I saw that I had him going and I kept him going. “But when an embezzler stays alive and does his best to straighten matters—”
“Don’t call me that name!” he groaned.
“If you will take me into your confidence, Judge Kingsley, so that I can turn to and help you, I swear before Almighty Jehovah that I will set to work for you with body and soul. I can help you—I know I can help. No man can feel as I feel and be useless! But let me tell you this much on the other side!” I bent down and snapped my finger under his nose. That was no time for half-way and mealy-mouthed stuff. “If you throw me down after this honest offer, it means that you think I’m too cheap to be of use and too low to associate with. And that’s an insult I’ll never swallow! So help me, I’ll drag you up into the village with that rope around your neck and blow the whole business and hand you over to those who will take care of you. I will! My mind is made up. Take your choice!”
I am sure that with no less bitter alternative could I have jounced any of his secrets out of Zebulon Kingsley.
“I’m just enough of a hellion to do that very thing if you don’t treat me right,” I warned him, angrily.
“You leave me no choice in the matter,” he mourned. “You are—”
“Look out, sir! I’m doing what I’m doing out of pure and honest desire to help you. I want fair treatment.”
“Nothing can make my situation worse than it is, I suppose,” he stated, after meditating for a time. “On the fifteenth day of April it will become known in town meeting that more than ten thousand dollars of town notes are out, drawing interest and bearing my name as town treasurer. I have issued those notes without warrant.”
“But the people who hold them know they are out!” He was coldly, numbly patient with me, the untamed animal who had promised to pounce on him and drag him to his shame in the village.
“I have borrowed the money in various small lots and in each case the note-holder is keeping absolutely still in order to escape taxation.”