“It began in the thoughtless imprudence of youth,” he went on, playfully. “I used to think that money was an asset.”
“And you have discovered that money is only a jackasset.”
“That it is, in fact, a liability, and that every man you meet is dunning you for a part of it.”
“Including the lawyers you meet,” I said. “Oh, they're the worst of all!” he laughed. “As distributors of the world's poverty they are unrivaled.”
He smiled and shook his head with a look of amusement and injury as he went on.
“Almost every one who comes near me has a hatchet if not an ax to grind. I am sick of being a little tin god. I seem to be standing in a high place where I can see all the selfishness of the world about me. No, it hasn't made me a cynic. I have some sympathy for the most transparent of them; but generally I am rather gruff and ill-natured; often I lose my temper. I have had enough of praise and flattery to understand how weary of it the Almighty must be. He must see how cheap it is, and if He has humor, as of course He has, having given so much of it to His children, how He must laugh at some of the gross adulation that is offered Him! But let us get to business.
“I invited you here to engage your services in a most important matter; it's so important that for many years I have given it my own attention. But my health is failing, and I must get rid of this problem, which is, in a way, like the riddle of the Sphinx. Some other fellow must tackle it, and I've chosen you for the job. Mr. Potter, you are to be, if you will, my trustiest friend as well as my attorney. For many years I have been the victim of blackmailers, and have paid them a lot of money.”
“Poverty is a good thing, but not if it's achieved through the aid of a blackmailer,” I remarked. “Try some other scheme.”
“But you must know the facts,” he went on. “At twenty-one I went into business with my father out in Illinois. He got into financial difficulties and committed a crime—forged a man's name to a note, intending to pay it when it came due. Suddenly, in a panic, he went on the rocks, and all his plans failed. He was up against it, as we say. There were many extenuating circumstances—a generous man, an extravagant family, of which I had been the most extravagant member; a mind that lost its balance under a great strain. He had risked all on a throw of the dice and lost. I'll never forget the hour in which he confessed the truth to me. It's hard for a father to put on the crown of shame in the presence of a child who honors him. There's no pang in this world like that. He had braced himself for the trial, and what a trial it must have been! I have suffered some since that day; but all of it put together is nothing compared to that hour of his. In ten minutes I saw him wither into old age as he burned in the fire of his own hell. When he was done with his story I saw that he was virtually dead, although he could still breathe and see and speak and walk. As I listened a sense of personal responsibility and of great calmness and strength came on me.
“I took my father's arm and went home with him and begged him not to worry. Then forthwith I went to police headquarters and took the crime on myself. My father went to paradise the next day, and I to prison. I was young and could stand it. They gave me a light sentence, on account of my age—only two years, reduced to a year and a half for good behavior. My Lord! It has been hard to tell you this. I've never told any one but you; not even my own mother knows the truth, and I wouldn't have her know it for all the world. I cleared out and went to work in California, in the mines. Suffered poverty and hardship; won success by and by; prospered, and slowly my little hell cooled down. But no man can escape from his past. By and by it overtakes him, and in time it caught me. A record is a record, and you can't wipe it out even with righteous living. It may be forgiven—yes, but there it is and there it will remain.