"The letter might have said more. It doesn't give you a great deal to work upon."
Max laughed.
"But it does. The letter wasn't signed, even, and was typewritten, so you'd say it wasn't worth reading twice. And yet I know right now who wrote it."
"Yes?"
"Yes." There was triumph unhidden in Max's voice, in his eyes turned full upon Sothern's. "For I've been after that man for more than seventeen months, the man who has cause to hate John Harper Drennen like poison, the man who'd like to entangle both the father and son in the mesh of the law. It's the man I'm going to get at the end of this trail, a man calling himself Sefton. And when I get him he's going to talk, he's going to identify John Harper Drennen, and I'm going to put the two of them where they'll see the sun through the bars for more years than is pleasant to look upon!"
Again there was silence and the calm smoking of pipes.
"Why do you tell me this, Max?" asked Sothern after a little.
Suddenly Max's hand shot out, resting upon Sothern's shoulder. Drennen started, his hands shutting tight, as he waited breathlessly for the words: "John Harper Drennen, you are my prisoner!" He fancied that he saw Sothern's body shaken with a little tremor. The words which he heard at last in Max's quiet voice were these:
"I tell you, Mr. Sothern, because I come pretty near the telling of everything to you. Because for six years you have been more a father to me than my own father ever was. Because everything that I am I owe to you. You set my feet in the right path, and now that I am succeeding, for by God, success is coming to me, I want you to know it! I have never talked to you of the things which I have felt most.…" For a moment he broke off; Drennen fancied his eyes glistened and that he had choked on the simple words. "You know what I mean … you don't think I'm a sentimental fool, do you?"
Sothern, his face white but his expression showing nothing, his voice grave and calm, dropped his own hand gently upon the lieutenant's shoulder.