“Who are they?” he inquired of the servant, and when he learned that Mr. Cargill was one of the number he rubbed his hands together gleefully and murmured to himself: “At last, at last, I have got you in the toils, my lady with the dainty, devilish face that refused me so scornfully a year ago.”
The look with which he entered the room where his visitors awaited him had a fine and scornful air of contempt about it, suggestive of unsatiated conquest, and slaves, male and female—especially female—dragging at his victorious chariot’s wheel.
“You are come to take up that note, I presume?” he began, addressing Mr. Cargill and ignoring his companion, “but you are entirely too late. Honorable men do not come sneaking into a bank two hours after it has been closed and after their note has gone to protest. To-morrow the whole town will know that your note has been protested—no not to-morrow, for that is Christmas Day,—but you will be the talk of the town the following day, and no doubt that reflection will sweeten your Christmas dinner—as” he snarled through his shark-like teeth—“as your wife sweetened mine a year ago, through your accursed interference.”
If he had not been carried away by his feelings he would have noticed the peculiar expression on the faces of his visitors, but he did not, and he raved on until, in a stentorian voice, Wilfred bade him be silent. What was it in the look and voice of that man that made the banker pause and wince as he met his gaze? “Who are you, sir, that dare——” he began, but his voice faltered, and his whole frame seemed to shrink as he met the other’s full lambent eye bent upon him, and felt it thrilling him through and through.
“I know you, surely,” he said slowly and almost feebly. “I have seen you before—somewhere,” and then the other’s gaze seemed to freeze him into silence.
“Listen to me, Banker Strangely, and do not dare to open your mouth till I have done.”
“You have been engaged in a conspiracy to ruin my friend, Mr. Cargill. You induced him to give you $5,000 to invest in a mine named the Longfellow, near Denver, and give you his note for $5,000, and you told him you were paying $15,000 more, and that, you said, made up the entire purchase money. To insure his joining you, you showed him a letter from the manager of the mine named George Williams, showing that very large profits were being made. You knew Mr. Cargill’s anxiety to make some money, so that his wife, who had had so many rich offers, might not pine for the wealth which might have been hers. O, revenge was sweet to you, and you played your cards well. Too well, my friend, for your own comfort now. You thought to wreck their happiness this fair Christmas eve, did you; well, there is going to be some wrecking done, my friend, but it is here in this house—your home—where it is going to occur and not over the way in the home of the woman you once said you loved.
“Your whole plot is laid bare. I hold in my hand in your own handwriting a full and detailed confession of your villainy which you wrote out last night and sent to my friend, together with the note for $5,000, which you acknowledged you had got from him by fraud. There it is, and see, you have endorsed it in your own handwriting, and added your private stamp to it. In the same letter you gave my friend the name of your accomplice, George Williams, and his address, and when I showed him your letter he confessed everything too, and told me a good deal more of your dealings than was needful for my case.”
“It is all a lie, that letter is a forgery, I never wrote it, and that note was stolen from the bank last night,” shrieked the banker, goaded to desperation, “I will send for the police.”
“You need not send far, there is one outside the door,” returned Wilfred. Then, opening the door, he summoned the officer to enter.