He was silent for a moment. "And why am I at an end?—why?" His answer rang through the room with a passionate resentment, with an agony of loss. "Because the world did not care to step in and point the right way to me. To have saved me would have been so easy! I was worth saving! I had brains—there was a man in me. Whose fault is it that I am now at the end?—a miserable remnant of a man! The world's. I was robbed of my chance in life—robbed, yes sir, robbed!—and I could have made it a splendid life! Ah, how I've wanted to make it a splendid life. And the world—the world that robbed me!—that world calls me criminal. And I must pay the penalty, and the penalty is—what you see! Oh, my God!"
For ten years Rogers had cherished the purpose of accusing the world on the day of his exposure—but now his loss was so overwhelming, speech to these people was so utterly useless, strength was so little, that he could say no more—could only, leaning against the desk, gaze in hatred and despair at Mr. Chambers and the owners. The faces of the five were pale and blank. There was a trace of sympathy in Mr. Jordon's face, and a momentary change in Mr. Chambers's that indicated—who knows what?
David sprang to Mr. Chambers's desk, his soul on fire.
"This, sir, is a damned inhuman outrage!" he flung down into the older man's face.
"It might also have been of interest to Mr. Rogers's clients," Mr. Chambers returned calmly, "to have known the record of Mr. Rogers's associate."
David's wrath had no time to fashion a retort, for the Mayor, at his side, hammered the desk with a great yellow-gloved fist. "That's what it is!" he shouted. "It's a low, dirty, murdering trick!"
"I merely acquainted his clients with his record—which they have a right to know."
A huge sarcastic laugh burst from the Mayor, and he pushed his face down into Mr. Chambers's.
"You," he roared, "you, when you're in a deal, you always show your clients your record, don't you!"
Rogers, out of whose cheeks the fire had gone, leaving them an ashen gray, tugged at their sleeves.