“That’s the stuff, Joe!” he cried jubilantly. “You knocked a home run that time.”
A look of blended astonishment and vexation came into Westland’s eyes. He seemed to doubt the evidence of his ears.
“Surely you’re joking, Mr. Matson,” he said. “No man in his senses would turn down such an offer as that.”
“I must be out of my senses then,” replied Joe, “for that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
“Perhaps you think we’re bluffing,” said Westland, “but money talks, and here is where it fairly shouts.”
He drew from his pocket a roll of bills of large denominations and laid it on the table.
“There’s the signing-up money,” he explained. “They wanted me to bring a certified check, but I insisted on the actual cash. Count it if you like and take it to the bank if you doubt that it’s good. There’s twenty thousand dollars in that roll, and every cent of it’s yours if you put your name at the bottom of this contract.”
He laid an official-looking document on the table beside the bills, and leaned back in his chair, ostensibly intent on the end of his cigar, but watching 28 Joe keenly from the corner of his eyes.
That pile of crisp yellowbacks was more money than Joe had ever seen at one time in his life, except through the bars of a cashier’s cage. And all he had to do was to reach out, sign his name, and the next minute thrust the bills into his pocket. They meant independence. They meant security. They meant the power and comfort and luxury that money can give.
But they also meant treachery and dishonor, and Joe never wavered for an instant.