“You wrong me, Otto, as usual,” said Gerard, in a broken voice. “I am as anxious as you are to do whatever’s right. But I can’t help myself. I may as well make a clean breast of it. I must have the money. You’ll think me an unmitigated fool, but, then, you think that already.”
He hesitated a moment; Otto did not move.
“Two years ago,” Gerard went on, huskily, “I became surety for a chum of mine—never mind his name; he’s dead, poor chap—and I’ve got to pay.”
“Surety! Surety!” stammered Otto. “How? What? What kind of surety?”
“It was a debt of honor, between gentlemen. And I’ve got to pay.”
“Of course—a card debt. I understood as much,” said Otto, self-righteously.
“It was not my card debt,” retorted Gerard, feeling his wrongs more acutely than ever, for, as we are aware, he was not a gambler. “It happened playing with strangers, and quite unexpectedly it grew into an enormous sum. For him, next morning, it meant pay or shoot yourself. He wanted it to mean ‘Shoot yourself,’ but I stopped that just in time and made it mean ‘pay—some day or other.’ So pay we must. The responsibility is mine.”
He stopped, staring with solemn eyes, back through the misty past, into what had been, till now, the most dramatic occurrence of his life. He remembered his awakening, the day after the gambling-bout, to the troubled consciousness that he must hurry at once to his friend. He remembered the room as he burst into it: the table with the despondent figure sitting there, the pistol waiting, ready loaded. These things were sacred; he was not going to speak of them to Otto.
“I cannot understand any human being accepting your security;” the elder brother’s tone was sceptical to a degree of provocation. “But, at any rate, the other man and his people must pay.”
“He is dead,” repeated Gerard, gently. “Had he lived, he would have been perfectly well able to do so; we both knew that, or I don’t think he would ever have allowed me to incur the risk. It wasn’t much of a risk, as I told him at the time. He was sole heir to a stingy old aunt; he died before her, and all her money’s gone to charities. So you see I’m fully liable. It’s exceedingly unfortunate, but it can’t be helped.”