"They merely yielded to our charms! They feel themselves honored by our acquaintance! Now seat yourself on the bed and I'll tell you the whole story. When I left you I hastened into the village, bought a stick of shaving soap in a drug store and a few cigars in a tobacconist's. In each place I conversed with the clerk, thus laying ample ground for an alibi. Hurrying back to the inn I avoided observation by entering by the side door, skipped up to our rooms—and there you are! I did run a chance, of course, in climbing down the ladder, but all's well that ends well. I exchanged our new bank notes for sixty well-worn one-thousand-dollar gold certificates negotiable in all parts of the republic. That means a net gain in the Red Leary trust fund of ten thousand dollars. Seebrook had the stuff in the collar tray of his trunk. As the trunk was otherwise empty and the lock a special one that gave me a bit of trouble he's not likely to bother with it until old man Congdon turns up to close the stock transaction. When he opens it he will find fifty thousand dollars of good bills neatly piled there and if he has the imagination of a canary he will think the fairies have played a trick on him!"
"My God!" moaned Archie. "You don't think you can get away with this!"
"I think," returned the Governor imperturbably, "that we must and will get away with it." His emphasis on the plural pronoun caused Archie to cringe. "It strikes me as highly amusing that we have unloaded those bills of Leary's on a good sport like Seebrook. As I locked that stuff in his trunk I got to laughing—really, I did—and a chambermaid roaming the hall must have heard me, for the key rattled in the lock just as I slipped out of the window. There's Leary's suitcase and I've packed it with our soiled linen and stuck in a pair of shoes for weight. Seebrook's legal tender is neatly rolled up in my best silken hose in my kit bag. Hark! There's Seebrook tumbling into his bed, which is just beneath mine!"
"You're getting me in pretty deep," mumbled Archie dejectedly.
"How about those blood stains on the sidewalk at Bailey Harbor?" asked the Governor in his blandest tones. "When you speak of getting in deep you forget that some one besides Hoky was shot back yonder. You came to me red-handed from a deed of violence, and I took you in and became your protector, asking no questions. It's the basest ingratitude for you to whimper over a small larceny when you have added assault or murder to the liabilities of our partnership! But don't forget for a moment that we're pals and pledged to see each other through."
The reference to the blood stains reported by the Bailey Harbor police threw Archie back instantly upon the Governor's mercy. Complicity in the robbery of Seebrook was as nothing compared with the haunting fear that the man he had shot in the Congdon house had died from the wound. Unable to determine this question he was floundering in a veritable sea of crimes. The Governor was undressing with provoking indifference to his companion's perturbation.
"Sleep, lad, sleep! You may be sure that nothing will harm us tonight, and I have faith that more stirring adventures are ahead of us. I forgive you your qualms and quavers, the pardonable manifestations of youth and inexperience. We walk in slippery places but we shall not stumble, at least not while the Governor keeps his head!"
Nothing appealed to Archie as of greater importance than the retention by his companion of the head that now lay chastely upon a snowy pillow. A handsome, well-formed head, a head suggestive of family and the pride of race, though filled with the most complicated mental machinery with which a human being had ever been endowed.
"Put out the lights and get you to your couch!" the Governor muttered drowsily.
The man certainly wore his crimes lightly. He was sound asleep before Archie had got into his pajamas.