“If I hadn’t found you by next Wednesday, I should have had to turn your property over to a dozen charitable institutions provided for by your father’s will—and, by George, I’ve been fighting a temptation to steal it!” His arms clasped Billy’s shoulder convulsively. “It’s been horrible, ghastly! I’ve been afraid I might find you and afraid I wouldn’t! I tell you it’s been hell. I’ve spent thousands of dollars trying to find you, fearing one day you might turn up, and the next day afraid you wouldn’t. And, you know, Tyringham, your father was my dearest friend; that’s what made it all so horrible. I want you to know about it, Billy; I want you to know the worst about me; I’m not the man you thought me. When I started away with Constance and told you I was going to California I decided to make a last effort to find Tyringham. I read a damned novel that acted on me like a poison; that’s why I’ve made a fool of myself in a thousand ways, thinking that by masquerading over the country I might catch Tyringham at his own game. And now you know what I might have been; you see what I was trying to be—a common thief, a betrayer of a sacred trust.”
“Don’t talk like that, father,” began Billy, shaken by his father’s humility. “I guess we’re in the same hole, only I’m in deeper. I tried to rob you. I tried to steal some of that Tyringham money myself, but—but——”
Hood, wishing to leave the two alone for their further confidences, walked to the recumbent Fogarty, roused him with a dig in the ribs, and conferred with him in low tones.
“You took the stuff from my box, Billy?” Mr. Deering asked.
Billy waited apprehensively for what might follow. It was possible that his father had already robbed the Tyringham estate; the thought chilled him into dejection.
“I had stolen it. My God, I couldn’t help it!” Deering groaned. “I left that waste paper in the box to fool myself, and put the real stuff in another place. I hoped—yes, that was it, I hoped—I’d never find Tyringham and I could keep those bonds. But all the time I kept looking for him. You see, Billy, I couldn’t be as bad as I wanted to be; and yet——”
He drew his hand across his face as though to shut out the picture he saw of himself as a felon.
“Oh, you wouldn’t have done it; you couldn’t have done it!” cried Billy, anxious to mitigate his father’s misery. “If you hadn’t hidden the real bonds, I’d have been a thief! Ned Ranscomb was trying to corner Mizpah and needed my help. I put in all I had—that two hundred thousand you gave me my last birthday, and then he skipped. When I get hold of him——!”
“You put two hundred thousand in Mizpah?”
“I did, like a fool, and, of course, it’s lost! Ned went daffy about a girl and dropped Mizpah—and my money!”