Nick's voice was not pleasant. It was sharp, severe.
"Because my business is a failure; because I am sick of St. Louis; because, with the few thousands I have secured, I may make a fresh start in some new section of the country; because I dislike notoriety, and Dashwood's story will——"
"Will bring you into the lime-light, eh?"
"Yes, that's it."
Nick looked hard at Leonard.
"You are a queer man, Mr. Leonard," he said. "Shrewd in some respects, utterly lacking in shrewdness in others. Let me see, have you explained everything? There is the matter of Luke Filbon's boat. What did you do with it? Turn it adrift, or scuttle it?"
"I—I scuttled it," replied Leonard, with a start.
"So I reasoned. And why did you scuttle it?"
"Because I feared that it might show blood-stains from John Dashwood's wound. The scuttling was a necessary precaution in the justifiable game I was playing."
"Now, let me see if I understand the case," said Nick judicially. "Everything you have done has been mainly in the interest of Mrs. Dashwood, your daughter. Incidentally, you have remembered yourself, and you have taken some interest—a commendable interest, I will admit—in Dashwood. You shun notoriety, you want to preserve your good name, to let the dead past bury its dead; and, if in carrying out the plan you have mapped out, your creditors suffer, what of that? It is better so; better for the officers of the law, who will be spared work and bother; better for Gabriel Leonard, who, amid new scenes, with at least five thousand dollars in his pocket, may begin life over again."