“How did you know that?”
“A man I knew in the Philippines—a Filipino—was wronged by a white man, who took his wife and threw her aside when he tired of her. The girl killed herself. Her husband watched his chance for a year, found it at last—thanks to that very fact that his victim wasn’t on guard against him—and sent his knife home. He’d been that fellow’s servant. I picked the dead man up. That Filipino looked as you looked a minute ago.”
“What became of the Filipino?” inquired his listener.
The colonel had not told the story quite without intention. He argued subconsciously, that if Mercer were a good sort under all, he would have a movement of sympathy for a more cruelly wronged man than he; if not, he would drive ahead to his purpose, whatever that might be. His keen eyes looked a little more gentle as he answered: “He poisoned himself. The best way out, I reckon. I should hate to have had him shot after I knew the story. But there was really no option. But I’m interrupting you. You did your work well and won Keatcham’s confidence?”
“He isn’t a very confiding man. I didn’t see him often. My dealings were with Atkins. He didn’t know that I had found him out; he thought that he had only to explain his two names, and expected gratitude for his warning, as he called it. He is slimy; but I was able to repay a little of my score with him. I was employed by more than Keatcham, and I saw a good many industrial back-yards. Just by chance, I came on a clue, and Endy Tracy and I worked it up together. Atkins was selling information to Keatcham’s enemies. We did not make out a complete case, but enough of one to make Keatcham suspect him, and at the right time. But that happened later—you see, I don’t know how to tell a story even with so much at stake.” He pulled out his handkerchief, and Winter caught the gleam of the beads on his sallow forehead. “It was this way,” he went on. “At first I was only looking about for a safe chance to kill him, and to kill that snake of an Atkins; but then it grew on me; it was all too easy a punishment—just a quick death, when his victims had years of misery. I wanted him to wade through the hell I had to wade through. I wanted him to know why he was condemned. Then it was I began to collect just the cases I knew about—just one little section of the horrible swath of agony and humiliation and poverty and sin he and his crowd had made—the one I knew every foot of, because I’d gone over it every night I wasn’t so dead tired I had to sleep. God! do you know what it is to have the people who used to be running out of their houses just to say howdy to you, curse you for a swindler or a fool or turn out of one street and down the other not to pass you? Did you ever have a little woman who used to give you frosted cake when you were a boy push her crape veil off her gray hair and hand you the envelope with her stock, with your handwriting on the envelope, and beg you—trying so hard not to cry, ’twas worse than if she had—beg you to lend her just half her interest money—and you couldn’t do it? Did you—never mind. I said I waded through hell. I did! Not I alone—that was the worst—all the people that had trusted me! And just that some rich men should be richer. Why should they have the lion’s share? The lion’s share belongs to the lion. They are nothing but jackals. They’re meaner than jackals, for the jackals take what the lion leaves, and these fellows steal the lion’s meat away from him. We made honest money; we paid honest wages; folks had more paint on their houses and more meat in their storehouses, and wore better clothes Sunday, and there were more school-houses and fewer saloons, and the negroes were learning a trade instead of loafing. The whole county was the better off for our prosperity, and there isn’t a mill in the outfit—and I know what I’m talking about—there isn’t a shop or a mine that’s as well run or makes as big an output now as it did when the old crowd was in. You find it that way everywhere; and that’s what is going to break things down. We saw to all the little affairs; they were our affairs, don’t you know? But Keatcham’s new men draw their salaries and let things slide. Yet Keatcham is a great manager if he would only take the time; only he’s too busy stealing to develop his businesses; there’s more money in stealing a railway than in building one up. Oh, he isn’t a fool; if I could once get him where he would have to listen, I know I could make him understand. He’s pretty cold-blooded, and he doesn’t realize. He only sees straight ahead, not all round, like all these superhumanly clever thieves; they have mighty stupid streaks. Well, I’ve got him now, and it is kill or cure for him. He can’t make a riffle. I knew I couldn’t do anything alone; I had to wait. I had to have stronger men than I am to help. By and by they tried their jackal business on a real lion—on Tracy. They wanted to steal his road. I got on to them first. I see a heap of people in a heap of different businesses—the little people who talk. They notice all right, but they can see only their own little patch. I was the fellow riding round and seeing the township. I pieced together the plot and I told Endy Tracy. He wouldn’t believe me at first, because his father had given Keatcham his first start and done a hundred things for him. To be sure, his father has been obliged as an honest man to oppose Keatcham lately, but Keatcham couldn’t mean to burn him out that way. But he soon found that was precisely what Keatcham did mean. Then he was glad enough to help me save his father. The old man doesn’t know a thing; we don’t mean he ever shall know. We let him put up the best sort of a fight a man can with his hands tied while the other fellow is free. My hands are free, too. I don’t respect the damned imbecile laws that let me be plundered any more than they do; and since my poor mother died last summer I am not afraid of anything; they are; that’s where I have the choice of weapons. I tell you, suh, nobody is big enough to oppress a desperate man! Keatcham had one advantage—he had unlimited money. But Aunt Rebecca helped us out there. Colonel, I want you to know I didn’t ask her for more than the bare grub-stake; it was she herself that planned our stock deal.”
“She is a dead game sport,” the colonel chuckled. “I believe you.”
“And I hope you don’t allow that I was willing to have her mix herself in our risks. She would come; she said she wanted to see the fun—”
“I believe you again,” the colonel assured him, and he remembered the odd sentence which his aunt had used the first night of their journey, when she expressed her hankering to match her wits against those of a first-class criminal.
“We didn’t reckon on your turning up, or the complication with Archie. I wish to God we’d taken the boy’s own word! But, now you know all about it, will you keep your hands off? That’s all we ask.”
“Well,”—the colonel examined his finger-nails, rubbing his hands softly, the back of one over the palm of the other—“well, you haven’t quite told me all. Don’t, unless you are prepared to have it used against you, as the policemen say before the sweat-box. What did you do to Keatcham to get him to go with you so like Mary’s little lamb?”