“The way I figure it out is this,” he said. “If you know that there’s two of us to get into trouble over this money, instead of one, you maybe will be more careful not to do the wrong thing with it, so it will get out. As for what’s the wrong thing I leave that to you. I’m goin’ to take a chance on John Osprey’s skinnin’ me alive if he hears about this transaction, and I guess there ain’t much likelihood of his hearin’ about it from you or me, is there?”
He ponderously drew out a long black check-book, inked the pen and looked at it, inked it again and wrote. Potter received the slip of paper with its figures written in a big, round buccaneer’s Spencerian. His fingers trembled in spite of himself.
“But, Colonel,” he began, suddenly feeling a sense of guilt.
“I don’t want a note,” interrupted Cobb, lifting his rotund body by the arms of his chair. “The check’s enough. If you don’t pay me, I’ll send it around to you some day, when you’re rich, and you can light your cigar with it or pay, just the way you please. It’s made out to cash, so’s you won’t have any trouble gettin’ the money, but you just write your name along the back when you get to the bank. Good luck, son.”
With the money actually in his pocket, Potter’s despondency abruptly returned. After all, what had he accomplished? The money was useless so far as restoring Ellen to her normal self was concerned. Much more—a simply unrealizable sum—would be needed to enable her to go away in peace and have her child with dignity and comfort. At best, this would only pay the price of a crime....
He found her in much the same mood as his own, tired and resigned. She did not complain or accuse any one at all. But she seemed aching with dull resentment at the inevitable, friendless future, hating it and fearing it. She told him directly that she was not to have an operation. Dr. Schottman had warned that in her case it meant an exceptional risk. Her health was not good and having the baby would put her in fine shape.... Potter felt the sting of a lash in every word she uttered. He burst out at last.
“Ellen, you must marry me. You must. There’s no other way out.”
She did not laugh at him, but she simply refused to heed him. If she had consented he would have felt in that moment infinitely happier; and for even a ray of light in his present darkness, he would have abandoned a great many of the future’s promises.
“But what will you do?”
“Dr. Schottman has arranged everything for me. He’s to take me to a hospital in a few weeks. I could wait a month or two longer, I suppose, without their knowing it, but I might as well go. At the hospital I’ll have to work, until my time. Then he’s fixed it with some people for me to stay. They won’t mind anything. He’s told them all about me. They’re patients of his, nice people and well off. The Meadowburns will never know anything, they’ll never see me again. Not even the doctor knows about you and nobody will if you keep still. I’m just to walk out and disappear.”