“Oh!” she commented, her expression shifting swiftly from sympathetic concern to doubt.
He caught the change in her look and tone, and flushed darkly.
“There are sometimes two sides to a story,” he muttered.
“Tell me your side now,” she suggested, with her usual directness.
His eyes fell before her clear honest gaze. His flush deepened. He hung his head, biting his twisted lip. After several moments he began to speak in a hesitating broken murmur:
“I’ve always been––wild. But I graduated from Tech.––not at the foot of my class. My father––always busy piling up millions––never a word or thought for me, except when I overspent my allowance. I was in a––fast set. My father––threatened 133 me. I had to make good. I took a position in old Leslie’s office––Genevieve’s father. I––”
He paused, licked his lips, hesitated, and abruptly went on again, this time speaking with almost glib facility: “There was an engineers’ contest for a projected bridge over Michamac Strait. I started to draw plans, that I might enter the contest, but I did not finish in time. The plans of the other engineers were all rejected. I continued to work on mine. After the contest I happened to pick up a piece of torn plan out of the office wastebasket, and it gave me a suggestion how to improve the central span of my bridge.”
“Yes?” asked the girl, her interest deepening.
He again licked his lips, hesitated, and continued: “There was no name on that torn plan––nothing to indicate to whom it had belonged. So I used it––that is, the suggestion I got from it, and was awarded the bridge on my plans. This made me the Resident Engineer of the bridge, and I had it almost completed when this man Blake came back from Africa after Genevieve, and claimed that I had––had stolen his plans of the bridge. It seems they were lost in Mr. Leslie’s office. He claimed he had handed them in to me for the contest. But so had all the other contestants, and their plans were not lost. It may have been that one of the doorkeepers tore his plans up, out of 134 revenge. Blake was a very rough brute of a fellow at that time. He quarreled with the doorkeeper because the man would not admit him to see Mr. Leslie––threatened to smash him. Afterwards he accused Mr. Leslie of stealing his plans.”
“Oh, no, no! he couldn’t have done that! He can’t be that kind of a man!” protested Isobel.