CHAPTER XVI
THE AUTOMOBILE WRECK
Thirty minutes after the happening of the incidents just related, a remarkable scene took place in Jack Gardner's smoking-room. There were present only the men of Sally's impromptu week-end party.
If the friends whom Jack Gardner had made since his sojourn in the East could have seen him at that moment, they would not have recognized in the coldly stern, keen-eyed copper magnate, the happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care Jack, of their acquaintance. The almost tragic occurrences of the evening had brought the real Jack Gardner to the surface, and he was for the moment again the dauntless young miner who had fought his way upward to the position he now held, by sheer force of character; for it requires a whole man to lift himself from the pick and shovel, and the drill and fuse, to the millionaire mine-owner and the person of prominence in the world such as he had become. He stood beside the small table at one end of the room; Morton occupied the center of it, facing him. Grouped around them, in various attitudes, were the others of that strange gathering. Duncan leaned idly against the mantel, and smoked his cigar with deliberation, although his gray eyes were coldly fierce in their expression, and his half-smile of utter contempt for the man who occupied the center of the scene rendered his face less handsome and attractive than usual. Malcolm Melvin was alert and attentive, from the end of the room opposite Gardner, and the other gentlemen of the party occupied chairs conveniently at hand.
It would be hard to define Richard Morton's attitude from any outward expression he manifested concerning it. He stood with folded arms, tall and straight, facing unflinchingly the accusing eyes of his life-long friend, Jack Gardner. His lips were shut tightly together, and he seemed like one who awaits stoically a verdict that is inevitable.
"Morton," said Gardner, speaking coldly and with studied deliberation, "you have been a life-long friend of mine, and, until to-night, I have looked upon you almost as a brother; but, to-night, by your own confession and by your acts which have followed upon that confession, you have destroyed every atom of the friendship I have felt for you. You have made me wish that I had never known you. You have outraged every sense of propriety, and every feeling of manhood that I thought you possessed. Fortunately for us all, no one is much the worse for your scoundrelism; I can call it by no other word. You have shown yourself to be, at heart, an unspeakable scoundrel, as undeserving of consideration as a coyote of the plains."
Morton's face went white as death at these words, and his eyes blazed with the fury of a wild animal that is being whipped while it is chained down so that it cannot show resentment. He did not speak; he made no effort to interrupt. Gardner continued:
"When Miss Langdon arrived here alone, in your roadster, she gave us no explanation whatever of what had happened, and, while we believed that some unpleasant incident must have occurred, we did not press her for the story of it. Then, you came, and without mincing your words you told the whole brutal truth; and you uttered it with a spirit of brutality and bravado that would be unbelievable under any other circumstances. And when, in your own self-abasement for what you had done, you confessed to the acts of which you were guilty toward Miss Langdon, you received, at Duncan's hands, the blow you so thoroughly merited; I am frank to say to you that, if he had held his hand one instant longer, it would have been my fist, instead of his, that floored you. But that is not all. You have been a gun-fighter for so many years, out there in your own wild country, that, before you were fairly down after you received the blow, you must needs pull your artillery, and use it. Do you realize, I wonder, how near to committing a murder you have been, to-night? If Miss Brunswick had not seen your act, if she had not started forward and thrown herself between your weapon and its intended victim, thus frightening you so that you sought at the last instant to withhold your fire, I tremble for what the consequences might have been. As it happened, no one has been harmed. You deflected your aim just in time to avoid a tragedy; but it is not your fault that somebody does not carry a serious wound as the consequence of your brutality. Were it not for Miss Brunswick's act, there would be a dead man at this feast, and you would be his murderer. But even that, horrible as it might have been, is less a crime than the other one you have confessed. You, reared in an atmosphere where all men infinitely respect woman-kind, deliberately outrage every finer feeling of the one woman you have professed to love. That, Richard Morton, is very nearly all that I have to say to you. I have asked these gentlemen to come into the room, and to be present during this scene, in order that we may all bind ourselves to secrecy concerning what has happened to-night. I can assure you that nothing of this affair will leak out to others. I have quite finished now. One of the servants will bring your roadster around to the door. Our acquaintance ends here."
He turned and pressed a button in the wall behind him, and a moment later the door opened; but it was Beatrice Brunswick who stood upon the threshold, and not the servant who had been summoned.