There was a pathetic side to this for a lad with a heart as soft as Matt's, but just then he had no time for that phase of the matter. The windows of the front room of the house were open, and covered with mosquito net. Voices could be heard coming from the front room—a woman's voice, tearful and full of entreaty, and a man's sharp, clean-cut, and almost brutal.
Quietly Matt passed through the gate and took up his post near one of the windows.
"You sign this paper," Murgatroyd was saying, "and I'll give you a receipt for two years' interest. What more do you expect?"
"I can't sign away all my rights to my husband's invention, Mr. Murgatroyd!" a woman's voice answered. "The interest for two years is only three hundred dollars, and that machine he sent to Fort Totten cost nearly a thousand dollars to build. It isn't right, Mr. Murgatroyd, for you to take the machine the government is thinking of buying, and all my interest in poor Harry's invention, for just three hundred dollars."
"Oh, you know a heap about business, you do, don't you?" snarled Murgatroyd. "What good's the flying machine, anyway? It killed your husband, and it's likely to kill anybody else that tries to run it. By taking over the invention, I feel as though I was loading up with a white elephant, but I've got a chance to get a young fellow to try and fly in that aëroplane at Fort Totten. I'll have to pay him a lot of money to do it, and before I make an arrangement with him I've got to have your name down in black and white to this paper. Do you think for a minute I'm going to spend my good money, paying this young fellow two or three thousand dollars to risk his neck in that machine, when I haven't got any writing from you to protect me? Sign this paper. If you don't, I'll come here and take everything you've got in the house to pay that hundred and fifty, interest. Don't whine around about it, because it won't do any good. If you want to keep a roof over your head, you do what I say—and do it quick."
It would be impossible to describe the harsh brutality of the loan broker's words. The ruffianly bullyragging was apparent to Matt, even though he could not see what was taking place in the room, and his blood began to boil.
"I can't do what you ask, Mr. Murgatroyd," said the woman brokenly. "When the two years had passed, you'd have the homestead, and the invention, and everything I've got. My duty to my children——"
A savage exclamation came to Matt's ears, followed by a cry from the woman and the clatter of an overturned chair. Prebbles had said that Murgatroyd was a robber. Matt, of course, could not understand all the ins and outs of the present situation, but he understood enough to know that the broker was seeking to browbeat a defenseless woman, and to intimidate her into signing away rights which meant much to her and her children.
Without a moment's hesitation, the king of the motor boys leaped through the window—with more or less damage to the mosquito netting.