At the same hour Canterac, seated at his work table, was finishing a long letter with these words,
“ ...and this is my last request. I hope you will grant it. Good-by, my sons! Forgive me!”
He folded the sheet of paper and put it in an envelope which he placed methodically in the pocket of a coat hanging near him.
“If luck’s against me tomorrow,” he thought, “they’ll find this letter on my person. Before the duel I’ll ask Watson to send it to my family, in case....”
An hour later his opponent was entering Moreno’s lodgings.
The government employee had returned just a short time before from the meeting with Canterac’s seconds. Pirovani spoke haltingly, struggling hard to conceal his emotion.
He had just left two letters on Moreno’s table, one of them very bulky, with the envelope still unsealed, showing the contents to be a folio of close written sheets. The Italian had been writing most of the night, trying to condense his affairs into such form as could be jotted down on these sheets. He pointed to the less voluminous of the two letters.
“That is for my daughter,” he said gravely. “Send it to her if anything final happens to me....”
Moreno tried to laugh as though he couldn’t at all believe in the possibility of a fatality. But he stopped his feigned merriment abruptly when the contractor went on in a still graver voice,
“This thicker envelope contains an authorization duly made out, by means of which you will be able to collect the money the government owes me, and other sums at the bank. A man as competent as you ought to find it possible, by means of all that I have prepared for you in this packet, to take over my business. I am also leaving a will, appointing you my daughter’s guardian. You are the only man here, Moreno, in whom I place my confidence. Even though now and then you have been more on my enemy’s side than mine ... but that doesn’t matter! I know that you are honest, and I am entrusting my daughter and my fortune to you,—everything I have in the world.”