"That's O. K.," Delbridge mumbled, dropping his cigar into a cuspidor. "Now I'll credit your account with the money. Check on it when you like."
When Delbridge's back was turned Mostyn drew a blank check from a pigeonhole and began to fill it in. The amount was for one hundred thousand dollars. He made it payable to Jefferson Henderson. He was about to sign his name when a great weakness swept over him like a flood from an unexpected source. How could he do a thing as silly as that? A gift of one-tenth of the amount would delight the old man and take him out of want—perhaps win his gratitude for all time. Mostyn started to tear the check up, but paused. No, no, that wouldn't be in obedience to a higher idea of justice. If the old man had been allowed to hold on to his investment in that early enterprise his earnings would have come to fully as much as the written amount. Suddenly Mostyn saw the dead face of his child as it lay in the coffin surrounded with flowers, and a sob struggled up within him and burst.
"For your sake, Dick," he whispered. "I know you'd want me to do it. I know it—I know it."
Half an hour later he was out in the open air, walking with a strange new activity. His very body seemed imponderable. He crossed the railway near the Kimball House and went on to Decatur Street. Along this street he walked for a few blocks and then turned off. Before long he was in the most dilapidated, sordid part of the city. He knew where Henderson lived. He had seen the old man pottering about the narrow front yard of the grimy little cottage as he drove past it one morning with a friend.
As he drew near the house to-day its impoverished appearance was more noticeable than ever. It was out of repair. Shingles had fallen from the sagging roof. It had not been painted for years; the slats and hinges of the outside blinds were broken, and they hung awry across the cracked window-panes. There was a little fence around it from which many palings were missing, as was the gate. On the narrow front porch a ragged hemp hammock hung by knotted and tied ropes between two posts. There was a broken baby-carriage in the yard, a child's playhouse at the step, a little toy wagon, a headless doll, a piece of bread, and some chicken-bones.
Mostyn went to the open door and rang the jangling cast-iron bell. It brought a young woman from a room on the right of the bare little hall. She held a baby in her arms as she peered questioningly at the visitor. Mostyn knew who she was. She was Henderson's youngest daughter, who had married a shiftless carpenter and been deserted by him, leaving two children to be cared for by their grandfather. It was evident by her blank stare that she did not recognize the caller.
"I want to see your father," Mostyn said. "Is he at home?"
"He's in the back yard," she answered. "He hasn't been feeling at all well to-day, and he didn't go to town as usual. Who may I say it is?"
"Tell him it is Mr. Mostyn," was the answer. "I won't keep him but a moment."
"Mostyn—Dick Mostyn!" The woman's tired eyes flashed as she jerked out the name. "So you have come here to devil him, have you?" She shifted the infant from her left to her right hip and sneered. "I don't suppose he cares to see you. I'll tell you one thing—he's my father and I have a right to be plain—you and your treatment are driving him out of his senses. He can't think of anything else or talk of anything else. Sometimes he rages, and sometimes he breaks down and cries like a child. I never have fully understood what you did to him, but I know you ruined him. Come in. I'll tell him you are here. I hope to the Lord you won't hit him any harder than you have already. We are in trouble enough. Two days last week we went without anything to eat except what a neighbor sent in, and that nearly killed my father, for he is proud. One of my sisters is sick and lost her job at the factory. If I thought you was any sort of a man I'd ask you to have pity."