The hostler's unjointed legs, unstable because of recurrent debauchery, carried him disconsolately to lower levels. The Banker must be sure of his business, must have it well in hand, when he ignored the usual diplomatic mollifying preparation of a drink.
The hostler had left the sitting-room door open; Crane closed it carefully, and, sitting with his back to the window, said to the bank clerk: “Mr. Cass, I am going to be very candid with you; I am going to tell you that I have discovered you stole the thousand dollars Mortimer has been accused of taking.”
Cass's face blanched a bluish white; his jaw dropped loosely like the jaw of a man who had been suddenly struck a savage blow. His weak, watery, blue eyes opened wide in terror; he gasped for breath; he essayed to speak—to give even a cry of pain, but the muscles of his tongue were paralyzed. His right hand resting on the arm of his chair, as Crane ceased speaking, fell hopelessly by his side, where it dangled like the cloth limb of a dummy.
Crane saw all this with fierce satisfaction. He had planned this sudden accusation with subtle forethought. It even gave him relief to feel his suffering shifted to another; he was no longer the assailed by evil fortune, he was the assailant. Already the sustaining force of right was on his side; what a dreadful thing it was to squirm and shrink in the toils of crime. A thought that he might have been like this had he allowed Mortimer to stand accused flashed through his mind. He waited for his victim to speak.
At last Cass found strength to say: “Mr. Crane, this is a terrible accusation; there is some dreadful mistake—I did not—”
The other interrupted him. The man's defense must be so abjectly hopeless, such a cowardly weak string of lies, that out of pity, as he might have ceased to beat a hound, Crane continued, speaking rapidly, holding the guilty man tight in the grasp of his fierce denunciation.
“You stole that note. You sent it, with a quick-delivery stamp to your brother, Billy Cass, in New York, and he bet it for you on my horse, The Dutchman, on the 13th, and lost it. Mortimer, thinking that Alan Porter had taken the money, replaced it, and you nearly committed a greater crime than stealing when you allowed him to be dishonored, allowed him to be accused and all but convicted of your foolish sin. It is useless to deny it, all this can be proved in court. I have weighed the matter carefully, and if you confess you will not be prosecuted; if you do not, you will be sent to the penitentiary.”
Cass, stricken beyond the hope of defense, rose from his chair, steadying himself with his hands on the table, leaned far over it, as though he were drawn physically by the fierce magnetism of his accuser, and spoke in a voice scarce stronger than the treble of a child's: “My God! Mr. Crane! Do you mean it, that you won't prosecute me? Did you say that?”
“Not if you confess.”
“Thank God—thank you, sir. I'm glad, I'm glad; I've been in hell for days. I haven't slept. Mortimer's eyes have stared at me all through the night, for I liked him—everybody liked him—he was good to me. Oh, God! I should have gone out of my mind with more of it. I didn't steal the money—no, no! I didn't mean to steal it; the Devil put it into my hands. Before God, I never stole a dollar in my life. But it wasn't that—it wasn't the money—it was to think that an innocent man was to suffer—to have his life wrecked because of my folly.”