Hurriedly the Governor took his departure. He was nervous, anxious, worried.
"It seems to be the kind of an explanation that doesn't explain ..." he told himself. Now he went back to his old office on Nassau Street and telephoned to Murgatroyd for the original exhibits. At the Barristers' Club, behind locked doors, he examined the documents for hours. All night long he studied them; then he rose and gazed out into the grey dawn.
"Wilkinson is guilty!" he cried out; "damnably guilty! Why didn't I see it all before?"
There was a reason: Colonel Morehead had been right when he told Wilkinson that Beekman was partisan. And so long as his duty lay that way, Beekman was partisan. But now he was Governor; his duty in this case had become judicial; he saw with impartial eyes; and what he saw and what he read was not the mere testimony of witnesses, not evidence that depended on veracity, but documents whose genuineness was undisputed, and whose significance had strangely escaped him until now. In his own words, over his own signature, Wilkinson had convicted himself over and over again.
"Damnably guilty," he repeated to himself.
One evening some days later Colonel Morehead betook himself into the presence of Peter V. Wilkinson and his daughter Leslie. He had with him, he said, a note which had come from the Governor's private chambers, which he wished to read to them. It ran:
My dear Colonel:
I have examined with great care the petitions for pardon in the People vs. Wilkinson. Also the printed record. There seem to be undisputed facts which are totally inconsistent with innocence. The verdict seems to have been justified, the decisions on appeal correct. There are no extenuating circumstances known to me which require executive interference.
Very truly,
Eliot Beekman.
"What the devil does he want?" growled Wilkinson, taking the letter from Morehead, and tossing it to Leslie. "Is it money or political preferment? Haven't I given him enough?" his anger increasing as he went on. "I made him——"