The detective folded the letter slowly and returned it to its envelope. Then he sat for long buried in thought. Rockamore had taken the solitary loophole of escape from overwhelming disgrace left to him. He had, as 276 far as in him lay, expiated his crimes. What need, then, to blazon them forth to a gaping world? Pennington Lawton had died of heart-disease, so said the coroner. The press had echoed him, and the public accepted that fact. Only two living persons beside the coroner knew the truth, and Blaine felt sure that the gentle spirit of Anita Lawton would be merciful––her thirst for vengeance upon her father’s murderer sated by his self-inflicted death––to those of his blood, who, innocent, must be dragged in the mire by the disclosure of his infamy.
When Henry Blaine presented himself an hour later at her home, he found Anita inexpressibly shocked by the tragic event of the night.
“He was guilty!” she murmured. “He took his own life to escape falling into your hands! That gunshot was no accident, Mr. Blaine. He murdered my father in cold blood, but he has paid. I abhor his memory, and yet I can find it in my heart to be sorry for him!”
In silence, the detective placed in her hands the letter of the dead man, and watched her face as she slowly read it. When she looked up, her eyes were wet, and a tiny red spot glowed in either cheek.
“Poor Father!” she moaned. “With all his leadership and knowledge of men, he was helpless and unsuspecting in the hands of that merciless fiend! And yet even he thought of his own people at the last, and wanted to spare them. Oh, how I wish we could! If we might only keep from them forever the knowledge of his wickedness, his crime!”
“We can, if you are willing.”
Blaine met her look of startled inquiry, and replied to it with a brief résumé of his interview of the previous 277 evening with Rockamore. When he added his suggestion that the matter of the way in which her father came to his death be buried in oblivion, and the public left to believe the first report, she was silent for a time.
“But the coroner who performed the autopsy night before last,” she remarked, at length, hesitatingly. “He will make the truth public, will he not?”
“Not necessarily. That depends upon you. If you wish it, nothing will ever be known.”
“I think you are right, Mr. Blaine. Father’s death has been avenged; neither you nor I can do more. The man who killed him has gone to his last account. Further notoriety and scandal cannot help Father, or bring him back to me. It would only cause needless suffering to those who are no more at fault than we ourselves. If the coroner can be silenced, we will keep our secret, you and I.”