“I’ll take care of her, whatever happens!” Guy’s heart was in his buoyant voice. “But you’ll be all right. Don’t you worry! Haven’t you got Mr. Blaine on your side?”
“I’ll try to see that you don’t suffer for your enforced share in the Lawton conspiracy, Brunell. It seems to me that you’ve already gone through trouble enough on that score, great as was the damage you half-unwittingly 299 wrought,” Blaine remarked, reassuringly––adding: “But why didn’t you come forward before, and give your testimony?”
“There wasn’t any court action,” the old man returned, hesitatingly. “And besides, I was afraid to come forward and tell what I knew, because of Emily. I would have done it, though, as soon as I learned they had robbed Miss Lawton of everything. I wasn’t sure of that, you see.”
“One thing more!” Blaine pressed the bell which would summon his secretary. “Why, if you had reformed, did you keep in your possession all these years your forging apparatus?”
“I had it taken care of for me while I served my term, meaning to use it again when I came out. I was bitter and revengeful, and I meant to do everybody up brown that I could. But when I was free and found my––my wife had gone and left me Emily, it seemed like a hostage from her gentle spirit given to the world, that I wouldn’t do any more wrong. I kept the plant because I didn’t know how to dispose of it so no one else could use it, and as the years went by, I got more and more scared at the thought of it.
“I was afraid both ways––afraid it would be discovered, but more afraid I’d be found out if I tried to get rid of it. So I buried it in the cellar of my little shop and did my level best to forget it. I’d almost succeeded when, God knows how, Paddington found me. You know the rest.”
“You rang, sir?” Marsh, the secretary, had entered noiselessly.
“Yes. Have these two people––this young lady and her father––conducted in my own limousine to my 300 house, and made comfortable there until I give you further directions as to what I wish done concerning them.”
Blaine cut short the old forger’s broken words of gratitude in his brusquely kind fashion, but his heart imaged always the light in the girl’s soft eyes as she bent a parting glance upon him, like a benediction, before the door closed.
“What are you going to do with them, sir?” young Morrow asked anxiously when they were alone.