"I came back, you young fool, to say something to you which I didn't want Miss Sherrill to hear. I didn't know, when I took her away, how completely you'd taken her into—your father's affairs. I told you this man may have been a wheelsman on the Corvet; I don't know more about him than that; I don't even know that certainly. Of course, I knew Ben Corvet was paying blackmail; I've known for years that he was giving up money to some one. I don't know who he paid it to; or for what."
The strain of the last few hours was telling upon Alan; his skin flushed hot and cold by turns. He paced up and down while he controlled himself.
"That's not enough, Spearman," he said finally. "I—I've felt you, somehow, underneath all these things. The first time I saw you, you were in this house doing something you ought not to have been doing; you fought me then; you would have killed me rather than not get away. Two weeks ago, some one attacked me on the street—for robbery, they said; but I know it wasn't robbery—"
"You're not so crazy as to be trying to involve me in that—"
There came a sound to them from the hall, a sound unmistakably denoting some presence. Spearman jerked suddenly up; Alan, going to the door and looking into the hall, saw Wassaquam. The Indian evidently had returned to the house some time before; he had been bringing to Alan now the accounts which he had settled. He seemed to have been standing in the hall for some time, listening; but he came in now, looking inquiringly from one to the other of them.
"Not friends?" he inquired. "You and Henry?"
Alan's passion broke out suddenly. "We're anything but that, Judah. I found him, the first night I got here and while you were away, going through my father's things. I fought with him, and he ran away. He was the one that broke into my father's desks; maybe you'll believe that, even if no one else will."
"Yes?" the Indian questioned. "Yes?" It was plain that he not only believed but that believing gave him immense satisfaction. He took Alan's arm and led him into the smaller library. He knelt before one of the drawers under the bookshelves—the drawer, Alan recalled, which he himself had been examining when he had found Wassaquam watching him. He drew out the drawer and dumped its contents out upon the floor; he turned the drawer about then, and pulled the bottom out of it. Beneath the bottom which he had removed appeared now another bottom and a few sheets of paper scrawled in an uneven hand and with different colored inks.
At sight of them, Spearman, who had followed them into the room, uttered an oath and sprang forward. The Indian's small dark hand grasped Spearman's wrist, and his face twitched itself into a fierce grin which showed how little civilization had modified in him the aboriginal passions. But Spearman did not try to force his way; instead, he drew back suddenly.
Alan stooped and picked up the papers and put them in his pocket. If the Indian had not been there, it would not have been so easy for him to do that, he thought.