第36章 THE REINCARNATION OF SMITH(2)

"Yer NOT," returned Scranton. "Not if I knows it. Yer goin' to climb down. Yer goin' to get up and get! Yer goin' to step down and out! Yer goin' to shut up your desk and your books and this hull consarn inside of an hour, and vamose the ranch. Arter an hour from now thar won't be any Mr. Farendell, and no weddin' to-morrow."

"If that's your game--perhaps you'd like to murder me at once?" said Farendell with a shifting eye, as his hand again moved towards his revolver.

But again the thin hand of the stranger was also lifted. "We ain't in the business o' murderin' or bein' murdered, or we might hev kem here together, me and Duffy. Now if anything happens to me Duffy will be left, and HE'S got the proofs."

Farendell seemed to recognize the fact with the same directness.

"That's it, is it?" he said bluntly. "Well, how much do you want?

Only, I warn you that I haven't much to give."

"Wotever you've got, if it was millions, it ain't enough to buy us up, and ye ought to know that by this time," responded Scranton, with a momentary flash in his eyes. But the next moment his previous passionless deliberation returned, and leaning his arm on the desk of the man before him he picked up a paperweight carelessly and turned it over as he said slowly, "The fact is, Mr. Farendell, you've been making us, me and Duffy, tired. We've bin watchin' you and your doin's, lyin' low and sayin' nothin', till we concluded that it was about time you handed in your checks and left the board. We ain't wanted nothin' of ye, we ain't begrudged ye nothin', but we've allowed that this yer thing must stop."

"And what if I refuse?" said Farendell.

"Thar'll be some cussin' and a big row from YOU, I kalkilate--and maybe some fightin' all round," said Scranton dispassionately.

"But it will be all the same in the end. The hull thing will come out, and you'll hev to slide just the same. T'otherwise, ef ye slide out NOW, it's without a row."

"And do you suppose a business man like me can disappear without a fuss over it?" said Farendell angrily. "Are you mad?"

"I reckon the hole YOU'LL make kin be filled up," said Scranton dryly. "But ef ye go NOW, you won't be bothered by the fuss, while if you stay you'll have to face the music, and go too!"

Farendell was silent. Possibly the truth of this had long since been borne upon him. No one but himself knew the incessant strain of these years of evasion and concealment, and how he often had been near to some such desperate culmination. The sacrifice offered to him was not, therefore, so great as it might have seemed. The knowledge of this might have given him a momentary superiority over his antagonist had Scranton's motive been a purely selfish or malignant one, but as it was not, and as he may have had some instinctive idea of Farendell's feeling also, it made his ultimatum appear the more passionless and fateful. And it was this quality which perhaps caused Farendell to burst out with desperate abruptness,--

"What in h-ll ever put you up to this!"

Scranton folded his arms upon Farendell's desk, and slowly wiping his clean jaw with one hand, repeated deliberately, "Wall--I reckon I told ye that before! You've been making us--me and Duffy--tired!" He paused for a moment, and then, rising abruptly, with a careless gesture towards the uncovered tray of gold, said, "Come! ye kin take enuff o' that to get away with; the less ye take, though, the less likely you'll be to be followed!"

He went to the door, unlocked and opened it. A strange light, as of a lurid storm interspersed by sheet-like lightning, filled the outer darkness, and the silence was now broken by dull crashes and nearer cries and shouting. A few figures were also dimly flitting around the neighboring empty offices, some of which, like Farendell's, had been entered by their now alarmed owners.

"You've got a good chance now," continued Scranton; "ye couldn't hev a better. It's a big fire--a scorcher--and jest the time for a man to wipe himself out and not be missed. Make tracks where the crowd is thickest and whar ye're likely to be seen, ez ef ye were helpin'! Ther' 'll be other men missed tomorrow beside you," he added with grim significance; "but nobody'll know that you was one who really got away."

Where the imperturbable logic of the strange man might have failed, the noise, the tumult, the suggestion of swift-coming disaster, and the necessity for some immediate action of any kind, was convincing.

Farendell hastily stuffed his pockets with gold and the papers he had found, and moved to the door. Already he fancied he felt the hot breath of the leaping conflagration beyond. "And you?" he said, turning suspiciously to Scranton.

"When you're shut of this and clean off, I'll fix things and leave too--but not before. I reckon," he added grimly, with a glance at the sky, now streaming with sparks like a meteoric shower, "thar won't be much left here in the morning."

A few dull embers pattered on the iron roof of the low building and bounded off in ashes. Farendell cast a final glance around him, and then darted from the building. The iron door clanged behind him--he was gone.