“He would come here and sit with me and smoke and was very silent. I knew there were debts and I knew well enough that the woman wanted him to sell himself.
“He raked and scraped money--he sold everything of his own, his instruments and all. He took out every cent of insurance that money would buy. Then he put prussic acid in a capsule--a shell of salol, I believe they said it was--so that the work of the poison would be delayed, and he swallowed the capsule on the street and went into an office and sat and chatted with friends and joked and laughed much more than was his habit till at last his eyes closed and his face grew white and he fell out of his chair upon the floor stone-dead, and never uttered a groan.
“It was brave work. They called it heart disease, but it's not easy to fool insurance people. They took him out of his grave and proved suicide--and they did not pay a dollar of insurance to his family. They were not obliged to. The policies were new and the suicide clause let the companies out. So he left only debts instead of twenty-five thousand dollars. However, I say it was brave work.”
“It would have been braver to stay and face it,” blurted Farr.
“But Andrew Kilgour had a code of his own--a state of mind some of us could not understand--the example of an ancestor. We are not all alike. Many cannot stay and face trouble. You might be able to do it--you seem to have a level head!”
Farr grew pale, his hands trembled on the arms of his chair, and then he got up and marched across the little shop to the window, turning his back on Citizen Drew.
“You told them in City Hall that you would stay here and fight,” pursued Citizen Drew. “That is brave work.”
“I'll be much obliged to you, Citizen Drew, if you'll leave me out of your catalogue of heroes. And I take back what I said about his facing it. I hadn't any right to make any such comment.”
“So the girl went to work in Symonds Dodd's office and his nephew is courting her. I hope he doesn't get Andrew Kilgour's daughter. He never went after any other girl honestly. I have looked into this case because I was Andrew's friend. Young Dodd wants to marry her and the mother is helping him. But I know that rapscallion, Mr. Farr. I can't believe that Kate Kilgour will be caught by him.”