"Then you must tell him about the note, and that first it will have to be paid off."
"And then you must hand him a letter which I will dictate to you now."
She flushed slightly, her eyes bright with excitement.
"You're sure it's perfectly honest, Mr. Tutt? I wouldn't want to do anything unfair!"
"No--he's only about a thousand times worse. He's a robber of widows and orphans. He isn't man enough to take a chance at housebreaking."
"I don't know what you mean," she sighed. "Where shall I write?"
Mr. Tutt cleared a space upon his desk, handed her a pad and dipped a pen in the ink while she took off her gloves.
"Address the note to the bank," he directed.
"Now say: 'Kindly deliver to Mr. Badger all the securities I have on deposit with you, whenever he pays my note. Very truly yours, Sarah Maria Ann Effingham.'"
"But I don't want him to have my securities!" she retorted.
"Oh, you won't mind! You'll be lucky to get Mr. Badger to take back your oil stock on any terms. Leave the certificate with me," laughed Mr. Tutt, rubbing his long thin hands together almost gleefully. "And now as it is getting rather late perhaps you will do me the honor of letting me escort you home."
It was midnight before Mr. Tutt went to bed. In the first place he had felt himself so neglectful of Mrs. Effingham that after he had taken her home he had sat there a long time talking over the old lady's affairs and making the acquaintance of the phthisical Jessie, who turned out to be a wistful little creature with great liquid eyes and a delicate transparent skin that foretold only too clearly what was to be her future. There was only one place for her, Mr. Tutt told himself--Arizona; and by the grace of God she should go there, Badger or no Badger!
As the old lawyer walked slowly home with his hands clasped behind his back he pondered upon the seeming mockery and injustice of the law that forced a lonely, half-demented old fellow with the fixed delusion that he was a financier behind prison bars and left free the sharp slick crook who had no bowels or mercies and would snatch away the widow's mite and leave her and her consumptive daughter to die in the poorhouse. Yet such was the case, and there they all were! Could you blame people for being Bolsheviks? And yet old Doc Barrows was as far from a Bolshevik as anyone could well be.