The old farmer started a little and I saw his hand grip the arm of the chair. He was surprised out of his shrewdness, too, for he merely repeated stubbornly, after a moment, “I tell you it’s a debt, Harry.” In another second he added, “What could he blackmail me for?” Then a sudden look of fear drove everything else from his face and he half rose out of his chair as he repeated in a shrill trembling voice:
“What could he blackmail me for?”
I got up and crossed over to lay my hand on his shoulder. Under my touch I could feel a tremor all over his frame.
“That’s just what you’re going to tell me,” I said quietly. “Listen to me. I’m a lawyer, and this sort of thing is my business. Maybe we can find a way out and maybe we can’t, but at any rate if you expect me to help you, you must tell me about it. A decent lawyer doesn’t betray a confidence, and I think I may say I’m decent. Why do you have to give this Gruber eight thousand dollars?”
In the end he told me. Garrulous, old men may be as a rule, but John Hawkins’s words came hard that morning. He hung off for more than an hour, and when he finally told his story I could see that every word was wringing blood from his heart, where the thing had been so long locked up. But though it was sad enough there was nothing really base in it, and the old man’s tough reluctance may be charged to his blind adoration of his daughter. It may be set down here baldly in a few words.
Six years before, John Hawkins, whose real name was Timothy Ryder, had been proprietor of a saloon in New York. His wife had died at the birth of their daughter; and Janet, spoiled by her father and not properly looked after, had gotten into bad company. There were details here that Hawkins passed over; he swore that Janet had not done anything really wrong, but through the misdeeds and treachery of her companions had been arrested and sentenced to three years at Bedford. I, who knew Janet, believed him. Hawkins had sold his saloon, spent half the proceeds in arranging his daughter’s escape, and come west with her.
“Gruber — Nosey Gruber we called him — is a ward-heeler and a crook,” said the old man toward the end. “I chased him out of the district once. I would have killed him last night, only there was no way. Unless I give him ten thousand dollars tomorrow he’s going to telegraph the New York police. I’ve got about two thousand in the bank that I’ve made off of my chickens. It was through them he found out about me; he was in Denver and saw my picture that I showed you in the paper.”
I remember as Hawkins finished the thought in the front of my brain was one of wonder at a man like Gruber reading a copy of the Utah Poultry Bulletin, and happening on that particular copy. My mind caught at that, I suppose, in an instinctive avoidance of the greater problem, how to save this old man from ruin, for I saw at once that the thing was insoluble. Nothing practicable could be done. We sat in silence, Hawkins with his fingers endlessly kneading themselves together and unfastening again, with so bitter a despair in his eyes as they met mine that I looked away.
At length we talked, but aimlessly. As a lawyer I had held the belief that no man should pay blackmail under any circumstances, but I faltered before the simple, hard facts. Refuse to pay, and Janet’s life would be ruined; pay, and it would probably be the same in the end anyway. Blackmailers, like cats, always come back. I said these things and many others to old Hawkins, and he merely sat and nodded his head miserably.
“What can I do,” he mumbled hopelessly. “I’ve got to pay. I could kill him, I suppose, but that would be just as bad for her. They’d find out who I was and it’d be the same thing. It’s only Nosey Gruber would do this. There’s never been any search for Janet — why was it Nosey saw that picture?”
I tried to get him to tell me what the offense was for which Janet had been committed, but he wouldn’t talk about it; he would only say that she was innocent and that it was all his own fault. He began again on the subject of the mortgage. He was half-crazed by fear; the thing must be done that day, at once, or Gruber would wire New York. Of course that was absurd, but the old man was unable to think clearly. In the end I refused pointblank to do anything unless he would consent that I first go to Dal Willett for advice. This was a sudden impulse, and nothing but a move of weakness on my part; the responsibility was more than I was willing to assume alone; but, on the other hand, I had come to believe greatly in Dal’s shrewdness and he might, after all, suggest something. To that I succeeded in getting Hawkins to agree, and leaving him there in the office I departed.
I’ve never seen Dal Willett worked up except that morning. The way I blurted the thing out in a breath had something to do with it, I suppose, but I have an idea that it was more the feeling he had for Janet. It opened my eyes to what passions and aches there had been behind his always quiet manner; I guess after all there was one human being he loved even more than he did his horses. I was astounded at the way he blazed up into fury; and then suddenly he was quiet again.
“Of course,” he observed, “it isn’t open to discussion. John can’t refuse to pay. It would mean Janet’s ruin and his own death, for the thing would certainly kill him. And he can’t pay either. Gruber would come back again and again, and when the old man dies he’ll keep after Janet. That would be just as pleasant as hell.”
I mumbled something about there being nothing else to do but pay. Dal glared at me.
“I said it wasn’t open to discussion, didn’t I?” he returned testily. “It’s a case of only two alternatives and both of them impossible.”
That appeared to me somewhat absurd. It must be either yes or no. Dal walked to the window of his little office and stood there with his back to me for a long while. I was conscious mostly of a great relief at having gotten half the burden off my shoulders, and I merely sat in silence and waited. Outside in the stable I could hear the boys calling to each other as they hauled the rigs up to the runway for cleaning, and the stamping of the horses’ feet in their stalls. Mot, Dal’s black and white coach dog, wandered in through the door and came up to stick his nose in the palm of my hand, and then ambled out again. Ten minutes passed without anything being said.
Suddenly Dal turned from the window, and I saw immediately from the look on his face that there was something in his mind.
“John’s over in your office?” he asked abruptly.
I nodded. “I left him there.”
“All right. Go and tell him to go back to the farm and stay there. Tell him to leave this thing to me. If Gruber telephones he must refuse to talk to him. If he’ll do that everything will be all right. Tell him I said so.”
“But what—” I began, bewildered.
“Do what I tell you. And tell the old man not to worry.”
That was all he would say, and a minute later I was trotting back to my office to carry out his instructions.
I anticipated a hard job of it, but old Hawkins was surprisingly amenable, and the secret of it was the unlimited confidence he felt in Dal Willett. As soon as I told him that Dal had given his word that “everything would come out all right” the old man meekly agreed to do just as he had said. He wanted to go around to the livery stable to talk with Dal, but finally I persuaded him to carry out the instructions to the letter. I went out to the street and unhitched his horse for him and watched him head south and disappear in the direction of the farm.
I hadn’t any idea what Dal was up to, and I’m not sure even now that he had figured it all out that morning in his office, though I think it likely. It was easy even for me to see that there was only one way out; and having decided to do the thing it remained merely to find the means. It was characteristic of Dal that he let it happen as naturally as possible.