He had turned me loose and we were sitting facing each other. I believe then was the first time I had ever had a good look at his eyes. They were close together and there was a kind of murky green fire playing around way down deep. His whole face was different.
There wasn’t anything to it. I argued with him about how the district attorney would laugh at his romantic idea of using a piece of carbon paper, but he had me scared and he knew it. Then I agreed to his plan with an amendment that he burn the paper.
He laughed then, and it was a long way from a chuckle. He must be laughing like that now, knowing what is going to happen to me.
“Burn it, and let you get me like you did Landis,” he wanted to know. “I know you, Barnes, and there is nothing you wouldn’t do to make money. My proposition is made and it goes. You can take it or leave it.”
I took another look at that face, and I agreed. He smiled then and drew out a little pile of papers from his pocket. One was articles of agreement for the partnership, providing for the change of the firm name. The others were notices for the papers of the change. I signed them all and then I wondered how he had happened to look for the carbon. I hated to ask him, but I had to know.
“You have a bad habit of leaving things around,” he told me when I did ask. “Besides that I have been with you long enough to see your crooked brain work. I saw you make a play at Old King one day at lunch. You remember, the day you had crackers and milk. I knew you usually had roast beef and all the vegetables you could find on the menu, finishing up with pie.
“I saw you meet him other times, and I knew that you were discussing trouble for someone. You may not remember, but I helped you check over the securities in the Landis safe deposit box one day. Then I began to watch you. I knew something was coming, and that you would make a fortune. I wasn’t going to be left out.
“The night before you went up to King’s house you did a little figuring on your scheme. You burned some of the papers, I found the ashes, but you must have crumpled up one of them without thinking about it. I don’t mind telling you I found it in your wastebasket. I had discovered a search of that basket every night was usually worth while.
“I heard you call Mrs. Barnes and tell her you were not coming home for dinner, and I followed you until I saw you safely in King’s house. When I came down next morning I met the night watchman leaving and he remarked that you must be trying to check me up, because you had been down to the office the night before using the typewriter. You see I had a pretty clear trail.”
The cigar I smoked that night was the last comfortable one I have had until this. There hasn’t been a moment, until last night, that I haven’t thought about that piece of carbon paper. And don’t think Brentwood let me forget about it either.
He didn’t mention it for a year. Then he came in and remarked that he thought he was growing more valuable as a member of the firm. I wasn’t quite cowed then and I let myself go for a minute, but he brought me up sharp. Oh, he had me, all right. I agreed.
The next time came about two years later. He asked me up to his apartment to dinner that night. I went, and he asked for another five per cent. There wasn’t any argument at all.
Don’t think that Brentwood wasn’t making good. He had a genius for finance. He never had a scheme that failed. Of course, we didn’t make millions out of everything he brought up, but we never lost and he worked hard.
My dinner engagements with him came about every two years, which brought us up to six months ago. I never had anything to do with him outside of the office except at dinners at my house, formal dinners, when he was just one of the guests.
Each time I went to his place he had a five per cent larger interest in the firm. The last time left him with a full half.
I had begun to take it for granted. I knew that every two years I would have to eat all alone with him and listen to his rotten talk about women. He was a cad, and he knew I hated his stories. That’s the reason he told them.
Then after dinner he would make his same smiling demand and there was nothing for me to do.
Did I tell you that I hadn’t had a peaceful moment since he showed me that paper? I couldn’t tell my wife about it. She is a wonderful woman. She doesn’t even suspect that I was mixed up in the Landis affair.
You are the first human being I have been able to tell this thing to after fifteen years of living it. Fifteen years is a long time. I don’t want your sympathy. It’s all over now and I want to get it off my mind.
But that doesn’t make any difference about my shooting Brentwood. As I said, he called on me last about six months ago. I thought then that I would have two more years of almost peace, when something else came up.
You may have seen a picture of my daughter Lucia. It was published last winter when she made her debut. She is her mother all over again, and I am just “daddy” to her.
She has always been my pal, since she was a little girl. And she is now, too.
Anyway, she made her debut last winter, and Brentwood started coming to the house more frequently. I would come home in the afternoon and find him at tea. My wife asked him to dinner two or three times, just with the family. She had never seen him ask for a larger share of the firm.
It kept up so that I began to have a big fear, bigger than my fear of Brentwood and his carbon paper. Suppose my girl should fall in love with him.
A couple of nights ago by some chance she was staying at home. She came into the library where I was trying to read, and I decided to try to find out how much she liked Brentwood.
She came over and sat on the arm of my chair and pulled my hair.
“Where is Brentwood tonight?” I started to question her.
“Pining away in some dark den, probably. I refused to let him come up. I told him it was daddy’s night.”
I patted her hand, but still that didn’t mean anything.
“It seems to me he is coming around pretty frequently these days.”
“You are not the only one who thinks so,” and she blushed.
Fathers may be stupid, but I knew my daughter and there was a great load gone off my mind.
“Who is he?” I tried to be very stern.
Then she slipped down into my lap and told me it was young Landis. The boy had more push than his father and was a comer. I liked him. They had decided that he was to come to see me the next day, and she had stayed at home to tell me about it. Her mother had already given her approval.
Young Landis came to see me yesterday. I liked the way he talked and I told him I was glad that Lucia had chosen him. When he left I felt so good I told Brentwood about it. I had to tell someone, because it meant so much to have my girl happy. He said that Landis was to be congratulated and left it at that.
His manner meant nothing to me, and I had about decided to give myself a half holiday, when he came into my office and invited me to dinner that night. He saw I was happy and he wasn’t going to let me be. He knew I wouldn’t refuse to go.
I went. Everybody knows that now. He was just the same at dinner as ever. The same boasting of his amours. I managed to live through it, because all the time my mind was busy wondering whether I could argue him out of asking for a larger share of the firm right at present. I wanted to give Lucia and Landis a start and I had to get all the returns I could get to do it properly.
But it wasn’t money he was after.
“I am not going to keep you in suspense, Barnes,” Brentwood began. “The reason I invited you up here immediately was to prevent you making the mistake you did this morning. It will never do for you to announce Lucia’s engagement to too many people. They might not understand it later.”
“Understand what?” I demanded. I didn’t need an answer. I knew what he meant, but I had to have him say it.
“Because, Barnes, you will have to arrange for her to marry me.”