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This heightened Pinney's respect for him, and apparently his divination of Pinney's character had nothing to do with Northwick's feeling toward him. So far as Pinney could make out it was friendly enough, and as their talk went on he imagined a growing trustfulness in it. Northwick kept his inferences and conclusions to himself.
He had fallen into a chair, and was motionless, save for the slow and labored breathing which shook his body. As he sat there in Pinney's ranch this pleasant afternoon, the wife whom he worshiped never so passionately as now, at their home one thousand miles away, was holding another man by the hand, and promising to be his wife. It was five minutes to five by the clock on the wall before him.
"Here is the money I brought with me." "Mr. Northwick! It isn't necessary yet! Indeed it isn't. I've every confidence in your honor as a gentleman." Pinney's eyes glowed with joy, and his fingers closed upon the envelope convulsively. "But if you mean business " "I mean business," said Northwick. "Count it." Pinney took the notes out and ran them over. "Forty-one thousand six hundred and forty."
Maxwell explained to Matt, as he had explained to Louise, that Pinney was the reporter who had written up the Northwick case for The Events. He said, after Matt had finished reading the letter, "I thought you would like to know about this. I don't regard Pinney's claim on my silence where you're concerned; in fact, I don't feel bound to him, anyway." "Thank you," said Matt.
But if I was in your place, I know what I should do." Northwick did not ask him what it was he would do. He fell into a deep silence which it seemed to Pinney he would never break; and his face became such a blank that all Pinney's subtlety was at fault. It is doubtful, indeed, if there was anything definite or directed in the mute misery of Northwick's soul.
Pinney's letter was a long one, written in pencil on one side of long slips of paper, like printer's copy; the slips were each carefully folioed in the upper right hand corner; but the language was the language of Pinney's life, and not the decorative diction which he usually addressed to the public on such slips of paper. "I guess," it began, "I've got onto the biggest thing yet, Maxwell.
But Pinney's spirit, though not of the greatest delicacy, had become sensitized toward the defaulter through the scrupulous regard for him shown by Père Étienne no loss than by the sense of holding almost a filial relation to him in virtue of his children's authorization.
It was not altogether strange to him; he had already done some minor pieces of amateur detective work, and acquitted himself with gratifying success; and he had lately seen a private detective, who attested his appreciation of Pinney's skill by offering him a partnership.
Several of them had illustrations: likenesses of Northwick, and views of his house in Boston, and his house in Hatboro'; views of the company's Mills at Ponkwasset; views of the railroad wreck at Wellwater; but it was Pinney's masterpiece which really made Hilary sick. All the papers were atrocious, but that was loathsome.
He got no word from the detective, who had given him a hint of the affair, to go ahead the night after his return from Hatboro', as he had expected, but he knew that the fact could not be kept back, and he worked as hard at his report as Pinney and Pinney's wife had worked at theirs.
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