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He returned to his office, and, putting the envelope that had been lying on Slinn's desk in his pocket, threw a serape over his shoulders, and locked the front door of the house behind him. It was well that the way was a familiar one to him, and that his feet instinctively found the trail, for the night was very dark.
"It is as I feared," he said, gravely. "You do not know or you would not have remained silent." He then briefly recounted the story of his finding Slinn's letter, his exhibition of it to the invalid, its disastrous effect upon him, and his innocent discovery of the contents.
You must not think you've got the monopoly of disremembering," he added, with a faint laugh. Equally through Slinn's hands passed the record of the lavish expenditure of Mrs. Mulrady and the fair Mamie, as well as the chronicle of their movements and fashionable triumphs.
Mamie his Mamie should never go back to the cabin, since desecrated by Slinn's daughters, and take their places. No! Why should she? because of the half-sick, half-crazy dreams of an old vindictive man? He stopped suddenly.
"Who is Don Caesar?" asked Slinn. "The man what picked you up that day. I mean," continued Mulrady, seeing the marks of evident ignorance on the old man's face, "I mean a sort of grave, genteel chap, suthin' between a parson and a circus-rider. You might have seen him round the house talkin' to your gals." But Slinn's entire forgetfulness of Don Caesar was evidently unfeigned.
"Have you any idea where the letter is, or what has become of Masters?" continued Mulrady, with a matter-of-fact gravity, that seemed to increase Slinn's vagueness and excite his irritability. "I don't know I sometimes think " He stopped, sat down again, and passed his hands across his forehead. "I have seen the letter somewhere since.
Why had he never thought of this when Slinn was speaking? A sense of shame, as if he had voluntarily withheld it from the wronged man, swept over him. He was turning away, when he was again startled. This time it was by a voice from below a voice calling him Slinn's voice. How had the crippled man got here so soon, and what did he want?
Unheeding the frightened gesture of entreaty from Slinn, equally with the unfeigned astonishment of Don Caesar, who was entirely unprepared for this revelation of Mulrady's and Slinn's confidences, he continued, "He has brought the copy with him. I reckon it would be only square for you to compare it with what you remember of the original."
It was the least he could do to justify the ready and almost superstitious assent he had given to Slinn's story. When he had made a few memoranda at his desk by the growing light, he again took the key of the attic, and ascended to the loft that held the tangible memories of his past life.
It was that the letter was a brutal joke of Slinn's a joke perhaps concocted by Mamie and himself a parting insult that should at the last moment proclaim their treachery and his own credulity. Doubtless it contained a declaration of their shame, and the reason why she had fled from him without a word of explanation. And the enclosure, of course, was some significant and degrading illustration.
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