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I shall always be thankful that the temptation did not reach the length of making me offer to buy Everton's silence. That, indeed, would have been suicidal. Yet the prompting suggestion came to me, in company with others still more ruthless. I was telling myself that the situation was sufficiently alarming to warrant almost any expedient.
Everton's mind was floundering hopelessly round this strange problem. He could understand a man being afraid; he was not sure that he wasn't afraid himself; but that a man afraid that he could not face death could yet contemplate certain death by his own hand, was completely beyond him. Halliday drew his breath in a deep sigh. "We'll say no more about it," he said.
He caught Everton's look, and although his teeth were gripped tight, he nodded cheerfully. Presently, when they were forming into line again beyond the wire, Halliday spoke. "Not too bad," he said. "The guns has done it for us this time. Come on, now, and keep your wits when you get across." In the ensuing rush across the open, Everton was conscious of no sensation of fear.
"Then I will give him a situation. I know him to be competent for the place I wish filled; and I believe he will be faithful." Here the interview ceased, and the gentleman who had taken the pains to sift out the truth returned to Everton's office. "Well," said he, on entering, "I believe I have got to the bottom of this matter." "What matter?" asked Everton, looking slightly surprised.
It flashed into Everton's mind that he had tripped over a hidden wire, and he was about to shout some chaffing remark, when he saw the back of the man's head as he lay face down. But even that unpleasant sight brought no fear to him. There was a stout barricade of wire in front of the next trench, and an order was shouted along to halt and lie down in front of it.
At one period it was fully one-third larger than it is now. Those large stones that stand by its brink are the "Mere Stones." There were several more stones about which marked Everton's ancient boundaries. There was one, I recollect, in the West Derby-road, near the Zoological Gardens. I often wonder if this relic of the past has been preserved.
In Cripple Creek I was Mary Everton's lover; in Denver I was Agatha Geddis's bondman and slave. Oftener and oftener, as the winter progressed, the business of the mine took me to the capital; and Agatha never let me escape. One time it would be a theater party, at which I would be obliged to meet her friends; people who, as I soon learned, were of the ultra fast set.
But Everton's return to the question at issue turned the danger of recognition aside. "To get back to the present time, and your plea for a rehearing," he went on. "I wish to be entirely fair to you, Bertrand; as fair as I can be without being unfair to Polly. Barrett told me yesterday afternoon that you had gone, or were going, to the Pacific Coast.
On my return to Cripple Creek after the interview which I have just detailed, I swore roundly that I would stop going to the Everton's; that, come what might, Polly should never be dragged into the horrible morass of degradation which I saw clearly, even at that bare beginning, was waiting to engulf me.
It was because, when the deciding moment came, I was always confronted by a vivid and soul-harrowing flash-light picture of Polly Everton's face as it would look when they should tell her. A Reckoning and a Hold-Up I imagine it is only in fiction that a man is able to live a double life successfully to the grand climax.
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