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Updated: June 2, 2025
What I did not suspect then, nor, indeed, for a long time afterward, was the possibility that Withers or Geddis, or both of them, had forestalled me in the matter of bribing the two deputies; that my foolish attempt had been anticipated, and that Whitredge, himself, was not wholly above suspicion as an accessory before the fact.
On the first page, in screaming headlines, I saw the complete explanation of the mysteries of the previous evening. Agatha Geddis had eloped with a married man notably prominent in social and business circles. The newspaper had two reliable sources of information. The deserted wife had been interviewed, and the guilty pair had been followed on the train by a reporter.
The most pressing need was for a lawyer, and since lawyers do not serve without fees, I was glad to remember that my savings, which were still reposing in Abel Geddis's bank vault, would enable me to pay as I went. By this time, in bitter revulsion from gratitude to fierce enmity, I was determined to defend myself tooth and nail. At one stroke Abel Geddis had cancelled all my obligations to him.
I knew Geddis and Withers must have one, and by a piece of great good luck I found a young surveyor's clerk who had made a tracing for Geddis from one of Blackwell's blue-prints. He had spoiled his first attempt by spilling a bottle of ink on it, so he made another. He didn't see any reason why he shouldn't sell me the spoiled copy." "I know what you are going to say!" I shouted.
With a desire keener than the hunger of the famishing for respectability and the privilege of living open-eyed and honestly before all men, I was forced, from the night of that first visit to Agatha Geddis, to lead a wretched, fear-frozen, double existence.
But these two old misers who are already tottering on the edge of the grave " "They have robbed me of my good name, and they have robbed us all of our good money!" I cut in rancorously. At this, Benedict, who had been saying little, put in his word. "I saw Whitredge an hour ago. He has been wiring Geddis and Withers to tell them that the game is up.
When he faced about again there was a frown of friendly concern wrinkling between his straight-browed level eyes. "How the devil did you ever come to get mixed up with the Geddis woman, Jimmie?" he demanded. I evaded the direct question. "It is a long story, and some day I may be able to tell you all of it. But I can't do it now.
My journey could be postponed; and in the light of what had happened, and what was now happening, I was beginning to understand that my runaway trip to the Pacific Coast was no longer necessary, on one account, at least. But in any event, wild horses couldn't have dragged me aboard of the same train with Agatha Geddis.
The other banks do most of the commercial business all of it, you might say; still, they say Geddis and old Abner Withers are getting richer and richer every day." "Agatha is married?" I asked. "No; and that's another of the funny things.
I sought him that afternoon with an explanation which was very far from explaining, but he listened patiently and with an evident desire to draw favorable inferences where he could from my somewhat vague story of my entanglement with Agatha Geddis.
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