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Updated: June 2, 2025
I gasped. "You mean to to jail?" Runnels nodded. "Jest for to-night. I reckon you'll be bailed, come mornin' if that blamed security comp'ny that's on your bond don't kick up too big a fight about it." "Hold on wait a minute," I begged. "There is nothing criminal against me, Uncle John. Mr. Geddis will tell you that.
She was with a party of friends from the East, but her Denver home was with Mrs. Altberg, a widow and a prominent society woman. Yes, Miss Geddis was quite well known in social circles; she was reputed to be wealthy, and the clerk understood that she had originally come to Colorado for her health.
Considered for herself, Miss Geddis is a woman for whom any self-respecting man could have little regard." For the first time in the interview the ex-schoolmaster's mild eyes grew hard. "Then I am to infer that she has a hold of some sort upon you?" "She has," I rejoined shortly.
While Cummings smoked a cigar in the window-seat I told Barrett the whole pitiful story, beginning with the night when I had promised Agatha Geddis that I would pull her father out of the hole he had digged for himself and ending with my appearance in the Cripple Creek construction camp. Barrett believed the story, and I didn't have to wait for him to tell me so. I could see it in his eyes.
There was a possibility that Geddis might be staying late in the bank; and if he were not, there was the other possibility that he might have changed the combination on the vault lock since my arrest. The more I thought about it, the more fiercely the escape notion gripped me. Whitredge's talk had made it perfectly plain that the best I could hope for in a court trial would be a light sentence.
Again pushing Simmons ahead of me, I entered the vault. It was a fairly modern structure; Geddis had had it rebuilt within the year; and it was electric-lighted and large enough to serve the double purpose of a bank strong-room and a safety deposit. Shoving the deputy into a corner I opened the cash-box and took out the exact amount of my savings, neither more nor less.
So I knew; knew when they sent you to prison for another man's crime, and knew, even better than your mother and sister did, why you let them do it. Oh, Jimmie!" with a queer little twist of the sweet lips that was half tears and half smile "if you could only know how wretchedly jealous I used to be of Agatha Geddis!" "You needn't have been!" I burst out. "But you don't know it all.
I was offered the job of bookkeeper and paymaster, combined, on the new work, with a substantial raise in salary, and the temptation to accept was very strong. But I argued, foolishly, perhaps, that so long as I remained in the same service as that in which she had discovered me, Agatha Geddis would always be able to trace me; that my best chance was to lose myself again as speedily as possible.
The despicable trick by means of which Geddis, or both of them, had shifted the defalcation loss to other shoulders proved two things conclusively: that the scheme had been well planned for in advance, and that the two old men had worked in collusion. I remembered my suspicion the one I couldn't prove that Withers had been as deep in the mud as Geddis was in the mire.
Surely little blame can attach to the confession that out of the tumult came a hot-hearted and vindictive determination to live for a single purpose; to work and strive and endure so that I might be the sooner free to square my account with Abel Geddis and Abner Withers. I need make no secret now of the depth of this hatred.
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