Chapter XXVII: Brute Force or Finesse

"What do you want me to say, Mr. Rodney?" asked Shurtliff, coming through the door, having caught Rodney's use of his name.

"Oh, Shurtliff----" began Rodney, somewhat embarrassed at having been overheard.

"What do you want me to speak about?" continued the old man suspiciously, not giving the younger man time to finish. "And what friend can you then approach, sir?"

"I'll tell you what I want," said Rodney.

He quickly came to a decision. Standing up and facing the old man, he staked everything on one bold throw. Grasping the situation, Helen Illingworth held her breath. Winters moved to take his own part in the game at the proper time.

"What is it, sir?" asked the secretary.

"Shut the door and come in," was the answer.

Rodney spoke sharply and it was a sort of indication, characteristic of the difference in station between an independent young man and a subservient old man.

"Here I am, sir," answered Shurtliff, closing the door and standing before it.

He shot a quick glance at the young woman. He observed her tense position. He saw the emotions that filled her soul in her face and bearing. All his old suspicions rose like a flood. For the moment he no longer cared for her. He almost hated her. He looked from her to the dark-faced, determined Rodney, to big, powerful, quiet Winters. Was this a trap? Were they going to try to force him to speak? He was a brave man, old Shurtliff, but his heart beat a little faster as he faced them. He was quite master of himself, though, cool, watchful, determined; in their eyes rather admirable than otherwise.

"The time has come for you to tell us the truth," began Rodney emphatically. "You know that the whole blame and responsibility for the failure of the International Bridge is loaded on the wrong man. You know that you permitted, and even made possible, the sacrifice of the reputation of the son for the sake of the fame of the father. You know that this girl here is breaking her heart, that Meade's life is ruined, and you're to blame. Now the time has come for you to speak. We know as well as you that young Meade is innocent. Here's our evidence."

He drew a handful of papers from his breast pocket and shook them in the face of the old man, who had shrunk back against the side of the car and stood staring, white-faced, thin-lipped, close-mouthed, inexorably resolved still.

"Read them," continued Rodney. "I'll admit to you that the whole thing would not be worth the paper it's written on in a court of law or even in a newspaper report, but it's convincing to us and you can make it convincing to everybody. You've got to speak."

"Do you think, sir, that there's any power in your stretched out arm or in your rude voice or in your threatening gesture to make me speak?"

"By the Lord," exclaimed Winters, suddenly whipping out a Colt's forty-five from the holster at his belt--he was dressed just as he had been when he rode away from the ranch--"out West we've got ways for persuading men to speak and this is one of them."

Winters was a bigger man than Rodney. His life had been wild and rough and his manner when he wanted was according. He would fain add physical compulsion under threat of death to Rodney's mental insistence.

"And do you think, sir, that I'm afraid of any lethal weapon you can produce or even use, any more than I am of Mr. Rodney's words?" The old man's eyes flashed and his knees shook, but he had all the spirit of a soldier as he looked into Winters' stern face, full of threat and menace. His thin voice took on a certain quality of courage. It even rang a little. His courage was mainly moral, but there was some accompanying physical hardihood, that was undoubted. "You can beat me, you can even kill me, if you wish, but you can't make me say a word I don't want to say of my own free will," he cried out at last, his voice strangely rising.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," said Helen Illingworth, rising and swiftly interposing between the secretary and the two angry men. She realized that the affair had gone far enough and that she must intervene. They had certainly failed lamentably, almost ludicrously. "You are wrong to threaten Mr. Shurtliff. He is old enough to be the father of either of you. Drop your arm, Mr. Rodney. Put up that pistol, Mr. Winters. Mr. Shurtliff," said the girl quickly, "as I am in a certain sense your hostess and as you are in a certain sense my guest here, I apologize to you for the improper and impulsive conduct of these young men. They love Bertram Meade dearly as I do. Let that be their excuse. Meanwhile, they will apologize to you here and now, I am sure."

There was a moment of silence. Rodney and Winters stared at each other and both looked at the girl, confronting them so confidently in her superb and beautiful way. Winters smiled a little shamefacedly as he shoved his gun back into its holster. His had indeed been the greater offense.

"Mr. Winters, Mr. Rodney," said the girl insistently.

"Oh, I apologize. I suppose it was wrong to threaten him," said Rodney disgustedly.

"Hang it," said Winters, now utterly forgetful of conventions, "it wasn't the thing to do to draw a gun on a little, old man and I'm sorry I did it."

"And now that we've apologized you'll tell us the truth, won't you?" asked Rodney swiftly, with no appreciable change of manner.

"Yes, we beg it now, humbly," chimed in Winters, with anything but an humble air or voice.

"I won't have Mr. Shurtliff even appealed to now," said Miss Illingworth. "You have threatened him and you have apologized. Whether he forgives you or not is for him to decide, but he shall not be worried, or questioned, or insulted any more."

"Thank you, Miss Illingworth. I came for that book on the desk; your father wants it," said Shurtliff grimly, bowing slightly to her.

He stepped a little tremblingly--the scene had been unnerving--past the young men, picked up the book, bowed again formally and unmistakably to Miss Illingworth alone, and went out of the car. The honors of the encounter were certainly his.

"Well, Miss Illingworth," said Winters, "I don't know whether you made a mistake or not. I think I could have scared it out of him with this little persuader of mine----" He tapped the butt of the pistol.

"You couldn't have done it if you had killed him," said the woman, who had read the old secretary correctly. "He isn't what I call a daring man, but he has courage that would take him to the stake rather than make him give way, the courage of endurance rather than of action. When he speaks, if he ever does, it will be of his own free will."

"Or because you may persuade him," said Rodney. "By Jove, when I think it over it was the finest thing you ever did."

"Bert Meade's a lucky fellow," said Winters. "You're the kind of a girl that ought to marry out West, where we try to breed men that will match up."

Helen Illingworth laughed a little, although she felt no inclination to merriment.

"That's a fine compliment," she said. "Well, this has rather shaken me and I'm going to ask you gentlemen to excuse me."

"We'll see if he is working on the dam tomorrow."

"You will stay all night, Mr. Winters?"

"Your father invited me to take a bunk in his car and to be perfectly frank with you I'd sleep out in the open rain rather than miss a chance of being in on the end of a game like this."

The girl bowed and left them.

"Dick," said Rodney slowly at last as the two sat smoking together in the silence of complete understanding and good comradeship, which requires no expression in talk, "you're not the only man who thinks that girl would be a good wife to a man."

"Ah," said Winters, "sits the wind in that quarter, Rod?"

"Yes," answered the other, "but I'm fighting this thing through for Meade."

"Well, by George," said the big ranchman, "you're as good a man as Meade any day, fine fellow as he is. I wish I had some chance to get in on this game and make myself worthy of the two of you, let alone the lady."

It was a rare confidence that Rodney had vouchsafed to his friend, and like every other Anglo-Saxon, having said his say he did not wish to discuss it further.

"Do you know," he began, changing the subject abruptly, "I think things have turned out pretty well in spite of our foolishness a while ago. I believe if there's a spark of human gratitude in Shurtliff's heart the girl's interposition when you and I were threatening him, and her refusal to allow him to be questioned later, will fan it into a flame. And I have an idea that when he thinks it over he'll be about ready to tell."

"Are you sure he has anything to tell?"

"Certain."

"Well, I guess you're right. It sort of consoles me for having drawn my gun, without using it, too. And if he tells in the morning and we find Meade everything will be lovely."

"For everybody but me," said Rodney.

"I'll tell you what, old man, when this thing's over you're coming out to spend the rest of the winter with me on the ranch. It's the greatest place on earth for a man to buck up. There's no woman within fifty miles."

Rodney laughed a little grimly.

"I'll go you," he said.