"It was not Sidney."
"Aw, chuck it!"
"It's a fact. I got here not two minutes after you left. The girl was
still there. It was some one else. Sidney was not out of the hospital
last night. She attended a lecture, and then an operation."
Joe listened. It was undoubtedly a relief to him to know that it had not
been Sidney; but if K. expected any remorse, he did not get it.
"If he is that sort, he deserves what he got," said the boy grimly.
And K. had no reply. But Joe was glad to talk. The hours he had spent
alone in the little room had been very bitter, and preceded by a time that
he shuddered to remember. K. got it by degrees--his descent of the
staircase, leaving Wilson lying on the landing above; his resolve to walk
back and surrender himself at Schwitter's, so that there could be no
mistake as to who had committed the crime.
"I intended to write a confession and then shoot myself," he told K. "But
the barkeeper got my gun out of my pocket. And--"
After a pause: "Does she know who did it?"
"Sidney? No."
"Then, if he gets better, she'll marry him anyhow."
"Possibly. That's not up to us, Joe. The thing we've got to do is to hush
the thing up, and get you away."
"I'd go to Cuba, but I haven't the money."
K. rose. "I think I can get it."
He turned in the doorway.
"Sidney need never know who did it."
"I'm not ashamed of it." But his face showed relief.
There are times when some cataclysm tears down the walls of reserve between
men. That time had come for Joe, and to a lesser extent for K. The boy
rose and followed him to the door.
"Why don't you tell her the whole thing?--the whole filthy story?" he
asked. "She'd never look at him again. You're crazy about her. I haven't
got a chance. It would give you one."
"I want her, God knows!" said K. "But not that way, boy."
Schwitter had taken in five hundred dollars the previous day.
"Five hundred gross," the little man hastened to explain. "But you're
right, Mr. Le Moyne. And I guess it would please HER. It's going hard with
her, just now, that she hasn't any women friends about. It's in the safe,
in cash; I haven't had time to take it to the bank." He seemed to
apologize to himself for the unbusinesslike proceeding of lending an entire
day's gross receipts on no security. "It's better to get him away, of
course. It's good business. I have tried to have an orderly place. If
they arrest him here--"