"Keep calm, man," was the lawyer's low advice. "Do you think if we had him tied up as tightly as I've made him believe that I should propose a compromise in his case. He's the weak link. Do you think I've had an easy time the last three hours bringing him to the point he's at? I had to invent evidence that couldn't possibly exist. I had to give him a merciless mental 'third degree.' I told him if he refused I was going to Sorenson with the same offer, who would jump at the chance. And, my dear man, we haven't, in reality, enough proof to convict a mouse since you lost that paper. So now, so far as he's concerned, you must bend a little, a very little--and you'll be able to hang the remaining three." This incisive reasoning was not to be denied. "I yield," said Weir. Beaming, Mr. Pollock walked back to the table. "Mr. Weir consents," he stated. "Mr. Martinez, if you will go to your office and bring the necessary forms and your seal we can make the transfers and statement and wind the matter up." An hour later Judge Gordon had signed the deeds, stock certificates from his safe and bills of sale spread before him, passing the ownership of lands, cattle and shares in companies to Pollock for equitable division between Weir and the Dent heirs if found. The old Mexican servants were called in and witnessed his shaky signatures to the papers. At the statement regarding the Dent shooting and Weir fraud, which Pollock had dictated to Martinez with Gordon's assistance, he staggered to his feet while the pen dropped from his hand. "I can't sign it, I can't sign it; they would kill me!" he groaned. The two aged servants stared at him wonderingly. "My dear Judge, they'll never know of it until it's too late for them to do anything--if they ever know," came the easterner's words, in smooth persuasiveness. Judge Gordon brushed a hand over his eyes. "Give me a moment," he muttered. He stood for a time motionless. Then he walked across the room and opened a door and entered an inner chamber. "He won't live a year after this," Pollock whispered to his companions. The speaker could have shortened the time immensely and have still been safe in his prophecy. For when at the end of five minutes he sent the woman to request the Judge to return, she stumbled out of the bed-chamber with affrighted eyes. She said the Judge was asleep on his bed and could not be aroused. Sleep of the profoundest, the men discovered on going in. And in his fingers was an empty vial. So far as Judge Gordon was concerned Weir had had his revenge. CHAPTER XXII AN OLD ADOBE HOUSE Revenge Weir had. But even in death Judge Gordon, true to his evasive, contriving character, had tricked him; and the irony lay in the fact that in this last act the trick was unpremeditated, unconscious, unintentional. Instead of the signed confession, necessary above everything else, which seemed almost in his fingers, the man had left a little poison vial.