There was some mysterious business afoot wherein Carey and Bob McGraw
were jointly interested, and they had met and quarreled over it, as
evidenced by T. Morgan Carey's all too apparent animosity. Mr. Hennage
had a haunting suspicion that Carey's animus did not arise from the
fact that McGraw had robbed him of fifteen hundred dollars. He felt that
there was a deeper, more vital reason than that. All of his days Mr.
Hennage had lived close to the primitive; he was a shrewd judge of
human impulses and it had been his experience that men quarrel over
two things--women and money. The possible hypothesis of a woman, in
the suspected quarrel between Bob McGraw and T. Morgan Carey, Harley P.
dismissed as untenable. Remained then, only money--and Bob McGraw had no
money. His finances were at so low an ebb as to be beneath the notice of
such a palpable commercial wolf as T. Morgan Carey; consequently, and
in the final analysis, Mr. Hennage concluded that Bob McGraw possessed
something which Carey coveted. Whether his spiteful attitude toward
the unfortunate Bob arose from this, or the loss of the fifteen hundred
dollars, Mr. Hennage now purposed discovering. He leaned toward Carey
confidentially and lowered his voice.
“Say, looky-here, Mr. Carey. This boy, McGraw, is a friend o' mine. A
little wild? Yes. But what young feller now-a-days ain't? I know he's
robbed you o' fifteen hundred dollars, an' I'm sorry for that, but I can
fix you up all right. I'm goin' to get into communication with our young
friend before long, if he ain't beefed by the sheriff first, or captured
alive--but it's ten to one they get him, an' he'll be brought to trial.
Well, now, here's what I'm drivin' at. If the boy's nabbed, an' you'll
agree to sorter, as the feller says, tangle the woof o' memory
an' refuse to swear that you recognize the said defendant as the
hereinbefore mentioned stage-robber, I'll see that you get your fifteen
hundred back. This is his first serious job, Mr. Carey, an' I wish you'd
go easy on him. He ain't really bad.”
T. Morgan Carey pounded the back of the seat in front of him.
“Not for fifty thousand dollars” he said. “The suggestion is
preposterous. The man is a menace to society and it is my duty to
testify against him if he is apprehended.”
“Then it ain't a question with you o' money back an' no questions
asked?”
Carey shook his head emphatically. “It's principle” he said.
Mr. Hennage appeared chopfallen. In reality he was amused. Never before
had Mr. Hennage met a man to whom the abandonment of such “principle”
would have been impossible under the terms suggested. Clearly there was
something wrong here. Mr. Hennage had met men to whom vengeance would
have been cheap at fifty thousand, but principle--the gambler shook his
head. He had lived long enough to learn that principle is a marketable
commodity, and he was not deceived in T. Morgan Carey's attitude of
civic righteousness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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