"He is not bad at heart!" she said resentfully.
"What worse can you say?" returned Carmody with a harsh laugh. "Of all expressions coined to d.a.m.n a man with faint praise, there is only one more effective: "He means well.""
Ethel was thoroughly angry now. She drew herself up, and her blue eyes darkened as she faced him.
"That is not so!" she cried. "Bill is _not_ bad at heart! And he _does_ mean well! Whose fault is it that he has grown up reckless and wild?
Who is to blame? What chance has he had? What have you done for him?
Filled his pockets with money and packed him off to school. Filled his pockets with money and sent him to college. Filled his pockets with money and shipped him abroad.
"Then, without consulting his taste or desire, you peremptorily thrust him into a business which he loathes--on an office boy"s salary and an allowance out of all proportion to his requirements.
"You say he has never taken you into his confidence. Have you ever invited that confidence? Have you ever sought his companionship--even his acquaintance?"
The man was astonished at her vehemence. Uncomfortably he found himself forced to the defensive.
"He had his chance. I placed him in the bank that he might learn the business as I learned it. If he had had the right stuff in him he would have made good. As it was, he attended to his duties in the most perfunctory and superficial manner. He showed not the slightest interest in the business. In fact, his position could have been ably filled by the veriest gutter-snipe. And _he_ is the man who one day, in all probability, would have come into control of the Carmody millions!
And he would have scattered them in a riot of dissipation the length and breadth of Broadway.
"But I have forestalled him. He is foot-loose--gone, G.o.d knows where, to follow the fortune of adventure, perhaps, at the ends of the earth.
For in him, transmitted in some unaccountable manner through the blood of the gentlest, sweetest little woman who ever warmed a heart, is the restless spirit of the roistering, fighting McKims."
"Is it the boy"s fault that he is a McKim?" returned the girl a little sharply. "Who chose his mother? Of all men you should be the last to speak disparagingly of a McKim. Turn the pages of history and you will find written large in the story of the upbuilding of nations the name of McKim. Carmody gold is the cabala of Carmody suzerainty. But the McKim name has been carved deep in the annals of nations by sheer force of the personalities behind blades of naked steel.
"Even now the crying world-need for men--big men--is as great as in the days when the fighting McKims deserted their hearthstones to answer the call of the falchion"s clash or the cannon"s roar. And some day you will realize this--when your bank messenger makes good!"
The old man regarded her with a look of admiration.
"You love him!" he said quietly.
The girl started. Her eyes flashed and the play of the firelight gave an added touch of crimson to her cheeks.
"I do not love him! I--I _hate him!_" Her voice faltered, and the man saw that she was very near to tears.
"A strange hate, this, Miss Ethel. A strange and a most dangerous hate for a girl to hold against a man who is a _thief_."
CHAPTER V
"THIEF!"
"A man who is a thief!" The words fell distinctly from Carmody"s lips with the studied quiet of desperation. Ethel stared wild-eyed at the speaker, and in the frozen silence of the room her tiny fists doubled until the knuckles whitened.
Noting the effect upon the girl, he continued, speaking more rapidly now that the dreaded word had been uttered.
"I had no wish to tell you this thing. It is a secret I would gladly have kept locked within my own breast. But I came here this evening with a purpose--to save, in spite of herself, if need be, the daughter of my dead friend from a life of suffering which would inevitably fall to the lot of any pure-hearted woman who linked her life with that of an unscrupulous scoundrel, in whom even common decency is dead, if, indeed, it ever lived."
"He is _not_ a thief! He----" began Ethel vehemently, but the man interrupted her.
"Wait until you have heard the facts. Last week, on Friday, there was entrusted to my son"s care for delivery a heavy manila envelope containing fifty thousand dollars" worth of negotiable bonds. It was a matter of vital importance that these be delivered within a specified time. Ignoring this fact, he pocketed the bonds, and, in company with a number of his acquaintances, indulged in a drunken spree which culminated after midnight in a disgraceful street scene in the Broadway theatre district.
"The following morning, when I confronted him, he flouted me to my face, whereupon I virtually disinherited him. Not wishing to turn him away penniless, I handed him a check for a considerable amount which he saw fit to destroy melodramatically in my presence. Upon my request for the return of the securities, he handed me an envelope identical with that in which the bonds had been placed. I carried the packet to the bank where it was opened and found to contain not the bonds--but those letters.
"To avoid a scandal I made good the loss. I learned later, through investigation, that upon leaving home he came directly to this house, where he remained for upward of a half-hour.
"Further than this I know nothing of his movements except that he reentered the taxi and proceeded down-town. At Thirty-Fourth Street, where the chauffeur slowed down for instructions, he found the cab empty."
"And _these_ are the facts upon which you base your accusation?" asked the girl coldly. "You, his own father!"
"To an unbiased mind the evidence allows but one interpretation."
"But his eyes! Oh, can"t you see there has been some mistake? His eyes are not the eyes of a thief!"
"There has been no mistake. A most thorough search of the premises has failed to disclose a trace of the missing securities. In his desk from which he took the subst.i.tuted packet were found several similar envelopes, but these contained only worthless rubbish--newspaper clippings of sporting events and the like.
"No, Miss Ethel, when William Carmody left my house that morning he carried with him those bonds. And he came here, knowing that he was a thief, with his pocket bulging with plunder!
"As I told you, I know nothing of the relations existing between you and my son. I only hope that he has gone forever out of your life, as he has gone out of mine."
The light died out of the girl"s eyes and her voice sounded strangely dull as she replied:
"Yes, he has gone out of my life--maybe forever. He came to me here, to tell me that he was going away to make good. And I--I was not big enough to see it. I sent him away with a sneer. Bill is no thief. For what he has been you are to blame--you and the Carmody money. For the first time in his life he has a fair chance. He has left New York the man you made him. He will return the man he makes himself. Oh! If--if I only----"
"There, there, Miss Ethel, your loyalty is admirable, if misplaced----"
"Don"t speak to me of loyalty! I have been as narrow and as _mean_ as--as _you_ have!"
"My dear girl, you are overwrought. The sooner we learn that William Carmody has ceased to exist the better it will be for both of us. I bid you good-night."
The girl sank into the depths of her big chair and watched the sputtering little jet-flames lick futilely at the artificial logs of the fireplace. Believing herself alone, she was startled by the sound of footsteps hurrying noisily across the room. The next instant a tousle-headed boy with eyes ablaze was at her side working her hands like pump-handles.
"By Jimmy, Eth, you"re a brick--the way you gave it to him! You bet I"ll tell Bill how you stuck up for him."
"Charlie Manton! You were listening--eavesdropping."
"I didn"t! I wasn"t! I mean I couldn"t help hearing! The door of the den was open and I was in there studying. Old man Carmody is an old liar!"
"Charlie!"
"Well, he is, and you know it! I hate him! You bet he wouldn"t dare call Bill a thief to his face! Bill could lick forty-seven like him with one hand tied behind his back. Bill is square. He wouldn"t swipe a million dollars--let alone a rotten, measly fifty thousand!"
"Charlie Manton! What kind of talk is that? You ought to be ashamed!"
"Well, I ain"t--so there! And I"m Bill"s friend, and I ain"t afraid to say so, either. You do love Bill--and you know it! You can claim you hate him till you"re black in the face, but you can"t fool _me_! What did you stick up for him for if you hated him? I bet old man Carmody swiped the bonds himself!"
"Stop right there! Aren"t you ashamed to speak so disrespectfully of Mr. Carmody? He was an old friend of father"s."