第27章

I sank all the proceeds of the first strike--and sank them fast, for unaccountable accidents that crippled me both financially and in the progress of the work began to happen." Wilbur flung out his hands impotently."Oh, it's a long story--too long to tell.Thurl was at the bottom of those accidents.He knew as well as I did that the mine was rich--better than I did, for that matter, for we discovered before we ran him out of Alaska that he had made secret borings on the property.But what I did not know until a few hours ago was that he had actually uncovered what we uncovered only yesterday--the mother lode.He was driving me as fast as he could into the last ditch--for Markel.I didn't know until yesterday that Markel had any thing to do with it.I struggled on out there, hoping every day to open a new vein.I raised money on everything I had, except my insurance and the mine--and sank it in the mine.No one out there would advance me anything on a property that looked like a failure, that had once already been abandoned.I have always kept an office here, and I came back East with the idea of raising something on my insurance.Markel, quite by haphazard as I then thought, was introduced to me just before we left San Francisco on our way to New York.On the run across the continent we became very friendly.

Naturally, I told him my story.He played sympathetic good fellow, and offered to lend me fifty thousand dollars on a demand note.Idid not want to be involved for a cent more than was necessary, and, as I said, I hoped from day to day to make another strike.Irefused to take more than ten thousand.I remember now that he seemed strangely disappointed."Again Wilbur stopped.He swept the moisture from his forehead--and his fist, clenched, came down upon the desk.

"You see the game!"--there was bitter anger in his voice now."You see the game! He wanted to get me in deep enough so that I couldn't wriggle out, deeper than ten thousand that I could get at any time on my insurance, he wanted me where I couldn't get away--and he got me.The first ten thousand wasn't enough.I went to him for a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth--hoping always that each would be the last.Each time a new note, a demand note for the total amount, was made, cancelling the former one.I didn't know his game, didn't suspect it--I blessed God for giving me such a friend--until this, or, rather, yesterday afternoon, when I received a telegram from my manager at the mine saying that he had struck what looked like a very rich vein--the mother lode.And"--Wilbur's fist curled until the knuckles were like ivory in their whiteness--"he added in the telegram that Thurl had wired the news of the strike to a man in New York by the name of Markel.Do you see? I hadn't had the telegram five minutes, when a messenger brought me a letter from Markel curtly informing me that I would have to meet my note to-morrow morning.I can't meet it.He knew I couldn't.With wealth in sight--I'm wiped out.A DEMAND note, a call loan, do you understand--and with a few months in which to develop the new vein Icould pay it readily.As it is--I default the note--Markel attaches all I have left, which is the mine.The mine is sold to satisfy my indebtedness.Markel buys it in legally, upheld by the law--and acquires, ROBS me of it, and--""And so," said Jimmie Dale musingly, "you were going to shoot yourself?"Wilbur straightened up, and there was something akin to pathetic grandeur in the set of the old shoulders as they squared back.