"What for?" Mittel made feeble protest.
"Never mind what for!" snapped Jimmie Dale. "Go and get it--and HURRY!"
Once more Mittel obeyed--and dropped the book hesitantly on the desk.
Jimmie Dale stared silently, insolently, contemptuously at the other.
Mittel stirred uneasily, sat down, shifted his feet, and his fingers
fumbled aimlessly over the top of the desk.
"Compared with you," said Jimmie Dale, in a low voice, "the Weasel, ay,
and Hamvert, too, crooks though they are, are gentlemen! Michael Breen,
as he died, told his wife to take that paper to some one she could
trust, who would help her and tell her what to do; and, knowing no one
to go to, but because she scrubbed your floors and therefore thought
you were a fine gentleman, she came timidly to you, and trusted you--you
cur!"
Jimmie Dale laughed suddenly--not pleasantly. Mittel shivered.
"Hamvert and Breen were partners out there in Alaska when Breen first
went out," said Jimmie Dale slowly, pulling the tin can wrapped in
oilskin from his pocket. "Hamvert swindled Breen out of the one strike
he made, and Mrs. Breen and her little girl back here were reduced to
poverty. The amount of that swindle was, I understand, fifteen thousand
dollars. I have ten of it here, contributed by the Weasel and Hamvert;
and you will, I think, recognise therein a certain element of poetic
justice--but I am still short five thousand dollars.
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