CHAPTER XXXII.
THE DEAD RETURNED TO LIFE.
Let us return to the moment at which Silas Craig received from the hands of William Bowen, his accomplice and tool, the document which he had fully believed to be destroyed.
It is thus that the wicked are always deserted and betrayed by their allies. The old phrase, "Honor among thieves," is a false and delusive one.
Among the dishonest there can be no honor. The same impulse which prompts them to cheat and deceive their victims, will, at another time, induce them to cheat each other.
Thus it was with the unscrupulous overseer, William Bowen; so long as his employer had paid him for his silence he was content to suppress the guilty secret of the money which Silas had received from Philip Treverton, but on the first occasion of the attorney's refusing to supply him with funds, he was ready to turn round and betray him.
It was with this view that he had contrived to substitute a blank sheet of paper, and to preserve the actual receipt written and signed by Silas Craig.
The wealthy attorney, the pretended Christian, stood convicted a cheat and a swindler.
Augustus Horton turned indignantly from his old ally.
"Bear witness, Mr. Leslie, and you, Mortimer," he said, "that I did not know what this man was."
Silas Craig gnashed his teeth in silence; then crushing the paper in his hand, he rose from his chair and looked about him.
It was the look of a wild beast at bay; the look of a fox that knows the chase is over and the dogs are round him.
He sees their glaring eyes, he feels their hot and hungry breath, but he determines on concentrating the energy of his nature on one last effort.
"This receipt is a forgery!" he screamed, in a shrill and broken voice. "I deny its validity!"
"Take care, Silas Craig," said his old accomplice, "I calculate lying won't save you. You'd better speak the truth for once in a way, I reckon, and throw yourself upon the mercy of these gents."
"I deny its validity!" repeated the attorney; "it's an infamous forgery, fabricated by that man, William Bowen. I defy any living creature to prove that Philip Treverton paid me one hundred thousand dollars."
"Beware, Silas Craig!" said a voice from the interior of the apartment. "You defy the living, do you also defy the dead?"
A man emerged from the shadow of the curtains about the window. That man was the elder of the two gold-diggers; but he was no stranger to those assembled there.
"The dead!" gasped Silas, dropping once more into his chair.
Those present never forgot the expression of the attorney's face, as with open mouth and protruding eyeballs, he stared at the newcomer.
It was but for a moment that they beheld the gaze of horror, for after one brief glance he covered his face with his outspread hands.
"The dead!" he repeated; "the dead!"
"Philip Treverton!" exclaimed Gerald Leslie.
"Yes, Gerald," answered the stranger, extending his hand to Cora's father; "that Philip Treverton whom you have been taught to think a gamester and a cheat. That Philip to whom, when about to sail for England, you intrusted a large sum of money, to be paid by him to that wretch yonder. You departed, secure in the belief that your friend and partner was a man of honor, and that the money was as safe in his hands as in your own. On your return you were told that your friend was dead, and that the money had not been paid. I have only learned to-day, from the lips of Bowen there, your noble and generous conduct. You uttered no word of complaint, no syllable of reproach, but you bore up to the last against the reverses brought upon you, as you thought, by the dishonor of another."
"Do not speak of that, Philip," said Gerald Leslie; "I attributed the loss of the money to some fatal moment of imprudence, and I never, even in thought, accused you of dishonor."
"Imprudence would have been dishonor in such a case," answered Philip Treverton. "Ay, Silas Craig, well may you hide your face from me—well may your eyes refuse to meet those of the man you would have murdered!"
"Murdered!" exclaimed Gerald and Mortimer, while the women listened with white and terrified faces to the disclosures of the returned wanderer.
"Yes, murdered. It is a foul word to speak beneath the broad blue sky, and in the sunlight of yonder heaven, but it is the word for all that."
"Silas Craig," cried Augustus Horton, "have you no word to answer to all this? Can you sit calmly there and hear these accusations? Speak, man, speak, and give your accuser the lie."
"He cannot!" said Philip Treverton, pointing to the lawyer. "Is that the attitude of a man who is falsely accused? Look at him; look at him crouching like a beaten hound beneath its master's whip."
"Do not speak of him," cried Gerald Leslie, impetuously, "but explain this mystery. How is it that for a twelvemonth you have disappeared from New Orleans, to return at this moment of ruin and despair?"
"I will tell you," answered Philip Treverton; "and I call upon this man, William Bowen, here, to bear witness of my truth, and on yonder wretch to contradict me if he dare. Upward of a year ago I was left by you with the sum of one hundred thousand dollars in my hands—the amount of the loan advanced to our firm by the usurer, Silas Craig. This was to be repaid upon a certain date; that date fell about a month after your departure for England. I held the money more sacred than my life, and I laid it by in the strong box devoted to important documents."
"You did as I myself would have done," said Gerald Leslie.
"I did; but I was by no means faultless. I was the victim of a vice which has brought dishonor upon men who never thought to blush before their fellow men—I was a gamester! I devoted my days to business cheerfully, conscientiously; but at night the demon of the dice-box lured me from my quiet home, and led me to a secret gaming-house in Columbia Street—a house known to all the gamblers of New Orleans, but which flourishes in bold defiance of the law. I had known this house for years, and had been a constant guest at its unholy altars, but there was one thing concerning it that I did not know."
"And that was—?"
"Its owner! I did not know that Silas Craig, the lawyer, that sanctimonious attorney whom men met every Sunday morning in the sacred temple of Heaven; I did not know that this man was the proprietor of that earthly hell, the wretch that pandered in secret to the vices of his fellow-citizens. I did not know this, and I did not know that the gaming-house in Columbia Street communicated by a secret passage with the office of Silas Craig."
"Impossible!" exclaimed Augustus Horton.
"Ay, the secret has been well kept; and it was a secret that was only to have been known to me when the hand of Death was on my lips to seal them to eternal silence. But the ways of Providence are inscrutable. The day arrived upon which our debt to this man became due. At twelve o'clock on that day I called, delivered to him the sum of one hundred thousand dollars in bills of exchange, and received his written acknowledgment of the money. This done I left as light as a feather. A load was removed from my mind, and I determined to spend a day of enjoyment. I dined with some friends at an hotel, and after sitting late over the table, and drinking a good deal of wine, we adjourned to the gambling-house in Columbia Street."
There was a brief pause; but Silas Craig never stirred from his abject attitude, never attempted by either word or gesture, to contradict the speaker.
"We played for some hours, but my friends were not such inveterate gamesters as myself, and they grew weary of the demoniac fever. After persuading me to quit the place with them, they at last lost patience with my folly and departed, leaving me still at the fatal green cloth. It was by this time four o'clock in the morning. I had drunk a great deal, and I had been losing money. My head was bewildered; my brain dizzy, and my temper soured by my losses. The room was almost deserted, but I still sat with my eyes fixed upon the game, madly endeavoring to retrieve my losses. At this crisis a great brawny fellow opposite to me, a Frenchman, ventured to insult me. Tipsy as I was, I was in no humor to brook this. I sprung toward him to chastise his insolence, and a fight ensued, in which I was getting the worst of it, when one of the bystanders interfered, and suggested that we should resort to small swords, and finish the business in a more gentlemanly manner."
"It was a plot!" said Gerald Leslie.
"It was! A villainous and foul plot, concocted by yonder stricken wretch. Stupefied and bewildered, I let them do what they pleased with me, and I know nothing of what happened till I found a duelling sword in my hand, and saw that my adversary was armed in the same fashion. By this time the room was entirely deserted, except by my antagonist, the other man, and myself. This other man—the same who had suggested our using swords—opened a door in the wall, a door which I had never before perceived, and pushed me into a long dimly lighted corridor, which was also strange to me. The door closed behind us, and we hurried along the corridor for some distance, until we were stopped by the stranger who had taken upon himself the management of the business. He placed us opposite to each other, put the swords into our hands, and gave us the signal to begin. I felt in a moment that I was a lost man. My head spun round. In the dim light I could scarcely see my adversary's face, as the lamps were so arranged that what light there was fell full upon mine. In vain I tried to parry his thrusts. I had been twice wounded slightly on the shoulder, when the lights were suddenly extinguished, and I felt the sharp pang of a stab from a long and slender sword.
"But this stab did not come from my opponent. Although I lost consciousness upon the moment of receiving the stroke, I knew that I was stabbed in the back."
"Execrable traitors!" exclaimed Gerald Mortimer, and Augustus.
"When I recovered my senses I found myself in a lonely boat-house on the banks of the Mississippi, four miles from New Orleans. I was lying on a mattress, and my wound had been dressed by a surgeon; but I was too feeble, from loss of blood and the pain I had endured, to utter a word, or ask one question of the man seated by my side."
"You were not alone, then?"
"No! William Bowen, the accomplice of Silas Craig, had repented of the horrible work as soon as it was done; and, under pretense of carrying my body to the river, had contrived to convey me to this lonely shed, which belonged to a friend of his."
"Stop a bit, Mr. Treverton," interrupted William; "when Mr. Craig settled with me that we were to set that villainous Frenchman on to you, get up a duel, and rob you of the receipt for the hundred thousand dollars, it was agreed that you were to be attacked in fair fight, and that you were not to be seriously hurt. It was Mr. Silas Craig yonder who couldn't be content with this; it was he who turned out the gas in the thick of the fight, and stabbed you in the back. You dropped down like a dead man; but the lawyer there was too great a coward to make sure whether you were really dead; he dared not approach within a couple of yards of his victim. He told me to ransack your pockets, and secure the receipt; and then, assisted by the Frenchman, to carry the body to the river."
"And you did so?"
"I did; but I contrived to get rid of the Frenchman as soon as we reached the quay, and then, dropping my bleeding burden into a boat, I rowed down to the boat-house, where I sought a surgeon to look at my patient. Mr. Treverton knows the rest."
"I do, William," answered Philip Treverton; "I know that you attended me faithfully and patiently; and then when I recovered you assisted me to get off to California, whence, after nearly a twelve-months' toil, I return so rich a man as to be able to recompense the noble conduct of my old friend, Gerald Leslie. As for yonder wretch," he added, pointing to Craig, "defeat has followed so utterly upon his career of crime that I doubt if the law can do much more to punish him. He will refund the hundred thousand dollars of which he has defrauded his victim."
"I will," gasped the unhappy wretch, rising, and staggering toward the door; "I am rich; take what you will. I shall leave New Orleans forever—"
He stopped suddenly, and passed his handkerchief across his lips; when he removed it, it was stained with patches of crimson.
He had broken a blood-vessel!