"If he can't keep himself out of the gutter, I can't keep him out,"

stated Miss Brady logically.

"Well, don't push him in," her cousin advised, but the light of battle had died out of his eyes, leaving them listless. "It's nothing to me. I only came to bring you this."

He produced something from an inner pocket and tossed it on the counter, something wrapped in a twist of newspaper, which parted as the girl bent eagerly over it, something which shone and twinkled alluringly, as she straightened it out with caressing fingers and held it up to the light--a little necklace of rather ornate design and startling colours, crimson stones and green and blue, the gayest of toys.

"Seems to be yours all right."

His cousin, who seemed to have forgotten his existence for one rapt moment, remembered it with a start. "Did you show this to your mother?"

she asked sharply.

"Why?"

"Well, she don't like to have me spend my money on imitation jewellery."

Miss Brady delivered this very natural explanation haltingly.

"Do you?"

One of the sudden, vivid blushes which had helped to establish her reputation as a beauty overspread Miss Brady's cheek. "I missed it this morning and didn't have time to hunt for it, and I was worried. I don't want to show it to her. It cost a good deal."

"It must have. They say a ruby's the only stone you can't imitate."

"What do you mean?" Miss Brady's cheeks grew still redder. "Why don't you save your big talk for Saxon? You may need it. Why don't you mind your own affairs, and leave mine alone?"

"Leave that on the kitchen floor for mother to find and sweep up in a broken dust-pan, or one of the kids to show to your father?"

"Why not? Haven't I got a right to do what I want with my own money?

Haven't I got a right to do what I want with myself? Who are you to dictate to me, with the Randall girl making a fool of you? Why----"

"That will be all." Though Miss Brady's voice had been threatening to make itself heard throughout all the three stores in one, she stopped obediently, looking defiant but frightened, but when her cousin spoke again the ring of authority which had shocked her was gone from his voice.

"Don't be scared. It's nothing to me what you do, and I shan't talk too much. You know me, Mag."

"No, I don't, not lately. You act doped, not half there. I can't make you out. If you think--if you suspect----"

"I don't. It's nothing to me. I'm due at Saxon's. Put your gla.s.s beads away before Ward sees them. Good luck to you."

Miss Brady, standing quite still in one of her carefully cultivated, statuesque poses, watched her cousin cross the street and disappear into a narrow and shabbily painted doorway there. Then she took his advice, and producing a red morocco wrist bag from under the counter, shut the necklace into it with a vicious snap, as if she did not derive so much pleasure as before from handling it now.

Her cousin climbed the three flights of stairs to Judge Saxon's office.

The stairs were dingy and looked unswept, and a pane of gla.s.s in the door of the untenanted suite across the landing from the Judge's was broken. Nothing about the Judge's quarters indicated that he was Colonel Everard's attorney, a big man in the town before the Everard regime, and under it--an unusual combination. His office was shabby outside and in.

The lettering on the door, Saxon and Burr, Attorneys-at-Law, looked newer than it was by contrast, and it was still only six months old.

Theodore Burr had his delayed junior partnership at last.

The Judge's young client did not pause to collect himself on the worn door-mat, as he had done when he first came here on errands like this.

They were an old story to him now, and so were scenes like the one with Maggie, which he had just come through so creditably. He looked quite unruffled by it, calm as people are when they have no troubles to bear--or when they have borne all they can, and are about to find relief in establishing the fact. He knocked and stepped inside.

CHAPTER NINE

A fire in the air-tight stove in the corner had taken the early morning chill from the room and been permitted to burn out, now that the morning sun came in warm through the dusty windows, but the room was still close and cloudy with wood smoke. At a battered, roll-topped desk in the sunniest window Mr. Theodore Burr was struggling with the eccentricities of an ancient Remington, and looking superior to it and to all his surroundings, but the Judge was nowhere to be seen.

Mr. Burr was a very large, very pink young man, with blond hair which would have looked too good to be true on a woman, and near-set, green-blue eyes which managed to look vacant and aggressive at the same time. He was wearing a turquoise-blue tie which accentuated their effectiveness, and he occupied himself ostentatiously with the Remington for quite three minutes before he turned his most vacant and aggressive look upon his client.

"Well, Donovan?" he said.

Mr. Burr's manner was as patronizing as Mr. Ward's with the friendliness left out, but his client was not chilled by it.

"Theodore, where's the Judge?" he asked.

"Mr. Burr." The pink young man turned two shades pinker as he made the correction. "The Judge is engaged."

"I don't believe it."

Mr. Burr laughed unpleasantly and held up his hand. From the other side of a door labelled private--misleadingly, for the Judge's little sanctum, where half the town had the privilege of crowding in and tipping back chairs and smoking, was the nearest approach to a clubroom that the town afforded, now that the Hiawatha Club was no more--m.u.f.fled voices were faintly audible.

"You can talk to me," said Mr. Burr.

"I can, and I can go away and come back when he's not engaged. He said he'd see me."

"He's changed his mind. He don't want to see you. I know all about your case."

"You've learned a lot in six months."

"Talk like that won't get you anything, Donovan, here or anywhere else,"

remarked Mr. Burr, reasonably, if somewhat offensively. Admitting it, his client dropped into one of the Judge's big office chairs, and sat there, fingering his cap as he talked, and looking suddenly beaten and tired.

"You're right, Theodore. Well, what's all this you know about my case?"

"Mike Brady sends you here begging when he's ashamed to come himself.

It's hard on you, Neil."

"My uncle's too busy to come. Is that all you know?"

"I know what you want to-day, and you can't have it."

"What do I want?"

Mr. Burr's manner had become alarmingly official, but his client continued to smile at him, and to fold and unfold his cap methodically.

"An extension of time on your uncle's mortgage. The princ.i.p.al is due the first of next month. You've kept the Judge waiting twice for the interest, the security is insufficient, the bank holds a first mortgage on the house, and for fourteen months your uncle has made no payment to the Judge whatever."

"Don't rub it in, Theodore."

"This is no laughing matter. Business is business," stated the junior partner importantly.