Here was my chance to pay
Brown in kind."
"Did Curly give you the facts?" asked Brown, who had grown a little
white around the mouth.
Enoch did not heed him. "I asked Curly if the story was a reflection
on these two men morally or financially. He said, morally; that it was
bad beyond words. At this point I weakened and told him that I had no
desire to display any man's weakness in the market place. And Curly
laughed at me and asked me what mercy Fowler had shown his brother?
But still I could not make up my mind to take those facts from Curly."
Mr. Brown eased back in his chair with a sneering smile. Young Ames
sat sickly pale, his mouth open.
"But when I left him," the calm, rich voice went on, "I told him that
he could write down the story and send it to my house in Washington.
Now the chances are that having drifted so many years without telling
it, he would have drifted on indefinitely. But fate intervened. Curly
went to the Mexican border. Certain gentlemen have seen to it that the
Mexican border is not safe. Curly was shot and he made it his
death-bed duty to dictate this delectable tale to a friend. In due
course of time, the document reached my house in Washington, and here
it is!" He tapped the upper drawer of his desk.
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