got to hurry to catch the afternoon editions," one spoke up. "Can't you give us the main facts right now? You've got 'em all – I just heard you say the money wasn't here."
"I'll see you in a few minutes," answered Mr. Haddon, and brusquely pressed them before him into the corridor.
When he reëntered the study he looked at them all grimly. "There's absolutely no keeping this from the papers," he said.
"But there must still be another place the money can be!" Helen cried.
"I've investigated every other place," returned Mr. Haddon, in the calm voice of finality. "The safe was the last possibility."
They all three stared at each other. It was Dr. Thorn that spoke the thought of all. "Then the worst we feared – is true?"
Mr. Haddon nodded. "It must be."
David could not speak, nor think – could only lean sickened against the desk. The exposure of Morton – and a thousand times worse, the ruin of St. Christopher's – both inevitable!
"Won't you please look again!" Helen cried, with desperate hope. "Perhaps you overlooked something."
Mr. Haddon knelt once more, and slowly fluttered the pages of the books and scrutinised each scrap of paper. Soon he paused, and studied a slip he had come upon. Then he rose, and David saw at the head of the slip, "Cash Account of Boys' Summer Home." It was the paper he had prepared to hide Morton's embezzlement.
Mr. Haddon's steady eyes took in David and Dr. Thorn. "Could anybody have been in the safe since Mr. Morton's death?"
"It's hardly possible," returned Dr. Thorn. "Mr. Aldrich has been in the study almost constantly."
Mr. Haddon's eyes fastened on David; a quick gleam came into them. David, unnerved as he was, could not keep his face from twitching.
There was a long silence. Then Mr. Haddon asked quietly:
"Could you have been in the safe, Mr. Aldrich?"
David did not recognise whither the question led. "Why, yes," he said mechanically.
Mr. Haddon held out the slip of paper. "According to this memorandum in Mr. Morton's hand, the money was in the safe the day before his death." His eyes screwed into David. "Perhaps you can suggest to us what became of the money."
David stared at him blankly.
"The money – was there – when Morton died!" said Dr. Thorn amazedly. He looked from one man to the other. Then understanding came into his face, and a great relief. "You mean – Mr. Aldrich – took it?"
"I took it!" David repeated stupidly.
He turned slowly to Helen. Her white face, with its wide eyes and parted lips, and the sudden look of fear she held upon him, cleared his head, made him see where he was.
"I did not take the money!" he cried.
"No, of course not," returned Mr. Haddon grimly. "But who did?"
"If I'd taken it, wouldn't I have disappeared? Would I have been such a fool as to have stayed here to be caught?"
"If the thief had run away, that would have fastened the guilt on him at once. To remain here, hoping to throw suspicion on Mr. Morton – this was the cleverest course."
"I did not take the money!" David cried desperately. "It's a lie!"
Helen moved to David's side, and gazed straight into Mr. Haddon's accusing face. Indignation was replacing her astoundment; her cheeks were tingeing with red.
"What, would you condemn a man upon mere guess-work!" she cried. "Merely because the money is not there, is that proof that Mr. Aldrich took it? Do you call this justice, Mr. Haddon?"
Mr. Haddon's look did not alter, and he did not reply. The opinion of womankind he had ever considered negligible.
Helen turned to David and gave him her hand. "I believe you."
He thanked her with a look.
"It must have been Mr. Morton," she said.
Her words first thrilled him. Then suddenly they rang out as a knell. If he threw off the guilt, it must fall on Morton; if Morton were publicly guilty, then the hundreds of the Mission —
Mr. Haddon's hard voice broke in, changeless belief in its tone: "Mr. Aldrich took it."
David looked at Mr. Haddon, looked whitely at Helen. And then the great Thought was conceived, struggled dizzily, painfully, into birth. He stood shivering, awed, before it…
He slowly turned and walked to a window and gazed down into the street, filled with children hurrying home from school. The Thought spoke to him in vivid flashes. He had no relatives, almost no friends. He loved Helen Chambers; but he was nobody and a beggar. He had not done anything – perhaps could never do anything – and even if he did, his work would probably be of little worth. He had wanted his life to be of service; had wanted to sell it, as it were, for the largest good he could perform. Well, here were the people of St. Christopher's toppling over the edge of destruction. Here was his Great Bargain – the chance to sell his life for the highest price.
As to what he had done with the five thousand, which of course he'd be asked – well, an evening of gambling would be a sufficient explanation.
He turned about.
"Well?" said Mr. Haddon.
David avoided Helen's look. He felt himself borne upward to the apex of life.
"Yes … I took it," he said.
BOOK II
THE CLOSED ROAD
CHAPTER I
DAVID RE-ENTERS THE WORLD
The history of the next four years of David's life is contained in the daily programme of Croton Prison. At six o'clock the rising gong sounded; David rolled out of his iron cot, washed himself at the faucet in his cell, and got into his striped trousers and striped jacket. At six-thirty he lock-stepped, with a long line of fellows, to a breakfast of hash, bread and coffee. At seven he marched to shoe factory or foundry, where he laboured till twelve, when the programme called him to dinner. At one he marched back to work; at half-past five he marched to his cell, where his supper of bread and coffee was thrust in to him through a wicket. He read or paced up and down till nine, when the going out of his light sent him into his iron cot. Multiply this by fifteen hundred and the product is David's prison life.
It would be untruth to say that a sense of the good he was doing sustained a passionate happiness in David through all these years. Moments of exaltation were rare; they were the sun-blooming peaks in an expanse of life that was otherwise low and gloom-hung. David had always understood that prisons in their object were not only punitive – they were reformative. But all his intelligence could not see any strong influence that tended to rouse and strengthen the inmates' better part. Occasional and perfunctory words from chaplains could not do it. Monotonous work, to which they were lock-stepped, from which they were lock-stepped, and which was directed and performed in the lock-step's deadening spirit, this could not do it. Constant silence, while eating, marching, working, could not do it. The removal for a week of a man's light because he had spoken to a neighbour, this could not do it.
