Page:Frank Packard - The Adventures of Jimmie Dale.djvu/174

170 pushed it across the desk—then a pen, which he dipped into the inkstand, and extended to the other. "The way you'll fix it will be to write out a confession exonerating Moyne."

Carling shrank back into his chair, his had huddling into his shoulders.

"No!" he cried. "I won't—I can't—my God!—I—I—won't!"

The automatic in Jimmie Dale's hand edged forward the fraction of an inch.

"I have not used this—yet. You understand now why—don't you?" he said under his breath.

"No, no!" Carling pushed away the pen. "I'm ruined—ruined as it is. But this would mean the penitentiary, too"

"Where you tried to send an innocent man in your place, you hound; where you"

"Some other way—some other way!" Carling was babbling. "Let me out of this—for God's sake, let me out of this!"

"Carling," said Jimmie Dale hoarsely, "I stood beside a little bed to-night and looked at a baby girl—a little baby girl with golden hair, who smiled as she slept."

Carling shivered, and passed a shaking hand across his face.

"Take this pen," said Jimmie Dale monotonously; "or—this!" The automatic lifted until the muzzle was on a line with Carling's eyes.

Carling's hand reached out, still shaking, and took the pen; and his body, dragged limply forward, hung over the desk. The pen spluttered on the paper—a bead of sweat spurting from the man's forehead dropped to the sheet.

There was silence in the room. A minute passed—another. Carling's pen travelled haltingly across the paper—then, with a queer, low cry as he signed his name, he dropped the pen from his fingers, and, rising unsteadily from his chair, stumbled away from the desk toward a couch across the room.

An instant Jimmie Dale watched the other, then he picked