Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/328

322 and as no one dared to make that proposition, Mr. Dumphy was, as usual, triumphant. In this frame of mind Mr. Poinsett found him, on his return from the Mission of San Antonio, the next morning.

"Bad news, I suppose, down there," said Mr. Dumphy briskly; "and I reckon the widow, though she has been luckier than her neighbors, don't feel particularly lively, eh? I'm dev'lish sorry for you, Poinsett, though, as a man, you can see that the investment was a good one. But you can't make a woman understand business, eh? Well, the Rancho's worth double the mortgage, I reckon, eh? Ugly, ain't she?—of course! Said she'd been swindled? That's like a woman! You and me know 'em, eh, Poinsett?"

Mr. Dumphy emitted his characteristic bark, and winked at his visitor.

Arthur looked up in unaffected surprise.

"If you mean Mrs. Sepulvida," he said coldly, "I haven't seen her. I was on my way there when your telegram recalled me. I had some business with Padre Felipe."

"You don't know, then, that the Conroy Mine has gone up with the earthquake, eh? Lead dropped out, eh, and the widow's fifty-six thousand?" (Here Mr. Dumphy snapped his finger and thumb to illustrate the lame and impotent conclusion of Donna Maria's investment.) "Don't you know that?"

"No," said Arthur, with perfect indifference and a languid abstraction that awed Mr. Dumphy more than anxiety; "no, I don't. But I imagine that isn't the reason you telegraphed me."

"No," returned Dumphy, still eying Poinsett keenly for a possible clew to this singular and unheard-of apathy to the condition of the fortune of the woman his visitor was about to marry. "No, of course!"

"Well," said Arthur, with that dangerous quiet which was the only outward sign of interest and determination in his nature. "I'm going up to One Horse Gulch to offer my services as counsel to Gabriel Conroy. Now for the details of this murder, which, by the way, I don't believe Gabriel committed, unless he's another man than the one I knew ! After that you can tell me your business with me, for I don't suppose you telegraphed to me on his account solely. Of course, at first you felt it was to your interest to get him and his wife out of the way, now that Ramirez is gone. But now, if you please, let me know what you know about this murder?"

Mr. Dumphy, thus commanded, and completely under the influence of Arthur's quiet will, briefly recounted the particulars already known to the reader, of which he had been kept informed by telegraph.

"He's been recaptured," added Dumphy, "I learn by a later dispatch; and I don't reckon there'll be another attempt to lynch him. I've managed that" he continued, with a return of his old self-assertion. "I've got some influence there!"

For the first time during the interview Arthur awoke from his preoccupation and glanced keenly at Dumphy.

"Of course," he returned coolly, "I don't suppose you such a fool as to allow the only witness you have of your wife's death to be sacrificed, even if you believed that the impostor who was personating your wife had been charged with complicity in a capital crime and had fled from justice. You're not such a fool as to believe that Mrs. Conroy won't try to help her husband, that she evidently loves, by every means in her power; that she won't make use of any secret she may have that concerns you to save him and herself. No, Mr. Peter Dumphy," said Arthur, significantly, "no, you're too much of a business man not to see that."

As he spoke, he noted the alternate flushing and paling of Mr. Dumphy's face, and read (I fear with the triumphant and instinctive consciousness of a superior intellect) that Mr. Dumphy had been precisely such a fool, and had failed! "I reckon nobody will put much reliance on the evidence of a woman charged with a capital crime," said Mr. Dumphy, with a show of confidence he was far from feeling.

"Suppose that she and Gabriel both swear that she knows your abandoned wife, for instance; suppose that they both swear that she and you connived to personate Grace Conroy for the sake of getting the title to this mine; suppose that she alleges that she repented and married Gabriel, as she did, and suppose that they both admit the killing of this Ramirez, and assert that you were persecuting them through him, and still are. Suppose that they show that he forged a second grant to the mine—through your instigation?"

"It's a lie," interrupted Dumphy, starting to his feet, "he did it from jealousy."

"Can you prove his motives?" said Arthur. "But the grant was not in my favor—it was to some old Californian down in the