Adventure Magazine Cover — page 193: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

wa ee oe D, Pia Re ean ES bs Pea - getting them recorded. put a whisper that carried. “Yes, I heard everything you and he—”’ a finger went out toward Daniel Cornwall—“ said that night - when ‘you quarreled over what it was best to do since Quiller had told you who Mr. Everhard was. You thought it would be easy to keep Mr. Everhard fooled by not running away—by devising some story to tell him. You said he couldn’t possibly know that Taggart had been sent by Daniel to rob my mother. [I heard all you said— both of you said!” XIV THAT’S about all there is to tell. Everybody in the hotel seemed try- ing to get into the room. Two house detectives did, and between them and the ~ detectives of the private agency they carried the trembling, shivering, protesting Daniel Cornwall off to jail. He might beat the murder charge, but there was no doubt that he had tried to kill the governor of Utah, and there are some things that not even a multimillionaire can do with inpunity. I didn’t get anything out of that satchel. The officers took charge of it and, so far as I know, it eventually reverted to the Corn- wall estate. I had a very hard time prying ten thousand dollars loose from Dr. Collins. He could absorb a lot of reasons and argument without being in the least effected, but finally he was persuaded to write out a check for that amount to Steve Ellis, to whom it was given as a little nest-egg to try new fortunes in the mining-camps. As for Cora and Jack, any one who can’t - guess what happened doesn’t deserve to be told. Joseph Cornwall, tnrough the very re- spectful and polite Mr. Parsons, »ppealed to me to refund the money. The old miser couldn’t sleep well, more on account of that money, I do believe, than because of his brother or the revelation that the governor of Utah made concerning Cornwall’s’ bribery, thievery, forging of records and general crookedness in stealing mining claims and I listened quite respectfully to Mr. Parsons and referred him to Dr. Collins. It would take a crow- bar and dynamite to get money intended for _ the Star of Hope hospital out of his pockets. That Daniel Cornwall had tried to employ me as a gunman to dispose of Steve Ellis in New York was entirely in keeping with the ‘way he had tried to settle ‘his personal troubles in Utah. Not knowing how to get in touch with city crooks and find some of those people who will cut a throat for a dollar or shoot a man for five, he had thought to buy me for a few hundred, and probably wouldn’t have paid the few hun- dred. More likely he would have helped the police get evidence to prove that I did it. Many people have got into trouble with me because I am not a crook in just the walys that they think, if, indeed, I am a crook at all. It was highly probable that Daniel would have been acquitted of murder, for money is magic in criminal courts, and he was clever. Quiller, who showed more loyalty to Corn- wall than the man deserved, told how they had with great difficulty—under pretense of being physicians—got hold of a suitable . body from the morgue, dressed it in Daniel Cornwall’s clothes and thrown it into the water. Isayitis highly probable that Corn- wall would have been acquitted, but he killed himself by jumping from ‘the train while being take to Salt Lake for trial. Joseph, the wily, clever, plausible legal member of the firm, had kept himself pretty well in the background of the Cornwall af- fairs. There was really no way of proving that he had meddled with even. documents and records, The Federal Government took a hand, however, and snatched back some of the holdings that the Cornwalls had ac- quired. Joseph, though his miserly soul must have been dreadfully pained by the - financial losses, never got into prison. He . retired to some obscure place and was eventually forgotten. I have a beautiful little steel box where- in to keep valuable papers—if I ever ac- quire any. I have a key too, and the key has a little gold case with a rather large diamond in it. The case is a miniature copy of the steel box and has a little in- scription showing that it was presented to me by the governor of Utah, though the governor spoke to me a little reproachfully for not letting him know five years earlier that I had done him such a service. I did not say so, but I had done him a greater service. JI had let his own, con- science finally rouse itself to defy the men whom he thought could ruin him, though in the wash-bowl of that cheap little Salt Lake rooming-house I had burned the evidence | that they thought they had.