CHAPTER XXVIII.
BREAKING THE FETTERS.
Don actually staggered, and for some moments he was unable to speak a word. To the deputy sheriff the boy’s agitation seemed a confession that he knew all about the matter in question, and so Drew said:
“The hull business has come out, ye see, so you might jest as well tell the truth about it. Of course your father’ll pertect you, but the other feller that passed the check over to Freeport will hev to smart.”
“Why, I don’t know anything about a forged check!” exclaimed Don, in a flutter. “That’s the honest truth, Mr. Drew.”
“Oh, come!” drawled the man. “It ain’t no use to try to squiggle round it. The check come back to the bank to-day, an’ your father was straightenin’ out his accounts this forenoon, so he gut holt of it right off. Reuben Gray, over to Freeport, tuck it, and he sent it over here by Jeff Lander to git it cashed at the bank, as Jeff was comin’ over on business. It was jest a happenstance that your father diskivered it so soon.”
Now Don understood why his father had looked on him with such sad reproach after discovering the crumpled letter in his waste-basket, and the boy was horrified by the knowledge that the doctor suspected him of participating in such a crime. He realized, also, that all this had come about through his association with an evil companion, against whom his father had warned him.
Being entirely innocent in regard to the forged check, Don became both vehement and indignant in his protestations. It was useless for Simeon Drew to try to coax or frighten a confession from him, and the deputy sheriff finally gave over the attempt in disgust.
“It would hev bin better for ye if you’d jest told everything ye knowed about it,” the man declared; “but, anyhow, I’ll hev the other feller nabbed before night.”
As Don continued on his way home, his brain in a whirl over the affair, the whole truth came to him like a flash of light. He recalled the fact that on the evening after the football game at Highland, while he was talking with Bentley in his father’s office, he had caught Leon examining Dr. Scott’s check-book and had angrily ordered the fellow to let it alone.
“He tore a blank check from it then!” palpitated Don. “He is the forger! He could imitate father’s writing, for he faked up that excuse for me. He went to Freeport, Thursday, and when he came home he had lots of money, which he said his aunt had given him for a birthday present.”
Everything seemed plain enough in a moment, and he understood why it was suspected that he had known something about the affair. Immediately he resolved to face Bentley in the matter and force the fellow to exonorate him. He hurried straight to Leon’s home, but Mrs. Bentley, a pale-faced, worried-appearing woman, announced that her son had not appeared since school that afternoon.
As Don was departing he found himself again confronted by Simeon Drew, who had followed him without his knowledge. The officer looked at him in a stern, accusing manner that was also full of triumph.
“I kinder jedged you’d hurry to tell t’other feller all about it,” he said. “Now, you kin see you might as well own up.”
“I’ll never own up to a thing I did not do!” cried Don. “You can’t make me, either! If Leon Bentley says I had anything to do with that business, he lies!”
“All right,” grinned the man. “He’ll hev a chanct to tell his story purty soon. You better go hum and keep still.”
Don went home, fully resolved to find his father and make a full confession of everything. Unfortunately, Dr. Scott was not there, having been called on a very serious case, and it was possible that he might not return until late at night.
Restless and excited, his face flushing and paling by turns, Don found himself unable to eat much supper, which convinced his aunt that a serious illness threatened him.
“It’s that dreadful football,” she asserted, positively. “You’re all worked up over it. I knew it would make you sick, and I told Lyman so. There’s no sense in you’re staving yourself to pieces morning, noon and night the way you’ve been doing for the last three weeks.”
Don might have told her everything then, but it was hard enough to have to tell it to his father, and he thought it useless to distress his aunt over a matter she could not remedy. After supper he went out into the village and tried to find Bentley, but it was a long time before he met any one who could give him any information concerning the young rascal.
The doctor’s son was not dull, even though he had been deceived by the crafty Leon, and, in thinking the whole matter over, he was assailed by a doubt concerning the genuineness of the portion of a letter that Bentley claimed to have found beneath Renwood’s desk.
“That may have been a forgery, too,” thought Don. “How do I know? I wish I’d never agreed to do that other business of dropping the letter to Winston where Sterndale could find it. Oh, I’ve got myself into a pretty mess, and all because I had anything to do with Bentley. But Renwood is back of it all! He started it! He is to blame!”
Always he came round to this mental assertion, but now, for the first time, he found it was not at all satisfying to himself. He was struck by the thought that in this manner he was trying to shift the blame for his own weakness on to the shoulders of another, which made him feel mean and small and more wretched than ever.
Then he thought of his father’s story and of Charlie, who had been ruined by associating with evil companions, suddenly feeling that the similarity of his position to that of Charlie when first accused of stealing was something startling. Charlie had associated with bad boys, but he had not actually stolen when first charged with theft. Don’s father had been taught a lesson by that terrible experience, and his lips had not harshly charged his son with participating in the crime of forgery, but his eyes had spoken quite as distinctly as words.
“But I’ll not be like Charlie!” the tortured boy mentally cried. “I see my mistake now, and I’ll have no more to do with Leon Bentley.”
He felt in a pocket of his coat and found a half-consumed package of cigarettes, which he took out and flung away. Leon’s father and mother were respectable, hard-working, honest people, and it now began to seem to Don that somehow all the degraded qualities of the son had developed under the brain-weakening, conscience-deadening, manhood-destroying thrall of that opium-tainted creation of evil, the paper-covered cigarette. Don wondered now that he had ever been tempted to smoke one of the vile-smelling things, and wondered still more that, having found neither satisfaction nor pleasure in the first one, he had persisted in their use; but he was thankful in his heart that the dreadful habit had not fixed itself firmly upon him, though he tried to assure himself that he would have broken it at any cost of self-denial and distress. His heart, however, declared to him that one of his passionate, impulsive disposition, one who could not control his fiery temper, would surely have found it hard to break clear from a habit with such power to fasten itself on its victims and bind them with chains soft as silk and strong as iron.
With the casting away of those cigarettes a feeling of partial relief came to him, for it seemed that he had broken the unsuspected bond that somehow connected him with the unscrupulous fellow he now despised.
As he was wandering about the streets, thinking of this thing and hoping to run across Bentley, he met Danny Chatterton, who seemed flushed, excited and in a great hurry.
“Hello, Scott!” called Chatterton, seeing him. “Have you heard the nun-nun-nun-news?”
“What news?” asked Don.
“Abub-bub-about Bentley.”
Don started. “No. What is it?”
“He’s sus-skipped out.”
“Skipped out? You mean——”
“He’s run away. I don’t nun-nun-know what he’s done, but it’s sus-something cuc-cuc-crooked, and he’s run for it. He sus-stole Sus-Skinny Jones’ bicycle and run away on that. Sim Drew has tut-took a tut-team and put after him. I’m going to the cuc-cuc-cuc-club to tell the bub-boys. Come on.”
But Don declined to accompany the little fellow, and Danny skipped away to carry the news to the boys at the club.
Scott turned toward home, for there was no longer any chance that he would meet Leon on the street that night. His father was still away. Till nearly ten o’clock he sat up and waited, still determined to confess everything; but the doctor did not return, and at last Don crept to bed to spend a wretched night—the night before the football game.