Old Jimmie believed that his last hour was come. He showed something
of the defiant, almost maniacal courage of a coward who realizes he can
retreat no farther.

"What I got to say, Joe Ellison," he snarled in a sudden rage which
bared his yellow teeth, "is that I'm even with you at last!"

"Even with me? What for?"

"For the way you double-crossed me in nineteen-one in that Gordon
business. You never gave me a dime--said the thing had fallen down--yet
I know there was a big haul!"

"I told you the truth. That Gordon thing was a fizzle."

"There's where you're lying! It was a clean-up! And I knew you'd been
cheating me out of my share in other deals!"

"You're absolutely wrong, Jimmie Carlisle. But if you thought that, why
didn't you have it out with me at the time?"

"Because I knew you would lie! You were a better talker than I was, and
since our outfit always sided with you, I knew I wouldn't have a chance
then. But I reasoned that if I kept quiet and kept on being your friend,
I'd get my chance to get even if I waited awhile. I waited--and I
certainly got my chance!"

"Go on, Jimmie Carlisle!"

And Old Jimmie went on--a startlingly different Old Jimmie, his pent-up
evil now loosed into quivering, malignant triumph; went on with the
feverish exultation of a twisted, perverted mind that has brooded
long over an imagined injustice, that has brooded greedily and long in
private over his revenge, and at last has his chance to gloat in the
open.

"When you were sent away, Joe Ellison, and turned over your daughter to
me with those orders about seeing that she was brought up as a decent
girl, I began to see the big chance I'd been waiting for. I asked
myself, What is the dearest thing in the world to Joe Ellison? The
answer was, this idea he'd got about his girl. I asked myself, What is
the biggest way I can get even with Joe Ellison? The answer was, to make
Joe Ellison believe all the time he's in stir that his girl is growing
up the way he wants her to be and yet to bring her up the exact thing he
didn't want her to be. And that's exactly what I did!"

"You--did--such a thing?" breathed Joe Ellison, almost incredulous.

"That's exactly what I did!" Old Jimmie went on, gloatingly. "It was
easy. No one knew you had a daughter, so I passed her off as my own baby
by a marriage I'd not told any one about. I saw that she always lived
among crooks, looked at things the way crooks do, and grew up with
no other t