Page 237

In spite of his protests, Bassett was compelled finally to agree. He was
sulky and dispirited. He saw the profound anticlimax to all his effort
of Dick wandering out again, legally dead and legally guilty, and he
swore roundly under his breath.
"All right," he grunted at last. "I guess that's the last word, Gregory.
But you tell her from me that if she doesn't reopen the matter of her
own accord, she'll have a man's life on her conscience."
"I'll not tell her anything about it. I'm not only her brother; I'm her
manager now. And I'm not kicking any hole in the boat that floats me."
He was self-confident and slightly insolent; the hands with which he
lighted a fresh cigarette no longer trembled, and the glance he threw at
Dick was triumphant and hostile.
"As a man sows, Clark!" he said. "You sowed hell for a number of people
once."
Bassett had to restrain an impulse to kick him out of the door. When he
had gone Bassett turned to Dick with assumed lightness.
"Well," he said, "here we are, all dressed up and nowhere to go!"
He wandered around the room, restless and disappointed. He knew, and
Dick knew, that they had come to the end of the road, and that nothing
lay beyond. In his own unpleasant way Fred Gregory had made a case for
his sister that tied their hands, and the crux of the matter had lain
in his final gibe: "As a man sows, Clark, so shall he reap." The moral
issue was there.
"I suppose the Hines story goes by the board, eh?" he commented after a
pause.
"Yes. Except that I wish I'd known about him when I could have done
something. He's my half-brother, any way you look at it, and he had a
rotten deal. Sometimes a man sows," he added, with a wry smile, "and the
other fellow reaps."
Bassett went out after that, going to the office on the chance of a
letter from Melis, but there was none. When he came back he found Dick
standing over a partially packed suitcase, and knew that they had come
to the end of the road indeed.
"What's the next step?" he asked bluntly.
"I'll have to leave here. It's too expensive."
"And after that, what?"
"I'll get a job. I suppose a man is as well hidden here as anywhere. I
can grow a beard-that's the usual thing, isn't it?"