The Borough Treasurer | Page 4

you--so much trusted that you've been
Borough Treasurer for years. You can't afford to let me tell the
Highmarket folk that you two are ex-convicts! Besides, in your case
there's another thing--there's your daughter."
Cotherstone groaned--a deep, unmistakable groan of sheer torture. But
Kitely went on remorselessly.

"Your daughter's just about to marry the most promising young man in
the place," he said. "A young fellow with a career before him. Do you
think he'd marry her if he knew that her father--even if it is thirty years
ago--had been convicted of----"
"Look you here!" interrupted Cotherstone, through set teeth. "I've had
enough! I've asked you once before if you'd any more to say--now I'll
put it in another fashion. For I see what you're after--and it's blackmail!
How much do you want? Come on--give it a name!"
"Name nothing, till you've told Mallalieu," answered Kitely. "There's
no hurry. You two can't, and I shan't, run away. Time enough--I've the
whip hand. Tell your partner, the Mayor, all I've told you--then you can
put your heads together, and see what you're inclined to do. An annuity,
now?--that would suit me."
"You haven't mentioned this to a soul?" asked Cotherstone anxiously.
"Bah!" sneered Kitely. "D'ye think I'm a fool? Not likely. Well--now
you know. I'll come in here again tomorrow afternoon. And--you'll both
be here, and ready with a proposal."
He picked up his glass, leisurely drank off its remaining contents, and
without a word of farewell opened the door and went quietly away.
CHAPTER II
CRIME--AND SUCCESS
For some moments after Kitely had left him, Cotherstone stood
vacantly staring at the chair in which the blackmailer had sat. As yet he
could not realize things. He was only filled with a queer, vague
amazement about Kitely himself. He began to look back on his
relations with Kitely. They were recent--very recent, only of yesterday,
as you might say. Kitely had come to him, one day about three months
previously, told him that he had come to these parts for a bit of a
holiday, taken a fancy to a cottage which he, Cotherstone, had to let,
and inquired its rent. He had mentioned, casually, that he had just

retired from business, and wanted a quiet place wherein to spend the
rest of his days. He had taken the cottage, and given his landlord
satisfactory references as to his ability to pay the rent--and Cotherstone,
always a busy man, had thought no more about him. Certainly he had
never anticipated such an announcement as that which Kitely had just
made to him--never dreamed that Kitely had recognized him and
Mallalieu as men he had known thirty years ago.
It had been Cotherstone's life-long endeavour to forget all about the
event of thirty years ago, and to a large extent he had succeeded in
dulling his memory. But Kitely had brought it all back--and now
everything was fresh to him. His brows knitted and his face grew dark
as he thought of one thing in his past of which Kitely had spoken so
easily and glibly--the dock. He saw himself in that dock again--and
Mallalieu standing by him. They were not called Mallalieu and
Cotherstone then, of course. He remembered what their real names
were--he remembered, too, that, until a few minutes before, he had
certainly not repeated them, even to himself, for many a long year. Oh,
yes--he remembered everything--he saw it all again. The case had
excited plenty of attention in Wilchester at the time--Wilchester, that
for thirty years had been so far away in thought and in actual distance
that it might have been some place in the Antipodes. It was not a nice
case--even now, looking back upon it from his present standpoint, it
made him blush to think of. Two better-class young working-men,
charged with embezzling the funds of a building society to which they
had acted as treasurer and secretary!--a bad case. The Court had
thought it a bad case, and the culprits had been sentenced to two years'
imprisonment. And now Cotherstone only remembered that
imprisonment as one remembers a particularly bad dream. Yes--it had
been real.
His eyes, moody and brooding, suddenly shifted their gaze from the
easy chair to his own hands--they were shaking. Mechanically he took
up the whisky decanter from his desk, and poured some of its contents
into his glass--the rim of the glass tinkled against the neck of the
decanter. Yes--that had been a shock, right enough, he muttered to
himself, and not all the whisky in the world would drive it out of him.

But a drink--neat and stiff--would pull his nerves up to pitch, and so he
drank, once, twice, and sat down with the glass in his hand--to think
still more.
That old Kitely was shrewd--shrewd! He had at