Rich Crooks/Chapter 14
XIV
THAT'S about all there is to tell. Everybody in the hotel seemed trying 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 impunity.
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 Cornwall 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, through the very respectful and polite Mr. Parsons, appealed 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 crowbar 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 hundred. 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 ways 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 Cornwall 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. I say it is highly probable that Cornwall 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 affairs. 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 acquired. 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 wherein to keep valuable papers—if I ever acquire 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 inscription 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. I had let his own conscience finally rouse itself to defy the men whom he thought could ruin him, though in the wash-bow] of that cheap little Salt Lake rooming-house I had burned the evidence that they thought they had.