“Now, when you tell me you were fighting consumption it clears a lot of space for me that has been dark.  I knew you were doped half the time, but I thought you were going the pace with the pipe, though I’ll admit I couldn’t fathom what drug you were taking.  But now I know Crimmins fed you dope while pretending to hand you nerve food.  I know it.  I know he bet against his stable time and ag’in and won every race you were accused of throwing.  I tracked things pretty clear that day after I left you.

“Well, I went to Waterbury and laid the charge against the trainer; giving him a chance to square himself before I made trouble higher up.  Well, Waterbury was mad.  Said he had no hand in it, and I believed him.  The upshot of it was that he faced Crimmins.  Now, Crimmins had been blowing himself on the pile he had made, and he was nasty.  Instead of denying it and putting the proving of the game up to me, he took the bit in his mouth at something Waterbury said.

“I don’t know all the facts.  They came out in the paper afterward.  But Crimmins and Waterbury had a scrap, and the trainer was fired.  He was fired when you went to the stable to say good-by to Sis.  He was packing what things he had there, but when he saw you weren’t on, he kept it mum.  I believe then he was planning to do away with Sis, and you offered a nice easy get-away for him.  He hated you.  First, because you turned down the crooked deal he offered you, for it was he who was beating the bookies, and he wanted a pal.  Secondly, he thought you had split about the dope, and he laid his discharge to you.  And he hated Waterbury.  He could square you both at one shot.  He poisoned Sis when you’d gone.

“Every one believed you guilty, for they didn’t know the row Crimmins and Waterbury had.  But Waterbury suspected.  He and Crimmins had it out.  He caught him on Broadway, a day or two later, and Crimmins walloped him over the head with a blackjack.  Waterbury went to the hospital, and came next to dying.  Crimmins went to jail.  I guess he was down and out, all right, when, as you say, he heard from his brother that Waterbury was at Cottonton.  I believe he went there to square him, but ran across you instead, and thought he could have a good blackmailing game on the side.  That wife game was a plot to catch you, kid.  He didn’t think you’d dare to come North.  When you told him about your lapse of memory, then he knew he was safe.  You knew nothing of his showdown.”

Garrison covered his face with his hands.  Only he knew the great, the mighty obsession that was slowly withdrawing itself from his heart.  It was all so wonderful; all so incredible.  Long contact with misfortune had sapped the natural resiliency of his character.  It had been subjected to so much pressure that it had become flaccid.  The pressure removed, it would be some time before the heart could act upon the message of good tidings the brain had conveyed to it.  For a long time he remained silent.  And Drake respected his silence to the letter.  Then Garrison uncovered his eyes.