a solution of the mystery heartened him.
He ate his dinner alone, unnoticed, and after dinner, in the writing
room, with its mission furniture and its traveling men copying
orders, he wrote a letter to Elizabeth. Into it he put some of the
things that lay too deep for speech when he was with her, and
because he had so much to say and therefore wrote extremely fast,
a considerable portion of it was practically illegible. Then, as
though he could hurry the trains East, he put a special delivery
stamp on it.
With that off his mind, and the need of exercise after the trip
insistent, he took his hat and wandered out into the town. The
main street was crowded; moving picture theaters were summoning
their evening audiences with bright lights and colored posters,
and automobiles lined the curb. But here and there an Indian with
braids and a Stetson hat, or a cowpuncher from a ranch in boots
and spurs reminded him that after all this was the West, the horse
and cattle country. It was still twilight, and when he had left
the main street behind him he began to have a sense of the familiar.
Surely he had stood here before, had seen the court-house on its
low hill, the row of frame houses in small gardens just across the
street. It seemed infinitely long ago, but very real. He even
remembered dimly an open place at the other side of the building
where the ranchmen tied their horses. To test himself he walked
around. Yes, it was there, but no horses stood there now, heads
drooping, bridle reins thrown loosely over the rail. Only a muddy
automobile, without lights, and a dog on guard beside it.
He spoke to the dog, and it came and sniffed at him. Then it
squatted in front of him, looking up into his face.
"Lonely, old chap, aren't you?" he said. "Well, you've got
nothing on me."
He felt a little cheered as he turned back toward the hotel. A few
encounters with the things of his youth, and perhaps the cloud
would clear away. Already the court-house had stirred some
memories. And on turning back down the hill he had another swift
vision, photographically distinct but unrelated to anything that
had preceded or followed it. It was like a few feet cut from a
moving picture film.
He was riding down that street at night on a small horse, and his
father was beside him on a tall one. He looked up at his father,
and he seemed very large. The largest man in the world. And the
most important.
It began and stopped there, and his endeavor to follow it further
resulted in its ultimately leaving him. It faded, became less real,
until he wondered if he had not himself conjured it. But that
experience taught him something. Things out of the past would come
or they would not come, but they could not be forced. One could not
will to revive them.
He stood at a window facing north that night, under the impression
it was east, and sent his love and an inarticulate sort of prayer
to Elizabeth, for her safety and happiness, in the general direction
of the Arctic Circle.
Bassett had not returned in the morning, and he found himself with
a day on his hands. He decided to try the experiment of visiting
the Livingstone ranch, or at least of viewing it from a safe
distance, with the hope of a repetition of last night's experience.
Of all his childish memories the ranch house, next to his father,
was most distinct. When he had at various times tried to analyze
what things he recalled he had found that what they lacked of normal
memory was connection. They stood out, like the one the night
before, each complete in itself, brief, and having no apparent
relation to what had gone before or what came after.
But the ranch house had been different. The pictures were mostly
superimposed on it; it was their background. Himself standing on
the mountain looking down at it, and his father pointing to it;
the tutor who was afraid of horses, sitting at a big table in a
great wood-ceiled and wood-paneled room; a long gallery or porch
along one side of the building and rooms added on to the house so
that one had to go along the gallery to reach them; a gun-room
full of guns.
When, much later, Dick was able calmly to review that day, he found
his recollection of it confused by the events that followed, but one
thing stood out as clearly as his later knowledge of the almost
incredible fact that for one entire day and for the evening of
another, he had openly appeared in Norada and had not been
recognized. That fact was his discovery that the Livingstone ranch
house had no place in his memory whatever.
He had hired a car and a driver, a driver who asserted that this
was the old Livingstone ranch house. And it bore no resemblance,
not the faintest, to the building he remembered. It did not lie
where it should have lain. The mountains were too far behind it.
It was not the house. The fields were not the proper fields. It
was wrong, all wrong.
He went no closer than the highway, because it was not necessary.
He ordered the car to turn and go back, and for the first and only
time he was filled with bitter resentment against David. David had
fooled him. He sat beside the driver, his face glowering and his
eyes hot, and let his indignation burn in him like a flame.
Hours afterwards he had, of course, found excuses for David.
Accepted them, rather, as a part of the mystery which wrapped him
about. But they had no effect on the decision he made during that
miserable ride back to Norada, when he determined to see the man
Bassett and get the truth out of him if he had to choke it out.
XXIV
Bassett was astounded when he saw Dick's signature on the hotel
register. It destroyed, in one line, every theory he held. That
Judson Clark should return to Norada after his flight was
incredible. Ten years was only ten years after all. It was not
a lifetime. There were men in the town who had known Clark well.
Nevertheless for a time he held to his earlier conviction, even
fought for it. He went so far as to wonder if Clark had come back
for a tardy surrender. Men had done that before this, had carried
a burden for years, had reached the breaking point, had broken.
But he dismissed that. There had been no evidence of breaking in
the young man in the office chair. He found himself thrown back,
finally, on the story of the Wasson woman, and wondering if he
would have to accept it after all.
The reaction from his certainty in the cabin to uncertainty again
made him fretful and sleepless. It was almost morning before he
relaxed on his hard hotel bed enough to sleep.
He wakened late, and telephoned down for breakfast. His confusion
had not decreased with the night, and while he got painfully out
of bed and prepared to shave and dress, his thoughts were busy.
There was no doubt in his mind that, in spite of the growth of the
town, the newcomer would be under arrest almost as soon as he made
his appearance. A resemblance that could deceive Beverly Carlysle's
brother could deceive others, and would. That he had escaped so
long amazed him.
By the time he had bathed he had developed a sort of philosophic
acceptance of the new situation. There would be no exclusive story
now, no scoop. The events of the next few hours were for every man
to read. He shrugged his shoulders as, partially dressed, he
carried his shaving materials into the better light of his bedroom.
With his face partially lathered he heard a knock at the door, and
sang out a not uncheerful "Come in." It happened, then, that it
was in his mirror that he learned that his visitor was not the
waiter, but Livingstone himself. He had an instant of stunned
amazement before he turned.
"I beg your pardon," Dick said. "I was afraid you'd get out before
I saw you. My name's Livingstone, and I want to talk to you, if
you don't mind. If you like I'll come back later."
Bassett perceived two things simultaneously; that owing probably to
the lather on his face he had not been recognized, and that the
face of the man inside the door was haggard and strained.
"That's all right. Come in and sit down. I'll get this stuff off
my face and be with you in a jiffy."
But he was very deliberate in the bathroom. His astonishment grew,
rather than decreased. Clearly Livingstone had not known him. How,
then, had he known that he was in Norada? And when he recognized
him, as he would in a moment, what then? He put on his collar and
tied his tie slowly. Gregory might be the key. Gregory might have
found out that he had started for Norada and warned him. Then, if
that were true, this man was Clark after all. But if he were Clark
he wouldn't be there. It was like a kitten after its tail. It
whirled in a circle and got nowhere.
The waiter had laid his breakfast and gone when he emerged from the
bathroom, and Dick was standing by the window looking out. He
turned.
"I'm here, Mr. Bassett, on rather a peculiar - " He stopped
and looked at Bassett. "I see. You were in my office about a
month ago, weren't you?"
"For a headache, yes." Bassett was very wary and watchful, but there
was no particular unfriendliness in his visitor's eyes.
"It never occurred to me that you might be Bassett," Dick said
gravely. "Never mind about that. Eat your breakfast. Do you mind
if I talk while you do it?"
"Will you have some coffee? I can get a glass from the bathroom.
It takes a week to get a waiter here."
"Thanks. Yes."
The feeling of unreality grew in the reporter's mind. It increased
still further when they sat opposite each other, the small table
with its Bible on the lower shelf between them, while he made a
pretense at breakfasting.
"First of all," Dick said, at last, "I was not sure I had found the
right man. You are the only Bassett in the place, however, and
you're registered from my town. So I took a chance. I suppose
that headache was not genuine."
Bassett hesitated.
"No" he said at last.
"What you really wanted to do was to see me, then?"
"In a way, yes."
"I'll ask you one more question. It may clear the air. Does this
mean anything to you? I'll tell you now that it doesn't, to me."
From his pocketbook he took the note addressed to David, and passed
it over the table. Bassett looked at him quickly and took it.
"Before you read it, I'll explain something. It was not sent to me.
It was sent to my - to Doctor David Livingstone. It happened to
fall into my hands. I've come a long way to find out what it means."
He paused, and looked the reporter straight in the eyes. "I am
laying my cards on the table, Bassett. This 'G,' whoever he is,
is clearly warning my uncle against you. I want to know what he is
warning him about."
Bassett read the note carefully, and looked up.
"I suppose you know who 'G' is?"
"I do not. Do you?"
"I'll give you another name, and maybe you'll get it. A name that
I think will mean something to you. Beverly Carlysle."
"The actress?"
Bassett had an extraordinary feeling of unreality, followed by one
of doubt. Either the fellow was a very good actor, or -
"Sorry," Dick said slowly. "I don't seem to get it. I don't know
that 'G' is as important as his warning. That note's a warning."
"Yes. It's a warning. And I don't think you need me to tell you
what about."
"Concerning my uncle, or myself?"
"Are you trying to put it over on me that you don't know?"
"That's what I'm trying to do," Dick said, with a sort of grave
patience.
The reporter liked courage when he saw it, and he was compelled to
a sort of reluctant admiration.
"You've got your courage with you," he observed. "How long do you
suppose it will be after you set foot on the streets of this town
before you're arrested? How do you know I won't send for the
police myself?"
"I know damned well you won't," Dick said grimly. "Not before I'm
through with you. You've chosen to interest yourself in me. I
suppose you don't deny the imputation in that letter. You'll grant
that I have a right to know who and what you are, and just what you
are interested in."
"Right-o," the reporter said cheerfully, glad to get to grips; and
to stop a fencing that was getting nowhere. "I'm connected with
the Times-Republican, in your own fair city. I was in the theater
the night Gregory recognized you. Verbum sap."
"This Gregory is the 'G'?"
"Oh, quit it, Clark," Bassett said, suddenly impatient. "That
letter's the last proof I needed. Gregory wrote it after he'd seen
David Livingstone. He wouldn't have written it if he and the old
man hadn't come to an understanding. I've been to the cabin. My
God, man, I've even got the parts of your clothing that wouldn't
burn! You can thank Maggie Donaldson for that."
"Donaldson," Dick repeated. "That was it. I couldn't remember her
name. The woman in the cabin. Maggie. And Jack. Jack Donaldson."
He got up, and was apparently dizzy, for he caught at the table.
"Look here," Bassett said, "let me give you a drink. You look
all in."
But Dick shook his head.
"No, thanks just the same. I'll ask you to be plain with me,
Bassett. I am - I have become engaged to a girl, and - well, I
want the story. That's all."
And, when Bassett only continued to stare at him:
"I suppose I've begun wrong end first. I forgot about how it must
seem to you. I dropped a block out of my life about ten years ago.
Can't remember it. I'm not proud of it, but it's the fact. What
I'm trying to do now is to fill in the gap. But I've got to,
somehow. I owe it to the girl."
When Bassett could apparently find nothing to say he went on:
"You say I may be arrested if I go out on the street. And you
rather more than intimate that a woman named Beverly Carlysle is
mixed up in it somehow. I take it that I knew her."
"Yes. You knew her," Bassett said slowly. At the intimation in
his tone Dick surveyed him for a moment without speaking. His face,
pale before, took on a grayish tinge.
"I wasn't - married to her?"
"No. You didn't marry her. See here, Clark, this is straight goods,
is it? You're not trying to put something over on me? Because if
you are, you needn't. I'd about made up my mind to follow the
story through for my own satisfaction, and then quit cold on it.
When a man's pulled himself out of the mud as you have it's not my
business to pull him down. But I don't want you to pull any bunk."
Dick winced.
"Out of the mud!" he said. "No. I'm telling you the truth, Bassett.
I have some fragmentary memories, places and people, but no names,
and all of them, I imagine from my childhood. I pick up at a cabin
in the mountains, with snow around, and David Livingstone feeding me
soup with a tin spoon." He tried to smile and failed. His face
twitched. "I could stand it for myself," he said, "but I've tied
another life to mine, like a cursed fool, and now you speak of a
woman, and of arrest. Arrest! For what?"
"Suppose," Bassett said after a moment, "suppose you let that go
just now, and tell me more about this - this gap. You're a medical
man. You've probably gone into your own case pretty thoroughly.
I'm accepting your statement, you see. As a matter of fact it must
be true, or you wouldn't be here. But I've got to know what I'm
doing before I lay my cards on the table. Make it simple, if you
can. I don't know your medical jargon."
Dick did his best. The mind closed down now and then, mainly from
a shock. No, there was no injury required. He didn't think he had
had an injury. A mental shock would do it, if it were strong enough.
And fear. It was generally fear. He had never considered himself
braver than the other fellow, but no man liked to think that he had
a cowardly mind. Even if things hadn't broken as they had, he'd
have come back before he went to the length of marriage, to find
out what it was he had been afraid of. He paused then, to give
Bassett a chance to tell him, but the reporter only said: "Go on.
you put your cards on the table, and then I'll lay mine out."
Dick went on. He didn't blame Bassett. If there was something that
was in his line of work, he understood. At the same time he wanted
to save David anything unpleasant. (The word "unpleasant" startled
Bassett, by its very inadequacy.) He knew now that David had built
up for him an identity that probably did not exist, but he wanted
Bassett to know that there could never be doubt of David's high
purpose and his essential fineness.
"Whatever I was before." he finished simply, "and I'll get that
from you now, if I am any sort of a man at all it is his work."
He stood up and braced himself. It had been clear to Bassett for
ten minutes that Dick was talking against time, against the period
of revelation. He would have it, but he was mentally bracing
himself against it.
"I think," he said, "I'll have that whisky now."
Bassett poured him a small drink, and took a turn about the room
while he drank it. He was perplexed and apprehensive. Strange
as the story was, he was convinced that he had heard the truth.
He had, now and then, run across men who came back after a brief
disappearance, with a cock and bull story of forgetting who they
were, and because nearly always these men vanished at the peak of
some crisis they had always been open to suspicion. Perhaps, poor
devils, they had been telling the truth after all. So the mind
shut down, eh? Closed like a grave over the unbearable!
His own part in the threatening catastrophe began to obsess him.
Without the warning from Gregory there would have been no return to
Norada, no arrest. It had all been dead and buried, until he
himself had revived it. And a girl, too! The girl in the blue
dress at the theater, of course.
Dick put down the glass.
"I'm ready, if you are."
"Does the name of Clark recall anything to you?"
"Nothing."
"Judson Clark? Jud Clark?"
Dick passed his hand over his forehead wearily.
"I'm not sure," he said. "It sounds familiar, and then it doesn't.
It doesn't mean anything to me, if you get that. If it's a key,
it doesn't unlock. That's all. Am I Judson Clark?"
Oddly enough, Bassett found himself now seeking for hope of escape
in the very situation that had previously irritated him, in the
story he had heard at Wasson's. He considered, and said, almost
violently:
"Look here, I may have made a mistake. I came out here pretty well
convinced I'd found the solution to an old mystery, and for that
matter I think I have. But there's a twist in it that isn't clear,
and until it is clear I'm not going to saddle you with an identity
that may not belong to you. You are one of two men. One of them
is Judson Clark, and I'll be honest with you; I'm pretty sure you're
Clark. The other I don't know, but I have reason to believe that
he spent part of his time with Henry Livingstone at Dry River."
"I went to the Livingstone ranch yesterday. I remember my early
home. That wasn't it. Which one of these two men will be arrested
if he is recognized?"
"Clark."
"For what?"
"I'm coming to that. I suppose you'll have to know. Another
drink? No? All right. About ten years ago, or a little less, a
young chap called Judson Clark got into trouble here, and headed
into the mountains in a blizzard. He was supposed to have frozen
to death. But recently a woman named Donaldson made a confession
on her deathbed. She said that she had helped to nurse Clark in a
mountain cabin, and that with the aid of some one unnamed he had
got away."
"Then I'm Clark. I remember her, and the cabin."
There was a short silence following that admission. To Dick, it
was filled with the thought of Elizabeth, and of her relation to
what he was about to hear. Again he braced himself for what was
coming.
"I suppose," he said at last, "that if I ran away I was in pretty
serious trouble. What was it?"
"We've got no absolute proof that you are Clark, remember. You
don't know, and Maggie Donaldson was considered not quite sane
before she died. I've told you there's a chance you are the other
man."
"All right. What had Clark done?"
"He had shot a man."
The reporter was instantly alarmed. If Dick had been haggard before,
he was ghastly now. He got up slowly and held to the back of his chair.
"Not - murder?" he asked, with stiff lips.
"No," Bassett said quickly. "Not at all. See here, you've had
about all you can stand. Remember, we don't even know you are
Clark. All I said was - "
"I understand that. It was murder, wasn't it?"
"Well, there had been a quarrel, I understand. The law allows for
that, I think."
Dick went slowly to the window, and stood with his back to Bassett.
For a long time the room was quiet. In the street below long lines
of cars in front of the hotel denoted the luncheon hour. An Indian
woman with a child in the shawl on her back stopped in the street,
looked up at Dick and extended a beaded belt. With it still
extended she continued to stare at his white face.
"The man died, of course?" he asked at last, without turning.
"Yes. I knew him. He wasn't any great loss. It was at the Clark
ranch. I don't believe a conviction would be possible, although
they would try for one. It was circumstantial evidence."
"And I ran away?"
"Clark ran away," Bassett corrected him. "As I've told you, the
authorities here believe he is dead."
After an even longer silence Dick turned.
"I told you there was a girl. I'd like to think out some way to
keep the thing from her, before I surrender myself. If I can
protect her, and David - "
"I tell you, you don't even know you are Clark."
"All right. If I'm not, they'll know. If I am - I tell you I'm
not going through the rest of my life with a thing like that
hanging over me. Maggie Donaldson was sane enough. Why, when I
look back, I know our leaving the cabin was a flight. I'm not
Henry Livingstone's son, because he never had a son. I can tell
you what the Clark ranch house looks like." And after a pause:
"Can you imagine the reverse of a dream when you've dreamed you are
guilty of something and wake up to find you are innocent? Who was
the man?"
Bassett watched him narrowly.
"His name was Lucas. Howard Lucas."
"All right. Now we have that, where does Beverly Carlysle come in?"
"Clark was infatuated with her. The man he shot was the man she
had married."
XXV
Shortly after that Dick said he would go to his room. He was still
pale, but his eyes looked bright and feverish, and Bassett went
with him, uneasily conscious that something was not quite right.
Dick spoke only once on the way.
"My head aches like the mischief," he said, and his voice was dull
and lifeless.
He did not want Bassett to go with him, but Bassett went,
nevertheless. Dick's statement, that he meant to surrender himself,
had filled him with uneasiness. He determined, following him along
the hall, to keep a close guard on him for the next few hours, but
beyond that, just then, he did not try to go. If it were humanly
possible he meant to smuggle him out of the town and take him East.
But he had an uneasy conviction that Dick was going to be ill.
The mind did strange things with the body.
Dick sat down on the edge of the bed.
"My head aches like the mischief," he repeated. "Look in that grip
and find me some tablets, will you? I'm dizzy."
He made an effort and stretched out on the bed. "Good Lord," he
muttered, "I haven't had such a headache since - "
His voice trailed off. Bassett, bending over the army kit bag in
the corner, straightened and looked around. Dick was suddenly
asleep and breathing heavily.
For a long time the reporter sat by the side of the bed, watching
him and trying to plan some course of action. He was overcome by
his own responsibility, and by the prospect of tragedy that
threatened. That Livingstone was Clark, and that he would insist
on surrendering himself when he wakened, he could no longer doubt.
His mind wandered back to that day when he had visited the old house
as a patient, and from that along the strange road they had both
come since then. He reflected, not exactly in those terms, that
life, any man's life, was only one thread in a pattern woven of an
infinite number of threads, and that to tangle the one thread was
to interfere with all the others. David Livingstone, the girl in
the blue dress, the man twitching uneasily on the bed, Wilkins the
sheriff, himself, who could tell how many others, all threads.
He swore in a whisper.
The maid tapped at the door. He opened it an inch or so and sent