or two no opportunity presented itself. When he called there was
always present some grave-faced sympathizing visitor, dark clad
and low of voice, and over the drawing-room would hang the
indescribable hush of a house in mourning. It seemed to touch
Elizabeth, too, making her remote and beyond earthly things. He
would go in, burning with impatience, hungry for the mere sight of
her, fairly overcharged with emotion, only to face that strange new
spirituality that made him ashamed of the fleshly urge in him.
Once he found Clare Rossiter there, and was aware of something
electric in the air. After a time he identified it. Behind the
Rossiter girl's soft voice and sympathetic words, there was a
veiled hostility. She was watching Elizabeth, was overconscious
of her. And she was, for some reason, playing up to himself. He
thought he saw a faint look of relief on Elizabeth's face when
Clare at last rose to go.
"I'm on my way to see the man Dick Livingstone left in his place,"
Clare said, adjusting her veil at the mirror. "I've got a cold.
Isn't it queer, the way the whole Livingstone connection is
broken up?"
"Hardly queer. And it's only temporary."
"Possibly. But if you ask me, I don't believe Dick will come back.
Mind, I don't defend the town, but it doesn't like to be fooled.
And he's fooled it for years. I know a lot of people who'd quit
going to him." She turned to Wallie.
"He isn't David's nephew, you know. The question is, who is he?
Of course I don't say it, but a good many are saying that when a
man takes a false identity he has something to hide."
She gave them no chance to reply, but sauntered out with her
sex-conscious, half-sensuous walk. Outside the door her smile
faded, and her face was hard and bitter. She might forget Dick
Livingstone, but never would she forgive herself for her confession
to Elizabeth, nor Elizabeth for having heard it.
Wallie turned to Elizabeth when she had gone, slightly bewildered.
"What's got into her?" he inquired. And then, seeing Elizabeth's
white face, rather shrewdly: "That was one for him and two for
you, was it?"
"I don't know. Probably."
"I wonder if you would look like that if any one attacked me!"
"No one attacks you, Wallie."
"That's not an answer. You wouldn't, would you? It's different,
isn't it?"
"Yes. A little."
He straightened, and looked past her, unseeing, at the wall. "I
guess I've known it for quite a while," he said at last. "I didn't
want to believe it, so I wouldn't. Are you engaged to him?"
"Yes. It's not to be known just yet, Wallie."
"He's a good fellow," he said, after rather a long silence. "Not
that that makes it easier," he added with a twisted smile. Then,
boyishly and unexpectedly he said, "Oh, my God!"
He sat down, and when the dog came and placed a head on his knee
he patted it absently. He wanted to go, but he had a queer feeling
that when he went he went for good.
"I've cared for you for years," he said. "I've been a poor lot,
but I'd have been a good bit worse, except for you."
And again:
"Only last night I made up my mind that if you'd have me, I'd make
something out of myself. I suppose a man's pretty weak when he
puts a responsibility like that on a girl."
She yearned over him, rather. She made little tentative overtures
of friendship and affection. But he scarcely seemed to hear them,
wrapped as he was in the selfish absorption of his disappointment.
When she heard the postman outside and went to the door for the
mail, she thought he had not noticed her going. But when she
returned he was watching her with jealous, almost tragic eyes.
"I suppose you hear from him by every mail."
"There has been nothing to-day."
Something in her voice or her face made him look at her closely.
"Has he written at all?"
"The first day he got there. Not since."
He went away soon, and not after all with the feeling of going for
good. In his sceptical young mind, fed by Clare's malice, was
growing a comforting doubt of Dick's good faith.
XXVII
When Wilkins had disappeared around the angle of the staircase
Bassett went to a chair and sat down. He felt sick, and his knees
were trembling. Something had happened, a search for Clark room
by room perhaps, and the discovery had been made.
He was totally unable to think or to plan. With Dick well they
could perhaps have made a run for it. The fire-escape stood ready.
But as things were - The murmuring among the crowd at the foot of
the stairs ceased, and he looked up. Wilkins was on the staircase,
searching the lobby with his eyes. When he saw Bassett he came
quickly down and confronted him, his face angry and suspicious.
"You're mixed up in this somehow," he said sharply. "You might as
well come over with the story. We'll get him. He can't get out
of this town."
With the words, and the knowledge that in some incredible fashion
Dick had made his escape, Bassett's mind reacted instantly.
"What's eating you, Wilkins?" he demanded. "Who got away? I
couldn't get that tongue-tied bell-hop to tell me. Thought it
was a fire."
"Don't stall, Bassett. You've had Jud Clark hidden upstairs in
three-twenty all day."
Bassett got up and towered angrily over the sheriff. The crowd had
turned and was watching.
"In three-twenty?" he said. "You're crazy. Jud Clark! Let me
tell you something. I don't know what you've got in your head, but
three-twenty is a Doctor Livingstone from near my home town. Well
known and highly respected, too. What's more, he's a sick man, and
if he's got away, as you say, it's because he is delirious. I had
a doctor in to see him an hour ago. I've just arranged for a room
at the hospital for him. Does that look as though I've been
hiding him?"
The positiveness of his identification and his indignation resulted
in a change in Wilkins' manner.
"I'll ask you to stay here until I come back." His tone was
official, but less suspicious. "We'll have him in a half hour.
It's Clark all right. I'm not saying you knew it was Clark, but I
want to ask you some questions."
He went out, and Bassett heard him shouting an order in the street.
He went to the street door, and realized that a search was going on,
both by the police and by unofficial volunteers. Men on horseback
clattered by to guard the borders of the town, and in the vicinity
of the hotel searchers were investigating yards and alleyways.
Bassett himself was helpless. He stood by, watching the fire of
his own igniting, conscious of the curious scrutiny of the few hotel
loungers who remained, and expecting momentarily to hear of Dick's
capture. It must come eventually, he felt sure. As to how Dick
had been identified, or by what means he had escaped, he was in
complete ignorance; and an endeavor to learn by establishing the
former entente cordiale between the room clerk and himself was met
by a suspicious glance and what amounted to a snub. He went back
to his chair against the wall and sat there, waiting for the end.
It was an hour before the sheriff returned, and he came in scowling.
"I'll see you now," he said briefly, and led the way back to the
hotel office behind the desk. Bassett's last hope died when he saw
sitting there, pale but composed, the elderly maid. The sheriff
lost no time.
"Now I'll tell you what we know about your connection with this
case, Bassett," he said. "You engaged a car to take you both to
the main line to-night. You paid off Clark's room as well as your
own this afternoon. When you found he was sick you canceled your
going. That's true, isn't it?"
"It is. I've told you I knew him at home, but not as Clark."
"I'll let that go. You intended to take the midnight on the main
line, but you ordered a car instead of using the branch road."
"Livingstone was sick. I thought it would be easier. That's all."
His voice sharpened. "You can't drag me into this, Sheriff. In
the first place I don't believe it was Clark, or he wouldn't have
come here, of all places on the earth. I didn't even know he was
here, until he came into my room this morning."
"Why did he come into your room?"
"He had seen that I was registered. He said he felt sick. I took
him back and put him to bed. To-night I got a doctor."
The sheriff felt in his pocket and produced a piece of paper.
Bassett's morale was almost destroyed when he saw that it was
Gregory's letter to David.
"I'll ask you to explain this. It was on Clark's bed."
Bassett took it and read it slowly. He was thinking hard.
"I see," he said. "Well, that explains why he came here. He was
too sick to talk when I saw him. You see, this is not addressed
to him, but to his uncle, David Livingstone. David Livingstone is
a brother of Henry Livingstone, who died some years ago at Dry
River. This refers to a personal matter connected with the
Livingstone estate."
The sheriff took the letter and reread it. He was puzzled.
"You're a good talker," he acknowledged grudgingly. He turned to
the maid.
"All right, Hattie," he said. "We'll have that story again. But
just a minute." He turned to the reporter. "Mrs. Thorwald here
hasn't seen Lizzie Lazarus, the squaw. Lizzie has been sitting in
my office ever since noon. Now, Hattie."
Hattie moistened her dry lips.
"It was Jud Clark, all right," she said. "I knew him all his life,
off and on. But I wish I hadn't screamed. I don't believe he killed
Lucas, and I never will. I hope he gets away."
She eyed the sheriff vindictively, but he only smiled grimly.
"What did I tell you?" he said to Bassett. "Hell with the women
- that was Jud Clark. And we'll get him, Hattie. Don't worry.
Go on."
She looked at Bassett.
"When you left me, I sat outside the door, as you said. Then I
heard him moving, and I went in. The room was not very light, and
I didn't know him at first. He sat up in bed and looked at me, and
he said, 'Why, hello, Hattie Thorwald.' That's my name. I married
a Swede. Then he looked again, and he said, 'Excuse me, I thought
you were a Mrs. Thorwald, but I see now you're older.' I recognized
him then, and I thought I was going to faint. I knew he'd be
arrested the moment it was known he was here. I said, 'Lie down,
Mr. Jud. You're not very well.' And I closed the door and locked
it. I was scared."
Her voice broke; she fumbled for a handkerchief. The sheriff
glanced at Bassett.
"Now where's your Livingstone story?" he demanded. "All right,
Hattie. Let's have it."
"I said, 'For God's sake, Mr. Jud, lie still, until I think what
to do. The sheriff's likely downstairs this very minute.' And then
he went queer and wild. He jumped off the bed and stood listening
and staring, and shaking all over. 'I've got to get away,' he said,
very loud. 'I won't let them take me. I'll kill myself first!'
When I put my hand on his arm he threw it off, and he made for the
door. I saw then that he was delirious with fever, and I stood in
front of the door and begged him not to go out. But he threw me
away so hard that that I fell, and I screamed."
"And then what?"
"That's all. If I hadn't been almost out of my mind I'd never have
told that it was Jud Clark. That'll hang on me dying day."
An hour or so later Bassett went back to his room in a state of
mental and nervous exhaustion. He knew that from that time on he
would be under suspicion and probably under espionage, and he
proceeded methodically, his door locked, to go over his papers.
His notebook and the cuttings from old files relative to the Clark
case he burned in his wash basin and then carefully washed the
basin. That done, his attendance on a sick man, and the letter
found on the bed was all the positive evidence they had to connect
him with the case. He had had some thought of slipping out by the
fire-escape and making a search for Dick on his own account, but
his lack of familiarity with his surroundings made that practically
useless.
At midnight he stretched out on his bed without undressing, and
went over the situation carefully. He knew nothing of the various
neuroses which affect the human mind, but he had a vague impression
that memory when lost did eventually return, and Dick's recognition
of the chambermaid pointed to such a return. He wondered what a
man would feel under such conditions, what he would think. He
could not do it. He abandoned the effort finally, and lay frowning
at the ceiling while he considered his own part in the catastrophe.
He saw himself, following his training and his instinct, leading
the inevitable march toward this night's tragedy, planning, scheming,
searching, and now that it had come, lying helpless on his bed while
the procession of events went on past him and beyond his control.
When an automobile engine back-fired in the street below he went
sick with fear.
He made the resolution then that was to be the guiding motive for
his life for the next few months, to fight the thing of his own
creating to a finish. But with the resolution newly made he saw
the futility of it. He might fight, would fight, but nothing could
restore to Dick Livingstone the place he had made for himself in
the world. He might be saved from his past, but he could not be
given a future.
All at once he was aware that some one was working stealthily at
the lock of the door which communicated with a room beyond. He
slid cautiously off the bed and went to the light switch, standing
with a hand on it, and waited. The wild thought that it might be
Livingstone was uppermost in his mind, and when the door creaked
open and closed again, that was the word he breathed into the
darkness.
"No," said a woman's voice in a whisper. "It's the maid, Hattie.
Be careful. There's a guard at the top of the stairs."
He heard her moving to his outer door, and he knew that she stood
there, listening, her head against the panel. When she was
satisfied she slipped, with the swiftness of familiarity with her
surroundings, to the stand beside his bed, and turned on the lamp.
In the shaded light he saw that she wore a dark cape, with its
hood drawn over her head. In some strange fashion the maid, even
the woman, was lost, and she stood, strange, mysterious, and
dramatic in the little room.
"If you found Jud Clark, what would you do with him?" she demanded.
From beneath the hood her eyes searched his face. "Turn him over
to Wilkins and his outfit?"
"I think you know better than that."
"Have you got any plan?"
"Plan? No. They've got every outlet closed, haven't they? Do
you know where he is?"
"I know where he isn't, or they'd have him by now. And I know Jud
Clark. He'd take to the mountains, same as he did before. He's
got a good horse."
"A horse!"
"Listen. I haven't told this, and I don't mean to. They'll learn
it in a couple of hours, anyhow. He got out by a back fire-escape
- they know that. But they don't know he took Ed Rickett's black
mare. They think he's on foot. I've been down there now, and she's
gone. Ed's shut up in a room on the top floor, playing poker. They
won't break up until about three o'clock and he'll miss his horse
then. That's two hours yet."
Bassett tried to see her face in the shadow of the hood. He was
puzzled and suspicious at her change of front, more than half
afraid of a trap.
"How do I know you are not working with Wilkins?" he demanded. "You
could have saved the situation to-night by saying you weren't sure."
"I was upset. I've had time to think since."
He was forced to trust her, eventually, although the sense of some
hidden motive, some urge greater than compassion, persisted in him.
"You've got some sort of plan for me, then? I can't follow him
haphazard into the mountains at night, and expect to find him."
"Yes. He was delirious when he left. That thing about the sheriff
being after him - he wasn't after him then. Not until I gave the
alarm. He's delirious, and he thinks he's back to the night he
- you know. Wouldn't he do the same thing again, and make for the
mountains and the cabin? He went to the cabin before."
Bassett looked at his watch. It was half past twelve.
"Even if I could get a horse I couldn't get out of the town."
"You might, on foot. They'll be trailing Rickett's horse by dawn.
And if you can get out of town I can get you a horse. I can get
you out, too, I think. I know every foot of the place."
A feeling of theatrical unreality was Bassett's chief emotion
during the trying time that followed. The cloaked and shrouded
figure of the woman ahead, the passage through two dark and empty
rooms by pass key to an unguarded corridor in the rear, the descent
of the fire-escape, where they stood flattened against the wall
while a man, possibly one of the posse, rode in, tied his horse and
stamped in high heeled boots into the building, and always just
ahead the sure movement and silent tread of the woman, kept his
nerves taut and increased his feeling of the unreal.
At the foot of the fire-escape the woman slid out of sight
noiselessly, but under Bassett's feet a tin can rolled and
clattered. Then a horse snorted close to his shoulder, and he was
frozen with fright. After that she gave him her hand, and led him
through an empty outbuilding and another yard into a street.
At two o'clock that morning Bassett, waiting in a lonely road near
what he judged to be the camp of a drilling crew, heard a horse
coming toward him and snorting nervously as it came and drew back
into the shadows until he recognized the shrouded silhouette
leading him.
"It belongs to my son," she said. "I'll fix it with him to-morrow.
But if you're caught you'll have to say you came out and took him,
or you'll get us all in trouble."
She gave him careful instructions as to how to find the trail, and
urged him to haste.
"If you get him," she advised, "better keep right on over the range."
He paused, with his foot in the stirrup.
"You seem pretty certain he's taken to the mountains."
"It's your only chance. They'll get him anywhere else."
He mounted and prepared to ride off. He would have shaken hands
with her, but the horse was still terrified at her shrouded figure
and veered and snorted when she approached. "However it turns out,"
he said, "you've done your best, and I'm grateful."
The horse moved off and left her standing there, her cowl drawn
forward and her hands crossed on her breast. She stood for a
moment, facing toward the mountains, oddly monkish in outline and
posture. Then she turned back toward the town.
XXVIII
Dick had picked up life again where he had left it off so long
before. Gone was David's house built on the sands of forgetfulness.
Gone was David himself, and Lucy. Gone not even born into his
consciousness was Elizabeth. The war, his work, his new place in
the world, were all obliterated, drowned in the flood of memories
revived by the shock of Bassett's revelations.
Not that the breaking point had revealed itself as such at once.
There was confusion first, then stupor and unconsciousness, and out
of that, sharply and clearly, came memory. It was not ten years
ago, but an hour ago, a minute ago, that he had stood staring at
Howard Lucas on the floor of the billiard room, and had seen
Beverly run in through the door.
"Bev!" he was saying. "Bev! Don't look like that!"
He moved and found he was in bed. It had been a dream. He drew a
long breath, looked about the room, saw the woman and greeted her.
But already he knew he had not been dreaming. Things were
sharpening in his mind. He shuddered and looked at the floor, but
nobody lay there. Only the horror in his mind, and the instinct
to get away from it. He was not thinking at all, but rising in him
was not only the need for flight, but the sense of pursuit. They
were after him. They would get him. They must never get him alive.
Instinct and will took the place of thought, and whatever closed
chamber in his brain had opened, it clearly influenced his physical
condition. He bore all the stigmata of prolonged and heavy
drinking; his nerves were gone; he twitched and shook. When he
got down the fire-escape his legs would scarcely hold him.
The discovery of Ed Rickett's horse in the courtyard, saddled and
ready, fitted in with the brain pattern of the past.
Like one who enters a room for the first time, to find it already
familiar, for a moment he felt that this thing that he was doing
he had done before. Only for a moment. Then partial memory ceased,
and he climbed into the saddle, rode out and turned toward the
mountains and the cabin. By that strange quality of the brain which
is called habit, although the habit be of only one emphatic
precedent, he followed the route he had taken ten years before.
How closely will never be known. Did he stop at this turn to look
back, as he had once before? Did he let his horse breathe there?
Not the latter, probably, for as, following the blind course that
he had followed ten years before, he left the town and went up the
canyon trail, he was riding as though all the devils of hell were
behind him.
One thing is certain. The reproduction of the conditions of the
earlier flight, the familiar associations of the trail, must have
helped rather than hindered his fixation in the past. Again he
was Judson Clark, who had killed a man, and was flying from himself
and from pursuit.
Before long his horse was in acute distress, but he did not notice
it. At the top of the long climb the animal stopped, but he kicked
him on recklessly. He was as unaware of his own fatigue, or that
he was swaying in the saddle, until galloping across a meadow the
horse stumbled and threw him.
He lay still for some time; not hurt but apparently lacking the
initiative to get up again. He had at that period the alternating
lucidity and mental torpor of the half drunken man. But struggling
up through layers of blackness at last there came again the
instinct for flight, and he got on the horse and set off.
The torpor again overcame him and he slept in the saddle. When the
horse stopped he roused and kicked it on. Once he came up through
the blackness to the accompaniment of a great roaring, and found
that the animal was saddle deep in a ford, and floundering badly
among the rocks. He turned its head upstream, and got it out safely.
Toward dawn some of the confusion was gone, but he firmly fixed in
the past. The horse wandered on, head down, occasionally stopping
to seize a leaf as it passed, and once to drink deeply at a spring.
Dick was still not thinking - there was something that forbade him
to think-but he was weak and emotional. He muttered:
"Poor Bev! Poor old Bev!"
A great wave of tenderness and memory swept over him. Poor Bev!
He had made life hell for her, all right. He had an almost
uncontrollable impulse to turn the horse around, go back and see
her once more. He was gone anyhow. They would get him. And he
wanted her to know that he would have died rather than do what
he had done.
The flight impulse died; he felt sick and very cold, and now and
then he shook violently. He began to watch the trail behind him
for the pursuit, but without fear. He seemed to have been wandering
for a thousand black nights through deep gorges and over peaks as
high as the stars, and now he wanted to rest, to stop somewhere and
sleep, to be warm again. Let them come and take him, anywhere out
of this nightmare.
With the dawn still gray he heard a horse behind and below him on
the trail up the cliff face. He stopped and sat waiting, twisted
about in his saddle, his expression ugly and defiant, and yet
touchingly helpless, the look of a boy in trouble and at bay.
The horseman came into sight on the trail below, riding hard, a
middle-aged man in a dark sack suit and a straw hat, an oddly
incongruous figure and manifestly weary. He rode bent forward,
and now and again he raised his eyes from the trail and searched
the wall above with bloodshot, anxious eyes.
On the turn below Dick, Bassett saw him for the first time, and
spoke to him in a quiet voice.
"Hello, old man," he said. "I began to think I was going to miss
you after all."
His scrutiny of Dick's face had rather reassured him. The delirium
had passed, apparently. Dishevelled although he was, covered with
dust and with sweat from the horse, Livingstone's eyes were steady
enough. As he rode up to him, however, he was not so certain. He
found himself surveyed with a sort of cool malignity that startled