"Suppose we don't go into that now," he said gently. "You've had about
all you can stand." He got up awkwardly. "I suppose you are playing
to-night?"
She nodded, looking up at him dumbly.
"Better lie down, then, and—forget me." He smiled down at her.
"I've never forgotten you, Jud. And now, seeing you again—I—"
Her face worked. She continued to look up at him, piteously. The
appalling truth came to him then, and that part of him which had
remained detached and aloof, watching, almost smiled at the irony. She
cared for him. Out of her memories she had built up something to care
for, something no more himself than she was the woman of his dreams; but
with this difference, that she was clinging, woman-fashion, to the thing
she had built, and he had watched it crumble before his eyes.
"Will you promise to go and rest?"
"Yes. If you say so."
She was acquiescent and humble. Her eyes were soft, faithful, childlike.
"I've suffered so, Jud."
"I know."
"You don't hate me, do you?"
"Why should I? Just remember this: while you were carrying this burden,
I was happier than I'd ever been. I'll tell you about it some time."
She got up, and he perceived that she expected him again to take her in
his arms. He felt ridiculous and resentful, and rather as though he was
expected to kiss the hand that had beaten him, but when she came close
to him he put an arm around her shoulders.
"Poor Bev!" he said. "We've made pretty much a mess of it, haven't we?"
He patted her and let her go, and her eyes followed him as he left the
room. The elder brotherliness of that embrace had told her the truth as
he could never have hurt her in words. She went back to the chair where
he had sat, and leaned her cheek against it.
After a time she went slowly upstairs and into her room. When her maid
came in she found her before the mirror of her dressing-table, staring
at her reflection with hard, appraising eyes.
Leslie's partner, wandering into the hotel at six o'clock, found from
the disordered condition of the room that Leslie had been back, had
apparently bathed, shaved and made a careful toilet, and gone out again.
Joe found himself unexpectedly at a loose end. Filled, with suppressed
indignation he commenced to dress, getting out a shirt, hunting his
evening studs, and lining up what he meant to say to Leslie over his
defection.
Then, at a quarter to seven, Leslie came in, top-hatted and
morning-coated, with a yellowing gardenia in his buttonhole and his
shoes covered with dust.
"Hello, Les," Joe said, glancing up from a laborious struggle with a
stud. "Been to a wedding?"
"Why?"
"You look like it."
"I made a call, and since then I've been walking."
"Some walk, I'd say," Joe observed, looking at him shrewdly. "What's
wrong, Les? Fair one turn you down?"
"Go to hell," Leslie said irritably.
He flung off his coat and jerked at his tie. Then, with it hanging
loose, he turned to Joe.
"I'm going to tell you something. I know it's safe with you, and I need
some advice. I called on a woman this afternoon. You know who she is.
Beverly Carlysle."
Joe whistled softly.
"That's not the point," Leslie declaimed, in a truculent voice. "I'm not
defending myself. She's a friend; I've got a right to call there if I
want to."
"Sure you have," soothed Joe.
"Well, you know the situation at home, and who Livingstone actually is.
The point is that, while that poor kid at home is sitting around killing
herself with grief, Clark's gone back to her. To Beverly Carlysle."
"How do you know?"
"Know? I saw him this afternoon, at her house."
He sat still, moodily reviewing the situation. His thoughts were a
chaotic and unpleasant mixture of jealousy, fear of Nina, anxiety over
Elizabeth, and the sense of a lost romantic adventure. After a while he
got up.
"She's a nice kid," he said. "I'm fond of her. And I don't know what to
do."
Suddenly Joe grinned.
"I see," he said. "And you can't tell her, or the family, where you saw
him!"
"Not without raising the deuce of a row."
He began, automatically, to dress for dinner. Joe moved around the room,
rang for a waiter, ordered orange juice and ice, and produced a bottle
of gin from his bag. Leslie did not hear him, nor the later preparation
of the cocktails. He was reflecting bitterly on the fact that a man who
married built himself a wall against romance, a wall, compounded of his
own new sense of responsibility, of family ties, and fear.
Joe brought him a cocktail.
"Drink it, old dear," he said. "And when it's down I'll tell you a few
little things about playing around with ladies who have a past. Here's
to forgetting 'em."
Leslie took the glass.
"Right-o," he said.
He went home the following day, leaving Joe to finish the business in
New York. His going rather resembled a flight. Tossing sleepless the
night before, he had found what many a man had discovered before him,
that his love of clandestine adventure was not as strong as his caution.
He had had a shock. True, his affair with Beverly had been a formless
thing, a matter of imagination and a desire to assure himself that
romance, for him, was not yet dead. True, too, that he had nothing to
fear from Dick Livingstone. But the encounter had brought home to him
the danger of this old-new game he was playing. He was running like a
frightened child.
He thought of various plans. One of them was to tell Nina the truth,
take his medicine of tears and coldness, and then go to Mr. Wheeler.
One was to go to Mr. Wheeler, without Nina, and make his humiliating
admission. But Walter Wheeler had his own rigid ideas, was
uncompromising in rectitude, and would understand as only a man could
that while so far he had been only mentally unfaithful, he had been
actuated by at least subconscious desire.
His own awareness of that fact made him more cautious than he need have
been, perhaps more self-conscious. And he genuinely cared for Elizabeth.
It was, on the whole, a generous and kindly impulse that lay behind his
ultimate resolution to tell her that her desertion was both wilful and
cruel.
Yet, when the time came, he found it hard to tell her. He took her for
a drive one evening soon after his return, forcibly driving off Wallie
Sayre to do so, and eying surreptitiously now and then her pale, rather
set face. He found a quiet lane and stopped the car there, and then
turned and faced her.
"How've you been, little sister, while I've been wandering the gay white
way?" he asked.
"I've been all right, Leslie."
"Not quite all right, I think. Have you ever thought, Elizabeth, that no
man on earth is worth what you've been going through?"
"I'm all right, I tell you," she said impatiently. "I'm not grieving any
more. That's the truth, Les. I know now that he doesn't intend to come
back, and I don't care. I never even think about him, now."
"I see," he said. "Well, that's that."
But he had not counted on her intuition, and was startled to hear her
say:
"Well? Go on."
"What do you mean, go on?"
"You brought me out here to tell me something."
"Not at all. I simply—"
"Where is he? You've seen him."
He tried to meet her eyes, failed, cursed himself for a fool. "He's
alive and well, Elizabeth. I saw him in New York." It was a full minute
before she spoke again, and then her lips were stiff and her voice
strained.
"Has he gone back to her? To the actress he used to care for?"
He hesitated, but he knew he would have to go on.
"I'm going to tell you something, Elizabeth. It's not very creditable
to me, but I'll have to trust you. I don't want to see you wasting your
life. You've got plenty of courage and a lot of spirit. And you've got
to forget him."
He told her, and then he took her home. He was a little frightened, for
there was something not like her in the way she had taken it, a sort of
immobility that might, he thought, cover heartbreak. But she smiled when
she thanked him, and went very calmly into the house.
That night she accepted Wallie Sayre.
Bassett was having a visitor. He sat in his chair while that visitor
ranged excitedly up and down the room, a short stout man, well dressed
and with a mixture of servility and importance. The valet's first words,
as he stood inside the door, had been significant.
"I should like to know, first, if I am talking to the police."
"No—and yes," Bassett said genially. "Come and sit down, man. What I
mean is this. I am a friend of Judson Clark's, and this may or may not
be a police matter. I don't know yet."
"You are a friend of Mr. Clark's? Then the report was correct. He is
still alive, sir?"
"Yes."
The valet got out a handkerchief and wiped his face. He was clearly
moved.
"I am glad of that. Very glad. I saw some months ago, in a
newspaper—where is he?"
"In New York. Now Melis, I've an idea that you know something about the
crime Judson Clark was accused of. You intimated that at the inquest."
"Mrs. Lucas killed him."
"So she says," Bassett said easily.
The valet jumped and stared.
"She admits it, as the result of an accident. She also admits hiding the
revolver where you found it."
"Then you do not need me."
"I'm not so sure of that."
The valet was puzzled.
"I want you to think back, Melis. You saw her go down the stairs,
sometime before the shot. Later you were confident she had hidden the
revolver, and you made a second search for it. Why? You hadn't heard her
testimony at the inquest then. Clark had run away. Why didn't you think
Clark had done it?"
"Because I thought she was having an affair with another man. I have
always thought she did it."
Bassett nodded.
"I thought so. What made you think that?"
"I'll tell you. She went West without a maid, and Mr. Clark got a
Swedish woman from a ranch near to look after her, a woman named
Thorwald. She lived at her own place and came over every day. One night,
after Mrs. Thorwald had started home, I came across her down the road
near the irrigator's house, and there was a man with her. They didn't
hear me behind them, and he was giving her a note for some one in the
house."
"Why not for one of the servants?"
"That's what I thought then, sir. It wasn't my business. But I saw the
same man later on, hanging about the place at night, and once I saw
her with him—Mrs. Lucas, I mean. That was in the early evening. The
gentlemen were out riding, and I'd gone with one of the maids to a hill
to watch the moon rise. They were on some rocks, below in the canyon."
"Did you see him?"
"I think it was the same man, if that's what you mean. I knew something
queer was going on, after that, and I watched her. She went out at night
more than once. Then I told Donaldson there was somebody hanging round
the place, and he set a watch."
"Fine. Now we'll go to the night Lucas was shot. Was the Thorwald woman
there?"
"She had started home."
"Leaving Mrs. Lucas packing alone?"
"Yes. I hadn't thought of that. The Thorwald woman heard the shot and
came back. I remember that, because she fainted upstairs and I had to
carry her to a bed."
"I see. Now about the revolver."
"I located it the first time I looked for it. Donaldson and the others
had searched the billiard room. So I tried the big room. It was under
a chair. I left it there, and concealed myself in the room. She, Mrs.
Lucas, came down late that night and hunted for it. Then she hid it
where I got it later."
"I wish I knew, Melis, why you didn't bring those facts out at the
inquest."
"You must remember this, sir. I had been with Mr. Clark for a long time.
I knew the situation. And I thought that he had gone away that night
to throw suspicion from her to himself. I was not certain what to do. I
would have told it all in court, but it never came to trial."
Bassett was satisfied and fairly content. After the Frenchman's
departure he sat for some time, making careful notes and studying them.
Supposing the man Melis had seen to be Clifton Hines, a good many things
would be cleared up. Some new element he had to have, if Gregory's
story were to be disproved, some new and different motive. Suppose, for
instance...
He got up and paced the floor back and forward, forward and back. There
was just one possibility, and just one way of verifying it. He sat down
and wrote out a long telegram and then got his hat and carried it to the
telegraph office himself. He had made his last throw.
He received a reply the following day, and in a state of exhilaration
bordering on madness packed his bag, and as he packed it addressed it,
after the fashion of lonely men the world over.
"Just one more trip, friend cowhide," he said, "and then you and I
are going to settle down again to work. But it's some trip, old
arm-breaker."
He put in his pajamas and handkerchiefs, his clean socks and collars,
and then he got his revolver from a drawer and added it. Just
twenty-four hours later he knocked at Dick's door in a boarding-house on
West Ninth Street, found it unlocked, and went in. Dick was asleep,
and Bassett stood looking down at him with an odd sort of paternal
affection. Finally he bent down and touched his shoulder.
"Wake up, old top," he said. "Wake up. I have some news for you."
To Dick the last day or two had been nightmares of loneliness. He threw
caution to the winds and walked hour after hour, only to find that
the street crowds, people who had left a home or were going to one,
depressed him and emphasized his isolation. He had deliberately put
away from him the anchor that had been Elizabeth and had followed a
treacherous memory, and now he was adrift. He told himself that he did
not want much. Only peace, work and a place. But he had not one of them.