He was homesick for David, for Lucy, and, with a tightening of the
heart he admitted it, for Elizabeth. And he had no home. He thought of
Reynolds, bent over the desk in his office; he saw the quiet tree-shaded
streets of the town, and Reynolds, passing from house to house in the
little town, doing his work, usurping his place in the confidence and
friendship of the people; he saw the very children named for him asking:
"Who was I named for, mother?" He saw David and Lucy gone, and the
old house abandoned, or perhaps echoing to the laughter of Reynolds'
children.
He had moments when he wondered what would happen if he took Beverly at
her word. Suppose she made her confession, re-opened the thing, to fill
the papers with great headlines, "Judson Clark Not Guilty. A Strange
Story."
He saw himself going back to the curious glances of the town, never to
be to them the same as before. To face them and look them down, to hear
whispers behind his back, to feel himself watched and judged, on that
far past of his. Suppose even that it could be kept out of the papers;
Wilkins amiable and acquiescent, Beverly's confession hidden in the ruck
of legal documents; and he stealing back, to go on as best he could,
covering his absence with lies, and taking up his work again. But even
that uneasy road was closed to him. He saw David and Lucy stooping to
new and strange hypocrisies, watching with anxious old eyes the faces of
their neighbors, growing defiant and hard as time went on and suspicion
still followed him.
And there was Elizabeth.
He tried not to think of her, save as of some fine and tender thing he
had once brushed as he passed by. Even if she still cared for him, he
could, even less than David and Lucy, ask her to walk the uneasy road
with him. She was young. She would forget him and marry Wallace Sayre.
She would have luxury and gaiety, and the things that belong to youth.
He was not particularly bitter about that. He knew now that he had given
her real love, something very different from that early madness of his,
but he knew it too late...
He looked up at Bassett and then sat up.
"What sort of news?" he asked, his voice still thick with sleep.
"Get up and put some cold water on your head. I want you to get this."
He obeyed, but without enthusiasm. Some new clue, some hope revived only
to die again, what did it matter? But he stopped by Bassett and put a
hand on his shoulder.
"Why do you do it?" he asked. "Why don't you let me go to the devil in
my own way?"
"I started this, and by Heaven I've finished it," was Bassett's exultant
reply.
He sat down and produced a bundle of papers. "I'm going to read you
something," he said. "And when I'm through you're going to put your
clothes on and we'll go to the Biltmore. The Biltmore. Do you get it?"
Then he began to read.
"I, the undersigned, being of sound mind, do hereby make the following
statement. I make the statement of my own free will, and swear before
Almighty God that it is the truth. I am an illegitimate son of Elihu
Clark. My mother, Harriet Burgess, has since married and is now known as
Hattie Thorwald. She will confirm the statements herein contained.
"I was adopted by a woman named Hines, of the city of Omaha, whose name
I took. Some years later this woman married and had a daughter, of whom
I shall speak later.
"I attended preparatory school in the East, and was sent during
vacations to a tutoring school, owned by Mr. Henry Livingstone. When I
went to college Mr. Livingstone bought a ranch at Dry River, Wyoming,
and I spent some time there now and then.
"I learned that I was being supported and sent to college from funds
furnished by a firm of New York lawyers, and that aroused my suspicion.
I knew that Mrs. Hines was not my mother. I finally learned that I was
the son of Elihu Clark and Harriet Burgess.
"I felt that I should have some part of the estate, and I developed a
hatred of Judson Clark, whom I knew. I made one attempt to get money
from him by mail, threatening to expose his father's story, but I did
not succeed.
"I visited my mother, Hattie Thorwald, and threatened to kill Clark. I
also threatened Henry Livingstone, and his death came during a dispute
over the matter, but I did not kill him. He fell down and hit his head.
He had a weak heart.
"My foster-sister had gone on the stage, and Clark was infatuated with
her. I saw him a number of times, but he did not connect me with the
letter I had sent. My foster-sister's stage name is Beverly Carlysle.
"She married Howard Lucas and they visited the Clark ranch at Norada,
Wyoming, in the fall of 1911. I saw my sister there several times,
and as she knew the way I felt she was frightened. My mother, Hattie
Thorwald, was a sort of maid to her, and together they tried to get me
to go away."
Bassett looked up.
"Up to that point," he said, "I wrote it myself before I saw him." There
was a note of triumph in his voice. "The rest is his."
"On the night Lucas was killed I was to go away. Bev had agreed to give
me some money, for the piece had quit in June and I was hard up. She
was going to borrow it from Jud Clark, and that set me crazy. I felt it
ought to be mine, or a part of it anyhow.
"I was to meet my mother in the grounds, but I missed her, and I went to
the house. I wasn't responsible for what I did. I was crazy, I guess.
I saw Donaldson on the side porch, and beyond him were Lucas and Clark,
playing roulette. It made me wild. I couldn't have played roulette that
night for pennies.
"I went around the house and in the front door. What I meant to do was
to walk into that room and tell Clark who I was. He knew me, and all I
meant to do was to call Bev down, and mother, and make him sit up and
take notice. I hadn't a gun on me.
"I swear I wasn't thinking of killing him then. I hated him like poison,
but that was all. But I went into the living-room, and I heard Clark
say he'd lost a thousand dollars. Maybe you don't get that. A thousand
dollars thrown around like that, and me living on what Bev could borrow
from him.
"That sent me wild. Lucas took a gun from him, just after that, and said
he was going to put it in the other room. He did it, too. He put it on a
table and started back. I got it and pointed it at Clark. I'd have shot
him, too, but Bev came into the room.
"I want to exonerate Bev. She has been better than most sisters to me,
and she has lied to try to save me. She came up behind me and grabbed my
arm. Lucas had heard her, and he turned. I must have closed my hand on
the trigger, for it went off and hit him.
"I was in the living-room when Donaldson ran in. I hid there until they
were all gathered around Lucas and had quit running in, and then I
got away. I saw my mother in the grounds later. I told her where the
revolver was and that they'd better put it in the billiard room. I was
afraid they'd suspect Bev.
"I have read the above statement and it is correct. I was legally
adopted by Mrs. Alice Ford Hines, of Omaha, and use that signature. I
generally use the name of Frederick Gregory, which I took when I was on
the stage for a short time.
"(Signed) Clifton HINES."
Bassett folded up the papers and put them in the envelope. "I got
that," he said, "at the point of a gun, my friend. And our friend Hines
departed for the Mexican border on the evening train. I don't mind
saying that I saw him off. He held out for a get-away, and I guess it's
just as well."
He glanced at Dick, lying still and rigid on the bed.
"And now," he said. "I think a little drink won't do us any harm."
Dick refused to drink. He was endeavoring to comprehend the situation;
to realize that Gregory, who had faced him with such sneering hate a day
or so before, was his half-brother.
"Poor devil!" he said at last. "I wish to God I'd known. He was right,
you know. No wonder—"
Sometime later he roused from deep study and looked at Bassett.
"How did you get the connection?"
"I saw Melis, and learned that Hines was in it somehow. He was the
connecting link between Beverly Carlysle and the Thorwald woman. But I
couldn't connect him with Beverly herself, except by a chance. I wired
a man I knew in Omaha, and he turned up the second marriage, and a
daughter known on the stage as Beverly Carlysle."
Bassett was in high spirits. He moved about the room immensely pleased
with himself, slightly boastful.
"Some little stroke, Dick!" he said. "What price Mr. Judson Clark
to-night, eh? It will be worth a million dollars to see Wilkins' face
when he reads that thing."
"There's no mention of me as Livingstone in it, is there?"
"It wasn't necessary to go into that. I didn't know—Look here," he
exploded, "you're not going to be a damned fool, are you?"
"I'm not going to revive Judson Clark, Bassett. I don't owe him
anything. Let him die a decent death and stay dead."
"Oh, piffle!" Bassett groaned. "Don't start that all over again. Don't
pull any Enoch Arden stuff on me, looking in at a lighted window and
wandering off to drive a taxicab."
Suddenly Dick laughed. Bassett watched him, puzzled and angry, with a
sort of savage tenderness.
"You're crazy," he said morosely. "Darned if I understand you. Here I've
got everything fixed as slick as a whistle, and it took work, believe
me. And now you say you're going to chuck the whole thing."
"Not at all," Dick replied, with a new ring in his voice. "You're right.
I've been ten sorts of a fool, but I know now what I'm going to do. Take
your paper, old friend, and for my sake go out and clear Jud Clark. Put
up a headstone to him, if you like, a good one. I'll buy it."
"And what will you be doing in the meantime?"
Dick stretched and threw out his arms.
"Me?" he said. "What should I be doing, old man? I'm going home."
Lucy Crosby was dead. One moment she was of the quick, moving about the
house, glancing in at David, having Minnie in the kitchen pin and unpin
her veil; and the next she was still and infinitely mysterious, on her
white bed. She had fallen outside the door of David's room, and lay
there, her arms still full of fresh bath towels, and a fixed and intense
look in her eyes, as though, outside the door, she had come face to face
with a messenger who bore surprising news. Doctor Reynolds, running up
the stairs, found her there dead, and closed the door into David's room.
But David knew before they told him. He waited until they had placed her
on her bed, had closed her eyes and drawn a white coverlet over her, and
then he went in alone, and sat down beside her, and put a hand over her
chilling one.
"If you are still here, Lucy," he said, "and have not yet gone on, I
want you to carry this with you. We are all right, here. Everybody is
all right. You are not to worry."
After a time he went back to his room and got his prayer-book. He could
hear Harrison Miller's voice soothing Minnie in the lower hall, and
Reynolds at the telephone. He went back into the quiet chamber, and
opening the prayer-book, began to read aloud.
"Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them
that slept—"
His voice tightened. He put his head down on the side of the bed.
He was very docile that day. He moved obediently from his room for
the awful aftermath of a death, for the sweeping and dusting and clean
curtains, and sat in Dick's room, not reading, not even praying, a
lonely yet indomitable old figure. When his friends came, elderly men
who creaked in and tried to reduce their robust voices to a decorous
whisper, he shook hands with them and made brief, courteous replies.
Then he lapsed into silence. They felt shut off and uncomfortable, and
creaked out again.
Only once did he seem shaken. That was when Elizabeth came swiftly in
and put her arms around him as he sat. He held her close to him, saying
nothing for a long time. Then he drew a deep breath.
"I was feeling mighty lonely, my dear," he said.
He was the better for her visit. He insisted on dressing that evening,
and on being helped down the stairs. The town, which had seemed inimical
for so long, appeared to him suddenly to be holding out friendly hands.
More than friendly hands. Loving, tender hands, offering service and
affection and old-time friendship. It moved about sedately, in
dark clothes, and came down the stairs red-eyed and using
pocket-hand-kerchiefs, and it surrounded him with love and loving
kindness.
When they had all gone Harrison Miller helped him up the stairs to where
his tidy bed stood ready, and the nurse had placed his hot milk on a
stand. But Harrison did not go at once.
"What about word to Dick, David?" he inquired awkwardly, "I've called
up Bassett, but he's away. And I don't know that Dick ought to come back
anyhow. If the police are on the job at all they'll be on the lookout
now. They'll know he may try to come."
David looked away. Just how much he wanted Dick, to tide him over these
bad hours, only David knew. But he could not have him. He stared at the
glass of hot milk.
"I guess I can fight this out alone, Harrison," he said. "And Lucy will
understand."
He did not sleep much that night. Once or twice he got up and tip-toed
across the hall into Lucy's room and looked at her. She was as white
as her pillow, and quite serene. Her hands, always a little rough and
twisted with service, were smooth and rested.
"You know why he can't come, Lucy," he said once. "It doesn't mean that
he doesn't care. You have to remember that." His sublime faith that she
heard and understood, not the Lucy on the bed but the Lucy who had not
yet gone on to the blessed company of heaven, carried him back to his
bed, comforted and reassured.
He was up and about his room early. The odor of baking muffins and
frying ham came up the stair-well, and the sound of Mike vigorously
polishing the floor in the hall. Mixed with the odor of cooking and of
floor wax was the scent of flowers from Lucy's room, and Mrs. Sayre's
machine stopped at the door while the chauffeur delivered a great mass
of roses.