Seven Keys to Baldpate Part 35

Bland stood up, his face was white and worried, his gay plumage no longer set the tone for his mood.

"I think I'll go, too," he announced, looking hopefully at Magee.

"I'm no longer your jailer," Magee said. "Professor, these gentlemen are your witnesses Do you wish to detain them?"

"See here," cried the mayor angrily, "there ain't no question but that you can find me in Reuton any time you want me. At the little room on Main Street--anybody can tell you my hours--the door's always open to any reformer that has the nerve to climb the stairs. Look me up there.

I'll make it interesting for you."

"I certainly shall," the professor replied. "And very soon. Until then you may go when and where you please."

"Thanks," sneered the mayor. "I'll expect you. I'll be ready. I've had to get ready to answer your kind before. You think you got me, eh? Well, you're a fool to think that. As for Drayton, the pup, the yellow-streaked pup--I'll talk to Mister Drayton when I get back to Reuton."

"Before you go, Bland," remarked Magee, smiling, "I want to ask about Arabella. Where did you get her?"

"Some of it happened to a friend of mine," the ex-haberdasher answered, "a friend that keeps a clothing store. I got this suit there. I changed the story, here and there. He didn't write her no note, though he thought seriously of it. And he didn't run away and hide. The last I seen of him he was testing the effect of the heart-balm on sale behind the swinging doors."

Mr. Magee laughed, but over the long lean face of Bland not the ghost of a smile flitted. He was frightened, through and through.

"You're a fine bunch," sneered Mr. Max. "Reformers, eh? Well, you'll get what the rest of 'em always got. We'll tie you up in knots and leave you on the door-step of some orphan asylum before we're through with you."

"Come on, Lou," said Cargan. "Drayton's a smart guy, Doc. Where's his proof? Eloped with the bundle of dry goods this young man's taken a fancy to. And even if he had the money--I've been up against this many a time. You're wasting your talents, Doc. Good night! Come on, boys."

The three stamped out through the dining-room, and from the window Mr.

Magee watched them disappear down the road that stretched to Asquewan Falls.

CHAPTER XVIII

A RED CARD

Mr. Magee turned back from the window to the dim interior of the hotel office. He who had come to Baldpate Inn to court loneliness had never felt so lonely in his life. For he had lost sight of her--in the great Reuton station of his imagination she had slipped from his dreams--to go where he could not follow, even in thought. He felt as he knew this great bare room must feel each fall when the last laugh died away down the mountain, and the gloom of winter descended from drab skies.

Selecting a log of the hermit's cutting from the stock beside the hearth, Mr. Magee tossed it on the fire. There followed a shower of sparks and a flood of red light in the room. Through this light Kendrick advanced to Magee's side, and the first of the Baldpate hermits saw that the man's face was lined by care, that his eyes were tired even under the new light in them, that his mouth was twisted bitterly.

"Poor devil," thought Magee.

Kendrick drew up chairs for himself and Magee, and they sat down. Behind them the bulky Mrs. Norton dozed, dreaming perhaps of her Reuton boarding-house, while Miss Thornhill and the professor talked intermittently in low tones. The ranks at Baldpate were thinning rapidly; before long the place must settle back with a sigh in the cold, to wait for its first summer girl.

"Mr. Magee," said Kendrick nervously, "you have become involved in an unkind, a tragic story. I do not mean the affair of the bribe--I refer to the matter between Hayden and myself. Before Peters comes back with--the men he went for--I should like to tell you some of the facts of that story."

"If you had rather not--" began Magee.

"No," replied Kendrick, "I prefer that you should know. It was you who took the pistol from--his hand. I do not believe that even I can tell you all that was in Hayden's mind when he went into that other room and closed the door. It seems to me preposterous that a man of his sort should take his life under the circ.u.mstances I feel, somehow, that there is a part of the story even I do not know. But let that be."

He bowed his head in his hands.

"Ever since I came into this room," he went on, "the eyes of a pompous little man have been following me about. They have constantly recalled to me the nightmare of my life. You have noticed, no doubt, the pictures of the admiral that decorate these walls?"

"I have," replied Magee. He gazed curiously at the nearest of the portraits. How persistently this almost mythical starched man wove in and out of the melodrama at Baldpate Inn.

"Well," continued Kendrick, "the admiral's eyes haunt me. Perhaps you know that he plays a game--a game of solitaire. I have good reason to remember that game. It is a silly inconsequential game. You would scarcely believe that it once sent a man to h.e.l.l."

He stopped.

"I am beginning in the middle of my story," he apologized. "Let me go back. Six years ago I was hardly the man you see now--I was at least twenty years younger. Hayden and I worked together in the office of the Suburban Railway. We had been close friends at college--I believed in him and trusted him, although I knew he had certain weaknesses. I was a happy man. I had risen rapidly, I was young, the future was lying golden before me--and I was engaged. The daughter of Henry Thornhill, our employer--the girl you have met here at Baldpate--had promised to be my wife. Hayden had also been a suitor, but when our engagement was announced he came to me like a man, and I thought his words were sincere.

"One day Hayden told me of a chance we might take which would make us rich. It was not--altogether within the law. But it was the sort of thing that other men were doing constantly, and Hayden a.s.sured me that as he had arranged matters it was absolutely safe. My great sin is that I agreed we should take the chance--a sin for which I have paid, Mr.

Magee, over and over."

Again he paused, and gazed steadily at the fire. Again Magee noted the gray at his temples, the aftermath of fevers in his cheeks.

"We--took the chance," he went on. "For a time everything went well.

Then--one bl.u.s.tering March night--Hayden came to me and told me we were certain to be caught. Some of his plans had gone awry. I trusted him fully at the time, you understand--he was the man with whom I had sat on the window-seat of my room at college, settling the question of immortality, and all the other great questions young men settle at such times. I have at this moment no doubt that he was quite truthful when he said we were in danger of arrest. We arranged to meet the next night at the Argots Club and decide on what we should do.

"We met--in the library of the club. Hayden came in to me from the card-room adjoining, where he had been watching the admiral doddering over his eternal game. The old man had become a fixture at the club, like Parker down at the door, or the great chandelier in the hall. No one paid any attention to him; when he tried to talk to the younger men about his game they fled as from a pestilence. Well, as I say, Hayden came to meet me, and just at that moment the admiral finished his game and went out. We were alone in the library.

"Hayden told me he had thought the matter over carefully. There was nothing to do but to clear out of Reuton forever. But why, he argued, should we both go? Why wreck two lives? It would be far better, he told me, for one to a.s.sume the guilt of both and go away. I can see him now--how funny and white his face looked in that half-lighted room--how his hands trembled. I was far the calmer of the two.

"I agreed to his plan. Hayden led the way into the room where the admiral had been playing. We went up to the table, over which the green-shaded light still burned. On it lay two decks of cards, face up.

Hayden picked up the nearest deck, and shuffled it nervously. His face--G.o.d, it was like the snow out there on the mountain."

Kendrick closed his eyes, and Magee gazed at him in silent pity.

"He held out the deck," went on the exile softly, "he told me to draw.

He said if the card was black, he'd clear out. 'But if it's red, David,'

he said, 'why--you--got to go.' I held my breath, and drew. It was a full minute before I dared look at the card in my hand. Then I turned it over and it was--red--a measly little red two-spot. I don't suppose a man ever realizes all at once what such a moment means. I remember that I was much cooler than Hayden. It was I who had to brace him up. I--I even tried to joke with him. But his face was like death. He hardly spoke at all at first, and then suddenly he became horribly talkative. I left him--talking wildly--I left Reuton. I left the girl to whom I was engaged."

To break the silence that followed, Mr. Magee leaned forward and stirred the logs.

"I don't want to bore you," Kendrick said, trying to smile. "I went to a little town in South America. There was no treaty of extradition there--nor anything else civilized and decent. I smoked cigarettes and drank what pa.s.sed for rum, on the balcony of an impossible hotel, and otherwise groped about for the path that leads to the devil. After a year, I wrote to Hayden. He answered, urging me to stay away. He intimated that the thing we had done was on my shoulders. I was ashamed, frightfully unhappy. I didn't dare write to--her. I had disgraced her. I asked Hayden about her, and he wrote back that she was shortly to marry him. After that I didn't want to come back to Reuton. I wanted most--to die.

"The years crept by on the balcony of that impossible hotel. Six of them. The first in bitter memories, memories of a red card that danced fiendishly before my eyes when I closed them--the last in a fierce biting desire to come back to the world I had left. At last, a few months ago, I wrote to another college friend of mine, Drayton, and told him the whole story. I did not know that he had been elected prosecutor in Reuton. He answered with a kind pitying letter--and finally I knew the horrible truth. Nothing had ever happened. The thing we had done had never been discovered. Hayden had lied. He had even lied about his engagement to Myra Thornhill. There, he had made a reality out of what was simply his great desire.

"You can imagine my feelings. Six years in a tomb, a comic opera sort of tomb, where a silly surf was forever pounding, and foolish palms kept waving. Six years--for nothing. Six years, while Hayden, guiltier than I, stayed behind to enjoy the good things of life, to plead for the girl whose lover he had banished.

"I lost no time in coming north. Three days ago I entered Drayton's office. I was ready and willing that the wrong Hayden and I had done should be made public. Drayton informed me that legally there had been no crime, that Hayden had straightened things out in time, that we had defrauded no one. And he told me that for whatever sin I had committed he thought I had more than atoned down there in that town that G.o.d forgot. I think I had. He explained to me about the trap he had laid for Hayden up here at Baldpate Inn. I begged to help. What happened after, you know as well as I."

"Yes, I think I do," agreed Mr. Magee softly.

"I have told you the whole story," Kendrick replied, "and yet it seems to me that still it is not all told. Why should Hayden have killed himself? He had lied to me, it is true, but life was always sweet to him, and it hardly seems to me that he was the sort to die simply because his falsehood was discovered. Was there some other act of cruelty--some side to the story of which we are none of us aware? I wonder."

He was silent a moment.

"Anyhow, I have told you all I know," he said. "Shall I tell it also to the coroner? Or shall we allow Hayden's suicide to pa.s.s as the result of his implication in this attempt at bribery? I ask your advice, Mr.

Magee."