The Breaking Point Part 33

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?"

Ba.s.sett 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 d.i.c.k said he would go to his room. He was still pale, but his eyes looked bright and feverish, and Ba.s.sett went with him, uneasily conscious that something was not quite right. d.i.c.k 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 Ba.s.sett to go with him, but Ba.s.sett went, nevertheless.

d.i.c.k'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 d.i.c.k was going to be ill. The mind did strange things with the body.

d.i.c.k 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. Ba.s.sett, bending over the army kit bag in the corner, straightened and looked around. d.i.c.k 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 her off. In view of his new determination even the maid had become a danger.

She was the same elderly woman who looked after his own bedroom, and she might have known Clark. Just what Providence had kept him from recognition before this he did not know, but it could not go on indefinitely.

After an hour or so Ba.s.sett locked the door behind him and went down to lunch. He was not hungry, but he wanted to get out of the room, to think without that quiet figure before him. Over the pretence of food he faced the situation. Lying ready to his hand was the biggest story of his career, but he could not carry it through. It was characteristic of him that, before abandoning it, he should follow through to the end the result of its publication. He did not believe, for instance, that either d.i.c.k's voluntary surrender or his own disclosure of the situation necessarily meant a conviction for murder. To convict a man of a crime he did not know he had committed would be difficult. But, with his customary thoroughness he followed that through also. Livingstone acquitted was once again Clark, would be known to the world as Clark.

The new place he had so painfully made for himself would be gone. The story would follow him, never to be lived down. And in his particular profession confidence and respect were half the game. All that would be gone.

Thus by gradual stages he got back to David, and he struggled for the motive which lay behind every decisive human act. A man who followed a course by which he had nothing to gain and everything to lose was either a fool or was actuated by some profound unselfishness. To save a life?

But with all the resources Clark could have commanded, added to his personal popularity, a first degree sentence would have been unlikely.

Not a life, then, but perhaps something greater than a life. A man's soul.

It came to him, then, in a great light of comprehension, the thing David had tried to do; to take this waster and fugitive, the slate of his mind wiped clean by shock and illness, only his childish memories remaining, and on it to lead him to write a new record. To take the body he had found, and the always untouched soul, and from them to make a man.

And with that comprehension came the conviction, too, that David had succeeded. He had indeed made a man.

He ate absently, consulting his railroad schedule and formulating the arguments he meant to use against d.i.c.k's determination to give himself up. He foresaw a struggle there, but he himself held one or two strong cards--the ruthless undoing of David's work, the involving of David for conspiring against the law. And d.i.c.k's own obligation to the girl at home.

He was more at ease in the practical arrangements. An express went through on the main line at midnight, and there was a local on the branch line at eight. But the local train, the railway station, too, were full of possible dangers. After some thought he decided to get a car, drive down to the main line with d.i.c.k, and then send the car back.

He went out at once and made an arrangement for a car, and on returning notified the clerk that he was going to leave, and asked to have his bill made out. After some hesitation he said: "I'll pay three-twenty too, while I'm at it. Friend of mine there, going with me. Yes, up to to-night."

As he turned away he saw the short, heavy figure of Wilkins coming in.

He stood back and watched. The sheriff went to the desk, pulled the register toward him and ran over several pages of it. Then he shoved it away, turned and saw him.

"Been away, haven't you?" he asked.

"Yes. I took a little horseback trip into the mountains. My knees are still not on speaking terms."

The sheriff chuckled. Then he sobered.

"Come and sit down," he said. "I'm going to watch who goes in and out of here for a while."

Ba.s.sett followed him unwillingly to two chairs that faced the desk and the lobby. He had the key of d.i.c.k's room in his pocket, but he knew that if he wakened he could easily telephone and have his door unlocked.

But that was not his only anxiety. He had a sudden conviction that the sheriff's watch was connected with d.i.c.k himself. Wilkins, from a friendly and gregarious fellow-being, had suddenly grown to sinister proportions in his mind.

And, as the minutes went by, with the sheriff sitting forward and watching the lobby and staircase with intent, unblinking eyes, Ba.s.sett's anxiety turned to fear. He found his heart leaping when the room bells rang, and the clerk, with a glance at the annunciator, sent boys hurrying off. His hands shook, and he felt them cold and moist. And all the time Wilkins was holding him with a flow of unimportant chatter.

"Watching for any one in particular?" he managed, after five minutes or so.

"Yes. I'll tell you about it as soon as--Bill! Is Alex outside?"

Bill stopped in front of them, and nodded.

"All right. Now get this--I want everything decent and in order. No excitement. I'll come out behind him, and you and Bill stand by. Outside I'll speak to him, and when we walk off, just fall in behind. But keep close."

Bill wandered off, to take up a stand of extreme nonchalance inside the entrance. When Wilkins turned to him again Ba.s.sett had had a moment to adjust himself, and more or less to plan his own campaign.

"Somebody's out of luck," he commented. "And speaking of being out of luck, I've got a sick man on my hands. Friend of mine from home. We've got to catch the midnight, too."

"Too bad," Wilkins commented rather absently. Then, perhaps feeling that he had not shown proper interest, "Tell you what I'll do. I've got some business on hand now, but it'll be cleared up one way or another pretty soon. I'll bring my car around and take him to the station. These hacks are the limit to ride in."

The disaster to his plans thus threatened steadied the reporter, and he managed to keep his face impa.s.sive.

"Thanks," he said. "I'll let you know if he's able to travel. Is this--is this business you're on confidential?"

"Well, it is and it isn't. I've talked some to you, and as you're leaving anyhow--it's the Jud Clark case again."

"Sort of hysteria, I suppose. He'll be seen all over the country for the next six months."

"Yes. But I never saw a hysterical Indian. Well, a little while ago an Indian woman named Lizzie Lazarus blew into my office. She's a smart woman. Her husband was a breed, dairy hand on the Clark ranch for years.

Lizzie was the first Indian woman in these parts to go to school, and besides being smart, she's got Indian sight. You know these Indians.

When they aren't blind with trachoma they can see further and better than a telescope."

Ba.s.sett made an effort.

"What's that got to do with Jud Clark?" he asked.