The King of Arcadia Part 27

"And you are Colonel Craigmiles's guest. Go on," said Ballard, straightening the path of hesitation for him.

"That's it," nodded Wingfield. "As you say, I am his guest; and--er--well, there is another reason why I should be the last person in the world to make or meddle. At first, I was brashly incredulous, as anyone would be who was mixing and mingling with the colonel in the daily amenities. Later, when the ugly fact persisted and I was obliged to admit it, the personal factor entered the equation. It's bad medicine, any way you decide to take it."

"Still you are not telling us what you mean to do, Mr. Wingfield,"

Bromley reminded him gently.

"No; but I don't mind telling you. I have about decided upon a weak sort of compromise. This thing will come out--it's bound to come out in the pretty immediate hence; and I don't want to be here when the sheriff arrives. I think I shall have a very urgent call to go back to New York."

Bromley laid hold of the table and pulled himself to his feet; but it was Ballard who said, slowly, as one who weighs his words and the full import of them: "Mr. Wingfield, you are more different kinds of an a.s.s than I took you to be, and that is saying a great deal. Out of a ma.s.s of hearsay, the idle stories of a lot of workmen whose idea of humour has been to make a b.u.t.t of you, you have built up this fantastic fairy tale.

I am charitable enough to believe that you couldn't help it; it is a part of your equipment as a professional maker of fairy tales. But there are two things for which I shall take it upon myself to answer personally. You will not leave Castle 'Cadia until your time is out; and you'll not leave this room until you have promised the three of us that this c.o.c.k-and-bull story of yours stops right here with its first telling."

"That's so," added Bromley, with a quiet menace in his tone.

It was the playwright's turn to gasp, and he did it, very realistically.

"You--you don't believe it? with all the three-sheet-poster evidence staring you in the face? Why, great Joash! you must be stark, staring mad--both of you!" he raved. And then to Blacklock: "Are you in it, too, Jerry?"

"I guess I am," returned the collegian, meaning no more than that he felt constrained to stand with the men of his chosen profession.

Wingfield drew a long breath and with it regained the impersonal heights of the unemotional observer. "Of course, it is just as you please," he said, carelessly. "I had a foolish notion I was doing you two a good turn; but if you choose to take the other view of it--well, there is no accounting for tastes. Drink your own liquor and give the house a good name. I'll dig up my day-pay later on: it's cracking good material, you know."

"That is another thing," Ballard went on, still more decisively. "If you ever put pen to paper with these crazy theories of yours for a basis, I shall make it my business to hunt you down as I would a wild beast."

"So shall I," echoed Bromley.

Wingfield rose and put the long-stemmed pipe carefully aside.

"You are a precious pair of bally idiots," he remarked, quite without heat. Then he looked at his watch and spoke pointedly to Blacklock.

"You're forgetting Miss Elsa's fishing party to the upper canyon, aren't you? Suppose we drive around to Castle 'Cadia in the car. You can send Otto back after Mr. Bromley later on." And young Blacklock was so blankly dazed by the cool impudence of the suggestion that he consented and left the bungalow with the playwright.

For some little time after the stuttering purr of the motor-car had died away the two men sat as Wingfield had left them, each busy with his own thoughts. Bromley was absently fingering the cartridges from Sanderson's rifle, mute proofs of the truth of the playwright's theories, and Ballard seemed to have forgotten that he had promised Fitzpatrick to run a line for an additional side-track in the railroad yard.

"Do you blame me, Loudon?" he asked, after the silence had wrought its perfect work.

"No; there was nothing else to do. But I couldn't help being sorry for him."

"So was I," was the instant rejoinder. "Wingfield is all kinds of a decent fellow; and the way he has untangled the thing is nothing short of masterly. But I had to tie his tongue; you know I had to do that, Loudon."

"Of course, you had to."

Silence again for a little s.p.a.ce; and then:

"There is no doubt in your mind that he has. .h.i.t upon the true solution of all the little mysteries?"

Bromley shook his head slowly. "None at all, I am sorry to say. I have suspected it, in part, at least, for a good while. And I had proof positive before Wingfield gave it to us."

"How?" queried Ballard.

Bromley was still fingering the cartridges. "I hate to tell you, Breckenridge. And yet you ought to know," he added. "It concerns you vitally."

Ballard's smile was patient. "I am well past the shocking point," he averred. "After what we have pulled through in the last hour we may as well make a clean sweep of it."

"Well, then; I didn't stumble over the canyon cliff that night four weeks ago: I was knocked over."

"What!"

"It's true."

"And you know who did it?"

"I can make a pretty good guess. While I was down at the wing dam a man pa.s.sed me, coming from the direction of the great house. He was a big man, and he was m.u.f.fled to the ears in a rain-coat. I know, because I heard the peculiar 'mackintosh' rustle as he went by me. I knew then who it was; would have known even if I hadn't had a glimpse of his face at the pa.s.sing instant. It is one of the colonel's eccentricities never to go out after nightfall--in a bone-dry country, mind you--without wearing a rain-coat."

"Well?" said Ballard.

"He didn't see me, though I thought at first that he did; he kept looking back as if he were expecting somebody to follow him. He took the path on our side of the canyon--the one I took a few minutes later.

That's all; except that I would swear that I heard the 'slither' of a mackintosh just as the blow fell that knocked me down and out.

"Heavens, Loudon! It's too grossly unbelievable! Why, man, he saved your life after the fact, risking his own in a mad drive down here from Castle 'Cadia in the car to do it! You wouldn't have lived until morning if he hadn't come."

"It is unbelievable, as you say; and yet it isn't, when you have surrounded all the facts. What is the reason, the only reason, why Colonel Craigmiles should resort to all these desperate expedients?"

"Delay, of course; time to get his legal fight shaped up in the courts."

"Exactly. If he can hold us back long enough, the dam will never be completed. He knows this, and Mr. Pelham knows it, too. Unhappily for us, the colonel has found a way to ensure the delay. The work can't go on without a chief of construction."

"But, good Lord, Loudon, you're not the 'Big Boss'; and, besides, the man loves you like a son! Why should he try to kill you one minute and move heaven and earth to save your life the next?"

Bromley shook his head sorrowfully.

"That is what made me say what I did about not wanting to tell you, Breckenridge. That crack over the head wasn't meant for me; it was meant for you. If it had not been so dark under the hill that night--but it was; pocket-dark in the shadow of the pines. And he knew you'd be coming along that path on your way back to camp--knew you'd be coming, and wasn't expecting anybody else. Don't you see?"

Ballard jumped up and began to pace the floor.

"My G.o.d!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed; "I was his guest; I had just broken bread at his table! Bromley, when he went out to lie in wait for me, he left me talking with his daughter! It's too horrible!"

Bromley had stood the eleven cartridges, false and true, in a curving row on the table. The crooking line took the shape of a huge interrogation point.

"Wingfield thought he had solved all the mysteries, but the darkest of them remains untouched," he commented. "How can the genial, kindly, magnanimous man we know, or think we know, be such a fiend incarnate?"

Then he broke ground again in the old field. "Will you do now what I begged you to do at first?--throw up this cursed job and go away?"

Ballard stopped short in his tramping and his answer was an explosive "No!"

"That is half righteous anger, and half something else. What is the other half, Breckenridge?" And when Ballard did not define it: "I can guess it; it is the same thing that made you stuff Wingfield's theories down his throat a few minutes ago. You are sorry for the daughter."

Through the open door Ballard saw Fitzpatrick coming across the stone yard.

"You've guessed it, Loudon; or rather, I think you have known it all along. I love Elsa Craigmiles; I loved her long before I ever heard of Arcadia or its king. Now you know why Wingfield mustn't be allowed to talk; why I mustn't go away and give place to a new chief who might live to see Elsa's father hanged. She must be spared and defended at any cost. One other word before Fitzpatrick cuts in: When my time comes, if it does come, you and one other man will know how I pa.s.sed out and why.

I want your promise that you'll keep still, and that you will keep Wingfield still. Blacklock doesn't count."