The Long Lane's Turning Part 19

His sacrifice had gone for nothing. He could not save Echo. The matter had been taken from his hands. She must be involved. If murder had been done, her pa.s.sionate denial in his defence would no doubt suffice to save him--he knew his southern juries!--but at what a price to her would be his salvation! For though sufficient doubt would be insinuated to legally acquit him, in the eyes of their world harrowing suspicions must always cling to her. Collusion between her and himself, her lover, to secure compromising letters, a guilty understanding embracing possible murder! A midnight _rendezvous_ with one lover, converted into swift tragedy by the vengeful pursuit of the other! So the speculations would run, and the baleful whispers would follow her all her life. What matter though she married him? Would love make up for that?

It was the Harry Sevier of remorseless logic, of clear thinking and rigid a.n.a.lysis, who reasoned now.

A tall old clock stood at the turn of the echoing stair and as he descended between his two uniformed attendants, grimly watchful of his every movement, he noted mechanically that it was two o'clock. It came to him with a chill and awed amazement how much might happen within one round of the clock. When those hands had last pointed to two o'clock he had stood in his office, a man of reputation and newly-ordered life, with all his heart beating to love; now he was disgraced, the woman he loved about to know the shame and hideous notoriety of scandal, both of them to be pilloried together as princ.i.p.als in another of those horrifying revelations of double-life which at periodic intervals shock a community's decorum!

It was not for himself he was thinking first. His pain for Echo swallowed up his own. As he sat in the cab between his guardians, bound for the station-house and the police interrogatory that should fling abroad its sensation in the morning's papers, his composure crumbled. He bent and put his cold face in his colder hands. His lips moved voicelessly.

"Echo ... Echo!" he whispered. "You have had my love, you have it now.

You could have my life, if I could give it--every day, every drop of my blood, would not be enough to pay the price of what you must bear! But it is out of my power. I thought I could save you, my darling! But I can't.... I can't.... If I might only suffer alone, and you never know!"

He lifted his head with a start. A thought had darted to his mind like an impinging ray of light. Why _should_ she ever know? Why should any one know--if Craig died? Only Craig who had known him in the past, had recognised him as Harry Sevier. Perhaps that was the greatest risk he should have to run. He could take refuge in silence, tell nothing, explain nothing. She would not know that the real shooter had not been taken. Could he maintain under the searching purview of the law that anonymity which he had sought to insure during the debauch into which he had so avidly plunged yesterday afternoon? Why not? He had so adjusted his home affairs, luckily, that a long time--perhaps many months--would elapse before his absence would be narrowly questioned.

He was now in a city where he was not known: hundreds of miles of steel rails lay between him and the crowds to whom he was a familiar figure.

His dark beard--so distinguishing a feature--was gone. He had discarded the characteristic gold-rimmed eye-gla.s.ses. Not an article of clothing he wore bore his name. His present face might be flung on printed pages to the four winds, and who, even of those who had seen him day in and day out, would say, "It is Harry Sevier!"

There were but two contingencies. If Craig recovered sufficient consciousness to speak the name that had fainted on his lips when they two had been face to face in that room of hurried surgery--then his incognito would fall and fate must have its way. If Craig died without recovering consciousness--this, provided his own ident.i.ty was not discovered, was the one way out for Echo.

For him it meant, probably, the last risk. He had now to meet no mere a.s.sumption of guilt, but an accusation, direct and unqualified, made under oath, in what might well be the hour of death. He could not offer in reb.u.t.tal evidence of character, reputation and standing. He was deliberately refusing to call his only witness to the fact. Yet he did not waver. The Harry Sevier who under the stress of impulse had acted so swiftly to save the woman he loved, elected the same choice now.

He would do it. Whatever the risk, whatever the ultimate cost to him, he would do it!

CHAPTER XXIII

THE BROKEN PICTURE

"Hyuh yo' is, honey, smack-dab on time!" called 'Lige's cheery voice, as he took Echo's bag. "Yo' fo'got ter say which train yo' comin' back on yistiddy, so ah ben waitin' wid dee cya'age fo dee las' fo'. Ah was figuratin' on yo' gittin' hyuh fo' dinnah, sho'."

As they bowled along toward home Echo wondered if she could really be the same girl who had driven away the day before along those self-same streets! The strenuous events through which she had pa.s.sed seemed the terrifying creation of a dream, a nightmarish panorama of the sick imagination, so wild and incredible all appeared in the serene light of this day: The painful scene in Craig's library that had ended in swift tragedy, with the apparition between the portieres of that baleful face--with its narrow eyes and upthrust of nondescript hair it had stamped itself ineffacably upon her memory!--the deafening shot and the after confusion--those breathless moments when she had run along the wet path, with a sense of flashing lights and alarm behind her--her safe emergence into the demure street, where she dared not run, compelling herself to walk albeit ready to faint with fear at sight of a patrolling policeman--the ghastly delay in the stuffy waiting-room of the station where she had checked her bag on arrival--the suffocating relief when at last the express pulled out, bearing her away unchallenged.

Through the long night she had tossed feverishly in her berth, without undressing, at intervals feeling the meaning of the catastrophe in which she had figured surge over her in a flood. That catastrophe itself had saved her from one horror: but for it she would now be the wife of Cameron Craig--a thought that made her shiver. Now she was safe! In all that trip, fortunately, she had encountered no one she knew. She had seen but one servant at the house and in his presence had worn a light veil. Only Craig had known who she was! What if she had been taken--held as a witness? How could she have explained her presence except by the letters for whose suppression she had been ready to give her life's happiness? As in imagination she saw her father and herself pictured in the yellow press, the centre of gossip and humiliating notoriety, she hugged the letters to her breast with intensest grat.i.tude toward the desperado who had extricated her from the instant crisis. With what swift self-possession he had acted for her safety! That in that lightning-like emergency he should have even thought of the letters filled her with astonishment. Over and over again she tried to picture his face behind the mask, as his hand had held out the packet to her. Her senses had been shocked keenly alive at the moment: she had even noted--as in tense crises one notes inconsequent trifles--the ring on his finger with its curious, square green stone. A thousand times she lost herself in wonder that a man capable of such a deed to an unknown woman could yet be a common burglar, one of the desperate gang whose leader was now awaiting trial, and whose malignant face and levelled pistol haunted her. Then the shuddering thought would roll over her that she, Echo Allen, had witnessed the awful act of murder, and she would hide her face in her pillow, trembling and spent. Dawn had long been whitening the windows when the strained nerves relaxed and the body, fatigued by two sleepless nights, found fitful rest.

The sun had been high when she awoke and by the time she had made her toilette and drunk a cup of coffee she had reached the little station for which she had ostensibly started the preceding day. A rambling hack had taken her to the home of her aunt--a recluse who had for a dozen years regarded the outer world through the blurred medium of semi-invalidism, absorbed in her languid reading and her flowers. On arrival Echo had found the frail figure lying out among her roses, with white, wild b.u.t.terflies flaunting about her, stronger than she had been for months past, and free from the querulous humours which generally held her. So keen was her delight in her betterment that Echo had found it easy to accomplish her own departure after luncheon, though she generally stayed the night. There was for the present, therefore, no added absence to be accounted for, and the lapse of time might never have to be explained.

As she drove now from the station through the bustling, down-town streets toward Midfields, the knowledge that her father's secret was safe overshadowed all the pain through which she had pa.s.sed. The dreadful memory dulled in the sunshine and the sense of security buoyed her. She would never have to tell her part in that terrible night to any one. Not even to Harry: she could tell him that she had never loved any one but him: that it had been misunderstanding that had driven her to send him that unhappy note. Her father himself need never be made aware that she knew his secret. It would be forever dead and buried!

She bade 'Lige stop at the post-office. At her aunt's she had wrapped the letters in thick wrapping-paper and sealed and tied the packet, and this she now addressed to her father, printing the words in a large, round hand. Then she bought some stamps, affixed them at one of the desks that lined the corridor and smudged them with ink to simulate a postmark. Once at home it would be easy to slip the parcel among his evening mail. He would believe that Craig had relented of his purpose, would destroy the letters, and the danger would be gone forever!

Lastly, standing in the thronging thoroughfare, at the same dusty little desk, on a sheet of paper which she bought at the stamp-window, she wrote to Harry Sevier:

Forget the note I sent you yesterday. Count that it was never written, that everything--everything!--is as it was when we sat on the porch together the day before. I can't write the rest--but come to me to-night, and I will tell you.

ECHO.

She sealed and addressed this--as an afterthought, marking it _urgent_--and went out to the carriage. A few minutes later the horses drew up again, this time before the populous office-building that held Harry's offices.

She climbed the stair slowly, her heart hammering. She intended to hand the note to his clerk. If Harry had gone home, it would be sent to him there. On the landing she stopped, her breath coming quickly.

The mahogany door was open and she could see a little way into the outer office. If she came face to face with him, what should she say?

But no sound of voices, no rustle of paper or scratch of pen, came to her. She went nearer--the place was empty. She took a hesitant step or two into the room. The door of the inner office was open--that was empty too, and its big desk closed. Harry was not there, but the clerk, at least, should not be far off, as the door had stood wide.

She went closer and peered into the inner office. Facing her from the wall was a small cabinet, its door, from which splinters of opaque gla.s.s were scattered about the rugs, smashed through as if by a heavy blow. Beneath it, on the desk-top, was a black bottle and a stained gla.s.s, tipped on its side.

All at once she started. She had caught sight of something that lay in the fire-place. She went and picked it up: it was a picture of herself--one she had never known Harry possessed--a photograph of her portrait that had been hung in a certain spring salon in Paris. It had been framed in silver, but frame and picture had been broken across, savagely torn and twisted into a remnant of metal and cardboard.

She dropped the defaced thing with a little cry and caught a hand to her breast. What must he have been thinking in that moment of ruthless destruction? It had been after he had read her note to him! Her cheeks flamed. Did he now despise her for what he had thought her flippancy, or hate her for having taken his love only to throw it away like an old glove? As she looked again at the riven cabinet and the bottle on the desk, a shiver of dread seized her. From the silent symbols there stood forth outlines that frightened her.

She went slowly out to the hall, the letter she had intended to leave crushed up in her hand. At the top of the stair stood a tall window and she halted in its embrasure and leaned against the sill, hearing dully the m.u.f.fled clack of the street and trying to see a mental way through the confusing conjectures that were leaping, like lurking beasts of prey, upon her. As she stood there voices sounded behind her, coming from the other end of the hall--the clerk was returning with a comrade:

"'No,' says he. 'Don't know _when_ I'll come back.' Thought he looked a bit off coloured, too. Told me to close up the office till I heard from him, and not to forward anything. Rum go, eh?"

"Seems like mighty poor business," ventured the other.

The clerk sniffed. "Business!" he exclaimed. "Much Sevier cares about that! A man with a brain like his and a silver tongue to boot doesn't need business! But after that speech of his the other day I should think he'd sit tight as wax to those Civic Club people. They're going to make a real campaign of it and he could get on the ticket sure.

It'd be a _cinch_! Why he wants to light out abroad somewhere beats _me_! Well, _I_ don't care how long he stays. I'm going to shut up the shebang to-night and put in some good licks for my law-examination."

They entered the office and the door closed upon their voices.

Echo stood motionless, looking down into the street. Harry had gone away! He had gone with despair and anger, or worse than anger, against her in his heart leaving behind him only that mangled portrait and that ominous bottle on the desk! Where had he gone, and when should she see him again?

Just across the way a knot of people was gathering in front of a newspaper bulletin-board whereon a great white sheet was being pasted, and her gaze--first mechanically, then with a start of shrinking comprehension--read the staring headlines that had been roughly lettered upon it:

CAMERON CRAIG SHOT DOWN BY BURGLAR

DESPERATE MIDNIGHT ENCOUNTER IN FINANCIER'S LIBRARY

WOUNDED MAN UNCONSCIOUS BUT STILL ALIVE

MYSTERIOUS WOMAN INVOLVED

Cameron Craig was not dead! If he lived, he must one day learn that the letters were gone from the safe. Would he not then connect her with their disappearance? What would he do? She was aware, unhappily, to what lengths he was capable of going! Even though the letters were not his, would he accuse her of stealing them--_her_?

As she drove away the last two lines seemed to imprint themselves on her eyeb.a.l.l.s in monstrous symbols of flame.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE WOMAN WHO KNEW

June came with its gold-born days, its pa.s.sionate bird-songs and scents of roses, its shimmer of willow and pine and burnished l.u.s.tre of down-bent holly-leaves and its evening mists wreathing the tall garden shrubs like wedding-veils. But the beauty and pa.s.sion of the throbbing season came to Echo with a sense of mockery.

The night of her return she had carried out her plan as regarded the letters and her father had believed the package had arrived with his mail. When a little later he had told her that Cameron Craig had sent him the letter whose publication had been threatened, years had seemed fallen from his shoulders. She had been content that he should deem the act significant of the other's better nature emerging from the slough of an ign.o.ble temptation--satisfied to know that in his mind the fact that it should have been one of the last acts Craig had performed before the tragedy, had invested it with a quality of the fateful and foreordained. Her own thought was absorbed with other things.