The Long Lane's Turning Part 22

The Governor mused a moment. "You will pardon me, I am sure, if I ask you one other question. Have you ever been in prison?"

"No," said Harry.

"Have you committed crime--in the past?"

"As the law counts it, no."

He looked the Governor steadily in the eyes as he spoke and the other, a keen judge of men, with a knowledge, bred of long life and observation, of the workings of the human conscience, felt a strange inclination to believe. Yet for every criminal there must be a first crime. Given a good family name and the remnant of a conscience, the man's insistence could be accounted for! With a little sigh he turned to Mason.

"Shall I see you at the Castlemans to-night?" he asked as they shook hands.

"I'm dining at the Langhams," Mason replied. "It's a farewell dinner for Miss Allen."

"A charming girl, Echo!" said the Governor. "I've known her since she was a child. A farewell, did you say? Is her visit over?"

"Yes, she's off to Europe to-morrow."

The lawyer went with the Governor to the door and stood a moment looking after him as he crossed the lawn to his carriage. He did not see the look that had suddenly slipped to the face of the man standing behind him--a look mingled of sudden wonder and questioning disquiet.

To Europe! Echo? Was she going away now ... knowing it all ...

knowing what he had pa.s.sed through, what lay before him? Going without written word or secret sign to him?

Harry felt a strange sinking of the heart. It seemed to him as if a cold shadow had suddenly fallen across the room--a shadow in which lurked something vague and formless, something whose existence his faith denied, yet which stood silently staring at him with a cruel and terrifying smile.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE END OF THE JOURNEY

Some miles beyond the skirt of the city, on the dusty highway, stood a vast wall of stone built four-square, along whose top, seen breast-high, men in dingy _khaki_ patrolled back and forth with rifles on their shoulders. Fronting the road was a great barred gate, with an arched top, set in the wall. This opened on a narrow paved court at one side of which was a two storied frame building, whose door was marked with the word "warden."

Before this door the next afternoon Harry Sevier stood with a sheriff.

The latter knocked and a heavy-featured man came out. "Well, Warden,"

said the sheriff, "I've brought you another boarder. Here's his papers."

The other examined the doc.u.ments, took a fountain-pen from his pocket and signed one--a form of receipt--and handed it back. "All right," he said briefly, and rushing open the door, motioned the new arrival to enter.

When Harry emerged, an hour later, under the care of a uniformed turn-key, he wore trousers and jacket of coa.r.s.e fulled cloth with horizontal stripes of black and yellowish-grey--the badge of the convict. Under his visored cap his crisp black hair had been clipped close to the skin. And in the upper office a trusty who acted as clerk was filling in on an indexed card the physical measurements which, with the number he wore on a leathern strap about his upper arm, const.i.tuted the formula by which hereafter was to be known the man who had once been Harry Sevier.

In the centre of the great walled s.p.a.ce reared an ancient circular structure of brick. It was like a huge bee-hive. His conductor led Harry to a compartment on the lower tier and unlocked an iron door.

"This is yours, 239," he said.

Harry entered. He heard the door clang behind him and the footsteps retire down the stone corridor. The light from a barred window struck full into his eyes and for a moment he did not see that another figure, in the same dingy stripes, sat on the edge of the narrow bunk, looking at him out of small, red-rimmed eyes.

The occupant rose slowly, thrusting a grimy hand through a shock of sand-coloured hair, and stared hard at the newcomer. Then he uttered a howl of evil mirth and recognition.

"Smoke of the devil!" he shouted. "If it ain't the youngster me and Towler had behind the portiary! Ho-ho! I saw by the papers they'd nabbed you. And to think the geezer swore it was you that plugged him!

They didn't get me--not that time! I'd be out still if I hadn't tried to lift a reticule on a street-car. It was my record that did it for me then. Well, we're pals now, old horse, and we'll celebrate it right!"

He thrust his arm beneath the rough blanket, brought out a flask, and uncorked it with his teeth.

"It's the real stuff," he said. "Towler slips it to me--good old pal!

He's got one of the guards 'fixed'! Here--drink hearty!" With a hoa.r.s.e laugh he thrust it into Harry's face.

Harry's eyes had been fixed on his with a curious intensity. In that startling moment, as the fumes of the liquor penetrated his nostrils, a lurid sequence had flashed to him. This man he had once betrayed by a base surrender to appet.i.te; now in antic irony, it was this man's crime that had betrayed him, Harry Sevier, to the same dilemma and a like shameful penalty. And here was dangled before him the hideous badge and symbol of his downfall!

He seized the wrist of the outstretched hand with a grasp like steel, and the flask smashed against the bars of the window. Then he hurled the other from him across the narrow cell.

His cell-mate clung to the bunk across which he had fallen, and stared at Harry with a look of slow malevolence. He licked his lips.

"I'll fix you for that!" he said.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE MAN IN THE WHEELED CHAIR

Echo sat under the Botticelli blue of a perfect afternoon on the terrace of the Hotel Splendid in Nice. Through the hot, bright air, set in the purple creases of the hazeless hills, she could see tinted villas drowsing in golden gardens aflame with flowers, and below under the dizzying sunlight beyond the long esplanade, tiny swells spilled over the pearly beech like molten sapphire.

The past months had been packed with new sights and sounds. There had been the ocean pa.s.sage, with all the gaiety that mill-pond weather and a total absence of _mal de mer_ evokes, a leisurely motor trip through the northern counties of England, shopping and theatre-going in Paris, and then a final fortnight on the Riviera. From the first day at sea, when the dimming sh.o.r.es of home had slipped away into the vaporous distance across the swinging, grey-green heave, Echo had thrown herself eagerly into the new experiences. It had seemed to her at first as though she was leaving behind all her pain and problem and flying whither the d.o.g.g.i.ng ghosts could not follow. From time to time she felt a wave of that shame that had overwhelmed her as she sat in the court-room. When she reflected, she felt astonishment at her own temerity--at the morbid curiosity which had impelled her to witness the rehearsal of an episode whose very memory thrilled her with pain and dread. But at length this, too, had faded. She had told herself that Harry would have returned before her and that all would again be well between them. With all her power she had striven to thrust the pain and apprehension from the mind and amid new and varying scenes she had partially succeeded.

But though the acute strain and distress, the piteous terror had dulled, her heart ached always with its burden, and there were many times when all of Mrs. Spottiswoode's effervescent moods could not call forth response. Across the fairest scenes the ghosts, uncalled, would thrust themselves, and in her brain a mocking voice would whisper--

"You will never tell him! You will never dare! There will always be a secret between you! You will be deceiving him--all your life. For if you told him the truth--the whole truth--would he believe you? The letters for which you made that visit, even if you could show them, are ashes now. And even if he believed in the necessity that drove you to win them from Craig, what might he imagine had been the price! You know what the world would think: you heard it in the court-room. He would think the same thing! You were in Craig's house, alone, that midnight--and you will never dare tell him! Can you say to him, 'It was _I_ who was in Cameron Craig's library! _I_ was the mysterious woman the police were searching for--_I_ whom you love!'?"

The sneering voices were whispering in her ear to-night, as she sat looking out across the blended harmonies of sky and sea, her wistful face bent beneath the soft halo of her hair.

There welled up in her with fresh force the aching resentment, the sick anger and rebellion against the sardonic fate that had so enmeshed her.

Why should Craig have ever seen and desired her? Why should his fancy not have fallen upon some other woman? Yet, had that been so, her father's name would have been ruined! That, at least, had not befallen. If only she had not written that note to Harry! So she reflected, not knowing that that fateful note itself had been the key to another series of incidents which had in fact wrought for her salvation--so curiously interwoven is the mystic fabric that man calls chance. By that note, she told herself, she had thrust his love from her. Would anything less than the whole truth bring it back? And in any case, if she did not tell him the whole, would she ever be safe in that love? For Craig could betray her if he regained his faculties. A single word could overwhelm her. There was that lost night when she had been believed to be at her aunt's--a dropped st.i.tch in time's weave which might unravel the whole! If he recovered Craig would hold her happiness in his grasp as surely as he had once held her father's honour.

The cogent reasons that had influenced Harry in his speculation on the same subject had been based on his keen masculine observation and familiarity with Craig's type; Echo had only her knowledge of his relentless pa.s.sion and lack of scruple, and her instinct was clouded by long anxiety and fear. She had lately striven to banish from her mind the idea that he might recover, but to-night it was upon her with strange force. A baleful thought thrust itself into her mind, an incarnate temptation: _If Craig would only die_! As it came to her she felt her face blush, and she shrank, feeling that a wicked thing had found lodgment in her soul; but it came again and again.

A little group of people who had arrived that morning had issued from the dining-room and now were seated about one of the small tables on the terrace drinking their coffee--two men, one elderly, one younger, a handsome woman and a girl. They continued the conversation begun inside--evidently a discussion of some one who had been on the train.

All at once the lady touched the speaker beside her on the arm.

"Hush!" she cautioned. "There he is now!"

The voices stilled. Glancing around Echo saw that a wheeled-chair was being pushed onto the far end of the terrace. A man sat in it, huddled in a steamer-rug.

"Is he married?" asked the lady, after a pause.

"No," replied the elderly man. "He has no family or near relatives.

The men with him are a nurse and a secretary. They say he is very rich."

"Poor fellow!" she exclaimed. "What a dreadful thing! Death is immensely preferable, of course, to life under such conditions. Where are they taking him?"