The Long Lane's Turning Part 34

"Of course, of course," agreed the other, in a mollifying tone. "But why not let the matter rest awhile? Go down for a month to Old Point and build up--"

Craig's face turned livid. He got up, and lifted one clenched fist in the air.

"Think what you like!" he said, venomously. "Do you suppose I care what any one thinks? I'll show you whether I'm right or not!" His voice rose. "I'll drag him in the mud! Every man and woman in these two states--yes, and in a dozen more!--shall know him for a scoundrel and a robber! He dares to run for Governor, does he? The drunken _poseur_! The d.a.m.ned hypocrite! He shall be jail-bird again and once for all, when I am through with him! He shall lie and rot with a chain and ball on his leg! He--"

He stopped. A needled stab of pain had darted, like a bee's sting, through his brow, beneath the bandage, and there flashed to him suddenly the warning of the surgeon, on the day he had left the hospital in Buda-Pesth: "...the tiniest hemorrhage in the affected area and all my surgery could not undo--"

He stood still an instant, breathing heavily. Then he caught up his hat and turned to the door.

Treadwell was looking at him curiously. The outburst had tended to reinforce the suspicion that had already come to him as to the other's mental condition. "What do you intend to do?" he asked.

"I am going to the Penitentiary, the physical record of the prisoner is there. I shall have it when I come back. I presume you would call that evidence?"

"The best--if the measurements proved identical with Sevier's. I daresay he would be willing to submit to the test," Treadwell added, thoughtfully. "--And then?"

"The election is day after to-morrow. I shall wait till the polls have closed, naturally, before I show him up. A convict, or one who has served a penal term, under the state const.i.tution, can hold no office of public trust. I am advised that the new ticket is likely to win.

The Trust's candidate will be next in the running, and with Sevier out, must be declared elected. Where will Sevier receive the returns?"

"At Midfields, I imagine," Treadwell replied. "It's the committee headquarters. Governor Eveland of your State is to be a guest there, I hear. He's very much interested in this campaign, being something of a reformer himself."

"So much the better! The Governor himself shall ask for the warrant for Sevier's arrest. We will go there that evening."

"We!" repeated Treadwell.

"Yes. You will come with me--as my attorney."

"But I don't approve the step!" protested the other. "I consider the whole affair preposterous!"

"I am under the impression," retorted Craig, darkly, "that you are still under my retainer--not Sevier's."

Treadwell flushed. "If you put it in that way," he said stiffly, "I shall of course accompany you. But you have my legal opinion."

Craig jerked the door open.

"I'll meet you at Midfields at eight that evening," he said.

CHAPTER XLIV

THE LIGHTED FUSE

In the Warden's office at the Penitentiary next morning--the same room Harry Sevier had entered when he had first stepped under the gloomy prison archway--Craig stood staring out of the open window across the yellow courtyard. The last move in the game was at hand--the game he had made up his mind now to play out alone, to the last card.

He had not taken the Warden into his confidence, though he had sat talking with him for a half hour. From him he had heard the tale of the escape of prisoner No. 239--a tender subject with the official, but one in which his influential visitor had exhibited a particular interest. To the Warden the latter's concern for a scoundrel who had come within an ace of murdering him seemed natural enough. It would be in keeping with Craig's determined and vindictive character to exhaust every effort to apprehend the fugitive. To some intention of this sort the Warden had laid his caller's further inquiries concerning the pickpocket who had been the missing man's cell-mate.

Craig, however, had had reason of another sort. It had chagrined him to learn that with the prisoner had disappeared the record-card on which he had counted as a piece of tangible evidence. But this was not an essential, since, once denounced, Harry Sevier would be put upon the defensive, and the one conclusive and natural defence--an alibi--he could not furnish. In the meantime, however, the sensational accusation should be supported, and what more to this purpose than the convict who had shared No. 239's very cell? Promise of a pardon--he could arrange that with the Board--would make the fellow tractable, and he could take him with him on parole.

The plan in his mind had leaped into action. He had expressed a wish to talk with Paddy the Brick and the Warden had sent for him. Craig was waiting the man's coming now, as he stood looking across the yard toward the vast round dormitory that tossed back the rumble of the toiling shops. There was an evil gloating in the fixed, speculative eyes--in imagination Craig was seeing Harry Sevier once more a denizen of that dismal place, a felon, and irrevocably shamed now in name and fame.

The door opened and a turnkey entered, a figure in striped clothes with him.

"Here's your man, Mr. Craig," said the Warden.

Craig turned from the window and set his eyes on Paddy the Brick. He gave a sudden start which the Warden, who had crossed to his desk and was searching in its pigeon-holes, did not see. Paddy the Brick shrank back, and a quick gleam of fear ran across his pallid features. For each--the would-be murderer and the man he had shot--in the self-same instant recognised the other.

At the fierce anger that blazed in Craig's face Paddy the Brick drew further back, his eyes darting from the man by the window to the Warden and back again, and his hand went instinctively out to the table to clutch a heavy, bra.s.s-edged ruler the only weapon at hand. It seemed at the instant that the other was about to leap upon him, to kill him with his working hands. But Craig recovered himself in time. He looked at the Warden.

"I should like to talk with him alone," he said, "if that is permissible."

"Certainly," the Warden answered. "As long as you like," and left the room with the paper he had been looking for.

As the door closed, Craig bent a long look upon the man who stood there. "Don't be a fool," he said. "Put that thing down. I'm not going to hurt you. I want to ask you some questions."

Paddy the Brick laid the ruler down, but he kept the table between them.

"Did you know who the man was who broke into my house with you--the one who was caught?"

The other looked at him cunningly. "The one you swore shot you?"

Craig's fingers twitched. "Yes," he said, after a pause.

"No. I never saw him before that night."

"What did he pay you for that job?"

Paddy the Brick stared. "Good Lord! _He_ wasn't one of us. He just happened in for a social call!" He leaned across the table. "Say," he whispered, "what did you want to hang him for?"

There was in the posture, the whisper, an inexpressible a.s.sumption of ident.i.ty of interest which stung and galled the man who faced him. The blood welled into Craig's face, then very slowly ebbed.

"Would you know him again, if he had changed his appearance? If, for instance, he wore a beard?"

"Know him!" Paddy the Brick jerked his thumb toward the window. "Why, we was mates over there."

Craig looked at him steadily for a moment without speaking. Then he pointed to a chair.

"Sit down," he said.

At midnight that night the home city of Harry Sevier was ablaze with lights and throbbing with the last feverish activity of a strenuous campaign. The candidate of the new party had returned that afternoon from a tour of the southern portion of the state, and plenteous bunting, everywhere displayed, testified to an enthusiasm that, carefully fostered by his lieutenants, had permeated every section and cla.s.s. That evening, to ring down the curtain with a brilliant _finale_, a torchlight procession had been organised. Ten thousand strong, the blazing flambeaux had marched and countermarched along the city's main thoroughfares, and Harry had reviewed them from the balcony of the hotel which was the party's _rendezvous_.

He had flung himself into the fight with every ounce of his splendid vitality which had been deepened and strengthened by the months of mountain solitude. There was infinitely more at issue now than he had dreamed when he canva.s.sed chances at the bungalow. The cause of the new party had then seemed inevitably a losing one. But during that long campaign--particularly in the last few weeks--it had been borne in upon him that the time had been ripe for the venture. Long arrogance and effrontery had borne their legitimate fruit in a profound resentment that had been fanned to vivid life by the quickening breath.

There had been an erasure of old lines, and at length the party in power, aroused and desperate, had found itself fighting for its life.

There were no odds offered that day on its victory! Once committed, however, there had been no turning back possible. Harry's bridges had been burned behind him. He could only go forward, and, fighting on, he had striven to thrust his problem, with its increasing implications, into the background of his mind. And in spite of himself the zest of victory had absorbed him. To-night's parade had been an inspiring spectacle and it had called from him the last speech of the campaign.

As he closed, amid the shouting and applause, a motor drew up at the curb and stopped just before the hotel entrance. On its fear seat, shielded from the gaze of the pavement by the leather hood, was Cameron Craig, and beside the chauffeur sat Paddy the Brick.