The Long Lane's Turning Part 36

"My G.o.d!" he cried. "You haven't dared--but this is infamous. It's an outrage! You--"

"Keep your place!" ground Craig. "I tell you I know what I'm doing!"

"It's my private opinion you're as crazy as a March hare," retorted the other, "but if you _are_ right, I'll have nothing to do with it, do you understand? Nothing! I don't care _what_ your d.a.m.ned evidence is!"

Craig turned his back on him and led the way up the steps, and after an instant's hesitation Treadwell followed. Through an open window Harry glimpsed the interior of the east room, dismantled now for the evening's strenuous occupation, where several masculine figures were grouped about a table, excitedly working over charts, and he could hear the irritant buzz of the telephone as it signalled the bulletins that were beginning now to pour into the busy hotel suite at the other end of the wire. Craig did not ring at the big door but led the way along the porch to a French-window, of the library, which stood ajar. He peered into it, then with an exclamation of satisfaction motioned the two attendants back, said a low word to Paddy the Brick at his heels, and flung the window open.

Sevier entered, Craig and his stool-pigeon next. Treadwell followed and drew the window to behind him.

CHAPTER XLVII

WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL

In the wide, lamp-lighted room into which this weird quartette had so startlingly entered, before the capacious fireplace two men had been sitting smoking--Judge Allen and his friend Governor Eveland. At the sudden apparition both had turned sharply toward the window--two strangely dissimilar figures: the Judge slight and spare and scholarly, his pale, finely-chiselled features tinged in the glow; the other deep-chested and powerful, of herculean mould, with a rugged face made almost patriarchal by the long grey beard which swept his chest: both countenances for the instant curiously alike in their expression of shocked surprise.

The Judge arose abruptly from his chair, his gaze shifting from the masked figure in striped clothes to Craig's face, eagerly alight and triumphant. He had no welcome for this summary entrance.

"Who is responsible for this intrusion?" he asked coldly.

Craig laughed. "I am responsible," he said. "I have business with you both. For some time, as you are aware, I have been debarred from such pursuits. However, I am now myself again, and free to pick up lost threads. Hence my call to-night."

"It can wait a more opportune time." The Judge spoke with asperity.

"Moreover, I must ask you to remember that I have servants to announce my guests."

"Apologies may be in order later," Craig returned, "if my errand does not justify itself. My business with you is to inform you that you and your friends have been giving countenance to a man whom the law is tracking down--a convict who escaped from prison in the next state some months ago. You see him before you." He looked at the Governor, who had neither moved nor spoken--he had small liking for Cameron Craig.

"My business with you, Governor Eveland, is to demand that you call upon the local authorities to arrest this jailbird, pending his extradition to your own jurisdiction. I have brought with me, under my personal surety, an inmate of the penitentiary"--he pointed to Paddy the Brick--"who was this criminal's cellmate and who has identified him."

There was a slight pause before the Governor replied. He had shared his host's irritation at the unceremonious entrance and this was allayed by no regard for Craig, whom he had always reckoned an evil influence in the activities of the state of which he himself was Chief Executive. Now the pallid face with its bandage across one temple, the distempered eyes and strange excitement, smote him with distaste.

"I like neither your method nor your manner, Mr. Craig. This would seem to be a matter for the police, not for me, nor, I take it, for Judge Allen. Why you choose to drag this man here, at such a moment, with this skulduddery of mask and stripes, I cannot imagine."

Craig laughed again, sneeringly. "A little fancy of my own, and regard for the dramatic proprieties..."

Treadwell strode forward with an exclamation.

"Judge--Governor Eveland!" he said explosively. "Let me say something.

I came here to-night purely in my capacity of Cameron Craig's attorney, intent only on saving him from what seemed to me a piece of brazen lunacy. But I begin to see that there is something behind this, and if it isn't lunacy it is something I like still less. I withdraw here and now from any connection with him or this action--"

"Withdraw and be d.a.m.ned!" Craig flung him, savagely. "I know what I am about!" His voice rose. "That man, Governor Eveland, is an escaped prisoner from the penitentiary of your state! Tear off his mask and see for yourselves who our 'John Doe' really is--this fine thief and would-be murderer--the man who shot me down a year ago!"

"Stop!" The Governor's voice rang through the room. He was on his feet now, stern authority in every line of his posture. "Mr. Craig, listen to me! You have thrust yourself here without warrant of right or of invitation, in a matter which you--not I--have elected to make my business. Very well: I take the affair and this prisoner into my own hands. Do you understand?"

He paused, his lips clipped to like shears. Craig's outburst, vicious with suppressed fury, had given him a lightning-like glimpse into something unguessed in the situation. The man before him, then, in this convict dress, was the burglar convicted of that old shooting--the prisoner whom he had seen at the court-house, and whose personality had so attracted and puzzled him. Yet there was more beneath Craig's att.i.tude than an understandable desire to punish the man who had shot him: more than that in those infuriate eyes, shaking hands and malicious triumph. The Governor had a hatred of persecution. His mind worked according to a law of stern and inflexible justice, yet to him justice opened itself to no a.s.sault of man's pa.s.sions.

Under that holding look Craig sat down heavily, angry arrogance in his face. Treadwell took a chair near him, and Paddy the Brick remained standing in the background, his small eyes glancing furtively from one to the other.

The Governor resumed his seat and bent his deliberate gaze on the figure that had been standing movelessly before him. A quick memory had come to him of the other's face, now hidden, as he remembered to have once seen it--clear-eyed, vivid and forceful, strangely lacking in the ear-marks of the criminal, a face that had often recalled itself to his mind since that day. He had no vulgar curiosity, but the patent mystery in the background called to him strangely.

"Are you, as this man alleges, a prisoner who some months ago broke jail in the adjoining state?"

"I am." The voice, m.u.f.fled by the mask, was low but distinct.

"The man who shot him in his library?"

"No."

The questioning, deep grey eyes looked steadily at the mask--it seemed as if the gaze would bore through the cloth. "But you were found guilty of that offence!"

"I was convicted, yes."

The Governor was silent a moment; then his hand reached for the pen on the table. "On the admission, then," he said slowly, "it is my duty to request the authorities to take you into custody. You are aware of your rights under the law?"

The striped figure bowed. "I am. I shall waive extradition. With your permission, however, I should like to make a statement."

"He can make that in the jail," interposed Craig contemptuously. "Take off his mask and send for the police."

The Governor frowned. "He can make it here and now, if he so chooses.

This is not your house, Mr. Craig. If you do not care to listen, there will be no objection to your withdrawal--with your witness."

There was a fleeting pause, in which a livid red mounted to Craig's brow, dark against the bandage. Then the Governor turned.

"Do you take your solemn oath that what you are about to say is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?"

"I do."

The Governor leaned back in his chair. "You may make your statement,"

he said quietly.

Harry bowed. He was feeling a chill sense of estrangement, as though the bars that were so soon to shut him from the life of which he had been a part had already fallen between him and his friends. But he was oddly self-controlled. In the few moments he had been thinking swiftly--not of himself, but of the cause he represented, the men who had pinned their faith upon him and whom he had betrayed, whose leader, Judge Allen, sat there now ignorant of the ruin that overwhelmed them.

To say to him, "I, Harry Sevier, whom you honoured, whom you made the bearer of your party banner, reached forth for this trust knowing myself a hunted man, outlawed of honest folk!" They were his friends, his loyal comrades in the fight, men whose friendship had been tried out by long years! In this last hour he shrank from a judgment biased with sympathy, and a fierce craving was rising in him for a justification based on no personal appeal.

He took a step backward to the mantel and stood thus, a little removed from them, looking from one to the other. He spoke in a low voice--not the alert, vibrant voice of the old Harry Sevier, but one alien, metallic, and strangely devoid of feeling.

"What I have to say may soon be said. It was not of my own will that I came here with covered face, and since this masquerade is not of my choosing, it may serve its purpose a moment longer. You, Judge Allen, know me well. Governor Eveland, you also are not unacquainted with me.

With every one in this room I have come in contact--not as a convict, but as a citizen and an honest man. My a.s.sociation with you, Judge Allen, has involved certain responsibilities, and these I have accepted while I have lain under the law. For this I owe you a greater reparation than I can ever make. I know that justification in the eyes of the world is impossible, but in your own mind--in the minds of others who stand with you--it perhaps may be given me. But a justification is empty to me that springs from personal sympathy. I want it as man to man. For this reason I keep on the mask a little longer."

He paused. The Governor had not spoken; he had settled back in his great chair, one hand in his beard. The Judge was leaning intently forward, his hands clasped; he had never taken his eyes from the speaker, save once to glance at Craig, who sat with narrowed eyes and heavy lips curved in a malicious sneer. Treadwell's elbow was on his knee, his chin in his palm, his brows drawn into a frown that told nothing, and behind all stood Paddy the Brick, furtively watching.

When the striped figure spoke again, it was in a voice which held a first thin thrill of feeling:

"I have said that I lay under the law, but it was through that law's error. I was unjustly accused and wrongfully convicted. I was innocent."

The Governor spoke, coldly and deliberately. "You were taken at midnight in the Craig house."