The Lost Road Part 13

And then, above his head, Hemingway heard the lazy whisper of the punka, and from the harbor the raucous whistle of the Crown Prince Eitel, signalling her entrance. The world had not stopped; for the punka-boy, for the captain of the German steamer, for Harris seated with face averted, the world was still going gayly and busily forward.

Only for him had it stopped.

In spite of the confident tone in which Harris had spoken, in spite of the fact that unless he knew it was the truth, he would not have spoken, Hemingway tried to urge himself to believe there had been some hideous, absurd error. But in answer came back to him s.n.a.t.c.hes of talk or phrases the girl had last addressed to him: "You can command the future, but you cannot change the past. I cannot marry you, or any one! I am not free!"

And then to comfort himself, he called up the look he had surprised in her eyes when he stood holding her hands in his. He clung to it, as a drowning man will clutch even at a piece of floating seaweed.

When he tried to speak he found his voice choked and stifled, and that his distress was evident, he knew from the pity he read in the eyes of Harris.

In a voice strange to him, he heard himself saying: "Why do you think that? You've got to tell me. I have a right to know. This morning I asked Mrs. Adair to marry me."

The consul exclaimed with dismay and squirmed unhappily. "I didn't know," he protested. "I thought I was in time. I ought to have told you days ago, but--"

"Tell me now," commanded Hemingway.

"I know it in a thousand ways," began Harris.

Hemingway raised his eyes hopefully.

But the consul shook his head. "But to convince you," he went on, "I need tell you only one. The thousand other proofs are looks they have exchanged, sentences I have chanced to overhear, and that each of them unknown to the other has told me of little happenings and incidents which I found were common to both. Each has described the house in which he or she lived, and it was the same house. They claim to come from different cities in New England, they came from the same city.

They claim--"

"That is no proof," cried Hemingway, "either that they are married, or that the man is a criminal."

For a moment Harris regarded the other in silence. Then he said: "You're making it very hard for me. I see I've got to show you. It's kindest, after all, to cut quick." He leaned farther forward, and his voice dropped. Speaking quickly, he said:

"Last summer I lived outside the town in a bungalow on the Pearl Road.

Fearing's house was next to mine. This was before Mrs. Adair went to live at the agency, and while she was alone in another bungalow farther down the road. I was ill that summer; my nerves went back on me. I couldn't sleep. I used to sit all night on my veranda and pray for the sun to rise. From where I sat it was dark and no one could see me, but I could see the veranda of Fearing's house and into his garden. And night after night I saw Mrs. Adair creep out of Fearing's house, saw him walk with her to the gate, saw him in the shadow of the bushes take her in his arms, and saw them kiss." The voice of the consul rose sharply. "No one knows that but you and I, and," he cried defiantly, "it is impossible for us to believe ill of Polly Adair. The easy explanation we refuse. It is intolerable. And so you must believe as I believe; that when she visited Fearing by night she went to him because she had the right to go to him, because already she was his wife. And now when every one here believes they met for the first time in Zanzibar, when no one will be surprised if they should marry, they will go through the ceremony again, and live as man and wife, as they are, as they were before he fled from America!"

Hemingway was seated with his elbows on the table and his face in his hands. He was so long silent that Harris struck the table roughly with his palm.

"Well," he demanded, "why don't you speak? Do you doubt her? Don't you believe she is his wife?"

"I refuse to believe anything else!" said Hemingway. He rose, and slowly and heavily moved toward the door. "And I will not trouble them any more," he added. "I'll leave at sunrise on the Eitel."

Harris exclaimed in dismay, but Hemingway did not hear him. In the doorway he halted and turned back. From his voice all trace of emotion had departed. "Why," he asked dully, "do you think Fearing is a fugitive? Not that it matters to her, since she loves him, or that it matters to me. Only I would like to think you were wrong. I want her to have only the best."

Again the consul moved unhappily.

"I oughtn't to tell you," he protested, "and if I do I ought to tell the State Department, and a detective agency first. They have the call. They want him, or a man d.a.m.ned like him." His voice dropped to a whisper. "The man wanted is Henry Brownell, a cashier of a bank in Waltham, Ma.s.s., thirty-five years of age, smooth-shaven, college-bred, speaking with a marked New England accent, and--and with other marks that fit Fearing like the cover on a book. The department and the Pinkertons have been devilling the life out of me about it for nine months. They are positive he is on the coast of Africa. I put them off. I wasn't sure."

"You've been protecting them," said Hemingway.

"I wasn't sure," reiterated Harris. "And if I were, the Pinkertons can do their own sleuthing. The man's living honestly now, anyway, isn't he?" he demanded; "and she loves him. At least she's stuck by him.

Why should I punish her?"

His tone seemed to challenge and upbraid.

"Good G.o.d!" cried the other, "I'm not blaming you! I'd be proud of the chance to do as much. I asked because I'd like to go away thinking she's content, thinking she's happy with him."

"Doesn't it look as though she were?" Harris protested. "She's followed him--followed him half around the globe. If she'd been happier away from him, she'd have stayed away from him."

So intent had been the men upon their talk that neither had noted the pa.s.sing of the minutes or, what at other times was an event of moment, that the mail steamer had distributed her mail and pa.s.sengers; and when a servant entered bearing lamps, and from the office the consul's clerk appeared with a bundle of letters from the Eitel, both were taken by surprise.

"So late?" exclaimed Hemingway. "I must go. If I'm to sail with the Eitel at daybreak, I've little time!"

But he did not go.

As he advanced toward Harris with his hand outstretched in adieu, the face of the consul halted him. With the letters, the clerk had placed upon the table a visiting-card, and as it lay in the circle of light from the lamp the consul, as though it were alive and menacing, stared at it in fascination. Moving stiffly, he turned it so that Hemingway could see. On it Hemingway read, "George S. Sheyer," and, on a lower line, "Representing William L. Pinkerton."

To the woman he loved the calamity they dreaded had come, and Hemingway, with a groan of dismay, exclaimed aloud:

"It is the end!"

From the darkness of the outer office a man stepped softly into the circle of the lamp. They could see his figure only from the waist down; the rest of him was blurred in shadows.

"'It is the end'?" he repeated inquiringly. He spoke the phrase with peculiar emphasis, as though to impress it upon the memory of the two others. His voice was cool, alert, authoritative. "The end of what?"

he demanded sharply.

The question was most difficult. In the silence the detective moved into the light. He was tall and strongly built, his face was shrewd and intelligent. He might have been a prosperous man of business.

"Which of you is the consul?" he asked. But he did not take his eyes from Hemingway.

"I am the consul," said Harris. But still the detective did not turn from Hemingway.

"Why," he asked, "did this gentleman, when he read my card, say, 'It is the end'? The end of what? Has anything been going on here that came to an end when he saw my card?"

Disconcerted, in deep embarra.s.sment, Harris struggled for a word. But his distress was not observed by the detective. His eyes, suspicious and accusing, still were fixed upon Hemingway, and under their scrutiny Harris saw his friend slowly retreat, slowly crumple up into a chair, slowly raise his hands to cover his face. As though in a nightmare, he heard him saying savagely:

"It is the end of two years of h.e.l.l, it is the end of two years of fear and agony! Now I shall have peace. Now I shall sleep! I thank G.o.d you've come! I thank G.o.d I can go back!"

Harris broke the spell by leaping to his feet. He sprang between the two men.

"What does this mean?" he commanded.

Hemingway raised his eyes and surveyed him steadily.

"It means," he said, "that I have deceived you, Harris--that I am the man you told me of, I am the man they want." He turned to the officer.

"I fooled him for four months," he said. "I couldn't fool you for five minutes."

The eyes of the detective danced with sudden excitement, joy, and triumph. He shot an eager glance from Hemingway to the consul.

"This man," he demanded; "who is he?"

With an impatient gesture Hemingway signified Harris.

"He doesn't know who I am," he said. "He knows me as Hemingway. I am Henry Brownell, of Waltham, Ma.s.s." Again his face sank into the palms of his hands. "And I'm tired--tired," he moaned. "I am sick of not knowing, sick of running away. I give myself up."

The detective breathed a sigh of relief that seemed to issue from his soul.