CHAPTER XXXIVTHE WING-BEAT OF AZRAEL
AndDorothy? Truly, these were terrible days and weeks for one who loved, and had lost and found, only to lose again. But, believing in her lover’s innocence as no one else save Henry Antrim did believe in it, she was yet powerless to break a single thread of the net which enmeshed him. She could do naught but grieve despairingly, and that in secret, since none but her father and Antrim guessed the depth of her hurt.
To her in her misery came an angel of light masquerading as one Parker Jarvis. She knew the reporter by sight, and better by repute, since Antrim had spoken much of him and of his friendly movings in Brant’s affair. She also knew that he was of those who would have held Brant excused though guilty; but at this point her knowledge of him paused until, one black Thursday evening in late November, but a single sweep of the clock hands from the fatal Friday morning, when she had stolen out of the house to be alone with her misery, he stood uncovered before her holding the gate for her to pass out.
“Do you know who I am, Miss Langford?” he asked; and when she signed assent he turned and walked beside her.
“I don’t mean to intrude, and I could have only one excuse for waylaying you,” he went on. “If there is any blame, Harry Antrim must answer for it. Hedoesn’t mean to tell all the things he knows, but sometimes he tells a good bit more than he sets out to, and he has told me enough to make me understand why to-morrow will hurt you worse than it will any of us.”
There was manifestly no answer to be made to this, and she let him go on without hindrance. For to-morrow would end it all, and anything less than death seemed too trivial to be opposed.
“I wanted to ask you to help me at a pinch where I am unable to help myself,” he continued. “But before I come to the helping part, I’d like to tell you just where I stand to-night. May I do that?”
Her “Yes” was no more than a whisper, but he heard it and took his cue promptly, beginning in the midst.
“At first I thought Brant did it, as a matter of course. Everything pointed that way, and the mere fact of his giving himself up seemed as good as a confession. But afterward when I began to dig a little deeper into it I wasn’t so sure; in fact, I came to believe that your brother had done it, and that Brant was trying to screen him—to—well, to stand in the way until your brother had a chance to run for it. You mustn’t mind my saying these things, because they have to be said before I can come around to the present state of affairs.”
Again she gave him liberty. “It does not matter; nothing matters any more.”
“Thanks. Well, about that time I had a talk with Brant, and I’m ashamed to say he made me fly the track again—made me believe he did do it, after all; and I went on believing it till one day about a week ago, when Harry Antrim told me what you told him Brant had told you. That is pretty badly tangled up, but I guess you know what I am driving at.”
“Mr. Brant told me he was innocent—is that what you mean?” she asked.
“That’s it precisely, and I just put it up that he would come pretty near telling you the truth; that you are the one person in the world he wouldn’t lie to. So I had to climb over the fence again, and—well, to cut a long story short, I haven’t had ten hours’ sleep in the last sixty-odd; and—and to-morrow is the day.”
She caught despairingly at the straw, as any poor drowning one might. “O Mr. Jarvis, what have you done? what can be done?”
“I don’t know that I have done anything. I’ve been desperately tangled up in two theories, and one of them is no good unless I can get rid of the other. Miss Langford, you will know how hard pressed I am when you hear what I came over here to ask you, but you must let to-morrow be my excuse for anything and everything. You have seen your brother and have been with him more or less every day since this thing happened: is he the one who ought to be counting the hours as George Brant is probably counting them this evening?”
The early dusk of the winter day was beginning to prick out the arc lights in the downtown circuits, and she stopped to turn back; and so facing him she gave him his answer:
“No, Mr. Jarvis, my brother did not do it. I have thought of that—I have been driven to think of it, dreadful as it is; and I have watched him—God forgive me!—I have watched him as an enemy might.He did not do it!”
Jarvis threw up his head and drew a deep breath of the crisp night air, as a swimmer who feels the bottom under his feet while yet the shore of ultimate safety is afar off.
“That helps out a whole lot,” he said; and his involuntarysigh was a measure of the relief which her assurance gave him. “May I walk back with you? I’m not half through.”
She suffered him, and he went quickly forward in the path she had cleared for him.
“We are now a long way ahead of any point that has been reached hitherto,” he began. “Brant didn’t do it, and your brother didn’t do it. But a man was killed, and if he did not commit suicide, somebody must have killed him. Happily, we don’t have to wrangle with the suicide theory, so we may safely fall back on the alternative. Do you follow me?”
Her “Yes” was not a whisper this time; it was an eager little gasp of expectancy.
“Good. Now, while I have been holding the William Langford possibility in suspension, as it were, I have been filling in the time by hunting desperately for this shadowy ‘somebody.’ That is why I haven’t had much sleep since Monday night.”
“O Mr. Jarvis! Have you found any clew at all?”
“If I say Yes, you must understand that it isn’t any bigger than a spider’s web—just one strand of a spider’s web, at that. For a week or so before the shooting Harding was seen here and there and everywhere in company with a man whom everybody can describe after a fashion and nobody can identify. They seemed to be friends, but that doesn’t count for much among people of that kind. Still, there is only one little thing to connect this unknown man with the murder, so far.”
“And that is?”
“That is the fact that he was seen just before the shooting, and he has not been seen since.”
“But surely he can be found?” So much she said, and then she covered her face with her hands and a drysob shook her. In a few short hours the clearest proof of Brant’s innocence would come too late.
Jarvis understood, and he held his peace until she grew calmer. Then he said: “I’ve told you my errand, or at least the biggest part of it. But there is one other little thing in which you can help. The time has come for the forlorn hope to make its last dash. Antrim tells me that Mr. Hobart, Brant’s oldest friend, has just got word, and he is coming hotfoot to Denver on this evening’s train. I want to have a final rally of Brant’s friends at Forsyth’s office to-night to see if we can’t cook up some sort of an excuse to beg the Governor for a reprieve. It’s the only hope now.”
“But I—how can I help?” she asked eagerly.
“You can persuade your father to come down after dinner. Harry will call for him with a carriage.”
She did not reply at once, and when she spoke it was as one who feels the way. “Will you understand me if I say that my father thinks he has done his whole duty? You must remember that he believes firmly in Mr. Brant’s guilt—he has believed in it from the very first.”
“I know; but it must be your share in this last pull to make him believe as we do.”
“Oh, how can I?” she cried.
“I think I can put you in the way of doing it, but you must forgive me if I dig still deeper into a matter which is your own private affair, Miss Langford. You have had one interview with Brant since he was locked up, and any man with blood in his veins could guess what happened in that half hour you were together. I’m not going to ask you to repeat that talk for my benefit, but I do ask this: Didn’t Brant give you to understand that he believed your brother to be the guilty one?”
She was choking with mingled grief and humiliationand embarrassment, but she made shift to answer him:
“He did.”
“Then, of course, you knew at once why he was there; that he had stepped in voluntarily to save your brother—not for Will’s sake, perhaps, but for yours?”
“I knew it then—I know it now.”
“And you knew that, rather than let the shame and disgrace and horror come upon you and yours, he would keep it up to the bitter end—that end which is coming to him to-morrow morning?”
“Yes; I knew that, too.”
Jarvis paused, and then he clinched the nail he had driven:
“Have you ever tried to make your father understand all this?”
“Oh, you are hard—bitter hard!” she broke out passionately. “I did try at first, but my father said it wasn’t in human nature. And how could I hope to make him believe it when he was so thoroughly convinced of Mr. Brant’s guilt?”
“None the less, you have it to do. You must convince him, and persuade him to come down to the office with Harry to-night. Luckily, I can help you a little. It so happened that I went to see Brant the same day you saw him. I was with him in less than half an hour after you left him. In that talk I came within one word of making him admit to me that he wasn’t guilty, and also of making him confess that he believed Will did the shooting. Shall I tell you how I know this?”
“If you must—if you will.”
“I had told him that it wasn’t any use to try to keep up the fiction; that the truth would all come out at the trial; that the court would appoint a lawyer to defend him, and that any counsel he might have, saveand excepting only your father, would break your brother’s testimony down in five minutes. Do you know what he did when I told him this?”
“No.”
“He sat down and scribbled a note for me to take to Forsyth. In that note he told Forsyth that he had reconsidered; that he would accept your father as his counsel. He believed it was the only way to save your brother from a cross-examination which would undo what he was staking his life to do. That is all.”
They had reached the Hollywood gate, and he opened it for her, and when she stood beyond it, lifted his hat.
“I hope I haven’t said too much, or asked too much, Miss Langford.”
She came close to the gate, and he could see her eyes shining in the twilight.
“No, you haven’t said too much, and you haven’t asked too much. I shall go down on my knees to my father, Mr. Jarvis, and—and as God helps me, he shall go to you believing as we do. And for yourself—” But he was gone before she could thank him.