XXIVNo Thoroughfare
AT the departure of the two fishermen, Virginia Grillage had taken Lucille Vallory under her wing, closing the cottage under the pines and taking the blind girl to the hotel. This left Oswald more or less unattached. Since there was no welcome for him at the foot of the ridge, and David had not even taken the trouble to introduce him to the members of the engineering staff, he spent the greater part of his time at the Inn, devoting himself, so far as Miss Grillage would permit it, to the care and comfort of the helpless one, and taking his meals in due submission at a table with Miss Virginia and her charge, the Englishman, and the heir of profitable breakfast-foods.
Beneath these routine time-killings, days in which nothing transpired to break the monotonous round of eating and sleeping and lounging upon the shaded porches of the Inn, Oswald fancied he could feel the tension of an approachingcrisis. To a keen-eyed young lawyer whose profession led logically to a study of the human problem in all its phases, the premonitory signs emphasized themselves. Miss Virginia, apparently engrossed in her favorite pastime of playing off one man against another, struck a false note now and then; young Wishart was occasionally jogged out of his customary rut of good-natured indolence; and even the imperturbable Englishman was losing the fine edge of a carefully cultivated Old-World indifference to his surroundings.
Notwithstanding these indications, it was Lucille Vallory who first put the impending threat into words, confiding in Oswald one evening when Virginia Grillage had gone for a stroll along the ridge accompanied by her two shadows.
“What is it, Herbert?” the blind girl asked; “what is happening to us all?”
“What should be happening?” he evaded. “Aren’t you enjoying yourself?”
“You know what I mean,” she insisted. “Nothing is the same any more; I can feel it. You are troubled about something, and so is Virginia. No, it isn’t anything that either of you say; it’s just how you feel inside. And Davie; he is different, too—so cruelly different. Is it because he is worried about his work?”
Oswald said what there was to be said, doing violence to his own convictions in an effort to shield the loved one. There was nothing for anybody to be troubled about, he told her; and David—she must remember that David was now at the head of an immense undertaking and was carrying a heavy load of responsibility. She was silenced, but he could see that his well-meant effort had been thrown away.
This happened on an evening when the two fishermen had been three days in the wilds of the upper Timanyoni. On the next morning the monotonies were broken. Little gossip of the big job penetrated to the Alta Vista, the summerers, as a rule, being content to hold the great engineering feat as a part of the scenic stage-effect for which they paid in their hotel bills. But on the morning in question, when Cumberleigh had joined a sunrise peak-climbing party, and Wishart was not yet out of bed, there was news of a small catastrophe. Oswald had the story from one of the Alta Vista clerks as he was getting his morning mail. Some time during the night an accident had happened in the big tunnel. In one of the blasts a man had been blown up and desperately hurt. A Brewster doctor had been telegraphed for and was coming up on a special train.
Oswald was interested only casually, and he saw no special significance in the added word particularizing the injured man as one of the railroad company’s inspectors. As he was crossing the lobby he met Miss Virginia. Though she was apparently just down from her rooms and on her way to breakfast, her first word was of the tragedy, or near-tragedy, in the tunnel.
“You have heard of the accident to Mr. Strayer?” she asked hurriedly. And then: “Have you seen David this morning?”
Oswald answered both queries in a single sentence.
“Yes, I’ve heard of the accident—the clerk was just this minute telling me about it: and I haven’t seen David.”
Miss Virginia was plainly anxious and disturbed She hesitated for a moment, a little frown coming and going between the straight-browed eyes, and Oswald noted that she was nervously twisting a bit of paper between her fingers. “I must see David—at once,” she said, half as if she were thinking aloud. “May I ask you to go and tell him so, Herbert?”
Since Virginia had shown herself more than friendly in his own trying involvement, Oswald consented willingly.
“I’ll find him for you,” he promised; and a minute later he was on his way down to the construction yard.
It so happened that he had to go no farther than to the office bunk car. The door was open and he went in. David Vallory was sitting behind the small mapping-table, checking dimensions on a set of blue-prints. At the sound of Oswald’s footsteps he looked up with a scowl of impatience, and his greeting was a challenge.
“Oh, it’s you, is it? I’ve been thinking it was about time you were showing up. When do you start back to Middleboro?”
Oswald ignored the ungracious demand and said what he had been sent to say.
“Miss Virginia is at the hotel, and she wishes to see you.”
“What for?”
“I didn’t inquire. She asked me to find you and deliver her message. I have done both.”
“I can’t go just now; I’m, busy.”
“Then I’ll wait for you,” said Oswald coolly, and he sat down on Plegg’s bunk, found a cigarette in his pocket case and lighted it.
In sheer perversity, as it seemed to the young lawyer, David went on shuffling the blue-prints and making figures on a pad under his hand. Oswaldwaited in silence and in due time had his reward.
“Be half-way decent about it, Bert, and tell me what I’m wanted for,” said the figure-maker, looking up suddenly from his work. “She has Cumberleigh and Wishart; aren’t they enough?”
Oswald’s smile was a palpable easing of strains. If David’s malady were nothing worse than a fit of jealousy, it was not necessarily incurable.
“I was wondering, before I came out here, what Vinnie might be doing to you,” he said. “You wrote us that she and her father were here, if you remember.”
“What she did to me was done more than a year ago, if you care to know. But you haven’t answered my question. What does she want of me this morning?”
“Honestly, I don’t know, David.”
“Where did you see her?”
“In the hotel lobby; she was on her way to the breakfast-room, I think.”
“And the other two?”
“Cumberleigh has gone to climb Qojogo with a sunrise party, and Wishart hasn’t turned out yet. Half of the time he is never visible before noon.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked first if I had heard of the accident in the tunnel last night.”
Once more David Vallory bent over the table and busied himself with the figure-making.
“You’ve heard of it, I suppose?” he offered, without looking up.
“Only in passing. The hotel clerk told me that a man was hurt; in one of the blasts, I think he said.”
David pushed his work aside as one who faces the guns only because he must. “Let’s go,” he consented shortly; and together they walked through the yard and climbed the ridge.
Miss Virginia was waiting on one of the porches when the pair crossed the painfully cared-for bit of greensward in front of the Inn. Oswald, telling himself that he had done his part, went on through to the breakfast-room, leaving David to fight his battle—if there were to be a battle—alone. The young woman’s first question was as direct as it was unexpected.
“Why have you been avoiding me so persistently?” she asked, making room for the summoned one to sit beside her on the settee.
“Perhaps it was because I had just sense enough to see that I had served my turn andwasn’t needed any more,” he answered in a tone that might have been copied faithfully from the king of the contractors in his most brittle mood.
“Silly!” she chided, with a strained little laugh. “I could forgive you for saying such a thing as that if you were only sincere. It isn’t Cumberleigh and Freddy Wishart, David; it’s yourself.”
“You wrote and told them where you were,” he accused.
“As it happens, I did not. But you needn’t try to hide behind a shadow—or two shadows. You have had other reasons for avoiding me. For one thing, you have met Mr. Lushing, and you have quarreled with him.”
“Everybody seems to know that,” he complained. “Go on.”
“For another thing, you have determined, in spite of all that we have talked about, to fight Mr. Lushing with his own weapons.”
This seemed to be too accurate to be classed with the shrewd guesses, and he accused her again.
“You’ve been prying into Plegg.”
“I haven’t seen Mr. Plegg in weeks; I haven’t been prying into any one, and I haven’t needed to. You have been showing very plainly that you have broken with the ideals—all of them. Whycouldn’t you stay up on the pedestal, David? It was such a nice pedestal!”
He laughed mirthlessly. “You are such a queer mixture of good, hard sense and back-number romanticism,” he commented. “Can’t you realize that I’ve got to be a man among men?”
“That is what you ought to be—in the other and better meaning of the phrase. You won’t make a very successful villain, David.”
“Perhaps not; but I shall try mighty hard not to let the other man make a wooden Indian of me,” he returned grimly.
“And you haven’t stopped, even at—murder.” She shuddered over the final word, but she would not qualify it.
He was regarding her through half-closed eyes. “Having said that much, you ought to say more, don’t you think?” he suggested.
“I am going to say more; lots more. That man in the tunnel last night: he wasn’t blown up by a blast.”
“How do you know he wasn’t?”
“One of your men carried or dragged him half-way to the mouth of the tunnel before the blast was fired.”
“Well?” he prompted.
“It comes to this; either it was a sheer accident—astone falling from the roof—or there was foul play. Mr. Lushing says it was foul play.”
“Lushing? You don’t mean to say that he has had the brazen effrontery to come to you!”
“No; he didn’t come here. He sent me a note; an unsigned note, because he is a coward. He did it once before, when he was dis—when he left the Grillage Company. He says you will be tried for murder if the man dies, and he throws it in my face.”
David got upon his feet rather unsteadily, but the unsteadiness was of rage.
“There wasn’t any murder last night, but there is going to be one when I can find this man who writes anonymous letters to you!” he broke out.
“No; sit down again, please. I am not nearly through. It makes very little difference what Mr. Lushing, or anybody else, may write or say to me, David; but there are other things that do make a world of difference. What special thing is there in that tunnel that you don’t want Mr. Lushing or his engineers to find out?”
He stared at her gloomily. “If you were your father’s son instead of his daughter, I might tell you.”
“You will tell me anyhow,” she declared quickly. “If you don’t, I shall find out for myself.”
“I believe you are quite capable of it. But there is nothing to be told more than I have already told you. You may remember that I admitted that there was a place in the tunnel that may be called dangerous. If Lushing finds out about it, he will immediately insist that it is dangerous, and the railroad people will make us spend a lot of money needlessly. Your father didn’t put me here to bankrupt the Grillage Engineering Company, Vinnie.”
She ignored the clause in condonation.
“So, accordingly, you have given orders to our men to have an accident happen if the secret seems likely to be discovered. This is simply horrible, David!”
“It is rather primitive, I’ll admit. But it’s business—in the modern meaning of the word. More than that, I owe it to your father.”
“You don’t owe himanythingthat ought to be paid with such a frightful price! What ought to be done with that place in the tunnel? What would be done if you were not blind to everything but profit and loss?”
David shrugged his shoulders and turned his face away. “I suppose the bad piece of roof would be shot down.”
“And you are deliberately allowing it to stayup—if it will—and endangering the lives of your workmen every hour of the day and night?”
“Hard-rock men always take a chance. It is a part of their trade. And Regnier, or some other member of the staff, is always there to take it with them.”
“You are hopeless—absolutely and utterly hopeless, David! Don’t you see what you are forcing me to do?”
“No.”
“I have some little conscience, if you haven’t. I can’t say anything to Mr. Lushing, of course, and I wouldn’t if I could. But I can write to Mr. Maxwell, the general manager of the railroad at Brewster. It so happens that I know him, and his wife.”
“Hold on; you wouldn’t do anything like that! Think a minute of the position in which it would place your father.”
She shook her head despairingly.
“You drive me into a corner and then beat me!” she cried. “It is all wrong, wrong! And you have broken my heart, David, because I thought you were different. You lay this horrible burden upon me one minute, and tie my hands the next. What if this man who was hurt last night should die?”
“He won’t die; but neither will he talk,” was the gritting reply.
The young woman had risen and her color was coming and going in hot little flashes.
“You think because I am my father’s daughter you are safe in saying anything you please, and in going on in any hard-hearted way you choose! It is what I might have expected of a man who would deny his only sister her one little chance of happiness. You are worse than other men, because you know the right way and you won’t walk in it!”
He sprang up suddenly and caught her hands in both of his.
“You are right, Vinnie; I do know better. Every word you have been saying has cut like a knife!” he burst out, smashing all the barriers of insincerity at a single blow. “I know where I stand, and what I’ve been doing, and I have been a conscious hypocrite every time I have pleaded the way of the world as my excuse. But a manmustbe loyal to something. For the obligation, the immense obligation, I owe your father. I have put my hands between his knees as the old-time vassals used to do, and sworn to make his cause my cause. He knows about that bad tunnel roof; knows more than I do; and when I spoke to him,he told me to forget it. I can’t be disloyal to him—and keep even a thief’s sense of honor!”
She released her hands quickly. It was early for any of the porch loungers to be out, but they were standing fairly in front of the lobby windows.
“That is better; much better,” she commended with a little sigh. “I thought you were gone, David; honestly, I was afraid that the good old David I used to know and—and think a lot of—was dead and buried—and it hurt me as much as it would if you had been my own brother. Now, if I could only forget what happened last night——”
“You may set your mind at rest about Strayer,” he put in quickly. “He won’t die; and he wasn’t assaulted, as you seem to think he was, though I won’t say what might or might not have happened in another minute or two. He was testing the bad roof with the point of an iron bar, and a loose rock came down upon his head.”
“But now you will pull the roof down, or timber it, or do whatever is needful to make it safe?” she said, half pleading with him.
“No; my hands are tied, too. I can’t saddle the company with the added expense after your father has told me in so many words to let italone. Neither must I let Lushing find out and force it upon him if I can help it. We must just trust to luck, Vinnie; there is no help for it.”
“There is going to be help for it,” she asserted, with true Grillage resolution. Then: “One more word before you go, David: you won’t fi—quarrel with Mr. Lushing again?”
But at this his eyes grew hard. “I owe him something more, now, for that anonymous letter. Besides, he’s out for my scalp, personally, and I shall certainly try to hold up my end if he starts anything. You can’t blame me for that, Vinnie. But that is a future. There is Wishart coming out of the breakfast-room, and I suppose he is looking for you. Anyway, my job is yelling for me and I must go. Don’t you worry a single minute about anything; do you hear?”
“Not even about Herbert and Lucille?” she threw in quickly, as one thrusts an antagonist who is helplessly off his guard.
“Oh, say; that isn’t fair!” he retorted, with a frown that turned itself into a grin in spite of the reluctances. “I’m right about Bert and the little sister—I’m practically certain I am; but you’ve got me going, and you know it. Do whatever you think is best. Good-by.”
What Miss Virginia thought was best was notto stay and meet the short-sighted heir of the breakfast-foods who was rambling aimlessly in her direction. Instead, she went into the lobby and sent a telegram. It was addressed to her father at Red Butte, and it was short and to the point:
“Highly important that you return at once.“V.”
“Highly important that you return at once.“V.”