XXIV
ORA watched the clock until twenty minutes after eleven.
The miners changed shift promptly, and the last should have gone down the Primo shaft by a quarter past at the latest. The shaft house would be empty, as no hoisting was being done on the night shift.
She turned out the light in her living-room, wrapped herself in a dark lodenmantel, a long cape with a hood that she had worn while climbing in Bavaria, and let herself out. She walked through the grove to the edge of the bluff above her camp and stood for a few moments, listening intently. Some ten minutes since she had heard the warning shriek of an automobile horn, but the garage of her manager, who had motored Whalen into Butte, was on the flat, and he had had time either to go down into the mine or climb to his own cottage.
The moon was at the full and the scene as sharply outlined as by day, although less animated. Save for the usual raucous noises of a mining camp the only sign of life was in the saloon. Some one was playing a pianola, and through the open door she saw men standing at the bar. For a moment she was tempted to take the surface path across the camps; but the risk was too great. Some one was sure to be abroad, and although she had been willing to brave the scorn of the world when there was no apparent alternative, she shrank from the plain Saxon the miners would use if they saw her. From Gregory’s shaft house she could reach his cabin by the path behind the abandoned cut.
A light was burning in her shaft house. She was not expert enough to descend the ladder candle in hand, and for a moment faltered above the darkness of the well; she had not been down before at night. Then she reflected that it was always night in the mines and descended without further hesitation.
At the foot of the shaft the usual station was one withthe chamber left after removing the first large deposit of ore. They had merely cut through the vein at this point without stoping, and the great excavation had a lofty roof. Ora struck a match and lit a candle near by. On the day of the geologists’ visit a number of miner’s candlesticks had been thrust into what little wood there was in the chamber, and the candles were but half burnt out. Then she lit the one she had brought in her pocket. Accustomed as she was by this time to the route underground by chamber and gallery to the Perch mine, she always picked her way carefully, particularly down the first drift; her lessees, impatient at the leanness of the connecting vein, and not wishing to spend either the time or the money to sink the shaft another hundred feet, had understoped, and the holes were ill-covered.
She crossed the large black cavern toward the first of these tunnels, or drifts, sweeping the candle about her head, and then holding it downward, for she always feared cave-ins. The room was almost untimbered, owing to the hardness of the rock.
She had almost reached the mouth of the drift, when she paused suddenly, listened intently, and then blew out her candle. Some one was on the ladder. It was one of the miners, no doubt. Something had detained him above ground, and not daring to summon the shaft house man, he was sneaking down the ladder. He would go on down to the second level of the mine. Ora stood motionless, her hood pulled over her white face. Her miners were good average men, but the saloon flourished, and was no doubt responsible for the present delinquency.
Then once more she listened intently. The upper part of her body stiffened like a startled animal’s. Whoever was coming down was making his first descent by foot; not only was his progress slow, but he was breathing heavily, and hesitating between rungs, as if it were his first experience of an inclined ladder. Miners hate the shaft ladder, and will resort to any subterfuge to avoid it, but they are experts in “negotiating” it nevertheless. No doubt this was some green hand, recently employed. Or possibly the man was drunk.
Then suddenly Ora turned cold with the chill of the mine itself, a mere physical attribute that her warm blood had never deigned to notice before. A form was slowlycoming into view below the high roof of the cavern, and although it was little more than a blot on the general blackness, Ora’s keen eyes, accustomed to the faint relief given by the candle near the shaft, noted as it descended further that it covered more of the ladder than it should. Miners are almost invariably thin and they wear overalls. This person wore a heavy cape like her own. But it was not alone the garment, which any miner would scorn, that betrayed the sex of the invader; it may have been the physical awkwardness, the shallow breathing, or some subtle psychical emanation—or all—that warned Ora of the approach not only of a woman but of a malignant force.
And this woman was following her. There was no doubt in her mind of that. She suffered a moment or two of furious unreasoning terror as she crouched against the wall and watched that shadow against a shadow slowly descend the final rungs of the ladder. Her first impulse had been to flee down the drift, but there was danger of falling into one of the gouge holes and disabling herself. She dared not relight her candle.
Shaking, terrified as she never had been in her life—for she was normally brave, and it was not a normal woman she feared but that aura of hate and lust for vengeance—undecided, putting up a frantic prayer that Gregory would come to her rescue, she pulled the hood over her face and almost sank to her knees. The woman, breathing heavily, reached the last rung and touched the ground as warily as a cat. For a moment she stood drawing in deep breaths like sighs, but which escaped, to tormented ears, like a hiss. Ora, her eyelids almost meeting over the intense concentration of her gaze, saw the woman fling back the mantle that covered her, throw out her arms as if to relax the muscles after the strain of the descent. Then she turned suddenly, snatched the candlestick from the wall and held it above her head.
For the moment Ora thought her heart had stopped. The woman was Ida. Her heavy lowered brows were like a heavy band across the white ghastliness of her face. Her eyes glittered horribly. Her lips were a mere tight line. Her black hair, loosened, fell over her face. Ora’s hypnotised gaze tore itself from those slowly moving eyes and lowered itself instinctively to Ida’s right hand. It held the stiletto she had given her in Genoa. The slanting raysof the candle fell on the jewels of the hilt. Then she knew that Ida had followed her down into the mine to kill her.
Her courage came back as quickly as it had fled. Ora’s brain might be democratic but her soul was haughty. The friendship of the past eighteen months between herself and this woman suddenly shaped itself as forced and artificial, and she was filled with a cold surprise and anger.Whowas Ida Hook that she should presume to question Ora Stratton? Similar reflections, no doubt, stiffened many a noble when on his way to the guillotine at the behest of thecanaille.
Ora was beyond the ray of the candle at present but Ida was beginning to move forward, her eyes almost blank in spite of their brilliancy, moving from side to side, striving to pierce the darkness, her head bent forward to catch the slightest sound. It was evident that she had seen Ora go into the shaft house, and knew that she could not be far off.
Ora took the automatic from the bag at her waist, pointed it at the roof of the cave and fired twice. The din was terrific in that confined space. Ida shrieked, dropped the stiletto and candle, and flung her arms about her head. Ora hastily lighted two other candles, and then retreated against the wall. She believed that the terrible inhibition in Ida’s tormented mind was shattered, but she kept the automatic in her hand, nevertheless.
The reverberations died away and once more the mine was as silent as only a deserted level of a mine can be. Ida raised her head and saw Ora. She gave a strangled cry and moved forward a step. Then her arms fell heavily to her side. She did not even pick up the dagger. The inhuman tension of her mind relaxed, the body barely had force enough to hold itself together.
“I came here to kill you,” she said. “But I can’t do it. I’ve been mad for hours, and I wish I could have found you in bed as I thought I would. I could have killed you then. But I saw you come down here—Have you told him?”
“No. He was down in the mine until eleven. I was on my way to tell him—to break down his resistance tonight!”
“His resistance?” Ida raised her head. She had lost the pitch necessary for murder, but her mind began torecover its alertness and her drooping body to set its springs in motion. “What do you mean by that? I thought he was in love with you.”
Ora laughed. She was filled with an utter despair, but the knife was still in Ida and she could turn it round. “Oh, yes, make no doubt of that. He loves me and will as long as he lives——”
“Not much he won’t!” roared Ida. “If I’ve been too quick for you you’ll never tell him now, and he practically gave me his word the other day that he’d never even ask me for a divorce again. That means you go and go quick, and if you think Gregory will have nothing to do but sit down and nurse your memory——”
The blood flew to Ora’s head and she hastily dropped the automatic into her bag. “I’ll not go!” she said. “And what is more I shall tell him. When Gregory knows that you spent three hours in Mowbray’s rooms at night——”
“Mowbray was not there! He was at the Country Club——”
“Washe?”
“Yes, and it can be proved. Moreover, you know me well enough——”
“It doesn’t matter what can be proved or what I believe. You waited for Mowbray—Do you suppose that Gregory—or any court of law——”
“My God!” cried Ida. “You! You! I think it was that drove me off my head more than the prospect of disgrace and losing Gregory. You! What in God’s name is possessing you? I always knew that you would be the concentrated essence of all damn fool women that ever lived when you did fall in love, but I never believed it was in you to do anything dishonourable——”
“And would you have believed that you, the concentrated essence of all that is cool, deliberate, calculating, would ever be inspired to commit murder? And for a man? What’s the use of talking? People possessed by love either are wholly themselves while it lasts, or are abnormal and should not be held accountable even to the law. I suppose this means that you too love Gregory Compton?”
“Yes it does!” cried Ida, the more vehemently because it shamed her to put this unwonted weakness into words. “I do, damn it all! I do. I thought I was immune, but I guess we are all born with the microbe and it bites whenthe soil is good and ready.” Her anger had vanished, for in spite of Ora’s defiance she knew that she was master of the situation. She kicked the stiletto contemptuously aside, clasped her hips with her large firm hands and threw back her shoulders. “Now!” she said, “admit right here that you know I didn’t go to Mowbray’s rooms for any old intrigue. That kind of thing isn’t in me and you know it.”
“I will confess I was surprised—I refused to believe it at first—Oh, I suppose I don’t. But it doesn’t matter——”
“Are you ready to come with me this minute to Gregory and tell him that yarn—knowing that I can prove Mowbray wasn’t there—I saygo with me—not by yourself.”
Ora made no reply. She was beaten but she was not ready to admit it.
“You may bet your life on one thing,” continued Ida. “You go with me or you don’t go at all, for I’ll stick to you like wet paint until this thing is settled once for all. Now just tell me what you meant a while back by Gregory’s resistance? When you found I wouldn’t consent to a divorce—of course you put him up to ask me, you traitorous little white devil—did you want him to elope with you?”
“Yes I did!”
“And he wouldn’t!”
“He—he would not sacrifice me——”
“Shucks! Where did you want him to go? To Europe?”
“Yes.”
“Good Lord! And what did you think you were going to do with him over there? Spoon in orange groves for forty years?”
“There are several thousand resources in Europe besides orange groves—but you would never understand——”
“Oh, don’t I understand? It’s I that does understand, not you, or you would never have made such an asinine proposition to Gregory Compton. Why on earth didn’t you propose some place withmines—Mexico, Alaska, China—Then you might have stood some show—but Europe—Gregory—Do you remember those American business men that always looked as if they had left their minds in an office at the top of a thirty-story building, andtheir bodies were being led round by a string? The vision of Gregory astray in Europe for the rest of his life would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. Talk about the conceit of man. It isn’t a patch on that of a woman when she gets the bug inside her head that she can be ‘everything’ to a man. I can manage Gregory till doomsday when I get him back, but you’d lose him inside of six months no matter which way you got him——”
“That couldn’t be true! I recognised that he was mine—mine—the night we met before I left——”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, yes, I met him once before I went abroad with you—we talked for an hour——”
“And he was the man you wrote those letters to in Europe——”
“Yes.”
“And I your most intimate friend!”
“I never sent them, and you did not care for him then——”
“Oh, I don’t see you apologising if you had turned heaven into hell. You made up your mind then to have him, I suppose?”
“No. And not even when I came out here. I only wanted to be with him—know him a little better—have that much—Oh, I couldn’t make you understand any more than that I can suffer as much as if I were the best of women who had lost her husband by death. It was only after Mowbray came—there seemed a prospect——”
“Well, I don’t know that I blame you so much, for I certainly bluffed it pretty well. I can forgive you for that but not for meaning to make me out a strumpet and send me to the muck heap, disgraced for the rest of my life. Well, come along. Let us go straight to Gregory and let him decide.”
Ora did not move.
“It’s either that or you go back to Butte with me tonight and start for Europe tomorrow morning.”
“I know when I am beaten. I will leave. And don’t imagine that you have won because you are in the right. We have emerged from the dark ages of superstition, and we know that the wicked are not punished if they are strong enough. Nor are the virtuous rewarded for merevirtue—not once in ten thousand times. You have won because you are stronger than I. That is all.”
“It’s enough for me.”
Ora laughed. “Do you really believe that you can win him back? He’ll not forget me, because I can always fire his imagination. He is as indifferent to you as only a man can be when the woman is an old story.”
“That was a nasty one! But I’m not worrying. I have been at a disadvantage since I got back, thinking my only rival was a hole in the ground. But take this from me, Ora: when a woman knows where she stands, and has the inside track, and has her nerve with her, the man has no show whatever. Nor the other woman. I’ll get him back all right. And he’ll forget you. That’s a man’s long suit.”
“We’ll neither of us ever know, so it doesn’t matter. I shall never see him again. That is all that matters to me.”
“And Valdobia?”
“I shall marry him. I suppose—after a while.”
“I don’t mind saying that he is much too good for you.”
“Possibly. And he’ll love me the more.”
“And shall you tell him of this little interlude?”
“Certainly not.”
“Well, I always have maintained that the woman who confessed anything to a man was a fool, but it certainly is a queer mix up.”
“I don’t know that I should so much mind telling him, after all. Men are too practical to resent any but the literal infidelity. And he is the only person living that understands me. Gregory does not and never would care to. Why could not I have had this madness for the one man who is really fitted to be my mate—whose ideas of life are my own, who has so much the same order of mind? Why should I love Gregory Compton, a man I not only cannot marry, but with whom I never could find a real companionship. My God! Why? Why?”
“There are several ways of getting ahead of life,” said Ida drily, “and one is not asking ‘Why’ too often. That’s just one of her little traps to keep you discontented. You and Gregory Compton! It certainly is funny. What did you talk about anyway?”
Ora threw out her arms and laughed wildly. “Ores. Ores. Ores. I tried to interest him in many of the things that interested me. He didn’t even try to understand what I was driving at. One night I offered to read to him—I had a lively new volume of memoirs in mind—he asked if I had any work on copper. I read to him for three hours from a book called ‘The Copper Mines of the World,’ technicalities and all. Of course he had read it before, but it seemed to delight him. We literally had no common meeting ground but ores, but we loved each other madly. Oh, don’t tell me that it was mere passion!” she broke out as angrily as if Ida had interrupted her. “Valdobia is attractive in far more ways and better looking. Gregory has met many women.—If that were all we should have bored each other long since—we never could have held each other’s imaginations while apart.—I tell you it is some deep primary bond—something that older races perhaps could explain. Why should we meet at all in this life——”
“I guess when we understand all the different brands of love we’ll vaccinate and be immune. Shut your teeth, Ora, and take your medicine. And for heaven’s sake let us get out of this damp hole. I’ll help you and Custer pack and we’ll go to Butte in the car I came out in. Have I got to go up that ladder!”
“No, we’ll go over to the Perch mine and ring for the skip there. My engineer is not on duty during the ‘graveyard shift.’”