Neither followed him, and Stephen did not even call after him “not to linger in the hall, running the risk of being seen,” but turned at once to Helen, who sat brooding and puzzled.
“Helen,” Pryde said earnestly, “you must help me persuade him to go at once.”
“I can’t do that, Stephen,” the girl replied slowly.
“But it’s madness for him to stay here.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” Helen said, shaking her head. “I have the same feeling that he has—exactly the same feeling.”
“Helen, be sensible!” he begged roughly. “Look things in the face! What evidence could there be here that would help you?”
“I can’t answer that,” she replied musingly, “at least not yet. All I know is that this is our one chance.”
“Our one chance?”
“Yes—Hugh’s and mine.”
Stephen Pryde winced. Hers and Hugh’s! They two linked by her, and always. “Yours and Hugh’s,” he said acidly. “Yes, but, Helen, aren’t you forgetting?”
“Forgetting what?”
“Your father’s wishes.”
“Oh,” she returned impatiently, “that was when he believed Hugh guilty; if he proves his innocence——”
“He hasn’t proved it yet,” Stephen broke in viciously.
“But he will,” she said firmly. “Stephen, I am sure he will. You—you wouldn’t wish to stand between us then?”
“Don’t you understand, Helen,” Pryde retorted, “that this is just what your father wanted to save you from? He realized that, if you ever came under Hugh’s influence again, he would make you believe in him.”
“Then you don’t believe in him?” She spoke coldly, and she was fully alert now.
“God knows I wish I could.”
“Stephen!” she cried, rising indignantly, recoiling from him in amazement.
“But I can’t,” Pryde added doggedly. He was furious now.
“Well, I can and do,” the girl said icily. “And I am going to stand by him, no matter what happens. I know he is innocent. But if he were guilty, a thousand times guilty, it would make no difference to me, none at all in my love. I’d only care for him the more, stand by him the more, and for ever and ever.”
The fierce color rushed to Pryde’s face, and his hands knotted together in pain.
“Helen,” he pled, “you are making things very difficult for me.”
“I am sorry, Stephen,” she said a little perfunctorily; “but I love Hugh,” she added proudly. “He is all I have in the world.”
“You don’t understand,” he retorted sternly. “I promised your father to take care of you. I mean to keep that promise.”
“No, I do not understand,” Helen said haughtily. She, too, was infuriated now.
“You must send Hugh away at once,” Stephen told her abruptly.
“Must? Do you think to force me to do as you wish?”
“Yes.”
She had spoken insolently, and he was white to his lips. He loved her, all his life he had loved her; and she knew it. An older woman would have spared him a little, because of that love, because of his pain. Helen hit him again. She went a step nearer, and laughed in his face—a taunting laugh of scorn and dislike.
There was a bitter pause, and then Stephen spoke more carefully, groping to retrieve somewhat the ground his passion had lost.
“You don’t seem to realize that Hugh is in a very dangerous position. If—if some one should inform the authorities of his whereabouts——”
“Inform the authorities?” she repeated his words wonderingly. He had not meant to say them, and already regretted them. He bit his lip. Suddenly their meaning dawned on her.
“Stephen,” her voice was stiff with horror, horror of him, not fear for Hugh. “You wouldn’t do that?”
“I!” he said thickly. “I—no—no—no.”
“I’d hate you, if you did that,” Helen said quietly. Pryde realized how much too far he had gone. He owed his place in the world to this girl’s favor, his hope, still ardent, to fulfill the dreams he had dreamt as a boy, watching the birds; he could not afford to incur her enmity. If love was lost, ambition remained. Fool, fool that he was to imperil that too. He changed his tone, and said shiftily—
“No—no—you misunderstand me—of course I wouldn’t.”
“It would disgrace Hugh,” she persisted hotly; “ruin his whole life, just when he has fought his way up again.”
“But don’t you see,” Stephen urged eagerly, taking quick advantage of the opening her words gave, “that is just what I am trying to prevent? If he is caught, he is certain to be disgraced. The whole truth about the theft would have to come out. That is why I want him to go from here quickly. It’s for his sake—to save him. I’m thinking of him, only of him.”
At the word “theft,” Helen threw her head up haughtily. But Stephen Pryde was almost past picking his words now. On the whole, though, he was playing his part well, his cards shrewdly. His last words rang true, whatever they in fact were; and Helen was not unimpressed. Incredible as it may seem, Pryde’s affection for his brother was not dead, and at sight of Hugh, for all the dilemma with which Hugh’s reappearance threatened him, that old-time affection had leapt in the older man’s guilt-heavy heart. And it was that, probably, that had given some warmth of truth to his last words, some semblance of conviction to Helen.
But she stood her ground. “He can’t go—until he has made his search,” she said with quiet finality. “His only chance of proving his innocence is through that.”
“But that’s absurd,” Pryde disputed impatiently. “What evidence could he find here?”
“I don’t know yet,” Helen admitted. “But I am sure there is something.”
“Sure? Why are you so sure?” He spoke eagerly, all his uneasiness rekindled at her confident words, the poor thief in him fearing each syllable an officer.
His cousin thought a little, and then she answered him, and more kindly.
“Stephen, I haven’t been quite frank with you, because I know you don’t believe what I believe, but I must tell you the truth now.”
“Well?” he said breathlessly.
“Hugh and I have both had a message from Daddy, telling us that the proof that would clear him is in this room.”
“A message—a message from your father?” His agitation was increasing, but he did his utmost to conquer it.
“Yes,” Helen replied gravely.
“He left you—he left you letters?” Pryde’s voice was thick with terror. Few as his words were, he spoke them with difficulty.
“No!” Helen shook her head.
“Then how”—his voice trembled and so did his hands—“how did the message come?”
“It only came lately—from the other side.”
“From the other side?” Stephen asked blankly.
Helen nodded. For a moment he looked at her in utter perplexity, and then a light broke faintly.
“Oh!” he said incredulously. “You—you mean the messages came from a dead man?”
“Yes,” Helen said assuredly.
Pryde’s relief was so great that he could scarcely control it or himself. He felt faint and sick with elation, and presently he broke into hysterical laughter. It was the second time he had laughed so in this room.
Helen regarded him offendedly. Indeed, feeling as she felt, and at stake what she had at stake, his mirth was offensive. But the boisterous merriment was his safety-valve.
When he was able to check himself, and he did as soon as he could, he said, more affectionately than superiorly,
“Helen, surely you can’t be serious?”
“I am,” she answered curtly. She was indignant.
“But,” Stephen persisted, “you can’t believe such preposterous nonsense. A message from the dead! It’s too absurd!”
“You will see that it is not,” the girl told him coldly.
“I shall have to wait a long time for that, I am afraid,” he returned patronizingly. He was quite himself now. He rose carelessly and strolled to the writing-table. But as he went the menace that still threatened him reasserted itself in his mind. He turned again to Helen. “And this message from the dead, as you call it, is your only reason for believing that there was some evidence in this room that would clear Hugh?”
“Yes.” She vouchsafed the word inimically.
Pryde drew a long breath of relief, and turned from her vexed face. As he turned, his eye fell again on the writing-table and traveled, as before, from it to the fireplace. He stood musing, and presently, scarcely conscious of what he was saying, said—
“And for a time you quite impressed me. I thought you had found out about——” He broke off abruptly, realizing with a frightened start that he had been on the verge of a damning admission. His great relief had weakened his masterly defense—made him careless.
Helen regarded him curiously. “About what?” she said.
“Why, about—about this evidence,” he replied, laughing lightly. He was well on his guard again.
“Don’t make fun of me, Stephen,” she said, rising. “You hurt me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said earnestly. “I didn’t mean to do that. Where are you going?” he added, as she reached the door.
“I am going to Hugh,” she said quietly, without halting or looking toward him. And he neither dared stay her nor follow her.
Alone in the fateful room, Stephen Pryde moved about it restlessly.
He lit a cigarette, but after a few whiffs he tossed it to the fire. Suddenly he looked apprehensively over his shoulder. He was shivering with cold. He walked about uncomfortably. “A message from the dead,” he said aloud, contempt, amusement, and dread blended in his voice. “A message from the dead.” He went hurriedly to the side table where the decanters stood and mixed himself a drink. He carried his glass to the fireplace, as if for warmth, and drank, looking down at the flames. Suddenly he swung round with a cry of horror. “Uncle Dick!” The thin glass fell and shivered into a dozen fragments on the hearth. “Who’s there?” he cried, twitching convulsively. “Who’s there?” And with a distraught moan, he sank cowering into the chair from which Richard Bransby had risen to die.
BOOK IV
THE LIGHT
The wretched man sat helpless in the grip of his terror. Cold puffs of air buffeted his trembling face. A hand of ice lay on his forehead. Afraid of what he almost saw dimly, and clearly sensed now, he hid his face in his hands and waited, unable to move, except as his own abject fear shook him, unable to call for help. And he would have welcomed any human help now—any human companionship.
But such wills as Stephen Pryde’s are neither conquered nor broken by one defeat. Presently he took down his hands, and the uncovered face was again the face of a man.
He was calmer now, and with his wonderful will and the habits of thought of a lifetime he was overcoming his fear. He looked about the big room quickly, shrugged his shoulders, and laughed slightly—a rather mirthless laugh of self-contempt. He got up in another moment, and moved about steadily, turning on the electric lights. Again he laughed as he stood warming his hands before the glow of the gas fire. Clearly he was ashamed of himself for having permitted his nerves to get the better of him and of his commonsense. Yet the quick, stealthy glances he could not refrain from throwing over his shoulder now and then, and an odd apprehensiveness in his bearing, proved that there was still some doubt in his mind—a doubt and a fear of which he could not rid himself—absolutely.
He was still wandering aimlessly about the room when his tired eyes fell on the writing-table. It suggested the missing paper to him again, of course: it always would, whenever he saw it. He went close to the table, dragged there, as it were, and, as they had done before again and again, his eyes traveled to the fire. A thought flashed to his troubled mind. He went eagerly to the fireplace, and kneeling down searched feverishly for some charred fragments of the paper that so threatened him. Nothing could have shown more clearly how unhinged he was. A paper burnt eight months ago would scarcely be traceable, by even one atom, near a fire that had been burning constantly since Helen’s return some days ago, or in a fireplace, or on a hearthrug, that Caroline Leavitt most certainly had had thoroughly cleaned each day since the partial removal of Helen’s taboo had made such cleanly housewifery possible. It had been a crazed thought, bred in an overwrought mind. Often acute mania discloses itself in just some such small irregularity of conduct.
Of course, he found nothing where there could be nothing to find. But it unsettled him again greatly. He rose from his knees and stood a long time deeply troubled, staring vacantly into space.
Presently he looked quickly behind him, but not this time with the nervous tremor of the ghost-ridden, but rather with the trained, skilled investigation of the steel-nerved housebreaker, the quick movement of one who wishes to make sure he is unobserved.
“Afraid of a dead man!” He laughed at the very thought. But the living—ah, that was very much another matter. He was afraid of the living, deadly afraid of his own brother—of poor hunted Hugh—of a slip of a girl, and of every breathing creature that might find, through search or by accident, and disclose, the incriminating document. For it, murder had been in his heart, in the hour he had written it. And because of it, something akin to murder throbbed and sickened in him now.
He looked about the room again and again for some possible hiding-place. Then all at once he looked at the door through which Hugh had gone, and his face grew livid and terrible. Hughmustgo. He must not, he should not, search this room and its hideous possibilities again. He must go: he should. If only the boy’d go and go into safety! How gladly he, Stephen, would aid him, and provide for him too. But, if Hugh would not go in that way, why, then he should go in another. Pryde had taken his resolve. He would not waver now.
He rang the bell, and moved to the table, and stood looking down on the notepaper there.
“You rung, sir?” Barker asked.
“Yes. There’s a camp near here, I believe?”
“Just over the hill, sir.”
“Simmons the gardener still lives in the cottage?”
“Yes, sir.” The girl glowed, and was almost inarticulate with eagerness. “But, sir, if you want some one to go over to the camp, sir——”
“That will do,” Pryde told her curtly.
“Very—very good, sir,” she almost sobbed it, and slunk out, disappointed and abashed.
Stephen watched her go impatiently, and then turned back to the table, his face tense and set. He picked up a piece of paper, sat down, dipped a pen in the ink—and then laid the pen down, remembering what had, in all probability, been last written at that table, with ink from this well—perhaps with this penholder! The nib was new, and careful “Aunt Caroline” had had the inkstand cleaned and filled. Stephen sighed and took up the pen. Then he frowned—at the embossed address at the head of the sheet. He tore it off, looked at the waste-paper basket, then at the fire, but neither seemed quite safe enough to share this latest secret of his penmanship. He put the torn-off engraved bit of paper carefully in his pocket, and began to write very slowly, with wonderful care.
The writing was not his own. Versatility in hand-writings had always been the greatest deftness of his versatile hands. “Hugh Pryde, wanted for desertion, is in hiding at Deep Dale. A Friend.” He wrote it relentlessly, his lip curving in scorn at the threadbare pseudonym. Then he gave a long look up at Helen’s portrait still radiant over the mantel. Then a thought of Hugh, and of the boyhood days they had shared, came to him chokingly. He propped his head in his hands, and sat and gazed ruefully at the treachery he had just written. So absorbed was he in his sorry scrutiny that he did not hear a step in the hall, and he jumped a little, woman-like, when his cousin closed the door behind her. With a quick, stealthy movement he folded the sheet of paper and thrust it into his coat “Oh, Helen, it’s you!” he said rather jerkily.
“Hugh is growing very impatient, Stephen,” she said, coming nearer; “will you go to him now?”
“Yes—yes—of course. I was just going. There’s no time to lose; none. I hope he has grown more reasonable.”
“How do you mean?” Helen spoke sharply.
“About leaving here, of course.” His voice was as sharp.
“We both know that he can’t do that yet,” she returned decidedly—“not until——”
Stephen came to her imperiously. “Helen, it’s folly for him to stay.”
“No,” she retorted hotly. “For I am sure, quite sure, we are going to find the proofs we want—and it is only here we can look for them.”
“But if you don’t find them?” he reminded her.
“We will.”
“You haven’t yet,” Stephen told her impatiently.
“In just a little while the way will come to us,” the girl said. “I am sure it will.”
“Yes, I’m sure it will,” her cousin said mendaciously. “But in the meantime the men are searching for Hugh. And, if he doesn’t leave at once, I feel certain they will come here and arrest him. I’m going to him now, to try to persuade him once more to be reasonable.” And he went from the library, his anonymous note in his pocket. Helen made no attempt to dissuade him. His words had troubled her deeply. Ought Hugh indeed to go? She couldn’t say. She could scarcely think.
She looked in the fire. She counted the clock’s ticking. She gazed at the Joss. What should she do? She asked them all that. What ought Hugh to do? They gave her no answer, no help. She rang the bell, and sank dejectedly into her father’s chair. “Do you know where Dr. Latham is?” she asked Barker when the girl came.
“No, Miss.”
“Find him. Tell him I want him—here, at once.”
It seemed an unconscionable time to her that she waited. But it was not long, as the clock told it. Barker had been quick for once.
“Dr. Latham, you must help me, you must help me now,” Helen cried excitedly as he came in.
At the sight of her face Latham turned back and closed the door carefully. Then he came to her.
“Help you—something has happened?”
“Yes. And that feeling I spoke of—that sense of nearness—has come back to me.”
The physician drew a chair close to hers. “You must put this out of your mind,” he told her pityingly.
She turned to him imploringly. “How can I? Daddy is speaking to me, he is trying to help me; and isn’t it terrible I can’t hear?—I can’t hear.”
“My dear child——”
“Oh, I know, you think I am nervous, overwrought—well, perhaps I am,” she said, rising and going to him, laying her hand on his chair’s high back, “but don’t you see the only way I can get any relief is to find out what Daddy wants to tell me?—Think how he must be suffering when he is trying so hard to speak to me, and I can’t hear—I can’t hear.” Latham made a gesture of sympathy and disbelief mingled, and laid his hand on hers, rising. “Oh, if you knew the circumstances you would help me, I know you would.”
Her voice was wild, but her eyes were clear and sane, and something in their steady light gave him pause—almost touched him with conviction. He was skilled at distinguishing truth from untruth, sanity from hallucination: that was no small part of his fine professional equipment. He studied her steadily, and then said gravely—
“What are the circumstances?”
“I know I can trust you.”
Latham smiled. “Of course.”
“Hugh has come back.”
“No?” Great physicians are rarely surprised. Horace Latham was very much surprised.
“He came this afternoon. Dr. Latham, he didn’t desert. Daddy told him he must give up his commission—he promised Hugh that he would arrange it; he must have died before he had the chance, but Hugh never knew. He enlisted under another name.”
Angela had always said that Hugh Pryde had done nothing shabby. She knew that. There was some explanation. Latham remembered it. Clever woman!
“But,” he said, “why did your father——”
“He thought Hugh had taken some money from the office,” Helen rushed on breathlessly. “The evidence was all against him; but he was innocent, Dr. Latham.” Latham’s face was non-committal, but he bowed his head gravely. “I know he was innocent,” the girl insisted, “and Daddy knows it now. Oh, Dr. Latham, can’t you help me?” She laid her little hands on his arm, and her tearful eyes pled with him eloquently.
Latham was moved. “My dear, how can I?” he said very gently.
“You don’t realize how vital this is,” she urged, “The authorities suspect Hugh’s whereabouts; they were at the office to-day, looking for him. If they find him before he can clear himself——”
“Yes——” Latham saw clearly the gravity of that. Butwhatcould he do? “Yes?”
“Don’t you see now that I must find out what Daddy wants to tell me?”
Latham was badly troubled. Hughmightbe innocent, but the chances were the other way. Angela was the most charming creature in all the universe. Helen was very charming. But their added convictions were no evidence in a court of law, and not much before the tribunal of his own masculine judgment.
“Miss Bransby,” he told the trembling girl sadly, “if I could help you to understand, I would; but I—I—don’t know the way.”
“But you believe there is a way?” Helen said, eagerly. Even that much from his lips would be something. Every one knew Dr. Latham was wise and thoughtful and careful. “You do believe there is a way?” she repeated wistfully.
“Perhaps.” He spoke almost as wistfully as she had. “If one could only find it; but so many unhappy people have tried to stretch a hand across that gulf, and so few have succeeded—and even when they have—most of the messages that have come to them have been either frivolous or beyond our understanding.”
“But we shall find the way—we shall find it,” Helen told him positively.
“Well,” Latham said, begging the psychic question—putting it aside for the more material quandary, “somehow we will find a way to get Hugh out of this difficulty. Where is he now?”
“With Stephen,” Helen told him.
“Stephen—Stephen’s the very man to help us,” Latham said cheerfully.
Helen felt perfectly sure that Stephen might be bettered for the work in hand, but she had no time to say so, even if she would, for at that moment Mrs. Hilary ran through the door, opening it abruptly, and closing it with a clatter.
“Oh! Helen,” she cried—and then she saw Latham, and paused disconcerted.
“He knows all about Hugh, Angela,” Helen said.
“Thank goodness! Now perhaps we shan’t be long! Something dreadful has happened. My chauffeur has just brought me a note. The detectives have found out that Hugh has been at my house. Two detectives are waiting there now to question me. They may be here any moment. Thank goodness Palmer had the sense to send me word. But, what shall we do? They may be here any moment, I tell you.”
“Yes,” Latham said, “unless they have been here already.” He went to the bell and rang it. Why he rang he did not say. And neither of the women asked him, only too content, as all but the silliest women, or the bitterest, are, to throw the responsibility of immediate practical action in such dilemmas on to a man they trusted. The three waited in silence until Barker said—
“You rang, miss?”
“I rang, Barker,” Latham answered. “Has any one been here lately asking for Mr. Hugh?”
“Yes, sir. This afternoon, sir.”
“This afternoon!” Helen cried in dismay.
“Yes, miss, about an hour ago, two men come—came.”
“What did you tell them?” Latham asked quickly. “I told them the truth, sir, of course, as I ’adn’t never been told to tell them anything else, that he has never been here, not once since the master died.”
“Quite right,” Latham said cordially. “And, Barker, if they should happen to come back, let me know at once, and I’ll speak to them.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And—Barker, did they see any one but you?”
“No, sir.”
“You are sure?”
“Oh yes, sir. I stood at the hall window and watched them until the road turned, and I couldn’t see them no more.”
“They will come back,” Helen almost sobbed as the door closed behind Barker.
“When they come back Hugh will not be here,” Latham told her confidently.
“Then you are going to help us?”
“Of course.” Latham smiled at her. In all his years of conventional rectitude, he had never defied the law of his land; and he fully realized the heinousness of aiding a deserter soldier to escape arrest—and in war time too—and its possible consequences. But he was staunch in friendship, he was greatly sorry for Helen, be the merits of Hugh’s case what they might, and he knew that Angela’s eye was on him. And this thing he could do. To raise the dead to the girl’s aid he had no necromancy, but to smuggle Hugh away he might easily compass, if no more time were lost. “Of course,” he repeated. “I must. Go and tell Hugh to come here as quickly as he can.”
“Yes,” Helen said eagerly. “Oh, thank you, Doctor.”
“That’s all right,” he said cheerfully.
Helen hurried away. Latham held out his hand, and Angela came to him and put hers in it. She asked him no question, and for a space he stood thinking.
“Now, dear,” he said in a moment.
“Yes,” she said eagerly.
“You must go at once.”
“I know—but where can I go?”
“Home.”
“Home!” She echoed his word in consternation.
“Yes, go back as if nothing had happened.” He put his arm about her and led her towards the door.
“As if nothing had happened?” she said feebly.
“Keep those men there until we have a chance to get Hugh safely away.”
“Oh——” she cried in a panic. “Oh—I couldn’t.”
“You must.” If “must” is the one word no woman forgives any man ordinarily, it can on the other hand be the sweetest she ever hears—at the right moment, from the right man. Angela accepted it meekly, and proudly too. “But what can I say to them?” she begged.
“Oh, say—anything, anything.”
“But, Horace, what does one say to detectives?”
“You can say whatever comes into your head,” he replied, smiling into her eyes. “After all they are only men.”
Angela dimpled. “Yes—so they are—just men. I dare say I can manage.”
“I dare say you can,” Horace Latham retorted dryly.
“Hugh will be down directly,” Helen told Latham as she came in, a moment after Mrs. Hilary had gone.
“Good. I will take him away in my car, and find some place where he can stay safely until we can get at the truth of this.”
“Ah, that is good of you,” Helen thanked him.
“Remember,” Latham reminded her gravely, “sooner or later Hugh must give himself up.”
“He knows that,” Helen said bravely.
“I drive my own car now,” the doctor said briskly, “so we can start at once. Be sure he’s ready.”
“Oh, yes,” she said.
“Then I’ll get the car and bring it round,” he said over his shoulder as he went.
She scarcely heard his last words, or realized that he had gone. She stood very still, one hand on the table—one on her breast. There was something trance-like in the tense, slender figure. Her wide eyes glazed. Her breath came in slow, heavy beats. Presently she gave a great sigh, lifted her hand from her breast to her head, then moved slowly towards the bookcase, her hand stretched out in front of her now, as if leading and pointing. She moved mechanically, as sleep walkers move, and almost as if impelled from behind. Her face was still and mask-like.
She had almost reached the bookshelves, almost touched with her outheld hand “David Copperfield,” when Stephen came into the room. Instantly something odd and uncanny in her manner arrested him. For one moment he stood riveted, spell-bound, then he shook off furiously the influence that held him, and exclaimed abruptly, peremptorily, “Helen! Helen!”
His voice broke the spell, and she turned to him blankly, like one who had but just awakened from heavy sleep. A moment she gazed at him unseeingly; then she moaned and tottered. She would have fallen, but Stephen caught her and held her. The spell, the faintness, whatever it was, passed or changed, and she moved slowly from his hold, greatly excited, but conscious, and more nearly normal; the rapt look on her face still, but penetrated more and more by her own personality, awake and normally sentient.
All at once she realized. In one flash of time, one great beat of emotion,she saw.
“Stephen!” she panted.
“What is it?” Pryde said, guiding her to a chair, and urging her into it gently.
“Stephen,” she repeated, both palms pressed on her forehead. “Oh!”
“What is the matter?” he asked hoarsely, dazed and perturbed.
“Just now—when you spoke”; her voice gathered tone as she continued, grew bell-clear, ringing, flute-fine, “the message was coming—it almost got through, it almost got through! Something was telling me what to do to save Hugh.”
Her eyes glowed like deep blue lamps, around her face a veil of transparent lambent whiteness clung, and transfigured it. The girl was in ecstasy.
Stephen Pryde was terribly shaken. He looked at Helen in fear and amazement. Then, unable to refrain, though he tried his strongest, he looked over his shoulder uneasily. When he could speak his voice was harsh and unnatural.
“Impossible,” he said roughly; “impossible.”
“No, no,” the girl whispered exultantly, clearly. “I know—I can’t tell you anything, but that I know, I know, I know.”
There was a power in the girl-voice that reached and subdued Stephen. He was impressed, almost convinced.
“You know,” he said slowly, wonderingly. “Did this message—did it indicate some paper—tell you where to look for it?” For his soul, for his life, for his whole future at stake, he could not keep the words back. They were forced from him, as the hand of the player plucks the melody from a harp—the melody, or the discord. Something stronger than he ever had been, or ever could be, commanded and he obeyed, bowed to the infinite; his own conscience turned traitor and linked against him, linked with some nameless mightiness he had scoffed at and denied and defied.
“Paper?” Helen said. “What paper do you mean?”
He rushed on, goaded and driven. “I don’t know—only if there were some evidence here that would clear Hugh, it would be in the shape of a paper that—that——” His tongue clove thick in his mouth, clotted and mumbled with nervousness. He could scarcely enunciate; he could not enunciate clearly—“that seems reasonable, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, of course,” Helen agreed. “No—nothing of that sort came to me—the whole thing was so vague—so indistinct. But I am sure now; it will come back to me—and help me—I am sure it will.” The glow on her face, the great light in her eyes, grew brighter and brighter.
Stephen Pryde was almost in the state he had been in when he had dropped his glass on the fender and cried, “Who’s there? Uncle Dick!” While Helen spoke he kept looking over his shoulder. He was tremblingly conscious of asomethingin the room, a something that he felt was a some one—a presence. It almost overpowered him, the conviction, the chill, and the unprecedented sensation, but, summoning his iron will, he resolved to fight on; and with a flash of chicanery that was nothing short of genius, and nothing less than satanic, he determined even to take advantage of the dead man’s message. For it had come to that with him now. That Richard Bransby was in the room, and trying “to communicate,” he now no more doubted than Helen herself did. Well! let it be so. Let the dead man get the message through, if he could! He—he, Stephen—would take it, twist it, turn it, use it, seize it—destroyit, if need were. He had defied God and His angels, his own conscience, fate, the law of the land, and now he defied the soul and the consciousness and all the craft of one old man dead—dead and returned.
He turned to Helen impressively. “If—if it would only come to you now.”
“What?” the girl said uncomprehendingly.
“If I could find whatever it is—if you would help me to find it,” he insinuated earnestly.
“How can I?” she faltered.
“Try,” he urged masterfully—“try and get that message again.” His hands were so cold they ached. Sweat ran on his brow. But his voice was firm, his eyes imperative, compelling.
“I can’t,” Helen said piteously.
“You must, I tell you, you must.” He stamped his foot in his insistence.
“Stephen, you frighten me,” she said, shrinking.
“Try, Helen, try.” He whispered it gently, soothingly.
Like some beautiful, breathing marionette, she rose slowly, very slowly, pressed one hand over her eyes—stood rigid, but swaying, poised for motion, tuned for revelation—for receiving and transmitting a message.
Stephen Pryde watched her with straining eyes. His gasping breath froze on his stiffening lips. He put out one daring hand, and just touched her sleeve. At that touch some negative current seemed to sweep and surge through her. She recoiled, she shuddered, and then she relaxed from all her intensity, and sank wearily down into the nearest chair, saying dully—
“I can’t Stephen, I can’t!”
The banished blood leapt back to his face, and laughed in his heart, danced through his veins. His whole attitude was changed in one flash of time; the attitude of his flesh, the attitude of his mind. Helen had failed. The thing she had hoped, he had feared and defied, could not be done. It was farce. It was fraud—fraud worked on them by their caitiff nerves, as “fortunes” forsooth were told for a “bob” by old crones, from tea leaves—on the Brixton Road. And almost he had been persuaded, he, Stephen Pryde! Pshaw! Well, his fears were done for and past now once for all. The dead man could not reach her! The dead man; a handful of dust or of rot in a grave!
He turned to Helen in cold triumph. “I knew it—I knew it,” he exulted. “Don’t you see now, Helen, how you are deceiving yourself? If there was a message for you, why shouldn’t it come? I tried to help you—to put myself in sympathy—you saw how useless it was.”
But Helen had been too near the unseen, too far across the dread borderland. Doubt could not touch her again. She had stood in the edge of the light. She had felt. Almost she had heard and had seen. She knew. She shook her head, without troubling to answer him or look toward him. She shook her head and she smiled.
“Where’s Latham?” Pryde said in a brisk, matter-of-fact tone.
She answered him as crisply, and as commonplace in manner and word.
“He is going to take poor Hugh away in his car; he has gone to get it ready.”
“Oh!”
“He is going to take him to some place where he will be safe until we can find the evidence that will clear him.”
“But there isn’t any,” Pryde said with truculent brutality; and his eyes measured yet again, gloatingly, the distance and the angle from the writing-table to the fireplace.
“I know there is,” Helen said quietly.
“There can’t be,” Stephen stormed, almost losing grip of himself—very nearly had he reached his breaking-point. “I tell you, there can’t be.”
Helen sat and studied her cousin curiously. She was not a thoughtful girl, and the abnormal strains through which she had been passing for some time now had conspired to make thought peculiarly difficult; but there was much in Stephen’s manner, in what he said and in how he said it, in his face, his eyes, his gestures, his inconsistencies, to compel thought and arouse suspicion, even in a mind as tired and as little given to analysis as hers was.
She was on his track now, not in the least knowing or surmising what was hidden in his soul, but sensing that there was something, something that it behooved her, for Hugh’s sake, to fathom. Whether she might have fathomed it, as she sat watching him with troubled, doubting eyes, would be difficult to guess. And in a few moments her detective train of thought was broken by Hugh’s voice. He came in gravely but cheerfully, and said, as he stood smiling down on her tenderly—
“Here I am, Helen.”
She smiled back at him, little minded to show less courage than her man did in this climax moment of their ordeal.
“Doctor Latham will be here in a minute; he’s going to take you away in his car,” she said as cheerfully as Hugh himself had spoken, and rising and linking her arm in his.
“But I can’t go, Helen,” Hugh told her,—“not yet—it wouldn’t be right for me to go until I have searched this room—I—why, if I turn towards the door even, somethingpushesme back. I mustn’t go, dear; I must search first. It won’t take long—I can do it before they get here.”
Stephen came to his brother, and laid his hands on Hugh’s shoulders. As Stephen came towards them, Helen drew a little away.
“No,” Stephen said earnestly, “no; why not go with Latham now, and then, come back—when it is safe?”
Hugh wavered. This elder brother had always influenced him much. They had been orphans together, and in their early orphaned days, the elder had been something of father and mother too to Hugh Pryde. Stephen’s earliest recollection was of their mother; Hugh’s earliest was of Stephen, mending a broken toy for him, and comforting him with a silver threepence. A thousand times Stephen had befriended him. Stephen was proved wise, again and again, and kind and disinterested.
“That would give me more time,” the boy said, looking gratefully into the affectionate, brotherly eyes that were bent steadily on his—“that’s not a bad idea. If Latham took me as far as the Heath they’d never find me there—never—then late to-night I could come back.”
“No,” Stephen interrupted, “not the Heath—it must be some place where I can get to you; it may not be safe to come back to-night—they may leave some one here to watch.”
“Yes,” Hugh agreed, “they’re almost sure to do that. Where shall I wait, Stevie?”
Stephen Pryde winced at the old name of their playfellow days—Hugh had not used it for years. But he had put his foot upon the fratricidal plowshare of deceit and treachery, and it was beyond him to withdraw it now. At that bitter moment he would have spared his brother if he could—but it was too late. Suffering acutely (probably Cain suffered so once), he said emphatically, “Oakhill! The wood on the other side.”
“But if they find me there,” Hugh objected, “I wouldn’t have a chance to get away.”
Stephen’s hands were still on his brother’s shoulders and he leaned his weight upon them.
“They won’t find you, my boy, trust me.”
It was enough, and Hugh’s answer came instant and content.
“All right, Stephen!”
“Good-by,” the elder said hastily. “I’ll go hurry up Latham; the sooner you are away from here now the better.” He released Hugh, and turned to go. But Hugh held out both his hands, and for a long moment the brothers stood looking earnestly into each other’s eyes, hands gripped—Helen, apart, watching them, dissatisfied. Then Stephen turned on his heel and walked resolutely away, out of the room.
As Stephen’s step died in the distance, all Hugh’s uncertainty came back, and he turned to Helen disconcertedly.
“I hope this is the right thing I am doing.”
“I am sure it is,” the girl said. “Dr. Latham thinks so too.”
“Are you? Still something keeps telling me I shouldn’t go—I dare say it’s my imagination.”
“Why, yes,” she reassured him, “what difference could it make, Hugh, whether you search this afternoon or this evening?”
“None, of course,” he admitted; “the strain has lasted so long it’s on my nerves. Oh,” he broke out anew, “if I could only think where to look now. But I can’t—I can’t.” He looked about the room distractedly.
Helen came to him, and put her hand on him. “It is going to be all right, Hugh—I’m certain it’s going to be all right.”
“Yes, I hope so,” he said; “but, Helen, if it shouldn’t?”
“If it shouldn’t?” she said, startled, and touched too now by his discomfort, his vacillation.
“This would have to be good-by, Helen.”
“No—no—no!” she said, choking.
“It would,” Hugh insisted sadly. “Oh, I dare say my record at the front—would help me; no doubt the penalty wouldn’t be very severe—but the whole story of the robbery would have to come out—the scandal would always cling to me—I couldn’t let you share that.”
“Do you think I’d mind?”
He took her face in his hands. “You don’t realize what unhappiness it would bring you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said proudly. “Iwantto share it with you.”
“No, Helen—unless I clear myself I can never see you again.” She caught his hands, and held, them to her heart. He whitened under and over his war-tan, but he added almost sternly, “I mean it.”
“And what about me?” she cried passionately. “Have you thought about that?”
“It’s you I am thinking of, believe that.”
“Oh!” she cried, hurt, angry, rebellious, freeing herself from his touch; but he caught her back and held her fast. He kissed her again and again, and then—again.
“Hugh, my boy, my boy,” Mrs. Leavitt sobbed, bustling in upon them.
Helen moved away, and sat down wearily. Hugh bent to his aunt’s embrace. “There, there, Aunt Caroline, don’t cry,” he entreated, as soon as he could disentangle himself enough to be articulate.
“I can’t help it—I can’t help it,” Mrs. Leavitt wailed.
“Yes, but such big tears,” he coaxed, dabbing at them affectionately with his khaki-colored handkerchief; “there, there, dear.”
But the poor childless Niobe would not be comforted.
“Oh! Hugh,” she sobbed, “you won’t let them take you away—you are not going to let them take you away—promise me.”
“Why, of course not,” he said soothingly.
“I’m so frightened,” the woman moaned.
“There is no need to be frightened,” he told her briskly, “if you will only do your part, dear Aunt Caroline.”
“What is my part?” Caroline Leavitt asked falteringly.
“None of the servants know I have been here—not even Barker has seen me—get them away so they won’t see me leave.”
“Yes, dear,” his aunt said promptly, alert, business-like, Martha ready and practical again under the stimulant of something definite to do, some tangible service to render, some woman’s help to contribute.
“Go quickly, won’t you?” But he need not have said it, for already she was hurrying from the room, and only half pausing to say, “Yes, at once. You will come back, Hugh—you are sure to come back?”
“Yes,” he said confidently, “don’t worry, I’ll come back.”
“I’ll get them all in the kitchen and lock the door,” she said grimly, and went.
Hugh nodded and he smiled until the door closed. Then he turned sadly to Helen.
“Well, dear, I’d better go now.” She could not speak, but she nodded—as bravely as she could. “Yes—keep up your courage, dear,” he told her; “everything will turn out all right.”
But at that she broke down and threw her arms about him convulsively.
“I can’t let you go, Hugh, I can’t let you go.”
“I must go, dear, you know I must.” He kissed her—just once, and put her from him, and went resolutely to the door. But in the doorway Dr. Latham met him, and pushed him back into the room.
“I have bad news, Hugh,” the physician said.
“Bad news?” Helen cried.
Hugh said nothing. He knew.
“They have come for you—they know you are here,” Latham said quietly.
Hugh turned pityingly to Helen—his one thought of her, to comfort her. But Helen, womanlike, was all courage now. She held out both hands; a moment he pressed them, then turned and went, with a soldier’s gait, toward the door.
“Scotland Yard men or a sergeant?” he asked Latham as he passed him.
“Soldiers,” Latham said.
“It’s tecs,” Barker cried in a wrathful panic, bursting through the doorway. “Me not know tecs! That’s likely. I knew it was tecs the ’stant I laid eyes on ’em—dressed up in a uneeform—but they’s tecs.” True to her type, she had sensed “police” even through tunics and khaki. The dullest servant, and the most inexperienced, have an unfailing flare for the “tec.”
Latham pushed her gently from the room, but she ran down the hall crying, “It’s tecs, I tell you; it’s tecs!”
“Military police, I suppose, or a non-com. and two privates,” Hugh said as he and Latham went toward the morning room.
“Two outside the door,” Latham said, “a non-commissioned officer in the morning room—a decent chap—very.”
Hugh nodded. “Oh, yes—and he’ll behave very decently to me—they usually do in such cases—and a good deal is left to their discretion. Undoubtedly it’s a non-com. and a trusted one. Good-by, Latham, and, I say, thanks awfully.”
“I’m coming in with you.”
“No, go back to Helen, I’d rather.”
Latham wrung Hugh’s hand; and Hugh passed into the morning room and closed the door.
“Here I am,” he said briskly.
The soldier standing waiting stepped back with an oath.
“Tare an’ ’ounds,” he exclaimed violently, “don’t you bey after tellin’ me it’s you, Carter.”
“Yes, Kinsella, I’m Pryde, wanted for desertion, all right. But, I say, it’s hellish luck that they’ve sent you after me!”
“Sent and bey damned to thim. Oi’ll not bey after doin’ ut. The loikes uv you! Oi’ll toike the stroips from me coat and ate ’em forst. Oi’ve fought the Hoons for ’em, and Oi’ll bey after foighten uv ’em again, but sorra a fist or a harm’ll Oi putt on you, Tom Carter—or Mister Proid, sor, whichiver, whoiver, ye are.”
“I’m both,” Hugh told him. “Where’s your warrant?”
“Me warrent is it? It’s no warrent uv moin, my boy, ‘sor’ I’m after mainin’. It’s a dirthy scrap uv paiper, an’ that’s what it is, fut to spat at the Imperur uv the Hoons—cursed bey the doiy they giv’ it myself.”
“Where are we going?” Hugh asked.
“To Hell wid going! you’re stayin’.”
“That’ll mean shooting, if not hanging, for both of us, Kinsella.”
“Mother of God! is it axin’ me to bey toiking ye that ye are? Me, that ye carried on yer back and fed from yer cup fer all this woirld’s uf Oi’d been yer baby an’ you the own mither uv me! We’ve starved and we’ve shivered togither. We’ve stuck in the mud to our necks, glued there loike flies in th’ amber, we’ve shared our rum tot and our billy, we’ve gone over the top shoulder to shoulder—we’ve stood so close Oi’ve heard your heart bate, and you’ve heard moine, whin we’ve been waitin’ for the wurd to come to dash into the curtain uv fire uv the barrage, and togither we’ve watched the flammin’ ruins uv Europe—and our pals dropping and writhing under the very feet uv us as if they’d been lice and Wilheim their Moses—Me arrest you! Oi’d sooner bey stealin’ the shillin’s off the eyelids uv a dead baby!” His own Irish eyes were brimful, and there was almost a sob in the lilt of the brogue on the tip of his tongue.
Hugh Pryde marched up to him with a laugh and pushed him down into a chair, then he swung himself onto a table and leaned over Kinsella, one hand gripped on his arm.
“Listen to reason,” he said. “We are soldiers——”
“Begorra thin Oi’m a man though, an’ whin Oi can’t bey the both, it’s man Oi’m choosin’ to bey, an’ not spalpeen.”
“We are soldiers,” Hugh said sternly; “you are here to arrest me, and you are going to do it.”
“And Oi’m not thin,” the other retorted. “Our Lady’d blush to own me, if ever Oi did such an Orangeman dirthy trick—an’ me a mimber of the Sodality meself win Oi was a boy. Oi’d sooner bey shootin’ me own brains into puddin’, an’ savin’ the Hoons the throuble uv it. Me shame the loikes uv yerself—Oi’d as soon say a wrongin’ wourd to the Saints in their shrines.”
“Listen,” Hugh told him again. “You want to help me?”
“Oi do that very same thing, thin.”
“Then do precisely as I tell you. I am going with you. I’d have had to give myself up in a day or two. I was going to—as soon as I’d done something I had to do here—something important. Now, I want you to stay here quietly, and let me go back for half an hour. Then I’ll come here, and we’ll go together and do what has to be done.”
“We will not thin.”
“You want to help me?”
“Sure it’s yourself as knows that.”
“Then you will do—as I say. It’s the only way, partner. I’ll be back.” At the door he turned to say, “By the way, Kin, I did not desert.”
“Glory bey to God, as if Oi didn’t know that.”
“But I seemed to have done so. It can be cleared up, and it shall; but the authorities are quite in the right—they thought I had.”
“An’ be damned to ’um—as blithering a set of auld wimin as iver wore petticoats. Authorities is ut? Meddlin’ and blunderin’ an’ playin’ the goat uv ut. That’s how they’ve been runnin’ this war from the furst day, and from the furst day Oi’ve said it. Oh!” he broke forth, “don’t ye bey after givin’ yerself up—and don’t ye bey after axin’ me to help ye do it. Oi’d—Oi’d—Oi’d rather turn Hoon and lick-spitter their cur uv a Kaiser than hurt wan hair uv yer head. I luv ye, Tom Carter. Oi sensed ye were a gintleman the furst toime Oi saw ye—and Oi loiked ye in spoit uv ut.”
“Will you wait for me for half an hour?”
“Toike yer toime,” Kinsella said grimly.
In the hall Hugh found Barker, and gave her a startling order for a tray of refreshments to be taken to his “friend” in the morning room.
True to her word Mrs. Leavitt had packed the servants into the kitchen—and then locked it. But she had been unable to find Barker, and was still beating the house for her.
The larder was accessible, and Barker foraged nobly.
She carried a tray so heavy with good things that she only just could carry it, into the morning room, a delighted smile on her face and her best apron, hurriedly donned, very much askew.
But the morning room was empty.
The window was open, and down the path marched two surprised privates, hurried and cursed by Sergeant Patrick Kinsella.
“Uv all th’ auld fools uv wimin,” he muttered, “ut isn’t the man wat’s wanted at all at all, but anither entoirly. The bloak we’re after wantin’s been gonn two hours and more—halfway to London, and out ur th’ counthry by this. Doouble-quick, now.” And they double-quicked.