"Everything is so quiet along this Potomac," Ralston wrote, "that Watson is getting more pessimistic about Henry Underwood than ever. He has long felt that to lock Henry up would be the quickest means of giving High Ridge a long-needed rest, and now he feels confirmed in his faith--or in his unfaith, if you take that point of view. I have been tempted to stir up a little local ruction myself, just to give your side some moral support,--but I am not sure it would be moral support under those circumstances. How is that?"
"I'd better go back," mused Burton, as he folded the letter. "I'm accomplishing nothing here, and I'm wasting time." To Welch he said aloud: "Tell them I am going back to High Ridge this afternoon."
Welch made the announcement. After an undemonstrative silence of some moments, Washitonka put a question which Welch translated.
"He asks if you will see the man who lies on his back all the time."
"Ben Bussey?"
Washitonka caught the name and nodded.
"Yes, I shall see Ben Bussey," said Burton. "What then?"
Washitonka went to a side of the teepee and from a pile of folded blankets he drew out a red-stone pipe, beautifully carved. With an air of dignity that would have done credit to a Spanish grandee, he carried it to Burton and placed it in his hands with a guttural injunction which Welch translated.
"He wants you to give it to the cripple. He says he taught the boy to carve pipes many moons ago, and Ben's father ate of his corn and slept under his buffalo robe like a brother."
"Thank him for the pipe," dictated Burton. "Tell him I will carry it safely to Ben Bussey, the man who cannot walk, and it will speak to him of old friends. Ask him if he knows when Ben's father died."
But instantly the mask of reserve dropped over the bronze features that for a moment had looked human.
"He doesn't remember," said Welch.
There was no use in waiting for a lapse into memory when ignorance was so persistently fostered. Burton rose.
"Ask Washitonka to accept from me this tobacco," he said. "It is in farewell. And for the women in his teepee I have brought presents." He took from his pocket two small hand-mirrors, and presented one to Ehimmeshunka and one to Pahrunta. Old Ehimmeshunka received hers with the delight of a child. She looked in it and laughed, and laughed and laughed, wrinkling up her queer old face in a manner wonderful to see. Pahrunta received hers in silence. She indeed hid it at once in her dress with an eagerness that showed its ownership was prized, but she did not show the excitability of Ehimmeshunka. Instead, she looked steadily at Burton. While he was making his final and formal adieux to Washitonka, he several times caught Pahrunta's serious eyes fixed upon him. But when he left the teepee she was busy over her work and gave no heed to him.
The train went out at four. Half an hour before it was due, Burton carried his bag over to the station platform. Then, merely from the habit of motion, he began pacing up and down the length of the board walk, waiting for the train. He was not in a cheerful mood, for his expedition had been a failure, and he was going back to a situation no more promising than he had left. As he turned on his heel at the extreme end of the walk, a blinding flash of light struck his eyes and made him wince. Where in the world did it come from? As he looked about, it again flashed dazzlingly into his eyes. A recollection of the way in which, as a youngster, he had indulged in the pleasing diversion of bewildering the passers in the street with a properly manipulated bit of looking-glass, helped him now to form a theory as to the present phenomena. Some urchin was having fun with the paleface! He looked carefully about, but there was no one in sight, nor was there seemingly any place on the bare prairie for a mischievous child to hide,--unless it was behind that leaning fence which served the railroad for a snow break in winter but which was now overgrown with the rank weeds of the summer. As he turned a suspicious eye upon it, he caught a momentary flash, instantly hidden. With a smile on his lips he sauntered down to the place, expecting to pull out from among the weeds some lithe, wriggling, brown-skinned boy, but to his utter amaze he found, crouching among the tall weeds, the heavy-featured Pahrunta, in her hand the mirror he had given her an hour before, and which she had used to attract his attention. Her attitude and actions showed plainly that she was anxious not to be seen from the teepees, and with a quick understanding of her desire for concealment Burton walked on a few steps, lit a cigar, and then slowly sauntered back as far as the fence and stopped near the place where she crouched.
"Did you want to tell me something?" he asked, speaking distinctly and hoping she might be more of a linguist than had yet appeared.
Such seemed, indeed, to be the case.
"You--friend," she said in a throaty guttural, helping her halting speech by pointing her finger at him.
"I am your friend,--yes," said Burton.
But she shook her head.
"You--friend--man--" In a rapid pantomime she struck her own arm, shrank from the blow, and threw a handful of leaves before her which she followed with her eye as they blew away. It was so vivid a sketch of the scene at the station at High Ridge when Selby struck down her outstretched hand and sent her baskets flying down the steps before her that Burton was thrilled by the skill of it. She wished to know if he were a friend of Selby's! For a moment he hesitated as to the policy of his answer; then, hoping the truth might prevail, he shook his head.
"No. Enemy. I follow on his trail. Some day scalp him." He felt that it was the proper place for pantomime on his part, but feared his ability. But she seemed to catch his meaning, and to his great relief she smiled in satisfaction.
"Washitonka friend," she said, pointing to the teepee. "Me no friend." She spat upon the ground. "Washitonka hide. Me show." And from the folds of her garment she suddenly brought out a small black object. It was an old-fashioned daguerreotype case. She opened it and held it toward Burton, but when he would have taken it into his own hand she drew back.
"See, no take," she said. Evidently she would not trust it out of her own possession.
He bent down to look. The case held, on one side, one of those curious early portraits which can only be seen when the light is right, and then come out with the startling distinctness of ghost-pictures. He turned her hand, which clutched the case tightly, until he caught the picture. Two young men--rather, a boy and a young man--looked out from behind the glass with the odd effect of an older fashion in hair and dress. The older of the two had the close-set eyes and narrow face that characterized Selby. It was Selby as he might have been twenty odd years ago,--a young man under twenty. The other might, he thought, be Ben Bussey. Of that he could not be sure, but he felt eagerly sure of Selby. He put his finger on the face and looked at Pahrunta.
"Selby?" he said. "The man that struck you?"
She shut the case, hastily hid it in her dress, and drew back among her concealing weeds. With the skill and noiselessness of an animal, she slunk in among them so that Burton himself was hardly able to locate her with his eye. There was no use in following her. If he had learned nothing else, he had learned that it is not possible to get from an Indian any information except what he wishes to give.
At that moment the whistle announced the approach of the train. Pahrunta had timed her confession so that he could not press her farther if he wanted to. He walked back to the platform, picked up his bag, and swung himself on. As they puffed past the weed-grown snow-break a moment later, he looked out, but no sign could he catch of the skulking figure he knew to be hidden there. But on the chance he tossed a gleaming coin backward toward it.
He found a quiet seat and gave himself up to analyzing the situation. Just what had he gained? A few disconnected facts. He pieced them together.
1. Old Ehimmeshunka did use in her basket work the peculiar knot he had identified in the woven lilac withes and in the knotted cord that bound Hadley.
2. Washitonka was either naturally very secretive or he had been warned not to talk. The latter theory was strengthened by the fact that he had seemed to know something about the two attacks on Burton, and by Pahrunta's fear of discovery.
3. Pahrunta had broken the imposed silence, under the spur of resentment toward Selby, and revealed the fact that there was the link of an ancient friendship between Selby and the red man. The presentation of the portrait as a souvenir could mean nothing else.
4. Washitonka had most carefully refrained from mentioning Selby, although he had avowed his friendship for Bussey, Ben's father.
5. Yet Dr. Underwood had spoken of Bussey and young Selby as companions in the wild early days. They had hunted together and together had roamed among the Indians. As civilization caught up with them, Selby had dropped the ways of the Indian, while Bussey, more of a Bohemian by nature, had gone with them when they went. But in the beginning they had all been intimate, and the fact that Ben (if it were Ben, as seemed likely) had been taken in the same picture with Selby, showed that the intimacy had extended over a number of years. Dr. Underwood, too, had formed acquaintances among the Indians, but his day, apparently, was later.
Had old Ehimmeshunka, who wove baskets like no one else in the tribe, taught her skill to young Selby when he went about among them in the garb of that old portrait, trading calicoes "warranted to fade in the first wash," as the doctor said, for their mink and muskrat skins? That was the prime question, and he could hardly claim that it was certainly answered. The opportunity had existed,--that much hehadlearned. Had it been used?
"By Jove!" said Burton, suddenly struck by an idea. He leaned forward, seeing nothing, for a long time. Then he repeated, in an awestruck way, "By Jove!"
The idea had struck him hard.
When Burton reached High Ridge, it was already late in the evening. If he had followed his inclinations, he would have gone like a shot to Rowan Street, but something that he called common sense interfered. He lost no time, however, in hunting up Watson, the chief of police. The chief was at home, and was thinking of going to bed when Burton called. He didn't think of it again for quite a while.
"I feel as though I was rehearsing for private theatricals," he said, with a somewhat embarrassed laugh, after Burton had gone over his plans with him in minute detail.
"That's all right. If we get what we want, it will be worth it. If we don't, we won't be any worse off than we are now. You understand. You will see that Underwood is taken home--not before eleven o'clock--and that your plainclothes man stays with him from that minute until further orders. And no one must know that he is out of jail except the man with him. I'll see the family in the morning and explain, and I'll see Selby in the course of the morning and see that he knows the news. Then just an hour after he is in the house,--neither more nor less,--there is to be an alarm of fire. You will see about that. Then I'll see you afterwards and we'll decide whether to go on with it."
"I guess I've got it straight," said Watson. "You are responsible for this, you know, and if anything goes wrong--"
"I'll take the responsibility, all right. It will be a busy day, but I rather hope something may come of it, Mr. Watson."
Watson cleared his throat discreetly. Of course if anything did come of it, he wouldn't mind taking the credit for the result, but since he was already committed to a theory on the subject of the High Ridge mystery, he didn't care to welcome any other suggestion too enthusiastically.
Burton went to his hotel, his thoughts in an excited whirl of possibilities. There was a telegram waiting for him. He tore it open, and read it twice over before he could focus his mind on it sufficiently to understand it.
"Arrive at two tomorrow private car. Be ready to go on west with me.
"Rachel Overman."
"To-morrow!" Burton said, trying to pull his thoughts together. "What in the world is the matter? Go west? Well, hardly! Is Phil worse, I wonder. Thank heaven she doesn't arrive in the morning. But go west to-morrow! Why, what nonsense!"
He did not stop to consider that it was exactly the sort of nonsense that he had given Rachel reason to expect of him for the last twenty years.
Burton made an early call the next day at the house on Rowan Street. Leslie Underwood was in the garden when he came up, and he stopped for a moment at the gate to enjoy the picture she made. It would be impossible for any one with sensibilities not to enjoy a painted picture of a beautiful girl bending before a bed of pansies, her summer gown of blue lawn making an effective contrast to the green grass upon which its folds rippled, and her hair bare to the sun. It would therefore have merely argued brutish insensibility on Burton's part if he had not felt the charm of the real thing. Perhaps, however, it would not have been necessary for him to feel it so keenly that it seemed like a hand laid hushingly upon his heart. He stood staring in a forgetfulness of himself that would have been a valued tribute to any work of art. Some instinct warned the girl; she turned her head abruptly and then, when she saw him, she rose and came toward him, strewing the gathered pansies like many-colored jewels along the sod.
p250"He stopped for a moment at the gate to enjoy the picture she made."Page 250.
"Oh, you're back!" she exclaimed.
It was so indisputable a statement of fact that he did not attempt an answer. But perhaps she did not notice the omission, for as she withdrew her hand from his she asked gayly: "Well, what luck?"
"I'll tell you, to-morrow."
"Then you have found something?"
"This is the time, Miss Underwood, when I can properly assume the air of inscrutable mystery which belongs by all tradition to the astute detective. If I had really been up in my part I should have assumed it long ago, instead of revealing my actual ignorance so recklessly. It's rather late in the day to begin to be mysterious, I admit, but I am disposed to claim the privilege for the next twenty-four hours."
She watched him eagerly. "Something is brewing!"
"Hum,--possibly. But please observe that I don't say there is."
"I shall watch you."
"I am flattered by your notice. I begin to perceive that I have been even more improvident than I guessed in letting the opportunity to be mysteriously interesting slip until now."
She laughed, and stooped to gather her forgotten pansies.
"I believe it's good news! I know you are hopeful, because you are gay."
"Perhaps I am gay merely to hide a perturbed heart."
She looked up quickly, questioningly.
"Have you heard from Philip lately? Or his mother?" she asked. The question may have been suggested by his words or it may not.
"I received a telegram from Mrs. Overman last night. She says she is to be here to-morrow on her way west."
"Here? Oh!" The girl looked startled. "Must I see her?"
"Would you rather not?"
"Oh, I could not bear to see her--yet."
"Then you need not," said Burton promptly, reckless of Rachel's feelings on the subject. "She is only going through the town, and very likely may not leave her car."
"You are not going on with her?" she asked, with sudden alarm.
"Oh, no, indeed!"
Then, as an afterthought, she asked: "Is Philip with her?"
"She didn't say. She doesn't tell me more than she thinks is good for me to know. But I have a bit of news for you. Henry is coming home this morning."
"Oh! How is that?"
"He is under guard, of course. But even so it will be a pleasant change for him. But it is not to be spoken of outside of the house."
She looked puzzled. "That's all I am to know?"
"At present."
"Very well," she said, with a sweet meekness that made him laugh, but with a curious catch at his heart. It is dangerous for a woman to play at meekness! She recovered herself quickly, and struck gayly into another theme. "Guess who's engaged!"
They had been walking up the path to the house, but at this he stopped short. "Engaged? Here? Some one I know?"
"Yes!"
"Not your brother?"
"Henry? Why, no. What made you think of him? It's Mr. Selby!"
"And Miss Hadley?" he asked, in dismay.
"Yes! How clever of you! How did you guess?"
"Wait a minute. Don't go in just yet," said Burton, stopping at the door. He led her aside to a garden bench which stood against the wall. "I want to consider this. Tell me all you know about it."
"There is nothing more to tell. Mr. Selby hasn't called for our congratulations. But the report is abroad."
"Does your brother know it?"
"I don't know." She looked up with obvious surprise. "Why? Why do you speak of him?"
"Did it never occur to you that Henry and Selby hated each other so bitterly because they both cared for Miss Hadley?"
"Henry? Oh, impossible!"
"Not impossible at all, I assure you."
"Why, he hardly knows her."
"How long is it necessary to know a person before falling in love?"
"I have no statistics on the subject."
"Well, my word for it, it doesn't take very long sometimes. And my word for it, Henry was in love with Miss Hadley. I wish we might keep him from hearing this news for a while."
"Why, you don't think Henry will shoot Selby at sight for carrying off his girl, do you?" she laughed.
"You are a heartless girl to laugh about it. Having some one else carry off the girl you love is a much more serious matter than you seem to realize. But I am not worrying about Selby. To be sure, It would look pretty bad for Henry if Selby were assassinated the first day he was out of jail, but Mr. Selby is under the special protection of the powers of mischief who are running things here, and I have no anxiety on his behalf."
"Mrs. Bussey says that the milkman says that the Hadleys' housemaid says that Minnie was up in her room crying all day yesterday," said Leslie mischievously.
"For goodness' sake, don't let Henry hear that," exclaimed Burton. But the name reminded him of Mrs. Bussey's specialty, and he glanced rather anxiously at the open drawing-room windows under which they had been sitting. Was it his fancy, or did the curtain stir with something more palpable than the wind? What a situation for this girl to live in! It was intolerable.
He was looking at her so intently that she looked up as though he had spoken.
"What is it?" she asked swiftly. "You are hiding something from me!"
"I am trying to," he said, recovering himself. "I think my only chance of succeeding is in keeping away from you. Where is your father?"
"In the surgery, I think."
"I'm going in to speak to him." He left her a little abruptly and went to the front door where Mrs. Bussey admitted him with her old air of curiosity struggling with timid resentment. Burton returned her look with keen interest. Had she been listening at the window?
"How do you do, Mrs. Bussey? And how's Ben? I'm coming up to see him in a minute. I have a little present from an old Indian who used to know him."
Mrs. Bussey relaxed into a smile, and hurried away, and Burton went on to the surgery to find the doctor.
"I don't dare say that my soul is my own in this house without first making sure that Mrs. Bussey won't overhear me and betray the damaging secret to my dearest enemy," he said, as he shook hands. "She is always at hand when I am indiscreet. I wanted to tell you privately and with the utmost secrecy that Henry is coming home this morning,--very soon. It is a part of a little scheme I am working out. He is really to be kept under the strictest surveillance. I wanted to explain this so that you would understand the presence of the stranger who will accompany him more or less inconspicuously, and not make any remarks in regard to him,--say in the hearing of Mrs. Bussey!"
"You are very mysterious."
"I am engaged in the services of a very mysterious family. The point is simply that Henry is to seem free, and yet is really to be under close guard, and that nobody is to say anything about anything, but simply lie low and wait! You understand?"
"I don't understand a thing."
"That will do just as well, provided you are content to remain in that state."
"Does Henry understand that he is to be watched?"
"Oh, of course." Burton glanced at his watch, and rose. But the doctor detained him.
"What about that basket? Did anything come of that?" he asked eagerly.
"I found the old squaw who made it."
"Well?"
"Well!"
"What of it?"
Burton shook his head. "I don't know--yet."
"You still think--?"
"I have postponed thinking till to-morrow. Now I must go up and see Ben for a minute; I told Mrs. Bussey I was coming up. I found that his father is not forgotten up there."
"You must come back and tell me all about it," insisted the doctor. "Stay for luncheon and entertain me. Do!"
Burton shook his head, standing impatiently with his hand on the door-knob. "Thanks, but I can't. I have a full afternoon before me. I am hatching a conspiracy of my own."
"And you won't take me into your confidence?"
"No! You look out for Henry. He's due to arrive any minute." He let himself out, glanced at his watch, and ran up the broad back stairs to Ben's room.
Mrs. Bussey opened the door to admit him with an air of embarrassment which he did not understand until he entered and found that Selby also was in the room. While Burton was surprised, he was glad it had so fallen out. It would save him the necessity of thinking up some excuse for an interview later.
"How are you, Bussey? Good day, Mr. Selby," he said, taking a chair without waiting for further invitation. The men returned his greeting rather ungraciously, and Burton guessed at once that he had interrupted something in the nature of a discussion which had left them at cross-purposes. Selby's face was twitching with nervous anger, and Ben looked as morose as a badgered animal.
"I have just been up to the Reservation for a few days, trying to find some Indian baskets," Burton went on, feeling his way conversationally into the murky atmosphere. "You see your collection inspired me, Mr. Selby. And I learn that important things have been happening in High Ridge 'while I was away." He smiled significantly at Selby, who scowled in embarrassment, and then escaped from personalities by his customary way of anger.
"At any rate, there haven't been any houses set afire lately."
"No, nor any hold-ups in the streets, nor any shots fired through people's windows," Burton said lightly. "All seems to have been beautifully quiet. But I hear that Henry goes free today."
"Goes free?" repeated Selby nervously. "So I hear. Probably they came to the conclusion that they didn't have sufficient reason for holding him."
Selby jumped from his chair and fidgetted across the room. Ben watched him with the hint of a malicious smile chasing the shadows from his face. It was Mrs. Bussey who spoke.
"Then like as not some one will be held up or some house will be set afire tonight."
"Oh, I hope not," said Burton, with a good show of concern. "That would make it look pretty black for Henry. But I hear that Watson didn't want to let him out just on that account. Henry and Watson are not very good friends, it seems."
"Watson knows the tricks that Henry was up to six years ago," said Mrs. Bussey.
"Well, I may be able to get Henry out of town by to-morrow," said Burton. "If he isn't in High Ridge, nobody can blame him if Watson's house burns after that. I guess it's safe to risk it for one night."
Ben had turned his head away indifferently. He still seemed to be brooding over something, and heedless of Burton's talk. But Selby turned abruptly from the window where he had been standing, and flared out at Burton.
"You seem to be meddling a good deal in matters that don't concern you. Did you tell Ben that I didn't pay him enough for his work?"
So that was what they had been quarrelling about! "I told him I thought I could get better prices for it," he said. "I think I can. Don't you consider it probable?"
"What business is it of yours?"
"None. I am simply meddling, as you correctly say."
"Then meddle and be damned to you. As for Ben's carving, I'll never take another stick of it. You can look out for him after this." And he flung out of the room.
Mrs. Bussey began to whimper. "Now what'll we do? Selby was mean, but he did pay something. And there ain't anybody else that Ben can work for."
"Yes, there is," said Burton promptly. "I'll see that he has a chance to sell anything he does."
Mrs. Bussey sniffed, but perhaps she did not mean to sniff cynically. However, Burton felt that the tide of sympathy was setting against him, and he hastened to talk of more cheerful matters.
"I met an old friend of yours on the Reservation,--Washitonka, his name is. Remember him?"
"Yes," said Ben impassively.
"He sent you this red-stone pipe."
Ben took the pipe in his fingers and turned it over and over, with careless curiosity. "I can carve better than that," he said calmly, and laid it down.
"Yes, you carve very well. You have strong and skilful fingers. But I think Washitonka sent you the pipe in token of friendship rather than to show his skill. He says he taught you to carve pipes long ago. Is that so?"
"Maybe so. I have forgotten."
"He hasn't forgotten you. And I saw Ehimmeshunka, who made the big basket I bought of Pahrunta. She is old." Burton glanced again at his watch, and as he replaced it in his pocket he took out a little wooden box. "Here is something else I brought you," he said, crossing over to Ben. "It's a box of red pigment. Did you ever try to color your carvings? I have seen Indian carvings that were colored, and I thought you might like to experiment with something of that sort. It would make your work look more Indian. This is a powder, you see, but it dissolves readily in water, and it makes a fast color. It's some kind of earth, I suppose,--"
"Fire! Fire!"
The cry came so sharply and shrilly across the quiet that Burton started, spilling the powder. He hastily snapped the cover on the box and sprang to the door. A puff of smoke, acrid and yellow, rushed into the room from the hall.
"Your kitchen is afire, Mrs. Bussey," he exclaimed, and ran down the stairs. Mrs. Bussey followed in a clattering hurry. The kitchen door, opening into the back hall at the foot of the stairs, was wide open, and the smoke was rushing out in great volumes. Burton heroically dashed into the midst of things, and then in a minute he laughed reassuringly.
"No great harm. It's only your dish towels, Mrs. Bussey."
The noise and the smoke had penetrated to the rest of the house, and almost at the same moment Leslie, Henry, and a stranger came rushing to the spot, followed by Mrs. Underwood and the doctor. Even in that moment of general confusion, Mrs. Underwood was calm enough to still the turmoil of the elements. Burton could not but admire her perfectly consistent poise. Turning her still eyes upon Mrs. Bussey, who was exclaiming hysterically over the pile of smouldering towels, she dropped her cool words like snowflakes on the fire.
"What matter about a few towels, Mrs. Bussey? There are more important things in the world."
"Important, indeed! It's important enough that we might all have been burnt in our beds!"
"Not at midday, Mrs. Bussey," interposed the doctor. "We do many things in this house that we ought not to do and we leave undone many things that we ought to do, but we haven't yet achieved the distinction of staying in bed till twelve of the clock."
"How would we have got Ben down from that second floor where he lies like a log, if the house had gone?" cried Mrs. Bussey, with a sudden access of fury, as the thought struck her. Then she saw Henry Underwood leaning against the door-post, a sardonic smile on his white face. "You villain, that's what you were trying to do," she screamed. "You were going to burn the house down to catch Ben!"
"If your dish towels weren't so dirty, they wouldn't catch fire all by themselves," he said insolently.
"All by themselves!" the indignant woman exclaimed. "They were set fire to, and that any one can see. It's incenerary, that's what it is, and--"
"Come, scatter," said Leslie quickly. "Mrs. Bussey and I want to clean up this kitchen. You can discuss the philosophy of events elsewhere."
Henry laughed and turned on his heel. The strange man who had stood just behind him and had said nothing through it all, went out with him.
"I wish you'd come into the surgery, Burton," said the doctor. He had been staring steadily at the smouldering pile of towels, still smoking whitely on the floor where Burton had flung them. One might almost have guessed that he wished to avoid the eyes of the little group in the room.
"In a moment. I'll just run up and reassure Ben." And, suiting the action to the word, he ran up the stairs two steps at a time, and put his head in at the half-open door.
"A false alarm, Bussey," he said. "No danger. Just a lot of smoke from some towels in the kitchen. Were you frightened?"
"No," said Ben stolidly.
"Here's your box of pigment that I carried off. I'll leave it on your table," said Burton, crossing the room. His voice shook in his throat when he spoke. He came back and stood by the couch for a moment, looking down curiously at Ben's impassive face.
"Suppose it had been a real fire, Ben! Wouldn't you have been frightened then? What would you have done?"
Ben's face twitched for a moment with a passing emotion.
"I guess that would have been Henry Underwood's affair," he said indifferently, and turned his face away.
"Henry is downstairs now."
But Ben made no answer to this, and Burton left him. He ran down the stairs and looked into the surgery, the door of which was standing open.
"Come inside," the doctor said, pulling him in and shutting the door behind him. "What am I to think of this?"
"Of what?"
"You know perfectly well. You are as white as--as I would be if I showed what I felt. Where was Henry when that fire started?"
"I don't know."
"He came into the house not ten minutes ago,--"
"Watson is a man of his word."
"--and went up to his room. Do you believe in evil spirits that carry out the secret wishes of men who are--criminally insane?"
"I should hate to say I didn't, because the idea offers so interesting a field for speculation that it strikes me it would be amusing to entertain it. But what suggests the question?"
The doctor looked at him with miserable eyes. "Who started that fire?" he asked, almost inaudibly.
Burton answered in the same undertone. "I did. But don't mention it. I'm afraid my reputation might suffer."
The doctor stared at him with such obvious dismay that Burton laughed aloud.
"By deputy, of course! I'm not crazy, Doctor, but I confess I am somewhat excited. I can't stop to explain further, because I have an engagement."
"Engagement be hanged. You are inventing that. Explain what you mean."
"If I hadn't an engagement, I should invent one, to get away from you. I don't want to talk to you. And I shall have a continuous engagement for the rest of the day. Good day to you."
"Pooh-pooh to you," responded the doctor, derisively. But the miserable look had been taken from his face.
Burton used his room telephone at the hotel to call up Watson, and even so he did not give his name.
"It's all right so far. We'll go ahead as planned," he said.
Next he went to the station to meet Rachel. The west-bound train to which her car, "Oversee," was attached, came puffing in with the air of importance which every one and everything that ministered to Rachel came sooner or later to assume. He walked down to the end of the long platform, and there was the familiar car, and, what was not so to be taken for granted, there was Rachel herself on the steps, waving an impatient hand to him.
"How jolly of you to come and see me," he said impudently, as he took her hand. For some queer reason, he did not carry it to his lips, as had been his old custom. "I was greatly surprised to receive your telegram yesterday."
"Were you?" she murmured in a tone that might mean nothing or might mean everything. "Didn't you think it was time?"
"Time for what?"
"Oh,--just time!"
"It is always time for you to telegraph me or write me or to come halfway across the continent to see me," he said promptly. "Is Philip with you?"
"Come inside," she said, and led the way into the tiny drawing-room of the coach. "Your things are coming soon, I hope. We have only half an hour here. Is there anything worth getting off for, or shall we just sit and talk?"
"We'll talk first. Please remember that I don't know yet what has brought you here. Where is Philip?"
"Oh, he didn't come with me," she said, motioning him to a seat as she took a chair herself. It was a part of her general harmoniousness that she always took a chair which was in the right light to show up her hair. He used to smile at the trait. It struck him now for the first time as somewhat trivial. And as he looked at her, it struck him for the first time that she was somewhat trivial as a whole. Rachel trivial? It gave him a shock that made his answer almost incoherent.
"Poor fellow!" he said mechanically. "Still unable to bear moving?"
"Philip is greatly improved," she said. She was sliding a jewelled bracelet up and down on her arm, and did not look at him. "In fact, he is so much better that he has run over to France, with the Armstrongs."
Burton looked at her in grave inquiry. "I am glad that he is better, but why didn't he come with you, instead of going across the water?"
"Oh, I didn't need him. And he knew that I should pick you up here."
"But surely it was due to Miss Underwood that he should come to her, if he were able to go anywhere. Nothing but his inability to travel justified my coming between them in this matter in the first place."
"My dear Hugh, I hope you haven't committed Philip in any way to that impossible girl!"
He stared at her in silence, absolutely speechless.
"Of course I know you were sent as envoy extraordinary and plenipotentiary," she said, with one of the sudden smiles which had so often disarmed his protests, "but that was because I was so sure I could trust everything to your discretion. And I know you haven't failed me! When you discovered that the Underwoods were the principals in acause celèbre, surely that was enough!"
He choked down the white wrath that surged upward. The very ghastliness of the situation made it necessary that he should be very careful. He spoke, after a moment, in almost his natural voice.
"I should not be surprised at your attitude, because I remember now--though I had forgotten it until you spoke--that I had the same feeling about the matter before I had met the Underwoods themselves. After knowing them, my feeling changed. I hoped I had made my impressions of Miss Underwood clear in my letters to you."
"You made it sufficiently clear that you had been bewitched," she said, with a smile that was not wholly friendly. "Miss Underwood must be very pretty."
"Yes, she is. And she is 'nice' in every other way, too. She is a brave, staunch, noble woman,--and Philip ought to go down on his knees in thankfulness for winning her."
"You are somewhat extravagant in speech," she said coldly. "Philip Overman would hardly need to express in that fashion his gratitude for winning the daughter of a country doctor of very tarnished reputation, whose brother has also figured in the police court!"
"Did you gather that from my letters?"
"No, from the newspapers. The situation has been written up for the Sunday supplements. The whole thing is cheap,--oh, horribly cheap, my dear Hugh!"
"But, Rachel,--for heaven's sake, what do you mean? Philip is in love with the girl,--"
"Fancies of that sort soon pass, Hugh."
"You thought it serious enough when you sent me to see her."
"I was frantic for the moment over Philip, and I would have sent you to get the moon for him, if he had cried for it. But it doesn't follow that I would let him have it when he got well."
"Has Philip nothing to say on the subject himself?" he asked coldly.
She smiled enigmatically, and instead of answering at once she asked in turn: "Exactly what did you say to Miss Underwood? How far did you--exercise diplomacy?"
"I didn't exercise any. I told her Philip was dying because she had refused him, and I took advantage of every feeling I could play upon to win the conditional promise from her that I sent on to you."
"What was her condition?"
"That the mystery hanging over the family be cleared, so that she could come to him on equal terms."
"That is,--if their name were cleared? I think you so expressed it in one of your interesting letters."
"That was her phrase."
"Then that lets us out," she smiled. "It hasn't been cleared."
"But it will be! Very soon! I am on the track now. By to-morrow I hope to show you the Underwood name as spotless as Overman."
She looked at him with unmistakable astonishment. "That you can make such a comparison makes sufficiently clear your amazing point of view. I hardly think we need discuss the matter further."
"I shall discuss it with Philip," he said abruptly.
"I told you Philip had gone abroad."
"I shall follow him. I must talk with the boy himself. He must have some spark of manliness."
"Why are you so provoking, Hugh?" she exclaimed. "What difference does it make about these people? Who are they that you should care?"
"I care for Philip's honor," he said obstinately. "That is involved. And the girl's happiness is involved."
"I'm sorry," said Mrs. Overman, with a smile that did not look sorry. "I'm afraid the matter is out of our hands, though, Hugh. Janet Armstrong is in the party. I rather think that you would find it too late to interfere."
He looked at her steadily and in silence.
"Janet is a charming girl," she went on lightly. "She will be a better match even than Ellice Avery. A year ago it might have been Ellice, but it has turned out for the best all around. Janet and Philip were engaged the day they sailed. And you must see, Hugh, that there is nothing further to be said about it."
Perhaps he did, for he said nothing. He rose and walked to the window and stood looking out so long that the lady frowned and smiled and frowned again, and finally spoke.
"Where are your things, Hugh? It is getting late."
"My things? Oh, they are not coming."
"But you are going on with me, aren't you?"
"No," he said. "I'm sorry."
"But I counted on you," she cried.
"I'm sorry," he said again, very gently. He could afford to be gentle now. "I have important work to do tonight."
"You are going to see that girl?"
"I did not mean that. I have a different engagement. But of course I shall see her as soon as possible."
Mrs. Overman bit her lip. "You are very punctilious! Well, I will wait a day for you. It need not take you longer."
He shook his head. "It may take me much longer. I shall be in High Ridge for some time, probably."
"Then--I'd better not wait for you."
"No. Don't wait for me," he said slowly.
She was very pale, but she smiled. "Then this is goodbye?"
"Yes, for the present."
She did not see his extended hand. She was untangling an invisible knot in the chain she wore, so her fingers were occupied.
"I don't know when I may see you again, then, for my plans are almost as indefinite as your own," she said airily. "I'm going somewhere,--and then somewhere else. When I'm ready to see you, I'll let you know."
"Good-bye,--and with the deepest meaning of the word," he said gravely. There was no use in ignoring what lay under the scene.
"Perhaps you'd better get off now, Hugh. You might be carried away in spite of your resolution,--and I should hate to see you carried away against your judgment," she mocked.
"Good-bye," he repeated. Something whirled in his brain.
As Burton watched the train pull out, its jaunty plume of smoke flaunting its scorn of High Ridge, it might have been hard to say whether he was more angry or more miserable. Perhaps each emotion helped to keep the other within bounds. How was he going to break to Miss Underwood the news that Philip had jilted her? That was the plain fact; and with her sensitive pride, her defenseless humility,--oh, it was an outrage. If he ever got a chance at Philip! To woo her for Philip had been irksome enough in the first place. To refuse her for Philip was something he had not undertaken to do.
But that must wait for to-morrow. He had another matter on his hands for tonight; the trap he had set must be sprung.