It was a blow greater, far greater than one that could have been struck in mere physical contact. Houston reeled with the effect of it; he gasped, he struggled aimlessly, futilely, for words to answer it. Vaguely, dizzily, knowing nothing except a dim, hazy desire to rid himself of the loathsomeness of it, Houston started to the door, only to be pulled back in the gigantic grip of Ba'tiste Renaud. The old Canadian was glaring now, his voice was thunderous.
"No! No! You shall not go! You hear Ba'teese, huh? You tell Medaine that is a lie! Un'stan'? That is a lie!"
"It is," Houston heard his voice as though coming from far away, "but I don't know how to answer it. I—I—can't answer it. Where is Miss Jierdon? Is she here? May I see her?"
"Miss Jierdon," Medaine Robinette answered him as though with an effort, "went back to camp last night."
"May I bring her here, to repeat that before me? There's been some sort of a horrible mistake—she didn't know what she was saying. She—"
"I'm afraid, Mr. Houston, that I would need stronger evidence—now. Oh, I want to be fair about this," she burst out suddenly. "I—I shouldn't ever have been drawn into it. It's nothing of my concern; certainly, I shouldn't be the one to be called upon to judge the innocence or guilt of some one I hardly know! I—"
"I realize that, Miss Robinette. I withdraw my request for anything you can give me." Again he started toward the door, and this time Ba'tiste did not detain him. But abruptly he halted, a sudden thought searing its way through his brain. "Just one moment more, Miss Robinette. Then I'll go. But this question means a great deal. You passed me one night on the road. Would it be impertinent to ask where you had been?"
"Certainly not. To Tabernacle. Lost Wing went with me, as usual. You may ask him."
"Your word is enough. May I inquire if on that night you saw Fred Thayer?"
"I did not."
"Thank you." Dully he reached for the knob. The woman who had appeared that night in the clearing, her head upon a man's shoulder, had been Agnes Jierdon!
He stepped to the veranda, waiting for Ba'tiste, who was making a last effort in his behalf. Then he called:
"I'd rather you'd not say anything more, Ba'tiste. Words aren't much use—without something to back them up."
And he knew that this possibility was all but gone. Tricked! For now he realized that Agnes Jierdon had stood by him at a time when her supposed confidence and trust could do no more for him than cheer him and cause him to trust her to the end that,—what?
Had it been she who had slipped the necessary papers of the contract and the lease into the mass of formalities which he had signed without even looking at the contents of more than the first page or two of the pile? They had been so many technical details, merely there for signature; he had signed dozens before. It would have been easy.
But Houston forced back the thought. He himself knew what it meant to be unjustly accused. Time was but of little moment now; his theories could wait until he had seen Agnes Jierdon, until he had talked to her and questioned her regarding the statements made to Medaine Robinette. Besides, Ba'tiste already was in the buggy, striving to cover his feelings by a stream of badinage directed toward Golemar, the wolf-dog, and waiting for Houston to take his place beside him. A moment more and they were driving away, Ba'tiste humped over the reins as usual, Houston striving to put from him the agony of the new accusation. Finally, the trapper cocked his head and spoke, rather to the horse and Golemar than to Houston.
"Eet is the one, big lie!"
"Yes, but there's not much way of proving it, Ba'tiste."
"Proof? Bah! And does Ba'teese need proof? Ba'teese no like this woman, Jierdon. She say Ba'teese burn the mill."
"I didn't know you heard that."
"She have a bad mouth. She have a bad eye. She have a bad tongue. Yes,oui! She have a bad tongue!"
"Let's wait, Ba'tiste. There may be some mistake about it. Of course, it's possible. She had worked for my father for six months at the time—she could have been placed there for a purpose. Her testimony was of the sort that the jury could take either as for me or against me; she established, as an eyewitness, that we had quarreled and that the mallet played a part in it. Naturally, though, I looked to her as my friend. I thought that her testimony helped me."
"And the taxi-driver? What did he say? Eh?"
"We never were able to find him."
"Oh, ho! Golemar! You hear?" The old trapper's voice was stinging with sarcasm. "They nev' fin' heem. But the woman she was in a taxi. Ah,oui. She could pass, just at the moment. She could put in the mind of the jury the fact that there was a quarrel, while she preten' to help M'sieu Houston. But the taxi-driver—no, they nev' fin' heem!"
"Let's wait, Ba'tiste."
"Oh—ah,oui."
On they drove in silence, talking of trivial things, each fencing away from the subject that was on their minds and from mention of the unfortunate interview with Medaine Robinette. The miles faded slowly, at last to bring the camp into view. Ten minutes later, Houston leaped from the buggy and knocked at the door of the cottage.
"I want to see Miss Jierdon," he told the cook who had opened the door. That person shook her head.
"She's gone."
"Gone? Where?"
"To town, I guess. She came back here from Miss Robinette's last night and packed her things and left. She didn't say where she was going. She left a note for you."
"Let me have it!" There was anxiety in the command. The cook bustled back into the house, to return with a sealed envelope addressed to Houston. He slit it with a trembling finger.
"What she say?" Ba'tiste was leaning from the buggy. Houston took his place beside him, and as the horse was turned back toward the trapper's cabin, read aloud:
"Dearest Barry:
"Hate awfully to run away like this without seeing you, but it can't be helped. Have an offer of a position in St. Louis that I can't very well refuse. Will write you from there.
"Love and kisses."AGNES."
Ba'tiste slapped the reins on the horse's back.
"She is like the Judas, eh?" he asked quietly, and Houston cringed with the realization that he had spoken the truth. Judas! A feminine Judas, who had come to him when his guard had been lowered, who had pretended that she believed in him, that she even loved him, that she might wreck his every plan and hope in life. A Judas, a—
"Let's don't talk about it, Ba'tiste!" Houston's voice was hoarse, weary. "It's a little too much to take, all in one day."
"Tres bien," answered the old French-Canadian, not to speak again until they had reached his cabin and, red-faced, he had turned from the stove to place the evening meal on the table. Then, his mouth full of crisply fried bacon, he waved a hand and spluttered with a sudden inspiration:
"What you do, now?"
"Queer question, isn't it?" The grim humor of it brought a smile, in spite of the lead in Houston's heart. "What is there to do?"
"What?" Ba'tiste gulped his food, rose and waved a hand with a sudden flash of emphasis. "Peuff! And there is ever'thin'. You have a mill."
"Such as it is."
"But eet is a mill. And eet can saw timber—enough to keep the wolf from the door. You have yourself. Your arm, he is near' well. And there is alway'—" he gestured profoundly—"the future. He is like a woman, the future," he added, with a little smile. "He always look good when he is in the far away."
The enthusiasm of the trapper found a faint echo in Houston's heart. "I'm not whipped yet, Ba'tiste. But I'm near it. I've had some pretty hard knocks."
"Ah,oui! But so have Ba'teese!" The shadows were falling, and the old French-Canadian walked to the window. "Oui, oui, oui! Look." And he pointed to the white cross, still faintly visible, like a luminous thing, beneath the pines. "Ev' day, Ba'teese, he see that. Ev' day, Ba'teese remember—how he work for others, how he isL' M'sieu Doctaire, how he help and help and help—but how he cannot help his own. Ev' day, Ba'teese, he live again that night in the cathedral when he call, so, 'Pierre! Pierre!' But Pierre does not answer. Ev' day, he remind how he come home, and how his heart, eet is cold, but how he hope that his Julienne, she will warm eet again—to fin' that. But does Ba'teese stop? Does Ba'teese fol' his hands? No! No!" He thundered the words and beat his heavy chest. "Some day, Ba'teese will fin' what he look for! When the cloud, he get heavy, Ba'teese, he go out there—out to his Julienne—and he kneel down and he pray that she give to heem the strength to go on—to look and look and look until he find eet—the thing he is want'! Ba'teese, he too have had his trouble. Ba'teese, he too would like to quit! But no, he shall not! And you shall not! By the cross of my Julienne, you shall not! Eet is to the end—and not before! You look like my Pierre! My Pierre had in heem the blood of Ba'teese—Ba'teese, who had broke' the way. And Pierre would not quit, and you will not quit. And—"
"I will not quit!" Barry Houston said the words slowly, in a voice heightened by feeling and by a new strength, a sudden flooding of a reserve power that he did not know he possessed. "That is my absolute promise to you, Ba'tiste. I will not quit!"
"Bon! Good! Golemar, you hear, eh?Mon ami, he come to the barrier, and he look at the trouble, but he say he will not quit.Veritas!Bon! He is my Pierre! He speak like my Pierre would speak! He will not quit!"
"No," and then Houston repeated it, a strange light shining in his eyes, his hands clenched, breath pulling deep into his lungs. "I will not quit."
"Ah,oui! Eet is now the, what-you-say, the swing-around point. To-night Ba'teese go out. Where? Ah, you shall wait an' see. Ba'teese go—Ba'teese come back. Then you shall see. Ah,oui! Then you shall see."
For an hour or so after that he boomed about the cabin, singing queer old songs in apatois, rumbling to the faithful Golemar, washing the dishes while Houston wiped them, joking, talking of everything but the troubles of the day and the plans of the night. Outside the shadows grew heavier, finally to turn to pitch darkness. The bull bats began to circle about the cabin. Ba'tiste walked to the door.
"Bon! Good!" he exclaimed. "The sky, he is full of cloud'. The star, he do not shine.Bon! Ba'teese shall go."
And with a final wave of the hand, still keeping his journey a mystery, he went forth into the night.
Long Houston waited for his return, but he did not come. The old, creaking clock on the rustic ledge ticked away the minutes and the hours until midnight, but still no crunching of gravel relieved his anxious ears, still no gigantic form of the grizzled, bearded trapper showed in the doorway. One o'clock came and went. Two—three. Houston still waited. Four—and a scratch on the door. It was Golemar, followed a moment later by a grinning, twinkling-eyed Ba'tiste.
"Bon! Good!" he exclaimed. "See, Golemar? What I say to you? He wait up for Ba'teese.Bon! Now—alert, mon ami! The pencil and the paper!"
He slumped into a chair and dived into a pocket of his red shirt, to bring forth a mass of scribbled sheets, to stare at them, striving studiously to make out the writing.
"Ba'teese, he put eet down by a match in the shelter of a lumber pile," came at last. "Eet is all, what-you-say, scramble up. But we shall see—ah,oui—we shall see. Now," he looked toward Houston, waiting anxiously with paper and pencil, "we shall put eet in the list. So. One million ties, seven by eight by eight feet, at the one dollar and the forty cents. Put that down."
"I have it. But what—"
"Wait! Five thousan' bridge timber, ten by ten by sixteen feet, at the three dollar and ninety cents."
"Yes—"
"Ten thousand feet of the four by four, at—"
"Ba'tiste!" Houston had risen suddenly. "What have you got there?"
The trapper grinned and pulled at his gray-splotched beard.
"Oh, ho! Golemar! He wan' to know. Shall we tell heem, eh? Ah,oui—" he shook his big shoulders and spread his hands. "Eet is—the copy of the bid!"
"The copy? The bid?"
"From the Blackburn mill. There is no one aroun'. Ba'teese, he go through a window. Ba'teese, he find heem—in a file. And he bring back the copy."
"Then—"
"M'sieu Houston, he too will bid. But he will make it lower. And this," he tapped the scribbled scraps of paper, "is cheaper than any one else. Eet is because of the location. M'sieu Houston—he know what they bid. He will make eet cheaper."
"But what with, Ba'tiste? We haven't a mill to saw the stuff, in the first place. This ramshackle thing we're setting up now couldn't even begin to turn out the ties alone. The bid calls for ten thousand laid down at Tabernacle, the first of June. We might do that, but how on earth would we ever keep up with the rest? The boxings, the rough lumber, the two by fourteen's finished, the dropped sidings and groved roofing, and lath and ceiling and rough fencings and all the rest? What on earth will we do it with?"
"What with?" Ba'tiste waved an arm grandiloquently. "With the future!"
"It's taking the longest kind of a chance—"
"Ah,oui! But the man who is drowning, he will, what-you-say, grab at a haystack."
"True enough. Go ahead. I'll mark our figures down too, as you read."
And together they settled to the making of a bid that ran into the millions, an overture for a contract for which they had neither mill, nor timber, nor flume, nor resources to complete!
Time dragged after that. Once the bid was on its way to Chicago, there was nothing to do but wait. It was a delay which lengthened from June until July, thence into late summer and early autumn, while the hills turned brown with the colorings of the aspens, while Mount Taluchen and its surrounding mountains once more became grim and forbidding with the early fall of snow.
The time for the opening of the bids had passed, far in the distance, but there had come no word. Ba'tiste, long since taken into as much of a partnership agreement as was possible, went day after day to the post office, only to return empty-handed, while Houston watched with more intensity than ever the commercial columns of the lumber journals in the fear that the contract, after all, had gone somewhere else. But no notice appeared. Nothing but blankness as concerned the plans of the Mountain Plains and Salt Lake Railroad.
Medaine he saw but seldom,—then only to avoid her as she strove to avoid him. Houston's work was now in the hills and at the camp, doing exactly what the Blackburn mill was doing, storing up a reasonable supply of timber and sawing at what might or might not be the first consignment of ties for the fulfillment of the contract. But day after day he realized that he was all but beaten.
His arm had healed now and returned to the strength that had existed before the fracture. Far greater in strength, in fact, for Houston had taken his place in the woods side by side with the few lumberjacks whom he could afford to carry on his pay roll. There, at least, he had right of way. He had sold only stumpage, which meant that the Blackburn camp had the right to take out as much timber as it cared to, as long as it was paid for at the insignificant rate of one dollar and fifty cents a thousand feet. Thayer and the men in his employ could not keep him out of his own woods, or prevent him from cutting his own timber. But they could prevent him from getting it to the mill by an inexpensive process.
From dawn until dusk he labored, sometimes with Ba'tiste singing lustily beside him, sometimes alone. The task was a hard one; the snaking of timber through the forest to the high-line roadway, there to be loaded upon two-wheeled carts and dragged, by a slow, laborious, costly process, to the mill. For every log that he sent to the saw in this wise, he knew that Thayer was sending ten,—and at a tenth of the cost. But Houston was fighting the last fight,—a fight that could not end until absolute, utter failure stood stark before him at the end of the road.
September became October with its rains, and its last flash of brilliant coloring from the lower hills, and then whiteness. November had arrived, bringing with it the first snow and turning the whole, great, already desolate country into a desert of white.
It was cold now; the cook took on a new duty of the maintenance of hot pails of bran mash and salt water for the relief of frozen hands. Heavy gum-shoes, worn over lighter footgear and reaching with felt-padded thickness far toward the knee, encased the feet. Hands numbed, in spite of thick mittens; each week saw a new snowfall, bringing with it the consequent thaws and the hardening of the surface. The snowshoe rabbit made its appearance, tracking the shadowy, silent woods with great, outlandish marks. The coyotes howled o' nights; now and then Houston, as he worked, saw the tracks of a bear, or the bloody imprints of a mountain lion, its paws cut by the icy crust of the snow as it trailed the elk or deer. The world was a quiet thing, a white thing, a cold, unrelenting thing, to be fought only by thick garments and snowshoes. But with it all, it gave Houston and Ba'tiste a new enthusiasm. They at least could get their logs to the mill now swiftly and with comparative ease.
Short, awkward-appearing sleds creaked and sang along the icy, hard-packed road of snow, to approach the piles of logs snaked out of the timber, to be loaded high beyond all seeming regard for gravitation or consideration for the broad-backed, patient horses, to be secured at one end by heavy chains leading to a patent binder which cinched them to the sled, and started down the precipitous road toward the mill. Once in a while Houston rode the sleds, merely for the thrill of it; for the singing and crunching of the logs against the snow, the grinding of bark against bark, the quick surge as the horses struck a sharp decline and galloped down it, the driver shouting, the logs kicking up the snow behind the sled in a swirling, feathery wake.
At times he stayed at the bunk house with the lumberjacks, silent as they were silent, or talking of trivial things which were mighty to them,—the quality of the food, the depth of the snow, the fact that the little gray squirrels were more plentiful in one part of the woods than another, or that they chattered more in the morning than in the afternoon. Hours he spent in watching Old Bill, a lumberjack who, in his few moments of leisure between the supper table and bed, whittled laboriously upon a wooden chain, which with dogged persistence he had lugged with him for months. Or perhaps staring over the shoulder of Jade Hains, striving to copy the picture of a motion-picture star from a worn, dirty, months-old magazine; as excited as they over the tiny things in life, as eager to seek a bunk when eight o'clock came, as grudging to hear the clatter of alarm clocks in the black coldness before dawn and to creak forth to the watering and harnessing of the horses for the work of the day. Some way, it all seemed to be natural to Barry Houston, natural that he should accept this sort of dogged, humdrum, eventless life and strive to think of nothing more. The other existence, for him, had ended in a blackened waste; even the one person in whom he had trusted, the woman he would have been glad to marry, if that could have repaid her in any way for what he thought she had done for him, had proved traitorous. His letters, written to her at general delivery, St. Louis, had been returned, uncalled for. From the moment that he had received that light, taunting note, he had heard nothing more. She had done her work; she was gone.
December came. Christmas, and with it Ba'tiste, with flour in his hair and beard, his red shirt pulled out over his trousers, distributing the presents which Houston had bought for the few men in his employ. January wore on, bringing with it more snow. February and then—
"Eet is come! Eet is come!" Ba'tiste, waving his arms wildly, in spite of the stuffiness of his heavy mackinaw, and the broad belt which sank into layer after layer of clothing at his waist, came over the brow of the raise into camp, to seize Houston in his arms and dance him about, to lift him and literally throw him high upon his chest as one would toss a child, to roar at Golemar, then to stand back, brandishing an opened letter above his head. "Eet is come! I have open eet—I can not wait. Eet say we shall have the contract! Ah,oui! oui! oui! oui! We shall have the contract!"
Houston, suddenly awake to what the message meant, reached for the letter. It was there in black and white. The bid had been accepted. There need now be but the conference in Chicago, the posting of the forfeit money, and the deal was made.
"Eet say five thousand dollars cash, and the rest in a bond!" came enthusiastically from Ba'tiste. "Eet is simple. You have the mill, you have the timber. Ba'teese, he have the friend in Denver who will make the bond."
"But how about the machinery; we'll need a hundred-thousand-dollar plant before we're through, Ba'tiste."
"Ah!" The old French-Canadian's jaw dropped. "Ba'teese, he is like the child. He have not think of that. He have figure he can borrow ten thousand dollar in his own name. But he have not think about the machinery."
"But we must think about it, Ba'tiste. We've got to get it. With the equipment that's here, we never could hope to keep up with the contract. And if we can't do that, we lose everything. Understand me, I'm not thinking of quitting; I merely want to look over the battlefield first. Shall we take the chance?"
Big Ba'tiste shrugged his shoulders.
"Ba'teese, he always try to break the way," came at last. "Ba'teese, he have trouble—but he have nev' been beat. You ask Ba'teese—Ba'teese say go ahead. Somehow we make it."
"Then to-morrow morning we take the train to Denver, and from there I'll go on to Boston. I'll raise the money some way. I don't know how. If I don't, we're only beaten in the beginning instead of at the end. We'll simply have to trust to the future—on everything, Ba'tiste. There are so many things that can whip us, that—" Houston laughed shortly—"we might as well be gamblers all the way through. We'll never fulfill the contract, even with the machinery, unless we can get the use of the lake and a flume to the mill. We may be able to keep it up for a month or two, but that will be all. The expense will eat us up. But one chance is no greater than the other, and personally, I'm at the point where I don't care."
"Oui! Ba'teese, he have nothing. Ba'teese he only fight for the excitement. So, to-morrow we go!"
And on the next day they went, again to go over all the details of their mad, foundationless escapade with Chance, to talk it all over in the old smoking car, to weigh the balance against them from every angle, and to see failure on every side. But they had become gamblers with Fate; for one, it was his final opportunity, to take or disregard, with a faint glimmer of success at one end of the vista, with the wiping out of every hope at the other. They tried not to look at the gloomy side, but that was impossible. As the train ground its way up the circuitous grades, Houston felt that he was headed finally for the dissolution. But there was at least the consolation about it that within a short time the uncertainty of his life would be ended; the hopes either crushed forever, or realized, that—
"Ba'tiste!" They were in the snowsheds at Crestline, and Houston had pointed excitedly toward a window of the west-bound train, just pulling past them on the way down the slope. A woman was there, a woman who had turned her head sharply, but with not enough speed to prevent a sight of her by the French-Canadian who glanced quickly and gasped:
"The Judas!"
Houston leaped from his seat and ran to the vestibule of the car, but in vain. It was closed; already the other last coach of the other train was pulling past and gaining headway with the easier grade. Wondering, he returned to his seat beside his partner.
"It was she, Ba'tiste," came with conviction. "I got a good look at her before she noticed me. Then, when I pointed—she turned her head away."
"But Ba'teese, he see her."
"She's going back. What do you suppose it can mean? Can she be—"
"Ba'teese catch the nex' train to Tabernacle so soon as we have finish our business. Eet is for no good."
"I wonder—" it was a hope, but a faint one—"if she could be coming back to make amends, Ba'tiste? That—that other thing seemed so unlike the person who had been so good to me, so apart from the side of her nature that I knew—"
"She have a bad mouth," Ba'tiste repeated grimly. "She have a bad eye, she have a bad tongue. A woman with a bad tongue, she is a devil. You—you no see it, because she come to you with a smile, when every one else, he frown. You think she is the angel, yes,oui? But she come to Ba'teese different. She talk to you sof' and she try to turn you against your frien'. Yes.Oui?Ne c'est pas? Ba'teese see her with the selfish mouth. Peuff! He see her when she look to heem out from the corner of her eye—so. Ba'teese know. Ba'teese come back quick, to keep watch!"
"I guess you're right, Ba'tiste. It won't do any harm. If she's returned for a good purpose, very well. If not, we're at least prepared for her."
With that resolution they went on to Denver, there to seek out the few friends Ba'tiste possessed, to argue one of them into a loan of ten thousand dollars on the land and trustworthy qualities which formed the total of Ba'tiste's resources, to gain from the other the necessary bond to cover the contract,—a contract which Barry Houston knew only too well might never be fulfilled. But against this fear was the booming enthusiasm of Ba'tiste Renaud:
"Nev' min'. Somehow we do eet. Ah,oui! Somehow. If we make the failure, then it shall be Ba'teese who will fin' the way to pay the bond. Now, Ba'teese, he go back."
"Yes, and keep watch on that woman. She's out here for something'—I feel sure of it—something that has to do with Thayer. Before you go, however, make the rounds of the employment agencies and tell them to send you every man they can spare, up to a hundred. We'll give them work to the extent of five thousand dollars. They ought to be able to get enough timber down to keep us going for a while anyway—especially with the roads iced."
"Ah.Oui. It is the three o'clock.Bon voyage, monBaree!"
It was the first time Ba'tiste Renaud ever had dropped the conventional "M'sieu" in addressing Houston, and Barry knew, without the telling, without the glowing light in the old man's eyes, that at least a part of the great loneliness in the trapper's heart had departed, that he had found a place there in a portion of the aching spot left void by a shrapnel-shattered son to whom a father had called that night in the ruined cathedral,—and called in vain. It caused a queer pang of exquisite pain in Houston's heart, a joy too great to be expressed by the reflexes of mere pleasure. Long after the train had left Denver, he still thought of it, he still heard the old man's words, he still sat quiet and peaceful in a new enthusiasm of hope. The world was not so blank, after all. One man, at least, believed in him fully.
Came Chicago and the technicalities of ironing out the final details of the contract. Then, dealer in millions and the possessor of nothing, Houston went onward toward Boston.
And Ba'tiste was not there to boom enthusiastically regarding the chances of the future, to enlarge upon the opportunities which might arise for the fulfillment of a thing which seemed impossible.
Coldly, dispassionately, now that it was done, that the word of the Empire Lake Mill and Lumber Company had been given to deliver the materials for the making of a great railroad, had guaranteed its resources and furnished the necessary bond for the fulfillment of a promise, Barry Houston could not help but feel that it all had been rash, to say the least. Where was the machinery to be obtained? Where the money to keep things going? True, there would be spot cash awaiting the delivery of every installment of the huge order, enough, in fact, to furnish the necessary running expenses of a mill under ordinary circumstances. But the circumstances which surrounded the workings of the Empire Lake project were far from ordinary. No easy skidways to a lake, no flume, no aerials; there was nothing to cut expenses. Unless a miracle should happen, and Houston reflected that miracles were few and far between, that timber must be brought to the mill by a system that would be disastrous as far as costs were concerned. Yet, the contract had been made!
He wandered the aisle of the sleeper, fidgeting from one end to the other, as neither magazines, nor the spinning scenery without held a counter-attraction for his gloomy thoughts. When night at last came, he entered the smoking compartment and slumped into a seat in a far corner, smoking in a detached manner, often pulling on his cigar long after lengthy minutes of reflection had allowed its ashes to cool.
About him the usual conversation raged, the settling of a nation's problems, the discussion of crime waves, Bolshevism and the whatnot that goes with an hour of smoking on a tiresome journey. From Washington and governmental affairs, it veered to the West and dry farming, thence to the cattle business; to anecdotes, and finally to ghost stories. And then, with a sudden interest, Houston forgot his own problems to listen attentively, tensely, almost fearfully. A man whom he never before had seen, and whom he probably never would see again, was talking,—about something which might be as remote to Houston as the poles. Yet it held him, it fascinated, it gripped him!
"Speaking of gruesome things," the talker had said, "reminds me. I'm a doctor—not quite full fledged, I'll admit, but with the right to put M. D. after my name. Spent a couple of years as an interne in Bellstrand Hospital in New York. Big place. Any of you ever been there?"
No one had. The young doctor went on.
"Quite a place for experiments. They've got a big room on the fifth floor where somebody is always dissecting, or carrying out some kind of investigations into this bodily thing we call a home. My work led me past there a good deal, and I'd gotten so I hardly noticed it. But one Sunday night, I guess it was along toward midnight, I saw something that brought me up short. I happened to look in and saw a man in there, murdering another one with a wooden mallet."
"Murdering him?" The statement had caused a rise from the rest of the auditors. The doctor laughed.
"Well, perhaps I used too sentimental a phrase. I should have said, acting out a murder. You can't very well murder a dead man. The fellow he was killing already was a corpse.
"You mean—"
"Just what I'm saying. There were two or three assistants. Pretty big doctors, I learned later, all of them from Boston. They had taken a cadaver from the refrigerator and stood it in a certain position. Then the one man had struck it on the head with the mallet with all the force he could summon. Of course it knocked the corpse down—I'm telling you, it was gruesome, even to an interne! The last I saw of them, the doctors were working with their microscopes—evidently to see what effect the blow had produced."
"What was the idea?"
"Never found out. They're pretty close-mouthed about that sort of thing. You see, opposite sides in a trial are always carrying out experiments and trying their level best to keep the other fellow from knowing what's going on. I found out later that the door was supposed to have been locked. I passed through about ten minutes later and saw them working on another human body—evidently one of a number that they had been trying the tests on. About that time some one heard me and came out like a bullet. The next thing I knew, everything was closed. How long the experiments had been going on, I couldn't say. I do know, however, that they didn't leave there until about three o'clock in the morning."
"You—you don't know who the men were?" Houston, forcing himself to be casual, had asked the question. The young doctor shook his head.
"No—except that they were from Boston. At least, the doctors were. One of the nurses knew them. I suppose the other man was a district attorney—they usually are around somewhere during an experiment."
"You never learned with what murder case it was connected?"
"No—the fact is, it passed pretty much out of my mind, as far as the details were concerned. Although I'll never forget the picture."
"Pardon me for asking questions. I—I—just happen to come from Boston and was trying to recall such a case. You don't remember what time of the year it was, or how long ago?"
"Yes, I do. It was in the summer, along about two or two and a half years ago."
Houston slumped back into his corner. Ten minutes later, he found an opportunity to exchange cards with the young physician and sought his berth. To himself, he could give no reason for establishing the identity of the smoking-compartment informant. He had acted from some sort of subconscious compulsion, without reasoning, without knowing why he had catalogued the information or of what possible use it could be to him. But once in his berth, the picture continued to rise before him; of a big room in a hospital, of doctors gathered about, and of a man "killing" another with a mallet. Had it been Worthington? Worthington, the tired-eyed, determined, over-zealous district attorney, who, day after day, had struggled and fought to send him to the penitentiary for life? Had it been Worthington, striving to reproduce the murder of Tom Langdon as he evidently had reconstructed it, experimenting with his experts in the safety of a different city, for points of evidence that would clinch the case against the accused man beyond all shadow of a doubt? Instinctively Houston felt that he just had heard an unwritten, unmentioned phase of his own murder case. Yet—if that had been Worthington, if those experts had found evidence against him, if the theories of the district attorney had been verified on that gruesome night in the "dead ward" of Bellstrand Hospital—
Why had this damning evidence been allowed to sink into oblivion? Why had it not been used against him?
It was a problem which Barry Houston, in spite of wakefulness, failed to solve. Next morning, eager for a repetition of the recital, in the hope of some forgotten detail, some clue which might lead him to an absolute decision, he sought the young doctor, only to find that he had left the train at dawn. A doorway of the past had been opened to Houston, only to be closed again before he could clearly discern beyond. He went on to Boston, still struggling to reconstruct it all, striving to figure what connection it might have had, but in vain. And with his departure from the train, new thoughts, new problems, arose to take the place of memories. His purposes now were of the future, not of the past.
And naturally, he turned first to the office of his father's attorney,—the bleak place where he had conferred so many times in the black days. Old Judge Mason, accustomed to seeing Barry in time of stress, tried his best to be jovial.
"Well, boy, what is it this time?"
"Money." Houston came directly to the point. "I've come back to Boston to find out if any one will trust me."
"With or without security."
"With it—the best in the world." Then he brought forward a copy of the contract. Mason studied it at length, then, with a slow gesture, raised his glasses to a resting place on his forehead.
"I—I don't know, boy," he said at last. "It's a rather hard problem to crack. I wish there was some one in the family we could go to for the money."
"But there isn't."
"No. Your uncle Walt might have it. But I'm afraid that he wouldn't feel like lending it to you. He still believes—well, you know how fathers are about their boys. He's forgotten most of Tom's bad points by now."
"We'll drop him from the list. How about the bankers."
"We'll have to see. I'm a little afraid there. I know you'll pardon me for saying it, Barry, but they like to have a man come to them with clean hands. Not that you haven't got them," he interjected, "but—well, you know bankers. What's the money for; running expenses?"
"No. Machinery. The other mill burned down, you know—and as usual, without insurance. We have a makeshift thing set up there now—but it's nothing to what will be needed. I've got to have a good, smooth-working plant—otherwise I won't be able to live up to specifications."
"You're not," and the old lawyer smiled quizzically, "going to favor your dearly beloved friend with the order, are you?"
"Who?"
"Worthington."
"The district attorney?"
"That was. Plutocrat now, and member of society, you know. He came into his father's money, just after he went out of office, and bought into the East Coast Machinery Company when it was on its last legs. His money was like new blood. They've got a good big plant. He's president," again the smile, "and I know he'd be glad to have your order."
Houston continued the sarcasm.
"I'd be overjoyed to give it to him. In fact, I think I'd refuse to buy any machinery if I couldn't get it from such a dear friend as Worthington was. It wasn't his fault that I wasn't sent to the penitentiary."
"No, that's right, boy." Old Lawyer Mason was quietly reminiscent. "He tried his best. It seemed to me in those days he was more of a persecutor than prosecutor."
"Let's forget it." Houston laughed uneasily.
"Now, to go back to the bankers—"
"There isn't much for us to do but to try them, one after another. I guess we might as well start now as any time."
Late that afternoon they were again in the office, the features of Mason wrinkled with thought, those of Barry Houston plainly discouraged. They had failed. The refusals had been courteous, fraught with many apologies for a tight market, and effusive regrets that it would be impossible to loan money on such a gilt-edged proposition as the contract seemed to hold forth, but— There had always been that one word, that stumbling-block against which they had run time after time, shielded and padded by courtesy, but present nevertheless. Nor were Houston and Mason unaware of the real fact which lay behind it all; that the bankers did not care to trust their money in the hands of a man who had been accused of murder and who had escaped the penalty of such a charge by a margin, which to Boston, at least, had seemed exceedingly slight. One after another, there in the office, Mason went over the list of his business acquaintances, seeking for some name that might mean magic to them. But no such inspiration came.
"Drop back to-morrow, boy," he said at last. "I'll think over the thing to-night, and I may be able to get a bright idea. It's going to be tough sledding—too tough, I'm afraid. If only we didn't have to buck up against that trial, and the ideas people seem to have gotten of it, we'd be all right. But—"
There it was again, that one word, that immutable obstacle which seemed to arise always. Houston reached for his hat.
"I'm going to keep on trying, anyway, Mr. Mason. I'll be back to-morrow. I'm going to get that money if I have to make a canvass of Boston, if I have to go out and sell shares at a dollar apiece and if I go broke paying dividends. I've made my promise to go through—and I'm going!"
"Good. I'll be looking for you."
But half an hour later, following a wandering, aimless journey through the crooked streets, Barry Houston suddenly straightened with an inspiration. He whirled, he dived for a cigar store and for a telephone.
"Hello!" he called, after the long wait for connections. "Mr. Mason? Don't look for me tomorrow—I believe I'll not be there."
"But you haven't given it up?"
"Given up?" Houston laughed with sudden enthusiasm. "No—I've just started. Put the date off a day or two until I can try something that's buzzing around in my head. It's a wild idea—but it may work. If it doesn't, I'll see you Thursday."
Then he turned from the telephone and toward the railroad station.
"One, to New York," he ordered hurriedly through the ticket window. "I've got time to make that seven-forty, if you rush it."
And the next morning, Barry Houston was in New York, swirling along Seventh Avenue toward Bellstrand Hospital. There he sought the executive offices and told his story. "Five minutes later he was looking at the books of the institution, searching, searching,—at last to stifle a cry of excitement and bend closer to a closely written page.
"August second," he read. "Kilbane Worthington, district attorney, Boston, Mass. Acc by Drs. Horton, Mayer and Brensteam. Investigations into effect of blows on skull. Eight cadavers."
With fingers that were almost frenzied, Houston copied the notation, closed the book, and hurried again for a taxicab. It yet was only nine o'clock. It the traffic were not too thick, if the driver were skilful—
He raced through the gate at Grand Central just as it was closing. He made the train in unison with the last drawling cry of the conductor. Then for hours, in the Pullman chair car, he fidgeted, counting the telegraph posts, checking off the stations as they flipped past the windows, through a day of eagerness, of excited, racking anticipation. It was night when he reached Boston, but Houston did not hesitate. A glance at a telephone book, another rocking ride in a taxicab, and Barry stood on the veranda of a large house, awaiting the answer to his ring at the bell. Finally it came.
"Mr. Worthington," he demanded. The butler arched his eyebrows.
"Sorry, but Mr. Worthington has left orders not to be—"
"Tell him that it is a matter of urgent business. That it is something of the utmost importance to him."
A wait. The butler returned.
"Sorry, sir. But Mr. Worthington is just ready to retire."
"You tell Mr. Worthington," answered Houston in a crisp voice, "that he either will see me or regret it. Tell him that I am very sorry, but that just now, I am forced to use his own methods—and that if he doesn't see me within five minutes, there will be something in the morning papers that will be, to say the least, extremely distasteful to him."
"The name, please?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Are you from a newspaper?"
"I'm not saying. Whether I go to one directly from here, depends entirely upon Mr. Worthington. Will you please take my message?"
"I'm afraid—"
"Take my message!"
"Directly, sir!"
Another wait. Then:
"Mr. Worthington will see you in the library, sir."
"Thanks." Houston almost bounded into the hall. A moment later, in the dimness of the heavily furnished, somewhat mysterious appearing library, Barry Houston again faced the man whom, at one time, he had hoped never again to see. Kilbane Worthington was seated at the large table, much in the manner which he had affected in court, elbows on the surface, chin cupped in his thin, nervous hands. The light was not good for recognizing faces; without realizing it, the former district attorney had placed himself at a disadvantage. Squinting, he sought to make out the features of the man who had hurried into the room, and failing, rose.
"Well," he asked somewhat brusquely, "may I inquire—"
"Certainly. My name's Houston."
"Houston—Houston—it seems to me—"
"Maybe your memory needs refreshing. Such little things as I figured in probably slipped your mind the minute you were through with them. To be explicit, my name is Barry Houston, son of the late William K. Houston. You and I met—in the courtroom. You once did me the very high honor to accuse me of murder and then tried your level best to send me to the penitentiary for life when you knew, absolutely and thoroughly, that I was an innocent man!"