The Breaking Point (36 page)

Yet, for a man who did not love, he was oddly angry at the sight of two
young figures on the doorstep. Their clear voices came to him across
the quiet street, vibrant and full of youth. It was the Sayre boy and
Elizabeth.

He half stopped, and looked across. They were quite oblivious of him,
intent and self-absorbed. As he had viewed Reynolds' unconscious figure
with jealous dislike, so he viewed Wallace Sayre. Here, everywhere, his
place was filled. He was angry with an unreasoning, inexplicable anger,
angry at Elizabeth, angry at the boy, and at himself.

He had but to cross the street and take his place there. He could
drive that beardless youngster away with a word. The furious possessive
jealousy of the male animal, which had nothing to do with love, made him
stop and draw himself up as he stared across.

Then he smiled wryly and went on. He could do it, but he did not want
to. He would never do it. Let them live their lives, and let him live
his. But he knew that there, across the street, so near that he might
have raised his voice and summoned her, he was leaving the best thing
that had come into his life; the one fine and good thing, outside of
David and Lucy. That against its loss he had nothing but an infatuation
that had ruined three lives already, and was not yet finished.

He stopped and, turning, looked back. He saw the girl bend down and
put a hand on Wallie Sayre's shoulder, and the boy's face upturned and
looking into hers. He shook himself and went on. After all, that was
best. He felt no anger now. She deserved better than to be used to help
a man work out his salvation. She deserved youth, and joyousness, and
the forgetfulness that comes with time. She was already forgetting.

He smiled again as he went on up the street, but his hands as he
buttoned his overcoat were shaking.

It was shortly after that that he met the rector, Mr. Oglethorpe. He
passed him quickly, but he was conscious that the clergyman had stopped
and was staring after him. Half an hour later, sitting in the empty
smoker of the train, he wondered if he had not missed something there.
Perhaps the church could have helped him, a good man's simple belief in
right and wrong. He was wandering in a gray no-man's land, without faith
or compass.

David had given him the location of Bassett's apartment house, and he
found it quickly. He was in a state of nervous irritability by that
time, for the sense of being a fugitive was constantly stressed in the
familiar streets by the danger of recognition. It was in vain that
he argued with himself that only the police were interested in his
movements, and the casual roundsman not at all. He found himself shying
away from them like a nervous horse.

But if he expected any surprise from Bassett he was disappointed. He
greeted him as if he had seen him yesterday, and explained his lack of
amazement in his first words.

"Doctor Livingstone telephoned me. Sit down, man, and let me look at
you. You've given me more trouble than any human being on earth."

"Sorry," Dick said awkwardly, "I seem to have a faculty of involving
other people in my difficulties."

"Want a drink?"

"No, thanks. I'll smoke, if you have any tobacco. I've been afraid to
risk a shop."

Bassett talked cheerfully as he found cigarettes and matches. "The old
boy had a different ring to his voice to-night. He was going down pretty
fast, Livingstone; was giving up the fight. But I fancy you've given
him a new grip on the earth." When they were seated, however, a sort of
awkwardness developed. To Dick, Bassett had been a more or less shadowy
memory, clouded over with the details and miseries of the flight. And
Bassett found Dick greatly altered. He was older than he remembered him.
The sort of boyishness which had come with the resurrection of his early
identity had gone, and the man who sat before him was grave, weary, and
much older. But his gaze was clear and direct.

"Well, a good bit of water has gone over the dam since we met," Bassett
said. "I nearly broke a leg going down that infernal mountain again.
And I don't mind telling you that I came within an ace of landing in the
Norada jail. They knew I'd helped you get away. But they couldn't prove
it."

"I got out, because I didn't see any need of dragging you down with
me. I was a good bit of a mess just then, but I could reason that out,
anyhow. It wasn't entirely unselfish, either. I had a better chance
without you. Or thought I did."

Bassett was watching him intently.

"Has it all come back?" he inquired.

"Practically all. Not much between the thing that happened at the ranch
and David Livingstone's picking me up at the cabin."

"Did it ever occur to you to wonder just how I got in on your secret?"

"I suppose you read Maggie Donaldson's confession."

"I came to see you before that came out."

"Then I don't know, I'm afraid."

"I suppose you would stake your life on the fact that Beverly Carlysle
knows nothing of what happened that night at the ranch?"

Dick's face twitched, but he returned Bassett's gaze steadily.

"She has no criminal knowledge, if that is what you mean."

"I am not so sure of it."

"I think you'd better explain that."

At the cold anger in Dick's voice Bassett stared at him. So that was
how the wind lay. Poor devil! And out of the smug complacence of his
bachelor peace Bassett thanked his stars for no women in his life.

"I'm afraid you misunderstand me, Livingstone," he said easily. "I don't
think that she shot Lucas. But I don't think she has ever told all she
knows. I've got the coroner's inquest here, and we'll go over it
later. I'll tell you how I got onto your trail. Do you remember taking
Elizabeth Wheeler to see 'The Valley?'"

"I had forgotten it. I remember now."

"Well, Gregory, the brother, saw you and recognized you. I was with him.
He tried to deny you later, but I was on. Of course he told her, and
I think she sent him to warn David Livingstone. They knew I was on the
trail of a big story. Then I think Gregory stayed here to watch me when
the company made its next jump. He knew I'd started, for he sent David
Livingstone the letter you got. By the way, that letter nearly got me
jailed in Norada."

"I'm not hiding behind her skirts," Dick said shortly. "And there's
nothing incriminating in what you say. She saw me as a fugitive, and she
sent me a warning. That's all."

"Easy, easy, old man. I'm not pinning anything on her. But I want, if
you don't mind, to carry this through. I have every reason to believe
that, some time before you got to Norada, the Thorwald woman was on my
trail. I know that I was followed to the cabin the night I stayed there,
and that she got a saddle horse from her son that night, her son by
Thorwald, either for herself or some one else."

"All right. I accept that, tentatively."

"That means that she knew I was coming to Norada. Think a minute; I'd
kept my movements quiet, but Beverly Carlysle knew, and her brother.
When they warned David they warned her."

"I don't believe it."

"If you had killed Lucas," Bassett asserted positively, "the Thorwald
woman would have let the sheriff get you, and be damned to you. She had
no reason to love you. You'd kept her son out of what she felt was his
birthright."

He got up and opened a table drawer.

"I've got a copy of the coroner's inquest here. It will bear going over.
And it may help you to remember, too. We needn't read it all. There's a
lot that isn't pertinent."

He got out a long envelope, and took from it a number of typed pages,
backed with a base of heavy paper.

"'Inquest in the Coroner's office on the body of Howard Lucas,'" he
read. "'October 10th, 1911.' That was the second day after. 'Examination
of witnesses by Coroner Samuel J. Burkhardt. Mrs. Lucas called and
sworn.'" He glanced at Dick and hesitated. "I don't know about this
to-night, Livingstone. You look pretty well shot to pieces."

"I didn't sleep last night. I'm all right. Go on."

During the reading that followed he sat back in his deep chair, his
eyes closed. Except that once or twice he clenched his hands he made no
movement whatever.

Q. "What is your name?"

A. "Anne Elizabeth Lucas. My stage name is Beverly Carlysle."

Q. "Where do you live, Mrs. Lucas?"

A. "At 26 East 56th Street, New York City."

Q. "I shall have to ask you some questions that are necessarily painful
at this time. I shall be as brief as possible. Perhaps it will be
easier for you to tell so much as you know of what happened the night
before last at the Clark ranch."

A. "I cannot tell very much. I am confused, too. I was given a sleeping
powder last night. I can only say that I heard a shot, and thought at
first that it was fired from outside. I ran down the stairs, and back to
the billiard room. As I entered the room Mr. Donaldson came in through
a window. My husband was lying on the floor. That is all."

Q. "Where was Judson Clark?"

A. "He was leaning on the roulette table, staring at the—at my husband."

Q. "Did you see him leave the room?"

A. "No. I was on my knees beside Mr. Lucas. I think when I got up he
was gone. I didn't notice."

Q. "Did you see a revolver?"

A. "No. I didn't look for one."

Q. "Now I shall ask you one more question, and that is all. Had there
been any quarrel between Mr. Lucas and Mr. Clark that evening in your
presence?"

A. "No. But I had quarreled with them both. They were drinking too
much. I had gone to my room to pack and go home. I was packing when I
heard the shot."

Witness excused and Mr. John Donaldson called.

Q. "What is your name?"

A. "John Donaldson."

Q. "Where do you live?"

A. "At the Clark ranch."

Q. "What is your business?"

A. "You know all about me. I'm foreman of the ranch."

Q. "I want you to tell what you know, Jack, about last night. Begin
with where you were when you heard the shot."

A. "I was on the side porch. The billiard room opens on to it. I'd been
told by the corral boss earlier in the evening that he'd seen a man
skulking around the house. There'd been a report like that once or
twice before, and I set a watch. I put Ben Haggerty at the kitchen wing
with a gun, and I took up a stand on the porch. Before I did that I
told Judson, but I don't think he took it in. He'd been lit up like a
house afire all evening. I asked for his gun, but he said he didn't
know where it was, and I went back to my house and got my own. Along
about eight o'clock I thought I saw some one in the shrubbery, and I
went out as quietly as I could. But it was a woman, Hattie Thorwald, who
was working at the ranch.

"When I left the men were playing roulette. I looked in as I went back,
and Judson had a gun in his hand. He said; 'I found it, Jack.' I saw he
was very drunk, and I told him to put it up, I'd got mine. It had
occurred to me that I'd better warn Haggerty to be careful, and I
started along the verandah to tell him not to shoot except to scare. I
had only gone a few steps when I heard a shot, and ran back. Mr. Lucas
was on the floor dead, and Judson was as the lady said. He must have
gone out while I was bending over the body."

Q. "Did you see the revolver in his hand?"

A. "No."

Q. "How long between your warning Mr. Clark and the shot?"

A. "I suppose I'd gone a dozen yards."

Q. "Were you present when the revolver was found?"

A. "No, sir."

Q. "Did you see Judson Clark again?"

A. "No, sir. From what I gather he went straight to the corral and got
his horse."

Q. "You entered the room as Mrs. Lucas came in the door?"

A. "Well, she's wrong about that. She was there a little ahead of me.
She'd reached the body before I got in. She was stooping over it."

Bassett looked up from his reading.

"I want you to get this, Livingstone," he said. "How did she reach the
billiard room? Where was it in the house?"

"Off the end of the living-room."

"A large living-room?"

"Forty or forty-five feet, about."

"Will you draw it for me, roughly?"

He passed over a pad and pencil, and Dick made a hasty outline. Bassett
watched with growing satisfaction.

"Here's the point," he said, when Dick had finished. "She was there
before Donaldson, or at the same time," as Dick made an impatient
movement. "But he had only a dozen yards to go. She was in her room,
upstairs. To get down in that time she had to leave her room, descend
a staircase, cross a hall and run the length of the living-room,
forty-five feet. If the case had ever gone to trial she'd have had to do
some explaining."

"She or Donaldson," Dick said obstinately.

Bassett read on:

Jean Melis called and sworn.

Q. "Your name?"

A. "Jean Melis."

Q. "Have you an American residence, Mr. Melis?"

A. "Only where I am employed. I am now living at the Clark ranch."

Q. "What is your business?"

A. "I am Mr. Clark's valet."

Q. "It was you who found Mr. Clark's revolver?"

A. "Yes."

Q. "Tell about how and where you found it."

A. "I made a search early in the evening. I will not hide from you that
I meant to conceal it if I discovered it. A man who is drunk is not
guilty of what he does. I did not find it. I went back that night, when
the people had gone, and found it beneath the carved woodbox, by the
fireplace. I did not know that the sheriff had placed a man outside the
window."

"Get that, too," Bassett said, putting down the paper. "The Frenchman
was fond of you, and he was doing his blundering best. But the sheriff
expected you back and had had the place watched, so they caught him. But
that's not the point. A billiard room is a hard place to hide things in.
I take it yours was like the average."