THE WING-BEAT OF AZRAEL
AND Dorothy? Truly, these were terrible days and weeks for one who
loved, and had lost and found, only to lose again. But, believing in
her lover’s innocence as no one else save Henry Antrim did believe in
it, she was yet powerless to break a single thread of the net which
enmeshed him. She could do naught but grieve despairingly, and that in
secret, since none but her father and Antrim guessed the depth of her
hurt.
To her in her misery came an angel of light masquerading as one Parker
Jarvis. She knew the reporter by sight, and better by repute, since
Antrim had spoken much of him and of his friendly movings in Brant’s
affair. She also knew that he was of those who would have held Brant
excused though guilty; but at this point her knowledge of him paused
until, one black Thursday evening in late November, but a single sweep
of the clock hands from the fatal Friday morning, when she had stolen
out of the house to be alone with her misery, he stood uncovered before
her holding the gate for her to pass out.
“Do you know who I am, Miss Langford?” he asked; and when she signed
assent he turned and walked beside her.
“I don’t mean to intrude, and I could have only one excuse for
waylaying you,” he went on. “If there is any blame, Harry Antrim must
answer for it. He doesn’t mean to tell all the things he knows, but
sometimes he tells a good bit more than he sets out to, and he has told
me enough to make me understand why to-morrow will hurt you worse than
it will any of us.”
There was manifestly no answer to be made to this, and she let him go
on without hindrance. For to-morrow would end it all, and anything less
than death seemed too trivial to be opposed.
“I wanted to ask you to help me at a pinch where I am unable to help
myself,” he continued. “But before I come to the helping part, I’d like
to tell you just where I stand to-night. May I do that?”
Her “Yes” was no more than a whisper, but he heard it and took his cue
promptly, beginning in the midst.
“At first I thought Brant did it, as a matter of course. Everything
pointed that way, and the mere fact of his giving himself up seemed
as good as a confession. But afterward when I began to dig a little
deeper into it I wasn’t so sure; in fact, I came to believe that your
brother had done it, and that Brant was trying to screen him--to--well,
to stand in the way until your brother had a chance to run for it.
You mustn’t mind my saying these things, because they have to be said
before I can come around to the present state of affairs.”
Again she gave him liberty. “It does not matter; nothing matters any
more.”
“Thanks. Well, about that time I had a talk with Brant, and I’m ashamed
to say he made me fly the track again--made me believe he did do it,
after all; and I went on believing it till one day about a week ago,
when Harry Antrim told me what you told him Brant had told you. That is
pretty badly tangled up, but I guess you know what I am driving at.”
“Mr. Brant told me he was innocent--is that what you mean?” she asked.
“That’s it precisely, and I just put it up that he would come pretty
near telling you the truth; that you are the one person in the world
he wouldn’t lie to. So I had to climb over the fence again, and--well,
to cut a long story short, I haven’t had ten hours’ sleep in the last
sixty-odd; and--and to-morrow is the day.”
She caught despairingly at the straw, as any poor drowning one might.
“O Mr. Jarvis, what have you done? what can be done?”
“I don’t know that I have done anything. I’ve been desperately tangled
up in two theories, and one of them is no good unless I can get rid of
the other. Miss Langford, you will know how hard pressed I am when you
hear what I came over here to ask you, but you must let to-morrow be my
excuse for anything and everything. You have seen your brother and have
been with him more or less every day since this thing happened: is he
the one who ought to be counting the hours as George Brant is probably
counting them this evening?”
The early dusk of the winter day was beginning to prick out the arc
lights in the downtown circuits, and she stopped to turn back; and so
facing him she gave him his answer:
“No, Mr. Jarvis, my brother did not do it. I have thought of that--I
have been driven to think of it, dreadful as it is; and I have watched
him--God forgive me!--I have watched him as an enemy might. _He did not
do it!_”
Jarvis threw up his head and drew a deep breath of the crisp night air,
as a swimmer who feels the bottom under his feet while yet the shore of
ultimate safety is afar off.
“That helps out a whole lot,” he said; and his involuntary sigh was a
measure of the relief which her assurance gave him. “May I walk back
with you? I’m not half through.”
She suffered him, and he went quickly forward in the path she had
cleared for him.
“We are now a long way ahead of any point that has been reached
hitherto,” he began. “Brant didn’t do it, and your brother didn’t do
it. But a man was killed, and if he did not commit suicide, somebody
must have killed him. Happily, we don’t have to wrangle with the
suicide theory, so we may safely fall back on the alternative. Do you
follow me?”
Her “Yes” was not a whisper this time; it was an eager little gasp of
expectancy.
“Good. Now, while I have been holding the William Langford possibility
in suspension, as it were, I have been filling in the time by hunting
desperately for this shadowy ‘somebody.’ That is why I haven’t had much
sleep since Monday night.”
“O Mr. Jarvis! Have you found any clew at all?”
“If I say Yes, you must understand that it isn’t any bigger than a
spider’s web--just one strand of a spider’s web, at that. For a week or
so before the shooting Harding was seen here and there and everywhere
in company with a man whom everybody can describe after a fashion and
nobody can identify. They seemed to be friends, but that doesn’t count
for much among people of that kind. Still, there is only one little
thing to connect this unknown man with the murder, so far.”
“And that is?”
“That is the fact that he was seen just before the shooting, and he has
not been seen since.”
“But surely he can be found?” So much she said, and then she covered
her face with her hands and a dry sob shook her. In a few short hours
the clearest proof of Brant’s innocence would come too late.
Jarvis understood, and he held his peace until she grew calmer. Then
he said: “I’ve told you my errand, or at least the biggest part of it.
But there is one other little thing in which you can help. The time has
come for the forlorn hope to make its last dash. Antrim tells me that
Mr. Hobart, Brant’s oldest friend, has just got word, and he is coming
hotfoot to Denver on this evening’s train. I want to have a final rally
of Brant’s friends at Forsyth’s office to-night to see if we can’t cook
up some sort of an excuse to beg the Governor for a reprieve. It’s the
only hope now.”
“But I--how can I help?” she asked eagerly.
“You can persuade your father to come down after dinner. Harry will
call for him with a carriage.”
She did not reply at once, and when she spoke it was as one who feels
the way. “Will you understand me if I say that my father thinks he has
done his whole duty? You must remember that he believes firmly in Mr.
Brant’s guilt--he has believed in it from the very first.”
“I know; but it must be your share in this last pull to make him
believe as we do.”
“Oh, how can I?” she cried.
“I think I can put you in the way of doing it, but you must forgive
me if I dig still deeper into a matter which is your own private
affair, Miss Langford. You have had one interview with Brant since he
was locked up, and any man with blood in his veins could guess what
happened in that half hour you were together. I’m not going to ask you
to repeat that talk for my benefit, but I do ask this: Didn’t Brant
give you to understand that he believed your brother to be the guilty
one?”
She was choking with mingled grief and humiliation and embarrassment,
but she made shift to answer him:
“He did.”
“Then, of course, you knew at once why he was there; that he had
stepped in voluntarily to save your brother--not for Will’s sake,
perhaps, but for yours?”
“I knew it then--I know it now.”
“And you knew that, rather than let the shame and disgrace and horror
come upon you and yours, he would keep it up to the bitter end--that
end which is coming to him to-morrow morning?”
“Yes; I knew that, too.”
Jarvis paused, and then he clinched the nail he had driven:
“Have you ever tried to make your father understand all this?”
“Oh, you are hard--bitter hard!” she broke out passionately. “I did try
at first, but my father said it wasn’t in human nature. And how could I
hope to make him believe it when he was so thoroughly convinced of Mr.
Brant’s guilt?”
“None the less, you have it to do. You must convince him, and persuade
him to come down to the office with Harry to-night. Luckily, I can help
you a little. It so happened that I went to see Brant the same day you
saw him. I was with him in less than half an hour after you left him.
In that talk I came within one word of making him admit to me that he
wasn’t guilty, and also of making him confess that he believed Will did
the shooting. Shall I tell you how I know this?”
“If you must--if you will.”
“I had told him that it wasn’t any use to try to keep up the fiction;
that the truth would all come out at the trial; that the court would
appoint a lawyer to defend him, and that any counsel he might have,
save and excepting only your father, would break your brother’s
testimony down in five minutes. Do you know what he did when I told him
this?”
“No.”
“He sat down and scribbled a note for me to take to Forsyth. In that
note he told Forsyth that he had reconsidered; that he would accept
your father as his counsel. He believed it was the only way to save
your brother from a cross-examination which would undo what he was
staking his life to do. That is all.”
They had reached the Hollywood gate, and he opened it for her, and when
she stood beyond it, lifted his hat.
“I hope I haven’t said too much, or asked too much, Miss Langford.”
She came close to the gate, and he could see her eyes shining in the
twilight.
“No, you haven’t said too much, and you haven’t asked too much. I shall
go down on my knees to my father, Mr. Jarvis, and--and as God helps me,
he shall go to you believing as we do. And for yourself--” But he was
gone before she could thank him.