HARRY DECIDES
The steel handcuff bit more hardly into Harry's wrist, but he did not
feel it. His eyes were fixed and his face had grown grey. The
accusation, with all its shuddering implications, had surged over him
like the assurance of the unescapable end, the last engulfing wave of
hopeless finality which, in its subsidence, left him cold and still.
Malice and hatred had closed the door of hope.
His sacrifice had gone for nothing. He could not save Echo. The
matter had been taken from his hands. She must be involved. If murder
had been done, her passionate denial in his defence would no doubt
suffice to save him--he knew his southern juries!--but at what a price
to her would be his salvation! For though sufficient doubt would be
insinuated to legally acquit him, in the eyes of their world harrowing
suspicions must always cling to her. Collusion between her and
himself, her lover, to secure compromising letters, a guilty
understanding embracing possible murder! A midnight _rendezvous_ with
one lover, converted into swift tragedy by the vengeful pursuit of the
other! So the speculations would run, and the baleful whispers would
follow her all her life. What matter though she married him? Would
love make up for that?
It was the Harry Sevier of remorseless logic, of clear thinking and
rigid analysis, who reasoned now.
A tall old clock stood at the turn of the echoing stair and as he
descended between his two uniformed attendants, grimly watchful of his
every movement, he noted mechanically that it was two o'clock. It came
to him with a chill and awed amazement how much might happen within one
round of the clock. When those hands had last pointed to two o'clock
he had stood in his office, a man of reputation and newly-ordered life,
with all his heart beating to love; now he was disgraced, the woman he
loved about to know the shame and hideous notoriety of scandal, both of
them to be pilloried together as principals in another of those
horrifying revelations of double-life which at periodic intervals shock
a community's decorum!
It was not for himself he was thinking first. His pain for Echo
swallowed up his own. As he sat in the cab between his guardians,
bound for the station-house and the police interrogatory that should
fling abroad its sensation in the morning's papers, his composure
crumbled. He bent and put his cold face in his colder hands. His lips
moved voicelessly.
"Echo ... Echo!" he whispered. "You have had my love, you have it now.
You could have my life, if I could give it--every day, every drop of my
blood, would not be enough to pay the price of what you must bear! But
it is out of my power. I thought I could save you, my darling! But I
can't.... I can't.... If I might only suffer alone, and you never
know!"
He lifted his head with a start. A thought had darted to his mind like
an impinging ray of light. Why _should_ she ever know? Why should any
one know--if Craig died? Only Craig who had known him in the past, had
recognised him as Harry Sevier. Perhaps that was the greatest risk he
should have to run. He could take refuge in silence, tell nothing,
explain nothing. She would not know that the real shooter had not been
taken. Could he maintain under the searching purview of the law that
anonymity which he had sought to insure during the debauch into which
he had so avidly plunged yesterday afternoon? Why not? He had so
adjusted his home affairs, luckily, that a long time--perhaps many
months--would elapse before his absence would be narrowly questioned.
He was now in a city where he was not known: hundreds of miles of steel
rails lay between him and the crowds to whom he was a familiar figure.
His dark beard--so distinguishing a feature--was gone. He had
discarded the characteristic gold-rimmed eye-glasses. Not an article
of clothing he wore bore his name. His present face might be flung on
printed pages to the four winds, and who, even of those who had seen
him day in and day out, would say, "It is Harry Sevier!"
There were but two contingencies. If Craig recovered sufficient
consciousness to speak the name that had fainted on his lips when they
two had been face to face in that room of hurried surgery--then his
incognito would fall and fate must have its way. If Craig died without
recovering consciousness--this, provided his own identity was not
discovered, was the one way out for Echo.
For him it meant, probably, the last risk. He had now to meet no mere
assumption of guilt, but an accusation, direct and unqualified, made
under oath, in what might well be the hour of death. He could not
offer in rebuttal evidence of character, reputation and standing. He
was deliberately refusing to call his only witness to the fact. Yet he
did not waver. The Harry Sevier who under the stress of impulse had
acted so swiftly to save the woman he loved, elected the same choice
now.
He would do it. Whatever the risk, whatever the ultimate cost to him,
he would do it!