THE HAUNTER OF THE SHADOW
But for the iron control to which he had schooled himself, Sevier, in
that second, must have made a panic movement of betrayal. He dragged
his eyes away instantly, his heart beating as if it must burst, as the
deliberate judicial accents struck across the courtroom:
"I have no desire to say anything to add to your anxiety of mind. The
rulings of the court, if they have had any bias, have not leaned to the
side of the Commonwealth. There is no legal right that has not been
afforded you and if you have not chosen to meet the evidence with
candour it is to be presumed that it is because candour could have lent
no degree of mitigation to the circumstances. The jury has found you
guilty as charged, and I should be doing less than my duty, if I
allowed sympathy based upon imagined facts to subtract from the full
legal penalty. The judgment of this court is, therefore, that you be
imprisoned in the state's penitentiary during a period of twenty years."
Harry hardly heard the pronouncement for the mental confusion that held
him. Echo knew! All the time while he had been fighting back
recognition, she had known! How had she guessed? Had his voice,
perhaps, that night when he had saved her, betrayed him? He remembered
her white and agonised look when he had thrust her from the door of
Craig's house and bade her run. A doubt, coupled with his absence from
home, would have driven her, somehow or other, to discover the truth.
She had been near him often, perhaps, realising the situation,
conscious of what he had been striving for, knowing that only silence
for a time could save them both! In that instant's view he had seen
the look of suffering and sickness in her face. In these long
weeks--if, indeed, she had known it so long--what an anguish of anxiety
she must have been enduring!
As the voice ceased and he sat down, through the warm wave that was
coursing over him, Harry felt a chilling realisation of the risk she
had run in coming there. An impulsive word, an indiscreet look, and
suspicion might have been roused leading to discovery. Sitting before
this bar he was only an unknown criminal, a submerged "John Doe" on
whom the make-shift expediency of the law spent itself. But the veil
once lifted, he would be Harry Sevier, club-man and lawyer whose
pleading folk had once flocked to hear, now caught in the vise of the
law and proven thief and degenerate.
In the emptying room he felt the cool hand of his counsel touch his
own, and followed him--with a watchful deputy-sheriff now in
hand-reach--to a side door that opened into a chamber at the rear of
the court-room. On the threshold the lawyer turned to the sheriff.
"There's no hurry, Jerry," he said peevishly. "You wait out here a few
minutes. The old man himself is coming. He wants to see him."
"Mr. Mason," said Sevier as the other closed the door. "I shall not
pretend to thank you for your interest and kindness."
The man of briefs shrugged his shoulders. "There's nothing to thank me
for," he answered briskly. "Now, if I had cleared you--"
Harry nodded. "Naturally, you couldn't do that. You were at a
disadvantage."
"Thanks to you!"
"Yes, I didn't assist you much, I know."
"Didn't help me at all," came back in a growl.
"No doubt you think I might have," said Harry. "But please don't count
me unresponsive. It is only that the logic of the situation appealed
to me as unanswerable. But it is a privilege," he added, with the
glimmer of a smile, "to have been associated with you."
Mason looked at him with a twist to his saturnine lips. "You have been
my most remarkable client," he said. "It would have pleased me to have
gotten you off. But unluckily for you, I'm no Harry Sevier."
It was fortunate that the face of the man beside him was turned away,
or he might have seen it go white and startled. "I'm sure I lost no
chance I might have had," said the other slowly, "even though you're
not Harry Sevier, whoever he is."
The other laughed shortly. "He's a lawyer in the next state. I heard
him plead once. _He_ didn't bother with evidence! He'd clear Judas
Iscariot with that silver tongue of his! Ah, well..." He shrugged his
shoulders again, and turned to a closed door. "I'll see if the old man
is ready."
"One moment." Harry had drawn the ring with the square uncut emerald
from his finger, and now he held it out. "I should consider it a
favour, if you would take this--it has no particular value, I am sorry
to say--as a little remembrance."
Mason turned the ring over in his hands. Under the churlish pose a
guilty flush stole up his lean, eccentric face that betrayed
unmistakably the friendliness and liking he had learned for the man
whose plight angered and whose attitude puzzled him. "Thank you!" he
said, and a sudden smile made the grim demeanour all at once soft and
human. He slipped it on his finger. "Thank you! I shall be proud to
keep it."
He opened the door and Sevier followed him into the room adjoining.
There, looking out of the window, the fingers of one thin hand in his
plenteous blue-grey beard, the other behind him, stood the Governor of
the State. Harry felt a thrill run through him. He knew the older man
by sight, for they had met once casually in the past. Had Echo already
spoken? Did the other know?
"Governor," said the lawyer, "I beg to present my client, whose cause I
have so poorly represented."
In the deep grey, kindly eyes that were studying him attentively, Harry
saw instantly, however, that there was no hidden knowledge, and his
heart, that had leaped quickly, dropped into measured beating. He
bowed.
"My counsel did wonders," he said, "but the day of miracles is past."
The reply was simple enough, but the visitor unconsciously looked his
surprise. He had been prepared for something in a way unusual, for
Mason had employed his intimacy to inspire something of his own keen
interest in his client. Face to face with the latter, the Governor
understood the lawyer's puzzlement. Here was a man who had been
arrested as a house-breaker and who, caught in the very act, had shot a
man down. Yet he found it suddenly credible, as Mason had declared,
that the man was no ordinary burglar, was indeed, or had been, a
gentleman. But there were gentlemen-thieves! He met Harry's tone with
noncommittal courtesy.
"You will not consider this an intrusion, I hope," he said. "My friend
here was anxious that I should see you. He has been deeply concerned
in your case."
"It is a pleasure," Harry replied simply. "He has been put to
considerable pains, in which there is very little credit, I am afraid."
"His interest," the Governor went on, "as he has assured me, arises
from a conviction that there is some hidden element in the affair that,
if it had been brought out, might have put a different face upon it."
Harry bowed but did not answer.
"You have a good reason, I take it, for maintaining the silence as to
yourself which my friend here finds so difficult?"
"The very best," said Harry grimly.
The Governor mused a moment. "You will pardon me, I am sure, if I ask
you one other question. Have you ever been in prison?"
"No," said Harry.
"Have you committed crime--in the past?"
"As the law counts it, no."
He looked the Governor steadily in the eyes as he spoke and the other,
a keen judge of men, with a knowledge, bred of long life and
observation, of the workings of the human conscience, felt a strange
inclination to believe. Yet for every criminal there must be a first
crime. Given a good family name and the remnant of a conscience, the
man's insistence could be accounted for! With a little sigh he turned
to Mason.
"Shall I see you at the Castlemans to-night?" he asked as they shook
hands.
"I'm dining at the Langhams," Mason replied. "It's a farewell dinner
for Miss Allen."
"A charming girl, Echo!" said the Governor. "I've known her since she
was a child. A farewell, did you say? Is her visit over?"
"Yes, she's off to Europe to-morrow."
The lawyer went with the Governor to the door and stood a moment
looking after him as he crossed the lawn to his carriage. He did not
see the look that had suddenly slipped to the face of the man standing
behind him--a look mingled of sudden wonder and questioning disquiet.
To Europe! Echo? Was she going away now ... knowing it all ...
knowing what he had passed through, what lay before him? Going without
written word or secret sign to him?
Harry felt a strange sinking of the heart. It seemed to him as if a
cold shadow had suddenly fallen across the room--a shadow in which
lurked something vague and formless, something whose existence his
faith denied, yet which stood silently staring at him with a cruel and
terrifying smile.