THE CHASM
The elevator deposited Harry at the third floor, where was the suite of
rooms that he had occupied while in town during the campaign, as being
more accessible than his own apartment. The outer chamber of the suite
was set with all the paraphernalia of a committee-room, with a huge
writing-table and several small desks holding telegraph instruments
installed to receive the returns. To-morrow would find it humming with
excitement, but it was deserted now. He had given Suzuki, his valet,
the evening off.
He shut the door and stood a moment leaning against it. His eyes were
blank, his face set. He had not known of Cameron Craig's journey
abroad, nor in the rush of the campaign had he seen the newspaper
paragraph which told of the success of the operation in Buda-Pesth.
But in the single look across the pavement he had leaped to the truth.
Craig had recovered his faculties--there had been full knowledge and
vengeful purpose in the haggard eyes. What he had dreaded, the
possibility which he had of late locked in an inner chamber of his
mind, had come to pass. All was finished! The Sword of Damocles was
about to fall!
What remained? To creep away, like a dastard, he, the leader in the
fight? To fly, like the discovered thief, as he had once thought of
doing? Even that was impossible now. He knew his enemy too well to
suppose that he would have left that way open! The other was but
playing with him, like a cat with a mouse, till the moment came to
publicly denounce him. For with a kind of prescience he guessed
Craig's real purpose, to seize the climactic moment and abstract from
his humiliation the last ounce of sensationalism.
All night, in the silent, empty apartment, under the brilliant lights,
Harry strode up and down--up and down tirelessly, his face white, his
hands clenched, confronting the blank wall that reared before him.
Temptation, in its most insidious form, fell upon him. Why should he
not brazen it out? After all, the burden of proof was upon his
accuser. He had destroyed the record-card which had held his physical
measurements. Jubilee Jim could be depended upon to swear to his
presence at the bungalow through the winter: wild horses would drag no
other story from his faithful lips. Simple and God-fearing as the old
negro was, love for his master was one of the prime articles of his
emotional and uncomplex religion. For that love he would
unquestioningly risk even the fires of the material hell of which his
Bible told him! Such an alibi would hold. What other proof could
Craig bring forward, further than a fortuitous resemblance, materially
weakened now by hair and beard, to a one-time convict in a penitentiary
in another state?
Was he not doubly justified in this deception? He was really innocent.
If he foreswore himself a thousand times, it would be in the way both
of justice and expediency. It would solve the problem. The new Cause
needed him. Had he any right to fling himself away, merely in the
interest of fictitious truth, on the mawkish principle of "Thou shalt
not do evil that good may come"?
Yet, to perjure himself! To know himself liar and hypocrite, even in
the hour when he should kiss the holy volume in the vows of a high
office? He who even in that past that had been clouded by egoistic
eccentricity and marred by dissipation, had always counted an oath
sacred! To bind that faithful servant on the mountain to a black
perjury--which would shadow his imagination with the smoke of the
eternal burning!
There came to him suddenly the memory of words that had woven with the
fevered imaginings of his illness on the mountain--words of Jubilee
Jim's prayer:
"Dey tek yo' darlin' son ... en put er crown o' tho'ns on he beautiful
haid, en he ain' done nuthin' 'cep'n good. Ah don' keer what Marse
Harry have on; Ah reck'n when he come lak dis, yo' gwine he'p me he'p
him--kase dat what he done fo' me!"
The stumbling, broken accents seemed to strike across the void. What
if, instead of the great machine of recompense that he had
distinguished in that prison experience, there were indeed a personal
God, as Jubilee Jim believed, throned in his vast white heaven of
glory--a God pitiful for the agony of his human creatures. Would he
look down now and hear his cry for help? Harry flung himself suddenly
on his knees, and leaned his forehead against the dark wainscoting. He
knew that he uttered no word, but all his being seemed to resolve
itself into an inarticulate cry for aidance. It was the first appeal
of his life to something outside of himself, the first cry of human
weakness, groping in its utter hopelessness for the Infinite. It was
the last step of the long way Harry had travelled--from self-abasement
to remorse and awakening conscience, through struggle with appetite to
victory over himself, self-abnegation, acquiescence in the great law of
retribution, and finally, in his despair, to prayer.
And out of the deep to which he had called, calmness at length came to
him, and with it a clear and steady purpose. As dawn took down the red
draw-bars of the sky to let in the day, he threw open a shutter and
stood looking down with aching eyes upon the drowsily-waking street.
There should be no lying denial, no cowardly evasion--nothing less than
the naked truth. If fate, if God, demanded this last thing of him--if
only so could he balance the account--he would not repine. He had
fought the fight, and at the last, so far as he could, he would keep
the faith!
Before the hotel had awakened, Harry was in his own apartment. He had
left a note for Brent, who was to be in charge at the hotel suite,
saying briefly that he should not appear that day, but would be with
the Committee at eight o'clock. He had sent the same message also to
Judge Allen. He told Suzuki to admit no one, disconnected his
telephone, and thereafter remained at his desk writing, a plate of
sandwiches at his elbow, bending himself to the final arrangement of
the details of his personal affairs, as he might have done, he thought
once, if by some clairvoyancy he foresaw that to-morrow he would die.
Death, indeed, would have been a welcome solution if by it he could
have bought extrication. Was he not going, living, to a worse death
than he should ever die?
As the mantel-clock struck seven, he laid the last written paper in the
desk-drawer and rising, went into his dressing-room. He bathed and
dressed, the last time in his life, he told himself, that he should don
the evening habilaments of a gentleman--grave-clothes! For the blow
would not be delayed. To-morrow, no doubt, the state would ring with
his downfall. To-night--in the hour of his victory, if victory should
be his--he would write _finis_ to the final chapter and surrender
himself to the law.
It was just at the half-hour when Harry opened the outer door of his
apartment. But he did not pass through. Three men had been waiting
silently just across the threshold. One of them was Craig. They
entered without a word, Craig shut the door and one of the others took
his stand before it.