WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL
In the wide, lamp-lighted room into which this weird quartette had so
startlingly entered, before the capacious fireplace two men had been
sitting smoking--Judge Allen and his friend Governor Eveland. At the
sudden apparition both had turned sharply toward the window--two
strangely dissimilar figures: the Judge slight and spare and scholarly,
his pale, finely-chiselled features tinged in the glow; the other
deep-chested and powerful, of herculean mould, with a rugged face made
almost patriarchal by the long grey beard which swept his chest: both
countenances for the instant curiously alike in their expression of
shocked surprise.
The Judge arose abruptly from his chair, his gaze shifting from the
masked figure in striped clothes to Craig's face, eagerly alight and
triumphant. He had no welcome for this summary entrance.
"Who is responsible for this intrusion?" he asked coldly.
Craig laughed. "I am responsible," he said. "I have business with you
both. For some time, as you are aware, I have been debarred from such
pursuits. However, I am now myself again, and free to pick up lost
threads. Hence my call to-night."
"It can wait a more opportune time." The Judge spoke with asperity.
"Moreover, I must ask you to remember that I have servants to announce
my guests."
"Apologies may be in order later," Craig returned, "if my errand does
not justify itself. My business with you is to inform you that you and
your friends have been giving countenance to a man whom the law is
tracking down--a convict who escaped from prison in the next state some
months ago. You see him before you." He looked at the Governor, who
had neither moved nor spoken--he had small liking for Cameron Craig.
"My business with you, Governor Eveland, is to demand that you call
upon the local authorities to arrest this jailbird, pending his
extradition to your own jurisdiction. I have brought with me, under my
personal surety, an inmate of the penitentiary"--he pointed to Paddy
the Brick--"who was this criminal's cellmate and who has identified
him."
There was a slight pause before the Governor replied. He had shared
his host's irritation at the unceremonious entrance and this was
allayed by no regard for Craig, whom he had always reckoned an evil
influence in the activities of the state of which he himself was Chief
Executive. Now the pallid face with its bandage across one temple, the
distempered eyes and strange excitement, smote him with distaste.
"I like neither your method nor your manner, Mr. Craig. This would
seem to be a matter for the police, not for me, nor, I take it, for
Judge Allen. Why you choose to drag this man here, at such a moment,
with this skulduddery of mask and stripes, I cannot imagine."
Craig laughed again, sneeringly. "A little fancy of my own, and regard
for the dramatic proprieties..."
Treadwell strode forward with an exclamation.
"Judge--Governor Eveland!" he said explosively. "Let me say something.
I came here to-night purely in my capacity of Cameron Craig's attorney,
intent only on saving him from what seemed to me a piece of brazen
lunacy. But I begin to see that there is something behind this, and if
it isn't lunacy it is something I like still less. I withdraw here and
now from any connection with him or this action--"
"Withdraw and be damned!" Craig flung him, savagely. "I know what I am
about!" His voice rose. "That man, Governor Eveland, is an escaped
prisoner from the penitentiary of your state! Tear off his mask and
see for yourselves who our 'John Doe' really is--this fine thief and
would-be murderer--the man who shot me down a year ago!"
"Stop!" The Governor's voice rang through the room. He was on his
feet now, stern authority in every line of his posture. "Mr. Craig,
listen to me! You have thrust yourself here without warrant of right
or of invitation, in a matter which you--not I--have elected to make my
business. Very well: I take the affair and this prisoner into my own
hands. Do you understand?"
He paused, his lips clipped to like shears. Craig's outburst, vicious
with suppressed fury, had given him a lightning-like glimpse into
something unguessed in the situation. The man before him, then, in
this convict dress, was the burglar convicted of that old shooting--the
prisoner whom he had seen at the court-house, and whose personality had
so attracted and puzzled him. Yet there was more beneath Craig's
attitude than an understandable desire to punish the man who had shot
him: more than that in those infuriate eyes, shaking hands and
malicious triumph. The Governor had a hatred of persecution. His mind
worked according to a law of stern and inflexible justice, yet to him
justice opened itself to no assault of man's passions.
Under that holding look Craig sat down heavily, angry arrogance in his
face. Treadwell took a chair near him, and Paddy the Brick remained
standing in the background, his small eyes glancing furtively from one
to the other.
The Governor resumed his seat and bent his deliberate gaze on the
figure that had been standing movelessly before him. A quick memory
had come to him of the other's face, now hidden, as he remembered to
have once seen it--clear-eyed, vivid and forceful, strangely lacking in
the ear-marks of the criminal, a face that had often recalled itself to
his mind since that day. He had no vulgar curiosity, but the patent
mystery in the background called to him strangely.
"Are you, as this man alleges, a prisoner who some months ago broke
jail in the adjoining state?"
"I am." The voice, muffled by the mask, was low but distinct.
"The man who shot him in his library?"
"No."
The questioning, deep grey eyes looked steadily at the mask--it seemed
as if the gaze would bore through the cloth. "But you were found
guilty of that offence!"
"I was convicted, yes."
The Governor was silent a moment; then his hand reached for the pen on
the table. "On the admission, then," he said slowly, "it is my duty to
request the authorities to take you into custody. You are aware of
your rights under the law?"
The striped figure bowed. "I am. I shall waive extradition. With
your permission, however, I should like to make a statement."
"He can make that in the jail," interposed Craig contemptuously. "Take
off his mask and send for the police."
The Governor frowned. "He can make it here and now, if he so chooses.
This is not your house, Mr. Craig. If you do not care to listen, there
will be no objection to your withdrawal--with your witness."
There was a fleeting pause, in which a livid red mounted to Craig's
brow, dark against the bandage. Then the Governor turned.
"Do you take your solemn oath that what you are about to say is the
truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?"
"I do."
The Governor leaned back in his chair. "You may make your statement,"
he said quietly.
Harry bowed. He was feeling a chill sense of estrangement, as though
the bars that were so soon to shut him from the life of which he had
been a part had already fallen between him and his friends. But he was
oddly self-controlled. In the few moments he had been thinking
swiftly--not of himself, but of the cause he represented, the men who
had pinned their faith upon him and whom he had betrayed, whose leader,
Judge Allen, sat there now ignorant of the ruin that overwhelmed them.
To say to him, "I, Harry Sevier, whom you honoured, whom you made the
bearer of your party banner, reached forth for this trust knowing
myself a hunted man, outlawed of honest folk!" They were his friends,
his loyal comrades in the fight, men whose friendship had been tried
out by long years! In this last hour he shrank from a judgment biased
with sympathy, and a fierce craving was rising in him for a
justification based on no personal appeal.
He took a step backward to the mantel and stood thus, a little removed
from them, looking from one to the other. He spoke in a low voice--not
the alert, vibrant voice of the old Harry Sevier, but one alien,
metallic, and strangely devoid of feeling.
"What I have to say may soon be said. It was not of my own will that I
came here with covered face, and since this masquerade is not of my
choosing, it may serve its purpose a moment longer. You, Judge Allen,
know me well. Governor Eveland, you also are not unacquainted with me.
With every one in this room I have come in contact--not as a convict,
but as a citizen and an honest man. My association with you, Judge
Allen, has involved certain responsibilities, and these I have accepted
while I have lain under the law. For this I owe you a greater
reparation than I can ever make. I know that justification in the eyes
of the world is impossible, but in your own mind--in the minds of
others who stand with you--it perhaps may be given me. But a
justification is empty to me that springs from personal sympathy. I
want it as man to man. For this reason I keep on the mask a little
longer."
He paused. The Governor had not spoken; he had settled back in his
great chair, one hand in his beard. The Judge was leaning intently
forward, his hands clasped; he had never taken his eyes from the
speaker, save once to glance at Craig, who sat with narrowed eyes and
heavy lips curved in a malicious sneer. Treadwell's elbow was on his
knee, his chin in his palm, his brows drawn into a frown that told
nothing, and behind all stood Paddy the Brick, furtively watching.
When the striped figure spoke again, it was in a voice which held a
first thin thrill of feeling:
"I have said that I lay under the law, but it was through that law's
error. I was unjustly accused and wrongfully convicted. I was
innocent."
The Governor spoke, coldly and deliberately. "You were taken at
midnight in the Craig house."
"I had entered it for no dishonest purpose. I broke no bolt nor
bar--that had been done before my arrival."
"You allege, then, that you were not in company with the robbers?"
"I was not. They were there when I entered."
"Why did you not give the alarm?"
"They made me their prisoner. A pistol was at my head."
"You did not so testify at your trial."
"I declined to testify at all."
The Governor nodded. "That is true," he said. "I remember."
There was a moment's pause, then the voice continued:
"It is sometimes inevitable that the law, whose purpose it is to be
just, is terribly unjust. Sometimes the sole clue to a situation which
seems to spell inevitable guilt lies in a fact, small in itself, whose
significance is such that it cannot be brought forward. This was my
case. The fact which would have cleared me could not be told. I
became a convict. For six months I was an inmate of the Penitentiary.
Then--the way opened to freedom, and I took it. What man would not
have done so? I acknowledged no right of the law over my body. I went
back to my former life, and took up my old profession here in this
city."
"Here!" The Judge muttered, under his breath.
"And in that life I found opening responsibilities. New work called to
me. My help was needed. I could not shirk it. I knew the risk
always, but I counted it small. And the need was great! With such a
work waiting my hand, a labour that no one else, it seemed, could
do--one upon which much depended--was I to stand aside, to withhold my
effort on the slender chance that discovery might sometime overtake me?"
The speaker seemed to have forgotten the Governor, to have swept all
else to one side and to be addressing now only the Judge, in an appeal
that touched the older man profoundly. It was, he thought, as though
the man's whole soul was crying out in some sense for forgiveness and
absolution for an injury unwittingly inflicted.
"The one thing has happened now which must lay the past bare. I must
meet this--the scandal, the shame. My life, all that makes life worth
living, ends to-night, and I stand before you with the bare soul of a
truthful man. You have known me and trusted me. You--and others--have
put faith in me...." The voice, for the first time, faltered and fell.
The Judge's head had been bowed, but he lifted it now.
"God alone knows the secrets of our hearts," he said, heavily. "If you
were innocent--but of that how can I say? My view of your actions
since your escape--those which may affect me--must necessarily hang
upon that point. I could believe that you are not a burglar. It may
be that knowledge of your true identity will presently convince me of
this. And I might be persuaded that your presence in the Craig house
that night was no more than an unfortunate coincidence. But the
evidence of the shooting appeared at the time irrefutable. I cannot
conceive that the mere knowledge of what you are would be likely to
affect my belief in that respect. Your statement as to that is not
only wholly unsupported, but was--and is--bluntly contradicted by the
man who was shot."
He ceased speaking. No word came from the striped figure, only a
slight movement of one hand, expressing at once resignation and
futility. Then the hand lifted to the mask.
The Governor, however, stayed the action of revealment with a sudden
gesture.
"One moment," he said quickly. "We have gone so far, I should like to
go a step further--and still forensically, if you please. The question
of identity may wait. Do I understand that you deny that you fired
that shot?"
"I do."
Craig lurched forward in his chair. "This is no trial court!" he
exclaimed savagely. "He has had his hearing once."
"Be silent!" commanded the Governor. "This man is in my hands, not in
yours!" The warning was heavy and vengeful, and it held now all the
electric energy of the man that had made him famous through a long
career of criminal practice before his Governorship days, and that now,
unleashed, dominated the room. Before it Craig whitened with a surge
of anger that sent a keen probe of pain through his temple. He sat
back, breathing hard, his great fingers working on the arms of his
chair.
The Governor was leaning forward now, his hand on the table.
"If I recollect--and I think I do, as certain aspects of the case
interested me at the time--there was a witness to the shooting beside
the men who were assumed to be your comrades. There was a woman there."
"She did not see my face."
"But she might have seen the face of the shooter. Why did she not see
yours?"
"I wore a mask."
"Is not a mask, in itself, a badge of criminal intent?"
"It was not mine. One of the men dropped it when they ran."
"If, being innocent," the Governor went on, "you put on the mask, the
only presumption is that you did not wish the woman to recognise you.
Therefore, she knew. Did you speak to her?"
There was no reply.
"If you spoke to her, it was when the man who had fired the shot was in
flight. Your words to her, verified by herself--if she were
reputable--would be evidence that you did not do the shooting. Why
then, did you not call her as a witness?"
The long French-window had swung again ajar and the cooling evening
breeze rustled the paper that lay upon the table. From the far road
there came a muffled, long-drawn cheer, that trailed across the tense
silence of the room.
"If the significant fact which could be brought forward at your trial
was the identity of this missing witness; if her testimony would show
that the law had erred--if it might operate to establish your
innocence--would not she herself justify you in revealing it?"
The silence, a longer one this time, remained unbroken.
"Do you still refuse to tell the name of the woman?"
"I do."
The Governor leaned to the table and picked up the pen. But in the
instant there was a quick step behind them.
All turned. Echo stood framed in the window--a figure in filmy white,
against which a single rose glowed like a hot ruby.
"I was that woman, Governor Eveland," she said clearly.