arc-light, and was still following the curve of the lakeside boulevard,
when he came to the surface of the submerging wave long enough to
realize that he had entered Jasper Grierson's portion of the water-front
drive. The great house, dark as to its westward gables save for the
lighted upper windows marking the sick-room and its antechamber, loomed
in massive solidity among its sheltering oaks; and the moon, which had
now topped the hills and the crimsoning smoke haze, was bathing
land- and lake-scape in a flood of silver light, whitening the pale yellow
sands of the beach and etching fantastic leaf-traceries on the gravel of
the boulevarded driveway.
There was no enclosing fence on the Mereside border of the boulevard,
and under the nearest of the lawn oaks there were rustic park seats,
Jasper Grierson's single concession to the public when he had fought for
and secured his property right-of-way through to the lake's margin.
Griswold turned aside and sat down on one of the benches. The
disappointment was growing less keen. He was beginning to understand
that he had made no allowance for the eternal feminine in the idealized
_Fidelia_--for the feminine and the straitly human. But the
disheartenment remained. Should he stay and fight it out? Or should he
take pity upon the poor prisoner of the conventions and seek to postpone
the day of reckoning by flight?
He had not fitted the answer to either of these sharp-pointed queries
when a pair of light-fingered hands came from behind to clap themselves
upon his eyes, and a well-known voice said, "Guess."
"Margery!" he said; and she laughed with the joyous unconstraint of a
happy child and came around to sit by him.
"I was doing time out on the veranda, and I saw you down here in the
moonlight, looking as if you had lost something," she explained, adding:
"Have you?"
"I don't know; can you lose that which you've never had?" he returned
musingly. And then: "Yes; perhaps I did lose something. Don't ask me
what it is. I hardly know, myself."
"You have just come from Doctor Bertie's?" she inquired.
"Yes."
"And Charlotte doesn't want to marry you?"
"Heavens and earth!" he exploded. "Who put the idea into your head that
I wanted to marry her?"
"You did"--calmly.
"Then, for pity's sake, let me take it out, quick. If I were the last
man on earth, Miss Farnham wouldn't marry me; and if she were the last
woman, I think I'd go drown myself in the lake!"
The young woman of the many metamorphoses was laughing again, and this
time the laugh was a letter-perfect imitation of a school-girl giggle.
"My!" she said. "How dreadfully hard she must have sat on you!"
"Please don't laugh," he pleaded; "unless you are the heartless kind of
person who would laugh at a funeral. I'm down under the hoofs of the
horses, at last, Margery, girl. Before you came, I was wondering if the
game were at all worth the candle."
Her mood changed in the twinkling of an eye. "The battle is over, and
won," she said, speaking softly. "Didn't you know that?" And then: "Oh,
boy, boy! but it has been a desperate fight! Time and again I have
thought you were gone, in spite of all I could do!"
"You thought--I was gone? Then you know?"
"Of course I know; I have known ever since the first night; the night
when I found the money in your suit-case. What a silly, silly thing it
was for you to do--to leave the Bayou State Security slips on the
packages!"
"But you said----"
"No, I didn't say; I merely let you believe that I didn't see them.
After that, I knew it would be only a question of time until they would
trace you here, and I hurried; oh, I _hurried_! I made up my mind that
before the struggle came, all Wahaska should know you, not as a bank
robber, but as you are, and I made it come out just that way. Then Mr.
Broffin turned up, and the fight was on. He shadowed you, and I shadowed
him--or had Johnnie Fergus do it for me. I knew he'd try Miss Farnham
first, and there was only one hope there--that she might fall in love
with you and so refuse to give you away. She did, didn't she?"
"Most emphatically, she did not," he denied. "You have greatly misjudged
Miss Farnham. The reason--the only reason--why she did not tell Broffin
what he wanted to know was a purely conventional one. She did not want
to be the most-talked-of woman in Wahaska."
His companion's laugh was not pleasant.
"I'd rather be a spiteful little cat, which is what she once called me,
than to be moth-eaten on the inside, like that!" she commented. Then she
went on: "With Miss Farnham out of it--and I knew she must be out of
it, since Broffin didn't strike--there was still Mr. Galbraith. You
didn't know why I was so anxious to have you get acquainted with him,
but you know now. And it worked. When Broffin asked him to identify you,
he couldn't--or wouldn't. Then came that unlucky drowning accident."
Griswold nodded slowly. "Yes, Mr. Galbraith knows me now."
"He doesn't!" she exulted. "He is a dear old saint, and he will never
know you again as the man who held him up. Listen: he sent for Broffin
this afternoon, and gave him a new commission--something about bonds in
California. And he told him he must go on the first train!"
Once more the castaway was running the gamut of the fiercely varying
emotions.
"Let me understand," he said. "You knew I had taken the money, and yet
you did all these things to pull me out and make the hold-up a success.
Where was your moral sense, all this time, little girl?"
She made a charming little mouth at him.
"I am _Joan_, and the _Joans_ don't have any moral senses--to speak
of--do they? That's the way you are writing it down in your book, isn't
it?" Then, with a low laugh that sounded some unfathomed depth of loving
abandonment: "It was a game; and I played it--played it for all I was
worth, and won. You are free; free as the air, Kenneth, boy. If Broffin
should come here this minute and put his hand on your shoulder, you
could look up and laugh in his face. Are you glad--or sorry?"
His answer was the answer of the man who was, for the time being,
neither the moralist nor the criminal. With a swift out-reaching he drew
her to him, crushed her in his arms, covered her face with kisses.
"I am glad--glad that I am your lover," he whispered, passionately.
"God, girl! but you are a woman to die for! No, not yet"--when she would
have slipped out of his arms--"Believe me, Margery; there has never been
any one else--not for a moment. But I thought it was Raymer, and for
your sake and his I could have stepped aside; I did try to step aside.
That is the one decent thing I have done in all this devilish business.
Are you listening?"
She had stopped struggling, and was hiding her face on his shoulder. He
felt her quick little nod and went on.
"Since you know the one decent thing, you must know all the horrible
things, too. A dozen times I have been a murderer in heart, and once ...
you know: I meant to let Galbraith die, that night."
She looked up quickly.
"No, boy, I'll never believe that--never! If you had stayed awake until
the time came, you couldn't have done it. And, besides, I am to blame. I
planned it--planned it purposely: I didn't even hope to find a nurse
when we were supposed to be looking for one. I knew how you felt, and I
wanted to make you show yourself that you didn't really hate him bad
enough to let him die. But I don't care; it doesn't matter--nothing
matters, now."
"Wait," he said. "There was murder in my heart that night, and it was
there again this evening--just a little while ago. Miss Farnham and
Galbraith were not the only ones I had to fear; there was another; the
teller who got here from New Orleans on the seven-forty-five train. You
didn't know about him, did you? He came, and an old newspaper friend of
mine was with him. I stumbled upon them on the sidewalk in front of the
Winnebago House; and Broffin was there, too. We were introduced, the
teller and I, and Broffin was so sure he had me that he got his
handcuffs out and was opening them."
Margery shuddered and hid her face again. "And I--I didn't know!" she
gasped.
"Luck was with me again," he continued. "Johnson didn't remember me;
refused to do so even when Broffin stopped him and tried to tell him who
I was. I had a pistol in my pocket, and it was aimed at Broffin. If he
had made a move to take me, I should certainly have killed him."
She sat up suddenly.
"Give me that pistol, Kenneth--give it to me _now_!"
"I can't," he confessed, shamefacedly. "When it was all over, I smashed
the pistol with a stone and threw it away."
She drew a long breath, "Is that all?" she asked.
"All but one thing; the worst of them all ... that day in the bank
vault----"
The daughter of men buried her face on his shoulder again at that.
"Don't!" she begged. "You couldn't help it, boy; I made you do
it--meaning to. There! and I said that wild horses should never drag it
out of me!"
Again he said, "Wait," and covered the shining head on his shoulder with
a caressing hand. "It wasn't love, then, little girl; that's what it
breaks my heart to tell you: it was just madness. And it wasn't clean;
you've got to know that, too."
She nodded her head violently. "I know," she murmured; "I knew it at the
time, and that was what made me cry. But now it's--it's different, isn't
it, boy? now you--are----"
"You have heard it all, Margery. You know what I thought I was, and what
I have turned out to be. I'm afraid I am just a common crook, after all;
there doesn't seem to be standing-room anywhere else for me. But every
living fibre of me, the good and the bad, loves you--loves you!"
"What do I care for anything else?" she flashed back. "You are you,
Kenneth, dear; that is all I know, and all I care for. If you had stolen
all the money in the world, and had killed a dozen men to make your
get-away, it would be just the same. Only----"
"Only what?" he demanded jealously.
"It would be just the same to me; but--but.... Oh, boy, dear! it will
never, _never_ be the same to you!"
"I--I don't understand," he stammered.
"Some day you will. You call yourself a crook: man, man! there isn't a
crooked drop of blood in you! Don't I know? You persuaded yourself that
you had a right to take this money; perhaps you did have; _I_ don't say
you didn't. When I see anything I want, I reach out and take it, if I
can--and I guess most people would, if they dared. But you are
different; you are _good_. Some day all these dreadful things that have
come tagging along after the fact will rise up and gnash their teeth at
you and tell you that it was a _sin_, a _crime_. And then--oh, boy,
dear! then I shall lose you!"
Very gently he took her in his arms again; and for a time all things
sensible and tangible, the deserted driveway, and the plashing of the
little waves on the sands, the staring moonlight and the stencilled
shadows of the oaks, were forgotten in the great soul-healing silence
that wrapped them about and enveloped them.
"Margery," he began, when the interval of thoughtful heart-searching had
done its illuminative work, "what would you say if I should tell you
that your 'some day' has already come?"
She started as if he had thrust a knife into her. Then she slipped out
of his arms and caught up his hand to press it against her cheek.
"I should say, 'Whatsoever seemeth good in the eyes of my dear lord, so
let it be.'"
"But think a moment, girl; if one has done wrong, there must be
atonement. That is the higher law--the highest law--and no man may
evade it. Do you know what that would mean for me?"
"It is the Price, boy, dear; I don't ask you to pay it. Listen: my
father and I have agreed to disagree, and he has turned over to me a lot
of money that he took from--that was once my mother's brother's share in
the Colorado gold claims. What is mine is yours. We can pay back the
money. Will that do?"
He was shaking his head slowly. "No," he said, "I think it wouldn't do."
"I was afraid it wouldn't," she sighed, "but I had to try. Are they
still gnashing their teeth at you?--the dreadful things, I mean?"
He did not answer in words, but she knew, and held her peace. At the end
of the ends he sprang up suddenly and drew her to her feet.
"I can't do it, Margery, girl! I can't ask you to wait--and afterward to
marry a convict! Think of it--even if Galbraith were willing to
withdraw, the law wouldn't let him, and I'd get the limit; anything from
seven years to fifteen or more. Oh, my God, no! I can't pay the price! I
can't give you up!"
She put her arms around his neck and drew his head down and kissed him
on the lips. "I'll wait ... oh, boy, boy! I'll wait! But I can neither
push you over the edge nor hold you back. Only don't think of me;
please, _please_ don't think of me!--'Whatsoever seemeth good'--that is
what you must think of; that is my last word: 'Whatsoever seemeth
good.'" And she pushed him from her and fled.
XLI
THE DESERT AND THE SOWN
Through streets in which the village quiet of the summer night was
undisturbed save by the spattering tinkle of the lawn sprinklers in the
front yards, and the low voices of the out-door people taking the air
and the moonlight on the porches, Griswold fared homeward, the blood
pounding in his veins and the fine wine of life mounting headily to his
brain.
After all the dubious stumblings he had come to the end of the road, to
find awaiting him the great accusation and the great reward. By the
unanswerable logic of results, in its effect upon others and upon
himself, his deed had proved itself a crime. Right or wrong in the
highest of the ethical fields, the accepted social order had proved
itself strong enough to make its own laws and to prescribe the
far-reaching penalties for their infraction. Under these laws he stood
convicted. Never again, save through the gate of atonement, could he be
reinstated as a soldier in the ranks of the conventionally righteous.
True, the devotion of a loving woman, aided by a train of circumstances
strikingly fortuitous and little short of miraculous, had averted the
final price-paying in penal retribution. But the fact remained. He was
a felon.
Into this gaping wound which might otherwise have slain him had been
poured the wine and oil of a great love; a love so clean and pure in its
own well-springs that it could perceive no wrong in its object; could
measure no act of loyal devotion by any standard save that of its own
greatness. This love asked nothing but what he chose to give. It would
accept him either as he was, or as he ought to be. The place he should
elect to occupy would be its place; his standards its standards.
Just here the reasoning angel opened a door and thrust him out upon the
edge of a precipice and left him to look down into the abyss of the
betrayers--the pit of those whose gift and curse it is to be the
pace-setters. In a flash of revealment it was shown him that with the
great love had come a great responsibility. Where he should lead,
Margery would follow, unshrinkingly, unquestioningly; never asking
whether the path led up or down; asking only that his path might be
hers. Instantly he was face to face with a fanged choice which
threatened to tear his heart out and trample upon it; and again he
recorded his decision, confirming it with an oath. The price was too
great; the upward path too steep; the self-denial it entailed too
sacrificial.
"We have but one life to live, and we'll live it together, Margery,
girl, for better or for worse," was his apostrophic declaration, made
while he was turning into Shawnee Street a few doors from his lodgings;
and a minute later he was opening the Widow Holcomb's gate.
The house was dark and apparently deserted as to its street-fronting
half when he let himself in at the gate and ran quickly up the steps.
The front door was open, and he remembered afterward that he had
wondered how the careful widow had come to leave it so, and why the hall
lamp was not lighted. From the turn at the stair-head he felt his way to
the door of his study. Like the one below, it was wide open; but some
one had drawn the window shades and the interior of the room was as dark
as a cavern.
Once, in the novel-writing, following the lead of many worthy
predecessors, Griswold had made much of the "sixth" sense; the subtle
and indefinable prescience which warns its possessor of invisible
danger. No such warning was vouchsafed him when he leaned across the end
of the writing-table, turned on the gas, and held a lighted match over
the chimney of the working-lamp. It was while he was still bending over
the table, with both hands occupied, that he looked aside. In his own
pivot-chair, covering him with the mate to the weapon he had smashed and
thrown away, sat the man who had opened the two doors and drawn the
window shades and otherwise prepared the trap.
"You bought a couple o' these little playthings, Mr. Griswold," said the
man, quietly. "Keep your hands right where they are, and tell me in
which pocket you've got the other one."
Griswold laughed, and there was a sudden snapping of invisible bonds. He
dismissed instantly the thought that Charlotte Farnham had taken him at
his word; and if she had not, there was nothing to fear.
"I threw the other one away a little while ago," he said. "Reach your
free hand over and feel my pockets."
Broffin acted upon the suggestion promptly.
"You ain't got it on you, anyway," he conceded; and when Griswold had
dropped into the chair at the table's end: "I reckon you know what I'm
here for."
"I know that you are holding that gun of mine at an exceedingly
uncomfortable angle--for me," was the cool rejoinder. "I've always had a
squeamish horror of being shot in the stomach."
The detective's grin was appreciative.
"You've got a good cold nerve, anyway," he commented. "I've been puttin'
it up that when the time came, you'd throw a fit o' some sort--what?
Since you're clothed in your right mind, we'll get down to business.
First, I'll ask you to hand over the key to that safety-deposit box
you've got in Mr. Grierson's bank."
Griswold took his bunch of keys from his pocket, slipped the one that
was asked for from the ring, and gave it to his captor.
"Of course, I'm surrendering it under protest," he said. "You haven't
yet told me who you are, or what you are holding me up for."
Broffin waved the formalities aside with a pistol-pointed gesture. "We
can skip all that. I've got you dead to rights, after so long a time,
and I'm goin' to take you back to New Orleans with me. The only question
is: do you go easy, or hard?"
"I don't go either way until you show your authority."
"I don't need any authority. You're the parlor-anarchist that held up
the president of the Bayou State Security Bank last spring and made a
get-away with a hundred thousand--what?"
"All right; you say so--prove it." Griswold had taken a cigar from the
open box on the writing-table and was calmly lighting it. There was
nothing to be nervous about. "I'm waiting," he went on, placidly, when
the cigar was going. "If you are an officer, you probably have a
warrant, or a requisition, or something of that sort. Show it up."
"I don't need any papers to take you," was the barked-out retort.
Broffin had more than once found himself confronting similar dead walls,
and he knew the worth of a bold play.
"Oh, yes, you do. You accuse me of a crime: did you see me commit the
crime?"
"No."
"Well, somebody did, I suppose. Bring on your witnesses. If anybody can
identify me as the man you are after, I'll go with you--without the
requisition. That's fair, isn't it?"
"I know you're the man, and you know it, too, damned well!" snapped
Broffin, angered into bandying words with his obstinate capture.
"That is neither here nor there; I am not affirming or denying. It is
for you to prove your case, if you can. And, listen, Mr. Broffin:
perhaps it will save your time and mine if I add that I happen to know
that you can't prove your case."
"Why can't I?"
"Just because you can't," Griswold went on, argumentatively. "I know the
facts of this robbery you speak of; a great many people know them. The
newspaper accounts said at the time that there were three persons who
could certainly identify the robber: the president, the paying teller,
and a young woman. It so happens that all three of these people are at
present in Wahaska. At different times you have appealed to each of
them, and in each instance you have been turned down. Isn't that true?"
Broffin glanced up, scowling.
"It's true enough that you--you and the little black-eyed girl between
you--have hoodooed the whole bunch!" he rasped. "But when I get you into
court, you'll find out that there are others."
Griswold smiled good-naturedly. "That is a bold, bad bluff, Mr. Broffin,
and nobody knows it any better than you do," he countered. "You haven't
a leg to stand on. This is America, and you can't arrest me without a
warrant. And if you could, what would you do with me without the support
of at least one of your three witnesses? Nothing--nothing at all."
Broffin laid the pistol on the table, and put the key of the safety-box
beside it. Then he sat in grim silence for a full minute, toying idly
with a pair of handcuffs which he had taken from his pocket.
"By the eternal grapples!" he said, at length, half to himself, "I've a
good mind to do it anyway--and take the chances."
As quick as a flash Griswold thrust out his hands.
"Put them on!" he snapped. "There are a hundred lawyers in New Orleans
who wouldn't ask for anything better than the chance to defend me--at
your expense!"
Broffin dropped the manacles into his pocket and sat back in the
swing-chair. "You win," he said shortly; and the battle was over.
For a little time no word was spoken. Griswold smoked on placidly,
seemingly forgetful of the detective's presence. Yet he was the one who
was the first to break the straitened silence.
"You are a game fighter, Mr. Broffin," he said, "and I'm enough of a
scrapper myself to be sorry for you. Try one of these smokes--you'll
find them fairly good--and excuse me for a few minutes. I want to write
a letter which, if you are going down-town, perhaps you'll be good
enough to mail for me."
He pushed the open box of cigars across to the detective, and dragged
the lounging-chair around to the other side of the table. There was
stationery at hand, and he wrote rapidly for a few minutes, covering
three pages of the manuscript sheets before he stopped. When the letter
was enclosed, addressed, and stamped, he tossed it across to Broffin,
face up. The detective saw the address, "Miss Margery Grierson," and,
putting the letter into his pocket, got up to go.
"Just one minute more, if you please," said Griswold, and, relighting
the cigar which had been suffered to go out, he went into the adjoining
bedroom. When he came back, he had put on a light top-coat and a soft
hat, and was carrying a small hand-bag.
"I'm your man, Mr. Broffin," he said quietly. "I'll go with you--and
plead guilty as charged."
* * * * *
Wahaska, the village-conscious, had its nine-days' wonder displayed for
it in inch-type head-lines when the _Daily Wahaskan_, rehearsing the
story of the New Orleans bank robbery, told of the voluntary surrender
of the robber, and of his deportation to the southern city to stand
trial for his offence.
Some few there were who took exceptions to Editor Randolph's editorial
in the same issue, commenting on the surrender, and pleading for a
suspension of judgment on the ground that much might still be hoped for
from a man who had retraced a broad step in the downward path by
voluntarily accepting the penalty. Those who objected to the editorial
were of the perverse minority. The intimation was made that the plea had
been inspired--a hint basing itself upon the fact that Miss Grierson had
been seen visiting the office of the _Wahaskan_ after the departure of
the detective, Matthew Broffin, with his prisoner.
The sensational incident, however, had been forgotten long before a
certain evening, three weeks later, when the Grierson carriage conveyed
the convalescent president of the Bayou State Security from the Grierson
mansion to the southbound train. Andrew Galbraith was not alone in the
carriage, and possibly there were those in the sleeping-car who mistook
the dark-eyed and strikingly beautiful young woman, who took leave of
him only after he was comfortably settled in his section, for his
daughter. But the whispered words of leave-taking were rather those of a
confidante than a kinswoman.