XI

Bassett lounged outside the neat privet hedge which it was Harrison

Miller's custom to clip with his own bachelor hands, and waited. And

as he waited he tried to imagine what was going on inside, behind the

neatly curtained windows of the old brick house.

He was tempted to ring the bell again, pretend to have forgotten

something, and perhaps happen in on what might be drama of a rather high

order; what, supposing the man was Clark after all, was fairly sure to

be drama. He discarded the idea, however, and began again his interested

survey of the premises. Whoever conceived this sort of haven for Clark,

if it were Clark, had shown considerable shrewdness. The town fairly

smelt of respectability; the tree-shaded streets, the children in socks

and small crisp-laundered garments, the houses set back, each in its

square of shaved lawn, all peaceful, middle class and unexciting. The

last town in the world for Judson Clark, the last profession, the last

house, this shabby old brick before him.

He smiled rather grimly as he reflected that if Gregory had been right

in his identification, he was, beyond those windows at that moment, very

possibly warning Clark against himself. Gregory would know his type,

that he never let go. He drew himself up a little.

The house door opened, and Gregory came out, turning toward the station.

Bassett caught up with him and put a hand on his arm.

“Well?” he said cheerfully. “It was, wasn't it?”

Gregory stopped dead and stared at him. Then:

“Old dog Tray!” he said sneeringly. “If your brain was as good as your

nose, Bassett, you'd be a whale of a newspaper man.”

“Don't bother about my brain. It's working fine to-day, anyhow. Well,

what had he to say for himself?”

Gregory's mind was busy, and he had had a moment to pull himself

together.

“We both get off together,” he said, more amiably. “That fellow isn't

Jud Clark and never was. He's a doctor, and the nephew of the old doctor

there. They're in practice together.”

“Did you see them both?”

“Yes.”

Bassett eyed him. Either Gregory was a good actor, or the whole trail

ended there after all. He himself had felt, after his interview, with

Dick, that the scent was false. And there was this to be said: Gregory

had been in the house scarcely ten minutes. Long enough to acknowledge a

mistake, but hardly long enough for any dramatic identification. He was

keenly disappointed, but he had had long experience of disappointment,

and after a moment he only said:

“Well, that's that. He certainly looked like Clark to me.”

“I'll say he did.”

“Rather surprised him, didn't you?”

“Oh, he was all right,” Gregory said. “I didn't tell him anything, of

course.”

Bassett looked at his watch.

“I was after you, all right,” he said, cheerfully. “But if I was barking

up the wrong tree, I'm done. I don't have to be hit on the head to

make me stop. Come and have a soda-water on me,” he finished amiably.

“There's no train until seven.”

But Gregory refused.

“No, thanks. I'll wander on down to the station and get a paper.”

The reporter smiled. Gregory was holding a grudge against him, for a bad

night and a bad day.

“All right,” he said affably. “I'll see you at the train. I'll walk

about a bit.”

He turned and started back up the street again, walking idly. His

chagrin was very real. He hated to be fooled, and fooled he had been.

Gregory was not the only one who had lost a night's sleep. Then,

unexpectedly, he was hailed from the curbstone, and he saw with

amazement that it was Dick Livingstone.

“Take you anywhere?” Dick asked. “How's the headache?”

“Better, thanks.” Bassett stared at him. “No, I'm just walking around

until train-time. Are you starting out or going home, at this hour?”

“Going home. Well, glad the head's better.”

He drove on, leaving the reporter gazing after him. So Gregory had

been lying. He hadn't seen this chap at all. Then why--? He walked

on, turning this new phase of the situation over in his mind. Why

this elaborate fiction, if Gregory had merely gone in, waited for ten

minutes, and come out again?

It wasn't reasonable. It wasn't logical. Something had happened inside

the house to convince Gregory that he was right. He had seen somebody,

or something. He hadn't needed to lie. He could have said frankly

that he had seen no one. But no, he had built up a fabric carefully

calculated to throw Bassett off the scent.

He saw Dick stop in front of the house, get out and enter. And coming

to a decision, he followed him and rang the doorbell. For a long time no

one answered. Then the maid of the afternoon opened the door, her eyes

red with crying, and looked at him with hostility.

“Doctor Richard Livingstone?”

“You can't see him.”

“It's important.”

“Well, you can't see him. Doctor David has just had a stroke. He's in

the office now, on the floor.”

She closed the door on him, and he turned and went away. It was all

clear to him; Gregory had seen, not Clark, but the older man; had told

him and gone away. And under the shock the older man had collapsed. That

was sad. It was very sad. But it was also extremely convincing.

He sat up late that night again, running over the entries in his

notebook. The old story, as he pieced it out, ran like this:

It had been twelve years ago, when, according to the old files,

Clark had financed Beverly Carlysle's first starring venture. He had,

apparently, started out in the beginning only to give her the publicity

she needed. In devising it, however, he had shown a sort of boyish

recklessness and ingenuity that had caught the interest of the press,

and set newspaper men to chuckling wherever they got together.

He had got together a dozen or so of young men like himself, wealthy,

idle and reckless with youth, and, headed by him, they had made the

exploitation of the young star an occupation. The newspapers referred

to the star and her constellation as Beverly Carlysle and her Broadway

Beauties. It had been unvicious, young, and highly entertaining, and it

had cost Judson Clark his membership in his father's conservative old

clubs.

For a time it livened the theatrical world with escapades that were

harmless enough, if sensational. Then, after a time, newspaper row began

to whisper that young Clark was in love with the girl. The Broadway

Beauties broke up, after a wild farewell dinner. The audiences ceased

to expect a row of a dozen youths, all dressed alike with gardenias in

their buttonholes and perhaps red neckties with their evening suits, to

rise in their boxes on the star's appearance and solemnly bow. And the

star herself lost a little of the anxious look she frequently wore.

The story went, after a while, that Judson Clark had been refused, and

was taking his refusal badly. Reporters saw him, carelessly dressed,

outside the stage door waiting, and the story went that the girl had

thrown him over, money and all, for her leading man. One thing was

clear; Clark, not a drinker before, had taken to drinking hard, and

after a time, and some unpleasant scenes probably, she refused to see

him any more.

When the play closed, in June, 1911, she married Howard Lucas,

her leading man; his third wife. Lucas had been not a bad chap, a

good-looking, rather negligible man, given to all-day Sunday poker,

carefully valeted, not very keen mentally, but amiable. They had bought

a house on East Fifty-sixth Street, and were looking for a new play

with Lucas as co-star, when he unaccountably went to pieces nervously,

stopped sleeping, and developed a slight twitching of his handsome,

rather vacuous face.

Judson Clark had taken his yacht and gone to Europe, and was reported

from here and there not too favorably. But when he came back, in early

September, he had apparently recovered from his infatuation, was his

old, carefully dressed self again, and when interviewed declared his

intention of spending the winter on his Wyoming ranch.

Of course he must have heard of Lucas's breakdown, and equally, of

course, he must have seen them both. What happened at that interview, by

what casual attitude he allayed Lucas's probable jealousy and the girl's

own nervousness, Bassett had no way of discovering. It was clear that

he convinced them both of his good faith, for the next note in the

reporter's book was simply a date, September 12, 1911.

That was the day they had all started West together, traveling in

Clark's private car, with Lucas, twitching slightly, smiling and waving

farewell from a window.

The big smash did not come until the middle of October.

Bassett sat back and considered. He had a fairly clear idea of the

conditions at the ranch; daily riding, some little reading, and a great

deal too much of each other. A sick man, too, unhappy in his exile,

chafing against his restrictions, lonely and irritable. The girl, early

seeing her mistake, and Clark's jealousy of her husband. The door into

their apartment closing, the thousand and one unconscious intimacies

between man and wife, the breakfast for two going up the stairs, and

below that hot-eyed boy, agonized and passionately jealous, yet meeting

them and looking after them, their host and a gentleman.

Lucas took to drinking, after a time, to allay his sheer boredom. And

Jud Clark drank with him. At the end of three weeks they were both

drinking heavily, and were politely quarrelsome. Bassett could fill

that in also. He could see the girl protesting, watching, increasingly

anxious as she saw that Clark's jealousy was matched by her husband's.

A queer picture, he reflected, the three of them shut away on the great

ranch, and every day some new tension, some new strain.

Then, one night at dinner, they quarreled, and Beverly left the table.

She was going to pack her things and go back to New York. She had felt,

probably, that something was bound to snap. And while she was upstairs

Clark had shot and killed Howard Lucas, and himself disappeared.

He had run, testimony at the inquest revealed, to the corral, and

saddled a horse. Although it was only October, it was snowing hard,

but in spite of that he had turned his horse toward the mountains. By

midnight a posse from Norada had started out, and another up the Dry

River Canyon, but the storm turned into a blizzard in the mountains, and

they were obliged to turn back. A few inches more snow, and they could

not have got their horses out. A week or so later, with a crust of ice

over it, a few of them began again, with no expectation, however, of

finding Clark alive. They came across his horse on the second day, but

they did not find him, and there were some among them who felt that,

after all, old Elihu Clark's boy had chosen the better way.

Bassett closed his notebook and lighted a cigar.

There was a big story to be had for the seeking, a whale of a story. He

could go to the office, give them a hint, draw expense money and start

for Norada the next night. He knew well enough that he would have to

begin there, and that it would not be easy. Witnesses of the affair

at the ranch would be missing now, or when found the first accuracy of

their statements would either be dulled by time or have been added to

with the passing years. The ranch itself might have passed into other

hands. To reconstruct the events of ten years ago might be impossible,

or nearly so. But that was not his problem. He would have to connect

Norada with Haverly, Clark with Livingstone. One thing only was simple.

If he found Livingstone's story was correct, that he had lived on a

ranch near Norada before the crime and as Livingstone, then he would

acknowledge that two men could look precisely alike and come from the

same place, and yet not be the same. If not--

But, after he had turned out his light and got into bed, he began to

feel a certain distaste for his self-appointed task. If Livingstone

were Clark, if after years of effort he had pulled himself up by his own

boot-straps, had made himself a man out of the reckless boy he had been,

a decent and useful citizen, why pull him down? After all, the world

hadn't lost much in Lucas; a sleek, not over-intelligent big animal,

that had been Howard Lucas.

He decided to sleep over it, and by morning he found himself not only

disinclined to the business, but firmly resolved to let it drop. Things

were well enough as they were. The woman in the case was making good.

Jud was making good. And nothing would restore Howard Lucas to that

small theatrical world of his which had waved him good-bye at the

station so long ago.

He shaved and dressed, his resolution still holding. He had indeed

almost a conscious glow of virtue, for he was making one of those

inglorious and unsung sacrifices which ought to bring a man credit in

the next world, because they certainly got him nowhere in this. He was

quite affable to the colored waiter who served his breakfasts in the

bachelor apartment house, and increased his weekly tip to a dollar and a

half. Then he sat down and opened the Times-Republican, skimming over

it after his habit for his own space, and frowning over a row of

exclamation and interrogation points unwittingly set behind the name of

the mayor.

On the second page, however, he stopped, coffee cup in air. “Is Judson

Clark alive? Wife of former ranch manager makes confession.”

A woman named Margaret Donaldson, it appeared, fatally injured by an

automobile near the town of Norada, Wyoming, had made a confession on

her deathbed. In it she stated that, afraid to die without shriving her

soul, she had sent for the sheriff of Dallas County and had made the

following confession:

That following the tragedy at the Clark ranch her husband, John

Donaldson, since dead, had immediately following the inquest, where he

testified, started out into the mountains in the hope of finding Clark

alive, as he knew of a deserted ranger's cabin where Clark sometimes

camped when hunting. It was his intention to search for Clark at this

cabin and effect his escape. He carried with him food and brandy.

That, owing to the blizzard, he was very nearly frozen; that he was

obliged to abandon his horse, shooting it before he did so, and that,

close to death himself, he finally reached the cabin and there found

Judson Clark, the fugitive, who was very ill.

She further testified that her husband cared for Clark for four days,

Clark being delirious at the time, and that on the fifth day he started

back on foot for the Clark ranch, having left Clark locked in the cabin,

and that on the following night he took three horses, two saddled, and

one packed with food and supplies. That accompanied by herself they went

back to the cabin in the mountains and that she remained there to

care for Clark, while her husband returned to the ranch, to prevent

suspicion.

That, a day or so later, looking out of her window, she had perceived

a man outside in the snow coming toward the cabin, and that she had

thought it one of the searching party. That her first instinct had been

to lock him outside, but that she had finally admitted him, and that

thereafter he had remained and had helped her to care for the sick man.

Unfortunately for the rest of the narrative it appeared that the injured

woman had here lapsed into a coma, and had subsequently died, carrying

her further knowledge with her.

But, the article went on, the story opened a field of infinite surmise.

In all probability Judson Clark was still alive, living under some

assumed identity, free of punishment, outwardly respectable. Three years

before he had been adjudged legally dead, and the estate divided, under

bond of the legatees.

Close to a hundred million dollars had gone to charities, and Judson

Clark, wherever he was, would be dependent on his own efforts for

existence. He could have summoned all the legal talent in the country to

his defense, but instead he had chosen to disappear.

The whole situation turned on the deposition of Mrs. Donaldson, now

dead. The local authorities at Norada maintained that the woman had not

been sane for several years. On the other hand, the cabin to which she

referred was well known, and no search of it had been made at the time.

Clark's horse had been found not ten miles from the town, and the cabin

was buried in snow twenty miles further away. If Clark had made that

journey on foot he had accomplished the impossible.

Certain facts, according to the local correspondent, bore out Margaret

Donaldson's confession. Inquiry showed that she was supposed to have

spent the winter following Judson Clark's crime with relatives in Omaha.

She had returned to the ranch the following spring.

A detailed description of Judson Clark, and a photograph of him

accompanied the story. Bassett re-read the article carefully, and

swore a little, under his breath. If he had needed confirmation of

his suspicions, it lay to his hand. But the situation had changed over

night. There would be a search for Clark now, as wide as the knowledge

of his disappearance. Local police authorities would turn him up in

every city from Maine to the Pacific coast. Even Europe would be on the

lookout and South America.

But it was not the police he feared so much as the press. Not all of the

papers, but some of them, would go after that story, and send their best

men on it. It offered not so much a chance of solution as an opportunity

to revive the old dramatic story. He could see, when he closed his eyes,

the local photographers climbing to that cabin and later sending its

pictures broadcast, and divers gentlemen of the press, eager to

pit their wits against ten years of time and the ability of a once

conspicuous man to hide from the law, packing their suitcases for

Norada.

No, he couldn't stop now. He would go on, like the others, and with this

advantage, that he was morally certain he could lay his hands on Clark

at any time. But he would have to prove his case, connect it. Who, for

instance, was the other man in the cabin? He must have known who the boy

was who lay in that rough bunk, delirious. Must have suspected anyhow.

That made him, like the Donaldsons, accessory after the fact, and

criminally liable. Small chance of him coming out with any confession.

Yet he was the connecting link. Must be.

On his third reading the reporter began to visualize the human elements

of the fight to save the boy; he saw moving before him the whole pitiful

struggle; the indomitable ranch manager, his heart-breaking struggle

with the blizzard, the shooting of his horse, the careful disarming of

suspicion, and later the intrepid woman, daring that night ride through

snow that had sent the posse back to its firesides to the boy, locked in

the cabin and raving.

His mind was busy as he packed his suitcase. Already he had forgotten

his compunctions of the early morning; he moved about methodically,

calculating roughly what expense money he would need, and the line of

attack, if any, required at the office. Between Norada and that old

brick house at Haverly lay his story. Ten years of it. He was closing

his bag when he remembered the little girl in the blue dress, at the

theater. He straightened and scowled. After a moment he snapped the bag

shut. Damn it all, if Clark had chosen to tie up with a girl, that was on

Clark's conscience, not his.

But he was vaguely uncomfortable.

“It's a queer world, Joe,” he observed to the waiter, who had come in

for the breakfast dishes.

“Yes, sir. It is that,” said Joe.