_Clouds_
Arsdale was somewhere about the house and Elaine had gone up-stairs
when Donaldson, who had come out-doors to smoke, saw a man with broad
shoulders and a round unshaven face step from a cab, push through the
hedge gate, and come quickly up the path. He watched him with
indifferent interest, until in the dusk he recognized the stubborn
mouth which gripped a cigar as a bull-dog hangs to a rag. Then he
hurried forward with hand extended.
"Good Lord, Saul," he exclaimed, "where did you drop from?"
"Hello, Don. I rather hoped that I might run across you here."
"I 'm ashamed of myself," answered Donaldson guiltily. "I did n't
notify you that we had found him. But the last I heard of you, you
were out of town."
"Oh, that's all right. Tung gave me the whole story."
"The rat! He made a lot of trouble for us."
"And for me, too."
"Still working on the Riverside robberies?"
Saul glanced up quickly. Then looking steadily into Donaldson's eyes
as though the reply had some significance he answered,
"Yes."
"I wish you luck. And say, old man, I 've worried since for fear lest
you lost a good opportunity for a hot scent the time I kept you out."
"I did. But I picked it up again by chance."
"You did? Have you caught the man?"
"No," answered Saul abstractedly. "Not yet."
He chewed the stub of his cigar a moment, glancing frequently at the
house.
"Say," he asked abruptly, "come down the road here a piece with me,
will you?"
Saul led him to the street and far enough away from the cab so that
their conversation could not be overheard, yet near enough to the
electric light for him to see Donaldson's face clearly.
"I want you to tell me something about young Arsdale," he began. "Is
he in the house there now?"
"Yes. And happy as a clam at high water."
"Has he talked any since he came back?"
"Talked? He's clear-headed enough, if that is what you mean?"
"Has he appeared at all worried--as though he had something on his
mind?"
"Not in the slightest He's taken such a new grip on himself that the
last few days are almost blotted out. You 'd never know him for the
same boy, Saul. He's quit the dope for good."
"So? Remorse!"
"Not the kind of remorse you mean, Beefy. This is the real thing."
Saul thought a moment. Then he asked,
"You told me, did n't you, that he had no money with him that night?"
"Not more than a dollar or so."
"He spent a lot at Tung's."
"The heathen probably robbed him of it!"
"Yes, but where did Arsdale get it?"
Donaldson started. There was something ominous in the question. But
he could n't recount to Saul that disgraceful attack the boy had made
upon his sister when returning for funds. It wouldn't be fair to the
present Arsdale.
"I don't know," he answered. "What have you up your sleeve, Beefy?"
"Something bad," replied Saul bluntly. He lowered his voice: "It is
beginning to look as though your young friend might know something
about the robberies that have been taking place around here."
"What!"
If an earthquake had suddenly shattered the stone house behind the
hedge, it would have left him no more dazed.
"I won't say that we 've got him nailed," Saul hastened to explain,
"but it begins to look bad for him."
"But, man dear," gasped Donaldson, "he is n't a thug! He isn't--"
"If he 's like the others he 's anything when he wants his smoke. I
've seen more of them than you."
"Saul," he said, "you 're dead wrong about this! You 've made a
horrible mistake!"
"Perhaps. But he 'll have to explain some things."
Donaldson took a grip on himself.
"What's the nature of your evidence?"
"There 's the question of where he got his funds, first; then the fact
that all the attacks took place within a small radius of this house;
then the motive, and finally the fact, that in a general way he answers
to the description given by four witnesses. He 'll have to take the
third degree on that, anyway."
The third degree would undoubtedly kill the boy, or, worse, break his
spirit and drive him either to a mad-house or the solace of his drug.
It was a cruel thing to confront him with this at such a point in his
life. It was fiendish, devilish. It was possible that they might even
make the boy believe that in his blind madness he actually did commit
these crimes. Then, as in a lurid moving picture, Donaldson recalled
the uneasiness of the girl; the morning papers with their glaring
headlines of the Riverside robberies, which he had found that morning
scattered about the floor; her fear of the police, and the mystery of
the untold story at which she had hinted. Take these, and the fact
that in his madness Arsdale had actually made an attack upon the girl
and upon himself, similar to those outside the house, and the chain was
a strong one. The pity of it--coming now!
Yes, it was in this that the cruel injustice lay. Even admitting the
boy to be guilty, it was still an injustice. The man who had done
those things was outside the pale of the law; he was no more. Arsdale
himself, Arsdale the clean-minded young man with a useful life before
him, Arsdale with his new soul, had no more to do with those black
deeds than he himself had. Yet that lumbering Juggernaut, the Law,
could not take this into account. The Law did not deal with souls, but
bodies.
To this day--what a hideous climax!
Saul detected the fear in Donaldson's eyes,
"You know something about this, Don!" he asked eagerly.
He was no longer a friend; he was scarcely a man; he was a hound who
has picked up his trail. His eyes had narrowed; his round face seemed
to grow almost pointed. He chewed his cigar end viciously. He was
alert in every nerve.
"You'd better loosen up," he warned, "it's all right to protect a
friend, but it can't be done in a case of this sort. You as a lawyer
ought to know that. It can't be done."
"Yes, I know, I know. But I want to tell you again that you 're dead
wrong about this. You haven't guessed right, Beefy."
"That's for others to decide," he returned somewhat sharply. "It 's up
to you to tell what you know."
"It's hard to do it--it's hard to do it to you."
Donaldson's face had suddenly grown blank--impassive. The mouth had
hardened and his whole body stiffened almost as it does after death.
When he spoke it was without emotion and in the voice of one who has
repeated a phrase until it no longer has meaning.
"I realize how you feel," Saul encouraged him, "but there's no way out
of it."
"No, there's no way out of it. So I give myself up!"
"But it is n't you I want,--it's Arsdale."
"No, I guess it's I. See how your descriptions fit me."
Saul pressed closer.
"What the devil do you mean?" he demanded.
"Just this," answered Donaldson dully, "I can't see an innocent man go
to jail."
To his mind Arsdale was as innocent to-day as though not a shadow of
suspicion rested upon him.
"Are you mad?"
"Not yet," answered Donaldson.
Saul waited a moment. In all his professional career he had never
received a greater surprise than this. He would not have believed
enough of it to react had it not been for Donaldson's expression. Back
of the impassiveness he read guilt, read it in the restless shifting of
the eyes and in the voice dead to hope. Then he said deliberately,
"I don't believe you, Don."
"No? Yet you 've got as much evidence against me as against Arsdale."
"But, God A'mighty, Donaldson, why should you do such a thing?"
"Why should the boy?"
Saul seized his arm.
"You don't tell me that you've fallen into that habit?"
"Sit in a law-office and do nothing for three years, then--then,
perhaps, you 'll understand."
Saul threw away his cigar. He studied again the thin face, the
haggardness that comes of opium, the nervous fingers, the vacant shifty
gaze of those on the sharp edge of sanity. Then he lighted a fresh
cigar and declared quietly,
"I don't believe you!"
"You 'll have to for the sake of those in the house. They 've been
good to me in there."
His voice was as hard as black ice and as cold. He looked more like a
magnetized corpse than he did a man.
"I wish," he continued evenly, "I wish I might have been knocked over
the head before it came to this. If I had known I had to face you, I
would have let it come to that. But I didn't expect this, Beefy."
"If this story is on the level, you 'd better shut up," warned Saul.
"What you say will be used against you."
"Thanks for reminding me, but things have come out so wrong that I
can't even shut up. If you should go inside that house with the dream
you sprang on me, you 'd drive the boy crazy and kill the girl. The
boy has been in a bad way, but he's all straight again now, and yet you
might make him believe he did these jobs when out of his head. And
then--and then--why, it would kill them both! That's why I could n't
let you do it. That's why you _must n't_ do anything like that."
Saul did not answer. He waited.
"So I might as well make a clean breast of it. Do you remember when
the last job was?"
"Last Saturday morning."
"Remember where you were at that time?"
"Why--that was the morning I went out with you!"
"Just so," answered Donaldson, his eyes leveled over Saul's head. "I
hate to tell you, but--but it was necessary to do that in order to keep
you away from headquarters."
Saul reached for his throat, pushing him back a step.
"You played me traitor like that?" he demanded.
"It was part of the game," answered Donaldson indifferently. Saul,
fearful of himself, drew back.
The latter tried to reason it out. A man can change a good deal in a
year, but even with opium it seemed impossible for Donaldson so to
abuse a friendship. But he was checked in his recollection of the man
as he had known him by the memory of that very morning. He had been
suspicious even then that something was wrong. Donaldson had appeared
nervous and altered.
"Donaldson," he burst out, "I 'd give up my rank to be out of this
mess."
He added impulsively,
"Tell me it's all a damned lie, Don!"
"No," replied Donaldson, "the sooner it's over the better. I 'm all
through now."
Still Saul hesitated. But there seemed nothing left.
"Come on," he growled.
Donaldson followed him to the cab. He was like a man too tired to care.
"Had n't you better make up some sort of a story for them in there?"
asked Saul, with a jerk of his head towards the house.
"That's so," answered Donaldson. "Will you trust me for a few minutes?"
"Take your time," said Saul.
Donaldson went back up the path and found both Arsdale and his sister
in the library.
"I 'll have to ask you to excuse me for to-night," he said. "I 've
just had word from a friend who wishes me to spend the night with him."
They both looked disappointed.
"He 's waiting out there for me now."
"Perhaps you will come back later," suggested Arsdale.
"Not to-night. Perhaps in the morning. I 'll drop you a word if I 'm
kept longer."
He spoke lightly, with no trace of anything abnormal in his bearing.
"All right, but we 'll miss you," answered Arsdale.
The girl said nothing but her face grew suddenly sober.
They went to the door with him and watched him step into the cab.
Saul had prayed that he would not return, and now looked more as though
it were he that was being led off. He chewed his unlighted cigar in
silence while the other sat back in his corner with his eyes closed.
Once on his way to headquarters he leaned forward, and clutching
Donaldson's knee, repeated his cry,
"Tell me it's all a lie," he begged. "There's time yet. I 'll hustle
you to the train and stake you to Canada. Just give me your word for
it."
Donaldson shook his head.
"It would only come back on Arsdale, and that is n't square."
"Then God help you," murmured Saul.
The cab stopped before headquarters and Saul, with lagging steps, led
his man in. The Chief listened to the story he told with his keen eyes
kindling like a fire through shavings. He saw the end to the bitter
invective heaped upon him during the last three weeks by the press.
Then he began his gruelling cross-examination.
The story Donaldson told was simple and convincing. He had come to New
York full of hope, had waited month after month, and had finally become
discouraged. In this extremity he had taken to a drug. His relations
with the Arsdales began less than a week ago and they knew nothing of
him save that he had been of some assistance in helping young Arsdale
straighten out. Arsdale had borrowed money of him, although doubtless
he could not remember it, and had taken it to go down to Tung's.
Feeling a sense of responsibility for the use the boy had made of this
money and out of regard to the sister, he had done his best to help him
pull out.
When pressed for further details of the crimes themselves, Donaldson
admitted that his memory was very much clouded. He had committed the
assaults when in a mental condition that left them in his memory only
as evil dreams. The substantiation of this must come through his
identification by the witnesses. He could remember nothing of what he
had done with the purses, or the jewels and papers which they
contained. He had used only the money.
An officer was sent to search his rooms at the hotel, and in the
meanwhile men were sent out to bring in the victims of the assaults.
It was for this test that Donaldson held in check all the reserve power
he had within him. If his story was weak up to this point, he realized
that this identification would substantiate it beyond the shadow of a
doubt. This he knew must be done in order to offset Arsdale's possible
attempt to give himself up when he should hear of this. As a student
he had been impressed with the unreliability of direct evidence, and
here would be an opportunity to test his theory that much of the
evidence to the senses is worthless. From the moment he had determined
upon this course he had based his hopes upon this test. Saul had made
it clear that the descriptions given by the witnesses were vague, and
now in the excitement of confronting their assailant they were apt to
be still more unsubstantial. If he could succeed in terrifying them,
he could convince them to a point where they would make all their
excited visions fit him to a hair.
And so as each man was brought before him, Donaldson looked at him from
beneath lowering brows with his mind fixed so fiercely upon the
determination to force them to see him as the shadowy brute who had
attacked them that he in reality looked the part. Two of the men
withdrew, wiping their foreheads, after making the identification
absolute.
The third witness, a woman, promptly fainted. When she revived she
said she was willing to take her oath that this was the man. Not only
was she sure of his height, weight, and complexion, but she recognized
the same malicious gleam which flashed from the demon's eyes as he had
stood over her. She shivered in fright.
The fourth victim was a man of fifty. He was slower to decide, but the
longer he stood in front of Donaldson, the surer he became. Donaldson,
with his arms folded, never allowed his eyes to move from the honest
eyes of this other. And as he looked he made a mental picture of the
act of creeping up behind this man, of lifting his weapon, finally of
striking. With the act of striking, his shoulders lifted, so intense
was his determination.
The man drew back from him.
"Yes," he said, "I am sure. This is the brute."
It was two hours later before Donaldson was finally handed over to the
officers of the Tombs, and Saul turned back reluctantly to give to the
eager reporters as meagre an outline of the story as he could.