Keith's hand was on the butt of his revolver as he made his way through
the black night. He could not see the gravel path under his feet but
could only feel it. Something that was more than a guess made him feel
that Shan Tung was not far away, and he wondered if it was a
premonition, and what it meant. With the keen instinct of a hound he
was scenting for a personal danger. He passed through the gate and
began the downward slope toward town, and not until then did he begin
adding things together and analyzing the situation as it had
transformed itself since he had stood in the door of the Shack,
welcoming the storm from the western mountains. He thought that he had
definitely made up his mind then; now it was chaotic. He could not
leave Prince Albert immediately, as the inspiration had moved him a few
hours before. McDowell had practically given him an assignment. And
Miss Kirkstone was holding him. Also Shan Tung. He felt within himself
the sensation of one who was traveling on very thin ice, yet he could
not tell just where or why it was thin.
"Just a fool hunch," he assured himself.
"Why the deuce should I let a confounded Chinaman and a pretty girl get
on my nerves at this stage of the game? If it wasn't for McDowell--"
And there he stopped. He had fought too long at the raw edge of things
to allow himself to be persuaded by delusions, and he confessed that it
was John Keith who was holding him, that in some inexplicable way John
Keith, though officially dead and buried, was mixed up in a mysterious
affair in which Miriam Kirkstone and Shan Tung were the moving factors.
And inasmuch as he was now Derwent Conniston and no longer John Keith,
he took the logical point of arguing that the affair was none of his
business, and that he could go on to the mountains if he pleased. Only
in that direction could he see ice of a sane and perfect thickness, to
carry out the metaphor in his head. He could report indifferently to
McDowell, forget Miss Kirkstone, and disappear from the menace of Shan
Tung's eyes. John Keith, he repeated, would be officially dead, and
being dead, the law would have no further interest in him.
He prodded himself on with this thought as he fumbled his way through
darkness down into town. Miriam Kirkstone in her golden way was
alluring; the mystery that shadowed the big house on the hill was
fascinating to his hunting instincts; he had the desire, growing fast,
to come at grips with Shan Tung. But he had not foreseen these things,
and neither had Conniston foreseen them. They had planned only for the
salvation of John Keith's precious neck, and tonight he had almost
forgotten the existence of that unpleasant reality, the hangman. Truth
settled upon him with depressing effect, and an infinite loneliness
turned his mind again to the mountains of his dreams.
The town was empty of life. Lights glowed here and there through the
mist; now and then a door opened; down near the river a dog howled
forlornly. Everything was shut against him. There were no longer homes
where he might call and be greeted with a cheery "Good evening, Keith.
Glad to see you. Come in out of the wet." He could not even go to
Duggan, his old river friend. He realized now that his old friends were
the very ones he must avoid most carefully to escape self-betrayal.
Friendship no longer existed for him; the town was a desert without an
oasis where he might reclaim some of the things he had lost. Memories
he had treasured gave place to bitter ones. His own townfolk, of all
people, were his readiest enemies, and his loneliness clutched him
tighter, until the air itself seemed thick and difficult to breathe.
For the time Derwent Conniston was utterly submerged in the
overwhelming yearnings of John Keith.
He dropped into a dimly lighted shop to purchase a box of cigars. It
was deserted except for the proprietor. His elbow bumped into a
telephone. He would call up Wallie and tell him to have a good fire
waiting for him, and in the company of that fire he would do a lot of
thinking before getting into communication with McDowell.
It was not Wallie who answered him, and he was about to apologize for
getting the wrong number when the voice at the other end asked,
"Is that you, Conniston?"
It was McDowell. The discovery gave him a distinct shock. What could
the Inspector be doing up at the Shack in his absence? Besides, there
was an imperative demand in the question that shot at him over the
wire. McDowell had half shouted it.
"Yes, it's I," he said rather feebly.
"I'm down-town, stocking up on some cigars. What's the excitement?"
"Don't ask questions but hustle up here," McDowell fired back. "I've
got the surprise of your life waiting for you!"
Keith heard the receiver at the other end go up with a bang. Something
had happened at the Shack, and McDowell was excited. He went out
puzzled. For some reason he was in no great hurry to reach the top of
the hill. He was beginning to expect things to happen--too many
things--and in the stress of the moment he felt the incongruity of the
friendly box of cigars tucked under his arm. The hardest luck he had
ever run up against had never quite killed his sense of humor, and he
chuckled. His fortunes were indeed at a low ebb when he found a bit of
comfort in hugging a box of cigars still closer.
He could see that every room in the Shack was lighted, when he came to
the crest of the slope, but the shades were drawn. He wondered if
Wallie had pulled down the curtains, or if it was a caution on
McDowell's part against possible espionage. Suspicion made him transfer
the box of cigars to his left arm so that his right was free. Somewhere
in the darkness Conniston's voice was urging him, as it had urged him
up in the cabin on the Barren: "Don't walk into a noose. If it comes to
a fight, FIGHT!"
And then something happened that brought his heart to a dead stop. He
was close to the door. His ear was against it. And he was listening to
a voice. It was not Wallie's, and it was not the iron man's. It was a
woman's voice, or a girl's.
He opened the door and entered, taking swiftly the two or three steps
that carried him across the tiny vestibule to the big room. His
entrance was so sudden that the tableau in front of him was unbroken
for a moment. Birch logs were blazing in the fireplace. In the big
chair sat McDowell, partly turned, a smoking cigar poised in his
fingers, staring at him. Seated on a footstool, with her chin in the
cup of her hands, was a girl. At first, blinded a little by the light,
Keith thought she was a child, a remarkably pretty child with
wide-open, half-startled eyes and a wonderful crown of glowing, brown
hair in which he could still see the shimmer of wet. He took off his
hat and brushed the water from his eyes. McDowell did not move. Slowly
the girl rose to her feet. It was then that Keith saw she was not a
child. Perhaps she was eighteen, a slim, tired-looking, little thing,
wonderfully pretty, and either on the verge of laughing or crying.
Perhaps it was halfway between. To his growing discomfiture she came
slowly toward him with a strange and wonderful look in her face. And
McDowell still sat there staring.
His heart thumped with an emotion he had no time to question. In those
wide-open, shining eyes of the girl he sensed unspeakable tragedy--for
him. And then the girl's arms were reaching out to him, and she was
crying in that voice that trembled and broke between sobs and laughter:
"Derry, don't you know me? Don't you know me?"
He stood like one upon whom had fallen the curse of the dumb. She was
within arm's reach of him, her face white as a cameo, her eyes glowing
like newly-fired stars, her slim throat quivering, and her arms
reaching toward him.
"Derry, don't you know me? DON'T YOU KNOW ME?"
It was a sob, a cry. McDowell had risen. Overwhelmingly there swept
upon Keith an impulse that rocked him to the depth of his soul. He
opened his arms, and in an instant the girl was in them. Quivering, and
sobbing, and laughing she was on his breast. He felt the crush of her
soft hair against his face, her arms were about his neck, and she was
pulling his head down and kissing him--not once or twice, but again and
again, passionately and without shame. His own arms tightened. He heard
McDowell's voice--a distant and non-essential voice it seemed to him
now--saying that he would leave them alone and that he would see them
again tomorrow. He heard the door open and close. McDowell was gone.
And the soft little arms were still tight about his neck. The sweet
crush of hair smothered his face, and on his breast she was crying now
like a baby. He held her closer. A wild exultation seized upon him, and
every fiber in his body responded to its thrill, as tautly-stretched
wires respond to an electrical storm. It passed swiftly, burning itself
out, and his heart was left dead. He heard a sound made by Wallie out
in the kitchen. He saw the walls of the room again, the chair in which
McDowell had sat, the blazing fire. His arms relaxed. The girl raised
her head and put her two hands to his face, looking at him with eyes
which Keith no longer failed to recognize. They were the eyes that had
looked at him out of the faded picture in Conniston's watch.
"Kiss me, Derry!"
It was impossible not to obey. Her lips clung to him. There was love,
adoration, in their caress.
And then she was crying again, with her arms around him tight and her
face hidden against him, and he picked her up as he would have lifted a
child, and carried her to the big chair in front of the fire. He put
her in it and stood before her, trying to smile. Her hair had loosened,
and the shining mass of it had fallen about her face and to her
shoulders. She was more than ever like a little girl as she looked up
at him, her eyes worshiping him, her lips trying to smile, and one
little hand dabbing her eyes with a tiny handkerchief that was already
wet and crushed.
"You--you don't seem very glad to see me, Derry."
"I--I'm just stunned," he managed to say. "You see--"
"It IS a shocking surprise, Derry. I meant it to be. I've been planning
it for years and years and YEARS! Please take off your coat--it's
dripping wet!--and sit down near me, on that stool!"
Again he obeyed. He was big for the stool.
"You are glad to see me, aren't you, Derry?"
She was leaning over the edge of the big chair, and one of her hands
went to his damp hair, brushing it back. It was a wonderful touch. He
had never felt anything like it before in his life, and involuntarily
he bent his head a little. In a moment she had hugged it up close to
her.
"You ARE glad, aren't you, Derry? Say 'yes.'"
"Yes," he whispered.
He could feel the swift, excited beating of her heart.
"And I'm never going back again--to THEM," he heard her say, something
suddenly low and fierce in her voice. "NEVER! I'm going to stay with
you always, Derry. Always!"
She put her lips close to his ear and whispered mysteriously. "They
don't know where I am. Maybe they think I'm dead. But Colonel
Reppington knows. I told him I was coming if I had to walk round the
world to get here. He said he'd keep my secret, and gave me letters to
some awfully nice people over here. I've been over six months. And when
I saw your name in one of those dry-looking, blue-covered, paper books
the Mounted Police get out, I just dropped down on my knees and thanked
the good Lord, Derry. I knew I'd find you somewhere--sometime. I
haven't slept two winks since leaving Montreal! And I guess I really
frightened that big man with the terrible mustaches, for when I rushed
in on him tonight, dripping wet, and said, 'I'm Miss Mary Josephine
Conniston, and I want my brother,' his eyes grew bigger and bigger
until I thought they were surely going to pop out at me. And then he
swore. He said, 'My Gawd, I didn't know he had a sister!'"
Keith's heart was choking him. So this wonderful little creature was
Derwent Conniston's sister! And she was claiming him. She thought he
was her brother!
"--And I love him because he treated me so nicely," she was saying. "He
really hugged me, Derry. I guess he didn't think I was away past
eighteen. And he wrapped me up in a big oilskin, and we came up here.
And--O Derry, Derry--why did you do it? Why didn't you let me know?
Don't you--want me here?"
He heard, but his mind had swept beyond her to the little cabin in the
edge of the Great Barren where Derwent Conniston lay dead. He heard the
wind moaning, as it had moaned that night the Englishman died, and he
saw again that last and unspoken yearning in Conniston's eyes. And he
knew now why Conniston's face had followed him through the gray gloom
and why he had felt the mysterious presence of him long after he had
gone. Something that was Conniston entered into him now. In the
throbbing chaos of his brain a voice was whispering, "She is yours, she
is yours."
His arms tightened about her, and a voice that was not unlike John
Keith's voice said: "Yes, I want you! I want you!"
X
For a space Keith did not raise his head. The girl's arms were about
him close, and he could feel the warm pressure of her cheek against his
hair. The realization of his crime was already weighing his soul like a
piece of lead, yet out of that soul had come the cry, "I want you--I
want you!" and it still beat with the voice of that immeasurable
yearning even as his lips grew tight and he saw himself the monstrous
fraud he was. This strange little, wonderful creature had come to him
from out of a dead world, and her lips, and her arms, and the soft
caress of her hands had sent his own world reeling about his head so
swiftly that he had been drawn into a maelstrom to which he could find
no bottom. Before McDowell she had claimed him. And before McDowell he
had accepted her. He had lived the great lie as he had strengthened
himself to live it, but success was no longer a triumph. There rushed
into his brain like a consuming flame the desire to confess the truth,
to tell this girl whose arms were about him that he was not Derwent
Conniston, her brother, but John Keith, the murderer. Something drove
it back, something that was still more potent, more demanding, the
overwhelming urge of that fighting force in every man which calls for
self-preservation.
Slowly he drew himself away from her, knowing that for this night at
least his back was to the wall. She was smiling at him from out of the
big chair, and in spite of himself he smiled back at her.
"I must send you to bed now, Mary Josephine, and tomorrow we will talk
everything over," he said. "You're so tired you're ready to fall asleep
in a minute."
Tiny, puckery lines came into her pretty forehead. It was a trick he
loved at first sight.
"Do you know, Derry, I almost believe you've changed a lot. You used to
call me 'Juddy.' But now that I'm grown up, I think I like Mary
Josephine better, though you oughtn't to be quite so stiff about it.
Derry, tell me honest--are you AFRAID of me?"
"Afraid of you!"
"Yes, because I'm grown up. Don't you like me as well as you did one,
two, three, seven years ago? If you did, you wouldn't tell me to go to
bed just a few minutes after you've seen me for the first time in all
those--those--Derry, I'm going to cry! I AM!"
"Don't," he pleaded. "Please don't!"
He felt like a hundred-horned bull in a very small china shop. Mary
Josephine herself saved the day for him by jumping suddenly from the
big chair, forcing him into it, and snuggling herself on his knees.
"There!" She looked at a tiny watch on her wrist. "We're going to bed
in two hours. We've got a lot to talk about that won't wait until
tomorrow, Derry. You understand what I mean. I couldn't sleep until
you've told me. And you must tell me the truth. I'll love you just the
same, no matter what it is. Derry, Derry, WHY DID YOU DO IT?"
"Do what?" he asked stupidly.
The delicious softness went out of the slim little body on his knees.
It grew rigid. He looked hopelessly into the fire, but he could feel
the burning inquiry in the girl's eyes. He sensed a swift change
passing through her. She seemed scarcely to breathe, and he knew that
his answer had been more than inadequate. It either confessed or
feigned an ignorance of something which it would have been impossible
for him to forget had he been Conniston. He looked up at her at last.
The joyous flush had gone out of her face. It was a little drawn. Her
hand, which had been snuggling his neck caressingly, slipped down from
his shoulder.
"I guess--you'd rather I hadn't come, Derry," she said, fighting to
keep a break out of her voice. "And I'll go back, if you want to send
me. But I've always dreamed of your promise, that some day you'd send
for me or come and get me, and I'd like to know WHY before you tell me
to go. Why have you hidden away from me all these years, leaving me
among those who you knew hated me as they hated you? Was it because you
didn't care? Or was it because--because--" She bent her head and
whispered strangely, "Was it because you were afraid?"
"Afraid?" he repeated slowly, staring again into the fire. "Afraid--"
He was going to add "Of what?" but caught the words and held them back.
The birch fire leaped up with a sudden roar into the chimney, and from
the heart of the flame he caught again that strange and all-pervading
thrill, the sensation of Derwent Conniston's presence very near to him.
It seemed to him that for an instant he caught a flash of Conniston's
face, and somewhere within him was a whispering which was Conniston's
voice. He was possessed by a weird and masterful force that swept over
him and conquered him, a thing that was more than intuition and greater
than physical desire. It was inspiration. He knew that the Englishman
would have him play the game as he was about to play it now.
The girl was waiting for him to answer. Her lips had grown a little
more tense. His hesitation, the restraint in his welcome of her, and
his apparent desire to evade that mysterious something which seemed to
mean so much to her had brought a shining pain into her eyes. He had
seen such a look in the eyes of creatures physically hurt. He reached
out with his hands and brushed back the thick, soft hair from about her
face. His fingers buried themselves in the silken disarray, and he
looked for a moment straight into her eyes before he spoke.
"Little girl, will you tell me the truth?" he asked. "Do I look like
the old Derwent Conniston, YOUR Derwent Conniston? Do I?"
Her voice was small and troubled, yet the pain was slowly fading out of
her eyes as she felt the passionate embrace of his fingers in her hair.
"No. You are changed."
"Yes, I am changed. A part of Derwent Conniston died seven years ago.
That part of him was dead until he came through that door tonight and
saw you. And then it flickered back into life. It is returning slowly,
slowly. That which was dead is beginning to rouse itself, beginning to
remember. See, little Mary Josephine. It was this!"
He drew a hand to his forehead and placed a finger on the scar. "I got
that seven years ago. It killed a half of Derwent Conniston, the part
that should have lived. Do you understand? Until tonight--"
Her eyes startled him, they were growing so big and dark and staring,
living fires of understanding and horror. It was hard for him to go on
with the lie. "For many weeks I was dead," he struggled on. "And when I
came to life physically, I had forgotten a great deal. I had my name,
my identity, but only ghastly dreams and visions of what had gone
before. I remembered you, but it was in a dream, a strange and haunting
dream that was with me always. It seems to me that for an age I have
been seeking for a face, a voice, something I loved above all else on
earth, something which was always near and yet was never found. It was
you, Mary Josephine, you!"
Was it the real Derwent Conniston speaking now? He felt again that
overwhelming force from within which was not his own. The thing that
had begun as a lie struck him now as a thing that was truth. It was he,
John Keith, who had been questing and yearning and hoping. It was John
Keith, and not Conniston, who had returned into a world filled with a
desolation of loneliness, and it was to John Keith that a beneficent
God had sent this wonderful creature in an hour that was blackest in
its despair. He was not lying now. He was fighting. He was fighting to
keep for himself the one atom of humanity that meant more to him than
all the rest of the human race, fighting to keep a great love that had
come to him out of a world in which he no longer had a friend or a
home, and to that fight his soul went out as a drowning man grips at a
spar on a sea. As the girl's hands came to his face and he heard the
yearning, grief-filled cry of his name on her lips, he no longer sensed
the things he was saying, but held her close in his arms, kissing her
mouth, and her eyes, and her hair, and repeating over and over again
that now he had found her he would never give her up. Her arms clung to
him. They were like two children brought together after a long
separation, and Keith knew that Conniston's love for this girl who was
his sister must have been a splendid thing. And his lie had saved
Conniston as well as himself. There had been no time to question the
reason for the Englishman's neglect--for his apparent desertion of the
girl who had come across the sea to find him. Tonight it was sufficient
that HE was Conniston, and that to him the girl had fallen as a
precious heritage.
He stood up with her at last, holding her away from him a little so
that he could look into her face wet with tears and shining with
happiness. She reached up a hand to his face, so that it touched the
scar, and in her eyes he saw an infinite pity, a luminously tender glow
of love and sympathy and understanding that no measurements could
compass. Gently her hand stroked his scarred forehead. He felt his old
world slipping away from under his feet, and with his triumph there
surged over him a thankfulness for that indefinable something that had
come to him in time to give him the strength and the courage to lie.
For she believed him, utterly and without the shadow of a suspicion she
believed him.
"Tomorrow you will help me to remember a great many things," he said.
"And now will you let me send you to bed, Mary Josephine?"
She was looking at the scar. "And all those years I didn't know," she
whispered. "I didn't know. They told me you were dead, but I knew it
was a lie. It was Colonel Reppington--" She saw something in his face
that stopped her.
"Derry, DON'T YOU REMEMBER?"
"I shall--tomorrow. But tonight I can see nothing and think of nothing
but you. Tomorrow--"
She drew his head down swiftly and kissed the brand made by the heated
barrel of the Englishman's pistol. "Yes, yes, we must go to bed now,
Derry," she cried quickly. "You must not think too much. Tonight it
must just be of me. Tomorrow everything will come out right,
everything. And now you may send me to bed. Do you remember--"
She caught herself, biting her lip to keep back the word.
"Tell me," he urged. "Do I remember what?"
"How you used to come in at the very last and tuck me in at night,
Derry? And how we used to whisper to ourselves there in the darkness,
and at last you would kiss me good-night? It was the kiss that always
made me go to sleep."
He nodded. "Yes, I remember," he said.
He led her to the spare room, and brought in her two travel-worn bags,
and turned on the light. It was a man's room, but Mary Josephine stood
for a moment surveying it with delight.
"It's home, Derry, real home," she whispered.
He did not explain to her that it was a borrowed home and that this was
his first night in it. Such unimportant details would rest until
tomorrow. He showed her the bath and its water system and then
explained to Wallie that his sister was in the house and he would have
to bunk in the kitchen. At the last he knew what he was expected to do,
what he must do. He kissed Mary Josephine good night. He kissed her
twice. And Mary Josephine kissed him and gave him a hug the like of
which he had never experienced until this night. It sent him back to
the fire with blood that danced like a drunken man's.
He turned the lights out and for an hour sat in the dying glow of the
birch. For the first time since he had come from Miriam Kirkstone's he
had the opportunity to think, and in thinking he found his brain
crowded with cold and unemotional fact. He saw his lie in all its naked
immensity. Yet he was not sorry that he had lied. He had saved
Conniston. He had saved himself. And he had saved Conniston's sister,
to love, to fight for, to protect. It had not been a Judas lie but a
lie with his heart and his soul and all the manhood in him behind it.
To have told the truth would have made him his own executioner, it
would have betrayed the dead Englishman who had given to him his name
and all that he possessed, and it would have dragged to a pitiless
grief the heart of a girl for whom the sun still continued to shine. No
regret rose before him now. He felt no shame. All that he saw was the
fight, the tremendous fight, ahead of him, his fight to make good as
Conniston, his fight to play the game as Conniston would have him play
it. The inspiration that had come to him as he stood facing the storm
from the western mountains possessed him again. He would go to the
river's end as he had planned to go before McDowell told him of Shan
Tung and Miriam Kirkstone. And he would not go alone. Mary Josephine
would go with him.
It was midnight when he rose from the big chair and went to his room.
The door was closed. He opened it and entered. Even as his hand groped
for the switch on the wall, his nostrils caught the scent of something
which was familiar and yet which should not have been there. It filled
the room, just as it had filled the big hall at the Kirkstone house,
the almost sickening fragrance of agallochum burned in a cigarette. It
hung like a heavy incense. Keith's eyes glared as he scanned the room
under the lights, half expecting to see Shan Tung sitting there waiting
for him. It was empty. His eyes leaped to the two windows. The shade
was drawn at one, the other was up, and the window itself was open an
inch or two above the sill. Keith's hand gripped his pistol as he went
to it and drew the curtain. Then he turned to the table on which were
the reading lamp and Brady's pipes and tobacco and magazines. On an
ash-tray lay the stub of a freshly burned cigarette. Shan Tung had come
secretly, but he had made no effort to cover his presence.
It was then that Keith saw something on the table which had not been
there before. It was a small, rectangular, teakwood box no larger than
a half of the palm of his hand. He had noticed Miriam Kirkstone's
nervous fingers toying with just such a box earlier in the evening.
They were identical in appearance. Both were covered with an exquisite
fabric of oriental carving, and the wood was stained and polished until
it shone with the dark luster of ebony. Instantly it flashed upon him
that this was the same box he had seen at Miriam's. She had sent it to
him, and Shan Tung had been her messenger. The absurd thought was in
his head as he took up a small white square of card that lay on top of
the box. The upper side of this card was blank; on the other side, in a
script as exquisite in its delicacy as the carving itself, were the
words:
"WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF SHAN TUNG."
In another moment Keith had opened the box. Inside was a carefully
folded slip of paper, and on this paper was written a single line.
Keith's heart stopped beating, and his blood ran cold as he read what
it held for him, a message of doom from Shan Tung in nine words:
"WHAT HAPPENED TO DERWENT CONNISTON? DID YOU KILL HIM?"