A MIDNIGHT WATCH
Half an hour later Burton returned--most unostentatiously. In fact, he
made himself think of a beginner in burglary as he hugged the shadowy
side of the street and sought the shelter of the trees in getting
across the garden. If one were going to do this sort of thing, one
might as well do it in proper style. The front door yielded
noiselessly to his touch, illustrating the advantage of having an
accomplice within, and he was safely inside. He bolted the door and
made his way through the dimly lit hall to the surgery. The whole
entry had occupied less than a minute. He was breathing quickly, but
it was from excitement. It was years since he had been in any sort of
an adventure. He felt like a college boy again.
The surgery was sufficiently lit by the diffused light of street-lamp
and moon to enable him to see his way about. He had brought with him
the electric pocket lamp which he carried with him when travelling,
but he did not intend to use it unless necessary. His plan was to keep
as quiet as possible and wait for the anticipated visitor. If the
person who had had access to the room to "salt" it were at all curious
about the result of the committee's visit, he ought, logically, to
come at the earliest possible moment to investigate. Burton had
planned to occupy the time by writing to Rachel, and he now pulled an
armchair into such a position that he could get enough of the thin
moonlight from the window to see his way across his writing pad, and
settled himself to the familiar task.
"My adored Rachel," he began, and then he stopped. It wasn't going to
be the easiest letter in the world to write. He had been less than a
day in High Ridge, yet already he had got so far away from the Putney
atmosphere that he was conscious of a jolt in trying to present the
situation here to Mrs. Overman. Rachel was of course the paragon of
womankind. He had been a freshman at college when she married Overman,
and he had accepted in perfect good faith the theory that as a
consequence he was always to live the life of a Blighted Being. It had
been the tacit understanding between them ever since, and he was
hardly conscious that her new widowhood had put any new significance
into their old relation. For years he had come and gone at her beck
and call, lived on her smiles and survived her frowns with more or
less equanimity, all as a bounden knight should do. It had almost
become a secondary occupation. But as time went on, occasions had
arisen when his account of facts had to be somewhat tempered for the
adored Rachel. She was just as adorable as ever, of course, but--she
didn't understand people who didn't live her kind of a life. Burton
felt instinctively that the whole Underwood situation would strike her
the wrong way. She would simply regard it as something that could
never by any possibility have happened to any one in her class, and
that would end it. If Philip were going to marry Miss Underwood--and
Philip was mighty lucky to have the chance--it behooved him to tell
his story warily so as not to prejudice Rachel against her future
daughter-in-law. He started in again, with circumspection.
"I am writing you by the light of the fair silver moon. Does that
make you think of the luny,--I mean lunar--epistles I used to write
you,--the almanac-man alone remembers how many years ago! I wrote by
moonlight then for romantic reasons,--now for strategical,--but that
is a subject which can only be continued in my next, so please keep up
your interest.
"I have seen Miss Underwood, and I wish to assure you in the first
place that Philip has shown his usual good taste and discrimination by
falling in love with her. She is a beautiful girl, and more. She has
charm and sweetness and manner and dignity. I'll report any other
qualities she may possess as I discover them. I should judge her to be
somewhat older than Philip, but I am the last man in the world with a
right to regard that as an obstacle.
"She has as yet given me no final answer in the matter which you
commissioned me to lay before her, for the following reason:
"Her father, who is a physician, and who impresses me as a very
original, attractive and honorable man, is at present under a curious
shadow of popular distrust. There was a highway robbery here a short
time ago, and the man robbed charges that Dr. Underwood was the
robber. I am sure there is not the slightest ground for such a charge,
but the people seem to have taken an attitude of distrust and
suspicion toward both the doctor and his son, and you can understand
Miss Underwood's natural feeling that until her father is vindicated
as publicly as he has been assailed, she will not give any
encouragement to Philip's suit. I have her word for it (and what is
more, her radiant look for it), that this is all that keeps her from
listening at this time. If you will tell Philip this, I am sure it
will have the effect upon his spirits which we have both so anxiously
desired. I have not the slightest doubt about the doctor's being
cleared. He is a most delightful man, and his son--" Burton held his
pen suspended. Henry did not lend himself to a phrase. There was
something about him that ran off into the shadowy unknown. He ended
his sentence lamely,--"is something of a character.
"Of course I shall stay on at High Ridge and bend every energy to
clearing up this matter without delay. It can hardly prove very
difficult, though there are some curious and unusual features in the
case.
"It is unnecessary for me to say that the thought that he is carrying
out the wishes of his adored Rachel is the chief joy in life of her
"BLIGHTED BEING."
It was the way in which he had always signed his letters to her since
her marriage. He wrote the words now with the cheerful unconsciousness
of habit, and folded his letter for mailing. Then after a moment he
rose and walked softly to the window. Putting the curtain aside, he
stood for some time looking out across the lawn. His window looked not
toward Rowan, but toward the side street, a hundred and fifty feet
away. The moon was clear and high, and the black and white of its
light and shadow made a scene that would have appealed to any lover of
the picturesque. It would delight a poet or a philosopher he thought,
and that brought Henry Underwood again to his mind. He was a curious
man,--a man to give one pause. There was something of the poet and
something of the philosopher in him, as witness his speeches in the
garden, but there was something else, also. If the moodiness which was
so obvious had manifested itself in the tricks that had defied the
police and scandalized the family, it went near to the line of the
abnormal. It would seem that the accusation was neither admitted nor
proved, but the hotel clerk had referred to it, Selby had openly
charged him with it, and the doctor evidently did not wish the matter
discussed. Well, it had nothing to do with the present affair,
unless--unless--Oh, of course it had nothing to do with the present
affair.
The figure of a man moving with a sort of stealthy swiftness among the
shadows of the garden caught his eye, and instantly he was alert. The
man crossed an open patch of moonlight and, with a curious feeling
that it was what he had expected, Burton recognized Henry Underwood.
He came directly toward the side of the house where the surgery was,
and a moment later Burton heard the outer door of the back hall open,
and footsteps went past his closed door.
Burton pressed his electric light to look at his watch. It was two
o'clock. He turned back to the window, with a feeling of irritation.
Henry Underwood might be a poet and a philosopher, but he was also a
fool, or he would not be wandering at two A.M. through a town that was
already smouldering with suspicion of the Underwood family. It was, to
say the least, imprudent. Burton wished he had not seen him. Probably
his errand was entirely innocent and easily to be explained, but the
human mind is a fertile field, and a seed of suspicion flourishes like
the scriptural grain of mustard.
There was a red glow in the sky over the trees of the garden. Burton
wondered if it could be the morning glow. It was hardly time for that.
He was speculating upon it idly when his ear caught the sound of
returning footsteps in the back hall,--though this time they were so
soft that if he had not been alert for any sound he would hardly have
noticed them. He drew aside from the window, hid himself in the shadow
of the long curtain, and waited. Unless the person in the hall entered
this room, he had no right to question his movements.
The door was opened with noiseless swiftness, and a man stood for an
instant in the opening. His head was bent forward and he carried a
light in his hand,--whether small lantern or shaded candle Burton did
not have time to see, for almost at the instant of opening the door
the light was quenched. Burton was certain that neither sound nor
movement had betrayed his own presence, yet after that single moment
of reconnoitering, the light went out and the door was shut sharply.
Burton sprang toward it, stumbled over the armchair he had himself
placed in the way, picked himself up, and reached the door,--only to
look into the blank blackness of the back hall. There was a faint
quiver of sound in the air, as though the outer house door had jarred
with a sudden closing, and he ran down the hall; the door was unlocked
and yielded at once to his touch. For a moment everything was still;
then he heard the clatter of feet on a board walk. It was as though
some one, escaping, had waited to see if he would be pursued and then
had fled on. Burton ran around to the rear of the house, thankful that
the moonlight now made his way plain. There was a board walk running
from the kitchen door to a high wall at the end of the lot, but the
sound he had heard was momentary, not continuous, so, on the theory
that the man had crossed the walk, not run down the hundred feet of it
to the alley, he ran on to the east side of the house. There was no
one to be seen, of course. Any one familiar with the location could
have hidden himself in any of a hundred shadows. The lot was filled
with trees, and one large oak almost rested against the house. It
reminded him of Henry's remark at dinner about getting down from the
second story by the oak on the east side, and he glanced up. It looked
an easy climb--and two of the house windows were lit. On the impulse
of the moment, he swung himself up into the branches. As he came level
with the lit windows, Henry Underwood passed one of them, still fully
dressed. He was so near that Burton was certain for a moment that he
himself must have been discovered, and he waited a moment in suspense.
But Henry had passed the window without looking out.
What Burton had expected to discover was perhaps not clear to his own
mind. If he had analyzed the intuition he followed, he would have said
that he was acting on the theory that Henry had looked into his room,
and then, fleeing out of doors to throw him off the scent--by that
side door to which he obviously carried a key, since he had let
himself in that way shortly before--had regained his room by this
schoolboy stairway. The feeling had been strong upon him that he was
close on the trail of some one fleeing. But if in fact it had been
Henry, how could he challenge him, here in his own room? Clearly he
was within his rights here,--a fact that was emphasized when, after a
minute, he came to the window and pulled the curtain down.
Burton dropped to the ground and retraced his steps around the rear of
the house. Here he saw that the board walk ran down to a gate,--the
gate in the rear by which he had seen Mrs. Bussey talking in excited
fashion to a man, earlier in the day. The gate opened at Burton's
touch and he looked out into an empty alley. It was so obvious that
this would have been the natural and easy way of escape that he could
only blame himself for folly in chasing an uncertain sound of
footsteps past the gate around to the east of the house.
He found his way back to the surgery a good deal humiliated. The
mysterious intruder had been almost within reach of his arm, and had
got away without leaving a trace, and all that was gained was that
hereafter he would be more alert than ever, knowing himself watched.
It was not a very creditable beginning. Burton threw himself down on
the couch, and his annoyance did not prevent his dropping, after a
time, into a sound sleep.
Therefore he did not see how that red glow on the sky above the trees
deepened and made a bright hole in the night, long before the morning
came to banish the darkness legitimately.