AN UNSTABLE SWEETHEART
Burton awoke the next morning in a new frame of mind. His half
reluctant interest in the Underwood situation had suddenly been
touched with enthusiasm. If Henry was innocent, then the whole thing
was a hideous conspiracy that cried to heaven to be exposed. The fact
that it was not taking place in past historic times or in distant
lands, but here in a commonplace town of the middle west in the light
of newspapers, police regulations and prevalent respectability,--all
this made it more interesting to him, instead of more prosaic. It was
a real and vital situation, not an imaginable possibility. If Henry
was in truth innocent, if the doctor was the guileless child of light
that he seemed, if Miss Leslie had been involved in all this tangle by
a cruel trick of Fate's, then certainly here was work waiting for him.
He was no detective, but neither was this the ordinary melodrama of
crime. It was rather a psychological problem, and it was just possible
that he was better fitted to get at the truth of the matter than a
professional who would have less human interest in the persons
involved.
First of all, he would see Miss Hadley. He wanted to verify his guess
that Henry's presence in the neighborhood last night was something
that she could very well explain if she wanted to. And if that proved
true, then Henry's wanderings on the night of the fire might easily
have been in the same direction. Burton could not deny that it would
ease his mind to have that point settled!
Miss Hadley came into the reception room with a nervous flutter in her
manner and a startled look in her soft eyes. She was a pretty girl, of
an excessively feminine type,--all soft coloring and timid grace.
Certainly she was a pleasant thing to look upon, yet Burton's heart
rather sank as he stood up to meet her. "She hasn't the backbone to
stand by a man," he thought to himself, with a swift recognition of
what Henry was going to need. But aloud he said: "I took the liberty
of calling to inquire about your father. I hope that his trying
experiences last night have not had any serious effects."
"He has gone down to the bank," she answered. "He felt that he ought
to take the risk."
"Risk? What is he afraid of?"
"Why, anything might happen, after last night," she said, opening her
eyes wide upon him.
"I'm glad to hear you say that," said Burton quickly, "because it
indicates that you--and I hope your father--do not share the foolish
idea that Henry Underwood was in any way responsible for that
outrage."
Her eyes filled with quick tears at the name. "They say he did it,"
she murmured.
"But you don't believe that," he said reassuringly. "You know that he
has been arrested and put in jail, yet you say that your father fears
other possible attacks. Of course if Mr. Underwood were the one, there
would be no further danger, now that he is locked up! So I infer that
your father is satisfied that it was some one else."
But anything so logical as this bit of reasoning found no response in
Miss Hadley's mind. She looked at him from brimming violet eyes that,
Burton confessed to himself with some cynicism, would have made
anything like common sense seem an impertinence to him if he had been
fifteen years younger.
"Papa says that he must have done it," she persisted. "He never did
like Hen-- Mr. Underwood."
"But I am sure that any personal dislike will not prevent his being
fair to him in a case like this. You can help, you know. You can tell
your father quite frankly why Mr. Underwood was found loitering in the
garden. That will clear him of the most serious part of the evidence
against him."
"What--what do you mean?" she gasped, looking at him in a kind of
terror and half rising, as though she would flee from the room.
"Mr. Underwood came here last night to see you, didn't he?" he asked,
in a matter-of-course tone.
The ready tears overflowed the brimming violets, and though she dabbed
them away with a trifle that she called a handkerchief, they continued
to well up and overflow, while she kept her eyes fixed upon him.
"I--I was going away. Papa said that I had to go to my aunt in
Williamston, so--that Hen-- Mr. Underwood c--could not come and see
me. And he c--couldn't even come to say goodbye, so he came to the
garden, and--and--I was afraid some one might see him if he kept
hanging around,--it wasn't my fault,--he wouldn't pay attention to me
when I told him never to come again,--"
"So you went down to the garden to say goodbye to him," said Burton,
cheerfully. "Well, that was kind of you, and I don't think for my part
that you could have done any less. He loves you and you love him and
you had a right to say goodbye to him before you went away. Of course
you would stand up for him, just as he would stand up for you. _I_
understand!"
Miss Hadley was so surprised by this mode of attack that she could
only stare at him in silence.
"Now the point that I want you to tell me," Burton continued, "is just
when you left Mr. Underwood in the garden and returned to the house."
She continued to stare in fascinated terror.
"You came in through the window in the drawing-room, didn't you?"
She made the slightest possible sign of assent.
"And you went directly up to your room?"
"Yes."
"And then when the wind came up you remembered that you had left the
window open and you went back to close it. Is that it?"
"Y--yes."
"And then when you got into the hall, what was it that called your
attention to your father's room? Was his door open?"
She nodded. "There was a light. I was afraid that he was up and would
hear me in the hall, so I peeked through the crack--" She stopped, but
she was not weeping now. She evidently saved her tears for her own
troubles.
"And then you saw him tied up in bed and you began to scream,--which
was the very best thing you could have done, my dear Miss Hadley. How
long were you in your room before you remembered about the window?"
"I--don't know."
"You had not begun to undress."
She gave him a startled look.
"I noticed that you were fully dressed. Did you read anything after
you went to your room?"
"No."
"Or write anything?"
"No."
"Or sew, or-- I don't know what girls do do when they go to their
room! But did you do anything, and how long did it take you? You see I
want to get an idea how long it was between the time you left Mr.
Underwood after saying goodbye to him, and the time that you looked
into your father's room."
"I don't know," she wailed, and Burton ground his teeth.
"But it may be very important! You must try to remember. It would have
taken quite a while for any one to tie all those knots. Of course if
he was with you in the garden he was not up in your father's room, and
if we can prove that there was not time enough--"
But she had sprung to her feet with a little scream. "You don't think
he will ever tell that I met him in the garden?"
"Aren't you going to tell, yourself?" asked Burton dryly.
She began to sob again, more with terror, it seemed, than anything
else. "Papa would be--so angry."
"But you wouldn't let that frighten you into silence, when your word
would mean so much to him?" Burton forced himself to speak gently and
coaxingly, for he saw that this frightened girl held the key to much
of the mystery,--and he doubted her generosity!
"I wish I had--never seen him. I wish he had never come to--the
garden. I never wanted him to come!"
"That wasn't the first time he had come, though, was it? You met him
in the garden the evening before, you know," Burton said. He took a
positive tone because he did not dare risk it as a question. But she
met his assertion with a look so startled that it was all the
confirmation he needed. Thank goodness! Henry had been here, then,
when he came home in the small hours, and there was no further need to
wonder about his whereabouts when the Sprigg fire started! Burton drew
a breath of relief.
"I didn't think he would tell," wailed Miss Hadley.
"He didn't," said Burton quickly. "I happened to see him both times;
that's how I knew."
"And I never thought he would be so wicked as to tie my father up in
knots!"
"But he didn't, my dear Miss Hadley; you surely knew he didn't. He
wouldn't have had time, even if there were nothing else. That's what
we can prove, you and I. I want you to tell--"
"Oh, I can't! I can't! I'll say I don't know anything about it, if you
try to make me tell. I think you are horrid!"
Burton beat his mind in despair. How was he to pin this irresponsible
child down to the facts of the situation? Suddenly she looked up from
her handkerchief.
"Mr. Selby says it was Henry, and now I can see what sort of a man he
really is."
"When did he say that?"
"Last night. And today."
Burton reflected that Selby certainly knew the advantage of striking
when the iron was hot. But he only asked: "Is Mr. Selby a friend of
Mr. Underwood's?"
A self-conscious look came into her face, and she dropped her eyes. It
was quite evident that her vanity took the jealousy of the two men as
a tribute to her powers.
"Does Mr. Selby know that you are engaged to Mr. Underwood?" he asked
abruptly.
"N--no!" she stammered.
"Did you tell him that you had just left Mr. Underwood in the garden
last night?"
"No," she gasped. "You--you don't think Mr. Underwood would tell?"
"No, I don't think he would," said Burton. "In fact, I feel quite sure
he would keep silence on that point, at any cost. But I am going to
tell, if it becomes necessary."
"I will never speak to him again," she cried desperately. "I will
never see him or speak to him again."
Burton held himself from retorting: "It will be better for him if you
don't," and merely answered, with as much kindliness as he could put
into his voice:
"I shall not speak of it unless necessary. If we can clear him without
that, all right; I know he would rather have it that way. But if it
becomes necessary to prove where he was that evening, in order to
prove that he could not have been in your father's room at the same
time, I am going to tell the facts. There won't be any harm to you in
them. And there isn't anything else to do, if that question comes up."
But Miss Hadley would not answer. She gave him one look of indignant
and tearful reproach, and then fled from the room, leaving him to find
his way out of the house as best he could.
Burton found himself in a somewhat embarrassing quandary as he
considered the matter. While he felt morally satisfied that he had
found the true explanation of Henry's presence in the neighborhood,
and the proof of his innocence of all complicity in the assault upon
the banker, he realized that it would not be easy to convince either a
prejudiced public or a jury. Miss Hadley was obviously not to be
counted upon. She might deny the whole thing, or she might be
terrified into admitting anything as to time and place that the
prosecution might wish to draw from her. Undoubtedly the opposition of
her father would seem to the multitude merely another reason for
suspecting Henry, instead of its being, as Burton saw it, a fairly
conclusive proof that he would have been more than ordinarily
scrupulous in his dealings with the man whom he hoped to call his
father-in-law. And of course Henry would neither tell himself, nor
thank Burton for telling, a piece of news that would be gossip and
cause for laughter in a small town like High Ridge. It was unfortunate
that Henry should have fixed his affections upon so unstable a
creature as the pretty Miss Hadley, anyhow. Why couldn't he have had
the judgment to choose some one like--well, like his sister Leslie,
who would have walked by the side of the man she loved down into the
valley of the shadow of death if need be?
But then, he reflected cynically, people never did show any judgment
when it came to falling in love, for the matter of that. There was
Miss Underwood, herself. Of course Philip was a charming boy, and all
that, but--He shook his head impatiently, and went on to interview
Henry.