THE following morning when Stella, sitting up in bed, opened her mail
and read Ackerman’s report, the last doubt of John Graham’s guilt was
shattered.
_“I have just learned,” Ackerman wrote, “that a number of men of
notoriously desperate character from the foot of the mountains were in
Independence on the day before the tragedy and that a man by the name of
Dan Wiley, their leader, reported in person to John Graham’s office.”_
Stella sprang from her bed and began hurriedly to dress.
“Now God give me strength for the work I’m going to do!” she cried, with
strangling rage. “To think that such a man should dare to speak to me of
love--should dare to clasp my hand with the stain of my father’s blood
yet fresh on his! I could kill him with my own hand--coward, dastard,
sneak, assassin! I hate him--I hate him!”
She threw herself on her bed again in a paroxysm of uncontrollable fury.
She arose at length, calm, alert, her cheeks flushed with brilliant
colour, her great eyes dilated wide and sparkling with courage.
The knocker struck sharply and she remembered with a start that Steve
Hoyle had returned on the midnight train and would call this morning.
She heard Maggie show Steve into the library.
Without waiting for her breakfast she hastened to meet him, and he
plunged at once into the purpose of his call:
“Has John Graham yet confessed his leadership?”
“He will to-day,” was the quiet answer.
“The fame of your desperate love affair has set the town agog,” Steve
laughed triumphantly.
“Doubtless,” she replied moodily.
“I’ve everything arranged--the men are only waiting for the word.”
“I prefer that the law take its course. I’m not ready to commit murder,”
she said emphatically.
“Nonsense! The law’s a farce--Deliver him to his own men to be judged
by the Klan which has set itself above the State. If he is the leader of
the Invisible Empire he holds his own High Court. Let his men decide his
fate. It’s justice!”
Stella hesitated a moment and slowly said:
“When I learn from his own lips that he is the Chief of the Klan and
find that there is no other way in which he can be made to pay the
penalty of his crime, I’ll deliver him to his men.”
“They’ll be ready to receive him.”
“I shall know in twenty-four hours.”
“I’ll await your word,” he answered eagerly, his eyes devouring her
beauty.
Steve hurriedly left and Stella seated herself at her desk to write her
answer to John Graham. Two attempts she tore up. The third suited her.
In the centre of a sheet of paper she wrote two words:
_“Come--Stella.”_
When John Graham received this note at eleven o’clock from the hands
of her messenger, he felt before he broke the seal that it bore glad
tidings.
He tore it open and with a cry of joy, tried to read, and the tears
blinded him. He crushed the note in his hand and bowed his head on his
desk, his whole being convulsed with emotion which he could not control.
He rose at length, walked to his window, opened the note again and gazed
at it until he broke into a joyous laugh, repeating the words:
_“Come--Stella.”_
“The most wonderful letter I ever received,” he exclaimed. “The longest,
the richest, the deepest--the answering call of my mate! In all nature
there’s no such cry. From out the shadows of hell I lift my soul and
answer, ‘My love, I come!’”
In a moment he had forgotten every fear; and all the pain, blind and
hideous, of the last three days was lost in a joy that lit the world
with splendour.
He called immediately on horseback and asked her to ride with him
through a beautiful wooded road he had long wished to show her. Stella
caught the echo of his horse’s hoofs with a shudder as he approached the
house. She had not heard that sound on the gravelled roadway of the lawn
since the night she listened to the distant echoes of the masqueraders
as she stood beside the dead.
She accepted his suggestion and hastily despatched a message to Ackerman
asking that he await her return in her library at sundown as she
intended to spend the afternoon in the country on important business.
At three o’clock they galloped out of Independence toward the river.
“My heart is too full now for speech,” he said, leaning toward her, his
face radiant with happiness.
“I understand.”
“Just to be near you is all I ask for a while. It seems too good to be
true. It has been a century since I saw you.”
She remained silent. The only visible response, if any, was the
quickening of her horse’s pace at the unconscious touch of the little
spur concealed beneath her skirts.
Her silence meant to him feelings too deep for words, and again his
heart sang for joy.
Four miles out of town they left the main highway and turned into the
narrow crooked road which wound along the banks of a creek through the
densest forest in the county.
“I’m going to take you to ‘Inwood,’ General Gaston’s place. The house
was burned by Sherman’s army, only the vine-covered ruins are standing
now. It was the finest house ever built in the state, and many a gay
party held high carnival there in the old days.”
“I’ve heard my mother speak of it,” she answered soberly, glancing at
him from the corner of her eye. “In fact, it was there at a picnic one
day that my father proposed to his sweetheart and my mother accepted
him, and planned their elopement. How strange that you should have
chosen to bring me to this place to-day!”
“You’ll understand it later,” he quickly responded.
“I hope you don’t mean to kidnap me?”
“It might be advisable in view of the events of the past three days,” he
laughed.
She glanced about her at the deep shadows of the great trees through
which they had been passing for more than a mile and shot at him a
sudden look of fear.
“Let’s turn back,” she said, flushing and reining her horse to a stand.
A look of pain clouded his face as he bent near.
“Surely, dearest, you can trust the man who worships you! Come, we are
only a few hundred yards from the gate.”
“Then I’ll trust you that much further,” she said with a light laugh,
spurring her horse forward.
In a few minutes they passed through the ruined gate in the edge of the
woods. The broken marble figures which once crowned the brick pillars
lay beside the entrance among a mass of tangled blackberry briars. They
had been pried from their places and hurled there by the bayonets of
Sherman’s men and had not been touched since.
The lawn, which once had spread its beautiful carpet of flowers and
shrubbery in wide acres here in the heart of the ancient woods,
had grown up in ugly broom straw and young pines, which were slowly
strangling to death the more delicate forms of life. The dark fir trees,
magnolia and holly, still flourished in luxury.
Towering in solemn, serried line on a gentle eminence still stood the
six great white Corinthian pillars of the front façade of the house.
Behind them in dark background a row of Norwegian firs, fifty years old,
marked the sky line. The afternoon sun cast the shadows of the trees
across the fluted marble of two of the pillars, while the other four
shimmered in the splendour of the sunlight.
The capitals of the columns had fallen with the blazing ruins of the
house, but the bases and tall beautiful fluted forms of each were yet
perfect. The ivy which had grown on the sides of the stone steps had
climbed in unbridled riot over one of them and hung in graceful festoons
from the top.
To Stella’s fancy they seemed grim white sentinels guarding the entrance
to some vast empire of the dead.
“How still and death-like everything is,” she said, with a timid glance
about her. “We seem a thousand miles from life.”
He took her hand.
“When I stand by your side, in every silent space I hear the beating of
the wings of angels.”
“The wings of the angel of Death here, I should think!” she said in
strange subdued tones, as her eyelids drooped and she looked away.
“Away with such nonsense,” he cried, cheerily. “I’ve something to do
before I dare to speak to you again of the love that is in my heart.”
He led her behind the towering columns, and, at the rear of the ruins of
the heavy brick walls, entered the basement by a stairway half covered
with fallen débris.
The floors of the first story which had been constructed of iron and
cement foundations had remained unbroken. The basement, once entered
below the ruins, was in a state of perfect preservation.
They entered the immense kitchen whose walls had once echoed with the
voices of swarms of indolent well-fed slaves.
Stella looked about her in amazement, asking with a slight tremor in her
voice:
“Why have you brought me here?”
“To place my life in your hands, joyously, without a single
reservation,” he said with deep earnestness. “You are in the council
chamber of the Invisible Empire. Here its High Court of Life and Death
was held.”
Stella’s breath quickened and she glanced at John with furtive eyes.
“I should have told you frankly at first. You had the right to know
before you gave your life into my keeping.”
He led her to the big wrought-iron range and opened one of its ovens,
revealing the form of an old-fashioned safe.
Taking a huge key from his pocket, he opened the door and drew from it a
package of papers.
“I am going to show you, my love, what no woman’s eye ever saw before,
the guarded secrets of the Invisible Empire, its signs, passwords,
ritual and secret oath. In this act I now imperil no life save my own.”
Stella’s tapering fingers trembled as she turned the pages nervously and
read its brief formulas.
“As Chief of the Klan I met here the leaders from each district.”
“Then--you--are--the--Chief?” she slowly asked, bending low to hide her
flushed face.
“Yes, I was the only Chief the Empire ever had in the state,” he
answered with a ring of boyish pride.
“And you bowed to no law save your own?” she asked in low tones.
“No.”
“And you really did hold high courts of life and death?” she whispered.
“Yes, we were the sole guardians of white civilisation. It was a
necessity--the last resort of desperation.”
“You tried men here in secret, sentenced them without a hearing,
executed them at night without warning, mercy or appeal?”
“It had to be--there was no other way. A million soldiers girded us with
their bayonets. We had to strike under a mantle of darkness and terror,
where the power of resistance was weakest, the blow unsuspected and
discovery impossible.”
“How terrible!” she interrupted with a shudder. “And yet,” she went on
with a sudden flash of her eye, “its mystery and its daring fascinate
me! Would you do something just to please a romantic fancy of mine?”
“I have but one desire in life--to please your fancy,” he cried.
“Come here with me again, day after to-morrow night, and dress in your
costume as Chief of the High Court of the Klan. Bring some lanterns and
we’ll light it up--it’s just a fancy of mine--will you do it?”
“You’re not afraid to be here alone with me at night?”
“Why should I? I love to do daring unconventional things. Besides, do we
not belong to each other now?”
“You do love me?” he whispered.
“Do you doubt it?”
“Kiss me!” he pleaded, bending closer.
With a sudden shudder she drew away.
“Not yet! you must be patient. I’ve a lot of silly notions. That’s one
of them. I’ll learn, no doubt.”
“I’ll try to teach you,” he laughed--“and be content to touch your hand
until my desire shall be yours.”
They rode swiftly home, John’s soul in a warm glow of happiness. Stella
spoke scarcely a word, but her cheeks were flushed and about her deep
brown eyes a curious smile was constantly playing.
He left her at the door and as he pressed her hand softly said:
“You scarcely spoke the whole way home--tell me what were you thinking
about?”
“I don’t know--perhaps dreaming of your terrible court--of a man being
condemned to death without knowing it!”
“Yet a smile was playing about your beautiful face?”
Stella suddenly burst into half hysterical laughter:
“Of course, how can you doubt that I was happy! I’ll tell you all my
thoughts to-morrow night.”
“Shall we go on horseback?”
“Yes, but I wish to go alone; I’ll meet you there at dusk,” she replied
with another strange laugh, waving her hand as he mounted his horse and
galloped away.
She closed the door and with quick nervous step, crossed the hall and
passed into the library, confronting Ackerman.
“John Graham is the Chief of the Ku Klux Klan--he has confessed to me!”
she whispered excitedly. “I have arranged everything for his arrest day
after to-morrow evening at their secret meeting place.”
“Then our work is complete,” he said with a ring of triumph.
“And his execution is a certainty?”
“I haven’t the remotest idea that Graham himself can ever be convicted
of the murder of Judge Butler--but your discovery is of tremendous
importance.”
“He--cannot--be--convicted!” Stella gasped.
“No, but the Invisible Empire will be in ruins in forty-eight hours,”
he replied, seizing his hat. “Excuse me now, I have work of the gravest
importance to-night. Thanks for the promptness with which you have kept
your promise.”
Before Stella could speak he was gone. With a scowl on her beautiful
brow, she called Maggie:
“Tell Mr. Steve Hoyle I wish to see him here immediately.”