The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  "I see," he said. "Well, that's that."

  But he had not counted on her intuition, and was startled to hear her say:

  "Well? Go on."

  "What do you mean, go on?"

  "You brought me out here to tell me something."

  "Not at all. I simply--"

  "Where is he? You've seen him."

  He tried to meet her eyes, failed, cursed himself for a fool. "He's alive and well, Elizabeth. I saw him in New York." It was a full minute before she spoke again, and then her lips were stiff and her voice strained.

  "Has he gone back to her? To the actress he used to care for?"

  He hesitated, but he knew he would have to go on.

  "I'm going to tell you something, Elizabeth. It's not very creditable to me, but I'll have to trust you. I don't want to see you wasting your life. You've got plenty of courage and a lot of spirit. And you've got to forget him."

  He told her, and then he took her home. He was a little frightened, for there was something not like her in the way she had taken it, a sort of immobility that might, he thought, cover heartbreak. But she smiled when she thanked him, and went very calmly into the house.

  That night she accepted Wallie Sayre.

  XLIII

  Bassett was having a visitor. He sat in his chair while that visitor ranged excitedly up and down the room, a short stout man, well dressed and with a mixture of servility and importance. The valet's first words, as he stood inside the door, had been significant.

  "I should like to know, first, if I am talking to the police."

  "No--and yes," Bassett said genially. "Come and sit down, man. What I mean is this. I am a friend of Judson Clark's, and this may or may not be a police matter. I don't know yet."

  "You are a friend of Mr. Clark's? Then the report was correct. He is still alive, sir?"

  "Yes."

  The valet got out a handkerchief and wiped his face. He was clearly moved.

  "I am glad of that. Very glad. I saw some months ago, in a newspaper--where is he?"

  "In New York. Now Melis, I've an idea that you know something about the crime Judson Clark was accused of. You intimated that at the inquest."

  "Mrs. Lucas killed him."

  "So she says," Bassett said easily.

  The valet jumped and stared.

  "She admits it, as the result of an accident. She also admits hiding the revolver where you found it."

  "Then you do not need me."

  "I'm not so sure of that."

  The valet was puzzled.

  "I want you to think back, Melis. You saw her go down the stairs, sometime before the shot. Later you were confident she had hidden the revolver, and you made a second search for it. Why? You hadn't heard her testimony at the inquest then. Clark had run away. Why didn't you think Clark had done it?"

  "Because I thought she was having an affair with another man. I have always thought she did it."

  Bassett nodded.

  "I thought so. What made you think that?"

  "I'll tell you. She went West without a maid, and Mr. Clark got a Swedish woman from a ranch near to look after her, a woman named Thorwald. She lived at her own place and came over every day. One night, after Mrs. Thorwald had started home, I came across her down the road near the irrigator's house, and there was a man with her. They didn't hear me behind them, and he was giving her a note for some one in the house."

  "Why not for one of the servants?"

  "That's what I thought then, sir. It wasn't my business. But I saw the same man later on, hanging about the place at night, and once I saw her with him--Mrs. Lucas, I mean. That was in the early evening. The gentlemen were out riding, and I'd gone with one of the maids to a hill to watch the moon rise. They were on some rocks, below in the canyon."

  "Did you see him?"

  "I think it was the same man, if that's what you mean. I knew something queer was going on, after that, and I watched her. She went out at night more than once. Then I told Donaldson there was somebody hanging round the place, and he set a watch."

  "Fine. Now we'll go to the night Lucas was shot. Was the Thorwald woman there?"

  "She had started home."

  "Leaving Mrs. Lucas packing alone?"

  "Yes. I hadn't thought of that. The Thorwald woman heard the shot and came back. I remember that, because she fainted upstairs and I had to carry her to a bed."

  "I see. Now about the revolver."

  "I located it the first time I looked for it. Donaldson and the others had searched the billiard room. So I tried the big room. It was under a chair. I left it there, and concealed myself in the room. She, Mrs. Lucas, came down late that night and hunted for it. Then she hid it where I got it later."

  "I wish I knew, Melis, why you didn't bring those facts out at the inquest."

  "You must remember this, sir. I had been with Mr. Clark for a long time. I knew the situation. And I thought that he had gone away that night to throw suspicion from her to himself. I was not certain what to do. I would have told it all in court, but it never came to trial."

  Bassett was satisfied and fairly content. After the Frenchman's departure he sat for some time, making careful notes and studying them. Supposing the man Melis had seen to be Clifton Hines, a good many things would be cleared up. Some new element he had to have, if Gregory's story were to be disproved, some new and different motive. Suppose, for instance...

  He got up and paced the floor back and forward, forward and back. There was just one possibility, and just one way of verifying it. He sat down and wrote out a long telegram and then got his hat and carried it to the telegraph office himself. He had made his last throw.

  He received a reply the following day, and in a state of exhilaration bordering on madness packed his bag, and as he packed it addressed it, after the fashion of lonely men the world over.

  "Just one more trip, friend cowhide," he said, "and then you and I are going to settle down again to work. But it's some trip, old arm-breaker."

  He put in his pajamas and handkerchiefs, his clean socks and collars, and then he got his revolver from a drawer and added it. Just twenty-four hours later he knocked at Dick's door in a boarding-house on West Ninth Street, found it unlocked, and went in. Dick was asleep, and Bassett stood looking down at him with an odd sort of paternal affection. Finally he bent down and touched his shoulder.

  "Wake up, old top," he said. "Wake up. I have some news for you."

  XLIV

  To Dick the last day or two had been nightmares of loneliness. He threw caution to the winds and walked hour after hour, only to find that the street crowds, people who had left a home or were going to one, depressed him and emphasized his isolation. He had deliberately put away from him the anchor that had been Elizabeth and had followed a treacherous memory, and now he was adrift. He told himself that he did not want much. Only peace, work and a place. But he had not one of them.

  He was homesick for David, for Lucy, and, with a tightening of the heart he admitted it, for Elizabeth. And he had no home. He thought of Reynolds, bent over the desk in his office; he saw the quiet tree-shaded streets of the town, and Reynolds, passing from house to house in the little town, doing his work, usurping his place in the confidence and friendship of the people; he saw the very children named for him asking: "Who was I named for, mother?" He saw David and Lucy gone, and the old house abandoned, or perhaps echoing to the laughter of Reynolds' children.

  He had moments when he wondered what would happen if he took Beverly at her word. Suppose she made her confession, re-opened the thing, to fill the papers with great headlines, "Judson Clark Not Guilty. A Strange Story."

  He saw himself going back to the curious glances of the town, never to be to them the same as before. To face them and look them down, to hear whispers behind his back, to feel himself watched and judged, on that far past of his. Suppose even that it could be kept out of the papers; Wilkins amiable and acquiescent, Beverly's confession hidden in the ruck of legal documents
; and he stealing back, to go on as best he could, covering his absence with lies, and taking up his work again. But even that uneasy road was closed to him. He saw David and Lucy stooping to new and strange hypocrisies, watching with anxious old eyes the faces of their neighbors, growing defiant and hard as time went on and suspicion still followed him.

  And there was Elizabeth.

  He tried not to think of her, save as of some fine and tender thing he had once brushed as he passed by. Even if she still cared for him, he could, even less than David and Lucy, ask her to walk the uneasy road with him. She was young. She would forget him and marry Wallace Sayre. She would have luxury and gaiety, and the things that belong to youth.

  He was not particularly bitter about that. He knew now that he had given her real love, something very different from that early madness of his, but he knew it too late...

  He looked up at Bassett and then sat up.

  "What sort of news?" he asked, his voice still thick with sleep.

  "Get up and put some cold water on your head. I want you to get this."

  He obeyed, but without enthusiasm. Some new clue, some hope revived only to die again, what did it matter? But he stopped by Bassett and put a hand on his shoulder.

  "Why do you do it?" he asked. "Why don't you let me go to the devil in my own way?"

  "I started this, and by Heaven I've finished it," was Bassett's exultant reply.

  He sat down and produced a bundle of papers. "I'm going to read you something," he said. "And when I'm through you're going to put your clothes on and we'll go to the Biltmore. The Biltmore. Do you get it?"

  Then he began to read.

  "I, the undersigned, being of sound mind, do hereby make the following statement. I make the statement of my own free will, and swear before Almighty God that it is the truth. I am an illegitimate son of Elihu Clark. My mother, Harriet Burgess, has since married and is now known as Hattie Thorwald. She will confirm the statements herein contained.

  "I was adopted by a woman named Hines, of the city of Omaha, whose name I took. Some years later this woman married and had a daughter, of whom I shall speak later.

  "I attended preparatory school in the East, and was sent during vacations to a tutoring school, owned by Mr. Henry Livingstone. When I went to college Mr. Livingstone bought a ranch at Dry River, Wyoming, and I spent some time there now and then.

  "I learned that I was being supported and sent to college from funds furnished by a firm of New York lawyers, and that aroused my suspicion. I knew that Mrs. Hines was not my mother. I finally learned that I was the son of Elihu Clark and Harriet Burgess.

  "I felt that I should have some part of the estate, and I developed a hatred of Judson Clark, whom I knew. I made one attempt to get money from him by mail, threatening to expose his father's story, but I did not succeed.

  "I visited my mother, Hattie Thorwald, and threatened to kill Clark. I also threatened Henry Livingstone, and his death came during a dispute over the matter, but I did not kill him. He fell down and hit his head. He had a weak heart.

  "My foster-sister had gone on the stage, and Clark was infatuated with her. I saw him a number of times, but he did not connect me with the letter I had sent. My foster-sister's stage name is Beverly Carlysle.

  "She married Howard Lucas and they visited the Clark ranch at Norada, Wyoming, in the fall of 1911. I saw my sister there several times, and as she knew the way I felt she was frightened. My mother, Hattie Thorwald, was a sort of maid to her, and together they tried to get me to go away."

  Bassett looked up.

  "Up to that point," he said, "I wrote it myself before I saw him." There was a note of triumph in his voice. "The rest is his."

  "On the night Lucas was killed I was to go away. Bev had agreed to give me some money, for the piece had quit in June and I was hard up. She was going to borrow it from Jud Clark, and that set me crazy. I felt it ought to be mine, or a part of it anyhow.

  "I was to meet my mother in the grounds, but I missed her, and I went to the house. I wasn't responsible for what I did. I was crazy, I guess. I saw Donaldson on the side porch, and beyond him were Lucas and Clark, playing roulette. It made me wild. I couldn't have played roulette that night for pennies.

  "I went around the house and in the front door. What I meant to do was to walk into that room and tell Clark who I was. He knew me, and all I meant to do was to call Bev down, and mother, and make him sit up and take notice. I hadn't a gun on me.

  "I swear I wasn't thinking of killing him then. I hated him like poison, but that was all. But I went into the living-room, and I heard Clark say he'd lost a thousand dollars. Maybe you don't get that. A thousand dollars thrown around like that, and me living on what Bev could borrow from him.

  "That sent me wild. Lucas took a gun from him, just after that, and said he was going to put it in the other room. He did it, too. He put it on a table and started back. I got it and pointed it at Clark. I'd have shot him, too, but Bev came into the room.

  "I want to exonerate Bev. She has been better than most sisters to me, and she has lied to try to save me. She came up behind me and grabbed my arm. Lucas had heard her, and he turned. I must have closed my hand on the trigger, for it went off and hit him.

  "I was in the living-room when Donaldson ran in. I hid there until they were all gathered around Lucas and had quit running in, and then I got away. I saw my mother in the grounds later. I told her where the revolver was and that they'd better put it in the billiard room. I was afraid they'd suspect Bev.

  "I have read the above statement and it is correct. I was legally adopted by Mrs. Alice Ford Hines, of Omaha, and use that signature. I generally use the name of Frederick Gregory, which I took when I was on the stage for a short time.

  "(Signed) Clifton HINES."

  Bassett folded up the papers and put them in the envelope. "I got that," he said, "at the point of a gun, my friend. And our friend Hines departed for the Mexican border on the evening train. I don't mind saying that I saw him off. He held out for a get-away, and I guess it's just as well."

  He glanced at Dick, lying still and rigid on the bed.

  "And now," he said. "I think a little drink won't do us any harm."

  Dick refused to drink. He was endeavoring to comprehend the situation; to realize that Gregory, who had faced him with such sneering hate a day or so before, was his half-brother.

  "Poor devil!" he said at last. "I wish to God I'd known. He was right, you know. No wonder--"

  Sometime later he roused from deep study and looked at Bassett.

  "How did you get the connection?"

  "I saw Melis, and learned that Hines was in it somehow. He was the connecting link between Beverly Carlysle and the Thorwald woman. But I couldn't connect him with Beverly herself, except by a chance. I wired a man I knew in Omaha, and he turned up the second marriage, and a daughter known on the stage as Beverly Carlysle."

  Bassett was in high spirits. He moved about the room immensely pleased with himself, slightly boastful.

  "Some little stroke, Dick!" he said. "What price Mr. Judson Clark to-night, eh? It will be worth a million dollars to see Wilkins' face when he reads that thing."

  "There's no mention of me as Livingstone in it, is there?"

  "It wasn't necessary to go into that. I didn't know-- Look here," he exploded, "you're not going to be a damned fool, are you?"

  "I'm not going to revive Judson Clark, Bassett. I don't owe him anything. Let him die a decent death and stay dead."

  "Oh, piffle!" Bassett groaned. "Don't start that all over again. Don't pull any Enoch Arden stuff on me, looking in at a lighted window and wandering off to drive a taxicab."

  Suddenly Dick laughed. Bassett watched him, puzzled and angry, with a sort of savage tenderness.

  "You're crazy," he said morosely. "Darned if I understand you. Here I've got everything fixed as slick as a whistle, and it took work, believe me. And now you say you're going to chuck the whole thing."

  "
Not at all," Dick replied, with a new ring in his voice. "You're right. I've been ten sorts of a fool, but I know now what I'm going to do. Take your paper, old friend, and for my sake go out and clear Jud Clark. Put up a headstone to him, if you like, a good one. I'll buy it."

  "And what will you be doing in the meantime?"

  Dick stretched and threw out his arms.

  "Me?" he said. "What should I be doing, old man? I'm going home."

  XLV

  Lucy Crosby was dead. One moment she was of the quick, moving about the house, glancing in at David, having Minnie in the kitchen pin and unpin her veil; and the next she was still and infinitely mysterious, on her white bed. She had fallen outside the door of David's room, and lay there, her arms still full of fresh bath towels, and a fixed and intense look in her eyes, as though, outside the door, she had come face to face with a messenger who bore surprising news. Doctor Reynolds, running up the stairs, found her there dead, and closed the door into David's room.

  But David knew before they told him. He waited until they had placed her on her bed, had closed her eyes and drawn a white coverlet over her, and then he went in alone, and sat down beside her, and put a hand over her chilling one.

  "If you are still here, Lucy," he said, "and have not yet gone on, I want you to carry this with you. We are all right, here. Everybody is all right. You are not to worry."

  After a time he went back to his room and got his prayer-book. He could hear Harrison Miller's voice soothing Minnie in the lower hall, and Reynolds at the telephone. He went back into the quiet chamber, and opening the prayer-book, began to read aloud.

  "Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept--"

  His voice tightened. He put his head down on the side of the bed.

  He was very docile that day. He moved obediently from his room for the awful aftermath of a death, for the sweeping and dusting and clean curtains, and sat in Dick's room, not reading, not even praying, a lonely yet indomitable old figure. When his friends came, elderly men who creaked in and tried to reduce their robust voices to a decorous whisper, he shook hands with them and made brief, courteous replies. Then he lapsed into silence. They felt shut off and uncomfortable, and creaked out again.