The Rest Hollow Mystery

by Rebecca N. Porter

  CHAPTER XIV

  When Kenwick entered the St. Germaine on the evening after his interviewwith Jarvis, a man rose from the farther corner of the lobby and cametoward him. "Kenwick!" he cried, and held out his hand. "I thought younever would come. I've been waiting here an eternity." It was ClintonMorgan.

  When the first, somewhat incoherent greetings were over and the two mensat facing each other across Kenwick's untidy writing-table, a moment ofembarrassed silence fell between them. Then, in a desperate attempt tostart the conversation, "I'm afraid I've kept you waiting rather a longtime," the host apologized.

  "You have," his caller agreed. "It's been more than a year, hasn't it?"He spoke in a cheerful, matter-of-fact tone as though a merepleasure-trip had intervened between this and their last encounter. ButKenwick was looking at him intently.

  "You know--about it then?"

  "Yes, we know all about it." Clinton Morgan leaned over and put hishand affectionately upon the other man's shoulder. "And, by George,Kenwick, I congratulate you. I congratulate you from the bottom of myheart. It was one chance against a thousand that you could win out. It'sa miracle!"

  Kenwick was scarcely conscious of the last sentences. His attention hadstopped short at that word "we." He reached down and picked a burntmatch from the carpet as he asked with a pathetic attempt at formalcourtesy, "How is your sister?"

  "Getting well, I believe. She has been----Well, this case of yours is amost enthralling one, Kenwick. Anybody would be interested, butparticularly any one who has known you. We have been following it withgreat interest."

  Kenwick looked at him incredulously. "How could you?"

  The caller shifted his position uneasily. "Well, that's rather a longstory. And Marcreta might prefer to tell you part of it herself. Andthat brings me to my errand. I came here to ask you up to the house.We've just got the old place fixed over, and,"--he glanced at hiswatch,--"it's not nine o'clock yet. If you haven't something else onhand that----"

  Kenwick cut in almost harshly. "Are you sure that your sister would careto see me? That she wouldn't perhaps be--well, afraid of me?"

  Morgan laughed. "Well, I'll be there, you know, if you should getviolent and begin throwing things around."

  But the other man's face did not relax. His voice came low and strainedas though it were being let out cautiously under high gear. "You don'tunderstand. Nobody can, I suppose, who hasn't been through thisexperience." His nervous hands stiffened upon the arms of the chair. "Itell you, Morgan, it's easier for a denizen of the underworld to livedown her reputation and achieve a reputable place in society than for aman or woman to regain the confidence of the world after a periodof----Well, I may as well out with the damned word--insanity."

  "Don't call it that, Kenwick. It wasn't that. In the trenches you got ablow that put you out of commission. But you were simply in a dazedcondition; mental aberration beginning with melancholia. You were neverviolently insane; never dangerous to anybody else."

  "How do you know? How do I know? I've suffered the anguish of hell,wondering about it. Somebody may have been killed in that accident thatrestored me to life. It may have been all my fault. I don't know. I'vespent the last month trying to find out in a quiet way. I suppose youthink I'm a coward for not going at it more directly." He looked at hiscompanion with a defiant appeal in his eyes. "But there were reasons whyI didn't want to kick up a lot of notoriety about myself. For any harmthat ever came to man or woman through me, I'm eager to pay. No courtdecision would have to make me do it; no court decision could keep mefrom doing it. But I wanted to save my name if I could. I wanted to savemy name so that some time it might be fit----"

  "I know." Clinton Morgan interrupted hastily. The memory of thattraitorous bit of paper which he had discovered in the gold and ivorybook came back to him and brought a guilty flush to his cheeks. Whetherhe would or no, he seemed to hold in his own hands all the threads ofthis tragic romance. A line of Marcreta's lyric drifted through hisbrain:

  Whence thy _uneasy_ spirit may depart?

  How well that word had been chosen to describe and conceal the livingdeath which this man had suffered!

  "You see," Kenwick went on, "I'm the spiritual counterpart of the ManWithout a Country. I don't belong anywhere. And, more than that, I'm acharge on the public conscience. Everybody who knows about my periodof--of incompetency belongs to an unofficial vigilance committee, whoseduty it is to warn society against me."

  Clinton groped for a reply, but words would not come. And the fact thatthere was no bitterness in the other man's voice, but only the levelmonotony which is achieved by long suppression, made it infinitelypathetic.

  "If it suited your whim to do so," Kenwick continued, "you might reversethe usual order of dining; begin with pie and end with soup. And thepublic would regard it either as a new cure for dyspepsia or aneccentricity of genius. But if I should try it, somebody wouldimmediately suggest that I shouldn't be allowed at large. It's the ironyof fate that I, who have always had a contempt for the trivialconventions of life (such a contempt that my sister-in-law never quitetrusted me in polite society), should now be in a cowering bondage tothem. I live all my days in a horror of doing something that mightappear erratic. And I spend the nights going back over every inchof the road to see if I have. Why don't the adherents of thefire-and-brimstone theory picture hell as a place where we can never acton impulse? As a place which dooms us forever to a hideousself-consciousness?"

  Clinton Morgan spoke with a sort of angry championship. "You've hadtough luck, my boy, the toughest kind of luck. But you've come out of itall right. By George, you can show the world now that you've come out ontop."

  "I haven't come out; that's just the trouble. I'll never be out of thewoods until I've accounted for them. Did you read last night's paper,Morgan?"

  "Yes. That's one thing that brought me here. Let me tell you something,Kenwick. Until about a week ago we thought you were dead. And we wererelieved, for we felt that it was a happy release for you; your only wayout. And then one day, not long ago, we got a clue." He still clung tothe plural pronoun. "We fell over a clue, you might say, which arousedour suspicions--and we followed it down."

  "You followed it down!" Kenwick cried. "You cared enough about it forthat?"

  His friend's reply came through guarded lips. "You have sufferedhorribly during these past months," he said. "But you are not the onlyone who has suffered."

  Kenwick glanced at him sharply. Then he seemed to sense the delicacy ofthe other man's position. "It's just this," Kenwick explained after amoment of silence. "Since this--this thing fell on me, I instinctivelydivide all people into two classes; those who knew me before ithappened, and those who have only known me since. With the second groupI'm always wondering if they are still unsuspecting: with the first, I'mwondering if they will ever be convinced. But go on with your story.What did you do about the clue?"

  "I'll tell you about that later. It's enough to say right now thatRichard Glover----"

  "Glover!" The word seemed to explode from Kenwick's lips. He leaped tohis feet. "That's the name!" he cried. "That's the name that I've beengroping after for two days. Sometimes I almost had it and then it wouldescape me. I had an idea fixed in my mind somehow that it began with a'B.' Why, I saw that fellow at the theater the other night, Morgan. Itwas a most curious thing, for as soon as my eyes lighted on him thevacuum in my mind was suddenly filled. I remember traveling across thecontinent with him. I remember my brother Everett introducing me to himone day at home before I came West this last time. That's all I doremember about him, but it sort of connects things in my brain. I wantedto talk to him the other night and see if he couldn't help me clearthings up, but when I got down to his seat, he was gone. I don't knowwhether he had recognized me too or not. But even so, I can't accountfor his wanting to avoid me. I haven't got anything against him. I mighthave thought the whole thing was a hallucination (for I never quitetrust my own senses now), but I had a reliable witness. Now what I wantto know is,
why should Glover be afraid to meet me?"

  "If you'll come up to the house," Morgan suggested again, "we may beable to straighten out some of these things."

  When they arrived, a few minutes later, at the Pine Street home, Clintonlingered outside fussing with the engine of his car, and Roger Kenwickwent alone to meet Marcreta. He found her in the fire-lightedliving-room where he had parted from her, and she came to greet him withthat slow grace that he knew so well, and that seemed now to stop thebeating of his heart. But if either of them had expected the firstmoments of reunion to melt away the shadows that lay between them, theywere disappointed. For the fires of memory burn deep. And the ghastlysuffering with which the two years of separation had been freighted hadleft marks that were not to be obliterated by those words of carefullycasual welcome. In spite of their efforts at commonplace dialogue, theyspoke to each other in the subdued voices of those who converse in thepresence of death. By tacit consent they avoided, during the firsthalf-hour, all mention of the tragedy which had separated them.

  "We've just had the house done over," Marcreta was saying as her brotherentered. "During the war it was a sanitarium, and although it has allbeen retinted and there are new hangings everywhere, Clinton says itstill smells of anesthetics. I tell him it's only his imagination. Doyou get any odor of ether?"

  "No," Kenwick answered.

  He found talking horribly difficult. This woman, for whom his soul hadyearned, seemed now to be looking at him from across a deep chasm.Between them stretched the bramble-bush; a tangle of underbrush; starksycamore-trees that rattled hideously in the winter wind; uprootedmadrone bushes stretching distorted claws heavenward in a mute appealfor vengeance. And insistently now the question beat against hisbrain--had he ever succeeded in crossing that ravine? Would he everreally succeed in crossing it? With the clutch of desperation he clungto the verdict of Dr. Gregson Bennet, as he had once clung for supportto those grim, high-backed chairs at Rest Hollow. He recalled havingonce read the story of an ex-convict coming home after his release fromthe penitentiary to meet that most crucial of all punishments; the eyesof the woman that he loved. To his supersensitive soul, the stigmaattached to him was something that was worse than crime; a thing thatbranded deeper and more indelibly. That it had come to him in thedischarge of duty weighed not a jot on his account-sheet. He toldhimself that it had been a judgment. He had always been a worshiper ofintellect. It had seemed to him the one enduring possession. And now ithad proved itself even more ephemeral than physical health. As his eyesrested upon her, unconscious of their own sadness, he knew all at oncethat Marcreta understood and was trying to make it easy for him.

  "The only way to make this easy for me," he heard himself sayingsuddenly, "is to drag it out into the light. As long as the past liesshrouded between us, we will never be able to forget it."

  * * * * *

  It was eleven o'clock when Kenwick went down the steps of the Morganhome. He refused Clinton's invitation to ride back in the car. For hewanted to walk, to walk on and on forever in the glorious starlight.There were no stars. A gray fog had rolled in from the bay and spreaditself like a huge blotter across the heavens. But he was unaware of it.Even the street lights, shining dimly as through frosted glass, seemedto shed across his path a supernatural radiance. For although no word oflove had passed between him and Marcreta Morgan, he had come away fromthat visit with a wild happiness surging in his heart. There had been noeffort to reestablish life upon its old basis. Marcreta, with whatseemed to him an almost superhuman tact, had divined the ghastlyfutility of such an endeavor. And instead she had conveyed to him, bysome indescribable method of her own, the assurance that she wouldwelcome, with unquestioning faith, the opening of a new and happier era.As he had sat there in the comfort of that living-room, where on anight, not long ago, he had caught a glint of a departed glory, desireand something finer had struggled for supremacy in his soul. Butcourageous self-analysis had driven home to him the realization that hehad Marcreta Morgan at a cruel disadvantage. Whether he would or no, hehad come back to her clothed in the appealing garments of tragedy. Hewas a pensioner on her sympathy, and in her eagerness to restore to himhis lost heritage, she had unconsciously disarmed herself. Thetemptation to cherish and set a jealous guard upon such an advantage hasoverpowered men and women innumerable. Kenwick sensed the treacheroussweetness of it flooding his heart like the seductive fragrance of somerare perfume, and then in a sudden fury he tore himself free of it.

  "By God! I haven't got as deep in as that!" he muttered, and wasunconscious that he said the words aloud. "I haven't sunk so deep thatI'd pull myself up that way!" He buttoned his overcoat about himconscious for the first time of the chill breeze. Not yet, he remindedhimself sharply, not yet did he have the right to conquer.

  As he took the intersecting street to cut the steep down-hill slope tothe hotel, he heard the echo of footsteps behind him. He quickened hisgait, impatient of any distracting element, and was instantly awarethat the other footsteps had quickened theirs. For half a block hewalked at a round pace. Then he stopped short and waited for the otherpedestrian to overtake him. A thick-set man in a black overcoat passedhim, slowed down to a creeping walk, and under the feeble light of thecorner street-lamp came to a halt. Kenwick glanced at him sharply, butthe man was a stranger to him. He passed on unaccosted, but as he wasstepping from the curb the stranger loomed up suddenly behind him."Stop!" he commanded.

  Kenwick turned. A heavy hand was laid upon his arm. He stood waiting,under the gleam of the bleary light, detained more by curiosity than bythe grip upon his arm. From the burly figure came a burly voice. "Youare Roger Kenwick."

  It was not a question, but the other man gave it sharp-voiced response."Yes. What is it to you?"

  "A good deal to me. I've been waiting for you. Some people wouldn't havewaited, but I'm a gentleman and I let you have your visit out with thelady. We'll take, the rest of the walk together. Beastly night, isn'tit?"

  Kenwick did not move, and his voice was more astonished than resentful."I think you've made a mistake in your man. You say you have beenwaiting for me?"

  The burly man began to walk slowly away and Kenwick fell into stepbeside him. "Ye-a, I've been waiting for you. And even if I hadn't been,I might have got suspicious a minute or so ago. Let me give you a tipfor your own good; don't talk to yourself in public. It's a bad habitfor anybody in your line of trade."

  Kenwick stopped short. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean, Mr. Kenwick, that you are under arrest."

  The slanting pavement seemed suddenly to be moving of its own accord andKenwick felt it carrying him along as though he were on an escalator.Then he heard himself ask dully, "What for?"

  The officer looked bored. But he stood there waiting in grim patiencefor his companion to regain the power of locomotion. "I asked you whatfor?" Kenwick repeated sharply. "You've made a mistake, but you've gotto answer that question. If I'm going to be hauled into jail, the lawgives me the right to know why."

  "Oh, cut it out!" the other admonished. "You're surprised all right;they always are. But I'll say this for you, Mr. Kenwick, there's nothingamateurish about your work. Plans all laid to make a quiet getaway East,but no dodging around cheap lodging-houses for yours. Business as usual,and friends kept happy and unsuspecting; everything strictly on thelevel. You know as well as I do why I'm on your track. You're wanted formurder--for the murder of Ralph Regan."