Loe raamatut: «The King of Arcadia», lehekülg 12

XIX
IN THE LABORATORY

Ballard had a small shock while he was crossing the stone yard with Fitzpatrick. It turned upon the sight of the handsome figure of the Craigmiles ranch foreman calmly rolling a cigarette in the shade of one of the cutting sheds.

"What is the Mexican doing here?" he demanded abruptly of Fitzpatrick; and the Irishman's manner was far from reassuring.

"'Tis you he'll be wanting to see, I'm thinking. He's been hanging 'round the office f'r the betther part of an hour. Shall I run him off the riservation?"

"Around the office, you say?" Ballard cut himself instantly out of the contractor's company and crossed briskly to the shed where the Mexican was lounging. "You are waiting to see me?" he asked shortly, ignoring the foreman's courtly bow and sombrero-sweep.

"I wait to h-ask for the 'ealth of Señor Bromley. It is report' to me that he is recover from hees sobad h-accident."

"Mr. Bromley is getting along all right. Is that all?"

The Mexican bowed again.

"I bring-a da message from the Señorita to da Señor Wingfiel'. He is som'where on da camp?"

"No; he has gone back to the upper valley. You have been waiting some time? You must have seen him go."

For the third time the Mexican removed his hat. "I'll have been here one, two, t'ree little minute, Señor Ballar'," he lied smoothly. "And now I make to myself the honour of saying to you, Adios."

Ballard let him go because there was nothing else to do. His presence in the construction camp, and the ready lie about the length of his stay, were both sufficiently ominous. What if he had overheard the talk in the office? It was easily possible that he had. The windows were open, and the adobe was only a few steps withdrawn from the busy cutting yard. The eavesdropper might have sat unremarked upon the office porch, if he had cared to.

The Kentuckian was deep in the labyrinth of reflection when he rejoined Fitzpatrick; and the laying-out of the new side-track afterward was purely mechanical. When the work was done, Ballard returned to the bungalow, to find Bromley sleeping the sleep of pure exhaustion on the blanket-covered couch. Obeying a sudden impulse, the Kentuckian took a field-glass from its case on the wall, and went out, tip-toeing to avoid waking Bromley. If Manuel had overheard, it was comparatively easy to prefigure his next step.

"Which way did the Mexican go?" Ballard asked of a cutter in the stone-yard.

"The last I saw of him he was loungin' off towards the Elbow. That was just after you was talkin' to him," said the man, lifting his cap to scratch his head with one finger.

"Did he come here horseback?"

"Not up here on the mesa. Might 'a' left his nag down below; but he wa'n't headin' that way when I saw him."

Ballard turned away and climbed the hill in the rear of the bungalow; the hill from which the table-smashing rock had been hurled. From its crest there was a comprehensive view of the upper valley, with the river winding through it, with Castle 'Cadia crowning the island-like knoll in its centre, with the densely forested background range billowing green and grey in the afternoon sunlight.

Throwing himself flat on the brown hilltop, Ballard trained his glass first on the inner valley reaches of a bridle-path leading over the southern hogback. There was no living thing in sight in that field, though sufficient time had elapsed to enable the Mexican to ride across the bridge and over the hills, if he had left the camp mounted.

The engineer frowned and slipped easily into the out-of-door man's habit of thinking aloud.

"It was a bare chance, of course. If he had news to carry to his master, he would save time by walking one mile as against riding four. Hello!"

The exclamation emphasised a small discovery. From the hilltop the entrance to the colonel's mysterious mine was in plain view, and for the first time in Ballard's observings of it the massive, iron-bound door was open. Bringing the glass to bear on the tunnel-mouth square of shadow, Ballard made out the figures of two men standing just within the entrance and far enough withdrawn to be hidden from prying eyes on the camp plateau. With the help of the glass, the young engineer could distinguish the shape of a huge white sombrero, and under the sombrero the red spark of a cigarette. Wherefore he rolled quickly to a less exposed position and awaited developments.

The suspense was short. In a few minutes the Mexican foreman emerged from the gloom of the mine-mouth, and with a single swift backward glance for the industries at the canyon portal, walked rapidly up the path toward the inner valley. Ballard sat up and trained the field-glass again. Why had Manuel gone out of his way to stop at the mine? The answer, or at least one possible answer, was under the foreman's arm, taking the shape of a short-barrelled rifle of the type carried by express messengers on Western railways.

Ballard screwed the glass into its smallest compass, dropped it into his pocket, and made his way down to the camp mesa. The gun meant nothing more than that the Mexican had not deemed it advisable to appear in the construction camp armed. But, on the other hand, Ballard was fully convinced that he was on his way to Colonel Craigmiles as the bearer of news.

It was an hour later when Otto, the colonel's chauffeur, kicked out the clutch of the buzzing runabout before the door of the office bungalow and announced that he had come to take the convalescent back to Castle 'Cadia. Bromley was still asleep; hence there had been no opportunity for a joint discussion of the latest development in the little war. But when Ballard was helping him into the mechanician's seat, and Otto had gone for a bucket of water to cool the hissing radiator, there was time for a hurried word or two.

"More trouble, Loudon – it turned up while you were asleep. Manuel was here, in the camp, while we were hammering it out with Wingfield. It is measurably certain that he overheard all or part of the talk. What he knows, the colonel doubtless knows, too, by this time, and – "

"Oh, good Lord!" groaned Bromley. "It was bad enough as it stood, but this drags Wingfield into it, neck and heels! What will they do to him?"

Ballard knitted his brows. "As Manuel could very easily make it appear in his tale-bearing, anything that might happen to Wingfield would be a pretty clear case of self-defence for Colonel Craigmiles. Wingfield knows too much."

"A great deal too much. If I dared say ten words to Elsa – "

"No," Ballard objected; "she is the one person to be shielded and spared. It's up to us to get Wingfield away from Castle 'Cadia and out of the country – before anything does happen to him."

"If I were only half a man again!" Bromley lamented. "But I know just how it will be; I sha'n't have a shadow of chance at Wingfield this evening. As soon as I show up, Miss Cauffrey and the others will scold me for overstaying my leave, and chase me off to bed."

"That's so; and it's right," mused Ballard. "You've no business to be out of bed this minute; you're not fit to be facing a ten-mile drive in this jig-wagon. By Jove: that's our way out of it! You climb down and let me go in your place. I'll tell them we let you overdo yourself; that you were too tired to stand the motor trip – which is the fact, if you'd only admit it. That will give me a chance at Wingfield; the chance you wouldn't have if you were to go. What do you say?"

"I've already said it," was the convalescent's reply; and he let Ballard help him out of the mechanic's seat and into the bungalow.

This is how it chanced that the chauffeur, coming back from Garou's kitchen barrel with the second bucket of water, found his fares changed and the chief engineer waiting to be his passenger over the ten miles of roundabout road. It was all one to the Berliner. He listened to Ballard's brief explanation with true German impassiveness, cranked the motor, pulled himself in behind the pilot-wheel, and sent the little car bounding down the mesa hill to the Boiling Water bridge what time the hoister whistles were blowing the six-o'clock quitting signal. The Kentuckian looked at his watch mechanically, as one will at some familiar reminder of the time. Seven o'clock was the Castle 'Cadia dinner hour: thirty minutes should suffice for the covering of the ten miles of country road, and with the fates propitious there would be an empty half-hour for the cajoling or compelling of Wingfield, imperilled in his character of overcurious delver into other people's affairs.

So ran the reasonable prefiguring; but plans and prefigurings based upon the performance of a gasolene motor call for a generous factor of safety. Five miles from a tool-box in either direction, the engines of the runabout set up an ominous knocking. A stop was made, and Ballard filled and lighted his pipe while the chauffeur opened the bonnet and tapped and pried and screwed and adjusted. Ten minutes were lost in the testing and trying, and then the German named the trouble, with an emphatic "Himmel!" for a foreword. A broken bolt-head had dropped into the crank-case, and it would be necessary to take the engines to pieces to get it out. Ballard consulted his watch again. It lacked only a quarter of an hour of the Castle 'Cadia dinner-time; and a five-mile tramp over the hills would consume at least an hour. Whatever danger might be threatening the playwright (and the farther Ballard got away from the revelations of the early afternoon, the more the entire fabric of accusation threatened to crumble into the stuff nightmares are made of), a delay of an hour or two could hardly bring it to a crisis. Hence, when Otto lighted the lamps and got out his wrenches, his passenger stayed with him and became a very efficient mechanic's helper.

This, as we have seen, was at a quarter before seven. At a quarter before nine the broken bolt was replaced, the last nut was screwed home, and the engines of the runabout were once more in commission.

"A handy bit of road repairing, Otto," was Ballard's comment. "And we did it five miles from a lemon. How long will it take us to get in?"

The Berliner did not know. With no further bad luck, fifteen or twenty minutes should be enough. And in fifteen minutes or less the little car was racing up the maple-shaded avenue to the Castle 'Cadia carriage entrance.

Ballard felt trouble in the air before he descended from the car. The great portico was deserted, the piano was silent, and the lights were on in the upper rooms of the house. At the mounting of the steps, the Forestry man met him and drew him aside into the library, which was as empty as the portico.

"I heard the car and thought it would be Mr. Bromley," Bigelow explained; adding: "I'm glad he didn't come. There has been an accident."

"To – to Wingfield?"

"Yes. How did you know? It was just after dinner. The colonel had some experimental mixture cooking in his electric furnace, and he invited us all down to the laboratory to see the result. Wingfield tangled himself in the wires in some unaccountable way and got a terrible shock. For a few minutes we all thought he was killed, but the colonel would not give up, and now he is slowly recovering."

Ballard sat down in the nearest chair and held his head in his hands. His mind was in the condition of a coffer-dam that has been laboriously pumped out, only to be overwhelmed by a sudden and irresistible return of the flood. The theory of premeditated assassination was no nightmare; it was a pitiless, brutal, inhuman fact. Wingfield, an invited guest, and with a guest's privileges and immunities, had been tried, convicted, and sentenced for knowing too much.

"It's pretty bad, isn't it?" he said to Bigelow, feeling the necessity of saying something, and realising at the same instant the futility of putting the horror of it into words for one who knew nothing of the true state of affairs.

"Bad enough, certainly. You can imagine how it harrowed all of us, and especially the women. Cousin Janet fainted and had to be carried up to the house; and Miss Elsa was the only one of the young women who wasn't perfectly helpless. Colonel Craigmiles was our stand-by; he knew just what to do, and how to do it. He is a wonderful man, Mr. Ballard."

"He is – in more ways than a casual observer would suspect." Ballard suffered so much of his thought to set itself in words. To minimise the temptation to say more he turned his back upon the accident and accounted for himself and his presence at Castle 'Cadia.

"Bromley was pretty well tired out when Otto came down with the car, and I offered to ride around and make his excuses. We broke an engine bolt on the road: otherwise I should have been here two hours earlier. You say Wingfield is recovering? I wonder if I could see him for a few minutes, before I go back to camp?"

Bigelow offered to go up-stairs and find out; and Ballard waited in the silence of the deserted library for what seemed like a long time. And when the waiting came to an end it was not Bigelow who parted the portières and came silently to stand before his chair; it was the king's daughter.

"You have heard?" she asked, and her voice seemed to come from some immeasurable depth of anguish.

"Yes. Is he better?"

"Much better; though he is terribly weak and shaken." Then suddenly: "What brought you here – so late?"

He explained the ostensible object of his coming, and mentioned the cause of the delay. She heard him through without comment, but there was doubt and keen distress and a great fear in the gray eyes when he was permitted to look into their troubled depths.

"If you are telling me the truth, you are not telling me all of it," she said, sinking wearily into one of the deepest of the easy-chairs and shading the tell-tale eyes with her hand.

"Why shouldn't I tell you all of it?" he rejoined evasively.

"I don't know your reasons: I can only fear them."

"If you could put the fear into words, perhaps I might be able to allay it," he returned gently.

"It is past alleviation; you know it. Mr. Wingfield was with you again to-day, and when he came home I knew that the thing I had been dreading had come to pass."

"How could you know it? Not from anything Wingfield said or did, I'm sure."

"No; but Jerry Blacklock was with him – and Jerry's face is an open book for any one who cares to read it. Won't you please tell me the worst, Breckenridge?"

"There isn't any worst," denied Ballard, lying promptly for love's sake. "We had luncheon together, the four of us, in honour of Bromley's recovery. Afterward, Wingfield spun yarns for us – as he has a habit of doing when he can get an audience of more than one person. Some of his stories were more grewsome than common. I don't wonder that Jerry had a left-over thrill or two in his face."

She looked up from behind the eye-shading hand. "Do you dare to repeat those stories to me?"

His laugh lacked something of spontaneity.

"It is hardly a question of daring; it is rather a matter of memory – or the lack of it. Who ever tries to make a record of after-dinner fictions? Wingfield's story was a tale of impossible crimes and their more impossible detection; the plot and outline for a new play, I fancied, which he was trying first on the dog. Blacklock was the only one of his three listeners who took him seriously."

She was silenced, if not wholly convinced; and when she spoke again it was of the convalescent assistant.

"You are not going to keep Mr. Bromley at the camp, are you? He isn't able to work yet."

"Oh, no. You may send for him in the morning, if you wish. I – he was a little tired to-night, and I thought – "

"Yes; you have told me what you thought," she reminded him, half absently. And then, with a note of constraint in her voice that was quite new to him: "You are not obliged to go back to Elbow Canyon to-night, are you? Your room is always ready for you at Castle 'Cadia."

"Thank you; but I'll have to go back. If I don't, Bromley will think he's the whole thing and start in to run the camp in the morning before I could show up."

She rose when he did, but her face was averted and he could not see her eyes when he went on in a tone from which every emotion save that of mere friendly solicitude was carefully effaced: "May I go up and jolly Wingfield a bit? He'll think it odd if I go without looking in at him."

"If you should go without doing that for which you came," she corrected, with the same impersonal note in her voice. "Of course, you may see him: come with me."

She led the way up the grand stair and left him at the door of a room in the wing which commanded a view of the sky-pitched backgrounding mountains. The door was ajar, and when he knocked and pushed it open he saw that the playwright was in bed, and that he was alone.

"By Jove, now!" said a weak voice from the pillows; "this is neighbourly of you, Ballard. How the dickens did you manage to hear of it?"

"Bad news travels fast," said Ballard, drawing a chair to the bedside. He did not mean to go into details if he could help it; and to get away from them he asked how the miracle of recovery was progressing.

"Oh, I'm all right now," was the cheerful response – "coming alive at the rate of two nerves to the minute. And I wouldn't have missed it for the newest thousand-dollar bill that ever crackled in the palm of poverty. What few thrills I can't put into a description of electrocution, after this, won't be worth mentioning."

"They have left you alone?" queried Ballard, with a glance around the great room.

"Just this moment. The colonel and Miss Cauffrey and Miss Dosia were with me when the buzzer went off. Whoever sent you up pressed the button down stairs. Neat, isn't it. How's Bromley? I hope you didn't come to tell us that his first day in camp knocked him out."

"No; Bromley is all right. You are the sick man, now."

Wingfield's white teeth gleamed in a rather haggard smile.

"I have looked over the edge, Ballard; that's the fact."

"Tell me about it – if you can."

"There isn't much to tell. We were all crowding around the electric furnace, taking turns at the coloured-glass protected peep-hole. The colonel had warned us about the wires, but the warning didn't cut any figure in my case."

"You stumbled?"

The man in bed flung a swift glance across the room toward the corridor door which Ballard had left ajar.

"Go quietly and shut that door," was his whispered command; and when Ballard had obeyed it: "Now pull your chair closer and I'll answer your question: No, I didn't stumble. Somebody tripped me, and in falling I grabbed at one of the electrodes."

"I was sure of it," said Ballard, quietly. "I knew that in all human probability you would be the next victim. That is why I persuaded Bromley to let me take his place in the motor-car. If the car hadn't broken down, I should have been here in time to warn you. I suppose it isn't necessary to ask who tripped you?"

The playwright rocked his head on the pillow.

"I'm afraid not, Ballard. The man who afterward saved my life – so they all say – was the one who stood nearest to me at the moment. The 'why' is what is tormenting me. I'm not the Arcadia Company, or its chief engineer, or anybody in particular in this game of 'heads I win, and tails you lose.'"

Ballard left his chair and walked slowly to the mountain-viewing window. When he returned to the bedside, he said: "I can help you to the 'why.' What you said in my office to-day to three of us was overheard by a fourth – and the fourth was Manuel. An hour or so later he came up this way, on foot. Does that clear the horizon for you?"

"Perfectly," was the whispered response, followed by a silence heavy with forecastings.

"Under the changed conditions, it was only fair to you to bring you your warning, and to take off the embargo on your leaving Castle 'Cadia. Of course, you'll get yourself recalled to New York at once?" said Ballard.

Wingfield raised himself on one elbow, and again his lips parted in the grinning smile.

"Not in a thousand years, Ballard. I'll see this thing out now, if I get killed regularly once a day. You say I mustn't write about it, and that's so. I'm not a cad. But the experience is worth millions to me – worth all the chances I'm taking, and more. I'll stay."

Ballard gripped the womanish hand lying on the coverlet. Here, after all, and under all the overlayings of pose and craftsman egotism, was a man with a man's heart and courage.

"You're a brave fool, Wingfield," he said, warmly; "and because you are brave and a man grown, you shall be one of us. We – Bromley and I – bluffed you to-day for a woman's sake. If you could have got away from the excitement of the man-hunt for a single second, I know your first thought would have been for the woman whose lifted finger silences three of us. Because you seemed to forget this for the moment, I knocked you down with your own theory. Does that clear another of the horizons for you?"

"Immensely. And I deserved all you gave me. Until I'm killed off, you may comfort yourself with the thought that one of the gallant three is here, in the wings, as you might say, ready and willing to do what he can to keep the curtain from rising on any more tragedy."

"Thank you," said Ballard, heartily; "that will be a comfort." Then, with a parting hand-grip and an added word of caution to the man who knew too much, he left the room and the house, finding his way unattended to the great portico and to the path leading down to the river road.

The mile faring down the valley in the velvety blackness of the warm summer night was a meliorating ending to the day of revelations and alarms; and for the first time since Wingfield's clever unravelling of the tangled mesh of mystery, the Kentuckian was able to set the accusing facts in orderly array. Yet now, as before, the greatest of the mysteries refused to take its place in the wellnigh completed circle of incriminating discoveries. That the King of Arcadia, Elsa's father and the genial host of the great house on the knoll, was a common murderer, lost to every humane and Christian prompting of the soul, was still as incredible as a myth of the Middle Ages.

"I'll wake up some time in the good old daylight of the every-day, commonplace world, I hope," was Ballard's summing-up, when he had traversed the reflective mile and had let himself into the office bungalow to find Bromley sleeping peacefully in his bunk. "But it's a little hard to wait – with the air full of Damocles-swords, and with the dear girl's heart gripped in a vise that I can't unscrew. That is what makes it bitterer than death: she knows, and it is killing her by inches – in spite of the bravest heart that ever loved and suffered. God help her; God help us all!"