“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.”
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.”
