A detailed description of Judson Clark, and a photograph
of him accompanied the story. Bassett re-read
the article carefully, and swore a little, under his
breath. If he had needed confirmation of his
suspicions, it lay to his hand. But the situation
had changed over night. There would be a search
for Clark now, as wide as the knowledge of his disappearance.
Local police authorities would turn him up in every
city from Maine to the Pacific coast. Even Europe
would be on the lookout and South America.
But it was not the police he feared so much as the
press. Not all of the papers, but some of them,
would go after that story, and send their best men
on it. It offered not so much a chance of solution
as an opportunity to revive the old dramatic story.
He could see, when he closed his eyes, the local
photographers climbing to that cabin and later sending
its pictures broadcast, and divers gentlemen of the
press, eager to pit their wits against ten years of
time and the ability of a once conspicuous man to
hide from the law, packing their suitcases for Norada.
No, he couldn’t stop now. He would go
on, like the others, and with this advantage, that
he was morally certain he could lay his hands on Clark
at any time. But he would have to prove his case,
connect it. Who, for instance, was the other
man in the cabin? He must have known who the
boy was who lay in that rough bunk, delirious.
Must have suspected anyhow. That made him, like
the Donaldsons, accessory after the fact, and criminally
liable. Small chance of him coming out with
any confession. Yet he was the connecting link.
Must be.
On his third reading the reporter began to visualize
the human elements of the fight to save the boy; he
saw moving before him the whole pitiful struggle;
the indomitable ranch manager, his heart-breaking
struggle with the blizzard, the shooting of his horse,
the careful disarming of suspicion, and later the intrepid
woman, daring that night ride through snow that had
sent the posse back to its firesides to the boy, locked
in the cabin and raving.
His mind was busy as he packed his suitcase.
Already he had forgotten his compunctions of the
early morning; he moved about methodically, calculating
roughly what expense money he would need, and the
line of attack, if any, required at the office.
Between Norada and that old brick house at Haverly
lay his story. Ten years of it. He was
closing his bag when he remembered the little girl
in the blue dress, at the theater. He straightened
and scowled. After a moment he snapped the bag
shut. Damn it all, if Clark had chosen to He
up with a girl, that was on Clark’s conscience,
not his.
But he was vaguely uncomfortable.
“It’s a queer world, Joe,” he observed
to the waiter, who had come in for the breakfast dishes.
