She gave him careful instructions as to how to find the trail, and urged him to haste.

“If you get him,” she advised, “better keep right on over the range.”

He paused, with his foot in the stirrup.

“You seem pretty certain he’s taken to the mountains.”

“It’s your only chance.  They’ll get him anywhere else.”

He mounted and prepared to ride off.  He would have shaken hands with her, but the horse was still terrified at her shrouded figure and veered and snorted when she approached.  “However it turns out,” he said, “you’ve done your best, and I’m grateful.”

The horse moved off and left her standing there, her cowl drawn forward and her hands crossed on her breast.  She stood for a moment, facing toward the mountains, oddly monkish in outline and posture.  Then she turned back toward the town.

XXVIII

Dick had picked up life again where he had left it off so long before.  Gone was David’s house built on the sands of forgetfulness.  Gone was David himself, and Lucy.  Gone not even born into his consciousness was Elizabeth.  The war, his work, his new place in the world, were all obliterated, drowned in the flood of memories revived by the shock of Bassett’s revelations.

Not that the breaking point had revealed itself as such at once.  There was confusion first, then stupor and unconsciousness, and out of that, sharply and clearly, came memory.  It was not ten years ago, but an hour ago, a minute ago, that he had stood staring at Howard Lucas on the floor of the billiard room, and had seen Beverly run in through the door.

“Bev!” he was saying.  “Bev!  Don’t look like that!”

He moved and found he was in bed.  It had been a dream.  He drew a long breath, looked about the room, saw the woman and greeted her.  But already he knew he had not been dreaming.  Things were sharpening in his mind.  He shuddered and looked at the floor, but nobody lay there.  Only the horror in his mind, and the instinct to get away from it.  He was not thinking at all, but rising in him was not only the need for flight, but the sense of pursuit.  They were after him.  They would get him.  They must never get him alive.

Instinct and will took the place of thought, and whatever closed chamber in his brain had opened, it clearly influenced his physical condition.  He bore all the stigmata of prolonged and heavy drinking; his nerves were gone; he twitched and shook.  When he got down the fire-escape his legs would scarcely hold him.

The discovery of Ed Rickett’s horse in the courtyard, saddled and ready, fitted in with the brain pattern of the past.