The Long Lane's Turning Part 37

"I had entered it for no dishonest purpose. I broke no bolt nor bar--that had been done before my arrival."

"You allege, then, that you were not in company with the robbers?"

"I was not. They were there when I entered."

"Why did you not give the alarm?"

"They made me their prisoner. A pistol was at my head."

"You did not so testify at your trial."

"I declined to testify at all."

The Governor nodded. "That is true," he said. "I remember."

There was a moment's pause, then the voice continued:

"It is sometimes inevitable that the law, whose purpose it is to be just, is terribly unjust. Sometimes the sole clue to a situation which seems to spell inevitable guilt lies in a fact, small in itself, whose significance is such that it cannot be brought forward. This was my case. The fact which would have cleared me could not be told. I became a convict. For six months I was an inmate of the Penitentiary.

Then--the way opened to freedom, and I took it. What man would not have done so? I acknowledged no right of the law over my body. I went back to my former life, and took up my old profession here in this city."

"Here!" The Judge muttered, under his breath.

"And in that life I found opening responsibilities. New work called to me. My help was needed. I could not s.h.i.+rk it. I knew the risk always, but I counted it small. And the need was great! With such a work waiting my hand, a labour that no one else, it seemed, could do--one upon which much depended--was I to stand aside, to withhold my effort on the slender chance that discovery might sometime overtake me?"

The speaker seemed to have forgotten the Governor, to have swept all else to one side and to be addressing now only the Judge, in an appeal that touched the older man profoundly. It was, he thought, as though the man's whole soul was crying out in some sense for forgiveness and absolution for an injury unwittingly inflicted.

"The one thing has happened now which must lay the past bare. I must meet this--the scandal, the shame. My life, all that makes life worth living, ends to-night, and I stand before you with the bare soul of a truthful man. You have known me and trusted me. You--and others--have put faith in me...." The voice, for the first time, faltered and fell.

The Judge's head had been bowed, but he lifted it now.

"G.o.d alone knows the secrets of our hearts," he said, heavily. "If you were innocent--but of that how can I say? My view of your actions since your escape--those which may affect me--must necessarily hang upon that point. I could believe that you are not a burglar. It may be that knowledge of your true ident.i.ty will presently convince me of this. And I might be persuaded that your presence in the Craig house that night was no more than an unfortunate coincidence. But the evidence of the shooting appeared at the time irrefutable. I cannot conceive that the mere knowledge of what you are would be likely to affect my belief in that respect. Your statement as to that is not only wholly unsupported, but was--and is--bluntly contradicted by the man who was shot."

He ceased speaking. No word came from the striped figure, only a slight movement of one hand, expressing at once resignation and futility. Then the hand lifted to the mask.

The Governor, however, stayed the action of revealment with a sudden gesture.

"One moment," he said quickly. "We have gone so far, I should like to go a step further--and still forensically, if you please. The question of ident.i.ty may wait. Do I understand that you deny that you fired that shot?"

"I do."

Craig lurched forward in his chair. "This is no trial court!" he exclaimed savagely. "He has had his hearing once."

"Be silent!" commanded the Governor. "This man is in my hands, not in yours!" The warning was heavy and vengeful, and it held now all the electric energy of the man that had made him famous through a long career of criminal practice before his Governors.h.i.+p days, and that now, unleashed, dominated the room. Before it Craig whitened with a surge of anger that sent a keen probe of pain through his temple. He sat back, breathing hard, his great fingers working on the arms of his chair.

The Governor was leaning forward now, his hand on the table.

"If I recollect--and I think I do, as certain aspects of the case interested me at the time--there was a witness to the shooting beside the men who were a.s.sumed to be your comrades. There was a woman there."

"She did not see my face."

"But she might have seen the face of the shooter. Why did she not see yours?"

"I wore a mask."

"Is not a mask, in itself, a badge of criminal intent?"

"It was not mine. One of the men dropped it when they ran."

"If, being innocent," the Governor went on, "you put on the mask, the only presumption is that you did not wish the woman to recognise you.

Therefore, she knew. Did you speak to her?"

There was no reply.

"If you spoke to her, it was when the man who had fired the shot was in flight. Your words to her, verified by herself--if she were reputable--would be evidence that you did not do the shooting. Why then, did you not call her as a witness?"

The long French-window had swung again ajar and the cooling evening breeze rustled the paper that lay upon the table. From the far road there came a m.u.f.fled, long-drawn cheer, that trailed across the tense silence of the room.

"If the significant fact which could be brought forward at your trial was the ident.i.ty of this missing witness; if her testimony would show that the law had erred--if it might operate to establish your innocence--would not she herself justify you in revealing it?"

The silence, a longer one this time, remained unbroken.

"Do you still refuse to tell the name of the woman?"

"I do."

The Governor leaned to the table and picked up the pen. But in the instant there was a quick step behind them.

All turned. Echo stood framed in the window--a figure in filmy white, against which a single rose glowed like a hot ruby.

"I was that woman, Governor Eveland," she said clearly.

CHAPTER XLVIII

THE HEART OF A WOMAN

For an instant there was a blank silence. The Judge sat as if stunned, one hand across his lips, the other clenched on his knee. Harry's breath had caught in his throat; he stood taken aback and confounded, his thought shocked apart and dispersed as a street explosion dissipates a crowd of pedestrians. He forgot all else, was conscious only of the deep fire of her eyes and the white surge of her breast, only that he loved her and that she stood on the brink of ruin--she whose name was unspotted from the world! An irrepressible exclamation burst from his lips.

The Governor put up his hand. "We will have the truth!" he said sternly.

He sat erect in his chair, his bushy brows drawn together, his compelling eyes holding Echo's. Slowly he turned his grey head toward Craig.

"It was Miss Allen," said Craig. His smouldering gaze had fastened on her with a savage joy. The drama was rus.h.i.+ng now to its inevitable _denouement_.

The crisis had come to Echo with fateful suddenness. From the porch--whither she had stolen, full of excitement, to listen to the bulletins from the east room that spelled victory for the cause of Harry Sevier--she had glimpsed through the French window that gathering in the library--the striped masked figure standing as before his judges, Craig with his bandaged temple, the silent listeners. The mask and the convict garb recalled that terrible midnight at Craig's house and the later episode at the jail, blent in a shuddering composite, even as the significance of the scene came home to her with a sudden horrifying clarity. It was true then; Craig had returned recovered!

The escaped convict had been retaken, and he had come forward to repeat his mistaken testimony! In her confusion of mind she did not reason: it did not occur to her that here was no tribunal of justice. The suggestion was overpowering: she only knew that within that room men sat again in judgment upon him with whose fate her own peace of mind was so entangled. And she knew the truth! In the swift surprise the shame and horror of the publicity which had wrestled with her pain of conscience during the weeks succeeding her visit to the jail and the baleful cert.i.tude it had brought, rolled over her anew with the anguished dread of Harry Sevier's contempt. But there was no wavering: the fight had been fought out once for all, and she had waited for Craig's revelation with outer calmness, though with her blood stilling to an icy current in her veins. Two things had come to her at the same instant: Craig did not intend to involve her, and the convict knew who she was. As she leaned against the sill listening, the meaning of that obstinate refusal to answer had thrilled her. He, like Craig, had known her, then, all along. Yet he had not betrayed her, nor would he betray her even now! The thought had spurred her resolve and sent her forward into the room with that confession on her lips.