The White Desert Part 26

"I have just told you that I have an eye-witness. Further, there are the three doctors."

"Have you seen them?"

Houston thought quickly. It was his only chance.

"I know exactly what their testimony will be."

"You've made arrangements for your suit then." Worthington's color had changed. Houston noticed that the hand which held the cigarette trembled slightly.

"No, I haven't. I'm not here to browbeat you, Mr. Worthington, or lie to you. It came to me simply as a ruse to get in to see you. But the more I think of it, the more I know that I could go through with it and possibly win it. I might get my million. I might not. I don't want money gained in that way. The taxpayers would have to foot the bill, not yourself."

"Oh, I guess I'd pay enough," Worthington had a.s.sumed an entirely different att.i.tude now. "It would hurt me worse in business than it would if I were still in office. Whether it's true or not."

"You know in your heart that there's no doubt of that."

Worthington did not answer. Houston waited a moment, then went on.

"But personally, I don't want to file the suit. I don't want any money--that way. I don't want any bribes, or exculpations, or statements from you that you know me to be innocent. Some might believe it; others would only ask how much I paid to have that statement given out. The damage has been done and is next to irreparable. You could have cleared me easily enough by dropping the case, or making your investigations before ever an indictment was issued. You didn't, and I remain guilty in the minds of most of Boston, in spite of what the jury said. A man is not guilty until convicted--under the law. He is guilty as soon as accused, with the lay mind. So you can't help me much there; my only chance for freedom lies in finding the man who actually committed that murder. But that's something else. We won't talk about it. You owe me something. And I'm here to-night to ask you for it."

"I thought you said you didn't want any bribes."

"I don't. May I ask you what your margin of profit is at your machinery company?"

"My margin of profit? What's that? Well, I suppose it runs around twelve per cent."

"Then will you please allow me to give you twelve thousand dollars in profits? I'm in the lumber business. I have a contract that runs into the millions; surely that is good enough security to a man"--he couldn't resist the temptation--"who knows my absolute innocence. It isn't good enough for the bankers, who still believe me guilty, so I've come directly to you. I need one hundred thousand dollars' worth of lumber-mill machinery, blade saws, crosscuts, jackers, planers, kickers, chain belting, leather belting, and everything else that goes to make up a first-cla.s.s plant. I can pay for it--in installments. I guarantee to give you every cent above my current running expenses until the bill is disposed of. My contract with the Mountain, Plains and Salt Lake Railroad is my bond. I don't even ask a discount, or for you to lose any of your profits. I don't even ask any public statement by you regarding my innocence. All I want is to have you do what you would do to any reputable business man who came to you with a contract running into the millions of dollars--to give me credit for that machinery. It's a fair proposition. Come in with me on it, and we'll forget the rest. Stay out--and I fight!"

For a long moment, Kilbane Worthington paced the floor, his hands clasped behind him, his rather thin head low upon his chest. Then, at last, he looked up.

"How long are you going to be in town?"

"Until this matter's settled."

"Where are you staying?"

"The Touraine."

"Very well. I'll have a machine there to pick you up at ten o'clock to-morrow morning and take you to my office. In the meanwhile--I'll think it over."

CHAPTER XVIII

It was a grinning Barry Houston who leaped from the train at Tabernacle a week later and ran open-armed through the snow toward the waiting Ba'tiste.

"You got my telegram?" He asked it almost breathlessly.

"Ah, _oui! oui, oui, oui_! _Sacre_, and you are the wizard!"

"Hardly that." They were climbing into the bobsled. "I just had enough sense to put two and two together. On the train to Boston I got a tip about my case, something that led me to believe that the district attorney knew all the time that I was innocent. He had conducted experiments at the Bellstrand Hospital of which nothing had been said in the trial. Three famous doctors had been with him. As soon as I saw their names, I instinctively knew that if the experiments had turned out the way the district attorney had wanted them, he would have used them in the trial against me, but that their silence meant the testimony was favorable to me."

"_Bon_!" Ba'tiste grinned happily. "And he?"

"It just happened that he is now in the mill machinery business. I,"

and Houston smiled with the memory of his victory, "I convinced him that he should give me credit."

"Eet is good. In the woods, there are many men. The log, he is pile all about the mill. Three thousand tie, already they are stack up."

"And the woman--she has caused no trouble?"

"No. Peuff! I have no see her. Mebbe so, eet was a mistake."

"Maybe, Ba'tiste, but I was sure I recognized her. The Blackburn crowd hasn't given up the ghost yet?"

"Ah, no. But eet will. Still they think that we cannot fill the contract. They think that after the first s.h.i.+pment or so, then we will have to quit."

"They may be right, Ba'tiste. It would require nearly two thousand men to keep that mill supplied with logs, once we get into production, outside of the regular mill force, under conditions such as they are now. It would be ruinous. We've got to find some other way, Ba'tiste, of getting our product to the mill. That's all there is to it."

"Ba'teese, he have think of a way--that he have keep secret. Ba'teese, he have a, what-you-say, hump."

"Hunch, you mean?"

"Ah, _oui_. Eet is this. We will not bring the log to the mill. We will bring the mill to the log. We have to build the new plant, yes, _oui_? Then, _bon_, we shall build eet in the forest, where there is the lumber."

"Quite so. And then who will build a railroad switch that can negotiate the hills to the mill?"

"Ah!" Ba'tiste clapped a hand to his forehead. "_Veritas_? I am the prize, what-you-say, squas.h.!.+ Ba'teese, he never think of eet!" A moment he sat glum, only to surge with another idea. "But, now, Ba'teese have eet! He shall go to Medaine! He shall tell her to write to the district attorney of Boston--that he will tell her--"

"It was part of my agreement, Ba'tiste, that he be forced to make no statements regarding my innocence."

"Ah, but--"

"It was either that, or lose the machinery. He's in business. He's afraid of notoriety. The plain, cold truth is that he tried to railroad me, and only my knowledge of that fact led him into doing a decent and honorable thing. But I sealed any chance of his moral aid when I made my bargain. It was my only chance."

Slowly Ba'tiste nodded and slapped the reins on the back of the horse.

"Ba'teese will not see Medaine," came at last, and they went on.

Again the waiting game, but a busy game however, one which kept the ice roads polished and slippery; which resulted, day by day, in a constantly growing mountain of logs about the diminutive sawmill. One in which plans were drawn, and sh.e.l.l-like buildings of mere slats and slab sidings erected, while heavy, stone foundations were laid in the firm, rocky soil to support the machinery, when it arrived. A game in which Houston hurried from the forests to the mill and back again, now riding the log sheds as a matter of swifter locomotion, instead of for the thrill, as he once had done. Another month went by, to bring with it the bill of lading which told that the saws, the beltings, the planers and edgers and trimmers, and the half hundred other items of machinery were at last on their way, a month of activities and--of hopes.

For to Ba'tiste Renaud and Barry Houston there yet remained one faint chance. The Blackburn crowd had taken on a gamble, one which, at the time, had seemed safe enough; the investment of thousands of dollars for a plant which they had believed firmly would be free of compet.i.tion. That plant could not hope for sufficient business to keep it alive, with the railroad contract gone, and the bigger mill of Houston and Renaud in successful operation. There would come the time when they must forfeit that lease and contract through non-payment, or agree to re-lease them to the original owner. But would that time arrive soon enough? It was a grim possibility,--a gambling wager that held forth hope, and at the same time threatened them with extinction.

For the same thing applied to Houston and Ba'tiste that applied to Blackburn and Thayer. If they could not make good on their contract, the other mill was ever ready to step in.

"Eet all depen'," said Ba'tiste more than once during the snowy, frost-caked days in which they watched every freight train that pulled, white-coated, over the range into Tabernacle. "Eet all depen' on the future. Mebbe so, we make eet. Mebbe so, we do not. But we gamble, eh, _mon_ Baree?"

"With our last cent," came the answer of the other man, and in the voice was grimness and enthusiasm. It was a game of life or extinction now.

March, and a few warm days, which melted the snows only that they might crust again. Back and forth traveled the bobsled to Tabernacle, only to meet with disappointment.