The Breaking Point Part 47

"He went on for a while on the horse. Then somehow he must have lost the horse, for he turned up on foot, date unknown, in a state of exhaustion at a cabin that lies here. I got lost myself, or I'd never have found the place. He was sick there for weeks, and he seems to have stayed on quite a while after he recovered, as though he couldn't decide what to do next."

Walter Wheeler stirred and looked up.

"What sort of condition was he in when he left?"

"Very good, they said."

"You're sure it was Livingstone?"

"The man there had a tree fall on him. He operated. I guess that's the answer."

He considered the situation.

"It's the answer to more than that," Reynolds said slowly. "It shows he had come back to himself. If he hadn't he couldn't have done it."

"And after that?" some one asked.

"I lost him. He left to hike to the railroad, and he said nothing of his plans. If I'd been able to make open inquiries I might have turned up something, but I couldn't. It's a hard proposition. I had trouble finding Hattie Thorwald, too. She'd left the hotel, and is living with her son. She swears she doesn't know where Clifton Hines is, and hasn't seen him for years."

Ba.s.sett had been listening intently, his head dropped forward.

"I suppose the son doesn't know about Hines?"

"No. She warned me. He was surly and suspicious. The sheriff had sent for him and questioned him about how you got his horse, and I gathered that he thought I was a detective. When I told him I was a friend of yours, he sent you a message. You may be able to make something out of it. I can't. He said: `You can tell him I didn't say anything about the other time.'"

Ba.s.sett sat forward.

"The other time?"

"He is under the impression that his mother got the horse for you once before, about ten days before Clark escaped. At night, also."

"Not for me," Ba.s.sett said decisively. "Ten days before that I was--" he got out his notebook and consulted it. "I was on my way to the cabin in the mountains, where the Donaldsons had hidden Jud Clark. I hired a horse at a livery stable."

"Could the Thorwald woman have followed you?"

"Why the devil should she do that?" he asked irritably. "She didn't know who I was. She hadn't a chance at my papers, for I kept them on me. If she did suspect I was on the case, a dozen fellows had preceded me, and half of them had gone to the cabin."

"Nevertheless," he finished, "I believe she did. She or Hines himself.

There was some one on a horse outside the cabin that night."

There was silence in the room, Harrison Miller thoughtfully drawing at random on the map before him. Each man was seeing the situation from his own angle; to Reynolds, its medical interest, and the possibility of his permanency in the town; to Walter Wheeler, Elizabeth's spoiled young life; to Harrison Miller, David; and to the reporter a conviction that the clues he now held should lead him somewhere, and did not.

Before the meeting broke up Miller took a folded ma.n.u.script from the table and pa.s.sed it to Ba.s.sett.

"Copy of the Coroner's inquiry, after the murder," he said. "Thought it might interest you..."

Then, for a time, that was all. Ba.s.sett, poring at home over the inquest records, and finding them of engrossing interest, saw the futility of saving a man who could not be found. And even Nina's faith, that the fabulously rich could not die obscurely, began to fade as the summer waned. She restored some of her favor to Wallie Sayre, and even listened again to his alternating hopes and fears.

And by the end of September he felt that he had gained real headway with Elizabeth. He had come to a point where she needed him more than she realized, where the call in her of youth for youth, even in trouble, was insistent. In return he felt his responsibility and responded to it. In the vernacular of the town he had "settled down," and the general trend of opinion, which had previously disapproved him, was now that Elizabeth might do worse.

On a crisp night early in October he had brought her home from Nina's, and because the moon was full they sat for a time on the steps of the veranda, Wallie below her, stirring the dead leaves on the walk with his stick, and looking up at her with boyish adoring eyes when she spoke.

He was never very articulate with her, and her trouble had given her a strange new aloofness that almost frightened him. But that night, when she s.h.i.+vered a little, he reached up and touched her hand.

"You're cold," he said almost roughly. He was sometimes rather savage, for fear he might be tender.

"I'm not cold. I think it's the dead leaves."

"Dead leaves?" he repeated, puzzled. "You're a queer girl, Elizabeth.

Why dead leaves?"

"I hate the fall. It's the death of the year."

"Nonsense. It's going to bed for a long winter's nap. That's all. I'll bring you a wrap."

He went in, and came out in a moment with her father's overcoat.

"Here," he said peremptorily, "put this on. I'm not going to be called on the carpet for giving you a sniffle."

She stood up obediently and he put the big coat around her. Then, obeying an irresistible impulse, he caught her to him. He released her immediately, however, and stepped back.

"I love you so," he stammered. "I'm sorry. I'll not do it again."

She was startled, but not angry.

"I don't like it," was all she said. And because she did not want him to think she was angry, she sat down again. But the boy was shaken. He got out a cigarette and lighted it, his hands trembling. He could not think of anything to say. It was as though by that one act he had cut a bridge behind him and on the other side lay all the plat.i.tudes, the small give and take of their hours together. What to her was a regrettable incident was to him a great dramatic climax. Boylike, he refused to recognize its unimportance to her. He wanted to talk about it.

"When you said just now that you didn't like what I did just then, do you mean you didn't like me to do it? Or that you don't care for that sort of thing? Of course I know," he added hastily, "you're not that kind of girl. I--"

He turned and looked at her.

"You know I'm still in love with you, don't you, Elizabeth?"

She returned his gaze frankly.

"I don't see how you can be when you know what you do know."

"I know how you feel now. But I know that people don't go on loving hopelessly all their lives. You're young. You've got"--he figured quickly--"you've got about fifty-odd years to live yet, and some of these days you'll be--not forgetting," he changed, when he saw her quick movement. "I know you'll not forget him. But remembering and loving are different."

"I wonder," she said, her eyes on the moon, and full of young tragedy.

"If they are, if one can remember without loving, then couldn't one love without remembering?"

He stared at her.

"You're too deep for me sometimes," he said. "I'm not subtle, Elizabeth.

I daresay I'm stupid in lots of things. But I'm not stupid about this.

I'm not trying to get a promise, you know. I only want you to know how things are. I don't want to know why he went away, or why he doesn't come back. I only want you to face the facts. I'd be good to you," he finished, in a low tone. "I'd spend my life thinking of ways to make you happy."

She was touched. She reached down and put her hand on his shoulder.