The Breaking Point Part 52

Below, Doctor Reynolds came in quietly and stood listening. The house was very still, and he decided that his news, which was after all no news, could wait. He went into the office and got out a sheet of note-paper, with his name at the top, and began his nightly letter to Clare Rossiter.

"My darling," it commenced.

Above, David lay in his bed and d.i.c.k read the papers in his hand. And as he read them David watched him. Not once, since d.i.c.k's entrance, had he mentioned Elizabeth. David lay still and pondered that. There was something wrong about it. This was d.i.c.k, their own d.i.c.k; no shadowy ghost of the past, but d.i.c.k himself. True, an older d.i.c.k, strangely haggard and with gray running in the brown of his hair, but still d.i.c.k; the d.i.c.k whose eyes had lighted at the sight of a girl, who had shamelessly persisted in holding her hand at that last dinner, who had almost idolatrously loved her.

And he had not mentioned her name.

When he had finished the reading d.i.c.k sat for a moment with the papers in his hand, thinking.

"I see," he said finally. "Of course, it's possible. Good G.o.d, if I could only think it."

"It's the answer," David said stubbornly. "He was prowling around, and fired through the window. Donaldson made the statement at the inquest that some one had been seen on the place, and that he notified you that night after dinner. He'd put guards around the place."

"It gives me a fighting chance, anyhow." d.i.c.k got up and threw back his shoulders. "That's all I want. A chance to fight. I know this. I hated Lucas--he was a poor thing and you know what he did to me. But I never thought of killing him. That wouldn't have helped matters. It was too late."

"What about--that?" David asked, not looking at him. When d.i.c.k did not immediately reply David glanced at him, to find his face set and pained.

"Perhaps we'd better not go into that now," David said hastily. "It's natural that the readjustments will take time."

"We'll have to go into it. It's the hardest thing I have to face."

"It's not dead, then?"

"No," d.i.c.k said slowly. "It's not dead, David. And I'd better bring it into the open. I've fought it to the limit by myself. It's the one thing that seems to have survived the s.h.i.+pwreck. I can't argue it down or think it down."

"Maybe, if you see Elizabeth--"

"I'd break her heart, that's all."

He tried to make David understand. He told in its sordid details his failure to kill it, his attempts to sink memory and conscience in Chicago and their failure, the continued remoteness of Elizabeth and what seemed to him the flesh and blood reality of the other woman. That she was yesterday, and Elizabeth was long ago.

"I can't argue it down," he finished. "I've tried to, desperately. It's a--I think it's a wicked thing, in a way. And G.o.d knows all she ever got out of it was suffering. She must loathe the thought of me."

David was compelled to let it rest there. He found that d.i.c.k was doggedly determined to see Beverly Carlysle. After that, he didn't know.

No man wanted to surrender himself for trial, unless he was sure himself of whether he was innocent or guilty. If there was a reasonable doubt--but what did it matter one way or the other? His place was gone, as he'd made it, gone if he was cleared, gone if he was convicted.

"I can't come back, David. They wouldn't have me."

After a silence he asked:

"How much is known here? What does Elizabeth know?"

"The town knows nothing. She knows a part of it. She cares a great deal, d.i.c.k. It's a tragedy for her."

"Shall you tell her I have been here?"

"Not unless you intend to see her."

But d.i.c.k shook his head.

"Even if other things were the same I haven't a right to see her, until I've got a clean slate."

"That's sheer evasion," David said, almost with irritation.

"Yes," d.i.c.k acknowledged gravely. "It is sheer evasion."

"What about the police?" he inquired after a silence. "I was registered at Norada. I suppose they traced me?"

"Yes. The house was watched for a while; I understand they've given it up now."

In response to questions about his own condition David was almost querulous. He was all right. He would get well if they'd let him, and stop coddling him. He would get up now, in spite of them. He was good for one more fight before he died, and he intended to make it, in a court if necessary.

"They can't prove it, d.i.c.k," he said triumphantly. "I've been over it every day for months. There is no case. There never was a case, for that matter. They're a lot of pin-headed fools, and we'll show them up, boy.

We'll show them up."

But for all his excitement fatigue was telling on him. Lucy tapped at the door and came in.

"You'd better have your supper before it spoils," she said. "And David needs a rest. Doctor Reynolds is in the office. I haven't told him yet."

The two men exchanged glances.

"Time for that later," David said. "I can't keep him out of my office, but I can out of my family affairs for an hour or so."

So it happened that d.i.c.k followed Lucy down the back stairs and ate his meal stealthily in the kitchen.

"I don't like you to eat here," she protested.

"I've eaten in worse places," he said, smiling at her. "And sometimes not at all." He was immediately sorry for that, for the tears came to her eyes.

He broke as gently as he could the news that he could not stay, but it was a great blow to her. Her sagging chin quivered piteously, and it took all the cheerfulness he could summon and all the promises of return he could make to soften the shock.

"You haven't even seen Elizabeth," she said at last.

"That will have to wait until things are cleared up, Aunt Lucy."

"Won't you write her something then, Richard? She looks like a ghost these days."

Her eyes were on him, puzzled and wistful. He met them gravely.

"I haven't the right to see her, or to write to her."

And the finality in his tone closed the discussion, that and something very close to despair in his face.

For all his earlier hunger he ate very little, and soon after he tiptoed up the stairs again to David's room. When he came down to the kitchen later on he found her still there, at the table where he had left her, her arms across it and her face buried in them. On a chair was the suitcase she had hastily packed for him, and a roll of bills lay on the table.

"You must take it," she insisted. "It breaks my heart to think--d.i.c.k, I have the feeling that I am seeing you for the last time." Then for fear she had hurt him she forced a determined smile. "Don't pay any attention to me. David will tell you that I have said, over and over, that I'd never see you again. And here you are!"