Part 29 (1/2)
His mind was in the condition of a coffer-dam that has been laboriously pumped out, only to be overwhelmed by a sudden and irresistible return of the flood. The theory of premeditated a.s.sa.s.sination was no nightmare; it was a pitiless, brutal, inhuman fact. Wingfield, an invited guest, and with a guest's privileges and immunities, had been tried, convicted, and sentenced for knowing too much.
”It's pretty bad, isn't it?” he said to Bigelow, feeling the necessity of saying something, and realising at the same instant the futility of putting the horror of it into words for one who knew nothing of the true state of affairs.
”Bad enough, certainly. You can imagine how it harrowed all of us, and especially the women. Cousin Janet fainted and had to be carried up to the house; and Miss Elsa was the only one of the young women who wasn't perfectly helpless. Colonel Craigmiles was our stand-by; he knew just what to do, and how to do it. He is a wonderful man, Mr. Ballard.”
”He is--in more ways than a casual observer would suspect.” Ballard suffered so much of his thought to set itself in words. To minimise the temptation to say more he turned his back upon the accident and accounted for himself and his presence at Castle 'Cadia.
”Bromley was pretty well tired out when Otto came down with the car, and I offered to ride around and make his excuses. We broke an engine bolt on the road: otherwise I should have been here two hours earlier. You say Wingfield is recovering? I wonder if I could see him for a few minutes, before I go back to camp?”
Bigelow offered to go up-stairs and find out; and Ballard waited in the silence of the deserted library for what seemed like a long time. And when the waiting came to an end it was not Bigelow who parted the portieres and came silently to stand before his chair; it was the king's daughter.
”You have heard?” she asked, and her voice seemed to come from some immeasurable depth of anguish.
”Yes. Is he better?”
”Much better; though he is terribly weak and shaken.” Then suddenly: ”What brought you here--so late?”
He explained the ostensible object of his coming, and mentioned the cause of the delay. She heard him through without comment, but there was doubt and keen distress and a great fear in the gray eyes when he was permitted to look into their troubled depths.
”If you are telling me the truth, you are not telling me all of it,” she said, sinking wearily into one of the deepest of the easy-chairs and shading the tell-tale eyes with her hand.
”Why shouldn't I tell you all of it?” he rejoined evasively.
”I don't know your reasons: I can only fear them.”
”If you could put the fear into words, perhaps I might be able to allay it,” he returned gently.
”It is past alleviation; you know it. Mr. Wingfield was with you again to-day, and when he came home I knew that the thing I had been dreading had come to pa.s.s.”
”How could you know it? Not from anything Wingfield said or did, I'm sure.”
”No; but Jerry Blacklock was with him--and Jerry's face is an open book for any one who cares to read it. Won't you please tell me the worst, Breckenridge?”
”There isn't any worst,” denied Ballard, lying promptly for love's sake.
”We had luncheon together, the four of us, in honour of Bromley's recovery. Afterward, Wingfield spun yarns for us--as he has a habit of doing when he can get an audience of more than one person. Some of his stories were more grewsome than common. I don't wonder that Jerry had a left-over thrill or two in his face.”
She looked up from behind the eye-shading hand. ”Do you dare to repeat those stories to me?”
His laugh lacked something of spontaneity.
”It is hardly a question of daring; it is rather a matter of memory--or the lack of it. Who ever tries to make a record of after-dinner fictions? Wingfield's story was a tale of impossible crimes and their more impossible detection; the plot and outline for a new play, I fancied, which he was trying first on the dog. Blacklock was the only one of his three listeners who took him seriously.”
She was silenced, if not wholly convinced; and when she spoke again it was of the convalescent a.s.sistant.
”You are not going to keep Mr. Bromley at the camp, are you? He isn't able to work yet.”
”Oh, no. You may send for him in the morning, if you wish. I--he was a little tired to-night, and I thought----”
”Yes; you have told me what you thought,” she reminded him, half absently. And then, with a note of constraint in her voice that was quite new to him: ”You are not obliged to go back to Elbow Canyon to-night, are you? Your room is always ready for you at Castle 'Cadia.”
”Thank you; but I'll have to go back. If I don't, Bromley will think he's the whole thing and start in to run the camp in the morning before I could show up.”