Part 17 (1/2)
”How long has he been doing that?”
”Since I can remember.”
”Is he a friend of Mr. Corvet?”
”No friend--no!”
”But Mr. Corvet saw him when he came here?”
”Always, Alan.”
”And you don't know at all what he came about?”
”How should I know? No; I do not.”
Alan got his coat and hat. The sudden disappearance of the man might mean only that he had hurried away, but it might mean too that he was still lurking near the house. Alan had decided to make the circuit of the house and determine that. But as he came out on to the porch, a figure more than a block away to the south strode with uncertain step out into the light of a street lamp, halted and faced about, and shook his fist back at the house. Alan dragged the Indian out on to the porch.
”Is that the man, Judah?” he demanded.
”Yes, Alan.”
Alan ran down the steps and at full speed after the man. The other had turned west at the corner where Alan had seen him; but even though Alan slipped as he tried to run upon the snowy walks, he must be gaining fast upon him. He saw him again, when he had reached the corner where the man had turned, traveling westward with that quick uncertain step toward Clark Street; at that corner the man turned south. But when Alan reached the corner, he was nowhere in sight. To the south, Clark Street reached away, garish with electric signs and with a half dozen saloons to every block. That the man was drunk made it probable he had turned into one of these places. Alan went into every one of them for fully a half mile and looked about, but he found no one even resembling the man he had been following. He retraced his steps for several blocks, still looking; then he gave it up and returned eastward toward the Drive.
The side street leading to the Drive was less well lighted; dark entry ways and alleys opened on it; but the night was clear. The stars, with the s.h.i.+ning sword of Orion almost overhead, gleamed with midwinter brightness, and to the west the crescent of the moon was hanging and throwing faint shadows over the snow. Alan could see at the end of the street, beyond the yellow glow of the distant boulevard lights, the smooth, chill surface of the lake. A white light rode above it; now, below the white light, he saw a red speck--the masthead and port lanterns of a steamer northward bound. Farther out a second white glow appeared from behind the obscuration of the buildings and below it a green speck--a starboard light. The information he had gained that day enabled him to recognize in these lights two steamers pa.s.sing one another at the harbor mouth.
”Red to red,” Alan murmured to himself. ”Green to green--Red to red, perfect safety, go ahead!” he repeated.
It brought him, with marvelous vividness, back to Constance Sherrill.
Events since he had talked with her that morning had put them far apart once more; but, in another way, they were being drawn closer together.
For he knew now that she was caught as well as he in the mesh of consequences of acts not their own. Benjamin Corvet, in the anguish of the last hours before fear of those consequences had driven him away, had given her a warning against Spearman so wild that it defeated itself; for Alan merely to repeat that warning, with no more than he yet knew, would be equally futile. But into the contest between Spearman and himself--that contest, he was beginning to feel, which must threaten destruction either to Spearman or to him--she had entered. Her happiness, her future, were at stake; her fate, he was certain now, depended upon discovery of those events tied tight in the mystery of Alan's own ident.i.ty which Spearman knew, and the threat of which at moments appalled him. Alan winced as there came before him in the darkness of the street the vision of Constance in Spearman's arms and of the kiss that he had seen that afternoon.
He staggered, slipped, fell suddenly forward upon his knees under a stunning, crus.h.i.+ng blow upon his head from behind. Thought, consciousness almost lost, he struggled, twisting himself about to grasp at his a.s.sailant. He caught the man's clothing, trying to drag himself up; fighting blindly, dazedly, unable to see or think, he shouted aloud and then again, aloud. He seemed in the distance to hear answering cries; but the weight and strength of the other was bearing him down again to his knees; he tried to slip aside from it, to rise.
Then another blow, crus.h.i.+ng and sickening, descended on his head; even hearing left him and, unconscious, he fell forward on to the snow and lay still.
CHAPTER X
A WALK BESIDE THE LAKE
”The name seems like Sherrill,” the interne agreed. ”He said it before when we had him on the table up-stairs; and he has said it now twice distinctly--Sherrill.”
”His name, do you think?”
”I shouldn't say so; he seems trying to speak to some one named Sherrill.”
The nurse waited a few minutes. ”Yes; that's how it seems to me, sir.
He said something that sounded like 'Connie' a while ago, and once he said 'Jim.' There are only four Sherrills in the telephone book, two of them in Evanston and one way out in Minoota.”