Part 11 (1/2)

Then he clapped on his hat.

”Well, I'm a d.a.m.ned fool,” he muttered, and went out into the street.

He was disappointed and a trifle sheepish. Life was full of queer chances, that was all. No resemblance on earth, no coincidence of birthplace, could make him believe that Judson Clark, waster, profligate and fugitive from the law was now sitting up at night with sick children, or delivering babies.

After a time he remembered the prescription in his hand, and was about to destroy it. He stopped and examined it, and then carefully placed it in his pocket-book. After all, there were things that looked queer. The fellow had certainly evaded that last question of his.

He made his way, head bent, toward the station.

He had ten minutes to wait, and he wandered to the newsstand. He made a casual inspection of its display, bought a newspaper and was turning away, when he stopped and gazed after a man who had just pa.s.sed him from an out-bound train.

The reporter looked after him with amused interest. Gregory, too! The Livingstone chap had certainly started something. But it was odd, too.

How had Gregory traced him? Wasn't there something more in Gregory's presence there than met the eye? Gregory's visit might be, like his own, the desire to satisfy himself that the man was or was not Clark. Or it might be the result of a conviction that it was Clark, and a warning against himself. But if he had traced him, didn't that indicate that Clark himself had got into communication with him? In other words, that the chap was Clark, after all? Gregory, having made an inquiry of a hackman, had started along the street, and, after a moment's thought, Ba.s.sett fell into line behind him. He was extremely interested and increasingly cheerful. He remained well behind, and with his newspaper rolled in his hand a.s.sumed the easy yet brisk walk of the commuters around him, bound for home and their early suburban dinners.

Half way along Station Street Gregory stopped before the Livingstone house, read the sign, and rang the doorbell. The reporter slowed down, to give him time for admission, and then slowly pa.s.sed. In front of Harrison Miller's house, however, he stopped and waited. He lighted a cigarette and made a careful survey of the old place. Strange, if this were to prove the haven where Judson Clark had taken refuge, this old brick two-story dwelling, with its ramshackle stable in the rear, its small vegetable garden, its casual beds of simple garden flowers set in a half acre or so of ground.

A doctor. A pill shooter. Jud Clark!

IX

Elizabeth had gone about all day with a smile on her lips and a sort of exaltation in her eyes. She had, girl fas.h.i.+on, gone over and over the totally uneventful evening they had spent together, remembering small speeches and gestures; what he had said and she had answered.

She had, for instance, mentioned Clare Rossiter, very casually. Oh very, very casually. And he had said: ”Clare Rossiter? Oh, yes, the tall blonde girl, isn't she?”

She was very happy. He had not seemed to find her too young or particularly immature. He had asked her opinion on quite important things, and listened carefully when she replied. She felt, though, that she knew about one-tenth as much as he did, and she determined to read very seriously from that time on. Her mother, missing her that afternoon, found her curled up in the library, beginning the first volume of Gibbon's ”Rome” with an air of determined concentration, and wearing her best summer frock.

She did not intend to depend purely on Gibbon's ”Rome,” evidently.

”Are you expecting any one, Elizabeth?” she asked, with the frank directness characteristic of mothers, and Elizabeth, fixing a date in her mind with terrible firmness, looked up absently and said:

”No one in particular.”

At three o'clock, with a slight headache from concentration, she went upstairs and put up her hair again; rather high this time to make her feel taller. Of course, it was not likely he would come. He was very busy. So many people depended on him. It must be wonderful to be like that, to have people needing one, and looking out of the door and saying: ”I think I see him coming now.”

Nevertheless when the postman rang her heart gave a small leap and then stood quite still. When Annie slowly mounted the stairs she was already on her feet, but it was only a card announcing: ”Mrs. Sayre, Wednesday, May fifteenth, luncheon at one-thirty.”

However, at half past four the bell rang again, and a masculine voice informed Annie, a moment later, that it would put its overcoat here, because lately a dog had eaten a piece out of it and got most awful indigestion.

The time it took Annie to get up the stairs again gave her a moment so that she could breathe more naturally, and she went down very deliberately and so dreadfully poised that at first he thought she was not glad to see him.

”I came, you see,” he said. ”I intended to wait until to-morrow, but I had a little time. But if you're doing anything--”

”I was reading Gibbon's 'Rome,'” she informed him. ”I think every one should know it. Don't you?”

”Good heavens, what for?” he inquired.

”I don't know.” They looked at each other, and suddenly they laughed.

”I wanted to improve my mind,” she explained. ”I felt, last night, that you-that you know so many things, and that I was frightfully stupid.”