Part 24 (1/2)
”I don't see that you owed me anything,” he objected. ”As the affair has developed, we were both the victims of an ugly plot. It certainly was not your fault. And once out of that accursed house, _you_ were free.”
”Not my fault--no,” she repeated, ”but my responsibility afterward.” She gazed past him out of the window where, at the curb, Arnold Rogers was a.s.sisting a fur-coated figure into the Paddington limousine. ”You see, Edward Marstan was my husband and----Well, some day you may come to realize, Mr. Kenwick, that when a woman has loved, there is no such word as 'free.'”
At the foot of the stairway Kenwick spoke with an almost curt suppression to Granville Jarvis. ”I'm going over to the hotel with Morgan. Come over there.”
The other man made no reply save a slight inclination of his head, and there was in his eyes an expression which haunted and mystified the released prisoner.
”Jarvis is a wizard,” he said to Clinton Morgan as they walked the few short blocks to Mont-Mer's leading hostelry. ”If they ever let down the bars of the court-room to men like that, they'll revolutionize legal procedure. He seems to have seen this case from every angle.”
”From more angles than you imagine,” his friend replied. ”And he had let me in on some of the most interesting of his findings that were not revealed in court. For instance, he examined that gardener this morning, just for his own satisfaction. The boy was willing, even flattered by the attention. Jarvis told me afterward that a witness like that ought to be ruled out of court. And he is typical of the ma.s.s of men and women who a.s.sist in acquitting the guilty and sending the innocent to the gallows. The average physician examining him would p.r.o.nounce him normal.
He can hear a sound distinctly, for instance, but he is afflicted with that common defect, the equivalent, Jarvis says, of color-blindness in the visual realm, which makes it impossible for him to tell whether the sound comes from behind or in front of him. And he lacks completely a visual memory. He could recall the exact words that Gifford said to him on the night of the suicide but he couldn't remember whether the body was covered or uncovered when he saw it. And as for the tests with Glover----By the way, what are you going to do with Glover?”
”I don't know yet. I haven't got that far. I think I can forgive him everything except that infamous story about Everett being close with me while I was under age. Why, I had too much money while I was in college, Morgan. That's the chief reason why I didn't push my literary work with greater zeal. The creative temperament is naturally indolent. It requires a spur, not necessarily a financial one, but so much the better if it is. Of course Glover and I will have to have a financial reckoning. I can see now why my frantic messages to our family lawyer were never answered. I suppose he's had dozens of communications from people purporting to be connected by blood or marriage with the Kenwick estate. Yes, Glover has got some things to answer to me for, but----”
His mind flew back to that last evening that he had spent in the fire-lit living-room on Pine Street. ”He brought h.e.l.l into my life for a time,” he ended slowly. ”But he brought--something else into it, too.”
It was half an hour later, after Kenwick had bathed and dressed for dinner, that Granville Jarvis came up to his room. Kenwick admitted him with an inarticulate word of greeting. Then while with fumbling fingers he put on a fresh collar, he made an attempt at normal conversation.
”Been expecting you,” he said. ”Morgan is down in the lobby. We'll all have dinner here first and then----”
”Can't do it,” Jarvis cut in. ”I have another engagement for dinner, and I'm leaving town on the eight-forty northbound. I just ran up to say good-by and--good luck.”
”Where are you going?”
Jarvis smiled. ”To Argentina, so far as you are concerned. But you can call it Columbia if you like. I'm returning to my work there. You see, I've been away on leave.”
”You've got to stay long enough for me to tell you something,” Kenwick's voice cut in authoritatively. ”But you couldn't stay long enough, Jarvis, for me to thank you for what you've done.”
His caller held up a hand. ”Please don't. Not that--please.”
”But,” Kenwick went on, ”you've got to hear an apology. I was just about on the verge of a collapse over there, and when you got up in court as the representative of Glover----Well, I didn't know the game, you see and I thought----”
”I know; Brutus.” It was Jarvis who finished the sentence. ”And in a sense, you were right,” he went on slowly. ”For what I did, I did--not for you.”
”You did it for science, of course; because to you I was an interesting case. But what can I ever do to repay you? How can----”
”I have been paid.” The same haunting, baffling expression was in the scientist's eyes, and he was not looking at the man whom his testimony had freed.
”Oh, I don't mean money!” Kenwick cried hotly. ”I know you have that!”
”I don't mean money, either.” He forced his gaze back to his host. And then that sixth sense which is in the soul of every creative artist awoke in Kenwick's being and made his eyes luminous with understanding.
Jarvis picked up his hat from the chair into which it had dropped. ”I'm going out to the Paddingtons' for dinner,” he said casually. ”I'll have about----” He snapped open the cover of his watch, then closed it again.
”The most devilish thing about life on this planet, Kenwick, is that we can't do very much for each other. The game is largely solitaire. But for any good that I ever did I've been well repaid. Any man ought to be satisfied, I think, when the G.o.ds allow him two full hours--in Utopia.”
CHAPTER XX
It was the morning after his acquittal that Kenwick and Marcreta Morgan drove out of the Paddington gateway in one of the Utopia machines. They turned to the left and took the stretch of perfect asphalt road that led to the old Raeburn house.
The mystery of its destruction had never been explained. Richard Glover, and every one else who was connected with the case of Ralph Regan, had proved a satisfactory alibi. The owner of Rest Hollow had been notified by wire of its destruction and he had replied with orders that the grounds were to be kept locked and admission denied to all callers. It had undoubtedly been one of the handsomest homes in a community of handsome homes, but since the first days of its existence fate had destined it for tragedy. And perhaps its owner was relieved to know that only a pile of whitening ashes marked the grave of his own romance and the prison of another man's hope. At all events, the mystery of its pa.s.sing never has been solved, and conjecture concerning it is still a favorite topic around the tea-tables of Mont-Mer's fas.h.i.+onable suburban district.