“Did Miss Thornhill and Kendrick meet for the first time, after his exile, up-stairs — in number seven?” Mr. Magee wanted to know.
“Yes,” answered Professor Bolton. “In one of his letters long ago Hayden told Kendrick he was engaged to the girl. It was the last letter Kendrick received from him.”
There was a pause.
“The important point now,” the old man went on, “is the identity of this girl to whom you have made your princely gift, out of the goodness of your young heart. I propose to speak to the woman she has introduced as her mother, and elicit what information I can.”
He crossed the floor, followed by Mr. Magee, and stood by the woman’s chair. She looked up, her eyes heavy with sleep, her appearance more tawdry than ever in that faint light.
“Madam,” remarked the professor, with the air of a judge trying a case, “your daughter has to-night made her escape from this place with a large sum of money earnestly desired by the prosecuting attorney of Reuton county. In the name of the law, I command you to tell me her destination, and what she proposes to do with that package of greenbacks.”
The woman blinked stupidly in the dusk.
“She ain’t my daughter,” she replied, and Mr. Magee’s heart leaped up. “I can tell you that much. I keep a boarding-house in Reuton and Miss — the girl you speak about — has been my boarder for three years. She brought me up here as a sort of chaperon, though I don’t see as I’m old enough for that yet. You don’t get nothing else out of me — except that she is a perfectly lovely young woman, and your money couldn’t be safer with the president of the United States.”
The puzzled professor of Comparative Literature caressed his bald head thoughtfully. “I — er—” he remarked. Mr. Magee could have embraced this faded woman for her news. He looked at his watch. It was twelve-twenty.
“The siege is over,” he cried. “I shall not attempt to direct your actions any longer. Mr. Peters, will you please go down to the village and bring back Mr. Quimby and — the coroner?”
“The coroner!” The mayor of Reuton jumped to his feet. “I don’t want to be in on any inquest scene. Come on, Max, let’s get out of here.”
Bland stood up, his face was white and worried, his gay plumage no longer set the tone for his mood.
“I think I’ll go, too,” he announced, looking hopefully at Magee.
“I’m no longer your jailer,” Magee said. “Professor, these gentlemen are your witnesses Do you wish to detain them?”
“See here,” cried the mayor angrily, “there ain’t no question but that you can find me in Reuton any time you want me. At the little room on Main Street — anybody can tell you my hours — the door’s always open to any reformer that has the nerve to climb the stairs. Look me up there. I’ll make it interesting for you.”
“I certainly shall,” the professor replied. “And very soon. Until then you may go when and where you please.”
“Thanks,” sneered the mayor. “I’ll expect you. I’ll be ready. I’ve had to get ready to answer your kind before. You think you got me, eh? Well, you’re a fool to think that. As for Drayton, the pup, the yellow-streaked pup — I’ll talk to Mister Drayton when I get back to Reuton.”
“Before you go, Bland,” remarked Magee, smiling, “I want to ask about Arabella. Where did you get her?”
“Some of it happened to a friend of mine,” the ex-haberdasher answered, “a friend that keeps a clothing store. I got this suit there. I changed the story, here and there. He didn’t write her no note, though he thought seriously of it. And he didn’t run away and hide. The last I seen of him he was testing the effect of the heart-balm on sale behind the swinging doors.”
Mr. Magee laughed, but over the long lean face of Bland not the ghost of a smile flitted. He was frightened, through and through.
“You’re a fine bunch,” sneered Mr. Max. “Reformers, eh? Well, you’ll get what the rest of ’em always got. We’ll tie you up in knots and leave you on the door-step of some orphan asylum before we’re through with you.”
“Come on, Lou,” said Cargan. “Drayton’s a smart guy, Doc. Where’s his proof? Eloped with the bundle of dry goods this young man’s taken a fancy to. And even if he had the money — I’ve been up against this many a time. You’re wasting your talents, Doc. Good night! Come on, boys.”
The three stamped out through the dining-room, and from the window Mr. Magee watched them disappear down the road that stretched to Asquewan Falls.
Chapter XVIII
A Red Card
Mr. Magee turned back from the window to the dim interior of the hotel office. He who had come to Baldpate Inn to court loneliness had never felt so lonely in his life. For he had lost sight of her — in the great Reuton station of his imagination she had slipped from his dreams — to go where he could not follow, even in thought. He felt as he knew this great bare room must feel each fall when the last laugh died away down the mountain, and the gloom of winter descended from drab skies.
Selecting a log of the hermit’s cutting from the stock beside the hearth, Mr. Magee tossed it on the fire. There followed a shower of sparks and a flood of red light in the room. Through this light Kendrick advanced to Magee’s side, and the first of the Baldpate hermits saw that the man’s face was lined by care, that his eyes were tired even under the new light in them, that his mouth was twisted bitterly.
“Poor devil,” thought Magee.
Kendrick drew up chairs for himself and Magee, and they sat down. Behind them the bulky Mrs. Norton dozed, dreaming perhaps of her Reuton boarding-house, while Miss Thornhill and the professor talked intermittently in low tones. The ranks at Baldpate were thinning rapidly; before long the place must settle back with a sigh in the cold, to wait for its first summer girl.
“Mr. Magee,” said Kendrick nervously, “you have become involved in an unkind, a tragic story. I do not mean the affair of the bribe — I refer to the matter between Hayden and myself. Before Peters comes back with — the men he went for — I should like to tell you some of the facts of that story.”
“If you had rather not—” began Magee.
“No,” replied Kendrick, “I prefer that you should know. It was you who took the pistol from — his hand. I do not believe that even I can tell you all that was in Hayden’s mind when he went into that other room and closed the door. It seems to me preposterous that a man of his sort should take his life under the circumstances I feel, somehow, that there is a part of the story even I do not know. But let that be.”
He bowed his head in his hands.
“Ever since I came into this room,” he went on, “the eyes of a pompous little man have been following me about. They have constantly recalled to me the nightmare of my life. You have noticed, no doubt, the pictures of the admiral that decorate these walls?”
“I have,” replied Magee. He gazed curiously at the nearest of the portraits. How persistently this almost mythical starched man wove in and out of the melodrama at Baldpate Inn.
“Well,” continued Kendrick, “the admiral’s eyes haunt me. Perhaps you know that he plays a game — a game of solitaire. I have good reason to remember that game. It is a silly inconsequential game. You would scarcely believe that it once sent a man to hell.”
He stopped.
“I am beginning in the middle of my story,” he apologized. “Let me go back. Six years ago I was hardly the man you see now — I was at least twenty years younger. Hayden and I worked together in the office of the Suburban Railway. We had been close friends at college — I believed in him and trusted him, although I knew he had certain weaknesses. I was a happy man. I had risen rapidly, I was young, the future was lying golden before me — and I was engaged. The daughter of Henry Thornhill, our employer — the girl you have met here at Baldpate — had promised to be my wife. Hayden had also been a suitor, but when our engagement was announced he came to me like a man, and I thought his words were sincere.