"Hello, puss!" said the gambler, putting out a hand. The cat stole closer. "I guess I'll have to take you home with me, eh? This ain't a place for unprotected females!" The cat crept back and forth under his caressing touch.

At the street-door Shrimplin appeared and disappeared, now his head was thrust into the room, and now his nose was flattened against the dingy show-windows; from neither point could he quite command the view he desired nor could he bring himself to enter the building; then he vanished entirely, but after a brief interval they heard his voice. He was evidently speaking with some one in the street. A little crowd was rapidly gathering about him, but it disintegrated almost immediately, his listeners abandoning him to hurry into the store.

"You must stand back, all of you!" said the colonel. "Unless you are very careful you may destroy important evidence!"

The crowd assembled itself silently for the most part; here and there a man removed his hat, or made some whispered comment, or asked some eager low-voiced question of Gilmore or the colonel. Men stood on boxes, on nail kegs, and on counters. Except for the little circle left about the dead man on the floor, every vantage point of observation was soon occupied. It was scarcely half an hour since Shrimplin had fallen speechless into Colonel Harbison's arms, yet fully two hundred men had gathered in that long room or were struggling about the door to gain admittance to it.

At a suggestion from Harbison, the gambler, followed by Joe, elbowed his way to the front door, which in spite of the protest of those outside, he closed and locked. A moment later, however, he opened it to admit Doctor Taylor, the coroner, and Conklin, the sheriff. The latter instantly set about clearing the room.

Gilmore and the colonel remained with the officials and during the succeeding ten minutes the gambler, who had kept his post at the door, opened, it to Moxlow, young Watt Harbison and two policemen.

As the coroner finished his examination of the body, the sound of wheels was heard in the Square and an undertaker's wagon drew up to the door. The murdered man was placed on a stretcher and covered with a black cloth, then four men raised the stretcher and for the last time the old merchant passed out under his creaking sign into the night.

"I've agreed to watch at the house, Andy," said Colonel Harbison. "I want you and Watt to come with me."

The gambler lighted a fresh cigar and the three men left the store.

On the Square groups of men discussed the murder. Though none was permitted to enter the store, the windows afforded occasional glimpses of the little group of officials within, until a policeman closed and fastened the heavy wooden shutters. Then the crowd slowly and reluctantly dispersed.

Meanwhile the town marshal, under cover of the excitement, had descended on the gas house where tramps congregated of winter nights for warmth and shelter. Here he found shivering over a can of beer, two homeless wretches, whom he arrested as suspicious characters. After this, official activity languished, for the official mind could think of nothing more to do.

With the scattering of the crowd on the Square, Shrimplin climbed into his cart and drove off home. The smother of wind-driven snow still enveloped the, town, the very air seemed charged with mystery and horror, and before the little lamplighter's eyes was ever the haunting vision of the murdered man.

He drove into the alley back of his house, unhitched Bill and led him into the barn. His torch made the gloom of the place more terrifying than utter darkness would have been. Suppose the murderer should be hiding there! Mr. Shrimplin's mind fastened on the hay-mow as the most likely place of concealment, and the cold sweat ran from him in icy streams; he could, almost see the murderer's evil eyes fixed upon him from the blackness above. But at last Bill was stripped of his harness, and the little lamplighter, escaping from the barn with its fancied terrors, hurried across his small back yard to his kitchen door.

"Well!" said Mrs. Shrimplin, as he entered the room. "I was beginning to wonder if you'd ever think it worth your while to come home!"

"What's the bell been ringing for?" asked Custer. Mrs. Shrimplin was seated by the table, which was littered with her sewing; Custer occupied his usual chair by the stove, and it was evident that they knew nothing of the tragedy in which Mr. Shrimplin had played so important, and as he now felt, so worthy a part.

"I suppose I've been out quite a time, and I may say I've seen times, too! I guess there ain't no one in the town fitter to say they seen times than just me!"

The light and comfort of his own pleasant kitchen had quite restored Mr. Shrimplin.

"I may say I seen times!" he repeated significantly. "There's something doing in this here old town after all! I take back a heap of the hard things I've said about it; a feller can scare up a little excitement if he knows where to look for it. I ain't bragging none, but I guess you'll hear my name mentioned—I guess you'll even see it in print in the newspapers!" He warmed his cold hands over the stove. "Throw in a little more coal, sonny; I'm half froze, but I guess that's the worst any one can say of me!"

"You make much of it, whatever it is," said Mrs. Shrimplin.

"Maybe I do and maybe I don't," equivocated Mr. Shrimplin genially.

"Maybe you're not above telling a body what kept you out half the night?" inquired his wife.

"If you done and seen what I've did and saw," replied Mr. Shrimplin impressively, "you'd look for a little respect in your own home."

"I'd be a heap quicker telling about it," said Mrs. Shrimplin.

Mr. Shrimplin turned to Custer.

"I guess, you're thinking it was a burglar; but, sonny, it wasn't no burglar—so you got another guess coming to you," he concluded benevolently.

"I know!" cried Custer. "Some one's been killed!"

"Exactly!" said Mr. Shrimplin with increasing benevolence. "Some one has been killed!"

"You done it!" cried Custer.

"I found the party," admitted Mr. Shrimplin with calm dignity.

"Oh!" But perhaps Custer's first emotion was on the whole one of disappointment.

"How you talk!" said Mrs. Shrimplin.

"I reckon I might say more, most any one would," retorted Mr. Shrimplin quietly. "It was old man McBride—someone's murdered him for his money; I never seen the town so on end over anything before, but whoever wants to be well posted's got to come to me for the particulars. I seen the old man before Colonel Harbison seen him, I seen him before Andy Gilmore seen him, I seen him before the coroner seen him, or the sheriff or any one seen him! I was on the spot ahead of 'em all. If any one wants to know how he looked just after he was killed, they got to come to me to find out. Colonel Harbison can't tell 'em, and Andy Gilmore can't tell 'em; it's only me knows them particulars!"

The effect of this stirring declaration was quite all he had hoped for. Out of the tail of his eye he saw that Mrs. Shrimplin was, as she afterward freely confessed, taken aback. As for Custer, he had forgotten his disappointment that a death by violence had occurred for which his father was not directly responsible.

"Did you see the man that killed old Mr. McBride?" asked Custer, breaking the breathless spell that was upon him.

"No; if I'd been just about fifteen minutes sooner I'd have seen him; but I was just about that much too late, sonny. I guess he's a whole lot better off, though."

"What would you have done if you'd seen him?" Custer's voice sank to a whisper.

"Well, I don't pack a gun for nothing. If I'd seen him there, he'd had to go 'round to the jail with me. I guess I could have coaxed him there; I was ready for to offer extra inducements!"

"And does everybody know you seen old Mr. McBride the first of any?" asked Custer.

"I guess they do; I ain't afraid about that. Colonel Harbison's too much of a gentleman to claim any credit that ain't his; he'd be the first one to own up that he don't deserve no credit."

"What took you into McBride's store? You hadn't no errand there." Mrs. Shrimplin was a careful and acquisitive wife.

"I allow I made an errand there," said Mr. Shrimplin bridling. "I reckon many another man might have thought he hadn't no errand there either, but I feel different about them things. I was just turned into the Square when along comes young John North—"

"What was he doing there?" suddenly asked Mrs. Shrimplin.

"I expect he was attending strictly to his own business," retorted Mr. Shrimplin, offended by the utter irrelevancy of the question.

"Go on, pal" begged Custer.

He felt that his mother's interruptions were positively cruel, and—so like a woman!

"Me and young John North passed the time of day," continued Mr. Shrimplin, thus abjured, "and I started around the north side of the Square to light the lamp on old man McBride's own corner. If I'd knowed then—" he paused impressively, "if I'd just knowed then, that was my time! I could have laid hands on the murderer. He was there somewheres, most likely he was watching me; well, maybe it was all for the best, I don't know as a married man's got any right to take chances. Anyway, I got to within, well—I should say, thirty feet of that lamp-post when all of a sudden Bill began to act up. You never saw a horse act up like he done! He rose in his britching and then the other end of him come up and he acted like he wanted to set down on the singletree!"

"Why did he do that?" asked Custer.

"Well, I guess you've got some few things to learn, Custer;" said Mr. Shrimplin indulgently. "He smelt blood—that's what he smelt!"

"Oh!" gasped Custer.

"I've knowed it to happen before. It's instinct," explained Shrimplin. "'Singular,' says I, and out I jumps to have a look about. I walked to the lamp-post, and then I seen what I hadn't seen before, that old man McBride's store door was open, so I stepped on to the sidewalk intending to close it, but as I put my hand on the knob I seen where the snow had drifted into the room, so I knew the door must have been open some little time. That's mighty odd, I thinks, and then it sort of come over me the way Bill had acted, and I went along into the store in pretty considerable of a hurry."

"Were you afraid?" demanded Custer in an awe-struck whisper.

"I'll tell you the truth, Custer, I wasn't. I own I'd drawed my gun, wishing to be on the safe side. First thing I noticed was that the lamps hadn't been turned up, though they was all lit. I got back to the end of the counter when I came to a halt, for there in a heap on the floor was old man McBride, with his head mashed in where some one had hit him with a sledge. There was blood all over the floor, and it was a mighty sickenin' spectacle. I sort of looked around hoping I'd see the murderer, but he'd lit out, and then I went back to the front of the store, where I seen Colonel Harbison coming across the Square. I told him what I'd seen and he went inside to look; while he was looking, along come Andy Gilmore and I told him, too, and he went in. They knowed the murderer wasn't there, that I'd been in ahead of them. After, that the people seemed to come from every direction; then presently some one started to ring the town bell and that fetched more people, until the Square in front of the store was packed and jammed with 'em. Everybody' wanted to hear about it first-hand from me; they wanted the full particulars from the only one who knowed 'em."

Mr. Shrimplin paused for breath. The recollection of his splendid publicity was dazzling. He imagined the morrow with its possibility of social triumph; he went as far as to feel that Mrs. Shrimplin now had a certain sneaking respect for him.

"Did you see tracks in the snow?" demanded Custer.

"No, I didn't see nothing," declared Mr. Shrimplin.

"You seen young John North."

It was Mrs. Shrimplin who spoke.

"Well, yes, I seen young John North—I said I seen him!"



CHAPTER SIX

PUTTING ON THE SCREWS

A score of men and boys followed the undertaker's wagon to the small frame cottage that had been Archibald McBride's home for half a century, and a group of these assembled about the gate as the wagon drew up before it. Along the quiet street, windows were raised and doors were opened. It was perhaps the first time, as it was to be the last, that Archibald McBride's neighbors took note of his home-coming.

His keys had been found and intrusted to one of the policemen who accompanied the undertaker and his men; now, as the wagon came to a stand, this officer sprang to the ground, and pushing open the gate went quickly up the path to the front door. There in the shelter of the porch he paused to light a lantern, then he tried key after key until he found the one that fitted the lock; he opened the door and entered the house, the undertaker following him. A second officer stationed himself at the door and kept back the crowd. Their preparations were soon made and the two men reappeared on the porch.

"It's all right," the undertaker said, and four men raised the stretcher again and carried the old merchant into the house.

At this juncture Colonel Harbison, followed by his nephew and Gilmore, made his way through the crowd before the door. Gilmore, even, gave an involuntary shudder as they entered the small hall lighted by the single lantern, while the colonel could have wished himself anywhere else; he had come from a sense of duty; he had known McBride as well as any one in Mount Hope had known him, and it had seemed a lack of respect to the dead man to leave him to the care of the merely curious; but he was painfully conscious of the still presence in the parlor; he felt that they were unwelcome intruders in the home of that austere old man, who had made no friends, who had no intimates, but had lived according to his choice, solitary and alone. The colonel and Watt Harbison followed the gambler into what had been the old merchant's sitting-room. There were two lamps on the chimneypiece, both of which Gilmore lighted.

"That's a whole lot better," he said.

"Anything more we can do, gentlemen?" asked the undertaker, coming into the room.

"Nothing, thank you," answered the colonel in a tone of abstraction, and he felt a sense of relief when the officials had gone their way into the night, leaving him and his two companions to their vigil.

Now for the first time they had leisure and opportunity to look about them. It was a poor enough place, all things considered; the furniture was dingy with age and neglect, for Archibald McBride had kept no servant; a worn and faded carpet covered the floor; there was an engraving of Washington Crossing the Delaware and a few old-fashioned woodcuts on the wall; at one side of the room was a desk, opposite it a rusted sheet-iron stove in which Watt Harbison was already starting a fire; there was a scant assortment of uncomfortable chairs, a table, with one leg bandaged, and near the desk an old mahogany davenport.

"This wouldn't have suited you, eh, Colonel?" said Gilmore at last.

"He could hardly be said to live here, he merely came here to sleep," answered the colonel.

"No, he couldn't have cared for anything but the one thing," said Gilmore. "Were you ever here before, Colonel?" he added.

"Never."

"I don't suppose half a dozen people in the town were ever inside his door until to-night," said Watt Harbison, speaking for the first time.

Gilmore turned to look at the colonel's nephew as if he had only that moment become aware of his presence. What he saw did not impress him greatly, for young Watt, save for an unusually large head, was much like other young men of his class. His speech was soft, his face beardless and his gray eyes gazed steadily but without curiosity on, what was for him, an uncliented world. For the eighteen months that he had been an "attorney and counselor at law" the detail of office rent had been taken care of by the colonel.

"Sort of makes the game he played seem rotten poor sport," commented Gilmore, replying to the nephew but looking at the uncle.

The colonel was silent.

"Rotten poor sport!" repeated Gilmore.

"Who'll come in for his property?" asked Watt Harbison.

"Oh, some one will claim that," said Gilmore. "They were saying down at the store, that once, years ago, a brother of his turned up, here, but McBride got rid of him."

"Suppose we have a look around before we settle ourselves for the night," suggested Watt Harbison.

"Will you join us, Colonel?" asked the gambler.

But the colonel shook his head. Gilmore took up one of the lamps as he spoke and opened a door that led into what had evidently once been a dining-room, but it was now only partly furnished; back of this was a kitchen, and beyond the kitchen a woodshed. Returning to the front of the house, they mounted to the floor above. Here had been the old merchant's bedroom; adjoining it were two smaller rooms, one of which had been used as a place of storage for trunks and boxes and broken bits of furniture; the other room was empty.

"We may as well go back down-stairs," said the gambler, halting, lamp in hand, in the center of the empty room.

Harbison nodded, and leading the way to the floor below, they rejoined the colonel in the sitting-room, where they made themselves as comfortable as possible.

The colonel and his nephew talked in subdued tones, principally of the murdered man; they had no desire to exclude their companion from the conversation, but Gilmore displayed no interest in what was said. He sat at the colonel's elbow, preoccupied and thoughtful, smoking cigar after cigar. Presently the colonel and his nephew lapsed into silence. Their silence seemed to rouse Gilmore to what was passing about him. He glanced at the elder Harbison.

"You look tired, Colonel," he said. "Why don't you stretch out on that lounge yonder and take a nap?"

"I think I shall, Andy, if you and Watt don't mind." And the colonel quitted his chair.

"Better put your coat over you," advised the gambler.

He watched the colonel as he made himself comfortable on the lounge, then he lighted a fresh cigar, tilted his chair against the wall and with head thrown back studied the ceiling. Watt Harbison made one or two tentative attempts at conversation, to which Gilmore briefly responded, then the young fellow also became thoughtful. He fell to watching the gambler's strong profile which the lamp silhouetted against the opposite wall; then drowsiness completely overcame him and he slept in his chair with his head fallen forward on his breast.

Gilmore, alert and sleepless, smoked on; he was thinking of Evelyn Langham. After his interview with her husband that afternoon he had gone to his own apartment. His bedroom adjoined North's parlor and through the flimsy lath and plaster partition he had distinctly heard a woman's voice. The sound of that voice and the suspicion it instantly begot added to his furious hatred of North, for he had long suspected that something more than friendship existed between Marshall Langham's wife and Marshall Langham's friend.

"Damn him!" thought the gambler. "I'll fix him yet!" And he puffed at his cigar viciously.

He had made sure that North's mysterious visitor was Evelyn Langham, for when she left the building he himself had followed her. Out of the dregs of his nature this foolish mad passion of his had arisen to torture him; he had never spoken with Langham's wife, probably she knew him by sight, nothing more; but still his game, the waiting game he had been forced to play, was working itself out better than he had even hoped! At last he had Marshall Langham where he wanted him, where he could make him feel his power. Langham would not be able to raise the money required to cover up those forgeries, and on the basis of silence he would make his bargain with the lawyer.

Gilmore pondered this problem for the better part of an hour, considering it from every conceivable angle; then suddenly the expression of his face changed, he forgot for the moment his ambitions and his desires, his hatred and his love; he thought he heard the click of the old-fashioned latch on the front gate. He remembered that it could be raised only with difficulty. Next he heard the sound of footsteps approaching the house. They seemed to come haltingly down the narrow brick path which the wind had swept clear of snow.

Mr. Gilmore was blessed with a steadiness of nerve known to but few men, yet the hour and the occasion had their influence with him. He stood erect: now the steps which had paused for a moment seemed to recede; it was as if the intruder, whoever he might be, had come almost to the front door and had then, for some inexplicable reason, gone back to the street. Gilmore even imagined him as standing there with his hand on the latch of the gate. He was tempted to rouse his two companions, but he did not, and then, as he still stood with his senses tense, he heard the steps again approach the front door. With a glance in the direction of the colonel and his nephew to assure himself that they still slept, Gilmore rather shamefacedly slipped his right hand under the tails of his coat, tiptoed into the hall and paused there close by the parlor door. The steps outside continued, he heard the porch floor give under a weight, and then some one rapped softly on the door.

Gilmore waited an instant; the rap was repeated; he stepped to the door, shot the bolt and opened it. The storm had passed; it was now cold and clear, a brilliant, starlit, winter's night. He saw the man on the porch clearly as he stood there with the world in white at his back. Gilmore instantly recognized him, and his hand came from under the tails of his coat; he closed the door softly.

"What sort of a joke is this, Marsh?" he demanded in a whisper.

"Joke?" repeated the lawyer in a thick husky voice, as he took an uncertain step toward the gambler.

"Your coming here at this hour; if it isn't a joke, what is it?"

Gilmore saw that his face was flushed with drink while his eyes shone with a light he had never seen in them before. He must have been abroad in the storm for some time, for the snow had lodged in the rim of his hat and his shoulders were still white with it; now and again a paroxysm of shivering seized him.

"Whisky chill," thought the gambler. "Come in, Marsh!" he said, but Langham seemed to draw back instinctively.

"No, I guess not, Andy!" and a sickly pallor overspread his face.

"What's the matter with you?" demanded Gilmore.

"I want to see you," said the other. "I can't go home yet." He swayed heavily. "I need to talk to you on a matter of business. Come on out—come on off of here;" and he led the way down the porch steps. "Whom have you in there with you?" he questioned when he had drawn Gilmore a little way along the path.

"The colonel and Watt Harbison."

"No one else?"

"No."

"Do they know I'm here?"

"I guess not, they were asleep two minutes ago."

"That's good. I don't want to see them, I want to see you."

"Wouldn't it keep, Marsh?" asked Gilmore.

"No, sir, it wouldn't keep; I want to tell you just what I think of you, you damn—"

"Oh, that will keep, Marsh, any time will do for that; anyway, you have told me something like that already! When you sober up—"

"Do you think I'm drunk?"

"I don't think anything about it."

"Well, maybe I am, I have been under a strain. But I'm not too drunk to attend to business; I am never too drunk for that. I wish to say I have the money—"

His lips twitched, and Gilmore, watching him furtively, saw that he was again shivering.

"You got what, Marsh?" demanded Gilmore in a whisper.

"The money, the money I owe you!"

"Oh, I see!" He fell back a step and stared at Langham; there was apprehension dawning in his eyes. "Where did you get it?" he asked.

But Langham shook his head.

"That's my business; it's enough for you to get your money."

"Well, you were quick about it," said Gilmore, and he rested his hand on the lawyer's arm.

Langham moved a step aside.

"You threatened me," he said resentfully, but with drunken dignity. "You were going to smash me; I wish to say that now you can smash and be damned! I have the money—"

"Oh, come, Marsh! Don't you feel cut up about that; I didn't mean to make you mad; you mustn't hold that against me!"

"You come to my office to-morrow and get your money," said Langham, still with dignity. "I've been under a great strain getting that money, and now I'm done with you—"

Gilmore laughed.

"What are you laughing at?"

"You, you fool! But you aren't done with me; we'll be closer friends than ever after this. Just now you are too funny for me to take seriously. You go home and sleep off this drunk; that's my advice to you! I'd give a good deal to know where you have been and what sort of a fool you have been making of yourself since I saw you last!" added Gilmore.

"Don't you worry about me; I'm all right. What I want to say is, lend me your keys; I can't go home this way—lend me your keys and I'll go to your rooms and sleep it off."

"All right, Marsh; think you can get there?"

"Of course; I'm all right."

"And you'll go there if I give you my keys—you'll go nowhere else?"

"Of course I won't, Andy!"

"You won't stop to talk with any one?"

"Who'll I find to talk with at this time of the night?" laughed the drunken man derisively. "It's three o'clock! Say, Andy, who'll I find to talk to?"

"By God, I hope no one, you fool!" muttered Gilmore.

"Well, give me the keys, Andy. I'll go along and get to bed, and I want you to forget this conversation—"

"Oh, I'll forget it all right, Marsh—but you won't after you come to your senses!" he added under his breath.

"Give me the keys—thanks. Good night, Andy! I'll see you in the morning."

He reeled uncertainly down the path, cursing his treacherous footing as he went. At the gate he paused and waved an unsteady farewell to the gambler, who stood on the porch staring after him.



CHAPTER SEVEN

THE BEAUTY OF ELIZABETH

His interview with Evelyn Langham left North with a sense of moral nausea, yet he felt he had somehow failed in his comprehension of her, that she had not meant him to understand her as he had; that, after all, perhaps the significance he had given to her words was of his own imagining.

He waited in his room until she should have time to be well on her way home, then hurried down-stairs. He was to dine at the Herberts' at seven o'clock, and as their place was but scant two miles from town, he determined to walk. He crossed the Square, only stopping to speak with the little lamplighter, and twenty minutes later Mount Hope, in the cold breath of the storm, had dwindled to a huddle of faint ghostly lights on the hillside and in the valley.

The Herbert home, a showy country-place in a region of farms, merited a name; but no one except Mrs. Herbert, who in the first flush of possession determined so to dignify it, had ever made use of the name she had chosen after much deliberation. General Herbert himself called it simply the farm, while to the neighbors and the dwellers in Mount Hope it was known as the general's place, which perhaps sufficiently distinguished it; for its owner was still always spoken of as the general, though since the war he had been governor of his state.

Rather less than half a century before, Daniel Herbert, then a country urchin tending cattle on the hillside where now stood his turreted stone mansion, had decided that some day when he should be rich he would return and buy that hillside and the great reach of flat river-bottom that lay adjacent to it, and there build his home. His worldly goods at the time of this decision consisted of a pair of jeans trousers, a hickory shirt, and a battered straw hat. For years he had forgotten his boyish ambition. He had made his way in the world; he had won success in his profession, the law; he had won even greater distinction as a soldier in the Civil War; he had been a national figure in politics, and he had been governor of his state. And then had come the country-bred man's hunger for the soil. He had remembered that hillside where as a boy he had tended his father's herds.

He was not a rich man, but he had married a rich woman, and it was her money that bought the many acres and built the many-turreted mansion. Wishing, perhaps, to mark the impermanency of the life there and to give it a purely holiday aspect, Mrs. Herbert had christened the place Idle Hour; but the governor, beyond occasional participation in local politics, never again resumed those activities by which he had so distinguished himself. He wore top-boots and rode about the farm on an old gray horse, while his intimates were the neighboring farmers, with whom he talked crops and politics by the hour.

In pained surprise Mrs. Herbert, a woman of great ambition, had endured five years of this kind of life; with unspeakable bitterness of spirit she had seen the once potent name of Daniel Herbert disappear from the newspapers, and then she had died.

On her death the general became a rich and, in a way, a free man, for now he could, without the silent protest of his wife, recover the neglected lore of wood and field, and practise forgotten arts that had in his boyhood come under the elastic head of chores. Elizabeth, his daughter, had never shared her mother's ambitions. Perhaps because she had always had it she cared nothing for society. She was well content to ride about the farm with her father, whom she greatly admired, and at whose eccentricities she only smiled.

In this agreeable comradeship with his daughter, General Herbert had lived through the period of his bereavement with very tolerable comfort. He had rendered the dead the dead's due of regretful tenderness; but Elizabeth never asked him when he was going to make his reentry into politics; and she never reproached him with having wasted the very best years of his life in trying to make four hundred acres of scientifically farmed land show a profit, a feat he had not yet accomplished.

Quitting the highway, North turned in at two stone pillars that marked the entrance to Idle Hour and walked rapidly up the maple-lined driveway to the great arched vestibule that gave to the house the appearance of a Norman-French chateau.

Answering the summons of the bell, a maid ushered him into the long drawing-room, and into the presence of the general and his daughter. The former received North with a perceptible shade of reserve. He knew more about the young man than he would have cared to tell his daughter, since he believed it would be better for her to make her own discoveries where North was concerned. He had not opposed his frequent visits to Idle Hour, for he felt that if Elizabeth was interested in the young fellow opposition would only strengthen it. Glancing at North as he greeted Elizabeth, the general admitted that whatever he might be, he was presentable, indeed good-looking, handsome. Why hadn't he done something other than make a mess of his life! He wondered, too, wishing to be quite fair, if North had not been the subject of a good deal of unmerited censure, if, after all, his idleness had not been the worst thing about him. He hoped this might be true. Still he regretted that Elizabeth should have allowed their boy and girl friendship—they had known each other always—to grow into a closer intimacy.

In the minds of these two men there was absolute accord on one point. Either would have said that Elizabeth Herbert's beauty was a supreme endowment, and more nearly perfect than the beauty of any other woman. She was slender, not tall, but poised and graceful with a distinction of bearing that added to her inches. Her hair was burnished copper and her coloring the tint of warm ivory with the sunlight showing through. North gazed at her as though he would store in his memory the vision of her loveliness. Then they walked out to the dining-room.

The dinner was rather a somber feast. North felt the restraint of the general's presence; he sensed his disfavor; and with added bitterness he realized that this was his last night in Mount Hope, that the morrow would find him speeding on his way West. He had given up everything for nothing, and now that a purpose, a hope, a great love had come to him, he must go from this place, the town of his birth, where he had become a bankrupt in both purse and reputation.

It was a relief when they returned to the drawing-room. There the general excused himself, and North and Elizabeth were left alone. She seated herself before the open fire of blazing hickory logs, whose light, and that of the shaded lamps, filled the long room with a soft radiance. She had never seemed so desirable to North as now when he was about to leave her. He stood silent, leaning against the corner of the chimneypiece, looking down on all her springlike radiance. Usually he was neither preoccupied nor silent, but to-night he was both. The thought that he was seeing her for the last time—Ah, this was the price of all his folly! At length he spoke.

"I came to-night to say good-by, Elizabeth!"

She glanced up, startled.

"To say good-by?" she repeated.

He nodded gloomily.

"Do you mean that you are going to leave Mount Hope?" she asked slowly.

"Yes, to-night maybe."

Her glance no longer met his, but he was conscious that she had lost something of her serenity.

"Are you sorry, Elizabeth?" he ventured.

To pass mutely out of her life had suddenly seemed an impossibility, and his tenderness and yearning trembled in his voice. She answered obliquely, by asking:

"Must you go?"

"I want to get away from Mount Hope. I want to leave it all,—all but you, dear!" he said. "You haven't answered me, Elizabeth; will you care?"

"I am sorry," she said slowly, and the light in her gray-blue eyes darkened.

She heard the sigh that wasted itself on his lips.

"I am glad you can say that,—I wish you would look up!" he said wistfully.

"Are you going to-night?" she questioned.

"Yes, but I am coming back. I shan't find that you have forgotten me when I come, shall I, Elizabeth?"

She looked up quickly into his troubled face, and it was not the warm firelight that brought the rich color in a sudden flame to her cheeks.

"I shall not forget you."

There was a determined gentleness in her speech and manner that gave him courage.

"I haven't any right to talk to you in this way; I know I haven't, but—Oh, I want you, Elizabeth!" And all at once he was on his knees beside her, his arms about her. "Don't forget me, dear! I love you, I Love you—I want you—Oh, I want you for my wife!"

The girl looked into the passionate face upturned to hers, and then her head drooped. And so they remained long; his dark head resting in her arms; her fair face against it.

"Why do you go, John?" she asked at length, out of the rich content of their silence.

"I haven't any choice, dear heart; there isn't any place for me here. I have thought it all over, and I know I am doing the wise thing,—I am quite sure of this! I shall write you of everything that concerns me!" he added hastily, as he heard the tread of the general's slippered feet in the hall.

North released her hands as the general entered the room. Elizabeth sank back in her chair. Her father glanced sharply at them, and North turned toward him frankly.

"I am leaving on the midnight train, General, and I must say good-by; I have to get a few things together for my trip!"

General Herbert glanced again at Elizabeth, but her face was averted and he learned nothing from its expression.

"So you are going away! Well, North, I hope you will have a pleasant trip,—better let me send you into town?"

And he reached for the bell-rope. North shook his head.

"I'll walk, thank you," he said briefly.

In silence he turned to Elizabeth and held out his hand. For an instant she rested hers in it, a cold little hand that trembled; their eyes met in a brief glance of perfect understanding, and then North turned from her. The general followed him into the hall.

"It's stopped snowing, and you will have clear starlight for your walk home,—the wind's gone down, too!" he said, as he opened the hall door.

"Don't come any farther, General Herbert!" said North.

But the general followed him into the stone arched vestibule.

"It's a fine night for your walk,—but you're quite sure you don't want to be driven into town?"

"No, no,—good night." And North held out his hand.

"Good night."

North went down the carriageway, and Herbert reentered the house.

North kept to the beaten path for a little while, then left it and tramped out across the fields until he came to a strip of woodland that grew along a stony hillside. He followed this ridge back a short distance and presently emerged upon a sloping meadow that overhung a narrow ravine. Not two hundred yards distant loomed Idle Hour, somber and dark and massive. He found a stump on the edge of the woods and brushed the snow from it, then drawing his overcoat closely about him, he sat down and lit his pipe.

The windows of Idle Hour still showed their many lights. At his feet a thread-like stream, swollen by the recent rains, splashed and murmured ceaselessly. He sat there a long time silent and absorbed, watching the lights, until at last they vanished from the drawing-room and the library. Then other lights appeared behind curtained windows on the second floor. These in their turn were extinguished, and Idle Hour sank deeper into the shadows as the crescent moon slipped behind the horizon.

"God bless her!" North said aloud.

He knocked the ashes from his pipe, and retraced his steps to the drive. He had but turned from this into the public road when he heard the clatter of wheels and the beat of hoofs, and a rapidly driven team swung around a bend in the road in front of him. He stepped aside to let it pass, but the driver pulled up abreast of him with a loud command to his horses.

"Heard the news?" he asked, leaning out over the dash-board of his buggy.

"What news?" asked North.

"Oh, I guess you haven't heard!" said the stranger. "Well, old man McBride, the hardware merchant, is dead! Murdered!"

"Murdered!" cried North.

"Yes, sir,—murdered! They found him in his store this evening a little after six. No one knows who did it. Well, good night, I thought maybe you'd like to know. Awful, ain't it?"



CHAPTER EIGHT

A GAMBLER AT HOME

It was morning, and Mr. Gilmore sat by his cheerful open fire in that front room of his, where by night were supposed to flourish those games of chance which were such an offense to the "better element" in Mount Hope. Mr. Gilmore was hardly a person of unexceptional taste, though he had no suspicion of this fact, since he counted that room quite all that any gentleman's parlor should be.

It was a large room furnished in dark velvet and heavy walnut. The red velvet curtains at the windows, when drawn at night, permitted no ray of light to escape; the carpet was a gorgeous Brussels affair, the like of which both as to cost and enduring splendor was not to be found elsewhere on any floor in Mount Hope. Seated as he then was, Gilmore could look, if so disposed, at the reflection of his own dark but not unhandsome face in a massive gilt-framed mirror that reached from chimneypiece to ceiling; or, glancing about the room, his eyes could dwell with genuine artistic pleasure on numerous copies in crayon of French figure-studies; nor were the like of these to be found elsewhere in Mount Hope.

Gilmore had quitted the McBride cottage some three hours before, and in the interim had breakfasted well and napped abstemiously. Presently he must repair to the court-house, where, it had already been intimated, the coroner might wish to confer with him.

Marshall Langham he had not seen. He had expected to find him still in his rooms, but the lawyer had left the key under the mat at the door, presumably at an early hour. Gilmore wondered idly if Langham had not made a point of getting away before he himself should arrive; he rather thought so, and he smiled with cheerful malevolence at his own reflection in the mirror.

Here his reveries were broken in on by the awkward shuffling of heavy feet in the hallway, and then some one knocked loudly on his door. Gilmore glanced hastily about to assure himself that the tell-tale paraphernalia of his craft were nowhere visible, and that the room was all he liked to fancy it—the parlor of a gentleman with sufficient income and quiet taste.

"Come in," he called at last, without quitting his chair.

The door slowly opened and the crown of a battered cap first appeared, then a long face streaked with coal-dust and grime and further decorated about the chin by a violently red stubble of several days' growth. With so much of himself showing; the new-comer paused on the threshold in apparent doubt as to whether he would be permitted to enter, or ordered to withdraw.

"Come in, Joe, and shut the door!" said Gilmore.

At his bidding the shoulders and trunk, and lastly the legs of a slouching shambling man of forty-eight or fifty entered the room.

Closing the door Joe Montgomery slipped off one patched and ragged cloth mitten and removed his battered cap.

"Well, what the devil do you want?" demanded Gilmore sharply.

Joe, shuffling and shambling, edged toward the grate.

"Boss, I want to drop a word with you!" he said in a husky voice. His glance did not quite meet Gilmore's, but the moment Gilmore shifted his gaze, that moment Joe's small, bright blue eyes sought the gambler's.

Gilmore and Joe Montgomery were distantly related, and while the latter never presumed on the score of this remote connection, the gambler himself tacitly admitted it by the help he now and then extended him, for Montgomery's means of subsistence were at the best precarious. If he had been called on to do so, he would have described himself as a handy-man, since he lived by the doing of odd jobs. He cleaned carpets in the spring; he cut lawns in the summer; in the fall he carried coal into the cellars of Mount Hope, and in the winter he shoveled the snow off Mount Hope's pavements; and at all times and in all seasons, whether these industries flourished or languished, he drank.

He now established himself on Mr. Gilmore's hearth,—a necessity—for he bent his hulking body and stuck his curly red head well into the grate; then as he withdrew it, he passed the back of his hand across his discolored lip.

"Excuse me, boss, I had to!" he apologized.

In Mr. Gilmore's presence Joe inclined toward a humble decency, for he was vaguely aware that he was an unclean thing, and that only the mysterious bond of blood gave him this rich and powerful patron.

"Well, you old sot!" said Gilmore pleasantly. "You haven't drunk yourself to death since I saw you in McBride's last night?"

The handy-man gave him a wide toothless grin, and his bashful blue eyes shifted, shuttle-wise, in their sockets until he was able to survey in full the splendor of the apartment.

"Boss, you got a sure-enough well-dressed room; I never seen anything that could hold a candle to it,—it's a bird!" He stole a shy abashed glance at the pictures on the wall, but becoming aware that Gilmore was watching him, he dropped his eyes in some confusion. "I reckon' them female pictures cost a fortune!" he said.

"They cost enough!" rejoined Gilmore, and again Montgomery ventured a covert glance in the direction of one of the works of art.

"I reckon it was summer-time!" he hinted modestly.

Gilmore laughed.

"How would you like one of them?" he asked.

Montgomery gave him a swift glance of alarm.

"No, boss, I'm a respectable married man, and if I lugged one of them ladies home with me, my old woman wouldn't do a thing but raise hell! Boss, they're raw; yes, sir, that's it—they're raw!" Then fearing he had gone too far in an adverse criticism, he added, "Friends of yours, boss?"

"Not all of them!" said Gilmore, with lazy amusement.

"Catched unawares?" hinted Montgomery. But Gilmore changed the subject abruptly.

"Well, what did you come here for?" he demanded.

"I got a lot of things on my mind, boss! I been a-worryin' all morning and then I thinks of you. 'Mr. Gilmore's the man to go to,' I tells myself, and I quit my job and come here."

He stuck his head into the grate again, but this time without apology.

"I suppose you are in trouble?" said Gilmore, and his genial mood seemed to chill suddenly.

"You're right, boss, I'm in a heap of trouble!"

"Well, then, clear out of here!" said Gilmore.

"Hold on, boss, it ain't that kind of trouble" interposed the handy-man hastily.

"What do you want?"

"Advice."

Gilmore leaned back in his easy-chair and crossed his legs.

"Go on!" he ordered briefly.

"A handy-man like me doin' all kinds of jobs for all kinds of people is sure to see some curious things, ain't he, boss?"

"Well?"

"I'm here to tell you what I seen, boss; and every word of it will be God A'mighty's truth!"

"It had better be!" rejoined Gilmore quietly, but with significant emphasis.

"I don't want no better friend than you been to me," said Montgomery in a sudden burst of grateful candor. "You've paid two fines for me, and you done what you could for me that time I was sent up, when old man Murphy said he found me in his hen-house."

Gilmore nodded.

"I was outrageous put upon! The judge appointed that fellow Moxlow to defend me! Say, it was a hell of a defense he put up, and I had a friend who was willin' to swear he'd seen me in the alley back of Mike Lonigan's saloon cleaning spittoons when old man Murphy said I was in his chicken house; Moxlow said he wouldn't touch my case except on its merits, and the only merit it had was that friend, ready and willin' to swear to anything!" Montgomery shrugged his great slanting shoulders. "He's too damn perpendicular!"

"He is," agreed Gilmore. "But what's this got to do with what you saw?"

"Not a thing; but it makes me sweat blood whenever I think of the trick Moxlow served me,—it ain't as if I had no one but myself! I got a family, see? I can't afford to go to jail,—it ain't as if I was single!"

"Get back to your starting-point, Joe!" said Gilmore.

"Who do you think killed old man McBride, boss?"

"How should I know?"

"You ain't got any ideas about that?" asked Montgomery.

Gilmore shot him a swift glance.

"I don't know whether I have or not," he replied.

"I have, boss."

"You?" His tone betrayed neither eagerness nor interest.

"That's what fetches me here, boss!" Joe replied, sinking his voice to a whisper. "I got a damn good notion who killed old McBride; I could go out on the street and put my hand on the man who done it!"

"You mustn't come here with these pipe dreams of yours, Joe; you have been drunk and all this talk about the McBride murder's gone to your head!" retorted Gilmore contemptuously.

"I hope I may die if I ain't as sober as you this minute, boss!" returned the handy-man impressively.

"Well, what do you know—or think you know?" asked Gilmore with affected indifference.

"Boss, did I ever lie to you?" demanded Montgomery.

"If you did I never found you out."

"And why? You never had no chance to find me out; for the reason that I always tell you the almighty everlastin' truth!"

"Well?" prompted Mr. Gilmore.

"Boss," and again Montgomery dropped his voice to a confidential whisper, "boss, I seen a man climb over old man McBride's shed yesterday just before six. I seen him come up on top of the shed from the inside, look all around, slide down to the eaves and drop into the alley, and then streak off as if all hell was after him!"

Gilmore's features were under such admirable control that they betrayed nothing of what was passing in his mind.

"Stuff!" he ejaculated at last, disdainfully.

"You think I lie, boss?" cried Montgomery, in an intense whisper.

"You know best about that," said Gilmore quietly.

"He come so close to me I could feel his breath in my face! Boss, he was puffin' and pantin' and his breath burnt,—yes, sir, it burnt; and I heard him say, 'Oh, my God!' like that, 'Oh, my God!'"

"And where were you when this happened?" demanded Gilmore with sudden sternness.

Montgomery hesitated.

"What's that got to do with it, boss?"

"A whole lot; come, out with it. Where were you to see and hear all this?"

"I was in White's woodshed," said Montgomery rather sullenly.

"Oh, ho, you were up to your old tricks!"

"He'll never miss it; I couldn't freeze to death; there's a livin' comin' to me," said the handy-man doggedly.

"You'll probably have a try for it back of iron bars!" said Gilmore.

But it was plain that Montgomery did not enjoy Mr. Gilmore's humor.

"White's coal house is right acrost the alley from old McBride's shed. You can go look, boss, if you don't believe me, and there's a small door opening out on to the alley, where the coal is put in."

"All the same you should keep out of people's coal houses, or one of these days you'll bring off more than you bargained for; say a load of shot."

"Maybe you'd like to know who I seen come over that roof?" said the handy-man impatiently.

"How many people have you told this yarn to already?" asked Gilmore, who seemed more anxious to discredit the handy-man in his own eyes than anything else.

"Not a living soul, boss; I guess I know enough to hang a man—"

"Pooh!" said Gilmore.

"You don't believe me?"

"Yes, I'll believe that you were stealing White's coal."

"Leave me tell it to you just as it happened, boss," said Montgomery. "Then if you say I lie, I won't answer you back; we'll let it go at that."

Gilmore appeared to consider for a moment, his look of mingled indifference and contempt had quite passed away.

"I guess it sounds straight, Joe!" he said at length slowly.

"Why? Because it is straight, every damn word of it, boss."

And as if to give emphasis to his words the handy-man swung out a grimy fist and dropped it into an equally grimy palm.

"What did you do after that?" asked Gilmore.

"Not much. I laid low and presently lifted my sack of coal out and ducked around to Lonigan's saloon. I went in there by the back door and left my sack leanin' against the building. Mike wanted his mail and he give me a drink of whisky if I'd take his keys and go to the post-office for him; I'd just come into the Square when I run into Shrimp who was tellin' how old man McBride was murdered. I went into the store and found you there with Colonel Harbison, you remember, boss?" Gilmore nodded and Montgomery continued. "I hadn't a chance to tell you what I'd seen, and all night long I kept hearin' him say it!"

"Say what, Joe?"

"Say, 'Oh, my God!' like I told you, boss; I couldn't sleep for it,—I wonder if he slept!"

"Joe," said the gambler, "I'll tell you something that I have only told the sheriff. I was in Langham's office late yesterday and John North was there; he left to go to McBride's. Conklin's been looking for him this morning, but he can't find him, and no one seems to know what's become of him. Do you follow me?"

"What's North got to do with it, boss?"

"How do you know it wasn't North you saw in the alley?" urged Gilmore.

"It were not!" said Joe Montgomery positively.

"You saw the man's face?"

"As plain as I see yours!"

"And you know the man?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll tell you who you saw," said the gambler coolly; "it was Marshall Langham."

The handy-man swore a great oath.

"You've guessed it, boss! You've guessed it."

"It ain't a guess as it happens."

"Boss, do you mean to tell me you knew all along?" demanded Montgomery incredulously.

"Yes."

"But what about North?"

"That's his lookout, let him clear himself."

Joe, shambling and shuffling, took a turn about the room.

"Boss, if it was me that stood in his boots the halter would be as good as about my neck; they wouldn't give me no chance to clear myself,—they wouldn't let me! Them smart lawyers would twist and turn everything I said so that God A'mighty wouldn't know His own truth!"

"Well, you were in that alley, Joe; if you feel for him, I expect we could somehow shift it to you!" said Gilmore.

The handy-man slouched to the hearth again.

"None of that, boss!" he cried. "I've told you what took me there, so none of that!"

His voice shook with suppressed feeling, as he stood there scowling down on the gambler.

"Sit down, Joe!" said Mr. Gilmore, unruffled.

Reluctantly the handy-man sank into the chair indicated.

"Now you old sot," began the gambler, "you listen to me! I suppose if they could shift suspicion so that it would appear you had had something to do with the old man's murder, it would take Moxlow and the judge and any decent jury no time at all to hang you; for who would care a damn whether you were hanged or not! But you needn't worry, I'm going to manage this thing for you, I'm going to see that you don't get into trouble. Now, listen, you're to let well enough alone. North is already under suspicion apparently. All right, we'll help that suspicion along. If you have anything to tell, you'll say that the man who came over that shed looked like North!"

"Boss, I won't say a word about the shed or the alley!"

"Oh, yes you will, Joe! The man looked like North,—you remember, at the time you thought he looked like North, and you thought you recognized his voice when he spoke, and you thought it was North's voice. He had on a black derby hat and a dark brown overcoat; don't forget that, Joe, for we are going to furnish young Mr. North with a bunch of worries."

The handy-man looked at him doubtfully, sullenly.

"I don't want to hang him, he's always treated me white enough, though I never liked him to hurt."

Gilmore laughed unpleasantly.

"Oh, there's no chance of that, your evidence won't hang him, but it will give him a whole lot to think about; and Langham's a pretty decent fellow; if you treat him right, he'll keep you drunk for the rest of your days; you'll own him body and soul."

"A ignorant man like me couldn't go up against a sharp lawyer like Marsh Langham! Do you know what'd happen to me? I'll tell you; I'd get so damned well fixed I'd never look at daylight except through jail windows; that's the trick I'd serve myself, boss."

"I'll take that off your hands," said Gilmore.

"And what do you get out of it, boss?" inquired the astute Mr. Montgomery.

"You'll have to put your trust in my benevolence, Joe!" said the gambler. "But I am willing to admit I want to see North put where he'll have every inducement to attend strictly to his own business!"



CHAPTER NINE

THE STAR WITNESS

It was between nine and ten o'clock when Marshall Langham reached his office. He scarcely had time to remove his hat and overcoat when a policeman entered the room and handed him a note. It was a hasty scrawl from Moxlow who wished him to come at once to the court-house.

As Moxlow's messenger quitted the room Langham leaned against his desk with set lips and drawn face; this was but the beginning of the ordeal through which he must pass! Then slowly he resumed his hat and overcoat.

The prosecuting attorney's office was on the second floor of the court-house, at the back of the building, and its windows overlooked the court-house yard.

On the steps and in the long corridors, men stood about, discussing the murder. Langham pushed his way resolutely through these groups and mounted the stairs. Moxlow's door was locked, as he found when he tried to open it, but in response to his knock a bolt was drawn and a policeman swung open the door, closing it the instant Marshall had entered.

Langham glanced around. Doctor Taylor—the coroner—was seated before the desk; aside from this official Colonel Harbison, Andy Gilmore, Shrimplin, Moxlow, Mr. Allison, the mayor, Conklin, the sheriff, and two policemen were present.

"Thank you, that is all, Mr. Gilmore," the coroner had said as Langham entered the room.

He turned and motioned one of the policemen to place a chair for the prosecuting attorney beside his own at the desk.

"As you know, Mr. Moxlow," the coroner began, "these gentlemen, Mr. Shrimplin, Colonel Harbison and Mr. Gilmore, were the first to view the murdered man. Later I was summoned, and with the sheriff spent the greater part of the night in making an examination of the building. We found no clue. The murderer had gone without leaving any trace of his passing. It is probable he entered by the front door, which Mr. Shrimplin found open, and left by the side door, which was also open, but the crowd gathered so quickly both in the yard and in the street, that it has been useless to look for footprints in the freshly fallen snow. One point is quite clear, however, and that is the hour when the crime was committed. We can fix that almost to a certainty. The murderer did his work between half past five and six o'clock. Mr. Shrimplin has just informed us that the only person he saw on the Square, until he met Colonel Harbison, was John North, whom he encountered within a block of McBride's store and with whom he spoke. While Mr. Shrimplin stopped to speak with Mr. North the town bell rang the hour—six o'clock."

The coroner paused.

There was a moment's silence, then Marshall Langham made a half step forward. A sudden palsy had seized him, yet he was determined to speak; he felt that he must be heard, that he had something vital to say. An impulse he could not control compelled him to turn in the direction of Andy Gilmore, and for a brief instant his eyes fastened themselves on the gambler, who returned his gaze with a cynical smile, as though to say: "You haven't the nerve to do it." With the tip of his tongue Langham moistened his swollen lips. He was about to speak now, and Gilmore, losing his former air of bored indifference, leaned forward, eager to catch every word.

"I would like to say," he began in a tolerably steady voice, "that North left my office at half past four o'clock yesterday afternoon intending to see Mr. McBride; indeed, happening to glance from my window, I saw him enter the store. Before he left my office he had explained the business that was taking him to McBride's; we had discussed it at some length."

"What took him to McBride's?" demanded Doctor Taylor.

"He went there to raise money on some local gas company bonds which he owned. Mr. McBride had agreed to buy them from him. I was able to tell North that I knew McBride could let him have the money in spite of the fact that it was a holiday and the banks were closed."

"How did you happen to know that, Langham?" asked Moxlow.

"Earlier in the day one of my clients had placed in McBride's hand a much larger sum of money than North expected to receive from him."

"You told North that?" asked Moxlow eagerly.

"I did. Perhaps you are not aware that McBride and North were on friendly terms; for years it had been North's habit to go to Mr. McBride whenever he had a sudden need of money. This I know to be a fact."

He glanced about him and could see that what he had said was making its impression on his hearers.

"When did you see McBride, at what hour?" asked Moxlow.

"A little before two."

"Do you feel at liberty to state the sum paid by your client?"

"It was three thousand and fifty-seven dollars, all in cash."

"There are one or two more questions I should like to ask you," said Moxlow. "You saw the money paid into Mr. McBride's hands before two o'clock yesterday afternoon?"

"Yes."

"Do you know what disposition he made of the money?"

"No, I do not."

"I mean, did he put it in his safe—in his pocket—"

"He did neither in my presence, the bundle of bills was lying on his desk when I left."

"You were not interrupted while you were transacting this business, no customer happened into the store?" asked Moxlow.

"So far as I know, we three were absolutely alone in the building."

"Afterward, when North called at your office, you mentioned this transaction?"

"Yes."

"Do you know how many shares Mr. North expected to dispose of?"

"Five, I think."

Langham paused and glanced again in the direction of the gambler, but Gilmore seemed to have lost all interest in what was passing.

Moxlow turned to Conklin.

"You found no such sum as Mr. Langham mentions, either on the person of the dead man, or in the safe?"

"No, the safe doors were standing open; as far as I am able to judge, the valuable part of its contents had been removed," replied the sheriff.

"How about McBride himself?"

"We found nothing in his pockets."

"Of course, if he bought North's bonds, that would account for a part of the sum Mr. Langham has just told us of," said Moxlow. "But where are the bonds?" he added.

"They were not among McBride's papers, that's sure," said the sheriff.

"Probably they were taken also, though it's hardly conceivable that the murderer waited to sort over the papers in the safe. I tell you, gentlemen, his position was a ticklish one." It was the coroner who spoke.

"It would seem a very desirable thing to communicate with North," suggested Moxlow.

"I guess you are right; yes, I guess we had better try and find Mr. North," said the coroner. "Suppose you go after him, Mr. Conklin. Don't send—go yourself," he added.

Again Langham dragged himself forward; the coils of this hideous thing seemed to be tightening themselves about John North. Langham's face still bore traces of his recent debauch, and during the last few minutes a look of horror had slowly gathered in his bloodshot eyes. He now studiously avoided Gilmore's glance, though he was painfully aware of his presence. The gambler coolly puffed at a cigar as he leaned against the casing of the long window at Doctor Taylor's back; there was the faint shadow of a smile on his lips as he watched Langham furtively.

"I doubt if North will be found," said the latter. "I doubt if he is in Mount Hope," he continued haltingly.

"What?" It was Moxlow who spoke.

"This morning I received a brief communication from him; it was written late last night; he informed me that he should leave for the West on the Chicago express. He inclosed the keys to his rooms."

Marshall Langham glanced at Gilmore, who seemed deeply absorbed. The coroner fidgeted in his seat; dismay and unspeakable surprise were plainly stamped on Colonel Harbison's face; Moxlow appeared quite nonplussed by what his partner had last said.

"I was aware that he contemplated this trip West," said Langham quickly. "He had asked me to dispose of the contents of his rooms when he should be gone."

"Did he tell you where he was going, Marshall?" asked Moxlow.

Langham raised his bloodshot eyes.

"No; he seemed in some doubt as to his plans."

"For how long a time have you known of Mr. North's intention to leave Mount Hope?" asked Moxlow.

"Only since yesterday, but I have known for quite a while that he planned some radical move of this sort. I think he had grown rather tired of Mount Hope."

"Isn't it true that his money was about gone?" questioned Moxlow significantly.

"I know nothing of his private affairs," answered Langham hastily. "He has never seemed to lack money; he has always had it to spend freely."

"It would appear that Mr. North is our star witness; what do you think, gentlemen?" and Moxlow glanced from one to another of the little group that surrounded him.

"At any rate he is a most important witness," emphasized the coroner.

"North took the Chicago express as he had planned," said Gilmore quietly. "The bus driver for the United States Hotel, where I breakfasted, told me that he saw him at the depot last night."

"I think we'd better wire North's description to the Chicago police; I see no other way to reach him." As he spoke, Moxlow turned to the sheriff. "You get ready to start West, Mr. Conklin. And don't let there be any hitch about it, either."



CHAPTER TEN

HUSBAND AND WIFE

Marshall Langham paused on the court-house steps; he was shaking as with an ague. He passed a tremulous hand again and again across his eyes, as though to shut out something, a memory—a fantasy he wanted to forget; but he well knew that at no time could he forget. Gilmore, coming from the building, stepped to his side.

"Well, Marsh, what do you think?" he said.

"What do I think?" the lawyer, repeated dully.

"Doesn't it seem to you that Jack North has been rather unlucky in his movements?"

"Oh, they make me tired!" cried Langham, with sudden passion.

Gilmore stared at him, coldly critical. The lawyer moved away.

"Going to your office, Marsh?" the gambler asked.

"No, I'm going home," Langham said shortly, and went down the steps into the street.

Home—until he could pull up and get control of himself, that was the best place for him!

He turned into the Square, and from the Square into High Street, and ten minutes later paused before his own door. After a brief instant of irresolution he entered the house. Evelyn was probably down-town at that hour, on one of the many errands she was always making for herself.

Without removing his hat or overcoat he dropped into a chair before the library fire. A devastating weariness possessed him, but he knew he could not hide there in his home. To-day he might, to-morrow even, but the time would come when he must go out and face the world, must listen to the endless speculation concerning Mount Hope's one great sensation, the McBride murder. Five minutes passed while he sat lost in thought, then he quitted his chair and went to a small cabinet at the other side of the room, which he unlocked; from it he took a glass and a bottle. With these he returned to his place before the fire and poured himself a stiff drink.

"I was mad!" he said with quivering lips. "Mad!" he repeated, and again he passed his shaking hand across his eyes. Once more he filled his glass and emptied it, for the potent stuff gave him a certain kind of courage. Placing the bottle and glass on the table at his elbow, he resumed his seat.

The bottle was almost empty when, half an hour later, he heard the house door open and close. It was Evelyn. Presently she came into the room, still dressed as if for the street.

"Why, what's the matter, Marsh?" she asked in surprise.

"Matter? Nothing," he said shortly.

She glanced at the bottle and then at her husband.

"Aren't you well?" she demanded.

"I'm all right."

"I hope you aren't going to start that now!" and she nodded toward the bottle.

He made an impatient gesture.

"Marshall, I am going to speak to the judge; perhaps if he knew he could do or say something; I am not going to bear this burden alone any longer!"

"Oh, what's the use of beginning that; can't you see I'm done up?" he said petulantly.

"I don't wonder; the way you live is enough to do any one up, as you call it; it's intolerable!" she cried.

"What does it matter to you?"

"It makes a brute of you; it's killing you!"

"The sooner the better," he said.

"For you, perhaps; but what about me?"

"Don't you ever think of any one but yourself?" he sneered.

"Is that the way it impresses you?" she asked coldly.

She slipped into the chair opposite him and began slowly to draw off her gloves. Langham was silent for a minute or two; he gazed intently at her and by degrees the hard steely glitter faded from his heavy bloodshot eyes. Fascinated, his glance dwelt upon her; nothing of her fresh beauty was lost on him; the smooth curve of her soft white throat, the alluring charm of her warm sensuous lips, the tiny dimple that came and went when she smiled, the graceful pliant lines of her figure, the rare poise of her small head—his glance observed all. For better or for worse he loved her with whatever of the man there was in him; he might hate her in some sudden burst of fierce anger because of her shallowness, her greed, her utter selfishness; but he loved her always, he could never be wholly free from the spell her beauty had cast over him.



"Look here, Evelyn," he said at last. "What's the use of going on in this way, why can't we get back to some decent understanding?" He was hungry for tenderness from her; acute physical fear was holding him in its grip. He leaned back in his chair and found support for his head. "You're right," he went on, "I can't stand this racket much longer—this work and worry; we are living beyond our means; we'll have to slow up, get down to a more sane basis." The words came from his blue lips in jerky disjointed sentences. "What's the use, it's too much of a struggle! I do a thousand things I don't want to do, shady things in my practice, things no reputable lawyer should stoop to, and all to make a few dollars to throw away. I tell you, I am sick of it! Why can't we be as other people, reasonable and patient—that's the thing, to be patient, and just bide our time. We can't live like millionaires on my income, what's the use of trying—I tell you we are fools!"

"Are matters so desperate with us?" Evelyn asked. "And is it all my fault?"

"I can't do anything to pull up unless you help, me," Langham said.

"Well, are matters so desperate?" she repeated.

He did not answer her at once.

"Bad enough," he replied at length and was silent.

A sense of terrible loneliness swept over him; a loneliness peopled with shadows, in which he was the only living thing, but the shadows were infinitely more real than he himself. He had the brute instinct to hide, and the human instinct to share his fear. He poured himself a drink. Evelyn watched him with compressed lips as he drained the glass. He drew himself up out of the depths of his chair and began to tramp the floor; words leaped to his lips but he pressed them back; he was aware that only the most intangible barriers held between them; an impulse that grew in his throbbing brain seemed driving him forward to destroy these barriers; to stand before her as he was; to emerge from his mental solitude and claim her companionship. What was marriage made for, if not for this?

"Look here," he said, wheeling on her suddenly. "Do you still love me; do you still care as you once did?" He seized one of her hands in his.

"You hurt me, Marsh!" she said, drawing away from him.

He dropped her hand and with a smothered oath turned from her.

"You women don't know what love is!" he snarled. "Talk about a woman giving up; talk about her sacrifices—it's nothing to what a man does, where he loves!"

"What does he do that is so wonderful, Marsh?" she asked coldly.

He paused and regarded her with a wolfish glare.

"It's no damned anemic passion!" he burst out.

"Thank you," she mocked. "Really, Marsh, you are outdoing yourself!"

"You have never let me see into your heart,—never once!"

"Perhaps it's just as well I haven't; perhaps it is a forbearance for which you should be only grateful," she jeered.

"If you were the sort of woman I once thought you, I'd want to hide nothing from you; but a woman—she's secretive and petty, she always keeps her secrets; the million little things she won't tell, the little secrets that mean so much to her—and a man wastes his life in loving such a woman, and is bitter when he finds he's given all for nothing!"

His heavy tramping went on.

"Is that the way you feel about it?" she asked.

"Yes!" he cried. "I'm infinitely more lonely than when I married you! Look here; I came to you, and in six months' time you knew a thousand things you had no right to know, unless you, too, were willing to come as close! But I'm damned if I know the first thing about you—sometimes you are one thing, sometimes another. I never know where to find you!"

"And I am to blame that we are unhappy? Of course you live in a way to make any woman perfectly happy—you are never at fault there!"

"You never really loved me!"

"Didn't I?" she sighed with vague emotion.

"No."

"Then why did I marry you, Marsh?"

"Heaven knows—I don't!"

"Then why did you marry me?" She gave him a fleeting smile.

"Because I loved you—because you had crept into my heart with your pretty ways, your charm, and the fascination of you. I hadn't any thought but you; you seemed all of my life, and I was going to do such great things for you. By God, I was going to amount to something for your sake! I was going to make you a proud and happy woman, but you wouldn't have it! You never got past the trivial things; the annoyances, the need of money, the little self-denials, the little inconveniences; you stopped there and dragged me back when I wanted to go on; you wouldn't have it, you couldn't or wouldn't understand my hopes—my ambitions!"

"Marsh, I was only a girl!" she said.

He put out his hand toward the bottle.

"Don't, Marsh!" she entreated.

He turned away and fell to pacing the floor again.

"What happiness do we get out of life, what good? We go on from day to day living a life that is perfectly intolerable to us both; what's the use of it—I wonder we stand it!"

"I have sometimes wondered that, too," Evelyn half whispered.

"You had it in your power to make our life different, but you wouldn't take the trouble; and see where we have drifted; you don't trust me and I don't trust you—" She started. "What sort of a basis is that for a man and wife, for our life together?"

"It's what we—what you have made it!" she answered.

"No, it isn't; it's what you have made it! I tell you, you were bored to death; you wanted noise and world! Remember how I used to come home from the office every night, and begrudged the moments when any one called? I wanted only you; I talked over my cases with you, my hopes and my ambitions; but you mighty soon got sick of that—you yawned, you were sleepy, and you wanted to go about; you thought it was silly staying cooped up like that, and seeing no one, going nowhere! It was stupid for you, you were bored to death, you wanted noise and excitement, to spend money, to see and be seen,—as if that game was worth the candle in a God-forsaken hole of a place like Mount Hope! You killed my ambition then and there; I saw it was no use. You wanted the results, but you wouldn't pay the price in self-denial and patience, and so we rushed into debt and it's been a scramble ever since! I've begged and borrowed and cheated to keep afloat!"

"And I was the cause of it all?" she demanded with lazy scorn of him.

"There was a time when I stood a chance of doing something, but I've fooled my opportunities away!"

"What of the promises you made me when we were married—what about them?" she asked.

"You created conditions in which I could not keep them!" he said.

"I seem to have been wholly, at fault; at least from your point of view; but don't you suppose there is something I could say? Do you suppose I sit here silent because I am convinced that it is all my fault?"

He did not answer her at once but continued to pace the floor; at length he jerked out:

"No, I was at fault too. I've a nasty temper. I should have had more patience with you, Evelyn—but it was so hard to deny you anything you wanted that I could possibly give you—I'd have laid the whole world at your feet if I could!"

"I believe you would, Marsh—then!" she said.

"It's a pity you didn't understand me," he answered indifferently.

Nothing he could say led in the direction he would have had it lead, for he wanted her to realize her part in what had happened, to know that the burden beneath which he had gone down was in a measure the work of her hands. His instinct was as primitive as a child's fear of the dark; he must escape from the horror of his isolation; his secret was made doubly terrifying because he knew he dared not share it with any living creature. Yet his mind played strange tricks with him; he was ready to risk much that he might learn what part of the truth he could tell her; he was even ready to risk all in a dumb brute impulse to gather up the remnants of his strength of heart and brain, and be the center of some widespread catastrophe; to put his fear in her soul just as it was in his own. How was she ever to comprehend the horror that held him in its cruel grasp, the thousand subtle shades of thought and feeling that had led up to this thing, from the memory of which he revolted! He turned his bloodshot eyes upon her, something of the old light was there along with the new; he had indeed loved her, but the fruit of this love had been rotten. He was silent, and again his heavy tread resounded in the room as he dragged himself back and forth.

The force in him was stirring her. Sensation of any sort had always made its strong appeal to her. Without knowing what was passing in his mind she yet understood that it was some powerful emotion, and her pliant nerves responded. For the moment she forgot that she no longer loved him. She rose and went to his side.

"Is it all my fault, Marsh?" she said.

"What is your fault?" he asked, pausing.

"That we are so unhappy; am I the only one at fault there?"

He looked down into her face relentingly.

"I don't know—I swear I don't know!" he said hoarsely.

"What is it, Marsh—why are you so unhappy? Just because you love me? What an unkind thing to say!"

He turned to the table to pour himself a drink, but she caught his hand.

"For my sake, Marsh!" she entreated.

Again he looked down into her eyes.

"For my sake," she repeated softly.

"By God, I'll never touch another drop!" he said.

"Oh, you make me so happy!" she exclaimed.

He crushed her in his arms until his muscles were tense. She did not struggle for release, but abandoned herself without a word to the emotion of the moment. Her head thrown back, her cheeks pale, her full lips smiling, she gazed up into his face with eyes burning with sudden fire.

"How I love you!" he whispered.

She slipped her arms about his neck with a little cry of ecstasy.

"Oh, Marsh, I have been foolish, too, but this is the place for me—my place—against your very heart!" she said softly.

For a long minute Langham held her so, and then tortured by sudden memory he came back sharply to the actualities. His arms dropped from about her.

"What is it, dear?" she asked.

She was not yet ready to pass from the passion of that moment.

"It's too late—" he muttered brokenly.

"No, dear, it's not too late, we have only been a little foolish. Of course we can go back; of course we can begin all over, and we know now what to avoid; that was it, we didn't know before, we were ignorant of ourselves—of each other. Why, don't you see, we are only just beginning to live, dear—you must have faith!" and again her arms encircled him.

"But you don't know—" he stammered.

"Don't know what, dear?"

He dropped into his chair, and she sank on her knees at his side. A horrible black abyss into which he was falling, seemed to open at his feet. Her hands were the only ones that could draw him back and save him.

"Don't know what?" she repeated.

The mystery of his man's nature, with its mingled strength and weakness, was something she could not resist.

"Does it ever do any good to pray, I wonder?" he gasped.

"I wonder, too!" she echoed breathlessly.

He laughed.

"What rot I'm talking!" he said.

"What is it that is wrong, Marsh?"

"Nothing—nothing—I can't tell you—"

"You can tell me anything, I would always understand—always, dear. Prove to me that our love is everything; take me back into your confidence!"

"No," he gasped hoarsely. "I can't tell you—you'd hate me if I did; you'd never forget—you couldn't!"

She turned her eyes on him in breathless inquiry.

"I would—I promise you now! Marsh, I promise you, can't you believe—?"

He shook his head and gazed somberly into her eyes. She rested her cheek against the back of his hand where it lay on the arm of his chair. There was a long silence.

"But what is it, Marsh? What has happened?"

"Nothing's happened," he said at last. "I'm a bit worried, that's all, about myself—my debts—my extravagance; isn't that enough to upset me? Every one's crowding me!"

There was another long pause. Evelyn sighed softly; she felt that they were coming back too swiftly to the every-day concerns of life.

"I'm worried, too, about North!" Langham said presently.

"About North—what about North?"

"They are going to bring him back; didn't you know he had gone West? He went last night."

"But who is going to bring him back?"

"They want him as a witness in the McBride case. They—Moxlow, that is—seems to think he knows something that may be of importance. He's a crazy fool, with his notions!"

"But North—" Evelyn began.

"It may make a lot of trouble for him. They are going to bring him back as a witness, and unless he gives a pretty good account of himself, Moxlow's scheme is to try and hold him—"

"What do you mean by a good account of himself?"

"He'll, have to be able to tell just where he was between half past five and six o'clock last night; that's when the murder was committed, according to Taylor."

"Do you mean he's suspected, Marsh? But he couldn't have done it!" she cried.

"How do you know?" he asked quickly.

"Why, I was there—"

"Where?"

"With him—"

"Here—was he here?" A great load seemed lifted from him.

She was silent.

"He was here between five and six?" he repeated. He glanced at her sharply. "Why don't you answer me?"

"No, he was not here," she said slowly.

"Where was he, then?" he demanded. "What's the secret, anyhow?"

"Marsh, I'm going to tell you something," she said slowly. "Nothing shall stand between our perfect understanding, our perfect trust for the future. You know I have been none too happy for the last year—I don't reproach you—but we had gotten very far apart somehow. I've never been really bad—I've been your true and faithful wife, dear, always—always, but—you had made me very unhappy—" She felt him shiver. "And I am not a very wise or settled person—and we haven't any children to keep me steady—"

"Thank God!" the man muttered hoarsely under his breath.

"What do you say?" she asked.

"Nothing—go on; what is it you want to tell me?"

"Something—and then perhaps you will trust me more fully with the things that are oppressing you. I believe you love me, I believe it absolutely—" she paused.

The light died out of his eyes.

"Marsh," she began again. "Could you forgive me if you knew that I'd thought I cared for some one else? Could you, if I told you that for a moment I had the thought—the silly thought, that I cared for another man?" She was conscious that his hand had grown cold beneath her cheek. "It was just a foolish fancy, quite as innocent as it was foolish, dear; you left me so much alone, and I thought you really didn't care for me any more, and so—and so—"

"Go on!"

"Well, that is all, Marsh."

"All?"

"Yes, it went no further than that, just a silly fancy, and I'd known him all my life—"

"Of whom are you speaking?"

"Of John North—"

"Damn him!" he cried. "And so that's what brought him here—and you were with him last night!" He sprang to his feet, his face livid. "What do you take me for? Do you expect me to forgive you for that—"

"But Marsh, it was just a silly sentimental fancy! Oh, why did I tell you!"

"Yes, why did you tell me!" he stormed.

"Because I thought it would make it easier for you to confess to me—"

"Confess to you? I've nothing to confess—I've loved you honestly! Did you think I'd been carrying on some nasty sneaking intrigue with a friend's wife—did you think I was that sort of a fellow—the sort of a fellow North is? Do you take me for a common blackguard?"

"Marsh, don't! Marshall, please—for my sake—" and she clung to him, but he cast her off roughly.

"Keep away from me!" he said with sullen repression, but there was a murderous light in his eyes. "Don't touch me!" he warned.

"But say you forgive me!"

"Forgive you—" He laughed.

"Yes, forgive me—Marsh!"

"Forgive you—no, by God!"

He reached for the bottle.

"Not that—not that, Marsh; your promise only a moment ago—your promise, Marsh!"

But he poured himself half a tumbler of whisky and emptied it at a swallow.

"To hell with my promise!" he said, and strode from the room.



CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE FINGER OF SUSPICION

In Chicago Conklin found an angry young man at police headquarters, and the name of this young man was John North.