Part 18

“You surprise me!” said Tregarvon. “How did he know?”

Hartridge smiled amiably. “You are not wholly in Mr. Carfax’s confidence, it would seem. On the evening when you had the trouble with the valley farmers, he and Miss Richardia drove over to Westwood House in your car while we waited dinner for them here at the school. And the next morning, presto! you had your help.”

“You are guessing at this?”

“Not wholly. I have just been to the ‘Pocket’ to see Sill McNabb’s little daughter, who is sick--doctoring people being another of my small recreations. When I pressed him, Sill told me that the order to help you came from Judge Birrell, and that it was put upon the score of common neighborliness.”

“But the idea of helping me originated with the judge’s daughter,” Tregarvon put in soberly. “Why should she wish to return good for evil, Professor Hartridge?”

This time Hartridge’s smile was less amiable.

“Miss Richardia’s motives are not to be questioned by either of us, Mr. Tregarvon. But why should you call her interest in your affair returning good for evil?”

Tregarvon fought away from the edge of the pit into which his incorrigible ingenuousness was about to precipitate him.

“Oh, there isn’t any reason why she should consider me. Within the past hour I have had the best possible proof of that.”

Hartridge was silent for a moment. Then he said: “Mr. Tregarvon, I trust you are a gentleman in all that the much-misused word implies.”

“A man may hardly assert that of himself,” was the quick retort. “But why?”

“What you have just said implies a knowledge of a secret which has been most carefully guarded by Miss Richardia’s friends. I am not in her confidence, but I shall take it upon myself to say that whatever she does is right.”

“Who is the man?” Tregarvon asked bluntly.

“That is a question which Miss Richardia herself will doubtless answer at the proper time. Until she chooses to answer it, neither you nor I have any right to ask it.”

Tregarvon was turning away to continue his walk to Coalville. But at the leave-taking instant he faced about for a final word.

“Has it ever occurred to you, Professor Hartridge, that this is a hell of a world?” he asked gloomily.

“It has--many times. Won’t you stop and take pot-luck with us at the faculty table? No? Then I wish you a pleasant walk to the valley. Good night.”

XXV

The Mangling of Poictiers

Upon leaving Highmount, Tregarvon took the short-cut path down the mountain, and was only a few minutes late for the dinner for two served by Uncle William in the office dining-room at Coalville. Though he had plenty of thought material of his own to work upon, he could hardly help observing that Carfax ate abstractedly and was unusually silent. While the old negro was coming and going, the talk, what little there was of it, touched lightly upon the visit to Westwood House; but after the table was cleared Carfax got up to stand with his back to the open fire and the commonplaces were thrust aside.

“When is it to be?” he asked abruptly.

Tregarvon, who was still dallying with the black coffee, looked up with a crooked smile.

“When is what to be?” he asked.

“You know what I mean. We gave you your chance with Elizabeth--Miss Richardia and I. I hope you’re not going to tell me that you flunked it.”

The wry smile broke into a short laugh. “Oh, no; I didn’t flunk it. But it’s all over, Poictiers. I’m down and out.”

Carfax was trying to light a cigarette, but the match went black and he did not seem to realize that he had no fire.

“So your crime has found you out, has it?” he said, and the gentle tone seemed to accentuate rather than to soften the accusing assumption.

Tregarvon shook his head. “It was the other way about. Elizabeth came down here for the express purpose of asking my permission to fall in love with some other fellow--no names named.”

“_Wh-what!_”

“It is even so.”

“And--and you believed her? You didn’t have sense enough in that thick head of yours to know that she was merely trying to save your face?”

“Oh, no; you’re off on the wrong foot altogether. She didn’t get that letter I wrote her from Chattanooga, and she hadn’t given me a chance to tell her about Richardia. It was perfectly straight. She has simply found the other man--the right man--and she is honest enough to say so.”

“Do you mean to say that you didn’t tell her anything about your crookedness down here?”

“Oh, yes; we talked about that later on, though, again, there were no names named. She jumped to the conclusion that my ‘crookedness’, as you call it, was with one of the pretty undergraduates at Highmount, and I let it go at that. There was no use of making a bad matter worse by dragging Richardia’s name into it.”

Carfax took a pacing turn up and down the room, broke it to go and stand for a full minute staring out of a window at Uncle William’s cook-house, and then faced about to say, almost pleadingly: “You are _sure_ she meant it, Vance?”

“Of course she meant it. She wouldn’t tell me much about the other fellow, except to say that it was some one whom I knew, and who was too decent to try to break in while our engagement still held good.”

“And she--she really would give the--the other fellow a chance, if--if he had the nerve to ask for it?”

“It would be something better than ‘a chance’, I should say.”

Again Carfax took a pacing turn, coming back from it to drop into the chair opposite Tregarvon.

“Vance, _I_ am the ‘other fellow,’” he said softly. “You didn’t suspect it, did you? It began last summer when we were at Lake Placid together. I thought it was all on my side of the house; I didn’t dream that she wasn’t in love with you in the--in the way she ought to have been. But----”

The interruption was the entrance of a softly padding Uncle William, bearing a neatly tied packet of letters.

“Dey’s for dat lily-white missy fr’m de Norf what’s staying with Miss Dick up at de ol’ place,” he explained. “Mistoo Tait, he brung ’em over, an’ ast would you-all gemmen please to send ’em up when you had de chanst.”

Tregarvon had found the wry smile again by the time the old negro had shuffled away.

“I suppose I ought to congratulate you, Poictiers, but I can’t just now; I’m too new a widower. You’ll have to hug your happiness alone for the present. You’ll excuse me, won’t you? But, see here--how about this little side-play with Richardia? You’re not going to be allowed to play fast and loose with her--not while I’m here to prevent it.”

Carfax was absently fingering the packet of letters.

“Hold on, Vance,” he broke in, “you’ve been saying, all along, that this last attack of yours--with Richardia--was the real thing; that there was no sentiment between you and Elizabeth.”

“That’s all very well,” said the attacked one, in a fresh thrill of self-pityings; “but I’m like the little kiddie who dropped his candy to reach for another piece and lost both. Just the same, it seems that you are due to get yours, too; you’ve proposed to one woman when you were in love with another. What did Richardia say to you when you asked her to marry you? That’s what I want to know now.”

The cherubic smile which was waiting for its chance in Carfax’s eyes turned slowly into an impish grin.

“As nearly as I can recall it, she said: ‘Most certainly not. Why should I?’ Of course, you have guessed that I asked her merely to give you a chance to be decently loyal to Elizabeth. Miss Richardia took it as it was meant, and we have been very good friends, playing the game at odd moments for your benefit when you seemed to be needing a bit of help.”

“Oh, yes; you were very kind; you are all very kind. But that doesn’t mend any broken bridges for me now. Do you want me to tell you why Richardia turned you and your ridiculous fortune down so easily? I can, you know,” and with that he told the story of his chance surprising of Miss Birrell’s secret.

Carfax heard him through patiently and did not seem unduly surprised at the new development.

“That accounts for a good many things,” he commented. “I have had a feeling for some time that Miss Richardia had something on her mind--something not altogether joyous. Once or twice she has seemed on the verge of confiding in me. It’s a case of the obdurate father, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so; though Hartridge didn’t hint at anything of that sort.”

“So Hartridge knows, too, does he?”

“They all know at Highmount, I fancy. And that reminds me: I’ve done it again--talked too much, as usual. I met Hartridge after I had seen the pair of them together, and we spoke of the love affair. Hartridge said it was Richardia’s secret, and that her friends had been carefully keeping it for her. I shouldn’t have told you.”

“It is safe enough with me, as you ought to know: you will be the one to go and tell it all over the lot,” was the unkind retort. And then: “These letters of Elizabeth’s; she ought to have them, don’t you think? Do you suppose I might----?”

Tregarvon waved him away.

“The letters will be all the excuse you will need for making two calls in the same half-day. Take the car and go and do what you’re aching to do. After you have sung your little song, you may give Elizabeth my love and my blessing. No, don’t stop to talk any more; just make your little bow and vanish, before I get to thinking too pointedly of all the things you’ve done to me.”

Carfax took his cue promptly, and before Tregarvon had finished filling his pipe the roar of the yellow car’s motor told him that the golden youth had begun his flight to the mountain top. A short half-hour later, at a second filling of the pipe, the motor roar was repeated, and while the solitary smoker was wondering what had brought Carfax back so soon, the dining-room door opened to admit Wilmerding.

“You are responsible,” said the young superintendent, explaining the motor-car clamor. “You gave me the fever, flaunting that big yellow devil of yours in my face, and I was obliged to go and buy. Want to take a little spin in the new wagon to see how she handles?”

Tregarvon pushed a chair into the fire-warmed semicircle for his visitor and shook his head.

“Some other time--if you’ll be good enough to let the invitation hang over. To-night I’d rather sit here before the fire with you and have a little heart-to-heart talk, Wilmerding. Will you indulge me?”

“Sure,” was the ready response. “The joy-ride can wait. Can you find me another pipe?”

The pipe was found and filled, and at its lighting Tregarvon began without preface, giving the steel-cube facts as they had been developed by Tryon and linking them up with Thaxter’s apparently disinterested effort to promote the sale of the Ocoee to Consolidated Coal. “I’m telling you this, Wilmerding, because I know you’re not implicated,” he said in conclusion. “Also, because it seems no more than fair that you should know. I’m not specially vindictive, you understand. I suppose Thaxter and the men behind him are calling it nothing more than a bit of sharp practice on purely legitimate business lines.”

“That might do for the drill-dulling,” the superintendent conceded thoughtfully, “though I’d take pretty violent exceptions to that, if I were you. But doesn’t this one proved rascality imply the authorship of all the others?”

“No. Hartridge thinks not, and so do I. By a good, vigorous stretch of imagination you could call the drill-dulling something less than criminal. But that can’t be said of the attempt to wreck my motor-car, or of the risk taken of killing somebody by the smashing of the machinery and the planting of a dynamite cartridge in the engine-boiler.”

While the evening lengthened they discussed the various phases of the mystery in all their bearings, and in the end Wilmerding came around to the Tryon-Hartridge hypothesis, namely, that Thaxter, unscrupulous as he may have been in bribing Sawyer, was not the instigator of the more serious barbarities.

“Not that I’m excusing Thaxter or the New York office from which he has his instructions,” he added. “The ‘Big Business’ methods are all more or less crooked, and I’d give half of my salary if I didn’t have to work for an outfit that simply won’t fight in the open, as men ought to fight. Do you know, Tregarvon, I’ve been hoping against hope that you’d strike it, and strike it rich, on the Ocoee. In that case, I had made up my mind to ask you to hire me.”

“If I had a mine, you couldn’t ask anything that would please me better,” said Tregarvon, warming to this expression of friendly loyalty. “But the thing looks pretty hopeless just now. As I have said, Professor Hartridge knows more about the Ocoee than anybody else seems to--and he won’t tell all he knows. But he did assure me this afternoon that we are not going to find the big vein where we are drilling in the old burying-ground, and I have every reason to believe that he was telling the truth. That lets me out. Thaxter ’phoned me this morning that he had got the option extended until to-morrow midnight. I stand to lose a hundred thousand dollars if I take the time to move the drilling plant and try again.”

Wilmerding rose to go, returning the borrowed pipe to its place on the mantel.

“It’s a hard proposition,” he admitted. “I’m not going to advise you to throw up the chance to get the hundred thousand. But if I were in your shoes, I’d be just reckless enough to gamble another throw or two. In this talk we’ve had, you have convinced me of one thing, Tregarvon, and that is that the Ocoee has a workable vein somewhere in the property. Hartridge knows it, and Consolidated Coal knows it. And what they know, some other fellow can find out. You have twenty-four hours, and a little better, in which to think it over. I said I wouldn’t advise, but I shall: don’t close with Thaxter one minute before you are obliged to.”

Tregarvon got out of his chair to shake hands with the departing visitor.

“You’re a man, Wilmerding, and I wish I had your nerve. But a couple of things have happened to-day--things that I can’t talk about, even to so good a friend as you are--and they have knocked me out. At the end of the ends, I’m afraid I shall weaken and sell out to your hog of a trust. It was good of you to come down and let me unload on you. If anything new turns up I’ll get you on the wire. Good night, and good luck to you.”

After Wilmerding had gone, Tregarvon sat for another hour before the fire, smoking abstractedly and hardly noting the passing of time. In due course there was another flurry of gas-engine noises, and when the clamor died away, Carfax came in to fling himself into the chair where Wilmerding had been sitting.

Tregarvon broke the silence morosely.

“Well? You are not measuring up very strikingly with the commonly accepted idea of the happy lover. What’s the latest?”

Carfax had taken a cork-tipped cigarette from his case and was absently trying to set fire to the wrong end of it.

“Vance,” he said, in his gentlest tone, “you deserve to be murdered in cold blood. You told me that Elizabeth hadn’t gotten that frenzied letter you wrote her the day you were in Chattanooga. She hadn’t, but it was merely delayed; it was in that lot of forwarded mail that I took up to-night, and I--_I_ gave it to her!”

“So that’s the latest, is it? Where does the tragedy come in?”

“Don’t say another word or I shall explode! You have probably forgotten that you wrote her that I was as good as engaged to Richardia Birrell--it would be quite like you to forget. She excused herself to go and read her letters, and when she came back I knew that the heavens had fallen. Oh, no; there wasn’t any scene; she just simply wouldn’t give me a chance to get a word in edgewise, though I tried for a solid hour to make the chance. I’m ruined for life--and you, with your nimble little pen and your neat facility for telling all you know, and then some, _you_ had to be the one to mangle me!”

XXVI

Tryon’s News

Tregarvon awoke on the Monday morning with the feeling of the putative bankrupt who is facing his final day of grace. Before midnight the bargain-and-sale decision must be made; and he knew perfectly well that there would be no chance in the short interval which still remained of adding to the facts as they stood. Nevertheless, after Carfax had disappeared, walking, in the direction of Hesterville, Tregarvon plunged into the routine, entering into a wire correspondence with the Chattanooga machinery firm and trying to extort a promise that the needed valve and steam-pipe should be shipped without fail by the afternoon train.

Since Carfax did not put in an appearance for the noon meal, Tregarvon ate alone. While he was at table Tryon came in to report. Early in the morning the man Sawyer had turned up at the drilling ground with a one-horse wagon and had taken his belongings, including the working-coat, and the tool-box, containing among other things the reserve supply of steel cubes. Tryon was of the opinion that the drill boss was preparing to vanish, and suggested the taking of preventive measures. Though Sawyer would doubtless be a most unwilling witness, it might be needful to make sure that he could be found when wanted.

Tregarvon concurred mechanically, telling the foreman to spread an unofficial drag-net for Sawyer, and agreeing to swear out a warrant for the man’s arrest if he should attempt to run away. Beyond this, he sent one of the laborers up to the drilling-stand to give Rucker a chance to sleep; and, later in the afternoon, sent word to Tryon’s house directing the foreman to share the coming night-watch with the mechanician; all this also as a matter of routine, since, with the suspension of working operations, there had been no threats of further aggressions.

Just before the evening meal Carfax returned abstracted and silent, and saying nothing as to the manner in which he had spent the day. Immediately after dinner he asked Tregarvon if he might have the motor-car.

“Going up to Westwood House to try again?” queried the motor-car’s owner, not too sympathetically.

“I’m no good to you here,” was the non-committal rejoinder; and a little later Tregarvon found himself facing the approaching crisis alone and still undecided.

Thaxter had telephoned during the afternoon, calling attention once more to the terms of the offer to purchase. The message had taken the tone of a friendly warning. There was no hope of securing further delay, but the bookkeeper would give Tregarvon the benefit of all the time that remained. He would stay in his Whitlow office, or be within call, up to midnight, and he hoped that Tregarvon would be sensible and remember the old saw about the bird in the hand.

Tregarvon was remembering the canny proverb--and a good many other things--when he lighted his after-dinner pipe. Throughout the entire day he had been wavering and postponing the moment of action. One hundred thousand dollars, judiciously invested, would provide an income for his mother and sister, which, however far it might fall short of the former Tregarvon lavishnesses, would still place them securely beyond the hazard of want. On the other hand, a certain innate obstinacy, grown now to a passion which threatened to drive cool-blood reason to the wall, refused to yield.

Apart from this, there was a question of pure ethics to be considered. Quite early in the attempt to develop the Ocoee he had secretly determined, if his efforts should prove successful, to reorganize the company, taking in those who had suffered loss; in other words, to make restitution to Parker’s victims. But if the property should be sold to the trust there was an end of the generous intention, and the nail of injustice driven by Parker would be irrevocably clinched.

These were some of the perplexities, but there was another which also demanded a hearing. Carfax had been most generous and loyal, spending not only his money but himself. But now the conditions were changed--or changing. Carfax had another interest, suddenly grown imperative. Would it not be most unfair to drag him still deeper into the discouraging fight, allowing him to spend more money which might never be repaid?

At this point in the reflective probings Tregarvon began to argue that he must see and talk with Carfax again before he could decide finally and definitely; and he had no sooner reached this conclusion, and was casting about for the means to translate it into action, when Wilmerding appeared--a veritable god-in-the-machine, since he was driving his new car.

“Thaxter was telling me that you’d most likely be making him a business call this evening, and I thought I’d drive over and take you back in my car,” said the newly made motor enthusiast. “If I’m butting in, don’t scruple to chase me away.”

Tregarvon was already taking his driving-coat from its closet in the fireplace corner. “You have come precisely in the nick of time,” he returned. “Carfax has taken my car to drive to Westwood House, and I must have a few minutes’ talk with him before I fight the final round with Thaxter. Will your car climb the big hill?”

“If it won’t, I’ll scrap it and buy another,” laughed the Pittsburgher; and five minutes later the new, high-powered roadster was storming up the Pisgah grades.

Eight minutes was the time to the Highmount gates, and Tregarvon called it a beat, though he had never timed his own car over the same distance. Eight other minutes covered the cross-mountain run to the western brow; and it was not until Wilmerding had tooled the roadster up the Westwood House driveway and was parking it beside the yellow touring-car that Tregarvon began to wonder if, with Elizabeth as her guest, Richardia would not be breaking her school routine by spending her evenings at home. In that case ... but it was now too late to retreat, and, with Wilmerding at his elbow, he ran up the steps to set the old-fashioned knocker of the great door clanging its drumbeat through the echoing interiors.

When Aunt Phyllis, the solemn-faced old negress who was the sole survivor of the once numerous household retinue, opened the drawing-room doors for the two callers, the judge’s daughter was at the piano, the judge was listening luxuriously in a deep, calico-covered armchair, and Carfax was sitting with Miss Wardwell in a window-seat at the farther end of the room.

Wilmerding made his own and Tregarvon’s apologies when the judge got upon his feet to welcome the newcomers.

“We were taking a spin in my new car,” he explained, tactfully leaving Tregarvon’s errand unmentioned. “Of course, we couldn’t pass your hospitable door, Judge Birrell.”

“No, suh; most suttainly you couldn’t,” was the ready response. “The do-ahs of old Westwood House may creak a little on thei-uh hinges, suh, but they still swing wide enough to let the guest enter at his pleas-yuh. Find yo-uh places, gentlemen, if you please; my daughtuh is giving us a little music.”

Miss Wardwell had risen, with Carfax backgrounding her because he was obliged to, and Tregarvon introduced Wilmerding as a fellow Pennsylvanian from the Pittsburgh end of the State. Elizabeth was pleasantly gracious to the young superintendent of coal mines, seeming to welcome him as in some sort a saver of situations; at least, so it appeared to Tregarvon. In the readjustment the judge sank back into the depths of his armchair, and Carfax surrendered his place in the window-seat to Wilmerding and wandered to another window to stand with his back to the room and his hands in his pockets. This was Tregarvon’s opportunity to say the needed word to the golden youth, but at its offering a sudden passionate impulse seized him and he crossed quickly to the piano alcove. “I see you have my nocturne,” he whispered, bending over the pianist and indicating the Chopin on the piano-desk; “please play it for me.”