Part 16

They lifted some bulky object, apparently a trunk, up to the balcony, She lacked the courage to stay and meet them, and she ran softly through to the walk, but there she wavered again. It flashed over her that if this were not Philip it might mean some peril to the mills; something that Forrest should know about. She went back and concealed herself behind the bar. It was very dark there, and she dropped to her knees, creeping under and drawing her skirts close.

The men brought their burden in, walking with the crunching sound made by rubber boots. They came behind the bar to the tap-room door and set the chest down, while one felt in his pocket for a key, and groping, found the lock. It seemed, in that strained silence, they must hear the thumping of her heart. They went in and left the chest and came out directly, closing and relocking the door. But as the key was withdrawn it fell with a muffled clink to the floor. She knew that it rested partly on the edge of her skirt but she dared not stir. She remained crouching, on her knees, another breathless interminable moment, then one said impatiently, "I've left my match-safe on board."

She knew that quick, incautious voice, and yet she could not master her unreasoning terror. It was Philip, but Philip shrouded in mystery; and the Philip she had known, with all his faults, had been open, above concealment, clear as day.

"Hush, you don't want any matches here," the other answered softly, and he dropped to his knees, feeling the floor. "Never mind," he said, rising, "Smith has the duplicate. Come, we must get away."

Louise waited, listening, until the tender pushed off, then she took the key and rose from her cramped position. She walked unsteadily around the bar and stopped, supporting herself on it for a moment. She was facing the dim square of light that marked the rear entrance, and she saw the mast of the little vessel rising tall and spectral through the gloom. Then presently her jib unfolded, her mainsail ran up, and she stood away and like a phantom dissolved in the smoke.

Louise turned and walked to the front door and on down towards her gate. Her fingers locked and unlocked over the key. "It was Philip," she told herself. "He comes here to the mills, secretly, at night, where he is master, and puts something in hiding. And I--I dared not speak to him. I crept like a coward--out of sight. I had done nothing--wrong--and yet I was--afraid."

Little Silas was waiting with Mason at the gate. She stopped in the light of the slab-fire to admire the fine lines of the finished boat. The old sailor stumped away radiant, and she went in with the child and lighted the swinging lamp and set the crimson shade. She drew the blinds and seated herself in the low wicker chair by the open fire to give the boy his hour. But afterwards, when he had been tucked snugly in his bed and she came back to the room, she took the key from her pocket and studied it, turning it slowly in her hands, as though she expected to find in it some difference from other keys; some clue to that mystery in the tap-room. There was a lurking dread in her eyes; lines settled at the corners of her sweet mouth. "The other man was Mr. Stratton," she said at last. "And some one else has the duplicate. Oh, I don't understand. I don't understand."

She returned the key to her pocket and went over to the piano. But she played mechanically, in fragments. Why had the tap-room been fitted with a strong lock? What was this terrible thing Philip had brought ashore? Awful crimes she had read of in newspapers flashed through her mind. What did this chest contain? She rose and began to walk the floor.

Suddenly the great silence that hung over the mills at night was broken by a hoarse whistle. The color went from her lips. Her body rocked slowly; she stood locking and unlocking her slender hands. The echo died along the bluff. She drew a great breath. "Why," she said, and laughed mirthlessly, "it is only one of the tugs; the _Tyee_ probably, coming in for wood or water."

But her hand stole to her pocket and closed over the key. She went to the front door and stood alert, listening, on the piazza, straining her eyes to define the lines of the steamer which was making her landing in the mingled smoke and fog. "Of course it's one of the tugs," she repeated, and walked the length of the porch, hurriedly, and halted, again listening.

The few men who had lingered near the slab-fire commenced to go down to the dock. She watched their figures grow dimmer, until they were only moving shadows in the thick atmosphere. The moon, rising above the lower, heavier strata, began to show a crimson run. Then, after a while, she heard Forrest's step on the walk. She went to the steps to meet him. She saw that two men waited a few yards behind him at the branch walk.

He followed her into the hall, and pushing the door to, stood with his hand on the knob. "The revenue cutter is here," he said. "The inspectors think they have located dope. They are coming in here, now, to go through the house." He paused, looking down into her white face. "I tried my best to prevent it," he added, "but they will do it very quietly. One of them is my friend Bates. You have nothing to fear."

But the terror grew in her eyes. She made an effort to speak, but the words failed her. She shaped her lips again. It was hardly more than a whisper. "What did you say they were looking for?"

"Opium. It generally is opium, and of course it's just a matter of form to come in here. A man is detailed to go through the mills and he makes a clean sweep of every building."

She caught the sound of the clicking gate. "Paul," she said, "make some excuse for me. Do it. Stay yourself, and light them through the rooms. Delay them if you can."

She turned and ran through the hall, and pausing to snatch up Mason's candle and matches at the back door, ran out around the house to the walk, in the moment Forrest admitted the officers.

It did not seem strange to Forrest that she had wished to avoid these men; he, himself, had felt the humiliation of their visit, for, though it was not remarkable that suspicion should have fallen on any of that rough Freeport crew, it was carrying the matter pretty far to include Mrs. Kingsley's home. He had asked the inspectors to exempt it, but Bates had replied, "I'm sorry, but the fact is, Forrest, that's the place I'm detailed specially to search." And what had she meant by "Delay them if you can?"

He took a lamp and lighted the officers through the rooms. Little Silas wakened and sat up in his bed, rubbing his eyes. He saw these men open his mother's bureau, drawer after drawer, and thrust their hands through her things, and he turned to Forrest for explanation. But the young man stood back, waiting in silence, with frowning brows.

There was no one on the walk when Louise hurried to the ruin. The fog and smoke had become very dense along the front of the bluff, but the moonlight filtered through enough to show objects, with the indistinctness of wet nights. The walls of the hotel loomed out of the pall, lonesomely. The floor complained at her tread. She went quickly behind the bar, and drawing the key from her pocket, found the lock. Inside the tap-room she lighted the candle. The floor was strewn with sand, dust, pebbles and bits of broken board. The tide still swashed under the worm-eaten planks; they shook at her step.

She put the candle down and tried to move the chest. It yielded slowly to her straining effort. Her first impulse had been to drag it through to the rear balcony and push it over into the sea, but she had not considered its weight. She locked the door and stood briefly scanning the floor. The short, uneven strips were rotting about the old nail-heads, which in places had worked up from the boards. There were widening cracks where ends joined. She knelt down and tried to start some of these rusty nails, but they were firmer than they looked. She moved from one to another in growing haste, still on her knees, and tugged at the stubborn iron with her tender hands. The jagged roughness tore her fingers, imbedding splinters at every wrench. She reached a looser nail. Her renewed effort forced the wood around it, and she began to use it as a claw, prying and digging faster and faster, working out the next. Presently she was able to lift this plank, and she used it as a lever under the second, bearing gradually with increasing weight. It gave without breaking and she laid it aside while she raised a third strip. There was an increased rush of air. The flickering candle-flame was snuffed out. Still the light from the high window showed the chest, and she dragged it to the aperture. It fell slanting, and caught in the flooring. At the same instant some one outside tried the tap-room door.

She grasped the chest with the strength of desperation. It slowly righted and went through. The tide closed over it with a deeper swash.

Again she heard that cautious noise. Some one was trying to force a key in the lock. It was obstructed by the one she had left there, and the attempt was followed by a muttered curse. She laid the planks back in their order, and brushing the sand and pebbles hastily over them, rose, panting, and faced the door. There was no further disturbance, but the room suddenly darkened. She turned, lifting her eyes to the high window, and saw against the light the head of a man. It appeared briefly and moved down, but she caught the brutish profile. It was the face that had once alarmed her, peering into her room out of the night.

She threw the door open, and relocking it from the outside, ran swiftly through the bar-room and down the walk. Presently she glanced back fearfully, but the man had not followed, and she paused to hurl the key and the candle far out in the tide.

As she approached her gate she saw that Forrest was waiting at the foot of the piazza steps, while the inspectors came along the side of the house from the rear. They moved slowly, prodding the sawdust and planking that built up the yard, and she hoped to gain the porch before they came that far. But they met her while she was still on the walk. Bates swept her with his keen glance, but the lantern, which the other man was adjusting, flashed that moment full in his face, and, blinded, he passed without stopping her, going in the direction of the ruin.

Forrest saw her and stood holding the gate. The slab-fire suddenly burst into brighter flame. It showed him clearly the stains of earth and brine upon her gown; the grime of dust and moisture on her worn face. She raised her hand to ward off his look, and her sleeve, rent to the elbow, fell back from her beautiful forearm, baring a long deep, bleeding hurt, ploughed there by the brass-bound end of the falling chest. "Louise, Louise," he said. "What is it? Tell me."

She pushed him aside and went up the steps.

"Trust me," he said. "Let me help you."

"No," she answered, "No. Don't ask me." Then she turned and looked down at him, and through the anguish in her eyes he saw the old heart-breaking appeal. "I--I did it--for--little Silas." Her voice broke in a great tearless sob. She went in and closed the door.

After a moment Forrest turned and followed the officers around to the ruin. As he approached he heard the sound of blows. What wall had they found to require such battering? He was there in time to see the hinges of the old tap-room door wrenched out of the soft wood. It fell inward, starting a cloud of dust from the rotting floor. Bates stepped on it, and flashed his lantern over the interior. His keen eyes swept the empty place and came back to meet the glance of the other inspector. He laughed. "Well, Bates," he said, "I guess we're fooled."

Bates's eyes moved to the fallen door. "This lock was put on this room for a purpose," he said. "And the _Phantom_ could land almost under these walls at high tide. She may be stumbling around out there now, feeling her way in through the smoke."

"The _Phantom_?" Forrest started. He leaned an instant on the bar behind him, then he pulled himself erect and stood staring into the empty tap-room. The lantern shining in his face showed it hard and gray with the deepening furrow cleaving his brows. "The _Phantom_ was here," he told himself. "The stuff was left in there--and _she_--knew it. She concealed it, moved it, somehow, while those men were at the house."

Bates turned and looked at him. "I suppose, Forrest," he said, "you can't account for this lock? You could hardly think of using this old ruin for storage purposes."

"No, no." His voice rang. He met the inspector's look clearly, with his quick, upward fling of the head. "I ought to know all about it, but I never saw it before. My work kept me in the other direction, at the mills."

"Of course," said Bates slowly, "of course, as I thought. I've simply got to patrol this beach, to-night, and wait for daylight to pick up a clue."

Forrest walked with the officers back towards the cutter. "I should have known about that lock," he told himself. "I should have found out why that horse was up there on the bluff that day. I should have learned what brought Stratton here alone. A little investigation would have shown how things were going. I might have kept Philip out of the scheme; brought things to a climax in time."

When the trio made the turn in the bluff that shut them off from a view of the ruin, Smith swung himself down from the rear balcony to the rim of beach which the ebbing tide had bared. He groped under the stringers and found a dark lantern, which he lighted and held beneath the building. It showed the top of the chest above the water, and he pushed along between the wall and the bluff to the side of the tap-room, and dipped under the floor. Presently he emerged, dragging the chest. He stooped and lifted, worked it on to his shoulder, and went splashing knee-deep and waist-deep in hollows, around to the western exposure of the headland. When it seemed accessible he used his lantern again and found the path. A short distance up he wormed himself, crouching, through a tangle of hazel and salal and reached a little spur flanked by an old cedar snag.

He put his burden down, and by the light of his lantern took two pairs of saddle-bags from the hollow heart of the trunk, and filled them with the contents of the chest. What remained he put into a coarse sack. Then he picked up the empty chest and ran back a pace or two and hurled it out into the tide. He waited, listening, but he heard only the rush and ebb of the sea, and he returned to the cedar, and taking the weighted bags on his shoulders, pushed on up to the summit.

He stopped there, gathering breath. The ledge where he stood seemed to run shelf wise along an abyss. The mingled fog and smoke gave immensity to the distance below. He bent his head, listening again, and caught faintly the voice of the sea, nothing more. Then suddenly out of the night behind him there came a gentle nicker. His big lips broke in a leer. He ran, groping along the ridge trail to his horse.

He threw the bags across his saddle and stopped to fold the sack inside his blanket, which he carried rolled at the crupper. Then he moved away up the ridge, running afoot with the horse. Once he swung himself up behind the load for a brief interval, while he gathered wind, but he was down again directly and slipping over the ground with the same ease.

Finally he halted. Out of the stillness he heard the sound of hoofs crossing a bridge. He fell to his knees an instant with his ear to the ground, and when he rose his lips again broke in their horrible leer. He moved on to a point where the trail cut a thoroughfare, and, presently, Stratton joined him. He took one pair of the saddlebags with him on the chestnut, and Smith mounted and they rode on together in the direction of the Nisqually.

*CHAPTER XXIII*

*"AS LONG AS WE TWO LIVE"*

Forrest stood on the upper landing of the mills. It was hardly midday and the air was charged with the singing and buzzing of saws and the rumble of the tramway. The town across the harbor was hidden in the thick pall, and the sun hung overhead a blood-red ball. Ashes and cinders fell everywhere; one breathed, tasted smoke.

The cutter, which had steamed over to the town during the night, had returned and was lying at the lower wharf, and Forrest was watching Bates. He had stayed to patrol the mills but had gone aboard when the steamer arrived, and had now come over the gangway and was walking up from the dock. Presently he mounted the stairs to the landing, but the manager did not turn, and he came over and stood by him, looking off into the smoke. "Of course, Forrest," he said at last, "you think a lot of the Judge. You are under obligations to him."

"I think a great deal of him, yes." Forrest gave the inspector a level look. "He is one of the best friends I ever had; but 'obligations' is hardly the word." He paused, looking off again into the smoke, then said, "Judge Kingsley is able to meet and brave through--what he must. It's Kingsley's wife I've got to think of. You don't know her, Bates." He paused, steadying his voice. "She has the old, rigorous New England sense of duty; the blood and principles of generations of Puritans are condensed in her. And yet she is so gentle, so sweet--but you can't understand without seeing her."

"I see," said Bates slowly, "I see. But, Forrest, suppose Kingsley is left out of this, could you put us on Stratton's track?"

Forrest swung around. "You ought to know, Bates, I'm not that sort of a man. And she--isn't that kind of a woman. She would wring the misery out of a thing like this, as no other woman would, and suffer the shame of it all her life,--but the expiation would mean something to her. She could stand the disgrace better, when it came to it, than covered guilt."

"I understand all that, Forrest,"--Bates lifted his hand with a sweeping gesture that dismissed that side of the question,--"but it's this way: the _Phantom_ was at her moorings over there at Seattle, when the cutter ran across last night. The captain boarded her immediately, and found Kingsley sleeping like a kid in his cabin below. Stratton had come up from Victoria with him, yes, but he had gone ashore. He couldn't tell just where he was at that time, but he usually put up at the Arlington. And, yes, they had run pretty close to Foulweather Bluff, just as we saw, and he was sorry about the matter of the headlight,--the glass had smashed in and he hadn't the chance to rig another,--but he was ready if they had come to collect the fine. And of course he had heard the cutter's salute, but it was too great a risk to bring the _Phantom_ around in the smoke; we had just come mighty near a collision. Then, when the captain told him he would have to make a thorough search of the yacht, he sat coolly advising him where to look. Hadn't he better cut up the cushions? He never had been certain what was inside. And there was a place on the port side that had always sounded a little hollow. They would find a hatchet in that locker if they wanted to rip off a few boards. In short, Forrest, there was absolutely nothing to show, beyond the fact that the _Phantom_ brought over our man. But, whatever Kingsley knows, or doesn't know, I must get on Stratton's track right away. That thoroughbred which he usually keeps in the Arlington stables when he is in town is gone; and that's about the only clue I have to work on."

"Then," said Forrest, with another level look, "if I were you I would go up to the top of this bluff and look around."

Bates started. A sudden understanding leaped in his face.

"And," continued Forrest, "if I happened to miss my trail anywhere up the ridge, I think I would shape a course straight through to a shooting-box he owns, up the Nisqually."

"Thank you for that, Forrest," Bates grasped his hand warmly, "thank you. When you went into the milling business the Government lost the chance of a mighty good man."

He turned with this and ran lightly down the stairs. A moment later the noon whistle sounded and the workmen began to come out on the landing. Forrest stood waiting while Bates hurried back to the cutter. A small vessel moved out from the shrouded city front, her set jib showing lighter in the dense grayness, and like a spectre drifted towards the mills. But Forrest saw her absently. He was thinking that he must go over to the little dining-room. Louise had not met him there at the usual breakfast hour, but she would hardly miss the midday meal. Young Silas would make it necessary for her to come. And he must sit there, passively, as though nothing had occurred, while she was in such desperate straits. How could he look into her face? How could he crush down any longer what he thought of Philip? What he hoped for Stratton? The recollection of him, his handsome, mocking face, his fascination, incredible power over Kingsley, most of all his responsibility for the wrecked life of this sweet woman, made his muscles tingle, and sent the blood with a rush through his veins. It was the passion of a strong and much-enduring man brought to his limit. His arms ached for physical contact. Some day, soon, he would like to set his hands on Stratton in one tremendous, unforgettable grip.

But Louise was not coming to the dining-room. Little Silas, mounting the stairs with Mason, was saying so. His "muvver" was not hungry; she was going to have some tea at home. But he was ready, and he had told Sing to watch, and when he saw him coming with Uncle Paul, to bring in the soup.

Forrest went over to the dining-room with the boy, and a little later the _Phantom_ swung in to her wharf. Kingsley came ashore and went directly up the walk to his house. His wife did not meet him at the door. He did not find her in the parlor. Of course she was at lunch, or was it dinner here at the mills? He sat down to the piano and ran his fingers over the keys. Presently the noise brought her into the room, and he looked up with a nod and smile, drumming on to the end of his tune. Then he wheeled around on the stool and rose to his feet. "Well, Louise," he said, "I have good news for you." She received his kiss on her cheek, at which he laughed, and putting his hand under her chin, compelled her sweet lips. "We are going home to Olympia."

He waited for her to speak, but she did not. She only stood locking and unlocking her slim hands, and looking at him with tragic, circle-rimmed eyes. "You'll be glad to get away from Freeport," he added.

"Yes," she answered slowly, "I shall be very--glad--to leave Freeport; I am going--but not to Olympia; not with you."

"You are not going to Olympia, Louise? Not with me?"

"That is what I said." Her breast heaved and she went on with apparent effort. "We made a--terrible mistake; I have known it for a long time. Still, I believed we could live out our lives together--for the sake of little Silas."

"Do you mean--our marriage, Louise? Do you think that was a mistake?"

"Yes." Her face grew very white, and she put one hand on a table, leaning a little on the support.

His own face clouded. It was the way of this man to value things according to the difficulty of possession; and he found himself suddenly shaken by a new and strange tenderness for his wife, while at the same time he felt a swift and bitter suspicion. He turned and walked the floor, retracing his steps, and going the length of the room again. "It is true, then," he said. "It is true."

"What is true?"

"What Stratton told me. This thing the mill-hands are bruiting about." She started and stood quivering from head to foot, and he added slowly, watching her, "This story about you and Paul."