Part 14

"There isn't any worst," denied Ballard, lying promptly for love's sake. "We had luncheon together, the four of us, in honour of Bromley's recovery. Afterward, Wingfield spun yarns for us--as he has a habit of doing when he can get an audience of more than one person. Some of his stories were more grewsome than common. I don't wonder that Jerry had a left-over thrill or two in his face."

She looked up from behind the eye-shading hand. "Do you dare to repeat those stories to me?"

His laugh lacked something of spontaneity.

"It is hardly a question of daring; it is rather a matter of memory--or the lack of it. Who ever tries to make a record of after-dinner fictions? Wingfield's story was a tale of impossible crimes and their more impossible detection; the plot and outline for a new play, I fancied, which he was trying first on the dog. Blacklock was the only one of his three listeners who took him seriously."

She was silenced, if not wholly convinced; and when she spoke again it was of the convalescent assistant.

"You are not going to keep Mr. Bromley at the camp, are you? He isn't able to work yet."

"Oh, no. You may send for him in the morning, if you wish. I--he was a little tired to-night, and I thought----"

"Yes; you have told me what you thought," she reminded him, half absently. And then, with a note of constraint in her voice that was quite new to him: "You are not obliged to go back to Elbow Canyon to-night, are you? Your room is always ready for you at Castle 'Cadia."

"Thank you; but I'll have to go back. If I don't, Bromley will think he's the whole thing and start in to run the camp in the morning before I could show up."

She rose when he did, but her face was averted and he could not see her eyes when he went on in a tone from which every emotion save that of mere friendly solicitude was carefully effaced: "May I go up and jolly Wingfield a bit? He'll think it odd if I go without looking in at him."

"If you should go without doing that for which you came," she corrected, with the same impersonal note in her voice. "Of course, you may see him: come with me."

She led the way up the grand stair and left him at the door of a room in the wing which commanded a view of the sky-pitched backgrounding mountains. The door was ajar, and when he knocked and pushed it open he saw that the playwright was in bed, and that he was alone.

"By Jove, now!" said a weak voice from the pillows; "this is neighbourly of you, Ballard. How the dickens did you manage to hear of it?"

"Bad news travels fast," said Ballard, drawing a chair to the bedside. He did not mean to go into details if he could help it; and to get away from them he asked how the miracle of recovery was progressing.

"Oh, I'm all right now," was the cheerful response--"coming alive at the rate of two nerves to the minute. And I wouldn't have missed it for the newest thousand-dollar bill that ever crackled in the palm of poverty. What few thrills I can't put into a description of electrocution, after this, won't be worth mentioning."

"They have left you alone?" queried Ballard, with a glance around the great room.

"Just this moment. The colonel and Miss Cauffrey and Miss Dosia were with me when the buzzer went off. Whoever sent you up pressed the button down stairs. Neat, isn't it. How's Bromley? I hope you didn't come to tell us that his first day in camp knocked him out."

"No; Bromley is all right. You are the sick man, now."

Wingfield's white teeth gleamed in a rather haggard smile.

"I have looked over the edge, Ballard; that's the fact."

"Tell me about it--if you can."

"There isn't much to tell. We were all crowding around the electric furnace, taking turns at the coloured-glass protected peep-hole. The colonel had warned us about the wires, but the warning didn't cut any figure in my case."

"You stumbled?"

The man in bed flung a swift glance across the room toward the corridor door which Ballard had left ajar.

"Go quietly and shut that door," was his whispered command; and when Ballard had obeyed it: "Now pull your chair closer and I'll answer your question: No, I didn't stumble. Somebody tripped me, and in falling I grabbed at one of the electrodes."

"I was sure of it," said Ballard, quietly. "I knew that in all human probability you would be the next victim. That is why I persuaded Bromley to let me take his place in the motor-car. If the car hadn't broken down, I should have been here in time to warn you. I suppose it isn't necessary to ask who tripped you?"

The playwright rocked his head on the pillow.

"I'm afraid not, Ballard. The man who afterward saved my life--so they all say--was the one who stood nearest to me at the moment. The 'why' is what is tormenting me. I'm not the Arcadia Company, or its chief engineer, or anybody in particular in this game of 'heads I win, and tails you lose.'"

Ballard left his chair and walked slowly to the mountain-viewing window. When he returned to the bedside, he said: "I can help you to the 'why.' What you said in my office to-day to three of us was overheard by a fourth--and the fourth was Manuel. An hour or so later he came up this way, on foot. Does that clear the horizon for you?"

"Perfectly," was the whispered response, followed by a silence heavy with forecastings.

"Under the changed conditions, it was only fair to you to bring you your warning, and to take off the embargo on your leaving Castle 'Cadia. Of course, you'll get yourself recalled to New York at once?" said Ballard.

Wingfield raised himself on one elbow, and again his lips parted in the grinning smile.

"Not in a thousand years, Ballard. I'll see this thing out now, if I get killed regularly once a day. You say I mustn't write about it, and that's so. I'm not a cad. But the experience is worth millions to me--worth all the chances I'm taking, and more. I'll stay."

Ballard gripped the womanish hand lying on the coverlet. Here, after all, and under all the overlayings of pose and craftsman egotism, was a man with a man's heart and courage.

"You're a brave fool, Wingfield," he said, warmly; "and because you are brave and a man grown, you shall be one of us. We--Bromley and I--bluffed you to-day for a woman's sake. If you could have got away from the excitement of the man-hunt for a single second, I know your first thought would have been for the woman whose lifted finger silences three of us. Because you seemed to forget this for the moment, I knocked you down with your own theory. Does that clear another of the horizons for you?"

"Immensely. And I deserved all you gave me. Until I'm killed off, you may comfort yourself with the thought that one of the gallant three is here, in the wings, as you might say, ready and willing to do what he can to keep the curtain from rising on any more tragedy."

"Thank you," said Ballard, heartily; "that will be a comfort." Then, with a parting hand-grip and an added word of caution to the man who knew too much, he left the room and the house, finding his way unattended to the great portico and to the path leading down to the river road.

The mile faring down the valley in the velvety blackness of the warm summer night was a meliorating ending to the day of revelations and alarms; and for the first time since Wingfield's clever unravelling of the tangled mesh of mystery, the Kentuckian was able to set the accusing facts in orderly array. Yet now, as before, the greatest of the mysteries refused to take its place in the wellnigh completed circle of incriminating discoveries. That the King of Arcadia, Elsa's father and the genial host of the great house on the knoll, was a common murderer, lost to every humane and Christian prompting of the soul, was still as incredible as a myth of the Middle Ages.

"I'll wake up some time in the good old daylight of the every-day, commonplace world, I hope," was Ballard's summing-up, when he had traversed the reflective mile and had let himself into the office bungalow to find Bromley sleeping peacefully in his bunk. "But it's a little hard to wait--with the air full of Damocles-swords, and with the dear girl's heart gripped in a vise that I can't unscrew. That is what makes it bitterer than death: she knows, and it is killing her by inches--in spite of the bravest heart that ever loved and suffered. God help her; God help us all!"

XX

THE GEOLOGIST

It was Miss Craigmiles herself who gave Ballard the exact date of Professor Gardiner's coming; driving down to the construction camp alone in the little motor-car for that avowed purpose.

A cloud-burst in the main range had made the stage road from Alta Vista impassable for the moment, leaving the Arcadia Company's railroad--by some unexplained miracle of good fortune--unharmed. Hence, unless the expected guest could be brought over from Alta Vista on the material train, he would be indefinitely detained on the other side of the mountain. Miss Elsa came ostensibly to beg a favour.

"Of course, I'll send over for him," said Ballard, when the favour had been named. "Didn't I tell you he is going to be _my_ guest?"

"But he isn't," she insisted, playfully. Bromley was out and at work, Wingfield had entirely recovered from the effects of his electric shock, and there had been no untoward happenings for three peaceful weeks. Wherefore there was occasion for light-heartedness.

Ballard descended from the bungalow porch and arbitrarily stopped the buzzing engines of the runabout by cutting out the batteries. "This is the first time I've seen you for three weeks," he asserted--which was a lover's exaggeration. "Please come up and sit on the porch. There is any number of things I want to say."

"Where is Mr. Bromley?" she asked, making no move to leave the driving-seat.

"He is out on the ditch survey--luckily for me. Won't you please 'light and come in?--as we say back in the Blue-grass."

"You don't deserve it. You haven't been near us since Mr. Bromley went back to work. Why?"

"I have been exceedingly busy; we are coming down the home-stretch on our job here, as you know." The commonplace excuse was the only one available. He could not tell her that it was impossible for him to accept further hospitalities at Castle 'Cadia.

"Mr. Bromley hasn't been too busy," she suggested.

"Bromley owes all of you a very great debt of gratitude."

"And you do not, you would say. That is quite true. You owe us nothing but uncompromising antagonism--hatred, if you choose to carry it to that extreme."

"No," he returned gravely. "I can't think of you and of enmity at the same moment."

"If you could only know," she said, half absently, and the trouble shadow came quickly into the backgrounding depths of the beautiful eyes. "There is no real cause for enmity or hatred--absolutely none."

"I am thinking of you," he reminded her, reverting to the impossibility of associating that thought with the other.

"Thank you; I am glad you can make even that much of a concession. It is more than another would make." Then, with the unexpectedness which was all her own: "I am still curious to know what you did to Mr. Wingfield: that day when he so nearly lost his life in the laboratory?"

"At what time in that day?" he asked, meaning to dodge if he could.

"You know--when you had him here in your office, with Jerry and Mr. Bromley."

"I don't remember all the things I did to him, that day and before it. I believe I made him welcome--when I had to. He hasn't been using his welcome much lately, though."

"No; not since that day that came near ending so terribly. I'd like to know what happened."

"Nothing--of any consequence. I believe I told you that Wingfield was boring us with the plot of a new play."

"Yes; and you said you couldn't remember it."

"I don't want to remember it. Let's talk of something else. Is your anxiety--the trouble you refuse to share with me--any lighter?"

"No--yes; just for the moment, perhaps."

"Are you still determined not to let me efface it for you?"

"You couldn't; no one can. It can never be effaced."

His smile was the man's smile of superior wisdom.

"Don't we always say that when the trouble is personal?"

She ignored the query completely, and her rejoinder was totally irrelevant--or it seemed to be.

"You think I came down here to ask you to send over to Alta Vista for Professor Gardiner. That was merely an excuse. I wanted to beg you once again to suspend judgment--not to be vindictive."

Again he dissimulated. "I'm not vindictive: why should I be?"

"You have every reason; or, at least, you believe you have." She leaned over the arm of the driving-seat and searched his eyes pleadingly: "Please tell me: how much did Mr. Wingfield find out?"

It was blankly impossible to tell her the hideous truth, or anything remotely approaching it. But his parrying of her question was passing skilless.

"Not being a mind-reader, I can't say what Wingfield knows--or thinks he knows. Our disagreement turned upon his threat to make literary material out of--well, out of matters that were in a good measure my own private and personal affairs."

"Oh; so there _was_ a quarrel? That is more than you were willing to admit a moment ago."

"You dignify it too much. I believe I called him an ass, and he called me an idiot. There was no bloodshed."

"You are jesting again. You always jest when I want to be serious."

"I might retort that I learned the trick of it from you--in the blessed days that are now a part of another existence."

"Oh!" she said; and there was so much more of distress than of impatience in the little outcry that he was mollified at once.

"I'm going to crank the engines and send you home," he asseverated. "I'm not fit to talk to you to-day." And he started the engines of the motor-car.

She put a dainty foot on the clutch-pedal. "You'll come up and see me?" she asked; adding: "Some time when you are fit?"

"I'll come when I am needed; yes."

He walked beside the slowly moving car as she sent it creeping down the mesa hill on the brakes. At the hill-bottom turn, where the camp street ended and the roundabout road led off to the temporary bridge, she stopped the car. The towering wall of the great dam, with its dotting of workmen silhouetted black against the blue of the Colorado sky, rose high on the left. She let her gaze climb to the summit of the huge dike.

"You are nearly through?" she asked.

"Yes. Two other weeks, with no bad luck, will see us ready to turn on the water."

She was looking straight ahead again.

"You know what that means to us at Castle 'Cadia?--but of course you do."

"I know I'd rather be a 'mucker' with a pick and shovel out yonder in the ditch than to be the boss here when the spillway gates are closed at the head of the cut-off tunnel. And that is the pure truth."

"This time I believe you without reservation, Breckenridge--my friend." Then: "Will Mr. Pelham come out to the formal and triumphal opening of the Arcadian Irrigation District?"

"Oh, you can count on that--with all the trimmings. There is to be a demonstration in force, as Major Blacklock would say; special trains from Denver to bring the crowd, a barbecue dinner, speeches, a land-viewing excursion over the completed portion of the railroad, and fireworks in the evening while the band plays 'America.' You can trust Mr. Pelham to beat the big drum and to clash the cymbals vigorously and man-fashion at the psychological instant."

"For purely commercial reasons, of course? I could go a step further and tell you something else that will happen. There will be a good many transfers of the Arcadia Company's stock at the triumphal climax."

He was standing with one foot on the car step and his hands buried in the pockets of his short working-coat. His eyes narrowed to regard her thoughtfully.

"What do you know about such things?" he demurred. "You know altogether too much for one small bachelor maid. It's uncanny."

"I am the cow-punching princess of Arcadia, and Mr. Pelham's natural enemy, you must remember," she countered, with a laugh that sounded entirely care-free. "I could tell you more about the stock affair. Mr. Pelham has been very liberal with his friends in the floating of this great and glorious undertaking--to borrow one of his pet phrases. He has placed considerable quantities of the Arcadia Company's stock among them at merely nominal prices, asking only that they sign a 'gentlemen's agreement' not to resell any of it, so that my father could get it. But there is a wheel within that wheel, too. Something more than half of the nominal capitalisation has been reserved as 'treasury stock.' When the enthusiasm reaches the proper height, this reserved stock will be put upon the market. People will be eager to buy it--won't they?--with the work all done, and everything in readiness to tap the stream of sudden wealth?"

"Probably: that would be the natural inference."

"I thought so. And, as the company's chief engineer, you could doubtless get in on the 'ground floor' that Mr. Pelham is always talking about, couldn't you?"

The question was one to prick an honest man in his tenderest part. Ballard was hurt, and his face advertised it.

"See here, little girl," he said, flinging the formalities to the winds; "I am the company's hired man at the present moment, but that is entirely without prejudice to my convictions, or to the fact that some day I am going to marry you. I hope that defines my attitude. As matters stand, Mr. Pelham couldn't hand me out any of his stock on a silver platter!"

"And Mr. Bromley?"

"You needn't fear for Loudon; he isn't going to invest, either. You know very well that he is in precisely the same boat that I am."

"How shocking!" she exclaimed, with an embarrassed little laugh. "Is Mr. Bromley to marry your widow? Or are you to figure as the consolation prize for his widow? Doubtless you have arranged it amicably between you."

Having said the incendiary thing, he brazened it out like a man and a lover.

"It's no joke. I suppose I might sidestep, but I sha'n't. You know very well that Bromley is in love with you--up to his chin, and I'm afraid you have been too kind to him. That is a little hard on Loudon, you know--when you are going to marry some one else. But let that rest, and tell me a little more about this stock deal. Why should there be a 'gentlemen's agreement' to exclude your father? To a rank outsider like myself, Arcadia Irrigation would seem to be about the last thing in the world Colonel Adam Craigmiles would want to buy."

"Under present conditions, I think it is," she said. "_I_ shouldn't buy it now."

"What would you do, O wise virgin of the market-place?"

"I'd wait patiently while the rocket is going up; I might even clap my hands and say 'Ah-h-h!' with the admiring multitude. But afterward, when the stick comes down, I'd buy every bit of Arcadia Irrigation I could find."

Again he was regarding her through half-closed eyelids.

"As I said before, you know too much about such things--altogether too much." He said it half in raillery, but his deduction was made seriously enough. "You think your father will win his law-suit and so break the market?"

"No; on the contrary, I'm quite sure he will be beaten. I am going, now. Don't ask me any more questions: I've said too much to the company's engineer, as it is."

"You have said nothing to the company's engineer," he denied. "You have been talking to Breckenridge Ballard, your future----"

She set the car in motion before he could complete the sentence, and he stood looking after it as it shot away up the hills. It was quite out of sight, and the sound of its drumming motor was lost in the hoarse grumbling of the river, before he began to realise that Elsa's visit had not been for the purpose of asking him to send for Gardiner, nor yet to beg him not to be vindictive. Her real object had been to warn him not to buy Arcadia Irrigation. "Why?" came the unfailing question, shot-like; and, like all the others of its tribe, it had to go unanswered.

It was two days later when Gardiner, the assistant professor of geology, kept his appointment, was duly met at Alta Vista by Ballard's special engine and a "dinkey" way-car, and was transported in state to the Arcadian fastnesses. Ballard had it in mind to run down the line on the other engine to meet the Bostonian; but Elsa forestalled him by intercepting the "special" at Ackerman's with the motor-car and whisking the guest over the roundabout road to Castle 'Cadia.

Gardiner walked down to the construction camp at Elbow Canyon bright and early the following morning to make his peace with Ballard.

"Age has its privileges which youth is obliged to concede, Breckenridge, my son," was the form his apology took. "When I learned that I might have my visit with you, and still be put up at the millionaire hostelry in the valley above, I didn't hesitate a moment. I am far beyond the point of bursting into enthusiastic raptures over a bunk shake-down in a camp shanty, steel forks, tin platters, and plum-duff, when I can live on the fat of the land and sleep on a modern mattress. How are you coming on? Am I still in time to be in at the death?"

"I hope there isn't going to be any death," was the laughing rejoinder. "Because, in the natural sequence of things, it would have to be mine, you know."

"Ah! You are tarred a little with the superstitious stick, yourself, are you? What was it you said to me about 'two sheer accidents and a commonplace tragedy'? You may remember that I warned you, and the event proves that I was a true prophet. I predicted that Arcadia would have its shepherdess, you recollect."

Thus, with dry humour, the wise man from the East. But Ballard was not prepared at the moment for a plunge into the pool of sentiment with the mildly cynical old schoolman for a bath-master, and he proposed, as the readiest alternative, a walking tour of the industries.

Gardiner was duly impressed by the industrial miracles, and by the magnitude of the irrigation scheme. Also, he found fitting words in which to express his appreciation of the thoroughness of Ballard's work, and of the admirable system under which it was pressing swiftly to its conclusion. But these matters became quickly subsidiary when he began to examine the curious geological formation of the foothill range through which the river elbowed its tumultuous course.

"These little wrinklings of the earth's crust at the foot of the great mountain systems are nature's puzzle-pieces for us," he remarked. "I foresee an extremely enjoyable vacation for me--if you have forgiven me to the extent of a snack at your mess-table now and then, and a possible night's lodging in your bungalow if I should get caught out too late to reach the millionaire luxuries of Castle 'Cadia."

"If I haven't forgiven you, Bromley will take you in," laughed Ballard. "Make yourself one of us--when you please and as you please. The camp and everything in it belongs to you for as long as you can persuade yourself to stay."

Gardiner accepted the invitation in its largest sense, and the afternoon of the same day found him prowling studiously in the outlet canyon with hammer and specimen-bag; a curious figure of complete abstraction in brown duck and service leggings, overshadowed by an enormous cork-lined helmet-hat that had been faded and stained by the sun and rains of three continents. Ballard passed the word among his workmen. The absent-minded stranger under the cork hat was the guest of the camp, who was to be permitted to go and come as he chose, whose questions were to be answered without reserve, and whose peculiarities, if he had any, were to pass unremarked.