Harry Sanderson"s eyes had not left Hugh"s face; he was thinking swiftly. The bolt from the blue had been so recent that this sudden apparition seemed a natural concomitant of the situation. Only the problem was no longer imminent; it was upon him. Jessica was not for him--he had accepted that. Though the clock might not turn backward, this man must stand between them. Yet his presence now in the predicament was intolerable. This drunken, criminal maligner had it in his power to precipitate the climax for her in a coa.r.s.e and brutal _expose_. Hugh had no idea of the true tangle, else he had not been seen in the town. But if not to-night, then to-morrow! Harry"s heart turned cold within him. If he could eliminate Hugh from the problem till he could see his way!
"Well," said Hugh with a sneer, "what have you got to say?"
Harry rose slowly and pushed the door shut. "When we last met," he said, "what you most wanted was to leave the country."
"I changed my mind," retorted Hugh. "I"ve got a right to do that, I suppose. I"ve come back now to get what is mine, and I"ll have it, too!"
He rapped the table with his knuckles.
Hugh had no recollection now of past generosities. His selfish materialism saw only money that might be his. "I know all about the strike," he went on, "and there"s no green in my eye!"
"How much will you take for the property?"
Hugh laughed again jeeringly. "That"s your game, is it? But I"m not such a numskull! Whatever you could offer, it"s worth more to me. You"ve found a good thing here, and you"d like to skin me as a butcher skins a sheep." In the warmer air of the cabin the liquor he had drunk was firing his brain, and an old suspicion leaped to his tongue.
"I know you, Satan Sanderson," he sneered. "You were always the same precious hypocrite in the old days, pretending to be so almighty virtuous, while you looked out for number one. I saw through you then, too, when you were posing as my friend and trying your best all along to queer me with the old man! I knew it well enough. I knew what the reason was, too! You wanted Jessica! You--"
Self-control left Harry suddenly, as a ship"s sail is whipped from its gaskets in a white squall. Before the words could be uttered, his fingers were at Hugh"s throat.
At that instant there was the sound of running feet outside, a hurried knock at the door and an agitated voice that chilled Harry"s blood to ice.
His hands relaxed their hold; he dragged Hugh to the door of the inner room, thrust him inside, shut and bolted it upon him.
Then he went and opened the outer door.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV
THE TEMPTATION
Jessica"s eyes met Harry"s in a look he could not translate, save that it held both yearning and anguish.
The accusation of Prendergast had stunned her faculties. As in an evil dream, with the low breeze murmuring by and the fitful moon overhead, she had seen the sheriff rise to his feet and methodically put the fragment of paper into his pocket-book. A moment later she was running up the dark path, her thoughts a confusion in which only one coherent purpose stood distinct--to warn him. They would know no need to hasten.
If the man she loved had reached the cabin, she would be before them.
Not that she believed him guilty; in his lost past there could be no stain so dark as that! She recalled the look of personal hatred she had once surprised on Prendergast"s face. He hated Hugh, and dying, had left this black lie behind to do him a mischief. He was innocent, innocent!
But would the charge not be believed? They would arrest him, drag him down to the town, to the brick jail on the court-house square. The community was prejudiced. Innocent men had been convicted before of crimes they never committed. In those breathless minutes she did not reason further; she knew only that a vital danger threatened him, and that he must fly from it. The lighted pane had told her the occupant of the cabin had returned.
She stood before the door, her hands clasped tightly, her eyes on Harry"s face, even in this crucial moment drinking in thirstily what she saw there; for in this crisis, hanging on the narrow verge of catastrophe, when he had need to summon all his store of poise and contained strength, his look melted over her in a mist of tenderness.
"What has happened?" he asked.
He did not offer to touch or to kiss her, but this she did not remember till afterward. In what words could she tell him? Would he think she believed him guilty when she besought him to fly? She answered simply, directly, with only a deep appeal in her eyes:
"Men will be here soon--men from the town. I overheard them. I wanted to let you know!" she hesitated; it had grown all at once difficult to put into words.
"Coming here? Why?"
"To arrest a man who is accused of murder."
If her eyes could have pierced the bolted door a few feet away! If she could have seen that listening face behind it, as her clear tones fell, grow instinct with recognition, amazement, and evil suspicion--a look that her last word swept into a sickly gray terror! If she could have heard the groan from the wretched man beyond!
"Whose murder?"
"Doctor Moreau"s."
In all Harry Sanderson"s life was to be never such a moment of revealment. He knew that she meant himself. The murderer of Doctor Moreau--Hugh"s one-time crony and loose a.s.sociate, who had shared in the plunder of the forged draft, and had then abandoned his cat"s-paw to discovery! The man Hugh had promised to "pay off for it some time!" Had Moreau also made this his stamping-ground? A swift memory swept him of Hugh"s hang-dog look, his nervous dread when he had begged in the chapel study for money with which to leave the country. It did not need the smothered gasp from behind the bolted door to point the way to the swift conclusion Harry"s mind was racing to. A dull flush spread to his forehead.
Jessica waited with caught breath, searching his countenance. It was told now, but he must know that she had not credited it--that "for better, for worse," she must believe in him now. "I knew, oh, I knew!"
she cried. "You need not tell me!"
The h.e.l.l of two pa.s.sions that were struggling within him--a savage exultation and a submerging wave of pity for her utter ignorance, her blind faith, for the painful denouement that was rushing upon her--died, and left him cold and still. "No," he said gravely, "I am not the man they want. It has all come back to me--the past that I had lost. Such a crime has no part in it."
At another time the abrupt news of this retrieval must have affected her strangely, for she had wondered much concerning the return of that memory that held alike their early love and his own tragedy and shame.
Now, however, a greater contingency absorbed her. He must go, and without delay. Her lips were opened to speak when he closed the door behind him and stepped quickly down toward her. At all odds, he was thinking, she must not see the man in that inner room! If she remained he could not guess what shock might result.
"Jessica," he said, "you have tried to save me from danger to-night. I need a greater service of you now; it is to ask no questions, but to go at once. I can not explain why, but you must not stay here a moment."
"Oh," she cried bitterly, "you don"t intend to leave! You choose to face it, and you want to spare me. If you really want to spare me, you will go! Why, you would have no chance where they have hated you so.
Prendergast was killed robbing the sluice to-night, and he lied--lied--lied! He swore you did it, and they will believe it!"
He put back her beseeching hands. How could he explain? Only to get her away--to gain time--_to think_!
"Listen!" she went on wildly. "They will wait to carry him to the town.
I can go and bring my horse here for you. There is time! You have only to send me word, and I will follow you to the end of the world! Only say you will go!"
He caught at the straw. The expedient might serve.
"Very well," he said; "bring him to the upper trail, and wait there for me."
She gave a sob of relief at his acquiescence. "I will hurry, hurry!" she cried, and was gone, swift as a swallow-flight, into the darkness.
As he reentered the cabin, the calmness fell from Harry Sanderson as a mask drops, and the latent pa.s.sion sprang in its place. He crossed the room and drew the bolt for the wretched man who, after one swift glance at his face, grovelled on his knees before him, sobered and shivering.
"For G.o.d"s sake, Harry, you won"t give me up?" Hugh cried. "You can"t mean to do that! Why, we were in college together! I"d been drinking to-night, or I wouldn"t have talked to you as I did. I"m sober enough now, Harry! You can have the claim. I"ll give it to you and all you"ve got out of it. Only let me go before they come to take me!"
Harry drew his feet from the frantic hands that clasped them. "Did you kill Moreau?" he asked shortly.
"It was an accident," moaned Hugh. "I never intended to--I swear to Heaven I didn"t! He hounded me, and he tried to bleed me. I only meant to frighten him off! Then--then--I was afraid, and I ran for it. That was when I came to you at Aniston and--we played." Hugh"s breath came in gasps and drops of sweat stood on his forehead.
A weird, crowding clamor was sweeping through Harry"s brain. When, at the sound of Jessica"s voice, he had thrust Hugh into the inner room, it had been only to gain time, to push further back, if by but a moment, the shock which was inevitable. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, Fate had swept the board. Hugh"s worthless life was forfeit. He would stand no longer between him and Jessica! The enginery of the law would be their savior.
Neither crime nor penalty was of his making. He owed Hugh nothing--the very money he had taken from the ground, save a bare living, had gone to pay his thievery. He could surrender him to the law, then take Jessica far away where the truth would come mercifully softened by distance and lightened by future happiness. It was not his to intervene, to cozen Justice, to compound a felony and defeat a righteous Providence! He owed mercy to Jessica. He owed none to this cringing, lying thing before him, who now reminded him of that chapel game that had ruined the Reverend Henry Sanderson!
"When we played!" he echoed. "How have you settled your debt--the "debt of honor" you once counted so highly? How have you lived since then?
Have you paid me those days of decent living you staked, and lost?"