The King of Arcadia Part 29

His mind was in the condition of a coffer-dam that has been laboriously pumped out, only to be overwhelmed by a sudden and irresistible return of the flood. The theory of premeditated a.s.sa.s.sination was no nightmare; it was a pitiless, brutal, inhuman fact. Wingfield, an invited guest, and with a guest's privileges and immunities, had been tried, convicted, and sentenced for knowing too much.

"It's pretty bad, isn't it?" he said to Bigelow, feeling the necessity of saying something, and realising at the same instant the futility of putting the horror of it into words for one who knew nothing of the true state of affairs.

"Bad enough, certainly. You can imagine how it harrowed all of us, and especially the women. Cousin Janet fainted and had to be carried up to the house; and Miss Elsa was the only one of the young women who wasn't perfectly helpless. Colonel Craigmiles was our stand-by; he knew just what to do, and how to do it. He is a wonderful man, Mr. Ballard."

"He is--in more ways than a casual observer would suspect." Ballard suffered so much of his thought to set itself in words. To minimise the temptation to say more he turned his back upon the accident and accounted for himself and his presence at Castle 'Cadia.

"Bromley was pretty well tired out when Otto came down with the car, and I offered to ride around and make his excuses. We broke an engine bolt on the road: otherwise I should have been here two hours earlier. You say Wingfield is recovering? I wonder if I could see him for a few minutes, before I go back to camp?"

Bigelow offered to go up-stairs and find out; and Ballard waited in the silence of the deserted library for what seemed like a long time. And when the waiting came to an end it was not Bigelow who parted the portieres and came silently to stand before his chair; it was the king's daughter.

"You have heard?" she asked, and her voice seemed to come from some immeasurable depth of anguish.

"Yes. Is he better?"

"Much better; though he is terribly weak and shaken." Then suddenly: "What brought you here--so late?"

He explained the ostensible object of his coming, and mentioned the cause of the delay. She heard him through without comment, but there was doubt and keen distress and a great fear in the gray eyes when he was permitted to look into their troubled depths.

"If you are telling me the truth, you are not telling me all of it," she said, sinking wearily into one of the deepest of the easy-chairs and shading the tell-tale eyes with her hand.

"Why shouldn't I tell you all of it?" he rejoined evasively.

"I don't know your reasons: I can only fear them."

"If you could put the fear into words, perhaps I might be able to allay it," he returned gently.

"It is past alleviation; you know it. Mr. Wingfield was with you again to-day, and when he came home I knew that the thing I had been dreading had come to pa.s.s."

"How could you know it? Not from anything Wingfield said or did, I'm sure."

"No; but Jerry Blacklock was with him--and Jerry's face is an open book for any one who cares to read it. Won't you please tell me the worst, Breckenridge?"

"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 a.s.sistant.

"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 d.i.c.kens 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 b.u.t.ton 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-gla.s.s 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.