The King of Arcadia Part 30

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. G.o.d help her; G.o.d 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 impa.s.sable 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 a.s.serted--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-gra.s.s."

"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 grat.i.tude."

"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 a.s.sociating 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.s, and he called me an idiot. There was no bloodshed."