XVIII
THE INDICTMENT
In the days following the episode of the tumbling granite block,Wingfield came and went unhindered between Castle 'Cadia and theconstruction camp at Elbow Canyon, sometimes with Jerry Blacklock for acompanion, but oftener alone. Short of the crude expedient of tellinghim that his room was more to be desired than his company, Ballard couldthink of no pretext for excluding him; and as for keeping him inignorance of the linked chain of accidents and tragedies, it was to bepresumed that his first unrestricted day among the workmen had put himin possession of all the facts with all their exaggerations.
How deeply the playwright was interested in the tale of disaster andmysterious ill luck, no one knew precisely; not even young Blacklock,who was systematically sounded, first by Miss Craigmiles, and afterwardat regular intervals by Ballard. As Blacklock saw it, Wingfield wasmerely killing time at the construction camp. When he was not listeningto the stories of the men off duty, or telling them equally marvellousstories of his own, he was lounging in the adobe bungalow, lying flat onhis back on the home-made divan with his clasped hands for a pillow,smoking Ballard's tobacco, or sitting in one of the lazy-chairs andreading with apparent avidity and the deepest abstraction one or anotherof Bromley's dry-as-dust text-books on the anatomy of birds and thetaxidermic art.
"Whatever it is that you are dreading in connection with Wingfield andthe camp 'bogie' isn't happening," Ballard told the king's daughter onemorning when he came down from Bromley's hospital room at Castle 'Cadiaand found Elsa waiting for him under the portieres of the darkenedlibrary. "For a man who talks so feelingly about the terrible drudgeryof literary work, your playwriter is certainly a striking example ofsimon-pure laziness. He is perfectly innocuous. When he isn't halfasleep on my office lounge, or dawdling among the masons orstone-cutters, he is reading straight through Bromley's shelf ofbird-books. He may be absorbing 'local color,' but if he is, he isletting the environment do all the work. I don't believe he has had aconsciously active idea since he began loafing with us."
"You are mistaken--greatly mistaken," was all she would say; and in thefulness of time a day came when the event proved how far a woman'sintuition may outrun a man's reasoning.
It was the occasion of Bromley's first return to the camp at ElbowCanyon, four full weeks after the night of stumbling on the steep path.Young Blacklock had driven him by the roundabout road in the littlemotor-car; and the camp industries paused while the men gave the "LittleBoss" an enthusiastic ovation. Afterward, the convalescent was gladenough to lie down on the makeshift lounge in the office bungalow; butwhen Jerry would have driven him back in time for luncheon at Castle'Cadia, as his strict orders from Miss Elsa ran, Bromley begged to beallowed to put his feet under the office mess-table with his chief andhis volunteer chauffeur.
To the three, doing justice to the best that Garou could find in thecamp commissary stores, came Mr. Lester Wingfield, to drag up a stooland to make himself companionably at home at the engineers' mess, as hiscustom had come to be. Until the meal was ended and the pipes werefilled, he was silent and abstracted to the edge of rudeness. But whenBallard made a move to go down to the railroad yard with Fitzpatrick,the spell was broken.
"Hold up a minute; don't rush off so frantically," he cut in abruptly."I have been waiting for many days to get you and Bromley together for alittle confidential confab about matters and things, and the time hascome. Sit down."
Ballard resumed his seat at the table with an air of predeterminedpatience, and the playwright nodded approval. "That's right," he wenton, "brace yourself to take it as it comes; but you needn't write yourreluctance so plainly in your face. It's understood."
"I don't know what you mean," objected Ballard, not quite truthfully.
Wingfield laughed.
"You didn't want me to come down here at first; and since I've beencoming you haven't been too excitedly glad to see me. But that's allright, too. It's what the public benefactor usually gets for butting in.Just the same, there is a thing to be done, and I've got to do it. I maybore you both in the process, but I have reached a point where a pow-wowis a shrieking necessity. I have done one of two things: I've unearthedthe most devilish plot that ever existed, or else I have stumbled into amare's nest of fairly heroic proportions."
By this time he was reasonably sure of his audience. Bromley, stillrather pallid and weak, squared himself with an elbow on the table.Blacklock got up to stand behind the assistant's chair. Ballard thrusthis hands into his pockets and frowned. The moment had probably arrivedwhen he would have to fight fire with fire for Elsa Craigmiles's sake,and he was pulling himself together for the battle.
"I know beforehand about what you are going to say," he interjected;"but let's have your version of it."
"You shall have it hot and hot," promised the playwright. "For quite alittle time, and from a purely literary point of view, I have beeninteresting myself in the curious psychological condition which breedsso many accidents on this job of yours. I began with the assumption thatthere was a basis of reality. The human mind isn't exactly creative inthe sense that it can make something out of nothing. You say, Mr.Ballard, that your workmen are superstitious fools, and that theirmental attitude is chiefly responsible for all the disasters. I say thatthe fact--the cause-fact--existed before the superstition; was thelegitimate ancestor of the superstition. Don't you believe it?"
Ballard neither affirmed nor denied; but Bromley nodded. "I've alwaysbelieved it," he admitted.
"There isn't the slightest doubt of the existence of the primarycause-fact; it is a psychological axiom that it _must_ antedate thediseased mental condition," resumed the theorist, oracularly. "I don'tknow how far back it can be traced, but Engineer Braithwaite's drowningwill serve for our starting point. You will say that there was nothingmysterious about that; yet only the other day, Hoskins, the locomotivedriver, said to me: 'They can say what they like, but _I_ ain'tbelieving that the river stove him all up as if he'd been stomped on ina cattle pen.' There, you see, you have the first gentle push over intothe field of the unaccountable."
It was here that Ballard broke in, to begin the fire-fighting.
"You are getting the cart before the horse. It is ten chances to onethat Hoskins never dreamed of being incredulous about the plain,unmistakable facts until after the later happenings had given him thesuperstitious twist."
"The sequence in this particular instance is immaterial--quiteimmaterial," argued the playwright, with obstinate assurance. "The factstays with us that there _was_ something partly unaccountable in thisfirst tragedy to which the thought of Hoskins--the thoughts of all thosewho knew the circumstances--could revert."
"Well?" said Ballard.
"It is on this hypothesis that I have constructed my theory. Casting outall the accidents chargeable to carelessness, to disobedience of orders,or to temporary aberration on the part of the workmen, there stillremains a goodly number of them carrying this disturbing atom ofmystery. Take Sanderson's case: he came here, I'm told, with a decentrecord; he was not in any sense of the words a moral degenerate. Yet ina very short time he was killed in a quarrel over a woman at whom theaverage man wouldn't look twice. Blacklock, here, has seen this woman;but I'd like to ask if either of you two have?"--this to Ballard and theassistant.
Ballard shook his head, and Bromley confessed that he had not.
"Well, Jerry and I have the advantage of you--we have seen her," saidWingfield, scoring the point with a self-satisfied smile. "She is agray-haired Mexican crone, apparently old enough, and certainly hideousenough, to be the Mexican foreman's mother. I'll venture the assertionthat Sanderson never thought of her as a feminine possibility at all."
"Hold on; I shall be obliged to spoil your theory there," interruptedBromley. "Billy unquestionably put himself in Manuel's hands. He used togo down to the ranch two or three times a week, and he spent money, agood bit of it, on the woman. I know it, because he borrowed from me.And along toward the last, he never rode in that dire
ction withoutslinging his Winchester under the stirrup-leather."
"Looking for trouble with Manuel, you would say?" interjected Wingfield.
"No doubt of it. And when the thing finally came to a focus, the Mexicangave Billy a fair show; there were witnesses to that part of it. Manueltold Sanderson to take his gun, which the woman was trying to hide, geton his horse, and ride to the north corner of the corral, where he wasto wheel and begin shooting--or be shot in the back. The programme wascarried out to the letter. Manuel walked his own horse to the southcorner, and the two men wheeled and began to shoot. Three or four shotswere fired by each before Billy was hit."
"Um!" said the playwright thoughtfully. "There were witnesses, you say?Some of the Craigmiles cow-boys, I suppose. You took their word forthese little details?"
Bromley made a sorrowful face. "No; it was Billy's own story. The poorfellow lived long enough to tell me what I've been passing on to you. Hetried to tell me something else, something about Manuel and the woman,but there wasn't time enough."
Wingfield had found the long-stemmed pipe and was filling it from thejar of tobacco on the table. "Was that all?" he inquired.
"All but the finish--which was rather heart-breaking. When he could nolonger speak he kept pointing to me and to his rifle, which had beenbrought in with him. I understood he was trying to tell me that I shouldkeep the gun."
"You did keep it?"
"Yes; I have it yet."
"Let me have a look at it, will you?"
The weapon was found, and Wingfield examined it curiously. "Is itloaded?" he asked.
Bromley nodded. "I guess it is. It hasn't been out of its case or thatcupboard since the day of the killing."
The playwright worked the lever cautiously, and an empty cartridge shellflipped out and fell to the floor. "William Sanderson's last shot," heremarked reflectively, and went on slowly pumping the lever until elevenloaded cartridges lay in an orderly row on the table. "You were wrong inyour count of the number of shots fired, or else the magazine was notfull when Sanderson began," he commented. Then, as Blacklock was aboutto pick up one of the cartridges: "Hold on, Jerry; don't disturb them,if you please."
Blacklock laughed nervously. "Mr. Wingfield's got a notion," he said."He's always getting 'em."
"I have," was the quiet reply. "But first let me ask you, Bromley: Whatsort of a rifle marksman was Sanderson?"
"One of the best I ever knew. I have seen him drill a silver dollarthree times out of five at a hundred yards when he was feeling well.There is your element of mystery again: I could never understand how hemissed the Mexican three or four times in succession at less thanseventy-five yards--unless Manuel's first shot was the one that hit him.That might have been it. Billy was all sand; the kind of man to go onshooting after he was killed."
"My notion is that he didn't have the slightest chance in the wideworld," was Wingfield's comment. "Let us prove or disprove it if wecan," and he opened a blade of his penknife and dug the point of it intothe bullet of the cartridge first extracted from the dead man's gun."There is my notion--and a striking example of Mexican fair play," headded, when the bullet, a harmless pellet of white clay, carefullymoulded and neatly coated with lead foil, fell apart under theknife-blade.
"There is my notion--and a striking example of Mexicanfair play."]
The playwright's audience was interested now, beyond all question ofdoubt. If Wingfield had suddenly hypnotised the three who saw thisunexpected confirmation of his theory of treachery in the Sandersontragedy, the awed silence that fell upon the little group around thetable could not have been more profound. It was Bromley who broke thespell, prefacing his exclamation with a mirthless laugh.
"Your gifts of deduction are almost uncanny, Wingfield," he asserted."How could you reason your way around to that?"--pointing at the claybullet.
"I didn't," was the calm reply. "Imagination can double discount purelogic in the investigative field, nine times out of ten. And in thisinstance it wasn't my imagination: it was another man's. I once read astory in which the author made his villain kill a man with this samelittle trick of sham bullets. I merely remembered the story. Now let ussee how many more there are to go with this."
There were four of the cartridges capped with the dummy bullets; theremaining seven being genuine. Wingfield did the sum arithmetical aloud."Four and five are nine, and nine and seven are sixteen. Sandersonstarted out that day with a full magazine, we'll assume. He fired fiveof these dummies--with perfect immunity for Manuel--and here are theother four. If the woman had had a little more time, when she waspretending to hide the gun, she would have pumped out all of the goodcartridges. Being somewhat hurried, she exchanged only nine, which, inan even game and shot for shot, gave Manuel ten chances to Sanderson'sone. It was a cinch."
Ballard sat back in his chair handling the empty rifle. Bromley's pallidface turned gray. The tragedy had touched him very sharply at the time;and this new and unexpected evidence of gross treachery revived all thehorror of the day when Sanderson had been carried in and laid upon theoffice couch to die.
"Poor Billy!" he said. "It was a cold-blooded murder, and he knew it.That was what he was trying to tell me--and couldn't."
"That was my hypothesis from the first," Wingfield asserted promptly."But the motive seemed to be lacking; it still seems to be lacking. Haveeither of you two imagination enough to help me out?"
"The motive?" queried Bromley. "Why, that remains the same, doesn'tit?--more's the pity."
The playwright had lighted the long-stemmed pipe, and was thoughtfullyblowing smoke rings toward the new patch in the bungalow ceiling.
"Not if my theory is to stand, Mr. Bromley. You see, I am proceedingconfidently upon the supposition that Sanderson wasn't messing inManuel's domestic affairs. I can't believe for a moment that it was aquarrel over the woman, with Manuel's jealousy to account for thekilling. It's too absurdly preposterous. Settling that fact to my owncomplete satisfaction, I began to search for the real motive, and it isfor you to say whether I am right or wrong. Tell me: was Sanderson morethan casually interested in the details of Braithwaite's drowning? Thatstory must have been pretty fresh and raw in everybody's recollection atthat time."
Bromley's rejoinder was promptly affirmative. "It was; and Sanderson_was_ interested. As Braithwaite's successor, and with the fight betweenthe company and the colonel transferred to him, he couldn't shirk hisresponsibility. Now that you recall it, I remember very well that he hadnotions of his own about Braithwaite's taking off. He was a quiet sort;didn't talk much; but what little he did say gave me to understand thathe suspected foul play of some kind. And here's your theory again, Mr.Wingfield: if a hint of what he suspected ever got wind in the camp, itwould account for the superstitious twist given to the drowning byHoskins and the others, wouldn't it?"
Wingfield smote the table with his fist.
"There is your connecting link!" he exclaimed. "We have just provedbeyond doubt that Sanderson wasn't killed in a fair fight: he wasmurdered, and the murder was carefully planned beforehand. By the sametoken, Braithwaite was murdered, too! Recall the circumstances as theyhave been related by the eye-witnesses: when they found the Governmentman and took him out of the river, his skull was crushed and both armswere broken ... see here!" he threw himself quickly into the attitude ofone fishing from a riverbank. "Suppose somebody creeps up behind me witha club raised to brain me: I get a glimpse of him or his shadow, dodge,fling up my arms, so--and one good, smashing blow does the business.That's all; or all but one little item. Manuel's woman knows who struckthat blow, and Sanderson was trying to bribe her to tell."
If the announcement had been an explosion to rock the bungalow on itsfoundations, the effect could scarcely have been more striking. Ballardflung the empty gun aside and sprang to his feet. The collegian sat downweakly and stared. Bromley's jaw dropped, and he glared across atWingfield as if the clever deduction were a mortal affront to be crammeddown the throat of its originator.
The
playwright's smile was the eye-wrinkling of one who prides himselfupon the ability to keep his head when others are panic-stricken.
"Seems to knock you fellows all in a heap," he remarked, calmly. "Whathave you been doing all these months that you haven't dug it out foryourselves?"
Bromley was moistening his lips.
"Go on, Mr. Wingfield, if you please. Tell us all you know--or think youknow."
"There is more; a good bit more," was the cool reply. "Three months agoyou had a train wreck on the railroad--two men killed. 'Rough track,'was the cause assigned, Mr. Bromley; but that was one time when yourcautious chief, Macpherson, fell down. The two surviving trainmen,questioned separately by me within the past week, both say that therewere at least inferential proofs of pulled spikes and a loosened rail. Alittle later one man was killed and two were crippled by the prematureexplosion of a charge of dynamite in the quarry. Carelessness, thistime, on the part of the men involved; and _you_ said it, Mr. Bromley.It was nothing of the kind. Some one had substituted a coil ofquick-firing fuse for the ordinary slow-match the men had been using,and the thing went off before the cry of 'fire' could be given. How do Iknow?"
"Yes; how _do_ you know?" demanded Bromley.
"By a mere fluke, and not by any process of deduction, in this instance,as it happens. One of the survivors was crafty enough to steal the coilof substituted fuse, having some vague notion of suing the company fordamages for supplying poor material. Like other men of his class, hegave up the notion when he got well of his injuries; but it was revivedagain the other day when one of his comrades told him I was a lawyer. Hemade a date with me, told me his tale, and showed me the carefullypreserved coil of bad fuse. I cut off a bit of it and did a littleexperimenting. Look at this." He took a piece of fuse from his pocket,uncoiled it upon the table, and applied a match. It went off like aflash of dry gunpowder, burning through from end to end in a fraction ofa second.
"Go on," said Ballard, speaking for the first time since the playwrighthad begun his unravelling of the tangled threads of disaster.
"We dismiss the quarry catastrophe and come to the fall of a greatboulder from the hill-crags on the farther side of the river some twoweeks later. This heaven-sent projectile smashed into the dam structure,broke out a chunk of the completed masonry, killed two men outright andinjured half a dozen others--correct me if I distort the details, Mr.Bromley. This time there was no investigation worthy of the name, if Ihave gathered my information carefully enough. Other rocks had fallenfrom the same slope; and after Fitzpatrick had assured himself thatthere were no more likely to fall, the matter was charged off to theaccident account. If you and Michael Fitzpatrick had been the typicalcoroner's jury, Mr. Bromley, you couldn't have been more easilysatisfied with purely inferential evidence. I wasn't satisfied until Ihad climbed painfully to the almost inaccessible ledge from which theboulder had fallen. Once there, however, the 'act of God' became veryplainly the act of man. The 'heel' used as a fulcrum in levering therock from the ledge was still in place; and the man in the case, in hishaste or in his indifference to discovery, had left the iron crowbarwith which he had pried the stone from its bed. The crowbar is stillthere."
"Is that all?" asked Bromley, wetting his lips again.
"By no manner of means," was the equable rejoinder. "I could go onindefinitely. The falling derrick may or may not have been aimedspecially at Macpherson; but it committed premeditated murder, just thesame--the broken guy cable was rotted in two with acid. Again you willdemand to know how I know. I satisfied myself by making a few simpletests on the broken ends with chemicals filched out of ColonelCraigmiles's laboratory up yonder in the second story of his electricplant. No; I'm no chemist. But you will find, when you come to writestories and plays, that a smattering knowledge of every man's tradecomes in handy. Otherwise you'll be writing yourself down as ablundering ass in every second paragraph."
Wingfield paused, but it was only to relight his pipe. When the tobaccowas burning again he went on, in the same even tone.
"The falling derrick brings us down to your _regime_, Mr. Ballard. Ipass by the incident of the hurled stone that made that awkward patchnecessary in your ceiling: you yourself have admitted that the stonecould not have come from the blasting in the quarry. But there wasanother railroad accident which deserves mention. No doubt Hoskins hastold you what he saw almost on the very spot where Braithwaite'ssnuffing-out occurred. He thought it was Braithwaite's ghost--he stillthinks so. But we are less credulous; or, at least, I was. LikeSanderson, I have been making friends--or enemies--at the Craigmilescattle ranch. In fact, I was down there the day following Hoskins'smisfortune. Curiously enough, there was another man who saw theBraithwaite ghost--one 'Scotty,' a cow-boy. He was night-herding on theranch bunch of beef cattle on the night of the accident, and he saw theghost, leather leggings, Norfolk shooting-jacket, and double-visoredBritish cap all complete, riding a horse down to the river a littlewhile before the train came around the curve. And after the hullabaloo,he saw it again, riding quietly back to the ranch."
Bromley was gripping the edge of the table and exchanging glances withBallard. It was the Kentuckian who broke the silence which fell upon thegroup around the table when the playwright made an end.
"Summing it all up, what is your conclusion, Wingfield? You have reachedone long before this, I take it."
The amateur Vidocq made a slow sign of assent.
"As I have told you, I went into this thing out of sheer curiosity, andpartly because there were obstructions put in my way. That's humannature. But afterward it laid hold of me and held me by its own grip.I'm not sure that there have been any simon-pure accidents at all. Sofar as I have gone, everything that has happened has been made tohappen; has been carefully planned and prepared for in advance by someone of more than ordinary intelligence--and vindictiveness. And,unhappily, the motive is only too painfully apparent. The work on thisirrigation project of yours is to be hampered and delayed by allpossible means, even to the sacrificing of human life."
Again there was a silence in the thick-walled office room; a silence sostrained that the clickings of the stone hammers in the yard and therasping cacophonies of the hoisting engines at the dam seemed farremoved. It was Bromley who spoke first, and his question was pointedlysuggestive.
"You haven't stopped with the broad generalisation, Mr. Wingfield?"
"Meaning that I have found the man who is responsible for all thesedesperate and deadly doings? I am afraid I have. There would seem to beonly one man in the world whose personal interests are at stake.Naturally, I haven't gone very deeply into that part of it. But didn'tsomebody tell me there is a fight on in the courts between the ArcadiaCompany and Colonel Craigmiles?--a fight in which delay is the one thingneedful for the colonel?"
Ballard came back to the table and stood within arm's-reach of thespeaker. His square jaw had taken on the fighting angle, and his eyeswere cold and hard.
"What are you going to do about it, Mr. Wingfield? Have you arrived atthat conclusion, also?"
Wingfield's doubtful glance was in young Blacklock's direction, and hisreply was evasive.
"That is a very natural question; but doesn't it strike you, Mr.Ballard, that this is hardly the time or place to go into it?"
"No."
"Very well.... Jerry, what we are talking about now is strictly betweengentlemen: do you understand?"
"Sure thing," said the collegian.
"You ask me what I am going to do, Mr. Ballard; and in return I'll askyou to put yourself in my place. Clearly, it is a law-abiding citizen'splain duty to go and lay the bald facts before the nearest prosecutingattorney and let the law take its course. On the other hand, I'm only aman like other men, and----"
"And you are Colonel Craigmiles's guest. Go on," said Ballard,straightening the path of hesitation for him.
"That's it," nodded Wingfield. "As you say, I am his guest;and--er--well, there is another reason why I should be the last personin the world to make or meddle. At f
irst, I was brashly incredulous, asanyone would be who was mixing and mingling with the colonel in thedaily amenities. Later, when the ugly fact persisted and I was obligedto admit it, the personal factor entered the equation. It's badmedicine, any way you decide to take it."
"Still you are not telling us what you mean to do, Mr. Wingfield,"Bromley reminded him gently.
"No; but I don't mind telling you. I have about decided upon a weak sortof compromise. This thing will come out--it's bound to come out in thepretty immediate hence; and I don't want to be here when the sheriffarrives. I think I shall have a very urgent call to go back to NewYork."
Bromley laid hold of the table and pulled himself to his feet; but itwas Ballard who said, slowly, as one who weighs his words and the fullimport of them: "Mr. Wingfield, you are more different kinds of an assthan I took you to be, and that is saying a great deal. Out of a mass ofhearsay, the idle stories of a lot of workmen whose idea of humour hasbeen to make a butt of you, you have built up this fantastic fairy tale.I am charitable enough to believe that you couldn't help it; it is apart of your equipment as a professional maker of fairy tales. But thereare two things for which I shall take it upon myself to answerpersonally. You will not leave Castle 'Cadia until your time is out; andyou'll not leave this room until you have promised the three of us thatthis cock-and-bull story of yours stops right here with its firsttelling."
"That's so," added Bromley, with a quiet menace in his tone.
It was the playwright's turn to gasp, and he did it, very realistically.
"You--you don't believe it? with all the three-sheet-poster evidencestaring you in the face? Why, great Joash! you must be stark, staringmad--both of you!" he raved. And then to Blacklock: "Are you in it, too,Jerry?"
"I guess I am," returned the collegian, meaning no more than that hefelt constrained to stand with the men of his chosen profession.
Wingfield drew a long breath and with it regained the impersonal heightsof the unemotional observer. "Of course, it is just as you please," hesaid, carelessly. "I had a foolish notion I was doing you two a goodturn; but if you choose to take the other view of it--well, there is noaccounting for tastes. Drink your own liquor and give the house a goodname. I'll dig up my day-pay later on: it's cracking good material, youknow."
"That is another thing," Ballard went on, still more decisively. "If youever put pen to paper with these crazy theories of yours for a basis, Ishall make it my business to hunt you down as I would a wild beast."
"So shall I," echoed Bromley.
Wingfield rose and put the long-stemmed pipe carefully aside.
"You are a precious pair of bally idiots," he remarked, quite withoutheat. Then he looked at his watch and spoke pointedly to Blacklock."You're forgetting Miss Elsa's fishing party to the upper canyon, aren'tyou? Suppose we drive around to Castle 'Cadia in the car. You can sendOtto back after Mr. Bromley later on." And young Blacklock was soblankly dazed by the cool impudence of the suggestion that he consentedand left the bungalow with the playwright.
For some little time after the stuttering purr of the motor-car had diedaway the two men sat as Wingfield had left them, each busy with his ownthoughts. Bromley was absently fingering the cartridges from Sanderson'srifle, mute proofs of the truth of the playwright's theories, andBallard seemed to have forgotten that he had promised Fitzpatrick to runa line for an additional side-track in the railroad yard.
"Do you blame me, Loudon?" he asked, after the silence had wrought itsperfect work.
"No; there was nothing else to do. But I couldn't help being sorry forhim."
"So was I," was the instant rejoinder. "Wingfield is all kinds of adecent fellow; and the way he has untangled the thing is nothing shortof masterly. But I had to tie his tongue; you know I had to do that,Loudon."
"Of course, you had to."
Silence again for a little space; and then:
"There is no doubt in your mind that he has hit upon the true solutionof all the little mysteries?"
Bromley shook his head slowly. "None at all, I am sorry to say. I havesuspected it, in part, at least, for a good while. And I had proofpositive before Wingfield gave it to us."
"How?" queried Ballard.
Bromley was still fingering the cartridges. "I hate to tell you,Breckenridge. And yet you ought to know," he added. "It concerns youvitally."
Ballard's smile was patient. "I am well past the shocking point," heaverred. "After what we have pulled through in the last hour we may aswell make a clean sweep of it."
"Well, then; I didn't stumble over the canyon cliff that night fourweeks ago: I was knocked over."
"What!"
"It's true."
"And you know who did it?"
"I can make a pretty good guess. While I was down at the wing dam a manpassed me, coming from the direction of the great house. He was a bigman, and he was muffled to the ears in a rain-coat. I know, because Iheard the peculiar 'mackintosh' rustle as he went by me. I knew then whoit was; would have known even if I hadn't had a glimpse of his face atthe passing instant. It is one of the colonel's eccentricities never togo out after nightfall--in a bone-dry country, mind you--without wearinga rain-coat."
"Well?" said Ballard.
"He didn't see me, though I thought at first that he did; he keptlooking back as if he were expecting somebody to follow him. He took thepath on our side of the canyon--the one I took a few minutes later.That's all; except that I would swear that I heard the 'slither' of amackintosh just as the blow fell that knocked me down and out.
"Heavens, Loudon! It's too grossly unbelievable! Why, man, he saved yourlife after the fact, risking his own in a mad drive down here fromCastle 'Cadia in the car to do it! You wouldn't have lived until morningif he hadn't come."
"It is unbelievable, as you say; and yet it isn't, when you havesurrounded all the facts. What is the reason, the only reason, whyColonel Craigmiles should resort to all these desperate expedients?"
"Delay, of course; time to get his legal fight shaped up in the courts."
"Exactly. If he can hold us back long enough, the dam will never becompleted. He knows this, and Mr. Pelham knows it, too. Unhappily forus, the colonel has found a way to ensure the delay. The work can't goon without a chief of construction."
"But, good Lord, Loudon, you're not the 'Big Boss'; and, besides, theman loves you like a son! Why should he try to kill you one minute andmove heaven and earth to save your life the next?"
Bromley shook his head sorrowfully.
"That is what made me say what I did about not wanting to tell you,Breckenridge. That crack over the head wasn't meant for me; it was meantfor you. If it had not been so dark under the hill that night--but itwas; pocket-dark in the shadow of the pines. And he knew you'd be comingalong that path on your way back to camp--knew you'd be coming, andwasn't expecting anybody else. Don't you see?"
Ballard jumped up and began to pace the floor.
"My God!" he ejaculated; "I was his guest; I had just broken bread athis table! Bromley, when he went out to lie in wait for me, he left metalking with his daughter! It's too horrible!"
Bromley had stood the eleven cartridges, false and true, in a curvingrow on the table. The crooking line took the shape of a hugeinterrogation point.
"Wingfield thought he had solved all the mysteries, but the darkest ofthem remains untouched," he commented. "How can the genial, kindly,magnanimous man we know, or think we know, be such a fiend incarnate?"Then he broke ground again in the old field. "Will you do now what Ibegged you to do at first?--throw up this cursed job and go away?"
Ballard stopped short in his tramping and his answer was an explosive"No!"
"That is half righteous anger, and half something else. What is theother half, Breckenridge?" And when Ballard did not define it: "I canguess it; it is the same thing that made you stuff Wingfield's theoriesdown his throat a few minutes ago. You are sorry for the daughter."
Through the open door Ballard saw Fitzpatrick coming across the stoneyar
d.
"You've guessed it, Loudon; or rather, I think you have known it allalong. I love Elsa Craigmiles; I loved her long before I ever heard ofArcadia or its king. Now you know why Wingfield mustn't be allowed totalk; why I mustn't go away and give place to a new chief who might liveto see Elsa's father hanged. She must be spared and defended at anycost. One other word before Fitzpatrick cuts in: When my time comes, ifit does come, you and one other man will know how I passed out and why.I want your promise that you'll keep still, and that you will keepWingfield still. Blacklock doesn't count."
"Sure," said Bromley, quietly; and then, with the big Irish contractor'sshadow fairly darkening the door: "You'll do the same for me,Breckenridge, won't you? Because--oh, confound it all!--I'm in the sameboat with you; without a ghost of a show, you understand."
Ballard put his back squarely to Michael Fitzpatrick scraping his feeton the puncheon-floored porch of the bungalow, and gripped Bromley'shand across the table.
"It's a bargain," he declared warmly. "We'll take the long chance andstand by her together, old man. And if she chooses the better part inthe end, I'll try not to act like a jealous fool. Now you turn in andlie down a while. I've got to go with Michael."
This time it was Bromley who saved the situation. "What a pair ofluminous donkeys we are!" he laughed. "She calls you 'dear friend,' andme 'little brother.' If we're right good and tractable, we may get cardsto her wedding--with Wingfield."