The Power and the Glory Part 31

"Yesterday evening," she returned placidly. "Don't you remember, Jerome, he was here at the Lyric reception?"

"Oh, I remember well enough," said Hardwick knitting his brows. "I thought some of you might have seen him since then. He's missing."

"Missing!" echoed Lydia Sessions with a note of terror in her tones.

Now Mrs. Hardwick looked startled.

"But, Jerome, I think you're inconsiderate," she began, glancing solicitously at her sister. "Under the circ.u.mstances, it seems to me you might have made your announcement more gently--to Lydia, anyhow. Never mind, dearie--there's nothing in it to be frightened at."

"I'm not frightened," whispered Lydia Sessions through white lips that belied her a.s.sertion. Hardwick looked impatiently from his sister-in-law to his wife.

"I'm sorry if I startled you, Lydia," he said in a perfunctory tone, "but this is a serious business. MacPherson tells me Stoddard hasn't been at the factory nor at his boarding-house to-day. The last person who saw him, so far as we know, is his stable boy. Black Jim says Stoddard rode out of the gate at five o'clock this morning, bareheaded and in his riding clothes. Have any of you seen him since--that's what I want to know?"

"Since?" repeated Miss Sessions, who seemed unable to get beyond the parrot echoing of her questioner's words. "Why Jerome, what makes you think I've seen him since then? Did he say--did anybody tell you--"

She broke off huskily and sat staring at her interlaced fingers dropped in her lap.

"No--no. Of course not, Lydia," her sister hastened to rea.s.sure her, crossing the room and putting a protecting arm about the girl's shoulders. "He shouldn't have spoken as he did, knowing that you and Gray--knowing how affairs stand."

"Well, I only thought since you and Stoddard are such great friends,"

Hardwick persisted, "he might have mentioned to you some excursion, or made opportunity to talk with you alone, sometime last night--to--to say something. Did he tell you where he was going, Lydia? Are you keeping something from us that we ought to know? Remember this is no child's play. It begins to look as though it might be a question of the man's life."

Lydia Sessions started galvanically. She pushed off her sister's caressing hand with a fierce gesture.

"There's nothing--no such relation as you're hinting at, Elizabeth, between Gray Stoddard and me," she said sharply. Memory of what Gray had (as she supposed) followed her into the library to say to her wrung a sort of groan from the girl. "I suppose Matilda's told you that we had--had some conversation in the library," she managed to say.

Her brother-in-law shook his head.

"We haven't questioned the servants yet," he said briefly. "We haven't questioned anybody nor hunted up any evidence. MacPherson came direct to me from Stoddard's stable boy. Gray did stop and talk to you last night?

What did he say?"

"I--why nothing in--I really don't remember," faltered Lydia, with so strange a look that both her sister and Hardwick looked at her in surprise. "That is--oh, nothing of any importance, you know. I--I believe we were talking about socialism, and--and different cla.s.ses of people.... That sort of thing."

MacPherson, who had pushed unceremoniously into the room behind his employer, nodded his gray head. "That would always be what he was speaking of." He smiled a little as he said it.

"All right," returned Hardwick, struggling into his overcoat at the hat-tree, and seeking his hat and stick, "I'll go right back with you, Mac. This thing somehow has a sinister look to me."

As the two men were leaving the house, Hardwick felt a light, trembling touch on his arm, and turned to face his sister-in-law.

"Why--Jerome, why did you say that last?" Lydia quavered. "What do you think has happened to him? Do you think anybody--that is--? Oh, you looked at me as though you thought I had something to do with it!"

"Come, come, Lyd. Pull yourself together. You're getting hysterical,"

urged Hardwick kindly. Then he turned to MacPherson. As the two men went companionably down the walk and out into the street, the Scotchman said apologetically:

"Of course, I knew Miss Lydia would be alarmed. I understand about her and Stoddard. It made me hesitate a while before coming up to you folks with the thing."

"Well, by the Lord, you did well not to hesitate too long, Mac!"

e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Hardwick. "I shouldn't feel the anxiety I do if we hadn't been having trouble with those mountain people up toward Flat Rock over that girl that died at the hospital." He laughed a little ruefully.

"Trying to do things for folks is ticklish business. There wasn't a man in the crowd that interviewed me whom I could convince that our hospital wasn't a factory for the making of stiffs which we sold to the Northern Medical College. Oh, it was gruesome!

"I told them the girl had had every attention, and that she died of pernicious anaemia. They called it 'a big dic word' and asked me point blank if the girl hadn't been killed in the mill. I told them that we couldn't keep the body indefinitely, and they said they 'aimed to come and haul it away as soon as they could get a horse and wagon.' I called their attention to the fact that I couldn't know this unless they wrote and told me so in answer to my letter. But between you and me, Mac, I don't believe there was a man in the crowd who could read or write."

"For G.o.d's sake!" exclaimed the Scotchman. "You don't think _those_ people were up to doing a mischief to Stoddard, do you?"

"I don't know what to think," protested Hardwick. "Yes; they are mediaeval--half savage. The fact is, I have no idea what they would or what they wouldn't do."

MacPherson gave a whistle of dismay.

"Gad, it sounds like the manoeuvres of one of our Highland clans three hundred years ago!" he said. "Wouldn't it be the irony of fate that Stoddard--poor fellow!--a friend of the people, a socialist, ready to call every man his brother--should be sacrificed in such a way?"

The words brought them to Stoddard's little home, silent and deserted now. Down the street, the lamps flared gustily. It was after eleven o'clock.

"Where does that boy live that takes care of the horses--black Jim?"

Hardwick inquired, after they had rung the bell, thumped on the door, and called, to make sure the master had not returned during MacPherson's absence.

"I don't know--really, I don't know. He might have a room over the stable," MacPherson suggested.

But the stable proved to be a one-story affair, and they were just turning to leave when a stamping sound within arrested their notice.

"Good G.o.d!--what's that?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed MacPherson, whose nerves were quivering.

"It's the horse," answered Hardwick in a relieved tone. "Stoddard's got back--"

"Of course," broke in old MacPherson, quickly, "and gone over to Mrs.

Gandish's for some supper. That is why he wasn't in the house."

To make a.s.surance doubly sure, they opened the unlocked stable door, and MacPherson struck a match. The roan turned and whinnied hungrily at sight of them.

"That's funny," said Hardwick, scarcely above his breath. "It looks to me as though that animal hadn't been fed."

In the flare of the match MacPherson had descried the stable lantern hanging on the wall. They lit this and examined the stall. There was no feed in the box, no hay in the manger. The saddle was on Gray Stoddard's horse; the bit in his mouth; he was tied by the reins to his stall ring.

The two men looked at each other with lengthening faces.

"Stoddard's too good a horseman to have done that," spoke Hardwick slowly.

"And too kind a man," supplied MacPherson loyally. "He'd have seen to the beast's hunger before he satisfied his own."

As the Scotchman spoke he was picking up the horse's hoofs, and digging at them with a bit of stick.

"They're as clean as if they'd just been washed," he said, as he straightened up. "By Heaven! I have it, Hardwick--that fellow came into town with his hoofs m.u.f.fled."

The younger man looked also, and a.s.sented mutely, then suggested:

"He hasn't come far; there's not a hair turned on him."

The Scotchman shook his head. "I'm not sure of that," he debated.

"Likely he's been led, and that slowly. G.o.d--this is horrible!"

Mechanically Hardwick got some hay down for the horse, while MacPherson pulled off the saddle and bridle, examining both in the process. Grain was poured into the box, and then water offered.