At the Crossroads Part 36

He placed certain old sheets on one side of the table; newer sheets on the other; some half sheets in the middle. It was like an intricate puzzle, and the same one that Maclin had recently tackled.

That he was meddling with another's property and reading another's letters did not seem to occur to Northrup. He was held by a determined force that was driving him on and an intense interest that justified any means at his disposal.

"Some day I will read my old doctor's letters to you--I have kept them all!"

Northrup looked up. Almost he believed Jan-an had voiced the words, but they had been spoken days ago by Mary-Clare during one of those illuminating talks of theirs and here _were_ some old letters of the doctor's. Were these Mary-Clare's letters? Why were they here and in this state?

Suddenly Northrup's face stiffened. The old, yellowed letters were, apparently, from Doctor Rivers to his son! But there were other letters on bits of fresh paper, the handwriting identical, or nearly so. Northrup's more intelligent eye saw differences. The more recent letters were, evidently, exercises; one improved on the other; in some cases parts of the letters were repeated. All these Northrup sorted and laid in neat piles.

"She set a store by them old letters," Jan-an was rambling along. "I'd have taken them back to her, but I 'clar, 'fore G.o.d, I don't know which is which, I'm that cluttered. Why did he want to pest her by taking them and then making more and more?"

"I'm trying to find out." Northrup spoke almost harshly. He wanted to quiet the girl.

The last sc.r.a.p of paper had been torn from an old, greasy bag and bore clever imitation. It was the last copy, Northrup believed, of what Jan-an said he had just carried away with him.

Northrup grew hot and cold. He read the words and his brain reeled. It was an appeal, or supposed to be one, from a dead man to one whom he trusted in a last emergency.

"So he's this kind of a scoundrel!" muttered Northrup, dazed by the blinding shock of the fear that became, moment by moment, more definite. "And he's taken the thing to her in order to get money."

Northrup could grope along, but he could not see clearly. By temperament and training he had evolved a peculiar sensitiveness in relation to inanimate things. If he became receptive and pa.s.sive, articles which he handled or fixed his eyes upon often transmitted messages for him.

So, now, disregarding poor Jan-an, who rambled on, Northrup gazed at the letters near him, and held close the brown-paper sc.r.a.p which was, he believed, the final copy before the finished production which was undoubtedly being borne to Mary-Clare now. Rivers would have a scene with his wife in the yellow house. With no one to interfere! Northrup started affrightedly, then realized that before he could get to the crossroads whatever was to occur would have occurred.

Larry would return to the shack. There was every evidence that he had not departed finally. Believing that no one would disturb his place so late at night he had taken a chance and--been caught by the last person in the world one would have suspected.

As an unconscious sleuth Jan-an was dramatic. Northrup let his eyes fall upon the girl with new significance. She had given him the power to set Mary-Clare free!

Her dull, tear-stained face was turned hopefully to him; her straight, coa.r.s.e hair hung limply on her shoulders--the old coat had slipped away and the ugly nightgown but partly hid the thin, scraggy body.

Lost to all self-consciousness, the poor creature was but an evidence of faith and devotion to them who had been kind to her. Something of n.o.bility crowned the girl. Northrup went around to her and pulled the old coat close under her chin.

"It's all right, Jan-an," he comforted, patting the unkempt head.

"Are them the letters he stole?"

"Some of them, yes, Jan-an."

"Kin I take 'em back to her?"

"Not to-night. I think Rivers will take them back."

"S'pose he won't."

"He will."

"You, you're going to fetch him one?" The instinct of the savage rose in the girl.

"If necessary, yes!" Northrup shared the primitive instinct at that moment. "And now you trot along home, my girl, and don't open your lips to any one."

"And you?"

"I'll wait for Mr. Larry Rivers here!"

"My G.o.d!" Jan-an burst forth. Then: "There's a sizable log back of the stove. Yer can fetch a good one with that."

"Thanks, Jan-an. Go now."

Jan-an rose stiffly and shuffled to the door, unlocked it, and went into the blackness outside.

Then Northrup sat down and prepared to wait.

The stove was rusty and cold, but Rivers had evidently had a huge fire on the hearth during the day. Now that he noticed, Northrup saw that there were sc.r.a.ps of burned paper fluttering like wings of evil omens stricken in their flight.

He went over to the hearth, poked the ashes, and discovered life. He laid on wood, slowly feeding the hungry sparks, then he took his old place by the table, blew out the light of the lamp and in the dark room, shot by the flares of the igniting logs, he resigned himself to what lay before.

Rivers might return with Maclin. This was a new possibility and disconcerting; still it must be met.

"I may kill a flock of birds by one interview," Northrup grimly thought and then drifted off on Maclin's trail. The ever-recurring wonder about the Point was intensified; he must leave that still in doubt.

"I'll get the d.a.m.ned thing in my own control, if I can," he concluded at length. "Buy it up for safety; keep still about it and watch how Maclin reacts when he knocks against the fact, eventually. That will make things safe for the present."

But to own the Point meant to hold on to King's Forest just when he had decided to turn from it forever--after setting Mary-Clare free.

The sense of a spiritual overlord for an instant daunted Northrup. It was humiliating to realize how he had been treading, all along, one course while believing he was going another. And then--it was close upon midnight and vitality ran sluggish--Northrup became part of one of those curious mental experiences that go far to prove how narrow the boundary is that lies between the things we understand and those that are yet to be understood.

For some moments--or was it hours?--Northrup was not conscious of time or place; not even conscious of himself as a body; he seemed to be a condition, over which a contest of emotions swept. He was not asleep.

He recalled later, that he had kept his eyes on the fire; had once attended to it, casting on a heavy log that dimmed its ferocious ardour.

Where Jan-an had recently sat, struggling with her doubts and fears, Mary-Clare seemed to be. And yet it was not so much Mary-Clare, visually imagined, as that which had gone into the making of the woman.

The black, fierce night of her birth; her isolated up-bringing with a man whose mentality had overpowered his wisdom; the contact with Larry Rivers; the forced marriage and the determined effort to live up to a bargain made in the dark, endured in the dark. It came to Northrup, drifting as he was, that a man or woman can go through slime and torment and really escape harm. The old, fiery furnace legend was based on an eternal truth; that and the lions' den! It put a new light on that peculiar quality of Mary-Clare. She had never been burnt or wounded--not the real woman of her. That explained the maddening thing about her--her aloofness. What would she be now when she stood alone?

For she was going to stand alone! Then Northrup felt new sensations driving across that state which really was himself shorn of prejudice and limitations. His relation to Mary-Clare was changed!

There were primitive forces battling for expression in his lax hour.

Setting the woman free from bondage--what for?

That was the world-old call. Not free for herself, but free that another might claim her. He, sitting there, wanted her. She had not altered that by her heroism. Who would help her free herself, for herself? Who would cut her loose and make no claims? Would it be possible to help her and not put her under obligation? Could any one trust a higher Power and go one's way unasking, refusing everything?

Was there such a thing as freedom for a woman when two men were so welded into her life?

Northrup set his teeth hard together. In the stillness he had his fight! And just then a shuffling outside brought him back to reality.

Rivers came in, not noticing the unlocked door; he had been drinking.

Northrup's eyes, accustomed to the gloom, marked his unsteady gait; smiled as Larry, unconscious of his presence, sank into a chair--the one in which Jan-an had sat--reached out toward the lamp, struck a match, lighted the wick and then, appalled, fixed his eyes upon Northrup!

CHAPTER XIV