Thoroughbreds Part 59

Suddenly he stopped in his swift pace, faced the girl, and asked, "You are quite sure you can't love me?" He was waiting for an answer.

"No, I can't--I hate to cause you misery, but I must speak the truth; you have asked for it."

"And you've answered honestly. I know it was foolish in me to ask the impossible. Just one more question and then I will tell you why I brought you here. Do you still believe in Mortimer's innocence--do you love Mortimer?"

"Yes."

"If I were to tell you that he is innocent, that I have discovered the guilty one."

"Oh, my G.o.d!" It was a cry of sudden joy, incapable of exact expression, irrelevant in its naming of the Deity, but full in its exultation of soul. Then, in quick transformation, the girl collapsed, as Ca.s.s had done, and huddled in her chair, stricken by the sudden conviction that the crime had been brought home to her brother. Her lover was guiltless; but to joy over it was a sin, inhuman, for was not Alan the thief, if Mortimer were innocent?

Crane understood. He had forgotten. He stepped quickly to the girl's side, put his hand tenderly on her head; her big gray eyes stared up at him full of a shrinking horror.

"Poor little woman!" he said, "your big, tender heart will be the death of you yet. But I've got only good news for you this time. Neither Mortimer nor Alan took the money--it was Ca.s.s."

"They are both innocent?"

"Yes, both."

"Oh, my G.o.d, I thank Thee." She pulled herself up from the chair, holding to Crane's arm, and looking in his face, said, "You did this; you found the guilty man for me?"

Crane nodded his head; and it came to the girl as she looked, that the eyes she had thought narrow in evil grew big and round and full of honesty, and soft with gentleness for her.

"How can I thank you--what can I do or say to repay you?" She knew what it must have cost the man to clear his rival's name.

"It was your doing, Miss Allis; it is I who must thank you. You made a man of me, brought more good into my life than had been there for forty years. I will be honest. I did not do this of myself, my own free will.

In my love for you, and desire to have you with me always, I almost committed a crime. I was tempted to conceal the discovery I had made; I knew that if I cleared Mortimer you were lost to me. I struggled with temptation and fell asleep still not conquering it. In my sleep I dreamed--I don't think it was a dream--it was like a vision--you came to me, and when I said that Mortimer was innocent, you kissed me on the forehead. I woke then, and the struggle had ceased--the temptation had pa.s.sed. I came down here, and Ca.s.s has confessed that he took the money."

"Would you like it--would you think it wrong--it seems so little for me to do--may I kiss you now, as I did in your dream, and thank you from the bottom of my heart for making me so happy? It all seems like a dream to me now."

For answer Crane inclined his head, and Allis, putting her hand upon his shoulder, kissed him on the forehead, and through him went a thrill of great thankfulness, of joy such as he knew would never have come to him had he gained through treachery even this small token of conquest.

"There," he said, taking Allis by the arm, and gently drawing her back to the chair; "now I am repaid a thousandfold for not doing a great wrong. You have beaten me twice within a few days. I fancy I should almost be afraid to be your husband, you master me so easily."

"That's Mortimer coming," Crane said, suddenly, as a step with more consistency in its endeavor than pertained to the hostler's, sounded, coming up the stairs. "I sent for him," he added, seeing the look of happy confusion in Allis's face.

"Come in," he called cheerily, in answer to a knock on the door.

"You sent for me--" Then Mortimer stopped suddenly, and stood staring first at Allis, then at Crane, alternately, back and forth from one to the other.

Crane turned his back upon the younger man and busied himself wondrously over the manipulation of a chair. A strange dread crept into Mortimer's heart; it smothered him; he felt dizzy. Why did Allis look so happy--why were there smiles on her lips when she must know there were ashes of gloom in his soul? Why was she alone there with Crane? Was it but another devilish trick of the misfortune that pursued him?

"Good afternoon, Miss" the words stuck in Mortimer's throat, and he completed his greeting with a most dreadfully formal bow.

The girl laughed outright; how droll it was to see a man trying to make himself unhappy when there was nothing but happiness in the world.

Through the open window she could hear the birds singing, and through it came the perfume of clover-buried fields; across the floor streamed warm, bright sunlight from a blue sky in which was no cloud. And from their lives, Mortimer's and her own, had been swept the dark cloud--and here, in the midst of all this joy was her lover with a long, sad face, trying to reproach her with a stiff, awkward bow.

Her laugh twirled Crane about like a top. He saw the odd situation; there was something incongruous in Mortimer's stiff att.i.tude. Crane had a big cloud of his own not quite driven from his sky, but a smile hovered on his thin lips. This happiness was worth catching.

Mortimer noticed the distasteful mirth reflected in the other man's face, and he repeated with asperity, "You sent for me, sir--may I ask--"

"Will you take a chair," said Crane, and he pushed the one he had been toying with toward Mortimer. The latter remained standing.

Allis sprang forward and caught him by the arm--Crane turned away, suddenly discovering that from the window the main street of Brookfield was a most absorbing study.

"I'm so happy," began Allis. Mortimer s.h.i.+vered in apprehension. Why had Crane turned his face away--what was coming? How could she be happy, how could anyone in the world be happy? But evidently she was. She stole a quick look at Crane--to be exact, Crane's back, for his head and shoulders were through the window.

Then the girl--she had to raise on her tiptoes--kissed the sad man on the cheek. I'm ashamed to say that he stared. Were they all mad--was he not standing with one foot in the penitentiary?

She drew him toward the chair, calling to Crane: "Will you please tell Mr. Mortimer the good news. I am too happy; I can't."

A fierce anger surged in Mortimer's heart; it was true, then--his disgrace had been too much for Allis. The other had won; but it was too cruel to kiss him.

Crane faced about, and coming forward, held out his hand to the man of distrust. "I hope you'll forgive me."

Mortimer sprang to his feet, shoving back his chair violently, and stood erect, drawn to his full height, his right hand clenched fiercely at his side. "Shake hands? No, a thousand times no!" he muttered to himself.

Crane saw the action, and his own hand dropped. "Perhaps I ask too much," he said, quietly; "I wronged you--"

Mortimer set his teeth and waited. There were great beads of perspiration on his forehead, and his broad chest set his breath whistling through contracted nostrils. A pretty misdirected pa.s.sion was playing him. This was why they had sent for him--the girl he would have staked his life on had been brought to believe in his guilt, and had been won over to his rival. Ah--a new thought; his mind, almost diseased by unjust accusation, prompted it--perhaps it was to save him from punishment that Allis had consented to become Crane's wife.

"But I believed you guilty--" Mortimer started as Crane said this "now I know that you are innocent, I ask--"

Mortimer staggered back a step and caught at the chair to steady himself. He repeated mechanically the other's words: "You know I'm innocent?"

"Yes, I've found the guilty man."

"Then Alan--oh, the poor lad! It's a mistake--you are wrong. The boy didn't take the money--I took it."

Crane looked at him in admiration, an indulgent smile on his lips.

"Nonsense, my dear sir!" he exclaimed, dryly; "Alan did not take the money--neither did you. Ca.s.s took it, and you wasted a day of the bank's time covering the crime for him."

"Ca.s.s took it?" asked Mortimer in a dazed way, looking from Crane to Allis.

"Yes; he has confessed, so you see he's ahead of you in that line"

He went on, speaking hurriedly: "I ask you to forgive me now for my suspicions. Your innocence is completely established. You acted like a hero in trying to s.h.i.+eld Alan Porter, and I like men of that stamp. The thousand dollars you paid in will be restored to you; it is yours. We will devise some scheme for clearing up the matter as far as your good name is concerned that will s.h.i.+eld poor Ca.s.s from people who have no business in this affair."

"But how did Ca.s.s manage to get the note?"

"Found it on the floor of the vault, he says."

"I don't see how it could have fallen out of the box, because the three bills were pinned to the note."

Crane drew forth a pocket book, and opening it took out the bill that had been stolen. He examined it closely, holding it up in front of the window.

"I think you are mistaken," he said, "there are no pin holes in this bill; I see," he continued, "the pin had not gone through this one; being detached, in handling the box, it has slipped out."

"It must have," concurred Mortimer. "I remember in putting the box in the compartment once I had to turn it on its edge; the bill being loose, as you say, has slipped to the floor, and as the vault was dark I did not notice it."