The Man Who Couldn't Sleep Part 44

He took a deep breath. Then he closed his eyes. And when he spoke he did so without opening them.

"I don't think I could explain," was his listless answer.

"Make a try at it," I urged. "Let's ventilate the thing, ca.n.a.lize it.

Let's throw a little light and order into it."

He moved his head up and down, slowly, as though he had some vague comprehension of the psychology of confession, some knowledge of the advantages of "exteriorating" secret offenses. Then he sat very still and tense.

"But there's no way of ventilating this. There's no way of knocking a window in it. It's--it's only a blank wall."

"Why a blank wall?" I inquired.

He turned and looked past me, with unseeing eyes.

"_Because I can't remember_," he said in a voice which made it seem that he was speaking more to himself than to me. He looked about him, with a helplessness that was pitiful. "I can't remember!" he repeated, with the forlornness of a frightened child.

"That's exactly what I wanted to get at," I cried, with a pretense at confident and careless intimacy. "So let's clear away in front of the blank wall. Let's at least try a kick or two at it."

"It's no use," he complained.

"Well, let's try," I persisted, with forced cheerfulness. "Let's get at the beginning of things."

"How far back do you want me to go?" he finally asked. He spoke with the weary listlessness of a patient confronted by an unwelcome pract.i.tioner.

"Let's begin right at the first," I blithely suggested.

He sat looking at his shaking fingers for a moment or two.

"There's really nothing much to begin at," he tried to explain. "These things don't seem to begin in a minute, or an hour, or a day."

"Of course not," I a.s.sented as I waited for him to go on.

"The thing I noticed at the time, about the only thing I even thought of, was that my memory seemed to have a blind spot--a blind spot the same as an eye has."

"Ill?" I asked. "Or overworking?"

"I guess I'd been pounding away pretty hard. I know I had. You see, I wanted to make good in that office. So I must have been biting off more than I could chew."

"What office?" I asked as he came to a stop. He looked up at me with a stare of dazed perplexity.

"Didn't I tell you that?" he asked, ma.s.saging his frontal bone with the ends of his unsteady fingers. "Why, I mean John Lockwood's office."

"John Lockwood?" I repeated, with a sudden tightening of the nerves.

"Do you mean the railway-investment man, the man who made so many millions up along the northwest coast?"

The youth in the chair nodded. And I made an effort to control my feelings, for John Lockwood, I knew only too well, was the father of Mary Lockwood. He, like myself, had exploited the Frozen North, but had exploited it in a manner very different from mine.

"Go on," I said, after quite a long pause.

"Lockwood brought me down from the Canadian Northern offices in Winnipeg. He said he'd give me a chance in the East--the chance of my life."

"What were you in his office?"

"I suppose you'd call it private secretary. But I don't think he knew what I was himself."

"And he let you overwork yourself?"

"No, I can't say that. It wasn't his fault. You see, his work this summer kept him out at the coast a good deal of the time. He had an English mining engineer named Carlton looking over some British Columbia interests."

"And you carried on the office work while Lockwood was out west?"

"I did what I could to keep my end of the thing going. But, you see, it was all so new to me. I hadn't got deep enough into the work to organize it the way I wanted to. There were a lot of little things that _couldn't_ be organized."

"Why not?"

"Well, this man Carlton, for instance, had Lockwood's office look after his English mail. All his letters had to be sent on to whatever point he reported from."

"Well?"

"When Lockwood was away from the office he deputized me to look after his mail, sign for the registered letters, re-direct telegrams, see that everything went through to the right point. It was quite a heavy mail. Carlton, I guess, was a man of importance, and besides that he was investing for friends at home. Looking after it, of course, was simple enough, but--"

"Wait!" I interrupted. "Has this mail anything to do with our blank wall?"

He looked about at me as though he had seen me for the first time, as though all that while he had been merely thinking aloud.

"Why that is the blank wall," he cried.

"How?" I demanded.

"Four weeks ago Lockwood came back from the West. On the same day a registered letter came to the office for young Carlton. That letter held twelve Bank of England notes for a hundred pounds each. About six thousand dollars altogether."

"Where did it come from?"

"From Montreal, from Carlton's own father. He wanted the money forwarded to his son. The older man was on his way back to England.

The younger Carlton was looking up certain lands his father wanted to invest in. Young Carlton's movements were rather uncertain, so his father made sure by sending the letter to our office--to Lockwood's office."

"And you were still acting as _poste restante_ for the Carlton out in British Columbia?"

"Yes, we'd been receiving and forwarding his mail."

"And?"

"We also received this registered letter from Montreal. That's where the blank wall comes in."

"How?"

"We've no record of that letter ever going out of our office."

He looked at me as though he expected me to be more electrified than I found it possible to be.