The White Desert Part 23

"I guess you're right, Ba'tiste. It won't do any harm. If she's returned for a good purpose, very well. If not, we're at least prepared for her."

With that resolution they went on to Denver, there to seek out the few friends Ba'tiste possessed, to argue one of them into a loan of ten thousand dollars on the land and trustworthy qualities which formed the total of Ba'tiste's resources, to gain from the other the necessary bond to cover the contract,--a contract which Barry Houston knew only too well might never be fulfilled. But against this fear was the booming enthusiasm of Ba'tiste Renaud:

"Nev' min'. Somehow we do eet. Ah, _oui_! Somehow. If we make the failure, then it shall be Ba'teese who will fin' the way to pay the bond.

Now, Ba'teese, he go back."

"Yes, and keep watch on that woman. She's out here for something'--I feel sure of it--something that has to do with Thayer. Before you go, however, make the rounds of the employment agencies and tell them to send you every man they can spare, up to a hundred. We'll give them work to the extent of five thousand dollars. They ought to be able to get enough timber down to keep us going for a while anyway--especially with the roads iced."

"Ah. _Oui_. It is the three o'clock. _Bon voyage, mon_ Baree!"

It was the first time Ba'tiste Renaud ever had dropped the conventional "M'sieu" in addressing Houston, and Barry knew, without the telling, without the glowing light in the old man's eyes, that at least a part of the great loneliness in the trapper's heart had departed, that he had found a place there in a portion of the aching spot left void by a shrapnel-shattered son to whom a father had called that night in the ruined cathedral,--and called in vain. It caused a queer pang of exquisite pain in Houston's heart, a joy too great to be expressed by the reflexes of mere pleasure. Long after the train had left Denver, he still thought of it, he still heard the old man's words, he still sat quiet and peaceful in a new enthusiasm of hope. The world was not so blank, after all. One man, at least, believed in him fully.

Came Chicago and the technicalities of ironing out the final details of the contract. Then, dealer in millions and the possessor of nothing, Houston went onward toward Boston.

And Ba'tiste was not there to boom enthusiastically regarding the chances of the future, to enlarge upon the opportunities which might arise for the fulfillment of a thing which seemed impossible.

Coldly, dispa.s.sionately, now that it was done, that the word of the Empire Lake Mill and Lumber Company had been given to deliver the materials for the making of a great railroad, had guaranteed its resources and furnished the necessary bond for the fulfillment of a promise, Barry Houston could not help but feel that it all had been rash, to say the least. Where was the machinery to be obtained? Where the money to keep things going? True, there would be spot cash awaiting the delivery of every installment of the huge order, enough, in fact, to furnish the necessary running expenses of a mill under ordinary circ.u.mstances. But the circ.u.mstances which surrounded the workings of the Empire Lake project were far from ordinary. No easy skidways to a lake, no flume, no aerials; there was nothing to cut expenses. Unless a miracle should happen, and Houston reflected that miracles were few and far between, that timber must be brought to the mill by a system that would be disastrous as far as costs were concerned. Yet, the contract had been made!

He wandered the aisle of the sleeper, fidgeting from one end to the other, as neither magazines, nor the spinning scenery without held a counter-attraction for his gloomy thoughts. When night at last came, he entered the smoking compartment and slumped into a seat in a far corner, smoking in a detached manner, often pulling on his cigar long after lengthy minutes of reflection had allowed its ashes to cool.

About him the usual conversation raged, the settling of a nation's problems, the discussion of crime waves, Bolshevism and the whatnot that goes with an hour of smoking on a tiresome journey. From Was.h.i.+ngton and governmental affairs, it veered to the West and dry farming, thence to the cattle business; to anecdotes, and finally to ghost stories. And then, with a sudden interest, Houston forgot his own problems to listen attentively, tensely, almost fearfully. A man whom he never before had seen, and whom he probably never would see again, was talking,--about something which might be as remote to Houston as the poles. Yet it held him, it fascinated, it gripped him!

"Speaking of gruesome things," the talker had said, "reminds me. I'm a doctor--not quite full fledged, I'll admit, but with the right to put M.

D. after my name. Spent a couple of years as an interne in Bellstrand Hospital in New York. Big place. Any of you ever been there?"

No one had. The young doctor went on.

"Quite a place for experiments. They've got a big room on the fifth floor where somebody is always dissecting, or carrying out some kind of investigations into this bodily thing we call a home. My work led me past there a good deal, and I'd gotten so I hardly noticed it. But one Sunday night, I guess it was along toward midnight, I saw something that brought me up short. I happened to look in and saw a man in there, murdering another one with a wooden mallet."

"Murdering him?" The statement had caused a rise from the rest of the auditors. The doctor laughed.

"Well, perhaps I used too sentimental a phrase. I should have said, acting out a murder. You can't very well murder a dead man. The fellow he was killing already was a corpse.

"You mean--"

"Just what I'm saying. There were two or three a.s.sistants. Pretty big doctors, I learned later, all of them from Boston. They had taken a cadaver from the refrigerator and stood it in a certain position. Then the one man had struck it on the head with the mallet with all the force he could summon. Of course it knocked the corpse down--I'm telling you, it was gruesome, even to an interne! The last I saw of them, the doctors were working with their microscopes--evidently to see what effect the blow had produced."

"What was the idea?"

"Never found out. They're pretty close-mouthed about that sort of thing.

You see, opposite sides in a trial are always carrying out experiments and trying their level best to keep the other fellow from knowing what's going on. I found out later that the door was supposed to have been locked. I pa.s.sed through about ten minutes later and saw them working on another human body--evidently one of a number that they had been trying the tests on. About that time some one heard me and came out like a bullet. The next thing I knew, everything was closed. How long the experiments had been going on, I couldn't say. I do know, however, that they didn't leave there until about three o'clock in the morning."

"You--you don't know who the men were?" Houston, forcing himself to be casual, had asked the question. The young doctor shook his head.

"No--except that they were from Boston. At least, the doctors were. One of the nurses knew them. I suppose the other man was a district attorney--they usually are around somewhere during an experiment."

"You never learned with what murder case it was connected?"

"No--the fact is, it pa.s.sed pretty much out of my mind, as far as the details were concerned. Although I'll never forget the picture."

"Pardon me for asking questions. I--I--just happen to come from Boston and was trying to recall such a case. You don't remember what time of the year it was, or how long ago?"

"Yes, I do. It was in the summer, along about two or two and a half years ago."

Houston slumped back into his corner. Ten minutes later, he found an opportunity to exchange cards with the young physician and sought his berth. To himself, he could give no reason for establis.h.i.+ng the ident.i.ty of the smoking-compartment informant. He had acted from some sort of subconscious compulsion, without reasoning, without knowing why he had catalogued the information or of what possible use it could be to him.

But once in his berth, the picture continued to rise before him; of a big room in a hospital, of doctors gathered about, and of a man "killing"

another with a mallet. Had it been Worthington? Worthington, the tired-eyed, determined, over-zealous district attorney, who, day after day, had struggled and fought to send him to the penitentiary for life?

Had it been Worthington, striving to reproduce the murder of Tom Langdon as he evidently had reconstructed it, experimenting with his experts in the safety of a different city, for points of evidence that would clinch the case against the accused man beyond all shadow of a doubt?

Instinctively Houston felt that he just had heard an unwritten, unmentioned phase of his own murder case. Yet--if that had been Worthington, if those experts had found evidence against him, if the theories of the district attorney had been verified on that gruesome night in the "dead ward" of Bellstrand Hospital--

Why had this d.a.m.ning evidence been allowed to sink into oblivion? Why had it not been used against him?

CHAPTER XVI

It was a problem which Barry Houston, in spite of wakefulness, failed to solve. Next morning, eager for a repet.i.tion of the recital, in the hope of some forgotten detail, some clue which might lead him to an absolute decision, he sought the young doctor, only to find that he had left the train at dawn. A doorway of the past had been opened to Houston, only to be closed again before he could clearly discern beyond. He went on to Boston, still struggling to reconstruct it all, striving to figure what connection it might have had, but in vain. And with his departure from the train, new thoughts, new problems, arose to take the place of memories. His purposes now were of the future, not of the past.

And naturally, he turned first to the office of his father's attorney,--the bleak place where he had conferred so many times in the black days. Old Judge Mason, accustomed to seeing Barry in time of stress, tried his best to be jovial.

"Well, boy, what is it this time?"

"Money." Houston came directly to the point. "I've come back to Boston to find out if any one will trust me."

"With or without security."

"With it--the best in the world." Then he brought forward a copy of the contract. Mason studied it at length, then, with a slow gesture, raised his gla.s.ses to a resting place on his forehead.

"I--I don't know, boy," he said at last. "It's a rather hard problem to crack. I wish there was some one in the family we could go to for the money."

"But there isn't."

"No. Your uncle Walt might have it. But I'm afraid that he wouldn't feel like lending it to you. He still believes--well, you know how fathers are about their boys. He's forgotten most of Tom's bad points by now."

"We'll drop him from the list. How about the bankers."

"We'll have to see. I'm a little afraid there. I know you'll pardon me for saying it, Barry, but they like to have a man come to them with clean hands. Not that you haven't got them," he interjected, "but--well, you know bankers. What's the money for; running expenses?"

"No. Machinery. The other mill burned down, you know--and as usual, without insurance. We have a makes.h.i.+ft thing set up there now--but it's nothing to what will be needed. I've got to have a good, smooth-working plant--otherwise I won't be able to live up to specifications."

"You're not," and the old lawyer smiled quizzically, "going to favor your dearly beloved friend with the order, are you?"

"Who?"

"Worthington."

"The district attorney?"