Part 99

“You're a capable person, aren't you? I'll bet you could tune a piano if you were put to it.”

He carried the situation well, the reporter had to admit; the only evidence he gave of strain was that the hands with which he lighted a cigarette were unsteady. He surveyed the obscure hotel at which the cab stopped with a sneering smile, and settled his collar as he looked it over.

“Not advertising to the world that you're in town, I see.”

“We'll do that, just as soon as we're ready. Don't worry.”

The laugh he gave at that struck unpleasantly on Bassett's ears. But inside the building he lost some of his jauntiness. “Queer place to find Judson Clark,” he said once.

And again:

“You'd better watch him when I go in. He may bite me.”

To which Bassett grimly returned: “He's probably rather particular what he bites.”

He was uneasily conscious that Gregory, while nervous and tense, was carrying the situation with a certain assurance. If he was acting it was very good acting. And that opinion was strengthened when he threw open the door and Gregory advanced into the room.

“Well, Clark,” he said, coolly. “I guess you didn't expect to see me, did you?”

He made no offer to shake hands as Dick turned from the window, nor did Dick make any overtures. But there was no enmity at first in either face; Gregory was easy and assured, Dick grave, and, Bassett thought, slightly impatient. From that night in his apartment the reporter had realized that he was constantly fighting a sort of passive resistance in Dick, a determination not at any cost to involve Beverly. Behind that, too, he felt that still another battle was going on, one at which he could only guess, but which made Dick somber at times and grimly quiet always.

“I meant to look you up,” was his reply to Gregory's nonchalant greeting.

“Well, your friend here did that for you,” Gregory said, and smiled across at Bassett. “He has his own methods, and I'll say they're effectual.”

He took off his overcoat and flung it on the bed, and threw a swift, appraising glance at Dick. It was on Dick that he was banking, not on Bassett. He hated and feared Bassett. He hated Dick, but he was not afraid of him. He lighted a cigarette and faced Dick with a malicious smile.

“So here we are, again, Jud!” he said. “But with this change, that now it's you who are the respectable member of the community, and I'm the--well, we'll call it the butterfly.”

There was unmistakable insult in his tone, and Dick caught it.

“Then I take it you're still living off your sister?”

The contempt in Dick's voice whipped the color to Gregory's face and clenched his fist. But he relaxed in a moment and laughed.

“Don't worry, Bassett,” he said, his eyes on Dick. “We haven't any reason to like each other, but he's bigger than I am. I won't hit him.” Then he hardened his voice. “But I'll remind you, Clark, that personally I don't give a God-damn whether you swing or not. Also that I can keep my mouth shut, walk out of here, and have you in quod in the next hour, if I decide to.”

“But you won't,” Bassett said smoothly. “You won't, any more than you did it last spring, when you sent that little letter of yours to David Livingstone.”

“No. You're right. I won't. But if I tell you what I came here to say, Bassett, get this straight. It's not because I'm afraid of you, or of him. Donaldson's dead. What value would Melis's testimony have after ten years, if you put him on the stand? It's not that. It's because you'll put your blundering foot into it and ruin Bev's career, unless I tell you the truth.”

It was to Bassett then that he told his story, he and Bassett sitting, Dick standing with his elbow on the mantelpiece, tall and weary and almost detached.

“I've got to make my own position plain in this,” he said. “I didn't like Clark, and I kept her from marrying him. There was one time, before she met Lucas, when she almost did it. I was away when she decided on that fool trip to the Clark ranch. We couldn't get a New York theater until November, and she had some time, so they went. I've got her story of what happened there. You can check it up with what you know.”

He turned to Dick for a moment.

“You were drinking pretty hard that night, but you may remember this: She had quarreled with Lucas at dinner that night and with you. That's true, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

“She went to her room and began to pack her things. Then she thought it over, and she decided to try to persuade Lucas to go too. Things had begun all right, but they were getting strained and unpleasant. She went down the stairs, and Melis saw her, the valet. The living-room was dark, but there was a light coming through the billiard room door, and against it she saw the figure of a man in the doorway. He had his back to her, and he had a revolver in his hand. She ran across the room when he heard her and when he turned she saw it was Lucas. Do you remember, Jud, having a revolver and Lucas taking it from you?”

“No. Donaldson testified I'd had a revolver.”