He had hardly ended this task when there was a trample of feet in the hall and then the rap and the voice of the landlord at the same instant. The door opened, but Jack Trainor was there, barring the entrance.
“Something fell,” said the landlord. “I heard something drop. Anything wrong?”
“I was tilted back in my chair,” said Trainor glibly, “and it fell over backward with me. I’ve got a bruised back. That’s all that’s been injured.”
The landlord looked as though he would enter, but presently he nodded, and then withdrew. Trainor closed and locked the door and returned to his victim.
He found that Haines was in the act of struggling weakly to a sitting position, his eyes blank and troubled, but, at the first glimpse of Trainor, the face of Haines flooded with intelligence and hatred.
“Now,” said Jack, drawing his revolver and laying it ostentatiously upon the table, “the time has come for us to talk business of a different kind from what you’ve expected, I guess. In the first place, I want to tell you that you’re right. I’m wanted. And I’m wanted for murder.” The lie came easily from his tongue. “Murder, Haines, and I want you to know it so you’ll understand that I’m ready to go the limit up here if you press me. A man can’t be hung more than once, and he’ll be hung as easy for one killing as for fifty.” It was evident that Haines was impressed. “And so,” said Jack, “I think I can trust you not to holler for help if I take the gag out of your mouth.”
He did as he said. Haines gasped violently to recover his choked-off wind, and then he stared steadily at Trainor with such a consuming rage that the larger man shuddered.
“What’s coming now?” asked Haines.
“The first thing is that I’m going to free your right arm and let you sit at that table to write a little note to your home saying that you’re going to be kept out pretty late, and that you may sleep at the hotel. You hear?”
There was a snarl from Haines, but he carefully softened the tone so that it would not carry beyond the room in which he was imprisoned.
“I’ll do what you want,” he said. “I know that I’ve been a fool. I’ve trusted a stranger for the first time and the last time in my life. No matter what it costs me, I can’t pay too high for it.”
“Not even the woman you love?”
“Not even the loss of her is too high a price,” insisted Larry Haines, although he lost his color as he spoke. Accordingly Jack freed his arm, and then helped him to the table and saw him take pen and paper and write:
Dear Dad:
I’m kept out. I have to talk about some new business with Joe Bigot, who just got back today from the mountains. I may have to stay at the hotel all night. Don’t worry.
Larry
This note he then sealed in an envelope and handed to Jack, who got a servant and dispatched the message. Then he turned once more to the other and secured his right hand firmly. After that, he went on to tie Larry Haines hand and foot, so swathing him with bandages that he was well nigh like an Egyptian mummy.
“Because,” he said, when a faint protest was wrung from Haines, “I’ve got to leave, and, if I leave, I’ve got to make sure of you. There’s one safe way, Haines, and that’s a tap on the head. Then Ineed not waste all this time. If you were in my boots, that’s what you’d do, eh?”
The suggestion brought a quick and indescribably cruel smile across the lips of the other man, and then he made his face impassive once more.
“Well, that’s a chance that may come my way one of these days. In the meantime, you lie here, partner, and keep thinking about what’s going on outside. When they come up in the morning and let you loose, you’ll find that Alice Cary and Joe Bigot are man and wife. No matter what you tell her then, the damage will be done, and in the end she’ll be glad that she married him.”
He moved the gag toward the lips of Haines, but the latter stopped him again.
“It seems a queer thing to me, stranger,” he said to Jack, “that a fellow like you would stand by and see such a girl as Alice Cary marry a blockhead like Bigot without lifting your hand. Why, man, she’s on fire with brains and energy. She’s the sort of girl…”
“That I’d like to marry myself,” said Jack. “That what you’re driving at?”
“I tell you this, that she’s fallen in love. She thinks that she’s in love with Joe Bigot. But I know that she isn’t. The man she’s in love with is the man who wrote those letters out of the mountains…and you’re the man.”
Jack shook his head. “It won’t work, Haines,” he said. “You certainly hate Bigot, eh? But you can’t make me do it. I don’t say that couldn’t be done. She’s like prairie grass in August. It wouldn’t take much to set her on fire, as you say. But the very things that make her incline to laugh at Joe are the things that will make her love him more in the end. Why, he’s twice the man that you and I are put together.He doesn’t talk as much, that’s all. And what does a lot of chatter mean?”
“What’s he done for you?” asked the other suddenly, making no effort to reply to this sudden flood of words.
“He saved my life.”
“I thought it was that. Well, I’ll stop talking. But I’d rather see her married to any man in the world than to Bigot.”
After that, without a struggle, he allowed Jack to affix the gag between his teeth. Jack stood back, made sure that all the bonds were so fast that the victim could hardly lift his head, to say nothing of banging upon the floor in any manner, and then turned upon his heel and strode rapidly from the room.
Downstairs he found the proprietor and told him that he would be out for some time, and that Mr. Haines, in the room above, must not be disturbed at any cost, because he was doing some important work. Then, knowing that the door to that room was locked, and that the key was in his pocket, he hurriedly sought Joe Bigot in the house of Alice Cary.
There was only one light burning in the old house when he arrived. But he knew perfectly well that it was the room of Alice in which the light burned and never the room of his friend. Alice’s room it was, where she sat with her thoughts chasing through the clouds. She was full of the return of her lover, but that lover was by this time fast asleep and smiling.
Jack Trainor shrugged his shoulders. He could barely understand such a man. But at least he knew enough of Joe to be aware that the latter’s apathy did not always spring from indifference. No matter how calm his exterior might be, his calmness was no true sign that there was a lack of fire in his heart.That he loved the girl with a quiet and enduring love, Trainor was certain.
He reached the house. In a minute he was in the room where Bigot slept, and roused him by dropping his hand upon the shoulder of the sleeper. Instantly Joe was up and grappling him with a bear-like power. It was a moment before he recognized the protesting voice of Jack and gasped out, as he relaxed his hold: “I thought it was Larry Haines come with a gun to get me because he couldn’t stop me any other way.”
It was such a basically true dream, in spite of its falsity, that Jack was amazed.
“Why does Haines hate you so much?” he asked at length.
“Once him and me and two others sat in at a game of poker. I caught Haines cheating. I didn’t say anything right then, but the next day, when I paid him what I’d lost to him, I told him what I knew. Ever since then he’s hated me. He thinks that I try to tell about that game to everybody. But you’re the first human being that’s heard me speak of it.”
It was such a tribute to the patient honesty of the big man that the heart of Jack Trainor softened suddenly. For years, perhaps, Joe had kept in perfect secrecy tidings about his greatest enemy that would have brought about the detestation of the rest of the acquaintances of the younger man. What motive of clemency had influenced him to this end? Once again, as so often before, Jack felt that he was brought into the presence of a fineness of heart of which he himself would be incapable.