A Poor Wise Man, Mary Roberts Rinehart [classic book list TXT] 📗
- Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
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He rode on ahead, his big black horse restive in the light from the lamps behind him. At the end of a lane he stopped.
“Straight ahead up there,” he said. “You’ll find - “
He broke off and stared ahead to where a dull red glare, reflected on the low hanging clouds, had appeared over the crest of the hill.
“Something doing up there,” he called suddenly. “Let’s go.”
He jerked his revolver free, dug his heels into the flanks of his horse, and was off on a dead run. Half way up the hill the car passed him, the black going hard, and its rider’s face, under the rim of his uniform hat, a stern profile. His reins lay loose on the animal’s neck, and he was examining his gun.
The road mounted to a summit, and dipped again. They were in a long valley, and the burning barn was clearly outlined at the far end of it. One side was already flaming, and tongues of fire leaped out through the roof. The men in the car were standing now, doors open, ready to leap, while the car lurched and swayed over the uneven road. Behind them they heard the clatter of the oncoming horse.
As they drew nearer they could see three watching figures against the burning building, and as they turned into the lane which led to the barnyard a shot rang out and one of the figures dropped and lay still. There was a cry of warning from somewhere, and before the detectives could leap from the car, the group had scattered, running wildly. The state policeman threw his horse back on its hunches, and fired without apparently taking aim at one of the running shadows. The man threw up his arms and fell. The state policeman galloped toward him, dismounted and bent over him.
Firing as they ran, detectives leaped out of the car and gave chase, and so it was that the young gentleman in bedroom slippers and pajamas, standing in his car and shielding his eyes against the glare, saw a curious thing.
First of all, the roof blazed up brightly, and he perceived a human figure, hanging by its hands from the eaves and preparing to drop. The young gentleman in pajamas was feeling rather out of things by that time, so he made a hasty exit from his car toward the barn, losing a slipper as he did so, and yelling in a slightly hysterical manner. It thus happened that he and the dropping figure reached the same spot at almost the same moment, one result of which was that the young gentleman in pajamas found himself struck a violent blow with a doubled-up fist, and at the same moment his bare right foot was tramped on with extreme thoroughness.
The young gentleman in pajamas reeled back dizzily and gave tongue, while standing on one foot. The person he addressed was the state constable, and his instructions were to get the fugitive and kill him. But the fugitive here did a very. strange thing. Through the handkerchief which it was now seen he wore tied over his mouth, he told the running policeman to go to perdition, and then with seeming suicidal intent rushed into the burning barn. From it he emerged a moment later, dragging a figure bound hand and foot, blackened with smoke, and with its clothing smoldering in a dozen places; a figure which alternately coughed and swore in a strangled whisper, but which found breath for a loud whoop almost immediately after, on its being immersed, as it promptly was, in a nearby horse-trough.
Very soon after that the other cars arrived. They drew up and men emerged from them, variously clothed and even more variously armed, but all they saw was the ruined embers of the barn, and in the glow five figures. Of the five one lay, face up to the sky, as though the prostrate body followed with its eyes the unkillable traitor soul of one Cusick, lately storekeeper at Friendship. Woslosky, wounded for the second time, lay on an automobile rug on the ground, conscious but sullenly silent. On the driving seat of an automobile sat a young gentleman with an overcoat over a pair of silk pajamas, carefully inspecting the toes of his right foot by the light of a match, while another young gentleman with a white handkerchief around his head was sitting on the running board of the same car, dripping water and rather dazedly staring at the ruins.
And beside him stood a gaunt figure, blackened of face, minus eyebrows and charred of hair, and considerably torn as to clothing. A figure which seemed disinclined to talk, and which gave its explanations in short, staccato sentences. Having done which, it relapsed into uncompromising silence again.
Some time later the detectives returned. They had made no further captures, for the refugees had known the country, and once outside the light from the burning barn search was useless. The Chief of Police approached Willy Cameron and stood before him, eyeing him severely.
“The next time you try to raid an anarchist meeting, Cameron,” he said, “you’d better honor me with your confidence. You’ve probably learned a lesson from all this.”
Willy Cameron glanced at him, and for the first time that night, smiled.
“I have,” he said; “I’ll never trust a pigeon again.” The Chief thought him slightly unhinged by the night’s experience.
Edith Boyd’s child was prematurely born at the Memorial Hospital early the next morning. It lived only a few moments, but Edith’s mother never knew either of its birth or of its death.
When Willy Cameron reached the house at two o’clock that night he found Dan in the lower hall, a new Dan, grave and composed but very pale.
“Mother’s gone, Willy,” he said quietly. “I don’t think she knew anything about it. Ellen heard her breathing hard and went in, but she wasn’t conscious.” He sat down on the horsehair covered chair by the stand. “I don’t know anything about these things,” he observed, still with that strange new composure. “What do you do now?”
“Don’t worry about that, Dan, just now. There’s nothing to do until morning.”
He looked about him. The presence of death gave a new dignity to the little house. Through the open door he could see in the parlor Mrs. Boyd’s rocking chair, in which she had traveled so many conversational miles. Even the chair had gained dignity; that which it had once enthroned had now penetrated the ultimate mystery.
He was shaken and very weary. His mind worked slowly and torpidly, so that even grief came with an effort. He was grieved; he knew that. Some one who had loved him and depended on him was gone; some one who loved life had lost it. He ran his hand over his singed hair.
“Where is Edith?”
Dan’s voice hardened.
“She’s out somewhere. It’s like her, isn’t it?”
Willy Cameron roused himself.
“Out?” he said incredulously. “Don’t you know where she is?”
“No. And I don’t care.”
Willy Cameron was fully alert now, and staring down at Dan.
“I’ll tell you something, Dan. She probably saved my life to-night. I’ll tell you how later. And if she is still out there is something wrong.”
“She used to stay out to all hours. She hasn’t done it lately, but I thought - “
Dan got up and reached for his hat. “Where’ll I start to look for her?”
But Willy Cameron had no suggestion to make. He was trying to think straight, but it was not easy. He knew that for some reason Edith had not waited until midnight to open the envelope. She had telephoned her message clearly, he had learned, but with great excitement, saying that there was a plot against his life, and giving the farmhouse and the message he had left in full; and she had not rung off until she knew that a posse would start at once. And that had been before eleven o’clock.
Three hours. He looked at his watch. Either she had been hurt or was a prisoner, or - he came close to the truth then. He glanced at Dan, standing hat in hand.
“We’ll try the hospitals first, Dan,” he said. “And the best way to do that is by telephone. I don’t like Ellen being left alone here, so you’d better let me do that.”
Dan acquiesced unwillingly. He resumed his seat in the hail, and Willy Cameron went upstairs. Ellen was moving softly about, setting in order the little upper room. The windows were opened, and through them came the soft night wind, giving a semblance of life and movement under it to the sheet that covered the quiet figure on the bed.
Willy Cameron stood by it and looked down, with a great wave of thankfulness in his heart. She had been saved much, and if from some new angle she was seeing them now it would be with the vision of eternity, and its understanding. She would see how sometimes the soul must lose here to gain beyond. She would see the world filled with its Ediths, and she would know that they too were a part of the great plan, and that the breaking of the body sometimes freed the soul.
He was shy of the forms of religion, but he voiced a small inarticulate prayer, standing beside the bed while Ellen straightened the few toilet articles on the dresser, that she might have rest, and then a long and placid happiness. And love, he added. There would be no Heaven without love.
Ellen was looking at him in the mirror.
“Your hair looks queer, Willy,” she said. “And I declare your clothes are a sight.” She turned, sternly. “Where have you been?”
“It’s a long story, Ellen. Don’t bother about it now. I’m worried about Edith.”
Ellen’s lips closed in a grim line.
“The less said about her the better. She came back in a terrible state about something or other, ran in and up to your room, and out again. I tried to tell her her mother wasn’t so well, but she looked as if she didn’t hear me.”
It was four o’clock in the morning when Willy Cameron located Edith. He had gone to the pharmacy and let himself in, intending to telephone, but the card on the door, edged with black, gave him a curious sense of being surrounded that night by death, and he stood for a moment, unwilling to begin for fear of some further tragedy. In that moment, what with reaction from excitement and weariness, he had a feeling of futility, of struggling to no end. One fought on, and in the last analysis it was useless.
“So soon passeth it away, and we are gone.”
He saw Mr. Davis, sitting alone in his house; he saw Ellen moving about that quiet upper room; he saw Cusick lying on the ground beside the smoldering heap that had been the barn, and staring up with eyes that saw only the vast infinity that was the sky. All the struggling and the fighting, and it came to that.
He picked up the telephone book at last, and finding the hospital list in the directory began his monotonous calling of numbers, and still the revolt was in his mind. Even life lay through the gates of death; daily and hourly women everywhere laid down their lives that some new soul be born. But the revulsion came with that, a return to something nearer the normal. Daily and hourly women lived, having brought to pass the miracle of life.
At half-past four he located Edith at the Memorial, and learned that her child had been born dead, but that she was doing well. He was suddenly exhausted; he sat down on a stool before the counter, and
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