“You must remember this, sir.  I had been with Mr. Clark for a long time.  I knew the situation.  And I thought that he had gone away that night to throw suspicion from her to himself.  I was not certain what to do.  I would have told it all in court, but it never came to trial.”

Bassett was satisfied and fairly content.  After the Frenchman’s departure he sat for some time, making careful notes and studying them.  Supposing the man Melis had seen to be Clifton Hines, a good many things would be cleared up.  Some new element he had to have, if Gregory’s story were to be disproved, some new and different motive.  Suppose, for instance...

He got up and paced the floor back and forward, forward and back.  There was just one possibility, and just one way of verifying it.  He sat down and wrote out a long telegram and then got his hat and carried it to the telegraph office himself.  He had made his last throw.

He received a reply the following day, and in a state of exhilaration bordering on madness packed his bag, and as he packed it addressed it, after the fashion of lonely men the world over.

“Just one more trip, friend cowhide,” he said, “and then you and I are going to settle down again to work.  But it’s some trip, old arm-breaker.”

He put in his pajamas and handkerchiefs, his clean socks and collars, and then he got his revolver from a drawer and added it.  Just twenty-four hours later he knocked at Dick’s door in a boarding-house on West Ninth Street, found it unlocked, and went in.  Dick was asleep, and Bassett stood looking down at him with an odd sort of paternal affection.  Finally he bent down and touched his shoulder.

“Wake up, old top,” he said.  “Wake up.  I have some news for you.”

XLIV

To Dick the last day or two had been nightmares of loneliness.  He threw caution to the winds and walked hour after hour, only to find that the street crowds, people who had left a home or were going to one, depressed him and emphasized his isolation.  He had deliberately put away from him the anchor that had been Elizabeth and had followed a treacherous memory, and now he was adrift.  He told himself that he did not want much.  Only peace, work and a place.  But he had not one of them.

He was homesick for David, for Lucy, and, with a tightening of the heart he admitted it, for Elizabeth.  And he had no home.  He thought of Reynolds, bent over the desk in his office; he saw the quiet tree-shaded streets of the town, and Reynolds, passing from house to house in the little town, doing his work, usurping his place in the confidence and friendship of the people; he saw the very children named for him asking:  “Who was I named for, mother?” He saw David and Lucy gone, and the old house abandoned, or perhaps echoing to the laughter of Reynolds’ children.

He had moments when he wondered what would happen if he took Beverly at her word.  Suppose she made her confession, re-opened the thing, to fill the papers with great headlines, “Judson Clark Not Guilty.  A Strange Story.”