CHAPTER X

A WALK BESIDE THE LAKE

"The name seems like Sherrill," the interne agreed. "He said it before when we had him on the table up-stairs; and he has said it now twice distinctly—Sherrill."

"His name, do you think?"

"I shouldn't say so; he seems trying to speak to some one named Sherrill."

The nurse waited a few minutes. "Yes; that's how it seems to me, sir. He said something that sounded like 'Connie' a while ago, and once he said 'Jim.' There are only four Sherrills in the telephone book, two of them in Evanston and one way out in Minoota."

"The other?"

"They're only about six blocks from where he was picked up; but they're on the Drive—the Lawrence Sherrills."

The interne whistled softly and looked more interestedly at his patient's features. He glanced at his watch, which showed the hour of the morning to be half-past four. "You'd better make a note of it," he said. "He's not a Chicagoan; his clothes were made somewhere in Kansas. He'll be conscious some time during the day; there's only a slight fracture, and— Perhaps you'd better call the Sherrill house, anyway. If he's not known there, no harm done; and if he's one of their friends and he should..."

The nurse nodded and moved off.

Thus it was that at a quarter to five Constance Sherrill was awakened by the knocking of one of the servants at her father's door. Her father went down-stairs to the telephone instrument where he might reply without disturbing Mrs. Sherrill. Constance, kimona over her shoulders, stood at the top of the stairs and waited. It became plain to her at once that whatever had happened had been to Alan Conrad.

"Yes.... Yes.... You are giving him every possible care? ... At once."

She ran part way down the stairs and met her father as he came up. He told her of the situation briefly.

"He was attacked on the street late last night; he was unconscious when they found him and took him to the hospital, and has been unconscious ever since. They say it was an ordinary street attack for robbery. I shall go at once, of course; but you can do nothing. He would not know you if you came; and of course he is in competent hands. No; no one can say yet how seriously he is injured."

She waited in the hall while her father dressed, after calling the garage on the house telephone for him and ordering the motor. When he had gone, she returned anxiously to her own rooms; he had promised to call her after reaching the hospital and as soon as he had learned the particulars of Alan's condition. It was ridiculous, of course, to attach any responsibility to her father or herself for what had happened to Alan—a street attack such as might have happened to any one—yet she felt that they were in part responsible. Alan Conrad had come to Chicago, not by their direction, but by Benjamin Corvet's; but Uncle Benny being gone, they had been the ones who met him, they had received him into their own house; but they had not thought to warn him of the dangers of the city and, afterward, they had let him go to live alone in the house in Astor Street with no better adviser than Wassaquam. Now, and perhaps because they had not warned him, he had met injury and, it might be, more than mere injury; he might be dying.

She walked anxiously up and down her room, clutching her kimona about her; it would be some time yet before she could hear from her father. She went to the telephone on the stand beside her bed and called Henry Spearman at his apartments. His servant answered; and, after an interval, Henry's voice came to her. She told him all that she knew of what had occurred.

"Do you want me to go over to the hospital?" he asked at once.

"No; father has gone. There is nothing any one can do. I'll call you again as soon as I hear from father."

He seemed to appreciate from her tone the anxiety she felt; for he set himself to soothe and encourage her. She listened, answered, and then hung up the receiver, anxious not to interfere with the expected call from her father. She moved about the room again, oppressed by the long wait, until the 'phone rang, and she sprang to it; it was her father calling from the hospital. Alan had had a few moments' consciousness, but Sherrill had not been allowed to see him; now, by the report of the nurse, Alan was sleeping, and both nurse and internes assured Sherrill that, this being the case, there was no reason for anxiety concerning him; but Sherrill would wait at the hospital a little longer to make sure. Constance's breath caught as she answered him, and her eyes filled with tears of relief. She called Henry again, and he evidently had been waiting, for he answered at once; he listened without comment to her repetition of her father's report.

"All right," he said, when she had finished. "I'm coming over, Connie."

"Now?"

"Yes; right away."

"You must give me time to dress!" His assumption of right to come to her at this early hour recalled to her forcibly the closer relation which Henry now assumed as existing between them; indeed, as more than existing, as progressing. And had not she admitted that relation by telephoning to him during her anxiety? She had not thought how that must appear to him; she had not thought about it at all; she had just done it.

She had been one of those who think of betrothal in terms of question and answer, of a moment when decision is formulated and spoken; she had supposed that, by withholding reply to Henry's question put even before Uncle Benny went away, she was thereby maintaining the same relation between Henry and herself. But now she was discovering that this was not so; she was realizing that Henry had not required formal answer to him because he considered that such answer had become superfluous; her yes, if she accepted him now, would not establish a new bond, it would merely acknowledge what was already understood. She had accepted that—had she not—when, in the rush of her feeling, she had thrust her hand into his the day before; she had accepted it, even more undeniably, when he had seized her and kissed her.

Not that she had sought or even consciously permitted, that; it had, indeed, surprised her. While they were alone together, and he was telling her things about himself, somewhat as he had at the table at Field's, Alan Conrad was announced, and she had risen to go. Henry had tried to detain her; then, as he looked down at her, hot impulse had seemed to conquer him; he caught her, irresistibly; amazed, bewildered, she looked up at him, and he bent and kissed her. The power of his arms about her—she could feel them yet, sometimes—half frightened, half enthralled her. But his lips against her cheek—she had turned her lips away so that his pressed her cheek! She had been quite unable to know how she had felt then, because at that instant she had realized that she was seen. So she had disengaged herself as quickly as possible and, after Alan was gone, she had fled to her room without going back to Henry at all.

How could she have expected Henry to have interpreted that flight from him as disapproval when she had not meant it as that; when, indeed, she did not know herself what was stirring in her that instinct to go away alone? She had not by that disowned the new relation which he had accepted as established between them. And did she wish to disown it now? What had happened had come sooner and with less of her will active in it than she had expected; but she knew it was only what she had expected to come. The pride she had felt in being with him was, she realized, only anticipatory of the pride she would experience as his wife. When she considered the feeling of her family and her friends, she knew that, though some would go through the formal deploring that Henry had not better birth, all would be satisfied and more than satisfied; they would even boast about Henry a little, and entertain him in her honor, and show him off. There was no one—now that poor Uncle Benny was gone—who would seriously deplore it at all.

Constance had recognized no relic of uneasiness from Uncle Benny's last appeal to her; she understood that thoroughly. Or, at least, she had understood that; now was there a change in the circumstances of that understanding, because of what had happened to Alan, that she found herself re-defining to herself her relation with Henry? No; it had nothing to do with Henry, of course; it referred only to Benjamin Corvet. Uncle Benny had "gone away" from his house on Astor Street, leaving his place there to his son, Alan Conrad. Something which had disturbed and excited Alan had happened to him on the first night he had passed in that house; and now, it appeared, he had been prevented from passing a second night there. What had prevented him had been an attempted robbery upon the street, her father had said. But suppose it had been something else than robbery.

She could not formulate more definitely this thought, but it persisted; she could not deny it entirely and shake it off.

To Alan Conrad, in the late afternoon of that day, this same thought was coming far more definitely and far more persistently. He had been awake and sane since shortly after noonday. The pain of a head which ached throbbingly and of a body bruised and sore was beginning to give place to a feeling merely of lassitude—a languor which revisited incoherence upon him when he tried to think. He shifted himself upon his bed and called the nurse.

"How long am I likely to have to stay here?" he asked her.

"The doctors think not less than two weeks, Mr. Conrad."

He realized, as he again lay silent, that he must put out of his head now all expectation of ever finding in Corvet's house any such record as he had been looking for. If there had been a record, it unquestionably would be gone before he could get about again to seek it; and he could not guard against its being taken from the house; for, if he had been hopeless of receiving credence for any accusation he might make against Spearman while he was in health, how much more hopeless was it now, when everything he would say could be put to the credit of his injury and to his delirium! He could not even give orders for the safeguarding of the house and its contents—his own property—with assurance that they would be carried out.

The police and hospital attendants, he had learned, had no suspicion of anything but that he had been the victim of one of the footpads who, during that month, had been attacking and robbing nightly. Sherrill, who had visited him about two o'clock, had showed that he suspected no other possibility. Alan could not prove otherwise; he had not seen his assailant's face; it was most probable that if he had seen it, he would not have recognized it. But the man who had assailed him had meant to kill; he had not been any ordinary robber. That purpose, blindly recognized and fought against by Alan in their struggle, had been unmistakable. Only the chance presence of passers-by, who had heard Alan's shouts and responded to them, had prevented the execution of his purpose, and had driven the man to swift flight for his own safety.

Alan had believed, in his struggle with Spearman in Corvet's library, that Spearman might have killed rather than have been discovered there. Were there others to whom Alan's presence had become a threat so serious that they would proceed even to the length of calculated murder? He could not know that. The only safe plan was to assume that persons, in number unknown, had definite, vital interest in his "removal" by violence or otherwise, and that, among them, he must reckon Henry Spearman; and he must fight them alone. For Sherrill's liking for him, even Constance Sherrill's interest and sympathy were nullified in practical intent by their admiration for and their complete confidence in Spearman. It did not matter that Alan might believe that, in fighting Spearman, he was fighting not only for himself but for her; he knew now certainly that he must count her as Spearman's; her! Things swam before him again dizzily as he thought of her; and he sank back and closed his eyes.

A little before six Constance Sherrill and Spearman called to inquire after him and were admitted for a few moments to his room. She came to him, bent over him, while she spoke the few words of sympathy the nurse allowed to her; she stood back then while Spearman spoke to him. In the succeeding days, he saw her nearly every day, accompanied always by her father or Spearman; it was the full two weeks the nurse had allotted for his remaining in the hospital before he saw her alone.

They had brought him home, the day before—she and her father, in the motor—to the house on Astor Street. He had insisted on returning there, refusing the room in their house which they had offered; but the doctor had enjoined outdoors and moderate exercise for him, and she had made him promise to come and walk with her. He went to the Sherrill house about ten o'clock, and they walked northward toward the park.

It was a mild, sunny morning with warm wind from the south, which sucked up the last patches of snow from the lawns and dried the tiny trickles of water across the walks. Looking to the land, one might say that spring soon would be on the way; but, looking to the lake, midwinter held. The counterscrap of concrete, beyond the withered sod that edged the Drive, was sheathed in ice; the frozen spray-hummocks beyond steamed in the sun; and out as far as one could see, floes floated close together, exposing only here and there a bit of blue. Wind, cold and chilling, wafted off this ice field, taking the warm south breeze upon its flanks.

Glancing up at her companion from time to time, Constance saw the color coming to his face, and he strode beside her quite steadily. Whatever was his inheritance, his certainly were stamina and vitality; a little less—or a little dissipation of them—and he might not have recovered at all, much less have leaped back to strength as he had done. For since yesterday, the languor which had held him was gone.

They halted a minute near the south entrance of the park at the St. Gaudens' "Lincoln," which he had not previously seen. The gaunt, sad figure of the "rail-splitter" in his ill-fitting clothes, seemed to recall something to him; for he glanced swiftly at her as they turned away.

"Miss Sherrill," he asked, "have you ever stayed out in the country?"

"I go to northern Michigan, up by the straits, almost every summer for part of the time, at least; and once in a while we open the house in winter too for a week or so. It's quite wild—trees and sand and shore and the water. I've had some of my best times up there."

"You've never been out on the plains?"

"Just to pass over them on the train on the way to the coast."

"That would be in winter or in spring; I was thinking about the plains in late summer, when we—Jim and Betty, the children of the people I was with in Kansas—"

"I remember them."

"When we used to play at being pioneers in our sunflower shacks."

"Sunflower shacks?" she questioned.

"I was dreaming we were building them again when I was delirious just after I was hurt, it seems. I thought that I was back in Kansas and was little again. The prairie was all brown as it is in late summer, brown billows of dried grass which let you see the chips of limestone and flint scattered on the ground beneath; and in the hollows there were acres and acres of sunflowers, three times as tall as either Jim or I, and with stalks as thick as a man's wrist, where Jim and Betty and I ... and you, Miss Sherrill, were playing."

"I?"

"We cut paths through the sunflowers with a corn knife," Alan continued, not looking at her, "and built houses in them by twining the cut stalks in and out among those still standing. I'd wondered, you see, what you must have been like when you were a little girl, so, I suppose, when I was delirious, I saw you that way."

She had looked up at him a little apprehensively, afraid that he was going to say something more; but his look reassured her.

"Then that," she hazarded, "must have been how the hospital people learned our name. I'd wondered about that; they said you were unconscious first, and then delirious and when you spoke you said, among other names, mine—Connie and Sherrill."

He colored and glanced away. "I thought they might have told you that, so I wanted you to know. They say that in a dream, or in delirium, after your brain establishes the first absurdity—like your playing out among the sunflowers with me when we were little—everything else is consistent. I wouldn't call a little girl 'Miss Sherrill,' of course. Ever since I've known you, I couldn't help thinking a great deal about you; you're not like any one else I've ever known. But I didn't want you to think I thought of you—familiarly."

"I speak of you always as Alan to father," she said.

He was silent for a moment. "They lasted hardly for a day—those sunflower houses, Miss Sherrill," he said quietly. "They withered almost as soon as they were made. Castles in Kansas, one might say! No one could live in them."

Apprehensive again, she colored. He had recalled to her, without meaning to do so, she thought, that he had seen her in Spearman's arms; she was quite sure that recollection of this was in his mind. But in spite of this—or rather, exactly because of it—she understood that he had formed his own impression of the relation between Henry and herself and that, consequently, he was not likely to say anything more like this.

They had walked east, across the damp, dead turf to where the Drive leaves the shore and is built out into the lake; as they crossed to it on the smooth ice of the lagoon between, he took her arm to steady her.

"There is something I have been wanting to ask you," she said.

"Yes."

"That night when you were hurt—it was for robbery, they said. What do you think about it?" She watched him as he looked at her and then away; but his face was completely expressionless.

"The proceedings were a little too rapid for me to judge, Miss Sherrill."

"But there was no demand upon you to give over your money before you were attacked?"

"No."

She breathed a little more quickly. "It must be a strange sensation," she observed, "to know that some one has tried to kill you."

"It must, indeed."

"You mean you don't think that he tried to kill you?"

"The police captain thinks not; he says it was the work of a man new to the blackjack, and he hit harder and oftener than he needed. He says that sort are the dangerous ones—that one's quite safe in the hands of an experienced slugger, as you would be with the skilful man in any line. I never thought of it that way before. He almost made it into an argument for leaving the trained artists loose on the streets, for the safety of the public, instead of turning the business over to boys only half educated."

"What do you think about the man yourself?" Constance persisted.

"The apprentice who practiced on me?"

She waited, watching his eyes. "I was hardly in a condition, Miss Sherrill, to appreciate anything about the man at all. Why do you ask?"

"Because—" She hesitated an instant, "if you were attacked to be killed, it meant that you must have been attacked as the son of—Mr. Corvet. Then that meant—at least it implied, that Mr. Corvet was killed, that he did not go away. You see that, of course."

"Were you the only one who thought that? Or did some one speak to you about it?"

"No one did; I spoke to father. He thought—"

"Yes."

"Well, if Mr. Corvet was murdered—I'm following what father thought, you understand—it involved something a good deal worse perhaps than anything that could have been involved if he had only gone away. The facts we had made it certain that—if what had happened to him was death at the hands of another—he must have foreseen that death and, seeking no protection for himself ... it implied, that he preferred to die rather than to ask protection—that there was something whose concealment he thought mattered even more to him than life. It—it might have meant that he considered his life was ... due to whomever took it." Her voice, which had become very low, now ceased. She was speaking to Alan of his father—a father whom he had never known, and whom he could not have recognized by sight until she showed him the picture a few weeks before; but she was speaking of his father.

"Mr. Sherrill didn't feel that it was necessary for him to do anything, even though he thought that?"

"If Mr. Corvet was dead, we could do him no good, surely, by telling this to the police; if the police succeeded in finding out all the facts, we would be doing only what Uncle Benny did not wish—what he preferred death to. We could not tell the police about it without telling them all about Mr. Corvet too. So father would not let himself believe that you had been attacked to be killed. He had to believe the police theory was sufficient."

Alan made no comment at once. "Wassaquam believes Mr. Corvet is dead," he said finally. "He told me so. Does your father believe that?"

"I think he is beginning to believe it."

They had reached the little bridge that breaks the Drive and spans the channel through which the motor boats reach harbor in the lagoon; he rested his arms upon the rail of the bridge and looked down into the channel, now frozen. He seemed to her to consider and to decide upon something.

"I've not told any one," he said, now watching her, "how I happened to be out of the house that night. I followed a man who came there to the house. Wassaquam did not know his name. He did not know Mr. Corvet was gone; for he came there to see Mr. Corvet. He was not an ordinary friend of Mr. Corvet's; but he had come there often; Wassaquam did not know why. Wassaquam had sent the man away, and I ran out after him; but I could not find him."

He stopped an instant, studying her. "That was not the first man who came to the house," he went on quickly, as she was about to speak. "I found a man in Mr. Corvet's house the first night that I spent there. Wassaquam was away, you remember, and I was alone in the house."

"A man there in the house?" she repeated.

"He wasn't there when I entered the house—at least I don't think he was. I heard him below, after I had gone up-stairs. I came down then and saw him. He was going through Mr. Corvet's things—not the silver and all that, but through his desks and files and cases. He was looking for something—something which he seemed to want very much; when I interfered, it greatly excited him."

They had turned back from the bridge and were returning along the way that they had come; but now she stopped and looked up at him.

"What happened when you 'interfered'?"

"A queer thing."

"What?"

"I frightened him."

"Frightened him?" She had appreciated in his tone more significance than the casual meaning of the words.

"He thought I was a ghost."

"A ghost. Whose ghost?"

He shrugged. "I don't know; some one whom he seemed to have known pretty well—and whom Mr. Corvet knew, he thought."

"Why didn't you tell us this before?"

"At least—I am telling you now, Miss Sherrill. I frightened him, and he got away. But I had seen him plainly. I can describe him.... You've talked with your father of the possibility that something might 'happen' to me such as, perhaps, happened to Mr. Corvet. If anything does happen to me, a description of the man may ... prove useful."

He saw the color leave her face, and her eyes brighten; he accepted this for agreement on her part. Then clearly and definitely as he could, he described Spearman to her. She did not recognize the description; he had known she would not. Had not Spearman been in Duluth? Beyond that, was not connection of Spearman with the prowler in Corvet's house the one connection of all most difficult for her to make? But he saw her fixing and recording the description in her mind.

They were silent as they went on toward her home. He had said all he could, or dared to say; to tell her that the man had been Spearman would not merely have awakened her incredulity; it would have destroyed credence utterly. A definite change in their relation to one another had taken place during their walk. The fullness, the frankness of the sympathy there had been between them almost from their first meeting, had gone; she was quite aware, he saw, that he had not frankly answered her questions; she was aware that in some way he had drawn back from her and shut her out from his thoughts about his own position here. But he had known that this must be so; it had been his first definite realization after his return to consciousness in the hospital when, knowing now her relation to Spearman, he had found all questions which concerned his relations with the people here made immeasurably more acute by the attack upon him.

She asked him to come in and stay for luncheon, as they reached her home, but she asked it without urging; at his refusal she moved slowly up the steps; but she halted when she saw that he did not go on.

"Miss Sherrill," he said, looking up at her, "how much money is there in your house?"

She smiled, amused and a little perplexed; then sobered as she saw his intentness on her answer.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I mean—how much is ordinarily kept there?"

"Why, very little in actual cash. We pay everything by check—tradesmen and servants; and even if we happen not to have a charge account where we make a purchase, they know who we are and are always willing to charge it to us."

"Thank you. It would be rather unusual then for you—or your neighbors—to have currency at hand exceeding the hundreds?"

"Exceeding the hundreds? That means in the thousands—or at least one thousand; yes, for us, it would be quite unusual."

She waited for him to explain why he had asked; it was not, she felt sure, for any reason which could readily suggest itself to her. But he only thanked her again and lifted his hat and moved away. Looking after him from the window after she had entered the house, she saw him turn the corner in the direction of Astor Street.

CHAPTER XI

A CALLER

As the first of the month was approaching, Wassaquam had brought his household bills and budget to Alan that morning directly after breakfast. The accounts, which covered expenses for the month just ending and a small amount of cash to be carried for the month beginning, were written upon a sheet of foolscap in neat, unshaded writing exactly like the models in a copybook—each letter formed as carefully and precisely as is the work done upon an Indian basket. The statement accounted accurately for a sum of cash in hand upon the first of February, itemized charged expenses, and totaled the bills. For March, Wassaquam evidently proposed a continuance of the establishment upon the present lines. To provide for that, and to furnish Alan with whatever sums he needed, Sherrill had made a considerable deposit in Alan's name in the bank where he carried his own account; and Alan had accompanied Sherrill to the bank to be introduced and had signed the necessary cards in order to check against the deposit; but, as yet, he had drawn nothing.

Alan had required barely half of the hundred dollars which Benjamin Corvet had sent to Blue Rapids, for his expenses in Chicago; and he had brought with him from "home" a hundred dollars of his own. He had used that for his personal expenses since. The amount which Wassaquam now desired to pay the bills was much more than Alan had on hand; but that amount was also much less than the eleven hundred dollars which the servant listed as cash on hand. This, Wassaquam stated, was in currency and kept by him. Benjamin always had had him keep that much in the house; Wassaquam would not touch that sum now for the payment of current expenses.

This sum of money kept inviolate troubled Alan. Constance Sherrill's statement that, for her family at least, to keep such a sum would have been unusual, increased this trouble; it did not, however, preclude the possibility that others than the Sherrills might keep such amounts of cash on hand. On the first of the month, therefore Alan drew upon his new bank account to Wassaquam's order; and in the early afternoon Wassaquam went to the bank to cash his check—one of the very few occasions when Alan had been left in the house alone; Wassaquam's habit, it appeared, was to go about on the first of the month and pay the tradesmen in person.

Some two hours later, and before Wassaquam could have been expected back, Alan, in the room which had become his, was startled by a sound of heavy pounding, which came suddenly to him from a floor below. Shouts—heavy, thick, and unintelligible—mingled with the pounding. He ran swiftly down the stairs, then on and down the service stairs into the basement. The door to the house from the areaway was shaking to irregular, heavy blows, which stopped as Alan reached the lower hallway; the shouts continued still a moment more. Now that the noise of pounding did not interfere, Alan could make out what the man was saying: "Ben Corvet!"—the name was almost unintelligible—"Ben Corvet! Ben!" Then the shouts stopped too.

Alan sped to the door and turned back the latch. The door bore back upon him, not from a push, but from a weight without which had fallen against it. A big, heavy man, with a rough cap and mackinaw coat, would have fallen upon the floor, if Alan had not caught him. His weight in Alan's arms was so dull, so inert that, if violence had been his intention, there was nothing to be feared from him now. Alan looked up, therefore, to see if any one had come with him. The alley and the street were clear. The snow in the area-way showed that the man had come to the door alone and with great difficulty; he had fallen once upon the walk. Alan dragged the man into the house and went back and closed the door.

He returned and looked at him. The man was like, very like the one whom Alan had followed from the house on the night when he was attacked; certainty that this was the same man came quickly to him. He seized the fellow again and dragged him up the stairs and to the lounge in the library. The warmth revived him; he sat up, coughing and breathing quickly and with a loud, rasping wheeze. The smell of liquor was strong upon him; his clothes reeked with the unclean smell of barrel houses.

He was, or had been, a very powerful man, broad and thick through with overdeveloped—almost distorting—muscles in his shoulders; but his body had become fat and soft, his face was puffed, and his eyes watery and bright; his brown hair, which was shot all through with gray, was dirty and matted; he had three or four days' growth of beard. He was clothed as Alan had seen deck hands on the steamers attired; he was not less than fifty, Alan judged, though his condition made estimate difficult. When he sat up and looked about, it was plain that whiskey was only one of the forces working upon him—the other was fever which burned up and sustained him intermittently.

"'Lo!" he greeted Alan. "Where's shat damn Injin, hey? I knew Ben Corvet was shere—knew he was shere all time. 'Course he's shere; he got to be shere. That's shright. You go get 'im!"

"Who are you?" Alan asked.

"Say, who'r you? What t'hells syou doin' here? Never see you before ... go—go get Ben Corvet. Jus' say Ben Corvet, Lu—luke's shere. Ben Corvet'll know Lu—luke all right; alwaysh, alwaysh knows me...."

"What's the matter with you?" Alan had drawn back but now went to the man again. The first idea that this might have been merely some old sailor who had served Benjamin Corvet or, perhaps, had been a comrade in the earlier days, had been banished by the confident arrogance of the man's tone—an arrogance not to be explained, entirely, by whiskey or by the fever.

"How long have you been this way?" Alan demanded. "Where did you come from?" He put his hand on the wrist; it was very hot and dry; the pulse was racing, irregular; at seconds it seemed to stop; for other seconds it was continuous. The fellow coughed and bent forward. "What is it—pneumonia?" Alan tried to straighten him up.

"Gi' me drink! ... Go get Ben Corvet, I tell you! ... Get Ben Corvet quick! Say—yous shear? You get me Ben Corvet; you better get Ben Corvet; you tell him Lu—uke's here; won't wait any more; goin' t'have my money now ... sright away, your shear? Kick me out s'loon; I guess not no more. Ben Corvet give me all money I want or I talk!"

"Talk!"

"Syou know it! I ain't goin'...." He choked up and tottered back; Alan, supporting him, laid him down and stayed beside him until his coughing and choking ceased, and there was only the rattling rasp of his breathing. When Alan spoke to him again, Luke's eyes opened, and he narrated recent experiences bitterly; all were blamed to Ben Corvet's absence; Luke, who had been drinking heavily a few nights before, had been thrown out when the saloon was closed; that was Ben Corvet's fault; if Ben Corvet had been around, Luke would have had money, all the money any one wanted; no one would have thrown out Luke then. Luke slept in the snow, all wet. When he arose, the saloon was open again, and he got more whiskey, but not enough to get him warm. He hadn't been warm since. That was Ben Corvet's fault. Ben Corvet better be 'round now; Luke wouldn't stand any more.

Alan felt of the pulse again; he opened the coat and under-flannels and felt the heaving chest. He went to the hall and looked in the telephone directory. He remembered the name of the druggist on the corner of Clark Street and he telephoned him, giving the number on Astor Street.

"I want a doctor right away," he said. "Any good doctor; the one that you can get quickest." The druggist promised that a physician would be there within a quarter of an hour. Alan went back to Luke, who was silent now except for the gasp of his breath; he did not answer when Alan spoke to him, except to ask for whiskey. Alan, gazing down at him, felt that the man was dying; liquor and his fever had sustained him only to bring him to the door; now the collapse had come; the doctor, even if he arrived very soon, could do no more than perhaps delay the end. Alan went up-stairs and brought down blankets and put them over Luke; he cut the knotted laces of the soaked shoes and pulled them off; he also took off the mackinaw and the undercoat. The fellow, appreciating that care was being given him, relaxed; he slept deeply for short periods, stirred and started up, then slept again. Alan stood watching, a strange, sinking tremor shaking him. This man had come there to make a claim—a claim which many times before, apparently, Benjamin Corvet had admitted. Luke came to Ben Corvet for money which he always got—all he wanted—the alternative to giving which was that Luke would "talk." Blackmail, that meant, of course; blackmail which not only Luke had told of, but which Wassaquam too had admitted, as Alan now realized. Money for blackmail—that was the reason for that thousand dollars in cash which Benjamin Corvet always kept at the house.

Alan turned, with a sudden shiver of revulsion, toward his father's chair in place before the hearth; there for hours each day his father had sat with a book or staring into the fire, always with what this man knew hanging over him, always arming against it with the thousand dollars ready for this man, whenever he came. Meeting blackmail, paying blackmail for as long as Wassaquam had been in the house, for as long as it took to make the once muscular, powerful figure of the sailor who threatened to "talk" into the swollen, whiskey-soaked hulk of the man dying now on the lounge.

For his state that day, the man blamed Benjamin Corvet. Alan, forcing himself to touch the swollen face, shuddered at thought of the truth underlying that accusation. Benjamin Corvet's act—whatever it might be that this man knew—undoubtedly had destroyed not only him who paid the blackmail but him who received it; the effect of that act was still going on, destroying, blighting. Its threat of shame was not only against Benjamin Corvet; it threatened also all whose names must be connected with Corvet's. Alan had refused to accept any stigma in his relationship with Corvet; but now he could not refuse to accept it. This shame threatened Alan; it threatened also the Sherrills. Was it not because of this that Benjamin Corvet had objected to Sherrill's name appearing with his own in the title of the ship-owning firm? And was it not because of this that Corvet's intimacy with Sherrill and his comradeship with Constance had been alternated by times in which he had frankly avoided them both? What Sherrill had told Alan and even Corvet's gifts to him had not been able to make Alan feel that without question Corvet was his father, but now shame and horror were making him feel it; in horror at Corvet's act—whatever it might be—and in shame at Corvet's cowardice, Alan was thinking of Benjamin Corvet as his father. This shame, this horror, were his inheritance.

He left Luke and went to the window to see if the doctor was coming. He had called the doctor because in his first sight of Luke he had not recognized that Luke was beyond the aid of doctors and because to summon a doctor under such circumstances was the right thing to do; but he had thought of the doctor also as a witness to anything Luke might say. But now—did he want a witness? He had no thought of concealing anything for his own sake or for his father's; but he would, at least, want the chance to determine the circumstances under which it was to be made public.

He hurried back to Luke. "What is it, Luke?" he cried to him. "What can you tell? Listen! Luke—Luke, is it about the Miwaka—the Miwaka? Luke!"

Luke had sunk into a stupor; Alan shook him and shouted in his ear without awakening response. As Alan straightened and stood hopelessly looking down at him, the telephone bell rang sharply. Thinking it might be something about the doctor, he went to it and answered it. Constance Sherrill's voice came to him; her first words made it clear that she was at home and had just come in.

"The servants tell me some one was making a disturbance beside your house a while ago," she said, "and shouting something about Mr. Corvet. Is there something wrong there? Have you discovered something?"

He shook excitedly while, holding his hand over the transmitter lest Luke should break out again and she should hear it, he wondered what he should say to her. He could think of nothing, in his excitement, which would reassure her and merely put her off; he was not capable of controlling his voice so as to do that.

"Please don't ask me just now, Miss Sherrill," he managed. "I'll tell you what I can—later."

His reply, he recognized, only made her more certain that there was something the matter, but he could not add anything to it. He found Luke, when he went back to him, still in coma; the blood-shot veins stood out against the ghastly grayness of his face, and his stertorous breathing sounded through the rooms.