The Breaking Point (9 page)

"Well, that's that. He certainly looked like Clark to me."

"I'll say he did."

"Rather surprised him, didn't you?"

"Oh, he was all right," Gregory said. "I didn't tell him anything, of
course."

Bassett looked at his watch.

"I was after you, all right," he said, cheerfully. "But if I was barking
up the wrong tree, I'm done. I don't have to be hit on the head to
make me stop. Come and have a soda-water on me," he finished amiably.
"There's no train until seven."

But Gregory refused.

"No, thanks. I'll wander on down to the station and get a paper."

The reporter smiled. Gregory was holding a grudge against him, for a bad
night and a bad day.

"All right," he said affably. "I'll see you at the train. I'll walk
about a bit."

He turned and started back up the street again, walking idly. His
chagrin was very real. He hated to be fooled, and fooled he had been.
Gregory was not the only one who had lost a night's sleep. Then,
unexpectedly, he was hailed from the curbstone, and he saw with
amazement that it was Dick Livingstone.

"Take you anywhere?" Dick asked. "How's the headache?"

"Better, thanks." Bassett stared at him. "No, I'm just walking around
until train-time. Are you starting out or going home, at this hour?"

"Going home. Well, glad the head's better."

He drove on, leaving the reporter gazing after him. So Gregory had
been lying. He hadn't seen this chap at all. Then why—? He walked
on, turning this new phase of the situation over in his mind. Why
this elaborate fiction, if Gregory had merely gone in, waited for ten
minutes, and come out again?

It wasn't reasonable. It wasn't logical. Something had happened inside
the house to convince Gregory that he was right. He had seen somebody,
or something. He hadn't needed to lie. He could have said frankly
that he had seen no one. But no, he had built up a fabric carefully
calculated to throw Bassett off the scent.

He saw Dick stop in front of the house, get out and enter. And coming
to a decision, he followed him and rang the doorbell. For a long time no
one answered. Then the maid of the afternoon opened the door, her eyes
red with crying, and looked at him with hostility.

"Doctor Richard Livingstone?"

"You can't see him."

"It's important."

"Well, you can't see him. Doctor David has just had a stroke. He's in
the office now, on the floor."

She closed the door on him, and he turned and went away. It was all
clear to him; Gregory had seen, not Clark, but the older man; had told
him and gone away. And under the shock the older man had collapsed. That
was sad. It was very sad. But it was also extremely convincing.

He sat up late that night again, running over the entries in his
notebook. The old story, as he pieced it out, ran like this:

It had been twelve years ago, when, according to the old files,
Clark had financed Beverly Carlysle's first starring venture. He had,
apparently, started out in the beginning only to give her the publicity
she needed. In devising it, however, he had shown a sort of boyish
recklessness and ingenuity that had caught the interest of the press,
and set newspaper men to chuckling wherever they got together.

He had got together a dozen or so of young men like himself, wealthy,
idle and reckless with youth, and, headed by him, they had made the
exploitation of the young star an occupation. The newspapers referred
to the star and her constellation as Beverly Carlysle and her Broadway
Beauties. It had been unvicious, young, and highly entertaining, and it
had cost Judson Clark his membership in his father's conservative old
clubs.

For a time it livened the theatrical world with escapades that were
harmless enough, if sensational. Then, after a time, newspaper row began
to whisper that young Clark was in love with the girl. The Broadway
Beauties broke up, after a wild farewell dinner. The audiences ceased
to expect a row of a dozen youths, all dressed alike with gardenias in
their buttonholes and perhaps red neckties with their evening suits, to
rise in their boxes on the star's appearance and solemnly bow. And the
star herself lost a little of the anxious look she frequently wore.

The story went, after a while, that Judson Clark had been refused, and
was taking his refusal badly. Reporters saw him, carelessly dressed,
outside the stage door waiting, and the story went that the girl had
thrown him over, money and all, for her leading man. One thing was
clear; Clark, not a drinker before, had taken to drinking hard, and
after a time, and some unpleasant scenes probably, she refused to see
him any more.

When the play closed, in June, 1911, she married Howard Lucas,
her leading man; his third wife. Lucas had been not a bad chap, a
good-looking, rather negligible man, given to all-day Sunday poker,
carefully valeted, not very keen mentally, but amiable. They had bought
a house on East Fifty-sixth Street, and were looking for a new play
with Lucas as co-star, when he unaccountably went to pieces nervously,
stopped sleeping, and developed a slight twitching of his handsome,
rather vacuous face.

Judson Clark had taken his yacht and gone to Europe, and was reported
from here and there not too favorably. But when he came back, in early
September, he had apparently recovered from his infatuation, was his
old, carefully dressed self again, and when interviewed declared his
intention of spending the winter on his Wyoming ranch.

Of course he must have heard of Lucas's breakdown, and equally, of
course, he must have seen them both. What happened at that interview, by
what casual attitude he allayed Lucas's probable jealousy and the girl's
own nervousness, Bassett had no way of discovering. It was clear that
he convinced them both of his good faith, for the next note in the
reporter's book was simply a date, September 12, 1911.

That was the day they had all started West together, traveling in
Clark's private car, with Lucas, twitching slightly, smiling and waving
farewell from a window.

The big smash did not come until the middle of October.

Bassett sat back and considered. He had a fairly clear idea of the
conditions at the ranch; daily riding, some little reading, and a great
deal too much of each other. A sick man, too, unhappy in his exile,
chafing against his restrictions, lonely and irritable. The girl, early
seeing her mistake, and Clark's jealousy of her husband. The door into
their apartment closing, the thousand and one unconscious intimacies
between man and wife, the breakfast for two going up the stairs, and
below that hot-eyed boy, agonized and passionately jealous, yet meeting
them and looking after them, their host and a gentleman.

Lucas took to drinking, after a time, to allay his sheer boredom. And
Jud Clark drank with him. At the end of three weeks they were both
drinking heavily, and were politely quarrelsome. Bassett could fill
that in also. He could see the girl protesting, watching, increasingly
anxious as she saw that Clark's jealousy was matched by her husband's.

A queer picture, he reflected, the three of them shut away on the great
ranch, and every day some new tension, some new strain.

Then, one night at dinner, they quarreled, and Beverly left the table.
She was going to pack her things and go back to New York. She had felt,
probably, that something was bound to snap. And while she was upstairs
Clark had shot and killed Howard Lucas, and himself disappeared.

He had run, testimony at the inquest revealed, to the corral, and
saddled a horse. Although it was only October, it was snowing hard,
but in spite of that he had turned his horse toward the mountains. By
midnight a posse from Norada had started out, and another up the Dry
River Canyon, but the storm turned into a blizzard in the mountains, and
they were obliged to turn back. A few inches more snow, and they could
not have got their horses out. A week or so later, with a crust of ice
over it, a few of them began again, with no expectation, however, of
finding Clark alive. They came across his horse on the second day, but
they did not find him, and there were some among them who felt that,
after all, old Elihu Clark's boy had chosen the better way.

Bassett closed his notebook and lighted a cigar.

There was a big story to be had for the seeking, a whale of a story. He
could go to the office, give them a hint, draw expense money and start
for Norada the next night. He knew well enough that he would have to
begin there, and that it would not be easy. Witnesses of the affair
at the ranch would be missing now, or when found the first accuracy of
their statements would either be dulled by time or have been added to
with the passing years. The ranch itself might have passed into other
hands. To reconstruct the events of ten years ago might be impossible,
or nearly so. But that was not his problem. He would have to connect
Norada with Haverly, Clark with Livingstone. One thing only was simple.
If he found Livingstone's story was correct, that he had lived on a
ranch near Norada before the crime and as Livingstone, then he would
acknowledge that two men could look precisely alike and come from the
same place, and yet not be the same. If not—

But, after he had turned out his light and got into bed, he began to
feel a certain distaste for his self-appointed task. If Livingstone
were Clark, if after years of effort he had pulled himself up by his own
boot-straps, had made himself a man out of the reckless boy he had been,
a decent and useful citizen, why pull him down? After all, the world
hadn't lost much in Lucas; a sleek, not over-intelligent big animal,
that had been Howard Lucas.

He decided to sleep over it, and by morning he found himself not only
disinclined to the business, but firmly resolved to let it drop. Things
were well enough as they were. The woman in the case was making good.
Jud was making good. And nothing would restore Howard Lucas to that
small theatrical world of his which had waved him good-bye at the
station so long ago.

He shaved and dressed, his resolution still holding. He had indeed
almost a conscious glow of virtue, for he was making one of those
inglorious and unsung sacrifices which ought to bring a man credit in
the next world, because they certainly got him nowhere in this. He was
quite affable to the colored waiter who served his breakfasts in the
bachelor apartment house, and increased his weekly tip to a dollar and a
half. Then he sat down and opened the Times-Republican, skimming over
it after his habit for his own space, and frowning over a row of
exclamation and interrogation points unwittingly set behind the name of
the mayor.

On the second page, however, he stopped, coffee cup in air. "Is Judson
Clark alive? Wife of former ranch manager makes confession."

A woman named Margaret Donaldson, it appeared, fatally injured by an
automobile near the town of Norada, Wyoming, had made a confession on
her deathbed. In it she stated that, afraid to die without shriving her
soul, she had sent for the sheriff of Dallas County and had made the
following confession:

That following the tragedy at the Clark ranch her husband, John
Donaldson, since dead, had immediately following the inquest, where he
testified, started out into the mountains in the hope of finding Clark
alive, as he knew of a deserted ranger's cabin where Clark sometimes
camped when hunting. It was his intention to search for Clark at this
cabin and effect his escape. He carried with him food and brandy.

That, owing to the blizzard, he was very nearly frozen; that he was
obliged to abandon his horse, shooting it before he did so, and that,
close to death himself, he finally reached the cabin and there found
Judson Clark, the fugitive, who was very ill.

She further testified that her husband cared for Clark for four days,
Clark being delirious at the time, and that on the fifth day he started
back on foot for the Clark ranch, having left Clark locked in the cabin,
and that on the following night he took three horses, two saddled, and
one packed with food and supplies. That accompanied by herself they went
back to the cabin in the mountains and that she remained there to
care for Clark, while her husband returned to the ranch, to prevent
suspicion.

That, a day or so later, looking out of her window, she had perceived
a man outside in the snow coming toward the cabin, and that she had
thought it one of the searching party. That her first instinct had been
to lock him outside, but that she had finally admitted him, and that
thereafter he had remained and had helped her to care for the sick man.

Unfortunately for the rest of the narrative it appeared that the injured
woman had here lapsed into a coma, and had subsequently died, carrying
her further knowledge with her.

But, the article went on, the story opened a field of infinite surmise.
In all probability Judson Clark was still alive, living under some
assumed identity, free of punishment, outwardly respectable. Three years
before he had been adjudged legally dead, and the estate divided, under
bond of the legatees.

Close to a hundred million dollars had gone to charities, and Judson
Clark, wherever he was, would be dependent on his own efforts for
existence. He could have summoned all the legal talent in the country to
his defense, but instead he had chosen to disappear.

The whole situation turned on the deposition of Mrs. Donaldson, now
dead. The local authorities at Norada maintained that the woman had not
been sane for several years. On the other hand, the cabin to which she
referred was well known, and no search of it had been made at the time.
Clark's horse had been found not ten miles from the town, and the cabin
was buried in snow twenty miles further away. If Clark had made that
journey on foot he had accomplished the impossible.

Certain facts, according to the local correspondent, bore out Margaret
Donaldson's confession. Inquiry showed that she was supposed to have
spent the winter following Judson Clark's crime with relatives in Omaha.
She had returned to the ranch the following spring.