The Breaking Point (17 page)

"Speak up, Jake," he said once, irritably. "This gentleman has come a
long way. It's a matter of some property."

"What sort of property?" Jake demanded. Jake was the spokesman of the
two.

"That's not important," Bassett observed, easily. "What we want to know
is if Henry Livingstone had any family."

"He had a brother."

"No one else?"

"Then it's up to me to trail the brother," Bassett observed. "Either of
you remember where he lived?"

"Somewhere in the East."

Bassett laughed.

"That's a trifle vague," he commented good-humoredly. "Didn't you boys
ever mail any letters for him?"

He was certain again that they exchanged glances, but they continued
to present an unbroken front of ignorance. Wasson was divided between
irritation and amusement.

"What'd I tell you?" he asked. "Like master like man. I've been here ten
years, and I've never got a word about the Livingstones out of either of
them."

"I'm a patient man." Bassett grinned. "I suppose you'll admit that one
of you drove David Livingstone to the train, and that you had a fair
idea then of where he was going?"

He looked directly at Jake, but Jake's face was a solid mask. He made no
reply whatever.

From that moment on Bassett was certain that David had not been driven
away from the ranch at all. What he did not know, and was in no way to
find out, was whether the two ranch hands knew that he had gone into the
mountains, or why. He surmised back of their taciturnity a small mystery
of their own, and perhaps a fear. Possibly David's going was as much a
puzzle to them as to him. Conceivably, during the hours together on the
range, or during the winter snows, for ten years they had wrangled and
argued over a disappearance as mysterious in its way as Judson Clark's.

He gave up at last, having learned certain unimportant facts: that the
recluse had led a lonely life; that he had never tried to make the place
more than carry itself; that he was a student, and that he had no other
peculiarities.

"Did he ever say anything that would lead you to believe that he had any
family, outside of his brother and sister? That is, any direct heir?"
Bassett asked.

"He never talked about himself," said Jake. "If that's all, Mr. Wasson,
I've got a steer bogged down in the north pasture and I'll be going."

On the Wassons' invitation he remained to lunch, and when the ranch
owner excused himself and rode away after the meal he sat for some
time on the verandah, with Mrs. Wasson sewing and his own eyes fixed
speculatively on the mountain range, close, bleak and mysterious.

"Strange thing," he commented. "Here's a man, a book-lover and student,
who comes out here, not to make living and be a useful member of the
community, but apparently to bury himself alive. I wonder, why."

"A great many come out here to get away from something, Mr. Bassett."

"Yes, to start again. But this man never started again. He apparently
just quit."

Mrs. Wasson put down her sewing and looked at him thoughtfully.

"Did the boys tell you anything about the young man who visited Henry
Livingstone now and then?"

"No. They were not very communicative."

"I suppose they wouldn't tell. Yet I don't see, unless—" She stopped,
lost in some field of speculation where he could not follow her. "You
know, we haven't much excitement here, and when this boy was first seen
around the place—he was here mostly in the summer—we decided that he
was a relative. I don't know why we considered him mysterious, unless
it was because he was hardly ever seen. I don't even know that that was
deliberate. For that matter Mr. Livingstone wasn't much more than a name
to us."

"You mean, a son?"

"Nobody knew. He was here only now and then."

Bassett moved in his chair and looked at her.

"How old do you suppose this boy was?" he asked.

"He was here at different times. When Mr. Livingstone died I suppose he
was in his twenties. The thing that makes it seem odd to me is that the
men didn't mention him to you."

"I didn't ask about him, of course."

She went on with her sewing, apparently intending to drop the matter;
but the reporter felt that now and then she was subjecting him to a
sharp scrutiny, and that, in some shrewd woman-fashion, she was trying
to place him.

"You said it was a matter of some property?"

"Yes."

"But it's rather late, isn't it? Ten years?"

"That's what makes it difficult."

There was another silence, during which she evidently made her decision.

"I have never said this before, except to Mr. Wasson. But I believe he
was here when Henry Livingstone died."

Her tone was mysterious, and Bassett stared at her.

"You don't think Livingstone was murdered!"

"No. He died of heart failure. There was an autopsy. But he had a bad
cut on his head. Of course, he may have fallen—Bill and Jake were away.
They'd driven some cattle out on the range. It was two days before he
was found, and it would have been longer if Mr. Wasson hadn't ridden out
to talk to him about buying. He found him dead in his bed, but there was
blood on the floor in the next room. I washed it up myself."

"Of course," she added, when Bassett maintained a puzzled silence, "I
may be all wrong. He might have fallen in the next room and dragged
himself to bed. But he was very neatly covered up."

"It's your idea, then, that this boy put him into the bed?"

"I don't know. He wasn't seen about the place. He's never been here
since. But the posse found a horse with the Livingstone brand, saddled,
dead in Dry River Canyon when it was looking for Judson Clark. Of
course, that was a month later. The men here, Bill and Jake, claimed it
had wandered off, but I've often wondered."

After a time Bassett got up and took his leave. He was confused and
irritated. Here, whether creditably or not, was Dick Livingstone
accounted for. There was a story there, probably, but not the story he
was after. This unknown had been at the ranch when Henry Livingstone
died, had perhaps been indirectly responsible for his death. He had,
witness the horse, fled after the thing happened. Later on, then, David
Livingstone had taken him into his family. That was all.

Except for that identification of Gregory's, and for the photograph of
Judson Clark.... For a moment he wondered if the two, Jud Clark and the
unknown, could be the same. But Dry River would have known Clark. That
couldn't be.

He almost ditched the car on his way back to Norada, so deeply was he
engrossed in thought.

On the seventh of June David and Lucy went to the seashore, went by
the order of various professional gentlemen who had differed violently
during the course of David's illness, but who now suddenly agreed with
an almost startling unanimity. Which unanimity was the result of careful
coaching by Dick.

He saw in David's absence his only possible chance to go back to Norada
without worry to the sick man, and he felt, too, that a change, getting
away from the surcharged atmosphere of the old house, would be good for
both David and Lucy.

For days before they started Lucy went about in a frenzy of nervous
energy, writing out menus for Minnie for a month ahead, counting and
recounting David's collars and handkerchiefs, cleaning and pressing his
neckties. In the harness room in the stable Mike polished boots until
his arms ached, and at the last moment with trunks already bulging,
came three gift dressing-gowns for David, none of which he would leave
behind.

"I declare," Lucy protested to Dick, "I don't know what's come over him.
Every present he's had since he was sick he's taking along. You'd think
he was going to be shut up on a desert island."

But Dick thought he understood. In David's life his friends had had to
take the place of wife and children; he clung to them now, in his age
and weakness, and Dick knew that he had a sense of deserting them, of
abandoning them after many faithful years.

So David carried with him the calendars and slippers, dressing-gowns and
bed-socks which were at once the tangible evidence of their friendliness
and Lucy's despair.

Watching him, Dick was certain nothing further had come to threaten his
recovery. Dick carefully inspected the mail, but no suspicious letter
had arrived, and as the days went on David's peace seemed finally
re-established. He made no more references to Johns Hopkins, slept like
a child, and railed almost pettishly at his restricted diet.

"When we get away from Dick, Lucy," he would say, "we'll have beef
again, and roast pork and sausage."

Lucy would smile absently and shake her head.

"You'll stick to your diet, David," she would say. "David, it's the
strangest thing about your winter underwear. I'm sure you had five
suits, and now there are only three."

Or it was socks she missed, or night-clothing. And David, inwardly
chuckling, would wonder with her, knowing all the while that they had
clothed some needy body.

On the night before the departure David went out for his first short
walk alone, and brought Elizabeth back with him.

"I found a rose walking up the street, Lucy," he bellowed up the stairs,
"and I brought it home for the dinner table."

Lucy came down, flushed from her final effort over the trunks, but
gently hospitable.

"It's fish night, Elizabeth," she said. "You know Minnie's a Catholic,
so we always have fish on Friday. I hope you eat it." She put her hand
on Elizabeth's arm and gently patted it, and thus was Elizabeth taken
into the old brick house as one of its own.

Elizabeth was finding this period of her tacit engagement rather
puzzling. Her people puzzled her. Even Dick did, at times. And nobody
seemed anxious to make plans for the future, or even to discuss the
wedding. She was a little hurt about that, remembering the excitement
over Nina's.

But what chiefly bewildered her was the seeming necessity for secrecy.
Even Nina had not been told, nor Jim. She did not resent that, although
it bewildered her. Her own inclination was to shout it from the
house-tops. Her father had simply said: "I've told your mother, honey,
and we'd better let it go at that, for a while. There's no hurry. And I
don't want to lose you yet."

But there were other things. Dick himself varied. He was always gentle
and very tender, but there were times when he seemed to hold himself
away from her, would seem aloof and remote, but all the time watching
her almost fiercely. But after that, as though he had tried an
experiment in separation and failed with it, he would catch her to him
savagely and hold her there. She tried, very meekly, to meet his mood;
was submissive to his passion and acquiescent to those intervals when
he withdrew himself and sat or stood near her, not touching her but
watching her intently.

She thought men in love were very queer and quite incomprehensible.
Because he varied in other ways, too. He was boyish and gay sometimes,
and again silent and almost brooding. She thought at those times that
perhaps he was tired, what with David's work and his own, and sometimes
she wondered if he were still worrying about that silly story. But once
or twice, after he had gone, she went upstairs and looked carefully into
her mirror. Perhaps she had not looked her best that day. Girl-like, she
set great value on looks in love. She wanted frightfully to be beautiful
to him. She wished she could look like Beverly Carlysle, for instance.

Two days before David and Lucy's departure he had brought her her
engagement ring, a square-cut diamond set in platinum. He kissed it
first and then her finger, and slipped it into place. It became a rite,
done as he did it, and she had a sense of something done that could
never be undone. When she looked up at him he was very pale.

"Forsaking all others, so long as we both shall live," he said,
unsteadily.

"So long as we both shall live," she repeated.

However she had to take it off later, for Mrs. Wheeler, it developed,
had very pronounced ideas of engagement rings. They were put on the day
the notices were sent to the newspapers, and not before. So Elizabeth
wore her ring around her neck on a white ribbon, inside her camisole,
until such time as her father would consent to announce that he was
about to lose her.

Thus Elizabeth found her engagement full of unexpected turns and twists,
and nothing precisely as she had expected. But she accepted things
as they came, being of the type around which the dramas of life are
enacted, while remaining totally undramatic herself. She lived her quiet
days, worried about Jim on occasion, hemmed table napkins for her linen
chest, and slept at night with her ring on her finger and a sense of
being wrapped in protecting love that was no longer limited to the white
Wheeler house, but now extended two blocks away and around the corner to
a shabby old brick building in a more or less shabby yard.

They were very gay in the old brick house that night before the
departure, very noisy over the fish and David's broiled lamb chop. Dick
demanded a bottle of Lucy's home-made wine, and even David got a little
of it. They toasted the seashore, and the departed nurse, and David
quoted Robert Burns at some length and in a horrible Scotch accent.
Then Dick had a trick by which one read the date on one of three pennies
while he was not looking, and he could tell without failing which one
it was. It was most mysterious. And after dinner Dick took her into his
laboratory, and while she squinted one eye and looked into the finder of
his microscope he kissed the white nape of her neck.

When they left the laboratory there were patients in the waiting-room,
but he held her in his arms in the office for a moment or two, very
quietly, and because the door was thin they made a sort of game of it,
and pretended she was a patient.