CHAPTER XXXVIII

The facts in detail which the Reverend John Baird had journeyed to Delisle County in the hope of being able to gather, he had been successful in gaining practical possession of. Having personal charm, grace in stating a case, and many resources both of ability and manner, he had the power to attract even the prejudiced, and finally to win their interest and sympathies. He had seen and conversed with people who could have been reached in no ordinary way, and having met them had been capable of managing even their prejudices and bitterness of spirit. The result had been the accumulation of useful and convincing evidence in favour of the De Willoughbys, though he had in more than one instance gained it from persons who had been firm in their intention to give no evidence at all. This evidence had been forwarded to Washington as it had been collected, and when Baird returned to the Capital it was with the knowledge that his efforts had more than probably put the final touches to the work which would gain the day for the claimants.

His train was rather late, and as it drew up before the platform he glanced at his watch in some anxiety. His audience for the lecture must already have begun to turn their faces toward the hall in which the evening's entertainment was to be held. He had hoped to reach his journey's end half an hour earlier. He had wanted a few minutes with Latimer, whose presence near him had become so much a part of his existence, that after an absence he felt he had lacked him. He took a carriage at the depot and drove quickly to their rooms. They were to leave them in a day or two and return to Willowfield. Already some of their possessions had been packed up. The sitting-room struck him as looking a little bare as he entered it.

"Is Mr. Latimer out," he asked the mulatto who brought up his valise.

"Yes, sir. He was called out by a message. He left a note for you on the desk."

Baird went to the desk and found it. It contained only a few lines.

"Everything is prepared for you. The audience will be the best you have had at any time. I have been sent for by the man Stamps. He is ill of pneumonia and wishes to deliver some letters to me. I will be with you before you go on the platform."

Since he had left Washington, Baird had heard from Latimer but once and then but briefly. He had felt that his dark mood was upon him, and this reference to letters recalled the fact.

"Stamps is the little man with the cattle claim," he commented to himself. "He comes from the neighbourhood of the Cross-roads. What letters could he have to hand over?"

And he began to dress, wondering vaguely.

Stamps had spent a sleepless night. He could not sleep because his last interview with Linthicum had driven him hard, even though he had been able to promise him the required five hundred dollars; he also could not sleep because the air of the city had been full of talk about the promising outlook of the De Willoughby claim. Over the reports he had heard, he had raged almost with tears.

"The Dwillerbys is ristycrats," he had said. "They're ristycrats, an' it gives 'em a pull even if they was rebels an' Southerners. A pore man ez works hard an' ain't nothin' but a honest farmer, an' a sound Union man ain't got no show. Ef I'd been a ristycrat I could hev got inflooence ez hed hev pulled wires fur me. But I hain't nothin' but my loyal Union principles. I ain't no ristycrat, an' I never aimed to be none."

The bitterness of his nervous envy would have kept him awake if he had had no other reason for being disturbed, but most of all he was sleepless, because he was desperately ill and in danger he knew nothing of. Cold and weeks of semi-starvation, anxiety, excitement, and drenched garments had done the little man to death, and he lay raging with fever and stabbed with pain at each indrawn breath, tossing and gasping and burning, but thinking only of Linthicum and the herds and the scraps of paper which were to bring him five hundred dollars. He was physically wretched, but even while he was racked with agonised fits of coughing and prostrated with pain it did not occur to him to think that he was in danger. He was too wholly absorbed in other thoughts. The only danger he recognised was the danger that there might be some failure in his plans--that Linthicum might give him up--that the parson might back out of his bargain, realising that after all letters unsigned save by a man's Christian name were not substantial evidence. Perhaps he would not come at all; perhaps he would leave the city; perhaps if he came he would refuse to give more than half or quarter the sum asked. Then Linthicum would throw him over--he knew Linthicum would throw him over. He uttered a small cry like a tortured cat.

"I know he'll do it," he said. "I seen it in his eye yesterday, when he let out on me an' said he was a-gettin' sick of the business. I shed hev kept my mouth shut. I'd said too much an' it made him mad. He'll throw me over Monday mornin' ef I don't take him the money on Sunday."

He ate nothing all through the day but lay waiting for the passing of the hours. He had calculated as to which post would bring the letter from Minty. He had written to tell her of the hiding-place in which he had kept the bits of paper safe and dry through all the years. She was to enclose them in a stout envelope and send them to him.

Through the long, dragging day he lay alone burning, gasping, fighting for his breath in the attacks of coughing which seemed to tear his lungs asunder. There was a clock in a room below whose striking he could hear each hour. Between each time it struck he felt as if weeks elapsed.

Sometimes it was months. He had begun to be light-headed and to think queer things. Once or twice he heard a man talking in a croaking wail, and after a few minutes realised that it was himself, and that he did not know what he had said, though he knew he had been arguing with Linthicum, who was proving to him that his claim was too rotten to have a ghost of a chance. By the time the afternoon post arrived he was semi-delirious and did not know how it happened that he at last found himself holding Minty's letter in his hand. He laughed hysterically when he opened it. It was all right. There were the two yellowed sheets of paper--small sheets, written close, and in a peculiar hand. He had often studied the handwriting, and believed if he had seen it again he should know it. It was small but strong and characteristic, though that was not what he had called it.

"Ef I'd hed more time an' could hev worked it out more--an' got him to write suthin' down--I could hev hed more of a hold," he said, plaintively, "but Linthicum wouldn't give me no time."

The post arrived earlier than he had expected it, and this gave him time to lie and fret and listen again for the striking of the clock in the room downstairs. The waiting became too long, and as his fever increased he became insanely impatient and could not restrain himself. To lie and listen for his visitor's footsteps upon the stairs--to lie until seven o'clock--if he did not come till then, would be more than he could endure. That would give him too long to think over what Linthicum would do if the whole sum were not forthcoming--to think of the reasons why the parson might make up his mind to treat the letters as if they were worthless. He lay and gnawed his finger-nails anew.

"I wouldn't give nothin' for 'em ef I was in his place," he muttered. "Ef thar'd been anythin' in 'em that proved anythin' I should hev used 'em long sence. But then I'm a business man an' he's a parson, an' doesn't know nothin' about the laws. But he might go to some man--say a man like Linthicum--who could put him up to things. Good Lord!" in a new panic, "he mayn't come at all. He might jest stay away."

He became so overwrought by this agonising possibility that instead of listening for the striking of the clock, he began to listen for the sound of some passing footstep--the footstep of someone passing by chance who might be sent to the parson with a note. With intolerable effort and suffering he managed to drag himself up and get hold of a piece of paper and a pencil to write the following lines:

"The letters hes come. You'd as well come an' get 'em. Others will pay for 'em ef ye don't want 'em yerself."

His writing of the last sentence cheered his spirits. It was a support to his small, ignorant cunning. "He'll think someone else is biddin' agen him," he said. "Ef there was two of 'em biddin', I could get most anythin' I axed."

After he had put the communication in an envelope he dragged himself to the door almost bent double by the stabbing pain in his side. Once there he sat down on the floor to listen for footsteps.

"It's hard work this yere," he panted, shivering with cold in spite of his fever, "but it's better than a-lyin' thar doin' nothin'."

At length he heard steps. They were the running, stamping feet of a boy who whistled as he came.

Stamps opened the door and whistled himself--a whistle of summons and appeal. The boy, who was on his way with a message to another room, hesitated a minute and then came forward, staring at the sight of the little, undressed, shivering man with his head thrust into the passage.

"Hallo!" he said, "what d'yer want?"

"Want ye to carry this yere letter to a man," Stamps got out hoarsely.

"I'll give ye a quarter. Will ye do it?"

"Yes." And he took both note and money, still staring at the abnormal object before him.

When the messenger arrived Latimer was reading the letters which had arrived by the last delivery. One of them was from Baird, announcing the hour of his return to the city. Latimer held it in his hand when Stamps's communication was brought to him.

"Tell the messenger that I will come," he said.

It was not long before Stamps heard his slow approach sounding upon the bare wooden stairs. He mounted the steps deliberately because he was thinking. He was thinking as he had thought on his way through the streets. In a few minutes he should be holding in his hand letters written by the man who had been Margery's murderer--the letters she had hidden and clung to and sobbed over in the blackness of her nights. And they had been written twenty years ago, and Margery had changed to dust on the hillside under the pines. And nothing could be undone and nothing softened. But for the sake of the little old woman ending her days quietly in Willowfield--and for the sake of Margery's memory--yes, he wanted to save the child's memory--but for these things there would be no use in making any effort to secure the papers. Yet he was conscious of a dread of the moment when he should take them into his hand.

Stamps turned eager, miserable eyes upon him as he came in.

"I thought mebbe ye'd made up yer mind to let the other feller hev them,"

he said. "Hev ye brought the money in bills?"

Latimer stood and looked down at him. "Do you know how ill you are?" he said.

"Wal, I guess I kin feel a right smart--but I don't keer so's things comes my way. Hev ye got the money with ye?"

"Yes. Where are the papers?"

"Whar's the money?"

Latimer took out a pocket-book and opened it that he might see.

Stamps's countenance relaxed. The tension was relieved.

"Thet's far an' squar," he said. "D'ye wanter know whar I found 'em? Tom Dwillerby never knowed I hed more than a envelope--an' I tuk care not to tell him the name that was writ on it. Ye was mighty smart never to let no one know yer name; I don't know how you done it, 'ceptin' that ye kept so much to yerselves."

Latimer remained silent, merely standing and letting him talk, as he seemed to have a feverish, half-delirious tendency to do. He lay plucking at the scanty bed-covering and chuckling.

"'Twas five years arter the child was born," he went on. "I was ridin'

through Blair's Holler an' it come to me sudden to go in an' hev a look round keerful. I looked keerful--mighty keerful--an' at last I went on my hands an' knees an' crawled round, an' there was a hole between the logs, an' I seen a bit of white--I couldn't hev seen it ef I hadn't been crawlin' an' looked up. An' I dug it out. It hed been hid mighty secret."

He put his hand under his wretched pillow. "Give me the money," he wheezed. "When ye lay it in my hand I'll pass the envelope over to ye.

Count it out first."

Latimer counted the bills. This was the moment. Twenty years gone by--and nothing could be changed. He put the money on the bed.