The second picture, Alan saw, was one that had been taken in front of the barn at the farm. It showed Alan at twelve, in overalls and barefooted, holding a stick over his head at which a shepherd dog was jumping.

"Yes; that is Shep and I--Jim's and my dog, Mr. Sherrill. It was taken by a man who stopped at the house for dinner one day; he liked Shep and wanted a picture of him; so he got me to make Shep jump, and he took it."

"You don't remember anything about the man?"

"Only that he had a camera and wanted a picture of Shep."

"Doesn't it occur to you that it was your picture he wanted, and that he had been sent to get it? I wanted your verification that these earlier pictures were of you, but this last one is easily recognizable."

Sherrill unfolded the third picture; it was larger than the others and had been folded across the middle to get it into the envelope. Alan leaned forward to look at it.

"That is the University of Kansas football team," he said. "I am the second one in the front row; I played end my junior year and tackle when I was a senior. Mr. Corvet--?"

"Yes; Mr. Corvet had these pictures. They came into my possession day before yesterday, the day after Corvet disappeared; I do not want to tell just yet how they did that."

Alan's face, which had been flushed at first with excitement, had gone quite pale, and his hands, as he clenched and unclenched them nervously, were cold, and his lips were very dry. He could think of no possible relationship between Benjamin Corvet and himself, except one, which could account for Corvet's obtaining and keeping these pictures of him through the years. As Sherrill put the pictures back into their envelope and the envelope back into his pocket, and Alan watched him, Alan felt nearly certain now that it had not been proof of the nature of this relationship that Sherrill had been trying to get from him, but only corroboration of some knowledge, or partial knowledge, which had come to Sherrill in some other way. The existence of this knowledge was implied by Sherrill's withholding of the way he had come into possession of the pictures, and his manner showed now that he had received from Alan the confirmation for which he had been seeking.

"I think you know who I am," Alan said.

Sherrill had risen and stood looking down at him.

"You have guessed, if I am not mistaken, that you are Corvet's son."

The color flamed to Alan's face for an instant, then left it paler than before. "I thought it must be that way," he answered; "but you said he had no children."

"Benjamin Corvet and his wife had no children."

"I thought that was what you meant." A twinge twisted Alan's face; he tried to control it but for a moment could not.

Sherrill suddenly put his hand on Alan's shoulder; there was something so friendly, so affectionate in the quick, impulsive grasp of Sherrill's fingers, that Alan's heart throbbed to it; for the first time some one had touched him in full, unchecked feeling for him; for the first time, the unknown about him had failed to be a barrier and, instead, had drawn another to him.

"Do not misapprehend your father," Sherrill said quietly. "I cannot prevent what other people may think when they learn this; but I do not share such thoughts with them. There is much in this I cannot understand; but I know that it is not merely the result of what others may think it--of 'a wife in more ports than one,' as you will hear the lakemen put it. What lies under this is some great misadventure which had changed and frustrated all your father's life."

Sherrill crossed the room and rang for a servant.

"I am going to ask you to be my guest for a short time, Alan," he announced. "I have had your bag carried to your room; the man will show you which one it is."

Alan hesitated; he felt that Sherrill had not told him all he knew--that there were some things Sherrill purposely was withholding from him; but he could not force Sherrill to tell more than he wished; so after an instant's irresolution, he accepted the dismissal.

Sherrill walked with him to the door, and gave his directions to the servant; he stood watching, as Alan and the man went up the stairs.

Then he went back and seated himself in the chair Alan had occupied, and sat with hands grasping the arms of the chair while he stared into the fire.

Fifteen minutes later, he heard his daughter's footsteps and looked up.

Constance halted in the door to a.s.sure herself that he was now alone; then she came to him and, seating herself on the arm of the chair, she put her hand on his thin hair and smoothed it softly; he felt for her other hand with his and found it, and held it clasped between his palms.

"You've found out who he is, father?" she asked.

"The facts have left me no doubt at all as to that, little daughter."

"No doubt that he is----who?"

Sherrill was silent for a moment--not from uncertainty, but because of the effect which what he must say would have upon her; then he told her in almost the same words he had used to Alan. Constance started, flushed, and her hand stiffened convulsively between her father's.

They said nothing more to one another; Sherrill seemed considering and debating something within himself; and presently he seemed to come to a decision. He got up, stooped and touched his daughter's hand, and left the room. He went up the stairs and on the second floor he went to a front room and knocked. Alan's voice told him to come in. Sherrill went in and, when he had made sure that the servant was not with Alan, he closed the door carefully behind him.

Then he turned back to Alan, and for an instant stood indecisive as though he did not know how to begin what he wanted to say. As he glanced down at a key he took from his pocket, his indecision seemed to receive direction and inspiration from it; and he put it down on Alan's dresser.

"I've brought you," he said evenly, "the key to your house."

Alan gazed at him, bewildered. "The key to my house?"

"To the house on Astor Street," Sherrill confirmed. "Your father deeded the house and its furniture and all its contents to you the day before he disappeared. I have not the deed here; it came into my hands the day before yesterday at the same time I got possession of the pictures which might--or might not, for all I knew then--be you. I have the deed down-town and will give it to you. The house is yours in fee simple, given you by your father, not bequeathed to you by him to become your property after his death. He meant by that, I think, even more than the mere acknowledgment that he is your father."

Sherrill walked to the window and stood as though looking out, but his eyes were blank with thought.

"For almost twenty years," he said, "your father, as I have told you, lived in that house practically alone; during all those years a shadow of some sort was over him. I don't know at all, Alan, what that shadow was. But it is certain that whatever it was that had changed him from the man he was when I first knew him culminated three days ago when he wrote to you. It may be that the consequences of his writing to you were such that, after he had sent the letter, he could not bring himself to face them and so has merely ... gone away. In that case, as we stand here talking, he is still alive. On the other hand, his writing you may have precipitated something that I know nothing of. In either case, if he has left anywhere any evidence of what it is that changed and oppressed him for all these years, or if there is any evidence of what has happened to him now, it will be found in his house."

Sherrill turned back to Alan. "It is for you--not me, Alan," he said simply, "to make that search. I have thought seriously about it, this last half hour, and have decided that is as he would want it--perhaps as he did want it--to be. He could have told me what his trouble was any time in these twenty years, if he had been willing I should know; but he never did."

Sherrill was silent for a moment.

"There are some things your father did just before he disappeared that I have not told you yet," he went on. "The reason I have not told them is that I have not yet fully decided in my own mind what action they call for from me. I can a.s.sure you, however, that it would not help you now in any way to know them."

He thought again; then glanced to the key on the dresser and seemed to recollect.

"That key," he said, "is one I made your father give me some time ago; he was at home alone so much that I was afraid something might happen to him there. He gave it me because he knew I would not misuse it. I used it, for the first time, three days ago, when, after becoming certain something had gone wrong with him, I went to the house to search for him; my daughter used it this morning when she went there to wait for you. Your father, of course, had a key to the front door like this one; his servant has a key to the servants' entrance. I do not know of any other keys."

"The servant is in charge there now?" Alan asked.

"Just now there is no one in the house. The servant, after your father disappeared, thought that, if he had merely gone away, he might have gone back to his birthplace near Manistique, and he went up there to look for him. I had a wire from him to-day that he had not found him and was coming back."

Sherrill waited a moment to see whether there was anything more Alan wanted to ask; then he went out.

CHAPTER IV

"ARRIVED SAFE; WELL"

As the door closed behind Sherrill, Alan went over to the dresser and picked up the key which Sherrill had left. It was, he saw, a flat key of a sort common twenty years before, not of the more recent corrugated shape. As he looked at it and then away from it, thoughtfully turning it over and over in his fingers, it brought no sense of possession to him. Sherrill had said the house was his, had been given him by his father; but that fact could not actually make it his in his realization. He could not imagine himself owning such a house or what he would do with it if it were his. He put the key, after a moment, on the ring with two or three other keys he had, and dropped them into his pocket; then he crossed to a chair and sat down.

He found, as he tried now to disentangle the events of the afternoon, that from them, and especially from his last interview with Sherrill, two facts stood out most clearly. The first of these related more directly to his father--to Benjamin Corvet. When such a man as Benjamin Corvet must have been, disappears--when, without warning and without leaving any account of himself he vanishes from among those who knew him--the persons most closely interested pa.s.s through three stages of anxiety. They doubt first whether the disappearance is real and whether inquiry on their part will not be resented; they waken next to realization that the man is actually gone, and that something must be done; the third stage is open and public inquiry. Whatever might be the nature of the information Sherrill was withholding from him, Alan saw that its effect on Sherrill had been to shorten very greatly Sherrill's time of doubt as to Corvet's actual disappearance. The Sherrills--particularly Sherrill himself--had been in the second stage of anxiety when Alan came; they had been awaiting Alan's arrival in the belief that Alan could give them information which would show them what must be "done" about Corvet. Alan had not been able to give them this information; but his coming, and his interview with Sherrill, had strongly influenced Sherrill's att.i.tude. Sherrill had shrunk, still more definitely and consciously, after that, from prying into the affairs of his friend; he had now, strangely, almost withdrawn himself from the inquiry, and had given it over to Alan.

Sherrill had spoken of the possibility that something might have "happened" to Covert; but it was plain he did not believe he had met with actual violence. He had left it to Alan to examine Corvet's house; but he had not urged Alan to examine it at once; he had left the time of the examination to be determined by Alan. This showed clearly that Sherrill believed--perhaps had sufficient reason for believing--that Corvet had simply "gone away." The second of Alan's two facts related even more closely and personally to Alan himself.

Corvet, Sherrill had said, had married in 1889. But Sherrill in long knowledge of his friend, had shown firm conviction that there had been no mere vulgar liaison in Corvet's life. Did this mean that there might have been some previous marriage of Alan's father--some marriage which had strangely overlapped and nullified his public marriage? In that case, Alan could be, not only in fact but legally, Corvet's son; and such things as this, Alan knew, had sometimes happened, and had happened by a strange combination of events, innocently for all parties. Corvet's public separation from his wife, Sherrill had said, had taken place in 1897, but the actual separation between them might, possibly, have taken place long before that.

Alan resolved to hold these questions in abeyance; he would not accept or grant the stigma which his relationship to Corvet seemed to attach to himself until it had been proved to him. He had come to Chicago expecting, not to find that there had never been anything wrong, but to find that the wrong had been righted in some way at last. But what was most plain of all to him, from what Sherrill had told him, was that the wrong--whatever it might be--had not been righted; it existed still.