"Wait a minute," she said, suddenly. "Let me ask you something." She took a step toward him, though her hand rested still on the back of the chair.

"If I know it already," she continued, looking him in the eyes, "there would be no necessity for you to speak?"

He took the time to consider this in all its bearings.

"I'd rather tell you in my own words," he said, at last; "but if you a.s.sure me that you know, I shall be satisfied."

She took a step nearer to him still. Only the tips of her fingers now rested on the back of the chair, to which she held, as to a bulwark.

Before she spoke she glanced round the room, as though afraid lest the doors and walls might mistake her words for a confession.

"Then I do know," she said, quietly.

XXIII

"The old lady was willing enough to talk," Conquest a.s.sured Ford, in his narrative of the taking of Amalia Gramm's testimony. "There's nothing more loquacious than remorse. I figured on that before going out to Omaha."

"But if she had no hand in the crime, I don't see where the remorse comes in."

"It comes in vicariously. She feels it for Jacob, since Jacob didn't live to feel it for himself. It involves a subtle element of wifely devotion which I guess you're too young, or too inexperienced, to understand. She was glad old Jacob was gone, so that she could make his confession with impunity. She was willing to make any atonement within _her_ power, since it was too late to call _him_ to account."

"Isn't that a bit far-fetched?"

"Possibly--except to a priest, or a lawyer, or a woman herself. It isn't often that a woman's heroism works in a straight line, like a soldier's, or a fireman's. It generally pops at you round some queer corner, where it takes you by surprise. Before leaving Omaha I'd come to see that Amalia Gramm was by no means the least valiant of her s.e.x."

Conquest's smoking-room, with its s.p.a.ce and height, its deep leather arm-chairs, its shaded lamps, its cheerful fire, suggested a club rather than a private dwelling, and invited the most taciturn guest to confidence. Ford stretched himself before the blaze with an enjoyment rendered keener by the thought that it might be long before he had occasion to don a dinner-jacket again, or taste such a good Havana. Though it was only the evening of his arrival, he was eager to give himself up.

Now that he had "squared himself," as he expressed it, with Miriam Strange, he felt he had put the last touch to his preparations. Kilcup and Warren were holding him back for a day or two, but his own promptings were for haste.

"I admit," Conquest continued to explain, as he fidgeted about the room, moving a chair here, or an ash-tray there, with the fussiness of an old bachelor of housekeeping tastes--"I admit that I thought the old woman was trying it on at first. But I came to the conclusion that she had told a true story from the start. When she gave her evidence at your trial she thought you were--the man."

"There's nothing surprising in that. They almost made me think so, too."

"It did look fishy, my friend. You won't mind my saying that much. Clearer heads than your jury of village store-keepers and Adirondack farmers might have given the same verdict. But old lady Gramm's responsibility hadn't begun then. It was a matter of two or three years before she came to see--as women do see things about the men they live with--that the hand which did the job was Jacob's. By that time you had disappeared into s.p.a.ce, and she didn't feel bound to give the old chap away. She says she would have done it if it could have saved you; but since you had saved yourself, she confined her attentions to shielding Jacob. You may credit as much or as little of that as you please; but I believe the bulk of it.

In any case, since it does the trick for us we have no reason to complain.

Come now!"

"I'm not going to complain of anything. It's been a rum experience all through, but I can't say that, in certain aspects, I haven't enjoyed it. I _have_ enjoyed it. If it weren't for the necessity of deceiving people who are decent to you, I'd go through it all again."

"That's game," Conquest said, approvingly, as he worked round to the hearth-rug, where he stood cutting the end of a cigar, with Ford's long figure stretched out obliquely before him.

"I would," Ford a.s.sured him. "I'd go through it all again, like a shot.

It's been a lark from--I won't say from start to finish--but certainly from the minute--let me see just when!--certainly from the minute when Miss Strange beckoned to me, over old Wayne's shoulder."

An odd look came by degrees into Conquest's face--the look of pitying amus.e.m.e.nt with which one listens to queer things said by some one in delirium. He kept the cutter fixed in the end of the cigar, too much astonished to complete his task.

"Since Miss Strange did--_what_?"

Ford was too deeply absorbed in his own meditations to notice the tone.

"I mean, since she pulled me through."

Conquest's face broke into a broad smile.

"Are you dreaming, old chap? Or have you 'got 'em again'?"

"I'm going back in the story," Ford explained, with a hint of impatience.

"I'm talking about the night when Miss Strange saved me."

"Miss Strange saved you? How?"

Ford raised himself slowly in his chair, his long legs stretched out straight before him, and his body bent stiffly forward, as he stared up at Conquest, in puzzled interrogation.

"Do you mean to say," he asked, incredulously, "that she hasn't told you--_that_?"

"Perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me yourself. I'll be hanged if I know what you're talking about."

There was suppressed irritation in the way in which he tore off the end of the cigar and struck a match. Ford let himself sink back into the chair again.

"So she never told you! By George, that's like her! It's just what I might have expected."

"Look here," Conquest said, sharply, "did you know Miss Strange before you came up here from South America?" He stood with his cigar unlighted, for he had let the match burn down to his fingers before attempting to apply it. "Was your taking the name of Strange," he demanded with sudden inspiration, "merely an accident, as I've supposed it was--or had it anything to do with her?"

"It wasn't an accident, and it did have something to do with her."

"Just so! And you kept it dark!"

Something in Conquest's intonation caused Ford to look up. He saw a man with face suddenly growing gray, as though a light had gone out of it. He was disturbed only to the point of feeling that he had spoken tactlessly, and proceeded to repair the error.

"I kept it dark for obvious reasons. If Miss Strange didn't tell you about it, it's because she isn't the kind of person to talk of an incident in which her own part was so n.o.ble. I'll give you the whole story now."

"I should be obliged to you," Conquest said, dryly.

He sat down on the very edge of one of the big arm-chairs, leaning forward, and fingering his still unlighted cigar nervously, as he watched Ford puff out successive rings of smoke before beginning. He was less on his guard to screen the intenseness with which he listened, because Ford spoke at first in a dreamy way, without looking in his direction.

With more insight into the circ.u.mstances surrounding him Ford would have told his tale with greater reticence. As it was he spoke with enthusiasm, an enthusiasm born of an honest desire that Conquest should see the woman he was about to marry in the full beauty of her character. In regard to this he himself had made the discovery so slowly and so recently that he was animated by something like a convert's zeal. Beginning his narrative quietly, in a reminiscent vein, with intervals in which he lapsed altogether into meditation, he was presently fired with all the animation in a story-teller when he perceives he is holding his hearer spellbound.

As a matter of fact, he was moved not so much by the desire of convincing Conquest of Miriam Strange's n.o.bility, as by the impulse to do her justice, once in his life at least, in language of his own.

It was a nave bit of eloquence, of which no detail was lost on the experienced man of the world, who sat twirling his cigar with nervous fingers, his eyes growing keener in proportion as his face became more gray. It was part of his professional acquirement to be able to draw his deductions from some s.n.a.t.c.h of human drama as he listened to its unfolding. His quickness and accuracy of judgment had, indeed, been a large element in his success; so that the habit of years enabled him to preserve a certain calmness of comprehension now. It lost nothing in being a studied calmness, since the forcing of his faculties within restraint concentrated their ac.u.men.

Ford concluded with what for him was an almost lyric outburst.

"By George! Conquest, I didn't know there were such women in the world.

She's been a revelation to me--as art and religion are revelations to other people. She came to me as the angel came to Peter in the prison; but, like Peter, I didn't know it was an angel. There's a sort of glory about her--a glory which it takes a higher sense than any I've got to see and understand. After all she's done for me--after all this time--I'm only now beginning to get glimpses of it; but it's merely as we get glimpses of an infinite beyond, because we see the stars. She's a mystery to me, in the same way that genius is a mystery, or holiness. I didn't appreciate her because I hadn't the soul, and yet it's in seeing that I hadn't the soul that I begin to get it. That's curious, isn't it? She's like some heavenly spirit that's pa.s.sed by me, and touched me into newness of life."

His ardor was so sincere, his hymn of praise so spontaneous that he expected some sort of echo back. It seemed to him that even if Conquest did not join in this chant in honor of the woman who presumably loved him, whom more presumably still he loved, it would be but natural for him to applaud it. Ford knew that if any one else had sung of Miriam Strange as he had just been singing, he would have leaped to his feet and wrung the man's hand till it ached. It surprised him, therefore, it disappointed him, that Conquest should sit unmoved, unless the spark-like twinkle of his little eyes could be taken as emotion.