half an hour later burton returned--most unostentatiously. in fact, he made himself think of a beginner in burglary as he hugged the shadowy side of the street and sought the shelter of the trees in getting across the garden. if one were going to do this sort of thing, one might as well do it in proper style. the front door yielded noiselessly to his touch, illustrating the advantage of having an accomplice within, and he was safely inside. he bolted the door and made his way through the dimly lit hall to the surgery. the whole entry had occupied less than a minute. he was breathing quickly, but it was from excitement. it was years since he had been in any sort of an adventure. he felt like a college boy again.
the surgery was sufficiently lit by the diffused light of street-lamp and moon to enable him to see his way about. he had brought with him the electric pocket lamp which he carried with him when travelling, but he did not intend to use it unless necessary. his plan was to keep as quiet as possible and wait for the anticipated visitor. if the person who had had access to the room to "salt" it were at all curious about the result of the committee's visit, he ought, logically, to come at the earliest possible moment to investigate. burton had planned to occupy the time by writing to rachel, and he now pulled an armchair into such a position that he could get enough of the thin moonlight from the window to see his way across his writing pad, and settled himself to the familiar task.
"my adored rachel," he began, and then he stopped. it wasn't going to be the easiest letter in the world to write. he had been less than a day in high ridge, yet already he had got so far away from the putney atmosphere that he was conscious of a jolt in trying to present the situation here to mrs. overman. rachel was of course the paragon of womankind. he had been a freshman at college when she married overman, and he had accepted in perfect good faith the theory that as a consequence he was always to live the life of a blighted being. it had been the tacit understanding between them ever since, and he was hardly conscious that her new widowhood had put any new significance into their old relation. for years he had come and gone at her beck and call, lived on her smiles and survived her frowns with more or less equanimity, all as a bounden knight should do. it had almost become a secondary occupation. but as time went on, occasions had arisen when his account of facts had to be somewhat tempered for the adored rachel. she was just as adorable as ever, of course, but--she didn't understand people who didn't live her kind of a life. burton felt instinctively that the whole underwood situation would strike her the wrong way. she would simply regard it as something that could never by any possibility have happened to any one in her class, and that would end it. if philip were going to marry miss underwood--and philip was mighty lucky to have the chance--it behooved him to tell his story warily so as not to prejudice rachel against her future daughter-in-law. he started in again, with circumspection.
"i am writing you by the light of the fair silver moon. does that make you think of the luny,--i mean lunar--epistles i used to write you,--the almanac-man alone remembers how many years ago! i wrote by moonlight then for romantic reasons,--now for strategical,--but that is a subject which can only be continued in my next, so please keep up your interest.
"i have seen miss underwood, and i wish to assure you in the first place that philip has shown his usual good taste and discrimination by falling in love with her. she is a beautiful girl, and more. she has charm and sweetness and manner and dignity. i'll report any other qualities she may possess as i discover them. i should judge her to be somewhat older than philip, but i am the last man in the world with a right to regard that as an obstacle.
"she has as yet given me no final answer in the matter which you commissioned me to lay before her, for the following reason:
"her father, who is a physician, and who impresses me as a very original, attractive and honorable man, is at present under a curious shadow of popular distrust. there was a highway robbery here a short time ago, and the man robbed charges that dr. underwood was the robber. i am sure there is not the slightest ground for such a charge, but the people seem to have taken an attitude of distrust and suspicion toward both the doctor and his son, and you can understand miss underwood's natural feeling that until her father is vindicated as publicly as he has been assailed, she will not give any encouragement to philip's suit. i have her word for it (and what is more, her radiant look for it), that this is all that keeps her from listening at this time. if you will tell philip this, i am sure it will have the effect upon his spirits which we have both so anxiously desired. i have not the slightest doubt about the doctor's being cleared. he is a most delightful man, and his son--" burton held his pen suspended. henry did not lend himself to a phrase. there was something about him that ran off into the shadowy unknown. he ended his sentence lamely,--"is something of a character.
"of course i shall stay on at high ridge and bend every energy to clearing up this matter without delay. it can hardly prove very difficult, though there are some curious and unusual features in the case.
"it is unnecessary for me to say that the thought that he is carrying out the wishes of his adored rachel is the chief joy in life of her
"blighted being."
it was the way in which he had always signed his letters to her since her marriage. he wrote the words now with the cheerful unconsciousness of habit, and folded his letter for mailing. then after a moment he rose and walked softly to the window. putting the curtain aside, he stood for some time looking out across the lawn. his window looked not toward rowan, but toward the side street, a hundred and fifty feet away. the moon was clear and high, and the black and white of its light and shadow made a scene that would have appealed to any lover of the picturesque. it would delight a poet or a philosopher he thought, and that brought henry underwood again to his mind. he was a curious man,--a man to give one pause. there was something of the poet and something of the philosopher in him, as witness his speeches in the garden, but there was something else, also. if the moodiness which was so obvious had manifested itself in the tricks that had defied the police and scandalized the family, it went near to the line of the abnormal. it would seem that the accusation was neither admitted nor proved, but the hotel clerk had referred to it, selby had openly charged him with it, and the doctor evidently did not wish the matter discussed. well, it had nothing to do with the present affair, unless--unless--oh, of course it had nothing to do with the present affair.
the figure of a man moving with a sort of stealthy swiftness among the shadows of the garden caught his eye, and instantly he was alert. the man crossed an open patch of moonlight and, with a curious feeling that it was what he had expected, burton recognized henry underwood. he came directly toward the side of the house where the surgery was, and a moment later burton heard the outer door of the back hall open, and footsteps went past his closed door.
burton pressed his electric light to look at his watch. it was two o'clock. he turned back to the window, with a feeling of irritation. henry underwood might be a poet and a philosopher, but he was also a fool, or he would not be wandering at two a.m. through a town that was already smouldering with suspicion of the underwood family. it was, to say the least, imprudent. burton wished he had not seen him. probably his errand was entirely innocent and easily to be explained, but the human mind is a fertile field, and a seed of suspicion flourishes like the scriptural grain of mustard.
there was a red glow in the sky over the trees of the garden. burton wondered if it could be the morning glow. it was hardly time for that. he was speculating upon it idly when his ear caught the sound of returning footsteps in the back hall,--though this time they were so soft that if he had not been alert for any sound he would hardly have noticed them. he drew aside from the window, hid himself in the shadow of the long curtain, and waited. unless the person in the hall entered this room, he had no right to question his movements.
the door was opened with noiseless swiftness, and a man stood for an instant in the opening. his head was bent forward and he carried a light in his hand,--whether small lantern or shaded candle burton did not have time to see, for almost at the instant of opening the door the light was quenched. burton was certain that neither sound nor movement had betrayed his own presence, yet after that single moment of reconnoitering, the light went out and the door was shut sharply. burton sprang toward it, stumbled over the armchair he had himself placed in the way, picked himself up, and reached the door,--only to look into the blank blackness of the back hall. there was a faint quiver of sound in the air, as though the outer house door had jarred with a sudden closing, and he ran down the hall; the door was unlocked and yielded at once to his touch. for a moment everything was still; then he heard the clatter of feet on a board walk. it was as though some one, escaping, had waited to see if he would be pursued and then had fled on. burton ran around to the rear of the house, thankful that the moonlight now made his way plain. there was a board walk running from the kitchen door to a high wall at the end of the lot, but the sound he had heard was momentary, not continuous, so, on the theory that the man had crossed the walk, not run down the hundred feet of it to the alley, he ran on to the east side of the house. there was no one to be seen, of course. any one familiar with the location could have hidden himself in any of a hundred shadows. the lot was filled with trees, and one large oak almost rested against the house. it reminded him of henry's remark at dinner about getting down from the second story by the oak on the east side, and he glanced up. it looked an easy climb--and two of the house windows were lit. on the impulse of the moment, he swung himself up into the branches. as he came level with the lit windows, henry underwood passed one of them, still fully dressed. he was so near that burton was certain for a moment that he himself must have been discovered, and he waited a moment in suspense. but henry had passed the window without looking out.
what burton had expected to discover was perhaps not clear to his own mind. if he had analyzed the intuition he followed, he would have said that he was acting on the theory that henry had looked into his room, and then, fleeing out of doors to throw him off the scent--by that side door to which he obviously carried a key, since he had let himself in that way shortly before--had regained his room by this schoolboy stairway. the feeling had been strong upon him that he was close on the trail of some one fleeing. but if in fact it had been henry, how could he challenge him, here in his own room? clearly he was within his rights here,--a fact that was emphasized when, after a minute, he came to the window and pulled the curtain down.
burton dropped to the ground and retraced his steps around the rear of the house. here he saw that the board walk ran down to a gate,--the gate in the rear by which he had seen mrs. bussey talking in excited fashion to a man, earlier in the day. the gate opened at burton's touch and he looked out into an empty alley. it was so obvious that this would have been the natural and easy way of escape that he could only blame himself for folly in chasing an uncertain sound of footsteps past the gate around to the east of the house.
he found his way back to the surgery a good deal humiliated. the mysterious intruder had been almost within reach of his arm, and had got away without leaving a trace, and all that was gained was that hereafter he would be more alert than ever, knowing himself watched. it was not a very creditable beginning. burton threw himself down on the couch, and his annoyance did not prevent his dropping, after a time, into a sound sleep.
therefore he did not see how that red glow on the sky above the trees deepened and made a bright hole in the night, long before the morning came to banish the darkness legitimately.
