CHAPTER XXVII
A GAME THAT WAS NEVER PLAYED
WARDEN RAND groped in the darkness for the lamp on the table, as, followed by Doctor Kreelmar, he entered the sitting room of his home.
"Guess Janet must have gone for a walk," said he. "Got a match, Kreelmar?"
Doctor Kreelmar produced the match, lighted it and handed it to the warden.
"Give you a bishop and a pawn to-night," volunteered the warden off-handedly, but chuckling inwardly to himself as he removed the lamp chimney. "Beat you too easily last time."
"You'll do what!" snapped the irascible little doctor, who was a very keen chess player and quite, if not more than, the equal of the warden.
"Bishop and a pawn," repeated the warden composedly, replacing the chimney and adjusting the wick with emphasised deliberation. "Get the board and the men—you know where they are—on top of the bookcase. I'll be back in a moment—left my cigars up-stairs"—and he hurried from the room.
With a snort, the doctor crossed to the bookcase, jerked the board and the box of chessmen from the top, and returned to the table. He slapped the board open, dumped the boxful of men over it, and began to sort out the black and white pieces—carefully setting up the white ones with which he was to play. This done, as he heard the warden's steps returning, he reached over, very grimly possessed himself of a black bishop and a black pawn and slipped them into his pocket. He was profoundly engrossed in seeing that the white pieces were exactly in the middle of the squares when the warden spoke from the doorway.
"Kreelmar!"
There was a hollowness, a dull weariness in the other's voice that caught the little doctor's ear instantly. He raised his eyes from the chessboard—and the next moment had jumped to his feet, sending the pieces of flying in all directions over the floor.
"Eh? What! What!" he spluttered out. "Good God, Rand, what's the matter?"
The warden was standing in the doorway, his face set and white, a sheet of notepaper in his hand.
"Kreelmar—Janet's gone!" he said numbly.
"Gone!" gasped Kreelmar. "Gone! Gone! Gone where? What do you mean? Gone where?"
"I don't know," the warden answered hoarsely. He came across the room toward the doctor. "I found this upstairs on the dresser. Read it, Kreelmar—read it."
Doctor Kreelmar took the paper and read it hurriedly, mumbling parts of the hastily scrawled sentences aloud.
"'… Gone away … for a long time … please, please do not try to find me … there was no other way …'"
Doctor Kreelmar dropped the note upon the table, took customary refuge in his handkerchief and mopped nervously at his face.
"What's it mean, eh? What's it mean?" he inquired weakly. "Gone where? What for? 'The only way'—what's she mean by that?"
"She was here less than an hour ago when I went down to the village"—the warden's voice choked. "I don't know what it means. She was just as she always was then. There's no reason why she should go away, she—"
"You're sure that's her writing on the note?" demanded Doctor Kreelmar suddenly.
The warden picked up the sheet of paper again and studied it anxiously.
"Yes," he said. "It's her writing—and she's gone, Kreelmar. Do you understand?—she's gone—what are we to do?"
"Do! Do!" flung out the little doctor. "Why, find her, of course—no matter what she says in that note. If she was here an hour ago she can't be very far away yet, and—"
"Listen!"—Warden Rand had caught the doctor's arm and was pressing it fiercely.
A step sounded on the veranda—a light step, crossing it very slowly—entering the hall.
"Listen!"—the warden's grip tightened. "It's—it's Janet!"
She came into the room like one walking in her sleep—as though she did not see them—her hands pressed to her temples, her eyes half-closed, no single vestige of colour in the strained, drawn face.
"Janet!" her father cried, stepping toward her. "Merciful Heavens, child, what has happened?"
For a moment she looked at them in a dazed, almost unconscious way. Her eyes passed from her father to Doctor Kreelmar, then rested on the note in the warden's hand. A pitiful smile quivered on her lips and she shook her head.
"Not now," she said in a low, unnatural voice. "Not now—don't ask me now. I did not think you would find that before you went to bed."
"Janet, you are ill—you are sick," said the warden, greatly distressed. "Kreelmar, you—"
"No," she said mechanically. "Not sick, not ill; I am only—very tired. Please do not worry about me, dad. I—I think I will go to my room."
She turned toward the door—and stopped. A dawning something crept into her face—a hope—a fear—her hands, at her sides now, clenched tightly. Some one was running hurriedly outside—running up the veranda steps. Varge!—had Varge come back—had something kept him from reaching the bridge, and he had come back—here?
The bell rang perfunctorily; but the outer door was open, and, without waiting for a response, a blue-coated prison guard stepped across the hall to the doorway of the sitting-room and saluted.
"Seven-seventy-seven's given himself up, sir," he panted, out of breath. "Came back ten minutes ago, sir."
For an instant it was as though the hush of death had fallen upon the room—and upon the guard's face came an awe-struck, frightened look as he gazed about him. The warden was staring at him; Doctor Kreelmar was staring at him—the warden's arms had been outstretched toward his daughter, and as though he had been turned suddenly to stone he stood rigidly in that attitude with his arms still held out; the doctor's hand and his handkerchief were glued immovably to his forehead. Only the slight little figure in white stirred—she seemed to sway queerly from side to side.
An instant the silence held, then it was broken by a low, moaning cry from Janet—then a cry in words, sobbing, anguished.
"Oh, dad! Oh, dad! Don't you understand? I love him. I—"
With a quick step toward her, the warden caught her in his arms—and as quickly, the spell lifted, Doctor Kreelmar rushed impetuously across the room, launched himself upon the guard and shoved the man out onto the veranda.
"You—you confounded, blundering idiot!" he exploded ferociously. "You—you—"
"What's the matter?" gasped the bewildered guard.
"Matter! Matter!" rasped out the little man. "None of your business! D'ye hear? None of your business! Shut up!"
"Yes, sir," said the guard weakly.
"Don't you know anything—eh?" demanded the choleric little doctor. "Don't you know anything?"
"I—I don't know, sir," stammered the guard helplessly.
"Yes, you do, too!" asserted Doctor Kreelmar fiercely. "Yes, you do, too!"—he stabbed viciously with his forefinger at the top button of the guard's uniform. "You know you don't know anything—not a thing of what happened in there—not a thing."
"No, sir," said the guard.
"You didn't see a thing"—the forefinger made a bull's-eye on the button.
"No, sir—not a thing."
"You didn't hear a word"—the forefinger went in and out as unerringly as a piston rod, and the while the little doctor's face was puckered into innumerable scowls, and his words, all bunched up together, were flung out like bullets from the muzzle of a Gatling gun.
"No, sir, not—a word."
"Well, then," jerked out the doctor, with earnest inconsistency, "keep your mouth shut about it!"
"You can trust me, sir," the guard assured him anxiously.
"Hum!" commented Doctor Kreelmar; then, with grim complacency: "If I can't, I'll make Gehenna a feather bed compared to what this place will be for you! Now, then, back you go! Tell 'em the warden'll be over in a—when he gets ready—we're playing chess. Seven-seventy-seven'll keep as well as anybody else. There's nothing about him to make a three-ringed circus over any more than any other man, is there—eh?"
"No, sir," said the guard meekly, and, saluting, went down the steps.
Doctor Kreelmar watched the man disappear in the shadow of the trees then he turned and walked slowly back into the sitting room. Janet's face was buried on her father's shoulder, and the warden's arms were wrapped close around the little form that was shaking with convulsive sobs. The doctor shook his head at the question in the warden's glance.
"She doesn't need me," he said, a curious gruffness in his voice. "Carry her upstairs and let her have her cry out—and let her have it out in your arms, Rand. I'll wait here for you until you come down again."
They passed out of the door, Janet in the warden's arms, and Doctor Kreelmar sat down in a chair and stared at the floor. He sat there for a very long time without any movement; then he got down on his knees and began to pick up the chessmen from the carpet. He picked them up very slowly, one at a time—where two lay together he picked them up separately. When they were all picked up, he packed them back in the box, folded up the board, carried box and board to the bookcase, came back to his chair—and stared at the floor again.
After a while, the low murmur of voices reached him from above. The handkerchief, that had never left his hand, mopped suddenly, uncertainly, at his forehead. After another while, a very long while, the warden's steps, dragging, weighted, descending the stairs, came to him. Doctor Kreelmar with a strange little shake of his body, stood up and faced the door.
There was anxiety, confusion, dismay and a smouldering fire in the warden's eyes as he came into the room and dropped heavily into a chair across the table from Doctor Kreelmar.
"Kreelmar," he said hoarsely, "this is awful. Varge came back here to-night to see Janet. It seems he didn't intend to be seen himself—but she saw him. You heard what she said down here—she loves him—she told him so to-night. He loves her. She says that they were going away together—that she persuaded him they must. She was to meet him at the bridge. She came into the house to write that note and get some things, and he started to go to the bridge through the fields. He never went there—I don't know where he's been for the last half-hour, but now he's given himself up. She says she understands now—that he has done it for her." The warden raised his head, and his hand on the table curled into a clenched knob. "My God, Kreelmar, what do you stand there looking at me like that for, as if I were talking about the weather? Don't you realise what this means? She, Janet, my daughter, is in love with one of my convicts! A convict, Kreelmar! Don't you understand? A convict, a lifer—my little girl and a convict!" His fist was opening and closing—a mirthless, unpleasant laugh purled from his lips.
Doctor Kreelmar reached over and laid his hand on the warden's arm.
"Rand, old friend," he said quietly, "there's no use letting go like that—not a bit. I think I understand—better than you do. Let's talk about it a little, as though it were—the weather."
Warden Rand met the doctor's eyes for a moment, then he brushed his hand nervously across his forehead and allowed his body to relax a little in his chair.
Doctor Kreelmar pulled his own chair a little nearer to the table and sat down in it.
"You have called him a convict, a lifer," he said slowly, "and it is true—but he is an innocent man."
"Innocent!"—the word seemed to rouse the warden angrily. "Innocent! Innocent! I've heard that ever since he came here! How do you know he's innocent?"
"For the same reason that you know it," replied the little doctor calmly. "You've never said so in so many words, but you've believed it—ever since he came here. Say it to-night, Rand—now—when it costs more to say it than it ever did before. Be the fair man you are. Go back to the beginning, without the prejudice of what's happened to-night, and picture him and every act of his from the time he came to the penitentiary."
There was a long silence. Warden Rand drummed on the table, his eyes on his restless fingers, his brow knitted. The doctor sat motionless, watching him—waiting for him to speak.
"Well," said the warden heavily, at last, "I'll admit it. I've felt that way, it is true—if it does you any good to have me say so. But what difference does it make to-night whether he is innocent or guilty? He's a convict—in there—under life sentence."
"It makes just this difference"—Doctor Kreelmar's hand reached out again and rested on the warden's arm, and his fingers closed with a quick, earnest pressure. "It makes just this difference—if he's an innocent man, he is the man whose love is the kind of love I'd hope for for a daughter of mine—and never expect her to get. Rand, think of it, if that man is innocent, his sacrifice is as nearly analogous as human sacrifice could ever be to that Divine sacrifice of nineteen hundred years ago. I want you to think of it, Rand—we've got to face this thing calmly, old friend—and fight it out—for little Janet."
He drew back his hand and ran it slowly through his hair. Warden Rand leaned a little further forward over the table, his eyes full on the doctor, both hands out before him; the fingers, interlaced, working over each other, the white showing at the knuckles.
"Janet says he did not intend to be seen when he came back to-night," Doctor Kreelmar went on presently. "A love that would impel him to take the risk he took for just a glimpse, a sight of her, is a love few men would be capable of. I told you that I thought I realised what all this meant better than you did—I think I do—because the shock to you has been greater and you are upset now. You said you did not know where he had been during the last half-hour when he left Janet to go to the bridge—I think I can tell you. He was somewhere alone—with his God. Janet was right—he has given himself up for her. It is not the man who would have suffered in the years to come, it is the woman—Janet. His love had brought him back once, and he had agreed to go with her; if that love had brought him back once when he did not know she loved him—you said she only told him so to-night—it would bring him back again a thousand times more surely when he knew she cared for him—and the next time he would not stop even where he stopped to-night. He took the only way he saw to save her from—himself. I am not a very big man. Rand, not big enough even to grasp it all—there is a great strength there, and a magnificent weakness, born of love, that enhances the strength, for the strongest man is the man who knows his weakness and shackles it at any cost. Rand"—he paused, and his voice broke a little—"Rand, I don't know how you feel about it—but I feel, somehow, that I'd like to be a better man."
It was a long time before the warden spoke. Neither man looked at the other—the warden's eyes were on the table—Doctor Kreelmar had risen impulsively from his chair as he finished speaking, and had walked to the window.
"All this may be so," said the warden, breaking the silence—his voice was steadier now, but very low, very sober. "I believe it is so, Kreelmar—but does it help us any? Does it do anything but—but make it harder?"
Doctor Kreelmar turned from the window and came back to the table.
"Yes," he said earnestly; "it helps. "And it does more than that—it shows us the way. Assuming Varge's innocence, we must prove it—it forces us to prove it, to probe this thing to the very bottom. It gives us not only the right to do it, but it makes it our duty to do it—for Janet's sake alone, if for no other reason."
Warden Rand smiled a little wanly.
"It is not an easy thing to do," he said dully.
"Perhaps not," admitted Doctor Kreelmar. "But we've got to try. To begin with, Varge is as much a doctor as I am, all but the name, and it will be natural enough for you to detail him to the infirmary where he will be with me."
"You mean," asked the warden quickly, "that you think you can make him speak for himself—on account of what's happened to-night—on account of—of Janet?"
"No," said Doctor Kreelmar thoughtfully. "No; I have little or no hope of that. In fact, there is less likelihood than ever of it. If he would have spoken, it was his way out to-night—and he went back there instead. No; I was not thinking of that—it simply solves the problem of his immediate disposal, that's all. It is somebody else who must be made to speak—not Varge."
The warden shook his head doubtfully.
"It is not an easy thing to do," he repeated, passing his hand backward and forward across his forehead in a troubled way. "Who will find this somebody?"
"I will," said the little doctor grimly.