The Long Lane's Turning

by Hallie Erminie Rives

A half hour later he was in a suite of the hotel. "Now bring me the home papers," he commanded.

"To-day, sir?" ventured the secretary. "Do you think you are strong enough so soon—"

"Do as I tell you," was the curt reply. "I was shot on the ninth of May, last year. I want to begin with the tenth, and I want all of them!"

The secretary went into the adjoining room, to return presently with a file of newspapers, stitched neatly together, their columns marked here and there in blue-pencil. He laid the great tome down on the table.

"That's all now," said Craig. "I'll call when I want you again. I'll dine here."

Alone, he drew a long breath. Then he set his teeth and a peculiar expression came to his face. A year, and more, had been snatched from his life—this had been told him when it had been evident that the operation had restored his faculties unimpaired, and as soon as he had recovered sufficient strength. Beyond this, however, he had been told nothing: on this score the surgical authority had been adamant. So, for weeks, denied even the presence of his secretary, he had been constrained, albeit impatiently, to subsist on the merest assurances cabled him from day to day that the interests which had been in his charge were adequately cared for, and to compel his stubborn resolution to patience. Now the embargo had been lifted; he was once more his own master. And before him, in black and white, lay the record of that vanished time, which to him was but a meaningless void thronged with vague and inchoate images, the story of the ignominy and downfall of the man who had tricked him and robbed him of the woman he desired! The blood rose in his temples. His lips drew up from his clenched teeth and his fingers twitched as he reached for the newspapers.

There it was, the episode that excluded all else from his thought, the sensational headlines running half across the front page—the story, pieced together by the assiduous reportorial pencil, of the burglars and the shooting, the unknown feminine visitor who had disappeared in the confusion leaving no clue behind her, the arrest of the single desperado, closing with the latter's confrontation with Craig himself. An exclamation of satisfaction fell from his lips. He had said to Echo that there lived no man who could say that he had lied—a boast that had had a shameful aftermath. Yet he felt now no shade of remorse for the black perjury that had fastened the attempted murder upon Harry Sevier. Rather he felt disappointed that consciousness had failed him a moment too soon, so that his own lips had not placarded the other to his face. That joy had been denied him.

He turned the leaves, searching avidly for the headlines which should have flung broadcast the startling identification. The events of the great world, the larger happenings that had plunged two Balkan States into war and overturned a British Ministry, the loss of a great ocean liner—even a senatorial inquiry into the methods of the Distillery Trust—held no interest for him at this moment. His brain had linked onto the past where it had dropped it, and the empty gulf had laid no cooling fingers on his burning craving for revenge.

But the thing he sought was not there. "Prisoner Refuses to Make Any Statement"—"Criminal Unknown to Police"—"Sticks Stubbornly to Policy of Silence"—as he read, a dull flush overspread his face. Fools! Was it possible that he—Harry Sevier—known to a thousand folk of a city a couple of hundreds of miles away, could hoodwink the police by the silly subterfuge of a newly-shaven chin? The papers shook in his vengeful clutch as he turned and turned, conning the progress of the trial. It ended with the conviction and the sentence; thereafter the headlines told of things of fresher public interest.

For a long time Craig sat perfectly still, staring into the grate whose fire-light danced in yellow shadows on the wall, with the page open on his knees. He had won the first trick, and Harry Sevier had played his lone trump of silence. But what of that? He was a jail-bird, chained to a cell for twenty years. His absence from home would long ago have raised a question, which in the end must become insistent. He, Cameron Craig, could answer that question! His lips curved in a cruel smile. And Echo? She had profited by the situation—Harry had borne the brunt.