Arthur Stringer

“ But as I seated Criswell at his own office desk and did my utmost to galvanize his tired brain into some semblance of the rôle I had laid out for it, I think he rather lost track of time and place. At the end of ten minutes my face was moist with sweat, and a wave of utter exhaustion swept through me as I saw that, after all my struggle, nothing in that minutely enacted little drama had struck a responsive chord in either his imagination or his memory.
"You don't get anything?" I asked as I dropped back into a chair at the end of my pantomime. ”

“ I called out, so sharply that it must have sounded like a scream to the bewildered woman in the cloth-of-gold cloak.
"Yes," he answered in his far-away voice.
"Was John Lockwood ever interested in Northern British Columbia? Did he happen to have any claims or interests or plans that would make him look up trails in a Police Patrol report?"
"I don't know," was the wearily indifferent answer.
"Think, man!" I called out at him. "Think!"
"I can't think," he complained.
"Wouldn't he have to look up roads to a new mining-camp in that district?" I persisted. ”

“ I've tried to visualize it; I've tried to imagine it as I must have lived it. But all I've left is the fool idea of a man hitting his thumb."
"What do you mean by that?" I demanded, sitting up with a jolt.
"I keep seeing somebody, somebody sitting in front of me, holding a letter in his right hand and tapping the thumb of his left hand with it as he talked."
"But who is it? Or who was it?"
"I've tried to imagine it was Lockwood."
"Why, you've something right there!" I exultantly cried out. "That's valuable. It's something definite, something concrete, something personal. Let's begin on that." ”

“ There's no use delving into psychology. It's all such ordinary every-day common sense."
He sat looking at me a little blankly as I pounded this out at him. His pallid face, twitching in the light from the fire, was studious, but only passively so. The infection of my rhapsodic effort had not reached him. I knew that, even before he spoke.
"I can see what you're aiming at," he explained. "But no matter how hard I think, I can't get beyond the blank wall. I'm still in this library of yours. And this is still a table and nothing like Lockwood's office desk." ”

“ Then a sudden idea fell like a hailstone out of the heavens themselves.
"I know what's the matter," I cried. "I know why you're not acting out the part. It's because you're not on the right stage. You know it's an empty rehearsal—you haven't been able to let yourself go!"
"I'm sorry," he said, with the contrition of a child, and with his repeated hand-gesture of helplessness.
I swung about on him, scarcely hearing the words he was uttering.
"We've got to get into that office," I declared. "We've got to get into Lockwood's own office." ”

“ Lockwood's own mind must have been busy, otherwise he would have carried away some definite memory of what had happened.
I looked up, quickly and irritably. I took the letter from Criswell's hand, glanced at it, and began absently tapping my left thumb-tip with it as I peered at the secretarial figure before me.
Criswell's face went blank as he saw the movement. It was now not even somnambulistic in intelligence. It maddened me to think he was going to fail me at such a critical moment.
"What are you breaking down for?" I cried. "Why don't you go on?" ”

“ I know you're pretty well done up. I know you're sick and tired of the whole hopeless situation, that you've given up trying to think about it. But I want you to act this thing out for me to-night. I want to try to dramatize that situation down in Lockwood's office when you signed for the Carlton letter. I want you to do everything you can to visualize that moment. I want you to get that cantilever bridge stuck out across the gulf, across the gulf from each side, until you touch the middle and give us a chance to bolt 'em together. ”

“ I waited until this strange pair had made a full circuit of the iron-fenced enclosure. Then I turned back into the square, walking southward until I came opposite my own house door. The second man must have seen me as I did so. Apparently suspicious of possible espionage, he loitered with assumed carelessness at the park's southern corner. The first man, the slighter and younger-looking figure of the two, kept on his unheeding way, as though he were the ghost-like competitor in some endless nightmare of a Marathon. ”

“ Yes, I don't believe any girl really knows her father's little tricks. I'd like to wager that Lockwood has the habit of tapping his thumb nail, sometimes, with what he may be holding in his other hand! ”

“ I suggested, "for a smoke and a drop of Bristol Milk?"
I was actually wheedling and coaxing him, as a stubborn child is coaxed.
"Milk!" he murmured. "I never drink milk."
"But, my dear man, Bristol Milk isn't the kind that comes from cows. It's seventy-year old sherry that's been sent on a sea-voyage to Australia and back. It's something that's oil to the throat and music to the senses!" ”

“ There's the white!" he gasped.
"Go on!" I cried. "Go on!"
"And those are the two hills covered with snow! That's it! I see it! I see it, now! That's the book John Lockwood was going through when I handed him the letter!"
"What letter?" I insisted.
"Carlton's letter," he proclaimed.
"Then where is it?" I asked, sick at heart. I looked from Criswell to the girl in the gold cloak as she crossed the room to the book-shelf and stooped over the space from which I had so feverishly snatched the Blue Book. ”

“ I told him. "And this is your desk. Remember, you're in your office, hard at work. Be so good, please, as to keep busy."
I crossed the room to the door as I spoke, intent on my impersonation. But I could hear him as he laughed his indulgent and mirthless laugh.
"Now, I'm bringing you this mail matter. And here I have a registered letter addressed to one Carlton. You see it, there? This letter? It's for Carlton, remember. I want you to take it. And sign for it, here. Yes, write down your name—actually write it. Now take the letter. And now think, man, think. ”

“ He closed his eyes, and appeared to be deep in thought.
"I've always felt one thing," he confessed, "I've always felt—mind you, I only say felt—that when I signed for that Carlton letter, I carried it into Lockwood's own room with his own personal mail, and either gave it to him or left it on his desk." ”

“ Still again I experienced that odd tightening of the nerves. And I had to take a grip on myself, before I could continue.
"You mean Mary Lockwood personally interested herself in your case?"
"Yes."
That would be like Mary Lockwood, I remembered. She would always want to be something more than just; she would want to be merciful—with others. ”

“ It carried a woebegone impassivity, the impassivity which implied he was so submerged in misery that no further blow could be of consequence to him. And yet, beyond the fixed pallor of that face there was something appealing, some trace of finer things, some touch which told me that he and the nocturnal underworld had nothing in common.
"But are you getting used to the other thing?" I asked. ”

“ You can't do a thing in this life, you've never lived an active moment of this life, without a record of it being left there. It may be buried, it may be buried so deep you'll die without digging it up, but it's there, I tell you, if you only go after it! ”

“ In the second place, being registered, it must have impressed me as being comparatively important."
"And Lockwood himself?"
"He says I'm mistaken. He holds I never gave him the letter, or he would have remembered it."
"And circumstances seem to back him up in this?"
"Everything backs him up," was the answer.
"Then let's go back to the possibilities. How about theft? Are you sure every one in the office was reliable?" ”

“ From Montreal, from Carlton's own father. He wanted the money forwarded to his son. The older man was on his way back to England. The younger Carlton was looking up certain lands his father wanted to invest in. Young Carlton's movements were rather uncertain, so his father made sure by sending the letter to our office—to Lockwood's office. ”

“ Every address has been canvassed. The thing's been verified through the local post-office, and through the Montreal office. That part of it's as clear as daylight. A letter came to this office of Lockwood's addressed to Carlton. It held six thousand dollars in cash. I received it and signed for it. The man to whom it was addressed never received it. Neither the money nor the letter was ever seen again. ”

“ And a moment later he was swinging negligently out across the pavement at a line which would converge with the path of the nervously pacing stranger. I could see the two round the corner almost together. I could see McCooey draw nearer and nearer. I could even see that he had turned and spoken to the night walker as they went down the square together past the lights of the Players. ”