But sitting there, facing this trio, each busy with his own swift thought, it gradually dawned upon Fred Starratt that now they were afraid of him. Like a captured and blinded Samson he was in a position to bring the temple walls crashing down upon them all. _They_ might elect to be silent, but what a voice _he_ could raise!... He had come out of a chuckling silence to hear Hilmer saying between almost shut teeth:

"I suppose you'll be needing money now, Starratt... Railroad rates have all been raised."

He felt at that moment the same triumph as when Storch had turned the key in its lock... Hilmer always did walk directly to his objective ... but there were times when subtleties had more power. He remembered the quiet thrust of his own voice measuring his adversary's expectancy:

"A man in my situation needs nothing, Hilmer ... least of all _money_!"

He never forgot the look of contempt which Hilmer threw at him ... but this time it had been a contempt for the unfathomable. Helen's face was white; only Mrs. Hilmer had continued to smile ... a set, ghastly, cruel smile of complete satisfaction. And, in the silence which followed, it was Mrs. Hilmer's voice that brought them all back with a start as she said:

"Well, here we are ... home again!"

It was the same voice that had broken in upon another tense situation months before with:

"What nice corn pudding this is, Mrs. Starratt...Would you mind telling me how you made it?"

Had they been moving in a circle since that fatal evening, Fred had found himself wondering...or had he merely been dreaming?

The scene which followed had been unforgetable--the chauffeur and Hilmer lifting Mrs. Hilmer into her wheeled chair; Helen Starratt coming forward considerately with a steamer rug for the invalid's comfort; Fred, standing outside the pale of all this activity like a dreamer constructing stage directions for the puppets of his imagination. And out of the almost placid atmosphere of domestic bustle the voice of Mrs. Hilmer again breaking the stillness, this time with a cool and knifelike precision as she said, turning her pale, icy eyes on Helen Starratt:

"My dear, your nurse-girl days are over...We've had you a long time and we can't be too selfish--now that your husband is back!"

Could Fred ever wipe from his memory the startled look which had swept Helen's face as she released her hold on the wheeled chair? Or the diabolical content with which Mrs. Hilmer settled back as she went on slowly, clearly, as if the steady drip of her words fascinated her:

"You wouldn't want to stay here...this is no place for lovers...And, besides, there isn't room for _two_!"

Helen's hands had fallen inertly at her sides as she stood facing Hilmer, as if waiting for his decision. But he had made no move, he merely had returned her gaze in equal silence. At that moment Mrs.

Hilmer's clawlike fingers closed over her husband's mangled thumb with a clutch of triumph and she had turned with a painful twist to dart her venomous scorn at Helen. A fortnight ago the doctors had given Mrs. Hilmer a scant six months of life. But now Fred Starratt knew that she would live as long as her spirits had vengeance to feed upon.

Thus had the door closed upon Hilmer and his crippled gaoler. Already Helen Starratt had gained the street corner. Fred was seized with an impulse to overtake her, but it had died as quickly. There was nothing he could offer ... not even a lodging for the night. Instead he had turned and walked briskly in an opposite direction.

As he drew nearer town the cries of the newsboys grew more insistent ... so insistent that Fred bought a paper. By this time they had cleared away the charred wreckage of Storch's shack, discovering the secret which its ruins had concealed. He found himself wondering how soon they would link him with the still-born plot which had achieved so much tragedy in spite of its miscarriage. Of Ginger there was little trace. She had been caught up in a winding sheet of flame, a chariot of fire which had swept clean her pitiful and outraged body...

Again he saw her face, wistful in the glare of that portentous noon, framed by the outline of Storch's doorway, heard himself call her name in agony, and woke to find only a memory answering him. And there came to him a realization of the terrible beauty of that moment which had released her spirit in white-heated transfiguration.

A sudden pity for the living began to well up within him ... for Hilmer in the relentless grip of the harpy who would tear at his content with her scrawny fingers ... for Mrs. Hilmer, condemned to feed to the end upon the bitter fruits of hatred ... for his wife, drifting to a pallid fate made up of petty adjustments and compromises. Yes ... he found himself pitying Helen Starratt most of all. Because he had a feeling that she would go on to the end cloaking her primitive impulses in a curious covering of self-deception. She would never understand ... never! She would always be restless, straining at the conventions, but unable or unwilling to pay the price of full freedom. And her remaining days would be spent in a futile pulling at the chains which her own cowardice had forged. She would not even have the memory of bitter-sweet delights.

He came from these musings to discover that his feet had strayed instinctively to the old garden which provoked the memory of his father and mother. But he found it destroyed utterly ... its prim beds swept aside to make way for a huge apartment house. The last intangible link which had bound him to his old life had been destroyed.

He turned away, almost with a feeling of relief--the past was forever dead, burying itself in its own tragic oblivion. He climbed higher, to the topmost point of the Hyde Street Hill, up the steps leading to the reservoir. It was another night of provocative perfumes and promissory warmths. He skirted the sun-baked slopes, sown with blossoming alfalfa, and came upon a clump of wind-tortured acacia bushes facing the west. He threw himself down and lay in a sweet physical truce, gazing up at the twinkling sky. He was alone with the night, he had not even a disciple to betray him.

He knew that if he willed it so he could be up and off, forever eluding, forever flaunting the law's ubiquitous presence. The sharp urge for subtle revenge which had come with realization of his power had pa.s.sed, but he was done with any and all compromises, he had no heart for the decaying fruits of deception.

Would they find him here wrapped in the cool fragrance of the night, or must he go down to them, yielding himself up silently and without bitterness? He had touched life at every point. He could say, now, with Hilmer:

"I know all the dirty, rotten things of life by direct contact!"

Yes, even to murder.

And with Storch he could repeat:

"A man who's been through h.e.l.l is like a field broken to the plow.

He's ready for seed."

He _was_ ready for seed, so freshly and deeply broken that he had a pa.s.sion to lie fallow against a worthy sowing.

Presently, enveloped in the perfect and childlike faith which follows revelation, he slept, with his face turned toward the stars. And as he stirred ever so slightly he felt the nearness of two souls. Clearly and more clearly they defined themselves until he knew them for those two erring companions of his misery who had been made suddenly perfect in the crucible of sorrow and sacrifice. They came toward him in a white, silent beauty, until on one side stood Felix Monet and on the other Sylvia Molineaux.

And before him in review pa.s.sed a motley company of every tragic group that he had ever known--business a.s.sociates, jailbirds, the inmates of Fairview, Storch's terrible companions. He recognized each group in its turn by their outer trappings. But suddenly their clothes melted and even their flesh dissolved, and he saw nothing but a company of skeletons stripped of all unessentials, and he could no longer mark them apart. And, in a flash, even these unmarked figures crumbled to dust, spreading out like a sunlit plain at noonday. And he saw clouds gather and rain fall and green blades spring up miraculously and blossom succeed blossom. And through it all Felix Monet stood on one side and Sylvia Molineaux on the other.

He awoke to the vigorous prod of a contemptuous boot. A policeman stood over him.

"What are you doing here?" the officer bellowed down at him.

He rose quickly. The sun was bathing the rejuvenated city in a flood of wonderful gold.

"My name is Fred Starratt," he said, quietly. "And I'm wanted for murder ... and some other things. You'd better take me down."

The policeman grasped his arm and together they made their way down to the level stretches of the paved street.

They stood for a moment to let a street car swing past. It was crowded with clerks, standing on the running board. Above the warning clang of the bell a voice came ringing out with a note of surprised recognition:

"h.e.l.lo, Fred Starratt! What's new?"

He made a trumpet with his hands.

"Everything!" he cried back, loudly. "_Everything in the world_!"

THE END