"Oh, nonsense, nonsense!" said the doctor kindly. "Chair or no chair he would have died just the same. I saw it coming. And your presence there this summer freed him entirely from money worries. He even paid me."

"Yes," said Kenny, "my money helped him drink himself to death."

The doctor sighed.

"Oh, well," he said, "that too would have happened just the same."

Kenny brushed his hair back dazedly from his forehead and rose. He felt as if he had fallen from a great height and hit his head. It was numbly aquiver. As he picked up the will and put it in his pocket, Adam Craig, sinister and una.s.sailable, seemed to mock him from the grave. His last trap! Almost Kenny could hear him chuckle: "Checkmate, Kenny, checkmate! And the game is won." How well he had known his opponent's excitable fancy!

"Doctor," asked Kenny drearily, "why were all the books in the farmhouse in Adam's room?"

"There," said the doctor, "I think he meant to be kind. Cordelia had had all sorts of schooling and so had he. I think by denying the youngsters books and too much knowledge, he thought to clip their wings at the start and keep them contented. In tune with the farm, I mean, and willing to stay. He'd seen enough of ruinous discontent when his sister and himself went out in the world and tried their wings. Just a fancy. I may be wrong. Well, Mr. O'Neill, I'm sorry. There's no mystery and no money--"

"No," said Kenny dully, "no mystery and no money." He moved toward the door with a curious trance-like feeling that this was still a part of his dream.

"Just a commonplace story of self," said the doctor, following him to the door, "with two ragged little kids the victims. Myself I think it's just as well, Mr. O'Neill, to say as little as possible about things of this sort. Tales up here grow. And fire that isn't fed goes out. It's bound to. I never had the heart myself to deny the old man's miser yarn. When I do talk, I try to say as little as possible and keep my two feet solidly on the ground."

He watched Kenny down the steps and into the buggy.

"Humph!" said the little doctor. "Thought he had his fingers on a regular swap-dollinger of a mystery, didn't he? To my thinking, the only mystery in the farmhouse is himself!"

And Kenny, climbing into the buggy in hot rebellion, felt that he had come decked out gorgeously in rainbow balloons. And the doctor, practical and unromantic, had pushed a weary finger through them, one by one, watching them collapse with his bored and kindly smile of understanding. Life after all, reflected Kenny irritably, was a matter of adjectives and any man was at the mercy of his biographer. He himself could have told that story of Adam and Cordelia Craig until no man could have called it commonplace and unromantic.

CHAPTER XXVI

AN INSPIRATION

Afterward Kenny thought that Nellie must have ambled into the doctor's barnyard and turned herself, for he had no memory of guiding her. A paralyzed conviction of another anti-climax had gripped him. He remembered turning into the road with a haunting sense of eyes upon him--Adam's eyes, piercing and bright with malevolent amus.e.m.e.nt. The chart! The hints! The will! The cunning of him! What would he tell Hughie and Hannah and Hetty? What would he tell Joan? What was there to tell save that he had put two and two together and made five, a romantic five lurid with melodrama?

And the brutal practice hour in Adam's room when he had told the truth!

Kenny went sick and cold and shivered. How unwittingly he had flung the old man's poverty in his teeth! How at times it must have hurt!

The memory made him shrink. And it hadn't been truth. He had battled for Joan with misinterpretation and cruelty; he had practiced the truth with the telling of untruth. And the proud old man who veiled his poverty with pretense, had listened, listened inscrutably and laughed, ready to thrust from the grave itself.

Ah! Fate was forever flinging down her gauntlet.

"To Kennicott O'Neill, my friend, my signet ring." His friend! In spite of the practice hour--his friend. Kenny's eyes smarted.

"Oh, Adam, Adam!" he said, sick at heart, "I beg your pardon."

The snow crunched steadily under Nellie's feet. Kenny stared sadly at the road ahead. Could he tell Joan what now he knew: that when the few bills were paid and the estate balanced, there would be no money left for the year of study?

Perhaps Joan would marry him now--at once--to-morrow! And they could leave the farm together. After all there was silver to his cloud.

Kenny brightened.

A preposterous notion of hers, that unfitness. The memory of the sunset hour in the cabin came again to darken the silver lining of his cloud. Joan's arms, Joan's voice, Joan's eyes had pleaded; it would make her happier to wait and study and watch his world before she came to it, his wife.

Kenny sighed.

It would make her--happier. And the problem still was with him.

Kenny cursed the evil in the world that had forced men to convention.

If only he could help her! If only--

A car was coming up behind him with a familiar noise of rattle. It was the doctor. Kenny sat up, alert, inspired, excited.

"Doctor," he called cheerfully, "is there a long distance telephone near?"

"A mile on. Road to the right," called the doctor, inwardly amazed at his visitor's mercurial disposition. "They call it Rink's Hotel. Not much of a place. Really a road house. But you'll find a telephone."

Kenny found the telephone at Rink's Hotel in a pantry near the barroom and closed the door to insure his privacy. It seemed an interminable interval of waiting, an interval of blankness filled with voices calling numbers on to further voices, before the Club Central answered.

Again he waited, tapping with impatience on the table. When the voice came he wanted, it was far away and drowsy. Kenny looked at his watch.

It was not yet eight o'clock.

"Garry," he said, "is that you?"

"Yes. Who's calling?"

"It's I--Kenny."

"Kenny!" Garry's astonished voice came clearly over the wire. "Kenny, where on earth did you go?" he demanded. "And what's the matter? Is anything wrong? What are you doing up in the middle of the night?"

Kenny snorted.

"Garry," he said, "I'm mailing to you now in a very few minutes my check for four thousand dollars--"

"Say it again."

"I said--I'm mailing to you--my check--for--four thousand--dollars."

"Wait a minute, Kenny. This wire must be out of order."

Kenny swore beneath his teeth.

"I said," he repeated with withering distinctness, "that I--am--mailing--to--you--my--check--for--four--thousand--dollars. And I want you to cash it in old bills. Get, that, Garry, please. Old bills."

"Old bills!" repeated Garry in a strangled voice. "For the love of Mike! . . . _Old bills_!"

"Garry! For G.o.d's sake, listen! This is absolute, unadulterated common sense. I want you to get that money in old bills, the older the better. Ragged if you can. And I want you to send it to me, Craig Farm, by registered package, special delivery."

"Are you in some mess or other? Because if you are I'll bring it."

"No, I can wait. I particularly don't want you to bring it. I can't explain now. I'll write you all the details. Then I want you to get a statement from the bank. Even with the four thousand gone, my balance ought to be at least a thousand dollars. See what they make it."

"Yes."