He pushed Buckley toward the door, and there was an answering stir within ... voices.

XXIV

An overwhelming desire possessed Gordon Makimmon to go home. He forgot the pressing necessity for a.s.sistance, the searing hurt within ... he must go home. He stumbled forward, turning into an aside that led directly behind Dr. Pelliter's drug store to the road above the Makimmon dwelling. He moved blindly, instinctively, following the way bitten beneath his consciousness by a lifetime of usage.

The house was dark, but it was hardly darker than Gordon's brain. He climbed the steps to the porch; his hands fumbled among the keys in his pocket.

Feet tramped across the creaking boards, approaching him; a palm fell upon his shoulder; a crisp voice rang out uncomprehended at his ear. It said:

"I'd knocked on all the doors, and was just going. I wanted to see you at once--"

Gordon felt over the door in search of the place for the key.

"I say I wanted to see you," the voice persisted; "it's Edgar Crandall.

You'll take pleasure from what I've got to tell."

The key slipped into its place and the bolt shot back.... Well, he was home. No other thought, no other consciousness, lingered in his mind; even the pain, the unsupportable white core of suffering in his brain, was dulled. He placed his foot upon the threshold, but the hand upon his shoulder arrested him:

"Greenstream's going to have a bank," the voice triumphantly declared; "it's settled--part outside capital, part guaranteed right here. Paper shaving, robbery, finished ... lawful rate ... chance--"

It was no more to Gordon Makimmon than the crackling of the forest branches, no more than an inexplicable hindrance to a desired consummation.

"If it hadn't been for you, what you did for me ... others ... new courage, example of bigness--Why! what's the matter with you, Makimmon?

That's blood."

Gordon made a tremendous effort of will, of grim concentration. He freed himself from the detaining hand. "Moment," he p.r.o.nounced. The single word was expelled as dryly, as lifelessly, as a projectile, from a throat insensate as the barrel of a gun. He vanished into the bitterly cold house.

The bare floors echoed to his plodding footsteps as he entered the bedroom beyond the dismantled chamber of the safe. A flickering desire to see led him to where, on the bureau, a lamp had been left. The chimney fell with a crash of splintering gla.s.s upon the floor, a match flared in his stiff fingers, and the unprotected wick burned with a choking, spectral blue light.

He saw, gazing at him from the black depths of the mirror above the bureau, a haggard face drained of all life, of all blood, with deep inky pools upon the eyes. A sudden emotion stirred in the chill immobility creeping upward through him.

"Lettice!" he cried in a voice as flat as a spent echo; "Lettice!"

He stumbled back, sinking.

Edgar Crandall found him kneeling at the bed, his arms outflung across the counterpane, his head bowed between, with a blackening stain beneath his clay-cold lips, beneath his face scarred with immeasurable suffering, fixed in a last surprise.

THE END