But he did not think so, and she knew it.
"There is a rather queer element in it," he observed, after a time.
"Another man, named Bassett, disappeared the same night. His stuff is at
the hotel, but no papers to identify him. He had looked after Dick that
day when he was sick, and he simply vanished. He didn't take the train.
He was under suspicion for being with Dick, and the station was being
watched." But she was not interested in Bassett. The name meant nothing
to her. She harked back to the question that had been in both their
minds since they had read, in stupefied amazement, David's statement.
"In a way, Walter, it would be better, if he..."
"Why?"
"My little girl, and--Judson Clark!"
But he fought that sturdily. They had ten years of knowledge and respect
to build on. The past was past. All he prayed for was Dick's return, an
end to this long waiting. There would be no reservations in his welcome,
if only-Some time later he went downstairs, to where Elizabeth sat waiting in
the library. He went like a man to his execution, and his resolution
nearly gave way when he saw her, small in her big chair and pathetically
patient. He told her the story as guardedly as he could. He began with
Dick's story to him, about his forgotten youth, and went on carefully
to Dick's own feeling that he must clear up that past before he married.
She followed him carefully, bewildered a little and very tense.
"But why didn't he tell me?"
"He saw it as a sort of weakness. He meant to when he came back."
He fought Dick's fight for him valiantly, stressing certain points
that were to prepare her for others to come. He plunged, indeed, rather
recklessly into the psychology of the situation, and only got out of the
unconscious mind with an effort. But behind it all was his overwhelming
desire to save her pain.
"You must remember," he said, "that Dick's life before this happened,
and since, are two different things. Whatever he did then should not
count against him now."
"Of course not," she said. "Then he--had done something?"
"Yes. Something that brought him into conflict with the authorities."
She did not shrink from that, and he was encouraged to go on.
"He was young then, remember. Only twenty-one or so. And there was a
quarrel with another man. The other man was shot."