Chapter IX

Eleanor Harrington came presently to the door and tapped.

"You're not asleep yet, are you, Jean?" she called. "James just wanted me to ask if there was any possibility that some of those papers were lost on the way? Did they fall or did anything happen where one might have slipped out? He thinks that two most important ones are missing."

"Not while they were in my possession, Eleanor," said Jean positively, feeling a return of her annoyance at her brother's manner. She opened the door and stood framed in the doorway, looking adorable in her little, pale blue kimono, with her hair tumbling about her shoulders. The elder sister fell on her neck and kissed her affectionately.

"You poor little girl, how tired you look. Get to bed quickly. It was a shame to trouble you any more about those horrid papers. There, good-night, dear! This is positively my last appearance," and she closed the door and went downstairs.

Five minutes later Jean turned to put out the light and saw, lying on the floor on the farther side of the little bed-stand, a slip of paper folded once across, and about the size of the wallet which she had given her brother-in-law. She pounced upon it and took it nearer the light. It looked more like an old letter that might have slipped from her trunk tray than a business paper.

As she opened the paper the name of Jasper Holt caught her eye, and her interest was at once enlisted. How came a paper bearing that name in the guest chamber of her brother's house? It could not possibly have come through her. Nothing of his could have caught in her garments, there was no place for anything to catch, and no way that his possessions could get into her bag. It could not, of course, be the missing paper from the wallet, since it bore his hated name. Yet, her brother had spoken of disagreeable business relations. Would this paper, perhaps, by any chance, explain to her the animosity that had sprung up between the two men? She felt she had the right to know. She glanced quickly down the page.

It was a simple contract, the grant of certain water rights to Jasper Holt in consideration of payment received, and to the veriest child who could read at all it would be patent that the paper must be the private property of Jasper Holt himself. How came it here in the house of his enemy?

She read the few lines over many times, until she knew them thoroughly; and slowly there grew in her heart a conviction that something was wrong somewhere. Her first impulse, to call her sister and consult her, she could not bring herself to follow. It seemed, somehow, that here was something she must think out for herself.

However and whatever her brother and sister felt, _she_ owed a loyalty to Jasper Holt. She might not do a wrong, even inadvertently, to him who had saved her life and cared for her so tenderly. If he were here she would unquestioningly have put the paper into his hands and asked him what to do about it. She had promised to trust him, and she felt such great confidence in him, from what she already knew about him, that she was convinced he would send the paper back to Harrington if it belonged to the latter.

But Holt was not here, and the problem of the future was still shrouded in difficulty. Would she ever see him to consult? Was this, perhaps, one of the missing papers James wanted, and why did she not trust James to give it back to Holt as quickly as she would have trusted Holt to give it to James? The question brought a look of trouble to her brow, and a flush to her cheek. Did she distrust her brother-in-law just a little bit? Had she always done so without knowing it? Or was it just a prejudice because he seemed not quite so fine in his nature as her beloved sister? Besides, James was prejudiced against Holt. It might be hard for him to be generous and true under those circumstances. Yet her heart rebuked her for the thought.

She stood uncertainly holding the bit of paper for a long time and finally put out the light and went and sat by the open window, trying to clear her mental vision and understand what she ought to do.

Out on the lawn the shadows were dark under the great tree where she and Jasper Holt had said good-bye. She thrilled again as she remembered.

The stars were clear and friendly as though they, too, remembered. The long stream of light still marked the divide between the shadows and the path to the house, for the lamps were burning brightly downstairs, though all seemed quiet. Jean had heard Eleanor come upstairs again, and tiptoe softly by her door as if fearing to wake her. She felt almost guilty, sitting there in the dark awake.

The pillows were soft in the great willow, cushioned chair she occupied, and the air was sweet that came in from the plains and sifted through the lacy shadow-work of vines. The day had been long and full of excitement, and the kindly night wrapped softly about the young sweet thing sitting with an angel's problem to decide. With the paper still held tightly in her hand, her head drooped back against the chair and she was asleep.

It might have been an hour later that she awoke, the gruff voice of a man startling her into consciousness once more:

"That you, Jim? What's the matter? It's fierce when one's having the time of his life to have to turn and run at a moment's call. What's up? Something pretty stiff or you never would have sent that message. If I find it's any nonsense and squeamishness I'll----"

"Sh----"

The voice suddenly changed into a gruff whisper. Jean was sufficiently awake to realize that the man Harrington had sent for was come. Then she addressed herself to her problem again, and the voices in low mumble, gradually rising to distinguishable sentences now and then, continued under her window.

She was not conscious of hearing them until suddenly she was startled into sharp attention by a name.

"I tell you if Jasper Holt gets onto this in time it will mean State's prison at least for us. It looks bad." It was Harrington's voice that spoke.

"I don't see it that way," said the stranger. "Holt hasn't got onto it, and Holt won't get onto it. You say the girl said he handed her back the wallet and never said a word. Don't you know Holt would never have let his own valuable private papers out of his hand if he had suspected in the least that he held them? You know Holt better than that. Ten to one he was so taken with the girl that he never noticed the wallet; and why would he think she had his wallet, anyway? I think it was pretty rare of old man Scathlin to think of giving the papers to her. It threw Holt entirely off the track for good. Now, what we want to do is to get hold of Blount. He's the whole show up there in New York, anyway. I'll just wire him to come on at once and talk it over, and we'll get to work and cut off the water supply while little Jasper's training his roses and wondering what has become of his perfectly good deeds to his perfectly good silver mine."

"But one of the missing papers is the grant of water rights. If that were here we might talk----"

Jean sat up suddenly with bated breath, and her arm hit against the hairbrush which, in her excitement of preparing for bed, she had laid down upon the window sill. The hairbrush fell with a sharp noise on the polished floor just over the edge of the rug, and the two men in the vine-draped porch below started fiercely and looked up, the stranger with an oath.

"What's that?"

"Oh, nothing, I guess," said Harrington, his own voice a trifle strained. "Probably my wife has gone in to tuck up the baby and dropped something---- Oh, you needn't worry, my sister-in-law is fast asleep hours ago. Her light went out just after I came out here to watch for you, and there hasn't been a sound overhead since. She was worn to a frazzle."

"Where is her room. This window up here?"

"No, just next, but she's asleep, I'm sure."

Harrington rose and stepping off the porch, walked out on the lawn in the edge of shadow next the path and looked up. Jean, huddled back against her great window-chair, her face white with excitement, could see his attitude as he surveyed the windows and then reassured came back to the porch.

"It's all right," he said in a low tone, "but maybe we had better go to the other end of the porch. I was afraid of waking the baby over there, and the rascal is a difficult problem when he wakes in the night."

"Well, talk lower anyway," said the stranger. "What did you say the other missing paper was? You have the list of them all, haven't you?"

"Yes, copies. I wish we'd sent the copies instead of the originals, only Scathlin's story about finding them wouldn't have worked then. The other lost paper is the claim, with the location of the ore--most important. Strange that those two, the ones on which the others all hinge, are gone! I can't understand. Do you suppose Scathlin has something up his sleeve? Maybe he kept only those two and means to get these later--but what object could he have had?"

There was silence for a moment while the two men thought.

At last Garrett spoke:

"What do you suppose Holt was doing on that train--the same train with Scathlin? Holt didn't leave home till Scathlin had been on his way nearly two days. When was the last we heard from Scathlin?"

"Pittsburgh. A telegram. He'd just arrived," answered Harrington glumly.

"What day was that? Could Holt have reached Pittsburgh before Scathlin got away? He's sharp you know. Have you got the telegram?"

"It's inside," said Harrington. "Just step in." And the two men went into the house. Jean could hear their low, troubled voices, rumbling on, but she could not hear any more words, and she sat shivering over what she had heard.

Scathlin! Scathlin! Why was that word so familiar? Scathlin! Ah! She had heard it from the lips of Holt himself, before she went into the sleeper. It was what he had called the old man.

Was this wrong, this involuntary eavesdropping? She had not meant to listen, had never thought there might be anything said that she would understand, or that they would care if she did hear, until the whole revelation was in her possession; and then she was too much frightened to stir or think what she ought to do. Was it not right, perhaps, that she should have heard; and, yet, what could she do? It was all too evident that Jasper Holt was about to be cheated in some way. That remark about his private papers was unmistakable. And the little paper in her hand that had to do with water rights was his also. Water rights were sacred things in the west, and most important. The losing of them had often been the cause of the sweeping away of whole fortunes she knew; and the little bit of paper that proved his right was in her trembling hand to bestow where she would! It was plain that if she should go down now and give it to those two men she would be most welcome; but she was sure that it would not be right for them to have it. They had admitted enough to make her feel that there was some plot against Holt; and suddenly all her latent dislike of her brother-in-law, which had been lying dormant through the years because there was nothing to rouse it, sprang into being. Her decision was made. She must somehow get that paper to Jasper Holt, and that just as soon as possible. She must not let her brother know that she had it. If she were mistaken about this, Jasper Holt would be true and tell her so and return the paper. She felt as sure of him as if she had known him all her life. But there _could_ be no mistake. It _must_ be his. The men had practically owned it!

It made her shiver with cold to think how dreadful all this was. Brought up to strictest integrity, it seemed terrible that one in their own family should swerve from it; there must be some other explanation to the talk she had heard. Things in the business world were queer, and a lot of shady things were done under the name of righteousness. She had heard her father talk about "graft"; maybe it was something like that. Maybe James thought he was doing good service to cut Jasper Holt out of his water right somehow; and maybe, in some strange unexplainable way, he was justified. And yet--what did they mean about the location of the silver mine? Oh, it was too much for her! If she had never known and loved Jasper Holt, and trusted him, she would have gone down and put the whole thing in James's hands and gone to bed thinking nothing further about it. But now her whole soul was roused to do the right thing toward her lover, who, she saw, was under the ban, and who seemed to her to be in the right in this case at least.

It occurred to her how easily she might wash her hands of the whole matter by dropping that bit of paper out of her window and letting it be found or not; as the case might be. How easy to live sometimes if one had no conscience to reckon with--and no heart!

It seemed a long time that she sat trembling by the open window, afraid to stir lest the men downstairs should hear her move; unable to think connectedly and decide what she ought to do. But at last the two men came out on the piazza, again, the guest apparently about to take his leave. His voice had lost its easy assurance.

"It looks bad!" he said, "very bad! It looks as if Scathlin had bungled things. If Holt suspects we have anything to do with it, why, our fish is dished. I guess there's nothing else to do but send him back those papers, saying that a stranger put them into your sister's hands to bring to you, and you know nothing about them, but seeing his name among them you suppose they must be his. You could add a word about being grateful for his care of the girl or something of the sort to make it look natural."

"But that throws all the responsibility on me," said Harrington angrily. "And it looks mighty funny to have those two important papers gone. These are no use to anybody without those----"

"Of course, but you're not supposed to know that, and he can't do anything but bluster. Anyhow, as far as I see, it's your only chance, and you'll have to do it mighty quick or that won't do any good. I wouldn't keep them a day----"

"I shall do nothing of the kind," snarled Harrington. "I would rather destroy them than play into his hand that way. I'm not in a position to throw suspicion on myself in that style."

"Do as you please," said the guest scornfully. "That's my advice. I wash my hands of it. If you want to hang on to a lost cause for the sake of pride you'll have to do it without me. I know when to quit."

"But suppose Scathlin returns in a few days with Blount."

"Scathlin won't return with Blount. You can take my word for that. Either Scathlin's dead or he's sold those other two papers to Holt and given away our secrets into the bargain. You may depend on it, if Scathlin was all right he'd have telegraphed at intervals as he was ordered. There's some reason why he quit telegraphing at Pittsburgh."

Garrett departed noisily, and after a few minutes pacing up and down the piazza Harrington went in, put out the lights and went upstairs.

Jean crept softly into bed, still grasping the paper close to her breast; and weary, troubled, bewildered, she soon fell fast asleep.

Later, when the moon had died and only the luminous mist in the East proclaimed the dawn at hand, a rider came quietly down the road, his horse stepping as if with padded feet, and stopped before the house.

The rider dismounted silently in the darkness and with noiseless tread came and laid something down in the dewy silence at the door. Then mounted and slipped away into the darkness again.