The Bells of San Juan - Jackson Gregory (most read books TXT) 📗

suspiciously. "What is he doing? What are you doing out here alone?"

"He is asleep," she told him.

Patten laughed again.

"Your little parties are growing commonplace then!"

"Charles Patten," she cut in coolly, "I have stood enough of your insult. Be still a moment and let me think."

He stared at her but for a little; his own mind busy, was silent. Could she make use of this blind instrument which fate had thrust into her hand? She began to believe that she could.

"Charles Patten," she went on, a new vigor in her tone, "Mr. Norton knows enough concerning you to make you a deal of trouble. Just how long a term in the State prison he can get for you I don't know. But . . ."

"Haven't I found the way to shut his mouth!" he said sharply.

"I think not. Before your slanders could travel far we could have found Father Jose and have been married. But let me finish. You have practised here for upward of two years, haven't you? You have made money, you have a ranch of your own. That is one thing to keep in mind. The other is that more than one of your patients have died. I believe, Charles Patten, that it would be a simple matter to have the district attorney convict you of murder. That's the second thing to remember."

Patten shifted uneasily. Then she knew that it had been God who had sent him. When he sought to bluster, she cut him short.

"In the morning, as soon as there is light enough," she said, wondering at her own calmness, "I am going to perform a capital operation upon Mr. Norton. It will be without his knowledge and consent. If he lives and you will give up your practice and retire to your ranch or what business pleases you, I will guarantee that he does not prosecute you for what has passed. If he dies . . ."

"If he dies"--he snatched the words from her--"it will be murder!"

". . . you would be free from prosecution," she continued, quite as though he had made no interruption, "I rather imagine that I should die, too. And, as you say, I would be liable for murder. He is asleep now because I have drugged him. I shall chloroform him before he wakes. I should have no defense in the law-courts. Yes, it would be murder."

He drew a step back from her as though from one suddenly gone mad.

"What are you operating for?" he demanded.

"For your blunder," she said simply. "And you are going to help me."

"Am I?" he jeered. "Not by a damned sight! If you think that I am going to let myself in for that sort of thing . . ."

Until now he had not seen the gun in her hand. Her quick gesture showed it to him.

"Charles Patten," she told him emphatically, "I am risking Mr. Norton's life; I am therefore risking my own. Understand what that means. Understand just what you have got to win or lose by to-night's work. Consider that I pledge you my word not to implicate you in what you do; that if worse came to worse, you could claim and I would admit that you were forced at the point of a gun to do as I told you. Oh, I can shoot straight! And finally, I will shoot straight, as God watches me, rather than let you go now and stop what I have undertaken! Think of it well, Charles Patten!"

Patten, being as weak of mind as he was pudgy of hand, having besides that peculiar form of craft which is vouchsafed his type, furthermore more or less of a coward, saw matters quite as Virginia wished him. Together they awaited the coming of the dawn. The girl, realizing to the uttermost what lay before her, forced herself to rest, lying still under the stars, schooling herself to the steady-nerved action which was to have its supreme test.

Just before the dawn they had coffee and a bite to eat from Norton's little pack. Close to the drugged man they builded a rude low table by dragging the squared blocks of fallen stone from their place by the wall. Upon this Virginia placed the saddle-blankets, neatly folded. Already Patten was showing signs of nervousness. Looking into her face he saw that it was white and drawn but very calm. Patten was asking himself countless questions, many of them impossible of answer yet. She was closing her mind to everything but the one supreme matter.

He helped her give the chloroform when she told him that there was sufficient light and that she was ready. He brought water, placed instruments, stood by to do what she told him. His nervousness had grown into fear; he started now and then, jerking about guiltily, as though he foresaw an interruption.

Together they got Norton's inert form upon the folded blankets. Patten's hands shook a little; he asked for a sip of brandy from her flask. She granted it, and while Patten drank she cut away the hair from the unconscious man's scalp. Long ago her fingers had made their examination, were assured that her diagnosis was correct. Her hands were as untrembling as the steel of her knife. She made the first incision, drawing back the flap of skin and flesh, revealing the bone of the skull. . . .

For forty-five minutes she worked, her hands swift, sure, capable, unerring. It was done. She was right. The under-table of the skull had been fractured; there was the bone pressure upon the underlying area of brain-tissue. She had removed the pressure and with it any true pathological cause of the theft impulse.

She drew a bandage about the sleeping eyes. She made Patten bring his own saddle-blanket; it was fixed across the entrance of the anteroom of the King's Palace, darkening it. Then she went to the ledge just outside and stood there, staring with wide eyes across the little meadow with its flowers and birds and water, down the slope of the mountain, to the miles of desert. She had now but to await the awakening.c

CHAPTER XXII (THE BEGINNING OF THE END )

 

When Norton stirred and would have opened his eyes but for the bandage drawn over them, she was at his side. She had been kneeling there for a long time, waiting. Her hand was on his where it had crept softly from his wrist.

"You must lie very still," she commanded gently. "I am with you and everything is all right. There was . . . an accident. No, don't try to move the cloth; please, Roderick." She pushed his hand back down to his side. "We are in the King's Palace, just you and I, and everything is all right."

He was feverish, and she soothed him; sick, and she mothered him and nursed him; troubled, uncertain, perplexed, and she comforted him. At the first she went no further than saying that there had been an accident; that already she had sent to San Juan for all that was needed to make him comfortable; that Mr. Engle had been instructed to speed a man to the railroad for further necessities; that now for his own sake, for her sake, he must just lie very still . . . try not even to think.

He was listless, seeming without volition, quite willing to surrender himself into her keeping. What dazed thoughts were his upon this first awakening were lost, forgotten in the brief doze into which she succeeded in luring him. When again he stirred and woke she was still at his side, kneeling upon the hard rock floor beside him. . . . She had had Patten help her to lift him down from the table before she despatched Patten with the note for John Engle. Again she pleaded with him to lie still and just trust to her.

He was very still. She knew that he was trying to piece together his fragmentary thoughts and impressions, seeking to bridge over from last night to to-day. So she talked softly with him, soothing him alike with the tenderness of her voice and the pressure and gentle stroke of her hand upon his hand and arm. He had had an accident but was going to be all right from now on. But he must not be moved for a little. Therefore Engle would come soon, and perhaps Mrs. Engle with him. And a wagon bringing a real bed and fresh clean sheets and all of those articles which she had listed. It would not be very long now until Engle came.

But at last when she paused his hand shut down upon hers and he asked quietly:

"I didn't dream it all, did I, Virginia? It is hard to know just what I did and what I dreamed I did. But it seems more than a dream. . . . Was it I who robbed Kemble of the Quigley mines?"

"Yes," she told him lightly, as though it were a matter of small moment. "But you were not responsible for what you did."

"And there were other robberies? I even tried to steal from you?"

"Yes," she answered again.

"And you wanted to have me submit to an operation? And I would not?"

"Yes."

"And then . . . then you . . . you did it?"

So she explained, feeling that certainty would be less harmful to him now than a continual struggle to penetrate the curtain of semidarkness obscuring his memory.

"I took it upon myself," she told him at the end. "I took the chance that you might die; that it might be I who had killed you. Perhaps I had no right to do it. But I have succeeded; I have drawn you back from kleptomania to your own clear moral strength. You will get well, Rod Norton; you will be an honest man. But I took it upon myself to take the chances for you. Now . . . do you think that you can forgive me?"

He appeared to be pondering the matter. When his reply came it was couched in the form of a question:

"Would you have done it, Virginia . . . if you didn't love me a little as I love you?"

And her answer comforted him. He was sleeping when the Engles came.

Later came the big wagon, one of Engle's men driving, Ignacio Chavez and two other Mexicans accompanying on horseback. Virginia had forgotten nothing. Quick hands did her bidding now, altering the anteroom of the King's Palace into a big airy bedroom. There was a great rug upon the floor, a white-sheeted and counterpaned bed, fresh pajamas, table, chair, alcohol-stove, glasses and cups and water-pitchers. There were cloths for fresh bandages, wide palm-leaf fans . . . there was even ice and the promise of further ice to come. The sun was shut out by heavy curtains across the main entrance and the broken-out holes in the easterly wall.

"My dear," said Mrs. Engle, taking both of Virginia's hands into her own, "I don't know just what has happened and I don't care to know until you get good and ready to tell me about it. But I can see by looking at you that you are at the end of your tether. I'm