The Lady Doc - Caroline Lockhart (ebook reader computer .txt) 📗
- Author: Caroline Lockhart
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He opened the other telegram mechanically. It was from Prescott and partially in code. It was a long one for Prescott to send, but Van Lennop looked at it without interest. He would translate it at his leisure—there was no hurry now—the game had lost its zest.
Van Lennop turned to the dingy register. A train had arrived in his absence and perhaps Britt, the new superintendent, had come. His name was there—that was something for which to be grateful, as he could the sooner get back into the world where he could find in business something better than his own wretched thoughts to occupy his mind.
He walked languidly over the stone flagging to his room and dropped listlessly into a chair. It was not long before he heard Britt's alert step in the corridor quickly followed by his brisk rap upon the door. He always had liked the ambitious young engineer and they shook hands cordially.
"I'm more than glad to see you."
Britt laughed.
"I dare say. A week in a place like this is much like a jail sentence unless you're hard at work. Are things in pretty much of a mess?"
Van Lennop went over the situation briefly, and concluded—
"I'll stay over a day or so, if you desire."
"There's no necessity, I think," said Britt, rising. "I'll keep in touch with you by wire. Crowheart again?"
Van Lennop shook his head.
"I'm going east from here."
"Here's a late paper; perhaps you'd like to look it over. When I'm in a place like this I can read a patent medicine pamphlet, and enjoy it."
Van Lennop smiled.
"Much obliged. There's the supper gong. Don't wait for me; I'll be a little late."
Van Lennop had no desire for food, much less for conversation, so he picked up the travel-worn newspaper which Britt had tossed upon the table and glanced at the headlines.
The stock market was stronger. Nevada Con was up three points. The girl with the beautiful eyebrows had married that French jackanapes after all. Another famine in India. A Crowheart date-line caught his eye.
Wealthy Sheepman Murdered
Edouard Dubois Shot and Killed at His Camp
Bride of a Day to Be Arrested
The story of Essie Tisdale's marriage with Dubois followed, and even the news editor's pencil could not eliminate Sylvanus Starr's distinctive style. He had made the most of a chance of a lifetime. "An old man's darling"—"Serpent he had warmed in his bosom"—"Weltering in his blood"—all the trite phrases and vulgarisms of country journalism were used to tell the sensational story which sickened Van Lennop as he read:
"The arrest of the murdered patriarch's beautiful bride is expected hourly, as the leading citizens of Crowheart are clamoring for justice and are bringing strong pressure to bear upon Sheriff Treu, who seems strangely reluctant to act."
The paper dropped from Van Lennop's nerveless hand and he sat staring at it where it lay. He picked it up and read the last paragraph, for his dazed brain had not yet grasped its meaning. But when its entire significance was made clear to him it came with a rush: it was like the instantaneous effect of some powerful drug or stimulant that turned the blood to fire and crazed the brain. The blind rage which made the room swing round was like the frenzy of insanity. Van Lennop's face went crimson and oaths that never had passed his lips came forth, choking-hot and inarticulate.
"The leading citizens of Crowheart, the outcasts and riff-raff of civilization, the tinhorn gamblers, the embezzlers, ex-bankrupts and libertines, the sheep-herders and reformed cattle-thieves, the blackmailers and dance-hall touts swollen by prosperity, disguised by a veneer of respectability, want justice, do they? By God!" Van Lennop shook his clenched fist at the empty air, "the leading citizens of Crowheart shall HAVE justice!"
He smoothed Prescott's crumpled telegram and reached for his code-book.
When he had its meaning he pulled a telegraph-blank toward him, and wrote:
Carry out my instructions to the letter. Do not neglect the smallest detail. Leave no stone unturned to accomplish the end in view.
Van Lennop
"Oh, Doc!" It was the telegraph operator, hatless, in his shirt-sleeves, hurrying toward her from the station as she passed.
Doctor Harpe stood quite still and waited, not purposely but because a sudden weakness in her knees made it impossible for her to meet him half-way. She was conscious that the color was leaving her face even as her upper lip stretched in the straight, mirthless smile with which she faced a crisis. She knew well enough why he called her, the dread of this moment had been with her ever since her foolish boast of Van Lennop's letter and the destruction of his telegram.
"You gave that message to Essie? She got it all right, didn't she, Doc?"
She had prepared herself a hundred times to answer this question, but now that it was put she found it no easier to decide on a reply; to know what answer would best save her from the consequences of the stupid error into which her hatred had led her.
If she said that she had lost it and subsequent events had driven it from her mind, he would duplicate the message. If she said she had delivered it and her falsehood was discovered, her position was rendered more dangerous, ten-fold. She decided on the answer which placed discovery a little farther off.
"Sure, she got it; I gave it to her that afternoon."
Her assurance closed the incident so far as the telegraph operator was concerned; it was the real beginning of it to Doctor Harpe, whose intelligence enabled her to realize to the utmost the position in which she now had irrevocably placed herself. She turned abruptly and walked to her office with a nervous rapidity totally unlike her usual swagger.
When the door was closed behind her she paced the floor with excited strides. It was useless to attempt to hide from herself the fact that she was horribly, cravenly afraid of Ogden Van Lennop; for she recognized beneath his calm exterior a quality which inspired fear. She was afraid of him as an individual, afraid of his money and the power of his influence if he chose to use them, for Dr. Harpe had brains enough, worldly wisdom enough, to know that he was beyond her reach.
In Crowheart, she believed that through her strong personality and the support of Andy P. Symes she could accomplish nearly anything she undertook; but she knew that in the great world outside where she had discovered Van Lennop was a factor, she would be only an eccentric female doctor, amusing perhaps, mildly interesting, even, but entirely inconsequential.
Her thoughts became a chaotic jam of incoherent explanations as she thought of an accounting to Van Lennop should he return, and again she raged at herself for the insane impulse which had led her to boast of a farewell letter to her. The sleepless hours in which she had gone over and over the situation with every solution growing more preposterous than the last, had been telling upon the nerves which never had quite recovered from the shock and the incidents which followed Alice Freoff's death. The slightest excitement seemed to set them jangling of late.
They were twitching now; her eyelids, her shoulders, her mouth seemed never in repose when she was alone. Her hand shook uncontrollably as she refilled a whiskey glass and rolled and smoked another cigarette. It was no new thing, this nervous paroxysm, being nearly always the climax to a night of exaggerated fear. The necessity for self-possession and outward calmness in public made it a relief to let her nerves go when alone.
"If he comes back, I'm ruined! He'll cut loose on me in public and he'll sting; I know him well enough for that." Her hands grew clammy at the thought. "It'll put a crimp in my practice. If it wasn't for the backin' of Symes I'd as well pull my freight—but he hasn't come yet. It's not likely he ever will with no word from her and this scandal comin' close on the heels of her silence. I'm a fool to worry—to let myself get in such a state as this."
She no longer entertained the hallucination that she might attract Van Lennop to herself; to save herself from public exposure, should he by any chance return, was her one thought, her only aim. And always her hopes simmered down to the one which centred in Symes's influence in Crowheart and his compulsory protection of herself. He dared not desert her.
"Let him try it!" She voiced her defiant thoughts. "Let him go back on me if he dare! If I get in a place where I've absolutely nothing to lose—if he throws me down—Andy P. Symes and Crowheart will have food for thought for many a day. But, pshaw! I'm rattled now; I've pulled out before and I'll——"
A hand upon the door-knob startled her. Hastily she shoved the glass and bottle from sight and pulled herself together.
"Oh, it's you?" Her tone was not cordial, as the Dago Duke stood before her.
"Did you think it was your pastor," inquired that person suavely as he sniffed the air, "come to remonstrate with you upon your intemperate habits?"
She laughed her short, harsh laugh as she took the bottle from its hiding-place and shoved it toward him.
"Help yourself."
She had long since learned that it was useless to pretend before the Dago Duke. His mocking, comprehending eyes made pretence ridiculous even to herself. She dreaded meeting him in public because of the flippant disrespect of his manner toward her; privately she found a certain pleasure in throwing off the cloak which hid her dark, inner-self from Crowheart. He assumed her hypocrisy as though it were a fact too obvious to question and she had been obliged to accept his estimate of her.
"How like you, my dear Doctor!" He picked up the bottle and read the label. "Your womanly solicitude for my thirst touches me deeply, but,"—he replaced the bottle upon her desk—"since I've stood off the demon Rum for six weeks now I'll hold him at bay until I finish my little talk with you."
"If you're here on business, cut it short," she said curtly.
"I can't imagine myself here on any other errand" he returned placidly. "Say, Doc,"—there was a note in his wonderful speaking voice which made her look up quickly—"why don't you give back that $5.00 and four bits you pinched from Giovanni Pellezzo?"
The moment showed her remarkable self-control. She could feel her overtaxed nerves jump, but not a muscle of her face moved.
"What are you driving at?" she demanded.
"The name is not familiar to you?"
"Not at all."
"I'm not surprised at that, since your interest in your contract patients extends no further than their pockets."
"If you're here to insult me——"
"I couldn't do that," returned the Dago Duke composedly; "I've tried."
"You've got to explain."
"That's what I came for." He smiled pleasantly.
"Well?" She tapped her foot.
"Don't rush me, Doc. I have so few pleasures, you know that, and the enjoyment I'm extracting from your suspense makes me desire to prolong it. You are anxious, you must admit that, although you really conceal it very well. But you're gray around the mouth and those lines from your nose down look like—yes, like irrigation laterals—furrows—upon my soul, Doc, you've grown ten years older since I came in. You should avoid worry by all means, but I can understand exactly how you feel when you're not quite sure to
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