Stella stared at the lifeless form, her beautiful face whiter than the dead, turned to the masqueraders huddled in a group, drew herself proudly erect, pointed to the door and said:
“Go!”
Silently and quickly they left, and as the last beat of their horses’ hoofs died away in the distance she lifted her face from her father’s hand which she had covered with kisses, and groaned:
“Forgive me—forgive me! I have but one aim in life now—God give me strength!”
THE murder of Judge Butler created a profound sensation both in the state and the nation. The Northern press held the Ku Klux Klan guilty of this atrocious crime without question, and it was the last straw needed to start an avalanche of hostile legislation in Congress against the entire South.
The famous Conspiracy Act was rushed through both houses of the National Legislature and signed by the President. It made membership in the secret order known as the Ku Klux Klan, or Invisible Empire, a felony, and provided for the trial of its members on the charge of treason, conspiracy and murder. The President was authorised to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and proclaim martial law in any county of the Southern States, and use the army and navy to enforce his authority.
The Attorney General promptly placed the county of Independence under military government, stationed two regiments of troops within its borders, and set to work with scores of detectives to find the guilty man.
Two months passed without the slightest progress. Five thousand dollars reward was offered by the national authorities and a similar sum by the state. Not a trace of the man responsible for the deed could be found, though a price of ten thousand dollars was set thus on his head. A number of arrests had been made, but the evidence produced was of so flimsy a character that in each instance the prisoner could not be held.
The longer the case was probed, the deeper became its insoluble aspects. The “Butler Murder Mystery,” as it was popularly known, provoked the widest public discussion, both in the state and national press, yet no explanation from any quarter could be found.
The effects of the crime on the Ku Klux raiders was immediate. Not a trace of their existence was left. The enormity of the tragedy had evidently sobered the dare-devils who had found amusement or personal profit in its activities. It now became the fashion to denounce the Klan and demand its extermination.
As the order had never had a spokesman, it had no defender. The demand for its suppression was universal. Yet no traitor had appeared among its ranks. The deepest curses of a race were reserved for the white lip that should betray its members. Whatever the leaders of public opinion might say, the masses of the people knew the necessity which had called this dreaded order into existence—the black threat of Negro dominion. Thousands of women and children knew its secrets and held them inviolate.
On Stella Butler the death of her father had wrought a deep and remarkable change. The fun-loving, imperious, self-willed, spoiled child had suddenly become a serious woman. She had given every hour of her time assisting the authorities in their search for the murderer and had followed every possible clue with breathless hope.
Two forces had driven her into a morbid interest in the crime, pride and remorse. In mere laughing banter she had promised her father if a single insult should be offered him, or a hair of his head harmed, she would give her life to avenge the deed. She had not dreamed of such a possibility. But now that the impossible had happened, she would make good her word to the dead. And she would make it good, not only because she had promised and her heart was sick with remorse for the part she had unconsciously played in the tragedy, but for a deeper personal reason—the consciousness of the insult to her pride which the crime had offered. The assassin had dared to strike her father dead in her home, in her very presence.
Had the knife sought her own heart she would have felt less deeply the wound. Somewhere even by her side there stood amid the shadows of life a being who could thus insult her by ignoring her very existence! She resolved to make that man feel her power by paying the penalty with his own life. An element of pitiless cruelty in her character found for the first time its expression in a passionate thirst for the blood of this criminal.
She had seen every effort to penetrate the mystery fail with increasing inward rage. Larkin, who had charge of the Judge’s campaign, had been aggressive and untiring for two weeks and then had given up and returned to his duties as Chairman of the State Executive Committee.
The Attorney General announced his departure for Washington and ordered the withdrawal of the troops and detectives.
Stella hastened to send her burning protest against his action. General Champion, who had been deeply moved by her beauty and evident suffering, called personally at the old Graham mansion for an interview. He received her indignant protests with the gravest courtesy.
“Please don’t tell me, General,” she began bitterly, “that my father’s death is an apparently insoluble mystery. I am sick, sick, sick of hearing such rubbish! Eight weeks ago he was murdered in cold blood in this hall on the very spot where you are now sitting. It was not done by ghosts, it was not an accident, it was done by a living man. I refuse to recognise in it an act of Providence. I will not wear an emblem of mourning as long as this man breathes on earth. I have sworn it My father was in the service of his country attempting to enforce its laws. I have the right to demand that a rich and powerful government avenge his death. It is incredible that the coward who did this crime can not be caught and punished.”
“Upon the other hand, my dear child,” said the General, “I assure you that the apprehension of this criminal is one of the most difficult tasks ever assigned the Department of Justice.”
“And why, pray?”
“Because in this climate the Invisible Empire is yet stronger than the visible——”
“You believe then that the Klan committed the deed?” she asked
“As sure of it as that I live. If we were dealing with the ordinary criminal, it would be easy. We are dealing with larger problems. Every clue we have found has proven false for this reason. The man really responsible stands at our elbow did we but know the truth.”
“What do you mean?” Stella asked with sudden interest.
“That your father’s death was ordered by an inner circle of the Invisible Empire. He was probably executed by an individual who did not even know his name. The occasion of the masquerade ball was simply utilised for the purpose. Unless we know the name of the Chief of the Klan in this state no progress can be made. This man has the power of life and death over his men. No such deed could have been committed without his order.”
“And you are going to give up the search?” was the eager question.
“For the present yes. It is a waste of time.”
“And you have formed no idea as to who this Chief may be?” asked the big brown eyes, flashing with a new purpose.
“I haven’t a scrap of evidence that can be used in an English-speaking court of justice—but I am morally certain that I know the man.”
“And if you knew him by his own confession?”
“I could send him to the gallows within thirty days.”
“The man you suspect?”
“John Graham!”
Stella sprang to her feet, her face white with an emotion which stopped for a moment her very heart-beat.
“Within a month I’ll tell you the truth”—she said with laboured breath.
“Can you do it?”
“Beyond the shadow of a doubt!” was her firm answer.
The General seized her hand as he took his leave.
“If you do, my child, you will destroy an empire mightier than the law of the land. I’ll place the entire resources of the Department of Justice at your command.”
Stella’s brown eyes rested on her own beautiful reflection in the mirror as she slowly said:
“Thank you, General, I have at present all the weapons I shall need.”
STELLA was putting the last touches to a perfect toilet before meeting Steve Hoyle who was waiting impatiently below. She had given him the sign for which he had long prayed, her permission for the formal renewal of his suit. They had remained friends on condition that he keep silent on the subject until she gave him permission to speak. She had done this in the most delicate way in the note of reply she had sent in the afternoon to his request for permission to call.
She had determined to take Steve by storm to-night. The secret on which her heart was set she counted already within her grasp, yet she would leave no stone unturned, neglect no trick in all the known realm of woman’s art to make her victory absolute.
Her refusal to put on black at her father’s funeral, or wear it since, and her declaration that his death was not the act of God but of the devil, had shocked the tradition-loving Southern people beyond measure. Maggie had lost no time in telling her their comments. She heard them with contempt and proceeded to shock her critics still worse by establishing herself permanently in the great lonely house with only Aunt Julie Ann as her guardian.
Her whole being was fused into a single deathless purpose—to take the life of the man who had killed her father. She would stop at no means to accomplish this end, and she would treat with scorn every convention of society which might interfere.
She slowly descended the winding stairs to-night before Steve’s enraptured gaze, dressed in pure white with full train. A single deep red rose was set in her black hair. Her arms were bare and their beauty was perfect—starting with the tiniest wrists and swelling into full voluptuous splendour above the dimpled elbows. She had a way of moving them when she walked which was modest yet subtle in sensuous suggestion.
Steve watched her spellbound. She placed her hand in his with a tender smile, the brown eyes watching the effects of her beauty with quiet triumph.
She allowed Steve to silently lead her to the old davenport under the stairs and take his seat by her side.
“You meant what your letter implied?” he asked eagerly.
“I did,” was the firm answer.
“It seemed too good to be true, dear, yet I felt sure that you would need me in this crisis of your life.”
“I do need you. I wonder if you will prove wanting when put to the test?”
“Try me!” he boldly challenged.
“You are sure that you love me with a love that will endure through good and evil, through life and death, through every test?”
She leaned close, her eyes searching Steve’s soul.
The man drew a deep breath and his hand grasped hers with fierce passion.
“I love you beyond the power of words to tell—I worship you!” he cried, attempting instinctively to draw her into his arms.
“Yes I know,” she answered, lifting her hand in warning, “you love me that way—I don’t say it displeases me—I have a soul and I have a body too. There’s something big, fierce, and strong in you, Steve, that always drew me—that draws me to you to-night—but I want to know if your love goes deeper than the body; if it’s big enough, true enough to dare anything in this world or the next for the woman you love?”
“Yes!” he cried.
“You love me better than money?”
“Yes!”
“Better than power?”
“Yes!”
“Better than your own life?”
“Yes!” he whispered, crushing her hand in his.
“Suppose I should put you to a test and you should fail?”
“With your eyes calling me I’d dare the terrors of hell!”
She took both his hands, fixed her eyes on his until their warm brown light enfolded him with tenderness:
“Give me the name of the Chief of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina,” she whispered.
Steve’s face went white, and he stammered:
“Why—why—my dear—how—can—I? I don’t know him. It’s impossible!”
“Nothing is impossible to the man who loves me if I desire it,” she answered, firmly holding Steve with her eyes dilated to extraordinary size under the tension of her deep emotion.
He turned from her gaze, the cold sweat breaking out on his forehead.
“But, Stella, my dear, I’m not a member of the Klan.”
She dropped his hand, sprang to her feet, and looked at him a moment.
“You are lying!”
“I swear I’m telling you the truth,” he cried, eagerly attempting to regain her hand.
She turned from him with contempt. She saw too late that she had overplayed the part. She had been too eager, too sure. He was a greater coward than she had suspected.
“But why should you ask such a thing of me?” he stammered.
“You know why.”
“I haven’t the remotest idea.”
“Coward!” she hissed, turning suddenly. “You know that I wish to hang this man for the murder of my father.”
“If the Government of the United States with its army and navy and its millions cannot find him—am I a coward because I tell you that I do not know his name?”
“Yes.”
“In God’s name why?” he pleaded.
“I know that you are a member of the Klan.”
“Upon my soul and honour I swear that I am not!”
“Have you either soul or honour?”
“I won’t quarrel with you, dear; you are overwrought and crushed by this tragedy. You don’t mean what you say.”
“I do mean it!” she fiercely cried.
“Then you’ll live to regret it,” he answered, recovering his composure. “I’ll do anything within human reason. You must not ask the impossible.”
“Then you will help me to find this man?”
“To the limit of my power.”
“Why say to the limit of my power? I hate a man who fences, squirms and lies when face to face with a test of his manhood! Will you help me find this man? Yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“That’s better.”
“But tell me,” he said, watching her with increasing reserve and cunning. “Whom do you suspect?”
“John Graham.”
Steve’s eyes flashed.
“And what is your programme when you have established the fact?”
“The Attorney General has promised to hang him within thirty days.”
“With all due respect to the Attorney General—he can’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“We are living under conditions of revolution. No jury can be found who will convict him. There’s but one way.”
“What do you mean?” Stella asked, lowering her voice.
“That beyond a doubt John Graham inspired this crime.”
“You believe it?” she broke in fiercely.
“I’m sure of it. His hatred of the Judge had become a mania. He used the Klan as the cloak of his hired assassin.”
“The Klan decreed his death,” said Stella sternly.
“John Graham decreed it.”
“What do you propose?” she asked, again coming close to Steve.
“To have him executed by the Klan itself!”
“And yet you are not a member?” she asked with a smile.
“I am in touch with men who are.”
“How could his execution be brought about?”
“Ask him the question you put to me.”
“And if he tells?”
“He will forfeit his life.”
Stella’s eyes rested a moment on the chair in which her father fell the night of his death. She turned and gazed into Steve’s face with a strange absent expression in her eyes as though they were seeing a picture which had etched itself in fire on her soul.
“I’m going to cultivate Mr. Graham’s acquaintance,” she slowly said. “I’ll learn from his own lips if he is the leader of the Ku Klux Klan.”
“And if you find that he is?”
“I may hold you to your pledge!”
“And on the day he is executed.”
“I will marry you!”
THE next morning Steve Hoyle left town and Stella began at once to put into execution her plan to entrap John Graham in the meshes of her beauty and deliver him to justice. She felt instinctively that if this man with his intense and romantic nature ever yielded to the spell of her love, there could be no limit to which he would not go at her bidding. With equal certainty she realised that the task would be a delicate one—a task which might put to the test every power she possessed. Her whole being rose to the work with a thrill of keen, cruel interest—the interest of the primitive huntress on track of the rarest, wildest and most daring game.
The first difficulty which apparently opened an impassable gulf between them was the suit which John Graham had begun to regain possession of the estate. The language in which his complaint had been drawn was the limit of bitter accusation permitted in a legal document—parts of it, indeed, the Court had ordered stricken from the record as scandalous and irrelevant.
Stella’s eyes danced with excitement as she read in the morning’s paper the announcement of his withdrawal of this suit. The news was accompanied by a brief statement which might have been written as a personal apology to her for the language he had used.
“I beg leave to say to the public in withdrawing this action that I regret the overheated language in which the original complaint was expressed.”
Without a moment’s hesitation she seized her pen and wrote him an invitation to call. Her words revealed the deeply laid scheme on which her mind had seized in a flash of inspiration. She read and reread it carefully:
My dear Mr. Graham:
Permit me to thank you for the manly words of retraction which you have used in this morning’s paper.-Your withdrawal of this suit and the generous manner in which it was done, removes the only barrier to our friendly acquaintance. I wish to renew it, and ask you to please accept at once the position of my personal attorney in the settlement of my father’s estate. Your influence in the courts of North Carolina, your eloquence and genius will, be of invaluable service to an orphan girl who needs the advice of one on whose integrity she can absolutely rely.
Trusting that you may honour me by answering this request in person at three o’clock this afternoon.
Sincerely,
Stella Butler.
John Graham could not believe his senses when he first read this letter. The boy had turned and gone without waiting for an answer and he sat stupefied by a whirl of conflicting emotions.
He read it again, bent and kissed her name. He had never before seen her handwriting. He studied it with curious interest. Its deep lines revealed with startling distinctness traits of a remarkable character. It was full of long strokes of the pen with equal emphasis across, up and down. The letters were unevenly formed, showing the self-willed, imperious spirit that had refused to copy the lines set by another hand, and yet the effect was pleasing and held the eye in a continuous surprise at its sensational curves and dashes. Through every line he felt the throb of an intense nature, which seemed to sink into inaudible whispers of emotion in the queer little twists of the pen with which each sentence ended.
He placed the note in an inner pocket. Had he received this invitation yesterday, he would have locked his doors, shouted and danced for joy at the opportunity to press her hand again and look into those deep brown eyes that haunted him waking or dreaming. Now it was a serious question. Within twenty-four hours he had received confirmation of two suspicions which had oppressed him since the night of Butler’s death—that his father might have committed the deed and that Billy was in the party of masqueraders.
In either case, the stain of the Judge’s blood was on the house of Graham and the Angel of Death stood with drawn sword barring the way of his happiness. He would not seek the hand of Stella with the blood of her father on his own. He would accept the moral responsibility of his father’s act or that of his younger brother. He had reproached himself bitterly that he had neglected to know and teach his high-strung younger brother as he might. The mother dead, his father a hopeless mental invalid, Billy had grown up with no hand to guide his wayward fancy. It was not to be wondered at that he soon recognised no authority save that of his own will.
Stella’s request had brought John face to face with the problems of his father and Billy. He must know the truth before he could answer that letter. Better to strangle the love that was fast swelling in his heart than wait until the hour when the call of love might drown the voice of honour.
He left his office and went at once to his father’s room. The Major was dressed with his habitual care, his linen spotless, his boots carefully polished, his thin white hair brushed straight back from his high forehead. He was seated in his armchair, gently stroking with his chalk-white bony hand his delicate ghostly beard, while delivering to Alfred one of his interminable talks of the old life in the South. At times he forgot the war and the horrors which followed and reenacted the scenes of the past until his former slave, too full to bear more, would stop him tenderly, and get him to change the subject.
“Leave us awhile, Alfred,” John said, on entering.
“Yassah,” the old butler answered, bowing himself out with stately dignity.
John closed the door and drew his chair close to the Major’s.
“Father, I want to ask you something very particular,” he began.
The old man smiled indulgently.
“Well, out with it, you young rascal! You’ve been flying round her long enough. I knew it would come at last. So she’s got you, has she! Well, well, Jennie’s a fine girl, my boy; I danced at her father’s and mother’s wedding. I wish I had more to give you. You’ll have to be content with the lower plantation, and a dozen slaves to start with.”
“Listen, father,” John urged, stopping him with a gentle pressure on his arm. “And try to remember. Have you encountered Butler lately?”
“Change our butler!—what better butler do you want than Alfred? He’s an aristocrat to his finger tips. I wouldn’t think of reducing him from his present rank; what has he done to offend any one?”
“I mean the Judge who took the house—I mean Judge Butler.”
“Ah! A man of low origin and no principle, my son—a renegade who betrayed his people for thirty pieces of silver—silver stained with blood—a dirty, contemptible office-seeker. I wouldn’t lower myself by speaking to such a man.”
“Yes, I know father,” John broke in, “but I’m trying to recall to your memory the visits you have made at night lately to the old home.”
“Of course, I love the old home. I was born here. I brought my bride here. I’ll never leave it except for a better world.”
John felt a lump rise in his throat and rose to go. It was useless. Besides, the thing was unthinkable. How could this feeble old man spring on one of Butler’s physique and stab him to death. He couldn’t, except in a moment of superhuman frenzy which sometimes comes to the insane. There was the thought which returned again and again to torment him! Aunt Julie Ann declared the ghost was seen to pass through the hall and go upstairs but a few moments before the tragedy. Yes, it was possible.
John peered into his father’s restless eyes with a mad desire to lift the mysterious veil that obscured the world from his vision. The horror of the sickening tragedy strangled him and he turned, abruptly leaving the room.
He sought Billy with a growing sense of helpless and bitter despair. Since the day of their brief quarrel which followed the demonstration before old Larkin, Billy had avoided John. Since Butler’s death they had scarcely spoken. The effect of this tragedy on his headstrong younger brother first led John to suspect his membership in the newly organised Klan under Steve’s leadership.
John found him in his room reading.
“Billy, I must have a serious talk with you,” the older brother began.
“All right, sit down,” the boy answered, laying aside his book.
“A youngster of eighteen who keeps to his room for days at a time and reads is either sick or has something on his mind.”
“Which do you think?” Billy asked, looking vaguely out the window.
“I’ll answer you by asking a question, and I want you to answer on the honour of a Graham. Are you a member of Steve Hoyle’s Klan?”
“You have no right to ask that question,” was the hot reply.
“Yes, I have,” John slowly said, “for two reasons. As the organiser of the original Ku Klux Klan in this state I hold myself in a measure responsible for its existence even in its lowest forms. But that’s not all, my boy, you’re my brother, and I love you.”
Billy’s eyes blinked and he looked at the ceiling. He had never heard such an expression from John’s lips before.
“I wish I’d slipped my arm around you and told you that long ago. I’ve always been proud of your high-strung, sensitive spirit, proud in my own heart that we were of the same blood, and I want to ask you to forgive me for seeing so little of you and being of so little help to you.”
A sob caught the boy’s breath.
“You’ll let me help you now?” John asked tenderly, extending his hand.
Billy rose trembling, his eyes running over with tears, took a step toward the door, turned and threw himself into John’s arms, sobbing bitterly.
The older brother held him close for a moment in silence, and slowly said at last:
“Now tell me.”
“I was at Judge Butler’s that night!”
John sank to a chair with a groan.
“My God! I knew it!”
“But, of course, you know that I had nothing to do with any attack on a man in whose house I was a guest,” he went on rapidly. “The whole thing is a horrible mystery to us all. Every man in our crowd was in the ballroom dancing.”
“How did you know that?” John interrupted sharply.
“Because I counted them as they entered.”
“You counted them?”
“Yes.”
“Then you were in command of the crowd?” Billy hesitated a moment, and said:
“Yes!”
John drew a deep breath and turned his head away in anguish.
“I could not resist the temptation to lead them. I wanted to see inside the old house again—you understand. I never dreamed of anything happening.”
“None of the boys were drinking?”
“No, and there wasn’t a fool among them—they were all my chums and friends in town.”
“Then go at once and tell them that I say to put a thousand miles between them and this town in the next forty-eight hours—to Texas if possible.”
“Why?” asked Billy with a touch of wounded pride.
“There are a hundred reasons—one is enough. There’s a price on the head of the man who committed that crime.”
“My men didn’t do it!”
“Granted. But one of these fine days a white-livered traitor may crawl from your Klan and claim his reward of gold or office. You will be convicted in ten minutes.”
Billy turned pale, and straightened his boyish figure.
“Well, I’ll tell my men to go. I’ll not run.”
“You can serve your men best by going. The bravest general always knows when to retreat.”
“I’ll stand my ground.”
“You must go. I can fight for you better with a thousand miles between us. I’ll play a trick on my Yankee friends this time. I’m going to send you North into the enemy’s country—to college.”
Billy was trembling now with a new excitement. His heart was set on a college career and he hadn’t as yet hoped to find the way.
“How will you do it?” he asked eagerly.
“Old Nickaroshinski will take my note. I’ll borrow the money.”
The boy smiled for the first time in a month.
“Oh! John, you’ve taken a load off my soul.”
John’s hand crushed the letter from Stella, which he was unconsciously grasping in his pocket.
“And you’ve piled one on my soul under which I’ll stagger to the grave,” he cried within, outwardly answering with a smile and warm grip of the hand as he said:
“Quick now, boy. Don’t lose a minute. There will be some heart-broken mothers in town tomorrow night. There’s but one choice: the plains of the West, or a prison pen.”
“I’ll go at once,” Billy cried, seizing his hat and hastily leaving.
Pale and haggard, John slowly returned to his office. He looked at his watch. It was five minutes to three. Stella was waiting to receive him. He could hear the low sweet tones of her voice greeting him, and see her great brown eyes smiling their welcome.
But his mind was made up. Safety lay in flight. He wrote a brief reply to her letter.
My dear Miss Butler:
I thank you for the honour you do me in the request you make. I regret that I cannot see my way clear at present to accept your offer. I have many reasons, and I beg you to believe that they are very serious ones—otherwise I would hasten to answer in person your call.
With sincere regrets,
John Graham
Stella received the note with mingled surprise and rage, and immediately wired the Attorney General in the cipher code he had given her asking for the assistance for two months of the best detective the Secret Service could command.
General Champion replied within two hours. “Mr. Ackerman leaves here to-night. He will report to you in Independence to-morrow.”
ACKERMAN sent to Stella his letter of introduction from the Attorney General, stating that he would call the following day and report progress.
General Champion’s letter had raised the highest hopes by the declaration that the young detective had developed a well defined and intelligent theory on which to conduct the prosecution of the case.
Stella awaited his call impatiently. She had pictured the ideal detective of romance and could not conceal her amazement at his personal appearance when she extended her hand to greet him.
His voice was soft and low as her own, his face wreathed in smiles—and such a face!—plump, rosy cheeked, young, fresh and boyish, save for the slightest touch of gray in the dark hair about his temples. His eye alone, to the close student of men, might have revealed his profession. It looked a steady blaze of light from beneath straight intellectual brows.
“You had better understand at once, Miss Butler,” he began, “that I am a prosperous young business man from the North at present engaged in the organisation of cotton mills in the South.”
Stella could not repress a smile, as she said:
“I must say you look the part.”
“I have engaged board at Mrs. Wilson’s and asked Mr. John Graham to act as my attorney in the organisation of a company in this county.”
“I see,” she cried, for the first time catching the steady light of Ackerman’s eye.
“I cannot be seen in conference with you. We will report to each other by letter. But we must clearly understand each other. Am I right that you mean to press this case to the bitter end, let the blow fall on whom it may?”
“Certainly,” was the firm answer.
“I learn from the Attorney General’s office that you are on the track of the man who is Commander-in-chief of the Klan in this state?”
“Yes.”
“Pardon another question. I must know if you are in dead earnest? I have found that women have little tenacity of purpose in such cases and as a rule cannot be depended on.”
“I’ll show you that they are not all alike!” Stella broke in angrily.
“Then may I ask that if you succeed in securing this name that you will place it in my hands without a moment’s delay?”
“At once.”
STELLA determined to make one more direct appeal to John Graham before resorting to indirect subterfuges for the purpose of meeting him.
She wrote half a dozen letters and tore them up. They lacked simplicity. The only effective appeal to this man must disarm all suspicion of subtlety. It must be natural, sincere and ring true. She found it a very difficult thing to express in cold written words one thing and mean another, and yet preserve the ring of truth and sincerity. At last she wrote a letter which seemed to be effective. She read it over and over, and added to the paper the faintest touch of delicate perfume, an old extract of sweet pinks, which she had used the night of their meeting. She laid it aside and waited an hour to carefully read it again. It was too important to risk a failure. Should he once suspect an ulterior purpose of any kind her plan must end in utter defeat. She spent an hour walking through the lawn, returned and read again the letter.
It seemed cold, stiff and artificial, and the touch of perfume obvious and vulgar. It lacked the magnetism of personality. She had no power to convey this as yet in words. She must see him face to face, hold him with the deep charm of her great eyes, and enfold him with the spell of her beauty.
“I must see him,” she cried—“or I’ll fail! If I can only touch his hand, stand by his side and look into his face, I’ll win.”
She walked to the window and stood thoughtful a moment. Suddenly her eyes lighted.
“I’ll do it! I’ll go to his dingy office and ask for his services as any other client. Why not? His sign is a standing invitation to the world. How stupid of me to be wasting paper!”
In five minutes she was on the way. Her dress was a simple girlish pattern of green dimity. A quaint bonnet of the period, flaring wide and high in front, its tiny circular crown tilted, with ribbon tied under her dainty chin, made a picture no artist could pass without a sigh.
She stopped before the wrought-iron weatherbeaten sign which hung from the doorway leading up a flight of stairs to the young lawyer’s office. Her heart fluttered with a moment of uncertainty as she felt herself standing on the threshold of the most daring step of her life. The plain gold letters of the sign held her with a strange fascination:=
She had never noticed this piece of plain black iron before, and yet somehow it seemed a part of the record of her deep inner life, and, as it moved, gently stirred by the soft breezes of a Southern day, creaking on the rod from which it hung, the sound thrilled her with a feeling of strange terror. She turned quickly away, her heart pounding with excitement, and began to retrace her steps.
She walked a block, stopped, flushed red, frowned and turned on her heels.
“I’ll not be a silly coward. I’ll not look back again until it’s done.”
This time she walked firmly up the stairs and gently knocked on his door.
John had just finished his business with Nickaroshinski.
The old Jew had accepted his personal note unsecured by any endorsement for the money needed to send Billy north to college. He sat in brooding silence, idly holding between his fingers the paper on which he had recorded the memorandum of his new indebtedness. He was not worrying over his ability to pay—of that he felt sure. Butler had answered his suit by removing the order of his disbarment on Larkin’s advice the day of the County Convention. His practice gave promise of a comfortable living.
It was Billy’s flight, which was arranged for the following day, that had focussed his thoughts on the miserable tragedy which had raised still another barrier between him and his possible approach to Stella.
The knock on his door had not interrupted the train of his thought. He was looking through his window into the deep blue of the infinite skies, and linking in fancy the mysteries of their changing lights to those which flashed from the fathomless depths of the eyes of the woman he loved.
He had mechanically answered the knock without moving and still sat wide-eyed and dreaming when the rustle of Stella’s dress and the echo of her soft footfall startled him.
He turned in amazement, stared, suddenly sprang to his feet, his face flushed with excitement. Surely he was asleep—dreaming! Or had the picture in his soul suddenly stepped from the infinite into the flesh and blood of the finite in answer to the yearning call of his heart! A hundred wild thoughts swept his imagination in the brief moment before he could speak.
“I fear I’ve startled you!” she said, drawing back with a timid gesture.
“Why, why—it’s you—Miss Butler! I hadn’t dreamed of seeing you in this dingy office!”
He stammered and hesitated, and continued to gaze at her in confusion.
“May I sit down?” she asked softly.
“I beg a thousand pardons,” he answered, springing across the room for a chair. He dumped a pile of law books from it—brushed the dust from the bottom and placed it before her.
“Believe me,” he went on, “I was so astonished at seeing you, I thought I must have fallen asleep—you see it was too beautiful to be true—I thought it must be a dream.”
“Well, there was nothing left but to humble myself and call on you—you refused to call on me.”
“I can never tell you how sorry I was to have to write that note,” he said gravely.
“I’m glad, for I refuse to take your letter as final. You said there were many and serious reasons why you could not act as my counsel. I’ve come to hear them.”
“I assure you they are serious enough, Miss Butler. I fear it will not be possible for me to state them.”
“Then I refuse to accept them,” she answered with a smile.
John gazed at her, wondering if she could know what havoc her sweet appealing smile was playing with his resolutions.
He tried to speak and couldn’t.
Stella continued, her voice low and musical with childlike tenderness:
“I know that my father was your political foe, but he had the profoundest respect for your ability and your high sense of honour. His death will doubtless remain one of the unexplained tragedies of the troubles through which the country is now passing.”
She rose and slowly approached John’s chair, her great brown eyes blinding him with their light as she gently laid a white hand on his shoulder.
He started at her touch.
“Mr. Graham,” she said, with exquisite tenderness, “life is too short to cherish its bitter feuds.”
“Yes,” he answered in a whisper barely audible.
“I am utterly alone and distressed over business affairs I do not understand. I have implicit faith in you. I need your help and advice. Will you refuse me what you would grant without question to a stranger who would call at this office and ask?”
John flushed and fumbled his hands nervously.
“Come, you will accept, will you not?” She extended her hand. “Shall we be friends?”
He trembled for a moment and his own hand resistlessly sought hers.
“Yes!” he cried with deep emotion, unconsciously crushing her hand in his.
“You will come to-morrow morning to the house and go over the papers with me?”
“To-morrow afternoon,” he replied, as a momentary cloud shadowed his brow. “I have an important engagement for the morning.” And he thought of Billy with a pang.
“Then to-morrow afternoon,” she cried, with a tender smile that lingered as a caress long after she had passed from the door.