JOHN GRAHAM fought his way home heedless of the storm’s blinding fury. The hurricane without was but a zephyr to the one which raged within his own soul. Again and again he asked himself the question why Stella should have demanded of him such a confession.
He had instantly resented it. Perhaps he had scented danger. And yet it was preposterous to think the girl he worshipped could have desired this dangerous knowledge to be used against him.
Ackerman in discussing his mill projects in the office during the afternoon had asked him a number of irritating questions about the Klan which he had skilfully parried. His mind was over-sensitive and sore perhaps from this annoyance. Ackerman could have nothing to do with Stella—they were not even passing acquaintances.
From every point of view he tested the problem of her possible design to use this knowledge and found it preposterous. There was but one reasonable explanation. She had found with her keen woman’s intuition the one weak spot in his mental attitude toward her. Yes, it was true. He loved her with passionate devotion, but he had not fully trusted her. She had discovered it. Had she not thus revealed the true state of her own heart? She must love him. Otherwise this keen sensitiveness to his moods would not be possible. The thought was sweet in spite of his agony over their break. After all she was right, proud little queen of his heart, to demand his loyal faith! Should he yield to her this perilous secret of his own life? Would he thus endanger those with whom he had been associated in the daring task of saving the civilisation of the South in the blackest hour of her history?
While the battle thus raged in his soul he reached his room, removed his drenched clothing and replaced them with dry ones. He walked to his window and looked out on the spluttering street lamp across the way struggling to hold its tiny flame against the storm and wondered why he had dressed again. He should have gone to bed. And then the dawning sense of loss and misery crushed him. He sank into a chair and watched the rain dash against the glass and stream down the sides of the window, his heart aching in dumb agony.
“My God!” he cried at last, “I can’t live without her! She loves me, and I must win her!”
The memory of her cold words as she ordered him from the house came crashing back into his heart with sinister echoes. Never had he seen a human being so transformed by anger—eyes that a moment before had held him enraptured with their tender light had flashed cold points of steel. Hands, soft and warm and full of velvet feeling, had closed in rage as the claws of a tigress!
Suppose she refused to see him again? It was unthinkable. He seemed to have lived a century within the weeks since she had called him to her side. The life which had gone before grew dim. Four years of war and two years of daring secret revolution as a leader of the Invisible Empire faded from his consciousness. Only a great love remained, and those days by her side seemed to hold the full measure of his life.
He undressed and went to bed, only to roll and toss hour after hour without sleep.
He saw the first gray light of dawn with a sense of utter desolation. The rain had ceased an hour before. Swift flying clouds and swaying tree-tops heralded the coming of a clear, beautiful day. He determined to write at once and beg to see her. In a moment his mind was on fire with his passionate plea. As the sun rose, reflecting through scurrying clouds its scarlet and purple glory, he hastily dressed, sat down at his table and poured out his anguish in burning words of tenderness and love. He read it over with renewed hope. Never had he expressed himself so well. The letter was a living thing. No woman’s hand could touch it without feeling its vital power. An immortal soul beat within it.
He had added the last line of a postscript begging her to name an early hour at which he might call, and sat in dull moody reverie unconscious of the flight of time.
A gentle knock on his door roused him. He opened it and stared blankly at Susie’s gentle face.
“I trust you’re not sick, Mr. John,” she said. “Everybody is through breakfast. I’ve kept yours warm.”
“Thank you, Miss Susie. I’ve only a little headache. I won’t eat any breakfast. I’ve important work at the office. I’m going down at once.”
As he passed her at the head of the stairs she said with a wistful look:
“Mama says she heard you stirring all night. If I can help you, won’t you let me?”
“Yes, little comrade, I will. I’ll let you know,” he answered, swinging quickly down the stairs and out the front door.
He found a boy on the street and sent him to Stella with his letter. He stood at his office door and watched him until out of sight and counted the minutes until he reappeared. He had paid him a dime on dispatching the letter and promised to double it if he came back in a hurry. Fifteen minutes later he smiled as he saw the boy coming in a run, his swift bare feet making the dirt fly in the middle of the street.
“I knew it! Of course, she will see me!” he exclaimed as he bounded up his stairs two rounds at a jump. He gave the astonished boy a quarter instead of another dime, hurried into his office, and slammed the door. He felt the weight of the letter with faint misgivings. It was large to have been written so quickly. Yet it was addressed with her own dear hand. He tore it open, and from his trembling fingers dropped his own letter with the seal unbroken. Not a line from her. Her meaning could not be misunderstood. She could have offered him no deeper insult. He sank to his seat with a groan and sat for an hour in a stupor of wounded pride. “I won’t accept such an answer from her!” he cried bitterly. “And I won’t stand on ceremony.”
He walked down the street to the gate of the driveway of the Graham house, hoping he might find Aunt Julie Ann at her cottage. The door was closed and he could get no response to his knock. He looked longingly at the old house shining with its snow white doors and windows against the dark fresh green of the rain-soaked trees, and thought with a pang of his quarrel over its possession. What did houses matter if the heart was sick unto death! The humblest Negro cabin would be a palace if only her face would shine from the doorway!
He felt himself drawn toward her with resistless force and before he realised what he was doing his hand was on the brass knocker and its echoes were ringing through the hall.
Aunt Julie Ann shook her head as she ushered him in.
“I wish ye hadn’t come, marse John,” she said sorrowfully.
“Why not?”
“She shut hersef up in de room an’ won’t let nobody come in. I creep up to de door, and hear her cryin’ sof’ an’ low. I knock an’ she didn’ answer. I knock again an’ calls her sweet names an’ ax her please lemme do sumfin for her. She jump up an’ stamp her foot an’ say she kill me ef I doan’ leave her ’lone. I’se skeered of her, honey, she ain’t lak our folks. When de old Boy’s in her lak it is ter day she talks jes lak de Judge. When she laughs an’ plays an’ looks purty as an angel her voice jest like her Ma’s, low an’ sweet.”
“Tell her I’m here and wish to see her”—John interrupted with impatience.
Aunt Julie Ann shook her head again:
“You better not honey!”
“I must see her. Try!”
John stood at the foot of the stairs nervously fumbling his hat while Aunt Julie Ann climbed to the floor and knocked on her door.
He listened breathlessly for her answer. The key clicked in the lock and Stella opened it wide enough to be distinctly heard. Her voice rang cold and clear:
“Tell Mr. Graham to leave this house instantly and never enter it again!”
The door closed and the bolt flashed into its place again.
John’s face flushed red, the colour slowly fading as his strong jaws snapped with new determination.
“In spite of the devil, I’ll win her yet!”
TWO days passed without a word of hope for John. On the third morning after his dismissal by Stella he sat pale and listless at breakfast, scarcely tasting his food, while Susie watched his drawn face with keen sympathetic eyes. An hour later she entered his office.
“You promised to let me help you,” she said quietly. “I have come.”
He looked at her a moment and wondered why he had never before seen her striking beauty. A tall figure with exquisite sylph like lines, a serene and perfectly moulded face with straight, thoughtful brows shadowing the tenderest gray-blue eyes, and a crown of luxuriant auburn blonde hair.
He caught at once the sincere sympathy of her mood, as he pressed her hand.
“I never saw you so beautiful, Miss Susie, or your face so sweet and restful.”
She blushed and looked out the window.
“I can’t tell you how I thank you for coming. I think we must have been brother and sister in some other world before this.”
The corners of the girl’s lips twitched and she turned her tender eyes full on John’s.
“You are in love with Stella?”
“Yes.”
“And she has rejected you?”
“No, we have quarrelled and she refuses to see me or read my letters.”
“She loves you?”
“I’ve hoped so, I don’t know. She lets me feel it without words.”
“We are friends, what can I do?”
“See her and beg her for God’s sake to let me call, at least to read my letters. Will you go to-day?”
“Immediately.”
“Thank you,” he cried, again tenderly pressing her hand. “You must have loved too, Miss Susie.”
“Perhaps I have,” was the soft reply. “Write your message and I’ll take it.”
John seated himself and hastily wrote:
My dear Stella:
From the bottom of a heart crushed with anguish I ask your pardon for my lack of faith. Your pride was right. Give me a chance and I will show you what the trust of perfect love means for me. I await from you the words of life or death.
John Graham.
Susie promised to return at once with her answer.
She knocked at the door of the old Graham house with a strange conflict raging in her own breast. She hoped to succeed for the sake of the aching heart of the man she had left, and yet mingled with the fear of failure was the half-mad wish that Stella might reject his plea.
Aunt Julie Ann’s face was troubled as she greeted Susie.
“Tell Miss Stella, that I’m very sorry to learn of her illness and I trust she can see me a moment.”
“Yassum, I tell her—but I’se feard she ain’t well enough.”
Aunt Julie Ann returned immediately, smiling.
“She say come right up to her room, Miss Susie.”
Susie was shocked to note the change-in the beautiful young face lying still and pale against the white pillow.
“I’m sorry to find you so ill!”
“Yes, I suppose I have nerves,” she said, smiling wanly. “I didn’t know it before. I think some of them must have snapped—but I’m better now. I’ll get up this afternoon.”
“I’ve something that will help you, if you will take it.”
Stella’s brow clouded, and her eyes, wide and cold, assumed a sinister half-mad expression.
“You have a message from Mr. Graham?”
“How did you guess it?”
“He has tried every other possible way. I wondered if he would stoop to this.”
“Stoop!—what do you mean?”
“To use you for such a purpose.”
“And why not?”
“You ask that of me?” The great brown eyes pierced Susie’s soul.
“Certainly.”
“Then it’s all right,” she said with a light laugh. “You must receive his message,” Susie said. “You’ve won the heart of the noblest man I have ever known—a great, beautiful, measureless love. Don’t turn away from it—you may not know its like again.”
The full lips smiled curiously.
“I’ve brought you a letter from him—you must read it.”
Susie pressed the letter into Stella’s hand and turned away to the window. She heard the rattle of the paper as it was opened and refolded, and walked back to the bedside. Before she could ask Stella’s answer, her eye rested on a letter in Ackerman’s handwriting, lying open on the white covering. She started violently but managed to suppress an exclamation. Only that morning she had received herself a letter from the young Northerner declaring his love in simple, honest fashion. She couldn’t believe her eyes at first, but a second look convinced her of its reality. What puzzled her still more was to observe beside this letter a sheet of paper on which was drawn the diagram of the hall with the minute accuracy of an architect’s plan, with Ackerman’s notes interlining it.
“What shall I say?” she stammered in confusion.
Stella looked at her with a momentary start, smiled and answered:
“Tell Mr. Graham I have received and read his letter. I’ll think it over this evening and reply to-morrow.”
“Then I’ll go,” said Susie, taking her hand. “I’m so glad I saw you.”
As she turned through the door her eye again was drawn irresistibly to Ackerman’s letter. She returned to John Graham’s office stunned by this puzzling discovery.
John was bitterly disappointed in the message she brought. Her long stay had raised in him the highest hope. His own surrender had been so complete and generous, that he could not conceive it possible that she would debate in cold blood for twenty-four hours the question of her answer. It seemed heartless and utterly cruel. He rebelled in fierce futile protest. He did not try to conceal the bitterness of his disappointment from Susie, and was too selfishly occupied with his own grief to note the constraint in her manner as she hurried home from his office, even before he had found words in which to thank her for the delicate service she had rendered him.
He sent for Alfred and got word to Aunt Julie Ann that he wished to see her at her cottage after supper. He knew that Alfred had taken advantage of Isaac’s long absence to renew his calls on his former love.
When he arrived at nine o’clock Aunt Julie Ann had placed a pot of coffee and a plate of tea-cakes on a little table for him.
“What’s de matter, honey?” she asked.
“I’m in great trouble, Aunt Julie Ann.”
“Well, Mammy’s baby knows who ter come to when he’s in trouble!” she said tenderly. She had always called him baby—this bronzed hero of battle fields. His thirty years meant nothing to her except increasing faith in his manhood. Since the day she first took his baby form in her arms she had watched him grow in body and spirit with a brooding mother pride.
“You must talk to Miss Stella for me,” he said. “Get close to her Aunt Julie Ann, you’re a woman, and tell her all the good things you remember about me. You know better than I do—you understand? Make her smile again and get her to see me.”
“Now, you set down dar sir, an’ drink dat coffee an’ tell me what you doin’ gwine roun’ here mopin’ an’ pinin’ yo’ life out all ’bout a gal don’t care two straws whedder you’se er livin’ er dyin’. I’d be shamed er myself, great big grown man lak you is, what fit froo de war an’ everybody say gwine ter be de guvnor some day.”
“Can’t you get her to see me, Aunt Julie Ann?” he interrupted, earnestly.
“Drink dat coffee, an’ den I tell ye!”
“It’s too hot for coffee—I’m not hungry—Tell me now.”
“Drink it fur Mammy, boy—I wants de grouns. I’m gwine tell ye somefin when I looks in de cup. I seed a vision las’ night.”
To humour her John drank the coffee in silence. She took the empty cup, studied its message, and looked into John’s face.
“Yes, honey, hit’s des lak I see hit las’ night, an’ I warns ye! I see two purty gals—a fair one and a dark one. Bof lubs ye—but dey’s one er slippin up behind yer back wid a shinin’ knife in her hand. Her long black hair is hangin’ loose on her white shoulders an’ all twisted lak snakes. I see her hide de knife in her bosom an’ slip her arms roun’ yo neck. She kiss you an’ blindfold ye wid her curly hair an’ slip de knife from her bosom an’ stab you froo de heart! Mammy’s baby! Mammy’s baby!”
The black woman’s voice sank to a weird whisper full of tears and ‘wild half-savage music as she seized John’s hand.
“Don’t come to de house no mo,’ Marse John!” she pleaded.
“And why not?” he asked sharply.
“Case I look again in de vision an’ I see her face plain—an’ it wuz hers!”
“Whose?”
“Miss Stella, honey—I warns ye! she doan lub my baby—keep away from her!”
“Rubbish, Aunt Julie Ann; you’ve been having a nightmare.”
“I see it all, des ez plain ez I sees you now—I warns ye!”
“I’ll risk it,” John laughed. “I’m hoping for good news to-morrow—please say your prayers for me to-night.”
Yet in spite of his culture and the inheritance of centuries of knowledge, the voodoo message of his old nurse shrouded his spirit in deeper gloom. He walked home with a new sense of dread in his heart, wondering what answer she would send him to-morrow.
THE following morning when Stella, sitting up in bed, opened her mail and read Ackerman’s report, the last doubt of John Graham’s guilt was shattered.
“I have just learned,” Ackerman wrote, “that a number of men of notoriously desperate character from the foot of the mountains were in Independence on the day before the tragedy and that a man by the name of Dan Wiley, their leader, reported in person to John Graham’s office.”
Stella sprang from her bed and began hurriedly to dress.
“Now God give me strength for the work I’m going to do!” she cried, with strangling rage. “To think that such a man should dare to speak to me of love—should dare to clasp my hand with the stain of my father’s blood yet fresh on his! I could kill him with my own hand—coward, dastard, sneak, assassin! I hate him—I hate him!”
She threw herself on her bed again in a paroxysm of uncontrollable fury. She arose at length, calm, alert, her cheeks flushed with brilliant colour, her great eyes dilated wide and sparkling with courage.
The knocker struck sharply and she remembered with a start that Steve Hoyle had returned on the midnight train and would call this morning. She heard Maggie show Steve into the library.
Without waiting for her breakfast she hastened to meet him, and he plunged at once into the purpose of his call:
“Has John Graham yet confessed his leadership?”
“He will to-day,” was the quiet answer.
“The fame of your desperate love affair has set the town agog,” Steve laughed triumphantly.
“Doubtless,” she replied moodily.
“I’ve everything arranged—the men are only waiting for the word.”
“I prefer that the law take its course. I’m not ready to commit murder,” she said emphatically.
“Nonsense! The law’s a farce—Deliver him to his own men to be judged by the Klan which has set itself above the State. If he is the leader of the Invisible Empire he holds his own High Court. Let his men decide his fate. It’s justice!”
Stella hesitated a moment and slowly said:
“When I learn from his own lips that he is the Chief of the Klan and find that there is no other way in which he can be made to pay the penalty of his crime, I’ll deliver him to his men.”
“They’ll be ready to receive him.”
“I shall know in twenty-four hours.”
“I’ll await your word,” he answered eagerly, his eyes devouring her beauty.
Steve hurriedly left and Stella seated herself at her desk to write her answer to John Graham. Two attempts she tore up. The third suited her. In the centre of a sheet of paper she wrote two words:
“Come—Stella.”
When John Graham received this note at eleven o’clock from the hands of her messenger, he felt before he broke the seal that it bore glad tidings.
He tore it open and with a cry of joy, tried to read, and the tears blinded him. He crushed the note in his hand and bowed his head on his desk, his whole being convulsed with emotion which he could not control. He rose at length, walked to his window, opened the note again and gazed at it until he broke into a joyous laugh, repeating the words:
“Come—Stella.”
“The most wonderful letter I ever received,” he exclaimed. “The longest, the richest, the deepest—the answering call of my mate! In all nature there’s no such cry. From out the shadows of hell I lift my soul and answer, ‘My love, I come!’”
In a moment he had forgotten every fear; and all the pain, blind and hideous, of the last three days was lost in a joy that lit the world with splendour.
He called immediately on horseback and asked her to ride with him through a beautiful wooded road he had long wished to show her. Stella caught the echo of his horse’s hoofs with a shudder as he approached the house. She had not heard that sound on the gravelled roadway of the lawn since the night she listened to the distant echoes of the masqueraders as she stood beside the dead.
She accepted his suggestion and hastily despatched a message to Ackerman asking that he await her return in her library at sundown as she intended to spend the afternoon in the country on important business.
At three o’clock they galloped out of Independence toward the river.
“My heart is too full now for speech,” he said, leaning toward her, his face radiant with happiness.
“I understand.”
“Just to be near you is all I ask for a while. It seems too good to be true. It has been a century since I saw you.”
She remained silent. The only visible response, if any, was the quickening of her horse’s pace at the unconscious touch of the little spur concealed beneath her skirts.
Her silence meant to him feelings too deep for words, and again his heart sang for joy.
Four miles out of town they left the main highway and turned into the narrow crooked road which wound along the banks of a creek through the densest forest in the county.
“I’m going to take you to ‘Inwood,’ General Gaston’s place. The house was burned by Sherman’s army, only the vine-covered ruins are standing now. It was the finest house ever built in the state, and many a gay party held high carnival there in the old days.”
“I’ve heard my mother speak of it,” she answered soberly, glancing at him from the corner of her eye. “In fact, it was there at a picnic one day that my father proposed to his sweetheart and my mother accepted him, and planned their elopement. How strange that you should have chosen to bring me to this place to-day!”
“You’ll understand it later,” he quickly responded.
“I hope you don’t mean to kidnap me?”
“It might be advisable in view of the events of the past three days,” he laughed.
She glanced about her at the deep shadows of the great trees through which they had been passing for more than a mile and shot at him a sudden look of fear.
“Let’s turn back,” she said, flushing and reining her horse to a stand.
A look of pain clouded his face as he bent near.
“Surely, dearest, you can trust the man who worships you! Come, we are only a few hundred yards from the gate.”
“Then I’ll trust you that much further,” she said with a light laugh, spurring her horse forward.
In a few minutes they passed through the ruined gate in the edge of the woods. The broken marble figures which once crowned the brick pillars lay beside the entrance among a mass of tangled blackberry briars. They had been pried from their places and hurled there by the bayonets of Sherman’s men and had not been touched since.
The lawn, which once had spread its beautiful carpet of flowers and shrubbery in wide acres here in the heart of the ancient woods, had grown up in ugly broom straw and young pines, which were slowly strangling to death the more delicate forms of life. The dark fir trees, magnolia and holly, still flourished in luxury.
Towering in solemn, serried line on a gentle eminence still stood the six great white Corinthian pillars of the front façade of the house. Behind them in dark background a row of Norwegian firs, fifty years old, marked the sky line. The afternoon sun cast the shadows of the trees across the fluted marble of two of the pillars, while the other four shimmered in the splendour of the sunlight.
The capitals of the columns had fallen with the blazing ruins of the house, but the bases and tall beautiful fluted forms of each were yet perfect. The ivy which had grown on the sides of the stone steps had climbed in unbridled riot over one of them and hung in graceful festoons from the top.
To Stella’s fancy they seemed grim white sentinels guarding the entrance to some vast empire of the dead.
“How still and death-like everything is,” she said, with a timid glance about her. “We seem a thousand miles from life.”
He took her hand.
“When I stand by your side, in every silent space I hear the beating of the wings of angels.”
“The wings of the angel of Death here, I should think!” she said in strange subdued tones, as her eyelids drooped and she looked away.
“Away with such nonsense,” he cried, cheerily. “I’ve something to do before I dare to speak to you again of the love that is in my heart.”
He led her behind the towering columns, and, at the rear of the ruins of the heavy brick walls, entered the basement by a stairway half covered with fallen débris.
The floors of the first story which had been constructed of iron and cement foundations had remained unbroken. The basement, once entered below the ruins, was in a state of perfect preservation.
They entered the immense kitchen whose walls had once echoed with the voices of swarms of indolent well-fed slaves.
Stella looked about her in amazement, asking with a slight tremor in her voice:
“Why have you brought me here?”
“To place my life in your hands, joyously, without a single reservation,” he said with deep earnestness. “You are in the council chamber of the Invisible Empire. Here its High Court of Life and Death was held.”
Stella’s breath quickened and she glanced at John with furtive eyes.
“I should have told you frankly at first. You had the right to know before you gave your life into my keeping.”
He led her to the big wrought-iron range and opened one of its ovens, revealing the form of an old-fashioned safe.
Taking a huge key from his pocket, he opened the door and drew from it a package of papers.
“I am going to show you, my love, what no woman’s eye ever saw before, the guarded secrets of the Invisible Empire, its signs, passwords, ritual and secret oath. In this act I now imperil no life save my own.”
Stella’s tapering fingers trembled as she turned the pages nervously and read its brief formulas.
“As Chief of the Klan I met here the leaders from each district.”
“Then—you—are—the—Chief?” she slowly asked, bending low to hide her flushed face.
“Yes, I was the only Chief the Empire ever had in the state,” he answered with a ring of boyish pride.
“And you bowed to no law save your own?” she asked in low tones.
“No.”
“And you really did hold high courts of life and death?” she whispered.
“Yes, we were the sole guardians of white civilisation. It was a necessity—the last resort of desperation.”
“You tried men here in secret, sentenced them without a hearing, executed them at night without warning, mercy or appeal?”
“It had to be—there was no other way. A million soldiers girded us with their bayonets. We had to strike under a mantle of darkness and terror, where the power of resistance was weakest, the blow unsuspected and discovery impossible.”
“How terrible!” she interrupted with a shudder. “And yet,” she went on with a sudden flash of her eye, “its mystery and its daring fascinate me! Would you do something just to please a romantic fancy of mine?”
“I have but one desire in life—to please your fancy,” he cried.
“Come here with me again, day after to-morrow night, and dress in your costume as Chief of the High Court of the Klan. Bring some lanterns and we’ll light it up—it’s just a fancy of mine—will you do it?”
“You’re not afraid to be here alone with me at night?”
“Why should I? I love to do daring unconventional things. Besides, do we not belong to each other now?”
“You do love me?” he whispered.
“Do you doubt it?”
“Kiss me!” he pleaded, bending closer.
With a sudden shudder she drew away.
“Not yet! you must be patient. I’ve a lot of silly notions. That’s one of them. I’ll learn, no doubt.”
“I’ll try to teach you,” he laughed—“and be content to touch your hand until my desire shall be yours.”
They rode swiftly home, John’s soul in a warm glow of happiness. Stella spoke scarcely a word, but her cheeks were flushed and about her deep brown eyes a curious smile was constantly playing.
He left her at the door and as he pressed her hand softly said:
“You scarcely spoke the whole way home—tell me what were you thinking about?”
“I don’t know—perhaps dreaming of your terrible court—of a man being condemned to death without knowing it!”
“Yet a smile was playing about your beautiful face?”
Stella suddenly burst into half hysterical laughter:
“Of course, how can you doubt that I was happy! I’ll tell you all my thoughts to-morrow night.”
“Shall we go on horseback?”
“Yes, but I wish to go alone; I’ll meet you there at dusk,” she replied with another strange laugh, waving her hand as he mounted his horse and galloped away.
She closed the door and with quick nervous step, crossed the hall and passed into the library, confronting Ackerman.
“John Graham is the Chief of the Ku Klux Klan—he has confessed to me!” she whispered excitedly. “I have arranged everything for his arrest day after to-morrow evening at their secret meeting place.”
“Then our work is complete,” he said with a ring of triumph.
“And his execution is a certainty?”
“I haven’t the remotest idea that Graham himself can ever be convicted of the murder of Judge Butler—but your discovery is of tremendous importance.”
“He—cannot—be—convicted!” Stella gasped.
“No, but the Invisible Empire will be in ruins in forty-eight hours,” he replied, seizing his hat. “Excuse me now, I have work of the gravest importance to-night. Thanks for the promptness with which you have kept your promise.”
Before Stella could speak he was gone. With a scowl on her beautiful brow, she called Maggie:
“Tell Mr. Steve Hoyle I wish to see him here immediately.”
STEVE’S response to Stella’s call was prompt.
He entered the library with heavy, firm step, a flush of triumph on his sleek handsome animal face.
“He has betrayed the Klan to you?” he asked with eagerness.
“Sit down,” she responded coolly, an accent of resentment rising in her voice. “Before I answer that important question, I’ve something I wish to ask you.”
“Anything you like,” he answered suavely. “And I want the truth,” she continued, with increasing emphasis.
“I’ll give it to you if it’s in my power.”
“You haven’t done it always,” was the firm retort.
“You wish to know about the men on whom I rely to execute justice on John Graham?”
“Yes, who are they?”
“Members of the Klan from the hills—innocent men on whom he wreaked his vengeance in the most brutal and inhuman manner without a trial.”
“You are sure they are members of the Klan?”
“Certainly.”
“They will come to arrest and try him, dressed in the same costumes the men wore the night my father was killed?”
“Yes.”
“Have you hired these men to assassinate him?” she suddenly asked, piercing Steve with her great eyes.
“My God, no!” he protested.
“What will they do?”
“Why, try him by his own laws, of course,” Steve answered vaguely.
“What laws?”
“The law of the Order which forbids an officer to abuse his power by using it for personal ends as he did in the murder of the Judge.”
“Why have they not tried him before?”
“The feeling against him was not strong enough.”
“And now?”
“If he has betrayed the Klan, by his own laws he can be torn limb from limb, so long as a shred of its power remains.”
“He could not be put to death for telling the secrets of the Klan to the woman he loves?”
“Yes.”
“And he knows this?”
“Of course.”
“A big, glorious, beautiful thing, a love like that, isn’t it?” she cried with strange elation, tears flashing from her eyes.
“From the woman’s point of view, perhaps it is—from that of the man whose life he puts in peril, hardly.”
“But from the woman’s point of view! yes—and judged by her standard, cowards who hedge and lie and fear to do such things don’t measure very high beside him—do they? I’m afraid, Steve, your love is a weak thing. It would be a pity to kill a man who would dare death to please the fancy of the woman he loves—now, wouldn’t it?”
“Such a man, for example, as he who sneaked under cover of the night and struck your father dead at your feet without a chance to defend himself,” Steve sneered.
“Yes! That’s the hideous thought that strangles me!” she cried, her breast heaving with a tumult of emotion, her breath coming in gasps of passion.
“You are going to falter and give up?” he asked indignantly.
Stella ignored his question and said in even tones as though talking to herself:
“I had intended to have the United States marshals arrest him dressed in the Klan costume at their meeting place.”
“And now?” Steve broke in eagerly.
“I don’t know what to do. I’ll be frank with you, Steve—I never expected to keep my promise to marry you—I never really expected to face such a choice. There are times when I like you. There’s evil in me, as there is in you—cruelty, pride, selfishness—I feel our kinship. But I don’t love you, and the closer I get to you the less I love you.”
“You’ll learn to love me—I’ll wait,” he broke in.
“The reason why I like you less and less,” she went on, “is that I feel other forces in me which are not evil—big, generous impulses, and aspirations for things beautiful and true and good that you have never felt and could never understand.”
“Which some other man might develop,” he snapped. “Well, play the baby act then, and give it all up.”
“No, I’ve made up my mind to have the life of the man who took my father’s. It’s the one supreme passion which dominates my soul and body.”
“He has confessed to you then?” Steve cried breathlessly.
“Yes.”
“Where will the men meet you?”
“At Inwood immediately after dark, day after to-morrow,” she answered firmly.
“It’s too early. Nine o’clock is better. The men will have time for careful preparation.”
“I’ll be with him in the basement. He will be in the Klan costume; I wish him arrested and tried in that.”
“It shall be exactly as you wish,” said Steve, his eyes sparkling with triumph. “And your signal to the men?”
“Will be a light in the window of the basement.”
“I understand—Inwood—nine o’clock at night, day after to-morrow.”
Stella’s answer was scarcely a whisper:
“Yes.”