Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-01-27

q HE was worried by that time, but far
- more collected than he was. She sat,
! ~ absently tapping the shelf with nail
file, and rejecting.
"All right, she said Suppose 1t is?
What then? He has been in hiding for ten
years. Why shouldn't he continue to hide?
What would bring him out now? Unless he
needed money. Was he shabby?"
NO" he said sulkily. HE was with a
girl. He was dressed all right"
"You didn't say anything, except to Joe
Saunders?"
"No, I'm not crazy to tell the world"
"Pd better see Joe," she reflected GO
and get him, Fred. And tell Alice she
needn't watt
She got up and moved about the room, put
ting things away and finding relief in move
ment, still beautiful woman, with rather &C.
centuated features and an easy carriage. Just
then she was uneasy and resentful, startled
but not particularly alarmed Her reason
told her that Judson Clark even if he still
lived and had been there that night, meant
to leave the dead past to care for ITSELF and
wished, no more than she, to revive it.
Her brother came back, and she turned to
meet him. To her surprise he was standing
inside the door, white to the lips and staring
at her with wide eyes.
"Saunders!" he said chokingly. "Saun-
ders, the fool! He's given it away, Bev.'
He staggered to chair, and ran a hand
kerchief across his shaking lips.
"He told Bassett, of the 'Times-Repub-
1ican' he managed to say. "Do you-do you
know what that means? And Bassett got
Clark's automobile number. He told Joe.''
He looked up at her, his face tWitching
They'll get the story, and blow it wide
open!"
you know I'm prepared for that, have
been for ten years.
I'D better make sure that it was Jud first"
he offered, after time, land then warn
him."
"Why?"
"You know what I think. think he be-
lieves-"
"Hush!" she commanded sharply. "No,
Fred. You let the thing alone"
She sent him out for taxi soon after and
they went back to the hotel. But, alone later
on in her suite in the Ardmore, she did rot
Immediately go to bed. She put dressing
gown, and stood for long time by her win
dow, looking out. Instead of the city lights,
however, she saw a range of snow-capped
mountains, and sheltered at their foot the
Clark house, built by the old millionaire as
place of occasional refuge from the pressure
of his life. There lie had raised his fine
horses, and trained them for the track. There,
when late in life he married. he had taken
his wife for their honeymoon and two years
later, for the birth of their son. And there,
when she died he had returned with the
child, broken and prematurely aged, to be
killed by one of his own stations, when the
boy was fifteen.
NIX years his own master Judson had
been twenty-one to her twenty, when
~ she first met him. Going the usual
pace too, and throwing money right and left.
He had financed her stage properties, nd
then he fell in love with her. She shivered
as she remembered it. 1t had been desperate
oh
else.
She left the window, turned out the lights
and got into her bed. She was depressed and
lonely, and she cried a little. After time
she remembered that she had not put any
cream on her face She crawled out and
went through the familiar motions in the
dark.
Dick rose next morning with sense of
1ightness and content that sent him singing
into his shower. -
The world was a good place. A fine old
place. 1t had work and play and love. 1t
had office hours and visits anC the golf links,
and it had soft feminine eyes, and small ten
der figures always to be cared for and looked
after.
She liked him. She did not think he was
old. She thought his profession was the
finest in the world. She had wondered if he
would have time to come and see her, some
day. Time! He considered very seriously,
whether it would be too soon to run in that
afternoon. Perhaps tomorrow would look
better. No, hang it ALL today was today
On his way from the bathroom to his bed
room he leaned over the staircase.
Aunt LUCY" he called
eyes, Dick?"
''The top of the morning to you! D'you
think Minnie would have time to press my
blue trousers this morning?"
There was the sound of her chair being
pushed back in the dining room, OF colo
guy in the kitchen, and Minnie herself ap-
peared below him.
Just throw them down. DR.. Dick" she
said give got an iron hot now"
This mood of unreasoning happiness con-
tinued all morning. He went from house to
house, properly grave and responsible, /out
with a small song in his heart.
At the luncheon table he was almost hilar-
ious and David played up to him albeit rather
heavily. But Lucy was thoughtful and qu!et
She had a sense of things somehow closing
down on them, of hands reaching out from the
past, and clutching.
She could not eat.
Nevertheless, when she herself admitted a
new patient for Dick that afternoon, she mad
no premonition of trouble. She sent him into
the waiting room, tall, robust and younglsh
man. perhaps in his late thirties.
On the other hand, Louis Bassett was feel-
ing more or less uncomfortable. There was
an air of peace and quiet responsibility ABOUT
the old house, that somehow made his errand
appear absurd To connect with 1t Judso9
clark and his tumultuous past seemed
ridiculous.
His errand, on the surface, was neuralgia
headache.
When, hat in hand, he walked into Dicks
consulting room, he had made up MS mlnu
that he would pay the price of an over-actlVe
imagination for a prescription; walk out
again. and try to forget that he had let
chance resemblance carry him off his feet.
But as he watched the man who sat across