CHAPTER IX A GLEAM OF LIGHT

The white-capped attendant at the hospital led us up a flight of broad, easy steps, to a large sunny room where convalescents were allowed to try their new strength. Here "our man" was sitting in a large arm-chair, wrapped in a blanket.

"He simply wouldn't stay in bed," the nurse explained in an undertone. "He says he must go home, but he really isn't strong enough to walk across the room without help."

"Is there anything the matter with him? Beyond exhaustion, I mean," I asked. Jean had run across the room and was bending over the old man with a coaxing concern in her face that was charming. She was like an elfin sprite trying to express sympathy for some poor, huddled-up toad.

"That's enough," said the nurse crisply. "No, there doesn't seem to be anything else wrong. But it will take a week at least before he is able to take care of himself. His mind will grow stronger as he does." "Isn't his mind right?"

"You can talk to him," she said, non-committally. "Don't tire him." And with that she left us.

Jean came running back to meet me and put me properly into touch with things.

"He isn't happy," she explained hastily. "You must be cheerful, and not bother him.--Here is Mr. Hilton who has come to see you, Mr. Jordan. Now you can have a nice little talk with him." Her tone indicated that this was indeed a privilege which might make up for many slings from unkind fortune.

Mr. Jordan made an impatient gesture as though he would throw off the blanket which was binding his arms.

"What am I doing here?" he asked querulously. "I want to get away. How did I get here?"

"You fainted away on the street, Mr. Jordan," I answered. "We brought you here to have you taken care of. Of course you may go as soon as you are able to. Do you want to go home? Wouldn't it be best for some member of your family or some friend to come for you?"

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He was Diavolo's partner," he said vehemently. Page 137.>

He let his chin sink upon his breast, and closed his eyes. Jean telegraphed me a look of comment, interpretation and exhortation. I half guessed what she meant, but I was too keen on my own trail to consider making things easy for the old man.

"I believe you came to Saintsbury to look up Alfred Barker," I said, quietly.

He did not answer or open his eyes, but I felt that his silence was now alert instead of dormant, and presently a slow shiver ran over his frame.

"It was a shock to you to find that he was dead, was it not?"

He roused himself to look at me. "I can't get at Diavolo except through him. He was Diavolo's partner," he said vehemently.

"I am quite ready to believe that," I said heartily. But Jean had the good sense not to be frivolous. She was smoothing the old man's hand softly.

"Who is Diavolo?" she asked simply.

"If I knew! He was careful enough not to give his name." He was trembling with excitement and his voice broke in his throat.

I began to see that this was a story which I must get, and also that I should have to get it piecemeal from his distracted mind.

"Where did you meet Diavolo?" I asked.

"Why, at Eden Valley."

The name struck an echo in my brain. Of what was Eden Valley reminiscent?

"What was he doing there?" I asked, questioning at hazard.

The old man clutched the arms of his chair with his hands and leaned forward to look into my face. "You never heard of him?"

"Not a word."

He nodded heavily and sank back in his chair. "He gave a show," he said dully. "In the Opery House. To show off how he could hypnotize people." A slow tear gathered in his eye.

I began to get a coherent idea. "Oh, Diavolo was the name assumed for show purposes by a man who went around giving exhibitions of hypnotism. Is that it?"

"Yes."

"What did Alfred Barker have to do with it?"

"He was with him. He was the man that engaged the Opery House and done the rest of the business. Diavolo kep' in the background. Nobody knows who Diavolo was, but Alfred Barker left a trail I could follow." Excitement had made his voice almost strong, and brought back a momentary energy.

"What did you want to follow him for?"

His face worked with passion. "To get back my thousand!" he cried, clenching his trembling hands.

"How did he get your thousand?"

"He got it from the bank, on a check he made me sign while I was hypnotized!"

Suddenly I remembered,--Eden Valley, 32.00 plus 1000. That was a part of the memoranda in Barker's note-book. A memorandum of the profits of their trip! But I must understand it better.

"Did you let Diavolo hypnotize you?" I asked.

"I didn't think he could," the old farmer admitted, hanging his head. "I thought my will was too strong for him to get control of me. He called for people to come up from the audience and I laughed with the rest to see him make fools of the boys,--making them eat tallow candles for bananas, and scream when he threw a cord at them and said it was a snake, and things like that. But I was mighty proud of my strong will, and the boys dared me to go up and let him have a try at me, so I went."

"And did he make you sign a check?" I asked, incredulously.

"Not then. That was too public. He knew his business too well for that. But he got control of me." There was something pitiable in the man's trembling admission. "He hypnotized me before I knew it, and when I came to, I was standing on a chair in the middle of the stage, trying to pull my pants up to my knees, because he had told me that I was an old maid, and there was a mouse on the floor, and the boys out in front were rolling over with laughter."

"That was very unkind," said Jean, indignantly.

"I was ashamed and I was mad," the old man continued, "and I knew the boys would make everlasting fun of me, so next day I went up to see him at the hotel. I thought if I could talk to him, man to man, and without the fancy fixings of the stage, I could maybe find out how it was did. He was pleasant and smiling and talked easy, and then I don't remember one thing after that. Just a smoke in my mind. I suppose he hypnotized me without my knowing it."

"That is possible, I suppose, since he had had control of your will before. What next?"

"The next thing I knew, I was walking up the road home, feeling queer and dizzy in my head. I couldn't remember how I got out of the hotel, nor nothing. And I didn't know what had really happened until I went to the bank to draw some money a month afterwards, and they told me I had checked it all away."

"Is that possible?" I asked doubtfully.

"Easy enough," he said bitterly. "I could see it clear enough afterwards. If he could make me believe I was an old maid afraid of a mouse, couldn't he just as easy make me think I owed him a thousand dollars and was making a check to pay it? I had my check book in my pocket when I went there, and it showed my balance, of course, so it was easy enough for them to find out how much they could ask for and not get turned down by the bank. The last check was torn out but the stub not filled in. And the bank showed me the canceled check all right."

"Payable to whom?"

"To Alfred Barker. But he was only the hired man, I could see that. Diavolo was the real one. Barker came and went when he lifted his finger. But Alfred Barker's name was on the check, so his name wouldn't show. I had time to think it all out afterwards."

It was an amazing story, but I could not pronounce it incredible, especially when I recalled that significant "plus" of $1000 at Eden Valley, in Barker's memorandum book.

"What did you do about it? Anything?"

"I tried to follow them. Diavolo showed in other places, and I thought I could find them. I see there wasn't no use going to law about it, because I couldn't deny that I had signed the check, and I understand it ain't against the law to hypnotize a man. But if I could find them, I bet I could get some satisfaction out of Barker's hide, if I could catch him alone. I wasn't going to take any more chances with Diavolo." He shuddered.

"You never caught up with them?"

"No. They had always just gone on. Then they stopped the show business and I lost track of them, till I heard that Barker was in Saintsbury. I came as fast as I could, but--I was too late." His head fell forward on his breast, and he looked ready to collapse. His loss, the long pursuit, the disheartening ending, had broken him.

Jean looked at me anxiously, and I understood, but it seemed to be too important to get all the information possible from the old man at once to give more than the barest consideration to his feelings. I poured a little whiskey into the cup of my pocket flask, and after he had choked it down he looked more equal to further cross-examination.

"Did you ever hear Barker address Diavolo by name?" I asked.

"No. I tell you he was the hired man."

"What did Diavolo look like?"

"He was about your height and build. Thin dark face. Long black hair and a soft black beard. Queer eyes that gave you the shivers."

It was not an identifying description. Probably nineteen men out of twenty are of my height and build, which is in all respects medium; the long hair and black beard were probably stage properties; and the queer eyes might be merely Mr. Jordan's afterthought of what the hypnotizer's eyes ought to be.

"Would you know him again if you saw him without his hair and beard?"

He looked surprised, and then doubtful. "I don't know."

But at this point the attendant nurse came up, and intimated plainly that I was a trespasser and transgressor, and that the interview was ended.

"I'll come to-morrow and take you out for a drive, if the doctor thinks you are strong enough to go," I said, by way of keeping the door open for further details.

"I must go home," he said, querulously.

"The faster you get strong, the sooner you can go. Till to-morrow, then."

Jean walked beside me quietly and sedately till we were outside. Then she turned to me with a flash of intense feeling.

"What are you going to do for him?"

"Find Diavolo," I answered promptly.

"And make him give back the thousand dollars?"

"If possible," I answered absently. My mind was more actively engaged with other features of the story than with the defrauding of the old farmer, and I was not sorry when I could put Jean on her car, so that I could wander off by myself to think the matter over. How far, if at all, this affair of Diavolo might have a bearing upon the murder mystery was uppermost in my mind. Suppose Diavolo and his "hired man" had quarreled. Suppose they had quarreled to the death? It was, of course, quite probable that a man of Barker's type would have many enemies, but here I was dealing not with probabilities but with a fact, however small it might be. There had been, in the recent past, an intimate relation between Barker and a man who was capable of touring the country as a hypnotist, a man who concealed his identity,--Ha, a motive! They had quarreled over the division of the thousand dollars, and Barker had threatened to expose him! His own death had followed! This chain had developed so rapidly and vividly in my imagination that it was a cold shock when my common sense recalled that I must establish some connection between Diavolo and Gene Benbow to make the thread complete. Whatever part Gene had played or had not played in the tragedy itself, he had confessed to the shot. The confession itself was a fact and must be accounted for, whether the thing confessed was a fact or not.

Up to this time the only theory in my mind that was compatible with Gene's innocence was the theory of romantic self-sacrifice on his part. I had felt that if he was not guilty he was trying to save someone who was. Whom would Gene Benbow wish to save at any cost? Who had killed Barker? Who was Diavolo? Would one name answer all three questions?

That was what I must find out.