Chapter 39 - Page 2

come," he began to say. "I wanted at least a word with you before I went on."

Then his smile died out, leaving blank amazement which a breath's space later was alarmed questioning. He recalled later how for a second he stood and stared. Latimer's face was white and damp with sweat. Its lines were drawn and sunken deep. His eyes were fixed on the man before him with something which had a ghastly resemblance to an unsteady smile which was not a smile at all. He looked as if illness--or death--or madness had struck him. He did not seem a sane man, and yet a stillness so deadly was expressed by his whole being that it seemed to fill the small, neat, business-like green-room.

Baird strode towards him and seized him by the shoulder.

"What is it? What is it? What is it?" he cried out.

Latimer's face did not alter in a line. He fumbled stiffly in his breast-pocket and held out some pieces of yellowed letter-paper--this being done stiffly, too. He spoke in a hoarse whisper. It seemed to search every corner of the room and echo there.

"See!" he said. "These are two letters. A man wrote them to a poor, half-mad child twenty years ago."

The door opened, and the member of the committee looked in again, radiant with exultation.

"The audience waiting in such breathless silence that you might hear a pin drop. Two thousand of them, if there's one. Ten minutes to eight."

"Thank you," answered Baird.

The door closed again and he stood looking at Latimer's rigid hand and the papers.

"They were written to Margery," went on Latimer. "Stamps found them in a chink in the logs. She had hidden them there that she might take them out and sob over and kiss them. I used to hear her in the middle of the night."

Baird snatched them from his hand. He fell into a chair near the table and dropped his face upon the yellowed fragments, pressing them against his lips with awful sobbing sounds, as if he would wrest from them the kisses the long-dead girl had left there.

"I, too!" he cried. "I, too! Oh! my God! Margery!"

"Don't say 'God!'" said Latimer. "When she was dying, in an agony of fear, she said it. Not that word! Another!"

He said no other--and Latimer drew nearer to him.

"You wrote them," he said. "They are written in your hand--in your words--I should know them anywhere. You may deny it. I could prove nothing. I do not want to prove anything. Deny it if you will."

Baird rose unsteadily. The papers were clutched in his hand. His face was marred by the unnaturalness of a man's tears.

"Do you think I shall deny it?" he answered. "It is true. I have sat and listened to your talk of her and thought I should go quite mad. You have told me of