Chapter 40

Tom walked up the staircase pondering deeply. The De Willoughby claim was before the House. Judge Rutherford was making his great speech, and the chief claimant might have been expected to be sitting breathless in one of the galleries. But he was not. He was going to Baird, who had sent for him, and Baird was sitting in the room in which Latimer lay dead with a bullet in his heart. He had been sitting there for hours, and when Tom had arrived at the house he had been told that Baird had asked that he should be taken to him in the death-chamber. He was sitting on a chair by the bed on which Latimer was stretched, rigid with a still face, which looked like a mask of yellow wax, appearing above the exceeding freshness of the turned-down linen sheet. Baird did not move as Tom entered, but continued to gaze at the dread thing with dull, drooping eyes. Tom went to him and laid his hand on his shoulder. He saw the man was stupefied.

"There's nothing to say, Baird," he said after a silence, "when it comes to this."

"There is something for me to say," Baird answered, very quietly. "I want to say it before him, while he lies there. I wonder if he will hear?"

"He may."

"It would not do any good to anyone if he did," Baird said. "The blackness of it all lies in that--that he would not be helped, she would not be helped--I should not."

"She?" said Tom.

Baird got up at once, stiffly and unsteadily. He stood upright, the lithe-limbed slender form, which was so much admired upon the platform, held rigidly. His face looked lined and haggard.

"No other man shall feel an affection for me--I think you are beginning to feel an affection for me--under a false impression. That man loved me for long years, and I loved him. I think I helped him to something that was as near happiness as his nature would allow him to feel. God knows I owed it to him. I was one of those who repented too late. That is why I have preached of repentance. I have done it with a secret, frenzied hope."

"Did he know your reason?" asked Tom.

"Not until last night. When he knew it, he killed himself."

"Because--?" began Tom.

"Because he had loved and trusted me for half a lifetime--because I was the one human creature to whom he had confided the tragedy of his life--knowing he would be sure of comprehension and sympathy. It was to me he poured forth the story of that poor child. You saw her die. She was his sister. And I----"

Tom turned and looked at the face of the dead man and then, slowly, to the face of the living one, who stood before him.

"You--were the man?" he said.

"Yes."

Tom turned to the dead man again. He put his big, warm hand with a curiously suggestive movement--a movement