The Breaking Point - Page 130/275

After an hour or so Bassett locked the door behind him and went down to

lunch. He was not hungry, but he wanted to get out of the room, to think

without that quiet figure before him. Over the pretence of food he faced

the situation. Lying ready to his hand was the biggest story of his

career, but he could not carry it through. It was characteristic of

him that, before abandoning it, he should follow through to the end the

result of its publication. He did not believe, for instance, that

either Dick's voluntary surrender or his own disclosure of the situation

necessarily meant a conviction for murder. To convict a man of a crime

he did not know he had committed would be difficult. But, with his

customary thoroughness he followed that through also. Livingstone

acquitted was once again Clark, would be known to the world as Clark.

The new place he had so painfully made for himself would be gone. The

story would follow him, never to be lived down. And in his particular

profession confidence and respect were half the game. All that would be

gone.

Thus by gradual stages he got back to David, and he struggled for the

motive which lay behind every decisive human act. A man who followed a

course by which he had nothing to gain and everything to lose was either

a fool or was actuated by some profound unselfishness. To save a life?

But with all the resources Clark could have commanded, added to his

personal popularity, a first degree sentence would have been unlikely.

Not a life, then, but perhaps something greater than a life. A man's

soul.

It came to him, then, in a great light of comprehension, the thing David

had tried to do; to take this waster and fugitive, the slate of his mind

wiped clean by shock and illness, only his childish memories remaining,

and on it to lead him to write a new record. To take the body he had

found, and the always untouched soul, and from them to make a man.

And with that comprehension came the conviction, too, that David had

succeeded. He had indeed made a man.

He ate absently, consulting his railroad schedule and formulating the

arguments he meant to use against Dick's determination to give himself

up. He foresaw a struggle there, but he himself held one or two strong

cards--the ruthless undoing of David's work, the involving of David for

conspiring against the law. And Dick's own obligation to the girl at

home.

He was more at ease in the practical arrangements. An express went

through on the main line at midnight, and there was a local on the

branch line at eight. But the local train, the railway station, too,

were full of possible dangers. After some thought he decided to get a

car, drive down to the main line with Dick, and then send the car back.