The Breaking Point - Page 148/275

Dick had picked up life again where he had left it off so long before.

Gone was David's house built on the sands of forgetfulness. Gone was

David himself, and Lucy. Gone not even born into his consciousness

was Elizabeth. The war, his work, his new place in the world, were all

obliterated, drowned in the flood of memories revived by the shock of

Bassett's revelations.

Not that the breaking point had revealed itself as such at once. There

was confusion first, then stupor and unconsciousness, and out of that,

sharply and clearly, came memory. It was not ten years ago, but an hour

ago, a minute ago, that he had stood staring at Howard Lucas on the

floor of the billiard room, and had seen Beverly run in through the

door.

"Bev!" he was saying. "Bev! Don't look like that!"

He moved and found he was in bed. It had been a dream. He drew a long

breath, looked about the room, saw the woman and greeted her. But

already he knew he had not been dreaming. Things were sharpening in his

mind. He shuddered and looked at the floor, but nobody lay there. Only

the horror in his mind, and the instinct to get away from it. He was not

thinking at all, but rising in him was not only the need for flight, but

the sense of pursuit. They were after him. They would get him. They must

never get him alive.

Instinct and will took the place of thought, and whatever closed chamber

in his brain had opened, it clearly influenced his physical condition.

He bore all the stigmata of prolonged and heavy drinking; his nerves

were gone; he twitched and shook. When he got down the fire-escape his

legs would scarcely hold him.

The discovery of Ed Rickett's horse in the courtyard, saddled and ready,

fitted in with the brain pattern of the past.

Like one who enters a room for the first time, to find it already

familiar, for a moment he felt that this thing that he was doing he

had done before. Only for a moment. Then partial memory ceased, and he

climbed into the saddle, rode out and turned toward the mountains and

the cabin. By that strange quality of the brain which is called habit,

although the habit be of only one emphatic precedent, he followed the

route he had taken ten years before. How closely will never be known.

Did he stop at this turn to look back, as he had once before? Did he let

his horse breathe there? Not the latter, probably, for as, following the

blind course that he had followed ten years before, he left the town and

went up the canyon trail, he was riding as though all the devils of hell

were behind him.