The Breaking Point

But if Judson Clark had died, the story still lived. Every so often it

came up again. Three years before he had been declared legally dead, and

his vast estates, as provided by the will of old Elihu Clark, had gone

to universities and hospitals. But now and then came a rumor. Jud Clark

was living in India; he had a cattle ranch in Venezuela; he had been

seen on the streets of New Orleans.

Bassett ran over the situation in his mind.

First then, grant that Clark was still living and had been in the

theater that night. It became necessary to grant other things. To grant,

for instance, that Clark was capable of sitting, with a girl beside him,

through a performance by the woman for whom he had wrecked his life, of

a play he had once known from the opening line to the tag. To grant that

he could laugh and applaud, and at the drop of the curtain go calmly

away, with such memories behind him as must be his. To grant, too, that

he had survived miraculously his sensational disappearance, found a new

identity and a new place for himself; even, witness the girl, possible

new ties.

At half past two Bassett closed his memorandum book, stuffed it into his

pocket, and started for home. As he passed the Ardmore Hotel he looked

up at its windows. Gregory would have told her, probably. He wondered,

half amused, whether the stage manager had told him of his inquiries,

and whether in that case they might not fear him more than Clark

himself. After all, they had nothing to fear from Clark, if this were

Clark.

No. What they might see and dread, knowing he had had a hint of a

possible situation, was the revival of the old story she had tried so

hard to live down. She was ambitious, and a new and rigid morality was

sweeping the country. What once might have been an asset stood now to be

a bitter liability.

He slowed down, absorbed in deep thought. It was a queer story. It might

be even more queer than it seemed. Gregory had been frightened rather

than startled. The man had even gone pale.

Motive, motive, that was the word. What motive lay behind action.

Conscious and unconscious, every volitional act was the result of

motive.

He wondered what she had done when Gregory had told her.

As a matter of fact, Beverly Carlysle had shown less anxiety than

her brother. Still pale and shocked, he had gone directly to her

dressing-room when the curtain was rung down, had tapped and gone in.

She was sitting wearily in a chair, a cigarette between her fingers.

Around was the usual litter of a stage dressing-room after the play, the

long shelf beneath the mirror crowded with powders, rouge and pencils,

a bunch of roses in the corner washstand basin, a wardrobe trunk, and a

maid covering with cheese-cloth bags the evening's costumes.