A Husband by Proxy

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  FOSTER DURGIN

  Confusion reigned in the office presently, for more of the officerscame upon the scene, and people from adjoining rooms helped to swellthe numbers. Everyone was talking at once.

  The form of Wicks, motionless and broken, lay far below the window, onthe pavement of an air and light shaft, formed like a niche in thebuilding. Garrison sent Dorothy to her lodgings, promising to visither soon. There was nothing she could do in such a place, and he feltthere was much she should be spared.

  Pike, young Barnes, and Foster Durgin remained, the two former aswitnesses of what had occurred, Durgin by Garrison's request. Allothers were presently closed out of the office, and the body of Wickswas removed.

  The hour that followed, an hour of answering questions, makingstatements, proving who he was and what, was a time that Garrisondisliked exceedingly, but it could not be escaped. Reporters hadspeedily gathered; the story would make a highly sensational sequel tothe one already printed.

  The guilt of Wicks had been confessed. Corroborative testimony beingquite abundant, and every link in the chain complete, the affair leftno possible suspicion resting upon either Scott or any of Hardy'srelatives; and Garrison and Durgin refused to talk of Dorothy'smarriage or anything concerning the will.

  The story used before was, of course, reviewed at length. Despite thedelays of the investigation immediately undertaken, Garrison managed atlast to secure the freedom of Pike and Will Barnes, in addition to thatof himself and Foster Durgin. As good as his word, he took thedisciple of Walton to a first-class dealer in sportsmen's articles andbought him a five-dollar rod. Barnes and the coroner of Branchvillestarted somewhat late for their town.

  The evening was fairly well advanced when at length young Durgin andGarrison found themselves enabled to escape officials, reporters, andthe merely curious, to retire to a quiet restaurant for something toeat and a chat.

  Durgin, as he sat there confronting his host, presented a picture toGarrison of virtues mixed with hurtful tendencies. A certain look ofmelancholy lingered about his eyes. His mouth was of the sensitivedescription. His gaze was steady, but a boyish expression of defiancesomewhat marred an otherwise pleasant countenance.

  He showed both the effects of early spoiling and the subsequentintolerance of altered conditions. On the whole, however, he seemed amanly young fellow in whom regeneration was more than merely promised.

  Garrison ordered the dinner--and his taste was both excellent andgenerous.

  "Mr. Durgin," he said at last with startling candor, "it looked for atime as if you yourself were concerned in the death of Mr. Hardy. Morethan half the pleasure that Dorothy will experience in the outcome ofto-day's affairs will arise from her knowledge of your innocence."

  Foster met his gaze steadily.

  "I am sorry for many of the worries I have caused," he said, in aquiet, unresentful manner, free alike from surprise or anger. "I'vebeen trying to do better. You knew I'd been away?"

  "That was one of the features of the case that looked a littlesuspicious," answered Garrison.

  "I didn't care to tell where I was going, in case my mission shouldfail," the young fellow imparted. "I went after work--good, clean,well-paying work--and I got it. I can hold up my head at last."

  A look of pride had come upon his face, but his lip was trembling.That the fight he had waged with himself was manly, and worthily won,to some considerable extent, was a thing that Garrison felt. He had nointention of preaching and no inclination for the task.

  "'Nuff said," he answered. "Shake. Here comes the soup."

  They shook hands over the table. No further reference was made to apersonal subject. Some way Garrison felt that a man had come to takethe place of a boy, and while he reflected that the fight was not yetabsolutely finished, and the bitterness of it might remain for sometime yet to come, nevertheless he was thoroughly convinced that throughsome great lesson, or some awakening influence, Foster had come to hismanhood and could henceforth be trusted to merit respect and the trustof all his fellow-beings.

  Garrison, alone, at nine o'clock, had an impulse to hasten off toBranchville. In the brief time of lying unconscious on the floor whenWicks struck him down, he had felt some strange psychic sense takepossession of his being, long enough for the room that Hardy hadoccupied in Hickwood to come into vision, as if through walls madetransparent.

  He had merely a dim, fading memory that when he awoke he had spoken toDorothy, telling her to help him to go, that the hiding-place ofHardy's will had been at last revealed. As he thought of it now, onhis way to Dorothy's abiding place, he shook his head in doubt. It wasprobably all an idle dream.