Chapter XI: Part 11

At the first impact of this astounding piece of news, an exclamation of amazement broke from the minister's lips; but immediately his teeth were set hard as his eye dived down the column, lapping up the words of the story by sentences and almost by paragraphs.

Miss Dounay, it appeared, had gone to the office of District Attorney Miller at three o'clock that afternoon by appointment, and had there sworn to a complaint, charging him, the Reverend John Hampstead, with the theft of her diamond necklace, valued at twenty-two thousand dollars. There were a few lines of an interview with District Attorney Miller, in which that official stated that at first he had not regarded Miss Dounay's charges seriously, but that the actress was so emphatic in her demand for the warrant of arrest that he had not felt himself justified in refusing it. At the same time, the District Attorney expressed his personal belief in the innocence of the minister.

An attempt to serve the warrant immediately, the story said, had been frustrated by the temporary absence of the Reverend Hampstead in San Francisco upon one of his accustomed missions of mercy.

The article concluded with the statement that while it was generally known that Doctor Hampstead was one of Miss Dounay's guests on the night before, the report that he had been charged with the theft of the diamonds was everywhere received with a smile, and there was some harsh criticism of the District Attorney for issuing a complaint, the only effect of which must be to gratify the enemies of the clergyman, and to lessen his influence, thus hampering him in the good work he was doing in the community. This would be all to no purpose, since even a preliminary hearing must be sufficient to show that there was no evidence against him, and that the complaint itself was due to the extravagant suspicion of a highly nervous woman, laboring under great emotional strain.

That the actress herself, a woman of moods and caprices, had no adequate appreciation of the seriousness of her act in thus attacking the character of Doctor Hampstead was made evident to the reporters, when a telephone call to her apartments revealed that in the very hour when an endeavor to serve the warrant of arrest was being made, the actress was leaving her hotel in the company of a well-known young business man for a pleasure cruise upon the Bay.

The minister saw with satisfaction how completely the facts as developed had been edited into a story, the assumptions of which were entirely favorable to him. That was good. It was also right. That in itself would show this reckless woman that the people would refuse to believe ill of him upon the word of any mere stranger.

Nevertheless, reflection on the sheer impudence of the woman's attack made Hampstead angry, and with a quick, nervous movement he crushed the paper into a ball and hurled it over the side.

Was there ever a story of blacker ingratitude? Was there ever a weaker, more craven specimen of a man? Was there ever a more clever, more devilish woman?

So this was the way she made good her threat. She had set this trap, had persuaded Rollie to pretend to steal the diamonds and to make a false confession to him, during which the minister had actually sealed the diamonds in one of his own envelopes. John wished he could be sure whether the young rascal actually took the diamonds away with him, as he appeared to do, or whether he didn't drop them in a drawer of the desk or about the study, where a search would reveal them.

With facial expression quite unministerial Hampstead's mind raced on to the question whether the story of the defalcation was also trumped up? But at this point his excited mental processes halted, puzzled for a moment; and then abruptly his face cleared, as he saw the untenableness of his suddenly conceived theory. No; it would not do. Rollie had undoubtedly been perfectly sincere, and this scheming Jezebel of a woman had merely taken advantage of him in the moment of confession, and made him either consciously or unconsciously, and perhaps helplessly, a tool of her desperate vengeance.

And vengeance for what? Hampstead kept asking himself that, and never got farther with an answer than the rage of a self-centered, heartless woman at his failure to pay the supreme tribute to vanity by making love to her as once he had done, and giving her the gloating satisfaction of spurning him as she had spurned him before. This was the extent of his crime against her, and this bold, bald attempt to destroy him was the punishment she had devised. Heavens! Had the woman no sense of responsibility at all? No consciousness of all the terrible harm she would be doing to so many others besides himself if she succeeded in ruining him? Think of the men and women who trusted him, the young boys and girls to whom he was pointed out as a shining example, the struggling people who found inspiration and courage in the spectacle of his own dauntless battlings for the right.

John felt that it was not egotism to think of himself in this way. He knew it as a fact because he had to know it, because men told him so continually, and because it was a supremely steadying influence upon his own life. He dared not swerve. Rollie Burbeck was not the only man in the community who owed him for escape from a fall, or who was toiling laboriously upward, with an eye on the minister climbing far above and turning cheerfully to beckon or lower an Alpine rope for part of the weakened climber's load.

And the Dounay woman knew all of this. Some of it he had shown to her in the hope that it would be an inspiration. Some of it she had seen for herself. But now, in her malice and hatred, she took no account of all that. Unable to make him swerve, she was wickedly determined to hurl him down. And having used Rollo Burbeck this far, John had no doubt at all that her genius would be entirely equal to using him still further, by binding him to absolute secrecy as to his knowledge of the minister's innocence.

But this thought brought home another with shocking force,--the realization that Rollie, the one man who could vindicate him of this charge must not vindicate him! For Rollie to speak and ruin himself seemed only fair, rather than for the minister to be ruined; yet for the young man to confess would be a terrible blow to the mother,--would in fact most likely kill her. That was unthinkable. That blow must be prevented at all hazards.

But even eliminating the mother, and supposing the young man too craven to speak out for himself, Hampstead knew, thinking back a few hours, that on his honor as a minister he had sealed his own lips concerning the young man's confession; he had hinged his appeal to the moral consciousness of that misguided youth upon his own fealty as a priest of God to the sacred trust of confession. How presumptuous this afternoon sounded that speech which he had made to the wretched penitent this morning with such easy assurance.

Yet, presumptuous or not, Hampstead's reasonings had led him quickly to the one outstanding fact: His knowledge of who did steal the diamonds could never be used in his defense. His vindication must depend solely on the inability of Miss Dounay to prove her case. This in itself put him in a negative and an unnatural position, an all but helpless position. His nature was aggressive. He was a fighter, not a "stander." Instead of vindication, he could never get more than a Scotch verdict of "not proven." He would have to face the community with that. Well, thank God, he was strong enough for that; strong enough to simply stand and endure! Yes, testing his moral fiber by the best judgment he could form of what the strain would be like, he felt equal to the load. In the consciousness of this strength, his shoulders stiffened with pride and a sort of eagerness to take up their burden. A sense of triumph even came to him. This self-deluding woman should see how strong he was, and how unshakable was the faith of the community in the integrity of his character.

But when the minister, rather calmed by having hardened himself thus against what appeared to be coming upon him, lifted his eyes suddenly from the deck, he was disconcerted to observe a group of people eyeing him curiously at a distance of some dozen or twenty feet. These were people whom he did not recognize, but some one of them evidently knew him and had pointed him out to the rest. He reflected that they must have been watching him for some time. No doubt they had observed his demeanor as he read the paper, and afterwards when he tossed it away in anger. He must have made quite an exhibition of himself, and it gave him a creepy sensation to catch these curious, unfeeling eyes upon him as if they viewed the struggles of a fly in a spider's web. It made him feel that he was entangled, and he began to realize what a diversion his entanglement would afford this whole metropolitan community, and that to-night, through the headlines in the papers, everybody was watching him just as these people were. He reflected, too, that there is a fascination about watching the fall of a tall tree, of a tall flagpole, or of a tall human being. At the moment Hampstead did not feel so very tall; yet he knew that deservedly or undeservedly, he was upon a position of eminence, and his fall would afford an interesting spectacle.

However, he did not intend to fall. Rising vigorously from his seat, the minister confronted with a smile the group who had been gazing at him. "Good evening, gentlemen," he said pleasantly, and walked toward the front of the boat.

"Some nerve, what!" was a comment that broke out of the group as he passed it. Whether the words were meant for his ears or not, they reached them and caused another smile.

"I'll show them nerve!" he mused, with foolish but very human pride.

Mingling in the crowd which trampled and elbowed its way off the boat, the minister was careful to bear himself with open-eyed good cheer. He kept his chin up, a self-confident smile upon his face, and his eyes roving for a sight of familiar faces. Whenever he caught the eye of an acquaintance, the greeting he bestowed was hearty and betokened a man without the slightest cause for anxiety of any sort.

Nevertheless, it was disturbing to perceive that people rather avoided his eye. Generally quite the reverse was true, and it was rare upon the boat that some one did not approach him and fall into conversation. Yet so subtle is that mysterious psychology of the social impulse that now a mere publication of the fact that he was to be arrested, even accompanied, as it was, by the statement that nobody believed him guilty, had yet sufficient influence to make him shunned. What a silly world it was, after all!

But in making the transfer from the ferry to the suburban train, there was a walk of two hundred feet, with a news stand on the way, and then fresh disillusionment lay in wait for Doctor Hampstead, in the form of a later edition of another Oakland paper.

"CLERIC FLIES ARREST," bawled this headline stridently.

The minister's lip curled sarcastically at sight of this, but he bought the paper, reading as he walked to the car steps. But the sub-head was more disturbing. "Hampstead's Premises Searched," it declared, the types seeming to scream the words exultantly.

Searched--and in his absence! This was outrageous! More; it was alarming, for there were papers in his study which he had good reason for keeping from the eyes of the police. Fortunately, however, the most important of these were in the safe deposit box. He felt deeply grateful now for this box, the key to which was in his pocket; and after a sympathetic thought for Rose, Dick, and Tayna, and the excited, bewildered state in which they must have received the officers, the clergyman turned his mind to a contemplation of this new account in detail, and thereby got his first real taste of what an unfriendly attitude on the part of a newspaper can make of the most innocent circumstances.

Up to now, the minister, his utterances, his denunciations, even his moral crusades, had been popular. The papers had put the most favorable construction upon all his acts. Their columns and their headlines had done him respect and honor. But now this paper had put every circumstance in the worst possible light. It cleverly touched up those scenes in the picture which looked incriminating and left the others unillumined, until one would never gather from the story that there was any reason to doubt the guilt or the guilty flight of the minister.

Hampstead attributed this to mere unfriendliness, never suspecting that in one hour between editions an editor could have subtly sensed a popular readiness to accept the worst view of his case, and deliberately pandered to it as a mere matter of commercial newsmongering; nor that this unfavorable account was to be accepted as the first straw blown up in a hurricane of adverse criticism which would rise and sweep over the city and blow its very hardest in the aisles of All People's Church itself.

The effect of this narrative upon Hampstead's mind was unspeakably oppressive, and he looked up from its perusal with relief and pleasure at finding a well-known physician in the seat beside him. The doctor was prominent in the work of one of the Encina churches, and had been particularly sympathetic with Hampstead in campaigns against petty crime. The minister had a right, therefore, to feel that this man was one of his friends; yet the physician greeted him with a self-conscious air and immediately relapsed into silence. Hampstead endured this until the humor of the situation forced itself upon him.

"Oh, cheer up," he laughed, poking the physician with an elbow. "You probably know worse people than diamond thieves."

The doctor also laughed and disclaimed any sense of gloom, but his was an embarrassed merriment, and he refrained from meeting the eye of the minister. However, after another interval of silence, as if feeling that he should at any rate say something, he reached over and laid a patronizing hand upon the minister's knee.

"Of course, Doctor Hampstead," he suggested, "every one is confident you will be able to prove your innocence."

The minister made an ejaculation that was short and sharp.

The doctor looked at him with surprise, as if questioning whether he heard aright.

"Under the law, I thought a man was presumed to be innocent, and that his accusers had to prove his guilt," went on Hampstead.

The doctor flushed slightly, and while his eyes roved through the car window, declared:

"Well, I am afraid, Doctor Hampstead, you will find that a public man against whom a charge like this is hurled is presumed to be guilty until he proves himself innocent."

"That is your attitude?" inquired Hampstead coldly.

"Oh, by no means," protested the physician.

"It is his attitude all the same," commented the minister to himself, somewhat bitterly, as he descended from the train at the station nearest his home.

"How does he take it?" asked one sage citizen, crowding into the vacant seat beside the physician, while a second leaned over from behind to hear the answer.

"Very much worried," replied the doctor, as gravely and as oracularly as he would have pronounced upon another man's patient. "Very much worried!"

"Would you believe," the physician inquired presently of the first citizen, with a hesitating and extremely confidential air, "would you believe that Doctor Hampstead would say 'hell'--outside of a sermon, I mean?"

"No," answered the man addressed, "I would not," and his eyebrows were lifted, while his whole face expressed surprise, shock, and a desire for confirmation.

"Well," concluded the doctor enigmatically, "neither would I." And that was all Doctor Mann did say upon the subject, yet citizen number one, while casting the dice with citizen number two at the Tobacco Emporium on the corner next the railroad station to see which should pay for their after-dinner smoke, communicated in confidence that the Reverend Hampstead had, in the stress of his emotion, uttered an oath; in fact, and to be specific, had said that his persecutors, all and singular, and this actress woman in particular, could go to hell!

This conference between citizen one and two may have been overheard. An inference that it was so overheard might have been drawn from the columns of _The Sentinel_, which next morning concluded its story of the remarkable developments of the night with the observation that the character of the minister was evidently cracking under the strain, since last night upon the suburban train, when a friend addressed him with a solicitous inquiry, the accused clergyman had broken into a stream of profane objurgations loud enough to be heard above the roar of the train in several seats around. It was added that the reverend gentleman quickly regained control of his feelings and apologized for his form of expression by saying that he had been overworked for a long time and the developments of the day had seriously upset him.

John Hampstead read this particular paragraph in _The Sentinel_ with a sense of utter amazement at the wicked mendacity of public rumor, since what he had said to Doctor Mann was merely "Humph!" uttered with sharp and scornful emphasis.

But there was a far bigger story than that in the morning _Sentinel_. It had to do with those things which happened between the hour when John Hampstead dropped from his train, a little irritated with Doctor Mann, and the hour when he went to bed, but not to sleep.

*CHAPTER XXVIII*

*THE ARREST*

As the perturbed minister, hurrying from the train, turned into the short street leading toward his home upon the Bay-side, he was charged upon by Dick and Tayna, both of whom, in the state of their emotion, forgot High School dignity and came rushing upon their uncle with feet thudding like running ostriches. Tayna's cheeks were red as her Titian hair with flaming indignation, and her eyes burned like lights, while her full red lips pouted out: "Isn't it a shame?"

"It's a darn piece of blackmail, that's what it is, and it's actionable, too!"

This oracular verdict, of course, came panting from the lips of Dick, who, over-exerted by his run, stood with arms akimbo, hands holding his sides, and his too heavy head tipping backward on his shoulders, while with scrutinizing eye he studied the face of his uncle.

As for Hampstead, in the devoted loyalty of these fatherless children and the distress of mind which each exhibited, he entirely forgot the sense of hot injustice and wrong burning in his own breast. All the emotion he was then capable of turned itself into sympathy for them and solicitous anticipations as to the effect of the whole wretched business upon his sister Rose. With a sweep of his strong arms, he gathered the two young people to his breast, printing a kiss on Tayna's cheek, which he found burning hot, and squeezing Dick until the stripling gasped and struggled for release as he used to do when a squirming youngster. With his arms still affectionately about the shoulders of the two, Hampstead walked on down the street, palm-studded, with flower-bordered skirts of green on either side and the blue vista of the Bay showing dimly in the growing dusk.

Rose was waiting on the piazza. Her face was very calm, yet to John's keen eye, it bore a look of desperately mustered self-control. With the ready intuition of her sex, she had divined far more completely than her brother how desperate and dangerous was the struggle upon which he was entering, and she was determined to give him every advantage that sympathy, poise, and unwavering loyalty could supply.

"It's all right, Rose, all right," he hastened to assure her, as the steps were mounted. "A mere extravagance of an excited woman that the papers have made into a great sensation. It will melt away like fog. We are helpless for a few days until I can demand and receive a hearing upon preliminary trial. That will show that they have no case at all. Until then, we must simply stand and be strong."

Rose was already in her brother's arms, yet his speech, instead of reassuring her, made the tears flow.

"It is so--so humiliating to think of you defending yourself," she protested, "to hear you talk of their inability to make out a case. It seems so--so lowering, as if you were going to be put on trial just like a criminal."

"Why," replied John, "that's just what it all means. _Just like a criminal!_"

He said the thing strongly enough, but after it came a choke in the throat. He had not really comprehended this before. He had thought of making his defense from the standpoint of the popular idol that he was. As a matter of fact, he was going to trial like any criminal. His vantage ground was merely that of the prisoner at the bar. This prepared him for what Rose had to say next; for subtly perceiving that her brother had sustained an additional shock, her own self-control revived. Wiping her eyes, she turned to lead the way within.

"They," she said solemnly, "are waiting in the study."

"They?" inquired Hampstead.

"There are four men in there," Rose replied. "They want," and her voice threatened to break, "they want you!"

At this bald putting of the horrible fact, Tayna burst into a wail of woe and flung her arms about her uncle, whom she had followed into the hall.

"There, there, girl, don't cry," urged her uncle soothingly. "There is no occasion for it; this is annoying but not necessarily distressing. It is a mere formality of the law which must be complied with. Run along now, all of you, and wash the tears out of your eyes. I will be with you in five minutes. Let us sit down to a happy, cheerful dinner. I confess I am a little upset myself, but not too disturbed to be hungry," and with a weak attempt at grimacing humor, the big man laid a hand upon the region of his diaphragm.

In his study, as Rose had forewarned him, the minister found four men: Searle, Assistant District Attorney; Wyatt, Deputy Sheriff; and two city detectives.

Searle was a suave, resourceful man and the one assistant in the District Attorney's office whom Hampstead had found himself unable to trust; and that rather because of his personal and political associations than for any overt act of which the minister was cognizant.

Wyatt was a bloated person, amiable in disposition, whose excess of egotism was coupled with a paucity of intelligence, yet wholly incorruptible and with an exaggerated sense of duty that made him a capable officer,--a thing with which his breeding, which was obtrusively low, did not interfere.

Hampstead was able to master his feelings sufficiently to greet the quartet urbanely, if not cordially.

"A disagreeable duty, I assure you," conceded Searle.

"A disagreeable experience," laughed Hampstead, but with no great suggestion of levity.

"I guess I don't need to read this to you, Doc," said the Deputy Sheriff, as he opened to Hampstead a document drawn from his pocket. "It is a warrant for your arrest."

The minister took the document and glanced it through, his eyes hesitating for a moment at the name of the complaining witness.

"Alice Higgins?" he asked, with an inquiring glance.

"The true name of the complaining witness and accuser," replied Searle.

"Oh, I see," assented John.

It had never occurred to him that Marien Dounay was only a stage name. Was there anything at all about this woman that was not false, he wondered.

John returned the warrant to Wyatt and caught the look in that officer's eye. A sense of the horrible indignity of arrest came over the minister, a perception of what it meant: this yielding of one's liberty, of one's body to the possession of another, who might be a coarser and more inferior person than one's self. With a guilty flush, John thought how many times in his crusades against the gamblers and small law-breakers he had procured the swearing out of complaints that led to the arrest of scores of men. He had marveled at the venomous hatred which those men later displayed toward himself, regarding him as the author of a public disgrace put upon them, and not upon them alone but upon their families also. Now he understood.

"The bail is fixed at ten thousand dollars," explained Searle smoothly. "When we got your telephone message that you would be home at seven o'clock, I took the liberty of arranging for Judge Brennan to be in his chambers at nine to-night so that you could be there with your bondsmen and not have to spend the night in jail."

"That was very considerate of you," assented the minister, a huskiness in his tone despite himself.

The night in jail! The very idea. And ten thousand dollars bail! He had expected to be released upon his own recognizance. Again that disagreeable intimation of being treated like a common criminal came crowding in with a suffocating effect upon his spirit. But he rallied, exclaiming with another effort at easy urbanity: "Very well, I acknowledge my arrest, and it will be unnecessary to detain you gentlemen further. I shall be glad to meet you with my bondsmen in the judge's chambers."

The Deputy Sheriff coughed in an embarrassed way, but stood stolidly before his prisoner.

"I am sorry, Doctor Hampstead," explained Searle, "but we shall have to search you. Benson's men here will do that."

"Search me?" exclaimed Hampstead, with a sudden sense of insult. "By the appearance of things," he added, while casting a sarcastic look at the signs of disorder about, "I should think this farce had been carried far enough. You did not find the diamonds here. You do not expect to find them upon my person, do you?"

The speaker's tones witnessed a natural indignation and considerable irritability.

"I got to do my duty," replied Wyatt stubbornly, making a sign to the two detectives, who immediately arose and advanced upon the minister.

For an instant the situation was exceedingly tense. Hampstead was a very strong man, and his resentment at what seemed an insult put upon him with malice, was very hot. But good sense triumphed in the interval of thought which the officers diplomatically allowed.

"Oh, of course," he exclaimed with a gesture of submission, "you men are only cogs. Once the machinery of the law is put in motion, you must turn with the other wheels. Pardon my irritation, gentlemen, but the situation is unusual for me and rather hard. I feel the injustice and indignity of it very keenly."

"We appreciate your situation perfectly," said Assistant District Attorney Searle smoothly. "As you say, we are all of us cogs."

Yet the actual search of his person, once entered on, seemed to Hampstead to proceed rather perfunctorily, although at the same time he got from the faces and manner of all four an impression of something they were holding in reserve.

"What is this?" asked one of the detectives dramatically, holding up a long, narrow key with a red rubber band doubled and looped about the neck, which he had just extracted from the minister's pocket.

"That is the key to my safe deposit box at the Amalgamated National," replied Hampstead, naturally enough.

"Then," said Wyatt bluntly, "we've got to search that box."

The minister was instantly on his guard.

Some play of eyes between the four men, accompanied by a subtle change in the expression of their faces, warned him that they must have been apprised of the existence of this box and that the key was the real object of their personal search. Hampstead resolved hastily to defeat them.

"I decline to permit it," he declared shortly. "There are very private papers in that box, things which have been communicated to me in the utmost confidence, and I would not be justified in permitting you--or any one else--to handle them. Under the rules of the bank, without my consent or an order of court, you could not reach the box."

"I have that order of court here," said Searle, speaking up quickly, but with cold precision of utterance, "in a search warrant directed particularly to your safe deposit box."

Like a flash, Hampstead thought that he understood.

"So that is what you are here for, Searle?" he snapped sarcastically, turning and confronting the Assistant District Attorney. "I never have trusted you. I couldn't understand your presence here or your interest in this silly charge; but now I comprehend fully. You have taken advantage of it to get your eyes on the perjury case I have against your bosom friend, Jack Roche. Well, I warn you! This is where I stop and fight!"

But Searle refused to get angry at this bald impugnment of his integrity and motives. No doubt it was his confidence in an ultimate and complete humiliation of the minister that enabled him to maintain an unruffled demeanor while he suggested blandly:

"Perhaps you ought not to proceed further, Doctor Hampstead, without the advice of a lawyer."

The proposal touched the minister in his pride.

"A lawyer?" he objected scornfully. "Thank you, no! My cause requires no expert advocacy. In my experience of the past four years, I have learned quite enough about court practice to cope with this ridiculous burlesque without professional assistance."

Searle, playing his cards deliberately, took advantage of the minister's assumed acquaintance with legal lore to suggest with alacrity:

"You know then, Doctor, that it is useless to fight a court order of this sort, as you spoke of doing in your excitement a moment ago. I think, with the attorneys of your Civic League, you have gone through a safe deposit box or two upon your own account, by means of just such a search warrant as I now exhibit to you."

Again Hampstead's second thought assured him that he was powerless to resist.

"Yes," he confessed resignedly to Searle's speech, after the necessary interval for consideration, "I suppose I must admit it. When I spoke of fighting, I spoke in heat; partly because I feel the gross injustice and bitter wrong this senseless charge is doing to innocent people other than myself, who am also innocent, and partly because, as I have already told you, I utterly distrust your motive in making the whole of this search. You must be as well aware as I that this charge is the work of a woman who, to speak most charitably, is beside herself with excitement."

But Searle only smiled, and observed with urbanity unruffled.

"I am sorry, Doctor, that you distrust me. You may have the privilege, of course, of being present when we examine the contents of the box."

"Naturally I shall insist upon that," said the minister.

"In that case," Searle added with significant emphasis, "I think your observations will convince you that we are solely concerned in a search for the diamonds."

"As I like to believe well of all men, I shall hope so," countered the minister; and then, since the demeanor of the officers made it clear there was no more searching to be done, he continued, after a glance at his watch: "If I am to meet Judge Brennan and yourself with my bondsmen at nine o'clock, I suggest that we go from there direct to the bank vaults. They are accessible until midnight, as you doubtless know."

"Very good, Doctor," replied Searle in that oily voice which indicated how completely to his satisfaction affairs were progressing.

"And now," suggested the minister, with a nod toward the street door, "as the hour is late, I will ask you gentlemen to excuse me."

Searle darted a look at Wyatt.

"Very sorry, Doc, but I got to stay with you," volunteered the deputy, "and hand you over to the judge."

Once more the flush of offense mounted to the cheek of Hampstead. Hand him over to the judge! How galling such language was when used of him! Again he recalled with compunction how many arrests he had caused without an emotion beyond the satisfaction of an angler when he hooks a fish. But he--John Hampstead--minister, preacher, pastor of All People's; a shining light in a vast metropolitan community! Surely it was something different and infinitely more degrading for him to be arrested than for a mere plasterer, or mayhap a councilman? He had a greater right than they to be wrathful and resentful. Besides, they were guilty. Judges, juries, or their own confessions, had unfailingly so declared. He was innocent, spotlessly innocent of the charge against him. His defenselessness proceeded from relations of comparative intimacy with the actress, and his priestly knowledge of the guilty person. Yet the thought of this helped humor and good sense to triumph again, over his rising choler.

"Oh, very well," he exclaimed, half-jocularly, half-derisively. "Make yourself at home; all of you make yourselves at home. We are accustomed to an unexpected guest or two at the table. Be prepared to come out to dinner. Listen, if you like, while an arrested felon telephones to his friends, seeking bondsmen. You may hear secret codes and signals passing over the wire. You may even wish to put under surveillance the gentlemen with whom I communicate."

"Doctor! Doctor!" protested Searle, with hands uplifted comically. "Your hospitality and your irony both embarrass us. The detectives and I will be on our way. Wyatt will have to do his duty."

"As you please," exclaimed Hampstead, who was fast recovering his poise; "quite as you please."

With this speech he held open the outside door and bade the three departing guests good evening; and then, while the Deputy waited in the room, the clergyman was busy at the telephone until he had the promise of three different gentlemen of his acquaintance to meet him at Judge Brennan's chambers at nine that night and qualify as his bondsmen in the sum of ten thousand dollars.

This much attended to, dinner became the next order; but it was not a very happy affair. There had never been a time when the little family group, bound together by ties that were unusually tender, wished more to be alone at a meal. Now, when the superfluous presence was the official representative of the very thing that had plunged them into gloom, the situation became one of torture. Food stuck to palates. Scraps of conversation were dropped at rare intervals and upon entirely extraneous subjects in which nobody, not even the speakers, had the slightest interest. At times there was no sound save the audible enjoyment of his food by their guest, for the Deputy Sheriff, accustomed to the ruthless thrust of his official self into the personal and sometimes the domestic life of individuals, was quite too crass to sense the embarrassment and positive pain his presence caused and was also exceedingly hungry.

In this general silence, the grating of wheels on the graveled walk outside the study door sounded loudly.

"Mrs. Burbeck!" exclaimed Hampstead in some surprise. "She never came to me at night before. Finish your dinner, Deputy. If you will excuse me, I must receive one of my parishioners in the study."

"Sorry, but I can't excuse you, Doc," replied Wyatt jocularly; "but if you'll excuse me for just a minute, while I get away with this second piece of loganberry pie, I'll be with you."

"Be with me?" asked the minister, color rising. "Do you mean that you will intrude upon the privacy of an interview with a helpless lady in a wheel chair who comes to see me alone?"

Wyatt's fat cheek was bulging, and there were tiny streams of crimson juice at the corners of the lips; but he interrupted himself long enough to reply bluntly: "I ain't agoin' to let you out of my sight. Orders is orders, that's all I got to say."

"But tell me, Wyatt, who gave you such orders?" queried the minister, with no effort to conceal his irritation.

"Searle. And they were give to him," answered the Deputy phlegmatically, his fat-imbedded eyes intent upon the white and crimson segment of pastry on his plate.

"And who gave such orders to him?" persisted Hampstead.

"If you ask me--" began the Deputy, and then exasperatingly blotted out the possibility of further speech by the transfer of the dripping triangle to his mouth.

"Well, I do ask you," declared the minister curtly.

"He got 'em from Miss Dounay."

"And is that woman running the District Attorney's office?" questioned the minister scornfully.

"Search me!" gulped Wyatt, with a shrug of his shoulders. "I had one look at her. She's got eyes like a pair of automatics. You take it from me, Doc," and Wyatt laid his unoccupied hand upon the sleeve of the minister, "if she's got anything on you, compromise and do it quick; if she ain't, fight, and fight like h----." Wyatt stopped and shot an apologetic glance around the table. "'Scuse my French," he blurted, "but you know what I mean."

"Yes," said the minister, holding his head very straight, "I realize that you do not mean to insult me."

"Insult you?" argued the Deputy, overflowing with satisfied amiability. "After coming over here to arrest you, and you givin' me a dinner like this? Pie like this? Well, I guess not. I'm bribed, Doc, that's what I am. I got to go in that room with you when you see the old lady; but I'll hold my thumbs in my ears, and I won't see a d---- there I go again." Once more Wyatt's apologetic look swept around the table.

"Mrs. Burbeck is in the study," announced the maid.

*CHAPTER XXIX*

*THE ANGEL ADVISES*

Because locomotion was not easy for her, it was to have been expected that the conferences between John Hampstead and Mrs. Burbeck, which, especially in the early days of his pastorate, had been so many, would take place in that lady's home; and they usually did. But as time went on, her own independence of spirit and increased consideration for the minister led Mrs. Burbeck frequently to prefer to come to him. To make this easy, two planks had been laid to form a simple runway to the stoop at the study door. When, therefore, the minister entered his library to-night, closely followed by Wyatt, he found that good woman waiting in the wheel chair beside his desk. The object of her call showed instantly in an expression of boundless and tender solicitude; and yet the clergyman immediately forgot himself in a conscience-stricken concern for his visitor.

"You should not have come," he exclaimed quickly, sympathy and mild reproach mingling, while a devotion like that of a son for a mother was conveyed in his tone and glance.

Truly, Mrs. Burbeck had never looked so frail. All but the faintest glow of color had gone from her cheeks; her eyes were bright, but with a luster that seemed unearthly, and her skin had a transparent, wax-like look that to the clergyman was alarmingly suggestive, as if the pale bloom of another world were upon her cheeks, which a single breath must wither.

Making these observations swiftly as his stride carried him to her, the minister, speaking in that rich baritone of melting tenderness which was one of Hampstead's most charming personal assets, concluded with: "You are not well. You are not at all well."

"Oh, yes," the Angel answered, "I am well."

Although she spoke in a voice that appeared to be thin to the point of breaking, her tone was even, and her senses proclaimed their alertness by allowing her eyes to wander from the face of the minister and fix themselves inquiringly over his shoulder on the unembarrassed, stolid man at the door.

"Tell her not to mind me, Doc," interjected Wyatt in a stuffy voice. At the same time an exploratory thumb brought up a quill from a vest pocket, and the deputy began with entire assurance the after-dinner toilet of his teeth, while his eyes roamed the ceiling and the tops of the bookcases as if suddenly oblivious of the presence of other persons in the room.

"Yes," said the minister reassuringly, "we will not be disturbed by Mr. Wyatt's presence. He is merely doing his duty."

"You are--?" Mrs. Burbeck hesitated with an upward inflection, and the disagreeable word unuttered.

"Yes," replied the minister gravely, his inflection falling where hers had risen. "I am."

"Oh, that woman! That woman!" murmured Mrs. Burbeck, "I have mistrusted her and been sorry for her all at once. But it was Rollie that I feared for."

There was a sigh of relief that was as near to an exhibition of selfishness as Mrs. Burbeck had ever approached; after which, mother-like, she lapsed into a rhapsody over her son.

"Rollie," she began, in doting accents, "is so young, so handsome, so responsive to beauty of any sort; so ready to believe the best of every one. I feared that he would fall in love with her and ruin his business career--you know how these theatrical marriages always turn out--or that she would jilt him and break his heart. Rollie has such a sensitive, expansive nature. He has always been trusted so widely by so many people. Since that boy has grown up, I have lived my whole life in him. Do you know," and she leaned forward and lowered her voice to an impressive and exceedingly intimate note; "it seems to me that if anything should happen to Rollie, it would crush me, that I should not care to live,--in fact should not be able to live."

Tears came readily to the limpid pools of her eyes, and the delicately chiseled lips trembled, though they bravely tried to smile.

Hampstead sat regarding her thoughtfully, love and apprehension mingling upon his face. It suddenly reoccurred to him with compelling force that the most awful cruelty that could be inflicted would be for this delicate and fragile woman, who to-night looked more like an ambassadress from some other existence than a thing of flesh and blood, to know the truth about her son. Seeing her thus smiling trustfully through her mother-tears, thinking of all that her sweet, saint-like confidences had meant to him, Hampstead felt a mighty resolve growing stronger and stronger within him.

But for once Mrs. Burbeck's intuitions were not sure, and she misconstrued the meaning of her pastor's silence.

"Forgive me," she pleaded in tones of self-reproach. "Here I am in the midst of your trouble babbling of myself and my son. Yet that is like a mother. She never sees a young man's career blighted but she grows suddenly apprehensive for the child of her own bosom. Now that feeling comes to me with double force. I love you almost as a son. Consequently, when I see my boy out there in the sun of life mounting so buoyantly, and you, so worthy to mount, but struggling in mid-flight under a cloud, I feel a mingling of two painful emotions. I suffer as if struck upon the heart. My spirit of sympathy and apprehension rushes me to you, yet when I get to you, my doting mother's heart makes me babble first of my boy. And so," she concluded, with an apologetic smile, "you see how weak and frail and egotistic I am, after all."

"But," protested Hampstead, who had been eager to break in, "my career is not blighted. I am not under a cloud. It annoyed me to-night upon the boat and train to discover how suddenly I was pilloried by my enemies and avoided by my friends. They seem to take it for granted that I am already smirched; that to me the subject must be painful, and as there is no other subject to be thought of at the moment, hence conversation will also be painful. Because of this I am a pariah, to be shunned like any leper."

With rising feeling, the young minister snatched a breath and hurried on.

"Now, Mrs. Burbeck, I do not feel like that at all. I have put myself in the way of sustaining this attack through following the course of duty, as I conceived it. I need not assure you that I am innocent of a vulgar thing like burglary. I need not assure the public. It is impossible that they should believe it. Nevertheless, I have seen enough in the papers to-night to show how they will revel at seeing me enmeshed in the toils of circumstance. To them it is a rare spectacle. Very well, let it be a spectacle. It is one in which I shall triumph. I propose to fight. I feel like fighting." His fist was clenched and came down upon the arm of his chair, and his voice, though still low, was full of vibrant power.

"I feel that I have the right to call upon every friend, upon every member of All People's, upon every believer in those things for which I have fought in this community, to rally to my side to fight shoulder to shoulder in the battle to repel what in effect is an assault not upon me, but upon the things for which I stand."

Mrs. Burbeck's expressive eyes were floating full with a look that verged from sympathy toward pity.

"You will have to be a very expert tactician," she said soberly, drawing on those fountains of ripe wisdom, so full at times that they seemed to mount toward inspiration; "if you are to make the public think of your embarrassment in that way. It is going to look at this as a disgraceful personal entanglement of a minister with an actress!"

Hampstead writhed in his chair. Nothing but the depth of his consideration for Mrs. Burbeck kept him from exclaiming vehemently against what he deemed the enormous injustice of this assumption.

"She's right, Doc; right's your left leg," sounded a throaty voice, which startled the two of them into remembering that they were not alone.

"Why, Wyatt!" exclaimed the minister reprovingly, turning sharply on the deputy.

"Excuse me, Doc," Wyatt mumbled abjectly. "I just thought that out loud. All the same, she's wisin' you up to somethin' if you'll let 'er. Some of these old dames that ain't got nothin' to do but just set and think gets hep to a lot of things that a hustlin' man overlooks."

Hampstead was disgusted.

"Don't interrupt us again, please, Wyatt," he observed, combining dignity and rebuke in his utterance.

But Wyatt, influenced no doubt by the look almost of fright on Mrs. Burbeck's face, was already in apologetic mood.

"Say," he mumbled contritely, "you're right, Doc. I'm so sorry for the break that, orders or no orders, I'll just step out in the hall while you finish. But all the same, you listen to her," and he indicated the disturbed and slightly offended Mrs. Burbeck with a stab of a toothpick in the air, "and she'll tell you somethin' that's useful."

"Thank you very much, Wyatt," replied the minister in noncommittal tones, but with a sigh of relief as the deputy withdrew from the room.

Yet he had a growing sense of depression. Wyatt's boorish, croaking interruption had thrown him out of poise. Mrs. Burbeck's exaggerated sense of the gravity of the matter weighed him down like lead, and the more because an inner voice, sounding faintly and from far away, but with significance unmistakable, seemed to tell him her view was right. Nevertheless, his whole soul rose in protest. It ought not to be right. It was a gross travesty on justice and on popular good sense.

Mrs. Burbeck, looking at him fixedly, noted this change in spirit and the conflict of emotions which resulted. Reaching out impulsively, she touched the large hand of the man where it lay upon the desk.

"I feared you would take it too lightly," she reflected. "Youth always does that. For this world about you to turn and gnash you is mere human nature, which it is your business to understand. Has it never occurred to you that the same voices who upon Sunday cried out: 'Hosannah, Hosannah to the son of David!' upon Friday shouted: 'Away with him! Crucify him! Crucify him!'"

"But I am innocent," Hampstead protested, though weakly.

"And so was He," Mrs. Burbeck replied simply.

"But He was worthy to suffer. I am not," murmured Hampstead humbly.

"Sometimes," suggested the sweet-voiced woman, "suffering makes us worthy."

"But," affirmed the minister, his fighting spirit coming back to him, "I can prove my innocence!"

The face of Mrs. Burbeck lighted. "Then you must," she said decisively. "You give me hope when you say that. It was to tell you that I came, fearful that you would rely upon the public to assume your innocence until your guilt was proven. Alas, they are more likely to assume the contrary, to hold you guilty until you prove yourself innocent."

"I have been made to see that already," replied Hampstead. "At first, no doubt, I did underestimate the gravity of the situation. You have helped me to appraise its dangers more accurately."

But Mrs. Burbeck had more important advice to give.

"Yes," she went on half-musingly, because tactfulness appeared to suggest that form of utterance, "you will have to vindicate yourself absolutely. It is a practical situation. The danger is not that you will be convicted and sent to jail. Nobody believes that, I should say. The danger is that a question-mark will be permanently attached to your name and character. The Reverend John Hampstead, interrogation point! Is he a thief, or not? Did he compromise himself, or not? Is he weak, or not? This is the thing to fear, the thing that would condemn you and brand you as stripes brand a convict."

For a tense, reflective moment the minister's lips had grown dry and bloodless; and then he confessed grudgingly: "I begin to see that you are right."

"You should begin your defense by a counter-attack," Mrs. Burbeck continued, feeling that the man was sufficiently aroused now to appreciate the importance of vigorous defensive actions. "Declare your disbelief that the diamonds have actually been stolen. Get out a warrant of search, and you will probably find them now concealed among her effects. At any rate this counter-search would hold the public verdict in suspense; and it would be like your well-known aggressive personality. If the search fails to reveal them, if her diamonds really are stolen, your complete vindication must depend upon the capture and exposure of the real thief."

Hampstead wiped his moist brow nervously. It was uncannily terrible that this woman of all persons in the world should say this to him. However, he had sufficient presence of mind to urge:

"But how unjust to force a contract like that upon me."

"It is unjust," admitted the Angel of the Chair. "Yet the innocent often suffer injustice, and you must realize that you are not immune. That is your only course, and I came specifically to warn you of it. Prove there was no theft, or get the thief!"

There was snap and sparkle in Mrs. Burbeck's eyes. Despite her physical frailty, her spirit was stout, and her conviction so forcefully conveyed that the minister delivered himself of a gesture of utter helplessness.

"I cannot do either," he said, half-whispering his desperation. "Yet I think I appreciate better than you how sound your advice has been. But there are reasons that I cannot give you, that I cannot give to any one, why the course which you suggest cannot be followed. I must go another way to vindication; but," and his voice rose buoyantly, "I will go and I will get it."

Mrs. Burbeck received with misgivings her pastor's complete rejection of the advice she had offered, yet some unconscious force in the young minister's manner swept her on quickly against her judgment and her will to an enormous increase of faith, both in the strength and the judgment of the man. As for Hampstead, he concluded his rejection by doing something he had never done before. That was to lean low, his face chiseled in lines of gravity and devotion, and taking the delicate hand of Mrs. Burbeck, that in its weakness was like a drooping flower, lift it to his lips and kiss it.

"Conserve all your spirit," he said solemnly, still clinging tenderly to the hand. "It may be that I shall have to lean heavily upon you."