The Scapegoat (Vance)

by Louis Joseph Vance

The Scapegoat

I.

BEFORE he realized it, Clifford was upon them. For a year he had been guarding against just such an encounter—and now it had to come without the least forewarning!

It drew on toward the end of the afternoon—an hour when all Tangiers lay seething in the fierce, oblique rays of a westering sun. Few but natives would be abroad at such an hour; the foreign residents would keep to the hotels until the cool of evening. Clifford, off his guard, came stumbling out of a narrow, reeking alleyway, into the main thoroughfare of Tangiers, and all but ran into a little group of tourists—a glare of white garments, immaculate against the purple-shadowed façade of a Moorish junk bazaar.

He caught his breath sharply, and there was an imperceptible falter in his stride. Collecting himself, he turned away, jerking his helmet well forward over his eyes to avoid the ever possible recognition. Then came that which he had been fearing for so many weary months—the ring of his own name, clear upon the hot, vibrant air:

"Clifford!" The voice was a girl's! His heart seemed to stop for an instant. Pretending not to hear, he hurried on; but the call became imperative.

"Clifford! Oh, Tommy Clifford!"

He knew those tones, or at least he remembered them vaguely, but he dared not look around. There came a flurry of skirts, a scurry of footsteps upon the rough cobbles, and he was aware of the weight of a small, gloved hand upon his arm. He halted, steeling himself, and turned to meet a pair of radiant eyes, set in a face flushed, more than merely pretty, informed with an expression at once eager, joyful, and sympathetic.

"Miriam!" he stammered. "Miriam Train!"

His own face went white beneath its ineradicable tan; even to the lips it became ashen; and in his eyes pain leapt like a flame.

"Tommy!" the girl cried compassionately. "I—I'm so sorry—and glad; glad that I've found you—at last!" She shook her head, looking him full in the eyes. "Ah, Tommy," she said reproachfully, "why didn't you let us know where you were?"

He found her hand, firm and cool, within his own; and somehow the contact seemed to lend him strength and tenderness.

"I did not know," he said gently, "that any living being cared, Miriam."

"Don't!" she cried. "Don't say that! It isn't so. I——"

She hesitated, and it seemed that her color deepened. I n the pause the voice of a member of her party sounded loud above the street din:

"Miss Train! We're going!"

"Coming!" she responded impatiently, without turning her head. "Won't you come, too, Tommy?"

He smiled sadly as her fingers tightened upon his own. "Don't ask that of me," he said. "I couldn't, you know——"

"Then you'll come to see me, won't you. Tommy? You must—must! We're stopping at the Angleterre. I insist," she continued with determination, as she saw the shadow of refusal cloud his clear eyes. "To-night I'll be at home—just to you. All the others are going to ride over to Ceuta by moonlight; but I shan't go. You'll surely come? Remember, I count upon you!"

II.

He was grateful to her for receiving him, as she did, in the dim obscurity of the veranda. In the lonely corner which they selected, he settled into the chair by her side, with a little sigh.

"You're awfully good," he said.

"You may smoke, if you like," she told him, leaning forward and staring out over the rail.

Below them Tangiers seemed tumbling headlong down the hillside to the sea—a huddle of white and flat-roofed houses, threaded by tortuous streets, like faintly illuminated tunnels, with here and there the shining dome of a mosque swelling upwards, like the half of a great eggshell. Moonlight drenched it all, and far, far down the shimmering Atlantic swept in and broke against the cliffs with a noise like distant thunder. Clifford's gaze, wandering outward, surveyed the scene indifferently. It was very beautiful—yes, in an exotic way; but he was weary with it all, and his heart faint with hunger for home.

That was why he had weakened at the eleventh hour and accepted Miriam's invitation—because he had been so long away from home, hearing never a word of any one he knew, starving on the meager lines of American news tucked away in the corners of Continental newspapers. But now that he had come, he hardly knew what to say—how to ask her for word of those whom he had loved and lost.

She chose to break the silence with a careless question:

"What vessel is that?"

Clifford glanced down toward the harbor. A fussy steamer was puffing in to its anchorage, like a fat, white ghost with bright, staring eyes.

"It's the mail boat," he told her. "She's in late. To-morrow," he continued in a half-whisper, "she'll be going on to Gibraltar and connecting with the liners for home!"

"Yes," said the girl abstractedly, and lapsed again into her silence; for she was considering how she might say to him that which she longed to say.

"Now," said Clifford presently, without daring to look at the girl—whose eyes never for an instant left his strong, clean profile—"now, tell me everything, please, Miriam—all the news about every one I know."

She obeyed quietly in a low voice. It seemed a long account, but Clifford did not tire in the least. Only when she paused for breath he would nod and say:

"Thank you. Please go on—unless you're tired."

Then he would listen ever more intently, waiting, waiting for the two names which were, after all, the only ones he cared to hear about. But—perhaps intentionally—she failed to mention them; and finally he had to ask, with an embarrassed and apologetic laugh:

"And—and Archer and Evelyn Taylor? They're married long since, I suppose?"

"No," she began slowly.

"Not married?"

"No. I didn't mention it, Tommy, because——"

"I understand—and thank you. But—not married! I must know, Miriam."

"Will Archer," she said after a pause, "is dead."

Clifford's cigarette fell whirling to the garden below the veranda.

"Dead!" he whispered incredulously. "Dead!" He drew a long breath; there seemed to be a haze before his eyes. And he forgot his rôle. "Please," he cried, turning to her—and the suffering in his eyes wrung her heart—"please tell me! Don't you see I'm tortured, Miriam? I know you only wish to spare me, but—you see, there was a girl, and—and——"

"This makes it different," said the girl quietly. "Now you can ask her, Tommy." She went on, while he listened, aghast at his slip. "That's why I wanted to tell you—for the girl's sake." She felt herself coloring to the eyes, but the shadows were merciful. "I wanted to tell you that you were free—free to go home and face them all. Ah, Tommy, Tommy!" There was a little break in her voice. "You didn't think that we who knew you believed you guilty—did you? Because we didn't. And that is why I was glad, oh, so glad, to find you, and to be the first, the very first to tell you! You see, after you sacrificed everything, Tommy, and ran away, trying to save your chum, to make us believe that you had stolen the money, and not Will Archer——"

"But you mustn't blame him," Clifford put in quickly. "He didn't really know what he was doing."

"I know." She nodded decidedly. "I know that you sacrificed all to save your friend. And when Will discovered what you had done, when it was too late, he told Evelyn. Of course that broke the engagement; and it was only a little later that Will was thrown from his auto somehow—we never really knew what had happened. He left a signed confession; but we didn't know where you had buried yourself, Tommy."

He was standing now, gripping the rail so that his knuckles stood out white against the bronze of his hands, and staring off wistfully over the waters—toward home.

"Oh, you don't know, you don't know," he cried brokenly, "what this means to me, Miriam!"

"Ah, but I do," she told him gently. "I know very well. That's why I came here. Tommy—to find you. I'd heard it was a place where people went when they were in trouble, and I wanted to tell you, because—because"—again there sounded that pitiful little quaver in her voice—"because the girl is waiting for you."

"You think so?"

There was a leaping joy within him that made it hard to speak.

"I'm sure she's waiting, Tommy!"

He turned like a flash and caught both her hands. The girl rose with a little low cry, and for an instant her soul was in her eyes as she faced him. Then the radiance died, and she looked very weary and worn; but Clifford did not notice it.

"Then I'll go!" he cried. "I'll go! Miriam, Miriam, I don't know how to thank you! I'm off in the morning by that mail steamer. Home! You won't mind my hurrying off to pack, will you? She sails at sunrise—and just think, in ten days I'll see Evelyn——"

"No," she said softly, "I don't mind. Hurry—hurry!" She . smiled bravely into his face for an instant, then drew away her hands. "Good-night," she said.

And when he was gone she stood for a long time, motionless, dry of eye and lip, staring at the corner around which he had disappeared. Finally she stretched forth both arms.

"Oh, my dear, my dear!" she sobbed as if her heart would break—but gently, that none might hear.

Louis Joseph Vance