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After an hour or so Bassett locked the door behind him and went down to
lunch. He was not hungry, but he wanted to get out of the room, to think
without that quiet figure before him. Over the pretence of food he faced
the situation. Lying ready to his hand was the biggest story of his
career, but he could not carry it through. It was characteristic of
him that, before abandoning it, he should follow through to the end the
result of its publication. He did not believe, for instance, that
either Dick's voluntary surrender or his own disclosure of the situation
necessarily meant a conviction for murder. To convict a man of a crime
he did not know he had committed would be difficult. But, with his
customary thoroughness he followed that through also. Livingstone
acquitted was once again Clark, would be known to the world as Clark.
The new place he had so painfully made for himself would be gone. The
story would follow him, never to be lived down. And in his particular
profession confidence and respect were half the game. All that would be
gone.
Thus by gradual stages he got back to David, and he struggled for the
motive which lay behind every decisive human act. A man who followed a
course by which he had nothing to gain and everything to lose was either
a fool or was actuated by some profound unselfishness. To save a life?
But with all the resources Clark could have commanded, added to his
personal popularity, a first degree sentence would have been unlikely.
Not a life, then, but perhaps something greater than a life. A man's
soul.
It came to him, then, in a great light of comprehension, the thing David
had tried to do; to take this waster and fugitive, the slate of his mind
wiped clean by shock and illness, only his childish memories remaining,
and on it to lead him to write a new record. To take the body he had
found, and the always untouched soul, and from them to make a man.
And with that comprehension came the conviction, too, that David had
succeeded. He had indeed made a man.
He ate absently, consulting his railroad schedule and formulating the
arguments he meant to use against Dick's determination to give himself
up. He foresaw a struggle there, but he himself held one or two strong
cards--the ruthless undoing of David's work, the involving of David for
conspiring against the law. And Dick's own obligation to the girl at
home.
He was more at ease in the practical arrangements. An express went
through on the main line at midnight, and there was a local on the
branch line at eight. But the local train, the railway station, too,
were full of possible dangers. After some thought he decided to get a
car, drive down to the main line with Dick, and then send the car back.