Read Online The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart - Free Book Online

irritated. His annoyance was not
decreased by the calm voice behind him which said:
    "Better drink considerable water when you take that stuff. Some stomachs
don't tolerate it very well."
    The door closed. The reporter stood in the waiting-room for a moment.
Then he clapped on his hat.
    "Well, I'm a damned fool," he muttered, and went out into the street.
    He was disappointed and a trifle sheepish. Life was full of queer
chances, that was all. No resemblance on earth, no coincidence of
birthplace, could make him believe that Judson Clark, waster, profligate
and fugitive from the law was now sitting up at night with sick
children, or delivering babies.
    After a time he remembered the prescription in his hand, and was about
to destroy it. He stopped and examined it, and then carefully placed it
in his pocket-book. After all, there were things that looked queer. The
fellow had certainly evaded that last question of his.
    He made his way, head bent, toward the station.
    He had ten minutes to wait, and he wandered to the newsstand. He made
a casual inspection of its display, bought a newspaper and was turning
away, when he stopped and gazed after a man who had just passed him from
an out-bound train.
    The reporter looked after him with amused interest. Gregory, too! The
Livingstone chap had certainly started something. But it was odd, too.
How had Gregory traced him? Wasn't there something more in Gregory's
presence there than met the eye? Gregory's visit might be, like his own,
the desire to satisfy himself that the man was or was not Clark. Or it
might be the result of a conviction that it was Clark, and a warning
against himself. But if he had traced him, didn't that indicate that
Clark himself had got into communication with him? In other words, that
the chap was Clark, after all? Gregory, having made an inquiry of a
hackman, had started along the street, and, after a moment's thought,
Bassett fell into line behind him. He was extremely interested and
increasingly cheerful. He remained well behind, and with his newspaper
rolled in his hand assumed the easy yet brisk walk of the commuters
around him, bound for home and their early suburban dinners.
    Half way along Station Street Gregory stopped before the Livingstone
house, read the sign, and rang the doorbell. The reporter slowed down,
to give him time for admission, and then slowly passed. In front of
Harrison Miller's house, however, he stopped and waited. He lighted a
cigarette and made a careful survey of the old place. Strange, if this
were to prove the haven where Judson Clark had taken refuge, this old
brick two-story dwelling, with its ramshackle stable in the rear, its
small vegetable garden, its casual beds of simple garden flowers set in
a half acre or so of ground.
    A doctor. A pill shooter. Jud Clark!

IX
*
    Elizabeth had gone about all day with a smile on her lips and a sort of
exaltation in her eyes. She had, girl fashion, gone over and over the
totally uneventful evening they had spent together, remembering small
speeches and gestures; what he had said and she had answered.
    She had, for instance, mentioned Clare Rossiter, very casually. Oh
very, very casually. And he had said: "Clare Rossiter? Oh, yes, the tall
blonde girl, isn't she?"
    She was very happy. He had not seemed to find her too young or
particularly immature. He had asked her opinion on quite important
things, and listened carefully when she replied. She felt, though, that
she knew about one-tenth as much as he did, and she determined to
read very seriously from that time on. Her mother, missing her that
afternoon, found her curled up in the library, beginning the first
volume of Gibbon's "Rome" with an air of determined concentration, and
wearing her best summer frock.
    She did not intend to depend purely on Gibbon's "Rome," evidently.
    "Are you expecting any one, Elizabeth?" she asked, with the frank
directness characteristic of mothers, and Elizabeth, fixing a date in
her mind with terrible