The Fortune Hunter
L >>
Louis Joseph Vance >> The Fortune Hunter
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 | 4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16
The only sense Will could get out of that was that the young man was
travelling for a buggy house and hadn't brought any samples with him.
"I thought," he allowed, "as how you'd be wantin' a place to display
your samples, but of course if you're in the wagon business--"
"Oh," said Mr. Duncan, "I thought you meant the 'sample-room' over
there." He nodded toward the bar. "That's what you call the
dispensaries of intoxicating liquors in this part of the country, is it
not?"
Will made a noise resembling an affirmative, and as soon as he got his
breath explained that travelling men generally wanted a sort of a
showroom next to theirs and that that was called a sample-room, too.
"But I'm not a travelling man," said The Mysterious Stranger. "So I
shall have as little use for the one as the other."
"Then the room on the third floor'll do for you," said Will. "How long
do you calculate on stayin'?"
"That will depend," said Mr. Duncan: "a day or so--perhaps longer;
until I can find comfortable and more permanent quarters."
In his amazement Will jabbed the pen so hard into the potato beside the
ink-well that he never could get the nib out and had to buy a new one.
"You don't mean to say you're thinkin' of coming here to live?" he
gasped.
"Yes, I do," said the young man apologetically. "I don't think you'll
find me in the way. I shall be very quiet and unobtrusive. I'm a
student, looking for a quiet place in which to pursue my studies."
"Well," said Will, "you've found it all right. There ain't no quieter
place in Pennsylvany than Radville, Mr. Duncan. I hope you'll like it,"
he said, sarcastic.
"I shall endeavour to," said the young man.
"And now may I go to my room, please? I should like to renovate my
travel-stained person to some extent before dinner."
"You'll have time," said Will; "dinner's at noon to-morrow. I guess
you're thinkin' about supper. That's ready now. Here, Tracey, you carry
this gentleman's things up to number forty-three."
But Tracey had already gone, and such was his haste to spread the news
that he forgot to take the horse and surrey back to the stable, but
left it standing in front of the hotel till eight o'clock; for which
oversight, I am credibly informed, his father justly dealt with him
before sending him to bed.
I have never been able to understand how we failed to hear of it at
Miss Carpenter's before seven o'clock. That was the hour when, having
finished supper and my first evening pipe, I started down-town to the
_Citizen_ office, intending to stop in at the Bigelow House on the
way and confound Will with the list of the day's happenings. Main
Street was pretty well crowded for that hour, I remember noticing, and
most of the townsfolk were grouped together on the corners, underneath
the lamps, discussing something rather excitedly. I paid no particular
attention, realising that between Caesar, Pete Willing, Roland
Burnette's suit and the checker game, they had enough to talk about. So
it wasn't until I walked into the Bigelow House office that I either
heard or saw anything of The Mysterious Stranger.
Will Bigelow was in his usual place behind the desk, and looked, I
thought, rather disgruntled. His reply to my "Howdy, Will?" sounded
somewhat snappish. But he got out of his chair and moved round the end
of the desk just as the young man came out of the dining-room door.
Then Will pulled up and I realised that he was calling my attention to
the stranger.
So far as I could see, he seemed an ordinary, everyday, good-looking,
good-natured young man, whose naturally sunny disposition had been
insulted by the food recently set before him. He wandered listlessly
out upon the porch and stood there, with his hands in his pockets,
looking up and down Centre Street, just then being shadowed into the
warm, purple June dusk, beneath its double row of elms. We've always
thought it a rather attractive street, and that night it seemed
especially lively with its trickle of girls and boys strolling up and
down, and the groups of grown folks on the corners, and Roland
Burnette's summer suit conspicuous through Sothern and Lee's
plate-glass windows; and I supposed the young man was admiring it all.
But now I know him better. He felt just the same about Main Street,
corner of Centre, Radville, as I should have about Broadway and
Forty-second Street, New York, if you had set me down there and told me
I'd got to get accustomed to the idea that I must live there. He was
saying, deep down in his heart: "O _Lord_!"--with the rising
inflection.
Will grabbed my arm, without saying anything, and pulled me into the
bar.
"Hello!" I said, as he went round behind and opened the cigar-case,
"what's up?"
He took out two boxes of the finest five-centers in town and placed
them before me. "Them's up," he said. "You win. Have one."
It staggered me to have him give in that way; I had been looking
forward to a long and diverting dispute. "I guess you've heard
everything worth hearing about to-day's history," I said, disappointed,
as I selected the least unpleasant looking of the cigars.
"No, I haven't," he said. "I didn't have to hear anything. What earned
you that smoke took place right here in this office.... Here," he said,
striking a match for me.
I had been trying to put the cigar away so that I might dispose of it
without hurting Will's feelings, but he had me, so I recklessly poked
the thing into the automatic clipper and then into my mouth. "What do
you mean?" I asked, puffing.
"Come 'long outside," said Will; and we went out on the porch just in
time to see Mr. Duncan going wearily upstairs to his room. "I mean,"
said Will, _"him"_. And then he told me all about it.
"But things like that don't happen every day," he wound up defensively.
"I'll go you another cigar on to-morrow."
"No, you won't," I said indignantly; and furtively dropped the infamous
thing over the railing.
I am never successful in my little attempts at deception, even in
self-defence. In all candour I believe my disposition of that cigar
would have gone undetected but for my notorious bad luck. Of course
Bigelow's setter, Pompey, had to be asleep right under the spot where I
dropped the cigar, and equally of course the burning end had to make
instantaneous connection with his nerve centres, via his hide, with such
effect that he arose in agony and subsequently used coarse language.
Investigation naturally discovered my empty-handed perfidy. To no one
else in Radville would this have happened.
On the other hand, no one else in Radville would have thrown away the
cigar.
V
MARGARET'S DAUGHTER
Discomfort roused Duncan from his rest at an early hour, the morning
following his arrival in Radville. I must confess that the beds in the
Bigelow House are no better than they should be; in fact, according to
Duncan, not so good. Duncan ought to know; he has slept in one of them,
or tried to; a trial thus far to me denied. From what he has said,
however, I shudder to think what will become of me should I ever lose
the shelter of Miss Carpenter's second-story front and be thrown out
into a heartless world to choose between the Bigelow House and Frank
Tannehill's Radville Inn....
Duncan arose and consulted the two-dollar watch which he had left on
the pine washstand by the window. It was half-past seven o'clock, and
that seemed early to him. He was tired and would willingly have turned
in again, but a rueful glance at the couch of his night-long vigil
sufficed him. He lifted a hand to Heaven and vowed solemnly: "Never
again!"
As he bent over the washstand and poured a cupful of water into the
china basin, thus emptying the pitcher, he was conscious of a pain in
his back; but a thought cheered him. "They must have decent stables in
this town," he considered, brightening. "The haymows for mine, after
this."
He dressed with scrupulous care, mindful of Kellogg's parting words,
the sense of which was that first impressions were most important. "All
the same," Duncan thought, "I don't believe they count in a dead-and-
alive place like this. There's no one here with sufficient animation to
realise I'm in town." This shows how little he understood our little
community. A day of enlightenment was in store for him.
Pansy Murphy was scrubbing out the office when he came down for
breakfast. She is large, of what is known as a full complexion,
good-hearted and energetic. His pause at the foot of the stairs, as he
surveyed in dismay the seven seas of soapy water that occupied the
floor, aroused her. She sat back suddenly on her heels and looked her
fill of him, with her blue Irish eyes very wide, and her mouth a trap.
He bowed politely. Pansy saved herself from falling over backwards by a
supreme effort, scrubbed her hair out of her eyes with a very wet hand,
and gave him "Good-marrin', Misther Dooncan," in a brogue as rich as
you could wish for.
He started violently. "Heavens!" he said. "I am discovered!"
"Make yer moind aisy about thot," Pansy assured him. "'Tis known all
over town who ye arre, what's yer name, how manny troonks ye've brought
wid ye, and th' rayson f'r yer comin' here."
"A comforting thought, thank you," he commented: "to awake to find
one's self grown famous over-night!..."
"Now ye know," she returned, emboldened, "what it is to be a big toad
in a small puddle."
"I thank you." He nodded again, with a comprehensive survey of the
reeking floor. "I'm afraid I do." With which he slipped and slid over
to and through the swinging wicker doors of the dining-room.
It was deserted. From the negligee of the tables, littered with the
plates and dishes, dreary survivors of a dozen breakfasts, he divined
that he was the tardiest guest in the household. A slatternly young
woman in a soiled shirt-waist--the waitress--received him with great
calm and waved him toward a table by the window, where an unused cover
was laid. He went meekly, dogged by her formidable presence. She stood
over him and glared down.
"Haman neggs," she said defiantly, "steakan nomlette."
"I'll be a martyr," he told her civilly. "Me for the steak."
She frowned gloomily and tramped away. He folded his hands and, cheered
by an appetising aroma of warm water and yellow soap from the office,
considered the prospect from the window by his side. Three children and
a yellow dog came along and watched him do it, dispassionately
reviewing his points in clear young voices. Tracey Tanner ambled into
view on the other side of the street and beamed at him generously, his
round red face resembling, Duncan thought, more than anything else a
summer sun rising through mist. Josie Lockwood (he was to discover her
name later) passed with her pert little nose ostentatiously pointed
away from him; none the less he detected a gleam in the corner of her
eye.... Others went by, singly or in groups, all more or less openly
interested in him.
He tried to look unconscious, but with ill success. There was nothing
particularly engaging in the view: the broad, dusty street lined with
commonplace structures of "frame" and brick, glowing in the morning
sunshine. There were, to be sure, cool shadows beneath the trees, but
the suggestion was all of summer heat. There was a watering-trough and
hitching-rail directly opposite, a little to one side of Hemmenway's
feed-store, and there a well-fed mare stood, drooping dejectedly
between the shafts of a dilapidated buggy. On the corner was a
two-storey brick building with large plate-glass windows on the ground
floor for the display of intimate articles of feminine apparel. The
black and gold sign above proclaimed it: "The Fair. Dry Goods &
Notions. Leonard & Call." Duncan considered it with grave respect. "The
scene of my future activities," he observed.
By this time his audience had become too large and friendly for his
endurance. He rose and retired to a less public table.
In her own good time the waitress returned with a plate, and a small
oval platter in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. She placed
them before him with a manner that told him plainly he could never make
himself the master of her affections. The small oval platter was
discovered to contain a small segment of dark-brown ham and two fried
eggs swimming in grease.
Duncan questioned the woman with mute, appealing eyes.
"Steak's run out," she told him curtly.
"Leaving no address?" he inquired with forced gaiety.
A suppressed smile softened her austerity, and she turned away to hide
it. "To think," he wondered, "that a sense of humour should inhabit
that!" He broke a roll and munched it gloomily, pondering this
revelation. "And such humour !" he added, with justice.
After an interval the woman returned. He had refrained from the staple
dish. She indicated it with a grimy forefinger.
"Please!" he begged plaintively. "I'm never very hungry in the
morning."
"I guess you don't like the table here," she observed icily, clearing
away.
"Do you?"
"I don't have to; I live home."
He stared. Could it be possible...?
"I know a good old one, too," he ventured hopefully. "Now here." He
drew his coffee cup toward him and began to stir with energy. "You say:
'It looks like rain'; and I'll say: 'Yes, but it tastes a little like
coffee.'"
She clattered away indignantly. He rose, depressed, and sighing sought
the outer air.
In the course of a forenoon's stroll Radville discovered itself to him
in all its squalor and its loveliness. It sits in the centre of a broad
valley of rolling meadow-land, studded with infrequent homesteads,
broken into rather extensive farms, threaded by a shallow silver stream
that gives its all in tribute to the Susquehanna far in the south. The
barrier mountains rise about it like the sides of a bowl, with a great
V-shaped piece chipped out of the southern wall. This break we call the
Gap; through it the railroad comes to us, through it the river escapes.
The hills rear high and steep, their swelling flanks cloaked in sombre
green and grey, with here and there a bald spot like a splash of ochre
where there's been a landslide, climbing directly from the plain, with
no foothills. A recluse, I have thought, must have chosen this spot for
a town site; sickened of the world, he sought seclusion--and found it
here to his heart's content. Until the coke-ovens come, following the
miners, with their attendant hordes of Slovaks, Poles and Hungarians,
we shall be near to God, for we shall know peace....
The town has been laid out with great rectangularity; the river divides
it unequally. On the western bank is the larger community--locally, the
Old Town, retaining its characteristics of sobriety, quiet and comfort;
here, also, is the business centre--such business as there is. Here
Duncan found homely residences sitting back from the street in ample
grounds--grounds, perhaps, not very carefully groomed, but in spite of
that attractive and pleasant to the eye. With one or two exceptions,
none were strongly suggestive of wealth. He detected a trace of
ostentation, and no taste whatever, in Lockwood's new villa (I'm told
that's the polite designation for the edifice he caused to be erected
what time the plague of riches smote him and the old home on Cherry
Street became too small for the collective family chest), and there was
quiet dignity in the quaintly columned facade of the Bohun mansion, now
occupied solely by old Colonel Bohun, lonely and testy, reputed the
richest as well as the most miserable man in the county. But as to his
wealth, I doubt if rumour runs by more than tradition; Blinky
Lockwood's new-found hundred-thousands are growing rapidly toward the
million mark, unless Blinky's a worse business man than the town takes
him to be.
An old stone arch (whereon lovers linger in the moonlight) spans the
stream and links the Old Town with the new, which we sometimes term the
Flats, but more often simply Over There. It is a sordid huddle of dingy
and down-at-the-heel tenements, housing the poorer working classes and
the frankly worthless and ruffianly riff-raff of the neighbourhood.
There are eight gin-mills Over There as against two sample-rooms in the
Old Town, and of the local constabulary two-thirds lead exciting lives
patrolling the Flats; the remaining third is ordinarily to be found
dozing in the backroom of Schwartz's, and if roused will answer to the
name and title of Pete Willing, Sheriff and Chief of Police.
Duncan reviewed both sides of the municipal face with fine
impartiality--the Flats last; and turned back to the Old Town. "There's
one thing," he communed as he reached the bridge: "If these people ever
find me out they'll run me across the river--sure."
He paused there, looking up and down the valley with contemplative
gaze; and it was there I found him.
As is my custom, I had devoted the earlier morning hours to the
compilation of that work which is to gain for the name of Littlejohn a
trifle more respect than, I fear, it owns in Radville nowadays; and
afterwards, again in accordance with habit, had started out for my
morning constitutional. As I was about to leave the house Miss
Carpenter waylaid me and, in a voice still tremulous from the shock of
yesterday, asked me to hunt up Jake Sawyer in the Flats and tell him to
come and cut the grass.
I was not in the least unwilling, for the walk was not long, and the
morning very pleasant--not too warm, and bright with the smiling spirit
of June. I don't remember feeling more cheerful and at peace with the
world than when I marched off on my mission. The cloud I might, of
course, have anticipated: clouds always come, and a lifetime has taught
me to be sceptical of that tale about the silver lining. And even when
it came it seemed no more depressing, of no more significant moment,
than the cloud shadow that scurries across a wheat-field with no effect
other than to enhance the beauty of the sunshine that pursues it.
Old Colonel Bohun was the cloud-shadow of that morning. I met him
turning into Main Street from Mortimer--at the head of which his
mansion stands. He came down the sidewalk, but with a hint of haste in
his manner: a tall old man, bending beneath the burden of his years,
his fierce old face and iron-grey hair shaded as always by the black
slouch hat with the flapping brim, his rounded shoulders cloaked with
the black Inverness cape he wore summer and winter. In spite of his age
and evident decrepitude, he bodied forth the spirit of what he had
been, and none could pass him without knowledge of his presence; he
drew eyes as a magnet draws filings, and drawing, held them in respect.
I doubted if there were a man in Radville who could meet the old
colonel with anything but a mingling of fear and deference--with one or
two exceptions. For myself I hated him heartily, and he, looking down
at me from the peak of pride whereon his iron soul perched, despised me
with equal intensity. So we got along famously at our infrequent
encounters.
This morning I caught a flash of fire from his red-rimmed old eyes, and
told myself I was sorry for whoever crossed his path before he returned
to his lonely castle. It was his habit at odd intervals to foray down
the village streets with one grievance or another rankling in his
bosom, seeking some unlucky one upon whose head to wreak his
resentment. We had come to recognise the heavy, slow tapping of his
thick cane as a harbinger of trouble, even as you might prognosticate a
thunderstorm from the rumbling beneath the horizon.
I saw he recognised me and gave him a civil salute, which he returned
with a brusque nod and a sharper, "Good-morning, Littlejohn," as he
passed. Then he swung into Main Street, paralleling my course on the
opposite sidewalk, and went _thump-thumping_ along, darting quick
glances hither and yon beneath his heavy brows, like some dark
incarnation of perverse pride and passion.
Partly because the sight of him sensibly influenced my mood, and partly
because inevitably he made me think of Sam Graham, I turned off at
Beech Street, leaving him to pursue his way toward the centre of town.
Graham's one-horse drug-store stood on Beech, a block south of Main.
That being the least promising location in town for a business of any
sort, Sam had naturally selected it when he concluded to set up shop.
If Sam had ever in his life displayed any symptoms of business
sagacity, Radville would never have recovered from the shock. I believe
it was Legrand Gunn, our only really certificated village wit, who
coined the epigram: "As useless as to take a prescription to Graham's."
The implication being that Graham didn't carry sufficient stock to
fill any prescription; which was largely true; he couldn't; he hadn't
the money to stock up with. What little he took in from time to time
went in part to the support of Betty and himself, but mainly to pay
interest on his debts and buy raw materials for models of his
thousand-and-one inventions. Most Radvillians firmly believed that Sam
has at some time or other in his busy, worthless career invented
everything under the sun, practicable or impracticable--the former
always a few days after somebody else had taken out patents for the
identical device. But at that time no one believed he would ever make a
cent out of any one of the children of his ingenious brain; nor was I,
in this respect, more credulous than any of my fellow-townsmen.
I lingered a moment outside the shop, thinking of the change that had
come over it since the death of Margaret Graham, Betty's mother. For,
despite its out-of-the-way location, the shop had not always been
unprofitable; while Margaret lived (my heart still ached with the
memory of her name) Sam's business had prospered. She had been one of
those woman who can rise to any emergency in the interest of her loved
ones; the first to realise Sam's improvidence and lack of executive
ability, she had taken hold of the business with a firm hand and made
it pay--while she lived. It has never ceased to be a source of
wondering speculation to me, that she, with her gentle training, so
wholly aloof from every thought of commerce or economy, should have
proven herself so thorough and level-headed a business woman. There's
no accounting for it, indeed, save on the theory that she conceived it
a woman's function to make up for man's deficiencies; Sam needed her,
so she become his wife; he needed a manager, so she had became that
also....
During Margaret's regime, as I say, the shop had thrived. Sam had few
ill-wishers in Radville; the trade came his way. Then Betty was born
and Margaret died....
Most of this I have on hearsay. I left Radville shortly after their
marriage and did not return until some months after Margaret's burial.
By that time the shop had begun to show signs of neglect; its stock was
decimated, its trade likewise. Sam was struggling with his inventions
more fiercely than ever--seeking forgetfulness, I always thought. The
business was allowed to take care of itself. He had always a serene
faith in his tomorrows.
Now the little shop had been far distanced by the competition of
Sothern and Lee. It was twenty years behind the times, as the saying
is. Small, darksome, dreary and dingy, it served chiefly as a
living-room for Sam, his daughter, and his cronies, as well as for his
workshop. He had a bench and a ramshackle lathe in one corner, where
you might be sure to find him futilely pottering at almost any hour. He
owned the little building--or that portion in it which it were a farce
to term the equity above the mortgage--and Betty kept house for him in
three rooms above the store.
I saw nothing of him as I stepped across the street, and was wondering
if he were at home when, through the small, dark panes of glass in his
show windows I discerned his white old head bobbing busily over
something on the rear counter. I pushed the door open and entered. He
looked up with his never-failing smile of welcome and a wave of his
hand.
"Howdy, Homer? Come in. Well, well, I'm glad to see you. Sit down--I
think that chair there by the stove will hold together under you."
"What are you doing, Sam?" I asked.
"Fixin' up the sody fountain. 'Meant to get it working last month,
Homer, but somehow I kind of forgot."
He rubbed away briskly at the single faucet which protruded above the
counter, lathering it briskly with a metal polish that smelt to Heaven.
"Do much sody trade, Sam?"
He paused, passing his worn old fingers reflectively across a chin
snowy with a stubble of neglected beard. "No," he allowed thoughtfully,
"not so much as we used to, now that Sothern and Lee've got this
new-fangled notion of puttin' ice cream in a nickel glass of sody. Most
of the young folks go there, now, but still I get a call flow and
then--and every little bit helps." He rubbed on ferociously for a
moment. "'Course, I'd do more, likely, if I carried a bigger line of
flavours."
"How many do you carry?"
"One," he admitted with a sigh, "vanilly."
While I filled my pipe he continued to rub very industriously.
"Why don't you get more?"
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 | 4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16