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
He flashed me one of his pale, genial smiles. "I'm thinkin' of it,
Homer, soon's I get some money in. Next week, mebbe. There's a man in
N'York that mebbe can be int'rested in one of my inventions, Roland
Barnette says. Mebbe he'd be willin' to put a little money in it,
Roland says, and of course if he does, I'll be able to stock up
considerable."
I sighed covertly for him. He rubbed, humming a tuneless rhythm to
himself.
"Roland's goin' to write to him about it."
"What invention?" I asked, incredulous.
Sam put down his bottle of polish and came round the counter, beaming;
nothing pleases him better than an opportunity to exhibit some one of
his innumerable models. "I'll show you, Homer," he volunteered
cheerfully, shuffling over to his work-bench. He rasped a match over
its surface and applied the flame to a small gas-bracket fixed to the
wall. A strong rush of gas extinguished the match, and he turned the
flow half off before trying again. This time the vapour caught and
settled to a steady, brilliant flame as white as and much softer than
acetylene.
"There!" he said in triumph. "What d'ye think of that, Homer?"
"Why," I said, "I didn't know you had an acetylene plant."
"No more have I, Homer."
"But what is that, then?" I demanded.
"It's my invention," he returned proudly.
"I've been workin' on it two years, Homer, and only got it goin'
yestiddy. It's going to be a great thing, I tell you."
"But what _is_ it, Sam?"
"It's gas from crude petroleum, Homer. See ..." he continued,
indicating a tank beneath the bench which seemed to be connected with
the bracket by a very simple system of piping, broken by a smaller,
cylindrical tank. "Ye put the oil in there--just crude, as it comes out
of the wells, Homer; it don't need refinin'--and it runs through this
and down here to this, where it's vaporised--much the same's they
vaporise gasoline for autymobile engines, ye know--and then it just
naturally flows up to the bracket--and there ye are."
"It's wonderful, Sam," said I, wondering if it really were.
"And the best part of it is the economy, Homer. A gallon will run one
jet six weeks, day in and out. And simple to install. I tell ye--"
"Have you got it patented yet?"
"Yes, siree! took out patents just as soon as it struck me how simple
it 'ud be--more than two years ago. Only, of course, it took time to
work it out just right, 'specially when I had to stop now and then
'cause I needed money for materials. But it's all right now, Homer,
it's all right now."
"And you say Roland Barnette's writing to some one in New York about
it?"
"Yes; he promised he would. I explained it to Roland and he seemed real
int'rested. He's kind, very kind."
I was inclined to doubt this, and would probably have said something to
that effect had not a shadow crossing the window brought me to my feet
in consternation. But before I could do more than rise, Colonel Bohun
had flung open the door and stamped in. He stopped short at sight of
me, misguided by his near-sighted eyes, and singled me out with a
threatening wave of his heavy stick.
"Well, sir!" he snarled. "I've come for my answer. Have you sense
enough in your addled pate to understand that, man? I've come for my
answer!"
"And may have it, whatever it may be, for all of me," I told him.
His face flushed a deeper red. "Oh, it's only you, is it, Littlejohn? I
took you for that fool Graham, in this damned dark hole. Where is he?"
I looked to Graham and he followed the direction of my gaze to the
work-bench, where Sam stood with his back to it, his worn hands folded
quietly before him. He seemed a little whiter than usual, I thought;
and perhaps it was only my fancy that made him appear to tremble ever
so slightly. For he was quite calm and self-possessed--so much so that
I realised for the first time there was another man in Radville besides
myself who did not fear old Colonel Bohun.
"I'm here, colonel," he said quietly. "What is it you wish?"
The colonel swung on him, shaking with passion. But he held his tongue
until he had mastered himself somewhat: a feat of self-restraint on his
part over which I marvel to this day.
"You know well, Graham," he said presently. "You got my letter--the
letter I wrote you a week ago?"
"Yes," said Sam, with a start of comprehension. "Yes, I got it."
"Then why the devil, man, don't you answer it?"
Sam's apologetic smile sweetened his face.
"Why," he said haltingly--"I'm sure I meant no offence, but--you see,
I'm a very busy man--I forgot it."
"The hell you forgot it. D'ye expect me to believe that, man?"
"I'm afraid you'll have to."
Bohun was speechless for a moment, stricken dumb by a second seizure of
fury. But again he calmed himself.
"Very well. I'll swallow that insolence for the present--"
"It wasn't meant as such, I assure--"
"Don't interrupt me! D'you hear? ... I've come for my answer. Yes, I've
come down to that, Graham. If you can't accord me the common courtesy
of a written reply--I've come to hear it from your mouth."
Sam nodded thoughtfully. "Mebbe," he said, "you forgot you have failed
to accord me the common courtesy of any sort of a communication
whatever for twenty years, Colonel Bohun. Even when my wife, your
daughter, died, you ignored my message asking you to her funeral...."
"Be silent!" screamed the colonel. "Do you think I'm here to bandy
words with you, fool? I demand my answer."
"And as for that," continued Sam as evenly as if he had not been
interrupted, "your proposition was so preposterous that it could have
come only from you, and deserved no answer. But since you want it
formally, sir, it's no."
For a moment I feared Bohun would have a stroke. The back of the chair
I had just vacated and his stick alone supported him through that dumb,
terrible transport. He shook so violently that I looked momentarily to
see the chair break beneath him. There was insanity in his eyes. When
finally he was able to articulate it was in broken gasps.
"I don't believe it," he stammered. "It's a lie. I don't believe it.
It's madness--the girl wouldn't be so mad. ..."
"What is it, father?"
I don't know which of us three was the more startled by that simple
question in Betty Graham's voice; Sam, at all events, showed the least
surprise; the old colonel wheeled toward the back of the store, his jaw
dropping and his eyes protruding as though he were confronted with a
ghost. As, in a way, he was: even I had been struck by that strange,
heartrending similarity to her mother's tone; and even I trembled a
little to hear that voice, as it seemed, from beyond the grave.
Betty stood at the foot of the staircase; alarmed by the noise of the
colonel's raging, she had stolen down, unheard by any of us. And in
that moment I realised as never before that the girl had more of her
mother in her than lay in that marvellous reproduction of Margaret
Graham's voice. As she waited there one detected in her pose something
of her mother's quiet dignity, in her eyes more than a little of
Margaret's tragedy. Of Margaret's beauty I saw scant trace, I own; but
in those days my eyes were blinded by the signs of overwork and
insufficient nourishment that marred her young features, by the
hopeless dowdiness of her garments.
Abruptly she moved swiftly to her father's side and slipped her hand
into his. "What is it, father?" she repeated, eyeing Colonel Bohun
coldly.
I thought Sam's eyes filled. His lips trembled and he had to struggle
to master his voice. He smiled through it all, tenderly at his girl,
but there was in that smile the weakness of the child grown old, the
dependence of the man whose womanfolk must ever mother him.
"Why, Betty," he said, tremulous--"why, Betty, your grandfather here
has been kind enough to offer to take you and educate you and make a
lady of you, and--and we were just talking it over, dear, just talking
it over."
"Do you mean that?" she flung at Bohun.
He straightened up and held himself well in hand. "Is it the first you
have heard of it?"
"Yes." She looked inquiringly at her father.
"Why didn't you tell her?" Bohun persisted harshly. "Were you afraid?"
"No." Sam shook his head slowly. "I wasn't
afraid. But it was unnecessary.... You see, Betty, Colonel Bohun is
willing to do all this for you on several conditions. You must leave me
and never see me again; you mustn't even recognise me should we meet
upon the street; you must change your name to Bohun and never permit
yourself to be known as Betty Graham. Then you must--"
"Never mind, daddy dear," said the girl. "That is enough. I know now--I
understand why you never told me. It's impossible. Colonel Bohun knew
that when he made the offer, of course; he made it simply to harass
you, daddy. It's his revenge...."
She looked Bohun up and down with a glance of contempt that would have
withered another man, poor, wan, haggard little maid of all work that
she was.
"And that's your answer, miss?" he snapped, livid with wrath.
"I would not," she told him slowly, "accept a favour from you, sir, if
I were starving...."
Bohun drew himself up. "Then starve," he told her; and walked out of
the shop.
I gaped after his retreating figure. It seemed impossible, incredible,
that he should have taken such an answer without yielding to a fit of
insensate passion. And I was still marvelling when I heard Graham
saying in a broken voice: "Betty! Betty, my little girl!"
Then I, too, went away, with a mist before my eyes to dim the golden
grace of June.
VI
INTRODUCTION TO MISS CARPENTER
On my way back from the Flats I discovered Duncan sitting on the wall
of the bridge, moodily donating pebbles to the water. His attitude
suggested preoccupation with unhappy reflections, a humour from which
the sound of my footsteps roused him. He looked up and caught my eye
with an uncertain nod, as though he half recognised me--presumably
having casually noticed me at the Bigelow House the previous evening.
"Good-morning," said I cheerfully, with a slight break in my stride
intended craftily to convey the impression that I was not altogether
averse to a pause for gossip.
He said "Good-morning," sombrely.
"A pleasant day," I observed spontaneously, stopping.
"Yes," he agreed. "By the way, have you a match about you?"
I searched my pockets, found a box and handed it over.
"I've been perishing for a ..." He slid his fingers into a waistcoat
pocket, as one who should seek a cigarette-case; but the hand came
forth empty. He bit his remark off abruptly, with a blank look in his
eyes which was promptly succeeded by an expression of deepest chagrin.
He got up and with a little bow returned the box.
"I forgot," he said, apologetic.
"I'm afraid I can't help you out," said I.
"Oh, that's all right. I'd just forgotten that I don't smoke."
I pretended not to notice his disconcertion.
"You're to be congratulated; it's a shameful waste of time and money."
"A filthy habit," said he warmly.
"Indeed, yes," I chanted, finding my pipe and tobacco pouch.
He caught my twinkle as I filled and lighted, and looked away, the
shadow of a smile lurking beneath his small, closely clipped moustache.
"I beg your pardon," he said a moment later, regarding me with more
interest, "but--do you live here?"
"Certainly. Why?"
"I was sure of it," he replied soberly. "But don't you feel a bit
lonesome, sometimes?"
"Not in the least. Radville's one of the most interesting places on
this side of the footstool." He sighed. "Indeed," I insisted, "you
won't feel any more lonely after you've lived here a while, than I do
now, Mr. Duncan."
He opened his eyes at my acquaintance with his name, but jerked his
head at me comprehendingly.
"To be sure," he said. "You would know. But I'm only beginning to
realise what it feels like to be a marked man."
"I hear you intend to make Radville your permanent residence, Mr.
Duncan?"
"It's part of the system," he said obscurely. "It may prove a life
sentence."
"Don't you think you'll like it here?"
"Oh, I'm strong for Radville," he declared earnestly. "It's all to the
merry ... I beg your pardon."
I stared curiously to see him colour like a school-girl. "What for?"
"My mistake, sir; I forgot myself again. I don't use slang."
"Oh!" I commented, wondering. He was beginning to puzzle me.
In the pause the air began to rock with the heavy clanging of the clock
in the Methodist Church steeple.
"That's noon," I said. "We'll have to cut along: dinner's ready."
Duncan immediately replanted himself firmly upon the parapet. "I know
it," he said with some indignation.
Again bewildered, I hesitated, but eventually advanced: "Our ways run
together, Mr. Duncan, as far as the Bigelow House. My name is
Littlejohn--Homer Littlejohn."
He rose again to take my hand and assured me he was glad to make my
acquaintance. "But," he added morosely, "I'll be damned if I go back to
that hotel before dinner's over.... Great Scott! I forgot again. I
don't swear!"
"Have you any other unnatural accomplishments?" I inquired, chuckling.
"I'm so full of 'em I can hardly stick," he assented gloomily. "I don't
drink or smoke or swear or play pool or cards, and on Sundays I go to
church."
I laughed outright. "You've come to the right place for such exemplary
virtues to be fully appreciated, Mr. Duncan."
"That's all right," he said with a return of his indignation, "but it
wasn't in the bargain that I should starve to death. Do you realise,
Mr. Littlejohn," he continued, warming, "that you behold in me a young
man in the prime of health actually on the point of wasting visibly
away to a shadow of my former hardy self? It's a fact: I am. For the
past two days I've had nothing to eat except railway sandwiches and
coffee and the kind of fodder they pitchfork you at the Bigelow House.
And I came here with a mind coloured with rosy anticipations of real
old-fashioned country cooking. It's an outrage!"
"Look here," said I: "why not come home with me for dinner? I'll be
glad to have you, and Miss Carpenter won't mind your coming, I'm sure."
He got up with alacrity. "Those are the first human words I've heard in
Radville, sir! I accept with joy and gratitude. Come--lead me to it!"
Now, Miss Carpenter doesn't like her meals delayed; so I would have
been inclined to hasten this Mr. Duncan; but he saved me the trouble.
"Miss Carpenter?" he asked without warning, as we hurried up Main
Street.
"My landlady, Mr. Duncan."
"She takes boarders? An old maid?" he persisted eagerly.
"An elderly spinster; boarders are her distraction as well as a source
of income."
"Do you think she'd take me in, Mr. Littlejohn?"
"I'm sure of it. There's a vacant room ..."
"Does she talk?"
"Moderately."
"Not a regular walking newspaper--no?"
"Not exactly--"
"Then I'm afraid it's no use," he sighed.
I glanced up at his face, but it was inscrutable.
"You--you want a landlady who talks?" I gasped, incredulous.
"It's one of the rules," he said, again obscurely.
I could make nothing of him. And had I any right to introduce to Hetty
Carpenter a guest who came without credentials and talked more or less
like a lunatic at large?
"Mr. Duncan--" I began, uncomfortable.
"Don't say it," he anticipated me. "I know you think I'm crazy--but I'm
not. You would think so, naturally, because you're the only man here
who's ever lived away from Radville long enough--not counting those who
went to the World's Fair--."
"How did you know?"
"Bigelow told me last night; said you'd be glad to meet somebody from
New York. I hope he's right. I'm glad, personally.... You see--May I
request that you regard this as confidential?"
"Yes--yes!"
"I've come to Radville to make my fortune."
The confession smote me witless: I could only gape. He nodded
confirmation, with a most serious mien. At length I found strength to
articulate. "From New York--?"
"Yes. It's a new scheme. You see, Mr. Littlejohn,
matters have come to such a state that a city-bred boy practically
doesn't stand any show on earth of making good in the cities; your
country-bred boys crowd him to the wall, nine times out of ten. They
invade us in hordes, fresh from the open, strong, vigorous,
clear-headed, ambitious.... What chance have we got? ... I've been
figuring it out, you see, and I've come to the conclusion that it's my
only salvation to get back to the country and improve some of the
opportunities--the golden opportunities--that your boys have neglected,
overlooked, in their mad desire to invade the commercial centres of the
country."
He seemed very much in earnest; I was watching him as closely as I
might without making my scrutiny offensive; and there seemed to be the
ring of conviction in his voice, while the expression of his eyes
indicated concentrated thought. And how was I to know, then, that the
concentration was due to the necessity of invention?
"You follow me, Mr. Littlejohn?"
"I was here first," I corrected. "Still, there's more in what you say
than perhaps you realise."
"If I'd made this discovery originally I'd agree with you, sir. But,
quite to the contrary, it was pointed out to me by one of the shrewdest
business minds in the United States--a man who'd been a country boy to
begin with. And I've come to the conclusion that he's right."
"So you're here."
"Here I am."
"And what do you propose doing?"
"I'm reading law, Mr. Littlejohn; that I shall continue. In the
meantime, I shall keep my eyes open. At any day, at any amount, the
opportunity may present itself, the opportunity I'm looking for."
"Probably you're right," I assented, impressed, as we turned a corner.
A young woman in a very attractive linen gown was strolling toward us,
quite prettily engaged with a book which she read as she walked, her
fair young head bowed beneath a sunshade which tinted her face
becomingly. She gave me a shy smile and a low-voiced greeting as we
passed. Only my knowledge of the young woman prevented me from being
blinded by her engaging appearance.
"That," said I, when we were out of earshot, "shows you what a furore a
good-looking young man can create in a town like this. Josie Lockwood
has put on her best bib-and-tucker to go walking in this afternoon, on
the off-chance of meeting you, Mr. Duncan."
"Flattery note," he commented. "Who's Josie Lockwood?"
"Daughter of Blinky Lockwood, the richest man in Radville."
"Ah!" he said cryptically.
We had come to Miss Carpenter's. I opened the gate for him, but he
stood aside, refusing to precede me. And courtesy in the young folk of
to-day warms my old heart.
He had as much for Hetty Carpenter. Within an hour he had insinuated
himself into her good graces with a deftness, an ease, that astounded.
Within three hours he was established, bag and baggage, in her very
best room.
And thirty minutes after she had helped Duncan unpack, Hetty had to run
downtown to buy a spool of thread.
VII
A WINDOW IN RADVILLE
A jealous secret, which has never heretofore been divulged, is
responsible for the prosperity of the Radville _Citizen_--at
least, in very great measure. As the discoverer of this recipe for
circulation, I have kept it carefully locked in my guilty bosom for
many a year, and if I now betray it I do so without scruple, for the
_Gazette_ is now established firmly in a groove of popularity from
which you'd find it hard to oust the paper. So here's letting the cat
out of the bag:
The policy of the _Citizen_ has long been to devote its columns
mainly to the exploitation of what is known in newspaper terminology as
"the local story." Of the news of the great outside world we're
parsimonious, recognising the fact that the coronation of King Edward
VII. is a matter of much less import to our community than the
holocaust which was responsible for the destruction of Sir
Higginbottom's new hen-house. Similarly a West Indian tornado involving
losses running up into hundreds of thousands of dollars sinks into
relative insignificance as compared with the local weather forecast and
its probable effect on crops not worth ten thousand; while the enforced
abdication of the Sultan of Turkey gets a "stick" (a space in a
newspaper column about as long as your forefinger, if you have a small
hand) as contrasted with the column and a half assigned to the death of
old Colonel Bohun.
Now, naturally, a paper in a small country town can't afford a large
and hustling staff of enthusiastic reporters; and very probably the
_Citizen_ would overlook many items and stories of burning local
interest were it not for the fact that the population has been
cunningly made to serve in a reportorial capacity without either pay or
its own knowledge. We literally get our local news by wireless; and
from dawn to dark there's a constant supply of it on tap.
It's this way: our editorial rooms are in the second storey of a
building overlooking Court House Square. The lower floor is occupied by
the Post Office, and in front of the Post Office are a hitching-post
and two long, weather-scarred benches, while just across the road--I
mean street--on the boundary of the square proper--is a near-bronze
drinking-fountain and watering-trough erected from the proceeds of
several fairs given by the local branch of the W. C. T. U. Naturally,
indeed inevitably, all Radville gravitates to the Post Office, bringing
the news with it, and stops to discuss it on the steps or the benches
or by the fountain; and the acoustics are admirable. With a window open
and scratch-pad handy, the keen-eared scribe at his desk in our offices
can hardly fail to pick up every scrap of town information between
sunrise and dusk.... Of course, in winter the supply's not so good.
Winter before last we all suffered with colds acquired through keeping
the windows open; and last winter our circulation fell off surprisingly
through keeping them closed. This winter we contemplate cutting a
trap-door through the floor for the ostensible purpose of ventilation.
And thus it was that I managed to hear much of Mr. Duncan while I
myself was engaged in formulating an estimate of the young man. He
engaged the popular imagination no less than mine own, although I was
more intimately associated with him--as a fellow-resident at Hetty
Carpenter's. My professional duties making their habitual demands upon
my time, I saw, it may be, less of him than many of our people.
Certainly I learned less of his ways from first-hand knowledge. But
from my desk (it's the nearest to the window right above the Post
Office door) I was enabled to keep a pretty close line upon his habits
and movements, during the first fortnight of his stay in Radville.
At home I saw him with unvarying regularity at meal-times and less
frequently after supper. Between whiles he seemed to observe a fairly
regular routine: in the morning, after breakfast, he walked abroad for
his health's sake; in the afternoon and evening he sequestered himself
in his room for the pursuit of his legal studies. About the genuineness
of these latter I was long without a question: having been privileged
to inspect his room I found it redolent of an atmosphere of highly
commendable application. His writing table was a model of neatness, and
his store of legal treatises impressed one vastly. That no one, not
even Hetty Carpenter, ever saw the room without remarking the open
volume of "The Law of Torts," with its numerous pages painstakingly
spaced by slips of paper by way of bookmarks, is an attested fact. That
it was always the same volume is less widely known.
Less directly (that is to say, via my window) I learned of him
compendiously from sources which would have been anonymous but for my
long acquaintance with the voices of the townspeople.... I write these
pages at my desk at home and, if truth's to be told, somewhat
surreptitiously; but with these voices ringing in my memory's ear I
seem still to be sitting at my erstwhile desk by the window, looking
out over Court House Square, chewing the rubber heel of my pencil the
while I listen. It's summer weather and there's a smell in the air of
dust and heat; the square simmers and shimmers in unclouded sunshine,
its many green plots of grass a trifle grey and haggard with dust, the
flagstaff with its two flanking cannon by the bandstand in the middle
wavering slightly in the haze of heat; there are two rigs, a farm-wagon
and a buckboard, hitched to the post below, and some boys are squirting
water on one another by holding their hands over the lips of the
fountain across the way. Immediately opposite, on the far side of the
square, the Court House rises proudly in all the majesty of its
columned front and clapboarded sides; farther along there's the
Methodist Church, very severe, with its rows of sheds to one side for
the teams of the more rural members. Behind them all bulk our hills,
dim and purple against the overwhelming blue of the sky. It's very
quiet: there are few sounds, and those few most familiar: the raucous
war-cry of a rooster somewhere on the outskirts of town; an
intermittent thudding of hoofs in the inch-deep dust of the roadway;
Miles Stetson wringing faint but genuine shrieks of agony from his
cornet, in a room behind the Opery House on the next street;
periodically a shuffle of feet on the sidewalk below; less frequently
the whine of the swinging doors at Schwartz's place; above it all,
perhaps, the shrill but not unpleasant accents of Angie Tuthill as she
pauses on the threshold downstairs and injects surprising information
into the nothing-reluctant ears of Mame Garrison.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 | 5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16