Kitabı oku: «Stranded in Arcady», sayfa 10
XXI
THE FAIRY FORTUNE
Mr. Watson Grider was not alone when they found him. He was sharing a sofa in the public parlor with an elderly little gentleman whose winter-apple face was decorated with mutton-chop whiskers and wreathed in smiles – the smiles of a listener who has just heard a story worth retailing at the dinner-table.
The two stood up when Prime led his companion into the room, and Grider did the honors.
"Miss Millington, let me introduce Mr. Shellaby, an old friend of my father's and the senior member of the firm of Shellaby, Grice, and Shellaby, solicitors. Mr. Shellaby – Miss Millington and Mr. Donald Prime."
The little gentleman adjusted his eyeglasses and looked the pair over carefully. Then the twinkling smile hovered again at the corners of the near-sighted eyes.
"Are you – ah – are you aware of your relationship to this young lady, Mr. Prime?" he asked.
Prime made a sign of assent. "We figured it out one evening over our camp-fire. We are third cousins, I believe."
"Exactly," said Mr. Shellaby, matching his slender fingers and making a little bow. "Now another question, if you please: Mr. Grider tells me that you have just returned from a most singular and adventurous experience in the wilds of the northern woods. This experience, I understand, was entirely involuntary on your part. Have you – ah – formulated any theory to account for your – ah – abduction?"
Prime glanced at Grider and frowned.
"We know all we need to know about that part of it," he rejoined curtly. "Mr. Grider is probably still calling it a practical joke; but we call it an outrage."
The little man smiled again. "Exactly," he agreed; and then: "Do you happen to know what day of the month this is?"
Prime shook his head.
"We have lost count of the days. I kept a notched stick for a while, but I lost it along toward the last."
Mr. Shellaby waved them to chairs, saying: "Be seated, if you please; we may as well be comfortable as we talk. This is the last day of July. Does that mean anything in particular to either of you?"
Lucetta gave a little cry of surprise.
"It does to me," she said quickly. "Did you – did you put an advertisement in a Cleveland newspaper addressed to me, Mr. Shellaby?"
"We did; and we also advertised for the heirs of Roger Prime, of Batavia, New York. We believed at the time that it was a mere matter of form; in fact, when we drew his will our client informed us that there would most probably be no results. He was of the opinion that neither Roger Prime nor Clarissa Millington had left any living children."
"Your client?" Prime interrupted. "May we ask who he is?"
"Was," corrected the small man gravely. "Mr. Jasper Bankhead died last January. You didn't know him, I'm sure; quite possibly you have never heard of him until this moment."
"We both know of him," Prime amended. "He was my great-uncle, and a cousin of Miss Millington's grandmother. He was scarcely more than a family tradition to either of us, however. We had both been told that he went west as a young man and was never heard of afterward."
Mr. Shellaby nodded soberly.
"Mr. Bankhead was a rather peculiar character in some respects; quite eccentric, in fact. He accumulated a great deal of property in British Columbia – in mining enterprises – and it was only in his latter years that he came here to live. We drew his will, as I have said. He was without family, and he left the bulk of his estate – something over two millions – to various charities and hospitals. There were other legacies, to be sure, and among them one which was to be divided equally between, or among, the direct heirs, if any could be discovered, of Clarissa Millington and Roger Prime."
"And if no such heirs could be found?" Prime inquired.
"Our client was quite sure that they wouldn't be found. It seems that he had previously had some inquiries made on his own account. For that reason he placed a comparatively short time limit upon our efforts and prescribed their form. We were to advertise in certain newspapers, and if there should be no answer within six months of the date of his death the legacy in question was to revert to his private secretary, a young man who had served him in many capacities, and who was, by the by, already generously provided for in a separate bequest."
Lucetta's gray eyes lighted suddenly and she spoke with a little catching of her breath.
"The name of that young man, Mr. Shellaby, is Horace Bandish, isn't it?" she suggested.
"Quite so," nodded the little man; and then, with the amused twinkle returning to point the bit of dry humor: "I am sorry to have to spoil your estimate of Mr. Grider's capabilities as a practical joker; yes, very sorry, indeed; but I'm afraid I must. Bandish was your kidnapper, you know, and it is owing entirely to Mr. Grider's energetic efforts that the fellow is at present safely lodged in the Ottawa jail awaiting indictment and trial. In order that he might be certain of adding your legacy to his own, he meant to deprive you both of any possible opportunity of communicating with us before July thirty-first. The young woman who calls herself his wife was his accomplice, but she has disappeared. Mr. Grider can give you the details of the plot better than I can."
"Then Grider didn't – then the legacy is ours?" Prime stammered, clutching manfully for handholds in the grapple with this entirely new array of things incredible.
"Precisely, Mr. Prime; yours and Miss Millington's. There will be some legal formalities, to be sure, but Mr. Grider assures us that you can comply with them. Compared with Mr. Bankhead's undivided total, the amount of the legacy is not great; some two hundred thousand dollars, less the costs of administration, to be divided equally between you if you prove to be the only surviving heirs direct of the two persons named in the will."
Prime turned slowly upon his companion castaway.
"You said you wanted enough, but not too much," he reminded her solemnly. "I hope you're not disappointed, either way. At all events, you'll never have to cook for a man again unless you really wish to, and you can have your wish about the world travel, too."
"And you can have yours about the writing of the leisurely book," she flashed back; "about that, and – and – "
Prime's laugh ignored the presence of Grider and the lawyer.
"And the imaginary girl, you were going to say? Yes; I shall certainly marry her, if she'll have me."
Mr. Shellaby was on his feet and bowing again.
"I think I have said all that needs to be said here and now," he concluded mildly. "If you will excuse me, I'll go. We are a rather busy office. Later, Mr. Grider may bring you to us and we can set the legal machinery in motion. I congratulate you both very heartily, I'm sure," and he shook hands all around and backed away.
When they were left alone with the barbarian, Prime wheeled short upon him.
"Watson, will you raise your right hand and swear that this isn't another twist in your infernal joke?" he demanded. "Because, if it is – "
Grider fell back into the nearest chair and chuckled like a fat boy at a play.
"If it only were!" he gloated. "Wouldn't it be rich? Oh, Great Peter! why didn't I think of it in time and run a sham lawyer in on you? It would have been as easy as rolling off a log. Unhappily, Don, it's all too true. I didn't invent it – more's the pity!"
Prime stood over the joker, menacing him with a clenched fist. "If you want to go on living and spending your swollen fortune, you'll tell us all the ins and outs of it," he rasped, in well-assumed ferocity.
"I was only waiting for an invitation," was the laughing rejoinder. "When you didn't turn up in Boston to go motoring with me I ran over to New York and broke into your rooms. On your desk I found a telegram purporting to have come from me at Quebec. Since I hadn't wired you from Quebec, or anywhere else, I began to ask questions. Your janitor answered the first one: you had already gone to Canada. I couldn't imagine what was going on, but it seemed to be worth following up, so I took the next train for Quebec."
"And you didn't wire ahead?" said Prime.
"No; it didn't occur to me, but it wouldn't have done any good. Your disappearance was two days old when I reached Quebec. You weren't missed much, but Miss Millington was; the school-teachers were milling around and raising all sorts of a row. But in another day it quieted down flat. Somebody started the story that you two had run off together to get married; that it had been all cut and dried between you beforehand."
"That was probably a part of the plot – to account for us in that way," Lucetta put in.
"No doubt it was," Grider went on. "But the elopement story didn't satisfy me. I knew there wasn't any reason in the wide world why Don shouldn't get married openly, if he could find any girl foolish enough to say 'yes,' so I simply discounted the gossip and wired for detectives. A very little sleuth work developed the fact that each of you had been seen last in company with one of the Bandishes. That gave us a sort of a clew, and we began to trail Mr. Horace Bandish and dig up his record."
"And while you were doing all this for us, we … honestly, Mr. Grider, I am ashamed to tell you what we were saying of you," said the young woman in penitent self-abasement.
"Oh, that was all right. In times past I had given Don plenty of material of that sort to work on; only I wish I had known how you were looking at it – that you were charging it all up to me. It would have lightened the gloom immensely. But to get on: we trailed Bandish, as I say, and found that he had had an aeroplane shipped to him at Quebec a few days before your arrival there. That looked a bit suspicious, and a little more digging made it look more so. The 'plane had been unloaded and carted away, and a few days later had been brought back and shipped to Ottawa. That left a pretty plain trail, but still there was no evidence of criminality."
"Of course, you didn't know anything about the legacy, at that stage of it?" Prime threw in.
"Not a thing in the world. More than that, Bandish's record was decently good. We found that he had been a sort of general factotum for a rich old man, and had been left comfortably well off when his employer died. There was absolutely no motive in sight; no reason on earth why he should drug a couple of total strangers and blot them out. Just the same, I was confident that he had done it, and that I should eventually find you by keeping cases on him. So I dropped the detectives, who were beginning to give me the laugh for being so pig-headed about an ordinary elopement, gathered up your belongings on the chance that you'd need 'em if I should make good in the search for you, and came here to Ottawa to keep in touch with Bandish."
Prime's smile was grim. "You were taking a lot of trouble for two people who were just about that time calling you all the hard names in the category," he interposed.
"Wasn't I?" said the barbarian with a grin. "But never mind about that. I came here, as I said, and settled down to keep an eye on Horace. For quite some time I didn't learn anything new. I found that Bandish was a club man, well known and rather popular; also that he was an amateur aviator and had made a number of exhibition flights. Everybody knew him and everybody seemed to like him. In the course of time we met at one of the clubs, and I watched him carefully when we were introduced. If he had sent the forged telegram it was proof that he knew me by name, at least. But he never made a sign.
"It was about a week later than this when I stumbled upon Mr. Shellaby and got my first real clew in the story of the legacy muddle. Of course, that opened all the doors, and after that I laid for Horace like a cat watching a mouse. Before long I could see that he was growing mighty nervous about something, and the next thing I knew he turned up missing. Right there I lost my head and wasted two whole days trying to find out which railroad he had taken out of town. Late in the evening of the second day I learned, by the merest bit of bull-headed luck, that he had gone up the Rivière du Lièvres in a motor-launch. I had a quick hunch that that motor-launch was pointing in your direction and that it was up to me to chase him and find you and get you back here before the thirty-first. Three hours later I had borrowed the Sprite and was after him."
"He found us," said Prime, rather grittingly. "We had stopped to patch our canoe, and he came up in the night and cut another hole in it. I mistook him for you – which was the chief reason why I didn't take a pot-shot at him as he was running away."
"I knew I had no chance to overtake him," Grider went on, "but it seemed a safe bet that I'd get him coming out. I did; captured him, took him ashore, built a fire, and told him I was going to roast him alive if he didn't come across with the facts. He held out for a while, but finally told me the whole of it: how he had figured to get you two together in Quebec after he had learned that you, Miss Millington, were due to be there with the teachers. You see, he knew all about you – both of you. As Mr. Bankhead's secretary he had made, at Mr. Bankhead's dictation, all the former inquiries, and, of course, had carefully kept the answers from reaching the old gentleman. With a little more cooking he told me how he and the woman had drugged you both, after which he had carried you in the 'plane to the shore of some unpronounceable lake in the north woods."
"What did he mean to do? – let us starve to death?" Prime asked.
"Oh, no; nothing so murderous as that! He had it all doped out beforehand. There is a Hudson Bay post on one of the streams flowing into the lake, and he had arranged with a couple of half-breed canoe-men to happen along and pick you up and bring you back, stipulating only that they should kill time enough to make the return trip use up the entire month of July. As the fatal date drew near, he grew uneasy and made the launch trip to see to it personally that you were not getting along too fast. He found your camp and cut your canoe merely to add a little more delay for good measure. He couldn't tell me what had become of his half-breeds."
Prime laughed. "I suppose the old Scotch under-sheriff told you, didn't he?"
"He tried to tell me that you and Miss Millington had assassinated the two men and stolen their canoe and outfit. You didn't do that? – or did you?"
"Hardly," Prime denied. Then he told the story of the finding of the dead men, capping it with an account of the chance visit of Jean Ba'tiste.
Grider left his chair and took a turn up and down the room.
"It was a great adventure," he declared, coming back to them. "Some day you are going to tell me all about it, and the kind of a time you had. I'll bet it was fierce – some parts of it, anyway. I can't answer for you, Miss Millington; but what Don doesn't know about roughing it is – or used to be – good and plenty."
"You sent Bandish back to town after you were through with him?" Prime inquired.
"Yes. I had taken a pair of handcuffs along, just on general principles, and I lent him my engineer to run the launch. Afterward, I kept on up-stream in the Sprite, hoping to meet you coming down; and hoping against hope that we would be able to beat the calendar back to Ottawa."
"We never should have beaten it if the old Scotchman hadn't taken a hand," was Prime's comment. "He saved us at least a full day."
Grider was edging toward the door. "I guess you don't need me any more just now," he offered. "I'm due to go and thank the good-natured lumber king who lent me the Sprite. By and by, after the dust has settled a bit, I'll come around and show you where Mr. Shellaby holds forth."
"One minute, Mr. Grider," Lucetta interposed hastily. "We can't let you go without asking your forgiveness for the way in which we have been vilifying you for a whole month, and for what we both said to you last night. I must speak for myself, at least, and – "
"Don't," said Grider, laughing again. "It's all in the day's work. As it happened, I wasn't the goat this time, but that isn't saying that I mightn't have done something quite as uncivilized if you had given me a chance. You two gave me one of the few perfect moments of a rather uneventful life last night when you made me understand that you were giving me credit for the whole thing – as a joke! I only wish I could invent one half as good. And that reminds me, Don; can you – er – do you think you'll be able to put a real woman into the next story?"
For some few minutes after the barbarian had ducked and disappeared a stiff little silence fell upon the two he had left behind. In writing about it Prime would have called it an interregnum of readjustment. He had gone to a window to stare aimlessly down into the busy street, and Lucetta was sitting with her chin in her cupped palms and her eyes fixed upon the rather garish pattern of the paper on the opposite wall. After a time Prime pulled himself together and went back to her.
"It is all changed, isn't it?" he said, in a rather flat voice. "Everything is changed. You are no longer a teacher, working for your living. You are an heiress, with a snug little fortune in your own right."
She looked up at him with the bright little smile which had been brought over intact from the days of the banished conventions.
"Whatever you say I am, you are," she retorted cheerfully. "Only I can't quite believe it yet – about the money, you know."
"You'd better," he returned gloomily. "Besides, it is just what you said you wanted – neither too little nor too much: one hundred thousand at a good, safe six per cent will give you an income of six thousand a year. You can travel on that for the remainder of your natural life."
"Easily," she rejoined. "And you can write the leisurely book and marry the girl. Perhaps you will be doing both while I am getting ready to go on my travels. You won't insist upon going back to Ohio with me now, will you? You – you ought to go straight to the girl, don't you think?"
"You are forgetting that I said she was an imaginary girl," he parried.
"You said so at first; but afterward you admitted that she wasn't. Also, you promised me you would show me her picture after we should get out of the woods."
"I have never had her picture," he denied. "I said I would show you what she looks like. Come to the window where the light is better."
She went with him half-mechanically. Between the two windows there was an old-fashioned pier-glass set in the wall. Before she realized what he was doing he had led her before the mirror.
"There she is, Lucetta," he said softly; "the only girl there is – or ever will be."
She started back with a little cry, putting out her hands as if to push him away.
"No, Donald – a thousand times no!" she flashed out. "Do you think I don't know that this is only another way of telling me how sorry you are for me? You know well enough what people will say when they hear how we have been together for a whole month, alone; and in your splendid chivalry you would – "
He did not let her finish. The hotel parlor was supposed to be a public room, but he ignored that and took her in his arms.
"From the first day, Lucetta, dear – from the very first day!" he argued passionately. "And it grew and grew with your absolute, your simply angelic trust in me until I was half-mad with the desire to tell you. But I couldn't tell you then; I couldn't even let you suspect and still be what you were believing me to be. Don't you think you could learn, in time, you know, to – to – "
Her face was hidden, but she made her refusal quite positive.
"No, Donald, I can never learn it – again. Because, you see, in spite of the other girl I was believing in – that you made me believe in – I – Oh, it was wicked, wicked! – but I couldn't help it! And all the time I was sc-scared perfectly frantic for fear you would find it out!"
"You were, were you?" he laughed happily. "Perhaps I did find it out – just a little…"
It was something like an hour later, and an overruling Providence had graciously preserved the privacy of the public parlor for them during the entire length of the precious interval, when Prime looked at his watch and said: "Heavens, Lucetta! it's nearly noon! Let's go quickly and beard the Shellaby in his den before he goes to luncheon. The fairy fortune may escape us yet if we don't hurry up and nab it."
She had risen with him, and her eyes were shining when she lifted her face and let him see them.
"As if the money, or anything else in this world, could make any difference to either of us now, Donald, dear!" she protested, with a fine scorn of such inconsequent things as fairy fortunes.
And Prime, seeing the unashamed love in the shining eyes, joyously agreed with her.
