Kitabı oku: «The Pagan Madonna», sayfa 10
The recipients of this remarkable news appeared petrified for a space. Cunningham enjoyed the astonishment.
“Sounds almost too good to be true, doesn’t it? Still, it’s a fact.”
“That’s tiptop news, Cunningham,” said Dennison. “I hope when you go down the ladder you break your infernal neck. But the luck is on your side.”
“Let us hope that it stays there,” replied Cunningham, unruffled. He turned to Cleigh again: “I say, we’ve always been bewailing that job of Da Vinci’s. But the old boy was a seer. He knew that some day there would be American millionaires and that I’d become a force in art. So he put his subject on a plaster wall so I couldn’t lug it off. A canvas the same size, I don’t say; but the side of a church!”
“A ship is going to pick you up to-morrow?” asked Jane.
“Yes. The crew of the Wanderer goes to the Haarlem and the Haarlem crew transships to the Wanderer. You see, Cleigh, I’m one of those efficiency sharks. In this game I have left nothing to chance. Nothing except an act of God – as they say on the back of your steamer ticket – can derange my plans. Not the least bit of inconvenience to you beyond going out of your course for a few days. The new crew was signed on in Singapore – able seamen wanting to return to the States. Hired them in your name. Clever idea of me, eh?”
“Very,” said Cleigh, speaking directly to Cunningham for the first time since the act of piracy.
“And this will give you enough coal to turn and make Manila, where you can rob the bunkers of one of your freighters. Now, then, early last winter in New York a company was formed, the most original company in all this rocky old world – the Great Adventure Company, of which I am president and general adviser. Pearls! Each member of the crew is a shareholder, undersigned at fifteen hundred shares, par value one dollar. These shares are redeemable October first in New York City if the company fails, or are convertible into pearls of equal value if we succeed. No widows and orphans need apply. Fair enough.”
“Fair enough, indeed,” admitted Cleigh.
Dennison stared at his father. He did not quite understand this willingness to hold converse with the rogue after all this rigorously maintained silence.
“Of course the Great Adventure Company had to be financed,” went on Cunningham with a deprecating gesture.
“Naturally,” assented Cleigh. “And that, I suppose, will be my job?”
“Indirectly. You see, Eisenfeldt told me he had a client ready to pay eighty thousand for the rug, and that put the whole idea into my noodle.”
“Ah! Well, you will find the crates and frames and casings in the forward hold,” said Cleigh in a tone which conveyed nothing of his thoughts. “It would be a pity to spoil the rug and the oils for the want of a little careful packing.”
Cunningham rose and bowed.
“Cleigh, you are a thoroughbred!”
Cleigh shook his head.
“I’ll have your hide, Cunningham, if it takes all I have and all I am!”
CHAPTER XIX
Cunningham sat down. “The spirit is willing, Cleigh, but the flesh is weak. You’ll never get my hide. How will you go about it? Stop a moment and mull it over. How are you going to prove that I’ve borrowed the rug and the paintings? These are your choicest possessions. You have many at home worth more, but these things you love. Out of spite, will you inform the British, the French, the Italian governments that you had these objects and that I relieved you of them? In that event you’ll have my hide, but you’ll never set eyes upon the oils again except upon their lawful walls – the rug, never! On the other hand, there is every chance in the world of my returning them to you.”
“Your word?” interrupted Jane, ironically.
So Cleigh was right? A quarter of a million in art treasures!
“My word! I never before realized,” continued Cunningham, “what a fine thing it is to possess something to stand on firmly – a moral plank.”
Dennison’s laughter was sardonic.
“Moral plank is good,” was his comment.
“Miss Norman,” said Cunningham, maliciously, “I slept beside the captain this morning, and he snores outrageously.” The rogue tilted his chin and the opal fire leaped into his eyes. “Do you want me to tell you all about the Great Adventure Company, or do you want me to shut up and merely proceed with the company’s business without further ado? Why the devil should I care what you think of me? Still, I do care. I want you to get my point of view – a rollicking adventure, in which nobody loses anything and I have a great desire fulfilled. Hang it, it’s a colossal joke, and in the end the laugh will be on nobody! Even Eisenfeldt will laugh,” he added, enigmatically.
“Do you intend to take the oils and the rug and later return them?” demanded Jane.
“Absolutely! That’s the whole story. Only Cleigh here will not believe it until the rug and oils are dumped on the door-step of his New York home. I needed money. Nobody would offer to finance a chart with a red cross on it. So I had to work it out in my own fashion. The moment Eisenfeldt sees these oils and the rug he becomes my financier, but he’ll never put his claw on them except for one thing – that act of God they mention on the back of your ticket. Some raider may have poked into this lagoon of mine. In that case Eisenfeldt wins.”
Cleigh smiled.
“A pretty case, Cunningham, but it won’t hold water. It is inevitable that Eisenfeldt gets the rug and the paintings, and you are made comfortable for the rest of your days. A shabby business, and you shall rue it.”
“My word?”
“I don’t believe in it any longer,” returned Cleigh.
Cunningham appealed to Jane.
“Give me the whole story, then I’ll tell you what I believe,” she said. “You may be telling the truth.”
What a queer idea – wanting his word believed! Why should it matter to him whether they believed in the honour of his word or not, when he held the whip hand and could act as he pleased? The poor thing! And as that phrase was uttered in thought, the glamour of him was dissipated; she saw Cunningham as he was, a poor benighted thing, half boy, half demon, a thing desperately running away from his hurt and lashing out at friends and enemies alike on the way.
“Tell your story – all of it.”
Cunningham began:
“About a year ago the best friend I had – perhaps the only friend I had – died. He left me his chart and papers. The atoll is known, but uncharted, because it is far outside the routes. I have no actual proofs that there will be shell in the lagoon; I have only my friend’s word – the word of a man as honest as sunshine. Where this shell lies there is never any law. Some pearl thiever may have fallen upon the shell since my friend discovered it.”
“In that case,” said Cleigh, “I lose?”
“Frankly, yes! All financial ventures are attended by certain risks.”
“Money? Why didn’t you come to me for that?”
“What! To you?”
Cunningham’s astonishment was perfect.
“Yes. There was a time when I would have staked a good deal on your word.”
Cunningham rested his elbows on the table and clutched his hair – a despairing gesture.
“No use! I can’t get it to you! I can’t make you people understand! It isn’t the pearls, it’s the game; it’s all the things that go toward the pearls. I want to put over a game no man ever played before.”
Jane began to find herself again drawn toward him, but no longer with the feeling of unsettled mystery. She knew now why he drew her. He was the male of the species to which she belonged – the out-trailer, the hater of humdrum, of dull orbits and of routine. The thrilling years he had spent – business! This was the adventure of which he had always dreamed, and since it would never arrive as a sequence, he had proceeded to dramatize it! He was Tom Sawyer grown up; and for a raft on the Mississippi substitute a seagoing yacht. There was then in this matter-of-fact world such a man, and he sat across the table from her!
“Supposing I had come to you and you had advanced the money?” said Cunningham, earnestly. “All cut and dried, not a thrill, not a laugh, nothing but the pearls! I have never had a boyhood dream realized but, hang it, I’m going to realize this one!” He struck the table violently. “Set the British after me, and you’ll never see this stuff again. You’ll learn whether my word is worth anything or not. Lay off for eight months, and if your treasures are not yours again within that time you won’t have to chase me. I’ll come to you and have the tooth pulled without gas.”
Dennison’s eyes softened a little. Neither had he realized any of his boyhood dreams. For all that, the fellow was as mad as a hatter.
“Of course I’m a colossal ass, and half the fun is knowing that I am.” The banter returned to Cunningham’s tongue. “But this thing will go through – I feel it. I will have had my fun, and you will have loaned your treasures to me for eight months, and Eisenfeldt will have his principal back without interest. The treasures go directly to a bank vault. There will be two receipts, one dated September – mine; and one dated November – Eisenfeldt’s. I hate Eisenfeldt. He’s tricky; his word isn’t worth a puff of smoke; he’s ready at all times to play both ends from the middle. I want to pay him out for crossing my path in several affairs. He’s betting that I will find no pearls. So to-morrow I will exhibit the rug and the Da Vinci to convince him, and he will advance the cash. Can’t you see the sport of it?”
“That would make very good reading,” said Cleigh, scraping the shell of his avocado pear. “I can get you on piracy.”
“Prove it! You can say I stole the yacht, but you can’t prove it. The crew is yours; you hired it. The yacht returns to you to-morrow without a scratch on her paint. And the new crew will know absolutely nothing, being as innocent as newborn babes. Cleigh, you’re no fool. What earthly chance have you got? You love that rug. You’re not going to risk losing it positively, merely to satisfy a thirst for vengeance. You’re human. You’ll rave and storm about for a few days, then you’ll accept the game as it lies. Think of all the excitement you’ll have when a telegram arrives or the phone rings! I told you it was a whale of a joke; and in late October you’ll chuckle. I know you, Cleigh. Down under all that tungsten there is the place of laughter. It will be better to laugh by yourself than to have the world laugh at you. Hoist by his own petard! There isn’t a newspaper syndicate on earth that wouldn’t give me a fortune for just the yarn. Now, I don’t want the world to laugh at you, Cleigh.”
“Considerate of you.”
“Because I know what that sort of laughter is. Could you pick up the old life, the clubs? Could a strong man like you exist in an atmosphere of suppressed chuckles? Mull it over. If these treasures were honourably yours I’d never have thought of touching them. But you haven’t any more right to them than I have, or Eisenfeldt.”
Dennison leaned back in his chair. He began to laugh.
“Cunningham, my apologies,” he said. “I thought you were a scoundrel, and you are only a fool – the same brand as I! I’ve been aching to wring your neck, but that would have been a pity. For eight months life will be full of interest for me – like waiting for the end of a story in the magazines.”
“But there is one thing missing out of the tale,” Jane interposed.
“And what is that?” asked Cunningham.
“Those beads.”
“Oh, those beads! They belonged to an empress of France, and the French Government is offering sixty thousand for their return. Napoleonic. And now will you answer a question of mine? Where have you hidden them?”
Jane did not answer, but rose and left the dining salon. Silence fell upon the men until she returned. In her hand she held Ling Foo’s brass hand warmer. She set it on the table and pried back the jigsawed lid. From the heap of punk and charcoal ashes she rescued the beads and laid them on the cloth.
“Very clever. They are yours,” said Cunningham.
“Mine?”
“Why not? Findings is keepings. They are as much yours as mine.”
Jane pushed the string toward Cleigh.
“For me?” he said.
“Yes – for nothing.”
“There is sixty thousand dollars in gold in my safe. When we land in San Francisco I will turn over the money to you. You have every right in the world to it.”
Cleigh blew the ash from the glass beads and circled them in his palm.
“I repeat,” she said, “they are yours.”
Cunningham stood up.
“Well, what’s it to be?”
“I have decided to reserve my decision,” answered Cleigh, dryly. “To hang you ’twixt wind and water will add to the thrill, for evidently that’s what you’re after.”
“If it’s on your own you’ll only be wasting coal.”
Cleigh toyed with the beads.
“The Haarlem. Maybe I can save you a lot of trouble,” said Cunningham. “The name is only on her freeboard and stern, not on her master’s ticket. The moment we are hull down the old name goes back.” Cunningham turned to Jane. “Do you believe I’ve put my cards on the table?”
“Yes.”
“And that if I humanly can I’ll keep my word?”
“Yes.”
“That’s worth many pearls of price!”
“Supposing,” said Cleigh, trickling the beads from palm to palm – “supposing I offered you the equivalent in cash?”
“No, Eisenfeldt has my word.”
“You refuse?” Plainly Cleigh was jarred out of his calm. “You refuse?”
“I’ve already explained,” said Cunningham, wearily. “I’ve told you that I like sharp knives to play with. If you handle them carelessly you’re cut. How about you?” Cunningham addressed the question to Dennison.
“Oh, I’m neutral and interested. I’ve always had a sneaking admiration for a tomfool. They were Shakespeare’s best characters. Consider me neutral.”
Cleigh rose abruptly and stalked from the salon.
Cunningham lurched and twisted to the forward passage and disappeared.
When next Jane saw him in the light he was bloody and terrible.
CHAPTER XX
Jane and Dennison were alone. “I wonder,” he said, “are we two awake, or are we having the same nightmare?”
“The way he hugs his word! Imagine a man stepping boldly and mockingly outside the pale, and carrying along his word unsullied with him! He’s mad, Denny, absolutely mad! The poor thing!”
That phrase seemed to liberate something in his mind. The brooding oppression lifted its siege. His heart was no longer a torture chamber.
“I ought to be his partner, Jane. I’m as big a fool as he is. Who but a fool would plan and execute a game such as this? But he’s sound on one point. It’s a colossal joke.”
“But your father?”
“Cunningham will have to dig a pretty deep hole somewhere if he expects to hide successfully. It’s a hundred-to-one shot that father will never see his rug again. He probably realizes that, and he will be relentless. He’ll coal at Manila and turn back. He’ll double or triple the new crew’s wages. Money will mean nothing if he starts after Cunningham. Of course I’ll be out of the picture at Manila.”
“Do you know why your father kidnaped me so easily? I thought maybe I could find a chink in his armour and bring you two together.”
“And you’ve found the job hopeless!” Dennison shrugged.
“Won’t you tell me what the cause was?”
“Ask him. He’ll tell it better than I can. So you hid the beads in that hand-warmer! Not half bad. But why don’t you take the sixty thousand?”
“I’ve an old-fashioned conscience.”
“I don’t mean Father’s gold, but the French Government’s. Comfort as long as you lived.”
“No, I could not touch even that money. The beads were stolen.”
“Lord, Lord! Then there are three of us – Cunningham, myself, and you!”
“Are you calling me a tomfool?”
“Not exactly. What’s the feminine?”
She laughed and rose.
“You are almost human to-night.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to have a little talk with your father.”
“Good luck. I’m going to have a fresh pot of coffee. I shall want to keep awake to-night.”
“Why?”
“Oh, just an idea. You’d better turn in when the interview is over. Good luck.”
Jane stood framed in the doorway for a moment. Under the reading lamp in the main salon she saw Cleigh. He was running the beads from hand to hand and staring into space. Behind her she heard Dennison’s spoon clatter in the cup as he stirred the coffee.
Wild horses! She felt as though she were being pulled two ways by wild horses! For she was about to demand of Anthony Cleigh the promised reparation. And which of two things should she demand? All this time, since Cleigh had uttered the promise, she had had but one thought – to bring father and son together, to do away with this foolish estrangement. For there did not seem to be on earth any crime that merited such a condition. If he humanly could – he had modified the promise with that. What was more human than to forgive – a father to forgive a son?
And now Cunningham had to wedge in compellingly! She could hesitate between Denny and Cunningham! The rank disloyalty of it shocked her. To give Cunningham his eight months! Pity, urgent pity for the broken body and tortured soul of the man – mothering pity! Denny was whole and sound, mentally and physically; he would never know any real mental torture, anything that compared with Cunningham’s, which was enduring, now waxing, now waning, but always sensible. To secure for him his eight months, without let or hindrance from the full enmity of Cleigh; to give him his boyhood dream, whether he found his pearls or not. Her throat became stuffed with the presage of tears. The poor thing!
But Denny, parting from his father at Manila, the cleavage wider than ever, beyond hope! Oh, she could not tolerate the thought of that! These two, so full of strong and bitter pride – they would never meet again if they separated now. Perhaps fate had assigned the rôle of peacemaker to her, and she had this weapon in her hand to enforce it or bring it about – the father’s solemn promise to grant whatever she might ask. And she could dodder between Denny and Cunningham!
To demand both conditions would probably appeal to Cleigh as not humanly possible. One or the other, but not the two together.
An interval of several minutes of which she had no clear recollection, and then she was conscious that she was reclining in her chair on deck, staring at the stars which appeared jerkily and queerly shaped – through tears. She hadn’t had the courage to make a decision. As if it became any easier to solve by putting it over until to-morrow!
Chance – the Blind Madonna of the Pagan – was preparing to solve the riddle for her – with a thunderbolt!
The mental struggle had exhausted Jane somewhat, and she fell into a doze. When she woke she was startled to see by her wrist watch that it was after eleven. The yacht was plowing along through the velvet blackness of the night. The inclination to sleep gone, Jane decided to walk the deck until she was as bodily tired as she was mentally. All the hidden terror was gone. To-morrow these absurd pirates would be on their way.
Study the situation as she might, she could discover no flaw in this whimsical madman’s plans. He held the crew in his palm, even as he held Cleigh – by covetousness. Cleigh would never dare send the British after Cunningham; and the crew would obey him to the letter because that meant safety and recompense. The Great Adventure Company! Only by an act of God! And what could possibly happen between now and the arrival of the Haarlem?
Cleigh had evidently turned in, for through the transoms she saw that the salon lights were out. She circled the deck house six times, then went up to the bow and stared down the cutwater at the phosphorescence. Blue fire! The eternal marvel of the sea!
A hand fell upon her shoulder. She thought it would be Denny’s. It was Flint’s!
“Be a good sport, an’ give us a kiss!”
She drew back, but he caught her arm. His breath was foul with tobacco and whisky.
“All right, I’ll take it!”
With her free hand she struck him in the face. It was a sound blow, for Jane was no weakling. That should have warned Flint that a struggle would not be worth while. But where’s the drunken man with caution? The blow stung Flint equally in flesh and spirit. He would kiss this woman if it was the last thing he ever did!
Jane fought him savagely, never thinking to call to the bridge. Twice she escaped, but each time the fool managed to grasp either her waist or her skirt. Then out of nowhere came the voice of Cunningham:
“Flint!”
Dishevelled and breathless, Jane found herself free. She stumbled to the rail and rested there for a moment. Dimly she could see the two men enacting a weird shadow dance. Then it came to her that Cunningham would not be strong enough to vanquish Flint, so she ran aft to rouse Denny.
As she went down the companionway, her knees threatening to give way, she heard voices, blows, crashings against the partitions. Instinct told her to seek her cabin and barricade the door; curiosity drove her through the two darkened salons to the forward passage. Only a single lamp was on, but that was enough. Anthony Cleigh’s iron-gray head towering above a whirlwind of fists and forearms!
What had happened? This couldn’t be real! She was still in her chair on deck, and what she saw was nightmare! Out of the calm, all in a moment, this! Where was Denny, if this picture wasn’t nightmare? Cunningham above, struggling with the whisky-maddened Flint – Cleigh fighting in the passage! Dear God, what had happened?
Where was Denny? The question let loose in her heart and mind all that was emotional, at the same time enchaining her to the spot where she stood. Denny! Why, she loved Denny! And she had not known it consciously until this moment. Because some presciential instinct warned her that Denny was either dead or badly hurt!
The narrowness of the passage gave Cleigh one advantage – none of the men could get behind him. Sometimes he surged forward a little, sometimes he stepped back, but never back of the line he had set for himself. By and by Jane forced her gaze to the deck to see what it was that held him like a rock. What she saw was only the actual of what she had already envisaged – Denny, either dead or badly hurt!
What had happened was this: Six of the crew, those spirits who had succumbed to the secret domination of the man Flint – the drinkers – had decided to celebrate the last night on the Wanderer. Their argument was that old man Cleigh wouldn’t miss a few bottles, and that it would be a long time between drinks when they returned to the States; and never might they again have so easy a chance to taste the juice of the champagne grape. Where was the harm? Hadn’t they behaved like little Fauntleroys for weeks? They did not want any trouble – just half a dozen bottles, and back to the forepeak to empty them. That wouldn’t kill the old man. They wouldn’t even have to force the door of the dry-stores; they had already learned that they could tickle the lock out of commission by the use of a bent wire. Young, restless, and mischievous – none of them bad. A bit of laughter and a few bars of song – that was all they wanted. No doubt the affair would have blown itself out harmlessly but for the fact that Chance had other ideas. She has a way with her, this Pagan Madonna, of taking off the cheerful motley of a jest and substituting the Phrygian cap of terror, subitaneously.
Dennison had lain down on the lounge in the main salon. Restless, unhappy, bitter toward his father, he had lain there counting the throbs of the engine to that point where they mysteriously cease to register and one has to wait a minute or two to pick up the throb again.
For years he had lived more or less in the open, which attunes the human ear to sounds that generally pass unnoticed. All at once he was sure that he had heard the tinkle of glass, but he waited. The tinkle was repeated. Instinct led him at once to the forward passage, and one glance down this was sufficient. From the thought of a drunken orgy – the thing he had been fearing since the beginning of this mad voyage – his thought leaped to Jane. Thus his subsequent acts were indirectly in her defense.
“What the devil are you up to there?” he called.
The unexpectedness of the challenge disconcerted the men. They had enough loot. A quick retreat, and Dennison would have had nothing to do but close the dry-stores door. But middle twenties are belligerent rather than discreet.
“What you got to say about it?” jeered one of the men, shifting his brace of bottles to the arms of another and squaring off.
Dennison rushed them, and the mêlée began. It was a strenuous affair while it lasted. When a strong man is full of anger and bitter disappointment, when six young fellows are bored to distraction, nothing is quite so satisfying as an exchange of fisticuffs. Dennison had the advantage of being able to hit right and left, at random, while his opponents were not always sure that a blow landed where it was directed.
Naturally the racket drew Cleigh to the scene, and he arrived in time to see a champagne bottle descend upon the head of his son. Dennison went down.
Cleigh, boiling with impotent fury, had gone to bed, not to sleep but to plan; some way round the rogue, to trip him and regain the treasures that meant so much to him. Like father, like son. When he saw what was going on in the passage he saw also that here was something that linked up with his mood. Of course it was to defend the son; but without the bitter rage and the need of physical expression he would have gone for the hidden revolver and settled the affair with that. Instead he flew at the men with the savageness of a gray wolf. He was a tower of a man, for all his sixty years; and he had mauled three of the crew severely before Cunningham arrived.
Why had the mutinous six offered battle? Why hadn’t they retreated with good sense at the start? Originally all they had wanted was the wine. Why stop to fight when the wine was theirs? In the morning none of them could answer these questions. Was there ever a rough-and-tumble that anybody could explain lucidly the morning after? Perhaps it was the false pride of youth; the bitter distaste at the thought of six turning tail for one.
Cunningham fired a shot at the ceiling, and a dozen of the crew came piling in from the forward end of the passage. The fighting stopped magically.
“You fools!” cried Cunningham in a high, cracked voice. “To put our heads into hemp at the last moment. If anything happens to young Cleigh, back to Manila you go with the yacht! Clear out! At the last moment!” It was like a sob.
Jane, still entranced, saw Cleigh stoop and put his arms under the body of his son, heave, and stand up under the dead weight. He staggered past her toward the main salon. She heard him mutter.
“God help me if I’m too late – if I’ve waited too long! Denny?”
That galvanized her into action, and she flew to the light buttons, flooding both the dining and the main salons. She helped Cleigh to place Dennison on the lounge. After that it was her affair. Dennison was alive, but how much alive could be told only by the hours. She bathed and bandaged his head. Beyond that she could do nothing but watch and wait.
“I wouldn’t mind – a little of that – water,” said Cunningham, weakly.
Cleigh, with menacing fists, wheeled upon him; but he did not strike the man who was basically the cause of Denny’s injuries. At the same time Jane, looking up across Dennison’s body, uttered a gasp of horror. The entire left side of Cunningham was drenched in blood, and the arm dangled.
“Flint had a knife – and – was quite handy with it.”
“For me!” she cried. “For defending me! Mr. Cleigh, Flint caught me on deck – and Mr. Cunningham – oh, this is horrible!”
“You were right, Cleigh. The best-laid plans of mice and men! What an ass I am! I honestly thought I could play a game like this without hurt to anybody. It was to be a whale of a joke. Flint – ”
Cunningham reached blindly for the nearest chair and collapsed in it.
An hour later. The four of them were still in the main salon. Jane sat at the head of the lounge, and from time to time she took Dennison’s pulse and temperature. She had finally deduced that there had been no serious concussion. Cleigh sat at the foot of the lounge, his head on his hands. Cunningham occupied the chair into which he had collapsed. Three ugly flesh wounds, but nothing a little time would not heal. True, he had had a narrow squeak. He sat with his eyes closed.
“Why?” asked Jane suddenly, breaking the silence.
“What?” said Cleigh, looking up.
“Why these seven years – if you cared? I heard you say something about being too late. Why?”
“I’m a queer old fool. An idea, when it enters my head, sticks. I can’t shift my plans easily; I have to go through. What you have witnessed these several days gives you the impression that I have no heart. That isn’t true. But we Cleighs are pigheaded. Until he was sent to Russia he was never from under the shadow of my hand. My agents kept me informed of all his moves, his adventures. The mistake was originally mine. I put him in charge of an old scholar who taught him art, music, languages, but little or nothing about human beings. I gave him a liberal allowance; but he was a queer lad, and Broadway never heard of him. Now I hold that youth must have its fling in some manner or other; after thirty there is no cure for folly. So when he ran away I let him go; but he never got so far away that I did not know what he was doing. I liked the way he rejected the cash I gave him; the way he scorned to trade upon the name. He went clean. Why? I don’t know. Oh, yes, he got hilariously drunk once in a while, but he had his fling in clean places. I had agents watching him.”
“Why did he run away?” asked Jane.
“No man can tell another man; a man has to find it out for himself – the difference between a good woman and a bad one.”
“I play that statement to win,” interposed Cunningham without opening his eyes.
“There was a woman?” said Jane.
“A bad one. Pretty and clever as sin. My fault. I should have sent him to college where he’d have got at least a glimmer of life. But I kept him under the tutor until the thing happened. He thought he was in love, when it was only his first woman. She wanted his money – or, more properly speaking, mine. I had her investigated and found that she was bad all through. When I told him boldly what she was he called me a liar. I struck him across the mouth, and he promptly knocked me down.”
