Kitabı oku: «The Pagan Madonna», sayfa 11
“Pretty good punch for a youngster,” was Cunningham’s comment.
“It was,” replied Cleigh, grimly. “He went directly to his room, packed, and cleared out. In that he acted wisely, for at that moment I would have cast him out had he come with an apology. But the following day I could not find him; nor did I get track of him until weeks later. He had married the woman and then found her out. That’s all cleared off the slate, though. She’s been married and divorced three times since then.”
“Did you expect to see him over here?”
“In Shanghai? No. The sight of him rather knocked me about. You understand? It was his place to make the first sign. He was in the wrong, and he has known it all these seven years.”
“No,” said Jane, “it was your place to make the first advance. If you had been a comrade to him in his boyhood he would never have been in the wrong.”
“But I gave him everything!”
“Everything but love. Did you ever tell him a fairy story?”
“A fairy story!” Cleigh’s face was the essence of bewilderment.
“You put him in the care of a lovable old dreamer, and then expected him to accept life as you knew it.”
Cleigh rumpled his cowlicks. A fairy story? But that was nonsense! Fairy stories had long since gone out of fashion.
“When I saw you two together an idea popped into my head. But do you care for the boy?”
“I care everything for him – or I shouldn’t be here!”
Cunningham relaxed a little more in his chair, his eyes still closed.
“What do you mean by that?” demanded Cleigh.
“I let you abduct me. I thought, maybe, if I were near you for a little I might bring you two together.”
“Well, now!” said Cleigh, falling into the old New England vernacular which was his birthright. “I brought you on board merely to lure him after you. I wanted you both on board so I could observe you. I intended to carry you both off on a cruise. I watched you from the door that night while you two were dining. I saw by his face and his gestures that he would follow you anywhere.”
“But I – I am only a professional nurse. I’m nobody! I haven’t anything!”
“Good Lord, will you listen to that?” cried the pirate, with a touch of his old banter. “Nobody and nothing?”
Neither Jane nor Cleigh apparently heard this interpolation.
“Why did you maltreat him?”
“Otherwise he would have thought I was offering my hand, that I had weakened.”
“And you expected him to fall on your shoulder and ask your pardon after that? Mr. Cleigh, for a man of your intellectual attainments, your stand is the biggest piece of stupidity I ever heard of! How in the world was he to know what your thoughts were?”
“I was giving him his chance,” declared Cleigh, stubbornly.
“A yacht? It’s a madhouse,” gibed Cunningham. “And this is a convention of fools!”
“How do you want me to act?” asked Cleigh, surrendering absolutely.
“When he comes to, take his hand. You don’t have to say anything else.”
“All right.”
From Dennison’s lips came a deep, long sigh. Jane leaned over.
“Denny?” she whispered.
The lids of Dennison’s eyes rolled back heavily.
“Jane – all right?” he asked, quickly.
“Yes. How do you feel?”
He reached out a hand whence her voice came. She met the hand with hers, and that seemed to be all he wanted just then.
“You’d better get your bathrobe, Mr. Cleigh,” she suggested.
Cleigh became conscious for the first time of the condition of his pyjama jacket. It hung upon his torso in mere ribbons. He became conscious also of the fact that his body ached variously and substantially.
“Thirty-odd years since I was in a racket like this. I’m getting along.”
“And on the way,” put in Cunningham, “you might call Cleve. I’d feel better – stretched out.”
“Oh, I had forgotten!” cried Jane, reproaching herself. Weakened as he was, and sitting in a chair!
“And don’t forget, Cleigh, that I’m master of the Wanderer until I leave it. I sympathize deeply,” Cunningham went on, ironically, “but I have some active troubles of my own.”
“And God send they abide with you always!” was Cleigh’s retort.
“They will – if that will give you any comfort. Do you know what? You will always have me to thank for this. That will be my comforting thought. The god in the car!”
Later, when Cleve helped Cunningham into his bunk, the latter asked about the crew.
“Scared stiff. They realize that it was a close shave. I’ve put the fools in irons. They’re best there until we leave. But we can’t do anything but forget the racket when we board the Dutchman. Where’s that man Flint? We can’t find him anywhere. He’s at the bottom of it. I knew that sooner or later there’d be the devil to pay with a woman on board. Probably the fool’s hiding in the bunkers. I’ll give every rat hole a look-see. Pretty nearly got you.”
“Flint was out of luck – and so was I! I thought in pistols, and forgot that there might be a knife or two. I’ll be on my feet in the morning. Little weak, that’s all. Nobody and nothing!” said Cunningham, addressing the remark to the crossbeam above his head.
“What’s that?” asked Cleve.
“I was thinking out loud. Get back to the chart house. Old Newton may play us some trick if he isn’t watched. And don’t bother to search for Flint. I know where he is.”
Something in Cunningham’s tone coldly touched Cleve’s spine. He went out, closing the door quietly; and there was reason for the sudden sweat in his palms.
Chance! A wry smile stirred one corner of Cunningham’s mouth. He had boasted that he had left nothing to chance, with this result! Burning up! Inward and outward fires! Love beads! Well, what were they if not that? But that she would trust him when everything about him should have repelled her! Was there a nugget of forgotten gold in his cosmos, and had she discovered it? She still trusted him, for he had sensed it in the quick but tender touch of her hands upon his throbbing wounds.
To learn, after all these years, that he had been a coward! To have run away from misfortune instead of facing it and beating it down!
Pearls! All he had left! And when he found them, what then? Turn them into money he no longer cared to spend? Or was this an interlude – a mocking interlude, and would to-morrow see his conscience relegated to the dustbin out of which it had so oddly emerged?
When Dennison opened his eyes again Jane was still holding his hand. Upon beholding his father Dennison held out his free hand.
“Will you take it, Father? I’m sorry.”
“Of course I’ll take it, Denny. I was an old fool.”
“And I was a young one.”
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Cleigh asked, eagerly.
“If it won’t be too much trouble.”
“No trouble at all.”
A hand pressure, a few inconsequent phrases, that is always enough for two strong characters in the hour of reconciliation.
Cleigh out of the way, Jane tried to disengage her hand, but Dennison only tightened his grip.
“No” – a pause – “it’s different now. The old boy will find some kind of a job for me. Will you marry me, Jane? I did not speak before, because I hadn’t anything to offer.”
“No?”
“I couldn’t offer marriage until I had a job.”
“But supposing your father doesn’t give you one?”
“Why – ”
“You poor boy! I’m only fishing.”
“For what?”
“Well, why do you want to marry me?”
“Hang it, because I love you!”
“Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place? How was I to know unless you told me? But oh, Denny, I want to go home!” She laid her cheek against his hand. “I want a garden with a picket fence round it and all the simple flowers. I never want another adventure in all my days!”
“Same here!”
A stretch of silence.
“What happened to me?”
“Someone hit you with a wine bottle.”
“A vintage – and I never got a swallow!”
“And then your father went to your defense.”
“The old boy? Honestly?”
“He stood astride your body until Mr. Cunningham came in and stopped the mêlée.”
“Cunningham! They quit?”
“Yes – Flint. I didn’t dream it wouldn’t be safe to go on deck, and Flint caught me. He was drunk. But for Cunningham, I don’t know what would have happened. I ran and left them fighting, and Flint wounded Cunningham with a knife. It was for me, Denny. I feel so sorry for him! So alone, hating himself and hating the world, tortured with misunderstanding – good in him that he keeps smothering and trampling down. His unbroken word – to hang to that!”
“All right. So far as I’m concerned, that cleans the slate.”
“I loved you, Denny, but I didn’t know how much until I saw you on the floor. Do you know what I was going to demand of your father as a reparation for bringing me on board? His hand in yours. That was all I wanted.”
“Always thinking of someone else!”
“That’s all the happiness I’ve ever had, Denny – until now!”
CHAPTER XXI
A good deal of orderly commotion took place the following morning. Cunningham’s crew, under the temporary leadership of Cleve, proceeded to make everything shipshape. There was no exuberance; they went at the business quietly and grimly. They sensed a shadow overhead. The revolt of the six discovered to the others what a rickety bridge they were crossing, how easily and swiftly a jest may become a tragedy.
They had accepted the game as a kind of huge joke. Everything had been prepared against failure; it was all cut and dried; all they had to do was to believe themselves. For days they had gone about their various duties thinking only of the gay time that would fall to their lot when they left the Wanderer. The possibility that Cleigh would not proceed in the manner advanced by Cunningham’s psychology never bothered them until now. Supposing the old man’s desire for vengeance was stronger than his love for his art objects? He was a fighter; he had proved it last night. Supposing he put up a fight and called in the British to help him?
Not one of them but knew what the penalty would be if pursued and caught. But Cunningham had persuaded them up to this hour that they would not even be pursued; that it would not be humanly possible for Cleigh to surrender the hope of eventually recovering his unlawful possessions. And now they began to wonder, to fret secretly, to reconsider the ancient saying that the way of the transgressor is hard.
On land they could have separated and hidden successfully. Here at sea the wireless was an inescapable net. Their only hope was to carry on. Cunningham might pull them through. For, having his own hide to consider, he would bring to bear upon the adventure all his formidable ingenuity.
At eleven the commotion subsided magically and the men vanished below, but at four-thirty they swarmed the port bow, silently if interestedly. If they talked at all it was in a whispering undertone.
The mutinous revellers formed a group of their own. They appeared to have been roughly handled by the Cleighs. The attitude was humble, the expression worriedly sorrowful. Why hadn’t they beat a retreat? The psychology of their madness escaped them utterly. There was one grain of luck – they hadn’t killed young Cleigh. What fool had swung that bottle? Not one of them could recall.
The engines of the Wanderer stopped, and she rolled lazily in the billowing brass, waiting.
Out of the blinding topaz of the sou’west nosed a black object, illusory. It appeared to ride neither wind nor water.
From the bridge Cleigh eyed this object dourly, and with a swollen heart he glanced from time to time at the crates and casings stacked below. He knew that he would never set eyes upon any of these treasures again. When they were lowered over the side that would be the end of them. Cunningham might be telling the truth as to his intentions; but he was promising something that was not conceivably possible, any more than it was possible to play at piracy and not get hurt.
At Cleigh’s side stood the son, his head swathed in bandages. All day long he had been subjected to splitting headaches, and his face looked tired and drawn. He had stayed in bed until he had heard “Ship ahoy!”
“Are you going to start something?” he asked.
Cleigh did not answer, but peered through the glass again.
“I don’t see how you’re going to land him without the British. On the other hand, you can’t tell. Cunningham might bring the stuff back.”
Cleigh laughed, but still held the glass to his eye.
“When and where are you going to get married?”
“Manila. Jane wants to go home, and I want a job.”
Cleigh touched his split lips and his bruised cheekbone, for he had had to pay for his gallantry; and there was a spot in his small ribs that racked him whenever he breathed deeply.
“What the devil do you want of a job?”
“You’re not thinking that I’m going back on an allowance? I’ve had independence for seven years, and I’m going to keep it, Father.”
“I’ve money enough” – brusquely.
“That isn’t it. I want to begin somewhere and build something for myself. You know as well as I do that if I went home on an allowance you’d begin right off to dominate me as you used to, and no man is going to do that again.”
“What can you do?”
“That’s the point – I don’t know. I’ve got to find out.”
Cleigh lowered the glass.
“Let’s see; didn’t you work on a sugar plantation somewhere?”
“Yes. How’d you find that out?”
“Never mind about that. I can give you a job, and it won’t be soft, either. I’ve a sugar plantation in Hawaii that isn’t paying the dividends it ought to. I’ll turn the management over to you. You make good the second year, or back you come to me, domination and all.”
“I agree to that – if the plantation can be developed.”
“The stuff is there; all it needs is some pep.”
“All right, I’ll take the job.”
“You and your wife shall spend the fall and winter with me. In February you can start to work.”
“Are you out for Cunningham’s hide?”
“What would you do in my place?”
“Sit tight and wait.”
Cleigh laughed sardonically.
“Because,” went on Dennison, “he’s played the game too shrewdly not to have other cards up his sleeve. He may find his pearls and return the loot.”
“Do you believe that? Don’t talk like a fool! I tell you, his pearls are in those casings there! But, son, I’m glad to have you back. And you’ve found a proper mate.”
“Isn’t she glorious?”
“Better than that. She’s the kind that’ll always be fussing over you, and that’s the kind a man needs. But mind your eye! Don’t take it for granted! Make her want to fuss over you.”
When the oncoming tramp reached a point four hundred yards to the southwest of the yacht she slued round broadside. For a moment or two the reversed propeller – to keep the old tub from drifting – threw up a fountain; and before the sudsy eddies had subsided the longboat began a jerky descent. No time was going to be wasted evidently.
The Haarlem– or whatever name was written on her ticket – was a picture. Even her shadows tried to desert her as she lifted and wallowed in the long, burnished rollers. There was something astonishingly impudent about her. She reminded Dennison of an old gin-sodden female derelict of the streets. There were red patches all over her, from stem to stern, where the last coat of waterproof black had blistered off. The brass of her ports were green. Her name should have been Neglect. She was probably full of smells; and Dennison was ready to wager that in a moderate sea her rivets and bedplates whined, and that the pump never rested.
But it occurred to him that there must be some basis of fact in Cunningham’s pearl atoll, and yonder owner was game enough to take a sporting chance; that, or he had been handsomely paid for his charter.
An atoll in the Sulu Archipelago that had been overlooked – that was really the incredible part of it. Dennison had first-hand knowledge that there wasn’t a rock in the whole archipelago that had not been looked over and under by the pearl hunters.
He saw the tramp’s longboat come staggering across the intervening water. Rag-tag and bob-tail of the Singapore docks, crimp fodder – that was what Dennison believed he had the right to expect. And behold! Except that they were older, the newcomers lined up about average with the departing – able seamen.
The transshipping of the crews occupied about an hour. As the longboat’s boat hook caught the Wanderer’s ladder for the third time the crates and casings were carried down and carefully deposited in the stern sheets.
About this time Cunningham appeared. He paused by the rail for a minute and looked up at the Cleighs, father and son. He was pale, and his attitude suggested pain and weakness, but he was not too weak to send up his bantering smile. Cleigh, senior, gazed stonily forward, but Dennison answered the smile by soberly shaking his head. Dennison could not hear Cunningham’s laugh, but he saw the expression of it.
Cunningham put his hand on the rail in preparation for the first step, when Jane appeared with bandages, castile soap, the last of her stearate of zinc, absorbent cotton and a basin of water.
“What’s this – a clinic?” he asked.
“You can’t go aboard that awful-looking ship without letting me give you a fresh dressing,” she declared.
“Lord love you, angel of mercy, I’m all right!”
“It was for me. Even now you are in pain. Please!”
“Pain?” he repeated.
For one more touch of her tender hands! To carry the thought of that through the long, hot night! Perhaps it was his ever-bubbling sense of malice that decided him – to let her minister to him, with the Cleighs on the bridge to watch and boil with indignation. He nodded, and she followed him to the hatch, where he sat down.
Dennison saw his father’s hands strain on the bridge rail, the presage of a gathering storm. He intervened by a rough seizure of Cleigh’s arm.
“Listen to me, Father! Not a word of reproach out of you when she comes up – God bless her! Anything in pain! It’s her way, and I’ll not have her reproached. God alone knows what the beggar saved her from last night! If you utter a word I’ll cash that twenty thousand – it’s mine now – and you’ll never see either of us after Manila!”
Cleigh gently disengaged his arm.
“Sonny, you’ve got a man’s voice under your shirt these days. All right. Run down and give the new crew the once-over, and see if they have a wireless man among them.”
Sunset – a scarlet horizon and an old-rose sea. For a little while longer the trio on the bridge could discern a diminishing black speck off to the southeast. The Wanderer was boring along a point north of east, Manila way. The speck soon lost its blackness and became violet, and then magically the streaked horizon rose up behind the speck and obliterated it.
“The poor benighted thing!” said Jane. “God didn’t mean that he should be this kind of a man.”
“Does any of us know what God wants of us?” asked Cleigh, bitterly.
“He wants men like you who pretend to the world that they’re granite-hearted when they’re not. Ever since we started, Denny, I’ve been trying to recall where I’d seen your father before; and it came a little while ago. I saw him only once – a broken child he’d brought to the hospital to be mended. I happened to be passing through the children’s ward for some reason. He called himself Jones or Brown or Smith – I forget. But they told me afterward that he brought on an average of four children a month, and paid all expenses until they were ready to go forth, if not cured at least greatly bettered. He told the chief that if anybody ever followed him he would never come back. Your father’s a hypocrite, Denny.”
“So that’s where I saw you?” said Cleigh, ruminatively. He expanded a little. He wanted the respect and admiration of this young woman – his son’s wife-to-be. “Don’t weave any golden halo for me,” he added, dryly. “After Denny packed up and hiked it came back rather hard that I hadn’t paid much attention to his childhood. It was a kind of penance.”
“But you liked it!”
“Maybe I only got used to it. Say, Denny, was there a wireless man in the crew?”
“No. I knew there wouldn’t be. But I can handle the key.”
“Fine! Come along then.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Do? Why, I’m going to have the Asiatic fleets on his heels inside of twenty-four hours! That’s what I’m going to do! He’s an unprincipled rogue!”
“No,” interposed Jane, “only a poor broken thing.”
“That’s no fault of mine. But no man can play this sort of game with me, and show a clean pair of heels. The rug and the paintings are gone for good. I swore to him that I would have his hide, and have it I will! I never break my word.”
“Denny,” said Jane, “for my sake you will not touch the wireless.”
“I’m giving the orders!” roared Cleigh.
“Wait a moment!” said Jane. “You spoke of your word. That first night you promised me any reparation I should demand.”
“I made that promise. Well?”
“Give him his eight months.”
She gestured toward the sea, toward the spot where they had last seen the Haarlem.
“You demand that?”
“No, I only ask it. I understand the workings of that twisted soul, and you don’t. Let him have his queer dream – his boyhood adventure. Are you any better than he? Were those treasures honourably yours? Fie! No, I won’t demand that you let him go; I’ll only ask it. Because you will not deny to me what you gave to those little children – generosity.”
Cleigh did not speak.
“I want to love you,” she continued, “but I couldn’t if there was no mercy in your sense of justice. Be merciful to that unhappy outcast, who probably never had any childhood, or if he had, a miserable one. Children are heartless; they don’t know any better. They pointed the finger of ridicule and contempt at him – his playmates. Imagine starting life like that! And he told me that the first woman he loved – laughed in his face! I feel – I don’t know why – that he was always without care, from his childhood up. He looked so forlorn! Eight months! We need never tell him. I’d rather he shouldn’t know that I tried to intercede for him. But for him we three would not be here together, with understanding. I only ask it.”
Cleigh turned and went down the ladder. Twenty times he circled the deck; then he paused under the bridge and sent up a hail.
“Dinner is ready!”
The moment Jane reached the deck Cleigh put an arm round her.
“No other human being could have done it. It is a cup of gall and wormwood, but I’ll take it. Why? Because I am old and lonely and want a little love. I have no faith in Cunningham’s word, but he shall go free.”
“How long since you kissed any one?” she asked.
“Many years.” And he stooped to her cheek. To press back the old brooding thought he said with cheerful brusqueness: “Suppose we celebrate? I’ll have Togo ice a bottle of that vintage those infernal ruffians broke over your head last night.”
Dennison laughed.
October.
The Cleigh library was long and wide. There was a fine old blue Ispahan on the floor. The chairs were neither historical nor uncomfortable. One came in here to read. The library was on the second floor. When you reached this room you left the affairs of state and world behind.
A wood fire crackled and shifted in the fireplace, the marble hood of which had been taken from a famous Italian palace. The irons stood ready as of yore for the cups of mulled wine. Before this fire sat a little old woman knitting. Her feet were on a hassock. From time to time her bird-like glance swept the thinker in the adjacent chair. She wondered what he could see in the fire there to hold his gaze so steadily. The little old lady had something of the attitude of a bird that had been given its liberty suddenly, and having always lived in a cage knew not what to make of all these vast spaces.
She was Jane’s mother, and sitting in the chair beside her was Anthony Cleigh.
“There are said to be only five portable authentic paintings by Leonardo da Vinci,” said Cleigh, “and I had one of them, Mother. Illegally, perhaps, but still I had it. It is a copy that hangs in the European gallery. There’s a point. Gallery officials announce a theft only when some expert had discovered the substitution. There are a number of so-called Da Vincis, but those are the works of Boltraffio, Da Vinci’s pupil. I’ll always be wondering, even in my grave, where that crook, Eisenfeldt, had disposed of it.”
Mrs. Norman went on with her knitting. What she heard was as instructive and illuminating to her as Chinese would have been.
From the far end of the room came piano music; gentle, dreamy, broken occasionally by some fine, thrilling chord. Dennison played well, but he had the habit of all amateurs of idling, of starting something, and running away into improvisations. Seated beside him on the bench was Jane, her head inclined against his shoulder. Perhaps that was a good reason why he began a composition and did not carry it through to its conclusion.
“That was a trick of his mother’s,” said Cleigh, still addressing the fire. “All the fine things in him he got from her. I gave him his shoulders, but I guess that’s about all.”
Mrs. Norman did not turn her head. She had already learned that she wasn’t expected to reply unless Cleigh looked at her directly.
“There’s a high wind outside. More rain, probably. But that’s October in these parts. You’ll like it in Hawaii. Never any of this brand of weather. I may be able to put the yacht into commission.”
“The sea!” she said in a little frightened whisper.
“Doorbells!” said Dennison with gentle mockery. “Jane, you’re always starting up when you hear one. Still hanging on? It isn’t Cunningham’s willingness to fulfill his promise; it’s his ability I doubt. A thousand and one things may upset his plans.”
“I know. But, win or lose, he was to let me know.”
“The poor devil! I never dared say so to Father, but when I learned that Cunningham meant no harm to you I began to boost for him. I like to see a man win against huge odds, and that’s what he has been up against.”
“Denny, I’ve never asked before; I’ve been a little afraid to, but did you see Flint when the crew left?”
“I honestly didn’t notice; I was so interested in the disreputable old hooker that was to take them off.”
She sighed. Fragments of that night were always recurring in her dreams.
The door opened and the ancient butler entered. His glance roved until it caught the little tuft of iron-gray hair that protruded above the rim of the chair by the fire. Noiselessly he crossed the room.
“Beg pardon, sir,” he said, “but a van arrived a few minutes ago with a number of packing cases. The men said they were for you, sir. The cases are in the lower hall. Any orders, sir?”
Cleigh rose.
“Cases? Benson, did you say – cases?”
“Yes, sir. I fancy some paintings you’ve ordered, sir.”
Cleigh stood perfectly still. The butler eyed him with mild perturbation. Rarely he saw bewilderment on his master’s countenance.
“Cases?”
“Yes, sir. Fourteen or fifteen of them, sir.”
Cleigh felt oddly numb. For days now he had denied to himself the reason for his agitation whenever the telephone or doorbell rang. Hope! It had not served to crush it down, to buffet it aside by ironical commentaries on the weakness of human nature; the thing was uncrushable, insistent. Packing cases!
“Denny! Jane!” he cried, and bolted for the door.
The call needed no interpretation. The two understood, and followed him downstairs precipitately, with the startled Benson the tail to the kite.
“No, no!” shouted Cleigh. “The big one first!” as Dennison laid one of the smaller cases on the floor. “Benson, where the devil is the claw hammer?”
The butler foraged in the coat closet and presently emerged with a prier. Cleigh literally snatched it from the astonished butler’s grasp, pried and tore off a board. He dug away at the excelsior until he felt the cool glass under his fingers. He peered through this glass.
“Denny, it’s the rug!”
Cleigh’s voice cracked and broke into a queer treble note.
Jane shook her head. Here was an incurable passion, based upon the specious argument that galleries and museums had neither consciences nor stomachs. You could not hurt a wall by robbing it of a painting – a passion that would abide with him until death. Not one of these treasures in the casings was honourably his, but they were more to him than all his legitimate possessions. To ask him to return the objects to the galleries and museums to which they belonged would be asking Cleigh to tear out his heart. Though the passion was incomprehensible, Jane readily observed its effects. She had sensed the misery, the anxiety, the stinging curiosity of all these months. Not to know exactly what had become of the rug and the paintings! Not to know if he would ever see them again! There was only one comparison she could bring to bear as an illustration: Cleigh was like a man whose mistress had forsaken him without explanations.
She was at once happy and sad: happy that her faith in Cunningham had not been built upon sand, sad that she could not rouse Cleigh’s conscience. Secretly a charitable man, honest in his financial dealings, he could keep – in hiding, mind you! – that which did not belong to him. It was beyond her understanding.
An idea, which had been nebulous until this moment, sprang into being.
“Father,” she said, “you will do me a favour?”
“What do you want – a million? Run and get my check book!” he cried, gayly.
“The other day you spoke of making a new will.”
Cleigh stared at her.
“Will you leave these objects to the legal owners?”
Cleigh got up, brushing his knees.
“After I am dead? I never thought of that. After I’m dead,” he repeated. “Child, a conscience like yours is top-heavy. Still, I’ll mull it over. I can’t take ’em to the grave with me, that’s a fact. But my ghost is bound to get leg-weary doing the rounds to view them again. What do you say, Denny?”
“If you don’t, I will!”
Cleigh chuckled.
“That makes it unanimous. I’ll put it in the codicil. But while I live! Benson, what did these men look like? One of them limp?”
“No, sir. Ordinary trucking men, I should say, sir.”
“The infernal scoundrel! No message?”
“No, sir. The man who rang the bell said he had some cases for you, and asked where he should put them. I thought the hall the best place, sir, temporarily.”
“The infernal scoundrel!”
“What the dickens is the matter with you, Father!” demanded Dennison. “You’ve got back the loot.”
“But how? The story, Denny! The rogue leaves me ’twixt wind and water as to how he got out of this hole.”
