Kitabı oku: «The Merry Anne», sayfa 14

CHAPTER XIV – IN WHICH BEVERIDGE SURPRISES HIMSELF

DICK and Beveridge stood on the wharf at Chicago. The lights that wavered over their faces from the lanterns of the Foote and from the arc lamp overhead showed them sober, silent. The camaraderie of the chase and of the voyage that followed had ceased to be. Beveridge’s elation had been subdued by the distressing event of the evening, but still the mind behind his decorously quiet face was teeming with plans and schemes. Dick was gloomy, bewildered. Both seemed to be waiting for something. They stood watching the bustle aboard the revenue cutter as the crew made her snug for the night, until finally Dick spoke: —

“You haven’t told me yet what I’m to do next, Bill.”

“What you’re to do next?”

“Why – yes. You see – ”

“Go on. I’m listening.”

But Dick found it hard to go on. “I didn’t know but what – ”

Beveridge turned abruptly at a noise up the street, placed two fingers in his mouth, and whistled. And after a moment Dick saw what had kept him waiting. It was no sense of delicacy. Beveridge had been looking for a carriage. “Get in, Smiley,” he said, when the driver pulled up.

“Get in?”

“Yes – after you.”

“You mean, then – ”

“Well, what?”

“I didn’t suppose after what has happened that you’d need me any longer.”

“Not need you, Smiley?” They were seated within the vehicle now, the door was shut, and the driver, the special agent’s whispered word in his ear, was whipping up his horses. “I’m afraid you don’t understand. I have no authority to let you off.”

It was his manner more than his words that suddenly swept away Dick’s delicacy and aroused his anger. “The hell you haven’t!” was his reply.

“Certainly not.”

“You don’t expect me to believe that. You have no case against me now.”

“I grant you that. And I can promise you that you won’t be detained more than a few days at the outside. But this business has passed up out of my hands now. All I can do is to deliver you up, make my report, and set the machinery in motion for your release.”

Dick sat motionless, gazing into the shadows before him. “What right had you to let Pink go, then?”

“That was different.”

“How? – How?”

“Nobody ever looked on Harper as of any importance in the business.”

“That is no answer. You’re holding me on a technicality. The importance of the man makes no difference when you are dealing in red tape.”

“See here, Smiley, don’t you think you had better stop abusing me, and take a sensible view of it?”

As he spoke, they were crossing State Street, and the brighter light illuminated the interior of the carriage. For reply, Dick turned and looked at his custodian, looked him through and through with a gaze of profound contempt. Words were not necessary; Beveridge saw that Dick had fathomed his motives, Dick saw that he was understood. At the moment neither was thinking of the gloomy city that was closing in around them; for both saw the wide, free beach, the gleaming lake, the two long piers, the quaint little house on stilts, the upper balcony with its burden of forget-me-nots and geraniums and all the blossoms that Annie loved. And both had in their nostrils the refreshing smell of the east wind – made up of all the faint mingled odors of Lake Michigan – a little pine in it, a little fish in it, but, more than all, the health and strength and wholesome sweetness of the Lakes. And both were silent while the carriage rattled along, while they stepped out, crossed the walk, and entered a stone building with barred windows, while, with Beveridge on one side and a guard on the other, Dick walked to his cell.

Beveridge caught the half-past eight train for Lakeville the next morning, and walked straight down to the house on stilts. Annie was out on the lake, her mother said, looking at him, while she said it, and after, with doubtful, questioning eyes. So he sat down on the steps and looked out over the beach and the water. It was a fine warm day, with just breeze enough to ripple, the lake from shore to horizon, and set it sparkling in the sun. The sky was blue and white; and the cloud shadows here and there on the water took varied and varying colors – deep blue, yellow, sea-green. The shore-line dwindled off to the northward in long scallops, every line of the yellow beach cut out cleanly, every oak on the bluff outlined sharply. In truth, it was a glorious day – just the day Beveridge would have chosen had the choice been his – the day of days, on which he was to make the last arrangements in clinching his success, in assuring his future. Annie had gone out to the nets with her father. She was, at the moment, rowing him in. On other days Beveridge had sat here and watched her coming in from the nets, with a great box of whitefish aboard.

The boat grounded on the sand. Captain Fargo stepped out and drew it up. Beveridge rose and smiled lazily while he waited for Annie to come up to the steps. The sun had been in her eyes, and at first she did not see him distinctly.

“Well,” said Beveridge, “hello! Didn’t expect to see me, did you?”

She stopped abruptly and looked at him. He did not know just how to interpret her expression.

“Aren’t you going to speak to me, Annie?” Her answer, when it came, blanketed him, and left him, so to speak, flapping in the wind. She said, “What have you done with Dick?”

“Dick? Why – oh, he’s all right.”

“Why hasn’t he been back?”

“He ‘ll be around all right. They thought it would be necessary to hold him for a few days.”

“To hold him, – where?”

“Don’t you see – ”

“Is he in prison?”

“Yes, but that will be fixed – ”

“In Chicago?”

“Yes, he – ”

“Father,” said she, “Dick’s in prison. We must go down to see him.” And she turned back to Beveridge with the question, “When can we get a train?”

What could Beveridge do but fumble in his pockets, bring out a handful of papers, look them over until he found a time-table, and announce that the next train was the ten-twelve?

“You will have to show us how to get there, Mr. Beveridge,” said Annie. “Come and change your clothes, father. Will you wait here, Mr. Beveridge?”

Beveridge said that he would, certainly. And then when father and daughter had hurried into the house, and after Captain Fargo had turned his box of fish over to a boy who acted on occasions as his helper, the special agent sat down again and looked at the Lake. The sun was shining on, bright as ever; the water was still varicolored, the sky still blue-and-white; but he saw them not.

In something more than twenty minutes Annie was down and waiting impatiently for her father. Her whole mind was bent on getting to town. She hardly saw Beveridge. As for him, chagrined as he was, he had to admit that she looked very pretty in her trim blue gown. He had never before seen her dressed for the city. He was inclined to feel awed as well as bewildered. Then, finally, appeared the Captain in his Sunday clothes. And the three set out for the train and Dick.

All the way Annie was preoccupied. Hardly a word could Beveridge get. From the train they hurried over to the stone building with the barred windows. Here the special agent held a short, whispered conversation which ended in the unbarring of doors and the word to follow down a corridor. And finally the last door was opened and Dick stood before them, dishevelled, unshaven, but indisputably Dick. Beveridge found himself slipping into the background when Annie and the prisoner were clasping hands without a word; but he watched them. He saw the question in Dick’s eyes, – the something deep and burning, the something that was not a question, in Annie’s. He saw that she did not think of withdrawing her hand; he knew that in one short moment more her arms would be thrown around Dick’s neck. He turned away, and, leaving them there, walked out into the street.

The lights were out at “The Teamster’s Friend.” It was ten o’clock at night, and from Stenzenberger’s lumber office on one corner through to the corner at the farther end of the block the street was deserted. But Beveridge, who slowly turned the corner by the lumber yard, – Beveridge, who had passed the most turbulent day of his life trying to realize that he had lost Annie, – knew where to look. Lonely, miserable, plunged into dejection now that the strain was over, he turned into the driveway that led to the sheds in the rear of the saloon, and, pausing, looked up. Yes, there was a light in the upper rear window. He whistled. The curtain went up a little way – some one was looking down. The curtain went down again; the light slowly disappeared, leaving grotesque shadows on the curtain as it was carried from the room. Steps sounded in the hall; the bolt slipped back, and Madge stood in the doorway.

“Hello,” said Beveridge. “Here I am.”

“Oh,” cried Madge, with what sounded like a gasp of relief. She drew him quickly in, closed and locked the door, and stood looking at him.

“I had to go out of town, Madge. I didn’t get in till late last night. I have some news for you.”

“Come in,” she said. And they went back into the dining room, where she had set down the lamp. They took chairs on opposite sides of the table. Madge rested her elbows on the red cloth, propped her chin on her two hands, and waited. Beveridge, while he looked at her, was rapidly getting back his self-possession.

“Well, Madge, there’s a good deal to tell you. McGlory – ”

She waited as long as she could, then exclaimed, in an uncertain voice: “What about him? Where is he?”

“He’s gone.”

“Where?”

“Nobody on earth can tell you that.”

She leaned across the table and caught his arm. “Is he dead?”

“Yes, dead – and buried.”

She leaned back in her chair. She could not take her eyes from his face, and yet she said nothing. It could not be said that her face showed a trace of happiness, but there was, nevertheless, a strange sort of relief there.

For a long time neither spoke. But Beveridge’s impetuous nature could not long endure this silence. “Well, Madge,” he broke out, “do you still want me?”

She did not answer.

“That’s what I’ve come to know. If you ‘ll do it, we will be married to-night.”

“You couldn’t – ” her voice was low and dreamy. “You couldn’t get a license before to-morrow,” she said.

“It’s queer,” said Dick, “but that is the Beveridge of it. You can’t tell what he is going to do next. I don’t believe he knows himself half the time.”

The Captain, with Annie at the tiller and Dick stretched lazily out beside her, was skimming and bounding along off the Grosse Pointe light.

“Wasn’t it – ” Annie wore a conscious expression – “wasn’t it rather sudden?”

“It must have been. But that is Beveridge.”

“And she was a saloon keeper’s wife?”

“Yes, – but it wasn’t so bad as it sounds when you say it that way. She was too good for McGlory.”

“Oh, you – you know her?”

“I’ve seen her, yes.”

“But isn’t she – old?”

“Not so very. She can’t be much older than Beveridge. She is good looking – almost pretty. And she looks sort of – well, when you saw her there in McGlory’s place, it seemed too bad. She was quiet, and she looked as if she was made for something better.”

They were silent for a time. Then their eyes met, and she missed his answering smile. “What is it, Dick?” she asked.

“I was thinking about Henry – about what he was, and then what he did for me. We have everything to thank him for, you and I, Annie.” He paused, then went on. “I suppose he was wrong – he must have been wrong if we are to believe in law at all. But that night on the steamer, when he was telling us about it, I watched him and Beveridge both pretty closely, – the expression of their faces and their eyes. The way a man looks at you tells so much, Annie. And I knew all the while, though Beveridge was standing there for the law, and Henry for what they call crime, still – ”

“What, Dick?”

“ – if I were in a tight place again and had to choose which of those two men to trust my life with, I shouldn’t need to stop to think. It would be Henry, every time.”

He sat up to shift his position, when something which he saw on the northern horizon drove the clouds from his face. This was a great day for Dick. “Look, Annie!” He was pointing eagerly. “Look there!”

“Where?”

“Can’t you see it – the Anne?”

Then Annie’s heart leaped too. And she ordered Dick to ease off the sheet, adding only, “We ‘ll meet her, shan’t we?” To which Dick responded with a nod.

So they headed north, with everything drawing full and the bubbles dancing by. Pink saw them and came up into the wind. The Captain slipped alongside, a sailor caught the painter, Dick handed Annie up, clambered after, stepped to the wheel, and they swung slowly off.

“Make the boat fast astern,” called Dick to one of the revenue cutter men.

“All right, sir.”

“Things gone all right, Pink?”

“First class. Not much wind in the Straits.”

“I hardly thought there would be.”

Annie was perched on the cabin trunk, looking at Dick with laughing eyes. She enjoyed watching him, she liked his easy way of falling into the command of his schooner, she admired the muscles on his forearm (for he had rolled up his sleeves). He caught her glance. “Want to take her, Annie?”

“Oh, yes, Dick. Will you let me?”

“If you want to.”

So Annie took the wheel. She stood there, a merry, graceful figure, – though Dick kept close by and reached out a steadying hand now and then, – while the schooner came about, headed for the long pier, ran up neatly into her berth, threw out her lines, and stopped, her voyage over.

[Note: – In the spring, when the ice broke up in the streams of Michigan, a party of lumbermen found what had been the body of a man lying in a shallow creek, deep in the forest. Particulars would be unpleasant. It is enough to say that they buried him there, being rough men and far from a coroner; and that on a water-soaked envelope in his pocket was found a name which, as nearly as anything, seemed to spell “Roche.” To the persons of this tale his end remained a mystery. It might be added that Beveridge found more difficulty than he had foreseen in weaving his net around Stenzenberger. In fact the special agent had failed, at last accounts, to disturb the serenity of the lumber dealer, in spite of the moral certainty that his share in the guilt was the largest of any. Perhaps his secret went to the bottom of Lake Michigan with Henry Smiley. – S.M.]