XIV
A Reprieve
For the length of time it took him to read Josiah Richlander's signatureon the Hophra House register and to grasp the full meaning of theLawrenceville magnate's presence in Brewster, Smith's blood ran cold andthere was a momentary attack of shocked consternation, comparable tonothing that any past experience had to offer. It had been a foregoneconclusion from the very outset that, sooner or later, some one who knewhim would drift in from the world beyond the mountains; but in all hisimaginings he had never dreamed of the Richlander possibility. Verda, ashe knew, had been twice to Europe--and, like many of her kind, had neverbeen west of the Mississippi in her native land. Why, then, had she----
But there was no time to waste in curious speculations as to the whysand wherefores. Present safety was the prime consideration. With JosiahRichlander and his daughter in Brewster, and guests under the same roofwith him, discovery, identification, disgrace were knocking at the door.Smith had a return of the panicky chill when he realized how utterlyimpossible it would be for a man with his business activities to hide,even temporarily, not in the hotel, to be sure, but anywhere in a townof the Brewster dimensions. And the peril held no saving element ofuncertainty. He could harbor no doubt as to what Josiah Richlander woulddo if discovery came. For so long a time as should be consumed intelegraphing between Brewster and Lawrenceville, Smith thought he mightventure to call himself a free man. But that was the limit.
It was the dregs of the J. Montague subconsciousness yet remaining inhim that counselled flight, basing the prompting upon a bit ofpanic-engendered reasoning. Miss Verda and her father could hardly beanything more than transient visitors in Brewster. Possibly he might beable to keep out of their way for the needful day or so. To resolve insuch an urgency was to act. One minute later he had hailed a passingauto-cab at the hotel entrance, and the four miles between the city andColonel Baldwin's ranch had been tossed to the rear before heremembered that he had expressly declined a dinner invitation for thatsame evening at Hillcrest, the declination basing itself upon businessand having been made by word of mouth to Mrs. Baldwin in person when shehad called at the office with her daughter just before the luncheonhour.
Happily, the small social offense went unremarked, or at leastunrebuked. Smith found his welcome at the ranch that of a man who hasthe privilege of dropping in unannounced. The colonel was jocoselyhospitable, as he always was; Mrs. Baldwin was graciously lenient--wasgood enough, indeed, to thank the eleventh-hour guest for reconsideringat the last moment; and Corona----
Notwithstanding all that had come to pass; notwithstanding, also, thathis footing in the Baldwin household had come to be that of a familyfriend, Smith could never be quite sure of the bewitchingly winsomeyoung woman who called her father "Colonel-daddy." Her pose, if it werea pose, was the attitude of the entirely unspoiled child of nature andthe wide horizons. When he was with her she made him think of all thewords expressive of transparency and absolute and utter unconcealment.Yet there were moments when he fancied he could get passing glimpses ofa subtler personality at the back of the wide-open, frankly questioningeyes; a wise little soul lying in wait behind its defenses; prudent,all-knowing, deceived neither by its own prepossessions or prejudices,nor by any of the masqueradings of other souls.
Smith, especially in this later incarnation which had so radicallychanged him, believed as little in the psychic as any hardheaded youngbusiness iconoclast of an agnostic century could. But on this particularevening when he was smoking his after-dinner pipe on the flagstonedporch with Corona for his companion, there were phenomena apparentlyunexplainable on any purely material hypothesis.
"I am sure I have much less than half of the curiosity that women aresaid to have, but, really, I _do_ want to know what dreadful thing hashappened to you since we met you in the High Line offices thismorning--mamma and I," was the way in which one of the phenomena wasmade to occur; and Smith started so nervously that he dropped his pipe.
"You can be the most unexpected person, when you try," he laughed, butthe laugh scarcely rang true. "What makes you think that anything hashappened?"
"I don't think--I _know_," the small seeress went on with calmassurance. "You've been telling us in all sorts of dumb ways that you'vehad an upsetting shock of some kind; and I don't believe it's anotherlawsuit. Am I right, so far?"
"I believe you are a witch, and it's a mighty good thing you didn't livein the Salem period," he rejoined. "They would have hanged you to a deadmoral certainty."
"Then there was something?" she queried; adding, jubilantly: "I knewit!"
"Go on," said the one to whom it had happened; "go on and tell me therest of it."
"Oh, that isn't fair; even a professional clairvoyant has to be told thecolor of her eyes and hair."
"Wha-what!" the ejaculation was fairly jarred out of him and for themoment he fancied he could feel a cool breeze blowing up the back of hisneck.
The clairvoyant who did not claim to be a professional was laughingsoftly.
"You told me once that a woman was adorable in the exact degree in whichshe could afford to be visibly transparent; yes, you said 'afford,' andI've been holding it against you. Now I'm going to pay you back. Youare the transparent one, this time. You have as good as admitted thatthe 'happening' thing isn't a man; 'wha-what' always means that, youknow; so it must be a woman. Is it the Miss Richlander you were tellingme about?"
There are times when any mere man may be shocked into telling the simpletruth, and Smith had come face to face with one of them. "It is," hesaid.
"She is in Brewster?"
"Yes."
"When did she come?"
"This evening."
"And you ran away? That was horribly unkind, don't you think--after shehad come so far?"
"Hold on," he broke in. "Don't let's go so fast. I didn't ask her tocome. And, besides, she didn't come to see me."
"Did she tell you that?"
"I have taken precious good care that she shouldn't have the chance. Isaw her name--and her father's--on the hotel register; and just aboutthat time I remembered that I could probably get a bite to eat outhere."
"You are queer! All men are a little queer, I think--always exceptingColonel-daddy. Don't you want to see her?"
"Indeed, I don't!"
"Not even for old times' sake?"
"No; not even for old times' sake. I've given you the wrong impressioncompletely, if you think there is any obligation on my part. It nevergot beyond the watch-case picture stage, as I have told you. It mighthave drifted on to the other things in the course of time, simplybecause neither of us might have known any better than to let it drift.But that's all a back number, now."
"Just the same, her coming shocked you."
"It certainly did," he confessed soberly; and then: "Have you forgottenwhat I told you about the circumstances under which I left home?"
"_Oh!_" she murmured, and as once before there was a little gasp to gowith the word. Then: "She wouldn't--she wouldn't----"
"No," he answered; "she wouldn't; but her father would."
"So her father wanted her to marry the other man, did he? What was helike--the other man? I don't believe you've ever told me anything abouthim."
Smith's laugh was an easing of strains.
"Now your 'control' is playing tricks on you. There were a dozen othermen, more or less."
"And her picture was in the watch-case of each?"
"You've pumped me dry," he returned, the sardonic humor reassertingitself. "I haven't her watch-case list; I never had it. But I guess it'swithin bounds to suppose that she got the little pictures from thephotographer by the half-dozen, at least. Young women in my part of theworld don't think much of the watch-case habit; I mean they don't regardit seriously."
A motor-car was coming up the driveway and Smith was not altogethersorry when he saw Stillings, the lawyer, climb out of it to mount thesteps. It was high time that an interruption of some sort was breakingin, and when the colonel app
eared and brought Stillings with him to thelounging end of the porch, a business conference began which gave MissCorona an excuse to disappear, and which accounted easily for theremainder of the evening.
Borrowing a horse from the Hillcrest corral the following morning, Smithreturned to Brewster by way of the dam, making the long detour count foras much as possible in the matter of sheer time-killing. It was a littlebefore noon when he reached town by the roundabout route, and afterputting the horse up at the livery-stable in which Colonel Baldwin was ahalf owner, he went to the hotel to reconnoitre. The room-clerk who gavehim his key gave him also the information he craved.
"Mr. Richlander? Oh, yes; he left early this morning by the stage. He isinterested in some gold properties up in the range beyond Topaz. Fineold gentleman. Do you know him, Mr. Smith?"
"The name seemed familiar when I saw it on the register last evening,"was Smith's evasion; "but it is not such a very uncommon name. He didn'tsay when he was coming back?"
"No."
Smith took a fresh hold upon life and liberty. While the world isperilously narrow in some respects, it is comfortably broad in others,and a danger once safely averted is a danger lessened. Snatching a hastyluncheon in the grill-room, the fighting manager of Timanyoni High Linehurried across to the private suite in the Kinzie Building offices intowhich he had lately moved and once more plunged into the businessbattle.
Notwithstanding a new trouble which Stillings had wished to talk overwith his president and the financial manager the night before--theclaim set up by the dead-and-gone paper railroad to a right of wayacross the Timanyoni at the dam--the battle was progressing favorably.Williams was accomplishing the incredible in the matter of speed, andthe dam was now nearly ready to withstand the high-water stresses whenthey should come. The power-house was rising rapidly, and the machinerywas on the way from the East. Altogether things were looking morehopeful than they had at any period since the hasty reorganization.Smith attacked the multifarious details of his many-sided job withreturning energy. If he could make shift to hold on for a few days orweeks longer....
He set his teeth upon a desperate determination to hold on at any cost;at all costs. If Josiah Richlander should come back to Brewster--butSmith would not allow himself to think of this. At the worst, the periodof peril could not be long. Smith knew his man, and was well assuredthat it would take something more alluring than a gold-mine to keep theLawrenceville millionaire away from his business at home for anyconsiderable length of time. With the comforting conclusion for astimulus, the afternoon of hard work passed quickly and there was only asingle small incident to break the busy monotonies. While Smith wasdictating the final batch of letters to the second stenographer a youngman with sleepy eyes and yellow creosote stains on his fingers came into ask for a job. Smith put him off until the correspondence wasfinished and then gave him a hearing.
"What kind of work are you looking for?" was the brisk query.
"Shorthand work, if I can get it," said the man out of a job.
"How rapid are you?"
"I have been a court reporter."
Smith was needing another stenographer and he looked the applicant overappraisingly. The appraisal was not entirely satisfactory. There was acertain shifty furtiveness in the half-opened eyes, and the rather weakchin hinted at a possible lack of the discreetness which is the primerequisite in a confidential clerk.
"Any business experience?"
"Yes; I've done some railroad work."
"Here in Brewster?"
Shaw lied smoothly. "No; in Omaha."
"Any recommendations?"
The young man produced a handful of "To Whom it May Concern" letters.They were all on business letter-heads, and were apparently genuine,though none of them were local. Smith ran them over hastily and he hadno means of knowing that they had been carefully prepared by CrawfordStanton at no little cost in ingenuity and painstaking. How careful thepreparation had been was revealed in the applicant's ready suggestion.
"You can write or wire to any of these gentlemen," he said; "only, ifthere is a job open, I'd be glad to go to work on trial."
The business training of the present makes for quick decisions. Smithsnapped a rubber band around the letters and shot them into a pigeonholeof his desk.
"We'll give you a chance to show what you can do," he told the man outof work. "If you measure up to the requirements, the job will bepermanent. You may come in to-morrow morning and report to Mr. Miller,the chief clerk."
The young man nodded his thanks and went out, leaving just as the firststenographer was bringing in his allotment of letters for thesignatures. Having other things to think of, Smith forgot thesleepy-eyed young fellow instantly. But it is safe to assume that hewould not have dismissed the incident so readily if he had known thatShaw had been waiting in the anteroom during the better part of thedictating interval, and that on the departing applicant's cuffs weremicroscopic short-hand notes of a number of the more important letters.
The Real Man Page 14