XX
Tucker Jibbey
Though it was a working man's bedtime when Smith put Miss Richlanderinto the elevator at the Hophra House and bade her good night, he knewthat there would be no sleep for him until he had made sure of thearrival or non-arrival of the young man who, no less certainly thanJosiah Richlander or Debritt, could slay him with a word. Returning theborrowed runabout to its garage, he went to the railroad station andlearned that the "Flyer" from the East was over four hours late. Withthirty minutes to spare, he walked the long train platform, chewing anextinct cigar and growing more and more desperate at each pacing turn.
With time to weigh and measure the probabilities, he saw what would cometo pass. Verda Richlander might keep her own counsel, or she might not;but in any event, Stanton would be quick to identify Jibbey as afollower of Verda's, and so, by implication, a man who would beacquainted with Verda's intimates. Smith recalled Jibbey's variedweaknesses. If Verda should get hold of him first, and was stillgenerous enough to warn him against Stanton, the blow might be delayed.But if Stanton should be quick enough, and cunning enough to play uponJibbey's thirst, the liquor-loosened tongue would tell all that it knew.
In such a crisis the elemental need rises up to thrust all otherpromptings, ethical or merely prudent, into the background. Smith hadbeen profoundly moved by Corona Baldwin's latest appeal to suchsurvivals of truth and honor and fair-dealing as the strangemetamorphosis and the culminating struggle against odds had left him.But in any new birth it is inevitable that the offspring of the man thatwas shall be at first--like all new-born beings--a pure savage, guidedonly by instinct. And of the instincts, that of self-preservation easilyovertops all others.
Smith saw how suddenly the pit of disaster would yawn for him uponJibbey's arrival, and the compunctions stirred by Corona's plea for thehigher ideals withdrew or were crushed in the turmoil. He had set hishand to the plough and he would not turn back. It was Jibbey'seffacement in some way, or his own, he told himself, for he had longsince determined that he would never be taken alive to be dragged backto face certain conviction in the Lawrenceville courts and a livingdeath in the home State penitentiary.
With this determination gripping him afresh, he glanced at his watch. Infifteen minutes more his fate would be decided. The station baggage andexpress handlers were beginning to trundle their loaded trucks outacross the platform to be in readiness for the incoming train. There wasstill time enough, but none to spare. Smith passed through the stationquickly and on the town side of the building took a cab. "Benkler's,"was his curt order to the driver; and three minutes later he was tellingthe night man at the garage that he had come back to borrow Maxwell'srunabout again, and urging haste in the refilling of the tanks.
The delayed "Flyer" was whistling in when Smith drove the runabout tothe station, and he had barely time to back the machine into place inthe cab rank and to hurry out to the platform before the train cameclattering down over the yard switches. Since all the debarkingpassengers had to come through the archway exit from the track platform,Smith halted at a point from which he could pass them in review. Theday-coach people came first, and after them a smaller contingent fromthe sleepers. At the tail of the straggling procession Smith saw hisman, a thin-faced, hollow-eyed young fellow with an unlighted cigarettehanging from his loose lower lip. Smith marked all the little details:the rakish hat, the flaming-red tie, the russet-leather suitcase withits silver identification tag. Then he placed himself squarely in theyoung man's way.
Jibbey's stare was only momentary. With a broad-mouthed grin he droppedthe suitcase and thrust out a hand.
"Well, well--Monty, old sport! So this is where you ducked to, is it? ByJove, it's no wonder Bart Macauley couldn't get a line on you! How aretricks, anyway?"
Smith was carefully refusing to see the out-stretched hand. And it askedfor a sudden tightening of the muscles of self-possession to keep himfrom looking over his shoulder to see if any of Stanton's shadow menwere at hand.
"Verda got your telegram, and she asked me to meet you," he rejoinedcrisply. "Also, to make her excuses for to-night: she has gone to bed."
"So that's the way the cat's jumping, is it?" said the imitation blacksheep, the grin twisting itself into a leer. "_She_ got a line on you,even if Macauley couldn't. By Gad! I guess I didn't get out here any toosoon."
Smith ignored the half-jealous pleasantry. "Bring your grip," hedirected. "I have an auto here and we'll drive."
Being a stranger in a strange city, Jibbey could not know that the hotelwas only three squares distant. For the same cause he was entirelyunsuspicious when Smith turned the car to the right out of the cab rankand took a street leading to the western suburb. But when the pavementshad been left behind, together with all the town lights save anoccasional arc-lamp at a crossing, and he was trying for the third timeto hold a match to the hanging cigarette, enough ground had been coveredto prompt a question.
"Hell of a place to call itself a city, if anybody should ask you," hechattered. "Much of this to worry through?"
Smith bent lower over the tiller-wheel, advancing the spark and openingthe throttle for more gas.
"A good bit of it. Didn't you know that Mr. Richlander is out in thehills, buying a mine?"
Tucker Jibbey was rapid only in his attitude toward the world ofdecency; the rapidity did not extend to his mental processes. The suburbstreet had become a country road, the bridge over the torrenting Gloriahad thundered under the flying wheels, and a great butte, black in itsforesting from foot to summit, was rising slowly among the western starsbefore his small brain had grasped the relation of cause to effect.
"Say, here, Monty--dammit all, you hold on! Verda isn't with OldMoneybags; she's staying at the hotel in town. I wired and found outbefore I left Denver. Where in Sam Hill are you taking me to?"
Smith made no reply other than to open the cut-out and to put his footon the accelerator. The small car leaped forward at racing speed andJibbey clutched wildly at the wheel.
"Stop her--stop her!" he shrilled. "Lemme get out!"
Smith had one hand free and it went swiftly to his hip pocket. A secondlater Jibbey's shrilling protest died away in a gurgle of terror.
"For--for God's sake, Monty--don't kill me!" he gasped, when he saw thefree hand clutching a weapon and uplifted as if to strike. "Wh--what'veI done to you?"
"I'll tell you--a little later. Keep quiet and let this wheel alone, ifyou want to live long enough to find out where you're going. Quiet down,I say, or I'll beat your damned head off!--oh, you would, would you? Allright--if you _will_ have it!"
* * * * *
It lacked only a few minutes of midnight when Smith returned theborrowed runabout for the second time that night, sending it jerkilythrough the open door of Benkler's garage and swinging stiffly frombehind the steering-wheel to thrust a bank-note into the hand of thewaiting night man.
"Wash the car down good, and be sure it's all right before Mr. Maxwellsends around in the morning," he commanded gruffly; and then: "Take yourwhisk and dust me off."
The night man had seen the figure of his tip and was nothing loath.
"Gosh!" he exclaimed, with large Western freedom; "you sure look as ifyou'd been drivin' a good ways, and tol'able hard. What's this on yoursleeve? Say! it looks like blood!"
"No; it's mud," was the short reply; and after the liberal tipper hadgone, the garage man was left to wonder where, on the dust-dry roads inthe Timanyoni, the borrower of Mr. Maxwell's car had found mud deepenough to splash him, and, further, why there was no trace of the mud onthe dust-covered car itself.
The Real Man Page 20