by Bret Harte
CHAPTER X
The rainy season had set in early. The last three weeks of summerdrought had drained the great valley of its lifeblood; the dead stalksof grain rustled like dry bones over Dr. West's grave. The desiccatingwind and sun had wrought some disenchanting cracks and fissures inAladdin's Palace, and otherwise disjoined it, so that it not onlylooked as if it were ready to be packed away, but had become finallyuntenable in the furious onset of the southwesterly rains. Thegorgeous furniture of the reception-rooms was wrapped in mackintoshes,the conservatory was changed into an aquarium, the Bridge of Sighscrossed an actual canal in the stable-yard. Only the billiard-room andMr. Prince's bed-room and office remained intact, and in the latter,one stormy afternoon, Mr. Prince himself sat busy over his books andpapers. His station-wagon, splashed and streaked with mud, stood inthe court-yard, just as it had been driven from the station, and thesmell of the smoke of newly-lit fires showed that the house had beenopened only for this hurried visit of its owner.
The tramping of horse hoofs in the court-yard was soon followed bysteps along the corridor, and the servant ushered Captain Carroll intothe presence of his master. The Captain did not remove his militaryovercoat, but remained standing erect in the centre of the room, withhis forage cap in his hand.
"I could have given you a lift from the station," said Prince, "if youhad come that way. I've only just got in myself."
"I preferred to ride," said Carroll, dryly.
"Sit down by the fire," said Prince, motioning to a chair, "and dryyourself."
"I must ask you first the purport of this interview," said Carroll,curtly, "before I prolong it further. You have asked me to come herein reference to certain letters I returned to their rightful owner somemonths ago. If you seek to reclaim them again, or to refer to asubject which must remain forgotten, I decline to proceed further."
"It DOES refer to the letters, and it rests with you whether they shallbe forgotten or not. It is not my fault if the subject has beendropped. You must remember that until yesterday you have been absenton a tour of inspection and could not be applied to before."
Carroll cast a cold glance at Prince, and then threw himself into achair, with his overcoat still on and his long military boots crossedbefore the fire. Sitting there in profile Prince could not but noticethat he looked older and sterner than at their last interview, and hischeeks were thinned as if by something more than active service.
"When you were here last summer," began Prince, leaning forward overhis desk, "you brought me a piece of news that astounded me, as it didmany others. It was the assignment of Dr. West's property to Mrs.Saltonstall. That was something there was no gainsaying; it was apurely business affair, and involved nobody's rights but the assignor.But this was followed, a day or two after, by the announcement of theDoctor's will, making the same lady the absolute and sole inheritor ofthe same property. That seemed all right too; for there were,apparently, no legal heirs. Since then, however, it has been discoveredthat there is a legal heir--none other than the Doctor's only son.Now, as no allusion to the son's existence was made in that will--whichwas a great oversight of the Doctor's--it is a fiction of the law thatsuch an omission is an act of forgetfulness, and therefore leaves theson the same rights as if there had been no will at all. In otherwords, if the Doctor had seen fit to throw his scapegrace son a hundreddollar bill, it would have been legal evidence that he remembered him.As he did not, it's a fair legal presumption that he forgot him, orthat the will is incomplete."
"This seems to be a question for Mrs. Saltonstall's lawyers--not forher friends," said Carroll, coldly.
"Excuse me; that remains for you to decide--when you hear all. Youunderstand at present, then, that Dr. West's property, both byassignment and will, was made over, in the event of his death, not tohis legal heirs, but to a comparative stranger. It looked queer to agood many people, but the only explanation was, that the Doctor hadfallen very much in love with the widow--that he would have probablymarried her--had he lived."
With an unpleasant recollection that this was almost exactly Maruja'sexplanation of her mother's relations to Dr. West, Carroll returned,impatiently, "If you mean that their private relations may be made thesubject of legal discussion, in the event of litigation in regard tothe property, that again is a matter for Mrs. Saltonstall todecide--and not her friends. It is purely a matter of taste."
"It may be a matter of discretion, Captain Carroll."
"Of discretion!" repeated Carroll, superciliously.
"Well," said Prince, leaving his desk and coming to the fire-place,with his hands in his pockets, "what would you call it, if it could befound that Dr. West, on leaving Mrs. Saltonstall's that night, did notmeet with an accident, was not thrown from his horse, but was coollyand deliberately murdered!"
Captain Carroll's swift recollection of the discovery he himself hadmade in the road, and its inconsistency with the accepted theory of theaccident, unmistakably showed itself in his face. It was a momentbefore he recovered himself.
"But even if it can be proved to have been a murder and not anaccident, what has that to do with Mrs. Saltonstall or her claim to theproperty?"
"Only that she was the one person directly benefited by his death."
Captain Carroll looked at him steadily, and then rose to his feet. "DoI understand that you have called me here to listen to this infamousaspersion of a lady?"
"I have called you here, Captain Carroll, to listen to the argumentsthat may be used to set aside Dr. West's will, and return the propertyto the legal heir. You are to listen to them or not, as you choose;but I warn you that your opportunity to hear them in confidence andconvey them to your friend will end here. I have no opinion in thecase. I only tell you that it will be argued that Dr. West was undulyinfluenced to make a will in Mrs. Saltonstall's favor; that, afterhaving done so, it will be shown that, just before his death, he becameaware of the existence of his son and heir, and actually had aninterview with him; that he visited Mrs. Saltonstall that evening, withthe records of his son's identity and a memorandum of his interview inhis pocket-book; and that, an hour after leaving the house, he wasfoully murdered. That is the theory which Mrs. Saltonstall has toconsider. I told you I have no opinion. I only know that there arewitnesses to the interview of the Doctor and his son; there is evidenceof murder, and the murderer is suspected; there is the evidence of thepocket-book, with the memorandum picked up on the spot, which youhanded me yourself."
"Do you mean to say that you will permit this pocketbook, handed you inconfidence, to be used for such an infamous purpose?" said Carroll.
"I think you offered it to me in exchange for Dr. West's letters toMrs. Saltonstall," returned Prince, dryly. "The less said about that,the less is likely to be said about compromising letters written by thewidow to the Doctor, which she got you to recover--letters which theymay claim had a bearing on the case, and even lured him to his fate."
For an instant Captain Carroll recoiled before the gulf which seemed toopen at the feet of the unhappy family. For an instant a terribledoubt possessed him, and in that doubt he found a new reason for acertain changed and altered tone in Maruja's later correspondence withhim, and the vague hints she had thrown out of the impossibility oftheir union. "I beg you will not press me to greater candor," she hadwritten, "and try to forget me before you learn to hate me." For aninstant he believed--and even took a miserable comfort in thebelief--that it was this hideous secret, and not some coquettishcaprice, to which she vaguely alluded. But it was only for a moment;the next instant the monstrous doubt passed from the mind of the simplegentleman, with only a slight flush of shame at his momentarydisloyalty.
Prince, however, had noticed it, not without a faint sense of sympathy."Look here!" he said, with a certain brusqueness, which in a man of hischaracter was less dangerous than his smoothness. "I know your feelingsto that family--at least to one of them--and, if I've been playing itpretty rough on you, it's only because you played it rather r
ough on MEthe last time you were here. Let's understand each other. I'll go sofar as to say I don't believe that Mrs. Saltonstall had anything to dowith that murder, but, as a business man, I'm bound to say that thesecircumstances and her own indiscretion are quite enough to bring thebiggest pressure down on her. I wouldn't want any better 'bear' on themarket value of her rights than this. Take it at its best. Say thatthe Coroner's verdict is set aside, and a charge of murder againstunknown parties is made--"
"One moment, Mr. Prince," said Carroll. "I shall be one of the firstto insist that this is done, and I have confidence enough in Mrs.Saltonstall's honest friendship for the Doctor to know that she willlose no time in pursuing his murderers."
Prince looked at Carroll with a feeling of half envy and half pity. "Ithink not," he said, dryly; "for all suspicion points to one man as theperpetrator, and that man was Mrs. Saltonstall's confidentialservant--the mayordomo, Pereo." He waited for a moment for the effectof this announcement on Carroll, and then went on: "You now understandthat, even if Mrs. Saltonstall is acquitted of any connivance with oreven knowledge of the deed, she will hardly enjoy the prosecution ofher confidential servant for murder."
"But how can this be prevented? If, as you say, there are actualproofs, why have they not been acted upon before? What can keep themfrom being acted upon now?"
"The proofs have been collected by one man, have been in possession ofone man, and will only pass out of his possession when it is for thebenefit of the legal heir--who does not yet even know of theirexistence."
"And who is this one man?"
"Myself."
"You?--You?" said Carroll, advancing towards him. "Then this is YOURwork!"
"Captain Carroll," said Prince, without moving, but drawing his lipstightly together and putting his head on one side, "I don't propose tohave another scene like the one we had at our last meeting. If you tryon anything of that kind, I shall put the whole matter into a lawyer'shands. I don't say that you won't regret it; I don't say that I sha'ntbe disappointed, too, for I have been managing this thing purely as amatter of business, with a view to profiting by it. It so happens thatwe can both work to the same end, even if our motives are not the same.I don't call myself an officer and a gentleman, but I reckon I've runthis affair about as delicately as the best of them, and with a d----dsight more horse sense. I want this thing hushed up and compromised,to get some control of the property again, and to prevent itdepreciating, as it would, in litigation; you want it hushed up for thesake of the girl and your future mother-in-law. I don't know anythingabout your laws of honor, but I've laid my cards on the table for youto see, without asking what you've got in your hand. You can play thegame or leave the board, as you choose." He turned and walked to thewindow--not without leaving on Carroll's mind a certain sense offirmness, truthfulness, and sincerity which commanded his respect.
"I withdraw any remark that might have seemed to reflect on yourbusiness integrity, Mr. Prince," said Carroll, quietly. "I am willingto admit that you have managed this thing better than I could, and, ifI join you in an act to suppress these revelations, I have no right tojudge of your intentions. What do you propose to have me do?"
"To state the whole case to Mrs. Saltonstall, and to ask her toacknowledge the young man's legal claim without litigation."
"But how do you know that she would not do this without--excuseme--without intimidation?"
"I only reckon that a woman clever enough to get hold of a million,would be clever enough to keep it--against others."
"I hope to show you are mistaken. But where is this heir?"
"Here."
"Here?"
"Yes. For the last six months he has been my private secretary. Iknow what you are thinking of, Captain Carroll. You would consider itindelicate--eh? Well, that's just where we differ. By this means Ihave kept everything in my own hands--prevented him from getting intothe hands of outsiders--and I intend to dispose of just as much of thefacts to him as may be necessary for him to prove his title. Whatbargain I make with HIM--is my affair."
"Does he suspect the murder?"
"No. I did not think it necessary for his good or mine. He can be anugly devil if he likes, and although there wasn't much love lostbetween him and the old man, it wouldn't pay to have any revenge mixedup with business. He knows nothing of it. It was only by accidentthat, looking after his movements while he was here, I ran across thetracks of the murderer."
"But what has kept him from making known his claim to the Saltonstalls?Are you sure he has not?" said Carroll, with a sudden thought that itmight account for Maruja's strangeness.
"Positive. He's too proud to make a claim unless he could thoroughlyprove it, and only a month ago he made me promise to keep it dark.He's too lazy to trouble himself about it much anyway--as far as I cansee. D----d if I don't think his being a tramp has made him lose histaste for everything! Don't worry yourself about HIM. He isn't likelyto make confidences with the Saltonstalls, for he don't like 'em, andnever went there but once. Instinctively or not, the widow didn'tcotton to him; and I fancy Miss Maruja has some old grudge against himfor that fan business on the road. She isn't a girl to forgive orforget anything, as I happen to know," he added, with an uneasy laugh.
Carroll was too preoccupied with the danger that seemed to threaten hisfriends from this surly pretender to resent Prince's tactless allusion.He was thinking of Maruja's ominous agitation at his presence at Dr.West's grave. "Do they suspect him at all?"--he asked, hurriedly.
"How should they? He goes by the name of Guest--which was his father'sreal name until changed by an act of legislation when he first camehere. Nobody remembers it. We only found it out from his papers. Itwas quite legal, as all his property was acquired under the name ofWest."
Carroll rose and buttoned his overcoat. "I presume you are able tooffer conclusive proofs of everything you have asserted?"
"Perfectly."
"I am going to the Mision Perdida now," said Captain Carroll, quietly."To-morrow I will bring you the answer--Peace or War." He walked to thedoor, lifted his hand to his cap, with a brief military salutation, anddisappeared.