by Max Brand
“Very well done,” said the other approvingly. “I won’t offer you a smoke, however,” he added, “because I always feel that smoking with a man is like eating at his table. It’s rather hard to treat him as an enemy afterward.”
Jerry watched, and his eye was as sharp and steady as flint. “Get into your talk,” he said. “Get on with it. But if you’ve touched a button or anything like that, if you’ve sent a high sign for some of your guests to come flocking around me, remember that I’ll get you before they can get me, my friend.”
The host tipped back his head and laughed and laughed and laughed. Jerry watched, fascinated, as the fat throat puffed and shook.
“Dear me,” James P. Langley said as his merriment subsided, “I almost like you for that, my boy. You’ve been reading quite a bit of trash, I see. Buttons to press and trap doors, too, eh? Come, come, you’re too old for that.”
“All right,” Jerry said, leaning suddenly back and smiling in turn at the other. “I’m not in a rush. If this is the game, I’ll play it this way.”
“Oh, I don’t put you down for a fool,” Langley replied at once. “You’ve done two things very well. First, my trail was a hard one to follow. I suppose it was the gambler in Chambers City that tipped you off?”
Jerry shrugged his shoulders.
“You don’t need to be reticent on his behalf,” said the other, and the well-trimmed mustache bristled a disagreeable trifle. “I know that’s the only place you could have learned what you wanted to know. You got him to talk, eh?”
“Also, I won quite a stake from him,” Jerry said, and smiled.
“That’s item number two for you, then,” said Langley. “The third thing is that you’re right about the gun. I have a revolver with me. I always have, in fact.”
“And you sit like a cur and hear me browbeat you, eh?” said Jerry.
The host grew pale to the eyes. “It’s hard to stand abuse,” he said. “But I’ll have to.”
The fighting devil in Jerry welled up into his eyes and ran back to his heart, twice; a cold sweat was standing out all over his body, and he was shaking before that was over, but he had kept from drawing his gun.
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” the other remarked. “But I’ve known very few men in my life who could kill in cold blood. You think you can and your nerves are all set for it, but, when it comes to meeting the other fellow’s eyes, you weaken, eh?”
Jerry sat very still and thought. Every ounce of mental strength in his brain went into the effort. “Langley,” he said, when he had finished the struggle, “I think you’re not straight . . . I think you’re a crook.”
The other lighted a cigar and puffed at it, then held it poised as though he were listening to an entertaining story.
“I think you’re a crook,” Jerry repeated, “and a lot of little things along the road to Saint Hilaire have just about convinced me of it. But there’s one chance in ten that I’m wrong. I’m not reserving anything. You did a yellow thing back at Sloan. You got me when I was helpless and you took something from me. If you can explain that away, I’ll get up and say good bye and never look at your ratty eyes again. That’s square, I think. Now explain.”
The older man squinted through a mist of smoke. He looked up to the ceiling and then down at the floor. “That’s a square opening for me,” he said. “But I can’t take advantage of it. All I can say is this . . . the only big mistake I ever made in my life was in rating a very clever man as a fool. You see, I treated the man as a fool, and he took me off guard. God, it seems impossible that I could have done it, now that I look back. He twisted me around his finger. The result is the clever man put me in such a position that I can’t explain how I happened to take your father’s gun. It’s impossible. I could tell you a story, but then you’d ask questions, and your questions would blow up the tale.” He puffed again at the cigar thoughtfully.
Jerry raised his left hand and brushed it across his shining forehead without obscuring his sight. “One thing more,” he said. “If you give me back the gun, I think I can call the game off now. I’ll not try to think it out.”
But still the host shook his head. “I’ve just been thinking of that,” he said, “but the clever man saw through even that chance. I can’t give the gun back to you.”
“Then,” said Jerry, “as sure as the sun’s going to rise, I’m going to drill you, Langley.”
“Tut, tut,” said the other. “You’ve already had your chance and you’ve failed. I know your mind, lad. I’ve stepped into it. You can’t pull a gun until the other fellow has made the first move. Now, if I were to go for my revolver, I’d get it out, and I’d get it out before you had yours halfway to the mark. I’d kill you, my son . . . but, when you were dead, what earthly good would it do me? None whatever, and, instead, it would do me a tremendous harm. You see, large things are built on small, and, if I were to kill you, this entire house would topple about my ears.”
That whiplash flicker of his eyes went up and down the body of Jerry Peyton and then burned into his face.
“Nothing would please me more,” went on Langley, “than a moment alone with you out in the mountain desert . . . say somewhere near Sloan . . . where a community is not so shocked by manslaughter. Unfortunately we are some three thousand miles and more from Sloan.” He paused and sighed. “And we are on the island of Saint Hilaire, where man-killing is looked upon not as a vocation, but as a sin. You’ve no idea what a great difference that makes. For instance, if you were to be irritated past the point of endurance . . . if you were to do the impossible and draw your gun and shoot me . . . a dozen telephone messages would be sent out instantly from this house, and then the messages would be repeated at the farther end, so that in five minutes the entire coastline of this island would be watched and guarded. Every boat would be inspected to make sure that you were not on it, and little launches with machine guns mounted on ’em would slide up and down the coast to see that you didn’t drift to sea.”
He had talked so long that the cigar had almost gone out, and he now prevented this evil by puffing rapidly; his head appeared, presently, through a dense cloud of smoke, the eyes glittering at Jerry.
“You see,” went on Langley, “this might be called a co-operative system of society. Do you follow that?”
“I’m followin’ you so close, partner,” said the big man, and he stretched himself in his chair, “that I’m wearing calluses on your heels. Go on.”
The host looked at him with singular respect and cold observance commingled; he was thinking of the long, powerful body of a great cat, stretching with sleepy eyes, but incredibly alert at the same time.
“In this co-operative system,” continued Langley, “we all work together to make it uncomfortable for the criminal. We don’t consign all our legal interests to the hands of one sheriff, as they do at Sloan. Instead, we all step in and catch the disagreeable member of society and exterminate him with no more compunction than one would step on a snake.”
“Me being the snake,” said Jerry ungrammatically, and grinned.
He was met by a flash of white teeth. “I’m glad you understood so well,” Langley went on. “For you are here in the midst of a net. It might be said that you rest on the palm of the hand of society, and, if you bite the skin which holds you, the fingers will close and crush you out of recognizable shape. But, on the other hand, suppose that I were to shoot you down. In that case the danger would not be nearly so great. I would be kept under surveillance, to be sure . . . but I could readily escape from actual physical danger. On the other hand, a vital blow would be struck at the foundation of my work and ambition. I have said that if I kill you, this house will tumble about my ears. And I mean this almost literally. I am not a mild man in a crisis, and the people of Saint Hilaire would not endure another outbreak on my part. I should find my social position destroyed, the prospects of my family irretrievably ruined, or, at the least, the work of many years blown away in one puff of wind.”
“You’re a bright man,” Jerry said dryly. “You’re too bright, almost. But you can’t hold up. You can’t stand the gaff. Suppose I pick a time when you have a lot of Saint Hilaire’s social knockouts around you . . . suppose I step up and call you hard . . . insult you in front of the gang. That’ll make you go for your gun, eh?”
There was that same mirthless flash of white teeth, the same bristling of the precisely trimmed mustache.
“In many ways,” said the rich man, “you are a child, Peyton. If you did that, I’d simply denounce you to the police as a madman and have you locked up.”
“You’d be disgraced, though,” said Jerry. “They’d see you’re yellow.”
“Not at all,” said the other with meaning. “Whatever people may privately think of me in Saint Hilaire, my courage, at least, has been placed beyond question. Come, my boy, look about you and see how complete the net is. I speak without passion and without fear of you . . . your position is impossible . . . therefore, look about you, admit the fact, and withdraw at once.”
With one long, inward glance Jerry obeyed and saw that, as Langley had said, there was no escape. But being brought up against an impenetrable wall, his anger rose. It was a wall of words, after all; it was an obstacle created by the talk of this cool fellow with the glistening eyes. And in his helplessness Jerry let his glance rove. He then saw, close to him, a writing desk of ebony. It was one of those rare bits that are carved elaborately, and yet the minute carving is made subordinate to the line of the piece; the slender legs were yet strong enough and they rose from an adequate base; one would not be afraid to rest the weight of his elbow upon that desk. It was polished until, although it stood in the shadow, it glimmered, as though shining in the content of its own beauty. On the smooth surface lay a paper knife; it was silver, with a handle roughened by emeralds set into the metal, and on the surface of the dark ebony there was a reflection, a white streak for the silver and a green light for the emeralds—so that the knife seemed to be floating. Upon these two things of beauty Jerry stared, for to him they reconstructed the whole fortune of the rich man and signified more than the rest of the house. The desk, carved like a jewel, the paper knife, a jewel indeed, left carelessly upon the surface of the desk—Jerry calculated absently that the entire value of the main street of Sloan would not duplicate that paper cutter. He looked up to Langley and sighed.
“It looks to me,” he said, “as though you’re right.”
“Good,” the millionaire said. It was a great mistake, that satisfied nod, for no man, and particularly no young man, likes to have his conclusions taken for granted. But Langley was victorious, he felt, and now he rushed on foolishly: “Of course, I’ll see that all arrangements are made for your trip back, and it will be a pleasure to refund the money you have spent on this unfortunate excursion, in fact . . .”
“The devil!” said Jerry with infinite disgust.
It made Langley open his eyes.
“I said it looked to me as though you were right,” said the big man, “but I’ll be hanged if I’ll go on the looks of it. I can’t plug a man who won’t pull a gun. You’re right there. I can’t make you fight by insultin’ you in public. Well, there’s still some other way I can hit you. I don’t know how it is, but I’ll find that way . . . and I’ll make you come to me foamin’, Mister Langley, I’ll make you come to me like a cow bawlin’ for her calf. I’ll make you come ravin’ and beggin’ for a chance to get a shot at me. I’ll make you want to do murder, my friend.” He leaned a narrow, hard fist on the surface of the writing desk. “As a matter of fact, Mister Langley, I don’t think that’s anything new to you.” So saying, he straightened, and backed with long, light steps through the door.
Langley watched him, interested, and then noted the swiftness and ease of the sidewise leap that carried the Westerner out of sight behind the wall. There was an ominous grace about his actions that made Langley think, not for the first time, of some big, half-tamed panther, playing in his cage. But the bars against which Jerry Peyton spent himself were the bars of civilization. While he thought of these things, Langley picked up the paper knife from the ebony desk and looked at it curiously. The hard fist of Jerry had rested upon it, and it was sadly bent. The jeweler would have to look at it.
XVII
The Negro boy before the house of the master had the reins jerked from his hands, and he had barely time to catch a silver coin that was flung to him while Peyton vaulted into the saddle. The little Negro was used to seeing expert riders mount, but something in the manner in which this stranger flung himself through the air and landed lightly in the saddle on a horse that stood a good sixteen hands and a half made the boy gape. He remained gaping while Jerry jerked the horse from a standing start into a full gallop with a merciless twist of spurred heels. Then horse and rider shot off down the road and the shadows of the palms were brushing across them.
It was not the road by which he had come to the house, and Jerry did not care. He went blindly at top speed until the rush of wind against his face had cooled his blood sufficiently for him to begin thinking. In the old days, when he felt after this fashion, he used to jump into the saddle on the buckskin. She took part of the mad humor out of him with her bucking, as a rule, and he spent the rest of it hunting for trouble with the first man he met. Around Sloan men were astonishingly accommodating when it came to providing trouble, but in this infernal island . . . He brought the poor horse to a stand with a wrench on the reins that almost broke the poor brute’s jaw, for through the tree trunks just ahead of him he made out the flash and blue shimmer of the sea. It was everywhere about him, then. It was crowding into his back yard, in fact. He sent his trembling horse out onto the brow of the hill and looked down where the surf came boiling on the beach and then slid back to the deep places. It leaped in tricky currents, and he saw what had been a smooth place before suddenly involved in a deep whirl that sucked the foam under and then threw it up again. To Jerry water meant, on the whole, nothing more than the sleepy old Winton River, and he looked on the ocean with disgust. He remembered, too, the way the ship had ridden the waves, bucking until one’s stomach commenced almost to float. So he hated this blue ocean and its green margin; above all he hated it because it drove back into his mind the memory that he was helpless—that he could never escape if he shot down Langley. As if to complete his picture of isolation, as if purposely sent to drive him to a frenzy, a long, low-lying launch sneaked into view around the end of the promontory and glided across the bay. How could he escape from such a seagoing greyhound as that?
He found his horse shaking again, and then he discovered that the animal was terrified because he had ridden so close to the edge of the hill, where the soil crumbled away and dropped in what was almost a cliff to the sea. At the sight of his horse’s fear all the mad, sullen child boiled up in Jerry, all the hate that he felt for Langley and the sea and the fate that had sent him to this accursed island. He spurred the gelding until he stood straight up, with a groan, and then struck on all fours in full gallop. He strove to swerve inland, but the iron arm of Jerry wrenched his head over and made him race along the very verge of the cliffs. Sometimes the ground gave way under his pounding hoofs. Sometimes his hindquarters sagged as a miniature landslide commenced and threatened to suck the horse over the brow of the hill, until the gelding was tortured into a hysteria of fear as strong and as blind as Jerry’s hysteria of rage. He ran, now, where Jerry guided him. He went fearlessly along that crumbling cliff edge. He even strove to swerve and leap into the abyss when the yell of the cowpuncher rose and blew tinglingly behind him, but the man kept him true to his course, not a foot allowed on the danger side of it and not a foot allowed toward safety. He kept on until Jerry felt the forelegs pounding, felt the h
indquarters sag, and knew that the gelding was almost spent. All at once his own passion left him. He swung the gelding over to a firm little plateau and brought him to a down-headed halt. For a moment the panting of the horse lifted him slightly up and down in the saddle. He himself was panting, now that his rage had been converted into weariness, and, when he slipped off the horse and remorsefully patted the flanks of the gelding, he would have given a great deal, indeed, if his prank had remained unplayed.
It was at this moment of depression that he looked over the croup of the horse suddenly, and saw an old man standing on the hilltop above him with folded arms and watching him solemnly. Indeed, his pose was one of almost affected dignity and reserve. He held his hat in his hand, so that it came under one elbow, and the wind was lifting the misty white hair, which he wore rather long for an ordinary man. He stood with one foot advanced in that position of self-control and balance that the world for some reason has connected with that nervous, active genius, Napoleon. For the rest, there was no semblance at all between this man and the conqueror. He was of an attenuated leanness and very tall. Even from this distance Jerry could see that his head was small and his nose large. There was about him a sort of cruel dignity and scorn—it made Jerry think of a bald eagle surveying his kingdom of the air from a crag. He was almost surprised when he saw the old man shake his head in disapproval and became aware that this majestic figure was watching him. Because the other stood with head uncovered, Jerry instantly swept off his own hat and bowed.
Among the maxims of Hank Peyton, uttered when he was drunk but observed whether drunk or sober and impressed even upon Jerry’s infancy with brutal force, was the following: “They’s three things you got to side-step and handle with a long rein . . . an old horse, an old man, and a woman.” There was a little white scar that showed over Jerry’s eye when he flushed; it marked an occasion when he was a very small boy and had spoken back to his mother. Hank Peyton had promptly knocked him down with the butt end of a loaded blacksnake. That lesson of courtesy was never forgotten by Jerry, and, if he was ever tempted to forget, the scar reminded him. So he stood with his broad-brimmed hat in his hand and waited for the older man to address him.