by Max Brand
“Colonel Macon — my father—” she began. Then: “Do you really wish to see him?”
The hushed voice made Donnegan smile — it was such a voice as one boy uses when he asks the other if he really dares enter the pasture of the red bull. He chuckled again, and this time she smiled, and her eyes were widened, partly by fear of his purpose and partly from his nearness. They seemed to be suddenly closer together. As though they were on one side against a common enemy, and that enemy was her father. The old woman was cackling sharply from the bottom of the stairs, and then bobbing in pursuit and calling on Donnegan to come back. At length the girl raised her hand and silenced her with a gesture.
Donnegan was now hardly a pace away; and he saw that she lived up to all the promise of that first glance. Yet still she seemed unreal. There is a quality of the unearthly about a girl’s beauty; it is, after all, only a gay moment between the formlessness of childhood and the hardness of middle age. This girl was pale, Donnegan saw, and yet she had color. She had the luster, say, of a white rose, and the same bloom. Lou, the old woman had called her, and Macon was her father’s name. Lou Macon — the name fitted her, Donnegan thought. For that matter, if her name had been Sally Smith, Donnegan would probably have thought it beautiful. The keener a man’s mind is and the more he knows about men and women and the ways of the world, the more apt he is to be intoxicated by a touch of grace and thoughtfulness; and all these age- long seconds the perfume of girlhood had been striking up to Donnegan’s brain.
She brushed her timidity away and with the same gesture accepted Donnegan as something more than a dangerous vagrant. She took the lamp from the hands of the crone and sent her about her business, disregarding the mutterings and the warnings which trailed behind the departing form. Now she faced Donnegan, screening the light from her eyes with a cupped hand and by the same device focusing it upon the face of Donnegan. He mutely noted the small maneuver and gave her credit; but for the pleasure of seeing the white of her fingers and the way they tapered to a pink transparency at the tips, he forgot the poor figure he must make with his soiled, ragged shirt, his unshaven face, his gaunt cheeks.
Indeed, he looked so straight at her that in spite of her advantage with the light she had to avoid his glance.
“I am sorry,” said Lou Macon, “and ashamed because we can’t take you in. The only house on the range where you wouldn’t be welcome, I know. But my father leads a very close life; he has set ways. The ways of an invalid, Mr. Donnegan.”
“And you’re bothered about speaking to him of me?”
“I’m almost afraid of letting you go in yourself.”
“Let me take the risk.”
She considered him again for a moment, and then turned with a nod and he followed her up the stairs into the upper hall. The moment they stepped into it he heard her clothes flutter and a small gale poured on them. It was criminal to allow such a building to fall into this ruinous condition. And a gloomy picture rose in Donnegan’s mind of the invalid, thin-faced, sallow-eyed, white- haired, lying in his bed listening to the storm and silently gathering bitterness out of the pain of living. Lou Macon paused again in the hall, close to a door on the right.
“I’m going to send you in to speak to my father,” she said gravely. “First I have to tell you that he’s different.”
Donnegan replied by looking straight at her, and this time she did not wince from the glance. Indeed, she seemed to be probing him, searching with a peculiar hope. What could she expect to find in him? What that was useful to her? Not once in all his life had such a sense of impotence descended upon Donnegan. Her father? Bah! Invalid or no invalid he would handle that fellow, and if the old man had an acrid temper, Donnegan at will could file his own speech to a point. But the girl! In the meager hand which held the lamp there was a power which all the muscles of Donnegan could not compass; and in his weakness he looked wistfully at her.
“I hope your talk will be pleasant. I hope so.” She laid her hand on the knob of the door and withdrew it hastily; then, summoning great resolution, she opened the door and showed Donnegan in.
“Father,” she said, “this is Mr. Donnegan. He wishes to speak to you.”
The door closed behind Donnegan, and hearing that whishing sound which the door of a heavy safe will make, he looked down at this, and saw that it was actually inches thick! Once more the sense of being in a trap descended upon him.
CHAPTER 7
HE FOUND HIMSELF in a large room which, before he could examine a single feature of it, was effectively curtained from his sight. Straight into his face shot a current of violent white light that made him blink. There was the natural recoil, but in Donnegan recoils were generally protected by several strata of willpower and seldom showed in any physical action. On the present occasion his first dismay was swiftly overwhelmed by a cold anger at the insulting trick. This was not the trick of a helpless invalid; Donnegan could not see a single thing before him, but he obeyed a very deep instinct and advanced straight into the current of light.
He was glad to see the light switched away. The comparative darkness washed across his eyes in a pleasant wave and he was now able to distinguish a few things in the room. It was, as he had first surmised, quite large. The ceiling was high; the proportions comfortably spacious; but what astounded Donnegan was the real elegance of the furnishings. There was no mistaking the deep, silken texture of the rug upon which he stepped; the glow of light barely reached the wall, and there showed faintly in streaks along yellowish hangings. Beside a table which supported a big reading lamp — gasoline, no doubt, from the intensity of its light — sat Colonel Macon with a large volume spread across his knees. Donnegan saw two highlights — fine silver hair that covered the head of the invalid and a pair of white hands fallen idly upon the surface of the big book, for if the silver hair suggested age the smoothly finished hands suggested perennial youth. They were strong, carefully tended, complacent hands. They suggested to Donnegan a man sufficient unto himself.
“Mr. Donnegan, I am sorry that I cannot rise to receive you. Now, what pleasant accident has brought me the favor of this call?”
Donnegan was taken aback again, and this time more strongly than by the flare of light against his eyes. For in the voice he recognized the quality of the girl — the same softness, the same velvety richness, though the pitch was a bass. In the voice of this man there was the same suggestion that the tone would crack if it were forced either up or down. With this great difference, one could hardly conceive of a situation which would push that man’s voice beyond its monotone. It flowed with deadly, all-embracing softness. It clung about one; it fascinated and baffled the mind of the listener.
But Donnegan was not in the habit of being baffled by voices. Neither was he a lover of formality. He looked about for a place to sit down, and immediately discovered that while the invalid sat in an enormous easy-chair bordered by shelves and supplied with wheels for raising and lowering the back and for propelling the chair about the room on its rubber tires, it was the only chair in the room which could make any pretensions toward comfort. As a matter of fact, aside from this one immense chair, devoted to the pleasure of the invalid, there was nothing in the room for his visitors to sit upon except two or three miserable backless stools.
But Donnegan was not long taken aback. He tucked his cap under his arm, bowed profoundly in honor of the colonel’s compliments, and brought one of the stools to a place where it was no nearer the rather ominous circle of the lamplight than was the invalid himself. With his eyes accustomed to the new light, Donnegan could now take better stock of his host. He saw a rather handsome face, with eyes exceedingly blue, young, and active; but the features of Macon as well as his body were blurred and obscured by a great fatness. He was truly a prodigious man, and one could understand the stoutness with which the invalid chair was made. His great wrist dimpled like the wrist of a healthy baby, and his face was so enlarged with superfluous flesh that the lower part of it quite dwarfed
the upper. He seemed, at first glance, a man with a low forehead and bright, careless eyes and a body made immobile by flesh and sickness. A man whose spirits despised and defied pain. Yet a second glance showed that the forehead was, after all, a nobly proportioned one, and for all the bulk of that figure, for all the cripple-chair, Donnegan would not have been surprised to see the bulk spring lightly out of the chair to meet him.
For his own part, sitting back on the stool with his cap tucked under his arm and his hands folded about one knee, he met the faint, cold smile of the colonel with a broad grin of his own.
“I can put it in a nutshell,” said Donnegan. “I was tired; dead beat; needed a handout, and rapped at your door. Along comes a mystery in the shape of an ugly-looking woman and opens the door to me. Tries to shut me out; I decided to come in. She insists on keeping me outside; all at once I see that I have to get into the house. I am brought in; your daughter tries to steer me off, sees that the job is more than she can get away with, and shelves me off upon you. And that, Colonel Macon, is the pleasant accident which brings you the favor of this call.”
It would have been a speech both stupid and pert in the mouth of another; but Donnegan knew how to flavor words with a touch of mockery of himself as well as another. There were two manners in which this speech could have been received — with a wink or with a smile. But it would have been impossible to hear it and grow frigid. As for the colonel, he smiled.
It was a tricky smile, however, as Donnegan felt. It spread easily upon that vast face and again went out and left all to the dominion of the cold, bright eyes.
“A case of curiosity,” commented the colonel.
“A case of hunger,” said Donnegan.
“My dear Mr. Donnegan, put it that way if you wish!”
“And a case of blankets needed for one night.”
“Really? Have you ventured into such a country as this without any equipment?”
“Outside of my purse, my equipment is of the invisible kind.”
“Wits,” suggested the colonel.
“Thank you.”
“Not at all. You hinted at it yourself.”
“However, a hint is harder to take than to make.”
The colonel raised his faultless right hand — and oddly enough his great corpulence did not extend in the slightest degree to his hand, but stopped short at the wrists — and stroked his immense chin. His skin was like Lou Macon’s, except that in place of the white-flower bloom his was a parchment, dead pallor. He lowered his hand with the same slow precision and folded it with the other, all the time probing Donnegan with his difficult eyes.
“Unfortunately — most unfortunately, it is impossible for me to accommodate you, Mr. Donnegan.”
The reply was not flippant, but quick. “Not at all. I am the easiest person in the world to accommodate.”
The big man smiled sadly.
“My fortune has fallen upon evil days, sir. It is no longer what it was. There are in this house three habitable rooms; this one; my daughter’s apartment; the kitchen where old Haggie sleeps. Otherwise you are in a rat trap of a place.”
He shook his head, a slow, decisive motion.
“A spare blanket,” said Donnegan, “will be enough.”
There was another sigh and another shake of the head.
“Even a corner of a rug to roll up in will do perfectly.”
“You see, it is impossible for me to entertain you.”
“Bare boards will do well enough for me, Colonel Macon. And if I have a piece of bread, a plate of cold beans — anything — I can entertain myself.”
“I am sorry to see you so compliant, Mr. Donnegan, because that makes my refusal seem the more unkind. But I cannot have you sleeping on the bare floor. Not on such a night. Pneumonia comes on one like a cat in the dark in such weather. It is really impossible to keep you here, sir.”
“H’m-m,” said Donnegan. He began to feel that he was stumped, and it was a most unusual feeling for him.
“Besides, for a young fellow like you, with your agility, what is eight miles? Walk down the road and you will come to a place where you will be made at home and fed like a king.”
“Eight miles, that’s not much! But on such a night as this?”
There was a faint glint in the eyes of the colonel; was he not sharpening his wits for his contest of words, and enjoying it?
“The wind will be at your back and buoy your steps. It will shorten the eight miles to four.”
Very definitely Donnegan felt that the other was reading him. What was it that he saw as he turned the pages?
“There is one thing you fail to take into your accounting.”
“Ah?”
“I have an irresistible aversion to walking.”
“Ah?” repeated Macon.
“Or exercise in any form.”
“Then you are unfortunate to be in this country without a horse.”
“Unfortunate, perhaps, but the fact is that I’m here. Very sorry to trouble you, though, colonel.”
“I am rarely troubled,” said the colonel coldly. “And since I have no means of accommodation, the laws of hospitality rest light on my shoulders.”
“Yet I have an odd thought,” replied Donnegan.
“Well? You have expressed a number already, it seems to me.”
“It’s this: that you’ve already made up your mind to keep me here.”
CHAPTER 8
THE COLONEL STIFFENED in his chair, and under his bulk even those ponderous timbers quaked a little. Once more Donnegan gained an impression of chained activity ready to rise to any emergency. The colonel’s jaw set and the last vestige of the smile left his eyes. Yet it was not anger that showed in its place. Instead, it was rather a hungry searching. He looked keenly into the face and the soul of Donnegan as a searchlight sweeps over waters by night.
“You are a mind reader, Mr. Donnegan.”
“No more of a mind reader than a Chinaman is.”
“Ah, they are great readers of mind, my friend.”
Donnegan grinned, and at this the colonel frowned.
“A great and mysterious people, sir. I keep evidences of them always about me. Look!”
He swept the shaft of the reading light up and it fell upon a red vase against the yellow hangings. Even Donnegan’s inexperienced eye read a price into that shimmering vase.
“Queer color,” he said.
“Dusty claret. Ah, they have the only names for their colors. Think! Peach bloom — liquid dawn — ripe cherry — oil green — green of powdered tea — blue of the sky after rain — what names for color! What other land possesses such a tongue that goes straight to the heart!”
The colonel waved his faultless hands and then dropped them back upon the book with the tenderness of a benediction.
“And their terms for texture — pear’s rind — lime peel — millet seed! Do not scoff at China, Mr. Donnegan. She is the fairy godmother, and we are the poor children.”
He changed the direction of the light; Donnegan watched him, fascinated.
“But what convinced you that I wished to keep you here?”
“To amuse you, Colonel Macon.”
The colonel exposed gleaming white teeth and laughed in that soft, smooth- flowing voice.
“Amuse me? For fifteen years I have sat in this room and amused myself by taking in what I would and shutting out the rest of the world. I have made the walls thick and padded them to keep out all sound. You observe that there is no evidence here of the storm that is going on tonight. Amuse me? Indeed!”
And Donnegan thought of Lou Macon in her old, drab dress, huddling the poor cloak around her shoulders to keep out the cold, while her father lounged here in luxury. He could gladly have buried his lean fingers in that fat throat. From the first he had had an aversion to this man.
“Very well, I shall go. It has been a pleasant chat, colonel.”
“Very pleasant. And thank you. But before you go, taste this whisky. It w
ill help you when you enter the wind.”
He opened a cabinet in the side of the chair and brought out a black bottle and a pair of glasses and put them on the broad arm of the chair. Donnegan sauntered back.
“You see,” he murmured, “you will not let me go.”
At this the colonel raised his head suddenly and glared into the eyes of his guest, and yet so perfect was his muscular and nerve control that he did not interrupt the thin stream of amber which trickled into one of the glasses. Looking down again, he finished pouring the drinks. They pledged each other with a motion, and drank. It was very old, very oily. And Donnegan smiled as he put down the empty glass.
“Sit down,” said the colonel in a new voice.
Donnegan obeyed.
“Fate,” went on the colonel, “rules our lives. We give our honest endeavors, but the deciding touch is the hand of Fate.”
He garnished this absurd truism with a wave of his hand so solemn that Donnegan was chilled; as though the fat man were actually conversant with the Three Sisters.
“Fate has brought you to me; therefore, I intend to keep you.”
“Here?”
“In my service. I am about to place a great mission and a great trust in your hands.”
“In the hands of a man you know nothing about?”
“I know you as if I had raised you.”
Donnegan smiled, and shaking his head, the red hair flashed and shimmered.
“As long as there is no work attached to the mission, it may be agreeable to me.”
“But there is work.”
“Then the contract is broken before it is made.”
“You are rash. But I had rather begin with a dissent and then work upward.”
Donnegan waited.
“To balance against work—”
“Excuse me. Nothing balances against work for me.”
“To balance against work,” continued the colonel, raising a white hand and by that gesture crushing the protest of Donnegan, “there is a great reward.”