by Max Brand
“Trying to drop him with a chance shot.”
“But again you had no luck?”
“None.”
“Today, when your horse was galloping, you shot tin cans from the top of posts a dozen or twenty feet away.”
“Well?”
“This evening, when you were not in the saddle, you miss shots at a man and a horse not five paces off?”
“There is a difference between day and night.”
“Very true. But the stars are bright!”
“Besides, there is a difference between shooting at a target, even at a very small one, and at a man, even a big one. If that were not true, in the old days the good shots would always have won the duels.”
“Kobbe, who was the man?”
“The man? I have not the slightest idea.”
“What had happened before?”
“He shot at me from behind the garden wall, while I was walking down by the pool. I jumped over the fence and...”
“You ran straight at him?”
“Through the brush and then at the wall from the side so that I took him by surprise. He shot at me and I at him. He fell and I jumped over the fence after him.”
“Ah?”
“I saw him lying flat. I called out to him to surrender. Instead, he caught up his revolver and threw it at me. It was a lucky aim. The gun hit my arm and made me drop my revolver which fell several steps away. I ran to scoop it up, but by that time he was in the saddle and riding away and Jenkins was shooting at him over the wall.”
“You let a wounded man get away from you?” Alvarez whirled upon him. “Do you think I would be wise to allow such an unlucky man to work for me?”
The first answer which jumped to the lips of Kobbe was a careless and impertinent reply, but he knew that if he angered Alvarez, it meant that he had seen the girl for the last time. And that would be a disaster. He could not get out of his head the picture of her as she had turned toward him from the piano, curious, sad, searching eyes. He must see her at least once more and determine if she were indeed happy in the thought of her approaching marriage.
“You have been guarded by a number of men for a whole week,” he said.
“What has that to do with it?”
“How many men have they even touched with a bullet?” asked Kobbe.
“But perhaps they have no enemies?”
“Do you think it was my enemy who fired at me when I was in the garden?”
“Why not? They could never mistake you for me.”
“They may wish to get me out of the way before they attempt to get at you.”
Talk had relieved the anger of Alvarez somewhat. Now he broke suddenly into laughter. “Well,” he said, “the main thing is that you made the rascal run, and that you nipped him with a bullet... a rather bad wound, too, for I myself searched the place and saw the stains in the grass. But, Kobbe, I’m very curious to know what it was that you talked about with him.”
“Talked about? Nothing!”
The rancher began to nod, looking half in anger and half in whimsical amusement at Kobbe.
“Jenkins saw you jump over the fence whole seconds before he came up. But when he arrived, you still had not had time to finish your enemy. Kobbe. Be frank with me!”
“I am frank as I can be.”
“You will not tell me who he was?”
“I do not know.”
“Suppose what he said to you was: ‘Alvarez can only be willing to pay you a few hundreds for his life. But we will pay you as many thousands for his death!’ Suppose that he said only those few words to you!”
Kobbe shrugged his shoulders and allowed the other to study him at leisure.
“Come,” said Alvarez suddenly. “I have this to show you.”
He led his companion to a small desk at the corner of the room. From the upper part of it he jerked out a little drawer which was tightly packed with a whole stack of greenbacks.
“Today,” he said, “I was paid an old debt, and I was paid in cash. Count it, Kobbe!”
Kobbe flicked over a few bills to catch the denominations. “There are several thousands here,” he said.
“There are as many thousands as there are days remaining in this month,” he said. “And if I am still alive at the end of this month, the money is yours, Kobbe. Do you understand?”
“That is too generous.”
“My friend, if I could be sure that you will put all your heart and your brain into this work of defending me, I’d double and treble that sum. My life is in your hands. I am a fool if I do not treat my life with caution.”
“Why,” said Kobbe suddenly, “do you trust so much in me?”
The rancher made a vague gesture. “If you cannot save me,” he said, “no one can save me. That much I know!”
He changed the subject suddenly.
“You did not stay long with Miss Mantiez?”
“I did not,” admitted Kobbe.
“She thought your leaving was rather strange.”
“I am sorry.”
“I fear that you are not a great man with the ladies, Kobbe.”
“I fear I am not,” said Kobbe. “If you have depended upon me to entertain Miss Mantiez, I shall disappoint you again.”
And it was plain that the rancher was delighted.
“If we must get along without your talk,” he said, “we must do as best we may do. And if...”
Here there was the long and almost human sighing of a draft across the room, and Alvarez whirled as though his name had been called. He saw only a yawning door and the black hall beyond it, yet the sight seemed to steal all his manhood away. He sank into a chair, gasping: “Kobbe... for heaven’s sake... see... what it is! Help!”
Kobbe ran to the door and looked down the hall. There was nothing there. He closed the door and turned back with that report.
“It was only the work of the wind,” he said.
“Do you think so?” sneeringly replied Alvarez, some of his courage returning. “Do you think it is only the wind? I tell you they have surrounded my house and they are in my house. Perhaps you are one of them. Perhaps they have poisoned the mind of Miriam against me. Perhaps her hand will tomorrow pour a few drops in the wine which will...”
He broke off with a shudder. And then he added solemnly: “Never think that I am a foolish neurasthenic. I tell you, Kobbe, that there are men in this world who would give their own lives for the sake of taking mine. They have hunted me for years. They have found me at last. The first of them I have killed with my own hand. But the second... heaven knows what will happen when the second sneaks inside my house, unless a brave man like you protects me. Good night. And remember, that when I call from my room after dark... if it is only so much as a whisper... if it is only a sound which you imagine... if it sounds only like the beating of the feet or the hands of a man who is being strangled so that he cannot cry out before his death... or if in the middle of the night a mere suspicion stirs in you... then, for heaven’s sake jump from your bed, seize your guns, and dash into my room. Do you hear me, Kobbe?”
And he clutched the arm of his companion with shaking hands. Kobbe turned his head a little away from that yellowed face of fear.
“I shall do my best,” he said.
IX. ON WATCH
THERE WAS NO sleep for Kobbe that night. He undressed, went to bed, and made desperate efforts to concentrate on lines of passing sheep, and on columns of figures, but all sleep-inducing devices were of no avail. Finally he dressed again, replaced his guns on his person, and went into the hall. He paced up and down for some time when the door of the room of Alvarez was snatched open and Alvarez himself looked wildly out upon him with a revolver clutched in his hand.
“Praise heaven it is you, Kobbe,” Alvarez said. “I listened to that cursed pacing up and down the hall... just a whisper and a creak, now and then... until it seemed to me that I could count my murderers gathering. I tried to push open the door into your room. I had forgotten that
it can only be opened from your side. Finally I determined to rush out and fight for my life. And then I see it is only you... walking here deliberately back and forth... keeping on the watch to save me... oh, Kobbe, God bless you for it!”
And Kobbe saw tears glinting on his cheeks. He felt a touch of shame. Certainly it had not been on account of Alvarez that he had conducted that midnight promenade.
“Go down to the main hall,” said Alvarez. “If you will stay up this night for my sake, go down to the main hall and watch there. I have dreamed of them for a week slipping in from the rear garden and coming through the hall and up the steps, softly and silently... go quickly, Kobbe! That is the place to watch tonight. Let the hall be. They will beat down Jenkins and the other guards. They will come in a silent wave through the garden and enter the house.”
Of course, to Kobbe, it seemed madness. But he could do nothing but obey. He saw the rancher turn, a bowed, slow-moving figure, into his room; then Kobbe went to the great hall.
The approach to it was down a short range of steps, for though the building was of one story, it was constructed upon several levels, according to the original disposition of the ground, and the wing of the bedchambers was at a considerable elevation above the great hall and the living rooms. The hall itself extended through the entire breadth of the house, with great French doors opening on the garden behind the house. Into it he passed, and finding a corner chair he looked over the apartment.
With its lofty ceiling and spacious floor it was worthy in dimensions of some old baronial hall. At parts of it he could only guess, for there was not a light burning. But the moon had lately risen and was pouring its slant light through the tall eastern windows, and that light was dimly caught up by the big mirrors which were built into the walls on all sides, so that the hall was half light and half shadow and even the light parts were little more than starlight darkness.
His mind was still far from his task as guard and deep in the problem of Alvarez and his strange prepossessions when he heard a light whispering sound on the steps which led down from the upper level and into the big room. He had barely time to shrink out of his chair and kneel behind it when a glimmering figure in white stole into view, paused, and then went slowly on, in ghostly silence so far as any footfall was concerned, but with the same light whispering of silk against silk.
It crossed the hall and was swallowed in the blackness of an opposite doorway. Kobbe was instantly after her. When he reached the doorway, the figure was gone, but when he hurried on to the next chamber he saw it again, a pale form disappearing into the music room. And from the doorway, he listened to faint music beginning on the piano, touched so very softly that it was like a ghost of sound. And as he listened, it seemed to Kobbe that he recognized some of the same strains which Miriam Mantiez had played that evening while he sat in the room and while they talked cautiously, just above the sound of the hammers on the strings.
He glided into the room. A great block of moonshine, white as marble, lay upon the floor just beyond the piano. And the room beyond the shaft of light was black with dull outlines — all dull saving for that one form at the piano which seemed to shine by a faint radiance of its own. And he knew that it was Miriam.
The ghostly coldness which had possessed his blood was dissipated. He could suddenly breathe freely. His heart leaped. And when he spoke, he knew what answer he would receive. For she had come down here at midnight to play over again the music which she had played for him that evening. Yes, surely his words to her had sunk far deeper than he had dreamed.
He called softly, and she swerved away from the piano and the moonlight cascaded over her and made her an exquisite creature of light. She recognized him in the next instant and managed a shaky laugh when he came forward.
“I thought... a ghost,” she said.
“And I thought the same thing,” he said.
“But why are you here?”
“And you,” he said, “why are you here?”
“I could not sleep,” she said.
“Nor I,” said Kobbe. “What kept you awake?”
“Oh, I have insomnia now and then.”
“I was awake, thinking,” said Kobbe.
“Unhappy thoughts, then?”
“Yes, partly. And some very happy ones. I was thinking over all the things that I might have said to you this evening, and which I forgot to say.”
“Ah? Then I am glad that I have come down here.”
“But I shall never be able to tell them to you.”
“And why?”
“They are the sort of things that one tells only to oneself.”
“I am a kind critic,” said Miriam.
And she said it in such a way that he found himself stealing close and closer to her without his own volition. He came so close that he could see her smile.
“If you tempt me to speak, we may both regret it.”
There, certainly, was warning enough. But she did not draw back.
“I know,” she said. “All the time I have been in my room I have been trying to guess at the things which were behind the words you were speaking. I have tried to guess. But I cannot guess. That’s why I want to hear them now.”
“And whatever they are, you’ll forgive them?”
“I promise. Because they will be the truth.”
“They will be the truth, I think. But do you know the old story of what happened to people on the night of midsummer?”
“Well? They were enchanted with a happy madness.”
“That’s it, exactly. I am enchanted with a happy madness which makes me say things that I should not say otherwise. But it makes me say that when I met you I became eager for your happiness. You seemed to me so lovely and so good that I made myself happy imagining the sort of life you were to lead after I saw no more of you. And when I learned afterwards that your life was to be spent as the wife of Señor Alvarez...”
“Hush!” she whispered.
“No one can hear me.”
“I tell you that the stones of the house have ears for that name.”
“I know one thing: that you don’t worship him blindly, as other people think you do. That he is no oracle to you, as others think.”
“How do you know that?”
“I have myself heard you say that he eavesdrops upon you. And in the whole world there’s nothing more cowardly and small-souled than that.”
“Please... please! If you say such things...”
“The floor will gape under us and swallow us both. Is that it?”
“I only warn you that we must not think of such things. How I could have said what I did to you I don’t know. But when he left us alone this evening, it seemed to me a trap. Because he knows what is going on in my mind every instant!”
“Nonsense! That’s just hysteria.”
“And yet if you knew all the things I could tell you... but when you were in the room and when I was playing for you, I was afraid of what would happen if he read my thoughts.”
“And why?”
“Because all at once it came over me... choked me... a wave of knowledge that I had been hideously lonely all my life and that I should be lonely all my days to come. And that I had missed and would always miss something that you have and that all sunlit people have!”
“What can you mean by that?”
“I don’t know, except that the life I have led here seems made up of shadows and no substance. Can you understand? I feel as if every day was like the day that went before, and that other days would follow exactly like it. I feel as if I were not real, but just a mirror reflecting a pale image of something that I might be.”
“And it was this evening you felt it?”
“Yes.”
“Then,” he said, “it is magic, but white magic, you know. For I felt the same thing. As if to take you out of this house would be to lead you out of a darkness into the sun.”
“Ah, that is it!”
“But instead you are to stay here as th
e wife of an old man.”
“Hush!”
“But why under heaven do you do it? This is a free country!”
“Nothing that comes near him remains free very long. Everything, sooner or later, becomes afraid of him.”
“Do you mean to say...?”
“Oh, yes! Don’t you see that what other people think is worship of him... is simply terror that freezes my mind and soul? I dread him more than I dread death!”
X. DANGER THREATENS
THE SHOCK OF it numbed Kobbe’s very brain. She slipped closer to him, her eyes going wildly over his shoulder on either side, as if searching out an invisible danger which must be gliding upon them. Now she was clinging to him, and her great eyes were fixed upon his.
“Do you know that I have not had the courage to tell you that there is danger threatening you here in this house? Do you know that?”
“Threatening me here? Yes, I think many people know that. From the outside there are...”
“Not the outside... not the outside. That’s not it! I lay awake on my bed trying to puzzle it out. That was after he told me this evening. For he tells me everything, you know. He feels that I am such a part of him that he can tell me everything. He cannot see that I hate and loathe him and all his thoughts! Oh, with all of his brains and his devilishness he cannot see that I know him and hate what I know! But tonight... ah, what is that?”
She swayed to one side, but he caught her and supported her, and at the same time swinging her around, he surveyed the doorway with the muzzle of his revolver. It was only an instant, but in that instant she depended upon him for protection, and in that instant joy almost burst his heart. He could have faced lions with his bared hands.
“Praise heaven! But we must not stay here. If he is not here, he is coming.”
“We cannot stir until you’ve told me what the danger is that threatens me.”
“Haven’t you guessed?”
“No.”
“It is he... it is Alvarez!”
“He?”
“When you came, he told me about it. You are one of his enemies.”