by Max Brand
“Why not tell me here?” asked Sherry.
“Tell you the story here?” cried the other. He laughed with the sudden harshness that, now and again, came into his voice. “Why in the name of caution should I tell you a story where the whole world might listen to me? No, no! Wait till we get to my house. I have one room there that really is private.” He laughed again, the same jarring laugh, as he repeated this.
And Sherry, amazed, unnerved, sick at heart, went unwillingly up the path beside his companion. The drive doubled twice, cutting along the face of that bluff that he had noticed before rising above the town, and finally it came to the front of the house on the hill that had showed lights that had seemed as much stars as lamps.
It was not an imposing house. It was built all in one story, and it followed the natural conformation of the ground slavishly.
There had apparently been no attempt to level a sufficient space, for the foundations were laid according to the natural contour of the land. The result was an indescribable living line to the upper contour of the building, which pitched up and down heedlessly, like a boat upon the waters, bringing up with a high head upon the northeastern end of the ridge.
“She lies here like a snake, doesn’t she?” murmured Wilton.
“Yes,” said Sherry in full agreement. “Like a snake ready to strike.”
He saw the other twist sharply about and glance at him, but now they passed under the face of the dwelling and went directly to that highest spot where the house came to an end. They passed around to the very extreme point, and Sherry exclaimed with real wonder: “Why, it’s like the bow of a ship!”
It did, in fact, contract toward that point, so that it gave the whole edifice a strange likeness to a misshapen vessel struggling through the sea. Yes, and in another instant the clay rock seemed a vast wave, which was upholding the ship toward the sky, ready the next instant to dash it to destruction. These strange images jumped full-grown into the brain of Sherry, and he dismissed them again with a shrug of his powerful shoulders.
“D’you like the place?” asked Wilton in a strangely eager voice.
“You have a view from up here,” replied Sherry noncommittally.
All the plain about them was dotted with the lights of single houses, or streaked with the lights of whole streets. For Clayrock was not a town standing by itself. There were many other smaller villages scattered around it, so that, to carry out the first metaphor that occurred to Sherry, if this house of Wilton’s were a ship at sea, it was steering by the lights of a most dangerous and twisting channel.
“And now,” said Wilton, “we’ll go into my room.”
He stepped up to the door and turned a switch, which caused a flood of light to spring up within. Into the interior, Wilton peered through a small hole that he uncovered and then covered again. After this, he unlocked the door and waved Sherry ahead of him.
“Go first,” he said, “and let me tell you that I never go across this threshold without expecting to be met with a bullet through the head or a knife in the throat.”
With this odd introduction, he closed the door behind him, and waved Sherry up a second short flight of stairs that rose from the little entrance hall.
“This is my own private way of coming in and going out,” explained Wilton, and unlocked the door at the head of the stairs.
VI
He again waved Sherry in before him. “And here is my room,” he said.
The illusion of a ship’s cabin was almost perfect. The very windows were rounded at the tops, small, and where the chamber narrowed at the front end of the house, there was actually a round light. The ceiling, too, was manifestly curved, as though following the lines of an upper deck. To make the resemblance perfect, a narrow flight of steps, hardly more than a ladder with wooden rungs, lifted to a trap door out of one corner. Up this went Wilton while Sherry followed him, wondering.
The manner of his host was as matter of fact as that of any man he ever had met in his life, but his words and his ways were odd, indeed. They passed from the ladder-like stairway to the roof of the house. Or, more properly speaking, it was the roof of the room beneath, with little relation to the rest of the building. The sense that he was in a ship persisted still with Sherry, although now, to be sure, it was more like voyaging through the stars than over any terrestrial ocean.
“I want you to take note of a few of the features here,” said Wilton. And he called attention to the fact that on three sides the room gave down upon the sheer face of the clay rock, a dizzy fall. Upon the fourth side, it looked down at least twenty feet upon the nearest portion of the roof of the remainder of the odd building.
“A little fort, you see?” remarked Wilton. “Now, step closer to the edge. Anywhere closer to the edge.”
Sherry obeyed, but with caution. He had a giddy feeling that this singular fellow might thrust him over the side into oblivion. The roof on which he stepped yielded, as he thought, the slightest particle beneath the pressure of his weight, and he heard the faint ringing of a bell from the room beneath. He stepped back in haste.
“What’s that?” asked Sherry.
“An alarm, of course. Come down with me again.”
They returned to the room below, and Wilton carried on his methodical demonstration of his house. Sherry listened carefully, knowing that something lay behind all this, but unable to guess what.
“Have you tried the weight of the door?” asked Wilton.
He set it ajar, and Sherry moved it back and forth. It seemed the weight of lead.
Wilton explained with his usual calm: “There is a half-inch sheet of bulletproof steel of the finest quality sunk in that door, and, in fact, every wall of this room is secured in the same fashion . . . the ceiling and the floor, too. Those solid shutters that close over the windows are lined with half-inch steel, as well, and the trap door leading to the roof. This room, you will see, is such a strong box that, if a bomb were exploded under it, it might be knocked off its base, but it would hardly be more than dented by the explosion.”
Sherry nodded. He could not help wondering if Wilton were a little mad.
“Now, then,” said Wilton, “you will see that it would be very hard for anyone to get into this room, but, still, there are drills that would eat through half an inch of steel as though it were soft pine. I can’t depend upon steel alone. I need something more, and here it is.” He set wide a door and revealed a shallow closet where Sherry, with experienced eye, noted at once a formidable little armory.
He saw half a dozen repeating rifles, revolvers, and automatic pistols, pump guns, double-barreled shotguns, and two with sawed-off barrels, terrible at such close range as fighting within the limits of a room. Sherry examined them with care, and he saw, also, ranged boxes of ammunition for all the different types of weapons.
“You might stand a siege,” he said.
“I might.” Wilton nodded. He opened a second door, and pointed at several tiers of boxes. “Canned food and distilled water,” he explained. “Yes, I could stand a siege.” He turned and faced Sherry. “You want to know why I expect such a thing to happen?”
“Of course,” agreed Sherry.
“I’ll tell you why. No . . . it would take a great deal of time. I can’t tell you this moment all the details. But after the . . .”
A bell rang. The ring was twice repeated with a pressing haste.
“That’s my niece, Beatrice,” said Wilton. He went to the door and laid his hand upon the knob of it. Then he turned and looked earnestly at Sherry: “She’s an unusual sort of girl, you’ll see.”
He opened the door, stepping straight back behind the panel, as it swung slowly inward, delayed by its own weight, and Sherry found himself staring into a white, sad face, the eyes surrounded by deep shadows.
A girl came into the room with a graceful step which yet had little lightness in it.
“I’ve brought you a note, Uncle Oliver,” she said.
“Beatrice,” Wilton said,
“this is Lewis Sherry. Sherry, this is my niece, Beatrice Wilton.”
She came up to Sherry and shook hands, with one of those casual and forced smiles that Sherry had always hated. Then she turned back to her uncle. “This is the thing, Uncle Oliver.” She handed him an envelope.
He frowned down at it—then suddenly crumpled it in his nervous grasp. “Where did you get this?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you another time,” she answered.
“And why not now? I don’t mind talking before Sherry.”
“Ah?” she said, and, half turning, she looked with a keenly searching glance at the big man. It was as much as to say: Have you been enlisted? It was to be inferred from her voice and her manner that she was not altogether on the side of her uncle. There was a definite gap between them. “If you don’t mind, then, I’ll tell you exactly. I was taking the short cut up the hill . . .”
“When?”
“Half an hour ago.”
“What were you doing out as late as that?”
Instead of answering, she paused, and deliberately looked straight into the face of her uncle. Then she went on: “I was as far up the path as the place where the old root sticks its elbow out of the ground, and there a hand touched my arm.”
“By Jove,” breathed Wilton.
“It wasn’t very pleasant. I turned around, and the other arm was caught. There were two men, one held me on each side.”
“What sort of men?” asked Wilton, who had turned gray and now sat down.
“I couldn’t see. It was pitch black there among the trees. I strained my eyes at them, because of course I wanted to try to recognize them. I think, in addition, that they hadn’t trusted the darkness. They had either blacked or masked their faces. So I could make out nothing, except that one of them was about middle height, and the other was a great deal taller. About as tall, I should say, as Mister Sherry.” She regarded Sherry again, but only for the sake of more accurately estimating his height.
“You tell a story well,” said Oliver Wilton ironically. “You never are in a hurry to get to the point, my dear.”
“Thank you,” she replied, her eyes as dull and dark as ever while they watched her uncle. “I have to take it by degrees. That forestalls questions afterward, you know . . . if you’ll pay attention the first time. I say that I couldn’t make them out. I was frightened and . . .”
“Bah!” broke in Oliver Wilton.
She repeated sternly: “I was frightened.” It was as though she insisted upon the possibility of fear, and her uncle would not allow it in her. “They gave me this letter,” she went on, “and they said to me . . . ‘Tell him that we’re straight as a string. With him, too. Only . . . we want turkey talked.’ After that, they let me go. Those were the only words they spoke to me.”
“Then how did you know that they were referring to me?” He asked this sharply, suspiciously.
“I guessed. I don’t know how.” She was sneering openly.
It was more than dislike that existed between these two. It was actual hatred, as Sherry was beginning to understand. And he considered the girl more keenly than before. She might have been beautiful if her air had been more happy, her eyes not quite so dull, with only flashes of emotion passing through them, from time to time. But a settled melancholy seemed to possess her, and she was faintly frowning all the time.
She had brown eyes; her hair was a very dark auburn. And sometimes, as she turned her head, the red highlights upon her hair seemed to be repeated in the color of her eyes, making a weird effect. Her skin was very white, her eyes unusually large, and the upper lids, when she looked downward, were distinctly marked with purple. Some women make up in this manner to give a touch of thoughtful distinction to their faces, but Sherry did not need to be told that all was natural with her.
He never had seen man or woman at all like her. He put her into a new category and reserved judgment. He was only ready to say one thing: that she possessed as much force—as much danger, say—as any man. And he had known dangerous men.
Another of those unpleasant little pauses had come between her and her uncle. Then she said good night to them and left.
Wilton closed and locked the door behind her, and turned back to Sherry.
“That’s one reason I live in a steel box,” he declared.
VII
It was an odd thing, indeed, to learn that a man’s reason for fortifying his room as though it were a blockhouse is the existence of a young girl. But there was something so extraordinary in the manner of Beatrice Wilton that it appeared to Sherry that there was some justification of the attitude of his host.
At this point, Wilton asked the cowpuncher to sit down. He said in his quiet way: “You’ve seen and heard a good many strange things since you came to this house with me, Sherry.”
“I have,” admitted Sherry.
“I wanted to show you the face of the situation first. Now, I must tell you why I’ve been so frank. But first of all, I will give you another bit of testimony.”
They went to a clothes closet that was, in fact, large enough to serve as a dressing room, with a small window, like a porthole, opening to the south. From this he came back carrying a gray felt hat, which he held up, and Sherry saw a half-inch hole punched neatly through the crown.
“Air hole, for hot weather,” said Wilton. “Put there by some kind friend . . . I don’t know who. I was walking up the hill one evening and this hat was shot off my head by some man in the brush. I went after him . . . found nothing. The trees and the bushes make a thick tangle, you know.”
“I know,” said Sherry.
Wilton, with a sigh as though of relief, tossed the hat back through the door, where it rolled, unregarded, upon the floor of the dressing room.
“What do you think of this affair, Sherry?” asked the other.
“What you mean,” answered Sherry, “is that you’re in danger of your life. And I gather that you think Beatrice Wilton may have something to do with your danger. Is that it?”
“That’s it.” Wilton nodded. “It doesn’t seem possible to you?”
“Miss Wilton, you mean?” inquired Sherry.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know,” said Sherry. “I’ve been living on the range a long time. You don’t suspect women of murder . . . not on the range. Besides, what has she to gain by finishing you?”
“I am her guardian,” said Wilton. “She has a half million or so of property.”
“And what of that?” asked Sherry sharply.
“You think I’m a fairly callous fellow?” Wilton smiled. “Well, Sherry, that property goes to her the moment that she marries, or, on my death.”
Sherry thought this over with a frown. “You think she’s hiring killers to go after you?” he said.
“I don’t know,” answered Wilton. “My life is endangered. I know that. I know that Beatrice has plenty of reason for wanting to get rid of me. I know that she’s not fond of me”
“You’re letting me into this pretty deep,” said Sherry.
“You want to know how you’re interested,” said Wilton, “and I’ll tell you. I have an idea that during the next ten days there will be special efforts to get at me. During that time I’m going to live under a guard.” He narrowed his eyes at Sherry again. “You’re a fighting man, Sherry,” he continued, “and I gamble that you’re an honest man. Will you take the job of trying to keep me alive for ten days?”
“I had an idea that something like that was coming,” said Sherry. “But before I give you an answer, I want to know what there is in the job?”
“I don’t think,” said Wilton, “that one man would be enough. I’d leave it to you to pick out some other good fighting man, some reliable fellow. You can pay him whatever you like. And I’ll pay you . . . a thousand dollars a day.”
Sherry frowned.
“You don’t like that?” asked Wilton curiously.
“A fee like that,” said Sherry, “is almost too big to be pai
d for honest work. However, I’ll think it over. Tell me, Wilton, if you suspect any other person besides your niece?”
“I suspect every living soul around me,” said Wilton in his calm way, which he retained even when saying the most startling things. “I suspect even you. You may have been planted somewhere at the hotel so that I could fall in your way. Yes, I suspect everyone.”
“Why should other people want to get at you?”
Wilton considered, his glance fixed upon the ceiling. “I don’t think I’ll answer that,” he said.
He looked straight at Sherry, and suddenly the big fellow realized that his host was a man capable of anything—certainly capable of banishing all shame.
“You want me to watch over you,” answered Sherry, “but at the same time you want to blind one of my eyes. Is that very logical?”
“I can tell you this,” said Wilton. “If ever sailors come near this house, be on your guard against them. Outside of Beatrice, the next danger that I know of has to do with the sea. Someone from the sea, Sherry, is going to take a try at me.”
“Someone like Capper?” suggested Sherry.
“Like Capper,” agreed the other. “But a great deal more formidable. Capper was a good deal of a fool. Bloodthirsty. Exactly that. I mean to say . . . he was so interested in making trouble that he hardly cared if he ruined himself in making the other fellow suffer. However, I expect that we may have a visit from a more dangerous sailor than Capper.”
“And that’s all that you can tell me?”
“I can tell you a little more than that. There are several sets of people that want me to die.”
“Within ten days?”
“Yes, within ten days.”
“Your niece is one of them?”
“When her father died,” said Wilton, “he left her money in trust for a year. At the end of that time, the control of her money was to pass into my hands, if I cared to undertake the work of guardian. That work meant giving up my own affairs entirely. But I decided to make that sacrifice.”
He looked straight at Sherry, and the latter looked straight back at his host. There had been a little ironical intonation on the last word.