The Steel Box

by Max Brand

  To Sherry there was something wonderfully grim in the appearance of this girl, her mouth set firmly, determination in her eyes—the very poise of her body showed that she was practicing for more than mere game.

  Twice more he saw her fire, and each time the bullet struck home in a small sapling not more than six inches in diameter.

  Then Lang waved Sherry back, and they stole away through the woods and back toward the house, with a painful slowness.

  When they were on the edge of the trees, again, with the house partly outlined beyond them, Sherry asked: “What do you make of it, Pete?”

  “You talk sad and you talk small,” said Pete. “It sort of riles you, kid?”

  “Why should it?” protested Sherry.

  “Why shouldn’t it?” snapped Pete Lang. “You get yourself all heated up about a girl . . . and then you see her practicing with a silencer on a gun . . . and hitting the mark . . . and looking as though the mark was a man. A silent gun’s a murderer’s gun, Tiny.”

  Sherry groaned. “I’ve nothing to say,” he admitted. “But I want to ask you what . . .”

  “Don’t bother me,” said the cowpuncher. “I gotta think, don’t I? For myself, and Wilton . . . and you, you poor snowblind cayuse, you.”

  They went on toward the house, and, coming out into the garden, they saw, on her knees in a bed of flowers, busily at work with a trowel, a big garden hat shading her face, no other person than Beatrice Wilton herself.

  She looked up to them with a cheerful smile. “Have you been wandering around in the woods?” she asked.

  “To see what the lay of the land was like,” answered Lang, for Sherry was dumb with amazement.

  “They’re grand old trees,” she replied. “And Uncle Oliver won’t sell them.”

  They went on past her.

  “Nice gent, that Wilton,” said Lang. “She’s sure gotta be grateful because he ain’t sold the old trees off of the place.”

  “What does it mean?” asked Sherry. “How the dickens could she have come back here before us, old-timer?”

  “She knows the woods. There may be level ways, if you know the angles and the corners. That’s not what bothers me.”

  “What in heaven’s name does, then?”

  “The cool way of that girl. Cool as ice, Tiny. But no coolness under the skin. She looked after us all the way until we got around the corner of the house.”

  “How did you tell that? I didn’t see you look back.”

  “I felt her look. She’s got that kind of eyes,” said Lang.

  * * * * *

  They went to their small room, and they hardly had settled down in it before their employer tapped at the door. He invited Lang to go up with him to the office, while Sherry stretched out on his bunk to piece together what they had learned.

  Presently both Lang and Wilton came back; Wilton was pale with anger and excitement.

  “Sherry,” he said, “I think that I’m paying you boys well. I’ve offered to double that pay if one of you will get rid of Fennel for me. You understand? I’ll double the money. It’ll be twenty thousand dollars on the nail. Lang, here, refuses.”

  “I don’t follow that . . . entirely,” said Sherry slowly. “One of us bumps off Fennel. Is that it?”

  “That wouldn’t stop us,” broke in Lang with an odd glance at his companion. “It ain’t the first man that Sherry, here, has slipped a slug into. But you gotta hold your horses, Wilton.”

  “I tell you on my honor,” said Wilton gravely, “that that man may ruin me.”

  “If he’s the real article?”

  “Real article?”

  “Not a fake, I mean.”

  “How could he be a fake? He knows already . . .”

  “He’s a danged actor,” said Lang with conviction. “Did you ever hear of a sailor with a whole new outfit . . . and one old pair of sea boots . . . with holes in the bottom of ’em? A fine comforting thing a pair of boots like that would be, going around the Horn.”

  “By heaven!” exclaimed Wilton, and quickly struck his hands sharply together.

  “And how long ago,” said Lang, “did sailors stop calling whiskey and rum grog? He’s a fake.”

  XII

  The reaction of Wilton to this strange remark was odd, to say the least. He glared hard at Lang and asked sharply: “Have you been at sea?”

  “I ain’t spent all my days on the range,” admitted Lang.

  Wilton continued to regard him with distinct disfavor. “You haven’t spent all of your days on the range, eh? How did you sail?”

  “Before the mast.”

  “Where?”

  “And what’s that got to do with the job here?” asked Lang bluntly.

  The fist of Wilton balled suddenly. Then he controlled himself. “You’re sure that Fennel is a faker?”

  “As sure as I’m standing here.”

  “Lang, there’s a good deal depends on this!”

  “By the way you carry on, I suppose there is,” replied the cowpuncher.

  Before Wilton could make further remark, there was a loud rap at the outer door.

  “Will you open and see who’s there?” Wilton asked Sherry.

  So Sherry went to the front door and opened it for Dr. Eustace Layman, whose usually pale face was now flushed from walking up the hill. He came in upon them with a wave of his hand in greeting.

  “I’ve been called in to see this fellow, Fennel,” he said. “The rascal is drinking himself into an early grave.”

  “I wish he were under the sod already,” commented Wilton. “Is he seriously ill?”

  “Typical alcoholic. Subnormal temperature, jerky hands, dull eyes, and a sinking in the pit of the stomach.”

  “What did you do for him?”

  “Told him to stop all liquor at once. The rascal simply cursed the world of doctors, and poured himself another drink under my eyes. After that, he gave me a letter to carry to you.”

  “A letter for me?”

  “Here it is.”

  Wilton received it. “It seems the scoundrel is a sham,” he said to the doctor. “Lang saw through him. Lang has been at sea.”

  “A sham?” murmured Layman, and looked askance at Lang. “Are you sure of that? He appears like the real article, to me. He’s low enough to be really in the part.”

  “He ain’t so low as all that,” said Lang. “He’s got a brain in his head.”

  “Did you guess that by his talk?” asked the doctor.

  “By his eye,” answered Lang. “You can change a good many things, but you can’t keep thought out of a gent’s eye.”

  “Ha?” said the doctor. “You’re a clever fellow, Lang. I can see that.”

  Wilton, in the meantime, was tearing open the envelope. “He’s printed the letters,” said Wilton. “He wouldn’t trust his handwriting, it seems.” Then he gasped, and, suddenly crumpling the letter, he thrust it into his pocket as though he feared that some hand might snatch it from him.

  “What’s upset you, Oliver?” asked Layman. “If the fellow’s a fake, how can he trouble you like this?”

  Wilton slowly drew out a handkerchief, and dragged it across his forehead. He looked white and sick; in fact, he had to lean one hand against the side of the doorjamb. “He’s coming here,” said Wilton. “He’s coming here sometime this afternoon, and he invites me to meet him in my garden, Eustace.”

  “Nonsense,” replied the doctor. “Make him meet you in your room, of course. Or rather, don’t see him at all . . . if Lang is right about him. What’s to be gained from talking to a mere sham and . . . ?”

  “You talk like a fool!” exclaimed Wilton. “I’ve got to meet him. This afternoon . . . I’m going up to rest, now. Will you go up with me, Eustace?”

  They went together out of the little chamber and climbed the stairs. On the way, Sherry could hear Layman making some suggestion, and to it Wilton answered in a loud and angry voice: “I tell you, I won’t have any more of the stuff. Either I’ll have a g
ood, normal sleep, or else I’ll get on without it altogether.”

  The door of the steel room closed behind them, and Sherry sat down heavily on the bunk nearest him. “My head’s spinning,” he confessed. “If this rat, Fennel, is a sham, how can he upset Wilton like this? Why should Wilton plan to see him at all?” Lang did not answer, and Sherry continued: “Why didn’t you tell me that Fennel was a sham?”

  “What good would it do to tell you? What good? The thing you tell is the thing that you’ve lost. I gotta few ideas already in my head about these people. But if I tell you, then they’ll die. Telling a secret is killing it at the root. You can throw the reins and dismount, old-timer. I’m gonna drift this herd if I can, and you can’t help me much.”

  Even this bluntness did not disturb Sherry, who stretched himself on the bunk and folded his hands under his head. “I’m not a clever one like you,” he said. “You can do the thinking for the party . . . call me when I’m wanted.” And instantly he closed his eyes and pretended to sleep.

  “You ain’t a man, you’re an ox,” said Lang. “You were made up of nerve and muscle and bone, and the brains left out. I would rather . . .”

  Sherry heard no more, but slept in fact until he was wakened by a dimly heard tap on the door, and then by the squeak of the hinges as it was opened.

  Eustace Layman came in to them, saying: “You boys may find Wilton a little trying for the next few days. The truth is that he’s upset and his nerves are frayed very thin, indeed. I want you to bear with him, if you can.”

  “We’re paid for that,” replied Sherry.

  “You’re well paid,” replied the doctor, “and, for my part, I think that you’re paid for nothing.”

  “You think that?”

  “Wilton’s imagination is running away with him. I never knew an old sailor who wasn’t apt to have more daydreams than were good for him, and I believe that’s the trouble with my friend, Wilton.”

  “Is he an old sailor?”

  “He was on the sea for years. Became a skipper, in fact.”

  “Did you ever hear of a ship called the Princess Marie?” asked Lang.

  “Great Scott, yes,” said the doctor, “and so has everyone else who knows anything about the Wiltons.”

  “How come that, Doctor?”

  “Why, that was Everett Wilton’s ship, of course,” said Eustace Layman. “The one that foundered in the typhoon.”

  “Foundered?”

  “Sprang a leak in a heavy wind and went down.”

  “I don’t recall hearing of any such a thing,” said Lang. “Not while I follered the sea, and I used to hear a good deal about the China Seas, and that part of the world.”

  “You know that bit, eh?”

  “Pretty fair.”

  “She was only two thousand tons, but she was a new, strong boat. She was such a good one that Everett put his brother in command of her, because he didn’t want to trust any other person with such a large part of the Wilton fortune. Well, she struck this typhoon of which I was speaking, sprang a leak, and went down. Twelve of the crew in two boats made Hevavo. You know that port?”

  “Yes, in San Cristobal.”

  “The ship was a clean loss, and she wasn’t insured for half her value, and the cargo wasn’t insured at all, I believe. It was a hard blow for the Wilton fortune. It cut the Wilton money in half, I should say.”

  “And that was the Princess Marie,” murmured Lang.

  “That was the ship. She was only six months old. Everett had great hopes of her. I’ve always thought that it was the loss of the ship that made him so despondent.”

  “Made him sort of low, did it?” queried Lang.

  “Low? Why, man, you know that he committed suicide?”

  “Suicide!” cried Sherry, springing up.

  Dr. Layman drew back a step.

  “Suicide, of course,” he said with a slight frown. “He made sure of himself by jumping off the bluff into the river. The rocks nearly cut him to bits . . . but there was enough left for the purposes of identification.”

  “Suicide,” muttered Sherry. “How long ago?”

  “Nearly a year.”

  “No wonder his daughter is half a wreck,” said Sherry grimly. “I’m glad that I’ve heard this.”

  “One runs into these melancholy temperaments,” said Layman. “It’s in the Wilton blood, of course. Strong-tempered people . . . never can quite tell what they’ll do.” He turned toward the door. “You’ll bear with Wilton, boys, for a few days?”

  “Of course,” said Sherry.

  The doctor nodded cheerfully to them and went out. They could hear him whistling blithely as he walked away from the house into the garden.

  “Cool fellow, eh?” commented Sherry.

  “Cool?” said Lang. “He’s too cool. I don’t like him worth a cent, I can tell you.” Then he added: “It’s a fine job that we’ve got into. I’d rather ride herd on five thousand mavericks than try to handle this job.”

  “Suicide . . . shipwreck . . . it’s a fine job . . . you’re right. But you won’t chuck it, Pete?”

  “Have you still got hopes of her?” asked Lang with brutal suddenness.

  To which Sherry replied calmly: “Of course I have, old son. She’s walked into the middle of my brain and I’ll never be able to get rid of the thought of her.”

  XIII

  The afternoon came on chilly and dark. The wind lay in the northwest, with the sting of the higher snows in it, and carrying black clouds that looked as though they were about to drop a cargo of rain over Clayrock in passing. But as they spread southward, the darkness departed, and they sank over the south horizon in droves of milk-white fleeces. Under this sky, Wilton sent forth his two guards, saying briefly: “Look over the garden. Print the paths in your brains. Come back here in an hour. I’m going out to meet Fennel.”

  He said it with a desperate quiet, like a man full of his fate. And Sherry and Lang went out and leaned against the wind, which, leaping straight across the valley, smote the great clay rock with a constant volleying.

  Three paths opened from the house. Sherry took one, and Lang another, and they strode off on their exploration. Pausing at every juncture of paths, Sherry tried to make careful note of them all, but he found that he was having very little luck. There seemed to be two systems employed in the layout of the paths through the Wilton garden. On the one hand, there were two winding paths that worked up the hillside with gradual curves to make the ascent easier. On the other hand, there was a much briefer way of ascent or descent, and that was a path that dropped in sharply angling zigzags to the foot of the slope. All these paths intersected here and there in the most random fashion, for the garden had not been laid out in any methodical pattern, but the paths had been made for the sake of convenience to get up and down the hill. Sometimes the two curving ways crossed one another and recrossed; sometimes the path of descent cut sheer across the others, turned abruptly, and dropped again toward the foot of the rock. Sherry, work as he might, could not untangle this confusion and bring the scheme to any order in his mind. He even lost the main ways two or three times, and found himself in some little clearing among the trees, where the Wiltons had laid out bright scraps of flower garden in their random way.

  The second time he entered one of these, Beatrice Wilton sprang up from a rustic bench on which she had been seated, her head resting in both hands, and out of her lap something dropped with the bright glitter of steel to the ground.

  She stepped hastily forward—as though she hoped that with her feet she could hide the thing. But Sherry shook his head.

  “I saw it,” he said.

  She waited for an instant, as though about to reply, but then she apparently changed her mind and stooped and picked up the revolver. She slipped it inside her jacket and faced Sherry again with a defiance as distinct as it was silent.

  It roused a little impatience in his mind; he pointed toward the hidden weapon. “Why do you carry that?” he asked.
<
br />   “We have rabbits here,” she answered. “One gets a whack at them, now and again.”

  “And you have a silencer on it, too.”

  “Of course. That’s to keep from scaring the other rabbits.”

  “Let me see the gun,” he demanded.

  She paused. “Well . . .” she consented. And she held out the revolver unwillingly.

  It was of a very small caliber, but specially made in every respect, with a long, delicate barrel, on which the silencer looked oddly out of place. When Sherry broke the gun open, he found that it was loaded with long .22s. He shut it again with a snap. Then he handed it back to her.

  “You don’t like it,” she said.

  “No,” he answered. “I don’t go in for murder.” Even as he spoke, he felt that he was being foolishly blunt and rude, but he was hardly sorry as he watched her eyes widen at him.

  “That’s a great deal to say,” she observed. But he saw that she was not angry. She was rather frightened, and her face was full of suspicion. “But I know,” she went on pleasantly, “that you fellows from the range don’t stop to pick your words. At any rate, you know well that one has to learn to take care of oneself in this part of the world.”

  “No woman does,” he told her.

  “And why not?” she asked.

  “Because the men look out for them, of course. You’re a Westerner. You know that better than I do.”

  “I understand you now,” she replied. “Western chivalry! But I know the truth.”

  “Look here,” said Sherry. “Why don’t you come out in the open? Maybe I could help.”

  She turned her head away a little, and he knew that she did so to cover a faint smile of derision, or of doubt, but that hardly mattered so much as the new view he had of her in profile. For from that angle, he saw no longer the shadows of trouble about her eyes, nor the pain, which stiffened her lips; at a stroke she seemed five years younger, delicately and purely lovely.

  He, rather breathless, went blundering on: “I see what you think. You’ve heard yarns about me in the town. About the killing of Capper. I’ll tell you straight. There was something in the whiskey . . . and it drugged me. Whatever I did, I don’t remember it . . . any more than that bench remembers anything. Do you believe that?”