“Wait!” I said earnestly. “I’ve something else to tell you. Something for your own safety. Tell me first when and how you came here and how you got into the house?”
“Why, I walked out from the village—Mill Valley, I mean—this morning. I had a bundle of old keys and finally got the front door open. I was here when you came. We had a fine game of hide-and-seek, though you didn’t know it. I thought I’d escape discovery till you went to sleep and then leave.”
“After searching a little more, I suppose,” I supplied. “Well, you came out of your hiding-place to see if I’d settled down, and— Did you hear voices just before I caught you?”
“Yes.”
And then I told her of my interview with Hardridge and tried to make it clear to her that it would be difficult to leave Cragcastle that night without stopping a bullet. I argued the more convincingly because even then, in a nebulous way, the plan I later acted on was forming in my mind.
But, to put it through, I must win Miss Maxon’s confidence completely.
My exact arguments don’t matter. And, anyway, the personal element figures mainly in matters of this kind. Any one would find it hard to tell me why she should not have stayed in the house. And she admitted, at last, that no one would be concerned about her whereabouts. She was teaching in San Bernardino, had come north during the few days of vacation and was merely registered at one of the San Francisco hotels.
After that she quite readily told me the object of her search in Cragcastle. I’d already divined that it was family jewelry; she centered the search to a single sapphire—a sapphire that had come down in the Maxon family for many generations, always from elder son to elder son, until John Maxon, Sr., had broken the chain. He was the younger of two brothers and the favorite with their father. Indeed, between the other son and their parent had come a wide estrangement—the girl gave me to understand that it was through some machination on the part of John Maxon. Anyway, all the family estate had been willed to John Maxon, except only the famous sapphire—and that had disappeared.
And Miss Maxon was sure her uncle, John Maxon, had stolen it and, being unwilling to dispose of it and unable to display it, had kept it hidden all these years. She said he had even boasted of the theft to her father. And she was sure it was still in Cragcastle, where he had suddenly and unexpectedly died.
Was it? It seemed a fantastic tale but not an incredible one. A great gem and family strife—how related are the two ideas! And I had—considering the proverb, “Like father, like son”—no reason to think over highly of the paternal ancestor of John Maxon, Jr. He might easily be a man who would steal for spite and gloat over his stealings in secret. Of all forms of wealth, jewels lend themselves most easily to this form of vice—as witness history. Truly the love of jewels—but I suppose my belief in Esther Maxon’s story was very largely based on my real desire to help her.
“Please don’t think that—that it’s for myself. But my father’s quite ill—has been for years. He’s never had—proper care. I don’t make enough as a teacher, and, if we could get the sapphire and sell it—”
“I’ll get it for you,” I said. “Or I think I can.”
For her tale of the sapphire had given me the second half of the idea I needed.
“Oh! How?”
“Not by searching. We might search a year and never find it. Your uncle had a good many years to contrive a hiding-place. But, if it’s in this house, I think I can get it. I’ll try, anyway.”
I wasn’t too sure. But, if my mental laborings had borne true fruit—if I’d judged accurately the character of the suddenly resurrected John Maxon and his motive in having Osborne inveigle me into impersonating him at Cragcastle—then we had a chance.
For, of course, if John Maxon were alive, he was the principal, Osborne only the agent. I thought it quite clear, too, why he should temporarily desire an understudy in the play called life. In short, I simply took for granted the truth of Hardridge’s description of him, thought what such a man would do in such a case as he had found himself on reading his father’s will—and in such and such another case—and mapped my moves accordingly.
Without telling her anything of my plan, I finally got Miss Maxon to retire for the night. Indeed, she was very tired. There were bedrooms in the second story of the house, and I led her to one that had strong shutters over the window and confidence-inspiring bolts.
Then I went to the cellar, got twenty feet of light rope and passed through the house again to the front door. Taking my revolver in my hand, I opened the door and darted through it. Hastily I turned the key in the lock. Then I leaped away from the door and across the roadway into a narrow trail that led through the chaparral down the mountainside. Throughout I made it appear that I was rather clumsily and nervously trying to escape unseen.
Of course, my intention was precisely opposite.
I assumed that Hardridge would be as easily fooled in such matters as the average city-bred man.
III
IT WAS a quite dark night. A low, thin mist had drifted up from the sea, and through it the light of the stars and of a ghostly half-moon filtered uncertainly. From the beginning of the trail I looked back a scant twenty yards to the house and saw only a bulky gray shadow. Besides that and the nearby chaparral I could see nothing. The light of the string of villages from the foot of Tamalpais to the ferry passage, the intermittent flash of Alcatraz and even the white radiance that San Francisco usually flings against the sky were all blotted out by the mist.
So, although I knew that humanity, society and the law were all very close at hand, it didn’t seem so strange that I should be crouching primitively in the edge of the brush, my nerves strung up, straining my senses for a sign of Hardridge.
Which wasn’t long coming. The chaparral crackled to my right. A cautious foot planted itself on the roadway—I judged about thirty paces lower down. There were more footsteps; Hardridge came closer. Just when, by craning my neck out of the brush, I could see him outlined shadowily, I made a slight noise with my foot. Instantly a revolver cracked, and the bullet hit the road a little beyond me.
And instantly I had turned and was moving cautiously—yet not so cautiously that Hardridge could not hear my movements—down the trail.
Hardridge, of course, started in pursuit, as I had intended, and—ostensibly hunted, really hunter—I quickened my flight. I made only enough noise so that the sound of my movements would come to Hardridge’s ears above the noise of his own. Which was really considerable. Hardridge’s pursuit, at once freighted by excess of caution and hurried by hate, was so laughably awkward that I knew—barring accidents—I’d be able to accomplish at least the first item of my plan.
The trail here descended sharply. On both sides the shrubbery was as thick as an abandoned vineyard. Here and there low chaparral thrust arresting, thorn-tipped branches across the trail and tore at my flesh and clothing. Underfoot the ground was uneven, uncertain, strewn with small stones that were easily dislodged and with dead leaves that crackled. Still I was able in some way to control the sound of my passage and to move with less and less of noise every minute.
Hardridge was now about twenty yards behind me, but he was rapidly lessening the distance. Also, he was rapidly lessening his caution. Probably the diminishing sound of my flight excited him with the thought that I was escaping. Now and then I purposely broke a twig or brushed a branch so he’d know I was still in motion. Once, straightening up, I thrust my head above the chaparral. He fired, but I had ducked out of sight again before his finger jerked the trigger. I intended the movement to enrage him still further, like a mocking gesture.
The game was, I suppose, slightly unfair, for Hardridge was blinded both by passion and inexperience. But he had brought it on himself. Besides, as things stood now, I was really working toward the end Hardridge himself desired. At least I so believed.
A little farther and my flight ended. The trail led straight on, but to the right a narrow opening between tw
o clumps of shrubbery attracted me. I stopped opposite that opening, drew up my feet and backed into it. Then I picked up a pebble and tossed it down the trail. It struck the ground perhaps five yards beyond where I lay and bounced and rolled a little.
Hardridge probably believed, as I intended he should, that the pebble had been dislodged by my foot. Anyway, he came blindly on until I could have reached out and touched him. There he stopped as if he had sensed my nearness and was mentally feeling for me. If it hadn’t been for his labored breathing, he might have heard me stir and set myself for the leap.
As it was, the butt of my revolver crashed against his forehead while he still stood there—waiting, it seemed, for the blow. He reeled backward, and I caught him and twisted his arms behind his back. He was only partially stunned, and he struggled feebly while I tied his wrists together.
“Maxon! —— you, Maxon!” he muttered. And, as full strength and consciousness came to him with complete realization of his helplessness, the strength of his expletives kept pace with his growing rage. Nevertheless, I could hardly disagree with most of his expletives as applied to the individual whose life I’d borrowed; so, while I finished binding his arms securely to his body, I let him talk on. Then—
“Why don’t I kill you, then, if I’m all that?” I asked.
It was my intention to give him a doubt to start on. If I’d flatly denied being John Maxon, Hardridge would hardly have believed me; besides, it wasn’t in the game. But it was in the game that he be made to regard that possibility—as a possibility.
“Why didn’t I kill you a few hours ago or a few minutes or any time between? I could’ve, you know. As easily as I could kill you now. Of course, you realize that. You’re really as helpless out here as an infant.”
“Cut that, you—”
It is unpleasant to see a man fairly sob with rage. I suppose part of that rage was at himself for being so easily trapped and mastered.
“I’m going to gag you,” I went on when he’d quite finished, “take you back to the house and lock you in a closet. There you’ll stay all day. You’ll be regularly fed; I want you to keep up your strength. In fact, I’ve a particular reason for wanting it. In the evening you’ll be unbound and the gag removed, but you’ll be still kept in the closet—and be sure the door of it will be covered by my gun. You should know by this time that I don’t make mistakes. Now, why do you suppose I’m doing all that?”
“How the devil should I know? I suppose you’re calling in your friends, the police.”
“Try again,” I said. “I needn’t go to all that trouble to get the police. But I’m merely suggesting that maybe you haven’t quite plumbed this thing yet. Put your think-tank to work and try to figure things out. You’ll have lots of time in that closet.”
He emitted a sound between a curse and a groan. I think he was looking forward into those black hours when he’d be alone with his hatred, balked, bound and helpless.
“You’d better kill me now, John Maxon,” he said.
“John Maxon probably would,” I replied.
And then I clapped on the gag, giving him that besides a new thought to chew on. It was perhaps the impact of that new thought on his brain that made him quite easy to manage on the way back to Cragcastle.
I put him into the hall closet, which was built into the wall between the doors of the dining-room and reception-room. It was small enough that he would have practically no liberty of movement even if he got free from the rope; the door was strong, and I could figure no chance of his escape. Nevertheless, I placed a barricade of furniture against the wall. Then I went to the telephone.
The wires of which—think of it!—Hardridge had omitted to cut. I’ve often wondered, of dunderwittedness and crime, which is the cause and which the effect. Hardridge had been, as I was to learn next day, among the higher-ups of crimedom, but even he neglected so obvious a thing as the cutting of a telephone wire.
OF COURSE, I’d provided myself with Osborne’s home as well as office address, and, by employing the ancient but usually effective catch phrase, “Matter of life or death,” I finally got a sleepy somebody to promise to call him. I admit that, aside from the fact that the hour was a suitable one for the message I had for him, there was something satisfying in the idea of dragging the comfort-loving lawyer from his bed at two in the morning.
“Hello! Hello! Yes, this is Osborne. What is it?”
I hardly recognized the voice whose suave tones had drawn me into this adventure. Irritable as it was, there was clearly a touch of nervous dread in it, too. That nervous dread, the jerky, frightened notes of my own voice were by no means intended to allay.
“This is Part— No, no, I mean it’s Maxon. That’s it, John Maxon. Are you alone?”
It was interesting to notice how the alchemy of imagination and an evil conscience transmuted my make-believe agitation into real panic at the other end of the wire. Osborne’s voice, when it came again, fairly shook.
“Yes. Practically, that is. I don’t think— Wait a minute.” I think he closed a door. “Now. But be careful over the ’phone. What has happened?”
“Nothing! That is— Well, I’m leaving, that’s all. I can’t go through with it. That’s all. Good—”
“Here, wait a minute,” Osborne cried in alarm. “Don’t hang up. Wait a minute. Where are you?”
“In Cragcastle, where you sent me,” I said nervously and half angrily.
“Well— Has anything— What’s happened?”
“Nothing. I told you—nothing.”
“But something has. It must’ve, or you wouldn’t— You’re right to be careful, but I must know. For your sake—protection, as well as— Listen! I’ll ask questions. I warned you of danger, you remember.”
“Yes.”
“Well, did it materialize?”
“Yes.”
“Ah!” Osborne’s voice dropped a key. “Is it—ended?”
He pronounced the last word so significantly that there was no mistaking the meaning. It was the lawyer’s safe way of asking, over the wire, if Hardridge was dead.
“Yes,” I replied.
And thought I heard, over the twenty miles that separated us, a quick, sharp breath of relief.
“And—and I’m going,” I continued. “It’ll be—discovered. I had to—”
“All right,” he interrupted me sharply. “Take care. I quite understand. You had to— But I suppose you’re quite right—to go away. We’ll have to give up the other project.”
I thought he was almost too quick, for realism, to put aside the hope we were both supposed to have of dividing the Maxon estate. But, of course, I was also supposed to be quite unsuspicious that our contract in regard to that estate was a farce and that my function from the beginning had been to kill or be killed by Hardridge.
“I’m glad you agree. Well, good-by!”
“Wait a minute. Tell me. Was it only one? Was he alone?”
“Yes.”
“Have you any money?”
I was waiting for that question. I knew he’d ask it, because both he and his principal would certainly desire that I travel far and speedily, and I’d led him to believe I was penniless.
I laughed in as self-satisfied a fashion as I could manage and threw a touch of impudent boasting into my tone.
“Plenty of it.”
“Good,” said Osborne somewhat perplexedly. “I’m glad of that. But I’d like to know— Can’t you tell me—”
“I’m off,” I warned.
“Where it is?” he finished desperately. “It’ll have to be disposed of, you know. Where’ll I—whoever goes over—find it?”
It was clear, of course, that he spoke of Hardridge’s body—another inquiry that it was quite inevitable he should make.
“You might look,” I said with a sort of boastful gibe, “near the place old man Maxon hid his sapphire.”
“What’s that? What do you know about—” The lawyer’s voice mounted excitedly.
; “Good-by.”
I hung up the receiver.
A moment later the ’phone began ringing furiously as if Osborne had managed to communicate to the inanimate instrument something of his own agitation. Then I cut the wire—as Hardridge should have done.
And I pulled a couch out of the parlor, placed it near the door behind which Hardridge was imprisoned, lay down on it and was soon asleep. Morning was only a few hours off, and I was quite confident nothing would happen till then. Or, indeed, till the covering darkness of the following night. That is, if I divined correctly the nature of the man for whom I waited.
Which was, of course, not Osborne. Osborne was strictly an office worker. He might be imagined playing any sort of crooked game in the world—but through intermediaries only. His own physical participation and his own personal peril would always be missing elements. No; the man who would come to see to the safety of the Maxon sapphire would be the man who thought it his property—the man who, using Osborne as agent, had attempted to befool me to his own place under the Damoclean sword.
IV
LOOKING back, I’ve always felt the day that followed was one of the most remarkable of my life—and I speak of the day, not of the night with its element of tragedy. The day was remarkable for its very lack of that element—for its very unremarkableness. I hold that, with such a night as had passed fresh in our memories, with Hardridge imprisoned, with the arrival of the man whom Hardridge had vowed to kill presumably impending and with the girl’s fortune and possibly more than one life depending upon the dénouement, it was no commonplace thing that the day slipped by, to Miss Maxon and me, much like a pleasant holiday outing.
For I finally persuaded her to stay until the working out of my plan. Concerning which, by the way, I told her as little as possible. It’s always much easier to agree on an end than on the means, and it doesn’t always pay to tell everything even to the people in whose interest one may be working.
We talked about a great many things, mainly impersonal, and even took several short walks. One of those walks took us to the place that was then called Land’s End. It was Miss Maxon who suggested it; I knew nothing until then of the trap-like cañon at the rear of the house, with its wide mouth and narrow exit upon the sea. But we had no sooner arrived at the railing that guarded that exit, where we could look down some hundred feet into white surf, than Miss Maxon was seized with a violent fit of trembling and suggested that we return. It was the only sign of real agitation I saw in her that day.
The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge Page 4