by Rex Stout
In his search for fresh meat the paymaster followed his nose in and out of three smaller shops before he found the way to the large establishment of Hernandez y Hermanos. Here he found what he wanted.
The elder Hernandez, smiling, courteous, recorded his order for ten hindquarters and the same number of fores, promising immediate delivery and the freshest beeves. Then he turned to a clerk and beckoned sharply.
“No! Mendez! Drive to the storage and bring this,” he said, handing the clerk a duplicate of the paymaster’s order. “And, going, you may take the scales to the hotel.”
“But there are the jars of Señor Martin—”
“Go, fool!” the excitable Hernandez shouted. “Bah! Señor Martin can wait.”
An electric thrill, indefinable, illusive, passed through the brain of the paymaster. He decided to disregard it, but it was insistent. He turned to Hernandez.
“Señor Martin?” he said half indifferently. “Who is this Martin?”
Hernandez was glad to oblige the paymaster.
“Americano,” he replied. “Coffee planter this side—a little—of Caguas. A very good man, I believe, but small. He pays very well.”
“I think I know him,” said the paymaster. “What is he like?” He understood that the “small” applied to the fortune, not to the person.
“I have never seen him, señor,” was the reply. “Never does he come to San Juan. He sends money by the carrier and a writing. Every month—sometimes two.”
“Do you keep the orders? Could I see them?”
“Certainly, señor.”
Hernandez trotted to the office at the rear, and after some minutes reappeared with an old letter file. From this he took some papers which he handed to the paymaster.
The paymaster was curiously excited. Whether it was the spoken name of Martin or an awakened recollection of something he had once said about Puerto Rico, or merely the effect of intuition, may not be known; but he was actually quivering with eagerness—the eagerness of bruin roused by the odor of the hidden sweet.
The first paper showed him his mistake. It was an order for three chairs and some glass jars and was signed “S. Martin.” He gazed at it blankly.
“Pardon, señor,” said the courteous Hernandez, “but that was written by the señora. For many months she has written. But there are some—”
He rummaged in the pile of papers, drew one forth, and handed it to the paymaster.
And then the face of Garway Ross turned pale and his eyes closed to a narrow slit. Perhaps, after all, he was vindictive. As for the paper—that handwriting! The books of the pay office of the Helena were full of it.
The next morning but one found the paymaster, mounted on a short-haired native pony, proceeding leisurely along the white, level road that leads from San Juan to the foothills of the Sierra de Luquillo. Feeling sure of his quarry, he had taken his time. He had not questioned the carrier for fear of a possible communication and warning to Señor Martin; but the courteous Hernandez had furnished information of the exact whereabouts of Martin’s plantation.
The paymaster’s intentions were extremely hazy. Strapped about his waist under his coat were two ugly Navy revolvers; yet he was no Corsican. He told himself that they were meant purely as a defense; he certainly did not premeditate murder. In the meantime there they were.
He did not intend to expose Martin or arrest him; that would have been to expose and betray himself. Nor had he an idea of forcing a material restitution. The loss of the money had been but a slight and temporary annoyance; furthermore, it was to be doubted if Martin had it in his power to repay even a small part of it. Apparently, then, his journey was purposeless.
But still his heart was hot with anger; indefinable, and therefore reasonless. He was not a lover of justice, an avenger of the law, a crusader for the right. He was simply a man with a grudge.
The pony, unlike its rider, was little inconvenienced by the glare of the road and the heat of the tropical sun. For four long hours he trotted on unwearyingly, stopping now and then to rest in the shade of a grove of palms, or to drink from one of the bubbling streams dashing toward the foothills below.
At eleven o’clock he turned from the road into a path at the foot of a ridge of limestone cliffs, and three hundred yards farther on came within sight of a low rambling house set at the edge of a small clearing.
This was the home of Señor Martin.
Paymaster Garway Ross stopped his pony and for some minutes sat gazing at the house in silence. Afterward when the scene rose in his memory, he wondered at the rare loveliness of the setting—the charm, even, of the house itself.
In the immediate background was a grove of tillandsia, fragrant and cool. On either side appeared long rows of coffee trees, brilliantly white with their innumerable blossoms; and beyond, at the foot of a sloping valley, could be seen a somber purple patch, relieved here and there by a gorgeous scarlet of nature’s most beautiful parasite.
Over all was the heavy fragrance, the droopy languor, of the land of the lotus.
But for the present the paymaster was conscious only of his immediate emotions. For the first time he realized that the enterprise contained an element of real danger.
Martin might even now be observing him from one of those shaded windows; possibly have recognized him. Thinking thus, the paymaster wheeled his pony about and retreated out of sight round a bend in the path.
Here he removed one of the revolvers from the hidden belt and placed it in his side coat pocket; after which precaution he returned to the clearing and rode boldly up to the door of the house.
He had scarcely halted his pony when the door opened and a woman appeared on the threshold.
The paymaster dismounted, lifted his hat, and bowed.
“I want to see James Martin,” he said.
The woman looked up quickly and for a moment was silent.
Then she spoke in a low, rather harsh voice:
“What about?”
The paymaster bowed again.
“I had rather tell that to Mr. Martin himself,” he said. “Is he here?”
“No.” A faint gleam of interest flickered across the woman’s face as she added, “Were you a friend of his?”
“Yes,” said the paymaster inwardly thanking her for the tense, while he wondered at it. “When will he be at home?”
The woman did not answer. Instead after a moment of silence, she turned and called sharply, “Miguel!”
Another moment, and a slouching blinking hombre appeared in the doorway.
“Take the pony,” the woman said shortly.
Then, motioning to the paymaster to follow, she started round the path encircling the house toward the grove of tillandsias in the rear.
The paymaster guessed intuitively what they were to find.
It was in the air, in the woman’s tone, in her very silence; and he as silently followed her through the shady grove across a quivering log bridge, and into a second grove more deeply shaded than the first. She halted abruptly by a giant tillandsia, and the paymaster approached and stood at her side.
He had guessed correctly. At their feet was a slender mound of earth covered with coarse grass; and at its farther end was a rude block of limestone bearing this inscription:
JAMES MARTIN
Died December 22, 1907
Age 24
The woman sat on the trunk of a fallen tree and gazed at the stone impassively, in silence. Finally the paymaster turned to her.
“So,” he said, “six months ago.”
The woman nodded.
“I am Paymaster Ross, of the navy,” he continued presently. “Perhaps you have heard him speak of me. I knew your—him—”
“My son,” said the woman dully.
At this the paymaster felt a slight surprise; somehow he had never thought of Martin as having a mother. He knew that he ought to speak, to say something; but he felt that there was nothing he could possibly say, nothing worth saying.
; Finally, “He was a good boy,” he observed awkwardly.
Again the woman nodded.
“I suppose he was. He spoke a lot about you. He always said you was kind to him. I suppose I ought to thank you.”
“Won’t you tell me more about it?” said the paymaster. “I mean about him, and how he came down here, and how he—about the end.”
Then he seated himself beside her and waited.
She began with a grim smile.
“There was a time then I could have talked all about it,” she observed. “Somehow I don’t feel like it anymore. And it’s all Jimmie’s fault. Maybe you’re right. Maybe he was a good boy and all that; but somehow he never seemed to get anywhere.”
She paused and sighed heavily, and the paymaster rose to his feet and stood looking down at the grave.
“He was just like his father.”
As the woman continued, her voice held a new note of bitterness, and the paymaster shuddered.
“He died when Jimmie was twelve years old and the others was babies. He always was a fool, and Jimmie was just like him. Then, after I’d starved and slaved to death nearly, Jimmie got that money from the navy.
“He called it a bonus. I never understood about it. I never wanted him to go in the navy anyway; but then that was all right. And then, when he got all that money, he made us all come down here, where it’s only fit for niggers.
“And Annie and Tom are always sick, too. I used to wonder about it and I wouldn’t be surprised if he stole it. Annie and Tom are the others. You didn’t see ’em as you came in from the road?”
With an effort the paymaster turned to face her and shook his head.
“No. But he—he was a good worker.”
His own words sounded in his ear hollow, inane. Here all was dust and ashes. Words were useless.
“Perhaps,” the woman continued. “But when a woman like me has had her whole life spoiled by a man and his son, she can’t think very well of either of ’em. He should have given me that money; I’d earned it. But he talked about Annie and Tom, and what he’d do for ’em, and brought us all off down here where it’s only fit for niggers.
“And now he’s gone and I can’t get anybody to stay here, and the niggers won’t work, and we’re worse off than ever. He ought to stayed in the navy. At least, we got forty dollars a month from him then.”
The paymaster forced himself to speak.
“But the place seems to be in good condition. Couldn’t you sell it?”
The woman laughed—a harsh crackling laugh that gave the paymaster an involuntary shiver of disgust. Then she waved a hand toward the long stretch of white blossoms on either side of the house.
“They look pretty, don’t they?” she said with infinite sarcasm. “Yes, they look pretty all right. But they’re all eat up with worms. There’s something wrong with ’em inside. Of course, I tried to sell out as soon as he was gone. He might have done it himself.”
Again the paymaster made a weak attempt to probe beneath the crust.
“But he was a good boy, Mrs. Martin,” he said. “And from what you say, I judge that he gave you all he had. He did everything he could. And now—now that he is gone—”
For a moment the woman stared at him almost wonderingly. Then she gave a short laugh.
“That’s a fool notion,” she said. “I guess I know what you mean. It sounds just like him. What’s the difference if he’s dead? He’s better off than I am. But then, of course, you was his friend.”
She stopped abruptly and sat gazing at the paymaster in a sort of stupid antagonism.
But the paymaster was silenced. The fruit of life! And he—not knowing—for what had he come? His eyes, as he turned them for the last time on the grave of Jimmie Martin, were eloquent and—if that may be—tender.
But the dust of the grave has no ears—perhaps! He wondered and turned to go.
The woman made no motion to follow or to speak. Was she somehow aware that her harsh and gloomy note had been used by the poet to complete the rhythm of a scheme awful and beautiful? Had she played her part knowing and yet helpless?
She barely glanced up as the paymaster passed her. He moved swiftly. At the log bridge he turned and looked back. She was sitting as he had left her, her head bowed forward, and he shuddered as he conceived her likeness to the hovering form of the bird of death.
It was a week or so later that the pay yeoman of the Helena was seated at his desk, striving valiantly to bring order out of chaos. He was trying to strike a balance from the vague and cryptic entries of a private account-book which the paymaster had asked him to check up.
The paymaster was seated on the edge of the desk, smoking a huge black cigar.
“I don’t know,” said the pay yeoman, scratching his head in perplexity. “Which are receipts and which expenditures?”
“Why, they’re in a sort of chronological order,” said the paymaster vaguely. “But it must be mostly expenditures.”
The yeoman sighed hopelessly and turned over some half-dozen pages. Then he gazed at the book reflectively, tapping his teeth with the end of a penholder.
“Now, here, for instance,” he said. “Here’s an entry: ‘James Martin. To experience supplied—$8000.’ Does that mean you gave him eight thousand, or did he give it to you?”
The paymaster did not reply. Instead, he leaned over the yeoman’s shoulder and gazed at the page for a full minute in silence.
Then he took the book from the yeoman, erased something written on the page in pencil, and taking a pen from the desk, printed across it in big black letters the word “Paid.”
Then he returned the book to the yeoman.
“But was it a receipt or an expenditure?” persisted the other. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means a good deal to me,” said the paymaster.
“And,” he added to himself as he turned to leave the office, “to Jimmie.”
Secrets
I WAS FIRST ATTRACTED to her by her attitude toward the picture. Taken altogether, it measured up better than that of any other person who had been submitted to the test. I can see even now her gaze of frank interest and curiosity and her quick questioning glance at me as I sat watching her out of the corner of my eye, finding an unusual difficulty in regarding her with that attitude of calm and impartial analysis which, in my opinion, a lawyer should always maintain toward his client.
First of all, perhaps I had better explain about the picture.
It was my own idea. From the day that I opened my law offices on William Street I had been keenly conscious of one of the greatest handicaps under which an attorney labors: the difficulty of getting a line on the character of the client.
This is more important than a layman would suppose—and particularly so with lawyers like myself, who make it a rule never to defend the confessedly or obviously guilty. In many cases it is next to impossible to form a sensibly correct judgment.
When a man is placed in a position where he finds it necessary to seek legal advice and aid, his mind is usually so disturbed and disarranged by his perplexities that all ordinary tests for the reading of character are rendered useless.
The picture was more a happy accident than any result of my own ingenuity or wisdom. I came across it by chance in the studio of an artist friend who was possessed of an extravagant interest in the bizarre and unique.
Its subject has nothing to do with the story, and I shall not attempt to describe it. It is enough to say that it portrayed with frank naturalism and a taste of genius one of the most fundamental of the elements of human nature and experience, without being either distasteful or offensive.
No sooner had I seen it, and realized the effect of the shock which I had felt in every corner of my brain, than I knew that here at last was the very thing I wanted. My friend was loath to part with it until I explained the reason for my desire; and men, flattered by my recognition of its peculiar merit, he wished to make me a gift of it.
The thing
was incredibly successful from the very first.
The chair in which I seat my clients is placed directly at my elbow on the right, in front of the arm slide on my rolltop desk. I placed the picture inside the desk, opposite this chair, so that it was invariably the first thing that caught the eye of the visitor after being seated.
The effect was always interesting and profitable; in some instances even startling.
A study of the different sensations and expressions it has caused to appear on the faces of my unsuspecting clients would fill a volume. Frank or affected modesty, involuntary horror, open curiosity, sudden fear—it has shown them all. I became an adept at reading the signs—the temperature of this human thermometer.
By its very crudity, its primality, the thing was infallible, never failing to shock the mind into a betrayal of its most carefully hidden secrets. Of course, its main strength lay in its unexpectedness. I believed then, and I believe now, that no will, however strong, could have held itself neutral against the test without being forewarned.
And yet—I often wonder—how could she possibly have known?
On the morning of her first call I was alone in the office, having sent James uptown on some errand, while it was too early for the stenographer to have arrived.
Thus it was that I myself greeted her in the outer room, and inquired the nature of her business.
“I came to see Mr. Moorfield,” she said in a voice which, naturally gentle and refined, was rendered rough and harsh by a very evident anxiety and uneasiness. “I wish to see him concerning a personal matter. It is very important.”
You will have some idea of the manner of her appearance and bearing when I confess that they almost persuaded me—me, the coolest and least impressionable lawyer at the New York bar—to forego what I had come to call the “picture test,” and interview her in the outer room. Would to Heaven I had!
As she stood by the door looking up into my face with a half-hopeful, half-fearful expression, her rich, cherry lips trembling with the emotion she could not conceal, her eyes glowing and moist, her figure swaying in mute appeal—well, the angels themselves have seen no more delightful picture.