Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Leverett, stunned, sat staring, motionless, clutching the rifle from the muzzle of which a delicate stain of vapour floated and disappeared through a rosy bar of sunshine.

  In the intense stillness of the place, suddenly the dead man made a sound; and the trap-robber nearly fainted.

  But it was only air escaping from the slowly collapsing lungs; and Leverett, ashy pale, shaking, got to his feet and leaned heavily against an oak tree, his eyes never stirring from the sprawling thing on the ground.

  * * * * *

  If it were a minute or a year he stood there he could never have reckoned the space of time. The sun’s level rays glimmered ruddy through the woods. A green fly appeared, buzzing about the dead man. Another zig-zagged through the sunshine, lacing it with streaks of greenish fire. Others appeared, whirling, gyrating, filling the silence with their humming. And still Leverett dared not budge, dared not search the dead and take from it that for which the dead had died.

  A little breeze came by and stirred the bushy hair on Kloon’s head and fluttered the ferns around him where he lay.

  Two delicate, pure-white butterflies — rare survivors of a native species driven from civilization into the wilderness by the advent of the foreign white — fluttered in airy play over the dead man, drifting away into the woodland at times, yet always returning to wage a fairy combat above the heap of soiled clothing which once had been a man.

  Then, near in the ferns, the withering fronds twitched, and a red squirrel sprung his startling alarm, squeaking, squealing, chattering his opinion of murder; and Leverett, shaking with shock, wiped icy sweat from his face, laid aside his rifle, and took his first stiff step toward the dead man.

  But as he bent over he changed his mind, turned, reeling a little, then crept slowly out among the pitcher-plants, searching about him as though sniffing.

  In a few minutes he discovered what he was looking for; took his bearings; carefully picked his way back over a leafy crust that trembled under his cautious tread.

  He bent over Kloon and, from the left inside coat pocket, he drew the packet and placed it inside his own flannel shirt.

  Then, turning his back to the dead, he squatted down and clutched Kloon’s burly ankles, as a man grasps the handles of a wheelbarrow to draw it after him.

  Dragging, rolling, bumping over roots, Jake Kloon took his last trail through the wilderness, leaving a redder path than was left by the setting sun through fern and moss and wastes of pitcher-plants.

  Always, as Leverett crept on, pulling the dead behind him, the floor of the woods trembled slightly, and a black ooze wet the crust of withered leaves.

  At the quaking edge of a little pool of water, Leverett halted. The water was dark but scarcely an inch deep over its black bed of silt.

  Beside this sink hole the trap-thief dropped Kloon. Then he drew his hunting knife and cut a tall, slim swamp maple. The sapling was about twenty feet in height. Leverett thrust the butt of it into the pool. Without any effort he pushed the entire sapling out of sight in the depthless silt. He had to manoeuvre very gingerly to dump Kloon into the pool and keep out of it himself. Finally he managed it.

  To his alarm, Kloon did not sink far. He cut another sapling and pushed the body until only the shoes were visible above the silt.

  These, however, were very slowly sinking, now. Bubbles rose, dully iridescent, floated, broke. Strings of blood hung suspended in the clouding water.

  Leverett went back to the little ridge and covered with dead leaves the spot where Kloon had lain. There were broken ferns, but he could not straighten them. And there lay Kloon’s rifle.

  For a while he hesitated, his habits of economy being ingrained; but he remembered the packet in his shirt, and he carried the rifle to the little pool and shoved it, muzzle first, driving it downward, out of sight.

  As he rose from the pool’s edge, somebody laid a hand on his shoulder.

  That was the most real death that Leverett had ever died.

  * * * * *

  II

  A coward died many times before Old Man Death really gets him.

  The swimming minutes passed; his mind ceased to live for a space. Then, as through the swirling waters of the last dark whirlpool, a dulled roar of returning consciousness filled his being.

  Somebody was shaking him, shouting at him. Suddenly instinct resumed its function, and he struggled madly to get away from the edge of the sink-hole — fought his way, blindly, through the tangled undergrowth toward the hard ridge. No human power could have blocked the frantic creature thrashing toward solid ground.

  But there Quintana held him in his wiry grip.

  “Fool! Mule! Crazee fellow! What did you do, eh? For why you make jumps like rabbits! Eh? You expec’ Quintana? Yes? Alors!”

  Leverett, in a state of collapse, sagged back against an oak tree.

  Quintana’s nervous grasp fell from his arms and they swung, dangling.

  “What you do by that pond-hole? Eh? I come and touch you, and, my God! — one would think I have stab you. Such an ass!”

  The sickly greenish hue changed in Leverett’s face as the warmer tide stirred from its stagnation. He lifted his head and tried to look at Quintana.

  “Where Jake Kloon?” demanded the latter.

  At that the weasel wits of the trap-robber awoke to the instant crisis. Blood and pulse began to jump. He passed one dirty hand over his mouth to mask any twitching.

  “Where’s my packet, eh?” inquired Quintana.

  “Jake’s got it.” Leverett’s voice was growing stronger. His small eyes switched for an instant toward his rifle, where it stood against a tree behind Quintana.

  “Where is he, then, this Jake?” repeated Quintana impatiently.

  “He got bogged.”

  “Bogged? What is that, then?”

  “He got into a sink-hole.”

  “What!”

  “That’s all I know,” said Leverett, sullenly. “Him and me was travellin’ hell-bent to meet up with you, — Jake, he was for a short cut to Drowned Valley, — but ‘no,’ sez I, sink-holes into the woods — —’”

  “What is it the talk you talk to me?” asked Quintana, whose perplexed features began to darken. “Where is it, my packet?”

  “I’m tellin’ you, ain’t I?” retorted the other, raising a voice now shrill with the strain of this new crisis rushing so unexpectedly upon him: “I heard Jake give a holler. `What the hell’s the trouble?’ I yells. Then he lets out a beller, `Save me!’ he screeches, `I’m into a sink-hole! The quicksand’s got me,’ sez he. So I drop my rifle, I did, — there she stands against that birch sapling! — and I run down into them there pitcher-plants.

  “`Whar be ye!’ I yells. Then I listens, and don’t hear nothin’ only a kina wallerin’ noise an’ a slobber like he was gulpin’ mud.

  “Then I foller them there sounds and I come out by that sink-hole. The water was a-shakin’ all over but Jake he had went down plum out o’ sight. T’want no use. I cut a sapling an’ I poked down. I was sick and scared like, so when you come up over the moss, not makin’ no noise, an’ grabbed me — God! — I guess you’d jump, too.”

  Quintana’s dark, tense face was expressionless when Leverett ventured to look at him. Like most liars he realised the advisability of looking his victim straight in the eyes. This he managed to accomplish, sustaining the cold intensity of Quintana’s gaze as long as he deemed it necessary. Then he started toward his rifle. Quintana blocked his way.

  “Where my packet?”

  “Gol ram it! Ain’t I told you? Jake had it in his pocket.”

  “My packet?”

  “Yaas, yourn.”

  “My packet, it is down in thee sink ‘ole?”

  “You think I’m lyin’?” blustered Leverett, trying to move around Quintana’s extended arm. The arm swerved and clutched him by the collar of his flannel shirt.

  “Wait, my frien’,” said Quintana in a soft voice. “You shall explain to me some things before yo
u go.”

  “Explain what! — you gol dinged — —”

  Quintana shook him into speechlessness.

  “Listen, my frien’,” he continued with a terrifying smile, “I mus’ ask you what it was, that gun-shot, which I hear while I await at Drown’ Vallee. Eh? Who fire a gun?”

  “I ain’t heard no gun,” replied Leverett in a strangled voice.

  “You did not shoot? No?”

  “No! — damn it all — —”

  “And Jake? He did not fire?”

  “No, I tell yeh — —”

  “Ah! Someone lies. It is not me, my frien’. No. Let us examine your rifle — —”

  Leverett made a rush for the gun; Quintana slung him back against the oak tree and thrust an automatic pistol against his chin.

  “Han’s up, my frien’,” he said gently, “ — up! high up! — or someone will fire another shot you shall never hear. … So! … Now I search the other pocket. … So! … Still no packet. Bah! Not in the pants, either? Ah, bah! But wait! Tiens! What is this you hide inside your shirt —— ?”

  “I was jokin’,” gasped Leverett; “ — I was jest a-goin’ to give it to you — —”

  “Is that my packet?”

  “Yes. It was all in fun; I wan’t a-going to steal it — —”

  Quintana unbuttoned the grey wool shirt, thrust in his hand and drew forth the packet for which Jake Kloon had died within the hour.

  Suddenly Leverett’s knees gave way and he dropped to the ground, grovelling at Quintana’s feet in an agony of fright:

  “Don’t hurt me,” he screamed, “ — I didn’t mean no harm! Jake, he wanted me to steal it. I told him I was honest. I fired a shot to scare him, an’ he tuk an’ run off! I wan’t a-goin’ to steal it off you, so help me God! I was lookin’ for you — as God is my witness — —”

  He got Quintana by one foot. Quintana kicked him aside and backed away.

  “Swine,” he sad, calmly inspecting the whimpering creature who had started to crawl toward him.

  He hesitate, lifted his automatic, then, as though annoyed by Leverett’s deafening shriek, shrugged, hesitated, pocket both pistol and packet, and turned on his heel.

  By the birch sapling he paused and picked up Leverett’s rifle. Something left a red smear on his palm as he worked the ejector. It was blood.

  Quintana gazed curiously at his soiled hand. Then he stopped and picked up the empty cartridge case which had been ejected. And, as he stooped, he noticed more blood on a fallen leaf.

  With one foot, daintily as a game-cock scratches, he brushed away the fallen leaves, revealing the mess underneath.

  After he had contemplated the crimson traces of murder for a few moments, he turned and looked at Leverett with faint curiosity.

  “So,” he said in his leisurely, emotionless way, “you have fight with my frien’ Jake for thee packet. Yes? Ver’ amusing.” he shrugged his indifference, tossed the rifle to his shoulder and, without another glance at the cringing creature on the ground, walked away toward Drowned Valley, unhurriedly.

  * * * * *

  III

  When Quintana disappeared among the tamarracks, Leverett ventured to rise to his knees. As he crouched there, peering after Quintana, a man came swiftly out of the forest behind him and nearly stumbled over him.

  Recognition was instant and mutual as the man jerked the trap-robber to his feet, stifling the muffled yell in his throat.

  “I want that packet you picked up on Clinch’s veranda,” said Hal Smith.

  “M-my God,” stammered Leverett, “Quintana just took it off me. He ain’t been gone a minute — —”

  “You lie!”

  “I ain’t lyin’. Look at his foot-marks there in the mud!”

  “Quintana?”

  “Yaas, Quintana! He tuk my gun, too — —”

  “Which way!” whispered Hal Smith fiercely, shaking Leverett till his haws wagged.

  “Drowned Valley. … Lemme loose! — I’m chokin’ — —”

  Smith pushed him aside.

  “You rat,” he said, “if you’re lying to me I’ll come back and settle your affair. And Kloon’s, too!”

  “Quintana shot Jake and stuck him into a sink-hole!” snivelled Leverett, breaking down and sobbing: “ — oh, Gawd — Gawd — he’s down under all that black mud with his brains spillin’ out — —”

  Bu Smith was already gone, running lightly along the string of footprints which led straight away across slime and sphagnum toward the head of Drowned Valley.

  In the first clump of hard-wood trees Smith saw Quintana. He had halted an he was fumbling at the twine which bound a flat, paper-wrapped packet.

  He did not start when Smith’s sharp warning struck his ear: “Don’t move!

  I’ve got you over my rifle, Quintana!”

  Quintana’s fingers instantly ceased operations. Then, warily, he lifted his head and looked into the muzzle of Smith’s rifle.

  “Ah, bah!” he said tranquilly. “There were three of you, then.”

  “Lay that packet on the ground.”

  “My frien’ — —”

  “Drop it or I’ll drop you!”

  Quintana carefully placed the packet on a bed of vivid moss.

  “Now your gun!” continued Smith.

  Quintana shrugged and laid Leverett’s rifle beside the packet.

  “Kneel down with your hands up and your back toward me!” said Smith.

  “My frien’ — —”

  “Down with you!”

  Quintana dropped gracefully into the humiliating attitude popularly indicative of prayerful supplication. Smith walked slowly up behind him, relieved him of two automatics and a dirk.

  “Stay put,” he said sharply, as Quintana started to turn his head. Then he picked up the packet with its loosened string, slipped it into his side pocket, gathered together the arsenal which had decorated Quintana, and so, loaded with weapons, walked away a few paces and seated himself on a fallen log.

  Here he pocketed both automatics, shoved the sheathed dirk into his belt, placed the captured rifle handy, after examining the magazine, and laid his own weapon across his knees.

  “You may turn around now, Quintana,” he said amiably.

  Quintana lowered his arms and started to rise.

  “Sit down!” said Smith.

  Quintana seated himself on the moss, facing Smith.

  “Now, my gay and nimble thimble-rigger,” sad Smith genially, “while I take ten minutes’ rest we’ll have a little polite conversation. Or, rather, a monologue. Because I don’t want to hear anything from you.”

  He settled himself comfortably on the log:

  “Let me assemble for you, Senor Quintana, the interesting history of the jewels which so sparklingly repose in the packet in my pocket.

  “In the first place, as you know, Monsieur Quintana, the famous Flaming

  Jewel and the other gems contained in this packet of mine, belonged to

  Her Highness the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia.

  “Very interesting. More interesting still — along comes Don Jose Quintana and his celebrated gang of international thieves, and steals from the Grand Duchess of Esthonia the Flaming Jewel and all her rubies, emeralds and diamonds. Yes?”

  “Certainly,” said Quintana, with a polite inclination of acknowledgment.

  “Bon! Well, then, still more interesting to relate, a gentleman named

  Clinch helps himself to these famous jewels. How very careless of you,

  Mr. Quintana.”

  “Careless, certainly,” assented Quintana politely.

  “Well,” said Smith, laughing, “Clinch was more careless still. The robber baron, Sir Jacobus Kloon, swiped, — as Froissart has it, — the Esthonian gems, and under agreement to deliver them to you, I suppose, thought better of it and attempted to abscond. Do you get me, Herr Quintana?”

  “Gewiss.”

  “Yes, and you got Jake Kloon, I hear,” laughed Smith.
<
br />   “No.”

  “Didn’t you kill Kloon?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, pardon. The mistake was natural. You merely robbed Kloon and

  Leverett. You should have killed them.”

  “Yes,” said Quintana slowly, “I should have. It was my mistake.”

  “Signor Quintana, it is human for the human crook to err. Sooner or later he always does it. And then the Piper comes around holding out two itching palms.”

  “Mr. Smith,” said Quintana pleasantly, “you are an unusually agreeable gentleman for a thief. I regret that you do not see your way to an amalgamation of interests with myself.”

  “As you say, Quintana mea, I am somewhat unusual. For example, what do you suppose I am going to do with this packet in my pocket?”

  “Live,” replied Quintana tersely.

  “Live, certainly,” laughed Smith, “but not on the proceeds of this coup-de-main. Non pas! I am going to return this packet to its rightful owner, the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia. And what do you think of that, Quintana?”

  Quintana smiled.

  “You do not believe me?” inquired Smith.

  Quintana smiled again.

  “Allons, bon!” exclaimed Smith, rising. “It’s the unusual that happens in life, my dear Quintana. And now we’ll take a little inventory of these marvellous gems before we part. … Sit very, very still, Quintana, — unless you want to lie stiller still. … I’ll let you take a modest peep at the Flaming Jewel — —” busily unwrapping the packet— “just one little peep, Quintana — —”

  He unwrapped the paper. Two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate lay within.

  Quintana turned white, then deeply, heavily red. Then he smiled in ghastly fashion:

  “Yes,” he said hoarsely, “as you have just said, sit, it is usually the unusual which happens in the world.”

  * * * * *

  Episode Six

  The Jewel Aflame

  * * * * *

  I

  Mike Clinch and his men “drove” Star Peak, and drew a blanket covert.

  * * * * *

  There was a new shanty atop, camp debris, plenty of signs of recent occupation everywhere, — hot embers in which offal still smouldered, bottles odorous of claret dregs, and an aluminum culinary outfit, unwashed, as though Quintana and his men had departed in haste.