MY thoughts, fears, and hopes went galloping ahead of me during that ride back to the East. It’s all a blur of memory—wheat-fields, prune-orchards, tunnels, peaks, and prairies—and the old judge sitting beside me, twisting his withered hands and cracking his bony knuckles. It was lucky for both of us that the slow part of the journey was at the start and that we had the clang of mile-a-minute rails under us for the last two days of that race.
Well, I thought the thing over. It was just as much of a nightmare then as it seems now when I am setting it down.
How I ever undertook such a crack-brained, daredevil trip and hoped for anything tangible to fall to me by such a hundred-to-one shot I do not understand even now in clear fashion, in spite of the explanation I have given. We talk about hunches in this world! If I had not obeyed some sort of suggestion I certainly would not have chased those renegades. Only by meeting with them did I stand a chance of recovering any money. That thought and my hankering to use my knowledge about the Pratt-Dawlin gang influenced me a great deal, I suppose. And the conviction that I couldn’t spin a thread by seeking money in any other way pried me out of Levant, of course.
I have had something to say about the force of circumstances!
I was not in a comfortable frame of mind at all, though the money in my pockets should have given me considerable cheer. I did not feel that it was my money—any of it. I could not make it seem like anything which belonged to me or convince myself that I had earned it. I had picked a man’s pocket for part of it and the rest of that cash had been jammed into my pockets, so to speak. I was not wasting a moment’s time on questioning the morality of any of my acts. I reckoned if Pratt’s wallet had been stuffed with twice as much I would have kept the plunder.
I pondered on another point.
Judge Kingsley, provided we got under the wire in season, could be saved from the charge of criminality, but he still had his salvation, financially, to work out. He needed all that money and more—and I had volunteered—had forced myself on him as combination courier and savior. It was all settled in my mind, according to my private code, that I must hand over the cash.
I will state right here that the decision I had come to about the money did not rasp my feelings in the slightest. I had read quite a few story-books in my time. If there was ever a case in the whole realm of fact and fiction where the final scene would show loving daughter clasped in adoring lover’s arms, and a benignant father raising his hands over them with “Bless-you-my-children” sentiment, my affair seemed to be triumphantly of that sort. Time, effort, and money—it all belonged in the family!
My heart glowed and my eyes grew moist and it was a wonder that I did not blurt out the whole thing to the judge—I felt so sure of him!
However, he had his own troubles to take up his mind pretty completely, I realized. There was no telling what might be happening back home, with my uncle Deck stirring things. If I had timed trains right, and nothing tipped upside down, we didn’t have much more than twenty-four hours’ leeway in Levant ahead of that town meeting. I asked the judge if the town notes were very widely scattered, and he told me they were not. He had picked special parties whom he could depend on to keep their mouths shut about their investment, and he felt pretty sure that they would hand back the notes in exchange for cash and would ask no questions and would keep still in the future.
“But I can’t eat and I can’t sleep,” he mourned, “not till I have those papers in my two hands!” He put up his crooked claws and worked them. “In my hands—all torn into ribbons—and then into the fire! Just think of it!” He croaked the words and shivered. “Papers—only a few papers! Scattered around town. Papers with ink-marks! Yet they can send me to State prison!”
No, that wasn’t the time to talk with the judge about being his partner or his son-in-law. But I did talk more with him in regard to plans for gathering in the notes quietly and quickly the moment we struck town. I had him give me the names so that I could help plan the campaign.
I knew them, of course. They were old tight-wads of farmers in the back districts who would endure lighted candles at their feet for a long time before they would leak any information about their money matters; there were some widows and old maids who didn’t know anything about money matters, anyway. The judge had picked well, I had to admit to myself. But there was a lot to do, a mighty short time to do it in, and it had got to be done with the delicate touch a bashful chap would use in picking a rose-leaf off a sleeping schoolmarm’s cheek.
Therefore, this was my suggestion to the judge: we’d slip off the train a station below Levant Comers, hire a hitch, and make our rounds of the town’s creditors in the back-lots before we showed up in Levant village.
That’s what we did.
The lengthened days of April gave us a full hour and a half of sunlight for our ride on our quest. Out of cupboards and long wallets and rosewood boxes the farmers and the old maids dutifully produced their town notes—“for the judge had called on.” They seemed to believe that his wish to call in the notes settled the matter beyond all question.
He became once more his dignified, calm, self-contained self, though I could see that it was only by exercise of all his will power.
I had placed packets of money in his hands and he figured interest and made payments.
The first man with whom he did business gave the judge his cue and made me thank the good Lord that I had planted that seed in Dodovah Vose!
“You’re looking better than I have ever seen you, Judge! Younger, too! What have you been doing to yourself? Oh, your whiskers are cut off! Improves you!”
The moment we had struck Spokane I bought alcohol and stripped that grotesque mustache from the judge’s face. In spite of his haggard countenance, he did look younger.
“It’s said around town,” proceeded Farmer Bailey—=and I held my breath and did not dare to look at Judge Kingsley—“that you’ve just cleaned up a lot of money in a big deal. Dod Vose has given out first news! We’re all glad of it because we have always looked up to you as a financier.”
The judge nodded stiffly in acknowledgment of the compliment.
“And I suppose he has made you rich, too, young Sidney, taking you under his wing like he has,” suggested the farmer, with a wink. “Your uncle is giving you a black eye for deserting the family—like he done the first time you left town—but I guess you haven’t made any mistake by grabbing in with Judge Kingsley.”
“I’m quite sure of that,” I told Farmer Bailey.
“I hate to take this money, Judge,” said the farmer. “It’s been safe with you. I ain’t a financier like you be. It hasn’t been taxed. You bet I have kept my mouth shut!”
“It’s only to clear up town business on account of the special meeting which has been called for to-morrow,” stated the judge. “I am glad to hear you have kept the matter private. I merely tried to help a few of my friends. And I suggest that you say nothing about having received this money or that you have surrendered a town note. There are disturbers in town who threaten a high tax-rate.”
“It’s Deck Sidney, thrashing around to make a big show of his authority, now that he is selectman,” the farmer grumbled. “He ain’t being backed up by the people, I can tell you that! It’s all right to be enterprising, but he is too cussed much so. He was around here the other day, trying to nose out whether I held a town note or not!” I felt a thrill of fear and the judge grew visibly paler. “Yes, he hung on and coaxed and threatened and argued. But I knew what he was up to!”
He winked at the shrinking judge.
“He said if I didn’t bring my town note into the meeting I’d never be able to collect.”
“How did he know you held a town note?” croaked the judge.
“He didn’t know! He was round town guessing. I never let on. I knew he wasn’t any financier. I knew that you’d protect me, no matter what Deck Sidney might say. I smelled him out, all right! He thinks he is running this town and he tried to bamboozle me so that he could find some more property to tax. I reckon we’ll show him where he belongs when it comes to next annual meeting. He’s getting altogether too big for his britches!” We learned much more about my uncle’s recent activities before we finished our ride. Evidently, when he had held his nose in the air he had sniffed town notes; but when he had set his nose to the ground and had tried to run those notes to their lairs he had failed. At any rate, the holders protested to the judge that they had not dropped one word—all of them suspecting that my uncle was merely digging out property to tax. The resentful farmers had replied to his anathema with some of their own and the frightened old maids had been too scared to say anything to him. We heard enough to know that he had traveled more or less by guesswork, and had made his quest general, hoping to corner somebody by chance. If we could believe the protestations of the parties concerned, Judge Kingsley’s defenses still presented a fair front to the world..
At last, before the evening was old, the judge had taken into his hands the last note.
Then we ordered our driver to hurry us to the village.
“Mr. Sidney,” said the judge, when he had paid the driver and stood in the shadows at the edge of the square, “this is not the time to talk over our affairs, but I do want you to step into my office for a few moments.”
He led the way.
The big house was dark and a queer kind of a shiver ran through me when I looked at it.
“The devil must have had me in his clutch all these days,” muttered the judge. “I have been worse than a lunatic. Not a word from me to my poor folks at home!”
To tell the truth, I had not been giving much thought to our remissness in that duty. I have never been much of a letter-writer in my life—I had been so long without folks who cared to hear from me that the matter of keeping anybody posted on my whereabouts never came into my mind. To be sure, I had Celene Kingsley in my mind all the time, even in the stress of our adventures, but I had not presumed to write to her. During our travels it had not occurred to me that it was any part of my business to prompt Judge Kingsley in any of his family affairs. But now that we were back, in front of that gloomy house, I realized just how brutal the whole thing was.
The judge went to his office door and his hand trembled so violently that the key clattered all around the hole; what with the darkness and his agitation, he could not unlock the door, and I did it for him, gently taking the key from his hand.
I lighted his lamp when we were within. We stood there for a few moments and looked at each other.
“It’s so still!” he mumbled. “It seems early for them to be in bed.”
“But your folks must be all right,” I ventured. “If there was anything wrong we would have heard about it while we have been riding about town.”
“Probably! Probably!” His voice quavered and he was all a-tremble. “But it seems so still!”
He sat down at his table and pulled out the notes he had been gathering.
“You are entitled to look on, Mr. Sidney! I wanted you to see me do it. I don’t just understand all the reasons yet why you have helped me as you have. We will talk about that some day when my head is clearer. It’s all a dream—a dream—a dream—so it seems now.” He sort of maundered along in his talk. He did not seem to be at all sure of himself. If the thought did come to me with any force that then was a good time to tell him why I had volunteered as I had done, I put the idea away when I looked at him.
He dumped papers out of a tin tray which stood on the table. He piled the notes in the tray.
“Touch a match to them, sir,” he told me. “You are entitled to do it. We will watch them burn. I signed them as town treasurer. One of them would put me into prison. Hurry! Set the match to them!” And I obeyed.
Then, almost before the red embers were dark, he dove his hands into the ashes of the papers and scrufled them about and out of him came the most dreadful cackle of laughter I ever heard.
I was anxious to end that scene as quickly as I could. I pulled a packet from my coat and laid it on the table; I tapped my finger on it to get his attention.
“Here is something I have held out, Judge Kingsley,”
I informed him. “There’s a thousand dollars tied up in this paper. Five hundred of it I accepted from Dodo-vah Vose, agreeing to put him in right in our speculation. I took it when I started West.”
In spite of his emotion the old judge’s business sense flared just as the fire had flared in the tray a moment before.
“But there was no speculation—there was no business deal! Why did you take money in that way?”
“I had special reasons of my own, sir.”
“But you had no right—it was a private affair—it—”
“And I also had reasons of your own to consider, sir,” I broke in. “Mr. Vose asked me to invest for him. I wanted your name to stand well after we were gone. I was under obligations to Mr. Vose and when I told him we had a big deal on I could give him no good reason why I would not turn a little profit his way. That’s why the man Bailey is so sure that your credit is now good. You’ll find that the news has gone all about the section—”
“They’ll be jumping on me for the money I owe!” snarled the judge. “Vose has ruined me if he has bragged. You have—”
“Just a moment, sir, before you say something you’ll be sorry for. It’s just the other way, I’ll warrant! Men will bring more money to you. You can be shrewd and work out of your troubles. Your credit is established. I made a good play when I did it.”
“You say there’s a thousand dollars in that envelope?”
“Yes, sir! I have handed the other packets to you. I propose to give Mr. Vose five hundred dollars profit—and after I have done that you’ll get the best advertising you ever had. They’ll rate you mighty high in these parts. Five hundred is a cheap price for what you’ll get.”
“But I need every cent just now to tide me over,” he whined. “You are throwing money away recklessly. Vose can be taken care of some time. Give him his own five hundred—or—or—say it has been invested for him. I will attend to his case later.”
And do you know what that old rhinoceros did? He reached out his paw to take that packet. I had to pound my fist on his fingers to make him let go.
He stood up and called me names—said that I was taking money he needed. I suppose I ought to have made allowances for the state of mind he was in—his fears—his weakness of old age—his dreadful anxiety which still goaded him.
But I was in a bad way, myself, and I could not pardon that selfishness.
“Confound you,” I yelled, “I have a mind to back you against the wall and strip every dollar out of your pockets!”
And then we heard a noise and we turned around, and there stood Celene Kingsley looking at us—looking at me especially with hatred and horror.
“Father!” she cried. “Shall I run and call help? He is robbing you!”
I certainly could not say a word just then, and the judge sat down and gasped and gaped at her.
She came into the room. She was white and pale and thin, but she was no shrinking and anguished maiden. She was showing the female’s ferocity in guarding her own.
“I heard you! Confessing that you’re a robber out of your own mouth! Where have you been with my poor father? What devilish spell have you put on him—you and the rest of your gang?”
She turned away from me.
“Father, don’t you realize that you have come home when it is too late? Oh, God in heaven, why did you not break away from those rogues and come home—or write so that we could ransom you? I know. They have kept you a prisoner!”
“Too late?” he looked at his office safe. I knew what he was afraid of. “Too late?”
She began to sob. “It has killed mother!”
He got up and staggered to her and took her in his arms.
“Your mother dead?”
“It’s worse than that! It’s her mind—it has gone, and her body is following. She hasn’t known me for days. She lies there dying.”
I was shocked, but I must confess I did not feel like a murderer. Mrs. Kingsley had been ill when we went away—she had so declared in my hearing.
“Miss Kingsley,” I put in, “I’m sorry, but your father and I—”
Her tears ceased and she turned on me in a fury. I knew something about the Kingsley disposition, but I did not know before that she had so much of it in her.
“Sorry! You sorry? I know about you, you miserable low-lived wretch! I have been hunting for my father. Do you think I would look down on my dying mother and not spend every cent I had in trying to find where you had taken him? My detectives have been on that trail you left in the city!”
Able detectives! On the cold and easy trail instead of nosing on the warm one!
“But please listen to me—”
“To more of your lies? No! I know you for what you are—hiding from the police in the city—coming back here to finish the ruin of my innocent father after your friends had been, sent here by you to rob him. You don’t dare to deny what you have been in the city! Your face convicts you!” >
I was perfectly conscious that I was not presenting any lamb-like picture of innocence. She certainly had me on the run when she burst out with that exposure of my city record. But I did not propose to lie down and stick up my feet like a calf ticketed for the butcher.
“Miss Kingsley,” I said, slapping the packet of money across my palm—and that was a poor tool to use for emphasis after she had heard my talk to her father, “you must listen—”
“I have been listening just now! I heard you threaten to strip my poor father of every cent he has in the world! Do you deny you said it?”
“No, but—”
“Do you deny that you have been the sort of a man I have said you were?”
She rushed at me, her hands like claws. I was reminded of a sight I had witnessed in boyhood—a shrieking meadow-thrush defending her nest against a sneaking snake.
I looked past her toward the judge. I did hope he would say something, even though I did not expect that he would come out with the whole truth. Honestly, I would have stopped him short if he had started to confess to her anything about the real reason why I was mixed into his affairs. Had not the whole expedition been planned so that the women folks would not know?
Nevertheless, a decent man in his right senses could have made some sort of talk to help me out. But it was plain enough that Judge Kingsley was not in his right senses—he did not seem to have much of any sense left in him; he was doddering around the room, twisting his hands and accusing himself of having killed his wife.
“Please listen,” I implored. “You have heard only one side—”
“I will not listen! You, your uncle, the renegades you associate with, you have tried to ruin my father. You weren’t even decent enough to be an open enemy—you came sneaking into our home to lie to us and deceive us.”
“By the gods,” I shouted, “you will listen to me! I don’t propose to be kicked around from pillar to post all my life. I am the best friend the Kingsley family ever had. If your father doesn’t tell you so, I will. Judge Kingsley, why don’t you be a man?”
But he gave me a fishy look and went on lamenting.
She started for the door. “There are honest men in this village—I’m going to call them!”
But I got to the door ahead of her.
“There’s another time coming—a better time for an explanation—and you’ll be the sorriest girl in the world.”
“I can never be as sorry as I am now—sorry and ashamed! To think that I ever put confidence in a creature by the name of Sidney!”
What a glorious home-coming for the paragon of selfsacrifice!
I walked around the square half a dozen times before I dared to go into the tavern. I don’t know how I ever got through that interview with Dodovah Vose without betraying my state of mind, but I managed it and excused my peculiarity by saying that I was all worn out by my trip. And he had too much on his own mind in a few minutes to pay special attention to me, for I handed him one thousand dollars and went up to my room without bothering to contradict his excited guessings that the judge and I had cleaned up a fortune. Kingsley, I reflected, might as well have the benefit of the guessing. And, it must be known, hope was not dead in me in spite of my agony.
Something else was very much alive in me. Blackleg, eh? Flashy rogue! Barker for gamblers!
I took off that plug-hat, held it in both hands, and put my foot through the crown; then I kicked it all around the room. I stripped off that frock-coat, grabbed the tails and ripped it into two parts.
Then I went to the closet and surveyed that ready-made suit and the billycock hat with content.
In the morning I would be Ross Sidney, professional diver, ready to go back on the job if there was any such thing as a job for me in all the world. I hoped I would be sane once more when I opened my eyes on a new day. I yanked that fancy waistcoat into ribbons, threw the pearl-gray trousers under the bed, and hurried to go to sleep so that I would not become completely crazy before I could forget my troubles.
THERE surely is a lot in this conscious-virtue notion! I had plenty of the quality next morning.
Things seemed brighter. I felt like myself once more. It was inconceivable that the horrible misunderstanding between Celene Kingsley and myself could continue very long; I was ready to make confession as to my temporary lunacy in the city, and my new optimism encouraged me to believe that she would find excuse for me. At any rate, I was soon assured that whatever she had learned from that detective, whoever he was, she had kept it to herself. From that reticence I drew excellent augury that she was not out to ruin me. If she had opened her mouth about my past I would have known it the moment I stepped out on the street in Levant. But every person I met ducked polite salute, and I met many persons because the village was full on account; of the town meeting.
At ten o’clock the town hall was crowded and in a short time the cut-and-dried preliminaries were over.
My uncle was with his associates on the platform, and the stare he gave me when he caught my eyes was so demoniac that I was careful not to look his way again for some time.
There was evidence of strained anticipation everywhere in the gathering. I heard voters whispering that Deck Sidney proposed to spring something. But nobody, according to what I could hear, presumed to put in words what they guessed.
My uncle was mashing his personal batteries, I saw.
An unemotional lawyer explained the purpose of the meeting, and then the moderator called on Judge Kingsley, as town treasurer, to give the financial standing of the town.
Uncle Deck fairly bored the judge with his gaze when the old man walked to the platform and I was as intent with my scrutiny, for I was wondering how Kingsley would get through with it. He was white and somewhat shaky, but he was the same old cold proposition when he faced the voters.
“I hope you will pardon a word on a personal matter,” he said, as he unfolded his papers; “but I have returned from a business trip and find serious illness in my family. I have been keeping watch at the bedside of my dear wife and my thoughts are not clear enough to enable me to make the little address I had contemplated for to-day. I will only say that the movement to clear the town of its debt is very praiseworthy and my report will show that the thing may be done with a little extra effort. Our only considerable indebtedness consists of town bonds amounting to eight thousand dollars and current items as follows.” Then he went on to give the list of unpaid town orders, of which only a few were extant. “I see here representatives of the bondholders,” he added, “who will check my figures if such assurance is required by any voter—and probably most of the parties who hold town orders are in the meeting. I hope the town orders will be presented for payment at once so that there may be no floating indebtedness.” He folded up his papers.
My uncle got up and stamped down his trousers legs.
“Now, you voters,” he called, “ask your questions!”
But not a voice was raised.
“I’m no lawyer and I’m making no threats,” my uncle went on. “But after the way this meeting has been advertised, and after the call that has been made, I reckon that the men who have been holding out claims against this town and who haven’t presented them will be left to whistle for their money. I propose to have action taken that will outlaw those claims.”
Judge Kingsley turned slowly on my uncle and stood as stiff as a stake.
“To what claims do you refer, Selectman Sidney? Do you question the accuracy of my report?”
“Come out of your holes, you old woodchucks!” shouted Uncle Deck, looking past the judge at the voters. Men scowled at him and grumbled.
The judge walked toward the First Selectman and shook his papers.
“You must talk to me, sir! I am the treasurer of this town and have been for a good many years. Here before the voters I demand that you specify claims.”
“I’ll specify, then! How about the town notes that are out with your name on them?”
A murmur ran through the assemblage.
“Just one moment, sir! Weigh your words,” warned the judge. “You are attacking my financial reputation; there is a law for slanderers and I have many witnesses here. Do you say there is one single town note extant with my name on it?”
“I say there are a lot of ’em!”
This time many voters raised voices of protest and there were hisses.
“That’s the thanks a straight man gets for trying to protect his town against a thief, eh?” raged my uncle, his ready temper bursting loose.
“If the judge don’t collect fifty thousand dollars damages for this, then I’m no guesser,” declared Dodovah Vose, who sat beside me.
Uncle Deck tramped to the edge of the platform and with wagging finger selected a man in the throng; the man was Farmer Bailey.
“Bailey, you hold a town note with Kingsley’s name on it! You know you do! Are you going to sit there and see it canceled as no good by the vote of this town?”
Bailey rose slowly and everybody listened in deep silence.
“I hold no note of any kind with Judge Kingsley’s name on it.”
“Yah-h-h! You have told me that before. But you don’t dare to stand here in town meeting and say it under oath.”
“Send down that Bible on the stand and I’ll take oath and kiss the Book,” offered Bailey. There was applause and the judge quieted it by raising his hand.
“I will pay double for any note with my name on it as treasurer, and I will turn the money over to the town as a gift,” he said.
I despised him when he made that bluff, though of course he had to do it. Really, in spite of his devilish temper and his spirit of revenge my uncle was twice the man Judge Kingsley was in that moment. I wasn’t trying to figure out the righteousness of the thing on either side; the judge was fighting for his very life, as well as his standing, and my uncle, though he was working for the good of the town according to his lights, was satisfying his old grudge—the real passion of his life.
A voter rose and bellowed until he secured silence; they were giving the judge an ovation.
“I want to put in a word here, fellow-townsmen! Money has been borrowed on town notes. A certain eminent man you all know tried to borrow from me and said I could escape taxation. And now he is backed by the liars—”
“And barked at by the liars, too,” yelled another man.
“I stand up here for Selectman Sidney, who has given his time and effort to help this town out of the clutches—”
They howled him down. But by this time the defenders of my uncle were howling, too.
“This meeting is going to break up in a free fight if a stop isn’t put to this jawing,” said Dodovah Vose. He jumped up on the settee and made himself heard. “I move we adjourn!”
The apprehensive moderator put the motion, the judge’s friends carried it, and the meeting was dissolved.
My uncle leaped off the platform and came raging at me through the crowd.
“It’s you—you damnation imp of Gehenna! Racing and chasing over this town yesterday! I had a line on you. Saving that old whelp from what was coming to him!” He put his hands over his head and wriggled his fingers. “God! I don’t know what you have done—you got that money by robbing a bank, probably. But you have done it—you have jumped up and down on your family! You have got to answer to me!”
Men pushed away in panic and left us in a ring. But I had no notion of entertaining the old goggle-eyes of Levant by fisticuffs with my uncle. I folded my arms.
“According to your reckoning, Uncle Deck, I have owed you something for a long time. I want to stand square with you! Go ahead and collect!”
He did not seem to understand at once.
“Go ahead and beat me up! I won’t raise a finger.” Yes, I would have taken the beating—I knew inside of me that I did owe my uncle something of the sort.
“Not by a dam-site, he sha’n’t beat you up,” declared Dodovah Vose. “I saved you from him once,” he said, careless of revelations, “and I’ll save you again.”
So, after waiting a minute and enduring my uncle’s tongue instead of his fists, I went away with Landlord Vose.
I was not in the mood for any further paltering or palavering in regard to my personal and private standing with the Kingsley family. I had a collection to make and I proposed to go and make it. I ought to have known better than to force the issue at that time. But youth is headstrong, the sense of my injuries was hot, and I felt that if ever the judge might be willing to show his gratitude that would be the time.
He was crossing the square on his way home and I left Mr. Vose and hurried after. I caught up with him at the front door.
“I want to come in and have a word with you and with your daughter,” I told him.
“Impossible,” he said, curtly. “I’m afraid my wife is at death’s door. And my daughter—she is very bitter!”
“I propose to have you explain enough so that she will not be bitter, sir. It’s my due. You know what kind of a service I have rendered. I have made an enemy of my uncle—ruined all my prospects to help you. There are things you can tell your daughter to—”
“How does my daughter enter into any affairs between you and myself? You must let me alone in my sorrow. Later I will pay you for your services. I am grateful. If I were not in such distress I would explain how grateful I am. I will pray that I may be spared till I can pay back to you what I owe.”
“Good Cæsar! I don’t want your money, Judge Kingsley. I’ll work and earn more to help you out of your difficulties. I only ask you to be a man and make your daughter understand—”
“My daughter again! You don’t presume—”
“I do presume, sir. She was kind to me until this horrible misunderstanding came up. I expect you to tell her that I am your best friend. It’s my right!”
I’ll never forget the look he gave me. I’ll wager a good bit that the idea of such enormity on my part never came into his Kingsley consciousness till that moment. Even then he did not seem to be just sure that he understood.
“I don’t expect anything definite from you or her, Judge Kingsley, until I have made good in the world. But I do look to you to give me a square deal. That’s only what you owe to me, man to man.”
“I owe you money and I will pay it. There is no other sort of bargain between us.”
He stepped into his house and shut the door in my face.
In that damnable situation I was minded to follow him and have it out, even if I were obliged to expose him. However, if death were hovering over that house it was a sanctuary I could not invade. But bitter thoughts raged in me when I turned away; I only asked to be set right with Celene.
I understand that this part of my confession will elicit little sympathy for me from the casual reader who takes the comfortable view that the world is full of girls and if one does not swing low enough on the bough there’s always another within reach. But mine was the exceptional case where the first love had become an obsession and all my spirit of persistency was flaming in me. I have not figured out as yet whether the troubles into which my general persistency in all matters has slammed me overbalance the fruits it has brought to me—but I reckon, after all, I’ll have to take my hat off to my persistency. If I had been a quitter I would not have played the biggest game in my life—and I’m coming to that right soon.
Once more circumstances were forcing me, though I needed mighty little forcing, to leave Levant at that juncture in my affairs.
“Damn ’em!” I blazed out to Dodovah Vose when I stamped into the tavern, “I’ve got to show ’em! I’ll show ’em I can make good.”
He blinked at me.
“But you have shown ’em already,” he said. He thought, of course, that I was speaking about the general public in Levant. “And if I was in your place I wouldn’t give a dam what your uncle says to you.”
Less than two hours later Landlord Vose revised that advice. He rushed up to my room where I was sorting some papers, having resolved to travel light when I did go.
“Get under—get under, young Sidney,” he gasped.
“Under what?”
“I reckon I mean get out. It’s your uncle Deck! Bailey and some other of them yawp-mouths in this place have been twitting and tormenting him and dropping hints, and he’s worse than a sore-eared bulldog after a scruffing. He’s coming with a double-barreled shot-gun. He is! He’s drunk, son, and there’s no dealing with him. He lays it all to you!”
“I won’t run.”
“But he isn’t responsible, son. To say nothing of what will happen to you, it means that he’ll go to State prison. You’re sane and sober and you ought to be willing to save him from himself.”
Right then Mr. Vose said something which appealed to me. I had stepped outside my family—I had conspired against my uncle—I had blocked his dearest ambition, iniquitous though it was. By hanging around and allowing him to take pot-shots at me I would be aggravating his troubles and bringing more serious afflictions upon him. A dead nephew, shot-riddled, would be a damning exhibit A in his trial for murder!
I picked up my few belongings and escaped from the back door of the tavern, hid in a cross-road till Dodovah Vose’s stableman came with a hitch, and I caught a train at a station down the line; hustling out of my native town on the run, by dint of practice, was getting to be one of the best performances in my list of tricks.
I counted my money when I was on my way to the city. I had not been keeping any strict account between the judge and myself; from the common stock I had been paying expenses and spending as loose as peas in order to hasten our journey back East. I found around two hundred and fifty dollars in my pockets, and I reflected, with a sort of grim zest in the humor of the thing, that I could fairly claim most of this money as my own—the tainted cash from my poker profits.
I went straight to Jodrey Vose when I arrived in the metropolis and he looked neither surprised nor overjoyed.
“Where have you been?” he inquired.
“Oh, sort of loafing around up-country—killing time!”
He squinted at me sourly.
“I can’t say that you’re doing any great credit to my training, young Sidney!”
“You are right, Captain Vose, but I’m turning over a new leaf and I’m out to make good. I am hoping that I can do something in the case of Anson C. Doughty so that I can get back into the diving business and keep on the job hereafter.”
“Then you’ll go back to diving and keep out from under plug-hats, will you?”
“Yes, sir!”
He looked at me for a long time and then he pulled out a letter.
“This here,” he said, tapping it, “is something more about that Golden Gate treasure. There’s a new crowd on the rampage about it. From somebody in the old crowd they have got hold of my name. I came nigh trying it on once, as I have told you. But it’s a gamble; I am old and I don’t want it. You are young and there’s nothing as yet for you on the Atlantic coast, and you might grab in on this. They want an Eastern diver because the divers out there are tied up with the big concerns and can’t be depended on to keep their mouths shut—so this letter says.”
“Probably it’s a pretty uncertain proposition, sir.”
“Well, you don’t expect to fall into anything very certain, do you, a diver blacklisted from Kittery to the Keys?” he demanded, tartly.
“No, sir.”
“I know nothing about these people, their plans, or anything. But I’ll do this for you, if you want me to. I’ll wire this party and tell him I am sending you on. After you are started you can post him from some place as to when you’ll arrive. Better give him a wire from time to time to keep his interest up. How’s your wallet?”
“I think it’s all right, sir.”
“If you’re lying to me that’s your own lookout. Haven’t sold your diving-dress, have you?”
“I have it safe in storage, sir.”
“Well, I’m glad you kept remembering that you’re a diver—and the best one I ever turned out!” That was the first word of high praise he had given me. He got up and shook my hand. “Now go dive, son, and after you raise that four million from the wreck of the Golden Gate come back and tell me all about it.”
I did not linger in the city; there were too many possibilities in the way of Dawlins and Doughtys.
Two hours later I was headed across the continent with my diving-dress in its canvas bag and the address of one Captain Rask Holstrom written in my note-book. I was pretty dizzy with the haste of it all and felt like the human shuttle between oceans—but I possessed considerable more serenity than I did when I began that lunatic lope with Judge Kingsley.
I had framed a motto and hung it in my soul—“I’ll show ’em!”