Читать книгу The Bronze Hand - Carolyn Wells - Страница 8

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Monday was another beautiful dolce far niente day.

The portion of deck where Oscar Cox had his chair, back against the side of the ship, and where many of his friends and acquaintances surrounded him, was the chief center of interest, and was a sort of Headquarters for planning entertainments and diversions.

The young people adored Cox, and many fathers had brilliant if vague hopes for the future.

Unstinting in his interest, advice and financial help when required, Oscar Cox, though a hard-headed business man, was soft hearted where the feminine element was concerned.

The flappers hung on his deck chair, they flattered him and jollied him, until, when he tired of the game, he would brush them all away, like a swarm of flies, and forbid them to come near him until summoned.

Whereupon, they would run off, laughing, to the very young gentlemen whom they thought it funny to call Sheiks, though some grouchy, middle-aged people called them Deck Lizards.

Nash and Mallory were too old to be classed in this lot, both being beyond thirty, but they enjoyed the youngsters’ fun, and were good sports.

Especially did they make themselves useful when an elaborate game was being arranged.

And today one was in process of unfolding.

“It’s too wonderful, my darlings!” Sally Barnes cried, as she ran to meet the pair on the deck, and taking an arm of each, hurried them over to a chattering crowd by the rail.

“A Treasure Hunt!” Gladys Parker cried. “Think of it! We can go poking into everybody’s state-rooms and into the Captain’s chiffonier and into Miss Gibbs’ Innovation trunk and ever’thin’!”

“Not in my stateroom!” Mallory declared.

“Oh, pooh! Hal Mall, there’d be nothing interesting in yours! Bet you haven’t a single thrill in your whole luggage! But fancy Mrs. Camper’s, now!”

“Why especially Mrs. Camper?”

“Oh, she’s so mysterious—so—so exciting, you know. They say—.”

“Oh, you gossips!” Nash cried, impatiently. “Never mind that, tell me more about your game.”

“Well, we have to get a treasure first, a prize, you know—something awfully worth while—two of them, in fact, one for men and one for wimmens. I—I dare to venture to hope that maybe, perhaps Mr. Cox will give us those—one of them anyway. Well, then—oh, gosh! there’s Dolly!” and the speaker ran away to greet a friend.

“I’ll tell you,” another girl began. “You know a Treasure Hunt. You go to one place, and that sends you to another, and so on, all over the ship.”

“But you’ll have to get permission to snoop into people’s state-rooms—.”

“Oh yes, of course. That’s one of the things you’re to do. Everybody must help some. Of course we can’t barge into a lady’s cabin, if she doesn’t know we’re coming. A man wouldn’t mind it so much. Well, all those things have to be looked after. We’re waiting for Mr. Cox, to see what he’ll give us for the Treasure. Oh, here he comes! My gladsome boy, good morning! Are you all set for a touch? I warn you, we’re out for b’ar! We want—.”

“Clear out with you! I don’t care what you want—you won’t get it from me! I’m all full of grouch, and if you come near, I’ll bite you!”

Oscar Cox’s tone was only mock ferocious, yet there was no twinkle in his eye, and the young people sensed at once that he was really out of sorts or out of temper or something.

They realized it was unwise to push him at the moment, and they fell back vanquished but very far from subdued.

“Leave him lay,” Sally advised, sagaciously. “He’ll come out of it all right. Let’s plan the thing all the same. We can get the Hunt all fixed up and then His Oiliness will only have to provide the Treasure.”

“I say,” put in Gladys, “do you suppose Miss Stuck-up Forman will let us hunt in her room? I’d love to get a snoop in there.”

“What do you think, Mr. Nash? You know her, don’t you?”

“I’ve met her but I can’t answer for her amiability in this matter. Why not ask her?”

Maisie’s chair, with Trent’s now next to it, was half a deck length away and the wild horde ran there half scared, half pleased at the idea of making their request.

“Oh, please, Miss Forman,” cried Sally Barnes, who was a natural born spokesman, “please say ‘yes’—won’t you? You see it’s for the benefit of the sick babies in the third class, and we want it to be a success, and if you’ll say ‘yes,’ lots of other people will tag along—see?”

Maisie roused herself and sat upright.

Though but two or three years older than these rollicking girls, she seemed immeasurably their senior, and her calm dignity made them appear hoydenish and rude.

But, greatly to Trent’s surprise, she received them with the most charming of smiles, drew Sally down to her chair beside her, and said:

“Tell me all about it. I’d love to help the sick babies.”

Sally gazed at her, enthralled. Suddenly she acquired a new enthusiasm.

“Oh, Miss Forman!” she cried, “I care for you! Aren’t you a winner! And ooh! these things!”

She ran her finger-tips admiringly over Maisie’s chic little hat, and her smart sports ensemble, and picking up her vanity case, proceeded, as she talked, to rummage therein.

“It’s a Treasure Hunt,” she began to explain—“oh, tell her about it, girls, I want to play wiv dese!”

She drew out the exquisite appointments for facial improvement, and gazed enraptured at a gold-mounted lipstick.

“Yes, tell me,” and Maisie smiled at the others, the while she unostentatiously drew her belongings from Sally’s ubiquitous fingers, and shut them back in her bag, of which she retained possession.

Sally gazed at her a moment, then picked up the hem of her skirt and kissed it. After which, Sally, the invincible, now the devoted slave of Maisie Forman, returned to the babbling chorus.

“You know Treasure Hunts, Miss Forman, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course,” and Maisie smiled encouragingly. “But only in cities, or across country—.”

“All the same,” one of the very young men struck in now. He simply had to. “We think we can stage one on the Pinnacle. We haven’t asked the Captain yet, but he’s pulp in the girls’ hands, and—” with sudden inspiration, “perhaps you’d put in a word for us, Miss Forman.”

“But I thought it was all arranged for,” and Maisie smiled inquiringly.

“Y—yes, all but getting the Captain’s consent—.”

“And Mr. Cox’s gift—.”

“And seeing about going in people’s state-rooms—.”

“Yes,” Sally declared, “it’s all arranged, except a few trifling details of that sort. Now, Miss Forman, can we—may we hunt in your cabin?”

“My Heavens, no! What an idea! I’ll do my part some other way.”

“Oh, it’ll be such a card for us, if you give your permission. Then nobody would refuse.”

“Do you—you can’t possibly mean to let you rummage through my belongings—.”

“Oh, lock up anything you don’t want us to see. All your petting notes and suitors’ pictures. All your booze and dope—.”

“All your transformations and—.”

But Maisie was helpless with laughter. She was unfamiliar with this particular type of free and easy patter, and the breezy, giggling girls, and the hovering, would-be blasé boys, seemed to her like an act from a play.

Maisie Forman had no mother, and her tired business man of a father had brought her up conventionally and a bit ignorantly. Jonathan Forman adored his daughter, and had given her luxuries and advantages to the best of his knowledge and belief, but now, alone in the world, for the moment, and eagerly interested in all she saw and heard, Maisie was finding out how little she knew of mundane conditions, after all.

Not that she wanted to belong to this noisy, boisterous herd, but she wanted to see them, to hear them, to watch them. She was beginning to feel that her exclusiveness was perhaps a mistake; that she could enjoy herself better by mixing, to a degree at least, with these people who had startled her at first.

“I’ll tell you,” she said at last, as she gained more definite ideas as to their wants, “I’ll help you. And if it’s necessary for you to invade my room, you may. We’ll see about that later. But what else can I do? Subscribe to the buying of the Treasure? Take tickets for the Hunt? What?”

“Well, you see, Miss Forman, we plan to get Mr. Cox to give us the Treasure. But he’s in a heluva grouch this morning, and we don’t dast tackle him. How would it be if you asked him?”

“Me? Ask Mr. Cox! Why, I don’t even know him.”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter. Maybe Mr. Trent would ask him. He knows him.”

Trent had been an interested listener but had so far, said little.

“Not I,” he declared, positively. “There’s nobody so appropriate for that errand as you youngsters yourselves. Wait till he’s in his usual sunny mood—not long, probably—and then approach him with your usual tact and delicacy—.”

“You’re making fun of us—” and Sally somehow managed to bring two big tears to her dancing eyes. It was a trick of hers.

“What else are you good for?” asked Trent, with a wondering stare, as he drew out a big folded handkerchief and offered it with a flourish for the absorption of the tears.

“I say,” piped up a good-looking boy, “old Oily is looking over here, and scowling like a pickax!”

“Jealous, probably,” said Nash, with a glance across the deck. “He thinks you’ve deserted him.”

Sally jumped up and ran over to Cox’s chair.

“I say,” she cried, bearding the lion in his den, “Miss Forman over there wants to speak to you.”

“To me?” returned Cox, in amazement.

“Yes,” Sally lied on, “she sent me to tell you—to ask you if you’d please step over there a minute.”

“Certainly,” said the Oil man, still looking incredulously at Sally. “Are you sure Miss Forman sent for me? We’re—we’re not acquainted.”

“I’ll introduce you, come ahead!” Sally fairly tugged at his coat, for her courage was weakening, and she was about ready to back out.

Oscar Cox strode along the deck, and joined the rollicking group.

“Miss Forman,” he said, “Miss Barnes tells me you do me the honor to wish to speak to me.”

Maisie Forman looked at him, a blank expression on her lovely face.

“I?” she said. “You?” Her air became haughty. All the camaraderie she had shown the young people vanished, and she was again the Princess in disguise, and not much disguised at that.

Then she turned to the culprit, now shaking with laughter.

“Sally,” she said, “why did you tell that naughty story? And just when I was beginning to like you!”

Trent picked up the situation.

“Mr. Cox,” he said, “these children are full of the old Nick today. Miss Forman didn’t send for you, Miss Barnes made that up. But may I present you? Miss Forman, this is Mr. Cox, whom I trust I may call a friend of mine. Mr. Cox, Miss Forman—also my friend.”

“Then, now, we’re all friends,” cried Sally, gayly, “and the goose hangs high!”

But a constraint had fallen on the more serious-minded ones of the group.

Maisie kept her aloof, exclusive air, which Trent began to suspect she used toward all but her near friends, and youngsters.

Oscar Cox, himself, seemed uncertain whether to join the gayety of the flappers, or adopt a dignity to match Miss Forman’s.

Mallory and Nash were interested in the whole episode, while the young people, trusting to their safety in numbers, began to clamor for a Treasure for the Treasure Hunt.

“And Miss Forman has promised to help you, has she?” Cox said, at last. “Well, then, I’ll help, too. Now here’s my proposition. If Miss Forman asks me for it, prettily, I’ll give the thing to her, and she can give it to the Hunt Club, or whatever you call yourselves.”

“Hoo-ray!” started the cheer leader, Sally, and the deck rang with their gratitude.

“But you haven’t it yet,” Cox warned them, smilingly. “Will Miss Forman ask for it?”

“Yes, indeed,” Maisie returned, growing a little flushed as all eyes rested on her, “of course I will. My dear Mr. Cox, please give these young people the Treasure they want for their game called ‘Treasure Hunt.’ Please give it to them at my request, and for the benefit of the poor little sick kiddies on board. Please do.”

The words were sincere, though the tone was playful, rather than beseeching. Maisie had managed to make it seem a plea, yet with an undercurrent that gave a sense of organized charity and entirely eliminated the personal equation.

Oscar Cox looked at her with a glance that saw right through her pretense and accepted her words at their true worth.

Yet he laughed genially, and told the eager crowd at his side that they should surely have their Treasure, as soon as he could manage to find or procure something appropriate.

“We want to have the Hunt tomorrow,” they told him. “Tomorrow afternoon. It’s Fourth of July, and we’re going to celebrate from morning till night.”

“I’m trying to persuade Puppy Abercrombie to climb up with a Star Spangled Banner and put it in place of the English flag,” announced a blue-eyed baby doll, in a shrill piping shriek.

“Now, don’t be silly,” Cox said, a little sternly. “You kids are so nice when you are just funny without being vulgar. Don’t disturb any flags, you’ll have enough Hail Columbia without. The Captain is going to give you glorious decorations for luncheon and all that. Don’t repay him by any annoyance.”

“No sir,” said one demurely, and the rest repeated it like so many parrots.

Laughing both at them and with them, Cox went off and they followed like the children following the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

“I can’t quite get that man,” said Nash, who, with Hal Mallory had stayed behind and basked in the warmth of Miss Forman’s suddenly displayed cordiality. “He’s a great financier, yet he never talks business. He’s a good deal of a sportsman, I’ve heard, yet he never plays games with anyone but the youngsters. He’s said to be fond of ladies’ society, yet he never speaks to a lady—older than those flappers, and he treats them like children, he isn’t really interested in them.”

“It seemed to me,” Maisie said, “his interest was really fatherly, or like a rich bachelor uncle. Is he a bachelor?”

“No, a widower,” Nash told her. “He has the queerest sort of an orderly or valet, or something. I’m not crazy about this plan of invading people’s state-rooms.”

“They won’t,” said Trent. “Except where they’re urgently invited. Captain Van Winkle won’t allow any annoying intrusions—of that I’m sure. And there are lots of places for the Hunt. I daresay it’ll be rather fun.”

“If Cox has a guiding hand, the whole game will be all right,” Mallory put in. “I don’t altogether like that man, yet I know he has excellent ideas of the eternal fitness of things. And the kids will obey him.”

“Why does he seem to be of such importance?” Maisie asked. “I hear much about him, and little of the other influential men on board. There are a lot, aren’t there?”

“Heaps,” said Mallory. “Why, Owen Camper and Mr. Mason, and Mr. Grell and—oh, lots of Wall Street men are in the smoking room every night. But they, most of them have wives and families along. I fancy Cox is a bit of a gay dog.”

“If you mean inclined to gay company or gay doings, I haven’t seen anything of it,” Nash objected. “Except for playing with those children, he keeps mostly to rather grave and sober company.”

“He danced with Miss Gibbs—” Trent offered.

“Then it was because he couldn’t help himself!” said Nash so fervently that Maisie laughed outright.

She had a gay, ringing little laugh, and the three men within hearing distance promptly fell more deeply in love than ever.

After tea, Miss Gibbs was moved to read palms.

This was a hobby of hers, and she used it to decided advantage in the matter of attracting people to her side.

The young people soon tired of it, as they knew the lingo by heart. But Oscar Cox surprised the palmist by asking her to read a hand for him.

She lavishly consented, and Cox produced from his deck bag the Bronze Hand.

“What a beauty,” exclaimed Miss Gibbs, who knew all about art, though she didn’t know what she liked.

“Yes, a fine piece of work. What do you make of it by means of palmistry?”

Though the bronze fingers were bent over at the second joints, the palm of the hand was freely exposed.

“You don’t think I can really see anything in it?” Lily Gibbs said, looking at him.

“Why not? If the palm is as true as the whole hand, why shouldn’t it tell something?”

“Very well,” and she scrutinized the bronze thoughtfully.

“It is contradictory,” she said, at last. “I get nothing sure, nothing really indicative.” Then, noting the disappointment on Cox’s face, she quickly proceeded to call on her inventive imagination.

“It is the hand of a criminal,” she said, suddenly, careless of the truth. “The lines show evil—deep evil.”

But though she was fibbing, it was not evident. Lily Gibbs was too clever for that.

“There is,” she went on, soberly, “another influence at work, a better part of the man’s nature, that strives against the deep rooted villainy, but it is a hopeless struggle. Whoever was the model for this bronze hand, was a wicked, a diabolically wicked man. That’s all I can say. Do you know anything about the original?”

“No, don’t know for sure that there was one. Maybe the hand is idealized or assembled from several models.”

“Maybe,” agreed Lily. “But, Mr. Cox, aside from the matter of palmistry, I, well, you see, I am a little—a tiny bit—clairvoyant.”

“Are you?” The tone showed interest. “Well?”

“I see things—not apparent to others—I see things of the future, omens, augurs,—circling wings—.”

“In connection with this hand?” Cox was superstitious after all.

“Yes; I see harm coming to you—to your own well-being, your own safety.”

“What sort of harm?”

“That I don’t know, but deep wrong—irremediable disaster.”

“Oh, come, now, Miss Gibbs,” and Hal Mallory’s gay voice proved that he had overheard her chatter. “Don’t scare the poor man out of his wits.”

“But it’s all true,” said Lily Gibbs, a little sulkily. “I can’t help it if I have second sight!”

“Second fiddlesticks!” snorted Mallory, who was furiously down on all sorts of charlatanry.

“Oh, very well,” and Miss Gibbs walked off in the state of mind commonly known as high dudgeon.

“Now you’ve made an enemy!” exclaimed Cox.

“I don’t care. Why do you encourage her in that rubbish?”

“Maybe it isn’t rubbish—maybe it’s revelation.”

“Maybe you’re the whole Pentateuch and the Apocrypha thrown in! I’d rather listen to the flappers’ babble than to the Gibbs’ hokum. Come along, and I’ll feed you a cocktail to brush the cobwigs out of your brain.”

It was after dinner that night that Maisie Forman, for the first time on board, consented to dance.

Max Trent had urged her again and again, only to be refused, but at last he sensed that she was wavering slightly in her decision, and he renewed his appeals.

“Oh, well, yes, then,” she said, with a smile that was half a sigh. “I do love to dance—I will—just once.”

“Once at a time is enough,” he laughed, as they went on the floor.

The music was perfect, so was the dancing space. Not too crowded, cool and pleasant, and as Maisie at once discovered, they suited one another exactly. She could remember no other partner she had ever had whose ways so pleased her.

She caught herself up quickly. Was she losing her heart to Trent?

Nonsense—just because she liked to dance with a man who knew the art, must she suspect herself of falling in love with him?

But when the dance was finished, she looked white and tired.

“What’s the matter?” asked Trent, aghast. “That little spin couldn’t have done you up like this! Are you ill, Miss Forman?”

“No—no, thank you, I’m all—all right. But if you please, I’ll go at once to my room. Good night Mr. Trent—and, thank you. Please—please do not go with me. Just put me in the elevator.”

Trent obeyed, and greatly mystified, went out on deck to think it over.

He chose an upper deck, and sat there alone for a long time. He had much to think about, and he didn’t want to dance any more that night.

At last, after perhaps two hours, he saw a woman’s figure, wrapped in a long cape, come out on the deck where he sat. He was in a dark corner, and though she glanced around, he knew she didn’t see him.

With a slow but firm and steady step, she went to the rail and looked over the side of the boat.

She stood motionless a moment or two, then with a quick movement climbed up on the rail, holding to the upright post.

Horror-stricken almost beyond power to move, Trent nevertheless managed to get out of the chair and spring across the deck to her.

He clutched her, bodily, just as she moved to jump. Another second would have been too late—indeed, it was all he could do to overcome the momentum she had already given her lithe limbs.

He set her down on the deck with a jerk, and looked into her face.

It was Maisie Forman!