Читать книгу The Northing Tramp - Edgar Wallace - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Mr. Pffiefer was a stout man with a sense of humour; but since he was a lawyer, having his dealings with a dour people who had one public joke which served the whole county when recited at farmers’ conventions, and one private obscenity which, told in a smoky atmosphere ’twixt shuffle and cut, had convulsed generations of hearers, he never displayed the bubbling sense of fun that lay behind his pink mask of a face.

He could have filled his untidy office with unholy laughter now, but he kept a solemn face, for the man who sat on the opposite side of a table covered with uneven mounds of papers, law books and personal memoranda, was a great personage, a justice of the peace and the leading farmer in the county.

“Let me get this thing right, Mr. Pffiefer,” Andrew Elmer’s harsh voice was tense with anxiety. “I get noth’n’ out of this estate unless October is married on her twen’y-first anniversary?”

Mr. Pffiefer inclined his head gravely.

“That is how the will reads.” His podgy fingers smoothed out the typewritten document before him.

“To my brother-in-law twenty thousand dollars and the residue of my estate to my daughter October Jones to be conveyed on the marriage of my daughter on or before her twenty-first anniversary of her birth.”

Andrew Elmer scratched his head irritably.

“That lawyer over in Ogdensburg figured it out this way. I get twenty thousand dollars, anyway. Then when October marries——”

“Who is responsible for this curious instrument?” interrupted the lawyer.

Andrew shifted uneasily.

“Well—I guess I drew it up. Jenny left most all her business to me.”

He was a thin man with a hard, angular face and the habit of moving his lips in silent speech. He held long conversations with himself, his straight slit of a mouth working at a great speed, though no sound came. Now he spoke to himself rapidly, his upper lip going up and down almost comically.

“Never was any reason to have this thing tested,” he said at last. “Jenny’s money was tied up in mortgages an’ they only just fell in. It was that bank president over at Ogdensburg that allowed I didn’t ought to touch the money till October was married. I figured it out this way. That the residoo’s all that concerns her....”

“Is there any residue, Mr. Elmer?”

There was a certain dryness in the lawyer’s tone, but Elmer saw nothing offensive in the question.

“Why, no: not much. Naturally there’s always a home for October with me an’ Mrs. Elmer. That’s God’s holy ord’nance—to protect the fatherless an’ everything. She’s been a great expense ... college an’ clothes, an’ the wedding’ll cost something. I figured it out when I drawed up that will——”

Mr. Pffiefer sighed heavily.

“Your legacy is contingent—just as October’s is contingent. When is the wedding to be?”

Like a ghost of wintry sunlight was the fleeting brightness which came to Elmer’s harsh face.

“To-night; that’s why I dropped in to see you. Mrs. Elmer figured it this way: you can be too economic, says she. For a dollar ’r so you can get the law of it, so’s there’ll be no come-back. I’d feel pretty mean if after October was out of the ... was fixed up, there was a rumpus over the will.”

“Marrying Sam Wasser, ain’t she?”

Mr. Elmer nodded, his eyes fixed on the buggy and the lean horse that was hitched just outside the window. That cadaverous animal was eating greedily from the back of a hay trolley which had been incautiously drawn up within reach.

“Yeh—Sam’s a nice feller.”

He ruminated on this for a while.

“October’s kind of crazy—no, not about Sam. Obstinate as an old mule. She goes mad—yes, sir. Seen her stand on the top of the well an’ say, ‘You touch me an’ I’ll jump right in’—yes, sir. Sparin’ the rod’s the ruin of this generation. My father took a slat to all of us, boy an’ girl alike. An’ I’m her guardian, ain’t I? Mrs. Elmer reckons that a spankin’ is just what October wants. But there it is—she didn’t holler ’r anything, just walked to the well an’ said, ‘If you beat me I’ll jump in.’ I figure that self-destruction is about the wickedest thing anybody can talk about. It goes plumb clean in the face of divine Providence. That’s October. She’ll do most anything, but it’s got to be done her way. Sam’s a nice, slick young feller. His pa’s got building lots and apartment houses down in Ogdensburg, besides the store, and Sam’s made money. I’m not sayin’ that I’d like to make profit on the degradation—to the level of the beasts in the field—of my fellow critters ... but the money’s good.”

The lawyer pieced together and interpreted, from this disjointed evidence of October’s wickedness and Sam Wasser’s virtues, a certain difficulty in the operation of match-making.

“October’s just as hard as a flint stone. She’s never found grace, though me an’ Mrs. Elmer’s prayed an’ prayed till we’re just sick of prayin’, an’ Reverend Stevens has put in a whole lot of private supplications to the Throne. I guess Satan does a lot of work around these high schools.”

There was a silence. Mr. Elmer’s long, shaven upper lip wrinkled and straightened with uncanny rapidity. A student of lip-reading, the fascinated Mr. Pffiefer saw words—“October,” “Giving trouble,” and, many times, “Money.”

He became audible.

“You never know where you’re at with October. S’pose you say, ‘October, there’s a chicken pie for dinner,’ she says ‘Yes.’ And when you hand out the plate she says, ‘I don’t eat chicken pie,’ just like that. Don’t say anything till you push the plate at her.”

Mr. Elmer relapsed into silence: evidently his mind had reverted to the will. The lawyer read “residue” and “hell” and other words.

“She’s fast, too. Smoking on Main Street only this morning, and after I prayed her an’ Mrs. Elmer almost went down on her knees ...

“What was the great idea?” Mr. Pffiefer permitted himself the question. “This will, I mean. Why residue, why marriage, before October’s twenty-first anniversary?”

Mr. Elmer glanced at him resentfully.

“Jenny believed in marryin’ young for one thing. And that’s right, Mr. Pffiefer. The psalmist said, ‘A maid——’”

“Yes, yes,” said the lawyer, a little testily, “we know what he said. But David never was my idea of a Sabbath school teacher. Mrs. Jones’s views are understandable. But fixing the will that way—I can’t get round that somehow. Almost looks as if it was a bribe to get October off your hands.”

His bright eyes transfixed Mr. Elmer for a second, but that worthy and conscientious man stared dumbly through the window. If he heard the challenge he did not accept.

“Almost looks,” said Pffiefer, with a hint of rising heat, “as if this humbug about the residue of an estate, which palpably and obviously has no existence, was a lure to a likely bridegroom. Sounds grand, ‘residue of my estate,’ but so far as I can see, Elmer, there are ten acres of marsh and a cottage that no man or woman could ever live in—say five hundred dollars——?”

He jerked his head on one side inquiringly.

“Twen’y-five hundred dollars,” murmured Mr. Elmer. “Got a feller over from Ogdens’ to value it. He said the new Lakes canal might be cut right through that property. What’ll I be owing you, Mr. Pffiefer?”

The lawyer’s first inclination was to say “Nothing,” but he thought better of that.

“Ten dollars,” he said briefly, and saw the old man wince.

Mr. Elmer paid on the nail, but he paid with pain. At the door of the office he paused. A thought occurred to the lawyer.

“Say, Mr. Elmer, suppose Sam doesn’t want to marry? He’s got kind of smart lately. And he has more money than seems right.”

Mr. Elmer shifted uncomfortably.

“Sam’s a worker,” he said. “He’s made money out of real estate——”

“Where?” asked the other bluntly. “I know as much about realty in this country as the next man, and I don’t remember seein’ Sam’s name figurin’ in any deal.”

Mr. Elmer was edging to the door.

“I think the rain’ll hold up long enough to get in the corn,” he stated. “Roots are just no good at all. Maybe I’ll get you to fix that new lease I’ve gave to Orson Clark.”

On this good and promising line he made his exit.

Mr. Pffiefer saw him climb slowly into the buggy and untie the lines. He had touched a very sore place: Mr. Elmer was panic-stricken. And there was every reason why he should be.

Give a dog a bad name and hang him. Give a man, or, worse, a woman, a name which is neither Mary nor Jane, but hovers somewhere about the opposite end of the pole, and she attracts to herself qualities and weaknesses which in some ineffable way are traceable to her misguided nomenclature.

They who named October Jones were with the shades, though one of them had lived long enough to repent of his enterprise.

October, under local and topical influences, had at various times and on particular occasions styled herself Doris Mabel, and Mary Victoria, and Gloria Wendy. At the McCube College she was Virginia Guinevere: she chose that name before she left home and had her baggage boldly initialled V. G. J.

“I guess I can’t get rid of the Jones,” she said thoughtfully, her disapproving eye upon the ‘J.’ “That old sea-man will kind of hang around, with his chubby little knees under my ears, all time.”

“I am afraid so,” said her parent wearily.

He had been a tall man, hollow-cheeked, long-bearded. Children did not interest him; October bored him. She had a trick of borrowing rare volumes from his library and leaving them on a wood-pile or amidst the golden rod or wherever she happened to be when it started raining.

“Jones was a pretty mean kind of name,” she suggested. “Can’t you change it, daddy?”

Mr. Jones sighed and tapped his nose with a tortoiseshell paper-knife.

“It satisfied my father, my grandfather and my great-grandfather and innumerable ancestors before them——”

Her brows knit.

“Who was the first Jones?” she demanded. “I’ll have to get the biology of that. I guess they sort of came out of their protoplasms simultaneous.”

“—ly!” murmured Mr. Jones. “I wish you would get out of that habit, October——”

October groaned.

“What is the matter with Virginia?” she asked. “That is one cute little name!”

There was nothing that was October in her appearance, for October is a red and brown month, and she was pinkish and whitish: she had April eyes and hair that was harvest colour, and she had a queer, searching habit of glance that was disconcerting. People who did not know her read into this an offensive scepticism, whilst in reality it was eagerness for knowledge.

As to her moral character:

Miss Washburton Flemming, Principal of the Flemming Preparatory School for Girls, wrote to her father:

“... I would point out one characteristic of October’s which may have escaped your observation, and that is her Intense Romanticism, which, linked as it is with an Exaltation of Spirit, may lead her into ways which we should all deplore. It is unfortunate that the dear child was denied the inestimable boon of a Mother’s Love. Perhaps she is more self-controlled to-day than she was when she came under our care....”

“How much more of this stuff?” snarled Stedman Jones as he turned the page—there were three more pages and a two-page postscript. He dropped the letter on the floor.

He really didn’t care how intense or how romantic October was, or how exalted she might be. Whilst he paid her fees and her amazing extras, he did not wish people to write letters to him about her or anybody or anything. He had not to buy her dresses, thank heavens. There was an income from his wife’s estate administered by a lout of a brother-in-law whom he had only met twice in his lifetime and with whom, in consequence, he had only quarrelled twice.

Stedman was a bibliophile, the author of a scholarly volume of mediæval French history, and the only times he was ever really cheerful with October were the last week of her short vacation.

Nobody ever called her Virginia or Alys or Gloria Wendy or Guinevere or anything but October—the nearest she got to an acceptable nickname was when somebody, reasoning along intelligent lines, called her “Huit.” In another age she would have been a Joan of Arc: lost causes had for her an attraction which she could not resist. She was by turns a parlour Socialist, a Worker of the World, an anarchist and a good Christian woman.

Cross October in the pursuit of her legitimate rainbows, and she was terrible; thwart her, and you trebled her resolution; forbid her, and she bared her feet for the red-hot shares across which she was prepared to walk to her objective.

Her father died the second year she was at McCubes. She spent two days trying to be sorry—trying to remember something that made him different and dearer. She confided to the principal, who consoled her with conventional references to the source of all comfort, that she had not been greatly successful.

“There is really nothing intrinsically precious about fathers—or mothers either,” she said, to the good lady’s distress. “You give back people all that they give to you. Parents are only precious when they love their children—otherwise they are just Mr. Jones and Mr. Hobson. That is how I feel about Daddy. I tried hard to be sorry, but the only tear I’ve shed is when I got maudlin about being an orphan. There’s an awful lot of self-pity about us orphans!”

Miss Washburton Flemming felt it necessary to straighten a dangerous angle.

“Your father, my dear, worked very hard for you. He gave you a comfortable home, he bought you all that you have, and paid your fees....”

“He’d have been arrested if he hadn’t,” said October. “I’m terribly sorry, Miss Flemming, but I’ve just got to get this thing right from my own point of view. I don’t think any other matters to me, just now.”

Her father left practically no money—he never had any to leave; she learnt this from the big, uncouth Andrew Elmer. Mr. Jones had merely an annuity which died with him. Mr. Elmer, whom she remembered dimly, was an uncle, the brother-in-law of her mother and sole executor of her mother’s estate. Incidentally her guardian by law and soon to be her most unwilling host.

The translation from the intenseness of McCubes to the modified placidity of Four Beech Farm had at first the illusion of a desirable change; it was as though she had come through the buffets and tossings of a whirlpool to calm waters. In twenty-four hours those calm waters had the appearance of a stagnant pool on which the green scum was already forming. And Mrs. Adelaide Elmer was a shocking substitute for the human contacts she had broken.

October did not rebel: rebellion was her normal state of being. The wildness of a tiger is unaffected by a change of cages; the new keeper had met with nothing fiercer than the domestic cat, and was outraged because her charge showed her teeth when she should have purred. Wise Miss Flemming had fixed an imponderable average of behaviour, balancing periodic atheisms against rhapsodical pieties, and discovered a standard of spiritual excellence which was altogether admirable. Mrs. Elmer lacked the qualities of discrimination. She was in truth on the side of uncharity, having been strictly trained in a school which enjoined obedience to parents, blind faith in the Holy Word, and the meek and awe-stricken silence of all children in the presence of their elders.

The Reverend Stevens was called in, his assistance invoked. He came one Saturday afternoon, bringing in his large hand three little books of counsel and comfort. October was not impressed by him, and in truth his education had been of an intensive character and there were certain appalling gaps which only social experience or innate goodness of heart could have bridged.

“He has all the thrones and oil paintings of theology, but there is no carpet on his floor and he eats with his fingers,” said October metaphorically.

Mrs. Elmer, who took this literally, was momentarily paralysed.

“A nicer man never lived”—her voice was a cracked falsetto when she was agitated—“and uses a knife and fork same as you, October. I never heard a wickeder story....”

October did not argue. She never argued unless there was a victory to be gained.

The proposal that she should marry, nervously offered by Andrew Elmer, was accepted with remarkable patience.

“Really?” October was interested. “Who have you got?”

Andrew repressed a desire to expatiate on the cold-bloodedness of the question.

“I been talking to Lee Wasser ...” he began.

The next day Samuel was introduced. He was rather sure of himself and he spoke unceasingly on his favourite topic. October listened with downcast eyes. When he had gone, she asked:

“Does this young man know anybody besides himself?”

Mr. Elmer did not understand her.

Samuel brought flowers and candy and new facts and anecdotes which showed him in an heroic light. He had a neat turn of humour and a gift of repartee. He told her all about this. His conversation was larded with: “So I says to Ed,” and “So Al says to me,” and he invariably concluded every such narrative with the assurance: “I thought they’d died laughin’.”

Once she asked if anybody had ever died in these happy circumstances, and he was taken aback.

“Well ... I mean ... of course they didn’t die ... what I meant was ... well, you know.”

He went home that night, his mind clouded with doubt. Once, when they were alone, sitting on the porch on a hot June night, he grew sentimental ... tried to kiss her. It was his right, as he explained afterwards. There was no unseemly struggle or resistance, no lips seeking lips and pecking at an ear. She held him back with one athletic hand and asked him not to be a fool.

No date had been fixed for the wedding. The announcement on the part of Andrew Elmer that, by a clause in her mother’s will, October must be married on her twenty-first birthday, came in the nature of a shock to everybody but October. When she was told, a week before the date, she merely said “Oh?”

Sam had a consultation with his father and ordered an expensive suite at an hotel romantically situated on the banks of the Oswegatchie.

Thus matters stood when Mr. Elmer had his interview with Joe Pffiefer, the man of law, and found his worst fears fully justified.

The old grey horse ambled on at his own pace; the buggy rocked from side to side as its spidery-web wheels met an obstruction, and Mr. Elmer rocked with it. His shrewd eye surveyed the street. Old man Wasser was standing outside Wasser’s Universal Stores, running his hairy hand through and again through his mat of grey hair. His octagonal glasses had slipped down his nose, pugnacity was in the thrust of his long jaw. With his free hand he was gesticulating to point his observation. And his audience was Sam, very serious. Not the seriousness of one who was at that moment an object of admonition, but rather he seemed to have a partnership in seriousness; his manner spoke agreement. Every time the waving hand fell to thump an invisible tub, Sam nodded deeply.

Mr. Elmer sniffed: he always sniffed rapidly when he was perturbed: and guided the languid grey to the broad sidewalk.

“... I was just saying to Sam that it don’t feel like a wedding day for nobody. Seems like when you’re camping and find out round about supper-time that it’s been Sunday all day. It don’t seem like Sunday—and it don’t seem like Sam’s wedding day.”

Sam shook his head. It only felt like a wedding day to him because he was uncomfortable and nervous and rather unhappy.

“It ought to be—different,” said Mr. Wasser Senior, glaring up at the man in the buggy. “Ought to have a kind of excitement and—well, it ought to be different. I’m not so sure ...”

He shook his head. Sam also shook his head.

“I don’t see what’s the matter with the day——” began Elmer.

“It’s the feeling. Kind of hunch, here!” Old Wasser struck his chest. “You got to be reasonable, Andrew; you got to put yourself in my place. Sam’s my only boy—can’t afford to spoil his young life. That’s the point. And October—her wedding day, and here was she, not ’n hour ago, on this very board walk with a cigarette an’ everybody looking at her and remarking. Old Doctor Vinner and Miss Selby and the city people over at Linsberg House. And Sam—what did she tell you, Sam?”

Sam emerged from the background and testified.

“She said one man’s like another man—only this morning. And she didn’t love me. She said she’d as soon marry a tramp as marry me—she wasn’t particular. She said that a girl had to make a start somewhere an’ maybe I’d do to begin with——”

Mr. Elmer drew a deep, whistling breath.

“Wish she’d seen that bum I was talkin’ to, she’d change her mind pretty quick,” said Sam, encouraged to eloquence. “I told her that wasn’t the kind of talk I liked to hear from a girl who was wearin’ my betrothal ring. She took it off and heaved it at me. Said she wasn’t going to limit the—what was it?—limit the expression of her personality for fifty dollars’ worth of bad taste——”

“H-w-w-w!” breathed Andrew Elmer. Mr. Wasser’s face was all smiling triumph.

“She said maybe she’d change her mind, she wasn’t sure—that’s when she told me that one man was like another as far as she was concerned.”

“Sam’s got the ring in his pocket,” confirmed Mr. Wasser.

“She’s young.” Andrew spoke urgently. “They get that way: doubt their own judgment. It’s natural. She’s always spoke well about you to me. I get plumb tired of hearing her talk of you. It’s ‘Sam this’ and ‘Sam that’ mornin’ till night. She’s proud and likes to hide her feelings.”

“Wish she’d hide the line she sold me,” said Sam, not wholly convinced, and yet, since he was a man and young, finding a difficulty in disbelieving this story of the secret praises which had been lavished upon him.

He looked at his father. The smile had left Mr. Wasser’s face; he was glum and perplexed.

“And we ought to have had her marriage deed fixed, Andrew. What’s the hurry, anyway? Give these young people a month or so to think it over....”

He pleaded, but could not insist. Andrew Elmer was in a sense a partner in his real estate transactions; he had unsuspected pulls, controlled a certain board of management, was in every way the wrong man to antagonise.

“It don’t feel like a wedding, Andrew. No party, nothing. Kind of mean and underhand. It will do us no good.”

Mr. Elmer gathered up the lines: it was the psychological moment.

“If you and Sam ain’t up to Four Beeches round about nine o’clock to-night, I guess I’ve got enough sense to know that you’ve backed out,” he said sombrely, and laid his whip across the old grey’s withers.

Anyway, he ruminated with satisfaction, he had avoided discussing the very delicate matter of October’s financial position.

As he was turning at the fork, a long-bodied touring car came slowly past him. He had a glimpse of a thin-faced man at the wheel. An Englishman, he guessed by the monocle. The machine had a Canadian number. Strangers are rare in Littleburg; he turned his head and looked back after the car, saw it stop before the Berg House Hotel. A few minutes later he saw two men who were also strangers. A tall, thick-set man with a short red beard, and a fat little man whose face was broader than it was long, the breadth being emphasised by the straight black eyebrows and moustache. They were striding out side by side, the little man’s head no higher than his companion’s shoulder. They favoured Mr. Elmer with a quick, sidelong stare and marched past with no other greeting.

“Littleburg’s goin’ ahead,” said Mr. Elmer.

He had large interests in Littleburg real estate, and had every reason to be pleased at this slender evidence of the town’s growing popularity.

The two men marched on without exchanging a word and turned into Berg House with the precision of soldiers. A tall, thin man in a long dust-coat was talking to the clerk. He was an Englishman: his accent betrayed him. Good-looking, though his face and features were small, sleek-haired, a little petulant.

“... the roads are abominable. Isn’t there a post road to Ogdensburg?”

The two men hardly paused in their stride: they heard this as they passed to the stairway. A stocky, sandy-haired man, who had been dozing in one of the long chairs that abounded in the vestibule, opened one eye as they came abreast of him, straightened up, relit the stub of his dead cigar, and followed them up the stairs. Evidently he knew their habitation, for he knocked on No. 7 and a voice barked permission to enter.

“’Morning, boys.” He nodded affably to the two, and such was his perfect assurance that there was no need for him to display the silver badge that was pinned on the inside of his coat.

“Heard you were in town. Stayin’ long?”

Red Beard finished the glass of water he was drinking when the detective entered, wiped his moustache daintily with a silk handkerchief and jerked a cigar from his pocket.

“Me and my friend are just stoppin’ over to look round,” he said. “We reckon to go on to Philadelphia, N.Y., by the night train. Thasso, Lenny?” He looked to his friend for support.

“Thasso,” said Lenny.

The sandy man lit the cigar.

“Chief asked me to make a call,” he said apologetically. “Thought maybe you mightn’t know we’d seen you arrive. Pretty poor place, Littleburg. You’d starve here, and that’s a fact. Ogdensburg’s not much better. The police have had a clean-up lately and they’re mighty sore with folks who think they’re easy. Chief was on the line to them this morning, and they reckoned Ogdensburg wouldn’t be healthy for you.”

“Philadelphia,” said Red Beard, “and we’re only stopping off. Utica’s our home.”

“Fine,” said the sandy man, by nature and training a sceptic. “Either of you boys got a gun?”

Red Beard spread out his arms invitingly, and the detective made a quick search first of one and then of the other. No lethal weapon was discovered.

“That’s fine,” said the sandy man cheerfully. “I’ll be seeing you at the depot about nine?”

“Sure thing,” said Red Beard as heartily.

The detective went down through the vestibule and telephoned. The Englishman had departed.

“Some of these guys want the earth,” complained the clerk. “’Is Lordship wants a new post road.”

“English?”

“And some,” said the clerk.

An hour later Red Beard and his friend came down to the lounge and were silent spectators of a ceremony.

A number of high-spirited young men of Littleburg had formed a ring about an embarrassed young man and they were chanting a ribald chorus. Red Beard gathered from this that the young gentleman in the centre was on the verge of matrimony. They were chanting the lay of a local poet and were by now word perfect.

“Aw ... listen, fellers ... !”

“Aw, listen, fellers!”

The circle broke into a formless little group from which great noises emerged.

“You are, Sam! And so you are ... you old skinflint!” “Aw, listen! ... say, come along to my apartment....”

The crowd billowed unevenly towards the door, Mr. Bennett, the proprietor of Berg House, rubbing his hands in the background and looking happy for the first time since this congregation had irrupted into his hotel.

Sam Wasser’s “apartment” was above the garage of his suffering parent. Sam, who was a strangely old boy, gave little parties here at times. There were secret closets wherein The Right Stuff was stored, and an odd assortment of glasses.

Towards the end of the afternoon Sam made a suggestion.

“Lishen, fellers ... got an idea. There’sh an ole hobo up in the woods ... good feller ... man of the world. Le’s go right along an’ gim a drink. Bet he ain’t tasted the Right Stuff in years.... Le’s all be bums.... Glor’us Fraternity Men who Love Wide Open Spacesh.... Le’s ...”