Читать книгу Ramshackle House - Footner Hulbert - Страница 4

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When Pen ran into the dining-room she found the little man seated at the table, his reading glasses on his nose and the newspaper spread before him. The face that he raised to her was pale and moist with excitement; his hands gripping the edge of the paper made it rattle with their trembling. Nevertheless in her first glance Pen was assured that no disaster threatened their house. There was even a sort of pleasure mixed with his horror. Her first reaction was to chagrin at having been frightened for nothing.

"What's the matter?" she asked sharply.

"Look! Look!" he said, pointing to the paper.

With her own swift, swimming motion she moved behind him, and looked down over his shoulder. She read staring headlines:

WEALTHY NEW YORK STOCKBROKER FOUND MURDERED

She was freshly annoyed by what seemed to be such ridiculous excitement. "What's that got to do with you?" she demanded.

"Read! Read!" he said hoarsely.

She impatiently read what was under the headlines:

"Collis Dongan of the old New York family, wealthy clubman and member of the Stock Exchange, was found dead in his apartment last night. Mr. Dongan, a widower without children resided at the exclusive Hotel Warrington. The body was found by his valet George Canfield who had been away on a vacation granted him by his master over the holiday. The revolver with which the deed was done was found lying near, and at first it was supposed to be a case of suicide. But Doctor Raymond Morsell the hotel physician who was quickly summoned by the frightened servant, instantly pronounced that the wound could not have been self-inflicted. The bullet had entered the base of the skull. The body was found lying in Mr. Dongan's living-room. It was fully clothed. There were no signs of any struggle. Every indication pointed to the fact that he had been shot down from behind without warning. Apparently he had been dead three days. His blood was matted and dried in the rug on which he lay."

Pen looked up in disgust. "What do you want me to read this horrible stuff for?" she asked. "It's like all the other cases."

"Read on!" said her father.

"After having summoned the doctor, the valet's next thought was to notify the dead man's partner Donald Counsell who occupied an apartment on the same floor in another part of the hotel...."

Pen read this name without any sensation beyond a sudden quickening of interest. She needed no further urging to read on.

"... but Counsell was not found in the hotel. Developments followed fast after that. The valet, Canfield, remembered that when he left his master on Friday night Counsell was with him, and the two men were quarrelling, apparently over business matters. He heard Counsell, who is a young man, violently abusing his senior. Dongan was not seen alive after that. Various persons living in the hotel testified to having heard a muffled sound which might have been a shot at 11.15 Friday night. At 11.20 the night clerk saw Counsell leaving the hotel, clearly in a state of agitation.

"The dead man's brother, Richard H. Dongan, vice-president of the Barrow Trust Company, was notified, and at his suggestion a hasty search of the books of Dongan and Counsell was conducted for the purpose of establishing a possible motive for the crime. The firm was found to be heavily involved owing to certain speculations of the junior partner on the exchange. By the break in Union Central last week Counsell stood to lose seventy-five thousand dollars, which apparently he had no means of raising. It is supposed that he appealed to his partner for help, and upon being indignantly refused, shot the elder man. The case against Counsell was made complete when Thomas Dittmars, bookkeeper to Dongan and Counsell, reluctantly identified the revolver as one belonging to Counsell, and pointed out Counsell's initials scratched on the butt. The bookkeeper knew the weapon because more than once it had been loaned to him when he had a large amount of Liberty bonds to deliver for the firm. Dittmars knew nothing of the transactions in Union Central because they were entered in the firm's private ledger to which only the partners had access. No trace of Counsell has been discovered since he left the hotel."

Thus far the summary of facts which heads all newspaper stories. Several columns of comment and hypothesis followed:

"On the face of it it is one of the most dastardly crimes in recent years. Dongan befriended the young man upon his graduation from college and admitted him to a partnership in his business only to be swindled and finally to be shot down by his protégé."

Pen for the moment disregarded what followed. She had to stop and think, she would have said, but as a matter of fact she was incapable of thinking. She was conscious only of a dull horror that numbed her faculties. She had not yet taken it in. Outwardly she was quite composed. With the palm of her hand she thoughtfully polished a dull spot on the velvety surface of the table.

Pendleton fairly babbled in his excitement. "When I first read the story he was in the drawing-room with you. I didn't know what to do! I didn't know what to do!"

Pen was sharply recalled to the necessity for action. "Well, what are you going to do?" she asked quietly.

"My duty," said the little man swelling a little.

"Inform against him?"

"Inform? What a word to use!" said Pendleton with asperity. "I mean to give him up to justice as he richly deserves."

"But he didn't do it," said Pen with an odd, detached air. The words came out of her involuntarily.

Pendleton stared. "How do you know?"

"By instinct," she said simply.

"Fiddlesticks!" said Pendleton. "You read the paper, didn't you?"

Pen merely smiled the smile that women use when they decline to argue with a man. It is very exasperating to a man.

"You have seen the man once and exchanged a few pleasantries with him!" he cried. "Do you presume to decide from that whether or not he is capable of murder?"

"I suppose he could shoot a man—with sufficient provocation," she said coolly. "Any man could I suppose ... But not like that. Not in the back!"

Pendleton flung up his hands. "Isn't that like a woman! Just because he has fine eyes I suppose, and a taking smile!"

It never reached Pen who was busy with her own thoughts. She knew in her heart without reason, without arguments that the charge was false, but she was searching for reasons that would convince a man. Her instinct led her unerringly to the weak spots of the case against Counsell.

"Why should he leave his pistol behind to convict him?" she asked. "Why should he introduce himself to us under his right name?"

Pendleton waved this impatiently aside. "Oh, they always make some slips. That's how they're caught. From the first I felt there was something funny about him."

"It was you who first asked him to stay," said Pen indignantly.

"Yes. But I didn't expect the house to be turned upside down to entertain him," he retorted. "Something funny about him, skulking down the Bay like that. You remember how he said he preferred to be alone."

"There's nothing criminal in that!"

"I don't know. Very strange he should slink out of the house without saying good-night to me. Perhaps he saw me reading the paper."

Pen all but wrung her hands. This was men's boasted logic. How could an intelligent person cope with it?

The little man got up with an important air.

"Don't act in haste, Dad," Pen pleaded earnestly. "Something tells me you will regret it. At least sleep on it!"

"He will be gone in the morning," Pendleton said. A look of dismay appeared in his face. "Good Heavens! If he suspects anything he will push off at once!"

"Would you be sorry?" Pen asked astonished.

Pendleton was momentarily disconcerted. "Well no ... of course not. But I must do my duty just the same ... This is an important case. I must act with prudence. The eyes of the world will be upon us now."

"Oh, the newspapers!" cried Pen. "They poison our lives!"

Pendleton was already at the door of the room. "Are you going to take him single-handed?" queried Pen.

He hesitated, puffing a little bit to conceal his discomposure. "The negroes..." he hazarded.

"Ellick and Theodo'!" said Pen with curling lip.

Pendleton rubbed his bald crown. "You're right," he said. "Worse than useless. I'll go to the lighthouse for Weems Locket and his assistant."

"You'll have to pass the tent on the beach."

"I'll row around in my skiff," said Pendleton craftily.

"With muffled oars?" she asked scornfully.

"Why yes," he said innocently. He was impervious to her scorn.

"Dad, you must listen to me!" she cried.

"This is man's work," he said, swelling up. "You must leave it to me."

A sick horror overcame her, that men were so insensible to the truth. What could one do with them? It was evident from the whole tone of the story she had read that men had already made up their minds as to Counsell's guilt. Let one of them raise the cry and all were ready to give tongue as thoughtlessly as a pack of hounds. It was not the desire for justice that moved them but a sort of blood lust. They would try him with all their solemn farcical forms of justice, but none the less he would be railroaded to a shameful death!

"Dad! You mustn't. You don't know what you're doing!" she murmured, swaying.

He stared his displeasure. "Pendleton, is it possible that you ... that this young man..."

She contrived some sort of a laugh. "What nonsense!"

He turned out of the door saying: "I must act at once."

Pen gasped: "Dad!" and keeled over on a chair. The swoon was perfectly genuine, but she lost consciousness only for the space of a breath, and thereafter her wits worked with the swiftness of desperation. He was deaf to truth, to reason, to sense, very well then, she must use a woman's weapons against him. It was Pendleton's transports of distress that gave her her cue.

"Penny, Penny, my child!" he was crying wildly.

Pen's mother had died a young woman of a heart attack, and the fear that Pen might have inherited her weakness was ever present in the good, absurd little man's breast. It was Pen's final weapon. Be it said to her credit she had never used it before. She put her hand to her breast without speaking.

"Oh, my child! Look at me! Speak to me!" he implored.

"Help me to my room!" she whispered.

He made a manful attempt to pick her up in his arms, but she was as big as he. He could not lift her.

"What shall I do!" he wailed, wringing his hands.

"I can walk," she said. "If you will help me."

"But the stairs!"

"Let me lie down in the drawing-room until I feel better."

He helped her across the hall and Pen sank down on the old linen-covered sofa with the broken springs. She was still pressing her hand to her breast in that mute gesture that drove him to distraction. In truth she was pale enough, but it was not from heart disease.

He made her as comfortable as he could; he brought her a glass of water. He scampered back into the hall to call up the doctor. After agitated appeals to other subscribers to get off the line he finally got Doctor Hance on Absolom's Island. But evidently the doctor declined to make the long drive around the head of the creeks and down the impassable Neck road. Pendleton must come for him in his boat he said. In vain the distracted father pleaded that he could not leave his child; the doctor was firm.

Finally Pendleton said: "Very well, I'll come at once. Wait for me on the steamboat dock."

Pen's breast became easier. This plan suited her very well.

Crying that he was going to get Aunt Maria Garner, he ran out of the house. The negro cabin was some three hundred yards behind the big house.

Pen used the interim to get her thoughts in some kind of order. She began to be conscious of a sort of exaltation. Her thoughts ran: "He's in trouble! I shall not lose him now! ... Every man's hand is raised against him. He has no one but me to depend on. He's mine!" There was a terrible joy in the thought of standing side by side with him against the whole world. Her breast burned with a fire of resolution. She even had a fleeting regret that he was not guilty; if he had been it would have required her to give so much more. "I love him! I love him!" she said to herself now without shame.

Pendleton returned with Aunt Maria. Pen was aware of Ellick's and Theodo's black faces peering in at the windows. This interfered with her plans.

"Send them away," she murmured. "There is nothing they can do."

Aunt Maria went out on the porch and shooed her sons home.

Coming back the big negress picked Pen up without more ado and carried her up the stairs. Aunt Maria had been the first person in the world to receive Pen into her arms, and appeared to be unconscious of any increase in her darling's weight. Pendleton fluttered about her like a hen crying at every step:

"Be careful! Oh, be careful!"

Aunt Maria laid Pen down on her bed.

In the midst of his passionate solicitude, a queer little suspicion flickered up in Pendleton's eyes. "While I am gone for the doctor don't let her exert herself in the slightest," he commanded.

Aunt Maria reassured him and he hastened out of the house.

The instant the front door closed behind him Pen sat up in bed, and felt of her hair. Aunt Maria took it as a matter of course. Unlettered though she might be, she had a fully-developed set of instincts; she knew that all sorts of expedients were required to manage those unreasonable creatures, men, and she awaited the explanation with an air of being surprised at nothing and ready for anything.

"I've got to go out," said Pen, exchanging her evening slippers for a pair of rubber-soled sneakers.

Aunt Maria looked rather dubious.

Pen saw that she would win her more securely by appealing to her sense of romance. She began: "That young man who had lunch and dinner with us..."

Aunt Maria's broad face softened and her eyes rolled zestfully.

"There is a story in the paper accusing him of murder!"

It was not what Aunt Maria expected. Her chin dropped, and her eyes almost started from her head. "Bless God!" she murmured.

"Father means to give him up. So I'm going down to warn him."

In Aunt Maria fear overcame romance. "Honey ... honey!" she stammered. "Doan yo' go down there! Doan yo' take no chances! If he's a bad man he'll hurt yo'!"

"A bad man!" cried Pen with shining eyes. "Aunt Maria where were your eyes!"

The old negress was awed by that light in her child's eyes. "Well ... well..." she murmured, "he sho was a pretty young man!"

Seizing a sweater to cover her bare arms and neck, Pen ran out of the room and down the stairs. Aunt Maria sat down muttering and shaking her head.

Softly closing the big door behind her, Pen sped over the weedy drive. The main gate to the grounds was in the side fence near the edge of the bank. Half of it hung askew on one hinge and the other half lay rotting on the earth. Outside the gate there was a grassy road which made a right-angled turn there. In one direction it ran back between the fields and on up the Neck; in the other it went straight ahead along the edge of the bank and presently descended to the old steamboat wharf on the property. So swift had Pen been that her father was still in sight, his lantern jogging agitatedly down the road in front of her. He always carried a lantern irrespective of the moon. She slackened her pace.

The road ran gently down a natural fault in the high bank. The earth was powdered with silver dust; a mocking-bird sang its casual and thrilling song nearby, and farther off whip-poor-wills. The bushes that rose between the road and the edge of the bank were festooned with the vines of the wild grape. It was the moment of its flowering and in this place its strange, poignant fragrance drowned the honeysuckle. In after life Pen never smelled that scent without living this night over. She was quite collected now. Terror, anxiety, shame and such feelings had been burned up by her great determination.

The road ended before the dilapidated wharf where no steamer had tied up for many years past. Pendleton's skiff was drawn up on the sand alongside, and the Pee Bee anchored a hundred feet out in the stream. Pen hung back in the shadows until her father should get away. Off to the left where the white beach curved beautifully out to the point she saw Counsell's little tent pitched in the sand with a fire burning before it, and the dark canoe drawn up. Off the end of the point the spidery lighthouse fixed her with the baleful glare of its red eye.

Pendleton pushed off to his motor-boat with an amount of caution absurd under the circumstances, for as soon as he turned over the engine she exploded like a gun. This time there was no hesitation in the Pee Bee; she moved off at once with her usual violence, shattering the night. Pen, watching the tent saw Counsell come out and look in the direction of the sound. But presently he went back again.

As soon as it was safe to do so, she picked her way out over the broken floor of the wharf. The piles were gnawed and broken, and the pushing of the ice during many seasons had given the whole structure a rakish cant towards the Bay. Pen dropped over the side into an inch or two of water and gingerly picked her way towards the tent.

It was a little lean-to tent open to the fire in front, but with a mosquito curtain hanging down. He heard her splashing towards him and came out. He must have been sitting there looking at the fire and smoking. His pipe was still between his teeth. He stared at her as at a ghost without making a sound. His body had a tense look. She could not read his face because the moon was behind him. Its light was strong in her face.

"It is I, Miss Broome," she said in her direct way.

He seemed to come to life. "You!" he cried in a voice of delight. He laughed shakily. "I thought ... how foolish of me ... I was thinking of you ... I thought..." He seemed unable to go on.

"I came through the water to avoid making tracks in the sand."

"I understand!" he said eagerly. "I'll carry you ashore."

Pen stamped her foot in the water. "You don't understand! Stay where you are and I'll tell you!"

"There's nothing wrong is there?" he asked anxiously. "I heard the motor-boat start off."

"Wrong enough," said Pen simply. Since nothing was to be gained by beating around the bush, she blurted out the truth. "Collis Dongan has been found shot dead in his rooms, and you are accused of having done it."

"What!" he cried with so perfect an expression of astonishment that Pen's breast was warmed and comforted. No guilty man could possibly have simulated that look. She had not doubted him, nevertheless it was sweet to be reassured. The tears sprang to her eyes; she hung her head to hide them. He did not notice them. He was dazed.

"Collis Dongan dead!" he muttered. "When ... How?"

She told the main facts of the story slowly, distinctly as to a stupid person.

"Good God! how terrible!" he muttered. "How quick can I get back to New York? It was suicide of course. He had cause enough."

"What cause?" Pen asked quickly.

"He had swindled and betrayed me," Counsell said bitterly. "And I found him out ... But he's dead! I'm sorry now for the things I said to him!" His thoughts flew off at a tangent. "But how is it you came to tell me ... and like this?" He was looking at her submerged feet.

"My father feels it his duty to give you up," said Pen. "I gained a little time by making believe to be ill. He will be here later with other men."

"Well, that's all right," said Counsell. "It's all got to be sifted to the bottom of course. They can't have any case against me."

"They have a complete case against you," said Pen. "And don't you see, they think you ran away." She gave him the points of the evidence against him.

"That's bad," he said gravely. "My revolver, eh? I had lost it! ... But you didn't believe it!" he cried warmly.

"I'm not a man," said Pen simply.

"Anyhow, it doesn't alter things," he said. "I've got to go back. They couldn't send an innocent man to the chair."

Pen clasped her hands in a sort of despair. Another obstinate man to be argued with! "They could! They could!" she cried. "You don't understand. I couldn't bring the paper to you because it would have been missed. But you must read it later. Then you'll see. My father is just like other men. They all seem to act in a herd. They have made up their minds that you did it. They are determined you sha'n't escape. Your trial would be a mockery."

He was impressed by her earnestness. "Just the same ... I couldn't run," he said slowly.

"You mustn't do anything on impulse," Pen urged. "You must read the newspaper and find out where you stand. You must give yourself up if you so decide, but not allow yourself to be caught."

He seemed to be convinced, but he did not take the matter seriously enough to suit Pen. He seemed to be thinking more of her than of his own situation. He took a step nearer to her.