Читать книгу The Opal Pin - Rufus Gillmore - Страница 5
Chapter 3
Оглавление“Manner’n’ tone, David, manner’n’ tone! That’s what the four hundred have on us, and that’s all, too. One generation ices-up for the next, and the next gets in all right without so much as a struggle. ‘Tain’t a case of money, breeding or leading a vertical life—nothing of the sort—just cold storage. Take Gideon Tucker! What’s he got? Nothin’ but a name that once was, shiny clothes, and the patented freezing process. Gus Ames, social tramp; not money enough to buy a drink, too lazy to do anything but dance for a living—leads the swell Boston cotillions, doesn’t he? Hired, of course. We all know that. Sim Hodge, farmer’s boy, self-made man like me; how’d he wriggle into that Cold Roast Boston set? Married one of their cold-storage women. I could buy and sell Sim; we’re good friends still, but his hand now would give you a chill. Manner’n’ tone, frost an’ distance—that’s the recipe! Look at Algy Coolidge. . . .”
Bunce kept on down the list of Boston people of birth and rank, handling their names with the familiarity of a megaphone-man on a sight-seeing auto, talking to David but really addressing the neighborhood. David rejoiced because it left him free to observe others in whom he was more interested.
Bunce talked on tirelessly. The young man in the chair ahead apparently paid no attention. And the girl—was she still watching him? Was she, each time that she lifted her eyes from her book, using the highly polished mahogany paneling as a mirror?
The train clicked along, and David could not determine. Gradually lack of event made him weary of his espionage and brought his attention back to his employer. Bunce was an inveterate smoker; Bunce had always spent most of his time on the train in the buffet smoker at the end. They were within an hour of Boston and Bunce had yet to leave his seat. Why was he so greatly interested in the stranger? Bunce had ceased to talk, lay back in his chair, eyes closed, apparently dozing. Had he given up all hope of achieving acquaintance? That wasn’t like Bunce.
David, unable to decide, looked out the window at the moving pictures. He was aroused by a sudden movement on the part of his employer. He turned to find the stranger’s seat vacant and both the young woman and Bunce looking toward the rear exit of the car. Bunce waited a moment, then yawned and rolled to his feet.
“Come on, David, my boy,” he said, “let’s slip back for just one smoke before we get into the Hub of the Universe.”
There were a number of unoccupied chairs in the smoker, but Bunce stood in the entrance until he located the stranger. The young man was seated in one of the cross seats just at their left. David, securing his first fair view of him, noticed that he was tall and distinguished looking, that his face wore the tan of travel or leisure. He was sitting in the corner with his feet sprawled out beneath the table. In the long-fingered right hand upon the table a cigarette sent up thin ribbons of chiffon across the rays of the descending sun of April. The cigarette bore a long ash, suggesting that he had lighted it, taken a puff or two, forgotten it. Attitude, look, everything, indicated that he desired to be left to himself.
Bunce paused only to locate him. Overlooking all the empty chairs beyond, he whisked masterfully up to the compartment occupied by the stranger.
“These seats taken?” he asked, and then, not waiting for an answer, he waved toward the other seat. “You sit in there, David,” he ordered and himself stood waiting for the stranger to make room beside him.
“I hope you don’t mind, friend,” he apologized, “it makes me carsick to ride backward.”
For a moment the young man looked up at Bunce expressionlessly. Then he rose.
“It’s all right. I was just going,” he announced politely, attempting to get by Bunce out into the aisle.
“Now, see here, I won’t stand for driving you out,” declared Bunce without moving aside.
“Not at all, I assure you. Really, I was about to leave.” The young man smiled.
Bunce never budged. “See here, stranger,” he expostulated, “this isn’t being very friendly, now, is it? Sit down and have a drink or a smoke just to show there’s no ill feeling. I’m the last man in the world to think of driving a man off his own doorstep.”
“Thank you, but—”
Bunce took insult, started indignantly away. “Here, you keep your seat and we’ll go somewhere else,” he stormed. “Never dreamed you’d object to our sitting in with you.”
“My dear sir! I’ll stay, of course, if that’s the way you feel about it.”
The young man dropped back into his corner, and, without further ado, Bunce, beaming, planted himself beside him. “Have a cigar?” he asked, throwing two upon the table and biting off the end of a third himself.
The stranger held up his cigarette as an excuse for not taking one. With the other hand he opened and placed upon the table his own cigarette case. It was a huge affair of chased silver, monogrammed, containing thirty or forty cigarettes. “Perhaps you will have a cigarette,” he said to David.
David’s hand stopped on its way to one of Bunce’s cigars. He held the contempt for cigarettes of one without the habit, but the way the stranger had immediately included him in the party won his heart. He looked up and met his eyes. Certain of the Latin races issue those black-brown eyes, big and shining and intense, never dull or without luster, filled with a passion strangely touching when things go wrong. David looked into them and went under. His hand strayed from the desired cigar to one of the stranger’s undesired cigarettes.
Bunce granted only the respite necessary to get his own cigar drawing.
“Going to stop off long in Boston?” he began.
“I wish I knew.” The young man carefully killed his cigarette, and lighted one of Bunce’s cigars.
“Ah, undecided! Visiting friends?”
“No. As a matter of fact, I’m looking for work.”
“Work!” Bunce looked him over. “What!—with those clothes?”
“What’s the matter? Has the fashion passed me?”
“Work!—with those fancy hands!”
“They grew on me. What can I do—cut them off?”
Bunce decided to laugh. “Ho, ho, ho, ho!” he exploded. “The next thing you’ll be telling me you sign your checks with a cross.”
The young man smiled politely, but said nothing. “Say, friend, what kind of a con game are you trying to put over on us?”
Bunce stopped chuckling and got down to business. “Plenty of this what you call ‘work’ right in New York. Couldn’t you get away with any of it?”
“Yes; but I thought I’d like to try my fortune in another city.”
“Oh!” Bunce waited for further confidence; it did not come.
“What’s the matter? Overspent your allowance? Been living like a Pittsburgher?” he pushed on.
“No.”
“If you asked me, I’d say your trouble was lockjaw.”
The stranger laughed.
Bunce took immediate advantage of the opening. “Well, what do you say to having a high-ball with us?” he asked, ringing for the porter.
“Thank you.”
Bunce affected not to notice the shake of the head that went with the words. He ordered and, when the stranger’s drink came with theirs, he made short work of his protest.
“Drink it, man, it won’t do you a bit of harm,” he insisted, “ain’t a Keeley-cure graduate, are you?”
The stranger smiled, poured, and allowed the porter to fill his glass with White Rock.
Bunce nodded approvingly and immediately assumed a more patronizing manner. “I’ve taken quite a fancy to you,” he said largely. “Now tell us all about it, son.”
The young man regarded Bunce with astonishment. “There’s nothing to tell except that I want to work,” he said politely after a moment.
Bunce took another tack. “What sort of work did you do in New York?” he asked.
“I worked in an advertising agency for a short time.”
“Short time! Hem! Couldn’t you make good?”
“Yes; they said I had ideas. I could have stayed.”
“Then why in the devil—” Bunce checked himself, but finished with a look.
The young man put down his cigar and patiently folded his hands upon the table. “As I stated, there were reasons why I didn’t want to remain in New York any longer.”
Bunce scowled. “Don’t mind looking like a runaway cashier or bank president, do you?”
The stranger laughed a little nervously. “You don’t notice any signs of the loot on me, do you?” he parried. “I don’t want to mislead you. I’m merely going to another city to begin over; that is, all I want is a chance to show what I can do—that’s about all there is to say.”
Bunce stared at him, plainly puzzled. “Great mistake, these half-confidences,” he muttered. “Young man, I’m one of the prominent business men of Boston. If you’d only tell—”
“Pardon me, you’ll have the same?” interrupted the stranger, signaling the porter.
“Don’t get nervous, I’m not going to offer you work.” Bunce sank into a moody silence which he managed to preserve until the drinks were ordered and brought. “Now, no offense, but how can I offer to do anything for a man who stops where you have? Just put yourself in my place.”
The stranger attempted a diversion by raising his drink in salute.
Bunce took a short sip, then put down his glass impatiently. “Strangest case I ever run up against,” he complained. “Here I am ready to lend you a hand and you just sit there and throw me down. Never saw anything like it.”
“I’m sorry, but what else can I do?” The young man gazed out the window.
“What else can you do? Tell me enough to take the fleeing criminal look off you. Just a little about your people and how you came to be looking for work rigged up like a swell. I’ll keep your incog., if that’s what’s eating you.”
“Incog.?” The young man reached nervously for his drink and drained it. As he put down the glass a thought seemed suddenly to startle him. He rose quickly to his feet. “I’ll have to ask you to excuse me for a few minutes,” he said.
Bunce, his face a study in disappointment, rose to allow him room to pass. “See here, you’re coming back again, aren’t you?” he exclaimed with alarm..
“Yes. I haven’t paid for the drinks yet.”
“Because if you shouldn’t—I want you to have my card, anyway.” Bunce thumbed a card nervously from his card-case and handed it to him. “I don’t know whether you want to give me one of yours or not,” he suggested awkwardly.
The stranger’s hand started instinctively for his card-case, but dropped. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t one with me,” he murmured. Then he appeared to catch the quick glint of suspicion on Bunce’s face. He paused uneasily. “But my name’s Durant— Richard Durant—if you can remember that,” he added restlessly. A moment later he disappeared through the door at the end of the car.
“ ‘Richard Durant’—there’s a name with some sound to it! You can’t fool me about the real ones. He’s the second man with some class I’ve got acquainted with on this train. I met Cornwallis Brooke this way. Mark my words, before we get through we’ll find he’s got his valet somewhere on this train or the next,” muttered Bunce triumphantly, for the first time deigning to notice David.
David could not forbear the covert sarcasm. “I agree with you that he acted like a gentleman from the start,” he admitted.
“Gentleman!” Bunce missed utterly the subtle criticism. “Gentleman! He’s either the real, quadruple-plated thing or I’ll eat my hat So you think he’s a gentleman, do you, David?” Bunce laughed quietly, with an irritating superiority.
“Yes—if he isn’t a crook or confidence man,” retorted David, looking up to observe the man in question beckoning through the door back of Bunce. For a moment he stared, doubting if the call were meant for him. Then he excused himself, left Bunce blissfully writing down the name, and went to meet the man who bore it.
Richard Durant opened the door and David joined him on the observation platform at the end of the train. They were the only occupants. A thin hail of cinders fell all about them and eddied around their eyes. Down the long, straight stretch of track clouds of dust sprang up in protest, pursued the trespassing train a short distance, and then gave over the chase to fresh ones. The air rushed back into the vacuum created by the swift passage of the train, and all the dirt and noise of travel fell upon them.
“I’m in deep water,” said the stranger.
“What?” David did not believe he heard aright above the din.
The stranger seemed disturbed by the sharpness of his tone. “Come on in where the hearing’s better,” he said after a moment’s hesitation.
David followed him meekly inside the car, wondering what was coming.
The stranger took one swift look at David, then his gaze wandered down the car, passing uneasily from passenger to passenger.
“I’m sorry to say that I’m in rather a bad fix— and I’m about to ask you to help me out,” he said hesitantly.
“Yes.” David pondered. Which did he wish help to escape, Bunce, the police—or, could it be the girl in the other car?
“I didn’t like to speak to the man you are with.”
It was Bunce! “No, that would be useless,” David advised, thinking quickly how the stranger could be loosened from Bunce’s clutch.
“Nor, on the other hand, did I feel sure I could fix it up with the porter.”
The porter! Then it was the police. David gloomed at the idea of serving as a confederate. “No,” he murmured unhappily.
“So I had no recourse except to you. But I shouldn’t be either surprised or hurt if you refused.”
Oh, Lord, it was the girl he wished to escape! David felt less inclined to mix in than ever. “I wish you’d tell me what’s the matter,” he suggested impatiently.
“I haven’t got money enough to pay for those drinks.”
David choked. Then, in spite of himself, he laughed. “You—you—you broke it so gently,” he gurgled, “that I thought you wanted me to murder or mutilate someone for you.”
“You took it so hard that I thought it was going to be a case of touch and go,” retorted Richard Durant.
“I feel more touched than hurt.” In their joint laughter David’s hand once again did a strange thing. It started for the pocket in which he kept his change; it kept on to an utterly different pocket. “Here, help yourself !” He was handing Durant his pocketbook.
Richard Durant’s face lighted, but he acted as if David’s offer were the most natural one in the world. He separated a single dollar from the array of bills and held out the pocketbook to its owner.
“Better take enough,” David was urgent.
“Thank you, I’m no highwayman. And—have you noticed this?” Durant drew the scarfpin from his tie and deposited it in David’s hand.
The stone was a blue opal, carved delicately, wonderfully into the semblance of a devil’s head. It was lifelike, sinister, leering. David exclaimed at the perfection of the workmanship.
“Keep it,” Durant invited him.
“Couldn’t think of robbing you,” David replied, attempting to return it.
“I’m an utter stranger to you. Keep it—at least until I call on you for it.” Durant ignored his protests, moved away. “Shall we go back now?” he asked, already on his way.
Bunce had evidently made use of their absence to map out a fresh campaign. There are people whose interest in another is only increased by the amount of reserve they encounter. Barely were they seated before he squared around toward Durant.
“Where are you going to put up in Boston?” he demanded.
“I haven’t decided yet.” Durant’s eyes twinkled as they caught those of the man from whom he had just borrowed the dollar. “Is there a Mills Hotel there?”
Bunce laughed shortly. “Now let’s cut out all this Mills Hotel business; we’re getting pretty close to town,” he advised. “Whom have you got letters to in Boston?”
“No one.”
“Then whom do you know there?”
“Not a soul.”
“Fine! You’re just going there to begin all over again, to start a clean slate, so to speak.” Bunce’s tone was guarded, but his look was satirical.
“Something like that.” Durant smiled.
“Fine! And, likewise, lucky for you that you fell into such good hands. Do you know a chap named Cornwallis Brooke? No? Well, he owes it to us that he’s right in with the best Boston society to-day. Met him, took a fancy to him, and now he’s hob-nobbing with the Cabots and all them.” Bunce enrolled him in the best set with a large, imperious gesture. “And, do you know what I’m going to do for you?” he went on. “I’m going to take you home with me to-night while we make your plans.”
“But—but—you don’t know anything about me!” Mr. Richard Durant seemed dumbfounded.
“What’s that got to do with it? I like your looks.”
“Hands and all?” Durant laughed nervously. “You’d better think first,” he cautioned.
“Benjamin Bunce has always been able to take care of Benjamin Bunce,” boasted the owner of that name, shooting a too venturesome cuff.
“Well, old King Cole—I’m a weak and friendless creature in a strange city.”
“Never mind, I took a fancy to you from the start. Let’s say you look like a long lost nephew of mine. Let it go at that.”
The stranger appeared still to teeter over the proposition. “If it’s just curiosity, I’ve told you all I shall about myself,” he warned.
“That’s all right. No questions asked. You just come along and make my home your own. Liberty Hall and all that. I like your looks, I tell you, and I want to see you start right. And, as for work— well, this will give us just the chance we need to talk that matter over.”
“That is so. One night—well, I don’t see why I shouldn’t do that,” mused Richard Durant.
“Then that’s settled!” Bunce placed both hands on the table as the cue for them all to rise.
“But I must say it’s exceedingly generous of you.”
“Don’t mention it, me lud. Now, suppose you just hand over your baggage checks.” Bunce rose hastily, as if not proposing to give his guest time to repent.
“Four pieces!” Bunce counted the checks. “Well, for a man looking for work you sure do travel with some baggage.” Bunce flourished the checks before David as if they augured well for the success of his purpose, whatever that might be.