THE SHADE WHO MEDDLED
Sometime in the night Vaniman awoke, not suddenly, or with the sense of
having been disturbed, but torpidly, with the feeling that he had been
especially deep in slumber. He recovered his senses slowly. Therefore,
only gradually did he become aware of a peculiar new condition of
affairs in the camp. He wondered idly, trying to make up his mind as to
what was different in the place this night. He heard the “yeak-yeak”
of the crickets outside. He heard nothing else. Then he understood.
His three comrades were not vocalizing their slumber in snores. He had
endured the torture philosophically night after night.
His surprise awakened him fully. He listened, but he could not hear
the sound of breathing. He rolled out of his bunk and investigated.
The light in the camp was merely the reflection of the paler hue of the
night outside, filtering through the open door and the single window.
But he perceived that he was alone in the place--the bunks were empty.
His primitive life in the camp had inured him to new habits; he had been
removing only his shoes and his coat when he went to bed. He pulled on
his shoes--he did not bother with coat or hat. He rushed out of
doors and called aloud, hoping that his panic was exaggerating his
apprehensions. There was no answer.
Then his fears took definite shape and sought for confirmation. He ran
to the horse hovel. The animal was gone.
Standing there, bitterly conscious of what had happened and acutely
aware of what was likely to happen with those three miscreants on the
trail of the treasure that they coveted, Vaniman accepted his full
measure of responsibility. He did not excuse the passion which had
prompted him to open his heart in regard to Tasper Britt. It was plain
that they intended to unlock the secret of the money by the use of
Britt, going to any lengths of brutality the occasion might demand.
To get at Britt they would be obliged to invade the Harnden home.
The thought of what might develop from that sortie wrought havoc in
Vaniman's soul! His fears for Vona and her mother spurred him to action
even more effectively than his conviction that his own cause was lost if
the men were able to force the money from Britt. If they were captured
it would be like them to incriminate Vaniman as an accomplice; if
they got safely away with the treasure there could be no revelations
regarding Britt's complicity in its concealment. Britt certainly would
not tell the truth about what had happened to him; the fugitives would
hide their secret and their plunder.
If ever a victim of devilish circumstances had a compelling reason to
play the game, single-handed and to the full limit of desperation, so
Vaniman told himself, he was the man.
He ran from the hovel to the peak of the crag that overlooked the
village of Egypt. He beheld below him a vast expanse of grayish white,
the fleecy sea of the enshrouding vapor. He heard no sounds, he saw no
lights. He had no notion of the hour. Wagg had accommodated him with the
time of day, when he asked for it, just as Wagg loaned him a razor
and doled his rations, persistently and with cunning malice working to
subdue the young man's sense of independence.
But in this crisis all of Vaniman's courage broke from the thralls in
which prison intimidation and a fugitive's caution and despair had bound
it during the months of his disgrace.
No matter how long the others had been on their way! They would be
obliged to go the long route around the hill, and were hampered by the
van; their grim forethought in taking the vehicle to transport their
booty, as if they were sure of succeeding, was another element that
wrought upon Vaniman's temper.
As he was, without coat or hat, he leaped from the crag, as if he were
trying to jump squarely into the middle of the village of Egypt. He
had taken no thought of the steepness of the slope or the dangers of
descent. He slipped and rolled for many rods and a rain of rocks and
earth followed him and beat upon him when he caught a tree and clung
to it. He went on more cautiously after that; blood trickled from the
wounds on his face where the sharp edges of rocks had cut. He thrust
himself through the scrub growth, opening a way with the motions of a
swimmer, his hands scarred by the tangled branches. There were other
steep places that were broken by terraces. When he was down from the
rocky heights on which the vapor did not extend and had entered the
confusing mists, he was obliged to go more slowly still, for he narrowly
missed some nasty falls.
Fierce impatience roweled him. He would not allow himself to weaken his
determination by thinking on what he would do after he arrived at the
Harnden home. He had set that as his goal. Above other considerations he
placed his frenzied resolution to protect Vona. He realized that he must
protect her even from himself--from the shock she would suffer by his
unprefaced appearance, this lover who would come like one risen from the
dead! The scoundrels who came seeking Britt in her home would not be as
terrifying as the visitor who would seem to be a specter--the shade of
the convict whom a mountain had crushed, so said the official reports of
the tragic affair.
The fact that he was rushing to meet in combat three men, armed and
desperate, worried him less than his anguished concern in behalf of the
girl who was unprepared for his advent by hint or warning.
At last he came to the pasture slopes where he was more sure of his
footing. He ran. When he heard the rumble of wheels he stopped in order
to listen, trying to distinguish the location of the sound in the fog,
which made direction uncertain. He knew it must be late. Few vehicles
were moved in Egypt after dark. He suspected that what he heard was the
van.
However, he was puzzled by what he was hearing. Either there were many
vehicles, or else the echoes were playing pranks in the mists
which enwrapped all objects. Under the pall of fog all sounds were
exaggerated. To right and left, near at hand and far away he heard the
rumble of wheels, the creak of whiffletrees, and the plodding feet of
animals.
He heard, too, an occasional, dust-choked bleat or a plaintive lowing.
But a sound that was repeated regularly he could not understand, nor
could he determine the direction from which it came. It was sound
diffused like the fog itself. It was mellowed by distance. He recognized
the notes as the winding of some sort of a horn or trump.
Vaniman's ears were telling him nothing definite. He hurried on down the
hill so that he might make his eyes serve him at closer range. In order
to see what was going on in the highway he was obliged to go close to
the wall which bordered it; though the fog hindered, it helped, for in
the obscurity he was well hidden among the bushes.
First he saw a hayrack go past. Two horses drew it. It was piled high
with household goods, and women and children were on top of the load.
Two cows were hitched on behind. By the time the fog had hidden this
conveyance a wagon of the jigger type rumbled past. It was as heavily
loaded as the hayrack. He heard other vehicles coming--he heard still
others far down the road on their way.
He was urged by a furious desire to shout--to ask what all this meant.
But he did not dare to run such risks. There was a wall between him and
the rest of humanity until his sorry affairs could be straightened.
The highway gave him a clew as to his whereabouts; he had been lost
in that wallow of vapor, unable to distinguish north from south. He
retreated from the wall and stooped as he ran along behind the screen of
the wayside alders. He had an affair of his own to look after, no matter
what the rest of Egypt was doing.
In spite of his haste, he carefully scrutinized each item in this
singular parade of the night, keeping near enough to the road for
that purpose. It seemed like some sort of a migration. He wondered how
comprehensive it was. He wanted to be sure that nobody in whom he was
especially interested passed him without his knowledge. There was every
kind of an equipage that would convey people or property. Nobody was
talking. So far as was possible, the human beings in the procession
seemed to be trying to make a secret of the affair. Mothers hushed
their children when the youngsters chattered or whimpered. Men merely
whispered commands to the horses.
All at once Vaniman beheld the van. It was holding a place in the parade
and was moving with the decorous slowness of the other vehicles. On the
driver's seat with Wagg were the two convicts. The comrade whom they had
deserted waited until it had passed; then he ran out into the road and
ducked along close to the rear of it.
They were coming away from the village of Egypt. To what extent had they
succeeded in their rascally errand? What burden were they conveying?
Vaniman could not curb his wild desire to find out. He had had plenty of
experience in dodging into that van. He lifted the flap and leaped in.
There was black darkness in there. He put out his hand cautiously.
It touched a man. The move that the man made was a sort of fruitless
struggle, indicating that his limbs were secured in some way.
Vaniman, in that crisis in his affairs, was not affected by
squeamishness. He used his hands. He immediately discovered that the man
was tied up hand and foot with torn cloth, strips of sheets or something
of the kind. The man's only apparel was a nightshirt. Around his neck,
so Vaniman's touch told him, was a leather cord to which keys were
attached. Tasper Britt had told his cashier that he always carried his
keys to bed with him in that fashion, and he had advised Vaniman to
employ the same caution.
This prisoner in the van was certainly the magnate of Egypt. Vaniman
found that a towel was bound tightly across the bearded mouth; the young
man even ran his hand over the bald pate, now divested of its toupee.
There was no gold in the van. Vaniman made sure of that after he had
satisfied himself as to the identity of Britt.
While the young man was endeavoring to steady his whirling thoughts,
striving to plan some course of action by which he could turn the
situation to his personal benefit, his attention became taken up in
another quarter. Through the trap he heard the voice of the short man.
“Quick! Off the road. Nobody's in sight!”
The van lurched and the front of it dipped with a violence that drove
Vaniman and Britt against the end. Up came the front and the rear
sagged. Then the van went bumping and swaying over uneven ground. The
claw-clash of the branches of trees against the sides informed Vaniman
that the men had driven into the woods.
When the vehicle halted, the young man crawled forward and huddled down
into as compact a ball as he could make of himself.
He heard the three men dismounting. “I'll tell the world that this is a
handy night for us, whatever it is that's going on in this burg!” It was
the voice of that ever-ready spokesman, the short man. “There would have
been a head at every window if we had been obliged to go teaming around
all by ourselves, in the night. But they wouldn't have noticed a couple
of giraffes and a hippopotamus in that procession.”
“I couldn't see that they even paid any attention to those women
squalling upstairs when we did the job,” was the tall man's opinion.
“Handy night, say you? Why, that man we braced up to and asked where was
Britt's boarding house, he seemed to have so much of his own business
on his mind that he wasn't wondering a mite what our business with Britt
might be.”
“Get busy!” said the other convict. “That business is only just
beginning.”
There was a stir of feet.
“Hold on!” It was the voice of Wagg, mumbling cautiously. “Tie your
handkerchiefs over your faces like I'm doing.”
“Right!” the short man agreed. “Always leave 'em guessing when you say
good-by!”
A few moments later Wagg lifted the flap; Vaniman saw him outlined
against the fog. The convicts reached in and pulled Britt out, and the
flap was dropped.
“Look out!” the short man warned. “Loosen that towel only a little and
hold your clutch on his gullet, bo! We're not any too far from that
road, and we'll understand the good news if he'll only whisper it.”
After a few moments he went on. “Man, we've got you--got you foul! You
know where that gold coin is. Shut up! No argument. You tell us where it
is. Then you won't get hurt. If you don't tell us, you _will_ get hurt.
Get busy with your mouth!”
In spite of his abhorrence at this method of extorting the truth,
Vaniman was conscious of a feeling of comradeship with the three
rapscallions at that moment. They were merely seeking loot. He was
seeking the re-establishment of his honor and his love. He waited in the
tense silence, straining every nerve to hear. No sound came to him. He
wondered whether Britt, cowed, was whispering the information.
“Get busy, I tell you!”
Evidently the prisoner was obstinate.
Minute after minute the short man labored with the captive, the snarl in
his insisting voice deepening into the diapason of malevolent threat.
But Britt said no word.
Vaniman, feeling that all the prospects of his life were at stake,
decided to play a waiting game. In spite of their culpable motive, the
men outside were serving as his aides in the crucial moment. They were
demanding information which the usurer owed to the innocent.
“Oh, very well,” said the master of ceremonies. “We'll go on with the
rest of the program, then. One of you bring that side lamp and light it.
And help me get this towel tighter. He's going to try some squalling.”
Vaniman saw the flare of the lamp past the edge of the flap. He set
his teeth and decided that he would not interfere. When he heard sounds
which, muffled in the towel, were like the whines and grunts of a
tortured animal, he stiffened his determination to await the issue.
“Now loosen the gag and let him talk! I reckon he has found something to
say.”
Vaniman heard louder groans. But Britt gave out no information.
“Back with the talk-tickler! Hold it closer! The same foot! We've got a
good start on that one.”
The man in the van felt his gorge rising, in spite of the fact that the
victim was a relentless persecutor of others. The stifled accents of
agony were dreadful.
After a time the short man spoke. Into three words he put the venom of
a malice that would not be gainsaid. “Now, damn you!” His tone hinted at
no regret for what had gone on before; it suggested that there was more
to come; it was compelling demand that the captive should employ the
respite that was offered.
Britt began to babble; there was a suggestion of partial mania in his
tones. Vaniman could not understand what he was saying, but the sharp
questions that were interjected by the manager of the affair--the
queries that gimleted for additional information--suggested the line of
confession that Britt was giving forth.
“Yes--in the bank! Where in the bank? . . . I heard that, but where?
. . . In the basement, hey? Well, where in the basement? . . . Concrete
block hey? . . . Come across! . . . Along here with that lamp, bo! . . .
Exactly where is that block?”
Through Vaniman there flooded something that was almost a delirium of
derring do. He did not know just what he would be able to perform--one
against three. He did not dare to wait for any farther developments in
the thing. He was possessed by the frantic fear that the knaves would
use their information and beat him to the treasure. That the money was
somewhere in the basement of Britt Block was enough for him at that
juncture. He decided that the time for stealth was past. He would
proclaim the news. He would tell his story. He would trust the case to
the fair judgment of men.
He scrambled forward in the van and made a hasty survey of the
situation. Britt was stretched on the ground. The two convicts were
kneeling side by side, bending over their captive, and the short man was
still plying Britt with questions. Their backs were toward the man in
the van. Wagg was kneeling at Britt's feet, holding the carriage lamp,
shielding the flare with a curved palm.
The posture of all three of them invited the attack that Vaniman
instantly decided on. He could not hope that he would be offered a
better opportunity.
He flung aside the flap, he leaped from the opening. Spreading his
knees, he landed on the convicts, a knee on each back, and then he
brought his hands toward each other with all his strength, cuffing their
skulls together with a resounding crack. They fell across Britt.
Vaniman was on his feet while Wagg was rising; the guard's slow mind
was operating ineptly on his muscles. The young man felled Wagg with a
vicious blow under the ear.
The convicts, knocked senseless, were on their faces, pinning Britt to
the ground. The butts of the bulldog revolvers in their hip pockets were
exposed. Vaniman snatched out the weapons. He aimed one of the revolvers
at Wagg, who had struggled to his knees. “Your knife! Throw it to me!
Quick!”
Under the menace of the gun Wagg obeyed.
The young man pocketed the guns for a moment. He rolled the reviving
convicts off Britt and slashed the prisoner's bonds and tore the towel
from his face. It was in his mind to force Britt to crawl into the van.
He was regarding Britt as his chief witness and principal exhibit in the
exposure he proposed to lay before the people of Egypt. In the back of
Vaniman's head there may have been some sort of consideration for
the man who had ruined him--scruples against leaving him with those
renegades who had tortured him. However, the young man was conscious
of the more compelling motive--to carry Britt along with him, to force
Britt, before the eyes of men, to uncover the hiding place of the
treasure.
He trained his guns on the three men, backing away from them in order to
have them at a safe distance. Britt was on his knees. He was staring at
Vaniman with unblinking eyes in which unmistakable mania was flaming.
The attack on him in his bed that night, the blow that had stunned
him so that the assailants might tie him up, the ride in the strange
conveyance, the dreadful uncertainty of what it was all about--these
matters had wrought cruelly upon the victim's wits. The torture by the
flame had further unsettled his mind. And at that moment, coming down
from the heavens, so it seemed, a dead man had appeared to him.
Britt's recent experience had rendered him incapable of surveying the
thing from a normal viewpoint. He saw the man whom he had disgraced
by plot and perjury, the man who was buried under tons of rock, so the
state had officially reported, the man to whose return after seven years
of punishment Britt had been looking forward with dread. He had slept
more peacefully since that tragedy had been enacted at the prison. Britt
was not admitting that this was a human being in the flesh. Already
partially crazed by the manhandling from which he had suffered, he
peered at this apparition, a mystic figure in the aura of the fog--the
shade of Frank Vaniman, so his frantic belief insisted--and leaped up,
screaming like a man who had gone stark, staring mad.
Before Vaniman had time to issue a command Britt ran away along the lane
by which the van had entered the wood. He was an extraordinary figure in
flight. His night robe fluttered behind as he ran. For the most part he
hopped on one foot; he yelped with pain when he was obliged to set the
blistered foot on the ground in order to recover his balance.
Vaniman did not stay to threaten the three men. He had their weapons and
he did not fear them.
He ran after Britt.