On the train travelling westward Mermaid and her aunt had some talk of
events, recent and not so recent.
“But why did you take my jewels?” demanded Keturah.
“Because they worried you. They were like a piece of bone, a tiny
fragment pressing on the brain,” responded the young woman. “I knew
that if they disappeared in such a way as to make it seem that they had
been stolen--and I suppose, strictly, they were stolen--the worrying
would cease. What made you think of Captain Vanton as the thief?”
“Because it was impossible to think of any one else, I suppose,” said
Mrs. Hand. “And while I never guessed that he was the man King, still
he evidently knew more about King than any of us did; and King had
known or seen Keturah Hawkins and knew of or had seen the stones. Any
one might want to steal them who knew about them. And he did.”
Mermaid had a question in turn:
“I should have thought Uncle Ho would have recognized Captain Vanton as
the Jacob King he had known in San Francisco.”
“Child, half a century had elapsed between his acquaintance with Jacob
King and the appearance of Captain Vanton in Blue Port. Then, those
sidewhiskers....”
“Dickie will come out next week,” Mermaid said, absently.
“Are you going to marry young Dick Hand?” Keturah inquired, with her
natural abruptness.
“Aunt, you wouldn’t have me marry a man just because he asks me, would
you?”
“Well, I hope you wouldn’t marry him without his asking you to.”
“I might ask him.”
“Dickie?”
“Oh, no--that is--I mean--Dickie has asked me, but I mean I
might--sometime----” Mermaid seemed unnecessarily embarrassed. Her aunt
looked at her intently; then, as if she thought it better to swerve the
conversation slightly, remarked abruptly: “Well, old Richard Hand died
a natural death at the end of his unnatural life, after all.”
“I don’t think you can call death from fear a natural death,” objected
the younger woman.
“Fear! What was he afraid of?”
“He was partly senile, of course, but he could not be convinced that
Captain Vanton was really dead. He heard more or less of Captain
Vanton’s story. The coroner didn’t give it out, but things like that
always get around, or some of them. When they told him that Captain
Vanton was Jacob King, he had a stroke. Paralysis. After that he kept
looking about him and saying: ‘The King is dead! Long live the King!’
And when they told him that Captain Vanton had been buried he cried
out: ‘Nothing is ever buried. He’ll come to life again.’ Later he had
delusions that he saw King or Vanton. Do you remember when Dad went
to see him? He caught sight of Dad and shrieked: ‘Don’t kill me, John
Smiley! I didn’t steal your daughter! Kill King! Only you can’t kill
him!’”
Mermaid finished with a shudder.
Mrs. Hand asked: “How much of the whole story does young Dick know?”
“His father’s part in it pretty fully. The rest--about Guy and Mrs.
Vanton and all--no more than the other Blue Port people. About all they
know is that Mrs. Vanton wasn’t the Captain’s wife and that the Captain
was a mad old man who made his boy’s life miserable and who had had
something underhanded to do with Richard Hand.”
“I’ve always wondered what you told that man to make him tell you that
you were John Smiley’s daughter,” Mrs. Hand remarked.
“Only what I guessed. He was ready to tell me,” said Mermaid. “I was
really fighting for Guy. I offered your jewels to him as a ransom for
Guy. It sounds ridiculous, but since I knew you thought he had taken
them I knew you must think he coveted them, had some craving that
they might satisfy. I was more or less in the dark; I went ahead by
instinct.”
“It’s a wonder, since he shot himself right after you left the house,
that you were not accused of murder,” said Keturah, grimly. “You might
have shot him dead and walked away.”
“You forget Mrs. Vanton,” Mermaid reminded her. “She had come to the
head of the stairs. She saw the door close after me. It was two or
three minutes later before she heard the pistol shot.”
“She’s honest, it seems.”
“Yes, poor creature.”
“Mary,” asked Keturah Hand as she leaned forward while her niece
adjusted the pillows behind her in the big Pullman chair, “when that
man refused the jewels you told him that you would offer another ransom
for Guy Vanton. What had you in mind?”
The younger woman was behind her aunt. Mrs. Hand twisted about suddenly
to see her face. It was flushed, but Mermaid’s deep and brilliant eyes
met her aunt’s unflinchingly.
“I would have married Guy,” she said, her voice vibrating slightly.
“His father--that is, that man--talked about saving him. I would have
matched my salvation of him against his--father’s. I would have fought
for him against all the past evil that was dragging him down. Now his
father is dead. He can--possibly--pull himself out alone, unaided. If
not, I am ‘standing by.’ Oh, yes--I love him,” she finished, answering
the interrogation that leaped from Keturah Hand’s eyes.