Celene Kingsley had touched squarely on one truth: the only way to
handle my uncle was to appear important even if I were not important.
Mere bluff would go a little way--but not far. I must have money!
And here I was picked by her as her champion in the family feud!
If I had only stayed in the city! There was money to be come at there.
Dollars in Levant were nailed down with spikes.
“We haven’t one happy hour in our home,” she wailed. “Your uncle is
breaking my father’s heart, Mr. Sidney. I don’t understand what your
uncle is doing; mother doesn’t understand it! Father has never told
his business to us. But he sits in his office and figures and figures.
Sometimes he stays there ’most all night. And it’s all on account of
your uncle! I know that! For my father says your uncle is hounding him
to death. You must find out what he is doing. I know you will find out
and tell him he must stop.”
“I will look into the matter,” I said, as bravely as I could. “Of course
there’s been hard feeling between my uncle and your father for a good
many years.”
“But my father is sorry now for anything in the past. He says so to us,
to mother and me. He sent mother to your uncle to ask him if he would
not stop persecuting. Yes, she went to your uncle because father asked
her to do so.”
That statement nigh took my breath away!
Mrs. Kingsley going as suppliant to my uncle Deck? Judge Zebulon
Kingsley requesting her to do it? I shut my eyes and could picture
her--frail, pale, aristocratic. The exigency must be desperate when
Judge Kingsley would submit his wife to such employment.
“But please keep that a secret,” she pleaded.
I saw that I was headed into something which was bigger and more baleful
than I had dreamed of. And more than before did I feel my deficiencies
as a fraud who could not even turn a trick for his own wants, let alone
those greater affairs in Levant.
“This mystery in our home is killing us all,” she went on. “There have
been strangers in town and they have been much with my father. I do not
like their looks. He would not tell us, but I am afraid they have coaxed
him away to the city on this trip he is making. Perhaps your uncle has
set those men on to harm him.”
I had never gauged my uncle Deck as a hirer of assassins, but I had not
seen him for some years, and I admitted to myself that there was never
any telling where a man’s grudge would lead him.
“Mother and I tried to make him stay at home. But he would not stay and
he would not tell us why he was going to the city. Oh, how I hate those
strangers, for I believe they have coaxed him away.”
I looked sideways at her, and a little shiver tingled in me. There was
real venom in her tone and I saw that I had not guessed the depths in
Miss Celene Kingsley.
“I wish I had a brother,” she mourned. “I believe he would feel as
I feel now, and would follow up and kill the man who would harm my
father.”
It was so strange an utterance from a girl and seemed so contrary to
what I had supposed her nature to be that I remembered that outburst for
a long time.
I juggled the skull on my knee and pondered awhile before I said
anything, and she was silent, too, evidently trying to get control of
her emotions.
“I want to say this to you, Miss Kingsley. The Sort-well boys gave me
some news of the home town and they told me that my uncle was after your
father in bitter fashion. That’s one reason why I have hurried up here.
I don’t know just what I can do with my uncle, but I’ll truly do my
best.”
We had come into the edge of the village and had passed the first
houses.
“I put my trust in you,” she said, gently. “I always knew you had good
impulses in you. I remember our talk that day on Purgatory Hill. And
I know you kept your promise you gave to me then. You did your best to
make the boys good.”
“And I’ll do my best to make my uncle good.”
“I do hope your business will not call you away until you have
straightened matters out. Oh, you asked about the price of the wood-lot!
Does it mean that you expect to have some business with father?”
I had not given another thought to the wood-lot since I had used it for
an excuse in an emergency. I did not see at that moment how I could use
a wood-lot for anything else than that excuse.
“If only you could have some business with my father--it would smooth
things so much for all of us, perhaps,” she pleaded.
“We’ll see what can be done,” I assured her. “This syndicate--this
combination--a very large concern,” I floundered on, trying to think up
some sort of a plausible lie to account for my interest in a wood-lot,
“it’s--er--ah!--you see, I can’t give out much information locally
because we do so many kinds of business--it’s all linked up--it’s
necessary to move carefully, but I think I’ll tell you this much,
confidentially, just between ourselves!” Again my hankering to have some
sort of a secret between Celene Kingsley and myself! “One branch of our
business is building all the tall brick chimneys in the eastern part of
the country. We use millions of bricks and so we need a great deal
of wood for burning the bricks. So that’s why, maybe, I can pay your
father’s price for the wood-lot. Now you understand!” I ended up with a
lot of relief, for I had to dive pretty deep for that lie.
“I do see, and I’m glad there’s a prospect you’ll stay in town. And
then, too, there’s your ankle to nurse!”
I was glad she mentioned the ankle, for I had forgotten all about
it, and would certainly have betrayed myself when I jumped out of the
carriage at the tavern. Really, to be a good liar a fellow should
take one of those courses in memory-training! As it was, I descended
carefully and promised her to apply cloths and liniment that night. She
tendered her little hand, and I pressed it, and she left with me the
memory of a smile which was like a rose gemmed with dew---for there were
tears in her eyes.
I waited in the tavern yard till she was well on her way, and then
I marched in without any limp, for I was not minded to keep up that
special lie for the benefit of all Levant.
Dodovah Vose walked behind his catty-cornered counter, plucked a rusty
pen from its potato scabbard, whirled the register around under my nose,
and tendered the pen.
“Rather nippy evenings, though pleasant enough daytimes for this time of
year, Squire,” he said, by way of welcome to the arriving guest.
That tickled me. He didn’t recognize me. He was looking at my rig rather
than at my face. When I had splashed my name on the page he pulled his
spectacles to the end of his nose and inspected the signature. Then he
snapped upright and stared at me.
“Godfrey domino Peter!” he bawled. “Then them Sortwell boys ain’t such
condemned liars as I suspected they were! When Jod wrote me that you had
quit diving I reckoned you had gone plunk square to tophet!”
“Oh, there’s always a chance for a fellow in the city, if he keeps
hustling,” I told him. I chinked the little handful of small change in
my pocket. “I’m going to stay here with you for a spell, Mr. Vose. Have
you a rule that guests without baggage must pay in advance?” I grinned
and he took it as a great joke.
“If you can tell me enough about Jod I may adopt you and give you free
board the rest of your life,” he chuckled.
Then I handed over his present with a word of explanation, and he
unwrapped the grisly object and surveyed it with as much satisfaction as
if it had been a golden nugget.
“Jod always knows what will hit me to a T. Of course, he says to you,
‘Tell Dod to make up a story to go with it’!”
“Exactly what he said, sir.”
“Sure! That’s what I have done with every curio he has given me.”
For the first time I realized that in my boyhood I had accumulated a
fine line of fiction from Dodovah Vose.
But I forgave him in my thoughts, for he took me into the big kitchen
and fried me the finest chicken I ever ate. And while he fixed up my
supper I told him how I had learned diving with his brother. I comforted
him, too, by telling him that I had given up the work only temporarily.
But I switched him when he tried to find out what I was up to at that
time. The plug-hat part of my program seemed to puzzle him very much.
I was not ready with any good explanation. I figured that I might have
some kind of a story ready in the morning, after I had slept on the
thing. I began to rely considerably on my work as a fabricator; I
had shown quite a lot of aptitude and readiness on short notice, I
reflected.
I found myself holding an impromptu reception in the tavern office that
evening--and they were all there with their little gimlets of questions,
boring for information, you can bet! Therefore I broke away early
and went to bed. I staved them all off in good shape, for I could be
dignified in those clothes I was wearing. What I was afraid of was that
Uncle Deck would pop in. He would not have used any gimlet; he would
have set upon me with a pod-auger of inquisition, and would have ridden
on it so as to bear down hard! And I had not my story ready!