without preface, giving the steel-cube facts as they had been developed
by Tryon and linking them up with Thaxter’s apparently disinterested
effort to promote the sale of the Ocoee to Consolidated Coal. “I’m
telling you this, Wilmerding, because I know you’re not implicated,” he
said in conclusion. “Also, because it seems no more than fair that you
should know. I’m not specially vindictive, you understand. I suppose
Thaxter and the men behind him are calling it nothing more than a bit
of sharp practice on purely legitimate business lines.”
“That might do for the drill-dulling,” the superintendent conceded
thoughtfully, “though I’d take pretty violent exceptions to that, if I
were you. But doesn’t this one proved rascality imply the authorship of
all the others?”
“No. Hartridge thinks not, and so do I. By a good, vigorous stretch
of imagination you could call the drill-dulling something less
than criminal. But that can’t be said of the attempt to wreck my
motor-car, or of the risk taken of killing somebody by the smashing
of the machinery and the planting of a dynamite cartridge in the
engine-boiler.”
While the evening lengthened they discussed the various phases of the
mystery in all their bearings, and in the end Wilmerding came around to
the Tryon-Hartridge hypothesis, namely, that Thaxter, unscrupulous as
he may have been in bribing Sawyer, was not the instigator of the more
serious barbarities.
“Not that I’m excusing Thaxter or the New York office from which he has
his instructions,” he added. “The ‘Big Business’ methods are all more
or less crooked, and I’d give half of my salary if I didn’t have to
work for an outfit that simply won’t fight in the open, as men ought to
fight. Do you know, Tregarvon, I’ve been hoping against hope that you’d
strike it, and strike it rich, on the Ocoee. In that case, I had made
up my mind to ask you to hire me.”
“If I had a mine, you couldn’t ask anything that would please me
better,” said Tregarvon, warming to this expression of friendly
loyalty. “But the thing looks pretty hopeless just now. As I have said,
Professor Hartridge knows more about the Ocoee than anybody else seems
to--and he won’t tell all he knows. But he did assure me this afternoon
that we are not going to find the big vein where we are drilling in
the old burying-ground, and I have every reason to believe that he was
telling the truth. That lets me out. Thaxter ’phoned me this morning
that he had got the option extended until to-morrow midnight. I stand
to lose a hundred thousand dollars if I take the time to move the
drilling plant and try again.”
Wilmerding rose to go, returning the borrowed pipe to its place on the
mantel.
“It’s a hard proposition,” he admitted. “I’m not going to advise you to
throw up the chance to get the hundred thousand. But if I were in your
shoes, I’d be just reckless enough to gamble another throw or two. In
this talk we’ve had, you have convinced me of one thing, Tregarvon, and
that is that the Ocoee has a workable vein somewhere in the property.
Hartridge knows it, and Consolidated Coal knows it. And what they
know, some other fellow can find out. You have twenty-four hours, and
a little better, in which to think it over. I said I wouldn’t advise,
but I shall: don’t close with Thaxter one minute before you are obliged
to.”
Tregarvon got out of his chair to shake hands with the departing
visitor.
“You’re a man, Wilmerding, and I wish I had your nerve. But a couple
of things have happened to-day--things that I can’t talk about, even
to so good a friend as you are--and they have knocked me out. At the
end of the ends, I’m afraid I shall weaken and sell out to your hog of
a trust. It was good of you to come down and let me unload on you. If
anything new turns up I’ll get you on the wire. Good night, and good
luck to you.”
After Wilmerding had gone, Tregarvon sat for another hour before the
fire, smoking abstractedly and hardly noting the passing of time. In
due course there was another flurry of gas-engine noises, and when the
clamor died away, Carfax came in to fling himself into the chair where
Wilmerding had been sitting.
Tregarvon broke the silence morosely.
“Well? You are not measuring up very strikingly with the commonly
accepted idea of the happy lover. What’s the latest?”
Carfax had taken a cork-tipped cigarette from his case and was absently
trying to set fire to the wrong end of it.
“Vance,” he said, in his gentlest tone, “you deserve to be murdered
in cold blood. You told me that Elizabeth hadn’t gotten that frenzied
letter you wrote her the day you were in Chattanooga. She hadn’t, but
it was merely delayed; it was in that lot of forwarded mail that I took
up to-night, and I--_I_ gave it to her!”
“So that’s the latest, is it? Where does the tragedy come in?”
“Don’t say another word or I shall explode! You have probably forgotten
that you wrote her that I was as good as engaged to Richardia
Birrell--it would be quite like you to forget. She excused herself to
go and read her letters, and when she came back I knew that the heavens
had fallen. Oh, no; there wasn’t any scene; she just simply wouldn’t
give me a chance to get a word in edgewise, though I tried for a solid
hour to make the chance. I’m ruined for life--and you, with your nimble
little pen and your neat facility for telling all you know, and then
some, _you_ had to be the one to mangle me!”
XXVI
Tryon’s News
Tregarvon awoke on the Monday morning with the feeling of the putative
bankrupt who is facing his final day of grace. Before midnight the
bargain-and-sale decision must be made; and he knew perfectly well that
there would be no chance in the short interval which still remained
of adding to the facts as they stood. Nevertheless, after Carfax had
disappeared, walking, in the direction of Hesterville, Tregarvon
plunged into the routine, entering into a wire correspondence with
the Chattanooga machinery firm and trying to extort a promise that
the needed valve and steam-pipe should be shipped without fail by the
afternoon train.
Since Carfax did not put in an appearance for the noon meal, Tregarvon
ate alone. While he was at table Tryon came in to report. Early in
the morning the man Sawyer had turned up at the drilling ground
with a one-horse wagon and had taken his belongings, including the
working-coat, and the tool-box, containing among other things the
reserve supply of steel cubes. Tryon was of the opinion that the drill
boss was preparing to vanish, and suggested the taking of preventive
measures. Though Sawyer would doubtless be a most unwilling witness, it
might be needful to make sure that he could be found when wanted.
Tregarvon concurred mechanically, telling the foreman to spread an
unofficial drag-net for Sawyer, and agreeing to swear out a warrant
for the man’s arrest if he should attempt to run away. Beyond this,
he sent one of the laborers up to the drilling-stand to give Rucker
a chance to sleep; and, later in the afternoon, sent word to Tryon’s
house directing the foreman to share the coming night-watch with the
mechanician; all this also as a matter of routine, since, with the
suspension of working operations, there had been no threats of further
aggressions.
Just before the evening meal Carfax returned abstracted and silent,
and saying nothing as to the manner in which he had spent the day.
Immediately after dinner he asked Tregarvon if he might have the
motor-car.
“Going up to Westwood House to try again?” queried the motor-car’s
owner, not too sympathetically.
“I’m no good to you here,” was the non-committal rejoinder; and a
little later Tregarvon found himself facing the approaching crisis
alone and still undecided.
Thaxter had telephoned during the afternoon, calling attention once
more to the terms of the offer to purchase. The message had taken the
tone of a friendly warning. There was no hope of securing further
delay, but the bookkeeper would give Tregarvon the benefit of all the
time that remained. He would stay in his Whitlow office, or be within
call, up to midnight, and he hoped that Tregarvon would be sensible and
remember the old saw about the bird in the hand.
Tregarvon was remembering the canny proverb--and a good many other
things--when he lighted his after-dinner pipe. Throughout the entire
day he had been wavering and postponing the moment of action. One
hundred thousand dollars, judiciously invested, would provide an
income for his mother and sister, which, however far it might fall
short of the former Tregarvon lavishnesses, would still place them
securely beyond the hazard of want. On the other hand, a certain innate
obstinacy, grown now to a passion which threatened to drive cool-blood
reason to the wall, refused to yield.
Apart from this, there was a question of pure ethics to be considered.
Quite early in the attempt to develop the Ocoee he had secretly
determined, if his efforts should prove successful, to reorganize the
company, taking in those who had suffered loss; in other words, to make
restitution to Parker’s victims. But if the property should be sold to
the trust there was an end of the generous intention, and the nail of
injustice driven by Parker would be irrevocably clinched.
These were some of the perplexities, but there was another which also
demanded a hearing. Carfax had been most generous and loyal, spending
not only his money but himself. But now the conditions were changed--or
changing. Carfax had another interest, suddenly grown imperative. Would
it not be most unfair to drag him still deeper into the discouraging
fight, allowing him to spend more money which might never be repaid?
At this point in the reflective probings Tregarvon began to argue
that he must see and talk with Carfax again before he could decide
finally and definitely; and he had no sooner reached this conclusion,
and was casting about for the means to translate it into action, when
Wilmerding appeared--a veritable god-in-the-machine, since he was
driving his new car.
“Thaxter was telling me that you’d most likely be making him a
business call this evening, and I thought I’d drive over and take you
back in my car,” said the newly made motor enthusiast. “If I’m butting
in, don’t scruple to chase me away.”
Tregarvon was already taking his driving-coat from its closet in the
fireplace corner. “You have come precisely in the nick of time,” he
returned. “Carfax has taken my car to drive to Westwood House, and I
must have a few minutes’ talk with him before I fight the final round
with Thaxter. Will your car climb the big hill?”
“If it won’t, I’ll scrap it and buy another,” laughed the Pittsburgher;
and five minutes later the new, high-powered roadster was storming up
the Pisgah grades.
Eight minutes was the time to the Highmount gates, and Tregarvon
called it a beat, though he had never timed his own car over the same
distance. Eight other minutes covered the cross-mountain run to the
western brow; and it was not until Wilmerding had tooled the roadster
up the Westwood House driveway and was parking it beside the yellow
touring-car that Tregarvon began to wonder if, with Elizabeth as her
guest, Richardia would not be breaking her school routine by spending
her evenings at home. In that case ... but it was now too late to
retreat, and, with Wilmerding at his elbow, he ran up the steps to
set the old-fashioned knocker of the great door clanging its drumbeat
through the echoing interiors.
When Aunt Phyllis, the solemn-faced old negress who was the sole
survivor of the once numerous household retinue, opened the
drawing-room doors for the two callers, the judge’s daughter was at the
piano, the judge was listening luxuriously in a deep, calico-covered
armchair, and Carfax was sitting with Miss Wardwell in a window-seat at
the farther end of the room.
Wilmerding made his own and Tregarvon’s apologies when the judge got
upon his feet to welcome the newcomers.
“We were taking a spin in my new car,” he explained, tactfully leaving
Tregarvon’s errand unmentioned. “Of course, we couldn’t pass your
hospitable door, Judge Birrell.”
“No, suh; most suttainly you couldn’t,” was the ready response. “The
do-ahs of old Westwood House may creak a little on thei-uh hinges,
suh, but they still swing wide enough to let the guest enter at his
pleas-yuh. Find yo-uh places, gentlemen, if you please; my daughtuh is
giving us a little music.”
Miss Wardwell had risen, with Carfax backgrounding her because he
was obliged to, and Tregarvon introduced Wilmerding as a fellow
Pennsylvanian from the Pittsburgh end of the State. Elizabeth was
pleasantly gracious to the young superintendent of coal mines, seeming
to welcome him as in some sort a saver of situations; at least, so it
appeared to Tregarvon. In the readjustment the judge sank back into
the depths of his armchair, and Carfax surrendered his place in the
window-seat to Wilmerding and wandered to another window to stand with
his back to the room and his hands in his pockets. This was Tregarvon’s
opportunity to say the needed word to the golden youth, but at its
offering a sudden passionate impulse seized him and he crossed quickly
to the piano alcove. “I see you have my nocturne,” he whispered,
bending over the pianist and indicating the Chopin on the piano-desk;
“please play it for me.”
As if his masterful mood were not to be safely denied, her fingers
fell upon the keys in the opening chords of the nocturne; and this was
the beginning of what gradually grew to be an interval of suspended
possibilities. Almost at once, Tregarvon realized that Richardia was
playing only from the fingers outward--faultlessly, but mechanically;
that Carfax was wandering from one window to another in a sort of
aimless unrest; that Elizabeth was setting all her serene traditions
at defiance by chatting eagerly, like an escaped school-girl, with
Wilmerding.
A few minutes further along, when Carfax dragged a chair into the
window recess and deliberately broke in upon Miss Wardwell and her
companion, the spirit of disquietude seemed to seize upon the judge,
also, since he wheeled his armchair to face the window group and did
violence to all the Westwood House musical unities by joining in the
low-toned conversation. This gave Tregarvon his excuse; and when the
nocturne ran away at its close into delicate little improvisations, he
spoke again in the guarded undertone.
“Hartridge may have told you that I accidentally surprised your secret
yesterday afternoon. I did, you know; but I want you to be assured that
it is as safe with me as it is with the professor, or with any of your
friends who know it.”
If he were expecting any manifestation of surprise it was not
forthcoming. So far from it, there was no break in the improvisation
harmonies.
“Some day I hope it won’t be necessary to make a secret of it,” she
replied evenly, matching his low tone.
“Does Elizabeth know?”
“Not yet. But I shall tell her.”
“Has she told you that our engagement is broken?”
Her nod was barely perceptible.
“I hope she told you that I didn’t break it.”
“Yes; she told me that, too.”
“You are not saying it, but deep down in your heart you are telling
yourself that I have got only what was coming to me. Isn’t that true?”
The answer came from lips that were paling a little. “Ask yourself.”
“It _is_ true. And it is also true, perhaps, that I should have had
this other whipping; the one I got yesterday afternoon when I was
trying to meet Hartridge on his way back from the ‘Pocket.’”
She was still keeping her face averted.
“I can’t talk about that now, to any one--least of all, to you.”
He bent lower to make sure that the group at the other end of the room
should not overhear.
“I want to meet the man. If I stay here on Mount Pisgah--if I don’t
throw it all up and go home--I mean to do what I can to help. Once
I shouldn’t have been big enough to say such a thing, Richardia;
but--thank God--I’ve grown a little in the past few months. May I add
that it is you who have shown me how to grow?”
She ignored the query and for the first time let him see her eyes:
they were swimming, and there was a note in her voice that he had
never heard before when she said: “You must not talk of giving up and
going away; you are the one who can do the most to help when the time
comes--if only----”
A clamorous banging of the door-knocker interrupted, and Aunt Phyllis
put her turbaned head into the drawing-room to say, with her fat chin
in the air and a fine scorn in her tone: “Po’ white man at de front
do’, comed to ast faw Mistoo Tregarbin.”
Tregarvon obeyed the summons rather reluctantly and found Tryon on the
veranda. The foreman had been running and was short of breath.
“You’d better come over--you an’ Mr. Carfax,” he broke out hurriedly.
“We’ve done caught the dannymiter. He was aimin’ to blow us all to
kingdom come, this time!”
“Who is it?” Tregarvon grated.
Tryon wagged his head mysteriously. “Hit ain’t Sawyer; hit’s the same
skunk I been a-suspicionin’ ever sense we had that talk yisterday.
You’ll see when you get thar’.”
Tregarvon went back to the drawing-room, meaning to cut Carfax out if
possible without giving a general alarm. But Wilmerding overheard his
whispered explanation to Carfax and so did Miss Wardwell; whereupon he
spoke up quickly, briefing the story of the Ocoee troubles, and adding
its latest sequel. The effect upon the master of Westwood House was
instantaneous and militant.
“What’s that, suh? Tryin’ to dynamite yo-uh machinery whilst you
and Mistuh Carfax are makin’ us a friendly visit heah at Westwood
House?” he demanded, his deep voice rumbling in the wrath of outraged
hospitality. “Richa’dia, daughtuh, get me my coat and hat; I’m goin’
oveh yondeh with these young gentlemen. No, Mistuh Tregarvon; don’t
deny me that privilege, suh; yo-uh bein’ undeh my roof at the precise
moment makes yo-uh quarrel _my_ quarrel, suh! You’ll give me a seat in
yo-uh steam-wagon, and--daughtuh, my coat and hat, immediately, if you
please. And fetch me the old shot-gun, too, my deah.”
By this time Wilmerding was declaring that he must not be left out; and
in the momentary confusion Tregarvon saw that the judge’s daughter,
while she was obeying her father’s commands, was pitiably agitated.
Assuming that her anxiety was for her father’s safety, he ventured a
word of assurance while she was holding the overcoat for the sleeves of
which the judge was hastily fumbling.
“You mustn’t distress yourself--we are not going to let your father get
hurt,” he protested.
“It’s--it’s not that!” she gasped; “it is something far worse.” Then,
in an agonized whisper that he had to bend lower to hear: “This man
they have taken; promise me that you will let him go before my--before
any one else has seen him!”
Tregarvon promised blindly, striving to ignore this last of the
maddening mysteries in an effort to be wholly loyal to the woman he
loved. But as he committed himself the difficulties in the way of
performance suddenly magnified themselves. With the judge taking part
in the descent upon the scene of the capture, how was he to be kept
from seeing and questioning the culprit? Tregarvon saw that he had
promised that which he would most probably be unable to perform, but in
the confusion of the hurried departure there was no chance to add the
qualifying word, and it was left unspoken.
XXVII
Cloud-Wraiths
With Judge Birrell urging haste, the start for the burying-ground
glade was made at once. Since Tregarvon’s car was large enough to hold
them all, Wilmerding’s roadster was left behind. Carfax drove the
touring-car, with Tryon clutching for handholds in the mechanician’s
seat beside him. This arrangement left the broad tonneau seat for the
other three; and the judge, with the gun between his knees, sat in
the middle. When the big car shot away with its loading the master of
Westwood was still calling down maledictions upon the heads of those
who would besmirch the fair fame of the Southland by resorting to the
methods of the assassin and the anarchist.
“Who are these scoundrels, Mistuh Tregarvon?” he demanded. “Just name
me thei-uh names, suh!” And then, with the charming inconsistency of
his kind: “This is a law-abiding community, suh, and you have wronged
us by keeping silence so long; you have, for a fact, suh! But now we
shall vindicate ou’selves. A little taste of a rope and a tree limb for
this grand rascal yo-uh men have caught will make him tell us the names
of his confederates and accomplices; and then, by the Lord Harry, suh,
we’ll run these lawbreakuhs down with the dogs and hang them higheh
than Haman!”
During the hurried cross-mountain run Tregarvon wrestled manfully
with the problem thrust upon him by Richardia Birrell’s whispered
appeal. How was he to prevent a meeting between the judge and the as
yet unnamed man whom Tryon and Rucker had captured? The query was
still unanswered when the yellow car skidded and slued around the turn
into the old wood road. Despite the promise given by a fair day and a
measurably clear evening, the night had suddenly thickened, with cloud
wracks flying low over the mountain top to wrap the forest in mantlings
of fleecy vapor silver-shot by the rays of a gibbous moon, but opposing
a wall of blank opacity to the headlamps of the car. Tregarvon would
have welcomed help from the chapter of accidents, but now that they
were off the main road there was a fair chance that the accident might
be too destructive.
“Easy, Poictiers!--you’ll scrap us if you don’t look out!” he
cautioned, leaning forward to warn Carfax, who was boring into the
cloud bank at reckless speed.
The words were scarcely uttered before there came a crunching of dry
tree limbs under the wheels, a hiss of escaping air, and a jolting
stoppage of the car as the brakes were applied.
“Punctured!” exclaimed the cautioner, and they all got out to
investigate cause and consequence. The obstruction proved to be what it
had seemed--the dry limb of a tree--and the result was a flat tire.
“It is dead wood, and it may have fallen of its own accord; or it may
mean that your dynamiter has friends who would like to delay us,”
Wilmerding offered. “On the bare chance, hadn’t we better sprint along
and not wait to change tires? Your man, Rucker, may easily be having
the time of his life trying to hold on to his prisoner.”
They sprinted accordingly, the judge taking the dog-trot as actively
as his younger pace-setters, and stubbornly refusing to let Tregarvon
relieve him of the burden of the heavy deer-gun. So running, they came
in a few minutes to the site of the old burying-ground, and to the door
of the tool shanty. Rucker admitted them at Tregarvon’s knock and call,
and his report was brief and unenlightening. “No; nothin’ doin’ since
we took him in--and the cuss won’t talk. But maybe you can make him
loosen up.”
Tregarvon still saw no way of keeping the judge out of it, and he held
himself absolved from his promise by the sheer impossibility of doing
what Richardia had begged him to do. The captive, wrist-bound with a
turn or two of cord, was sitting hunched upon the edge of Rucker’s
cot-bed. It was Carfax who picked up the lantern and flashed its light
into the man’s face. “By Jove!” he exclaimed; “Morgan McNabb!” and
Rucker nodded.
Judge Birrell sat upon the spare coil of rope and wiped his face with
his handkerchief. His hands were trembling and he was breathing hard,
but the smart run from the disabled automobile might have accounted for
these disturbances. When he spoke to the prisoner his tone was sternly
accusing.
“So it’s you, is it, Mo’gan McNabb?--turnin’ yo-uh teeth upon the hand
that’s been feedin’ you? By the Lord Harry, you make me mighty sorry
that I once saved you from going to the penitentiary, where you belong!
Now, then, open yo-uh mouth and tell these gentlemen why you come heah
dynamitin’ thei-uh machinery!”
The mountaineer’s lips were drawn back in a doglike snarl.
“I’ll see ’em damned befo’ I’ll open my haid to ’em, now, Judge
Birrell! Lookee at this yere,” and he wrenched his tied hands around so
that the judge might see.
“You don’t like the rope?” said the judge evenly. “Listen to me,
Mo’gan; you McNabbs have lived on Westwood land, father and son, for
fo’ generations, and you’ll open yo-uh head to me, suh! What quarrel
have you got with the owneh of the Ocoee property? Ansuh me, if you
don’t want anotheh tu’n o’ that rope taken around yo-uh neck, suh!”