“What can I do, Dan? I’m broke, too. My last dollar went to pay my last
debt to-day. I’ve nothing but what I stand in. I’ve got prospects, but
I can’t discount prospects at the banks.” The speaker laughed bitterly.
“I’ve reaped and I’m sowing, the same as you, Dan.”
The other made a nervous motion of protest. “No; not the same as me,
Flood--not the same. It’s sink or swim with me, and if you can’t help
me--oh, I’d take my gruel without whining, if it wasn’t for Di! It’s
that knocks me over. It’s the shame to her. Oh, what a cursed ass and
fool--and thief, I’ve been!”
“Thief-thief?”
Flood Rawley dropped the flaming match with which he was about to light
a cheroot, and stood staring, his dark-blue eyes growing wider, his
worn, handsome face becoming drawn, as swift conviction mastered him. He
felt that the black words which had fallen from his friend’s lips--from
the lips of Diana Welldon’s brother--were the truth. He looked at
the plump face, the full amiable eyes, now misty with fright, at the
characterless hand nervously feeling the golden moustache, at the
well-fed, inert body; and he knew that whatever the trouble or the
peril, Dan Welldon could not surmount it alone.
“What is it?” Rawley asked rather sharply, his fingers running through
his slightly grizzled, black hair, but not excitedly, for he wanted
no scenes; and if this thing could hurt Di Welldon, and action was
necessary, he must remain cool. What she was to him, Heaven and he only
knew; what she had done for him, perhaps neither understood fully as
yet. “What is it--quick?” he added, and his words were like a sharp grip
upon Dan Welldon’s shoulder. “Racing--cards?”
Dan nodded. “Yes, over at Askatoon; five hundred on Jibway, the
favourite--he fell at the last fence; five hundred at poker with Nick
Fison; and a thousand in land speculation at Edmonton, on margin.
Everything went wrong.”
“And so you put your hand in the railway company’s money-chest?”
“It seemed such a dead certainty--Jibway; and the Edmonton
corner-blocks, too. I’d had luck with Nick before; but--well, there it
is, Flood.”
“They know--the railway people--Shaughnessy knows?”
“Yes, the president knows. He’s at Calgary now. They telegraphed him,
and he wired to give me till midnight to pay up, or go to jail. They’re
watching me now. I can’t stir. There’s no escape, and there’s no one I
can ask for help but you. That’s why I’ve come, Flood.”
“Lord, what a fool! Couldn’t you see what the end would be, if your
plunging didn’t come off? You--you oughtn’t to bet, or speculate, or
play cards, you’re not clever enough. You’ve got blind rashness, and
so you think you’re bold. And Di--oh, you idiot! And on a salary of a
thousand dollars a year!”
“I suppose Di would help me; but I couldn’t explain.” The weak face
puckered, a lifeless kind of tear gathered in the ox-like eyes.
“Yes, she probably would help you. She’d probably give you all she’s
saved to go to Europe with and study, saved from her pictures sold at
twenty per cent of their value; and she’d mortgage the little income
she’s got to keep her brother out of jail. Of course she would, and of
course you ought to be ashamed of yourself for thinking of it.” Rawley
lighted his cigar and smoked fiercely.
“It would be better for her than my going to jail,” stubbornly replied
the other. “But I don’t want to tell her, or to ask her for money.
That’s why I’ve come to you. You needn’t be so hard, Flood; you’ve not
been a saint; and Di knows it.”
Rawley took the cheroot from his mouth, threw back his head, and laughed
mirthlessly, ironically. Then suddenly he stopped and looked round the
room till his eyes rested on a portrait-drawing which hung on the wall
opposite the window, through which the sun poured. It was the face of a
girl with beautiful bronzed hair, and full, fine, beautifully modelled
face, with brown eyes deep and brooding, which seemed to have time and
space behind them--not before them. The lips were delicate and full, and
had the look suggesting a smile which the inward thought has stayed. It
was like one of the Titian women--like a Titian that hangs on the wall
of the Gallery at Munich. The head and neck, the whole personality,
had an air of distinction and destiny. The drawing had been done by a
wandering duchess who had seen the girl sketching in the foothills,
when on a visit to that “Wild West” which has such power to refine
and inspire minds not superior to Nature. Its replica was carried to a
castle in Scotland. It had been the gift of Diana Welldon on a certain
day not long ago, when Flood Rawley had made a pledge to her, which was
as vital to him and to his future as two thousand dollars were vital to
Dan Welldon now.
“You’ve not been a saint, and Di knows it,” repeated the weak brother
of a girl whose fame belonged to the West; whose name was a signal for
cheerful looks; whose buoyant humour and impartial friendliness gained
her innumerable friends; and whose talent, understood by few, gave her
a certain protection, lifting her a little away from the outwardly crude
and provincial life around her.
When Rawley spoke, it was with quiet deliberation, and even gentleness.
“I haven’t been a saint, and she knows it, as you say, Dan; but the law
is on my side as yet, and it isn’t on yours. There’s the difference.”
“You used to gamble yourself; you were pretty tough, and you oughtn’t to
walk up my back with hobnailed boots.”
“Yes, I gambled, Dan, and I drank, and I raised a dust out here. My
record was writ pretty big. But I didn’t lay my hands on the ark of the
social covenant, whose inscription is, Thou shalt not steal; and that’s
why I’m poor but proud, and no one’s watching for me round the corner,
same as you.”
Welldon’s half-defiant petulance disappeared. “What’s done can’t be
undone.” Then, with a sudden burst of anguish: “Oh, get me out of this
somehow!”
“How? I’ve got no money. By speaking to your sister?”
The other was silent.
“Shall I do it?” Rawley peered anxiously into the other’s face, and he
knew that there was no real security against the shameful trouble being
laid bare to her.
“I want a chance to start straight again.”
The voice was fluttered, almost whining; it carried no conviction; but
the words had in them a reminder of words that Rawley himself had said
to Diana Welldon but a few months ago, and a new spirit stirred in him.
He stepped forwards and, gripping Dan’s shoulder with a hand of steel,
said fiercely:
“No, Dan. I’d rather take you to her in your coffin. She’s never known
you, never seen what most of us have seen, that all you have--or nearly
all--is your lovely looks, and what they call a kind heart. There’s only
you two in your family, and she’s got to live with you--awhile, anyhow.
She couldn’t stand this business. She mustn’t stand it. She’s had enough
to put up with in me; but at the worst she could pass me by on the other
side, and there would be an end. It would have been said that Flood
Rawley had got his deserts. It’s different with you.” His voice changed,
softened. “Dan, I made a pledge to her that I’d never play cards again
for money while I lived, and it wasn’t a thing to take on without some
cogitation. But I cogitated, and took it on, and started life over
again--me! Began practising law again--barrister, solicitor, notary
public--at forty. And at last I’ve got my chance in a big case against
the Canadian Pacific. It’ll make me or break me, Dan.... There, I wanted
you to see where I stand with Di; and now I want you to promise me that
you’ll not leave these rooms till I see you again. I’ll get you clear;
I’ll save you, Dan.”
“Flood! Oh, my God, Flood!” The voice was broken.
“You’ve got to stay here, and you’re to remember not to get the funk,
even if I don’t come before midnight. I’ll be here then, if I’m alive.
If you don’t keep your word--but, there, you will.” Both hands gripped
the graceful shoulders of the miscreant like a vice.
“So help me, Flood,” was the frightened, whispered reply, “I’ll make it
up to you somehow, some day. I’ll pay you back.”
Rawley caught up his cap from the table. “Steady--steady. Don’t go at
a fence till you’re sure of your seat, Dan,” he said. Then with a long
look at the portrait on the wall, and an exclamation which the other did
not hear, he left the room with a set, determined face.
......................
“Who told you? What brought you, Flood?” the girl asked, her chin in her
long, white hands, her head turned from the easel to him, a book in
her lap, the sun breaking through the leaves upon her hat, touching the
Titian hair with splendour.
“Fate brought me, and didn’t tell me,” he answered, with a whimsical
quirk of the mouth, and his trouble lurking behind the sea-deep eyes.
“Wouldn’t you have come if you knew I was here?” she urged archly.
“Not for two thousand dollars,” he answered, the look of trouble
deepening in his eyes, but his lips were smiling. He had a quaint sense
of humour, and at his last gasp would have noted the ridiculous thing.
And surely it was a droll malignity of Fate to bring him here to her
whom, in this moment of all moments in his life, he wished far away.
Fate meant to try him to the uttermost. This hurdle of trial was high
indeed.
“Two thousand dollars--nothing less?” she inquired gaily. “You are too
specific for a real lover.”
“Fate fixed the amount,” he added drily. “Fate--you talk so much of
Fate,” she replied gravely, and her eyes looked into the distance. “You
make me think of it too, and I don’t want to do so. I don’t want to feel
helpless, to be the child of Accident and Destiny.”
“Oh, you get the same thing in the ‘fore-ordination’ that old Minister
M’Gregor preaches every Sunday. ‘Be elect or be damned,’ he says to us
all. Names aren’t important; but, anyhow, it was Fate that led me here.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t me?” she asked softly. “Are you sure I wasn’t
calling you, and you had to come?”
“Well, it was en route, anyhow; and you are always calling, if I must
tell you,” he laughed. Suddenly he became grave. “I hear you call me in
the night sometimes, and I start up and say ‘Yes, Di!’ out of my sleep.
It’s a queer hallucination. I’ve got you on the brain, certainly.”
“It seems to vex you--certainly,” she said, opening the book that lay in
her lap, “and your eyes trouble me to-day. They’ve got a look that used
to be in them, Flood, before--before you promised; and another look
I don’t understand and don’t like. I suppose it’s always so. The real
business of life is trying to understand each other.”
“You have wonderful thoughts for one that’s had so little chance,” he
said. “That’s because you’re a genius, I suppose. Teaching can’t give
that sort of thing--the insight.”
“What is the matter, Flood?” she asked suddenly again, her breast
heaving, her delicate, rounded fingers interlacing. “I heard a man say
once that you were ‘as deep as the sea.’ He did not mean it kindly, but
I do. You are in trouble, and I want to share it if I can. Where were
you going when you came across me here?”
“To see old Busby, the quack-doctor up there,” he answered, nodding
towards a shrubbed and wooded hillock behind them.
“Old Busby!” she rejoined in amazement. “What do you want with him--not
medicine of that old quack, that dreadful man?”
“He cures people sometimes. A good many out here owe him more than
they’ll ever pay him.”
“Is he as rich an old miser as they say?”
“He doesn’t look rich, does he?” was the enigmatical answer.
“Does any one know his real history? He didn’t come from nowhere. He
must have had friends once. Some one must once have cared for him,
though he seems such a monster now.”
“Yet he cures people sometimes,” he rejoined abstractedly. “Probably
there’s some good underneath. I’m going to try and see.”
“What is it. What is your business with him? Won’t you tell me? Is it so
secret?”
“I want him to help me in a case I’ve got in hand. A client of mine is
in trouble--you mustn’t ask about it; and he can help, I think--I think
so.” He got to his feet. “I must be going, Di,” he added. Suddenly a
flush swept over his face, and he reached out and took both her hands.
“Oh, you are a million times too good for me!” he said. “But if all goes
well, I’ll do my best to make you forget it.”
“Wait--wait one moment,” she answered. “Before you go, I want you to
hear what I’ve been reading over and over to myself just now. It is from
a book I got from Quebec, called ‘When Time Shall Pass’. It is a story
of two like you and me. The man is writing to the woman, and it has
things that you have said to me--in a different way.”
“No, I don’t talk like a book, but I know a star in a dark night when I
see it,” he answered, with a catch in his throat.
“Hush,” she said, catching his hand in hers, as she read, while all
around them the sounds of summer--the distant clack of a reaper, the
crack of a whip, the locusts droning, the whir of a young partridge, the
squeak of a chipmunk--were tuned to the harmony of the moment and her
voice:
“‘Night and the sombre silence, oh, my love, and one star shining!
First, warm, velvety sleep, and then this quick, quiet waking to
your voice which seems to call me. Is it--is it you that calls?
Do you sometimes, even in your dreams, speak to me? Far beneath
unconsciousness is there the summons of your spirit to me?...
I like to think so. I like to think that this thing which has come
to us is deeper, greater than we are. Sometimes day and night there
flash before my eyes--my mind’s eyes--pictures of you and me in
places unfamiliar, landscapes never before seen, activities
uncomprehended and unknown, bright, alluring glimpses of some second
being, some possible, maybe never-to-be-realised future, alas! Yet
these swift-moving shutters of the soul, or imagination, or reality
--who shall say which?--give me a joy never before felt in life. If
I am not a better man for this love of mine for you, I am more than
I was, and shall be more than I am. Much of my life in the past was
mean and small, so much that I have said and done has been unworthy
--my love for you is too sharp a light for my gross imperfections of
the past! Come what will, be what must, I stake my life, my heart,
my soul on you--that beautiful, beloved face; those deep eyes in
which my being is drowned; those lucid, perfect hands that have
bound me to the mast of your destiny. I cannot go back, I must go
forwards: now I must keep on loving you or be shipwrecked. I did
not know that this was in me, this tide of love, this current of
devotion. Destiny plays me beyond my ken, beyond my dreams.
O Cithaeron! Turn from me now--or never, O my love! Loose me
from the mast, and let the storm and wave wash me out into the sea
of your forgetfulness now--or never!... But keep me, keep me,
if your love is great enough, if I bring you any light or joy; for I
am yours to my uttermost note of life.’”
“He knew--he knew!” Rawley said, catching her wrists in his hands and
drawing her to him. “If I could write, that’s what I should have said to
you, beautiful and beloved. How mean and small and ugly my life was till
you made me over. I was a bad lot.”
“So much hung on one little promise,” she said, and drew closer to
him. “You were never bad,” she added; then, with an arm sweeping the
universe, “Oh, isn’t it all good, and isn’t it all worth living?”
His face lost its glow. Over in the town her brother faced a ruined
life, and the girl beside him, a dark humiliation and a shame which
would poison her life hereafter, unless--his look turned to the little
house where the quack-doctor lived. He loosed her hands.
“Now for Caliban,” he said.
“I shall be Ariel and follow you-in my heart,” she said. “Be sure and
make him tell you the story of his life,” she added with a laugh, as his
lips swept the hair behind her ears.
As he moved swiftly away, watching his long strides, she said proudly,
“As deep as the sea.”
After a moment she added: “And he was once a gambler, until, until--”
she glanced at the open book, then with sweet mockery looked at her
hands--“until ‘those lucid, perfect hands bound me to the mast of
your destiny.’ O vain Diana! But they are rather beautiful,” she added
softly, “and I am rather happy.” There was something like a gay little
chuckle in her throat.
“O vain Diana!” she repeated.
.......................
Rawley entered the door of the but on the hill without ceremony. There
was no need for courtesy, and the work he had come to do could be easier
done without it.
Old Busby was crouched over a table, his mouth lapping milk from a
full bowl on the table. He scarcely raised his head when Rawley
entered--through the open door he had seen his visitor coming. He sipped
on, his straggling beard dripping. There was silence for a time.
“What do you want?” he growled at last.
“Finish your swill, and then we can talk,” said Rawley carelessly. He
took a chair near the door, lighted a cheroot and smoked, watching the
old man, as he tipped the great bowl towards his face, as though it
were some wild animal feeding. The clothes were patched and worn, the
coat-front was spattered with stains of all kinds, the hair and beard
were unkempt and long, giving him what would have been the look of a
mangy lion, but that the face had the expression of some beast less
honourable. The eyes, however, were malignantly intelligent, the hands,
ill-cared for, were long, well-shaped and capable, but of a hateful
yellow colour like the face. And through all was a sense of power, dark
and almost mediaeval. Secret, evilly wise and inhuman, he looked a being
apart, whom men might seek for help in dark purposes.
“What do you want--medicine?” he muttered at last, wiping his beard and
mouth with the palm of his hand, and the palm on his knees.
Rawley looked at the ominous-looking bottles on the shelves above the
old man’s head; at the forceps, knives, and other surgical instruments
on the walls--they at least were bright and clean--and, taking the
cheroot slowly from his mouth, he said:
“Shin-plasters are what I want. A friend of mine has caught his leg in a
trap.”
The old man gave an evil chuckle at the joke, for a “shin-plaster” was a
money-note worth a quarter of a dollar.
“I’ve got some,” he growled in reply, “but they cost twenty-five cents
each. You can have them for your friend at the price.”
“I want eight thousand of them from you. He’s hurt pretty bad,” was the
dogged, dry answer.
The shaggy eyebrows of the quack drew together, and the eyes peered out
sharply through half-closed lids. “There’s plenty of wanting and not
much getting in this world,” he rejoined, with a leer of contempt,
and spat on the floor, while yet the furtive watchfulness of the eyes
indicated a mind ill at ease.
Smoke came in placid puffs from the cheroot--Rawley was smoking very
hard, but with a judicial meditation, as it seemed.
“Yes, but if you want a thing so bad that, to get it, you’ll face the
devil or the Beast of Revelations, it’s likely to come to you.”
“You call me a beast?” The reddish-brown face grew black like that of a
Bedouin in his rage.
“I said the Beast of Revelations--don’t you know the Scriptures?”
“I know that a fool is to be answered according to his folly,” was the
hoarse reply, and the great head wagged to and fro in its smarting rage.
“Well, I’m doing my best; and perhaps when the folly is all out, we’ll
come to the revelations of the Beast.” There was a silence, in which the
gross impostor shifted heavily in his seat, while a hand twitched across
the mouth, and then caught at the breast of the threadbare black coat
abstractedly.
Rawley leaned forward, one elbow on a knee, the cheroot in his fingers.
He spoke almost confidentially, as to some ignorant and misguided
savage--as he had talked to Indian chiefs in his time, when searching
for the truth regarding some crime:
“I’ve had a lot of revelations in my time. A lawyer and a doctor always
do. And though there are folks who say I’m no lawyer, as there are those
who say with greater truth that you’re no doctor, speaking technically,
we’ve both had ‘revelations.’ You’ve seen a lot that’s seamy, and so
have I. You’re pretty seamy yourself. In fact, you’re as bad a man as
ever saved lives--and lost them. You’ve had a long tether, and you’ve
swung on it--swung wide. But you’ve had a lot of luck that you haven’t
swung high, too.”
He paused and flicked away the ash from his cheroot, while the figure
before him swayed animal-like from side to side, muttering.
“You’ve got brains, a great lot of brains of a kind--however you came
by them,” Rawley continued; “and you’ve kept a lot of people in the
West from passing in their cheques before their time. You’ve rooked ‘em,
chiselled ‘em out of a lot of cash, too. There was old Lamson--fifteen
hundred for the goitre on his neck; and Mrs. Gilligan for the
cancer--two thousand, wasn’t it? Tincture of Lebanon leaves you called
the medicine, didn’t you? You must have made fifty thousand or so in the
last ten years.”
“What I’ve made I’ll keep,” was the guttural answer, and the talon-like
fingers clawed the table.
“You’ve made people pay high for curing them, saving them sometimes; but
you haven’t paid me high for saving you in the courts; and there’s one
case that you haven’t paid me for at all. That was when the patient
died--and you didn’t.”
The face of the old man became mottled with a sudden fear, but he jerked
it forwards once or twice with an effort at self-control. Presently he
steadied to the ordeal of suspense, while he kept saying to himself,
“What does he know--what--which?”
“Malpractice resulting in death--that was poor Jimmy Tearle; and
something else resulting in death--that was the switchman’s wife. And
the law is hard in the West where a woman’s in the case--quick and hard.
Yes, you’ve swung wide on your tether; look out that you don’t swing
high, old man.”
“You can prove nothing; it’s bluff;” came the reply in a tone of malice
and of fear.
“You forget. I was your lawyer in Jimmy Tearle’s case, and a letter’s
been found written by the switchman’s wife to her husband. It reached
me the night he was killed by the avalanche. It was handed over to me by
the post-office, as the lawyer acting for the relatives. I’ve read it.
I’ve got it. It gives you away.”
“I wasn’t alone.” Fear had now disappeared, and the old man was
fighting.
“No, you weren’t alone; and if the switchman and the switchman’s wife
weren’t dead and out of it all; and if the other man that didn’t matter
any more than you wasn’t alive and hadn’t a family that does matter, I
wouldn’t be asking you peaceably for two thousand dollars as my fee for
getting you off two cases that might have sent you to prison for twenty
years, or, maybe, hung you to the nearest tree.”
The heavy body pulled itself together, the hands clinched.
“Blackmail-you think I’ll stand it?”
“Yes, I think you will. I want two thousand dollars to help a friend in
a hole, and I mean to have it, if you think your neck’s worth it.”
Teeth, wonderfully white, showed through the shaggy beard. “If I had to
go to prison--or swing, as you say, do you think I’d go with my mouth
shut? I’d not pay up alone. The West would crack--holy Heaven, I know
enough to make it sick. Go on and see! I’ve got the West in my hand.” He
opened and shut his fingers with a grimace of cruelty which shook Rawley
in spite of himself.
Rawley had trusted to the inspiration of the moment; he had had no
clearly defined plan; he had believed that he could frighten the old
man, and by force of will bend him to his purposes. It had all been
more difficult than he had expected. He kept cool, imperturbable, and
determined, however. He knew that what the old quack said was true--the
West might shake with scandal concerning a few who, no doubt, in remorse
and secret fear, had more than paid the penalty of their offences. But
he thought of Di Welldon and of her criminal brother, and every nerve,
every faculty was screwed to its utmost limit of endurance and capacity.
Suddenly the old man gave a new turn to the event. He got up and,
rummaging in an old box, drew out a dice-box. Rattling the dice, he
threw them out on the table before him, a strange, excited look crossing
his face.
“Play for it,” he said in a harsh, croaking voice. “Play for the two
thousand. Win it if you can. You want it bad. I want to keep it bad.
It’s nice to have; it makes a man feel warm--money does. I’d sleep in
ten-dollar bills, I’d have my clothes made of them, if I could; I’d
have my house papered with them; I’d eat ‘em. Oh, I know, I know about
you--and her--Diana Welldon! You’ve sworn off gambling, and you’ve
kept your pledge for near a year. Well, it’s twenty years since I
gambled--twenty years. I gambled with these then.” He shook the dice
in the box. “I gambled everything I had away--more than two thousand
dollars, more than two thousand dollars.” He laughed a raw, mirthless
laugh. “Well, you’re the greatest gambler in the West. So was I-in the
East. It pulverised me at last, when I’d nothing left--and drink, drink,
drink. I gave up both one night and came out West.
“I started doctoring here. I’ve got money, plenty of money--medicine,
mines, land got it for me. I’ve been lucky. Now you come to bluff
me--me! You don’t know old Busby.” He spat on the floor. “I’m not to be
bluffed. I know too much. Before they could lynch me I’d talk. But
to play you, the greatest gambler in the West, for two thousand
dollars--yes, I’d like the sting of it again. Twos, fours,
double-sixes--the gentleman’s game!” He rattled the dice and threw them
with a flourish out on the table, his evil face lighting up. “Come! You
can’t have something for nothing,” he growled.
As he spoke, a change came over Rawley’s face. It lost its cool
imperturbability, it grew paler, the veins on the fine forehead stood
out, a new, flaring light came into the eyes. The old gambler’s spirit
was alive. But even as it rose, sweeping him into that area of fiery
abstraction where every nerve is strung to a fine tension, and the
surrounding world disappears, he saw the face of Diana Welldon, he
remembered her words to him not an hour before, and the issue of the
conflict, other considerations apart, was without doubt. But there was
her brother and his certain fate, if the two thousand dollars were not
paid in by midnight. He was desperate. It was in reality for Diana’s
sake. He approached the table, and his old calm returned.
“I have no money to play with,” he said quietly. With a gasp of
satisfaction, the old man fumbled in the inside of his coat and drew out
layers of ten, fifty, and hundred-dollar bills. It was lined with them.
He passed a pile over to Rawley--two thousand dollars. He placed a
similar pile before himself.
As Rawley laid his hand on the bills, the thought rushed through his
mind, “You have it--keep it!” but he put it away from him. With a
gentleman he might have done it, with this man before him, it was
impossible. He must take his chances; and it was the only chance in
which he had hope now, unless he appealed for humanity’s sake, for the
girl’s sake, and told the real truth. It might avail. Well, that would
be the last resort.
“For small stakes?” said the grimy quack in a gloating voice.
Rawley nodded and then added, “We stop at eleven o’clock, unless I’ve
lost or won all before that.”
“And stake what’s left on the last throw?”
“Yes.”
There was silence for a moment, in which Rawley seemed to grow older,
and a set look came to his mouth--a broken pledge, no matter what the
cause, brings heavy penalties to the honest mind. He shut his eyes for
an instant, and, when he opened them, he saw that his fellow-gambler
was watching him with an enigmatical and furtive smile. Did this Caliban
have some understanding of what was at stake in his heart and soul?
“Play!” Rawley said sharply, and was himself again. For hour after hour
there was scarce a sound, save the rattle of the dice and an occasional
exclamation from the old man as he threw a double-six. As dusk fell, the
door had been shut, and a lighted lantern was hung over their heads.
Fortune had fluctuated. Once the old man’s pile had diminished to two
notes, then the luck had changed and his pile grew larger; then fell
again; but, as the hands of the clock on the wall above the blue
medicine bottles reached a quarter to eleven, it increased steadily
throw after throw.
Now the player’s fever was in Rawley’s eyes. His face was deadly pale,
but his hand threw steadily, calmly, almost negligently, as it might
seem. All at once, at eight minutes to eleven, the luck turned in
his favour, and his pile mounted again. Time after time he dropped
double-sixes. It was almost uncanny. He seemed to see the dice in the
box, and his hand threw them out with the precision of a machine. Long
afterwards he had this vivid illusion that he could see the dice in the
box. As the clock was about to strike eleven he had before him three
thousand eight hundred dollars. It was his throw.
“Two hundred,” he said in a whisper, and threw. He won.
With a gasp of relief, he got to his feet, the money in his hand. He
stepped backward from the table, then staggered, and a faintness passed
over him. He had sat so long without moving that his legs bent under
him. There was a pail of water with a dipper in it on a bench. He caught
up a dipperful of water, drank it empty, and let it fall in the pail
again with a clatter.
“Dan,” he said abstractedly, “Dan, you’re all safe now.”
Then he seemed to wake, as from a dream, and looked at the man at the
table. Busby was leaning on it with both hands, and staring at Rawley
like some animal jaded and beaten from pursuit. Rawley walked back to
the table and laid down two thousand dollars.
“I only wanted two thousand,” he said, and put the other two thousand in
his pocket.
The evil eyes gloated, the long fingers clutched the pile, and swept it
into a great inside pocket. Then the shaggy head bent forwards.
“You said it was for Dan,” he said--“Dan Welldon?”
Rawley hesitated. “What is that to you?” he replied at last.
With a sudden impulse the old impostor lurched round, opened a box, drew
out a roll, and threw it on the table.
“It’s got to be known sometime,” he said, “and you’ll be my lawyer
when I’m put into the ground--you’re clever. They call me a quack.
Malpractice--bah! There’s my diploma--James Clifton Welldon. Right
enough, isn’t it?”
Rawley was petrified. He knew the forgotten story of James Clifton
Welldon, the specialist, turned gambler, who had almost ruined his own
brother--the father of Dan and Diana--at cards and dice, and had then
ruined himself and disappeared. Here, where his brother had died, he had
come years ago, and practised medicine as a quack.
“Oh, there’s plenty of proof, if it’s wanted!” he said. “I’ve got it
here.” He tapped the box behind him. “Why did I do it? Because it’s my
way. And you’re going to marry my niece, and ‘ll have it all some day.
But not till I’ve finished with it--not unless you win it from me at
dice or cards.... But no”--something human came into the old, degenerate
face--“no more gambling for the man that’s to marry Diana. There’s a
wonder and a beauty!” He chuckled to himself. “She’ll be rich when I’ve
done with it. You’re a lucky man--ay, you’re lucky.”
Rawley was about to tell the old man what the two thousand dollars
was for, but a fresh wave of repugnance passed over him, and, hastily
drinking another dipperful of water, he opened the door. He looked back.
The old man was crouching forward, lapping milk from the great bowl, his
beard dripping. In disgust he swung round again. The fresh, clear air
caught his face.
With a gasp of relief he stepped out into the night, closing the door
behind him.