PANCHA WRITES A LETTER
Pancha had been much alone. Crowder had seen her several times, the
doctor had come, the chambermaid, one or two of her confreres from the
theater. But there had been long, dreary hours when she had lain
motionless, looking at the walls and thinking of her wrongs. She had
gone over and over the old ground, trodden the weary round like a
squirrel in a cage, asked herself the same questions and searched,
tormented, for their answers. As the days passed the weight of her
grievance grew, and her sick soul yearned to hit back at the man who had
so wantonly wounded her.
Gradually, from the turmoil an idea of retaliation was churned into
being. It did not reach the point of action till Monday evening. Then it
rose before her imperious, a vengeance, subtle and if not complete, at
least as satisfying as anything could be to her sore heart. It was that
expression of futile anger and poisoned musings, an anonymous letter. She
wrote it on the pink note paper which she had bought to write to Mayer
on. It ran as follows:
Dear Lady:
This letter is to warn you. It comes from a person friendly to you and
who wants to put you wise to something you ought to know. It's about Boye
Mayer, him that goes to your house and is after your sister. Maybe you
don't know that, but _I_ do--it's truth what I'm telling you every word.
He's no good. Not the kind to go round with your kind. It's your sister's
money he wants. If she had none he'd not trouble to meet her in the
plaza opposite the Greek Church. Watch out for him--don't let her go with
him. Don't let her marry him or you'll curse the day. I know him well and
I know he's bad right through.
Wishing you well,
FROM A FRIEND.
She had written the letter to Lorry as the elder sister, whose name she
had seen in the papers and whom Crowder had described as the intelligent
one with brains and character. Her woman's instinct told her that her
charges might have no weight with the younger girl, under the spell of
those cajoleries and blandishments whose power she knew so well. With the
letter in her hand she crept out to the stairhead and called to the clerk
in the office below. Gushing had not come on duty yet, and it was the day
man who answered her summons. She asked him to post the letter that
night, and he promised to do so. The lives of the group of which this
story tells were drawing in to a point of fusion. In the centripetal
movement this insignificant incident had its importance. The man forgot
his promise, and it was not till the next day at lunch that he thought of
the letter, posting it on his way back to the hotel.
In her room again, Pancha dropped on the sofa, and lay still. The
exertion had taxed her strength and she felt sick and tremulous. But she
thought of what she had done with a grim relish, savored like a burning
morsel on her tongue, the bitter-sweet of revenge.
Here an hour later Crowder found her. She was glad to see him, and told
him she was better, but the doctor would not let her get up yet.
"And even if he would," she said, "I don't want to. I'm that weak,
Charlie, you can't think. It's as if the thing that made me alive was
gone, and I was just the same as dead."
Crowder thought he understood his friend Pancha even as he did his friend
Mark. That she could have complexities and reservations beyond his simple
ken had never occurred to him. What he saw on the surface was what she
was, and being so, the news he was bringing would be as a tonic to her
broken spirit.
"You'll not stay that way long, Panchita," he said. "You'll be on the job
soon now. And what I've come to tell you will help on the good work. I've
got a story for you that'll straighten out all the creases and bring you
up on your feet better than a steam derrick would."
"What is it?" She did not seem especially interested, her glance
listless, her hand lying languid where he had dropped it.
"It's about Mayer."
He was rewarded by seeing her shift her head on the pillow that she might
command him with a vivid, bird-bright eye.
"What about him?"
"Every thing, my dear. We've got him coming and going. We've got him dead
to rights. He's a rogue and a thief."
With her hands spread flat on either side of her she raised herself to a
sitting posture. Her face, framed in its bush of hair, had a look of
strained, almost wild, inquiry.
"Thief!" she exclaimed.
"Yes. It's a honeycooler of a story. Burst out all of a sudden like a
night blooming cereus. But before I say a word you've got to promise on
everything you hold sacred that you won't breathe a word of it."
"I promise."
"It's only for a little while. It'll be public property in a day or
two--Thursday or Friday maybe."
"I'm on. How is he a thief?"
Crowder told her. The story was clear in his head by this time, and he
told it well, with the journalist's sense of its drama. As he spoke she
drew up her knees and clasping her hands round them sat rigid, now and
then as she met his eyes, raised to hers to see if she had caught a
point, nodding and breathing a low, "I see--Go on."
When he had finished he looked at her with challenging triumph.
"Well--isn't it all I said it was?"
Already she showed the effect of it. There was color in her face, a dusky
red on the high cheek bones.
"Yes--more. I didn't think--" She stopped and swallowed, her
throat dry.
"Did you have the least idea, did he ever say a word to suggest he had
anything as juicy as that in the background?"
"No. I can't remember all in a minute. But he never said much about
himself; he was always asking about me." She paused, fixedly
staring; then her glance, razor-sharp, swerved to the young man.
"Will he go to jail?"
"You bet he will. I'm not sure on just what count, but they'll find one
that'll fit his case. He's as much a thief as either Knapp or Garland. He
knew it wasn't Captain Kidd's treasure; he saw the papers. He can't play
the baby act about being ignorant. The way he hid his loot proves that."
"Yes," she murmured. "He's a thief all right. He's bad every way."
"That's what I wanted you to see. That's why I told you. You can't go on
caring now."
"No." Her voice was very low. "It puts the lid on that."
"You can thank God on your bended knees he threw you down."
"Oh, yes," she rocked her head slightly from side to side with an air of
morose defiance, "I _can_."
"_Do_ you?" said the young man, leaning closer and looking into her face.
He was satisfied by what he saw. For a moment the old pride flamed up, a
spark in the black glance, a haughty straightening of the neck.
"A common thief like him for my lover? Say, you know me, Charlie. I'd
have killed myself, or maybe I'd have killed him."
Crowder had what he would have called "a hunch" that this might be true.
From his heart he exclaimed:
"Gee, I'm glad it's turned out the way it has!"
"So am I. Only I'm sorry for one thing. It's _you_ that have caught him,
not _me_."
Crowder laughed.
"You Indian!" he said. "You red, revengeful devil!"
"Oh, I'm _that_!" she answered, with biting emphasis. "When I get a blow
I want to give one. I don't turn the other cheek; I strike back--with a
knife if I have one handy."
"Well, don't you bother about knives now. The hitting's going to be done
for you. All you have to do is to sit still, like a perfect lady, and
say nothing."
"Um." She paused, mused an instant, and then said: "You're sure you can't
be mistaken?"
"Positive. Funny, isn't it? It was the paper that gave me the lead. Sort
of poetic justice his being landed by that--the paper that had the
article about you in it."
She looked at him, struck with a sudden idea:
"Perhaps it was that article that made him come to see me in the
beginning."
Crowder smiled.
"I guess he wasn't bothering about articles just then. He'd used it to
wrap the money in. It was all muddy and ragged, the lower half of the
letter gone--the piece about you--got torn out by accident I guess. As I
see it he happened to have the paper and when he got the sacks out of the
ground, put some of 'em in it. Then when he was in the Whatcheer House he
stuffed it in the hole under the floor. It was the handiest way to get
rid of it."
Soon after that Crowder left, feeling that he had done a good work. The
news had had the effect he had hoped it would. She was a different girl.
The last glimpse of her, sitting in that same attitude with her hands
clasped round her knees, showed her revitalized, alive once more, with
something of the old brown and red vividness in her face.
When he had gone she remembered her letter. It was of no use now. She
would have liked to recall it, but it was too late; the clock on the
table marked eleven. Through the fitful sleep of her uneasy night it came
back, invested by the magnifying power of dreams with a fantastic
malignity; in waking moments showing as a bit of spite, dwindled to
nothing before the forces gathering for Mayer's destruction.