THE REAL EDWIN KEATCHAM
One Sunday after Mrs. Melville Winter and Archie came to Casa
Fuerte, Mr. Keatcham sent for the colonel. There was nothing
unusual in such a summons. From the beginning of his illness he had
shown a curious, inexpressive desire for the soldier’s company.
He would have him sit in the room, although too weak to talk to
him, supposing he wished to talk, which was not at all sure. “I
like-to-see-him-just-sitting-there,” he faltered to his nurse,
“can’t-he-read-or-play-solitaire-like-the-old-lady?”
Sometimes Winter would be conscious that the feeble creature in the
bed, with the bluish-white face, was staring at him. Whether the glassy
eyes beheld his figure or went beyond him to unfinished colossal
schemes that might change the fate of a continent, or drifted backward
to the poverty-stricken home, the ferocious toil and the unending
self-denial of Keatcham’s youth on the Pacific slope, the dim gaze
gave no clue. All that was apparent was that it was always on Winter,
as he curled his legs under his chair, wrote or knitted his brow over
rows of playing-cards.
At the very first, Keatcham’s mind had wandered; he used to shrink
from imaginary people who were in the room; he would try to talk to
them, distressing himself painfully, for he was so weak that his nurses
turned his head on the pillow; he would feebly motion them away.
In such aberrations he would sometimes appeal, in a changed, thin,
childish voice, to the obscure, toil-worn pioneer woman who had died
while he was a lad. “Mother, I _was_ a good boy; I always got up when
you called me, didn’t I? I helped you iron when the other boys were
playing--mother, please don’t let that old woman stay and cry here!” Or
he would plead: “Mother, tell her, say, _you_ tell her I didn’t know
her son would kill himself--I couldn’t tell--he was a damn coward,
anyhow--excuse me, mama, I didn’t mean to swear, but they make me so
awful mad!” There was a girl who came, sometimes, from whose presence
he shrank; a girl he had never seen; nor, indeed, had he ever known
in the flesh any of the shapes which haunted him. They had lived; but
never had his eyes fallen on them. Nevertheless, their presence was
as real to him as that of the people about him whom he could hear and
touch and see. It did not take Winter’s imagination long to piece
out the explanation of these apparitions: they were specters of the
characters in those dramas of ruthless conquest which Mercer had culled
out of newspaper “stories” and affidavits and court reports and forced
upon Keatcham’s attention. Miss Smith helped him to the solution,
although her own ignorance of Mercer’s method was puzzling. “How did
he ever know old Mrs. Ferris?” she said. “He called her Ferris and
he talks about her funny dress--she always did wear a queer little
basque and full skirt after all the world went into blouses--but how
did _he_ ever come across her? They had a place on the James that had
been in the family a hundred years and had to lose it on account of the
Tidewater; and Nelson Ferris blew his brains out.”
“Don’t you know how?” asked the colonel. “Well, I’ll tell you my guess
sometime. Who is the girl who seems to make him throw a fit so?”
“I’m not sure; I imagine it is poor Mabel Ray; there were two of them,
sisters; they made money out of their Tidewater stock and went to New
York to visit some kin; and they got scared when the stock fell and the
dividends stopped; and they sold out at a great loss. They never did
come back; they had persuaded all their kin to invest; and the stopping
of the dividends made it difficult for some of the poor ones--Mabel
said she couldn’t face her old aunts. She went on the stage in New
York. She was very pretty; she wasn’t very strong. Anyway, you can
imagine the end of the story. I saw her in the park last winter when
Mrs. Winter was in New York; she turned her face away--poor Mabel!”
Through Janet Smith’s knowledge of her dead sister’s neighbors, Winter
got a dozen pitiful records of the wreckage of the Tidewater. “Mighty
interesting reading,” he thought grimly, “but hardly likely to make the
man responsible for them stuck on himself!” Then he would look at the
drawn face on the pillow and listen to the babblings of the boy who had
had no childhood; and the frown would melt off his brow.
He did not always talk to his mother when his mind wandered; several
times he addressed an invisible presence as “Helen” and “Dear” with an
accent of tenderness very strange on those inflexible lips. When he
talked to this phantasm he was never angry or distressed; his turgid
scowl cleared; the austere lines chiseling his cheeks and brow faded;
he looked years younger. But for the most part, it was to no unreal
creature that he turned, but to Colonel Rupert Winter. He would address
him with punctilious civility, but as one who was under some obligation
to assist him, saying, for instance, “Colonel Winter, I must beg you
not to let those persons in the room again. They annoy me. But you
needn’t let Mercer know that. Please attend to it yourself, and get
them away. Miss Smith says you will. Explain to them that when I get up
I will investigate their claims. I’m too sick now!”
Conscious and free from fever, he was barely able to articulate, but
when delirious fancies possessed him he could talk rapidly, in a good
voice. Very soon it was clear that he was calmer for the colonel’s
presence. Hence, the latter got into the habit of sitting in the
room. He would request imaginary ruined and desperate beings to leave
Keatcham in peace; he would gravely rise and close the door on their
departure. He never was surprised nor at a loss; and his dramatic nerve
never failed. Later, as the visions faded, a moody reserve wrapped the
sick man. He lay motionless, evidently absorbed by thought. In one way
he was what doctors call a very good patient. He obeyed all directions;
he was not restless. But neither was he ever cheerful. Every day he
asked for his pulse record and his temperature and his respiration.
After a consultation with the doctor, Miss Smith gave them to him.
“It is against the rules,” grumbled the doctor, “but I suppose each
patient has to make his own rules.” On the same theory he permitted the
colonel’s visits.
Therefore, with no surprise, Winter received and obeyed the summons.
Keatcham greeted him with his usual stiff courtesy.
“The doctor says I can have the--papers--will you pick
out--the--one--day after I was stabbed.”
Miss Smith indicated a pile on a little table, placed ready at hand. “I
kept them for him,” she said.
“Read about--the Midland,” commanded the faint, indomitable voice.
“Want the election and the newspaper sentiments?” asked the colonel;
he gave it all, conscious the while of Janet Smith’s compassionate,
perplexed, sorrowful eyes.
“Don’t skip!” Keatcham managed to articulate after a pause.
The colonel gave him a keen glance. “Want it straight, without a
chaser?”
Keatcham closed his eyes and nodded.
The colonel read about the virtually unanimous election of Tracy; the
astonishment of the outsiders among the supposed anti-Tracy element;
the composed and impenetrable front of the men closest to Keatcham; the
reticence and amiability of Tracy himself, in whose mien there could
be detected no hint either of hostility or of added cordiality toward
the men who had been expected “to drag his bleeding pride in the dust;”
finally of the response of the stock-market in a phenomenal rise of
Midland.
Keatcham listened with his undecipherable mask of attention; there was
not so much as the flicker of an eyelid or the twitch of a muscle. All
he said was: “Now, read if there is anything about the endowment of the
new fellowships in some medical schools for experimental research.”
“Who gives the endowment?”
“Anonymous. In memory of Maria Warren Keatcham and Helen Bradford
Keatcham. Find anything?”
The colonel found a great deal about it. The paper was full of this
munificent gift, amounting to many millions of dollars and filling
(with most carefully and wisely planned details) an almost absolute
vacuum in the American scheme of education. The dignity and fame of the
chairs and fellowships endowed were ample to tempt the best ability of
the profession. The reader grew enthusiastic as he read.
“Why, it’s immense! And we have always needed it!” he exclaimed.
“There are some letters about it, there,”--Keatcham feebly motioned
to a number of neatly opened, neatly assorted letters on a desk. “The
doctor said I might have the letters read to me. Miss Smith got him to.
For fear of exciting you, the doctors usually let you worry your head
off because you don’t know about things. I’ve got to carry a few things
through if it kills me. Don’t you see?”
“I see,” said the colonel, “you shall.”
The next time he saw the financier, although only a few days had
elapsed, he was much stronger; he was able to breathe comfortably, he
spoke with ease, in his ordinary voice; in fine, he looked his old self
again, merely thinner and paler. Hardly was the colonel seated before
he said without preface--Keatcham never made approaches to his subject,
regarding conversational road-making as waste of brains for a busy man:
“Colonel, Miss Smith hasn’t time to be my nurse and secretary both. I
won’t have one sent from New York; will you help her out?”
The colonel’s lips twitched; he was thinking that were Miss Smith
working for Atkins, she couldn’t have a better chance to make a
killing. “But I’ll bet my life she isn’t,” he added; “she may be trying
to save his life, but she isn’t playing his game!”
He said aloud: “I will, Mr. Keatcham, if you will let me do it as part
of the obligation of the situation; and there is no bally rot about
compensation.”
“Very well,” said Keatcham. He did not hesitate; it was (as the colonel
had already discovered) the rarest thing in the world for him to
hesitate; he thought with astonishing rapidity; and he formulated his
answer while his interlocutor talked; before the speech was over the
answer was ready. Another trait of his had struck the soldier, namely,
the laborious correctness of his speech; it was often formal and
old-fashioned; Aunt Rebecca said that he talked like Daniel Webster’s
speeches; but it had none of the homely and pungent savor one might
expect from a man whose boyhood had scrambled through miners’ camps
into a San Francisco stock office; who had never gone to school in his
life by daylight; who had been mine superintendent, small speculator
and small director in California until he became a big speculator and
big railway controller in New York.
“You might begin on the morning mail,” Keatcham continued. “Let me sort
them first.” He merely glanced at the inscriptions on the envelopes,
opening and taking out one which he read rather carelessly, frowning a
little before he placed it to one side.
A number of the letters concerned the endowments of the experimental
chairs at the universities. Keatcham’s attention was not lightened by
any ray of pleasure. Once he said: “That fellow has caught my idea,”
and once: “That’s right,” but there was no animation in his voice, no
interest in his pallid face. Stealing a furtive scrutiny of it, now and
then, Rupert Winter was impressed with its mystical likeness to that of
Cary Mercer. There was no physical similarity of color or feature; it
was a likeness of the spirit rather than the flesh. The colonel’s eyes
flashed.
“I have it!” he exclaimed within, “I have it; they are fanatics, both
of them; Keatcham’s a fanatic of finance and Mercer is a fanatic of
another sort; but fanatics they both are, ready to go any length for
their principles or their ambitions or their revenge! _J’ai trouvé le
mot d’énigme_, as Aunt Becky would say--I wonder what she’ll say to
this sudden psychological splurge of mine.”
“The business hour is up,”--it was Miss Smith entering with a bowl on a
white-covered tray; the sun glinted the lump of ice in the milk and the
silver spoon was dazzling against the linen--“your biscuit and milk,
Mr. Keatcham. Didn’t you have it when you were a boy?”
“I did, Miss Janet,”--and Keatcham actually smiled. “I used to think
crackers and milk the nicest thing in the world.”
“That is because you never tasted corn pone and milk; but you are going
to.”
“When you make it for me. I’m glad you’re such a good cook. It’s one of
your ways I like. My mother was a very good cook. She could make better
dishes out of almost nothing than these mongrel chefs can make with
the whole world.”
“I reckon she could,” said Miss Smith; she was speaking sincerely.
“When my father didn’t strike pay dirt, my mother would open her bakery
and make pies for the miners; she could make bread with potato yeast or
‘salt-emptins’--can you make salt-rising bread?”
“I can--shall I make you some, to-morrow?”
“I’d like it. My mother used to make more money than my father;
sometimes when we children were low in clothes and dad owed a bigger
lot of money than usual, we had a laundry at our house as well as a
bakery. Yet, in spite of all the work, my mother found time to teach
all of us; and she knew how to teach, too; for she was principal of
a school when my father married her. She was a New Englander; so was
he; but they went West. We’re forty-niners. I saw the place where our
little cloth-and-board shack used to stand. After the big fire, you
know. It burned us all up; we had saved a good deal and my mother had a
nice bakery. She worked too hard; it killed her. Work and struggle and
losing the children.”
“They died?” said Miss Janet.
“Diphtheria. They didn’t know anything about the disease then. We
all had it; and my little sister and both my brothers died; but I’m
tough. I lived. My mother fell into what they called a decline. I was
making a little money then--I was sixteen; but I couldn’t keep her from
working. Perhaps it made no difference; but it did make a difference
her not having the--the right kind of food. Nobody knew anything about
consumption then. I used to go out in the morning and be afraid I’d
find her dead when I got back. One night I did.” He stopped abruptly,
crimsoning up to his eyes--“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”
“I call that tough,”--as the colonel blurted out the words, he was
conscious of a sense of repetition. When had he said those very same
words before, to whom? Of all people in the world, to Cary Mercer.
“Mighty tough,” murmured he softly.
“Yes,” said Keatcham, “it was.” He did not say anything more. Neither
did the colonel. Keatcham obediently ate his milk and biscuit; and very
shortly the colonel took his leave.
The next morning after an uneventful hour of sorting, reading and
answering letters for Miss Smith to copy on the traveling type-writer,
Keatcham gave his new secretary a sharp sensation; he ordered in his
quiet but peremptory fashion: “Now put that trash away; sit down; tell
me all you know of Cary--real name is Cary Mercer, isn’t it?”
The colonel said it was; he asked him if he wanted everything.
“Everything. Straight. Without a chaser,” snapped Keatcham.
The colonel gave it to him. He began with his own acquaintance; he told
about Phil Mercer; he did not slur a detail; neither did he underscore
one; Keatcham got the uncolored facts. He heard them impassively,
making only one comment: “A great deal of damage would be saved in this
world if youngsters could be shut up until they had sense enough not
to fool with firearms.” When Winter came to Mercer’s own exposition of
his motives and his design if successful in his raid on the kings of
the market, Keatcham grunted; at the end he breathed a noiseless jet of
a sigh. “You don’t think Mercer is at all”--he tapped the side of the
head.
“No more than you are.”
“Or you?”
“Oh, well,” the colonel jested, “we all have a prejudice in favor of
our own sanity. What I meant was that Mercer is a bit of a fanatic; his
hard luck has--well, prejudiced him--”
Keatcham’s cold, firm lips straightened into his peculiar smile, which
was rather of perception than of humor.
One might say of him--Aunt Rebecca Winter did say of him--that he saw
the incongruous, which makes up for humor, but he never enjoyed it;
possibly it was only another factor in his contempt of mankind.
“Colonel,” said Keatcham, “do you think Wall Street is a den of
thieves?”
“I do,” said the colonel promptly. “I should like to take a machine gun
or two and clean you all out.”
Keatcham did not smile; he blinked his eyes and nodded. “I presume a
good many people share your opinion of us.”
“Millions,” replied the colonel.
Again Keatcham nodded. “I thought so,” said he. “Of course you are all
off; Wall Street is as necessary to the commonwealth as the pores to
your skin; they don’t make the poison in the system any more than the
pores do; they only let it escape. And I suppose you think that big
financiers who control the trusts and the railways and--”
“Us,” the colonel struck in, “well?”
“You think we are thieves and liars and murderers and despots?”
“All of that,” said the colonel placidly; “also fools.”
“You certainly don’t mince your words.”
“You don’t want me to. What use would my opinion be in a one-thousandth
attenuation? You’re no homeopath; and whatever else you may be, you’re
no coward.”
“Yet, you think I surrendered to Mercer? You think I did it because I
was afraid he would kill me? I suppose he would have killed me if I
hadn’t, eh?”
“He can speak for himself about that; he seems--well, an earnest sort
of man. But I don’t think you gave in because you were afraid, if that
is what you mean. You are no more afraid than he was! You wanted to
live, probably; you had big things on hand. The Midland was only a
trump in the game; you could win the odd trick with something else; you
let the Midland go.”
“Pretty close,”--Keatcham really smiled--“but there is a good deal
more of it. I was shut up with the results of my--my work. He did
it very cleverly. I had nothing to distract me. There were the big
type-written pages about the foolish people who had lost their money,
in some cases really through my course, mostly because they got scared
and let go and were wiped out when, if they had had confidence in me
and held on, they would be very much better off, now. But they didn’t,
and they were ruined and they starved and took their boys out of
college and mortgaged their confounded homes that had been in their
families ever since Adam; and the old people died of broken hearts
and the girls went wrong and some of the idiotic quitters killed
themselves--it was not the kind of crowd you would want shut up with
you in the dark! I was shut up with them. He had some sort of way of
switching off the lights from the outside. I never saw a face or heard
a voice. I would have to sit there in the dark after he thought I had
read enough to occupy my mind. It--was unpleasant. Perhaps you suppose
that brought me round to his way of thinking?”
The colonel meditated. “I’ll tell you honestly,” he said after a pause,
“I was of that opinion, or something of the kind, until I talked your
case over with my aunt--”
“The old dame is not a fool; what did she say?”
“She said no, he didn’t convert you; but he convinced you how other
people looked at your methods. You couldn’t get round the fact that a
majority of your countrymen think your type of financier is worse than
smallpox, and more contagious.”
“Oh, she put it that way, did she? I wish she would write a prospectus
for me. Well, you think she was nearer right than you?”
“I think _you_ do; I myself think it was a little of both. You’ve
got a heart and a conscience originally, though they have got pretty
well tanned out in the weather; you didn’t want to be sorry for those
people, but you are. They have bothered you a lot; but it has bothered
you more to think that instead of going down the ages as a colossal
benefactor and empire builder, you are hung up on the hook to see
where you’re at; and where you _will_ be if the people get thoroughly
aroused. You all are building bigger balloons when it ought to be you
for the cyclone cellar! But _you_ are different. You can see ahead. I
give you credit for seeing.”
“Have you ever considered,” said Keatcham slowly, “that in spite
of the iniquitous greed of the men you are condemning, in spite of
their oppression of the people, the prosperity of the country is
unparalleled? How do you explain it?”
“Crops,” said the colonel; “the crops were too big for you.”
“You might give _us_ a little credit--your aunt does. She was here
to-day; she is a manufacturer and she comprehended that the methods of
business can not be revolutionized without somebody’s getting hurt.
Yet, on the whole, the change might be immensely advantageous. Now,
why, in a nutshell, do you condemn us?”
“You’re after the opinion of the average man, are you?”
“I suppose so, the high average.”
The colonel crossed his legs and uncrossed them again; he looked
straight into the other’s eyes; his own narrowed with thought.
“I’ll tell you,” said he. “I don’t know much about the Street or
high finance or industrial development. I’m a plain soldier; I’m
not a manufacturer and I’m not a speculator. I understand perfectly
that you can’t have great changes without somebody’s getting hurt in
the shuffle. It is beyond me to decide whether the new industrial
arrangements with the stock-jobber on top instead of the manufacturer
will make for better or for worse--but I know this; it is against the
fundamental law to do evil that good may come. And you fellows in Wall
Street, when, to get rich quick, you lie about stocks in order to buy
cheap and then lie another way to sell dear; when you make a panic out
of whole cloth, as you did in 1903, because, having made about all you
can out of things going up, you want to make all you can out of them
going down; when you play foot-ball with great railway properties and
insurance properties, because you are as willing to rob the dead as the
living; when you do all that, and when your imitators, who haven’t so
much brains or so much decency as you, when _they_ buy up legislatures
and city councils; and _their_ imitators run the Black Hand business
and hold people up who have money and are not strong enough, they
think, to hunt them down--why, not being a philosopher but just a plain
soldier, I call it bad, _rotten_ bad. What’s more, I can tell you the
American people won’t stand for it.”
“You think they can help themselves?”
“I know they can. You fellows are big, but you won’t last over night
if the American people get really aroused. And they are stirring in
their sleep and kicking off the bed-clothes.”
“Yet you ought to belong to the conservatives.”
“I do. That’s why the situation is dangerous. You as an old San
Franciscan ought to remember how conservative was that celebrated
Vigilance Committee. It is when the long-suffering, pusillanimous,
conservative element gets fighting mad that something is doing.”
“Maybe,” muttered Keatcham thoughtfully. “I believe we can manage for
you better than you can for yourselves; but when the brakes are broken
good driving can’t stop the machine; all the chauffeur can do is to
keep the middle of the road. I like to be beaten as little as any of
them; but I’m not a fool. Winter, you are used to accomplishing things;
what is your notion of the secret?”
“Knowing when to stop exhausting trumps, I reckon--but you don’t play
cards.”
“It is the same old game whatever you play,” said the railway king.
He did not pursue the discussion; his questions, Winter had found,
invariably had a purpose, and that purpose was never argument. He lay
back on the big leather cushions of the lounge, his long, lean fingers
drumming on the table beside him and an odd smile playing about the
corners of his mouth; his next speech dived into new waters. He said:
“Have those men from New York got Atkins, yet?”
“They couldn’t find him,” answered the colonel. “I have been having
him shadowed, on my own idea--I think he stabbed you, though I have no
proof of it; I take it you have proof of your matter.”
“Plenty,” said Keatcham. “I was going to send him to the pen in
self-defense. It isn’t safe for me to have it creep out that my
secretary made a fortune selling my secrets. Besides, I don’t want to
be killed. You say they can’t find him?”
“Seems to have gone to Japan--”
“Seems? What do you mean?”
“I am not sure. He was booked for a steamer; and a man under his name,
of his build and color, did actually sail on the boat,” announced the
colonel blandly.
“Hmn! He’s right here in San Francisco; read that note.”
Winter read the note, written on Palace Hotel note-paper, in a sharp,
scrawling, Italian hand. The contents were sufficiently startling.
Dear friend Hoping this find you well. Why do you disregard a true
Warning? We did write you afore once for say you give that money or
we shal be unfortunately compel to kill you quick. No? You laff. God
knows we got have that twenty-five thousan dol. Yes. And now because
of such great expence it is fifty thousan you shall pay. We did not
mean kill you dead only show you for sure there is no place so secret
you can Hide no place so strong can defend you. Be Warn. You come
with $50000.00 in $100 bills. You go or send Mr. Mercer to the Red
Hat; ask for Louis. Say to Louis For the Black Hand. Louis will say
For the Black Hand. You follow him. No harm will come to you. You
will be forgive all heretobefores. Elseways you must die April 15-20.
_This is sure_. You have felt our dagger the other is worse.
You well wishing Fren,
The Black Hand.
“Sounds like Atkins pretending to be a Dago,” said the colonel dryly.
“I could do better myself.”
“Very likely,” said Keatcham.
“Does he mean business? What’s he after?”
“To get me out of the way. He knows he isn’t safe until I’m dead. Then
he hasn’t been cleaned out, but he has lost a lot of money in this
Midland business. The cipher he has is of no use to him, there, or in
the other things which unluckily he knows about. With me dead and the
cipher in his hands, he could have made millions; even without the
cipher, if he knows I’m dead before the rest of the world, he ought to
make at least a half-million. I think you will find that he has put
everything he has on the chance. I told you he was slick. And unstable.
What do you anticipate he will do? Straight, with no chaser, as you
say.”
“Well, straight with no chaser, I should say a bomb was the meanest
trick in sight, so, naturally, he will choose a bomb.”
“I agree with you. You say the house is patrolled?”
“The whole place. But we’ll put on a bigger force; I’ll see Birdsall
at once. Atkins would have to hire his explosive talent, wouldn’t he?”
questioned the colonel.
“Oh, he knows plenty of the under-world rascals; and besides, for a
fellow of his habits, there is a big chance for loot. Mrs. Millicent
Winter tells me that your aunt has valuable jewels with her. If she
told me, she may have told other people, and Atkins may know. He will
use other people, but he will come, too, in my opinion.”
“I see,” said the colonel; “to make sure they don’t foozle the bomb.
But he’ll have his alibi ready all right. Mr. Keatcham, did they send
you a previous letter?”
“Oh, dear no; that’s only part of the game; makes a better story. So is
using the hotel paper; if it throws suspicion on anybody it would be
your party; you see Atkins knew Mercer had a grudge against me as well
as him. He was counting on that. I rather wonder that he didn’t fix up
some proof for you to find.”
“By Jove!” cried the colonel; “maybe he did.”
“And you didn’t find it?”
“Well, you see I was too busy with you; the others must have overlooked
it. Hard on Atkins after he took so much trouble, wasn’t it?”
“I told you he was too subtle. But it is not wise to underrate him, or
bombs either; we must get the women and those boys out of the house.”
“But how? You are not really acquainted with my aunt, Mrs. Rebecca
Winter, I take it.”
“You think she wouldn’t go if there was any chance of danger?”
“You couldn’t fire her unless out of a cannon; but she would help get
Archie away; Mrs. Melville and Miss Smith--”
“Well--ur--Miss Smith, I am afraid, will not be easy to manage; you
see, she knows--”
“Knows? Did you tell her?” asked Colonel Winter anxiously.
“Well, not exactly. As the children say, it told itself. There has been
a kind of an attempt, already. A box came, marked from a man I know in
New York, properly labeled with express company’s labels. Miss Smith
opened it; I could see her, because she was in the bath-room with the
door open. There was another box inside, wrapped in white tissue paper.
Very neatly. She examined that box with singular care and then she drew
some water in the lavatory basin, half opened the box and put the whole
thing under water in the basin. Then I thought it was time for me and
I asked her if it was a bomb. Do you know that girl had sense enough
not to try to deceive me? She saw that I had seen every move she had
made. She said merely that it was safe under water. It was an ingenious
little affair which had an electrical arrangement for touching off a
spark when the lid of the box would be lifted.”
“Ah, yes. Thoughtful little plan to amuse an invalid by letting him
open the box, himself, to see the nice surprises from New York. Very
neat, indeed. What did you do with the box?”
“Nothing, so far. It only came about an hour ago.”
“Do you reckon some of the Black Hands are out on the street, rubbering
to see if there are any signs of anything doing?”
“Perhaps; you might let Birdsall keep a watch for anything like that.
But they hear, somehow; there is a leak somewhere in our establishment.
It is not your aunt; she can hold her tongue as well as use it; the
boy, Archie, does not know anything to tell--”
“He wouldn’t tell it if he did,” interrupted the colonel; and very
concisely but with evident pride he gave Archie’s experience in the
Chinese quarter.
Keatcham’s comment took the listener’s breath away; so far afield was
it and so unlike his experience of the man; it was: “Winter, a son like
that would be a good deal of a comfort, wouldn’t he?”
“Poor little chap!” said Winter. “He hasn’t any father to be proud of
him--father and mother both dead.”
Keatcham eyed Winter thoughtfully a moment, then he said: “You’ve been
married and lost children, your aunt says. That must be hard. But--did
you ever read that poem of James Whitcomb Riley’s to his friend whose
child was dead? It’s true what he says--they were better off than he
‘who had no child to die.’”
Rupert was looking away from the speaker with the instinctive
embarrassment of a man who surprises the deeper feelings of another.
He could see out of the window the lovely April garden and Janet Smith
amid the almond blossoms. Only her shining black head and her white
shoulders and bodice rose above the pink clusters. She looked up and
nodded, seeing him; her face was a little pale, but she was smiling.
“I don’t know,” he said, “it’s hard enough either way for a man.”
“I never lost any children”--Keatcham’s tone was dry, still, but it
had not quite the former desiccated quality--“but I was married, for a
little while. If it’s as bad to lose your children as it is to lose the
hope of having them, it must be hard. You lost your wife, too?”
“Yes,” said Rupert Winter.
At this moment he became conscious that Keatcham was avoiding his gaze
in the very manner of his avoiding of Keatcham’s a moment ago; and it
gave him a bewildering sensation.
“I wanted to marry my wife for seven years before we were married,”
Keatcham continued in that carefully monotonous voice. “She was the
daughter of the superintendent of the mine where I was working. I
was only eighteen when I first saw her. I was twenty-five when we
were married. She used to give me lessons; she was educated and
accomplished. She did more than is easy telling, for me. Of course, her
parents were opposed at first because they looked higher for her, but
she brought them round by her patience and her sweetness and her faith
in me. Six months after we were married, she had an accident which left
her a helpless invalid in a wheeled chair, at the best; at the worst,
suffering--you’ve known what it is to see anybody, whom you care for,
in horrible pain and trying not to show it when you come near?”
“I have,” said Winter; “merry hell, isn’t it?”
“I have seen that expression,” said Keatcham; “I never recognized
its peculiar appropriateness before. Yes, it is that. Yet, Winter,
those two years she lived afterwards were the happiest of my whole
life. She said, the last night she was with me, that they had been
the happiest of hers.” The same flush which once before, when he had
seemed moved, had crept up to his temples, burned his hollow cheeks.
He was holding the edge of the table with the tips of his fingers and
the blood settled about the nails with the pressure of his grip. There
was an intense moment during which Winter vainly struggled to think of
something to say and looked more of his sympathy than he was aware;
then: “Cary Mercer needn’t think that he has had all the hard times in
the world!” said Keatcham in his usual toneless voice, relaxing his
hold and leaning back on his pillows. The color ebbed away gradually
from his face.
“I don’t wonder you didn’t marry again,” said Winter.
“You would not wonder if you had known Helen. She always understood.
Of course, now, at sixty-one, I could buy a pretty, innocent, young
girl who would do as her parents bade her, and cry her eyes out before
the wedding, or a handsome and brilliant society woman with plenty of
matrimonial experience--but I don’t want them. I should have to explain
myself to them; I don’t know how to explain myself; you see I can’t
half do it--”
“I reckon I understand a little.”
“I guess you do. You are different, too. Well, let’s get down to
business, think up some way of getting the women out of the house; and
get your sleuths after Atkins. It is ‘we get him, or he gets us!’”
The amateur secretary assented and prepared to go, for the valet was
at the door, ready to relieve him; but opposite Keatcham, he paused a
second, made a pretense of hunting for his hat, picked it up in his
left hand and held out the right hand, saying, “Well, take care of
yourself.”
Keatcham nodded; he shook the hand with a good firm pressure. “Much
obliged, Winter,” said he.
“Well,” meditated the soldier as he went his way, “I never did think to
take that financial bucaneer by the hand; but--it wasn’t the bucaneer,
it was the real Edwin Keatcham.”