THE TORN PAGE
My coming had thrown dinner late; we were barely through with the meal
and back once more in the living room when the latch of the French
window rattled, the window itself was pushed open, and a high imperious
voice proclaimed,
"The Princess of China, calling on Mr. Worth Gilbert."
There stood Ina Vandeman in the gorgeously embroidered robes of a high
caste Chinese lady, her fair hair covered by a sleek black wig that
struck out something odd, almost ominous, in the coloring of her skin,
the very planes of her features. Outside, along the porch, sounded the
patter of many feet; Skeet wriggled through the narrow frame under her
tall sister's arm, came scooting into the room to turn and gaze back at
her.
"Doesn't she look the vamp?"
"Skeet!" Ina had sailed in by this time, and Ernestine followed more
soberly. "You've been told not to say that."
"I think," the other twin backed her up virtuously, "with poor mother
sick and all, you might respect her wishes. You know what she said about
calling Ina a vamp." And Skeet drawled innocently,
"That it hit too near the truth to be funny--wasn't that it?"
Through the open window had followed a half dozen more of the Blossom
Festival crowd, Barbara and Bronson Vandeman among them. Ina paid no
attention to any one, standing there, her height increased by the long,
straight lines of the costume, her bisque doll features given a strange,
pallid dignity by the raw magnificence of its crusted purple and crimson
and green and gold embroidery and the dead black wig.
"Isn't it an exquisite thing, Worth?" displaying herself before him.
"Bronse has a complete Mandarin costume; we lead the grand march as the
emperor and empress of Mongolia. Don't you think it's a good idea?"
"First rate." Worth spoke in his usual unexcited fashion, and it was
difficult to say whether he meant the oriental idea or the appearance of
the girl who stood before him. She came close and offered the cuff of
one of her sleeves to show him the embroidery, lifting a delicate chin
to display the jade buttons at the neck.
Barbara over on the other side of the room refused to meet my eye. Mrs.
Bowman, a big fur piece pulled up around her throat, shivered. I met
half a dozen Santa Ysobel people whose names I've forgotten. I could see
that Bronson Vandeman socially took the lead here, that everybody looked
to him. The room was a babel of talk, when a few minutes later the
doorbell rang in orthodox fashion, and Chung ushered Cummings in upon
the general confusion. Some of the bunch knew and spoke to him; others
didn't and had to be presented; it took the first of his time and
attention. He only got a chance for one swipe at me, a low-toned,
sarcastic,
"Made a mistake to duck me, Boyne."
I didn't think it worth while to answer that. Presently I saw him
standing with Barbara. He was evidently effecting a switch of his
theater engagement to the ball, for I heard Skeet's,
"Mr. Cummings wants a ticket! He'll need two! Ten dollars, Mr.
Cummings--five apiece."
"No, no--Skeet," Barbara laughed embarrassedly. "Mr. Cummings was just
joking. He'll not be here Saturday night."
"I'll come back for it," hand in pocket.
"It's a masquerade--" Barbara hesitated.
"Bring my costume with me from San Francisco."
"I'm not sure--" again Barbara hesitated; Skeet cut in on her,
"Why, Barbie Wallace! It's what you came to Santa Ysobel for--the Bloss.
Fes. ball. And to think of your getting a perfectly good man, right at
the last minute this way, and not having to tag on to Bronse and Ina or
something like that! I think you're the lucky girl," and she clutched
Cummings' offered payment to stow it with other funds she had collected.
At last they got themselves out of the room and left us alone with
Cummings. He had carried through his little deal with Barbara as though
it meant considerable to him, but I knew that his errand with Worth was
serious, and put in quickly,
"I intended to write or phone you to-morrow, Cummings."
"Well," the lawyer worked his mouth a bit under that bristly mustache
and looked at Worth, "it might have saved you some embarrassment if
you'd been warned of my errand here to-night--earlier, that is. I
suppose Captain Gilbert has told you that I phoned him, when I failed to
connect with you, that I was coming here--and what I was coming for?"
"I didn't tell Jerry," Worth picked up a cigarette. "Couldn't very well
tell him what you were coming for. Don't know myself."
The words were blunt; really I think there was no intention to offend,
only the simple statement of a fact; but I could see Cummings beginning
to simmer, as he inquired,
"Does that mean you didn't understand my words on the phone, or that you
understood them and couldn't make out what I meant by them?"
"Little of both," allowed Worth. Cummings stepped close to him and let
him have it direct:
"I'm here to-night, Captain Gilbert, as executor of your father's
estate. I have filed the will to-day. I might have done so earlier, but
when I inventoried this place (you remember, the day before the
funeral--you were here at the time) I failed to locate a considerable
portion of your father's estate."
"You failed to locate? All the estate's here; this house, the down-town
properties. What do you mean, failed to locate?"
"I was not alluding to realty," said Cummings. "It's my duty to locate
and report to the court the present whereabouts of seventy-five thousand
dollars worth of stock in the Van Ness Avenue Savings Bank. Can you
declare to me as executor, where it is? And, if any other person than
your father placed it in its present whereabouts, are you ready to
declare to me how and when it came into that person's possession?"
"Quite a lot of words, Cummings; but it doesn't mean anything," Worth
said casually. "You know where that bank stock is and who put it there."
"Officially, I do not know. Officially, I demand to be told."
"Unofficially, answer it for yourself." Worth turned his back on the
lawyer to get a match from the mantel.
"Very well. My answer is that I intend to find out how and when that
bank stock which formed a part of your payment to the Van Ness Avenue
bank disappeared from this house."
I admit I was scared. Here was the first gun of the coming battle; and I
was sure this enemy, who stood now looking through half closed eyes at
the lad's back, would have poisoned gas among his weapons. He had
emphasized the "_when_." He believed that the stories of Worth's night
visit to his father were true; that the implied denial by Barbara and
myself in my office, was false; that Worth had either received the stock
from his father that Saturday night or taken it unlawfully. I was sure
that it was the stock certificates which I had seen Worth take from the
safe-compartment of the sideboard in the small hours of Monday morning;
a breach of legal form which it would be possible for a friendly
executor to pass over.
"Cummings, Worth inherits everything under his father's will; what's the
difference about a small irregularity in taking possession? He--"
"Never explain, Jerry," Worth shut me up. "Your friends don't need it,
and your enemies won't believe it."
Cummings had stood where he was since the first of the interview. His
face went strangely livid. There was more in this than a legal fight.
"Yes, Boyne's a fool to try to help your case with explanations,
Gilbert," he choked out. "I'll see that both of you get a chance to
answer questions elsewhere--under oath. Good evening." He turned and
left.
He had the best of it all around. I endeavored for some time to get
before Worth the dangers of his high-handed defiance of law, order,
probate judges, and the court's officers, in the person of Allen G.
Cummings, attorney and his father's executor. He listened, yawned--and
suggested that it must be nearly bedtime. I gave it up, and we went--I,
at least, with a sense of danger ahead upon me--to our rooms.
Along in the middle of the night I waked to the knowledge that a
casement window was pounding somewhere in the house. For a while I lay
and listened in that helpless, exaggerated resentment one feels at such
a time. I'd drop off, get nearly to sleep, only to be jerked broad awake
again by the thudding. Listening carefully I decided that the bothersome
window was in Worth's room, and finally I got up sense and spunk enough
to roll out of bed, stick my feet into slippers, and sneak over with the
intention of locking it.
The room was dimly lighted from the street lamps, far away as they were;
I made my way across it. Worth's deep, regular breathing was quite
undisturbed. I had trouble with the catch, went and felt over the bureau
and found his flashlight, fixed the window by its help, and returning
it, remembering how near I came to knocking it off the bureau top,
thought to put it in a drawer which stood half open.
As I aimed it downward, its circle of illumination showed something
projecting a corner from beneath the swirl of ties and sheaf of
collars--a book--a red morocco-bound book. Mechanically I nudged the
stuff away with the torch itself. What lay there turned me cold. It was
the 1920 diary!
My fingers relaxed; the flashlight fell with a thump, as I let out an
exclamation of dismay. A sleepy voice inquired from the bed,
"Hi, you Jerry! What you up to in here?"
For answer, I dragged out the book, went over to the bed, and switched
on the reading lamp there. Worth scowled in the glare, and flung his
arms up back of his head for a pillow to raise it a bit.
"Yeah," blinking amiably at the volume. "Meant to tell you. Found it
to-day when I was down in the repair pit at the garage. It had been
stuck in the drainpipe there."
"And I suppose," I said savagely, "that if I hadn't come onto it now,
you'd have burned this, too."
"Don't get sore, Jerry," he said. "I saved it," and he yawned.
I had an uncontrollable impulse to have a look at that last entry, which
would record the bitter final quarrel between this boy and his father.
No difficulty about finding the spot; as I raised the book in my hands
it fell open of itself at the place. I looked and what I saw choked
me--got cross-wise in my throat for a moment so no words could come out.
I stuck the book under his nose, and held it there till I could whisper.
"Worth, did you do this?"
The last written page was numbered 49; on it was recorded the date,
March sixth; the weather, cloudy, clearing late in the afternoon; the
fact that the sun had set red in a cloudless sky; and it ended abruptly
in the middle of a phrase. The leaf that carried page 50 had been torn
out; not cut away carefully as were those leaves in the earlier book,
but ripped loose, grabbed with clutching fingers that scarred and
twisted the leaf below!
He shoved my hand away and stared at me. For a moment I thought
everything was over. Certainly I could not be a very appealing sight,
standing there sweating with fear, my hair all stuck up on my head where
I'd clawed it, shivering in my nightclothes more from miserable
nervousness than from cold; but somehow those eyes of his softened; he
gave me one of the looks that people who care for Worth will go far to
get, and said quietly,
"You see what you're doing? I told you I didn't steal the book, so that
clears me in your mind of being the murderer. Now you're after me about
this torn-out page. If I'd torn it out and stolen it--you and I would
know what it would mean."
"But, boy--," I began, when he suffered a change of heart.
"Get out of here! Take that damn book and leave."
He heaved himself over in the bed, hunching the covers about his ears,
turning his back on me. As I crept away, I heard him finish in a sort of
mutter--as though to himself--
"I'm sorry for you, Jerry Boyne."