WAYS THAT ARE DARK
The people of Snake's Fall were in the throes of that artificial
excitement which ever accompanies the prospect of immediate and flowing
wealth in a community which has been feverishly striving with a
negative result.
Nor was this excitement a healthy or agreeable wave of emotion. It was
aggressive and vulgar. It was hectoring and full of a blatant
self-advertisement. Men who had never done better for themselves than
a third-rate hotel, or who had never used anything more luxurious than
a street car for locomotion in their ordinary daily life, now talked
largely of Plaza hotels and automobiles, of real estate corners and
bank balances. They sought by every subterfuge to exercise the
dominance of their own personalities in the affairs of the place, only
that they might the further enhance their individual advantage.
Schemes for building and trading were in everybody's minds, and money,
so long held tight under the pressure of doubt, now began to flow in
one incessant stream towards the coffers of the already established
traders.
Every boom city is more or less alike, and Snake's Fall was no
variation to the rule. Gambling commenced in deadly earnest, and the
sharpers, with the eye of the vulture for carrion, descended upon the
place. How word had reached them would have been impossible to tell.
Then came the accompaniment of loose houses, and every other evil which
seems to settle upon such places like a pestilential cloud.
To Gordon, looking on and waiting, it was all a matter of the keenest
interest, not untinged with a certain wholesome-minded disgust, and
when he sometimes spoke of it in the little family circle at the ranch,
or to the worldly-wise Mike Callahan in his barn, his talk was never
without a hint of real regret.
"It makes a feller feel kind of squeamish watching these folks," he
observed to Mike, as they sat smoking in the latter's harness-room one
afternoon. "You see, if I didn't know the whole game was lying in the
palm of my hand I'd just simply sicken at the sordidness of it. We
can't feel that way, though. We're worse than them. They're just dead
in earnest to beat the game by the accepted rules of it, which don't
debar general crookedness. We're out to win by sheer piracy. Makes
you laugh, doesn't it? Makes it a good play."
Mike was older, and had been brought up in a hard school.
"Feelin's don't count one way or the other, I guess," he replied
contemptuously. "When it comes to takin' the dollars out of the other
feller's pocket I'm allus ready and willin'. You can allus help him
out after you beat him. Private charity after the deal is a sort of
liqueur after a good dinner."
"Charity?" Gordon laughed.
"Well, maybe you got another name for it," retorted Mike indifferently.
"Several," laughed Gordon. "Rob a man and give him something back
needs another name."
"They call it 'charity' in the newspapers when them philanthropists
hand back part of the wad they've collected from a deluded
public--anyway. It don't seem different to me." Mike's tone was
sharply argumentative.
"It isn't different," agreed Gordon. "They're both a salve to
conscience. The only thing is that public charity of the latter nature
has the advantage of personal advertisement. I'm learning things,
Mike. I'm learning that the moment you get groping for dollars, you've
just tied up into a sack all the goodness and virtue handed out to you
by the Creator and--drowned it."
Though Gordon was never able to carry any sort of conviction on these
matters with Mike, his occasional regrets found a cordial sympathy in
Hazel Mallinsbee. She watched him very closely during the days of
waiting for the maturity of his schemes. She knew the impulse which
had inspired him. She understood it thoroughly. It was humor, and she
liked him all the better for it. She realized to the full all the
depth of love Gordon possessed for his father, an affection which was
not one whit the less for the fact that to all intents and purposes his
object was the highway robbery of that parent.
It was something of a paradox, but one which she perfectly understood.
She felt that it was a case of two strong personalities opposed to each
other in friendly rivalry. Gordon had propounded his beliefs to a man
of great capacity whose convictions were opposed. Opportunity had
served the younger man, who now intended to drive his point home
ruthlessly, with a deep, kindly humor lying behind his every act. She
could imagine, though she had never seen James Carbhoy, these two men,
big and strong and kindly, sitting opposite each other, smoking
luxuriously when it was all over, discussing the whole situation in the
friendliest possible spirit.
Her father offered little comment. Curiously enough, this man, who had
so much at stake, deep in his heart did not approve of the whole thing.
It was not that he possessed ordinary scruples. Had the conspiracy
been opposed to anybody but Gordon's father he would have been heart
and soul in the affair. He would have reveled in the daring of the
trick which Gordon intended to carry out. As it was, he was
old-fashioned enough to see some sort of heinous ingratitude and
offense in the fact of a son pitted piratically against his father.
However, he, like his daughter, watched closely for every sign this son
of his father gave. But while Hazel watched with sympathy and real
understanding, he saw only with the searching eyes of the observer who
is seeking the manner of man with whom he is dealing.
Once only, during the days of waiting and comparative inaction, he gave
vent to his disapproval, and even then his manner was purely that of
regret.
They were sitting together in the evening sunlight on the veranda of
the ranch.
"Gordon, boy," he said in his deep, rumbling voice, after a long,
thoughtful pause; "if I had a son, which I guess I haven't, it would
hurt like sin to think he'd act towards me same as you're doing to your
father."
His remark did not bring forth an immediate reply. When, however, it
finally came, accompanied as it was by twinkling, mischievous blue
eyes, and a smile of infinite amusement, Hazel, who was standing in the
doorway of the house, fully understood, although it left her father
unconvinced.
"If you were my father, I guess you wouldn't hate it a--little bit,"
Gordon said cheerfully. Then his eyes wandered in Hazel's direction,
and presently came back again to her father's face. "Maybe I'll live
many a long year yet, and if I do I can tell you right here that
perhaps there'll only be one greater moment in my life, than the moment
in which we win out on this scheme. I just want you to remember, all
through, that I love my old dad with all that's in me. Same as Hazel
loves you."
From that moment Gordon heard no further protest throughout all the
preparations that had to be made. Silas Mallinsbee cheerfully
acquiesced in all that was demanded of him. Furthermore, he tacitly
acknowledged Gordon's absolute leadership.
Under that leadership much had to be done of a subtle, secret nature.
The impression had to be created that the Buffalo Point interests had
completely abandoned the game. It was an anxious time--anxious and
watchful. David Slosson was kept under close surveillance by the four
conspirators, and, to this end, Gordon and Silas Mallinsbee spent most
of their time in Snake's Fall, which further added to the impression
that their interests had been abandoned.
Having succeeded in bribing Steve Mason, the telegraph operator, in the
first place, Peter McSwain further bought him body and soul over to
their interests. Mallinsbee's purse was wide open for all such
contingencies, and Steve was left with the comfortable feeling that,
whatever happened, he had made sufficient money to throw up his job
before any crash came, and clear out to safety with a capital he could
never have honestly made out of his work.
Thus Gordon had been enabled at last to dispatch his urgent code
message to his father, purporting as it did to come from David Slosson.
It was an irresistible demand for the Union Grayling and Ukataw
Railroad President's immediate presence in Snake's Fall. It had been
made as strong as David Slosson would have dared to make it. Nor, when
the answer to it arrived, would it ever reach the agent. Nothing was
forgotten. Every detail had been prepared for with a forethought
almost incredible in a man of Gordon's temperament and experience.
It was late evening the second day after the dispatching of Gordon's
urgent message. He had not long returned home to the ranch with
Hazel's father from a day amidst the excitement reigning in Snake's
Fall. Hazel was in the house clearing away supper and generally
superintending her domestic affairs. Silas Mallinsbee was round at the
corrals in consultation with his ranch foreman. Gordon was alone on
the veranda smoking and gazing thoughtfully out at the wonderful ruddy
sunset.
For him there was none of the peace which prevailed over the scene that
spread out before him. How could there be? Every moment of the two
days which had intervened since the dispatching of his message had been
fraught with tense, nervous doubt. Every plan he had made depended on
the answer to that message, and he felt that the time-limit for the
answer's arrival had been reached. It must come now within a few
hours. He felt that he must get it to-morrow morning or never. And
when it came what--what then? Would it be the reply he desired, or an
uncompromising negative? He felt that the whole thing depended upon
the relations between his father and his agent. He was inclined to
think, from the very nature of the work his father had intrusted to
Slosson, that those relations were of the greatest confidence. He
hoped it was so, but he could not be absolutely sure. Therefore the
strain of waiting was hard to bear.
While his busy thoughts teemed through his brain, and his
unappreciative gaze roamed over the purpling of the distant hills, his
ears, rendered unusually acute in the deep evening calm, suddenly
caught the faint, distant rumble of a vehicle moving over the trail.
His quick eyes turned alertly. There was only one trail, and that was
the road to Snake's Fall. The alertness of his eyes communicated
itself to his body. He moved off the veranda and gazed down the trail,
of which he now obtained a clear view. A team and buggy were
approaching at a rapid rate, and, even at that distance, he fancied he
recognized it as the one of Mike Callahan's which he had himself driven.
A wave of excitement swept over him. Could it be that----?
He went back to the veranda. The impulse to summon Mallinsbee was hard
to resist. But he forced himself to calmness.
Five minutes later Mike Callahan drove up, and his team stood drooping
and sweating.
"Say," he cried, in aggrieved fashion, "it jest set me whoopin' mad
when that wire-tappin' operator fell into my barn with his blamed
message, twenty minutes after you an' Mallinsbee had left. Look at the
time of it. It had buzzed over the wire ha'f an hour before you went."
Then he began to grin, and a keen light shone in his Irish eyes. "But
when I see who it was from I guessed I'd need to get busy. 'Tain't in
your fancy code. It's jest as plain as my face. Read it. The game's
up to us. Guess it's our move next."
But Gordon was paying no attention to the Irishman. He was reading the
brief message which at last set all his doubts at rest.
"Arrive Snake's Fall noon seventeenth."
It was addressed to Slosson, but there was no signature.
"That's to-morrow." Gordon's eyes lit. Then a shadow of doubt crossed
his smiling face. "It's dead safe Steve hasn't sent a copy to Slosson?"
Mike grinned.
"Steve don't draw his wad till--we're sure."
"No."
At that moment Mallinsbee appeared round the angle of the building.
Gordon's face was wreathed in smiles as he turned to him.
"We get to work--to-night," he said.
Mallinsbee nodded, without a sign of the other's excitement.
"So I guessed when I see Mike's team. Peter wise?"
"Yep." The Irishman's spirits had risen to a great pitch. "I put him
wise."
"Splendid. He's got everything ready?"
Gordon was thinking rapidly.
"Better send your team round to the barn," said Mallinsbee, with that
thoughtful care he had for all animals. "Then come inside and get some
supper."
Mike prepared to drive round to the barn.
"I see the rack in his yard," he grinned.
"Good."
Then Gordon laughed. The last care had been banished. Now it was
action. Now? Ah, now he was perfectly happy.
The night was intensely still. The last revelers in Snake's Fall had
betaken themselves to their drunken slumbers. The only lights
remaining were the glow of a small cluster of red lamps just outside
the town at the eastern end of it, and the peeping lights behind the
curtained windows of the houses to which these belonged. There was no
need to question the nature of these houses. In the West they are to
be found on the fringe of every young town that offers the prospect of
prosperity.
There was a single light burning in the hall of McSwain's hotel. This
was as usual, and would burn all night. For the rest, the house was in
darkness. The last guest had retired to rest a full hour or more.
The stillness was profound. The very profundity of it was only
increased by the occasional long-drawn dole of the prairie coyote,
foraging somewhere out in the distance for its benighted prey.
The shadowed outbuildings behind the hotel remained for a long time as
quiet as the rest of the world. The horses in the barn were sleeping
peacefully. The fowls and turkeys and geese which populated the yard
in daylight were as profoundly steeped with sleep as the rest of the
feathered world. Even the two aged husky dogs, set there on the
presumption of keeping guard, were composed for the night.
But after awhile sounds began to emanate from the dark barn. With the
first sound a dog-chain rattled, and immediately a low voice spoke.
After that the dog-chain remained still. Next came the sound of hoofs
on the hard sand floor of the barn. They were hasty, but swiftly
passing. The last sound was heard as two horses emerged upon the open,
each led by a shadowy figure quite unrecognizable in the velvety
darkness of the starlit night.
The horses moved across towards the vague outline of a large hayrack
which stood mounted in the running gear of a dismantled wagon, and the
figures leading them began at once to hook them up in place. While
this was happening two other figures were loading the rack with hay
from the corral near by, in which stood a half-cut haystack. Their
work seemed to be more intricate than the usual process of loading a
hayrack. There seemed to be a sort of wide and long cage in the bottom
of the rack, and the hay needed careful placing to leave the interior
of this free, while yet surrounding it completely and rendering it
absolutely obscured.
In less than half an hour the work was completed, and the four men
gathered together and conversed in low voices.
After this a fresh movement took place. The group broke up, and each
moved off as though to carry out affairs already agreed upon. One man
mounted the rack and took up his position for driving the team.
Another stood near the rear of the wagon and remained waiting, whilst
the other two moved towards the hotel.
These latter parted as they neared the building. One of them entered
it through the back door, and as he came within the radiance of the
solitary oil-lamp it became apparent that his face was completely
masked. He moved stealthily forward, listening for any unwelcome
sound, mounted the staircase, and was immediately swallowed up by the
darkness of the corridor above.
Meanwhile his companion had taken another route. He had moved along
the building to the left of the back door. His objective was the iron
fire-escape which went up to the gallery outside the upper windows.
He found it almost at the end of the building, and began the ascent.
In a few moments he was at the top, and, moving along the narrow iron
gallery, he counted the windows as he passed them. At the fifth window
he paused and examined it. The blind inside was withdrawn, and he ran
over in his mind the various details which had been given him. He knew
that the latch inside had been carefully removed.
He tried the window cautiously. It moved easily to his pressure, and a
smile stole over his masked features when he remembered that ample
grease had been placed in its slipway. It was good to think that these
contingencies had been so carefully provided for.
The window was sufficiently open. The process had been entirely
soundless, but he bent down and listened intently. Far away, somewhere
inside, he could hear the sound of deep breathing. He made his next
move quickly and stealthily. One leg was raised and thrust through the
opening, and, bending his great body nearly double, he made his way
into the room beyond.
Pausing for a few moments to assure himself that the sleeper in the
adjoining room had not been disturbed, he next made his way towards the
door, aided by the light of a silent sulphur match. He quickly
withdrew the bolt, and was immediately joined by the man who had
entered the hotel through the back door.
Now he turned his attention to the room itself. Yes, everything was as
he had been told. It was a largish room, and a small archway, hung
with heavy curtains, divided it from another. The portion he had
entered was furnished as a parlor, and beyond the curtains was the
bedroom. Signing to his companion to remain where he was, he moved
swiftly and silently to the heavy drawn curtains. For a second he
listened to the breathing beyond; then he parted them and vanished
within.
David Slosson awoke out of a heavy sleep with a sudden nightmarish
start. He thought some one was calling him, shouting his name aloud in
a terrified voice.
But now he was wide awake in the pitch-dark room: no sound broke the
silence. He was on his back, and he made to turn over on to his side.
Instantly something cold and hard encountered his cheek and a
whispering voice broke the silence.
"One word and you're a dead man!" said the voice. "Just keep quite
still and don't speak, and you won't come to any harm."
David Slosson was no fool, nor was he a coward, but, amongst his other
many experiences on the fringe of civilization, he had learned the
power of a gun held right. He knew that his cheek had encountered the
cold muzzle of a gun. Shocked and startled and helpless as he was, he
remained perfectly still and silent, awaiting developments.
They came swiftly. The curtains parted and a man, completely masked
and clad in the ordinary prairie kit of the West, and bearing a lighted
lamp in his hand, entered the room. His first assailant, holding the
gun only inches from his head, Slosson could not properly discern. Out
of the corners of his eyes he was aware that his face was masked like
that of the other, but that was all.
The newcomer set the lamp down on a table and advanced to the other
side of the bed. Instantly he produced a strap, enwrapped in the folds
of a thick towel.
Slosson realized what was about to happen, and contemplated resistance.
As though his thoughts had been read the man with the gun spoke again--
"Only one sound an' I'll blow your brains to glory. Ther' ain't no
help around that you ken get in time. So don't worry any."
The threat of the gun was irresistible, and Slosson yielded.
The second man forced the strap gag into his mouth and buckled it
tightly behind his victim's head. This done, the agent's hands were
lashed fast with a rope. Then the gun was withdrawn and the wretched
agent was assisted into his clothes, after the pockets had been
searched for weapons.
In a quarter of an hour the whole transaction was completed, and, with
hands securely fastened behind his back and the gag in his mouth fixed
cruelly firmly, David Slosson stood ready to follow his captors.
During all that time he had used his eyes and all his intelligence to
discover the identity of his assailants, but without avail. Even their
great size afforded him no enlightenment, with their entire faces
hidden under the enveloping masks.
In silence the light was extinguished. In silence they left the room
and proceeded down the stairs. In silence they came to the waiting
hayrack outside. Here Slosson beheld the other two masked figures, one
on the wagon, and the other waiting at the rear of it. But he was
given no further chance of observation. His captors seized him bodily
and lifted him into the cage beneath the hay, while one of the men got
in with him and now secured his feet.
After that more hay was thrown into the vehicle, till it looked like an
ordinary farmer's rack, and then the horses started off, and the
prisoner knew that, for some inexplicable reason, he had been kidnaped.
Mrs. Carbhoy had been concerned all day. When she was concerned about
anything her temper generally gave way to a condition which her
youthful daughter was pleased to describe as "gritty." Whether it
really described her mother's mood or not mattered little. It
certainly expressed Gracie's understanding of it.
To-day nothing the child did was right. She had called her physical
culture instructress a "cat" that morning, only because she had been
afraid to enter into a more drastic physical argument with her. For
that her "gritty" mother had deprived her of candy for the day. She
had refused to do anything right at her subsequent dancing lesson, in
consequence, and for that she had had her week's pocket-money stopped.
Then at lunch she had willfully broken the peace by upsetting a glass
of ice-water upon the glass-covered table, and incidentally had broken
the glass. For this she was confined to her school-room for the rest
of the day, and was only allowed to appear before her disturbed mother
at her nine-o'clock bed hour.
When a very indignant Gracie appeared before her mother to fulfill her
final duty of kissing her "good-night," that individual was more
"gritty" than ever. She was in the act of opening a bulky letter
addressed to her in a familiar handwriting. Gracie knew at once from
whom it came. Instantly the imp of mischief stirred in her bosom.
"What nursing home will you send Gordon to when he gets back?" she
inquired blandly.
Her mother eyed her coldly while she drew out the sheets of
letter-paper. She pointed to a wall bell.
"Ring that bell," she ordered sharply.
Gracie obeyed, wondering what was to be the consequence of her fresh
effort. She had not long to wait. Her mother's maid entered.
"Tell Huxton to pack Miss Gracie's trunks ready for Tuxedo. She will
leave for Vernor Court by the midday express. Her governesses will
accompany her."
The maid retired. In an instant all hope had fled, and Gracie was
reduced to hasty penitence.
"Please, momma, don't send me out to the country. I'm sorry for what
I've done to-day, real sorry--but I've just had the fidgets all day,
what with pop going away and--and that silly Gordon never coming near
us, or--or anything. True, momma, I won't be naughty ever again.
'Deed I won't. Oh, say you won't send me off by myself," she urged,
coming coaxingly to her mother's side. "There's Jacky Molyneux going
to take me a run in his automobile to-morrow afternoon, and we're going
to Garden City, and he always gives me heaps of ice-cream. Oh, momma,
don't send me off to that dreadful Tuxedo."
At all times Mrs. Carbhoy was easily cajoled, and just now she was
feeling so miserable and lonely since her husband had been called away
on urgent business, she knew not where. Then here was another of
Gordon's troublesome letters in her lap. So in her trouble she yielded
to her only remaining belonging. But she forthwith sat her long-legged
daughter on a footstool at her feet, and as penance made her listen to
the reading of the letter which had just arrived. Somehow, in view of
the previous letters from her son, Mrs. Carbhoy felt it to be
impossible to face this new one without support, even if that support
were only that of her wholly inadequate thirteen-year-old daughter.
"DEAREST MUM:
"Since Cain got busy shooting up his brother Abel, since Delilah became
a slave to the tonsorial art and practiced on Samson, since Jael turned
her carpentering stunts to considerable account by hammering tacks into
poor Sisera's head, right through the long ages down to the
record-breaking achievements of the champion prevaricator Ananias, I
guess the crookedness of human nature has progressed until it has
reached the pitch of a fine art, such as is practiced by legislators,
diplomats and New York police officers.
"This is a sweeping statement, but I contend it is none the less true.
"I'd say that in examining the facts we need to study the real meaning
of 'crookedness.' We must locate its cause as well as effect. Now
'crookedness' is the divergence from a straight line, which some fool
man spent a lifetime in discovering was the shortest route from one
given point to another. No doubt that fellow thought he was making
some discovery, but it kind of seems to me any chump outside the
bug-house and not under the influence of drink would know it without
having to spend even a summer vacation finding it out, and, anyway, I
don't guess it's worth shouting about.
"I guess it's up to us to track this straight line down in its
application to ethics. That buzzy-headed discoverer also says a line
is length without breadth. Consequently, I argue that a straight line
is just 'nothing,' anyway. Then when a mush-headed dreamer starts
right out to walk the straight line of life it's a million to one
chance he'll break his fool neck, or do some other positively
ridiculous stunt that's liable to terminate what ought to have been a
promising career. I submit, from the foregoing arguments, the straight
line of ethical virtue is just a vision, a dream, an hallucination, a
nightmare. It's one of those things the whole world loves to sit
around on Sundays and yarn about, and just as many folks would hate to
practice, anyway. And this is as sure as you'll find the only bit of
glass on the road when you're automobiling if you don't just happen to
be toting a spare tyre.
"Seeing that you can't everlastingly keep trying to walk on 'nothing'
without disastrous consequences, and, further, seeing the days of
miracles have died with many other privileges which our ancestors
enjoyed, such as being burned at the stake and painting up our bodies
in fancy colors, it is natural, even a necessity, that 'crookedness'
should have come into its own.
"Let's start right in at the first chapter of a man's life. It'll
point the whole argument without anything else. It's ingrained even in
the youngest kid to resort to subterfuge. Subterfuge is merely the
most innocent form in a crook's thesis. Maybe a kid, lying in its
cradle, with only a few days of knowledge to work on, don't know the
finer points he'll learn later. But he knows what he wants, and is
going to get it. He's going to get the other feller where he wants
him, and then force him to do his bidding. It's his first effort in
'crookedness' when he finds the straight line of virtue is just a most
uncomfortable nightmare. How does he do it?
"I guess it's this way. He needs his food. He guesses his gasoline
tank needs filling. He don't guess he's going to lie around with a
sort of mean draught blowing pneumonia through his vitals. He just
waits around awhile to see if any one's yearning to pump up his
infantile tyre, and when he finds there's nothing doing, why, he starts
right in to make his first fall off the straight line of virtue. You
see, the straight line says that kid's tank needs filling only at
stated intervals. The said kid don't see it that way, so he turns
himself into a human megaphone, scares the household cat into a dozen
fits, starts up a canine chorus in the neighboring backyards, makes his
father yearn to shoot up the feller that wrote the marriage service,
sets the local police officer tracking down a murder that was never
committed, and maybe, if he only keeps things humming long enough, sets
all the State legal machinery working overtime to have his parents
incarcerated for keeping an insanitary nuisance on the premises.
"See the crookedness of that kid? The moment he finds himself duly
inflated with milk he lies low. Do you get the lesson of it? It's
plumb simple. That kid wanted something. He didn't care a cuss for
regulations. He just laid right there and said, 'Away with 'em!' He
was thirsty, or hungry, or greedy. Maybe he was all three. Anyway, he
wanted, and set about getting what he wanted the only way he knew. All
of which illustrates the fact that when human nature demands
satisfaction no laws or regulations are going to stand in the way. And
that's just life from the day we're born.
"From the foregoing remarks you may incline to the belief that I have
set out willfully to outrage every moral and human law. This is not
quite the case. I am merely giving you the benefit of my observations,
and also, since I am merely another human unit in the perfectly
ridiculous collection of bipeds which go to make up the alleged
superior races of this world, I must fall into line with the rest.
"If Abel gets in my way I must 'out' him. If I can manufacture a down
cushion out of old Samson's hair to make my lot more comfortable, I'm
just going to get the best pair of shears and get busy. If I'm going
to collect amusement from studding that chump Sisera's head with tacks,
why, it's up to me to avoid delay that way. And as for Ananias, he
seems to me to have been a long way ahead of his time. They'd have had
his monument set up in every public office in the country to-day. He'd
have been the emblem of every trading corporation I know, and his
effigy would have served as the coat-of-arms for the whole of the
present-day creation.
"I trust you are keeping well, and the responsibility of guiding the
development of our Gracie is showing no sign of undermining your
constitution. Gracie is really a good girl, if a little impetuous. I
notice, however, that impetuosity gives way before the responsibilities
of life. So far she is quite young. I'm hoping good results when she
gets responsibility.
"Give my best love to the old Dad, and tell him that he must be careful
of his health in such a desperate heat as New York provides in summer
time. I think a month's vacation in the hills would be excellent for
him at this time of year. I am looking forward to the time when I
shall see him again.
"You might tell him I hope to fulfill my mission under schedule time.
If you do not hear from me again you will know I am working overtime on
the interests in which I left New York.
"Your loving son,
"GORDON.
"P.S.--It occurs to me I have not told you all the news I would have
liked to tell you. But two pieces occur to me at the moment. First,
that achievement in life demands not the fostering of the gentler human
emotions, but their outraging. Also, no man has the right to abandon
honesty until dishonesty pays him better.
"G."
The mother's sigh was a deep expression of her hopeless feelings as she
finished the last word of her son's postscript.
Gracie watched her out of the corners of her eyes.
"What's the matter, momma?" she inquired.
Her mother broke down weakly.
"They haven't found a trace of him yet. They can't locate how these
letters are mailed. They can't just find a thing. And all the time
these letters come along, and--and they get worse and worse. It's no
good, Gracie; the poor boy's just crazy. Sure as sure. It's the heat,
or--or drink, or strain, or--maybe he's starving. Anyway, he's gone,
and we'll never see our Gordon again--not in his right mind. And now
your poor father's gone, too. Goodness knows where. I'll--yes, I'll
have to set the inquiry people to find him, too, if--if I don't hear
from him soon. To--to think I'd have lived to see the day when----"
"I don't guess Gordon's in any sort of trouble, momma," cried Gracie,
displaying an unexpected sympathy for her distracted parent. Then she
smiled that wise little superior smile of youth which made her strong
features almost pretty. "And I'm sure he's not--crazy. Say, mom, just
don't think anything more about it. And I'd sort of keep all those
letters--if they're like that. You never told me the others. May I
read them? I never would have believed Gordon could have written like
that--never. You see, Gordon's not very bright--is he?"