VIOLENCE
At half-past three, Alan left the office. Sherrill had told him an
hour earlier that Spearman had telephoned he would not be able to get
back for a conference that afternoon; and Alan was certain now that in
Spearman's absence Sherrill would do nothing further with respect to
his affairs.
He halted on the ground floor of the office building and bought copies
of each of the afternoon papers. A line completely across the pink
page of one announced "Millionaire Ship Owner Missing!" The other
three papers, printed at the same hour, did not display the story
prominently; and even the one which did failed to make it the most
conspicuous sensation. A line of larger and blacker type told of a
change in the battle line on the west front and, where the margin might
have been, was the bulletin of some sensation in a local divorce suit.
Alan was some time in finding the small print which went with the
millionaire ship owner heading; and when he found it, he discovered
that most of the space was devoted to the description of Corvet's share
in the development of shipping on the lakes and the peculiarity of his
past life instead of any definite announcement concerning his fate.
The other papers printed almost identical items under small head-type
at the bottom of their first pages; these items stated that Benjamin
Corvet, the senior but inactive partner of the great shipping firm of
Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman, whose "disappearance" had been made the
subject of sensational rumor, "is believed by his partner, Mr. Henry
Spearman, to have simply gone away for a rest," and that no anxiety was
felt concerning him. Alan found no mention of himself nor any of the
circumstances connected with Corvet's disappearance of which Sherrill
had told him.
Alan threw the papers away. There was a car line two blocks west,
Sherrill had said, which would take him within a short distance of the
house on Astor Street; but that neighborhood of fashion where the
Sherrills--and now Alan himself--lived was less than a half hour's walk
from the down-town district and, in the present turmoil of his
thoughts, he wanted to be moving.
Spearman, he reflected as he walked north along the avenue, plainly had
dictated the paragraphs he just had read in the papers. Sherrill, Alan
knew, had desired to keep the circumstances regarding Corvet from
becoming public; and without Sherrill's agreement concealment would
have been impossible, but it was Spearman who had checked the
suspicions of outsiders and determined what they must believe; and, by
so doing, he had made it impossible for Alan to enroll aid from the
newspapers or the police. Alan did not know whether he might have
found it expedient to seek publicity; but now he had not a single proof
of anything he could tell. For Sherrill, naturally, had retained the
papers Corvet had left. Alan could not hope to obtain credence from
Sherrill and, without Sherrill's aid, he could not obtain credence from
any one else.
Was there, then, no one whom Alan could tell of his encounter with
Spearman in Corvet's house, with probability of receiving belief? Alan
had not been thinking directly of Constance Sherrill, as he walked
swiftly north to the Drive; but she was, in a way, present in all his
thoughts. She had shown interest in him, or at least in the position
he was in, and sympathy; he had even begun to tell her about these
things when he had spoken to her of some event in Corvet's house which
had given him the name "_Miwaka_," and he had asked her if it was a
ship. And there could be no possible consequent peril to her in
telling her; the peril, if there was any, would be only to himself.
His step quickened. As he approached the Sherrill house, he saw
standing at the curb an open roadster with a liveried chauffeur; he had
seen that roadster, he recognized with a little start, in front of the
office building that morning when Constance had taken him down-town.
He turned into the walk and rang the bell.
The servant who opened the door knew him and seemed to accept his right
of entry to the house, for he drew back for Alan to enter. Alan went
into the hall and waited for the servant to follow. "Is Miss Sherrill
in?" he asked.
"I'll see, sir." The man disappeared. Alan, waiting, did not hear
Constance's voice in reply to the announcement of the servant, but
Spearman's vigorous tones. The servant returned. "Miss Sherrill will
see you in a minute, sir."
Through the wide doorway to the drawing-room, Alan could see the
smaller, portiered entrance to the room beyond--Sherrill's study. The
curtains parted, and Constance and Spearman came into this inner
doorway; they stood an instant there in talk. As Constance started
away, Spearman suddenly drew her back to him and kissed her. Alan's
shoulders spontaneously jerked back, and his hands clenched; he did not
look away and, as she approached, she became aware that he had seen.
She came to him, very quiet and very flushed; then she was quite pale
as she asked him, "You wanted me?"
He was white as she, and could not speak at once. "You told me last
night, Miss Sherrill," he said, "that the last thing that Mr. Corvet
did--the last that you know of--was to warn you against one of your
friends. Who was that?"
She flushed uneasily. "You mustn't attach any importance to that; I
didn't mean you to. There was no reason for what Mr. Corvet said,
except in Mr. Corvet's own mind. He had a quite unreasonable
animosity--"
"Against Mr. Spearman, you mean."
She did not answer.
"His animosity was against Mr. Spearman, Miss Sherrill, wasn't it?
That is the only animosity of Mr. Corvet's that any one has told me
about."
"Yes."
"It was against Mr. Spearman that he warned you, then?"
"Yes."
"Thank you." He turned and, not waiting for the man, let himself out.
He should have known it when he had seen that Spearman, after
announcing himself as unable to get back to the office, was with
Constance.
He went swiftly around the block to his own house and let himself in at
the front door with his key. The house was warm; a shaded lamp on the
table in the larger library was lighted, a fire was burning in the open
grate, and the rooms had been swept and dusted. The Indian came into
the hall to take his coat and hat.
"Dinner is at seven," Wassaquam announced. "You want some change about
that?"
"No; seven is all right."
Alan went up-stairs to the room next to Corvet's which he had
appropriated for his own use the night before, and found it now
prepared for his occupancy. His suitcase, unpacked, had been put away
in the closet; the clothing it had contained had been put in the
dresser drawers, and the toilet articles arranged upon the top of the
dresser and in the cabinet of the little connecting bath. So, clearly,
Wassaquam had accepted him as an occupant of the house, though upon
what status Alan could not guess. He had spoken of Wassaquam to
Constance as his servant; but Wassaquam was not that; he was Corvet's
servant--faithful and devoted to Corvet, Constance had said--and Alan
could not think of Wassaquam as the sort of servant that "went with the
house." The Indian's manner toward himself had been noncommittal, even
stolid.
When Alan came down again to the first floor, Wassaquam was nowhere
about, but he heard sounds in the service rooms on the basement floor.
He went part way down the service stairs and saw the Indian in the
kitchen, preparing dinner. Wassaquam had not heard his approach, and
Alan stood an instant watching the Indian's tall, thin figure and the
quick movements of his disproportionately small, well-shaped hands,
almost like a woman's; then he scuffed his foot upon the stair, and
Wassaquam turned swiftly about.
"Anybody been here to-day, Judah?" Alan asked.
"No, Alan. I called tradesmen; they came. There were young men from
the newspapers."
"They came here, did they? Then why did you say no one came?"
"I did not let them in."
"What did you tell them?"
"Nothing."
"Why not?"
"Henry telephoned I was to tell them nothing."
"You mean Henry Spearman?"
"Yes."
"Do you take orders from him, Judah?"
"I took that order, Alan."
Alan hesitated. "You've been here in the house all day?"
"Yes, Alan."
Alan went back to the first floor and into the smaller library. The
room was dark with the early winter dusk, and he switched on the light;
then he knelt and pulled out one of the drawers he had seen Spearman
searching through the night before, and carefully examined the papers
in it one by one, but found them only ordinary papers. He pulled the
drawer completely out and sounded the wall behind it and the partitions
on both sides but they appeared solid. He put the drawer back in and
went on to examine the next one, and, after that, the others. The
clocks in the house had been wound, for presently the clock in the
library struck six, and another in the hall chimed slowly. An hour
later, when the clocks chimed again, Alan looked up and saw Wassaquam's
small black eyes, deep set in their large eye sockets, fixed on him
intently through the door. How long the Indian had been there, Alan
could not guess; he had not heard his step.
"What are you looking for, Alan?" the Indian asked.
Alan reflected a moment. "Mr. Sherrill thought that Mr. Corvet might
have left a record of some sort here for me, Judah. Do you know of
anything like that?"
"No. That is what you are looking for?"
"Yes. Do you know of any place where Mr. Corvet would have been likely
to put away anything like that?"
"Ben put papers in all these drawers; he put them up-stairs, too--where
you have seen."
"Nowhere else, Judah?"
"If he put things anywhere else, Alan, I have not seen. Dinner is
served, Alan."
Alan went to the lavatory on the first floor and washed the dust from
his hands and face; then he went into the dining-room. A place had
been set at the dining table around the corner from the place where, as
the worn rug showed, the lonely occupant of the house had been
accustomed to sit. Benjamin Corvet's armchair, with its worn leather
back, had been left against the wall; so had another unworn armchair
which Alan understood must have been Mrs. Corvet's; and an armless
chair had been set for Alan between their places. Wassaquam, having
served the dinner, took his place behind Alan's chair, ready to pass
him what he needed; but the Indian's silent, watchful presence there
behind him where he could not see his face, disturbed Alan, and he
twisted himself about to look at him.
"Would you mind, Judah," he inquired, "if I asked you to stand over
there instead of where you are?"
The Indian, without answering, moved around to the other side of the
table, where he stood facing Alan.
"You're a Chippewa, aren't you, Judah?" Alan asked.
"Yes."
"Your people live at the other end of the lake, don't they?"
"Yes, Alan."
"Have you ever heard of the Indian Drum they talk about up there, that
they say sounds when a ship goes down on the lake?"
The Indian's eyes sparkled excitedly. "Yes," he said.
"Do you believe in it?"
"Not just believe; I know. That is old Indian country up there,
Alan--L'arbre Croche--Cross Village--Middle Village. A big town of
Ottawas was there in old days; Pottawatomies too, and Chippewas.
Indians now are all Christians, Catholics, and Methodists who hold camp
meetings and speak beautifully. But some things of the old days are
left. The Drum is like that. Everybody knows that it sounds for those
who die on the lake."
"How do they know, Judah? How do you yourself know?"
"I have heard it. It sounded for my father."
"How was that?"
"Like this. My father sold some bullocks to a man on Beaver Island.
The man kept store on Beaver Island, Alan. No Indian liked him. He
would not hand anything to an Indian or wrap anything in paper for an
Indian. Say it was like this: An Indian comes in to buy salt pork.
First the man would get the money. Then, Alan, he would take his hook
and pull the pork up out of the barrel and throw it on the dirty floor
for the Indian to pick up. He said Indians must take their food off of
the floor--like dogs.
"My father had to take the bullocks to the man, across to Beaver
Island. He had a Mackinaw boat, very little, with a sail made brown by
boiling it with tan bark, so that it would not wear out. At first the
Indians did not know who the bullocks were for, so they helped him. He
tied the legs of the bullocks, the front legs and the back legs, then
all four legs together, and the Indians helped him put them in the
boat. When they found out the bullocks were for the man on Beaver
Island, the Indians would not help him any longer. He had to take them
across alone. Besides, it was bad weather, the beginning of a storm.
"He went away, and my mother went to pick berries--I was small then.
Pretty soon I saw my mother coming back. She had no berries, and her
hair was hanging down, and she was wailing. She took me in her arms
and said my father was dead. Other Indians came around and asked her
how she knew, and she said she had heard the Drum. The Indians went
out to listen."
"Did you go?"
"Yes; I went."
"How old were you, Judah?"
"Five years."
"That was the time you heard it?"
"Yes; it would beat once, then there would be silence; then it would
beat again. It frightened us to hear it. The Indians would scream and
beat their bodies with their hands when the sound came. We listened
until night; there was a storm all the time growing greater in the
dark, but no rain. The Drum would beat once; then nothing; then it
would beat again once--never two or more times. So we knew it was for
my father. It is supposed the feet of the bullocks came untied, and
the bullocks tipped the boat over. They found near the island the body
of one of the bullocks floating in the water, and its feet were untied.
My father's body was on the beach near there."
"Did you ever hear of a ship called the _Miwaka_, Judah?"
"That was long ago," the Indian answered.
"They say that the Drum beat wrong when the _Miwaka_ went down--that it
was one beat short of the right number."
"That was long ago," Wassaquam merely repeated.
"Did Mr. Corvet ever speak to you about the _Miwaka_?"
"No; he asked me once if I had ever heard the Drum. I told him."
Wassaquam removed the dinner and brought Alan a dessert. He returned
to stand in the place across the table that Alan had assigned to him,
and stood looking down at Alan, steadily and thoughtfully.
"Do I look like any one you ever saw before, Judah?" Alan inquired of
him.
"No."
"Is that what you were thinking?"
"That is what I was thinking. Will coffee be served in the library,
Alan?"
Alan crossed to the library and seated himself in the chair where his
father had been accustomed to sit. Wassaquam brought him the single
small cup of coffee, lit the spirit lamp on the smoking stand, and
moved that over; then he went away. When he had finished his coffee,
Alan went into the smaller connecting room and recommenced his
examination of the drawers under the bookshelves. He could hear the
Indian moving about his tasks, and twice Wassaquam came to the door of
the room and looked in on him; but he did not offer to say anything,
and Alan did not speak to him. At ten o'clock, Alan stopped his search
and went back to the chair in the library. He dozed; for he awoke with
a start and a feeling that some one had been bending over him, and
gazed up into Wassaquam's face. The Indian had been scrutinizing him
with intent, anxious inquiry. He moved away, but Alan called him back.
"When Mr. Corvet disappeared, Judah, you went to look for him up at
Manistique, where he was born--at least Mr. Sherrill said that was
where you went. Why did you think you might find him there?" Alan
asked.
"In the end, I think, a man maybe goes back to the place where he
began. That's all, Alan."
"In the end! What do you mean by that? What do you think has become
of Mr. Corvet?"
"I think now--Ben's dead."
"What makes you think that?"
"Nothing makes me think; I think it myself."
"I see. You mean you have no reason more than others for thinking it;
but that is what you believe."
"Yes." Wassaquam went away, and Alan heard him on the back stairs,
ascending to his room.
When Alan went up to his own room, after making the rounds to see that
the house was locked, a droning chant came to him from the third floor.
He paused in the hall and listened, then went on up to the floor above.
A flickering light came to him through the half-open door of a room at
the front of the house; he went a little way toward it and looked in.
Two thick candles were burning before a crucifix, below which the
Indian knelt, prayer book in hand and rocking to and fro as he droned
his supplications.
A word or two came to Alan, but without them Wassaquam's occupation was
plain; he was praying for the repose of the dead--the Catholic chant
taught to him, as it had been taught undoubtedly to his fathers, by the
French Jesuits of the lakes. The intoned chant for Corvet's soul, by
the man who had heard the Drum, followed and still came to Alan, as he
returned to the second floor.
He had not been able to determine, during the evening, Wassaquam's
attitude toward him. Having no one else to trust, Alan had been
obliged to put a certain amount of trust in the Indian; so as he had
explained to Wassaquam that morning that the desk and the drawers in
the little room off Corvet's had been forced, and had warned him to see
that no one, who had not proper business there, entered the house.
Wassaquam had appeared to accept this order; but now Wassaquam had
implied that it was not because of Alan's order that he had refused
reporters admission to the house. The developments of the day had
tremendously altered things in one respect; for Alan, the night before,
had not thought of the intruder into the house as one who could claim
an ordinary right of entrance there; but now he knew him to be the one
who--except for Sherrill--might most naturally come to the house; one,
too, for whom Wassaquam appeared to grant a certain right of direction
of affairs there. So, at this thought, Alan moved angrily; the house
was his--Alan's. He had noted particularly, when Sherrill had showed
him the list of properties whose transfer to him Corvet had left at
Sherrill's discretion, that the house was not among them; and he had
understood that this was because Corvet had left Sherrill no discretion
as to the house. Corvet's direct, unconditional gift of the house by
deed to Alan had been one of Sherrill's reasons for believing that if
Corvet had left anything which could explain his disappearance, it
would be found in the house.
Unless Spearman had visited the house during the day and had obtained
what he had been searching for the night before--and Alan believed he
had not done that--it was still in the house. Alan's hands clenched;
he would not give Spearman such a chance as that again; and he himself
would continue his search of the house--exhaustively, room by room,
article of furniture by article of furniture.
Alan started and went quickly to the open door of his room, as he heard
voices now somewhere within the house. One of the voices he recognized
as Wassaquam's; the other indistinct, thick, accusing--was unknown to
him; it certainly was not Spearman's. He had not heard Wassaquam go
down-stairs, and he had not heard the doorbell, so he ran first to the
third floor; but the room where he had seen Wassaquam was empty. He
descended again swiftly to the first floor, and found Wassaquam
standing in the front hall, alone.
"Who was here, Judah?" Alan demanded.
"A man," the Indian answered stolidly. "He was drunk; I put him out."
"What did he come for?"
"He came to see Ben. I put him out; he is gone, Alan."
Alan flung open the front door and looked out, but he saw no one.
"What did he want of Mr. Corvet, Judah?"
"I do not know. I told him Ben was not here; he was angry, but he went
away."
"Has he ever come here before?"
"Yes; he comes twice."
"He has been here twice?"
"More than that; every year he comes twice, Alan. Once he came
oftener."
"How long has he been doing that?"
"Since I can remember."
"Is he a friend of Mr. Corvet?"
"No friend--no!"
"But Mr. Corvet saw him when he came here?"
"Always, Alan."
"And you don't know at all what he came about?"
"How should I know? No; I do not."
Alan got his coat and hat. The sudden disappearance of the man might
mean only that he had hurried away, but it might mean too that he was
still lurking near the house. Alan had decided to make the circuit of
the house and determine that. But as he came out on to the porch, a
figure more than a block away to the south strode with uncertain step
out into the light of a street lamp, halted and faced about, and shook
his fist back at the house. Alan dragged the Indian out on to the
porch.
"Is that the man, Judah?" he demanded.
"Yes, Alan."
Alan ran down the steps and at full speed after the man. The other had
turned west at the corner where Alan had seen him; but even though Alan
slipped as he tried to run upon the snowy walks, he must be gaining
fast upon him. He saw him again, when he had reached the corner where
the man had turned, traveling westward with that quick uncertain step
toward Clark Street; at that corner the man turned south. But when
Alan reached the corner, he was nowhere in sight. To the south, Clark
Street reached away, garish with electric signs and with a half dozen
saloons to every block. That the man was drunk made it probable he had
turned into one of these places. Alan went into every one of them for
fully a half mile and looked about, but he found no one even resembling
the man he had been following. He retraced his steps for several
blocks, still looking; then he gave it up and returned eastward toward
the Drive.
The side street leading to the Drive was less well lighted; dark entry
ways and alleys opened on it; but the night was clear. The stars, with
the shining sword of Orion almost overhead, gleamed with midwinter
brightness, and to the west the crescent of the moon was hanging and
throwing faint shadows over the snow. Alan could see at the end of the
street, beyond the yellow glow of the distant boulevard lights, the
smooth, chill surface of the lake. A white light rode above it; now,
below the white light, he saw a red speck--the masthead and port
lanterns of a steamer northward bound. Farther out a second white glow
appeared from behind the obscuration of the buildings and below it a
green speck--a starboard light. The information he had gained that day
enabled him to recognize in these lights two steamers passing one
another at the harbor mouth.
"Red to red," Alan murmured to himself. "Green to green--Red to red,
perfect safety, go ahead!" he repeated.
It brought him, with marvelous vividness, back to Constance Sherrill.
Events since he had talked with her that morning had put them far apart
once more; but, in another way, they were being drawn closer together.
For he knew now that she was caught as well as he in the mesh of
consequences of acts not their own. Benjamin Corvet, in the anguish of
the last hours before fear of those consequences had driven him away,
had given her a warning against Spearman so wild that it defeated
itself; for Alan merely to repeat that warning, with no more than he
yet knew, would be equally futile. But into the contest between
Spearman and himself--that contest, he was beginning to feel, which
must threaten destruction either to Spearman or to him--she had
entered. Her happiness, her future, were at stake; her fate, he was
certain now, depended upon discovery of those events tied tight in the
mystery of Alan's own identity which Spearman knew, and the threat of
which at moments appalled him. Alan winced as there came before him in
the darkness of the street the vision of Constance in Spearman's arms
and of the kiss that he had seen that afternoon.
He staggered, slipped, fell suddenly forward upon his knees under a
stunning, crushing blow upon his head from behind. Thought,
consciousness almost lost, he struggled, twisting himself about to
grasp at his assailant. He caught the man's clothing, trying to drag
himself up; fighting blindly, dazedly, unable to see or think, he
shouted aloud and then again, aloud. He seemed in the distance to hear
answering cries; but the weight and strength of the other was bearing
him down again to his knees; he tried to slip aside from it, to rise.
Then another blow, crushing and sickening, descended on his head; even
hearing left him and, unconscious, he fell forward on to the snow and
lay still.