A CALLER
As the first of the month was approaching, Wassaquam had brought his
household bills and budget to Alan that morning directly after
breakfast. The accounts, which covered expenses for the month just
ending and a small amount of cash to be carried for the month
beginning, were written upon a sheet of foolscap in neat, unshaded
writing exactly like the models in a copybook--each letter formed as
carefully and precisely as is the work done upon an Indian basket. The
statement accounted accurately for a sum of cash in hand upon the first
of February, itemized charged expenses, and totaled the bills. For
March, Wassaquam evidently proposed a continuance of the establishment
upon the present lines. To provide for that, and to furnish Alan with
whatever sums he needed, Sherrill had made a considerable deposit in
Alan's name in the bank where he carried his own account; and Alan had
accompanied Sherrill to the bank to be introduced and had signed the
necessary cards in order to check against the deposit; but, as yet, he
had drawn nothing.
Alan had required barely half of the hundred dollars which Benjamin
Corvet had sent to Blue Rapids, for his expenses in Chicago; and he had
brought with him from "home" a hundred dollars of his own. He had used
that for his personal expenses since. The amount which Wassaquam now
desired to pay the bills was much more than Alan had on hand; but that
amount was also much less than the eleven hundred dollars which the
servant listed as cash on hand. This, Wassaquam stated, was in
currency and kept by him. Benjamin always had had him keep that much
in the house; Wassaquam would not touch that sum now for the payment of
current expenses.
This sum of money kept inviolate troubled Alan. Constance Sherrill's
statement that, for her family at least, to keep such a sum would have
been unusual, increased this trouble; it did not, however, preclude the
possibility that others than the Sherrills might keep such amounts of
cash on hand. On the first of the month, therefore Alan drew upon his
new bank account to Wassaquam's order; and in the early afternoon
Wassaquam went to the bank to cash his check--one of the very few
occasions when Alan had been left in the house alone; Wassaquam's
habit, it appeared, was to go about on the first of the month and pay
the tradesmen in person.
Some two hours later, and before Wassaquam could have been expected
back, Alan, in the room which had become his, was startled by a sound
of heavy pounding, which came suddenly to him from a floor below.
Shouts--heavy, thick, and unintelligible--mingled with the pounding.
He ran swiftly down the stairs, then on and down the service stairs
into the basement. The door to the house from the areaway was shaking
to irregular, heavy blows, which stopped as Alan reached the lower
hallway; the shouts continued still a moment more. Now that the noise
of pounding did not interfere, Alan could make out what the man was
saying: "Ben Corvet!"--the name was almost unintelligible--"Ben Corvet!
Ben!" Then the shouts stopped too.
Alan sped to the door and turned back the latch. The door bore back
upon him, not from a push, but from a weight without which had fallen
against it. A big, heavy man, with a rough cap and mackinaw coat,
would have fallen upon the floor, if Alan had not caught him. His
weight in Alan's arms was so dull, so inert that, if violence had been
his intention, there was nothing to be feared from him now. Alan
looked up, therefore, to see if any one had come with him. The alley
and the street were clear. The snow in the area-way showed that the
man had come to the door alone and with great difficulty; he had fallen
once upon the walk. Alan dragged the man into the house and went back
and closed the door.
He returned and looked at him. The man was like, very like the one
whom Alan had followed from the house on the night when he was
attacked; certainty that this was the same man came quickly to him. He
seized the fellow again and dragged him up the stairs and to the lounge
in the library. The warmth revived him; he sat up, coughing and
breathing quickly and with a loud, rasping wheeze. The smell of liquor
was strong upon him; his clothes reeked with the unclean smell of
barrel houses.
He was, or had been, a very powerful man, broad and thick through with
overdeveloped--almost distorting--muscles in his shoulders; but his
body had become fat and soft, his face was puffed, and his eyes watery
and bright; his brown hair, which was shot all through with gray, was
dirty and matted; he had three or four days' growth of beard. He was
clothed as Alan had seen deck hands on the steamers attired; he was not
less than fifty, Alan judged, though his condition made estimate
difficult. When he sat up and looked about, it was plain that whiskey
was only one of the forces working upon him--the other was fever which
burned up and sustained him intermittently.
"'Lo!" he greeted Alan. "Where's shat damn Injin, hey? I knew Ben
Corvet was shere--knew he was shere all time. 'Course he's shere; he
got to be shere. That's shright. You go get 'im!"
"Who are you?" Alan asked.
"Say, who'r _you_? What t'hells syou doin' here? Never see you before
... go--go get Ben Corvet. Jus' say Ben Corvet, Lu--luke's shere. Ben
Corvet'll know Lu--luke all right; alwaysh, alwaysh knows me...."
"What's the matter with you?" Alan had drawn back but now went to the
man again. The first idea that this might have been merely some old
sailor who had served Benjamin Corvet or, perhaps, had been a comrade
in the earlier days, had been banished by the confident arrogance of
the man's tone--an arrogance not to be explained, entirely, by whiskey
or by the fever.
"How long have you been this way?" Alan demanded. "Where did you come
from?" He put his hand on the wrist; it was very hot and dry; the
pulse was racing, irregular; at seconds it seemed to stop; for other
seconds it was continuous. The fellow coughed and bent forward. "What
is it--pneumonia?" Alan tried to straighten him up.
"Gi' me drink! ... Go get Ben Corvet, I tell you! ... Get Ben Corvet
quick! Say--yous shear? You get me Ben Corvet; you better get Ben
Corvet; you tell him Lu--uke's here; won't wait any more; goin' t'have
my money now ... sright away, your shear? Kick me out s'loon; I guess
not no more. Ben Corvet give me all money I want or I talk!"
"Talk!"
"Syou know it! I ain't goin'...." He choked up and tottered back;
Alan, supporting him, laid him down and stayed beside him until his
coughing and choking ceased, and there was only the rattling rasp of
his breathing. When Alan spoke to him again, Luke's eyes opened, and
he narrated recent experiences bitterly; all were blamed to Ben
Corvet's absence; Luke, who had been drinking heavily a few nights
before, had been thrown out when the saloon was closed; that was Ben
Corvet's fault; if Ben Corvet had been around, Luke would have had
money, all the money any one wanted; no one would have thrown out Luke
then. Luke slept in the snow, all wet. When he arose, the saloon was
open again, and he got more whiskey, but not enough to get him warm.
He hadn't been warm since. That was Ben Corvet's fault. Ben Corvet
better be 'round now; Luke wouldn't stand any more.
Alan felt of the pulse again; he opened the coat and under-flannels and
felt the heaving chest. He went to the hall and looked in the
telephone directory. He remembered the name of the druggist on the
corner of Clark Street and he telephoned him, giving the number on
Astor Street.
"I want a doctor right away," he said. "Any good doctor; the one that
you can get quickest." The druggist promised that a physician would be
there within a quarter of an hour. Alan went back to Luke, who was
silent now except for the gasp of his breath; he did not answer when
Alan spoke to him, except to ask for whiskey. Alan, gazing down at
him, felt that the man was dying; liquor and his fever had sustained
him only to bring him to the door; now the collapse had come; the
doctor, even if he arrived very soon, could do no more than perhaps
delay the end. Alan went up-stairs and brought down blankets and put
them over Luke; he cut the knotted laces of the soaked shoes and pulled
them off; he also took off the mackinaw and the undercoat. The fellow,
appreciating that care was being given him, relaxed; he slept deeply
for short periods, stirred and started up, then slept again. Alan
stood watching, a strange, sinking tremor shaking him. This man had
come there to make a claim--a claim which many times before,
apparently, Benjamin Corvet had admitted. Luke came to Ben Corvet for
money which he always got--all he wanted--the alternative to giving
which was that Luke would "talk." Blackmail, that meant, of course;
blackmail which not only Luke had told of, but which Wassaquam too had
admitted, as Alan now realized. Money for blackmail--that was the
reason for that thousand dollars in cash which Benjamin Corvet always
kept at the house.
Alan turned, with a sudden shiver of revulsion, toward his father's
chair in place before the hearth; there for hours each day his father
had sat with a book or staring into the fire, always with what this man
knew hanging over him, always arming against it with the thousand
dollars ready for this man, whenever he came. Meeting blackmail,
paying blackmail for as long as Wassaquam had been in the house, for as
long as it took to make the once muscular, powerful figure of the
sailor who threatened to "talk" into the swollen, whiskey-soaked hulk
of the man dying now on the lounge.
For his state that day, the man blamed Benjamin Corvet. Alan, forcing
himself to touch the swollen face, shuddered at thought of the truth
underlying that accusation. Benjamin Corvet's act--whatever it might
be that this man knew--undoubtedly had destroyed not only him who paid
the blackmail but him who received it; the effect of that act was still
going on, destroying, blighting. Its threat of shame was not only
against Benjamin Corvet; it threatened also all whose names must be
connected with Corvet's. Alan had refused to accept any stigma in his
relationship with Corvet; but now he could not refuse to accept it.
This shame threatened Alan; it threatened also the Sherrills. Was it
not because of this that Benjamin Corvet had objected to Sherrill's
name appearing with his own in the title of the ship-owning firm? And
was it not because of this that Corvet's intimacy with Sherrill and his
comradeship with Constance had been alternated by times in which he had
frankly avoided them both? What Sherrill had told Alan and even
Corvet's gifts to him had not been able to make Alan feel that without
question Corvet was his father, but now shame and horror were making
him feel it; in horror at Corvet's act--whatever it might be--and in
shame at Corvet's cowardice, Alan was thinking of Benjamin Corvet as
his father. This shame, this horror, were his inheritance.
He left Luke and went to the window to see if the doctor was coming.
He had called the doctor because in his first sight of Luke he had not
recognized that Luke was beyond the aid of doctors and because to
summon a doctor under such circumstances was the right thing to do; but
he had thought of the doctor also as a witness to anything Luke might
say. But now--did he want a witness? He had no thought of concealing
anything for his own sake or for his father's; but he would, at least,
want the chance to determine the circumstances under which it was to be
made public.
He hurried back to Luke. "What is it, Luke?" he cried to him. "What
can you tell? Listen! Luke--Luke, is it about the _Miwaka_--the
_Miwaka_? Luke!"
Luke had sunk into a stupor; Alan shook him and shouted in his ear
without awakening response. As Alan straightened and stood hopelessly
looking down at him, the telephone bell rang sharply. Thinking it
might be something about the doctor, he went to it and answered it.
Constance Sherrill's voice came to him; her first words made it clear
that she was at home and had just come in.
"The servants tell me some one was making a disturbance beside your
house a while ago," she said, "and shouting something about Mr. Corvet.
Is there something wrong there? Have you discovered something?"
He shook excitedly while, holding his hand over the transmitter lest
Luke should break out again and she should hear it, he wondered what he
should say to her. He could think of nothing, in his excitement, which
would reassure her and merely put her off; he was not capable of
controlling his voice so as to do that.
"Please don't ask me just now, Miss Sherrill," he managed. "I'll tell
you what I can--later."
His reply, he recognized, only made her more certain that there was
something the matter, but he could not add anything to it. He found
Luke, when he went back to him, still in coma; the blood-shot veins
stood out against the ghastly grayness of his face, and his stertorous
breathing sounded through the rooms.
Constance Sherrill had come in a few moments before from an afternoon
reception; the servants told her at once that something was happening
at Mr. Corvet's. They had heard shouts and had seen a man pounding
upon the door there, but they had not taken it upon themselves to go
over there. She had told the chauffeur to wait with the motor and had
run at once to the telephone and called Alan; his attempt to put her
off made her certain that what had happened was not finished but was
still going on. Her anxiety and the sense of their responsibility for
Alan overrode at once all other thought. She told the servants to call
her father at the office and tell him something was wrong at Mr.
Corvet's; then she called her maid and hurried out to the motor.
"To Mr. Corvet's--quickly!" she directed.
Looking through the front doors of her car as it turned into Astor
Street, she saw a young man, carrying a doctor's case, run up the steps
of Corvet's house. This, quite unreasonably since she had just talked
with Alan, added to her alarm; she put her hand on the catch of the
door and opened it a little so as to be ready to leave the car as soon
as it stopped. As the car drew to the curb, she sprang out, and
stopped only long enough to tell the chauffeur to be attentive and to
wait ready to come into the house, if he was called.
The man with the bag--Constance recognized him as a young doctor who
was starting in practice in the neighborhood--was just being admitted
as she and her maid reached the steps. Alan stood holding the door
open and yet blocking entrance when she came up. The sight of him told
her that it was not physical hurt that happened to him, but his face
showed her there had been basis for her fright.
"You must not come in!" he denied her; but she followed the doctor so
that Alan could not close the door upon her. He yielded then, and she
and her maid went on into the hall.
She started as she saw the figure upon the couch in the library, and as
the sound of its heavy breathing reached her; and the wild fancy which
had come to her when the servants had told her of what was going on--a
fancy that Uncle Benny had come back--was banished instantly.
Alan led her into the room across from the library.
"You shouldn't have come in," he said. "I shouldn't have let you in;
but--you saw him."
"Yes."
"Do you know him?"
"Know him?" She shook her head.
"I mean, you've never seen him before?"
"No."
"His name is Luke--he speaks of himself by that name. Did you ever
hear my father mention a man named Luke?"
"No; never."
Luke's voice cut suddenly their conversation; the doctor probably had
given him some stimulant.
"Where'sh Ben Corvet?" Luke demanded arrogantly of the doctor. "You go
get Ben Corvet! Tell Ben Corvet I want drink right away. Tell Ben
Corvet I want my thousan' dollar...!"
Constance turned swiftly to her maid. "Go out to the car and wait for
me," she commanded.
Luke's muffled, heavy voice went on; moments while he fought for breath
interrupted it.
"You hear me, you damn Injin! ... You go tell Ben Corvet I want my
thousan' dollars, or I make it two nex' time! You hear me; you go tell
Ben Corvet.... You let me go, you damn Injin!"...
Through the doorway to the library they could see the doctor force Luke
back upon the couch; Luke fought him furiously; then, suddenly as he
had stirred to strength and fury, Luke collapsed again. His voice went
on a moment more, rapidly growing weaker:
"You tell Ben Corvet I want my money, or I'll tell. He knows what I'll
tell.... You don't know, you Injin devil.... Ben Corvet knows, and I
know.... Tell him I'll tell ... I'll tell ... I'll tell!" The
threatening voice stopped suddenly.
Constance, very pale, again faced Alan. "Of course, I understand," she
said. "Uncle Benny has been paying blackmail to this man. For years,
perhaps...." She repeated the word after an instant, in a frightened
voice, "Blackmail!"
"Won't you please go, Miss Sherrill?" Alan urged her. "It was good of
you to come; but you mustn't stay now. He's--he's dying, of course."
She seated herself upon a chair. "I'm going to stay with you," she
said simply. It was not, she knew, to share the waiting for the man in
the next room to die; in that, of itself, there could be nothing for
him to feel. It was to be with him while realization which had come to
her was settling upon him too--realization of what this meant to him.
He was realizing that, she thought; he had realized it; it made him, at
moments, forget her while, listening for sounds from the other room, he
paced back and forth beside the table or stood staring away, clinging
to the portieres. He left her presently, and went across the hall to
the doctor. The man on the couch had stirred as though to start up
again; the voice began once more, but now its words were wholly
indistinguishable, meaningless, incoherent. They stopped, and Luke lay
still; the doctor--Alan was helping him now--arranged a quite inert
form upon the couch. The doctor bent over him.
"Is he dead?" Constance heard Alan ask.
"Not yet," the doctor answered; "but it won't be long, now."
"There's nothing you can do for him?"
The doctor shook his head.
"There's nothing you can do to make him talk--bring him to himself
enough so that he will tell what he keeps threatening to tell?"
The doctor shrugged. "How many times, do you suppose, he's been drunk
and still not told? Concealment is his established habit now. It's an
inhibition; even in wandering, he stops short of actually telling
anything."
"He came here--" Alan told briefly to the doctor the circumstances of
the man's coming. The doctor moved back from the couch to a chair and
sat down.
"I'll wait, of course," he said, "until it's over." He seemed to want
to say something else, and after a moment he came out with it. "You
needn't be afraid of my talking outside ... professional secrecy, of
course."
Alan came back to Constance. Outside, the gray of dusk was spreading,
and within the house it had grown dark; Constance heard the doctor turn
on a light, and the shadowy glow of a desk lamp came from the library.
Alan walked to and fro with uneven steps; he did not speak to her, nor
she to him. It was very quiet in the library; she could not even hear
Luke's breathing now. Then she heard the doctor moving; Alan went to
the light and switched it on, as the doctor came out to them.
"It's over," he said to Alan. "There's a law covers these cases; you
may not be familiar with it. I'll make out the death
certificate--pneumonia and a weak heart with alcoholism. But the
police have to be notified at once; you have no choice as to that.
I'll look after those things for you, if you want."
"Thank you; if you will." Alan went with the doctor to the door and
saw him drive away. Returning, he drew the library portieres; then,
coming back to Constance, he picked up her muff and collar from the
chair where she had thrown them, and held them out to her.
"You'll go now, Miss Sherrill," he said. "Indeed, you mustn't stay
here--your car's still waiting, and--you mustn't stay here ... in this
house!"
He was standing, waiting to open the door for her, almost where he had
halted on that morning, a few weeks ago, when he had first come to the
house in answer to Benjamin Corvet's summons; and she was where she had
stood to receive him. Memory of how he had looked then--eager,
trembling a little with excitement, expecting only to find his father
and happiness--came to her; and as it contrasted with the way she saw
him now, she choked queerly as she tried to speak. He was very white,
but quite controlled; lines not upon his face before had come there.
"Won't you come over home with me," she said, "and wait for father
there till we can think this thing out together?"
Her sweetness almost broke him down. "This ... together! Think this
out! Oh, it's plain enough, isn't it? For years--for as long as
Wassaquam has been here, my father has been seeing that man and paying
blackmail to him twice a year, at least! He lived in that man's power.
He kept money in the house for him always! It wasn't anything
imaginary that hung over my father--or anything created in his own
mind. It was something real--real; it was disgrace--disgrace and
worse--something he deserved; and that he fought with blackmail money,
like a coward! Dishonor--cowardice--blackmail!"
She drew a little nearer to him. "You didn't want me to know," she
said. "You tried to put me off when I called you on the telephone;
and--when I came here, you wanted me to go away before I heard. Why
didn't you want me to know? If he was your father, wasn't he
our--friend? Mine and my father's? You must let us help you."
As she approached, he had drawn back from her. "No; this is mine!" he
denied her. "Not yours or your father's. You have nothing to do with
this. Didn't he try in little cowardly ways to keep you out of it?
But he couldn't do that; your friendship meant too much to him; he
couldn't keep away from you. But I can--I can do that! You must go
out of this house; you must never come in here again!"
Her eyes filled, as she watched him; never had she liked him so much as
now, as he moved to open the door for her.
"I thought," he said almost wistfully, "it seemed to me that, whatever
he had done, it must have been mostly against me. His leaving
everything to me seemed to mean that I was the one that he had wronged,
and that he was trying to make it up to me. But it isn't that; it
can't be that! It is something much worse than that! ... Oh, I'm glad
I haven't used much of his money! Hardly any--not more than I can give
back! It wasn't the money and the house he left me that mattered; what
he really left me was just this ... dishonor, shame..."
The doorbell rang, and Alan turned to the door and threw it open. In
the dusk the figure of the man outside was not at all recognizable; but
as he entered with heavy and deliberate steps, passing Alan without
greeting and going straight to Constance, Alan saw by the light in the
hall that it was Spearman.
"What's up?" Spearman asked. "They tried to get your father at the
office and then me, but neither of us was there. They got me
afterwards at the club. They said you'd come over here; but that must
have been more than two hours ago."
His gaze went on past her to the drawn hangings of the room to the
right; and he seemed to appreciate their significance; for his face
whitened under its tan, and an odd hush came suddenly upon him.
"Is it Ben, Connie?" he whispered. "Ben ... come back?"
He drew the curtains partly open. The light in the library had been
extinguished, and the light that came from the hall swayed about the
room with the movement of the curtains and gave a momentary semblance
of life to the face of the man upon the couch. Spearman drew the
curtains quickly together again, still holding to them and seeming for
an instant to cling to them; then he shook himself together, threw the
curtains wide apart, and strode into the room. He switched on the
light and went directly to the couch; Alan followed him.
"He's--dead?"
"Who is he?" Alan demanded.
Spearman seemed to satisfy himself first as to the answer to his
question. "How should I know who he is?" he asked. "There used to be
a wheelsman on the _Martha Corvet_ years ago who looked like him; or
looked like what this fellow may have looked like once. I can't be
sure."
He turned to Constance. "You're going home, Connie? I'll see you over
there. I'll come back about this afterward, Conrad."
Alan followed them to the door and closed it after them. He spread the
blankets over Luke. Luke's coats, which Alan had removed, lay upon a
chair, and he looked them over for marks of identification; the
mackinaw bore the label of a dealer in Manitowoc--wherever that might
be; Alan did not know. A side pocket produced an old briar: there was
nothing else. Then Alan walked restlessly about, awaiting Spearman.
Spearman, he believed, knew this man; Spearman had not even ventured
upon modified denial until he was certain that the man was dead; and
then he had answered so as not to commit himself, pending learning from
Constance what Luke had told.
But Luke had said nothing about Spearman. It had been Corvet, and
Corvet alone, of whom Luke had spoken; it was Corvet whom he had
accused; it was Corvet who had given him money. Was it conceivable,
then, that there had been two such events in Corvet's life? That one
of these events concerned the _Miwaka_ and Spearman and some one--some
one "with a bullet hole above his eye"--who had "got" Corvet; and that
the other event had concerned Luke and something else? It was not
conceivable, Alan was sure; it was all one thing. If Corvet had had to
do with the _Miwaka_, then Luke had had to do with it too. And
Spearman? But if Spearman had been involved in that guilty thing, had
not Luke known it? Then why had not Luke mentioned Spearman? Or had
Spearman not been really involved? Had it been, perhaps, only evidence
of knowledge of what Corvet had done that Spearman had tried to
discover and destroy?
Alan went to the door and opened it, as he heard Spearman upon the
steps again. Spearman waited only until the door had been reclosed
behind him.
"Well, Conrad, what was the idea of bringing Miss Sherrill into this?"
"I didn't bring her in; I tried the best I could to keep her out."
"Out of what--exactly?"
"You know better than I do. You know exactly what it is. You know
that man, Spearman; you know what he came here for. I don't mean
money; I mean you know why he came here for money, and why he got it.
I tried, as well as I could, to make him tell me; but he wouldn't do
it. There's disgrace of some sort here, of course--disgrace that
involves my father and, I think, you too. If you're not guilty with my
father, you'll help me now; if you are guilty, then, at least, your
refusal to help will let me know that."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Then why did you come back here? You came back here to protect
yourself in some way."
"I came back, you young fool, to say something to you which I didn't
want Miss Sherrill to hear. I didn't know, when I took her away, how
completely you'd taken her into--your father's affairs. I told you
this man may have been a wheelsman on the Corvet; I don't know more
about him than that; I don't even know that certainly. Of course, I
knew Ben Corvet was paying blackmail; I've known for years that he was
giving up money to some one. I don't know who he paid it to; or for
what."
The strain of the last few hours was telling upon Alan; his skin
flushed hot and cold by turns. He paced up and down while he
controlled himself.
"That's not enough, Spearman," he said finally. "I--I've felt you,
somehow, underneath all these things. The first time I saw you, you
were in this house doing something you ought not to have been doing;
you fought me then; you would have killed me rather than not get away.
Two weeks ago, some one attacked me on the street--for robbery, they
said; but I know it wasn't robbery--"
"You're not so crazy as to be trying to involve me in that--"
There came a sound to them from the hall, a sound unmistakably denoting
some presence. Spearman jerked suddenly up; Alan, going to the door
and looking into the hall, saw Wassaquam. The Indian evidently had
returned to the house some time before; he had been bringing to Alan
now the accounts which he had settled. He seemed to have been standing
in the hall for some time, listening; but he came in now, looking
inquiringly from one to the other of them.
"Not friends?" he inquired. "You and Henry?"
Alan's passion broke out suddenly. "We're anything but that, Judah. I
found him, the first night I got here and while you were away, going
through my father's things. I fought with him, and he ran away. He
was the one that broke into my father's desks; maybe you'll believe
that, even if no one else will."
"Yes?" the Indian questioned. "Yes?" It was plain that he not only
believed but that believing gave him immense satisfaction. He took
Alan's arm and led him into the smaller library. He knelt before one
of the drawers under the bookshelves--the drawer, Alan recalled, which
he himself had been examining when he had found Wassaquam watching him.
He drew out the drawer and dumped its contents out upon the floor; he
turned the drawer about then, and pulled the bottom out of it. Beneath
the bottom which he had removed appeared now another bottom and a few
sheets of paper scrawled in an uneven hand and with different colored
inks.
At sight of them, Spearman, who had followed them into the room,
uttered an oath and sprang forward. The Indian's small dark hand
grasped Spearman's wrist, and his face twitched itself into a fierce
grin which showed how little civilization had modified in him the
aboriginal passions. But Spearman did not try to force his way;
instead, he drew back suddenly.
Alan stooped and picked up the papers and put them in his pocket. If
the Indian had not been there, it would not have been so easy for him
to do that, he thought.