WHEREIN LUCIA SEES TREACHERY BREWING, PELL PROVES HIMSELF A BRUTE, AND AN
UNEXPECTED GUEST APPEARS
When Lucia saw Gilbert pass the paper to her husband, she thought she could
not stand it. It was not her concern; and yet it was. Vitally, whatever
affected young Jones affected her. She could not see him tricked, duped.
And she knew that he was being played with, made a fool of. Some ulterior
motive lay beneath this seeming generosity. She tried to control herself;
but suddenly she found herself speaking.
"No! Don't! I can't--"
But she could get no farther. Something seemed to choke her, and make it
impossible for her to continue.
Her husband looked at her in amazement. She turned away, and was silent.
"Thank you," said Pell to Gilbert. Then, to his wife he said: "And now that
this is settled, we shall proceed to other business of even more
importance. This gentle soul," looking at Uncle Henry, "has said that our
friend loves you and that you love him. Is it true?" He was perfectly calm.
Once more he was the crafty, cruel, scheming man; and back into his eyes
came that glitter she so feared.
Gilbert, astonished, got to the other side of the table.
"I thought we were through with all that!" he said. "What's the use of
harping on it?"
"You were wrong," answered Pell, coldly. "I am a business man, as I told
you before. I do one thing at a time." His lids half closed, his hands
clenched. He swerved abruptly on his wife. "Well?" he said. "Well?"
"You mean to say," said Gilbert, "that you took seriously what my doddering
old uncle said? I told you I thought he was crazy, and you seemed to agree
with me. What are you talking about now?"
Morgan Pell's steel-gray eyes fastened themselves on Jones, "I am talking
to my wife. I am not ready for you--yet. One thing at a time, you know."
He looked again at Lucia. "Well? I am waiting. Answer me: Do you love him?"
Alarm at Pell's manner was rife in the room. What a brute he was, and how
terrible was his verbal attack!
Lucia could not trust herself to speak. She knew she would have to reply to
her husband's question, and though she knew her answer would be but a
monosyllable, she could not get it out.
"Well?" Pell repeated, and the word was like a hammer-blow.
"No!" Lucia managed to say.
The husband now turned on Gilbert. "Do _you_ love _her_?" he asked with
great deliberation, as though he had rehearsed it in his mind for days.
"Certainly not," was the immediate reply.
The silence that followed could have been cut with a knife. Everyone stood
as though turned to stone. Surely this denial would be enough. Pell did not
move. A menacing expression came over his face. As though there were no one
else in the world, he glanced first at his wife and then at Jones, and
affirmed with quiet deliberation:
"You're a couple of rotten liars!"
Had he been struck in the face, Gilbert could not have been angrier. He saw
it all now--he was in this man's power, utterly. It had been planned
craftily, smoothly. And there was no escape for Lucia. God! what he had
gotten her in for! He cursed the tongue of Uncle Henry, and mentally he
heaped maledictions on his own head for his gross stupidity. So this was
how the land lay--this was the path that led to his destruction--ah! not
only his, but hers! Angry as he was, he knew it would be futile to do
anything but try, even now, to placate this wretched specimen of a man. He
had to think quickly. There was not an instant to lose.
"But you said you didn't believe ..." he began; but Pell came mercilessly
back at him!
"I didn't--then. The time was inopportune."
Uncle Henry clutched the arms of his chair. "Ooooooh! The dirty bum!" he
yelled.
Pell went on, inexorably. "But now that she herself has admitted it, and--"
"Admitted it!" Gilbert cried, his rage now at the boiling point.
"Yes! By everything she has said and done to-day. My dear fellow," with a
subtle change of tone, "God knows I am no prude." He smiled a bland smile.
"But there are limits to what any husband can endure." His lips became thin
and terrible; his eyes were gleaming slits.
Gilbert was aghast. He saw no solution of this painful situation; no safety
for Lucia--his thoughts were all of Lucia.
"You don't think that!" he said, "You couldn't possibly think that! Oh, my
God!"
Morgan Pell sneered at him. "I know what I would have done, in your place
and with your opportunities."
Gilbert found it hard to realize that any husband could say a thing like
this in the presence of his wife. It revealed, if anything further were
needed to reveal, the cur in the man.
"We're not all as rotten as you are, Pell! Don't forget that!" he cried.
"You're a dog--a low-down dog." It was all he could do not to spring upon
this craven and pin him to the floor.
"And we're not all as discreet as you!" Pell flung back. "And now, if you
don't mind," he added insinuatingly, "I'd like to talk to my wife--alone."
Gilbert was consumed with fear for Lucia. "What?" he cried.
"Have you any objections?" Pell said, curling his lip. The irony in his
tone was unmistakable.
Gilbert moved toward the door. "Why--no."
"Thank you," Pell said; and he threw wide the door leading from the alcove
so that his host might pass through. He waited for him to do so. Gilbert
hesitated for the fraction of a second. He looked at Pell, and then at
Lucia, still lovely for all her suffering. There was nothing to
say--nothing he could say. He disappeared into the other room, and shut the
door behind him. Pell immediately turned to the others. "Well?" he said.
"You mean you want us to get out too?" Uncle Henry asked, indignation in
his high voice.
"That's exactly what I do mean," Morgan Pell stated, firmly. "And the
sooner the better."
The situation, he felt, was entirely in his hands.
"Oh, very well!" Uncle Henry replied. He pushed his chair toward the door,
murmuring as he went, "Thank God I ain't his wife! That's all I got to
say!"
Hardy was still standing in the shadows. He looked at "Red." "What's he
going to do?" meaning Pell.
"I don't know. I--" the foreman answered. Angela, frightened, followed the
husky "Red" through the door; and the husband and wife were left entirely
alone.
There was a pregnant silence. Terror came into Lucia's heart. Her brain
reeled. She had seen Morgan in a temper before--many times; but never with
quite this sinister light in his eyes, this tense, quiet force behind his
slightest gesture. What was he going to say to her? She felt like an animal
at bay. She determined that she would gain one advantage by making him be
the first to speak. But as he approached her slowly, fear seized her. He
seemed no longer a man, just a hulking giant--a brutal, frenzied creature;
and something quite apart from herself caused her to cry out:
"What are you going to do?" Oddly there flashed into her mind that very
line, and she wondered where she had heard it. Yes, even in her terror, her
abject fear, she remembered. It was once when, as a child, she had seen a
dramatization of "Oliver Twist." Bill Sykes came toward Nancy, just as
Morgan was coming toward her now, with leering countenance, and the poor
wretch had screamed out: "What are you going to do?" That scene was forever
photographed on her brain, and now, from some strange recess, Nancy's
pitiful words came back to her.
He did not answer. Another step, and he would be upon her.
"What is it, Morgan? Oh, what is it?" She shrunk back, slowly. If he
touched her ...
But he did not lift his hand, as she fully expected him to do. Instead, he
uttered only two words. They were a command.
"Kiss me!"
Almost she would rather have felt his blows raining on her head.
"What?" she cried, a new amazement within her.
He glared down at her. His breath was on her cheek.
"You heard," he stated. And he stood stock still.
Frightened beyond believing or seeing, she offered her cheek to him. "But
I--" she managed to get out.
Pell saw that she was shrinking away again; she could not bring herself to
do as he willed.
"So!" her husband cried, significantly. Now she realized, in a blinding
flash, the cruel subtlety behind his test of her. Her head went back; she
closed her eyes. And then--how she did it she never knew--she raised her
mouth.
"I don't want to kiss you." It was the refinement of cruelty. "I want _you_
to kiss _me_. Do it!" His hands were behind his back. He stood straight and
stiff as an Indian chief.
He watched her least movement. He put his lips very close to her mouth.
She struggled in that one mad second, and tried to kiss him. She could
not--she could not bring herself to the act.
He laughed sardonically. The devil himself could not have laughed liked
that.
"Some women could have done it," he told her, sternly. "But not you, my
dear...." Fury and sarcasm were in his tone. "So! That's it, is it? And I
stand blindly by while you and he ..."
Utter madness seemed to rush upon him.
Lucia had backed to the table. "No! I can't. You--you brute!"
Pell watched her, steadily. "Do you think I am a fool? Or that you are more
than human?" he cried out.
"I swear to God!" she contradicted him.
"Ha! You've had your turn, my lady! Now, it's mine! And after all I've done
for you, you ungrateful hussy!"
The clock struck three. It seemed an eternity until the little bell ceased.
Her life with him swam before her in that brief period. All she could utter
was:
"What are you going to do?" And she clutched her hands in helplessness,
for she read some sinister purpose in his voice.
"I'm going to do what I once saw another sensible husband do under these
circumstances."
Lucia's face was ashen now. "What is that?"
A second's pause. She hung on his answer.
"Horses don't know who they really belong to. So they are branded. There is
no reason why women equally ignorant shouldn't be similarly treated." Every
word was measured, uttered with fearful distinctness. His hand shot behind
him on the table, where "Red" had left his spurs. Lucia saw the swift
movement.
"No!" she screamed, "Oh, no, Morgan, not that!" Her senses reeled. The
earth crashed beneath her.
But he paid no heed. He seized her fiercely by one arm, reaching far out to
do so, and, gorilla-like, he had her, this weak flower, in his clutches. He
pinioned her deftly, and thrust her lovely body back, until her face looked
upward from the table. With his right hand, he started to tear her
beautiful face to shreds with the cruel spurs, forever to ruin her glorious
features, when, as if through a miracle, the door was thrown wide open, and
a strange figure stood on the sill--a Mexican in a great sombrero, a
flaming red kerchief at his throat, and eyes that gleamed and glistened,
teeth that were like the whitest ivory.
He stood, with arms crossed, surveying the scene. If lightning had struck
the adobe, Pell could not have been more dazed.
He released his wife. "What the devil!" he cried. "Who are you?"
"Hold up your hands!" yelled the bandit, stepping over the threshold. And
Pell's hands went up, like magic, the spurs jangling to the floor.
There was a noise without, and Uncle Henry was pushed in by a crude,
foul-looking Mexican, then came "Red," Angela, and Hardy, followed by
another Mexican bandit, and several Mexicans.
"Who is he? What does this mean?" Pell cried out.
"This is Pancho Lopez!" "Red" Giddings said. Everyone's hands were lifted,
and pistols were held by the Mexicans, ready to go off at the slightest
sign of rebellion.
"Pancho Lopez?" Pell repeated, frightened almost to the breaking point.
The bandit, a strange smile upon his lips, and hidden laughter in his eyes,
knew his power. The situation was one in which he reveled. He gazed around
him, triumphantly. His legs were spread apart, a cigarette drooped
nonchalantly from his lips.
"Señors, señoras!" he announced, in fascinating broken English, "you are
all my preesoner!"