CHECKMATE!
Daylight came bleak and cold as Kenny drove rapidly up the doctor's
lane. The aggrieved mare had traveled. Through the farm window, green
with potted begonias, Kenny could see the doctor already at his
breakfast. A young colored girl was pouring out his coffee. The
doctor himself opened the door.
"Well, Mr. O'Neill," he exclaimed, "who's sick? Not Joan, I hope?"
"No," said Kenny, following the doctor back to the table. "No, nobody
sick."
"Sit down," invited the doctor, "I always figure you can talk as well
sitting as standing and you can rest. Won't you have some breakfast?"
"I couldn't eat," said Kenny. "Doctor," he added hoarsely, "would
it--be possible--for me--to speak to you--alone?"
The doctor nodded. In a life made up of emergencies as his was,
nothing astonished him.
"Annie," he said kindly, "just tell Mrs. Cole not to hurry down to
breakfast. And close the door."
Kenny took the will from his pocket and spread it on the table.
The doctor wearily fumbled for his glasses and put them on.
"Hum!" he said. "The old man's will, eh? I've been wondering about
it. Well, he didn't leave much but the farm, did he? And it might
have been better for Don and Joan if he'd taken it with him. Nobody
around here would buy it. A barn of a place! And the land's full of
stone."
"Ah!" said Kenny significantly. "But Adam Craig was a miser!"
"Pooh!" said the doctor with a sniff. "Who told you that?"
Kenny stared.
"I found it out for myself," he said stiffly. "Since then I have
learned that it is common rumor in the village. And the old man, even
when I--I spoke of it directly to him, never troubled to deny it."
"Shucks!" said the little doctor crossly. "He liked it. It saved his
pride."
"Saved--his--pride!"
The doctor nodded.
"Mr. O'Neill," he said, "country folks stare less unkindly at a miser
than at some other things. It hurt Adam, knowing his guilt, to see the
old Craig home going to rack and ruin. Had a lot of money when his
father died. A lot. And he wanted folks to think he still had it.
But he didn't. Went through it, Mr. O'Neill, hitting the high spots.
Came home a penniless wreck of a man, body and soul and pocketbook
warped beyond recall. I was there when they settled up his estate. As
a matter of fact my brother was his lawyer. And what he hadn't lost in
gambling and dissipation he lost speculating in Wall Street. Oh, he
never tried the miser stunt with me. He knew that I knew that he
hadn't a cent."
"Not a cent!" echoed Kenny feebly. "Not a cent!" He cleared his
throat. "Not--a cent."
"Not a cent," said the doctor cheerfully. "And barely a living from
that farm."
"Dr. Cole," said Kenny steadily, "he may have lost his own money. Of
that I know nothing. But what about his sister's?"
"Why," said the doctor at once, "she hadn't any. Old Craig senior left
it all to Adam. She ran away, you know, and went on the stage. He
never forgot it. 'Tisn't much of a story. She was a darned pretty
girl, high-spirited and clever, and the old man was a devil like Adam.
A scandal of that kind fussed us up pretty much in those days. I
remember I went to see Cordelia once in some old-time play. She was
wearing those old gowns that Joan, poor child, wears now. Always had a
feeling after that that I was a part of the scandal. Mother," he added
dryly, "felt so too."
The doctor shook his head lugubriously.
"She was a widow when she died," reminded Kenny.
"Yes."
"The money I mean must have come from her husband and she entrusted it
to Adam for Joan and Donald."
"But my dear fellow," said the doctor kindly, "he hadn't any. He was
an actor chap. Cordelia came home to the farm to die while Adam was in
Europe. She hadn't a cent."
"Not a cent!" said Kenny again. "Not a cent!"
"Not a cent," repeated the mystified doctor.
"Oh, my God!" said Kenny. "And I've dug up the farm!"
It was the doctor's turn to stare.
"You dug up the farm!" he said blankly.
Sick with discouragement Kenny pointed to the will.
"Read it," he said bitterly. "Particularly the 'remainder, residue and
situate' part."
The doctor read and he read slowly. Before he reached the clause in
question Kenny was on his feet, mopping his forehead. He told of the
fairy mill and the chair by the fire.
The doctor poured himself another cup of coffee and looked at Kenny
with a shade of asperity. Fairies, it would seem, were a little out of
his line.
"Adam had a good many spells like that," he said, "'specially when he
was drinking hard. Off like a shot, hanging out of his chair. Mere
coincidence. As for the night he staggered out to the sitting room, it
is possible as you suggest that he did it in a fit of drunken
superstition. But there wasn't any money on his conscience. Couldn't
be for there wasn't any. If he feared at all to have his sister
revisit her home--queer notion, that, Mr. O'Neill! You Irish run to
notions!--it was simply because he hadn't given her kids a square deal
and he knew it."
Again the doctor adjusted his glasses and went back to the will.
"Doctor," flung out Kenny desperately, "I myself have seen indisputable
proof in that house that Adam Craig was a miser--even the way he
handled money."
The doctor sighed and looked up. And he smiled his weary,
understanding smile.
"What you saw, Mr. O'Neill," he said soberly, "was something very close
to poverty. He was selfish and he had to have his brandy. His economy
in every other way was horrible. Horrible! As for the way he handled
money, as I said before, he wanted you to think he was a miser. It
seems," added the doctor dryly as he went back to his reading, "that he
was a grain too successful."
"He hated his sister," blurted Kenny. "Why would he hate her and
revile her memory unless he knew he had wronged her? Why did he have
black wakeful hours in bed and have to drink himself to sleep?"
"Adam," said the doctor with weary sarcasm, "fancied his sister had
brought disgrace upon the grand old family name of Craig. She was a
good girl and clever. But Adam believed in sacrifice and conventional
virtue--for women. Most men do. And he knew the way folks feel up
here about the stage. The world's queer, Mr. O'Neill. And Adam was
just a little queerer than the rest of it. In a sense he had wronged
her. God knows he was cruel enough to those two poor youngsters. As
for his passion for drinking himself to sleep--well, when a man's had
straight legs and plenty of health, such a fate as Adam's hits hard.
"He hated Joan and Donald," said Kenny. "Why?"
"He resented their drain upon his pocket-book. He hadn't enough left
for them and brandy too. Though the Lord knows they never cost him
much. Nellie Craig had them for a while after Cordelia died. Good old
soul, Nellie. But her tongue hung in the middle and worked both ways
like a bell-clapper. I always blamed her for the start of the miser
yarn. Adam managed to get it over on her and that was enough."
He made a final effort to read the will and while Kenny sat in stony
silence, choking back a creepy feeling of despair, reached the clause
pertaining to the residue of Adam's wealth.
"Ah!" he said.
"Well?" choked Kenny. "Is there some damned commonplace explanation
for that, too?"
The doctor tapped the paper with his stubby finger.
"And you," he marveled, "who knew so well his devilish cunning! That
clause I think was his last cruel jest."
Kenny turned white.
"A trap!" he said.
"A trap," said the doctor. "And you've swallowed bait and trap and
all."
"How he must have hated me?"
"On the contrary," said the little doctor warmly, "I think in his way
he was fond of you. He counted the hours until nightfall, that I know."
"And I--" said Kenny with a sharp intake of his breath, "I killed him
with that story of the chair."
"Oh, nonsense, nonsense!" said the doctor kindly. "Chair or no chair
he would have died just the same. I saw it coming. And your presence
there this summer freed him entirely from money worries. He even paid
me."
"Yes," said Kenny, "my money helped him drink himself to death."
The doctor sighed.
"Oh, well," he said, "that too would have happened just the same."
Kenny brushed his hair back dazedly from his forehead and rose. He
felt as if he had fallen from a great height and hit his head. It was
numbly aquiver. As he picked up the will and put it in his pocket,
Adam Craig, sinister and unassailable, seemed to mock him from the
grave. His last trap! Almost Kenny could hear him chuckle:
"Checkmate, Kenny, checkmate! And the game is won." How well he had
known his opponent's excitable fancy!
"Doctor," asked Kenny drearily, "why were all the books in the
farmhouse in Adam's room?"
"There," said the doctor, "I think he meant to be kind. Cordelia had
had all sorts of schooling and so had he. I think by denying the
youngsters books and too much knowledge, he thought to clip their wings
at the start and keep them contented. In tune with the farm, I mean,
and willing to stay. He'd seen enough of ruinous discontent when his
sister and himself went out in the world and tried their wings. Just a
fancy. I may be wrong. Well, Mr. O'Neill, I'm sorry. There's no
mystery and no money--"
"No," said Kenny dully, "no mystery and no money." He moved toward the
door with a curious trance-like feeling that this was still a part of
his dream.
"Just a commonplace story of self," said the doctor, following him to
the door, "with two ragged little kids the victims. Myself I think
it's just as well, Mr. O'Neill, to say as little as possible about
things of this sort. Tales up here grow. And fire that isn't fed goes
out. It's bound to. I never had the heart myself to deny the old
man's miser yarn. When I do talk, I try to say as little as possible
and keep my two feet solidly on the ground."
He watched Kenny down the steps and into the buggy.
"Humph!" said the little doctor. "Thought he had his fingers on a
regular swap-dollinger of a mystery, didn't he? To my thinking, the
only mystery in the farmhouse is himself!"
And Kenny, climbing into the buggy in hot rebellion, felt that he had
come decked out gorgeously in rainbow balloons. And the doctor,
practical and unromantic, had pushed a weary finger through them, one
by one, watching them collapse with his bored and kindly smile of
understanding. Life after all, reflected Kenny irritably, was a matter
of adjectives and any man was at the mercy of his biographer. He
himself could have told that story of Adam and Cordelia Craig until no
man could have called it commonplace and unromantic.