The Second Vigil
With an almost physical effort Storm flung off the vague, harrowing
suggestion which had laid itself upon him; and shrouding the window
carefully with its curtains he turned on the lights once more, and
glanced at the tall clock in the corner.
Quarter past two! Scarcely an hour had passed since, he and Horton had
left that room to start upon the little stroll which was to end so
momentously for them both. For Horton it meant obliteration, the end
of all things, but for him the beginning of a new life, a life which
should begin with no memories, which should be crammed so full of
color and motion and excitement that thought itself would be crowded
out!
The money! He must know that it was still there even though he dared
not lose himself in the joy of contemplation of it until every last
trace of the visitor’s presence had been removed.
He turned to the closet and halted suddenly. There on the settee
before him lay Horton’s felt hat, shapeless and sodden and somehow
oddly pathetic. Storm put the womanish thought from him and gazed at
the storm-battered object in momentary disquietude. He must get rid of
it in some way, but that would resolve itself later. Now he must
assure himself that the prize for which he had risked all was within
his grasp.
With eager, trembling fingers he produced the key, opened the closet
door and felt about on the shelf. Horton had hidden the bag well, poor
confident fool! He had made sure that none but knowing hands should
seek out its hiding-place.——There it was! Storm felt the grained
surface of the leather, the hard, square edges of the packets which
bulged its sides, and a light of exultation gleamed in his eyes. His!
All his! That afternoon, a few short hours before, he had been the
most miserable, hopeless of men, and now, through his courage, his
resourcefulness and cunning, he had changed the face of destiny!
But he was wasting precious time in pandering now to the obsession
which filled him. Storm caught the golf cap from the rack and tossed
it lightly upon the closet shelf where it had rested so brief a time
before, then reluctantly closed the door. Moving to the living-room
once more, he collected the glasses, siphon and bottle and carried
them to the kitchen where with scrupulous care he cleared away the
debris of the earlier repast. As he applied himself to his
unaccustomed task his thoughts raced forward to the magic years ahead,
and if the lingering specter of a lonely, huddled, battered form lying
somewhere out in the night intruded itself to block the vision he
thrust it sternly aside.
Nothing could stop him now! The cup of forgetfulness, of hope and
adventure and rejuvenation which had been held to his lips and
snatched away was at last safe within his grasp, and he meant to drink
of it to the full! That picture of Yokohama harbor which Horton had
drawn; he should see it, too, and soon! The bobbing lights and
tinkling notes of the samisens, and taste of the East in his mouth; it
should be his, all of it, until he was satiated with it and turned to
other lands!
He looked about the conventional, luxurious rooms as though already
they were strange to him, lost in a haze of half-forgotten memories.
How soon they would be wholly forgotten, merged with those other more
poignant thoughts of Greenlea in the blankness of a descending
curtain! Not a memento should go with him into his new life; every
thread must be clipped short on the day when he finally shook the dust
of the past from his feet. And that would be soon, soon! There was
nothing now to wait for, no lack of funds to hold him back. He would
hang about, of course, until the little flurry of Horton’s
disappearance had blown over and been forgotten, and then he would set
sail!
When all was in order again Storm gave a final approving glance about
the kitchen and turned out the light. Homachi would note the quantity
of food which had been consumed, of course, but that could be casually
explained, and of Horton’s hour there remained no other indication.
The gold! He could revel in it now, feel its solid, reassuring touch,
know that for each separate clinking coin and crackling bill he could
demand of the world full measure in all that he had thought denied to
him forever! He dragged the bag from its hiding place, and dropping
unheedingly into the same chair which Horton had occupied two hours
before, he opened it, working the secret spring as he had seen the
other do. There it all lay before him; the few neat cylinders of gold,
the many compact piles of yellow-backs! He fondled them in a strange
ecstasy of possession, drunk with the knowledge of his own power. Had
a glimpse of his face been vouchsafed him at the moment, he would not
have recognized it as his own, so distorted was it by the passion
which consumed him. Avarice had never laid its clutching fingers on
him before, he had never known the rapacious hunger for wealth which
assailed others; and it was not now the money itself over which he
gloated, but all that it stood for, all that it would mean to him.
He had known the galling shackles of necessity which bound him to the
wheel of circumstance, and now at one blow he had struck them off! He
was free!
How long he crouched there he never knew, but after a time the first
ecstasy passed and a measure of sanity returned. The money was his
now; but he could not make instant use of his fortune, nor could he
leave it in that bag. The logical thing would be to place it in the
safe built into the wall of his bedroom, of which Potter had shown him
the combination before he departed. The gold and banknotes would form
too bulky a package to be concealed from Homachi’s sharp eyes anywhere
else in the apartment, and Storm repelled the thought of conveying it
secretly to some safe deposit vault. He must keep it in his immediate
possession, within reach of his hand.
He rose and carried the bag into the bedroom where he carefully
counted out its contents upon the bed. One thousand, ten, twenty,
fifty, one hundred, a hundred and twelve! He gasped at the immensity
of it spread out before him! A hundred and twelve thousand dollars;
and there were still some smaller gold coins and a two-dollar bill! As
he lifted the bag something clinked within it, and investigating an
inner pocket he discovered eight shining new dimes and four bright
pennies. Five hundred and fifty-two dollars and eighty-four cents in
addition to the thousands! He recalled Horton’s statement of the
amount, and an ironic smile curved his lips. What a methodical,
cautious, conscientious protector of other people’s money he had been,
and how little it had availed him or them when the blow fell!
Storm opened the safe, deposited the money within it down to the last
penny, and closing it slid the panel back into place. The bag remained
to be disposed of, and there was Horton’s hat and pistol, too, in the
drawer of the living-room table. He must get rid of them at the
earliest possible moment, and in a manner which could not be traced.
Of course, there was a chance that Horton’s body would not be
discovered until all means of identification had been obliterated; but
it was so unlikely that Storm dismissed it from his thoughts. He could
not afford to gamble on a favorable long shot now; he must look at
this situation as squarely as he had the first desperate one of a
month before, and prepare himself for every contingency.
Horton’s clothing must surely contain papers revealing his identity
and attesting to his connection with the Mid-Eastern coal people. In
the event that his body were found on the morrow, they would be
communicated with, perhaps even before they had time to grow uneasy
over the non-appearance of their paymaster. In a few hours, twelve at
most, that ordinary looking bag might become the most important and
sought-after article in the country, its description down to the
minutest detail spread broadcast in the press.
How could he rid himself of it and of the pistol and hat as well?
Gruesome accounts recurred to his mind of dismembered bodies having
been wrapped in clumsy packages and dropped overboard in midstream
from ferryboats. But something had always gone wrong; some sharp-eyed
passenger had observed the action and marked the luckless individual
for future identification, or the package itself had been recovered
and the murderer traced by some such trivial detail as the wrapping or
string which enclosed it. Clearly that means was not to be considered;
and yet something must be done, and Storm could conceive of nothing
more difficult to destroy than a stout leather bag. If he could only
pack the other damning evidence—the hat and pistol—into it and ship it
somewhere far away or else check it at some parcel repository——
Why not! The audacity of the thought made him gasp, and yet its
feasibility instantly took hold upon his mind. If he attempted to
express or send it by parcel post he would be compelled to write an
address, and handwriting could be traced; but if he went to one of the
great railroad terminals at the morning rush hour and checked the bag
at the parcel desk he would merely be handed a numbered paper tag
which could be easily destroyed, and in the hurrying crowd his
identity would surely be lost. Better still, he could employ a stolid
porter to check the bag for him, and it would be held for ten days or
more before investigated as unclaimed.
Of course, there was the danger of his being recognized by some
acquaintance in the passing throng of travelers, but it would be a
simple matter to provide himself with a plausible excuse for his
presence there. The bag itself was inconspicuous in appearance—Horton
had seen to that!—and it bore no signs to reveal the purpose for which
it had been used. The more Storm pondered, the more favorable the idea
impressed him. He would have to get out in the morning without
Homachi’s observation and that of the elevator boy, but it could be
managed. For the rest he must trust to luck until he had finally rid
himself of it; it was the only possible solution.
He took the pistol from the table drawer and weighed it thoughtfully
in his hand. It would not make the bag heavy enough to occasion
remark, and yet it must be packed in carefully; the bag must have the
outward appearance of being filled with the ordinary concomitants of
travel. The hat would help, and for the rest paper would serve——
Then Storm remembered and blessed his valet’s saving propensity. On an
unused upper shelf in the pantry were a pile of old newspapers, some
of them left from the litter of Potter’s departure, but most of them
painstakingly collected and preserved for some purpose known only to
Homachi’s Asiatic mind.
Storm procured a sheaf of them, and was on the point of wrapping up
the pistol to stow it into the bag when on the front page of the
topmost newspaper he saw roughly scrawled in pencil the characters,
“One-A”. It was the number of his apartment—the newsdealer’s or house
superintendent’s guide for the delivery of the papers—a common
practice, as he knew, all over the city, and yet it might furnish a
clue.
Whipping off the outer sheets of each newspaper, he folded them and
replaced them on the kitchen shelf, then crumpled the others and lined
the bag with them, nesting the pistol secure from movement or jar in
their depths. The hat, folded into a wad, came next, and then more
paper until the bag was full. When closed it had a comfortably bulging
appearance, and Storm snapped the secret spring into place and set it
on the floor between the dressing table and wall where it would escape
Homachi’s eyes when he came to call his master in the morning.
Morning? Already a dim gray effulgence was stealing in between the
curtains of the window, and Storm smiled to himself. How different was
the vigil from the one of a month ago when he had sat quaking and
bathed in sweat upon the foot of his bed, longing for yet dreading the
coming of the dawn, waiting through tortured ages for the cry to echo
up from below which would tell him that the body of his first victim
had been discovered!
Now he knew that he had nothing to fear. He was master of this
situation as he had been of the other, had he but realized it fully
then. He extinguished all the lights except the low wall bracket at
the bed’s head and disrobed lazily, glorying in his steady nerve, his
iron control of himself.
No compunction came to him at the thought of the night’s work. Jack
Horton had played so small a part in his life in the all but forgotten
college days that the reminiscences had awakened no responsive chord.
Hungry as he had been for human companionship in his despondency, the
commonplace, cocksure stranger who spoke with the easy familiarity of
an old friend had bored and slightly repelled him until he displayed
his treasure. Even then he had not become a personality, but merely a
wall of flesh and blood which stood between Storm and that which
became in a twinkling of an eye imperative to his whole future
existence.
How every circumstance had played into his hands! The remarkable
coincidence of their meeting, the need of caution on Horton’s part
which had prevented their taking a taxicab, prevented the
establishment of any clue which would lead to this apartment on the
Drive! From the moment when Horton stepped from the train until sooner
or later his body would be discovered up there among the bushes above
the rail road track which skirted the Hudson, there would be a blank
which the most astute detectives in the world could not fill in! The
bag and its contents would be discovered and identified in time, of
course, but the treasure which it had contained would never be traced;
it would seep out gradually through the vast market places of the
world in exchange for the good things of life!
Horton’s easy surrender to the proffered hospitality, the fortuitous
clearing away of the storm which made that nocturnal stroke possible,
the accident of the rain-soaked hat which had necessitated a change to
headgear that offered no protection from that blow——all these had
contributed miraculously to the result; but had it not been for
Storm’s instant conception of the masterly scheme, his nerve and
cleverness in carrying it out, his foresight in arranging for every
possible contingency, the money would within a few short hours have
been forever beyond his reach! Such chances come to but few men and
then only once in a life-time; yet what man but he would have had the
genius to grasp it!
Remorse? He choked back a laugh that rose in his throat at the very
thought. What did it matter that a clod like Horton had dropped out of
existence? Yet somehow Storm could not quite dispel the memory of that
shrunken, inert figure slumped helplessly against the wall; he could
not quite close his ears to that good-natured voice prattling of the
trust reposed in him, of the love of the girl who was “aces high”.
Bah! Was he getting squeamish now? One could only rise on the
shoulders of another, and it had been the way of the world through
countless ages that the strong, the ruthless, the resourceful should
triumph! There had been something dog-like about Horton’s unaffected
pleasure at their meeting, his unquestioning acceptance of the
hospitality offered, the gusto with which he relished the unaccustomed
luxuries, his open-hearted affection and confidence. . . .
Storm thumped his pillow viciously. Dogs had been kicked from the path
before and would be again! There, within reach of his hand behind the
panel lay the price of all that he asked of the future! A little more
of George Holworthy’s puttering solicitude, of Nicholas Langhorne’s
sleek patronage and domineering authority, a week or two still perhaps
of the mask of mourning, the treadmill of the office, the dodging of
hypocritical, unctuous sympathy over Leila’s loss; and then freedom!
Freedom at last and the wide world in which to forget it all!