_Death of the Old Professor, and how Queed finds that his List of
Friends has grown; a Last Will and Testament; Exchange of Letters
among Prominent Attorneys, which unhappily proves futile._
On the merriest, maddest day in March, Henry G. Surface, who had
bitterly complained of earthly justice, slipped away to join the
invisible procession which somewhere winds into the presence of the
Incorruptible Judge. He went with his lips locked. At the last moment
there had been faint signs of recurring consciousness; the doctor had
said that there was one chance in a hundred that the dying man might
have a normal moment at the end. On this chance his son had said to the
nurse, alone with him in the room:--
"Will you kindly leave me with him a moment? If he should be conscious
there is a private question of importance that I must ask him."
She left him. The young man knelt down by the bedside, and put his lips
close to the old man's ear. Vainly he tried to drive his voice into that
stilled consciousness, and drag from his father the secret of the
hiding-place of his loot.
"Father!" he said, over and over. "Father! _Where is the money?_"
There was no doubt that the old man stirred a little. In the dim light
of the room it seemed to his son that his right eye half opened, leaving
the other closed in a ghastly parody of a wink, while the upper lip drew
away from the strong teeth like an evil imitation of the old bland
sneer. But that was all.
So Surface died, and was gathered to his fathers. The embargo of secrecy
was lifted; and the very first step toward righting the ancient wrong
was to let the full facts be known. Henry G. Surface, Jr., took this
step, in person, by at once telephoning all that was salient to the
_Post_. Brower Williams, the _Post's_ city editor, at the other end of
the wire, called the name of his God in holy awe at the dimensions of
the scoop thus dropped down upon him as from heaven; and implored the
Doc, for old time's sake, by all that he held most sacred and most dear,
to say not a word till the evening papers were out, thus insuring the
sensation for the _Post_.
Mr. Williams's professional appraisement of the scoop proved not
extravagant. The _Post's_ five columns next morning threw the city into
something like an uproar. It is doubtful if you would not have to go
back to the '60's to find a newspaper story which eclipsed this one in
effect. For a generation, the biography of Henry G. Surface had had, in
that city and State, a quality of undying interest, and the sudden
denouement, more thrilling than any fiction, captured the imagination of
the dullest. Nothing else was mentioned at any breakfast-table where a
morning paper was taken that day; hardly anything for many breakfasts to
follow. In homes containing boys who had actually studied Greek under
the mysterious Professor Nicolovius at Mimer's School, discussion grew
almost hectic; while at Mrs. Paynter's, where everybody was virtually a
leading actor in the moving drama, the excitement closely approached
delirium.
Henry G. Surface, Jr., was up betimes on the morning after his father's
death--in fact, as will appear, he had not found time to go to bed at
all--and the sensational effects of the _Post's_ story were not lost
upon him. As early as seven o'clock, a knot of people had gathered in
front of the little house on Duke of Gloucester Street, staring
curiously at the shut blinds, and telling each other, doubtless, how
well they had known the dead man. When young Surface came out of the
front door, an awed hush fell upon them; he was aware of their nudges,
and their curious but oddly respectful stare. And this, at the very
beginning, was typical of the whole day; wherever he went, he found
himself an object of the frankest public curiosity. But all of this
interest, he early discovered, was neither cool nor impersonal.
To begin with, there was the _Post's_ story itself. As he hurried
through it very early in the morning, the young man was struck again and
again with the delicacy of the phrasing. And gradually it came to him
that the young men of the _Post_ had made very special efforts to avoid
hurting the feelings of their old associate and friend the Doc. This
little discovery had touched him unbelievably. And it was only part with
other kindness that came to him to soften that first long day of his
acknowledged sonship. Probably the sympathy extended to him from various
sources was not really so abundant, but to him, having looked for
nothing, it was simply overwhelming. All day, it seemed to him, his
door-bell and telephone rang, all day unexpected people of all sorts and
conditions stopped him on the street--only to tell him, in many ways and
sometimes without saying a word about it, that they were sorry.
The very first of them to come was Charles Gardiner West, stopping on
his way to the office, troubled, concerned, truly sympathetic, to
express, in a beautiful and perfect way, his lasting interest in his
one-time assistant. Not far behind him had come Mr. Hickok, the director
who looked like James E. Winter, who had often chatted with the
assistant editor in times gone by, and who spoke confidently of the day
when he would come back to the _Post_. Beverley Byrd had come, too,
manly and friendly; Plonny Neal, ill at ease for once in his life; Evan
Montague, of the _Post_, had asked to be allowed to make the
arrangements for the funeral; Buck Klinker had actually made those
arrangements. Better than most of these, perhaps, were the young men of
the Mercury, raw, embarrassed, genuine young men, who, stopping him on
the street, did not seem to know why they stopped him, who, lacking
West's verbal felicity, could do nothing but take his hand, hot with the
fear that they might be betrayed into expressing any feeling, and
stammer out: "Doc, if you want anything--why dammit, Doc--you call on
_me_, hear?"
Best of all had been Buck Klinker--Buck, who had made him physically,
who had dragged him into contact with life over his own protests, who
had given him the first editorial he ever wrote that was worth
reading--Buck, the first real friend he had ever had. It was to Buck
that he had telephoned an hour after his father's death, for he needed
help of a practical sort at once, and his one-time trainer was the man
of all men to give it to him. Buck had come, constrained and silent; he
was obviously awed by the Doc's sudden emergence into stunning
notoriety. To be Surface's son was, to him, like being the son of
Iscariot and Lucrezia Borgia. On the other hand, he was aware that, of
Klinkers and Queeds, a Surface might proudly say: "There are no such
people." So he had greeted his friend stiffly as Mr. Surface, and was
amazed at the agitation with which that usually impassive young man had
put a hand upon his shoulder and said: "I'm the same Doc always to you,
Buck, only now I'm Doc Surface instead of Doc Queed." After that
everything had been all right. Buck had answered very much after the
fashion of the young men of the Mercury, and then rushed off to arrange
for the interment, and also to find for Doc Surface lodgings somewhere
which heavily undercut Mrs. Paynter's modest prices.
The sudden discovery that he was not alone in the world, that he had
friends in it, real friends who believed in him and whom nothing could
ever take away, shook the young man to the depths of his being. Was not
this compensation for everything? Never had he imagined that people
could be so kind; never had he dreamed that people's kindness could mean
so much to him. In the light of this new knowledge, it seemed to him
that the last scales fell from his eyes ... Were not these friendships,
after all, the best work of a man's life? Did he place a higher value
even on his book itself, which, it seemed, he might never finish now?
And now there returned to him something that the dead old Colonel had
told him long ago, and to-day he saw it for truth. However his father
had wronged him, he would always have this, at least, to bless his
memory for. For it was his father who had called him to live in this
city where dwelt, as the strong voice that was now still had said, the
kindest and sweetest people in the world.
* * * * *
Henry G. Surface died at half-past two o'clock on the afternoon of March
24. At one o'clock that night, while the _Post's_ startling story was
yet in process of the making, his son stood at the mantel in Surface's
sitting-room, and looked over the wreck that his hands had made. That
his father's treasures were hidden somewhere here he had hardly
entertained a doubt. Yet he had pulled the place all to pieces without
finding a trace of them.
The once pretty sitting-room looked, indeed, as if a tornado had struck
it. The fireplace was a litter of broken brick and mortar; half the
floor was ripped up and the boards flung back anyhow; table drawers and
bookcases had been ransacked, and looked it; books rifled in vain were
heaped in disorderly hummocks wherever there was room for them;
everywhere a vandal hand had been, leaving behind a train of devastation
and ruin.
And it had all been fruitless. He had been working without pause since
half-past six o'clock, and not the smallest clue had rewarded him.
It was one of those interludes when early spring demonstrates that she
could play August convincingly had she a mind to. The night was
stifling. That the windows had to be shut tight, to deaden the noise of
loosening brick and ripping board, made matters so much the worse.
Surface was stripped to the waist, and it needed no second glance at
him, as he stood now, to see that he was physically competent. There was
no one-sided over-development here; Klinker's exercises, it will be
remembered, were for all parts of the body. Shoulders stalwart, but not
too broad, rounded beautifully into the upper arm; the chest swelled
like a full sail; many a woman in that town had a larger waist. Never he
moved but muscle flowed and rippled under the shining skin; he raised
his right hand to scratch his left ear, and the hard blue biceps leaped
out like a live thing. In fact, it had been some months since the young
man had first entertained the suspicion that he could administer that
thrashing to Mr. Pat whenever he felt inclined. Only it happened that he
and Mr. Pat had become pretty good friends now, and it was the
proof-reader's boast that he had never once made a bull in "Mr. Queed's
copy" since the day of the famous fleas.
In the quiet night the young man stood resting from his labors, and
taking depressed thought. He was covered with grime and streaked with
sweat; a ragged red stripe on his cheek, where a board had bounced up
and struck him, detracted nothing from the sombreness of his appearance.
Somewhere, valuable papers waited to be found; bank-books, certainly;
very likely stock or bonds or certificates of deposit; please God, a
will. Somewhere--but where? From his father's significant remark during
their last conversation, he would have staked his life that all these
things were here, in easy reach. And yet--
Standing precariously on the loose-piled bricks of the fireplace, he
looked over the ravaged room. He felt profoundly discouraged. Success in
this search meant more to him than he liked to think about, and now his
chance of success had shrunk to the vanishing point. The bowels of the
room lay open before his eye, and there was no hiding-place in them. He
knew of nowhere else to look. The cold fear seized him that the money
and the papers were hidden beyond his finding--that they lay tucked away
in some safety-deposit vault in New York, where his eye would never hunt
them out.
Surface's son leaned against the elaborate mantel, illimitably weary. He
shifted his position ever so little; and thereupon luck did for him what
reason would never have done. The brick on which his right foot rested
turned under his weight and he lost his foothold. To save himself, he
caught the mantel-top with both hands, and the next moment pitched
heavily backward to the floor.
The mantel, in fact, had come off in his hands. It pitched to the floor
with him, speeding his fall, thumping upon his chest like a vigorous
adversary. But the violence of his descent only made him the more
sharply aware that this strange mantel had left its moorings as though
on greased rollers.
His heart playing a sudden drum-beat, he threw the carven timber from
him and bounded to his feet. The first flying glance showed him the
strange truth: his blundering feet had marvelously stumbled into his
father's arcana. For he looked, not at an unsightly mass of splintered
laths and torn wall-paper and shattered plaster, but into as neat a
little cupboard as a man could wish.
The cupboard was as wide as the mantel itself; lined and ceiled with a
dark red wood which beautifully threw back the glare of the dancing
gas-jet. It was half-full of things, old books, letters, bundles of
papers held together with rubber bands, canvas bags--all grouped and
piled in the most orderly way about a large tin dispatch-box. This box
drew the young man's gaze like a sudden shout; he was hardly on his feet
before he had sprung forward and jerked it out. Instantly the
treacherous bricks threw him again; sprawled on the floor he seized one
of them and smashed through the hasp at a blow.
Bit by bit the illuminating truth came out. In all his own calculations,
close and exact as he had thought them, he had lost sight of one simple
but vital fact. In the years that he had been in prison, his father had
spent no money beyond the twenty-five dollars a month to Tim Queed; and
comparatively little in the years of his wanderings. In all this time
the interest upon his "nest-egg" had been steadily accumulating. Five
per cent railroad bonds, and certificates of deposit in four different
banks, were the forms in which the money had been tucked away, by what
devilish cleverness could only be imagined. But the simple fact was that
his father had died worth not less than two hundred thousand dollars and
probably more. And this did not include the house, which, it appeared,
his father had bought, and not leased as he said; nor did it include
four thousand four hundred dollars in gold and banknotes which he found
in the canvas sacks after his first flying calculation was made.
Early in the morning, when the newsboys were already crying the _Post_
upon the streets, young Henry Surface came at last upon the will. It was
very brief, but entirely clear and to the point. His father had left to
him without conditions, everything of which he died possessed. The will
was dated in June of the previous summer--he recalled a two days'
absence of his father's at that time--and was witnessed, in a villainous
hand, by Timothy Queed.
* * * * *
There were many formalities to be complied with, and some of them would
take time. But within a week matters were on a solid enough footing to
warrant a first step; and about this time Sharlee Weyland read, at her
breakfast-table one morning, a long letter which surprised and disturbed
her very much.
The letter came from a well-known firm of attorneys. At great length it
rehearsed the misfortunes that had befallen the Weyland estate, through
the misappropriations of the late Henry G. Surface. But the gist of this
letter, briefly put, was that the late Henry G. Surface had died
possessed of a property estimated to be worth two hundred thousand
dollars, either more or less; that this property was believed to be
merely the late trustee's appropriations from the Weyland estate, with
accrued interest; that "our client Mr. Henry G. Surface, Jr., heir by
will to his father's ostensible property," therefore purposed to pay
over this sum to the Weyland estate, as soon as necessary formalities
could be complied with; and that, further, our client, Mr. Henry G.
Surface, Jr., assumed personal responsibility "for the residue due to
your late father's estate, amounting to one hundred and seventeen
thousand dollars, either more or less, with interest since 1881; and
this debt, he instructs us to say, he will discharge from time to time,
as his own resources will permit."
So wrote Messrs. Blair and Jamieson to Miss Charlotte Lee Weyland,
congratulating her, "in conclusion, upon the strange circumstances which
have brought you, after so long an interval, justice and restitution,"
and begging to remain very respectfully hers. To which letter after four
days' interval, they received the following reply:
Messrs. Blair & Jamieson,
Commonwealth Building,
City.