Will Belter stopped at the farm next morning, and lingered, talking with
Jeff, watching furtively for a glimpse of the woman; asked at last,
point-blank, if it was true that Jeff’s niece had come to visit him. He
and Jeff were on the porch, outside the kitchen door; and Jeff nodded
and, raising his voice, called to the woman, who was inside. He called
her by his niece’s name.
“Mary!”
She came slowly to the door, dreading this contact with a stranger.
“This here’s Will Belter, one of our neighbors,” Jeff said by way of
introduction. “He lives up on the ridge beyond the village.”
Will, greedy eyes upon her, said, “Howdo, ma’am!”
The woman watched him through the screen door, and answered, “How do you
do!”
He said no more, and after a moment she turned back into the obscurity
of the kitchen.
Will told Jeff, “She’s older than I figured she’d be.”
“She looks older,” Jeff agreed. “That long train trip was pretty hard;
and she was kind of sick.”
“Ain’t but twenty-two or three, is she? I’d think she was thirty,
anyway.”
“Twenty-four,” Jeff told him.
When Will presently went on his way Jeff watched his disappearing figure
with stern eyes, and there was trouble in his countenance when he turned
and saw the woman standing inside the screen door and also watching.
“Who was that?”
“I’d as soon he hadn’t come here,” Jeff confessed. “He’s a mean hound. A
natural-born talebearer. Maybe we fooled him though.”
She made no comment, but both understood that her desire to remain
hidden was imperiled by this man’s appearance. The shadow hung over them
all that day. In the evening they read the paper together, found in it
little that was new.
Afterwards the woman sat for a long time, thoughtfully silent, and at
last said abruptly, “I think I’d better tell you why I ran away.”
Jeff looked across at her in surprise, hesitated. Then: “You needn’t,
’less you’re a mind to,” he assured her. “It don’t matter a bit in the
world to me.”
“It is your right to know,” she decided. “And--I’d like to be able to
talk about it with you. It would be a relief, I believe.”
Jeff nodded. “I expect that’s so,” he assented.
She took the paper from him, opened it to an inner page and pointed to a
paragraph under a separate headline, beneath the story of her own
disappearance.
“You saw this about Mr. Viles’ secretary being arrested?” she asked.
Jeff looked at the paper. The paragraph recited the fact that after a
preliminary hearing Franklin Gardner, secretary to Leander Viles, had
been held for the grand jury on a charge of stealing gems belonging to
the missing woman.
Ranney nodded. “I heard about his being arrested, in town that day,” he
told her.
“That was why I had to run away!” she cried, a sudden passion in her
tones. “That was why I had to get away. Because it was I who saw him
take them, and if they made me tell he would have to go to jail.”
She was leaning across the table, resting on her elbows, her fingers
twisting together; and she watched Jeff anxiously, hungrily, as though
to be sure he understood.
Jeff considered what she had said for a moment, and at length asked
slowly, “Saw him steal them?”
“It’s a necklace,” she explained desperately. “Pearls, and a pendant set
with diamonds, very beautifully. Mr. Viles used to boast how much he
paid for it. He was ever so proud of it, you see. He wanted to show it
to a man who is on the yacht with him, and that’s why he asked me to go
down to the cabin and get it from the safe.”
Jeff was trying to fill out the gaps in her story. “That’s when you
found out the necklace was gone, eh?” he inquired.
She nodded. Her words came in a rush:
“I saw Mr. Gardner come out of my cabin door, with the leather case in
his hand. He dodged away; and I suppose he thought I had not seen him.
And when I opened the little safe in my cabin the necklace was gone.”
Jeff grinned a little at that. “So your husband didn’t get to show it
off, and brag about it, after all?”
His antipathy toward this husband of hers was increasing.
The woman shook her head. “I had to go back and tell him it was gone,”
she assented. “And he went into one of his terrible rages. I was
frightened. The doctors have warned him. So I tried to reassure him,
told him that Mr. Gardner had the necklace.” Her hands were tightly
clasped, the knuckles white. “Oh, I shouldn’t have let him know!” she
cried wearily. “But I thought he must have asked Mr. Gardner to get it,
must have given him the combination of the safe. Only he and I had it.”
Memories silenced her; and Jeff had to prompt her with a question: “But
he hadn’t done that?”
“He hadn’t! He hadn’t!” she assented in a voice like a wail. “And when
we tried to find Mr. Gardner he was gone. Gone off the yacht. Had run
away. So then Mr. Viles went ashore himself, and by and by he came back,
very well pleased, and said they had caught Mr. Gardner on the boat and
had the necklace back again.”
“Did you run away right then?” he asked, when he saw she had forgotten
to go on.
She hesitated, as though choosing her words.
“No,” she told him. “That was the day before. I was very unhappy even
then. But until the next day I did not realize. Mr. Viles made me see.
It was just before dinner, and I met him in the main cabin. He was very
expansive and very good-humored and triumphant. He spoke of Mr. Gardner.
And he said this to me.”
She repeated the words in a curious, parrot-like tone, as though they
were engraved upon her memory. “He said: ‘It’s lucky you saw him, Lucia.
If you hadn’t actually seen him come out of your cabin with the necklace
in his hands we probably couldn’t send him to jail, even now!’”
Jeff was watching her attentively, waiting.
“I hadn’t really understood, before, that they would send him to jail,”
the woman cried. “I asked Mr. Viles if he meant to do that, and begged
him not to; and he just laughed at me. He said: ‘He’ll do ten years for
this little piece of work, Lucia. And you’ll be the one whose testimony
will send him up. That ought to be a satisfaction to you.’”
She added, with a movement of her hands as though everything were
explained, “So I ran away. There was a sailor who helped me and gave me
his coat, and I ran away, and got in your car because it was raining so
hard and that was the first place I saw where I could hide and be
sheltered from the rain.”
She broke off abruptly; and neither of them spoke for a period, while
Jeff considered that which she had told him.
At length he asked gently, “You didn’t want to see this here Gardner in
jail?”
The woman cried passionately, “No! No! Oh, he was wrong to steal. If I
had not seen him I would never have believed--But I didn’t want to put
him in jail!”
“I guess you liked him pretty well,” Jeff said. His tone was
sympathetic, not inquisitive.
“Yes,” she nodded sadly, as though she spoke of one who were dead. “Yes,
I did.” With a sudden confidence she added, “Why, he was my best friend.
We knew each other so well. It was through him I met Mr. Viles. And then
Frank had to go to Europe on business for Mr. Viles, and he was away so
long, and I did not hear from him. I used to work, you know. I was a
buyer in one of the New York stores. And Mr. Viles was ever so good to
me, and I was tired, and he begged me so. That was how I came to marry
him.”
“I don’t figure you ever loved him very much,” Jeff suggested after an
interval.
“He was good to me at first,” she protested. “I think he meant to be
good to me.”
Silence fell upon them both once more, and this time it persisted. By
and by Jeff rose from his chair, passed behind hers and touched her
shoulder roughly with his heavy hand.
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” he said cheerfully. “I wouldn’t worry too
much if I was you.”
She looked up at him and smiled through sudden tears. “You’re good to
me,” she told him.
“You run along to bed,” Jeff bade her. “Just forget your bothers and run
along to bed.”
But when she had gone upstairs the man remained for a long time in his
chair beside the warm lamp, thinking over what she had told him,
supplying for himself the things she had not told. Jeff had a shrewd
common sense; he was able to fill in many of the gaps, to see the truths
to which even Lucia was blind. And as he thought, his eyes clouded with
slow anger and his brows drew somewhat together; and when he got up at
last to turn toward his bedroom there was a ferocity in his expression
that no one had ever seen on Jeff Ranney’s face in all his fifty-seven
years. He spoke slowly, half aloud, addressing no one at all.
“Damn the man,” he muttered. “I’d like to bust him a good one. It’d do
him good.”
Upon this wish, which had a solemnity about it almost like a prayer,
Jeff went to bed.
V
Next morning, when Andy Wattles drove by the farm with Will Bissell’s
truck on his way to East Harbor, Jeff saw that Andy had a passenger.
Will Belter was riding to town with Andy. They hailed him as they passed
the barn, and Andy waved a hand in greeting as they disappeared. Jeff’s
perceptions were quick; it was no more than half a dozen seconds before
he understood that there was menace in this move on Belter’s part. His
first thought was to stop the man and bring him back, but the truck was
already far away along the townward road. He shook his head; there was
nothing he could do. If Belter meant harm the harm was done.
But the incident put Jeff on his guard, so that he made it his business
to stay about the house that day; and when, in the early afternoon, an
automobile stopped in the road before the farm he saw it and was ready.
He had given the woman no warning, but she heard the machine, and came
to his side in the dining room and looked out through the window.
Themselves hidden, they could see the car. Three men were in it--the
chauffeur, Will Belter and another. Jeff knew this other man; it needed
not the woman’s exclamation to inform him. Her husband had found her
hiding place.
When Lucia saw him she sank weakly in a chair beside the table, said in
a voice like a moan, “He’s found me! He’s found me!”
But for this crisis of his adventure Jeff was ready; he rose to meet the
moment, gripped her shoulder.
“Just mind this,” he told her swiftly. “Keep your head, ma’am, and mind
what I say. You don’t have to go back with him unless you want. He can’t
make you, ha’n’t no legal way to make you; and if you don’t want to go
you don’t have to go. I’ll see he don’t take you unless you say the
word.”
She looked up at him in swift gratitude; and he smiled at her and asked,
“Now can’t you take a little heart from that, ma’am?”
“He’s coming,” she whispered.
And Jeff looked through the window again and saw that Viles had left
Belter and the chauffeur in the car he had hired in East Harbor. He
himself came steadily toward the kitchen door, while the two other men
watched him from the road. Jeff and the woman heard his loud knock upon
the door.
At this summons Jeff left her where she sat, her strength returning. He
opened the kitchen door and faced the man he had learned to hate so
blindingly that the passion intoxicated him. Yet his countenance was
calm, his features all composed.
Viles was a large man without being fat; one of those men who have about
them the apparent solidity of flesh which is the attribute of such dogs
as Boston terriers. He may have been six feet tall, but he was inches
broader across the shoulders than most men of his height. His
countenance was peculiarly pink, as though rich blood coursed too near
the surface of his skin. Jeff marked that he was subject to a certain
shortness of breath, that his eyes were too small, and that even now a
little pulse was beating in the man’s throat.
Yet Viles spoke in a smooth and pleasant voice, said a jovial good
afternoon and asked if this was Jeff Ranney’s farm. Jeff said it was.
Viles asked, “Are you Ranney?”
“I’m Ranney,” Jeff assented. He had not asked the other to come in; the
screen door still separated them.
“Ah,” said Viles. “I am told your niece from California is visiting you.
I have a rather important bit of business to transact with her.”
Jeff shook his head. “She ain’t my niece,” he answered frankly. “She’s
your wife, that had to run away from you.”
His voice was stony; but at his words Viles moved backward a step, as
though under the impact of a blow, and Jeff saw the swift rage mount his
cheeks in a purple flood. Then the rich man laid his hand upon the
screen door, opened it.
Jeff did not move to one side, and Viles said hoarsely, “Get out of my
way, you impudent fool!”
Jeff shook his head. “Listen, mister,” he said softly. “This is my
house. You can’t come in here on your own say-so. I’m not fooling with
you either. If you want to come in, you ask.”
Viles lifted one clenched hand as though to sweep the other aside; and
Jeff added, “I’ve heard enough about you so I’d like right well to mix
it up with you a little bit--if you want to try anything like that. Do
you?”
“I want to come in,” said Viles hoarsely.
Jeff considered this for a moment, then he spoke to the woman, over his
shoulder. “Do you want to see him?” he asked her.
“I suppose so,” she told him wearily.
Jeff nodded. “All right, mister,” he said to Viles. “Come in and take a
chair.”
Viles had somewhat recovered himself. He followed Jeff’s indifferent
back into the dining room. The woman did not rise. Jeff set a chair
across the table from her, and Viles sat down in it while Jeff himself
crossed to shut the door that led into the parlor, then came back and
leaned against the kitchen door, watching this husband and wife, waiting
for what they would say.
Viles had drawn a velvet glove over the iron hand. He asked the woman
gently, “Are you all right, my dear?” She nodded. “You are well?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “Yes, I am well.”
He looked toward Jeff. “Mrs. Viles is unfortunately subject to moments
of great depression,” he explained courteously. “In these moments--” He
stopped, arched his eyebrows meaningly, as though Jeff must understand.
“You mean she has crazy spells?” Jeff asked bluntly. Viles protested
wordlessly. “She don’t act crazy to me,” Jeff commented. “But you may be
right. She married you.”
He was seeking quite deliberately to goad the other man into violence,
but Viles controlled himself, said across the table to his wife, “We
have been greatly concerned, my dear.”
“I’m sorry,” she said unconvincingly.
“It is a relief to know that you have not suffered. That scratch across
your temple--”
Lucia touched with her fingers the slight wound. “It is nothing.”
“You must have a good rest in bed when we get back to the yacht,” he
told her. There was an elephantine sportiveness in the man’s demeanor.
“I’m going to enjoy taking care of you.”
She was silent for a moment, then slowly shook her head. “I don’t think
I’ll go back,” she told him. “I don’t think I’ll go back at all.”
He tried to laugh easily. “You’re fancying things, Lucia. It is your
home. You belong there.”
She faced him with a moment of decision. “If you withdraw the charge
against Frank I’ll go back with you, Leander.”
“Withdraw it?” he asked in pretended astonishment.
“I can’t bear to have him go to jail,” she cried softly.
“But, my dear, the man’s a thief; has betrayed the trust I reposed in
him.”
“I can’t help it. I can’t help it. I don’t want him to go to jail.”
Viles dropped his eyes to the oilcloth that covered the table and
drummed upon it with his fingers for a moment, then turned to Jeff.
“I’d be obliged for a few moments’ talk with my wife alone,” he said, a
sardonic note in his tone.
Jeff held his eyes for a minute, then looked toward the woman. “What
shall I do, ma’am?” he asked, as though it were a matter of course that
he should defer to her.
She made a weary gesture. “He has a right to that,” she said.
Jeff nodded. “I’ll come back in fifteen minutes, mister,” he told Viles
menacingly.
But Viles smiled in affable assent. “That will do finely,” he agreed.
Jeff went out through the kitchen into the shed. When he was gone Viles
rose and crossed to listen at the door, and heard Jeff go on into the
barn. He returned to the dining room and stood above his wife, and when
she did not move he gripped her chin harshly and turned her face up to
his. No velvet glove upon the iron hand now. She winced a little with
the pain, but made no sound. There was triumph and malice in his grin.
“Thought you could get away with it, did you, Lucia?” he asked. She said
nothing. “Thought I wouldn’t find you?” Still she made no sound.
“Where’d you pick up this rural squire of yours?”
His tone was insult, and her continued silence seemed to anger him; he
loosed her chin with a gesture as though he flung her aside; rounded the
table again and sat down facing her and lighted a cigar, watching his
wife through the smoke. For a long minute neither of them moved or
spoke; then she lifted her head, very slowly, and met his eyes.
After an instant he laughed at her mockingly and leaned forward,
gesturing with the cigar, dropping flecks of ash upon the oilcloth.
“Lucia, my dear,” he said, “you haven’t played fair with me. You and
that tame cat of yours. And now I’m going to even the score. If you
loved him you shouldn’t have married me. Or having married me you should
have ceased to love him. Isn’t that a fair statement of the ethics of
the case?”
“I didn’t know, Leander,” she said pitifully. “He had been so long
away.”
“I sent him away,” the man admitted harshly. “I wanted a clear field,
and got it and got you. Thought I was getting the whole of you. But when
he came back I saw within six months’ time that it was only the husk of
you I had won.”
“You’re unfair!” she cried. “Frank never spoke to me--there was never
anything--”
“What do I care?” Viles demanded. “Don’t you suppose I know that? Don’t
you suppose I’ve seen to it that you were both pretty closely looked
after? But you loved him, and he loved you. A blind man could see that
whenever you were together.”
“I played fair with you,” his wife pleaded. “And he did too.”
“That’s because you were afraid to do anything else,” he assured her
scornfully. “That’s because you’re weaklings. I’m not a weakling, my
dear. In his place I’d have you. In my place I’ve evened the
score--against both of you.”
She began to sense that there was something more, something she did not
know. “What?” she asked faintly. “What have you done to him?”
He puffed at his cigar, relishing it, relishing the situation. “You two
blind fools! Did you think I was also blind?”
She shook her head helplessly. “What are you trying to say?”
The man swung around for a moment to look toward the road and make sure
the two men who had come with him were still in the car, then leaned
across the table toward her, speaking softly.
“I gave Frank the combination of your safe,” he told her, grinning with
delight in this moment of his triumph. “I told him to get the necklace,
and take it to Boston. To have it restrung; a surprise for you. Told him
not to let you see him, not to let you know. The poor fool believed me.”
She was staring at him, half understanding. “He didn’t steal it? He
didn’t steal it, then?”
“And the pretty part of it was the way I rang you in,” her husband
assured her mockingly. “Sending you down to the cabin at a moment when I
knew he would be there. So that you might catch him in the very doing of
it. So that your own testimony, my dear, might send this sweetheart of
yours to jail.” Her eyes widened, she was white as snow; and he threw
back his head and laughed aloud. “Ah, you see it now?”
Lucia came swiftly to her feet. “He didn’t steal it? He didn’t steal
it?” she cried. “Oh, he won’t have to go to jail!”
Her husband chuckled, watching her narrowly. “Not so quick on the
trigger, Lucia. Not so fast. He’ll go to jail, right enough. Don’t worry
about that. And you’ll send him there.”
“But he didn’t do it, Leander?” she urged pleadingly. “He’s not a thief
at all!”
“Of course he isn’t,” Viles assented. “That’s the beauty of the little
trap I laid.”
Flames were burning in her cheeks now; her head was high. “I won’t
testify against him,” she said swiftly. “You can’t do it without me, and
I won’t--”
“That was why you ran away?” he asked casually. “To avoid testifying? I
thought as much.”
“I won’t go back!” she cried. “I’ll go away again!”
He smiled. “There were others who saw,” he told her mildly. “Do you
suppose I would be content with so loose a plan? They saw him, as well
as you. Saw you also.” He leaned toward her ferociously. “You’ll
testify, and you’ll tell the truth, or I’ll convict you of perjury on
your own lie, my dear. He’ll go to jail certainly; and you also if you
choose.”
The woman was very intent, her thoughts racing. And suddenly she laughed
in his face. “And I’ll tell what you’ve just told me,” she reminded him.
“How long will your scheme stand then?”
He shook his head. “Oh, no, you won’t, my dear.”
“I will.”
“There is,” he said equably, “a little provision in the law of evidence
which will prevent you. A wife cannot testify to any private
conversation between herself and her husband. Did you suppose I would be
so mad as to let you slip out of this trap so easily? The judge himself
will forbid your saying one word as to what I have told you here.”
She was trembling with despair. “I won’t obey him!” she cried. “I’ll
tell anyway. The jurymen will believe me.”
“If you blurt out such a thing against the order of the court you will
be jailed for contempt, and the jury will be forbidden to believe you,
will be told to forget what you have said.” He shook his head mockingly.
“No, Lucia, my dear, there’s no way out. I have told you this simply in
order that you might appreciate the pains I have taken.” He laughed a
little. “What a thoughtful husband you have!”
He was still sitting, watching her with a cruel satisfaction; but she
was trembling, broken, her knees yielding beneath her. By littles she
sank into her chair, and put her head down upon her arms and wept
bitterly.
Her husband watched her from across the table and puffed at his cigar.
Then Jeff Ranney opened the parlor door and came into the room. Viles,
at the sound of the opening door, looked up in surprise, looked toward
the kitchen through which Jeff had disappeared, looked at Jeff again.
“What were you doing there?” he demanded, coming to his feet in sudden
anger.
“Listening to you talk,” said Jeff equably.
“Listening? How long?”
“Oh, I came right around the house and in the front door, soon as I went
out the back. Heard all you said, I guess.”
Lucia had stopped crying; she lifted her head and dried her eyes and
looked at Jeff. He looked down at her and smiled, a reassuring smile
that gave her somehow comfort.
Viles swung toward him, cried aloud, “You dog! I’ll teach you manners!”
“Yes, sir,” said Jeff slowly. “I’d like right well to mix it up with
you.”
Viles stopped in his tracks; the man was convulsed and shaking with his
own ferocious rage. “But it ain’t fair to pick on you,” Jeff decided;
“you’re such a fool.”
Lucia came to her feet, turned to Jeff appealingly. “You heard what he
said?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is it true? Can he do this? Is the law that way?”
Viles reached toward his wife, would have taken her arm. “Lucia!” he
cried. “Come away from here. Come away from here with me.”
But Jeff put an arm between them, swept the big man back against the
table. For an instant no one of them moved. Then Jeff said slowly, “I
had a lawsuit once, so I happen to know. What he says is all right. On
private conversations. But you see, this wa’n’t private. I heard.”
“You heard?” she whispered, not understanding.
Jeff nodded. “Sure. And I can tell anything I heard; and I guess--not
sure, but it don’t matter much, anyhow--I guess you can tell it, too, if
I heard what he said.”
He was looking down at her, had for the moment forgotten her husband.
But Lucia had not forgotten, and it was Lucia’s cry that warned Jeff.
Viles was tugging a pistol from his pocket.
Jeff swung his right leg upward, kicked cunningly at the big man’s hand.
The pistol flew across the room; and Viles, roaring with pain, swung in
at Jeff to grapple him. They came breast to breast, stood thus for an
instant, each straining terribly, exerting utmost strength.
Then Viles’ big head drooped with a little snapping jerk as all his body
let go; and he slid limply through Jeff’s arms to the floor. Jeff’s one
great hour was done.
An hour later Jeff drove Lucia back to town. He would send a man who
made such matters his profession, to care for what was left of Leander
Viles.