Reilly's Luck (1970) (19 page)

The food was served, the waiter left, and Val said, "She was my mother."

Van dropped his fork. His face turned white.

Slowly the color came back. He pulled at his tie, loosening it. "You're Val? Valentine Darrant?" he said.

"Yes."

"I'll be damned!" The words came slowly.

"I don't think you will be, Van. You kept me alive, you know. You saved my life, and did me the greatest favor a man ever did for another."

"What was that?"

"You left me with Will Reilly. He kept me, Van. He raised me. He taught me a way of life for which I owe him, and you, more than I can say."

"So? Maybe that was why we never saw him again. I was always expecting to have to meet him, and I was afraid--not of what he would do, but of the way he would have looked at me. I liked the man, damn it. I respected him. And then I had to abandon a kid on him."

"You think he avoided you and Myra?"

"He must have. You know the West. It's a small community, after all. The men of the mining camps were known in them all. They followed every boom. The same in the cattle towns. And Will Reilly was a known man. I had run into him fifty times before, but never after I left you with him."

They talked the meal through, and much of the night.

"What about you?" Van asked at last. "Where are you going? What are you going to do?"

"I'm going West. Not for long, I think, but I want to see some people out there and look at a ranch. And I made an investment a long time back, and I want to see what became of it."

He went on: "I passed my bar exam, Van. I can practice law if I want to. In fact, I have had some experience along that line. And I told you I worked with Bricker."

"It's a wonder you didn't run into Myra. She's done business with him. Knows him well, in fact."

"Myra Cord? If she had done business with him, I would know of it."

Van smiled wryly. "You don't think she would keep the old name, do you? She's too shrewd for that. She dropped that name a long while ago. She's Mrs. Everett Fossett now."

Val stared at him. Myra Cord ... his mother ...Mrs. Everett Fossett?

"You must be joking."

"No," Van said grimly, "I am dead serious. She married Old Man Fossett, married him for his name and his money. He was a respected man, you know, and a well-liked man, but he was no match for her. She tricked him and married him, and then murdered him in her own way. Oh, I know! It wasn't anything the law could call murder, but it was that, just as much as if she had used poison."

"She's worth millions."

"Yes, and not an honest dollar in the lot. She wasn't a pauper when she married Fossett. She had robbed every man she knew, I expect, and she had spent very little of it. Fossett was only another stepping stone."

"Have you seen her lately?"

"Not over two weeks ago, right here in New York. She didn't see me. I took care that she didn't, because I am one page she forgot to turn under; or rather, I got up nerve enough to run before she could do me in. She didn't see me, but I saw her." He was silent for several minutes. "She's a beautiful woman, Val, even yet. She's not much over forty, and even in the early days, mean as she was, she had good looks."

"I have seen her. I just never dreamed ... I mean, I had heard talk of her, but the idea that she was Myra Cord never entered my mind."

"Now that it has, don't go near her, Val--she'd kill you. Don't look at me like that. She wanted you killed when you were a helpless child, didn't she? And you'd open up a whole bag of tricks she wants forgotten. She's an important woman now, socially and financially. And she's completely ruthless. Once she sets her mind on something, there's nothing in God's world can stop her."

"I wonder."

"Don't wonder--don't even think about it."

Val pushed back from the table. "Van, what can I do for you?"

"Maybe a ten-dollar gold piece. Any more would be a waste."

"Van, why don't you go home? I mean back to your own people? Your own world."

"You're crazy." He chewed on his mustache. "Oh, I'll not deny I'd like to. They know I'm alive, but almost nothing else. But I couldn't. I've no money, no clothes, no way to make a living."

"Would five hundred dollars help? I mean, five hundred dollars and clothes? I'll stake you, Van. I think it's a good gamble."

"Damn it, Val, I couldn't. I just couldn't. And what would I say to them? My parents are alive. I have two sisters. I--"

"Just go back and don't say anything. They will make up better stories than you ever could. You've been traveling, seeing the West ... you've come home to settle down. I'll give you the money. I've done well, Van. I can afford it."

Actually he could not--not that much. But he was young, and the way looked bright ahead.

"All right," Van said at last, "I'll take it. If you will let me pay it back."

"Whenever you can ... but go home. Go back to your own people."

Chapter
Fifteen.

The butler paused before the portly man in the dark suit. "Mrs. Fossett will see you now, Mr. Pinkerton."

He got up and followed the butler over the deep carpets, through the tall oak doors, and into the library. He rarely entered this room, and was always astonished when he did. As the guiding hand of the largest and most successful detective agency in the United States, if not in the world, he had met all manner of men, and women. This was the only one who made him uneasy, and a little frightened.

Yes, that was the word. There was something about her cold, matter-of-fact mind that disturbed him. He had the sensation that she was always at least one jump ahead of him, and that whatever he said she already knew.

She sat behind the long desk, only a few papers before her, including, he noticed, several newspapers that he recognized as coming from various cities.

"You said you had news for me?"

"Yes." He paused. "I have found him."

"Well ... that's something, at least. Where is he? On the Bowery?"

"No, ma'am. He has gone home. He is with his family."

Myra Fossett felt a cold thrill of anger go through her. Was it, as Van himself had once said, that she never liked to have anyone to escape her?

"You have made a mistake. He is a proud man, whatever else he may be. I am sure he would not go home without money."

"He has money. A little, at least. He paid his bills. He bought new clothes--an excellent wardrobe, by the way--and he went home in some style."

"There must be some mistake. How could he get the money? Nobody would lend him money any longer, and he was always a rotten gambler."

"That we do not know, except that--"

"What?"

"Well, he was seen to meet a man--a young man--and they dined together. They talked for several hours. It was after that that he bought clothes and returned home."

She pondered, considering all the possibilities. Van knew too much; and a sober, serious Van who had gone home to his family might prove more dangerous than a casual drifter and drunk whom nobody would believe. Moreover, he had run away from her, and that she could not forgive.

"What sort of young man?"

"A gentleman, ma'am. Handsome, athletic, well-dressed, well-groomed. He was young ... perhaps twenty-five ... "

"What was he doing on the Bowery? Is he a bum?"

"No. Nothing like that," he said. "We made inquiries ... nobody would tell us anything, if they knew. He comes to the Bowery to train. To box and to wrestle. Incidentally, he is very good, they say."

"A professional?"

"No. I do not believe so. He is a gentleman."

Myra Fossett gave him a glacial look. "Sometime you must define the term for me, Mr. Pinkerton. I am not sure I know what a gentleman is, or how one becomes one. I doubt if I have ever met one."

"Present company excepted?"

"No," she replied shortly. "A man in your business, Mr. Pinkerton, is certainly no gentleman. In any event, I am not paying you for your moral standards. Rather," she added, "for your lack of them."

He got to his feet. "I resent that, madam--"

"Resent it and be damned," she said. "Now sit down and listen, or get out of here and send me your bill."

He hesitated, his face flushed. He knew suddenly that he hated this woman, hated everything about her, but she paid him well, and she seemed to have an unlimited amount of work to be done. He stifled his anger and sat down.

"You do not have a name for this young man? They must call him something around that gymnasium."

"Well, we do have a first name, but that is all. One of my men heard him called Val."

Val ...

Myra Fossett sat very still. Pinkerton, who had watched the emotions of many people, had the sensation that the name had struck her a body blow.

After a moment she said, "Mr. Pinkerton, if Van Clevern has returned to his people I am no longer interested in his actions. As of this moment, you may recall your investigators.

"However, I am interested in this young man. This Val, as you say he was called--I shall want a full report on him, his associates, his actions."

"It is going to be very difficult--"

"If that means you will want more money, the answer is no. If you believe the task will be beyond your scope, Mr. Pinkerton, I believe I can find somebody who will find it less difficult. Surely, the investigation of one unsuspecting young man cannot be such a problem."

"We have no idea who he is, or where he lives."

"But he goes to the gymnasium to box, doesn't he? Have him followed. Ask questions of those with whom he boxes ... I do not need to tell you your business, I hope."

"If I had some idea--"

"Of why I wanted the information?" Myra Fossett smiled. "Mr. Pinkerton, I have known for some time that you are eaten with curiosity as to the reason for my investigations. You might just tell yourself that in business matters I find the human element is always important. I like to know the manner of man with whom I deal, and what his associations are. You are valuable to me for that reason. Do your work and keep your mouth shut, and you will have a valuable client; make trouble for me, and I will ruin you ... I believe we understand each other, Mr. Pinkerton."

He got to his feet, his features set and hard. "We do, Mrs. Fossett. I shall have a report for you within the week."

When he had gone, Myra Fossett sat staring straight before her into the darkening room. She had told the truth and she had lied, at one and the same time. Information she wanted, but only in part for business reasons, and in part only for the malicious satisfaction of knowing the secret lives of her associates. Knowledge was indeed power, but it was for her more than a weapon, for it fed her contempt for the men with whom she associated and for the sheep who were their wives.

The information she required about Van was for an altogether different reason. For twenty years he had been a part of her life, and there was little in those twenty years that he did not know or suspect. When he had suddenly broken with her and run away, she had been furious, both with him and with herself for not recognizing the signs. The trouble was that he had threatened to leave so many times that she no longer believed him.

He had become necessary to her, for exactly what reasons she did not venture to ask herself. He was, even yet, a fine-looking man, acceptable in any company; and although a drinker, he had never yet allowed it to show in company to any degree more than dozens of others whom they met at one time or another. She had no intention of letting him leave when he wished, but she had already recognized the fact that a time was coming when he would be more of a handicap than an asset. To be realistic, that time had arrived.

Had he guessed her intentions? He might have suspected. Certainly, he knew enough about others who had gotten in her way. She remembered a day long ago when he had been just drunk enough to speak out, and he had told her in that curiously speculative way he had of talking when drunk, "Myra, you are a moral cripple. I mean it. Just as some people are born with physical defects, you were born with a moral defect. You have no conception of right and wrong. Things are good or bad as they serve your purpose or do not serve it."

Val? It was impossible, of course. Val was dead. He had died out there in the night and the cold after Van had abandoned him ...

She had never believed Van would have the guts for it. She had been surprised when he returned without the boy, but when he had suggested they leave at once, she thought that he might really have done it. And Van had never referred to Val again, never mentioned him even once, so he must have left him to die.

But suppose he had not? Where could he have taken the boy? Where might he have left him? All she had now was that twenty years later Van met somebody who might be twenty-five years old and called him Val ... or perhaps something that sounded like that. This person, whoever he was, might have given Van money; might have talked him into going home.

If so, what did it mean to her? It could mean everything, or nothing. Van close to her, under her thumb, frightened of her, was one thing. Van free of her, back with his own family ... would he want to forget all that lay behind? Or would he have an attack of conscience?