The Max Brand Megapack (269 page)

She hesitated, then shrugged her shoulders.

“I suppose you’re right. Let it go.” She laughed at her own concern over the matter. “Do you know, Vance, that sometimes I feel as if the whole world were conspiring to get a hand on Terry?”

CHAPTER 8

Terry did not come down for dinner. It was more or less of a calamity, for the board was quite full of early guests for the next day’s festivities. Aunt Elizabeth shifted the burden of the entertainment onto the capable shoulders of Vance, who could please these Westerners when he chose. Tonight he decidedly chose. Elizabeth had never see him in such high spirits. He could flirt good-humoredly and openly across the table at Nelly, or else turn and draw an anecdote from Nelly’s father. He kept the reins in his hands and drove the talk along so smoothly that Elizabeth could sit in gloomy silence, unnoticed, at the farther end of the table. Her mind was up yonder in the room of Terry.

Something had happened, and it had come through that long business envelope with the typewritten address that seemed so harmless. One reading of the contents had brought Terry out of his chair with an exclamation. Then, without explanation of any sort, he had gone to his room and stayed there. She would have followed to find out what was the matter, but the requirements of dinner and her guests kept her downstairs.

Immediately after dinner Vance, at a signal from her, dexterously herded everyone into the living room and distributed them in comfort around the big fireplace; Elizabeth Cornish bolted straight for the room of Terence. She knocked and tried the door. To her astonishment, the knob turned, but the door did not open. She heard the click and felt the jar of the bolt. Terry had locked his door!

A little thing to make her heart fall, one would say, but little things about Terry were great things to Elizabeth. In twenty-four years he had never locked his door. What could it mean?

It was a moment before she could call, and she waited breathlessly. She was reassured by a quiet voice that answered her: “Just a moment. I’ll open.”

The tone was so matter-of-fact that her heart, with one leap, came back to normal and tears of relief misted her eyes for an instant. Perhaps he was up here working out a surprise for the next day—he was full of tricks and surprises. That was unquestionably it. And he took so long in coming to the door because he was hiding the thing he had been working on. As for food, Wu Chi was his slave and would have smuggled a tray up to him. Presently the lock turned and the door opened.

She could not see his face distinctly at first, the light was so strong behind him. Besides, she was more occupied in looking for the tray of food which would assure her that Terry was not suffering from some mental crisis that had made him forget even dinner. She found the tray, sure enough, but the food had not been touched.

She turned on him with a new rush of alarm. And all her fears were realized. Terry had been fighting a hard battle and he was still fighting. About his eyes there was the look, half-dull and half-hard, that comes in the eyes of young people unused to pain. A worried, tense, hungry face. He took her arm and led her to the table. On it lay an article clipped out of a magazine. She looked down at it with unseeing eyes. The sheets were already much crumbled. Terry turned them to a full-page picture, and Elizabeth found herself looking down into the face of Black Jack, proud, handsome, defiant.

Had Vance been there, he might have recognized her actions. As she had done one day twenty-four years ago, now she turned and dropped heavily into a chair, her bony hands pressed to her shallow bosom. A moment later she was on her feet again, ready to fight, ready to tell a thousand lies. But it was too late. The revelation had been complete and she could tell by his face that Terence knew everything.

“Terry,” she said faintly, “what on earth have you to do with that—”

“Listen, Aunt Elizabeth,” he said, “you aren’t going to fib about it, are you?”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

“Why were you so shocked?”

She knew it was a futile battle. He was prying at her inner mind with short questions and a hard, dry voice.

“It was the face of that terrible man. I saw him once before, you know. On the day—”

“On the day he was murdered!”

That word told her everything. “Murdered!” It lighted all the mental processes through which he had been going. Who in all the reaches of the mountain desert had ever before dreamed of terming the killing of the notorious Black Jack a “murder”?

“What are you saying, Terence? That fellow—”

“Hush! Look at us!”

He picked up the photograph and stood back so that the light fell sharply on his face and on the photograph which he held beside his head. He caught up a sombrero and jammed it jauntily on his head. He tilted his face high, with resolute chin. And all at once there were two Black Jacks, not one. He evidently saw all the admission that he cared for in her face. He took off the hat with a dragging motion and replaced the photograph on the table.

“I tried it in the mirror,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t quite sure until I tried it in the mirror. Then I knew, of course.”

She felt him slipping out of her life.

“What shall I say to you, Terence?”

“Is that my real name?”

She winced. “Yes. Your real name.”

“Good. Do you remember our talk of today?”

“What talk?”

He drew his breath with something of a groan.

“I said that what these people lacked was the influence of family—of old blood!”

He made himself smile at her, and Elizabeth trembled. “If I could explain—” she began.

“Ah, what is there to explain, Aunt Elizabeth? Except that you have been a thousand times kinder to me than I dreamed before. Why, I—I actually thought that you were rather honored by having a Colby under your roof. I really felt that I was bestowing something of a favor on you!”

“Terry, sit down!”

He sank into a chair slowly. And she sat on the arm of it with her mournful eyes on his face.

“Whatever your name may be, that doesn’t change the man who wears the name.”

He laughed softly. “And you’ve been teaching me steadily for twenty-four years that blood will tell? You can’t change like this. Oh, I understand it perfectly. You determined to make me over. You determined to destroy my heritage and put the name of the fine old Colbys in its place. It was a brave thing to try, and all these years how you must have waited, and waited to see how I would turn out, dreading every day some outbreak of the bad blood! Ah, you have a nerve of steel, Aunt Elizabeth! How have you endured the suspense?”

She felt that he was mocking her subtly under this flow of compliment. But it was the bitterness of pain, not of reproach, she knew.

She said: “Why didn’t you let me come up with you? Why didn’t you send for me?”

“I’ve been busy doing a thing that no one could help me with. I’ve been burning my dreams.” He pointed to a smoldering heap of ashes on the hearth.

“Terry!”

“Yes, all the Colby pictures that I’ve been collecting for the past fifteen years. I burned ’em. They don’t mean anything to anyone else, and certainly they have ceased to mean anything to me. But when I came to Anthony Colby—the eighteen-twelve man, you know, the one who has always been my hero—it went pretty hard. I felt as if—I were burning my own personality. As a matter of fact, in the last couple of hours I’ve been born over again.”

Terry paused. “And births are painful, Aunt Elizabeth!”

At that she cried out and caught his hand. “Terry dear! Terry dear! You break my heart!”

“I don’t mean to. You mustn’t think that I’m pitying myself. But I want to know the real name of my father. He must have had some name other than Black Jack. What was it?”

“Are you going to gather his memory to your heart, Terry?”

“I am going to find something about him that I can be proud of. Blood will tell. I know that I’m not all bad, and there must have been good in Black Jack. I want to know all about him. I want to know about—his crimes.”

He labored through a fierce moment of silent struggle while her heart went helplessly out to him.

“Because—I had a hand in every one of those crimes! Everything that he did is something that I might have done under the same temptation.”

“But you’re not all your father’s son. You had a mother. A dear, sweet-faced girl—”

“Don’t!” whispered Terry. “I suppose he broke—her heart?”

“She was a very delicate girl,” she said after a moment.

“And now my father’s name, please?”

“Not that just now. Give me until tomorrow night, Terry. Will you do that? Will you wait till tomorrow night, Terry? I’m going to have a long talk with you then, about many things. And I want you to keep this in mind always. No matter how long you live, the influence of the Colbys will never go out of your life. And neither will my influence, I hope. If there is anything good in me, it has gone into you. I have seen to that. Terry, you are not your father’s son alone. All these other things have entered into your make-up. They’re just as much a part of you as his blood.”

“Ah, yes,” said Terry. “But blood will tell!”

It was a mournful echo of a thing she had told him a thousand times.

CHAPTER 9

She went straight down to the big living room and drew Vance away, mindless of her guests. He came humming until he was past the door and in the shadowy hall. Then he touched her arm, suddenly grown serious.

“What’s wrong, Elizabeth?”

Her voice was low, vibrating with fierceness. And Vance blessed the dimness of the hall, for he could feel the blood recede from his face and the sweat stand on his forehead.

“Vance, if you’ve done what I think you’ve done, you’re lower than a snake, and more poisonous and more treacherous. And I’ll cut you out of my heart and my life. You know what I mean?”

It was really the first important crisis that he had ever faced. And now his heart grew small, cold. He knew, miserably, his own cowardice. And like all cowards, he fell back on bold lying to carry him through. It was a triumph that he could make his voice steady—more than steady. He could even throw the right shade of disgust into it.

“Is this another one of your tantrums, Elizabeth? By heavens, I’m growing tired of ’em. You continually throw in my face that you hold the strings of the purse. Well, tie them up as far as I’m concerned. I won’t whine. I’d rather have that happen than be tyrannized over any longer.”

She was much shaken. And there was a sting in this reproach that carried home to her; there was just a sufficient edge of truth to wound her. Had there been much light, she could have read his face; the dimness of the hall was saving Vance, and he knew it.

“God knows I’d like to believe that you haven’t had anything to do with it. But you and I are the only two people in the world who know the secret of it—”

He pretended to guess. “It’s something about Terence? Something about his father?”

Again she was disarmed. If he were guilty, it was strange that he should approach the subject so openly. And she began to doubt.

“Vance, he knows everything! Everything except the real name of Black Jack!”

“Good heavens!”

She strained her eyes through the shadows to make out his real expression; but there seemed to be a real horror in his restrained whisper.

“It isn’t possible, Elizabeth!”

“It came in that letter. That letter I wanted to open, and which you persuaded me not to!” She mustered all her damning facts one after another. “And it was postmarked from Craterville. Vance, you have been in Craterville lately!”

He seemed to consider.

“Could I have told anyone? Could I, possibly? No, Elizabeth, I’ll give you my word of honor that I’ve never spoken a syllable about that subject to anyone!”

“Ah, but what have you written?”

“I’ve never put pen to paper. But—how did it happen?”

He had control of himself now. His voice was steadier. He could feel her recede from her aggressiveness.

“It was dated after you left Craterville, of course. And—I can’t stand imagining that you could be so low. Only, who else would have a motive?”

“But how was it done?”

“They sent him an article about his father and a picture of Black Jack that happens to look as much like Terry as two peas.”

“Then I have it! If the picture looks like Terry, someone took it for granted that he’d be interested in the similarity. That’s why it was sent. Unless they told him that he was really Black Jack’s son. Did the person who sent the letter do that?”

“There was no letter. Only a magazine clipping and the photograph of the painting.”

They were both silent. Plainly she had dismissed all idea of her brother’s guilt.

“But what are we going to do, Elizabeth? And how has he taken it?”

“Like poison, Vance. He—he burned all the Colby pictures. Oh, Vance, twenty-four years of work are thrown away!”

“Nonsense! This will all straighten out. I’m glad he’s found out. Sooner or later he was pretty sure to. Such things will come to light.”

“Vance, you’ll help me? You’ll forgive me for accusing you, and you’ll help me to keep Terry in hand for the next few days? You see, he declared that he will not be ashamed of his father.”

“You can’t blame him for that.”

“God knows I blame no one but myself.”

“I’ll help you with every ounce of strength in my mind and body, my dear.”

She pressed his hand in silence.

“I’m going up to talk with him now,” he said. “I’m going to do what I can with him. You go in and talk. And don’t let them see that anything is wrong.”

The door had not been locked again. He entered at the call of Terry and found him leaning over the hearth stirring up the pile of charred paper to make it burn more freely. A shadow crossed the face of Terry as he saw his visitor, but he banished it at once and rose to greet him. In his heart Vance was a little moved. He went straight to the younger man and took his hand.

“Elizabeth has told me,” he said gently, and he looked with a moist eye into the face of the man who, if his plans worked out, would be either murderer or murdered before the close of the next day. “I am very sorry, Terence.”