The Man on Horseback/Chapter 20

in Spokane, about a week earlier, lawyer Alec Wynn had paid a late call on Martin Wedekind.

"Well, Alec," asked the latter, anxiously, "how's it coming on?"

"Punk. Pretty damned punk. I am afraid that Tom Graves has not a leg to stand on."

"Oh, well, Alec, you're a lawyer, a professional pessimist. You're paid to look at the hopeless side of life, you know."

"No, Martin. It looks bad. Honest, it does! Have a peep at this!" He opened his leather case and took out a sheet of foolscap, sealed with the arms of the Dominion of Canada. "An affidavit, executed in regular form, attesting and swearing to Old Man Truex's death. Signed by the coroner of Crow's Nest Pass, and by three witnesses!"

"Who are the witnesses? Let's see!"

Alec Wynn pointed at the scrawling signatures.

"John Good …"

"The fellow who keeps that ramshackle hotel and bar at the Crow's Nest?"

"Yes, Martin. The same."

"He's a bad actor. Used to be a cattle rustler in the old days before the Royal Northwestern cleaned up the land."

The lawyer inclined his head.

"Sure," he said. "I know. Good gives the lie eternal to his name. He's no good at all. Neither are the other witnesses. See here! Arthur Forsythe …"

"That shyster lawyer from Fernie, B. C.?"

"Right—and Lawrence Walsh."

"Who's he?"

"Chap from Berlin …"

"Berlin!" cut in Wedekind excitedly.

"Berlin, Ontario," laughed Wynn. "He isn't a German. Walsh. Irish name, that! Came to Western Canada about a year ago, and my brother Roy had some rather unpleasant business dealings with him."

"So it seems that all the three witnesses are a bit …"

"Off color?" asked the lawyer. "Sure enough. But the coroner believes them evidently. There's the cold-blooded legal fact. According to the regular Canadian records Truex is dead. Slipped off his horse, tumbled down a mountain-side, broke his neck, and was buried."

"Yes, yes!" Martin Wedekind rose and paced up and down the room. "And yet," he said, "somehow …"

"Somehow you don't believe that Truex is dead. Somehow you think the whole thing is a cooked-up game to cheat friend Graves!"

"Exactly!"

"But you can do nothing," continued Wynn, "unless you produce the old prospector in the flesh."

Wedekind stopped in front of the lawyer.

"Alec," he said, "I have reasons, good, sound reasons, for believing what I do believe—namely, that Truex is alive, that Lehneke—or the party Lehneke acts for—is trying to do Tom out of the Yankee Doodle Glory."

"What are your reasons?"

"I can't tell you, Alec."

"I always thought you and I were pretty good friends."

"We are, Alec. But I can't tell you just the same. Only don't give in. Fight—that!" bringing his fist down on the Canadian affidavit. "Get the body exhumed. Have a look at it."

"Impossible!"

"How so?"

"Impossible without long legal rigmaroles," the lawyer corrected himself. "They cost both time and money."

"I'll supply the money, Alec!"

"Yes, yes. But the time. Who in Hades is going to supply the time? You see, while you and I'd be getting ready to carry that affidavit mess into the Provincial Supreme Court, Lehneke has Tom by the short hair on his neck. Look at this!" And he flung a long, legal-looking document on the table.

"See?" he continued. "Statement sworn to by the German Consul-General in New York and declaring that Eberhardt Lehneke is the only son and heir of Paul Lehneke and Mary Lehneke, both deceased. Also statement by the same Consul-General swearing that he has on files in the consular archives a certificate of marriage contracted between Paul Lehneke and Mary Truex, only sister of 'Old Man' Truex, and daughter of John and Priscilla Truex, natives of Oswego, N.Y. And birth certificate of Mary Lehneke, née Truex—and half-a-dozen other papers, establishing young Lehneke's position as Truex's heir without the shadow of a doubt."

"But …"

"Wait! Here's still another paper to complete the sweet circle. Look. An injunction handed down this afternoon by the Supreme Court of the State of Washington, making it incumbent upon Tom Graves to give a complete accounting of ore taken, shipped and sold from the Yankee Doodle Glory mine, injuncting his further working of the mine until the case has been settled and turning over Tom's money in the Old National to a receiver until that same date. Not only that. Lehneke seems to be ace high back home in Germany. For they even got busy there and put their paws on Tom's money in the Deutsche Bank in Berlin. I tell you Graves is in a rotten bad hole, Martin!"

"Only for the time-being. I know that youngster. I tell you he'll fight harder than ever."

"I hope so. But meanwhile he's in Berlin, strapped to his last ducat, I reckon. What in thunder is the poor boy going to do?"

And exactly the same question was bothering Tom a few days before his interview with, and his tenth proposal that month to, Bertha.

"What am I going to do?" he asked himself, reading over Alec Wynn's lengthy, detailed cablegram; and then, with a smile, at another he had received that morning and in which Martin Wedekind offered to stake him to his ticket back to Spokane.

"Come straight home," Martin's cable wound up; "up to you to fight."

"I'll fight all right!" Tom's answer flashed back across the Atlantic and the North American continent. "But I am not coming back just now;" and it was just after he had sent Krauss to despatch the cable that Lord Vyvyan called on him, immaculate in morning coat, topper, gray-cloth spats, and gold-topped malacca.

"Looking blue, Graves," he said. "What's the matter? Bad developments in your mining litigation?"

The Westerner showed him the telegrams without a word.

"Oh! I'm sorry! What are you going to do?"

Tom's jaws set like a steel trap.

"Fight!" he replied, laconically.

"Good!" exclaimed Vyvyan. "Jolly old spirit! Jolly old Anglo-Saxon quality! Fight! That's the ticket, old dear!"

Tom gave a rough laugh.

"I know. Only … at times I wonder if I'll be able to win."

"What?" The Englishman was horrified.

"Yep. It may be like—oh—like tackling this German army, with their Krupp guns and their trained millions, with our two-by-four American army. Damned stiff, Vyvyan! And …"

"Don't you dare say hopeless, Graves!"

"Sure. I won't. To please you. Only—" suddenly the whole despair of his situation surged upon the horse wrangler "—I've nothing left to fight with. They put their filthy, legal hands on everything I possess in the world, even the money I have in Berlin, at the Deutsche Bank. I don't know how I am going to pay for my dinner to-night, how I'm going to meet my rent. Yes. I've nothing left to fight with …"

"Except your friends!" cut in the Englishman. "You've got me!"

Tom smiled.

"Mighty kind of you, old fellow. I appreciate it, you just bet! But—not meaning to hurt your feelings none—how can you …"

"Shut up, and watch my smoke, Graves! What you got to have to fight that Lehneke person is the nervus rerum, money in other words …"

"That's no news!"

"And I'm going to supply it. I'm going to be the cute little bright-eyes who's going to plank down the war chest!"

"You?" Again Tom laughed. He remembered that the other had frequently told him how "stony" he was, that he did not have a cent in the world and had to depend on his brother, the Duke, for everything. "You—help me? Like the blind helping the lame!"

"Not at all. I have the makings, as you Americans say."

"Quit your bluffing. I know you're bust!"

"I am not!"

"You told me yourself that …"

"Old aunt of mine went out. Died, I mean. Left me oodles of cash."

"Oh!" Tom's exclamation was frankly incredulous; but Vyvyan slapped a check book on the table.

"Stop arguing and doubting," he said. "I'll write you my check now. As much as you want. Enough to fight that Lehneke person and to pay for all your living expenses here. Just name your figure," and, when Tom did not reply, only laughed, "how'll five thousand guineas do for a starter?"

"Five thousand guineas? That's twenty-five thousand dollars, isn't it?"

"Rather a little better, old cock. More if you want to. It'll be a pleasure."

"Must have left you a mint o' money, that aunt of yours."

"Right. Splendid old dear, wasn't she?" He waved the check book. "How much?"

But Tom shook his stubborn red head.

"I won't accept it," he said.

"Don't be a silly goat. You have got to win that case. You must give that Dutchman beans! Come on. Let me write you that check," urged Vyvyan.

"I'll think it over."

"All right, then. But I have to leave town for a few days, and so—here!" He made out his check for five thousand guineas on the British Linen Bank in London. "It's yours to use if you want to while I'm gone. Cash it at the American Express Company's local office."

"Wait," said Tom, "I must …"

"Receipt for it? Tommyrot!" And the Englishman was out of the room and the flat.

Tom looked at the check.

"Mighty convenient aunt, that one of Vyvyan's," he said to himself, "and died at a mighty convenient time. Well …"

He heard a faint noise behind him and turned. Krauss was standing there. His eyes were glued on the slip of pink paper and, acting quite instinctively, Tom put it in his pocket.

"Sent off that cable?" he asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Well?"

"Baron von Götz-Wrede is calling."

"All right. Show him in," said Tom; and a mornent later the officer came into the room.

"Has Vyvyan been with you again?" were his first words. "I just met him on the stairs."

"Yes," replied Tom.

"Do you like that drawling, supercilious Britisher?"

"Sure." Then, quickly, suddenly, Tom's temper got the best of him. "Look here," he added, belligerently, "I don't think it's anybody's damned business with whom I choose to herd, see?"

"That's where you are wrong, Graves. It is my business—as your friend!"

"Tickled to death you call yourself my friend. But—Vyvyan's my friend, too, and …"

"Let me explain!"

"All right, all right."

"Vyvyan is an Englishman."

"What of that? What's wrong with Englishmen?"

"Wrong? Oh … Nothing …"

The man was silent. He was very quiet, a smile playing on his handsome, dark features.

Then, with a terrible suddenness, a change came over him. His eyes flashed fire. His flaring nostrils dilated and quivered like those of a thoroughbred stallion. He shot out his long, strong, hairy hands, gesticulating, like clutching at an invisible, hated object. His heart, his soul, his whole being seemed to acetify, and all his well-trained, well-subdued emotions danced away in a mad whirligig of passion.

"I tell you what's wrong with them!" he cried, his voice peaking up to a high, broken screech. These English—these hypocritical, supercilious tradespeople—dieses verdammte Krämervolk! … Why, Graves … Wherever you go, wherever you turn, Africa, America, Asia, the South Seas, you find them squatting in their damned, smug self-content! Their flag is everywhere, their ships, their drawling, monocled fools of younger sons, their prating clergy, their contemptible little, scarlet-coated army … They are everywhere …"

"Sure," laughed Tom, "they are everywhere. And don't they do things right wherever they are? Don't they govern well? Don't they give all the world, including you Dutchmen, a fair chance to trade on equal terms and make money wherever they are? Say, I don't know much about politics, but just judging from what I know of horses, I reckon you're jealous …"

"I, a German, jealous of an Englishman?"

"You bet your boots. You're as jealous as hell. Otherwise you wouldn't curse them as you are doing now and the next moment try to ape them."

"We're not aping them!"

"Sure you are. I got eyes to see. There isn't a man in this town who can afford to who don't turn up his breeches when it rains in London. Look at the names of your swell stores: Old England, Prince of Wales, London House—and your hotels: the Bristol, the Windsor, the Westminster. Why, man, I've seen you ride. And you yourself try your darnedest to ride like a Britisher!"

"I don't have to try! I do ride like them. I went to the London horse show, at Olympia, and …"

Tom burst out laughing.

"Bit, didn't you?" he asked. "Caught you with the goods, eh? Been to London and learned the trick! Sure. That's just what I am saying …"

And when the Baron worked himself into another storm of passion, speaking about "dieser gemeine Englische Pöbel"," Tom cut in with an impatient:

"Forget it. You talk like an old-fashioned Cleveland Democrat on the stump. What's the use? You aren't running for Congress, and I'm not Irish. The days when you had to tweak the lion's tail to cop a hatful of votes are gone. We're sane these days."

"You mean to say that you Americans are satisfied to sit still while the English …"

"Yep. We're satisfied with our own little block of real estate from the Lakes to the Gulf, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. We aren't hogs. We got plenty and we don't envy our British cousins."

The German looked at Tom. There was an expression of utter astonishment on his aquiline face. Then he laughed.

"Ever heard of Nietzsche?" he inquired.

"No. What is it? Sounds like a guy sneezing."

"Nietzsche was a writer," the German went on, "and he wrote a book called Zarathustra. In that book there is a passage which speaks of the Ear, big as a man, on a slender stalk, and against the stalks dangles a bloated—soul shallow, untrained, helpless. And that soul, my friend, is the Anglo-Saxon world!"

"Nutty! Ab-so-lutely, completely hickory!" was Tom's simple comment; and to wind up the argument, he added: "Anyway, Vyvyan is a pal o' mine. Sit down. You look all excited. I'm going to get you a drop of my private stock Bourbon."

He walked out of the room. On the threshold he brushed against Krauss, who was just coming in, and he did not notice that the valet's nimble fingers had rapidly dipped into his side pocket to come out with a slip of pink paper.