The Millionth Chance/Chapter 6

WAS taken aback. I wasn’t conceited enough to imagine that I’d done any more for her than any other red-blooded man would have done, but still I happened to have been the man who did it. I trust that I am chivalrous enough to consider that the privilege of aiding a lady is a reward in itself, but still there is such a thing as noblesse oblige and its rules are applicable to either sex. She had fractured them.

For another time she had cruelly misjudged me, had listened to my assumption of the rôle of a Healy operative, and had accepted it as fact, when her common sense should have told her that I was playing a part. She had undoubtedly overheard my conversation with Minot and had accepted his interpretation of my rescue of her muff and herself. I wanted to shake her; and then my sense of humor came to my rescue. My anger left me in a laugh at this comedy of errors in which I had so misunderstood a part.

“Miss Gilman,” I said with a smile, “don’t you think it’s high time that we had a little explanation party? If you’ll listen to me for just one minute”

Her lips curled with a most maddening scorn.

“I have no doubt,” she said, “but that you are as clumsy a liar as you are spy! I don’t care to listen to you.”

This from the girl who had waited behind a tree, armed with an automatic pistol, prepared, I had no doubt, to use it in my be half, but a moment ago. Then, for a moment at any rate, she had trusted me, had let my actions speak for my honesty.

I bit my lip. The anger that mirth had swept away surged again within me. But I controlled it.

“Still,” I said, “if you’ll give me a moment”

“You look like a gentleman,” she blazed. “For a moment, in spite of everything, I believed you to be one. But I heard you admit to those men that— Oh, go away from me. Let me alone!”

Let my readers here become witness to an author’s high resolve. In the past I have sinned deeply. I have permitted the keys of my typewriter to evolve “cave-men” who, confronted by such a situation as this, have seized the objects of their primitive loves in their strong arms and crushed away the ladies’ doubts. But I shall never evolve such a character again. I have experienced, in real life, the situation which, too often, I have vicariously experienced in the pages of my manuscript. And I know that no matter how thrillingly such a situation may read, it doesn’t act well.

Never again shall my hero clasp the angry girl in his arms. For I know that no man, be he ever so misunderstood, be he ever so much in love, would dare put his arms about the pliant figure of a girl who confronted him with such a blaze of anger in her eyes as Miss Gilman held in hers. If this were fiction I could sweep away all doubts, all misunderstanding in one paragraph. But this is real life, and in real life—once again, I state emphatically that it can’t be done.

For a moment I met her fiery glance. I heard her foot stamp the ground.

“Go away,” she said again.

Meekly, humbly, I did as I was told, leaving behind me a girl on whose lips trembled sobs. Weatherbee Jones, master detective, master hero, master man, would have known how to meet such a situation. I can imagine his scorn of me for letting myself continue to be misunderstood, for continuing to play such an ignoble rôle. But if no man may be a hero to his valet, how much less possible is it for an author to be a hero to one of his own characters. Let those who will puzzle this out.

T SO happened that today, at dinner, was the first time I had ever eaten pickerel. And despite the fact that I had caught them myself, which should have flavored them, I never ate so tasteless a meal in my life. To enjoy dinner, one’s thoughts must be of dinner. Mine were up-stairs with the flashing-eyed girl to whom, it seemed, I was doomed ever to appear in evil light.

What was it that Ravenell and the new arrival, Minot, had thought was in her muff? Why were they so confident that she would make no charge against them?

I came to one conclusion: neither the major nor the girl was involved in any thing criminal. For Minot thought me to be a Healy operative, and that he thought the Healy agency had been retained by some one, and was not working on its own initiative, was evident from his remarks. And from Ravenell’s, too. Of course, private detective agencies never do work on their own initiative: they are always hired: but Minot had suggested that “my people” might pay better than his.

It was clear, therefore, that the major and his niece were believed to be in possession of something worth a fortune, but that that possession was not criminal. Otherwise, how could it happen that Minot believed two detective agencies were both striving for the same object, neither invoking the law? If the major and his niece were criminals, and possessed something which did not belong to them, how did it come to pass that two people, with interests evidently opposed, were seeking this something with the aid of detectives?

There could not be two rightful owners to this something. Inasmuch as Minot thought that my mythical employers might pay better than his own—or had, at least, to pump me, suggested that—it seemed clear to me that Minot believed that other people might have as much right to the something as did the person or persons who had retained the Greenhams.

If others, then, could hire detectives to get whatever the major and his niece possessed, the right of the Greenhams’ employers to that thing didn’t seem very well defined. If the major had stolen something and Minot believed that I was a Healy man, and if Minot’s employers really owned the something, why didn’t Minot, fearful lest I should obtain it, have the major arrested? The theory that the Greenhams delayed arrest in the hope that their quarry might lead them to his booty no longer applied.

Moreover, Ravenell had stated that the employers of the Greenhams weren’t the only ones who wanted “it.” And he had spoken of half a million dollars. Was this the value of Major Penrose’s possession, or was it but the fractional part of the something’s value offered for its capture?

What could the thing be? It must be small, to be capable of being carried in the girl’s muff. Was it jewelry? It didn’t seem possible that the major or the girl would have brought hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry down to a country hotel where burglary might prove so feasible.

Moreover, it was not possible that well-known detective agencies would take any part in the forcible abstraction of jewels. One agency, to avert possible scandal, might do so, but both Ravenell and Minot had admitted the right, so to speak, of another agency to be employed, by different employers. Not jewels, then. Before the Greenhams or the Healey agency accepted a case like this, they would have to be shown a mighty clear title to the jewels. And two clear titles could hardly exist. This was not a case, then, where detectives were hired to regain possession of stolen goods without police aid, in order that scandal might not cloud some fair reputation.

But, if criminality were not involved, why was Minot so scornful of my threat of the police? Only guilty people fear to invoke the aid of the law. Yet he seemed certain that the girl would fear to do so.

I was back to first principles again as I finished my lonely dinner. The puzzle was too much for me, and I strolled out into the hotel office to try and soothe my ruffled mentality with the first smoke of the day. As I was filling my pipe Ravenell and Minot entered the hotel and went directly into the dining-room, without so much as a glance at me.

Mine host of the Inn came over and dropped into a chair beside me. He stuffed tobacco into a battered old pipe.

“Pickerel good?” he inquired. He didn’t wait for an answer. “No food like the food a man catches for hisself. Tastes the best. Hunger makes it taste still better, and good comp’ny makes it better still.”

“I didn’t have much of that,” I laughed.

“For a fact you didn’t,” he said. “With Major Penrose and the young lady eatin’ in their rooms—now it’s too bad she ain’t more sociable-like. She’d make mighty nice comp’ny for a young man like you.”

I felt myself color and immediately found something wrong with the draft of my pipe. But he had not meant anything by his remark. What was there for him to mean, when it comes to that? And he lazily continued—

“And them other two fellers—somehow they don’t seem your stripe.”

Mentally I thanked him for not cataloguing me with Ravenell, the burly and coarse, or with his new-found associate, the rather too cunning-faced Minot. I straightened up and tossed away the cleaner with which I had supposedly remedied the fictitious stoppage of the pipe-stem. The captain had not noticed my flush. He lowered his voice and nodded toward the dining-room.

“Cur’ous about them two fellers,” he said.

“Yes?” I encouraged him.

He nodded.

“Uh-huh. This here Ravenell, he said as how he come down here for the fishin’ and that sort of thing. Well, he didn’t bring no tackle nor nothing with him. A-course, he can buy it down to the village, but still, while he’s big and husky, he don’t have the look of a sportsman to me, somehow. And then this feller Minot. He come in on the late train last night, the one that leaves Portland at eight o’clock. He went straight to bed after registerin’. Well, he come down late to breakfast this mornin’, after you’d gone out and after Ravenell had eaten his.

“After Minot gets through he comes out into the office and looks around. He sees Ravenell sitting here but for a moment he don’t speak. He just looks at Ravenell and Ravenell looks at him. They don’t act like they knows each other. Yet Ravenell gets up and walks over to Minot and in a minute they’re thick as two thieves. They get off in a corner with their heads together and stay there an hour or more. Talking quiet-like, too, and as though they don’t want no one to overhear them.

“A-course, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it kinda makes me think. It’s a cinch they didn’t know each other, when first they caught sight of each other. And yet inside of five minutes they’re gossiping like old friends.

“It looks to me as though they had a date to meet down here, and that’s funny, two strangers meetin’ in a out-o’-the-way place like Folly Cove. And this Minot tells me he’s a sportsman, too, which he certainly don’t look to be, with his peakish face and soft-looking body. And like Ravenell, he ain’t brought no gear with him, nothin’ at all. It looks funny to me. 'Don’t it to you?”

I said nothing, but puffed on my pipe. But the captain needed no words from me. He loved to talk, did Captain Noah Perkins of the Folly Cove Inn.

“And the way they eyed that girl! I dunno as it’s any of my business, and yet again it is. She’s a young, unprotected female, her uncle’s sick, and she’s stopping at my hotel. She come down-stairs and told me that while her uncle wasn’t very sick he’d like his meals in his room for a few days more and she’d have hers with him. Then she says she’s going for a walk. And all the time, over her shoulder, I could see Ravenell and Minot starin’ at her and tryin’ not to let me know it. But I got eyes in my head, I have. I see them!

“And a little after she goes out they sort of saunter out, too. Careless, but it looked to me like the carelessness was put on, and they was about to follow her. Well, it was none of my business and I guessed she wouldn’t come to harm, but when she come back—it was a little after you come in—I calls her over to the desk where I’m doin’ some figgers and I tells her that while her uncle is sick to look upon Captain Noah Perkins, what’s sixty-eight years old and never harmed a woman yet, as her guardeen. I says to her:

“‘Mentionin’ nobody, Miss Gilman, there’s a coupla stowaways aboard this craft what I don’t like the riggin’ of. If they crosses your bows fly a signal from the main-top and I’ll sink ’em!’

“She smiled kinda frightened-like and told me that nobody had annoyed her.

“‘’Sall right,’ said I, ‘but if they do, just tell Captain Noah Perkins, ma’am.’”

He knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose heavily to his feet.

“They’re guests in my hotel,” he said, “and while they behaves themselves everything is O. K. But the second they mutinies I stretch ’em with a belayin’-pin. I don’t like the cut of their jibs and that’s a fact.”

“Neither do I, Captain,” I told him, “and I’ll keep my eyes open, too.”

“I knew you was a regular man," he said. And I was flattered by the compliment.

Of course, I could not tell him of the incident of the path leading to the lake. That Miss Gilman had kept quiet about that showed her wishes in the matter, and angry though I tried to be with her, her wishes, even though unspoken, were law. But I would have liked to talk longer with the captain, to suggest to him that he see that the rooms of the two detectives were placed far from those of the major and his niece. But I could hardly do that without telling him what little I knew of the mystery that surrounded these people, and that I felt I had no right to do.

But the entrance of Tony Larue, bearing letters and newspapers, definitely ended the confidences which the captain’s rising had interrupted.

“Train’s late again, Captain,” said the Portuguese, with a flash of his white teeth. “Wires are still down, and I guess the trains from New York and Boston have to crawl. And the train down here waits for them, so”

He hurled the bundle of papers upon the desk without further explanation

“Are there papers for sale in the village?” I asked.

“Sure,” said Tony. “No New York ones, though. Just Portland and Boston.”

“They’ll do,” I said. “What store?”

“You don’t need to bother about going down, Mr. Brant,” said the captain. “I won’t be wantin’ these until tonight. You’re welcome to look ’em over. Take ’em up to your room if you choose.”

I didn’t feel much like walking down to the village. My skating had pretty well exhausted me. So I accepted his offer and, as I felt like lying down while I read, I took the newspapers up-stairs to my room.

The light was bad, the snow from the storm of two days ago having become encrusted upon the window. And as I read by artificial light only when I have to—writing fiction, needless to state, entails sufficient strain upon the eyes without one caring to endure that which is unnecessary—I crossed the room and threw open one of the two large windows that opened upon a balcony that ran along the front of the hotel on the second floor, and half-way around the sides, where it ended, as I had seen this morning, at French windows at either end of the corridor that bisected the second floor.

The window did not open easily. It was of the sort common in the country; the kind that stay open only by the loosing of a little rod that may be inserted in holes in the frame at intervals of six inches or more. This little rod, part of the window itself, is controlled by a spring. When the window is closed the spring thrusts the rod into a hole at the bottom of the frame and the window is securely locked against intrusion from outside.

One opens the window by pulling upon the knob in the window-sash until one has overcome the spring’s resistance and the rod comes free of the hole. Then one slides the window up until the desired height is reached, and then releases the knob, which causes the spring to loosen the rod, which slips into the hole and secures the window. I mention the idiosyncrasies of the window for the benefit of those who have not met with one of the kind, in order that they may better comprehend the predicament in which I shortly found myself.

For I found it difficult to remove the snow from the outside while I remained inside. Evidently the heat of the room had melted the first few flakes that adhered to the panes, causing the later flakes to freeze solidly to the glass. So I climbed through the window, thinking to remove it better from the balcony.

It came off rather easily from outside, especially after I put my pocket-knife into play. In a few minutes I had one window sufficiently cleared. But as I gave it the last finishing touch it crashed to.

Doubtless I had not fastened the catch firmly before climbing through and my work upon the glass had tended to force it downward. Anyway, whether due to the wearing away of the hole in which the little rod should have been fastened, or to my own carelessness, I was locked out upon the balcony. For I soon found that the window could not be opened from outside. Nor could the other one.

However, it was not a serious situation. If the French windows at either end of the hall would not yield to me, I could call for help. Meanwhile, I could do what I had set out to do. I cleaned the other window. Then I started along the balcony.

It was pure accident that made me take the right-hand course from my room. I hope it is not necessary to assure my read ers that I had no desire to spy upon either the major or his niece. Yet, not realizing that I was spying, I glanced into the major’s room as I passed it. He was seated, as I could see plainly enough, at a table in the center of the room. About him were strewn papers, and he was busily writing.

I had not intended to glance into his room. I had not thought anything at all about the fact that I must pass his windows. And the moment that I caught myself looking I dropped my eyes and passed swiftly on.

I hoped that the major’s niece would not see me. Were it not that in my shamed flurry at finding myself unconsciously spying, I had passed by the major’s room, I would have retraced my steps and tried an entrance at the long, door-like windows around the other side of the hotel. But to do that I would have to pass his windows again.

It may be argued that I took just as much risk of discovery by passing Miss Gilman’s window, but I did not stop to think of that. Indignant with myself for being idiot enough to let myself be placed in an equivocal position, I thought only of the swiftest extrication from it. The French windows at which I had originally aimed were the nearest now; I stumbled swiftly toward them. And as I passed the room next to the major’s, the room which was Miss Gilman’s, I knew, I turned my head outward, staring toward the wooded Head.

If she should see me, which I prayed heaven she might not, she could not, at any rate, be able to state certainly to her uncle or herself that I had looked into the room. My averted head would be some slight defense for me, but mighty slight, after all that had happened, and I realized that.

But she didn’t. At least, no cry came from her, nor any sound at all from her room. With a sigh of heartfelt relief I rounded the balcony turn and came to the French window. It was not locked. I opened it softly and stepped into the corridor. On tiptoe, for I did not wish some clumsy noise to attract a suspicion which I felt that I had thus far avoided, I made my way down the hall and into my own room.

It had been cold out on the balcony, yet I knew that I was wringing wet from perspiration. I listened at my door for a moment. No noise came from the rooms down the hall. I was safe. I breathed deeply. I felt like any criminal who has just achieved a masterpiece of villainy and who has come clear of pursuit. For I knew that while all that had gone before might some day be susceptible to explanation, to have been caught just now, apparently spying, would defer that “some day” almost to the confines of “never.”

As I stripped off my outer things and lay down on the bed to read I made up my mind that every word I uttered, every action I performed, from now on would be said or done with the utmost caution, with a guarding against any double meaning. For I would not give Miss Ruth Gilman further cause to suspect me. And as each minute passed without an irascible old gentleman hammering on my door, demanding an explanation of my spying, I breathed more easily. Heaven be praised, I had avoided one error, at least, in this most embarrassing comedy.

I must have slept, worn out by the war news and my own unwonted exertions. I remember, as my paper slid from my listless fingers, that the screeching strains of Tony Larue’s violin issued from his room opposite the major’s and sifted through the crack in my door. I wondered dreamily if the major would protest again; if Tony’s door were open.

Then, suddenly, I found myself seated on the edge of the bed, the newspapers scattered about me, and in my ears ringing the sound of what had seemed to be a shot. Then, as my brain cleared from the haze of what had been a heavy doze, if not sound slumber, I knew I had heard a shot. Also, I knew that I had heard, just after the shot, while my feet were swinging to the floor and my brain was becoming alive, the patter of stealthily running feet past my door.

I listened. I heard cries from down-stairs. Then, above those, I heard a shriek which my instinct, rather than my ears, told me came from the throat of Ruth Gilman.

I leaped across the room to the chair on which lay my outer garments and hastily began pulling them on. There was no repetition of the cry from the girl, but there were the sounds of heavy feet and hoarse breathing from people running past my door.