XIII—THE MAN WHO TALKED IN THE DARK
NEXT morning Dodovah Vose drove me to the railroad station at the Lower Comers. He looked at the trip as a sort of a triumphal parade, and said so to me.
“Some different from that night ride we took, young Sidney,” he chuckled. “I’m playing hackman this time so as to take the taste of that other ride out of my mouth!”
Yet, as I rode that morning by his side, I was wondering whether I would have courage to come back to Levant. Panic was in me—it truly was!
“Mighty scared little bug was you that night! But I always knew you had sprawl and gumption in you. Now you’re showing the old town a thing or two and I’m proud of you.”
His praise made me cringe more than ever.
When we passed the wood-lot a merry rick-tack of axes sounded in our ears.
“Yes, sir! You have shown them all that you can come back here and start something,” stated Landlord Vose. He did not realize how infernally right he was. What I had started was setting the willy-wallies to dancing in my soul.
“Things have come along with such a rush that I haven’t thought to ask you how you happened to hit it off so smooth with the judge,” he proceeded, and my alarm increased.
“I met him on the road, and we turned a quick trade on the spot. He was starting for the city and we had to trade sudden or not at all.”
“That hasn’t been the judge’s usual way in business,” he commented, sagely. “I have had some dealings with him myself, and so I know his style pretty well.” He gave me a sly, sideways glance. “Yes, I know him so well that I’ve noticed how he’s losing his grip on business.”
“And do you think he has been losing money, too?” I plumped at him.
“Well,” drawled Vose, “I don’t know how much money he’s got nor what sort of investments he’s carrying or how much money he has been handling for other folks, for he has always been cussed secret in his operations. And the folks who have turned money over to him have been secret, too, for I reckon he has helped them hide their money away from the tax-assessors. But I’ll tell you, young Sidney, his money, however much he’s got, must be pretty well tied up these days.”
I questioned him with a side-glance which met his own. “Because when old Rollins died a few months ago the heirs lit on the judge for the money he had in his hands—for the heirs are spenders and wanted the money to toss away. The judge’s home place is in his wife’s name and she mortgaged it to raise the money—and when a man mortgages the roof over his family’s head he does need money, there’s no doubt about that.”
“But there are times when a man doesn’t like to sacrifice securities,” I said. Somehow I felt as if I had been specially delegated to stand up for the Kingsley family. “Maybe so! Maybe so!” agreed Vose. “Finance is a strange critter—and the judge is a regular financier. But, I swan, if I like the looks of the strangers he has been doing business with for a long time back. I ain’t any kind of a hand to pry into the dealings of men who put up at my tavern. Those fellows always paid their bills and showed plenty of money, but it don’t seem to me as if straight business needs to be so blamed secret.”
“However, the big fellows in money affairs keep their cards pretty dose to their vests,” I suggested.
“Maybe so! But he’s selling property off slapdash—”
“Mrs. Kingsley says he wants to get rid of some of his cares.” Perhaps she had not said just that—but I had taken the rôle of the family champion.
“Maybe so—and if that’s the case, it’s too bad your uncle Deck is rampaging so. Generally, we all trust the judge and look up to him, and we don’t want to see him bothered at this time in his life. But here’s your uncle trying to stir, up enough sentiment to call a special town meeting.”
“What for?” I was more alarmed than ever.
“His excuse is that the town is now so prosperous that we can afford to pay off the whole town debt by a little extra splurge in taxation. Says that with the debt all paid off new industries can be induced to locate here.”
“But does that mean anything against Judge Kingsley? It looks to me like enterprise on Uncle Deck’s part.” Again Mr. Vose chanted his everlasting and singsong, “Maybe so!” Then he added: “But I reckon your uncle Deck has more visible property spread around this town than any other taxpayer in it. Maybe he has had a change of heart about money. Maybe he intends to loosen up in his old age. Maybe he wants to hand something back to a town he has gouged all his life. But from what I know of your uncle Deck, I don’t think he has grown so cussed patriotic all of a sudden. Young Sidney, I reckon there’s a hotter and livelier reason. Your uncle has been nursing a grudge till it’s well-grown and all haired out. That grudge is prancing, and he’s willing to pay high for a chance to show its paces in public. And there’s more in the plan of that special town meeting than shows on the surface at present writing!”
Therefore, when I climbed on board the train I had plenty to think about outside the immediate business I had in hand, though that was enough for one poor mind, Lord knows!
Take everything, by and large, I was in the prime mess of my young life up to date.
The principal reason why I stayed in it, I suppose, was because I didn’t know any better! That reason has accounted for a lot of my experiences.
Some of the best fights on the records have been won by men who were worst scared.
I alighted in Mechanicsville in a state of mind I’ll not attempt to describe. But I looked at myself in a store window and made up a business face to go with my appearance. I hired the best hack in sight, I started on a round of factories, wood merchants, brick-yards, and lumber-dealers. I rode up to the doors of offices in style; I walked in on ’em in style.
It was certainly a new wrinkle in wood-peddling—this plug-hat performance! It opened all doors to me. I don’t know what they thought I was, before I opened my mouth, but I was not kept twiddling my thumbs in anterooms; the main squeeze in every office shunted all else in order to greet me. I wonder what would have been my lot if I had come as a stammering farmer, a crude countryman, or a chopper in wool boots!
I sold wood! By gracious, I did!
I found out something all of a sudden. I discovered that I had the art of salesmanship. It’s an art, a qualification hard to describe. Every man who has ever bought anything knows what it is and how it has operated in his case.
I sold wood and lumber and sleepers—and the more I sold, the higher rose my confidence in my personality, and I had hard work to control and conceal my hysterics of success.
I worked off onto brick-yards even the crooked limbs, the second-grade stuff which I had seen piling up on my operation.
With every buyer I made written contracts, designating prompt delivery on certain dates, first deliveries to be made within a week and calling for cash payments of two-thirds of value of wood delivered, the whole amount to be paid when final delivery was made.
I went on down the line to another city and then to a third. I sold wood! I sold for three days. Then I woke up and stopped selling. It occurred to me that I might be overguessing on the resources of the Kingsley wood-lot.
I had not a mite of trouble in arranging with the division superintendent of the railroad line for a supply of gondola cars; I was offering something worth his attention.
I left that gentleman in mighty abrupt fashion; he must have thought that I was a very precipitate business man. But while I was winding up my arrangements with him, I looked out of his office window in the railroad station into the windows of a train which was pulling slowly out, on its way up-country. I caught a glimpse of a stem profile with a roll of chin-beard under it. If that face did not belong to Zebulon Kingsley—But I did not stop to do any more thinking on the matter. I galloped out of that office. I had to chase that train a hundred yards down the platform—but I made the last car!
Zebulon Kingsley home ahead of schedule!
I stood on the car steps, getting my breath, giving dizzy thought to the peril I had so narrowly missed. Zebulon Kingsley back in Levant ahead of me, viewing his desolated wood-lot and voicing his fury! Where would my character and importance land after that blow-up?
Did I say that my dizzy thoughts dealt with a peril I had missed? In about ten seconds I decided that I was traveling right along with the peril. I was doomed to drop into Levant in its company.
I might have been mistaken, I reflected. I hoped I had been deceived by a too-hasty glance. I walked down through the train. I was pretty sure of my man when I passed him, though I got a view of the back of his head only. Therefore I went to the front of the car, making an excuse of the water-cooler. I looked back at him while I drank. He seemed to be asleep, for his head was bent down into the folds of the cape he had pulled about his ears. I was so sure he was asleep that when I went back up the car I gave him a bold look to convince myself I had not been mistaken.
I got one of the starts of my life!
Zebulon Kingsley was distinctly not asleep. His eyes were like fire-balls, and he stared straight at me without one flicker of the lids or crinkle of the countenance to show that he recognized me. His face was gray and haggard. He was like a stone man. If he had given one hint by his expression that he knew me I would have pushed myself in beside him, I reckon, and would have come across with my little story. But that frozen face was too much for me. I was doing a lot of guessing about his state of mind, and my guesses warned me to stay away from him just then.
I hurried past and sat down in the first vacant seat.
The feeling I had was that he had found out by letter from home or somehow what kind of a trick I had cut up. Those glaring eyes hinted at unutterable things. He must be in such a fury, I thought, that words had failed him. He was waiting until he stepped foot in Levant to go at me in proper style. Naturally, he would not start anything on a railroad train. I sat there while those, thoughts flamed up in me like fire in a brush-heap, and for a long time I found no handy extinguisher for those thoughts.
However, there was a rather comforting packet in the breast pocket of my frock-coat; I got out those contracts and went over them carefully.
I did have some visible emblems of success to stick up in front of his sour face when it came to a showdown. But if Zebulon Kingsley was not willing to start anything in public on a train, neither was I. I studied my contracts, added figures, and tried to keep my mind off the big trouble ahead. But who has ever sat near a bomb with a sputtering fuse and felt in a mood for philosophy? I couldn’t even add figures!
The train bumped on and on. It was a long ride.
When we arrived at Levant Corners, I followed Kingsley so closely that we almost walked in a lock-step. I had a sort of crazy notion that if he started to bawl me out on the platform and expose me to the populace I’d choke him and drag him off somewhere for an explanation, for I truly did have a face to save in Levant.
I trod behind him on the station platform. Far up the platform was waiting a man who wore a constable’s badge. I itched all over as we approached that man; I fully expected that the judge would whirl and point me out and call for my arrest. But the constable touched his hat respectfully and the judge marched on. I almost bumped into him when he stopped at hail of a citizen. I was forced to go on, then. The citizen had buttonholed the judge on some matter of business, but by the few words I heard I knew it was no affair of mine. I ran my eye over the array of hitches waiting in the station yard, expecting to see Celene Kingsley. But she was not there. Her absence hinted to me that her father was not expected. Then he would ride on the stage! I resolved to walk on and to hail it when it overtook me. I proposed to be on the scene when Judge Kingsley got first peep at what had been his wood-lot. I kept looking behind and noted that he walked past the stage-coach and had started to foot it on my trail. Therefore he was not expected at home, and for reasons of his own had decided to walk.
When I saw that the stage had come on without him and had observed that he shook protesting hand at persons who stopped and offered a lift, I walked on more briskly. He wanted to be left alone, then! His expression had already hinted to me that he had no use for companionship at that time.
At last I could hear my ax-men. Their blades were biting wood in lively chorus, though the dusk was gathering. I realized that the spirit of rivalry was in them and that they were not watching the clock on that job. When I came in sight of the wood-lot I saw that a big expanse had been cleared, down to the bushes; the bared land was thickly dotted with wood which was tiered in cord lots. I hardly recognized the place.
The notion struck me that this was the proper strategic point to await the battle. In the first place, I would not be obliged to waste any breath in telling Zebulon Kingsley that his wood-lot was being cleared; his eyes would inform him on that point. I could devote all my language and energy to the job of enlightening him regarding my activities in the matter, my hopes and his prospects of getting some money. Secondly, considering strategy, my appearance before my men, accompanied by Judge Kingsley, after I got him under control, would put the stamp of authority on the whole affair; I believed I could control him. He certainly would have to take the situation as he found it; he couldn’t stick those trees back into the ground again.
Therefore I settled my plug-hat well on my head, pulled out my bunch of contracts, and waited for him to come around the bend in the road.
I reflected that he had looked to me like a man who had a great deal of trouble on his mind. In my young days, when old dog Bonny was dreadfully afflicted with fleas I tied a tin can to his tail to take his mind off his troubles. I believe fully that changing the current of his thoughts for a time proved really restful to him.
It was certain that Judge Kingsley would have the current of his thoughts changed in a very few minutes. He would have something entirely fresh to think about, and I hoped it would do him good, even though I received no thanks.
He seemed pretty much cast down when he shambled into sight, his shoulders bowed, staring at the road ahead of him. But all at once he straightened, threw back his head, and seemed to sniff the air.
“Charge!” I said to myself. And he set his elbows akimbo under his cape and came at a trot.
He tried to rush past me on his way to the fence, but I stepped in front of him and threw up my hands.
“Just a moment, Judge Kingsley! This is my business—”
“Your business be damned!” he stuttered.
Strong talk for a Sunday-school teacher, but it made him seem more human and my courage rose a bit. I had not known how to tackle that frozen figure he looked to be in the railroad train.
“But I’ll explain!”
“I’m going to find out what this set of infernal thieves—”
He wouldn’t wait any longer, though I was trying to head him off with my arms outstretched. He drove past me and wrenched a post out of the fence and started to climb into the wood-lot. There was only one thing to do—I must get the upper hand of the infuriated old man before we attracted the attention of my busy workers; the dusk was helping me in that respect.
I pulled the stake from him, held him by his arms, and set my face close to his; he was a scrawny old chap and he hadn’t any muscle left.
“Judge Kingsley, forgive me—but you must listen. It’s best for all concerned. I have bought this lot from you and I am operating on it.”
I thought he would choke to death before he got the words wrenched out of him.
“You haven’t bought it. You couldn’t buy it! There is no money passed. There’s no deed. You’re a thief!”
I had dropped the bunch of contracts when I grabbed him. I released my clutch on one arm and picked up the packet.
“Here’s something to show I am not a thief, sir. You’ve got to look at ’em. And the middle of the road is no place for our business.”
Furthermore, I noticed all at once that the choppers were giving up work and starting for the highway.
Probably the most sensible way was for me to go along to his house, exhorting him to keep his mouth shut till he understood the matter. But a row with him in his own house would be exposing myself to Celene. I held his arm and hurried him across the road and into the woods opposite. He protested angrily, but I kept him on the move until we were in a little clearing which the red western skies still lighted enough for my purpose.
I flapped the contracts under his nose. “You advertised the land—you gave me a price, Judge Kingsley. I know I have been irregular. I cannot stop now to explain why, but I have sold all the wood. Here are the contracts. Hunt up the men and make sure, if you don’t believe writing and signatures. I’ll let you go and collect your two thousand dollars before a dollar comes to me.” I shoved the papers into his hands and he pawed them over without seeming to understand very well. “Contracts?”
“Yes, sir! Contracts with responsible concerns.”
“I’ll have you arrested,” he insisted, but his anger was dying out and he sort of whined, “It’s my land; you haven’t any right to make contracts.”
All at once his legs bent under him and he sat down on the ground. There was plainly something special the matter with Zebulon Kingsley!
“Oh, my God!” he mourned. “Are all the blatherskites, thieves, and swindlers in this world on my track?”
“Don’t tie any of those kind of tags on to me, Judge Kingsley. It isn’t fair!”
“You have robbed me!”
“Confound it! Look at the contracts!” He did not seem to be taking any interest in the papers; he merely waggled the packet about like a child waving a rattle.
“First one, and then the other! They have robbed me. I am ruined!”
I squatted down in front of him and made him look at me. I was in the mood for any kind of self-sacrifice. I wanted to beat it into his old head that there was one man who was trying to help him.
“Judge Kingsley, listen to me! You are sure of getting your two thousand dollars for your wood-lot. I say again, go yourself and collect the money. If my estimates are in any way near right—and I reckon I am inside the truth—there’s around a thousand dollars profit in this deal, profit I was intending to take for myself. But, seeing that you feel as you do about my actions, I’ll hand the whole thing over to you. Take it all! Come to me in the morning when you’re feeling better and I’ll explain my trade with Henshaw Hook and the choppers.”
He looked at me and never said a word.
“I don’t even ask any pay for the time I have put in,” I said, trying to make myself as much of an angel as I could, now that I was started on the savior trail. “You understand, don’t you? All you’ve got to do is keep my promises to the men and pull down around three thousand in cash!”
In a story-book that would have been his cue to get up and clasp me to his breast. He simply blinked at me. I began to get a little warm in the region of my neckband.
“If that’s the way you feel about it, Judge Kingsley,” I said, straightening up, “I’ll bid you good evening. After you have tucked your three thousand in your jeans, send me a bill for damages and I’ll settle.”
He called me back before I had taken many steps.
“My head isn’t right,” he mumbled. “I have been having much trouble. What have you been telling me?”
I went over the thing again, very patiently, for I saw I was dealing with a case which was more serious than I thought. The night was on us by that time. I tore strips of birch bark from a tree, lighted them one by one, and made a torch so that he could examine one of the contracts. Again I insisted that he must cake the whole thing over profits and all.
“I had no right to start in on your property as I did, Judge Kingsley. So I’ll fine myself a thousand!”
“I think I ought to call you honest, young man,” he said, after a time. “I have hard work to believe that any man is honest in this world just now, but what you say sounds honest. I’ll meet you half-way in your honesty.”
He asked me to hold more torches. He found a sheet of letter-paper in his wallet, bearing his name printed at the top. He wrote a receipt for two thousand dollars, using the long wallet for his desk.
“I have dated it four days back. Now that I have met you half-way in one matter, young man, I ask you to meet me half-way in another. When you get that, money in hand, pay it to my wife. Do not tell anybody that you did not pay it to me.” He hesitated a moment. “As to the land—the deed—”
“I have no use for the land, Judge Kingsley. So there’s no call for a deed.”
“I think you are honest, young man. I believe I can trust you to give the money to my wife—and say nothing about it outside!”
“But I can give it to you, sir, in a few days!”
“I expect to be away on business for some time,” he said, curtly. “Now understand! Whatever questions are asked by anybody you must insist that you paid that money to me. Your own interest requires it! Show the receipt.”
“Forgive me for keeping you here so long in the dark and the cold, sir,” I pleaded, realizing the situation all at once. “If you’ll let me call on you to-morrow I’ll have something further to say about the matter of the profits—but I won’t bother you any more to-night.”
“That’s right! Don’t bother me to-night.”
I waited for him to come along with me.
“Good night, young man,” he said. “Step along ahead if you will! I prefer to walk home alone—I have some business matters to run over in my head.”
I realized fully that Judge Zebulon Kingsley did not care to have a Sidney chumming with him before the eyes of Levant, and I did not take this dismissal in bad part. I marched off.
But the memory of that face of his went with me. Fifty feet up in the road I stood stock-still. What did it mean—his command to hand over the money to his wife, making a secret of it? What made his eyes burn so redly? What was the matter with Judge Kingsley, anyway? I listened for his footsteps on the road behind me. I heard no sound.
It came to me that Celene Kingsley would have reason to blame me if I left her old father floundering around the woods in the darkness.
I went tiptoeing back, my ears perked.
I heard him talking rapidly and clearly, not as one talks aloud in soliloquy, but as if he were addressing somebody. I stepped carefully in through the fringe of trees and I found out that Zebulon Kingsley was talking to somebody; he was talking to God!
I listened five seconds and I realized what he was talking about. Then I leaped on him and struck his wrist with the edge of my hand.
He dropped a fat, ugly revolver which had glinted in the starlight. I pounced on it and flung it into the woods as far as muscle, fright, and anger could prevail. When I turned on the judge he had just tugged another revolver out of his pocket, twin of the other weapon. I had a tussle with him to get it, and he fairly squealed in his fury. But I wrenched the thing out of his clutch and threw it; then I pulled him to his feet and patted him all over, as a policeman frisks a prisoner, to make sure that he was not serving as arsenal for more artillery.
“Judge Kingsley,” I kept saying over and over, “your wife! Your daughter! Think of them!”
I was obliged to drag him out of the woods by main strength. I propelled him along the highway and he walked as stiffly as some kind of a wooden figure, moved by springs. His eyes stared straight ahead and his face was white in the starlight.
So we came into the village without a word between us, and I led him by dark lanes to his house.
Then he held back and replied to what I had said in the woods as if I had just spoken.
“I am thinking of them! That’s why I can’t face them!”
Oh, the tone in which he said that! Questions were crowding in my throat, but I did not dare to pry into troubles as deep as Judge Kingsley’s most certainly were. But I had to have some assurance from him.
“Judge Kingsley,” I said, with respect in my voice, “I am meddling, but God knows there was a call for somebody to meddle just now.”
“I want to be out of my troubles!” He was trembling like a leaf.
“But you’re not so much of a coward, Judge, that you’ll shift off all of your troubles on to your family, along with the awful one you were just about to shove on them! I know you’re not. I have always looked up to you, sir.”.
“But nobody can look up to me from now on, young man!”
“I always shall, sir. We all get rattled some time in our lives.” I knew I was making pretty poor talk to a man like Judge Kingsley, but I was trembling as badly as he was and I did not know what to say to him.
“I’m only poor Ross Sidney, sir. You know I don’t amount to much, but won’t you consider that I have done a little something for you this night? I stopped you when you didn’t know what you were doing.”
“I did know what I was doing,” he groaned. “I was doing it because I couldn’t go home. I walked up the road to the woods—to my woods on purpose to do it!”
It came to me that fate, or whatever rules human actions, had set me to play quite a part in Judge Kingsley’s life, for his private woods were not there—and I was.
“Will you consider me enough of a man, sir, so that I can ask a man-to-man promise that you’ll sleep on this thing and have a talk with me to-morrow? I have helped you on one matter. I’ll do my best to help you in other ways!”
“There’s no help for me.”
“But let me have a talk to-morrow with you! I beg you, Judge Kingsley. Give me your promise till tomorrow!”
He stiffened up and scowled at me. He resented what I said, I could see. I guess he thought I was trying to be too familiar with him. The old chap’s pride was still on tap. I suppose it seemed like lowering his dignity to make any sort of a man’s compact with young Ross Sidney. However, I was glad to see pride bristle up a bit in him.
“I never heard of a Kingsley being a coward, Judge,” I told him. “Or being a liar, either! You owe me something, sir, and I’ll insist on being paid with your promise. So I reckon I have it.” I did not give him opportunity to do any talking. I rang the bell at the door, though he grabbed at my hand to stop me.
“I can’t go in now! My face—my conscience!” So his conscience was still working!
“Leave it all to me, sir. I’ll fix it.”
The maid opened the door, and I led him into the sitting-room. Celene and her mother were there and they came to their feet, gasping with fright, for I was half carrying the judge.
“It’s nothing—it’s all right!” I told them. “We have been inspecting the work in the wood-lot on the way from the train. It’s nothing, I say—just a little touch of the heart. The judge insisted on walking too much.” I helped him to a couch. “I’ll call in the morning on that business, sir!” I told him. Then I turned to Celene, who was giving me warm welcome with her eyes, now that her fears were subsiding. “Keep your eye on your father during the night,” I advised her. “Of course, it’s nothing serious in his case—only a little overtasking of the heart—but a bit of home nursing will do him good.”
I reckoned I had planted a loyal sentinel over the man who was indebted to me for giving him more days of his life, even though they might be bitter days.
I went to Dodovah Vose’s tavern, feeling still more like an overloaded mule—saddled with plenty of my own troubles, to say nothing of other folks’.