“Fear! What was he afraid of?”
“He was partly senile, of course, but he could not be convinced that Captain Vanton was really dead. He heard more or less of Captain Vanton’s story. The coroner didn’t give it out, but things like that always get around, or some of them. When they told him that Captain Vanton was Jacob King, he had a stroke. Paralysis. After that he kept looking about him and saying: ‘The King is dead! Long live the King!’ And when they told him that Captain Vanton had been buried he cried out: ‘Nothing is ever buried. He’ll come to life again.’ Later he had delusions that he saw King or Vanton. Do you remember when Dad went to see him? He caught sight of Dad and shrieked: ‘Don’t kill me, John Smiley! I didn’t steal your daughter! Kill King! Only you can’t kill him!’”
Mermaid finished with a shudder.
Mrs. Hand asked: “How much of the whole story does young Dick know?”
“His father’s part in it pretty fully. The rest—about Guy and Mrs. Vanton and all—no more than the other Blue Port people. About all they know is that Mrs. Vanton wasn’t the Captain’s wife and that the Captain was a mad old man who made his boy’s life miserable and who had had something underhanded to do with Richard Hand.”
“I’ve always wondered what you told that man to make him tell you that you were John Smiley’s daughter,” Mrs. Hand remarked.
“Only what I guessed. He was ready to tell me,” said Mermaid. “I was really fighting for Guy. I offered your jewels to him as a ransom for Guy. It sounds ridiculous, but since I knew you thought he had taken them I knew you must think he coveted them, had some craving that they might satisfy. I was more or less in the dark; I went ahead by instinct.”
“It’s a wonder, since he shot himself right after you left the house, that you were not accused of murder,” said Keturah, grimly. “You might have shot him dead and walked away.”
“You forget Mrs. Vanton,” Mermaid reminded her. “She had come to the head of the stairs. She saw the door close after me. It was two or three minutes later before she heard the pistol shot.”
“She’s honest, it seems.”