Maurice Blake was far from being drunk, however, when I met him this day. Indeed, I do not believe that in his most reckless hour up to this time he had ever lost control of himself so far as not to know pretty nearly what he was doing all the time; but certainly he had been drinking this day, and the drinking manner did not set well on him.
Maurice was standing on the front steps of Mrs. Arkell’s boarding-house when I saw him. It was Mrs. Arkell’s granddaughter Minnie that married the wealthy Mr. Miner––a rather loud sort of man, who had been reported as saying that he would give her a good time and show her life. He may have given her a good time––I don’t know––but he was dead in two years. He was supposed to be very rich––three or four millions––but on settling up there was less than half a million. Of course that wasn’t bad––enough for Minnie to buy a big house next her grandmother’s for a summer home, and enough to go off travelling whenever she pleased.
When she came back to Gloucester she was still a very handsome girl, spoken of as the “Miner widow” among people who had known her only since her marriage, but still called Minnie Arkell by most of those who had known her when she was a child. In Gloucester she bought the first house just around the corner from her grandmother’s. A handy passage between their two back yards allowed her to visit her grandmother whenever she pleased. She wanted to be near her own people, she said, and was more in her grandmother’s house than her own.
Maurice came down the steps of Mrs. Arkell’s boarding-house as I came along, and joined me on 19 the sidewalk. He asked me the first thing if I wouldn’t have a drink, and I said no.
“Oh, I forgot,” he said, “you don’t drink. Have a cigar,” and he pulled one out of his pocket, and I took and lit it. Generally I smoked a pipe, but I liked good cigars, though I couldn’t afford them myself. This was not a good one––more like the kind they hand out in bar-rooms when men get tired of drinking and say they guess they’ll have a smoke.
“How does it happen, Joe, you’re not at the store? I always thought Withrow held his men pretty close to hours.”
“Well, so he does, but I’m not working for him now.” And then I told him that I had had an argument with Withrow, been discharged, and was thinking of going fishing. I didn’t tell him at first how it all came about, but I think he guessed it, for all at once, after a searching look, he reached out and shook hands with me.
“If ever I get a vessel again, Joe, and you still want to go fishing and care for a chance with me, you can have it––if you can’t go with a better man, I mean. I’ll take you and be glad to have you.”
That meant a good berth, of course, for Maurice was a killer.