CHAPTER XI
A CALLER
As the first of the month was approaching, Wassaquam had brought his household bills and budget to Alan that morning directly after breakfast. The accounts, which covered expenses for the month just ending and a small amount of cash to be carried for the month beginning, were written upon a sheet of foolscap in neat, unshaded writing exactly like the models in a copybook—each letter formed as carefully and precisely as is the work done upon an Indian basket. The statement accounted accurately for a sum of cash in hand upon the first of February, itemized charged expenses, and totaled the bills. For March, Wassaquam evidently proposed a continuance of the establishment upon the present lines. To provide for that, and to furnish Alan with whatever sums he needed, Sherrill had made a considerable deposit in Alan's name in the bank where he carried his own account; and Alan had accompanied Sherrill to the bank to be introduced and had signed the necessary cards in order to check against the deposit; but, as yet, he had drawn nothing.
Alan had required barely half of the hundred dollars which Benjamin Corvet had sent to Blue Rapids, for his expenses in Chicago; and he had brought with him from "home" a hundred dollars of his own. He had used that for his personal expenses since. The amount which Wassaquam now desired to pay the bills was much more than Alan had on hand; but that amount was also much less than the eleven hundred dollars which the servant listed as cash on hand. This, Wassaquam stated, was in currency and kept by him. Benjamin always had had him keep that much in the house; Wassaquam would not touch that sum now for the payment of current expenses.
This sum of money kept inviolate troubled Alan. Constance Sherrill's statement that, for her family at least, to keep such a sum would have been unusual, increased this trouble; it did not, however, preclude the possibility that others than the Sherrills might keep such amounts of cash on hand. On the first of the month, therefore Alan drew upon his new bank account to Wassaquam's order; and in the early afternoon Wassaquam went to the bank to cash his check—one of the very few occasions when Alan had been left in the house alone; Wassaquam's habit, it appeared, was to go about on the first of the month and pay the tradesmen in person.
Some two hours later, and before Wassaquam could have been expected back, Alan, in the room which had become his, was startled by a sound of heavy pounding, which came suddenly to him from a floor below. Shouts—heavy, thick, and unintelligible—mingled with the pounding. He ran swiftly down the stairs, then on and down the service stairs into the basement. The door to the house from the areaway was shaking to irregular, heavy blows, which stopped as Alan reached the lower hallway; the shouts continued still a moment more. Now that the noise of pounding did not interfere, Alan could make out what the man was saying: "Ben Corvet!"—the name was almost unintelligible—"Ben Corvet! Ben!" Then the shouts stopped too.
Alan sped to the door and turned back the latch. The door bore back upon him, not from a push, but from a weight without which had fallen against it. A big, heavy man, with a rough cap and mackinaw coat, would have fallen upon the floor, if Alan had not caught him. His weight in Alan's arms was so dull, so inert that, if violence had been his intention, there was nothing to be feared from him now. Alan looked up, therefore, to see if any one had come with him. The alley and the street were clear. The snow in the area-way showed that the man had come to the door alone and with great difficulty; he had fallen once upon the walk. Alan dragged the man into the house and went back and closed the door.
He returned and looked at him. The man was like, very like the one whom Alan had followed from the house on the night when he was attacked; certainty that this was the same man came quickly to him. He seized the fellow again and dragged him up the stairs and to the lounge in the library. The warmth revived him; he sat up, coughing and breathing quickly and with a loud, rasping wheeze. The smell of liquor was strong upon him; his clothes reeked with the unclean smell of barrel houses.
He was, or had been, a very powerful man, broad and thick through with overdeveloped—almost distorting—muscles in his shoulders; but his body had become fat and soft, his face was puffed, and his eyes watery and bright; his brown hair, which was shot all through with gray, was dirty and matted; he had three or four days' growth of beard. He was clothed as Alan had seen deck hands on the steamers attired; he was not less than fifty, Alan judged, though his condition made estimate difficult. When he sat up and looked about, it was plain that whiskey was only one of the forces working upon him—the other was fever which burned up and sustained him intermittently.
"'Lo!" he greeted Alan. "Where's shat damn Injin, hey? I knew Ben Corvet was shere—knew he was shere all time. 'Course he's shere; he got to be shere. That's shright. You go get 'im!"