Her little gasoline-driven car—delicate as though a jeweler had made it—was waiting for them under the canopy beside the house, when they went out. She delayed a moment to ask Alan to let down the windows; the sky was still clear, and the sunshine had become almost warm, though the breeze was sharp and cold. As the car rolled down the drive, and he turned for a long look past her toward the lake, she watched his expression.
"It's like a great shuttle, the ice there," she commented, "a monster shuttle nearly three hundred miles long. All winter it moves back and forth across the lake, from east to west and from west to east as the winds change, blocking each shore half the time and forcing the winter boats to fight it always."
"The gulls go opposite to it, I suppose, sticking to open water."
"The gulls? That depends upon the weather. 'Sea-gull, sea-gull,'" she quoted, "'sit on the sand; It's never fair weather when you're on the land.'"
Alan started a little. "What was that?" he asked.
"That rhyme? One which the wives of the lake men teach their children. Did you remember that too?"
"After you said it."
"Can you remember the rest of it?"
"'Green to Green—Red to Red,'" Alan repeated to himself. "'Green to green' and then something about—how is it, 'Back her—back and stopper.'"
"That's from a lake rhyme too, but another one!" she cried. "And that's quite a good one. It's one of the pilot rules that every lake person knows. Some skipper and wheelsman set them to rhyme years ago, and the lake men teach the rhymes to their children so that they'll never go wrong with a ship. It keeps them clearer in their heads than any amount of government printing. Uncle Benny used to say they've saved any number of collisions.
"Meeting steamers do not dread,"
she recited,
"When you see three lights ahead!Port your helm and show your red.For passing steamers you should tryTo keep this maxim in your eye,Green to Green—or Red to Red—Perfect safety—go ahead.Both in safety and in doubt,Always keep a good lookout;Should there be no room to turn,Stop your ship and go astern."
"Now we're coming to your 'back and stopper':
"If to starboard Red appear,'Tis your duty to keep clear;Act as judgment says is proper.Port or starboard—back or stop her!But when on your port is seenA steamer with a light of Green,There's not much for you to do—The Green light must look out for you."
She had driven the car swiftly on the boulevard to the turn where the motorway makes west to Rush Street, then it turned south again toward the bridge. As they reached the approach to the bridge and the cars congested there, Constance was required to give all her attention to the steering; not until they were crossing the bridge was she able to glance at her companion's face.
To westward, on both sides of the river, summer boats were laid up, their decks covered with snow. On the other side, still nearer to the bridge, were some of the winter vessels; and, while the motor was on the span, the bells began ringing the alarm to clear the bridge so it could turn to let through a great steamer just in from the lake, the sun glistening on the ice covering its bows and sides back as far as Alan could see.
Forward of the big, black, red-banded funnel, a cloud of steam bellowed up and floated back, followed by another, and two deep, reverberating blasts rumbled up the river majestically, imperiously. The shrill little alarm bells on the bridge jangled more nervously and excitedly, and the policeman at the south end hastily signalled the motor cars from the city to stop, while he motioned those still on the bridge to scurry off; for a ship desired to pass.
"Can we stop and see it?" Alan appealed, as Constance ran the car from the bridge just before it began to turn.
She swung the car to the side of the street and stopped; as he gazed back, he was—she knew—seeing not only his first great ship close by, but having his first view of his people—the lake men from whom now he knew from the feeling he had found within himself, and not only from what had been told him, that he had come.
The ship was sheathed in ice from stem to stern; tons of the gleaming, crystal metal weighed the forecastle; the rail all round had become a frozen bulwark; the boats were mere hummocks of ice; the bridge was encased, and from the top of the pilot house hung down giant stalactites which an axeman was chopping away. Alan could see the officers on the bridge, the wheelsman, the lookout; he could see the spurt of water from the ship's side as it expelled with each thrust of the pumps; he could see the whirlpool about the screw, as slowly, steadily, with signals clanging clearly somewhere below, the steamer went through the draw. From up the river ahead of it came the jangling of bells and the blowing of alarm whistles as the other bridges were cleared to let the vessel through. It showed its stern now; Alan read the name and registry aloud: "'Groton of Escanaba!' Is that one of yours, Miss Sherrill; is that one of yours and my—Mr. Corvet's?"
She shook her head, sorry that she had to say no. "Shall we go on now?"
The bridge was swinging shut again; the long line of motor cars, which had accumulated from the boulevard from the city, began slowly to move. Constance turned the car down the narrow street, fronted by warehouses which Alan had passed the morning before, to Michigan Avenue, with the park and harbor to the left. When she glanced now at Alan, she saw that a reaction of depression had followed excitement at seeing the steamer pass close by.
Memory, if he could call it that, had given him a feeling for ships and for the lake; a single word—Miwaka—a childish rhyme and story, which he might have heard repeated and have asked for a hundred times in babyhood. But these recollections were only what those of a three-years' child might have been. Not only did they refuse to connect themselves with anything else, but by the very finality of their isolation, they warned him that they—and perhaps a few more vague memories of similar sort—were all that recollection ever would give him. He caught himself together and turned his thoughts to the approaching visit to Sherrill—and his father's offices.
Observing the towering buildings to his right, he was able to identify some of the more prominent structures, familiar from photographs of the city. Constance drove swiftly a few blocks down this boulevard; then, with a sudden, "Here we are!" she shot the car to the curb and stopped. She led Alan into one of the tallest and best-looking of the buildings, where they took an elevator placarded "Express" to the fifteenth floor.
On several of the doors opening upon the wide marble hall where the elevator left them, Alan saw the names, "Corvet, Sherrill and Spearman." As they passed, without entering, one of these doors which stood propped open, and he looked in, he got his first realization of the comparatively small land accommodations which a great business conducted upon the water requires. What he saw within was only one large room, with hardly more than a dozen, certainly not a score of desks in it; nearly all the desks were closed, and there were not more than three or four people in the room, and these apparently stenographers. Doors of several smaller offices, opening upon the larger room, bore names, among which he saw "Mr. Corvet" and "Mr. Spearman."
"It won't look like that a month from now," Constance said, catching his expression. "Just now, you know, the straits and all the northern lakes are locked fast with ice. There's nothing going on now except the winter traffic on Lake Michigan and, to a much smaller extent, on Ontario and Erie; we have an interest in some winter boats, but we don't operate them from here. Next month we will be busy fitting out, and the month after that all the ships we have will be upon the water."
She led the way on past to a door farther down the corridor, which bore merely the name, "Lawrence Sherrill"; evidently Sherrill, who had interests aside from the shipping business, had offices connected with but not actually a part of the offices of Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman. A girl was on guard on the other side of the door; she recognized Constance Sherrill at once and, saying that Mr. Sherrill had been awaiting Mr. Conrad, she opened an inner door and led Alan into a large, many-windowed room, where Sherrill was sitting alone before a table-desk. He arose, a moment after the door opened, and spoke a word to his daughter, who had followed Alan and the girl to the door, but who had halted there. Constance withdrew, and the girl from the outer office also went away, closing the door behind her. Sherrill pulled the "visitor's chair" rather close to his desk and to his own big leather chair before asking Alan to seat himself.
"You wanted to tell me, or ask me, something last night, my daughter has told me," Sherrill said cordially. "I'm sorry I wasn't home when you came back."
"I wanted to ask you, Mr. Sherrill," Alan said, "about those facts in regard to Mr. Corvet which you mentioned to me yesterday but did not explain. You said it would not aid me to know them; but I found certain things in Mr. Corvet's house last night which made me want to know, if I could, everything you could tell me."
Sherrill opened a drawer and took out a large, plain envelope.
"I did not tell you about these yesterday, Alan," he said, "not only because I had not decided how to act in regard to these matters, but because I had not said anything to Mr. Spearman about them previously, because I expected to get some additional information from you. After seeing you, I was obliged to wait for Spearman to get back to town. The circumstances are such that I felt myself obliged to talk them over first with him; I have done that this morning; so I was going to send for you, if you had not come down."
Sherrill thought a minute, still holding the envelope closed in his hand.
"On the day after your father disappeared," he went on, "but before I knew he was gone—or before any one except my daughter felt any alarm about him—I received a short note from him. I will show it to you later, if you wish; its exact wording, however, is unimportant. It had been mailed very late the night before and apparently at the mail box near his house or at least, by the postmark, somewhere in the neighborhood; and for that reason had not been taken up before the morning collection and did not reach the office until I had been here and gone away again about eleven o'clock. I did not get it, therefore, until after lunch. The note was agitated, almost incoherent. It told me he had sent for you—Alan Conrad, of Blue Rapids, Kansas—but spoke of you as though you were some one I ought to have known about, and commended you to my care. The remainder of it was merely an agitated, almost indecipherable farewell to me. When I opened the envelope, a key had fallen out. The note made no reference to the key, but comparing it with one I had in my pocket, I saw that it appeared to be a key to a safety deposit box in the vaults of a company where we both had boxes.
"The note, taken in connection with my daughter's alarm about him, made it so plain that something serious had happened to Corvet, that my first thought was merely for him. Corvet was not a man with whom one could readily connect the thought of suicide; but, Alan, that was the idea I had. I hurried at once to his house, but the bell was not answered, and I could not get in. His servant, Wassaquam, has very few friends, and the few times he has been away from home of recent years have been when he visited an acquaintance of his—the head porter in a South Side hotel. I went to the telephone in the house next door and called the hotel and found Wassaquam there. I asked Wassaquam about the letter to 'Alan Conrad,' and Wassaquam said Corvet had given it to him to post early in the evening. Several hours later, Corvet had sent him out to wait at the mail box for the mail collector to get the letter back. Wassaquam went out to the mail box, and Corvet came out there too, almost at once. The mail collector, when he came, told them, of course, that he could not return the letter; but Corvet himself had taken the letters and looked them through. Corvet seemed very much excited when he discovered the letter was not there; and when the mail man remembered that he had been late on his previous trip and so must have taken up the letter almost at once after it was mailed, Corvet's excitement increased on learning that it was already probably on the train on its way west. He controlled himself later enough at least to reassure Wassaquam; for an hour or so after, when Corvet sent Wassaquam away from the house, Wassaquam had gone without feeling any anxiety about him.
"I told Wassaquam over the telephone only that something was wrong, and hurried to my own home to get the key, which I had, to the Corvet house; but when I came back and let myself into the house, I found it empty and with no sign of anything having happened.
"The next morning, Alan, I went to the safe deposit vaults as soon as they were open. I presented the numbered key and was told that it belonged to a box rented by Corvet, and that Corvet had arranged about three days before for me to have access to the box if I presented the key. I had only to sign my name in their book and open the box. In it, Alan, I found the pictures of you which I showed you yesterday and the very strange communications that I am going to show you now."
Sherrill opened the long envelope from which several thin, folded papers fell. He picked up the largest of these, which consisted of several sheets fastened together with a clip, and handed it to Alan without comment. Alan, as he looked at it and turned the pages, saw that it contained two columns of typewriting carried from page to page after the manner of an account.
The column to the left was an inventory of property and profits and income by months and years, and the one to the right was a list of losses and expenditures. Beginning at an indefinite day or month in the year 1895, there was set down in a lump sum what was indicated as the total of Benjamin Corvet's holdings at that time. To this, in sometimes undated items, the increase had been added. In the opposite column, beginning apparently from the same date in 1895, were the missing man's expenditures. The painstaking exactness of these left no doubt of their correctness; they included items for natural depreciation of perishable properties and, evidently, had been worked over very recently. Upon the last sheet, the second column had been deducted from the first, and an apparently purely arbitrary sum of two hundred thousand dollars had been taken away. From the remainder there had been taken away approximately one hundred and fifty thousand dollars more.
Alan having ascertained that the papers contained only this account, looked up questioningly to Sherrill; but Sherrill, without speaking, merely handed him the second of the papers.... This, Alan saw, had evidently been folded to fit a smaller envelope. Alan unfolded it and saw that it was a letter written in the same hand which had written the summons he had received in Blue Rapids and had made the entries in the little memorandum book of the remittances that had been sent to John Welton.
It began simply:
Lawrence—
This will come to you in the event that I am not able to carry out the plan upon which I am now, at last, determined. You will find with this a list of my possessions which, except for two hundred thousand dollars settled upon my wife which was hers absolutely to dispose of as she desired and a further sum of approximately one hundred and fifty thousand dollars presented in memory of her to the Hospital Service in France, have been transferred to you without legal reservation.
You will find deeds for all real estate executed and complete except for recording of the transfer at the county office; bonds, certificates, and other documents representing my ownership of properties, together with signed forms for their legal transfer to you, are in this box. These properties, in their entirety, I give to you in trust to hold for the young man now known as Alan Conrad of Blue Rapids, Kansas, to deliver any part or all over to him or to continue to hold it all in trust for him as you shall consider to be to his greatest advantage.
This for the reasons which I shall have told to you or him—I cannot know which one of you now, nor do I know how I shall tell it. But when you learn, Lawrence, think as well of me as you can and help him to be charitable to me.
With the greatest affection,BENJAMIN CORVET.
Alan, as he finished reading, looked up to Sherrill, bewildered and dazed.
"What does it mean, Mr. Sherrill?— Does it mean that he has gone away and left everything he had—everything to me?"
"The properties listed here," Sherrill touched the pages Alan first had looked at, "are in the box at the vault with the executed forms of their transfer to me. If Mr. Corvet does not return, and I do not receive any other instructions, I shall take over his estate as he has instructed for your advantage."
"And, Mr. Sherrill, he didn't tell you why? This is all you know?"
"Yes; you have everything now. The fact that he did not give his reasons for this, either to you or me, made me think at first that he might have made his plan known to some one else, and that he had been opposed—to the extent even of violence done upon him—to prevent his carrying it out. But the more I have considered this, the less likely it has seemed to me. Whatever had happened to Corvet that had so much disturbed and excited him lately, seems rather to have precipitated his plan than deterred him in it. He may have determined after he had written this that his actions and the plain indication of his relationship to you, gave all the explanation he wanted to make. All we can do, Alan, is to search for him in every way we can. There will be others searching for him too now; for information of his disappearance has got out. There have been reporters at the office this morning making inquiries, and his disappearance will be in the afternoon papers."
Sherrill put the papers back in their envelope, and the envelope back into the drawer, which he relocked.
"I went over all this with Mr. Spearman this morning," he said. "He is as much at a loss to explain it as I am."
He was silent for a few moments.
"The transfer of Mr. Corvet's properties to me for you," he said suddenly, "includes, as you have seen, Corvet's interest in the firm of 'Corvet, Sherrill and Spearman.' I went very carefully through the deeds and transfers in the deposit box, and it was plain that, while he had taken great care with the forms of transfer for all the properties, he had taken particular pains with whatever related to his holdings in this company and to his shipping interests. If I make over the properties to you, Alan, I shall begin with those; for it seems to me that your father was particularly anxious that you should take a personal as well as a financial place among the men who control the traffic of the lakes. I have told Spearman that this is my intention. He has not been able to see it my way as yet; but he may change his views, I think, after meeting you."
Sherrill got up. Alan arose a little unsteadily. The list of properties he had read and the letter and Sherrill's statement portended so much that its meaning could not all come to him at once. He followed Sherrill through a short private corridor, flanked with files lettered "Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman," into the large room he had seen when he came in with Constance. They crossed this, and Sherrill, without knocking, opened the door of the office marked, "Mr. Spearman." Alan, looking on past Sherrill as the door opened, saw that there were some half dozen men in the room, smoking and talking. They were big men mostly, ruddy-skinned and weather-beaten in look, and he judged from their appearance, and from the pile of their hats and coats upon a chair, that they were officers of the company's ships, idle while the ships were laid up, but reporting now at the offices and receiving instructions as the time for fitting out approached.
His gaze went swiftly on past these men to the one who, half seated on the top of the flat desk, had been talking to them; and his pulse closed upon his heart with a shock; he started, choked with astonishment, then swiftly forced himself under control. For this was the man whom he had met and whom he had fought in Benjamin Corvet's house the night before—the big man surprised in his blasphemy of Corvet and of souls "in Hell" who, at sight of an apparition with a bullet hole above its eye, had cried out in his fright, "You got Ben! But you won't get me—damn you! Damn you!"
Alan's shoulders drew up slightly, and the muscles of his hands tightened, as Sherrill led him to this man. Sherrill put his hand on the man's shoulder; his other hand was still on Alan's arm.
"Henry," he said to the man, "this is Alan Conrad. Alan, I want you to know my partner, Mr. Spearman."
Spearman nodded an acknowledgment, but did not put out his hand; his eyes—steady, bold, watchful eyes—seemed measuring Alan attentively; and in return Alan, with his gaze, was measuring him.
The instant of meeting, when Alan recognized in Sherrill's partner the man with whom he had fought in Corvet's house, was one of swift readjustment of all his thought—adjustment to a situation of which he could not even have dreamed, and which left him breathless. But for Spearman, obviously, it was not that. Following his noncommittal nod of acknowledgment of Sherrill's introduction and his first steady scrutiny of Alan, the big, handsome man swung himself off from the desk on which he sat and leaned against it, facing them more directly.
"Oh, yes—Conrad," he said. His tone was hearty; in it Alan could recognize only so much of reserve as might be expected from Sherrill's partner who had taken an attitude of opposition. The shipmasters, looking on, could see, no doubt, not even that; except for the excitement which Alan himself could not conceal, it must appear to them only an ordinary introduction.
Alan fought sharply down the swift rush of his blood and the tightening of his muscles.
"I can say truly that I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Spearman," he managed.
There was no recognition of anything beyond the mere surface meaning of the words in Spearman's slow smile of acknowledgment, as he turned from Alan to Sherrill.
"I'm afraid you've taken rather a bad time, Lawrence."
"You're busy, you mean. This can wait, Henry, if what you're doing is immediate."
"I want some of these men to be back in Michigan to-night. Can't we get together later—this afternoon? You'll be about here this afternoon?" His manner was not casual; Alan could not think of any expression of that man as being casual; but this, he thought, came as near it as Spearman could come.
"I think I can be here this afternoon," Alan said.
"Would two-thirty suit you?"
"As well as any other time."
"Let's say two-thirty, then." Spearman turned and noted the hour almost solicitously among the scrawled appointments on his desk pad; straightening, after this act of dismissal, he walked with them to the door, his hand on Sherrill's shoulder.
"Circumstances have put us—Mr. Sherrill and myself—in a very difficult position, Conrad," he remarked. "We want much to be fair to all concerned—"
He did not finish the sentence, but halted at the door. Sherrill went out, and Alan followed him; exasperation—half outrage yet half admiration—at Spearman's bearing, held Alan speechless. The blood rushed hotly to his skin as the door closed behind them, his hands clenched, and he turned back to the closed door; then he checked himself and followed Sherrill, who, oblivious to Alan's excitement, led the way to the door which bore Corvet's name. He opened it, disclosing an empty room, somewhat larger than Spearman's and similar to it, except that it lacked the marks of constant use. It was plain that, since Spearman had chosen to put off discussion of Alan's status, Sherrill did not know what next to do; he stood an instant in thought, then, contenting himself with inviting Alan to lunch, he excused himself to return to his office. When he had gone, closing the door behind him, Alan began to pace swiftly up and down the room.
What had just passed had left him still breathless; he felt bewildered. If every movement of Spearman's great, handsome body had not recalled to him their struggle of the night before—if, as Spearman's hand rested cordially on Sherrill's shoulder, Alan had not seemed to feel again that big hand at his throat—he would almost have been ready to believe that this was not the man whom he had fought. But he could not doubt that; he had recognized Spearman beyond question. And Spearman had recognized him—he was sure of that; he could not for an instant doubt it; Spearman had known it was Alan whom he had fought in Corvet's house even before Sherrill had brought them together. Was there not further proof of that in Spearman's subsequent manner toward him? For what was all this cordiality except defiance? Undoubtedly Spearman had acted just as he had to show how undisturbed he was, how indifferent he might be to any accusation Alan could make. Not having told Sherrill of the encounter in the house—not having told any one else—Alan could not tell it now, after Sherrill had informed him that Spearman opposed his accession to Corvet's estate; or, at least, he could not tell who the man was. In the face of Spearman's manner toward him to-day, Sherrill would not believe. If Spearman denied it—and his story of his return to town that morning made it perfectly certain that he would deny it—it would be only Alan's word against Spearman's—the word of a stranger unknown to Sherrill except by Alan's own account of himself and the inferences from Corvet's acts. There could be no risk to Spearman in that; he had nothing to fear if Alan blurted an accusation against him. Spearman, perhaps, even wanted him to do that—hoped he would do it. Nothing could more discredit Alan than such an unsustainable accusation against the partner who was opposing Alan's taking his father's place. For it had been plain that Spearman dominated Sherrill, and that Sherrill felt confidence in and admiration toward him.
Alan grew hot with the realization that, in the interview just past, Spearman had also dominated him. He had been unable to find anything adequate to do, anything adequate to answer, in opposition to this man more than fifteen years older than himself and having a lifelong experience in dealing with all kinds of men. He would not yield to Spearman like that again; it was the bewilderment of his recognition of Spearman that had made him do it. Alan stopped his pacing and flung himself down in the leather desk-chair which had been Corvet's. He could hear, at intervals, Spearman's heavy, genial voice addressing the ship men in his office; its tones—half of comradeship, half of command—told only too plainly his dominance over those men also. He heard Spearman's office door open and some of the men go out; after a time it opened again, and the rest went out. He heard Spearman's voice in the outer office, then heard it again as Spearman returned alone into his private office.
There was a telephone upon Corvet's desk which undoubtedly connected with the switchboard in the general office. Alan picked up the receiver and asked for "Mr. Spearman." At once the hearty voice answered, "Yes."
"This is Conrad."
"I thought I told you I was busy, Conrad!" The 'phone clicked as Spearman hung up the receiver.
The quality of the voice at the other end of the wire had altered; it had become suddenly again the harsh voice of the man who had called down curses upon "Ben" and on men "in Hell" in Corvet's library.
Alan sat back in his chair, smiling a little. It had not been for him, then—that pretense of an almost mocking cordiality; Spearman was not trying to deceive or to influence Alan by that. It had been merely for Sherrill's benefit; or, rather, it had been because, in Sherrill's presence, this had been the most effective weapon against Alan which Spearman could employ. Spearman might, or might not, deny to Alan his identity with the man whom Alan had fought; as yet Alan did not know which Spearman would do; but, at least, between themselves there was to be no pretense about the antagonism, the opposition they felt toward one another.
Little prickling thrills of excitement were leaping through Alan, as he got up and moved about the room again. The room was on a corner, and there were two windows, one looking to the east over the white and blue expanse of the harbor and the lake; the other showing the roofs and chimneys, the towers and domes of Chicago, reaching away block after block, mile after mile to the south and west, till they dimmed and blurred in the brown haze of the sunlit smoke. Power and possession—both far exceeding Alan's most extravagant dream—were promised him by those papers which Sherrill had shown him. When he had read down the list of those properties, he had had no more feeling, that such things could be his than he had had at first that Corvet's house could be his—until he had heard the intruder moving in that house. And now it was the sense that another was going to make him fight for those properties that was bringing to him the realization of his new power. He "had" something on that man—on Spearman. He did not know what that thing was; no stretch of his thought, nothing that he knew about himself or others, could tell him; but, at sight of him, in the dark of Corvet's house, Spearman had cried out in horror, he had screamed at him the name of a sunken ship, and in terror had hurled his electric torch. It was true, Spearman's terror had not been at Alan Conrad; it had been because Spearman had mistaken him for some one else—for a ghost. But, after learning that Alan was not a ghost, Spearman's attitude had not very greatly changed; he had fought, he had been willing to kill rather than to be caught there.
Alan thought an instant; he would make sure he still "had" that something on Spearman and would learn how far it went. He took up the receiver and asked for Spearman again.
Again the voice answered—"Yes."
"I don't care whether you're busy," Alan said evenly. "I think you and I had better have a talk before we meet with Mr. Sherrill this afternoon. I am here in Mr. Corvet's office now and will be here for half an hour; then I'm going out."
Spearman made no reply but again hung up the receiver. Alan sat waiting, his watch upon the desk before him—tense, expectant, with flushes of hot and cold passing over him. Ten minutes passed; then twenty. The telephone under Corvet's desk buzzed.
"Mr. Spearman says he will give you five minutes now," the switchboard girl said.
Alan breathed deep with relief; Spearman had wanted to refuse to see him—but he had not refused; he had sent for him within the time Alan had appointed and after waiting until just before it expired.
Alan put his watch back into his pocket and, crossing to the other office, found Spearman alone. There was no pretense of courtesy now in Spearman's manner; he sat motionless at his desk, his bold eyes fixed on Alan intently. Alan closed the door behind him and advanced toward the desk.
"I thought we'd better have some explanation," he said, "about our meeting last night."
"Our meeting?" Spearman repeated; his eyes had narrowed watchfully.
"You told Mr. Sherrill that you were in Duluth and that you arrived home in Chicago only this morning. Of course you don't mean to stick to that story with me?"
"What are you talking about?" Spearman demanded.
"Of course, I know exactly where you were a part of last evening; and you know that I know. I only want to know what explanation you have to offer."
Spearman leaned forward. "Talk sense and talk it quick, if you have anything to say to me!"
"I haven't told Mr. Sherrill that I found you at Corvet's house last night; but I don't want you to doubt for a minute that I know you—and about your damning of Benjamin Corvet and your cry about saving theMiwaka!"
A flash of blood came to Spearman's face; Alan, in his excitement, was sure of it; but there was just that flash, no more. He turned, while Spearman sat chewing his cigar and staring at him, and went out and partly closed the door. Then, suddenly, he reopened it, looked in, reclosed it sharply, and went on his way, shaking a little. For, as he looked back this second time at the dominant, determined, able man seated at his desk, what he had seen in Spearman's face was fear; fear of himself, of Alan Conrad of Blue Rapids—yet it was not fear of that sort which weakens or dismays; it was of that sort which, merely warning of danger close at hand, determines one to use every means within his power to save himself.
Alan, still trembling excitedly, crossed to Corvet's office to await Sherrill. It was not, he felt sure now, Alan Conrad that Spearman was opposing; it was not even the apparent successor to the controlling stock of Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman. That Alan resembled some one—some one whose ghost had seemed to come to Spearman and might, perhaps, have come to Corvet—was only incidental to what was going on now; for in Alan's presence Spearman found a threat—an active, present threat against himself. Alan could not imagine what the nature of that threat could be. Was it because there was something still concealed in Corvet's house which Spearman feared Alan would find? Or was it connected only with that some one whom Alan resembled? Who was it Alan resembled? His mother? In what had been told him, in all that he had been able to learn about himself, Alan had found no mention of his mother—no mention, indeed, of any woman. There had been mention, definite mention, of but one thing which seemed, no matter what form these new experiences of his took, to connect himself with all of them—mention of a ship, a lost ship—theMiwaka. That name had stirred Alan, when he first heard it, with the first feeling he had been able to get of any possible connection between himself and these people here. Spoken by himself just now it had stirred, queerly stirred, Spearman. What was it, then, that he—Alan—had to do with theMiwaka? Spearman might—must have had something to do with it. So must Corvet. But himself—he had been not yet three years old when theMiwakawas lost! Beyond and above all other questions, what had Constance Sherrill to do with it?
She had continued to believe that Corvet's disappearance was related in some way to herself. Alan would rather trust her intuition as to this than trust to Sherrill's contrary opinion. Yet she, certainly, could have had no direct connection with a ship lost about the time she was born and before her father had allied himself with the firm of Corvet and Spearman. In the misty warp and woof of these events, Alan could find as yet nothing which could have involved her. But he realized that he was thinking about her even more than he was thinking about Spearman—more, at that moment, even than about the mystery which surrounded himself.
Constance Sherrill, as she went about her shopping at Field's, was feeling the strangeness of the experience she had shared that morning with Alan when she had completed for him the Indian creation legend and had repeated the ship rhymes of his boyhood; but her more active thought was about Henry Spearman, for she had a luncheon engagement with him at one o'clock. He liked one always to be prompt at appointments; he either did not keep an engagement at all, or he was on the minute, neither early nor late, except for some very unusual circumstance. Constance could never achieve such accurate punctuality, so several minutes before the hour she went to the agreed corner of the silverware department.
She absorbed herself intently with the selection of her purchase as one o'clock approached. She was sure that, after his three days' absence, he would be a moment early rather than late; but after selecting what she wanted, she monopolized twelve minutes more of the salesman's time in showing her what she had no intention of purchasing, before she picked out Henry's vigorous step from the confusion of ordinary footfalls in the aisle behind her. Though she had determined, a few moments before, to punish him a little, she turned quickly.
"Sorry I'm late, Connie." That meant that it was no ordinary business matter that had detained him; but there was nothing else noticeably unusual in his tone.
"It's certainly your turn to be the tardy one," she admitted.
"I'd never take my turn if I could help it—particularly just after being away; you know that."
She turned carelessly to the clerk. "I'll take that too,"—she indicated the trinket which she had examined last. "Send it, please. I've finished here now, Henry."
"I thought you didn't like that sort of thing." His glance had gone to the bit of frippery in the clerk's hand.
"I don't," she confessed.
"Then don't buy it. She doesn't want that; don't send it," he directed the salesman.
"Very well, sir."
Henry touched her arm and turned her away. She flushed a little, but she was not displeased. Any of the other men whom she knew would have wasted twenty dollars, as lightly as herself, rather than confess, "I really didn't want anything more; I just didn't want to be seen waiting." They would not have admitted—those other men—that such a sum made the slightest difference to her or, by inference, to them; but Henry was always willing to admit that there had been a time when money meant much to him, and he gained respect thereby.
The tea room of such a department store as Field's offers to young people opportunities for dining together without furnishing reason for even innocently connecting their names too intimately, if a girl is not seen there with the same man too often. There is something essentially casual and unpremeditated about it—as though the man and the girl, both shopping and both hungry, had just happened to meet and go to lunch together. As Constance recently had drawn closer to Henry Spearman in her thought, and particularly since she had been seriously considering marrying him, she had clung deliberately to this unplanned appearance about their meetings. She found something thrilling in this casualness too. Spearman's bigness, which attracted eyes to him always in a crowd, was merely the first and most obvious of the things which kept attention on him; there were few women who, having caught sight of the big, handsome, decisive, carefully groomed man, could look away at once. If Constance suspected that, ten years before, it might have been the eyes of shop-girls that followed Spearman with the greatest interest, she was certain no one could find anything flashy about him now. What he compelled now was admiration and respect alike for his good looks and his appearance of personal achievement—a tribute very different from the tolerance granted those boys brought up as irresponsible inheritors of privilege like herself.
As they reached the restaurant and passed between the rows of tables, women looked up at him; oblivious, apparently, to their gaze, he chose a table a little removed from the others, where servants hurried to take his order, recognizing one whose time was of importance. She glanced across at him, when she had settled herself, and the first little trivialities of their being together were over.
"I took a visitor down to your office this morning," she said.
"Yes," he answered.
Constance was aware that it was only formally that she had taken Alan Conrad down to confer with her father; since Henry was there, she knew her father would not act without his agreement, and that whatever disposition had been made regarding Alan had been made by him. She wondered what that disposition had been.
"Did you like him, Henry?"
"Like him?" She would have thought that the reply was merely inattentive; but Henry was never merely that.
"I hoped you would."
He did not answer at once. The waitress brought their order, and he served her; then, as the waitress moved away, he looked across at Constance with a long scrutiny.
"You hoped I would!" he repeated, with his slow smile. "Why?"
"He seemed to be in a difficult position and to be bearing himself well; and mother was horrid to him."
"How was she horrid?"
"About the one thing which, least of all, could be called his fault—about his relationship to—to Mr. Corvet. But he stood up to her!"
The lids drew down a little upon Spearman's eyes as he gazed at her.
"You've seen a good deal of him, yesterday and to-day, your father tells me," he observed.
"Yes." As she ate, she talked, telling him about her first meeting with Alan and about their conversation of the morning and the queer awakening in him of those half memories which seemed to connect him in some way with the lakes. She felt herself flushing now and then with feeling, and once she surprised herself by finding her eyes wet when she had finished telling Henry about showing Alan the picture of his father. Henry listened intently, eating slowly. When she stopped, he appeared to be considering something.
"That's all he told you about himself?" he inquired.
"Yes."
"And all you told him?"
"He asked me some things about the lakes and about theMiwaka, which was lost so long ago—he said he'd found some reference to that and wanted to know whether it was a ship. I told him about it and about the Drum which made people think that the crew were not all lost."
"About the Drum! What made you speak of that?" The irritation in his tone startled her and she looked quickly up at him. "I mean," he offered, "why did you drag in a crazy superstition like that? You don't believe in the Drum, Connie!"
"It would be so interesting if some one really had been saved and if the Drum had told the truth, that sometimes I think I'd like to believe in it. Wouldn't you, Henry?"
"No," he said abruptly. "No!" Then quickly:
"It's plain enough you like him," he remarked.
She reflected seriously. "Yes, I do; though I hadn't thought of it just that way, because I was thinking most about the position he was in and about—Mr. Corvet. But I do like him."
"So do I," Spearman said with a seeming heartiness that pleased her. He broke a piece of bread upon the tablecloth and his big, well-shaped fingers began to roll it into little balls. "At least I should like him, Connie, if I had the sort of privilege you have to think whether I liked or disliked him. I've had to consider him from another point of view—whether I could trust him or must distrust him."
"Distrust?" Constance bent toward him impulsively in her surprise. "Distrust him? In relation to what? Why?"
"In relation to Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman, Connie—the company that involves your interests and your father's and mine and the interests of many other people—small stockholders who have no influence in its management, and whose interests I have to look after for them. A good many of them, you know, are our own men—our old skippers and mates and families of men who have died in our service and who left their savings in stock in our ships."
"I don't understand, Henry."
"I've had to think of Conrad this morning in the same way as I've had to think of Ben Corvet of recent years—as a threat against the interests of those people."
Her color rose, and her pulse quickened. Henry never had talked to her, except in the merest commonplaces, about his relations with Uncle Benny; it was a matter in which, she had recognized, they had been opposed; and since the quarrels between the old friend whom she had loved from childhood and him, who wished to become now more than a mere friend to her, had grown more violent, she had purposely avoided mentioning Uncle Benny to Henry, and he, quite as consciously, had avoided mentioning Mr. Corvet to her.
"I've known for a good many years," Spearman said reluctantly, "that Ben Corvet's brain was seriously affected. He recognized that himself even earlier, and admitted it to himself when he took me off my ship to take charge of the company. I might have gone with other people then, or it wouldn't have been very long before I could have started in as a ship owner myself; but, in view of his condition, Ben made me promises that offered me most. Afterwards his malady progressed so that he couldn't know himself to be untrustworthy; his judgment was impaired, and he planned and would have tried to carry out many things which would have been disastrous for the company. I had to fight him—for the company's sake and for my own sake and that of the others, whose interests were at stake. Your father came to see that what I was doing was for the company's good and has learned to trust me. But you—you couldn't see that quite so directly, of course, and you thought I didn't—like Ben, that there was some lack in me which made me fail to appreciate him."
"No; not that," Constance denied quickly. "Not that, Henry."
"What was it then, Connie? You thought me ungrateful to him? I realized that I owed a great deal to him; but the only way I could pay that debt was to do exactly what I did—oppose him and seem to push into his place and be an ingrate; for, because I did that, Ben's been a respected and honored man in this town all these last years, which he couldn't have remained if I'd let him have his way, or if I told others why I had to do what I did. I didn't care what others thought about me; but I did care what you thought; yet if you couldn't see what I was up against because of your affection for him, why—that was all right too."
"No, it wasn't all right," she denied almost fiercely, the flush flooding her cheeks; a throbbing was in her throat which, for an instant, stopped her. "You should have told me, Henry; or—I should have been able to see."
"I couldn't tell you—dear," he said the last word very distinctly, but so low that she could scarcely hear. "I couldn't tell you now—if Ben hadn't gone away as he has and this other fellow come. I couldn't tell you when you wanted to keep caring so much for your Uncle Benny, and he was trying to hurt me with you."
She bent toward him, her lips parted; but now she did not speak. She never had really known Henry until this moment, she felt; she had thought of him always as strong, almost brutal, fighting down fiercely, mercilessly, his opponents and welcoming contest for the joy of overwhelming others by his own decisive strength and power. And she had been almost ready to marry that man for his strength and dominance from those qualities; and now she knew that he was merciful too—indeed, more than merciful. In the very contest where she had thought of him as most selfish and regardless of another, she had most completely misapprehended.
"I ought to have seen!" she rebuked herself to him. "Surely, I should have seen that was it!" Her hand, in the reproach of her feeling, reached toward him across the table; he caught it and held it in his large, strong hand which, in its touch, was very tender too. She had never allowed any such demonstration as this before; but now she let her hand remain in his.
"How could you see?" he defended her. "He never showed to you the side he showed to me and—in these last years, anyway—never to me the side he showed to you. But after what has happened this week, you can understand now; and you can see why I have to distrust the young fellow who's come to claim Ben Covert's place."
"Claim!" Constance repeated; she drew her hand quietly away from his now. "Why, Henry, I did not know he claimed anything; he didn't even know when he came here—"
"He seems, like Ben Corvet," Henry said slowly, "to have the characteristic of showing one side to you, another to me, Connie. With you, of course, he claimed nothing; but at the office— Your father showed him this morning the instruments of transfer that Ben seems to have left conveying to him all Ben had—his other properties and his interest in Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman. I very naturally objected to the execution of those transfers, without considerable examination, in view of Corvet's mental condition and of the fact that they put the controlling stock of Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman in the hands of a youth no one ever had heard of—and one who, by his own story, never had seen a ship until yesterday. And when I didn't dismiss my business with a dozen men this morning to take him into the company, he claimed occasion to see me alone to threaten me."
"Threaten you, Henry? How? With what?"
"I couldn't quite make out myself, but that was his tone; he demanded an 'explanation' of exactly what, he didn't make clear. He has been given by Ben, apparently, the technical control of Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman. His idea, if I oppose him, evidently is to turn me out and take the management himself."
Constance leaned back, confused. "He—Alan Conrad?" she questioned. "He can't have done that, Henry! Oh, he can't have meant that!"
"Maybe he didn't; I said I couldn't make out what he did mean," Spearman said. "Things have come upon him with rather a rush, of course; and you couldn't expect a country boy to get so many things straight. He's acting, I suppose, only in the way one might expect a boy to act who had been brought up in poverty on a Kansas prairie and was suddenly handed the possible possession of a good many millions of dollars. It's better to believe that he's only lost his head. I haven't had opportunity to tell your father these things yet; but I wanted you to understand why Conrad will hardly consider me a friend."
"I'll understand you now, Henry," she promised.
He gazed at her and started to speak; then, as though postponing it on account of the place, he glanced around and took out his watch.
"You must go back?" she asked.
"No; I'm not going back to the office this afternoon, Connie; but I must call up your father."
He excused himself and went into the nearest telephone booth.