The Indian Drum Part 8

The fact that this other man searched also did not prove that Benjamin Corvet had left a record in the house, as Sherrill believed; but it certainly showed that another person believed--or feared--it. Whether or not guilt had sent Benjamin Corvet away four days ago, whether or not there had been guilt behind the ghost which had "got Ben," there was guilt in the big man's superst.i.tious terror when he had seen Alan.

A bold, powerful man like that one, when his conscience is clear, does not see a ghost. And the ghost which he had seen had a bullet hole above the brows!

Alan did not flatter himself that in any physical sense he had triumphed over that man; so far as it had gone, his adversary had had rather the better of the battle; he had endeavored to stun Alan, or perhaps do worse than stun; but after the first grapple, his purpose had been to get away. But he had not fled from Alan; he had fled from discovery of who he was. Sherrill had told Alan of no one whom he could identify with this man; but Alan could describe him to Sherrill.

Alan found a lavatory and washed and straightened his collar and tie and brushed his clothes. There was a bruise on the side of his head; but though it throbbed painfully, it did not leave any visible mark.

He could return now to the Sherrills'. It was not quite midnight but he believed by this time Sherrill was probably home; perhaps already he had gone to bed. Alan took up his hat and looked about the house; he was going to return and sleep here, of course; he was not going to leave the house unguarded for any long time after this; but, after what had just happened, he felt he could leave it safely for half an hour, particularly if he left a light burning within.

He did this and stepped out. The wind from the west was blowing hard, and the night had become bitter cold; yet, as Alan reached the drive, he could see far out the tossing lights of a s.h.i.+p and, as he went toward the Sherrills', he gazed out over the roaring water. Often on nights like this, he knew, his father must have been battling such water.

The man who answered his ring at the Sherrills' recognized him at once and admitted him; in reply to Alan's question, the servant said that Mr. Sherrill had not yet returned. When Alan went to his room, the valet appeared and, finding that Alan was packing, the man offered his service. Alan let him pack and went down-stairs; a motor had just driven up to the house.

It proved to have brought Constance and her mother; Mrs. Sherrill, after informing Alan that Mr. Sherrill might not return until some time later, went up-stairs and did not appear again. Constance followed her mother but, ten minutes later came downstairs.

"You're not staying here to-night?" she said.

"I wanted to say to your father," Alan explained, "that I believe I had better go over to the other house."

She came a little closer to him in her concern. "Nothing has happened here?"

"Here? You mean in this house?" Alan smiled. "No; nothing."

She seemed relieved. Alan, remembering her mother's manner, thought he understood; she knew that remarks had been made, possibly, which repeated by a servant might have offended him.

"I'm afraid it's been a hard day for you," she said.

"It's certainly been unusual," Alan admitted.

It had been a hard day for her, too, he observed; or probably the recent days, since her father's and her own good friend had gone, had been trying. She was tired now and nervously excited; but she was so young that the little signs of strain and worry, instead of making her seem older, only made her youth more apparent. The curves of her neck and her pretty, rounded shoulders were as soft as before; her l.u.s.trous, brown hair was more beautiful, and a slight flush colored her clear skin.

It had seemed to Alan, when Mrs. Sherrill had spoken to him a few minutes before, that her manner toward him had been more reserved and constrained than earlier in the evening; and he had put that down to the lateness of the hour; but now he realized that she probably had been discussing him with Constance, and that it was somewhat in defiance of her mother that Constance had come down to speak with him again.

"Are you taking any one over to the other house with you?" she inquired.

"Any one?"

"A servant, I mean."

"No."

"Then you'll let us lend you a man from here."

"You're awfully good; but I don't think I'll need any one to-night.

Mr. Corvet's--my father's man--is coming back to-morrow, I understand.

I'll get along very well until then."

She was silent a moment as she looked away. Her shoulders suddenly jerked a little. "I wish you'd take some one with you," she persisted.

"I don't like to think of you alone over there."

"My father must have been often alone there."

"Yes," she said. "Yes." She looked at him quickly, then away, checking a question. She wanted to ask, he knew, what he had discovered in that lonely house which had so agitated him; for of course she had noticed agitation in him. And he had intended to tell her or, rather, her father. He had been rehearsing to himself the description of the man he had met there in order to ask Sherrill about him; but now Alan knew that he was not going to refer the matter even to Sherrill just yet.

Sherrill had believed that Benjamin Corvet's disappearance was from circ.u.mstances too personal and intimate to be made a subject of public inquiry; and what Alan had encountered in Corvet's house had confirmed that belief. Sherrill further had said that Benjamin Corvet, if he had wished Sherrill to know those circ.u.mstances, would have told them to him; but Corvet had not done that; instead, he had sent for Alan, his son. He had given his son his confidence.

Sherrill had admitted that he was withholding from Alan, for the time being, something that he knew about Benjamin Corvet; it was nothing, he had said, which would help Alan to learn about his father, or what had become of him; but perhaps Sherrill, not knowing these other things, could not speak accurately as to that. Alan determined to ask Sherrill what he had been withholding before he told him all of what had happened in Corvet's house. There was one other circ.u.mstance which Sherrill had mentioned but not explained; it occurred to Alan now.

"Miss Sherrill--" he checked himself.

"What is it?"

"This afternoon your father said that you believed that Mr. Corvet's disappearance was in some way connected with you; he said that he did not think that was so; but do you want to tell me why you thought it?"

"Yes; I will tell you." She colored quickly. "One of the last things Mr. Corvet did--in fact, the last thing we know of his doing before he sent for you--was to come to me and warn me against one of my friends."

"Warn you, Miss Sherrill? How? I mean, warn you against what?"

"Against thinking too much of him." She turned away.

Alan saw in the rear of the hall the man who had been waiting with the suitcase. It was after midnight now and, for far more than the intended half hour, Alan had left his father's house unwatched, to be entered by the front door whenever the man, who had entered it before, returned with his key.

"I think I'll come to see your father in the morning," Alan said, when Constance looked back to him.

"You won't borrow Simons?" she asked again.

"Thank you, no."

"But you'll come over here for breakfast in the morning?"

"You want me?"

"Certainly."

"I'd like to come very much."

"Then I'll expect you." She followed him to the door when he had put on his things, and he made no objection when she asked that the man be allowed to carry his bag around to the other house. When he glanced back, after reaching the walk, he saw her standing inside the door, watching through the gla.s.s after him.

When he had dismissed Simons and reentered the house on Astor Street, he found no evidences of any disturbance while he had been gone. On the second floor, to the east of the room which had been his father's, was a bedroom which evidently had been kept as a guest chamber; Alan carried his suitcase there and made ready for bed.

The sight of Constance Sherrill standing and watching after him in concern as he started back to this house, came to him again and again and, also, her flush when she had spoken of the friend against whom Benjamin Corvet had warned her. Who was he? It had been impossible at that moment for Alan to ask her more; besides, if he had asked and she had told him, he would have learned only a name which he could not place yet in any connection with her or with Benjamin Corvet. Whoever he was, it was plain that Constance Sherrill "thought of him"; lucky man, Alan said to himself. Yet Corvet had warned her not to think of him....

Alan turned back his bed. It had been for him a tremendous day.

Barely twelve hours before he had come to that house, Alan Conrad from Blue Rapids, Kansas; now ... phrases from what Lawrence Sherrill had told him of his father were running through his mind as he opened the door of the room to be able to hear any noise in Benjamin Corvet's house, of which he was sole protector. The emotion roused by his first sight of the lake went through him again as he opened the window to the east.

Now--he was in bed--he seemed to be standing, a specter before a man blaspheming Benjamin Corvet and the souls of men dead. "And the hole above the eye! ... The bullet got you! ... So it's you that got Ben!

... I'll get you! ... You can't save the _Miwaka_!"

The _Miwaka_! The stir of that name was stronger now even than before; it had been running through his consciousness almost constantly since he had heard it. He jumped up and turned on the light and found a pencil. He did not know how to spell the name and it was not necessary to write it down; the name had taken on that definiteness and ineffaceableness of a thing which, once heard, can never again be forgotten. But, in panic that he might forget, he wrote it, guessing at the spelling--"_Miwaka_."