The Million-Dollar Suitcase Part 16

"You keep out of this, Boyne."

"You tell what's up your sleeve, c.u.mmings," I countered. "This is no witness-stand cross-examination. What you got?"

But Worth answered for him, hotly,

"If c.u.mmings hasn't seventy-two thousand dollars I commissioned him to raise for me, I don't care what he's got."

"And you didn't go to your father for it last night?" c.u.mmings returned to his question. He had moved close to the boy. Barbara stood just where she was when the door opened. Neither paid any attention to her. But she looked at the two men, drawn up with glances clinched, and spoke out suddenly in her clear young voice, as though there was no row on hand,

"Worth was with me last night, you know, Mr. c.u.mmings."

"I seem to have noticed something of the sort," c.u.mmings said with labored sarcasm. "And he'd been with that wedding party earlier in the evening, I suppose."

"With me till Miss Wallace came in." Worth's natural disposition to disoblige the lawyer could be depended on to keep from c.u.mmings whatever information he wanted before giving us his own news. "What you got, c.u.mmings?" I prompted again, impatiently. "Come through."

His eyes never s.h.i.+fted an instant from Worth Gilbert's face.

"A telegram--from Santa Ysobel," he said slowly.

Worth shrugged and half turned away.

"I'm not interested in your telegram, c.u.mmings."

Instantly I saw what the boy thought: that the other had taken it on himself to apply for the money to Thomas Gilbert, and had been turned down.

"Not interested?" c.u.mmings repeated in that dry, lawyer voice that speaks from the teeth out; on the mere tone, I braced for something nasty. "I think you are. My telegram's from the coroner."

Silence after that; Worth obstinately mute; Barbara and I afraid to ask.

There was a little tremor of c.u.mmings' nostril, he couldn't keep the flicker out of his eye, as he said, staring straight at Worth,

"It states that your father shot himself last night. The body wasn't discovered till late this morning, in his study."

CHAPTER IX

SANTA YSOBEL

Of all unexpected things. I went down to Santa Ysobel with Worth Gilbert. It happened this way: c.u.mmings, one of those individuals on whose tombstone may truthfully be put, "Born a man--and died a lawyer,"

seemed rather taken aback at the effect of the blow he'd launched. If he was after information, I can't think he learned much in the moment while Worth stood regarding him with an unreadable eye.

There was only a little grimmer tightening of the jaw muscle, something bleak and robbed in the glance of the eye; the face of one, it seemed to me, who grieved the more because he was denied real sorrow for his loss, and Worth had tramped to the window and stood with his back to us, putting the thing over in his silent, fighting fas.h.i.+on, speaking to none of us. It was when Barbara followed, took hold of his sleeve and began half whispering up into his face that c.u.mmings jerked his hat from the table where he had thrown it, and snapped,

"Boyne--can I have a few minutes of your time?"

"Jerry," Worth's voice halted me at the door, "Leave that card--an order--for me. For the suitcase."

c.u.mmings was ahead of me, and he turned back to listen, but I crowded him along and was pretty hot when I faced him in the outer office to demand,

"What kind of a deal do you call this--ripping in here to throw this thing at the boy in such a way? What is your idea? What you trying to put over?"

"Go easy, Boyne." c.u.mmings chewed his words a little before he let them out. "There's something queer in this business. I intend to know what it is."

"Queer," I repeated his word. "If the lawyers and the detectives get to running down all the queer things--that don't concern them a little bit--the world won't have any more peace."

"All right, if you say it doesn't concern you," c.u.mmings threw me overboard with relief I thought. "It does concern me. When I couldn't get--him"--a jerk of the head indicated that the p.r.o.noun stood for Worth--"at the Palace, found he'd been out all day and left no word at the desk when he expected to be in, I took my telegram to Knapp, and then to Whipple. They were flabbergasted."

"The bank crowd," I said. "Now why did you run to them? On account of Worth's engagement with them to-morrow morning? Wasn't that exceeding your orders? You saw that he intends to meet it, in spite of this."

"Why not because of this?" c.u.mmings demanded sharply. "He's in better shape to meet it now his father's dead. He's the only heir. That's the first thing Knapp and Whipple spoke of--and I saw them separately."

"Can that stuff. What do you think you're hinting at?"

"Something queer," he repeated his phrase. "Wake up, Boyne. Knapp and Whipple both saw Thomas Gilbert a little before noon yesterday. He was in the bank for the final transfer of the Hanford interests. They'd as soon have thought of my committing suicide that night--or you doing it.

They swear there was nothing in his manner or bearing to suggest such a state of mind, and everything in the business he was engaged on to suggest that he expected to live out his days like any man."

I thought very little of this; it is common in cases of suicide for family, friends or business a.s.sociates to talk in exactly this way, to believe it, and yet for the deep-seated moving cause to be easily discovered by an unprejudiced outsider. I said as much to c.u.mmings. And while I spoke, we could hear a murmur of young voices from the inner room.

"d.a.m.n it all," the lawyer's irritation spurted out suddenly, "With a cub like that for a son, I'd say the reason wasn't far to seek. Better keep your eye peeled round that young man, Boyne."

"I will," I agreed, and he took his departure. I turned back into the private room.

"Worth"--I put it quietly--"what say I go to Santa Ysobel with you? You could bring me back Monday morning."

He agreed at once, silently, but thankfully I thought.

Barbara, listening, proposed half timidly to go with us, staying the night at the Thornhill place, being brought back before work time Monday, and was accepted simply. So it came that when we had a blow-out as the crown of a dozen other petty disasters which had delayed our progress toward Santa Ysobel, and found our spare tire flat, Barbara jumped down beside Worth where he stood dragging out the pump, and stopped him, suggesting that we save time by running the last few miles on the rim and getting fixed up at Capehart's garage. He climbed in without a word, and drove on toward where Santa Ysobel lies at the head of its broad valley, surrounded by the apricot, peach and prune orchards that are its wealth.

We came into the fringes of the town in the obscurity of approaching night; a thick tulle fog had blown down on the north wind. The little foot-hill city was all drowned in it; tree-tops, roofs, the gable ends of houses, the illuminated dial of the town clock on the city hall, sticking up from the blur like things seen in a dream. As we headed for a garage with the name Capehart on it, we heard, soft, m.u.f.fled, seven strokes from the tower.

"Getting in late," Worth said absently. "Bill still keeps the old place?"

"Yes. Just the same," Barbara said. "He married our Sarah, you know--was that before you went away? Of course not," and added for my enlightenment, "Sarah Gibbs was father's housekeeper for years. She brought me up."

We drove into the big, dimly lighted building; there came to us from its corner office what might have been described as a wide man, not especially imposing in breadth, but with a sort of loose-jointed effectiveness to his movements, and a pair of roving, yellowish-hazel eyes in his broad, good-humored face, mighty observing I'd say, in spite of the lazy roll of his glance.

"Been stepping on tacks, Mister?" he hailed, having looked at the tires before he took stock of the human freight.

"h.e.l.lo, Bill," Worth was singing out. "Give me another machine--or get our spare filled and on--whichever's quickest. I want to make it to the house as soon as I can."

"Lord, boy!" The wide man began wiping a big paw before offering it.

"I'm glad to see you."

They shook hands. Worth repeated his request, but the garage man was already unbuckling the spare, going to the work with a brisk efficiency that contradicted his appearance.

Barbara sitting quietly beside me, we heard them talking at the back of the machine, as the jack quickly lifted us and Worth went to it with Capehart to unbolt the rim; a low-toned steady stream from the wide man, punctuated now and then by a word from Worth.