Ralestone Luck Part 29

"So that's what you really think of me!" observed Rupert. "Go reason with that wildcat of yours if you want to. I'm beginning to believe that you are two of a kind." He turned abruptly down the hall.

Val opened the door of the bedroom. The sunlight was fading fast and already the corners of the large room were filled with the gray of dusk.

But light from the windows swept full across the bed and its occupant.

Val hobbled stiffly toward it.

"h.e.l.lo." The brown face on the pillow did not change expression as Val greeted the swamper. "How do you feel now?"

"Bettah," Jeems answered shortly. "Ah'm good but they won't le' me up."

"The Doc says you're in for a couple of days," Val told him.

Somehow Jeems looked smaller, shrunken, as he lay in that oversized bed.

And he had lost that air of indolent arrogance which had made him seem so independent in their swamp and garden meetings. It was as if Val were looking down upon a younger and less confident edition of the swamper he had known.

"What does he think?" There was urgency in that question.

"Who's he?"

"Yo' brothah."

"Rupert? Why, he's glad to have you here," Val answered.

"Does he know 'bout--"

Val shook his head.

"Tell him!" ordered the swamper. "Ah ain't a-goin' to stay undah his ruff lessen he knows. 'Tain't fitten."

At this clean-cut statement of the laws of hospitality, Val nodded. "All right. I'll tell him. But what were you after here, Jeems? I'll have to tell him that, too, you know. Was it the Civil War treasure?"

Jeems turned his head slowly. "No." Again the puzzled frown twisted his straight, finely marked brows. "What do Ah want wi' treasure? Ah don't know what Ah was lookin' fo'. Mah grandpappy--"

"Val, supper's ready," came Rupert's voice from the hall.

Val half turned to go. "I've got to go now. But I'll be back later," he promised.

"Yo'll tell him?" Jeems stabbed a finger at the door.

"Yes; after supper. I promise."

With a little sigh Jeems relaxed and burrowed down into the softness of the pillow. "Ah'll be awaitin'," he said.

CHAPTER XIII

ON SUCH A NIGHT AS THIS--

It had been on of those dull, weepy days when a sullen drizzle clouded sky and earth. In consequence, the walls and floors of Pirate's Haven seemed to exude chill. Rupert built a fire in the hall fireplace, but none of the family could say that it was a successful one. It made a nice show of leaping flame accompanied by fancy lighting effects but gave forth absolutely no heat.

"Val?"

The boy started guiltily and thrust his note-book under the couch cus.h.i.+on as Charity came in. Tiny drops of rain were strung along the hairs which had blown free of her rain-cape hood like steel beads along a golden wire.

"Yes? Don't come here expecting to get warm," he warned her bitterly.

"We are very willing but the fire is weak. Looks pretty, doesn't it?" He kicked at a charred end on the hearth. "Well, that's all it's good for!"

"Val, what sort of a mess have you and Jeems jumped into?" she asked as she handed him her dripping cape.

"Oh, just a general sort of mess," he answered lightly. "Jeems had callers who forgot their manners. So Ricky and I breezed in and brought the party to a sudden end--"

"As I can see by your black eye," she commented. "But what has Jeems been up to?"

Val was suddenly very busy holding her cape before that mockery of a blaze.

"Why don't you ask him that?"

"Because I'm asking you. Rupert came over last night and sat on my gallery making very roundabout inquiries concerning Jeems. I pried out of him the details of your swamp battle. But I want to know now just what Jeems has been doing. Your brother is so vague--"

"Rupert has the gift of being exasperatingly uncommunicative," his brother told her. "The story, so far as I know, is short and simple.

Jeems knows a secret way into this house. In addition, his grandfather told him that the fortune of the house of Jeems is concealed here--having been very hazy in his description of the nature of said fortune. Consequently, grandson has been playing haunt up and down our halls trying to find it.

"His story is as full of holes as a sieve but somehow one can't help believing it. He has explained that he has the secret of the outside entrance only, and not the one opening from the inside. In the meantime he is in bed--guarded from intrusion by Ricky and Lucy with the same care as if he were the crown jewels. So matters rest at present."

"Neatly put." She dropped down on the couch. "By the way, do you realize that you have ruined your face for my uses?"

Val fingered the crisscrossing tape on his cheek. "This is only temporary."

"I certainly hope so. That must have been some battle."

"One of our better efforts." He coughed in mock modesty. "Ricky saved the day with alarms and excursions without. Rupert probably told you that."

"Yes, he can be persuaded to talk at times. Is he always so silent?"

"Nowadays, yes," he answered slowly. "But when we were younger--You know," Val turned toward her suddenly, his brown face serious to a degree, "it isn't fair to separate the members of a family. To put one here and one there and the third somewhere else. I was twelve when Father died, and Ricky was eleven. They sent her off to Great-aunt Rogers because Uncle Fleming, who took me, didn't care for a girl--"

"And Rupert?"

"Rupert--well, he was grown, he could arrange his own life; so he just went away. We got a letter now and then, or a post-card. There was money enough to send us to expensive schools and dress us well. It was two years before I really saw Ricky again. You can't call short visits on Sunday afternoons seeing anyone.

"Then Uncle Fleming died and I was simply parked at Great-aunt Rogers'. She"--Val was remembering things, a bitter look about his mouth--"didn't care for boys. In September I was sent to a military academy. I needed discipline, it seemed. And Ricky was sent to Miss Somebody's-on-the-Hudson. Rupert was in China then. I got a letter from him that fall. He was about to join some expedition heading into the Gobi.

"Ricky came down to the Christmas hop at the academy, then Aunt Rogers took her abroad. She went to school in Switzerland a year. I pa.s.sed from school to summer camp and then back to school. Ricky sent me some carvings for Christmas--they arrived three days late."

He stared up at the stone mantel. "Kids feel things a lot more than they're given credit for. Ricky sent me a letter with some tear stains between the lines when Aunt Rogers decided to stay another year. And that was the year I earned the reputation of being a 'hard case.'

"Then Ricky cabled me that she was coming home. I walked out of school the same morning. I didn't even tell anyone where I was going. Because I had money enough, I thought I would fly. And that, dear lady, is the end of this very sad tale." He grinned one-sidedly down at her.