Blacksheep! Blacksheep! by Meredith Nicholson (best books for students to read TXT) 📕

"Aries, the Lamb, the Fishes! For a time I stumbled and walked in darkness but the leading light is clearer now. The moving finger writes—writes!" He dropped his pencil and gazed blankly into space.

Archie had caught one day a glimpse of several of the zodiacal signs drawn on the margin of a newspaper where the Governor had neglected to erase them; but he was astounded to find that he was in the company of a man who took counsel of the stars.

"Né sous une mauvaise étoile! You catch the sense admirably. Yes, I was born under an evil star; just that! But if I haven't pondered the mysteries unprofitably I shall emerge from the shadow in due season. When you see me scribbling I am calculating the potency of the dark fate that overhangs me and trying to estimate when if ever the cloud will pass. Don't trouble your head with those fancies; leave them to me. Hope is buoyed in me by the fact that never yet have my figures erred. The night before I picked you up in the road I knew that you were walking toward me out of nowhere, and I was charged by the planets to befriend you. So here we are, pilgrims under heavenly protection!"

"I'm sorry; I don't want to leave you; I couldn't make it alone," Archie answered, awed and meek under these revelations.

"It's very curious, Archie," the Governor resumed, making a little pile of the scraps to which he had already reduced the sketch; "it's quite remarkable that the light still hangs in the west for us. Since you joined me it has been more brilliant. It may be that after all you are destined to bring me good luck!" He paced the floor for several minutes, then struck his hands together sharply. "All right!" he exclaimed. "It has never failed me! The light is mild, feminine, we shall say, gentle, persuasive, encouraging. It would be fatal to ignore its message."

Archie watched him for some gleam of humor, but the Governor had never been more serious. His face lighted as he found Archie's eyes fixed upon him.

"You were thinking just then that I've gone crazy; but I assure you that I'm perfectly able to give myself all the tests for insanity; I should recognize the symptoms immediately, from my ability to look into myself with the detachment of a man who stands at a window and peers into a lighted room. To return to practical affairs, we shall abandon Collins' machine and I'll wire him where to pick it up. Then we'll entrain at our leisure."

"If you don't mind my asking, I'd like to know where we're bound for?"

"New York, my dear boy; but you needn't be alarmed. It will be hot there and we'll only pause for a day or so. We both need to freshen up our wardrobe a bit."

Archie shook his head stubbornly.

"I haven't told you this, but I'm supposed to be in the Canadian Rockies. It would be a risky business for me to show up in town! I might at any turn run into relatives or friends who know I left for a two months' absence in the Rockies. And incidentally, the same people might know I had been to Bailey Harbor."

"You're a frightful egotist, Archie! This is a large world and man's memory is short. The man you dine with most frequently at your club wouldn't remember in a week whether you told him you were going to the Rockies or the Himalayas and if you met him on the Avenue he'd merely nod and pass on trying to remember who the devil you were. But I renew my sacred promise to take care of you; you may rely on me, Archie. Now as always we invite the most searching scrutiny! If you see any old friends I beg of you do not attempt to dodge them; shake one and all heartily by the hand. We'll pretend that our black wool is as white as the drifted snow, and no one will run after us shouting, 'Blacksheep, blacksheep!'"

As the train flew along the Connecticut shore Archie realized with a new poignancy the tremendous change that had occurred in his life since he left New York, his birthplace and the home of his family for two hundred years. Instead of lounging in clubs and his luxurious apartment he would now go skulking through the streets with a master crook, and his imagination was already intent upon the character of the lair to which the Governor would guide him. He still swayed between the joys of his mad adventure and its perils. He might, he knew, bid the Governor good-by at the Grand Central Station, step into a taxi and walk into the door of one or another of his clubs and bid the world defiance. The serenity of his life as known to his friends would be a sufficient refutation of any charge that might be made against him. No one would believe the mysterious Governor if he were to declare on oath that Archibald Bennett was a criminal who had left a scarlet trail across three states.

It would be an interesting experiment to defy the Governor; but he dismissed this as foolish and hazardous. The Governor had a long arm, and having trifled with his good nature at the Walkers' it would certainly be ungracious and in all likelihood disastrous to offend him a second time. But the Governor's fantastic talk about the joining of their stars in the west had touched his imagination. With all his absurdities, and strange and unaccountable as he was, the Governor did make good his promises. If he wasn't in league with occult powers he at least possessed a baffling sort of prescience; and what was more to the point he had apparently reduced to a fine art the business of keeping clear of the authorities. If he could escape from the Governor it would be to take up his old eventless life, with a recrudescence no doubt of the ills that had so long beset him; and he had utterly forgotten that he had ever been an invalid. He grinned as he reflected that he had been obliged to shoot a man to find a cure for his nerves.

As the train drew out of New Haven the Governor, seemingly absorbed in a magazine, covertly kicked him. A man passed slowly through the car, carelessly eyeing the passengers. When he reached Archie's chair he paused as though steadying himself against the swaying train. For a moment he clung to the back of the Governor's chair, which was turned toward the window, and his eyes surveyed the luggage piled under the windows. The Governor swung round presently and remarked indifferently without changing his position:

"Rawlings, the best man they have in the Department now. He's looking for some one but let us hope it's not us. A very keen eye has Rawlings. Not one of these sleuths in a black derby and false mustache you see in the movies, but a gentleman and a man of education. He's probably looking for that teller who cut a slice out of the surplus of a Massachusetts bank last week. It's not our trouble, Archie. Embezzlers and defaulters are not to my taste; we rather look down on that breed in the brotherhood. A low order of talent; no brains; they're not in our class."

"But it isn't necessary to advertise our sins to the whole train!" whispered Archie, eyeing apprehensively their nearest neighbors in the crowded car. "You haven't convinced me yet that we're not making a serious blunder."

"Cease grumbling! If we wanted to play safe we'd both enter some home for aged and decrepit men and sit among the halt and blind and toothless until we became even as they. Rawlings' defaulter is encumbered, most disgracefully, with the usual blonde, in this case the lily-handed cashier in a motion picture shop; and a man of Rawlings' intelligence would know at a glance that we are not villains of that breed. I haven't traveled by this route for some time and I mean to keep awake to enjoy the pleasant view. My historical sense is always tickled as I cut across Rhode Island and contemplate the state house at Providence. If we were not really upon business bent we might have run down to Narragansett Pier or even to Newport for a breath of air. Newport! Newport is adorable! I am far from being a snob, Archie, but Newport is really the loveliest place in America. I grant you that Bar Harbor has its points and even Bailey Harbor is not so bad—do pardon me, Archie! I forgot for the moment your unhappy memories of that place—but Newport alone is perfection gone to heaven! It would please me enormously to join you in a little excursion to Newport, by yacht preferably; but if it leaked out that we had been flying so high it would injure us with the simple-hearted comrades of the great brotherhood. You can imagine what a man like Red Leary would say if he knew we were dining at tables where the jewels run into millions. And your young friend Abijah, alias Pete Barney, would certainly cut our acquaintance if we failed to take advantage of such glorious opportunities."

"How are you going to know whether we're watched?" asked Archie in a frightened whisper when "Forty-second Street" flashed at him from the wall of the tunnel.

"In a few minutes we'll know the worst," replied the Governor blandly. "I beg of you be confident, be assured, be cheerful!"

At the station gates a man in gray livery stepped up and touched his cap to the Governor.

"Ah, Tom; glad to see you again!"

"Thank you, sir; is this all the luggage?"

"That's all, Tom. Have an eye to Mr. Comly's bag; he's stopping with me."

Archie dragged himself into a handsome limousine that was brought to the curb by a chauffeur as impeccably tailored as the footman.

"Well, George, how are things with you?" asked the Governor pleasantly.

"Very good, sir; things running very smoothly, sir."

"Drive directly home, please.

"We may wander to our hearts' content, Archie, but there's no place like home, particularly when it's little old New York," remarked the Governor, sinking back contentedly.