The Indian Drum by William MacHarg (classic english novels txt) 📕

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 the Miwaka!"

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—the Miwaka. 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 the Miwaka? Spearman might—must have had something to do with it. So must Corvet. But himself—he had been not yet three years old when the Miwaka was 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