Black Jack by Max Brand (top android ebook reader txt) 📕
His sister's voice cut into his musing. She had two tones. One might be called her social register. It was smooth, gentle--the low-pitched and controlled voice of a gentlewoman. The other voice was hard and sharp. It could drive hard and cold across a desk, and bring businessmen to an understanding that here was a mind, not a woman.
At present she used her latter tone. Vance Cornish came into a shivering consciousness that she was sitting beside him. He turned his head slowly. It was always a shock to come out of one of his pleasant dreams and see that worn, hollow-eyed, impatient face.
"Are you forty-nine, Vance?"
"I'm not fifty, at least," he countered.
She remained imperturbable, looking him over. He had come to notice that in the past half-dozen years his best smiles often failed to mellow her expression. He felt that something disagreeable was coming.
"Why did Cornwall run away this morning? I hoped to take him on a trip."
Read free book «Black Jack by Max Brand (top android ebook reader txt) 📕» - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
- Author: Max Brand
- Performer: -
Read book online «Black Jack by Max Brand (top android ebook reader txt) 📕». Author - Max Brand
exclamation. Then, without explanation of any sort, he had gone to his
room and stayed there. She would have followed to find out what was the
matter, but the requirements of dinner and her guests kept her
downstairs.
Immediately after dinner Vance, at a signal from her, dexterously herded
everyone into the living room and distributed them in comfort around the
big fireplace; Elizabeth Cornish bolted straight for the room of Terence.
She knocked and tried the door. To her astonishment, the knob turned, but
the door did not open. She heard the click and felt the jar of the bolt.
Terry had locked his door!
A little thing to make her heart fall, one would say, but little things
about Terry were great things to Elizabeth. In twenty-four years he had
never locked his door. What could it mean?
It was a moment before she could call, and she waited breathlessly. She
was reassured by a quiet voice that answered her: “Just a moment. I’ll
open.”
The tone was so matter-of-fact that her heart, with one leap, came back
to normal and tears of relief misted her eyes for an instant. Perhaps he
was up here working out a surprise for the next day—he was full of
tricks and surprises. That was unquestionably it. And he took so long in
coming to the door because he was hiding the thing he had been working
on. As for food, Wu Chi was his slave and would have smuggled a tray up
to him. Presently the lock turned and the door opened.
She could not see his face distinctly at first, the light was so strong
behind him. Besides, she was more occupied in looking for the tray of
food which would assure her that Terry was not suffering from some mental
crisis that had made him forget even dinner. She found the tray, sure
enough, but the food had not been touched.
She turned on him with a new rush of alarm. And all her fears were
realized. Terry had been fighting a hard battle and he was still
fighting. About his eyes there was the look, half-dull and half-hard,
that comes in the eyes of young people unused to pain. A worried, tense,
hungry face. He took her arm and led her to the table. On it lay an
article clipped out of a magazine. She looked down at it with unseeing
eyes. The sheets were already much crumbled. Terry turned them to a full-page picture, and Elizabeth found herself looking down into the face of
Black Jack, proud, handsome, defiant.
Had Vance been there, he might have recognized her actions. As she had
done one day twenty-four years ago, now she turned and dropped heavily
into a chair, her bony hands pressed to her shallow bosom. A moment later
she was on her feet again, ready to fight, ready to tell a thousand lies.
But it was too late. The revelation had been complete and she could tell
by his face that Terence knew everything.
“Terry,” she said faintly, “what on earth have you to do with that—”
“Listen, Aunt Elizabeth,” he said, “you aren’t going to fib about it, are
you?”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
“Why were you so shocked?”
She knew it was a futile battle. He was prying at her inner mind with
short questions and a hard, dry voice.
“It was the face of that terrible man. I saw him once before, you know.
On the day—”
“On the day he was murdered!”
That word told her everything. “Murdered!” It lighted all the mental
processes through which he had been going. Who in all the reaches of the
mountain desert had ever before dreamed of terming the killing of the
notorious Black Jack a “murder”?
“What are you saying, Terence? That fellow—”
“Hush! Look at us!”
He picked up the photograph and stood back so that the light fell sharply
on his face and on the photograph which he held beside his head. He
caught up a sombrero and jammed it jauntily on his head. He tilted his
face high, with resolute chin. And all at once there were two Black
Jacks, not one. He evidently saw all the admission that he cared for in
her face. He took off the hat with a dragging motion and replaced the
photograph on the table.
“I tried it in the mirror,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t quite sure until I
tried it in the mirror. Then I knew, of course.”
She felt him slipping out of her life.
“What shall I say to you, Terence?”
“Is that my real name?”
She winced. “Yes. Your real name.”
“Good. Do you remember our talk of today?”
“What talk?”
He drew his breath with something of a groan.
“I said that what these people lacked was the influence of family—of old
blood!”
He made himself smile at her, and Elizabeth trembled. “If I could
explain—” she began.
“Ah, what is there to explain, Aunt Elizabeth? Except that you have been
a thousand times kinder to me than I dreamed before. Why, I—I actually
thought that you were rather honored by having a Colby under your roof. I
really felt that I was bestowing something of a favor on you!”
“Terry, sit down!”
He sank into a chair slowly. And she sat on the arm of it with her
mournful eyes on his face.
“Whatever your name may be, that doesn’t change the man who wears the
name.”
He laughed softly. “And you’ve been teaching me steadily for twenty-four
years that blood will tell? You can’t change like this. Oh, I understand
it perfectly. You determined to make me over. You determined to destroy
my heritage and put the name of the fine old Colbys in its place. It was
a brave thing to try, and all these years how you must have waited, and
waited to see how I would turn out, dreading every day some outbreak of
the bad blood! Ah, you have a nerve of steel, Aunt Elizabeth! How have
you endured the suspense?”
She felt that he was mocking her subtly under this flow of compliment.
But it was the bitterness of pain, not of reproach, she knew.
She said: “Why didn’t you let me come up with you? Why didn’t you send
for me?”
“I’ve been busy doing a thing that no one could help me with. I’ve been
burning my dreams.” He pointed to a smoldering heap of ashes on the
hearth.
“Terry!”
“Yes, all the Colby pictures that I’ve been collecting for the past
fifteen years. I burned ‘em. They don’t mean anything to anyone else, and
certainly they have ceased to mean anything to me. But when I came to
Anthony Colby—the eighteen-twelve man, you know, the one who has always
been my hero—it went pretty hard. I felt as if—I were burning my own
personality. As a matter of fact, in the last couple of hours I’ve been
born over again.”
Terry paused. “And births are painful, Aunt Elizabeth!”
At that she cried out and caught his hand. “Terry dear! Terry dear! You
break my heart!”
“I don’t mean to. You mustn’t think that I’m pitying myself. But I want
to know the real name of my father. He must have had some name other than
Black Jack. What was it?”
“Are you going to gather his memory to your heart, Terry?”
“I am going to find something about him that I can be proud of. Blood
will tell. I know that I’m not all bad, and there must have been good in
Black Jack. I want to know all about him. I want to know about—his
crimes.”
He labored through a fierce moment of silent struggle while her heart
went helplessly out to him.
“Because—I had a hand in every one of those crimes! Everything that he
did is something that I might have done under the same temptation.”
“But you’re not all your father’s son. You had a mother. A dear, sweet-faced girl—”
“Don’t!” whispered Terry. “I suppose he broke—her heart?”
“She was a very delicate girl,” she said after a moment.
“And now my father’s name, please?”
“Not that just now. Give me until tomorrow night, Terry. Will you do
that? Will you wait till tomorrow night, Terry? I’m going to have a long
talk with you then, about many things. And I want you to keep this in
mind always. No matter how long you live, the influence of the Colbys
will never go out of your life. And neither will my influence, I hope. If
there is anything good in me, it has gone into you. I have seen to that.
Terry, you are not your father’s son alone. All these other things have
entered into your make-up. They’re just as much a part of you as his
blood.”
“Ah, yes,” said Terry. “But blood will tell!”
It was a mournful echo of a thing she had told him a thousand times.
She went straight down to the big living room and drew Vance away,
mindless of her guests. He came humming until he was past the door and in
the shadowy hall. Then he touched her arm, suddenly grown serious.
“What’s wrong, Elizabeth?”
Her voice was low, vibrating with fierceness. And Vance blessed the
dimness of the hall, for he could feel the blood recede from his face and
the sweat stand on his forehead.
“Vance, if you’ve done what I think you’ve done, you’re lower than a
snake, and more poisonous and more treacherous. And I’ll cut you out of
my heart and my life. You know what I mean?”
It was really the first important crisis that he had ever faced. And now
his heart grew small, cold. He knew, miserably, his own cowardice. And
like all cowards, he fell back on bold lying to carry him through. It was
a triumph that he could make his voice steady—more than steady. He could
even throw the right shade of disgust into it.
“Is this another one of your tantrums, Elizabeth? By heavens, I’m growing
tired of ‘em. You continually throw in my face that you hold the strings
of the purse. Well, tie them up as far as I’m concerned. I won’t whine.
I’d rather have that happen than be tyrannized over any longer.”
She was much shaken. And there was a sting in this reproach that carried
home to her; there was just a sufficient edge of truth to wound her. Had
there been much light, she could have read his face; the dimness of the
hall was saving Vance, and he knew it.
“God knows I’d like to believe that you haven’t had anything to do with
it. But you and I are the only two people in the world who know the
secret of it—”
He pretended to guess. “It’s something about Terence? Something about his
father?”
Again she was disarmed. If he were guilty, it was strange that he should
approach the subject so openly. And she began to doubt.
“Vance, he knows everything! Everything except the real name of Black
Jack!”
“Good heavens!”
She strained her eyes through the shadows to make out his real
expression; but there seemed to be a real horror in his restrained
whisper.
“It isn’t possible, Elizabeth!”
“It came in that letter. That letter I wanted to open, and which you
persuaded me not to!” She mustered all her damning facts one after
another. “And
Comments (0)