Lighted Windows, page 13
“Change Partners!”
A quartet of engineers took the places of the men in the quadrille and the figures began over again. The Samp sisters puffingly but gallantly carried on. Millicent Hale was the first to give out. Breathless, she retreated to the wall where Harcourt was standing. She slipped a hand within his arm.
“I haven’t danced so much nor so hard since the winter I came out. Do take me home, Bruce. Jimmy has disappeared. Joe will be furious if I stay longer.”
For the fraction of a second Harcourt hesitated. Why pick on him? Better to humor her. She might make a scene. Anthing was credible after her hateful attack on Janice. He looked across the room. The bride was surrounded by men begging for a dance. He would be back before she knew that he was gone. He followed Millicent Hale out of the Waffle Shop. A faint glow still tinted the serrated mountain-tops.
“How cold the nights are getting!”
She shivered as she drew her heavily fringed, heavily embroidered shawl of silver cloth about her shoulders. She slipped one hand within his arm.
“Of course I didn’t need an escort this short distance, Bruce, but I had to consult you about Jimmy.”
“Jimmy! What’s the matter with Jimmy?”
“That’s what I want to know. Today when I entered our cabin, he was threatening Joe with a pistol.”
An empty shoulder holster hanging against a log wall flashed on the screen of Harcourt’s mind and was gone.
“Millicent! You’ve been dreaming.”
Her laugh was bitter. “I’ll admit that my life is one long, hideous nightmare, but the part about Jimmy really happened. As I entered he was saying:
“ ‘Send for her again and I’ll shoot you. You’ve messed up my sister’s life, that’s enough. Get me?’
“I couldn’t believe it was Joe huddled in his chair, livid, afraid. Joe afraid! As I looked at him I thought what a poor fool I had been all these years, not to stand up to him, not to threaten him. He is a bully and a coward, Bruce, and I’ve never before found it out.”
“If you have lost your fear of him, it is a lot gained, Millicent. For whom did Joe send, do you know?”
“No. Unless—unless Jimmy found out about Tatima. Joe has made a fool of her with flattery. Nothing worse, I’m sure, but she follows him about like a dog.”
“I’ll speak to Jimmy. He will have to turn over his gun to me, if that is the use he is making of it.”
“Talk with him, Bruce. Poor boy, he has never forgotten his experiences overseas. You will have more influence than anyone else.” She laid her hand on his arm. “We all dump our worries on your shoulders, don’t we? I shan’t dare do it now that you are married. I feel as though I had lost you.”
Under pretense of producing his cigarette case Harcourt stepped back.
“You can’t lose what you never had, Millicent. Goodnight!”
He heard her little gasp as he turned on his heel, too embarrassed to wait until she was inside the cabin. Good Lord, one would have thought from her voice that he had been her lover! How she had changed in this last week. It was the wilderness, the rawness of the camp which was responsible. It was a cruel life for a woman. And he had tied Janice to it. What else could he have done? She had been in a panic of fear. She had turned to him. She was safe married to a man whom she trusted. They had not seen the last of Paxton. He would appear in his luxurious yacht, and make headquarters look like thirty cents. Let him try to get her. She was his. He was hers, heart and soul and body. She must not suspect it yet. She must go out on the last boat—no winter in Alaska for her—then when she had had time to think things through, he would get leave and join her.
His dream castle tumbled about his ears. Meanwhile he had this new problem of Jimmy Chester to meet. What the dickens had started him after his brother-in-law with a gun? What had sent the memory of his own missing revolver slashing through his mind when Millicent had told him of Jimmy’s threat? Jimmy Chester wouldn’t borrow. He had an arsenal of his own. It couldn’t be because of Tatima. He had known that Hale had hired her to take care of his cabin. For whom had Joe sent? He would straighten that situation out quick. Jimmy would be dispatched with a track-laying gang tomorrow. Kadyama had to be watched. One was enough.
What an infernal mix-up! He ought to concentrate with all his intelligence on the problems of construction, instead, he was getting mixed up in a family row. All of which confirmed him in his original contention that an engineers’ camp was no place for women. If the Hales would only get out. Tubby had been hinting that the late chief was not so helpless as he appeared. He would do a little sleuthing, and if Joe were shamming, out he would go on the next boat.
As he entered the Waffle Shop Miss Martha and Miss Mary, crimson faced from the exertions of the dance, with mammoth white aprons over their creaking taffetas, were serving the ice-cream which Grant had brought hundreds of miles in a plane. As he approached Janice he heard Jimmy Chester say harshly:
“He’ll never send for you again.”
Had Joe Hale sent for Janice? The suspicion tightened Harcourt’s lips. The girl looked up at him. There was a hint of resentment in her voice.
“Oh, you have come back. Jimmy and I had decided that you didn’t like the party, hadn’t we, Jimmy?”
It was evident that she had seen him go out with Millicent. He answered evenly.
“I’m crazy about the party. Did you think I would leave before I had danced with my bride? The musicians have finished their gorge and are tuning up. By the way, Chester, be ready with a track-laying gang to go up the inlet at reveille. You have all the specifications. Short notice, but you can make it. Want to push the work while this weather holds.” He held out his hand. “My dance—Mrs. Harcourt.”
He was conscious of Jimmy Chester’s pale, frowning regard as they moved away in rhythmic step to the music. He watched him until he left the room. Janice looked up.
“Sorry I was catty, Bruce.”
He held her the fraction of a degree closer. “Were you catty? Millicent was raw to you, Jan, but don’t lay it up against her. This last year has set her nerves on edge.”
“I wonder if a year here will do that to mine.”
“You won’t have a chance to find out.”
“Won’t I? Perhaps you will like having me here so much you’ll beg me to stay.”
His arm tightened. “Dance well together, don’t we?”
There was a hint of strain in her laugh. “The fighting line again. Tubby wants me here if you don’t. Yes, we are good. We might make a dancing team, if engineering fails.”
“That’s a thought. Sorry, but it is time the festivities broke up. All of us must be sons of toil again tomorrow. We, being the guests of honor, should make a move. That correct? I suspect Tubby of a theatrical climax. We will dance round to the door, vanish and escape.”
As they stole surreptitiously from the Waffle Shop, the squeak of the fiddle, the quaver of the flute, the blare of the saxophone rose on a triumphant note and ceased. The air was cool and clear as crystal. The green light in the radio tower glowed like an emerald eye in the forehead of a watchful god. The heavens still held a trace of the glory of the sunset. Above the broken crater spread a coppery glow. Seemingly near but in reality miles away, snowy mountaintops glimmered pearl and gray. Suddenly across the sky swept a film of glittering silver. The Northern Lights! They mounted and receded like the tide of the sea, now breaking into ruby waves, now into malachite billows. One shade melted into another, a blending harmony of delicate color. Shafts of red and green, orange and purple shot to the zenith of the indigo heavens. The light shattered into silver stepping-stones which mounted and mounted as though to form a skyway to the Celestial City. Colors streamed into half-tones, faded to amethyst and gold, fused into the dusky horizon, blinked out like pale witch fires. The moon swung clear of a fluff of cloud, the stars leaned low as though to catch the murmur of unseen life in the still night. The Aurora shimmered, faded like a low strain of melody into the illimitable silence of sea and forest.
Janice drew a long uneven breath. “It is more gorgeous than I had imagined.” As they turned toward the H house, she said lightly: “Ever since I arrived as Jimmy Delevan, I have been consumed by curiosity to—to see the inside of your cabin.”
He answered by throwing open the door. As they crossed the threshold a shower of confetti pelted them. It powdered their hair, lay like colored snow on their shoulders, one adventurous particle clung to Janice’s eyelashes. She laughed unsteadily as she brushed it away.
“The trail of the resourceful Mr. Grant. Doubtless he expected you to carry your bride over the threshold, as big strong men do in the movies and points south.”
Harcourt laid his hands lightly on her shoulders. “We will postpone that ceremony. Take off your wrap. The room is hot. Pasca keeps these fires roaring.”
She slipped off the heavily embroidered mandarin coat. He laid it on the couch, crossed to the fireplace and lighted a cigarette. Arm on the mantel, he watched her eyes travel from the Indian blankets on the log walls to the Russian samovar, saw them glow with admiration as they rested on the Chinese pewter tea-service, linger on the rich pelts on the floor. They met his.
“Like it?”
“Love it. How did these rare things get into this wilderness?”
“Small trading vessels stop for any one of a dozen reasons. The captain or mate usually has something choice he will dispose of for a consideration.”
“I’m mad about that Chinese pewter. We’ll have tea every afternoon.”
What a gallant child she was! As unselfconscious as though she had dropped in for an evening call. God help him to keep her so. She laughed.
“Perhaps I should have added, ‘With your permission.’ ”
“Everything I have is yours, Jan.” The huskiness of his voice sent the color to her face. That wouldn’t do. He opened a door, snapped on a light, said grandiloquently, “Behold the kitchenette!”
She stepped to the threshold. “Pale green, and a gray-and-white linoleum on the floor. My word, but you are modern!”
“I told you that I lost my head over the H house. After we had finished the chimneys, they just naturally required bedrooms to utilize their other sides; bedrooms required baths; a house this size needed a kitchen. I have never regretted it. Planning and ordering kept Archie Harper busy and happy. He worked up to almost the last moment of his life, and now I have it for you.” He nodded toward a lighted room. “Your things are in there. If you are not too tired I should like to talk a while, Jan.”
“Except for the fact that my feet are shredded to ribbons—that wasn’t a dance, it was a riot—I am not in the least tired. I will change my slippers and come back.”
“I’ll get your sandals.” He pulled the fan-back chair a bit nearer the fire. “Sit here—” As she hesitated he added, “Please.”
As he pulled aside the chintz curtain in her room, the buckle on the black satin slipper winked at him colorfully; he could almost hear it chuckle. It seemed years ago that he had picked it up on Fifth Avenue, had searched the Lost and Found column. Had a crystal-gazer or a palm-reader foretold that its owner would be seated in his cabin tonight, married to him, he would have accused the fortune-teller of a melodrama complex. After all, didn’t melodrama hold the stage in real life more often than critics would admit?
Janice was in the fan-back chair when he returned with the sandals. The firelight set every facet of the brilliants on her frock a-twinkle with rainbow colors. She looked up with a laugh.
“I was preparing to wriggle out of my slippers the way Miss Martha sheds her shoes at every opportunity.”
He dropped to one knee in front of her. “Stick out your foot.” He gently removed the high-heeled blue slipper with its sparkling bow, put on the sandal. “That better?” She nodded. “The other.” He held the slender foot in his hand after it was shod. “Jan, you understand, don’t you— Who the dickens is pounding like that? Is Tubby trying to be funny?”
“Someone is beating with both fists. Go! Quick!”
Harcourt pulled open the door. Millicent Hale stumbled into the room. “Bruce!” Her terrified eyes widened as Janice took a step toward her. She shut them. Sobbed. With arms outflung she braced herself against the log wall. Brilliants swinging from her ears, on her green frock, quivered with light. She shuddered. Gasped for control. Harcourt caught her shoulder.
“Steady, Millicent. What has happened?”
Her throat contracted. Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “Joe’s dead! Shot!” She covered her eyes with one hand. “You’re white as death, Bruce. Don’t be sorry for me. I’m free! Free! If you’d only waited.”
With a stifled exclamation he withdrew his hand. She crumpled to the floor.
XII
Harcourt picked his way through the maze of the Eskimo camp, past rudely constructed shacks, canvas tents, shelters of walrus hide. He cleared a baby that crawled in front of him at a jump, only to land on a dog which slunk away with a howl. The atmosphere was heavy with the odors of simmering seal-blubber, wet fur, drying fish. Bead-like eyes peered at him from cavernous interiors. Malamute pups worried bones, or dug frenziedly at the ground to bury them. Swarthy children pulled at the blankets of women with jet-black braids of hair who slapped them, nursed at the brown breasts of women who cuddled them. Virile youths in high skin boots, mail-order trousers and shirts, stared at him sheepishly; girls with brilliant red lips smiled at him shyly. Shadowy figures scuttled in the background, like supers assembling for a chorus; witch-like old women, with stripes tattooed from lower lip to the point of the chin, stirred the boiling contents of pots over small fires. Outside a tumbledown shack, two men pounded with white rods on stretched-skin drums as big as dishpans. They crooned as they boomed in perfect time.
He stopped before a shack. Silence followed his knock. He opened the door. Under a light which hung from a rafter a little man with a face like a walnut-shell, bone button through the flesh near the edge of his upper lip, worked at a bench littered with tools and pieces of silver. Propped against a crude blower was the advertising page from a magazine. On pegs on the wall hung bracelets and chains beautifully carved. A number of silver dollars were stacked in one corner. His face cracked into a smile of welcome.
“Howdy, Boss! Buy somet’ing?”
“Not this morning, Ossa.” Harcourt looked at the design from which the man was working.
“Where did you get this?”
“Mees Secr’tary bring it. Say I might mak’ same. Ossa get beeg trade nex’ summer she t’ink. She kin’. She help squaws with papooses, teech ’em much.”
Harcourt’s brows contracted. Janice in the native camp! Why hadn’t some one told him? If he got her away from this wilderness safe and sound, he never would worry about anything again in all his life.
He stepped to the table, set near a window hermetically sealed. Kadyama stared at him from above a handful of greasy cards. The eyes of the three other men shifted from one face to another.
“Pasca told you that I wanted to talk with you, Kadyama. Why didn’t you come to the office?”
“I no work no more. I go huntin’. Much money huntin’.”
“You won’t go hunting till you have talked with me, get me? No one leaves headquarters for the next three days. The Commissioner and his men are coming.” He watched the four faces. “Mr. Hale was shot last night.” Stupefaction in three pair of eyes, into Kadyama’s triumph flamed.
“Klosh! Good! The damn black cat go. He go.”
Remembrance of the abduction of Blot, which had been submerged in the rush of events, flashed back into Harcourt’s mind.
“Did you kidnap that cat?”
The Indian shrugged. “Good-for-nodings, I drop him in kennel yard, play with huskies. He like to fight. He fight ’em fine.”
“You’ll pay for that, Kadyama, after we get this other business cleared up.”
The Indian pulled himself to his feet. “W’y you talk lak dat to me? You t’ink Kadyama shoot Meester Hale? No. Know too much. Make heap bad work to shoot he. Whole pack peoples after. Yes sirree.”
“I don’t think you shot him. You must answer some questions though. Come to the office at two o’clock. If you don’t come I will send for you. Then some other people may think you did it. Understand?”
“Yes sirree. I be there.” The man’s servility was sardonic.
On his way back to the office Harcourt recaptured the picture of Janice in the fan-back chair last night in the H house. Lovely child. She was not a child; she had been a woman as she sat there, a beautiful, self-possessed woman. Cool. Steady. What had he expected? That the words of that marriage service would set her a-fire with love for him? It had taken iron self-control to keep from catching her in his arms and telling her he adored her. Millicent Hale’s entrance had been opportune, but what had Jan thought of her frenzied cry: “I’m free! Free! If you’d only waited!”
He had been furiously angry at the implication, had opened his lips to refute it when Millicent had crumpled. For an instant he and Janice had stared into one another’s eyes, then she had pointed to the woman on the floor.
“Better put her on the couch. Looks as though she had been wading. Her skirt is wet.”
He had only vaguely noticed that as he lifted her, but now the memory of the bedraggled lace of her frock came back to him. Had she come straight from her cabin to the H house there would have been a board walk all the way. Running round crazed from shock, probably. He had laid her on the couch before he had rushed back to the Waffle Shop for Grant, who was talking with the Samp sisters; even the musicians were gone. Together they had entered the Hale cabin. Joe lay where he had fallen. The wheel-chair was overturned. Death must have been instantaneous; his face showed no distress. If one could imagine it on such a still mask, the expression was contemptuous surprise. The Pekinese was playing with something on the rug. They had searched for a revolver, had found nothing but Hale’s own which hung in its holster, unloaded, clean barreled. Even a tenderfoot would know that it hadn’t been used for weeks. He had sent Tubby for Jimmy Chester and two engineers. While he was waiting, he had picked up the dog to shut him out of the room. A blue glass bead had rolled from between his paws. Tatima! Incredible.
