The Wonderful Scheme of Mr. Christopher Thorne, page 52
“Good—God!” Erskine ejaculated. “The midget mother, eh? Queen Tiny Teenygirl?”
“Yes,” Thorne said sadly. “Queen Tiny Teenygirl—of the Jones and Carrington shows—southern U.S.A.—late ’70’s and ’80’s. My mother! And little Alicia was her living replica. A weird, uncanny fascination for me to be captured by—wasn’t it? And something, Erskine, totally minus all feelings of sex. Such feelings inhibited completely—in all directions. My daughter—my mother—both in one—that was all. None but one like me—who has been confronted by the strangest of all paradoxes—could ever grasp it. And because of its terrible intensity—the way in which it caught me in both directions—little Alicia just flew straight into my heart. And remained there, fast, ever since. She does not know today—she would not even guess—that she was legally adopted by me when her mother died. Oh, Erskine, don’t tell Alicia—I beg of you. Everything has been—for her. She was—she was everything in my lonely, money-grubbing life. Will—will you give me your word—on that?”
“Naturally,” agreed Erskine promptly. “On both requests, moreover, yes! I shan’t tell Ebenezer—because I don’t want the family skeleton ever to have a chance to reach Alicia. Nor shall I tell Alicia either—since it would only cause her pain—and a sense of unnecessary inferiority that would probably spell disaster to our marriage. So the secret is sealed. As for your and my mutual financial accounts, the excess over the $31,250 for which you sold my foster-father’s invention is yours—and always has been. We make no claim on what was your legitimate profit. And about that $50 you advanced him when he was a fugitive in 1927. Well—my $50 surplus found on the books of the company—the one which upset the auditing applecart—some 16 days ago!—squares that up exactly, I believe. And as for the $31,250 note, you are now about to take it up with interest in full to date. The money that note represents was to be set aside for me originally—and so it’s come to me exactly as my Chinese foster-father intended. On top of this, you’ve shown a certain amount of contrition. So I guess our accounts are settled pretty completely. For Alicia’s sake, if for nothing else, I shall maintain an openly friendly attitude toward you for the rest of your life, mine and hers. But that I may always feel that I am a true Chinese—true to the teachings of the best man who ever lived—I intend to make that feeling genuine, too. For we Chinese, Mr. Thorne, have a proverb which runs: ‘Small men hate; bigger men pity; great men endeavor to understand.’ Which doesn’t mean I’m handing you an ‘out’ just because the system under which you exist is the Dog-Eat-Dog system. No! I’m referring—and here I’m being damnably frank, and you’ll have to take it!—I’m referring to the fact that in all probability you never could have risen above the system: that your mental workings—in everything from amassing dollars, to getting rid of undesirable suitors and possible blackmailers!—were bound to have been decidedly—well—skew-gee. Yes. The downright screwy personality of André Marceau himself—cuckoo if ever a man was cuckoo!—on one side of your inheritance—midgetism on the other. Which statement shows you, already, that maybe I do understand. However, that’s the end of all my references to the affair—or anything connected with it—from now on, forever. For Kong-Fu-Tse, the all-wise preceptor of us Chinese, once wrote: ‘When the whipping is over, the whip should be burned.’ So we’ll drop the whole matter for good and all—and proceed to forget it from A to Izzard.” Erskine rose, and turned to the door. “Well, I’ll just call in the other three men now.” He rolled the door open, thrust out his head, and called down the hall: “Mr. Cassidy?—Mr. Olson?—Mr. Garroway?—Will you step back into the library, please?” Within but a few seconds they came filing in. Erskine spoke. “Mr. Garroway, Mr. Thorne has agreed to accept his own note, amounting to $50,000 in principal and accrued interest, in payment of my deficit, the existence of which note and of which deficit on the books he may explain later by a supplementary statement attached to your report.” Erskine withdrew from his coat pocket the small blank envelope received from Mr. Thorvald Olson a couple of hours before, and moistening its flap, he sealed up inside it the promissory note so that no eyes could scan that document. And then handed the sealed envelope to Olson. “Mr. Olson, here is the note referred to. Will you and Mr. Garroway draw up the agreements and other papers, get Mr. Thorne’s signature and then give him this note; and will you see that Mr. Garroway issues a duplicate report certifying that my accounts are correct to the penny? And now I’ll take the sealed envelope of currency back, Mr. Cassidy—since it won’t be necessary to use it.”
And Cassidy, catching Thorne’s decisive nod, handed that item over stupidly; upon which Erskine stowed it away. And there the latter left them all; for a moment before, when he had called them in, he had glimpsed a girl standing down the hall, gazing, with a weary droop to her slim shoulders, out of one of the leaded glass panels of the front door. He crept quietly down the hall, and put two hands about her eyes. She turned suddenly, and he took her in his arms. She looked up at him with love light in her own blue orbs.
“What has happened—in there, Phil?” she asked eageily. “You look so—so relieved.”
“Well, darlin’, a great deal of importance to you and me has happened. For one thing, the money that was missing from the business has turned up—a fact!—and all is satisfactory, hunkydory and okay in that respect! For another thing, your father has virtually given his permission with respect to our marriage. And a third thing: We shall not be quite so poor as we once thought we would be. For since last we parted that Sunday in Garfield Park, I have received an inheritance. From up in Canada. $50,000 cash—to be explicit.”
“Fifty—thousand—dollars?” she cried unbelievingly. “Phil! Fifty—thousand—dollars? Oh—it seems hardly believable. And—and can we have a beautiful bungalow of our own—and everything?”
“Yes,” he said, smiling down at her, “a beautiful bungalow—if not a Beauty Bungalow! Here—let me show you the pictures.”
THE END
Harry Stephen Keeler, The Wonderful Scheme of Mr. Christopher Thorne
