Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US, page 80
“Can’t he find her and tell her those things for himself?”
“He can’t talk,” said Ronicky. “Not that I’m a pile better, but I could talk better for a friend than he could talk for himself, I figure. If things don’t go right then I’ll know that the trouble is with the gent with the smile.”
“And then?” asked the girl, very excited and grave.
“I’ll find him,” said Ronicky Doone.
“And—”
“Lady,” he replied obliquely, “because I couldn’t use a gun on a girl ain’t no sign that I can’t use it on a gent!”
“I’ve one thing to tell you,” she said, breaking in swiftly on him. “Do what you want — take all the chances you care to — but, if you value your life and the life of your friend, keep away from the man who smiles.”
“I’ll have a fighting chance, I guess,” said Ronicky quietly.”
“You’ll have no chance at all. The moment he knows your hand is against him, I don’t care how brave or how clever you are, you’re doomed!”
She spoke with such a passion of conviction that she flushed, and a moment later she was shivering. It might have been the draft from the window which made her gather the hazy-green mantle closer about her and glance over her shoulder; but a grim feeling came to Ronicky Doone that the reason why the girl trembled and her eyes grew wide, was that the mention of “the man who smiles” had brought the thought of him into the room like a breath of cold wind.
“Don’t you see,” she went on gently, “that I like you? It’s the first and the last time that I’m going to see you, so I can talk. I know you’re honest, and I know you’re brave. Why, I can see your whole character in the way you’ve stayed by your friend; and, if there’s a possible way of helping you, I’ll do it. But you must promise me first that you’ll never cross the man with the sneer, as you call him.”
“There’s a sort of a fate in it,” said Ronicky slowly. “I don’t think I could promise. There’s a chill in my bones that tells me I’m going to meet up with him one of these days.”
She gasped at that, and, stepping back from him, she appeared to be searching her mind to discover something which would finally and completely convince him. At length she found it.
“Do I look to you like a coward?” she said. “Do I seem to be weak- kneed?”
He shook his head.
“And what will a woman fight hardest for?”
“For the youngsters she’s got,” said Ronicky after a moment’s thought. “And, outside of that, I suppose a girl will fight the hardest to marry the gent she loves.”
“And to keep from marrying a man she doesn’t love, as she’d try to keep from death?”
“Sure,” said Ronicky. “But these days a girl don’t have to marry that way.”
“I am going to marry the man with the sneer,” she said simply enough, and with dull, patient eyes she watched the face of Ronicky wrinkle and grow pale, as if a heavy fist had struck him.
“You?” he asked. “You marry him?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“And you hate the thought of him!”
“I — I don’t know. He’s kind—”
“You hate him,” insisted Ronicky. “And he’s to have you, that cold-eyed snake, that devil of a man?” He moved a little, and she turned toward him, smiling faintly and allowing the light to come more clearly and fully on her face. “You’re meant for a king o’ men, lady; you got the queen in you — it’s in the lift of your head. When you find the gent you can love, why, lady, he’ll be pretty near the richest man in the world!”
The ghost of a flush bloomed in her cheeks, but her faint smile did not alter, and she seemed to be hearing him from far away. “The man with the sneer,” she said at length, “will never talk to me like that, and still — I shall marry him.”
“Tell me your name,” said Ronicky Doone bluntly.
“My name is Ruth Tolliver.”
“Listen to me, Ruth Tolliver: If you was to live a thousand years, and the gent with the smile was to keep going for two thousand, it’d never come about that he could ever marry you.”
She shook her head, still watching him as from a distance.
“If I’ve crossed the country and followed a hard trail and come here tonight and stuck my head in a trap, as you might say, for the sake of a gent like Bill Gregg — fine fellow though he is — what d’you think I would do to keep a girl like you from life-long misery?”
And he dwelt on the last word until the girl shivered.
“It’s what it means,” said Ronicky Doone, “life-long misery for you. And it won’t happen — it can’t happen.”
“Are you mad — are you quite mad?” asked the girl. “What on earth have I and my affairs got to do with you? Who are you?”
“I dunno,” said Ronicky Doone. “I suppose you might say I’m a champion of lost causes, lady. Why have I got something to do with you? I’ll tell you why: Because, when a girl gets past being just pretty and starts in being plumb beautiful, she lays off being the business of any one gent — her father or her brother — she starts being the business of the whole world. You see? They come like that about one in ten million, and I figure you’re that one, lady.”
The far away smile went out. She was looking at him now with a sort of sad wonder. “Do you know what I am?” she said gravely.
“I dunno,” said Ronicky, “and I don’t care. What you do don’t count. It’s the inside that matters, and the inside of you is all right. Lady, so long as I can sling a gun, and so long as my name is Ronicky Doone, you ain’t going to marry the gent with the smile.”
If he expected an outbreak of protest from her he was mistaken. For what she said was: “Ronicky Doone! Is that the name? Ronicky Doone!” Then she smiled up at him. “I’m within one ace of being foolish and saying — But I won’t.”
She made a gesture of brushing a mist away from her and then stepped back a little. “I’m going down to see the man with the smile, and I’m going to tell him that Harry Morgan is not in his room, that he didn’t answer my knock, and then that I looked around through the house and didn’t find him. After that I’m coming back here, Ronicky Doone, and I’m going to try to get an opportunity for you to talk to Caroline Smith.”
“I knew you’d change your mind,” said Ronicky Doone.
“I’ll even tell you why,” she said. “It isn’t for your friend who’s asleep, but it’s to give you a chance to finish this business and come to the end of this trail and go back to your own country. Because, if you stay around here long, there’ll be trouble, a lot of trouble, Ronicky Doone. Now stay here and wait for me. If anyone taps at the door, you’d better slip into that closet in the corner. Will you wait?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ll trust me?”
“To the end of the trail, lady.”
She smiled at him again and was gone.
Now the house was perfectly hushed. He went to the window and looked down to the quiet street with all its atmosphere of some old New England village and eternal peace. It seemed impossible that in the house behind him there were —
He caught his breath. Somewhere in the house the muffled sound of a struggle rose. He ran to the door, thinking of Ruth Tolliver at once, and then he shrank back again, for a door was slammed open, and a voice shouted — the voice of a man: “Help! Harrison! Lefty! Jerry!”
Other voices answered far away; footfalls began to sound. Ronicky Doone knew that Harry Morgan, his victim, had at last recovered and managed to work the cords off his feet or hands, or both.
Ronicky stepped back close to the door of the closet and waited. It would mean a search, probably, this discovery that Morgan had been struck down in his own room by an unknown intruder. And a search certainly would be started at once. First there was confusion, and then a clear, musical man’s voice began to give orders: “Harrison, take the cellar. Lefty, go up to the roof. The rest of you take the rooms one by one.”
The search was on.
“Don’t ask questions,” was the last instruction. “When you see someone you don’t know, shoot on sight, and shoot to kill. I’ll do the explaining to the police — you know that. Now scatter, and the man who brings him down I’ll remember. Quick!”
There was a new scurry of footfalls. Ronicky Doone heard them approach the door of the girl’s room, and he slipped into the closet. At once a cloud of soft, cool silks brushed about him, and he worked back until his shoulders had touched the wall at the back of the closet. Luckily the enclosure was deep, and the clothes were hanging thickly from the racks. It was sufficient to conceal him from any careless searcher, but it would do no good if any one probed; and certainly these men were not the ones to search carelessly.
In the meantime it was a position which made Ronicky grind his teeth. To be found skulking among woman’s clothes in a closet — to be dragged out and stuck in the back, no doubt, like a rat, and thrown into the river, that was an end for Ronicky Doone indeed!
He was on the verge of slipping out and making a mad break for the door of the house and trying to escape by taking the men by surprise, when he heard the door of the girl’s room open.
“Some ex-pugilist,” he heard a man’s voice saying, and he recognized it at once as belonging to him who had given the orders. He recognized, also, that it must be the man with the sneer.
“You think he was an amateur robber and an expert prize fighter?” asked Ruth Tolliver.
It seemed to Ronicky Doone that her voice was perfectly controlled and calm. Perhaps it was her face that betrayed emotion, for after a moment of silence, the man answered.
“What’s the matter? You’re as nervous as a child tonight, Ruth?”
“Isn’t there reason enough to make me nervous?” she demanded. “A robber — Heaven knows what — running at large in the house?”
“H’m!” murmured the man. “Devilish queer that you should get so excited all at once. No, it’s something else. I’ve trained you too well for you to go to pieces like this over nothing. What is it, Ruth?”
There was no answer. Then the voice began again, silken-smooth and gentle, so gentle and kindly that Ronicky Doone started. “In the old days you used to keep nothing from me; we were companions, Ruth. That was when you were a child. Now that you are a woman, when you feel more, think more, see more, when our companionship should be like a running stream, continually bringing new things into my life, I find barriers between us. Why is it, my dear?”
Still there was no answer. The pulse of Ronicky Doone began to quicken, as though the question had been asked him, as though he himself were fumbling for the answer.
“Let us talk more freely,” went on the man. “Try to open your mind to me. There are things which you dislike in me; I know it. Just what those things are I cannot tell, but we must break down these foolish little barriers which are appearing more and more every day. Not that I mean to intrude myself on you every moment of your life. You understand that, of course?”
“Of course,” said the girl faintly.
“And I understand perfectly that you have passed out of childhood into young womanhood, and that is a dreamy time for a girl. Her body is formed at last, but her mind is only half formed. There is a pleasant mist over it. Very well, I don’t wish to brush the mist away. If I did that I would take half that charm away from you — that elusive incompleteness which Fragonard and Watteau tried to imitate, Heaven knows with how little success. No, I shall always let you live your own life. All that I ask for, my dear, are certain meeting places. Let us establish them before it is too late, or you will find one day that you have married an old man, and we shall have silent dinners. There is nothing more wretched than that. If it should come about, then you will begin to look on me as a jailer. And—”
“Don’t!”
“Ah,” said he very tenderly, “I knew that I was feeling toward the truth. You are shrinking from me, Ruth, because you feel that I am too old.”
“No, no!”
Here a hand pounded heavily on the door.
“The idiots have found something,” said the man of the sneer. “And now they have come to talk about their cleverness, like a rooster crowing over a grain of corn.” He raised his voice. “Come in!”
And Ronicky Doone heard a panting voice a moment later exclaim: “We’ve got him!”
12. THE STRANGE BARGAIN
RONICKY DREW HIS gun and waited. “Good,” said the man of the sneer. “Go ahead.”
“It was down in the cellar that we found the first tracks. He came in through the side window and closed it after him.”
“That dropped him into the coal bin. Did he get coal dust on his shoes?”
“Right; and he didn’t have sense enough to wipe it off.”
“An amateur — a rank amateur! I told you!” said the man of the sneer, with satisfaction. “You followed his trail?”
“Up the stairs to the kitchen and down the hall and up to Harry’s room.”
“We already knew he’d gone there.”
“But he left that room again and came down the hall.”
“Yes. The coal dust was pretty well wiped off by that time, but we held a light close to the carpet and got the signs of it.”
“And where did it lead?”
“Right to this room!”
Ronicky stepped from among the smooth silks and pressed close to the door of the closet, his hand on the knob. The time had almost come for one desperate attempt to escape, and he was ready to shoot to kill.
A moment of pause had come, a pause which, in the imagination of Ronicky, was filled with the approach of both the men toward the door of the closet.
Then the man of the sneer said: “That’s a likely story!”
“I can show you the tracks.”
“H’m! You fool, they simply grew dim when they got to this door. I’ve been here for some time. Go back and tell them to hunt some more. Go up to the attic and search there. That’s the place an amateur would most likely hide.”
The man growled some retort and left, closing the door heavily behind him, while Ronicky Doone breathed freely again for the first time.
“Now,” said the man of the sneer, “tell me the whole of it, Ruth.”
Ronicky set his teeth. Had the clever devil guessed at the truth so easily? Had he sent his follower away, merely to avoid having it known that a man had taken shelter in the room of the girl he loved?
“Go on,” the leader was repeating. “Let me hear the whole truth.”
“I — I—” stammered the girl, and she could say no more.
The man of the sneer laughed unpleasantly. “Let me help you. It was somebody you met somewhere — on the train, perhaps, and you couldn’t help smiling at him, eh? You smiled so much, in fact, that he followed you and found that you had come here. The only way he could get in was by stealth. Is that right? So he came in exactly that way, like a robber, but really only to keep a tryst with his lady love? A pretty story, a true romance! I begin to see why you find me such a dull fellow, my dear girl.”
“John—” began Ruth Tolliver, her voice shaking.
“Tush,” he broke in as smoothly as ever. “Let me tell the story for you and spare your blushes. When I sent you for Harry Morgan you found Lochinvar in the very act of slugging the poor fellow. You helped him tie Morgan; then you took him here to your room; although you were glad to see him, you warned him that it was dangerous to play with fire — fire being me. Do I gather the drift of the story fairly well? Finally you have him worked up to the right pitch. He is convinced that a retreat would be advantageous, if possible. You show him that it is possible. You point out the ledge under your window and the easy way of working to the ground. Eh?”
“Yes,” said the girl unevenly. “That is—”
“Ah!” murmured the man of the sneer. “You seem rather relieved that I have guessed he left the house. In that case—”
Ronicky Doone had held the latch of the door turned back for some time. Now he pushed it open and stepped out. He was only barely in time, for the man of the sneer was turning quickly in his direction, since there was only one hiding place in the room.
He was brought up with a shock by the sight of Ronicky’s big Colt, held at the hip and covering him with absolute certainty. Ruth Tolliver did not cry out, but every muscle in her face and body seemed to contract, as if she were preparing herself for the explosion.
“You don’t have to put up your hands,” said Ronicky Doone, wondering at the familiarity of the face of the man of the sneer. He had brooded on it so often in the past few days that it was like the face of an old acquaintance. He knew every line in that sharp profile.
“Thank you,” responded the leader, and, turning to the girl, he said coldly: “I congratulate you on your good taste. A regular Apollo, my dear Ruth.”
He turned back to Ronicky Doone. “And I suppose you have overhead our entire conversation?”
“The whole lot of it,” said Ronicky, “though I wasn’t playing my hand at eavesdropping. I couldn’t help hearing you, partner.”
The man of the sneer looked him over leisurely. “Western,” he said at last, “decidedly Western.
“Are you staying long in the East, my friend?”
“I dunno,” said Ronicky Doone, smiling faintly at the coolness of the other. “What do you think about it?”
“Meaning that I’m liable to put an end to your stay?”
“Maybe!”
“Tush, tush! I suppose Ruth has filled your head with a lot of rot about what a terrible fellow I am. But I don’t use poison, and I don’t kill with mysterious X-rays. I am, as you see, a very quiet and ordinary sort.”
Ronicky Doone smiled again. “You just oblige me, partner,” he replied in his own soft voice. “Just stay away from the walls of the room — don’t even sit down. Stand right where you are.”
“You’d murder me if I took another step?” asked the man of the sneer, and a contemptuous and sardonic expression flitted across his face for the first time.
“I’d sure blow you full of lead,” said Ronicky fervently. “I’d kill you like a snake, stranger, which I mostly think you are. So step light, and step quick when I talk.”
