Wild Wings

by Margaret Piper Chalmers

  CHAPTER XIII

  BITTER FRUIT

  From the North Station in Boston Alan Massey directed his course to asmall cigar store on Atlantic Avenue. A black eyed Italian lad inattendance behind the counter looked up as he entered and surveyed himwith grave scrutiny.

  "I am Mr. Massey," announced Alan. "Mr. Roberts is expecting me. Iwired."

  "Jim's sick," said the boy briefly.

  "I am sorry. I hope he is not too sick to see me."

  "Naw, he'll see you. He wants to." The speaker motioned Alan to followhim to the rear of the store. Together they mounted some narrow stairs,passed through a hallway and into a bedroom, a disorderly, dingy,obviously man-kept affair. On the bed lay a large framed, exceedinglyugly looking man. His flesh was yellow and sagged loosely away from hisbig bones. The impression he gave was one of huge animal bulk, shrivelingaway in an unlovely manner, getting ready to disintegrate entirely. Theman was sick undoubtedly. Possibly dying. He looked it.

  The door shut with a soft click. The two men were alone.

  "Hello, Jim." Alan approached the bed. "Bad as this? I am sorry." Hespoke with the careless, easy friendliness he could assume when itsuited him.

  The man grinned, faintly, ironically. The grin did not lessen theugliness of his face, rather accentuated it.

  "It's not so bad," he drawled. "Nothing but death and what's that? Idon't suffer much--not now. It's cancer, keeps gnawing away like a rat inthe wall. By and by it will get up to my heart and then it's good-by Jim.I shan't care. What's life good for that a chap should cling to it like abarnacle on a rock?"

  "We do though," said Alan Massey.

  "Oh, yes, we do. It's the way we're made. We are always clinging tosomething, good or bad. Life, love, home, drink, power, money! Alwayssomething we are ready to sell our souls to get or keep. With you and meit was money. You sold your soul to me to keep money and I took it toget money."

  He laughed raucously and Alan winced at the sound and cursed the morbidcuriosity that had brought him to the bedside of this man who for threeyears past had held his own future in his dirty hand, or claimed to holdit. Alan Massey had paid, paid high for the privilege of not knowingthings he did not wish to know.

  "What kind of a trail had you struck when you wired me, Massey? I didn'tknow you were anxious for details about young John Massey's career Ithought you preferred ignorance. It was what you bought of me."

  "I know it was," groaned Alan, dropping into a creaking rocker beside thebed. "I am a fool. I admit it. But sometimes it seems to me I can't standnot knowing. I want to squeeze what you know out of you as you wouldsqueeze a lemon until there was nothing left but bitter pulp. It isdriving me mad."

  The sick man eyed the speaker with a leer of malicious satisfaction. Itwas meat to his soul to see this lordly young aristocrat racked withmisery and dread, to hold him in his power as a cat holds a mouse, whichit can crush and crunch at any moment if it will. Alan Massey's moodfilled Jim Roberts with exquisite enjoyment, enjoyment such as a gourmandfeels on setting his teeth in some rare morsel of food.

  "I know," he nodded. "It works like that often. They say a murderer can'tkeep away from the scene of his crime if he is left at large. There is anirresistible fascination to him about the spot where he damned hisimmortal soul."

  "I'm not a criminal," snarled Alan. "Don't talk to me like that or youwill never see another cent of my money."

  "Money!" sneered the sick man. "What's that to me now? I've lost my tastefor money. It is no good to me any more. I've got enough laid by to buryme and I can't take the rest with me. Your money is nothing to me, AlanMassey. But you'll pay still, in a different way. I am glad you came. Itis doing me good."

  Alan made a gesture of disgust and got to his feet, pacing to and fro,his face dark, his soul torn, between conflicting emotions.

  "I'll be dead soon," went on the malicious, purring voice from the bed."Don't begrudge me my last fling. When I am in my grave you will be safe.Nobody in the living world but me knows young John Massey's alive. Youcan keep your money then with perfect ease of mind until you get to whereI am now and then,--maybe you will find out the money will comfort you nolonger, that nothing but having a soul can get you over the river."

  The younger man's march came to a halt by the bedside.

  "You shan't die until you tell me what you know about John Massey," hesaid fiercely.

  "You're a fool," said James Roberts. "What you don't know you are notresponsible for--you can forget in a way. If you insist on hearing thewhole story you will never be able to get away from it to your dying day.John Massey as an abstraction is one thing. John Massey as a live humanbeing, whom you have cheated out of a name and a fortune, is another."

  "I never cheated him of a name. You did that."

  The man grunted.

  "Right. That is on my bill. Lord knows, I wish it wasn't. Little enoughdid I ever get out of that particular piece of deviltry. I over-reachedmyself, was a darned little bit too smart. I held on to the boy, thinkingI'd get more out of it later, and he slid out of my hands like an eel andI had nothing to show for it, until you came along and I saw a chance tomake a new deal at your expense. You fell for it like a lamb to theslaughter. I'll never forget your face when I told you John Massey wasalive and that I could produce him in a minute for the courts. If I had,your name would have been Dutch, young man. You'd never have gotten alook in on the money. You had the sense to see that. Old John diedwithout a will. His grandson and not his grand-nephew was his heirprovided anybody could dig up the fellow, and I was the boy that could dothat. I proved that to you, Alan Massey."

  "You proved nothing. You scared me into handing you over a whole lot ofmoney, you blackmailing rascal, I admit that. But you didn't proveanything. You showed me the baby clothes you said John Massey wore whenhe was stolen. The name might easily enough have been stamped on thelinen later. You showed me a silver rattle marked 'John Massey.' Theinscription might also easily enough have been added later at a crook'sconvenience. You showed me some letters purporting to have been writtenby the woman who stole the child and was too much frightened by her crimeto get the gains she planned to win from it. The letters, too, mighteasily have been forgery. The whole thing might have been a cock and bullstory, fabricated by a rotten, clever mind like yours, to apply the moneyscrew to me."

  "True," chuckled Jim Roberts. "Quite true. I wondered at your credulityat the time."

  "You rat! So it was all a fake, a trap?"

  "You would like to believe that, wouldn't you? You would like to have adying man's oath that there was nothing but a pack of lies to the wholething, blackmail of the crudest, most unsupportable variety?"

  Alan bent over the man, shook his fist in the evil, withered old face.

  "Damn you, Jim Roberts! Was it a lie or was it not?"

  "Keep your hands off me, Alan Massey. It was the truth. Sarah Nelson didsteal the child just as I told you. She gave the child to me when she wasdying a few months later. I'll give my oath on that if you like."

  Alan brushed his hand across his forehead, and sat down again limply inthe creaking rocker.

  "Oh, you are willing to believe that again now, are you?" mocked Roberts.

  "I've got to, I suppose. Go on. Tell me the rest. I've got to know. Didyou really make a circus brat of John Massey and did he really run awayfrom you? That is all you told me before, you remember."

  "It was all you wanted to know. Besides," the man smiled his diabolicalgrin again, "there was a reason for going light on the details. At thetime I held you up I hadn't any more idea than you had where John Masseywas, nor whether he was even alive. It was the weak spot in my armor.But you were so panic stricken at the thought of having to give up yourgentleman's fortune that you never looked at the hollowness of the thing.You could have bowled over my whole scheme in a minute by being honestand telling me to bring on your cousin, John Massey. But you didn't. Youwere only too afraid I would bring him on before you could buy me off. Iknew I could count on your
being blind and rotten. I knew my man."

  "Then you don't know now whether John Massey is alive or not?" Alan askedafter a pause during which he let the full irony of the man's confessionsink into his heart and turn there like a knife in a wound.

  "That is where you're dead wrong. I do know. I made it my business tofind out. It was too important to have an invulnerable shield not topatch up the discrepancy as early as possible. It took me a year to getmy facts and it cost a good chink of the filthy, but I got them. I notonly know that John Massey is alive but I know where he is and what he isdoing. I could send for him to-morrow, and cook your goose for youforever, young man."

  He pulled himself up on one elbow to peer into Alan's gloomy face.

  "I may do it yet," he added. "You needn't offer me hush money. It's nogood to me, as I told you. I don't want money. I only want to pass thetime until the reaper comes along. You'll grant that it would be amusingto me to watch the see-saw tip once more, to see you go down and yourcousin John come up."

  Alan was on his feet again now, striding nervously from door to windowand back again. He had wanted to know. Now he knew. He had knowledgebitter as wormwood. The man had lied before. He was not lying now.

  "What made you send that wire? Were you on the track, too, trying tofind out on your own where your cousin is?"

  "Not exactly. Lord knows I didn't want to know. But I had a queer hunch.Some coincidences bobbed up under my nose that I didn't like the looksof. I met a young man a few days ago that was about the age John wouldhave been, a chap with a past, who had run away from a circus. The thingstuck in my crop, especially as there was a kind of shadowy resemblancebetween us that people noticed."

  "That is interesting. And his name?"

  "He goes under the name of Carson--Richard Carson."

  Roberts nodded.

  "The same. Good boy. You have succeeded in finding your cousin.Congratulations!" he cackled maliciously.

  "Then it really is he?"

  "Not a doubt of it. He was taken up by a family named Holiday in Dunbury,Massachusetts. They gave him a home, saw that he got some schooling,started him on a country newspaper. He was smart, took to books, gotahead, was promoted from one paper to another. He is on a New York dailynow, making good still, I'm told. Does it tally?"

  Alan bowed assent. It tallied all too well. The lad he had insulted,jeered at, hated with instinctive hate, was his cousin, John Massey, thethird, whom he had told the other was quite dead. John Massey was verymuch alive and was the rightful heir to the fortune which Alan Massey wasspending as the heavens had spent rain yesterday.

  It was worse than that. If the other was no longer nameless, had theright to the same fine, old name that Alan himself bore, and had toooften disgraced, the barrier between him and Tony Holiday was sweptaway. That was the bitterest drop in the cup. No wonder he hatedDick--hated him now with a cumulative, almost murderous intensity. He hadmocked at the other, but how should he stand against him in fair field?It was he--Alan Massey--that was the outcast, his mother a woman ofdoubtful fame, himself a follower of false fires, his life ignoble,wayward, erratic, unclean? Would it not be John rather than Alan MasseyTony Holiday would choose, if she knew all? This ugly, venomous,sin-scarred old rascal held his fate in the hollow of his evil old hand.

  The other was watching him narrowly, evidently striving to followhis thoughts.

  "Well?" he asked. "Going to beat me at my own game, give yourcousin his due?"

  "No," curtly.

  "Queer," mused the man. "A month ago I would have understood it. It wouldhave seemed sensible enough to hold on to the cold cash at any risk. Nowit looks different. Money is filthy stuff, man. It is what they put ondead eye-lids to keep them down. Sometimes we put it on our own livinglids to keep us from seeing straight. You are sure the money's worth somuch to you, Alan Massey?"

  The man's eyes burned livid, like coals. It was a strange and rathersickening thing, Alan Massey thought, to hear him talk like this afterhaving lived the rottenest kind of a life, sunk in slime for years.

  "The money is nothing to me," he flung back. "Not now. I thought it wasworth considerable when I drove that devilish bargain with you to keepit. It has been worse than nothing, if you care to know. It killed myart--the only decent thing about me--the only thing I had a right to takehonest pride in. John Massey might have every penny of it to-morrow forall I care if that were all there were to it."

  "What else is there?" probed the old man.

  "None of your business," snarled Alan. Not for worlds would he havespoken Tony Holiday's name in this spot, under the baleful gleam of thosedying eyes.

  The man chuckled maliciously.

  "You don't need to tell me, I know. There's always a woman in it when aman takes the path to Hell. Does she want money? Is that why you musthang on to the filthy stuff?"

  "She doesn't want anything except what I can't give her, thanks to youand myself--the love of a decent man."

  "I see. When we meet _the_ woman we wish we'd sowed fewer wild oats. Iwent through that myself once. She was a white lily sort of girl andI--well, I'd gone the pace long before I met her. I wasn't fit to touchher and I knew it. I went down fast after that--nothing to keep me back.Old Shakespeare says something somewhere about our pleasant vices beingswhips to goad us with. You and I can understand that, Alan Massey. We'veboth felt the lash."

  Alan made an impatient gesture. He did not care to be lumped with thisrotten piece of flesh lying there before him.

  "I suppose you are wondering what my next move is," went on Roberts.

  "I don't care."

  "Oh yes, you do. You care a good deal. I can break you, Alan Massey, andyou know it."

  "Go ahead and break and be damned if you choose," raged Alan.

  "Exactly. As I choose. And I can keep you dancing on some mighty hotgridirons before I shuffle off. Don't forget that, Alan Massey. Andthere will be several months to dance yet, if the doctors aren't offtheir count."

  "Suit yourself. Don't hurry about dying on my account," said Alan withironical courtesy.

  A few moments later he was on his way back to the station. His universereeled. All he was sure was that he loved Tony Holiday and would fight tothe last ditch to win and keep her and that she would be in his armsto-night for perhaps the last time. The rest was a hideous blur.