by Max Brand
He was impressed. And more than that, he showed that he was disturbed in mind by what he had seen. I had this advantage over him—that at first sight I had decided that he was an extraordinary fellow from whom almost anything could be expected. Whereas he had seen in me simply a heavy-handed boor, celebrated for the moment in that valley of the San Marin because with a blow of my fist I had broken the side of a man. Deftness of any kind was outside of his expectation of me. Moreover, he had planned on astonishing me by making the gay merrymaker appear for a flash as the deadly gunfighter. All in all, luck and foresight and guessing could not possibly have favored me more. The exquisite Lewis Vidett was staring at me now with wide, dull eyes.
“By Lord,” he broke out, “you are extraordinary!”
“Señor,” I said, “you are too kind in saying this.”
He rubbed his knuckles across his chin and studied me above his hand.
“However,” he said, “you will admit that it was largely a lucky shot which you made.”
I smiled at him.
“As you please, señor,” I said.
“Will you tell me,” he said, frowning, “that you are actually in the habit of scoring in this fashion?”
“My dear young friend,” I said, “let us not ask too many questions of one another and we will get on much better together since I am to take charge of your safety.”
“You are to take charge of it?” he asked in the most pointed fashion.
“It seems that I am.”
“Have I not told you that I do not need assistance?”
“Ten thousand pardons. But I serve Señor Caporno, as you know.”
“Is it possible that you would force yourself upon me?”
“Day and night . . . night and day,” I said.
He uttered an exclamation of disgust and of wonder, also.
“Does it not occur to you that this may be a dangerous service?”
“A profitable service, only.”
“Mendez, do not be rash!”
“I am the height of caution.”
We stood for a moment regarding one another, he with a baleful stare and I with a forced smile. My smile managed to remain true only long enough. Then he stretched out his hand and laid it upon my arm.
“Mendez,” he said, “I begin to think that we may become friends.”
“Vidett, I can wish for nothing more.”
“Shall we shake hands, then?”
Now, my own hand was half stretched out to him when a sudden thought stopped me. It was true that I was pledged to guard this man during six long months. It was also true that I suspected him of being either one of the murderers or a participant at least in the plans that brought about the destruction of poor Truck Janvers. My hands dropped back to my side.
“I prove my friends,” I said, “before I take their hands.”
A black scowl crossed the face of young Vidett.
“Very well,” he said. “If trouble comes out of this refusal of yours, remember that it is of your own choosing.”
XVII
At this moment two Negro servants, with weapons in their hands, came running toward us through the trees and, when they saw us, they cried out. We learned from their first excited words that Señor Caporno, having heard the two shots in the trees, in an agony of alarm had sent out these messengers to find out what had happened to Vidett and to me.
Vidett and I, accordingly, went back with them and found Caporno sweating with excitement in the patio. He threw up his hands with a shout of joy when he saw us together.
“Do you know what I saw?” he cried to us. “I saw, at the first shot, the body of Lewis falling to the ground. And then, at the second shot, I saw Mendez leaning over him and, when the dying body stirred, sending a second bullet through his brain to end it all. Take my hands, both of you. Let me be sure that you have come back to me.”
Each of us took one of his fat hands. And again I was amazed at the tremendous power in the fingers of that old luxury lover.
“You were testing one another in some diabolical way!” he cried, turning his head from one to the other.
“Perhaps,” admitted Vidett carelessly.
“Oh, there is no devil like a young devil. You, Vidett, are also a great fool. Test this man, this Achilles who breaks men with a touch of his hand? Test him?”
Vidett grew hot of face. “All strength is not in the hands,” he said.
“Ah, there you speak like a young cut-throat. But, Lewis, in the name of heaven hear me and believe me. In many things you are too young to appreciate my wisdom. In many things, every old man seems an old fool to every youngster. But at least admit that I have the ability to read the print that concerns the hearts and the souls of men. And, in the face of this new friend of ours, our dear friend Francisco Mendez, I have seen a man slayer . . . a true destroyer! Will you believe it? Will you believe that it is suicide to raise your hand against him?”
He did not deliver this as a compliment, but he waved his hand toward me with a sort of horror, as one would point to a loathsome snake, ugly to behold, but irresistible because of the poison in its fangs. As for his protégé, he regarded me more calmly, but I felt that the words of his prospective father-in-law were of more than a little weight with him. I was glad of it. Frankly I was afraid of that handsome youngster. I was afraid of the lightning speed of his hand and the surety of his straight-looking eye. I felt that my safest way with Vidett was to maintain a sort of moral control over him, and nothing could have helped me in that direction more effectually than the words of Caporno.
“Now shake hands!” he commanded. “Let me see it done.”
I gave my hand freely to Vidett, but with a reservation in my eye that he noted, I saw, at once.
“Go, now,” he said to Vidett, “and send me Rosa. No, let Pedro go for her. I want her to see my new friend without a prejudice already in her eye.”
Vidett, accordingly, said good bye to me in the gayest manner and moved away, but I knew that there was more than one dark shadow of discontent in his mind. Pedro had disappeared into the house and now he came back behind the girl, came gliding back with a step as light as hers. Age seemed to wither and dry that man away, not really enfeeble him, no more than corpulent idleness had really effected the vigor of his ominous master. I could not help regarding the pair of them as a pair of devils. Which was the master devil?
Well, I was to learn that before the end.
But here was Rosa coming straight upon me. Here was I bowing before her, watching the dazzling flash of her teeth as she smiled at me. She stood beside the chair of her father, looking down at him. And I could not help noting that, when she looked down in this fashion, all the merriment and half the beauty seemed to disappear from her face and left there only a shade of sullenness and discontent.
Truly from that moment I began to guess that there was something of her father in her; from that moment I was prepared to watch her closely. Well for me that I did.
Caporno was telling her as he had told Vidett that I had come into the house to be their guardian
“Against what?” asked the girl, and lifted her blank eyes toward me.
“Hush, my dear,” said Caporno, with a secret frown at her. “In a word, I have not told him, except that he is to keep his eyes open.”
“Ah?” said Rosa, and looked straight at me again with her unfathomable eyes.
Yes, she was as exquisitely lovely close at hand as far away, but I preferred to look on her from the distance. Most of all, I felt that I would appreciate her in the highest degree if the lady had been locked in the frame of a picture and represented in dexterous paint alone. No, I did not like the daughter and the heir to Caporno’s fortunes. The more I saw of her, the more convinced I was that she would in the end get from him something more than his money alone.
These things were instincts, premonitions, but they glided across my brain with a very disagreeable strength for the moment.
“But you may tell
him as much as you please,” Caporno said, watching her thoughtfully.
“I don’t understand, I hope,” said the girl, staring steadily back at him in turn.
“You do, however.”
“Everything?”
“Every syllable . . . if you think that it is wise.”
She shrugged her shoulders and turned back to me. “You have talked with Lewis Vidett, of course,” she said.
“I have,” I answered.
“And Lewis,” said her father with a world of dry meaning in his voice, “has come to an excellent understanding with my friend Mendez.”
At this, she started, and glanced askance at Caporno, and he met her eye with a nod.
“Ah?” she said again, with the same little bird-like lift in her voice that I had noticed before. And, this time, she looked on me with a great deal more respect.
“Will you come with me?” said Rosa, and took me to the farther end of the patio and let me sit down beside her in the shadow of the colonnade where we had an excellent view of Lewis Vidett as he strolled back and forth, seemingly wrapped up in delight in the flowers. For, now and again, he would pause and pick a new blossom and hold it up with a flourish.
“And do you see?” said the girl, staring at him. “Each time he throws away the old one.”
I did not understand her. As a matter of fact, I did not wish to try to understand her. Rosa’s manner of thought was a bit too tipped with poison to be agreeable to me. I decided that I would not be too inquisitive in all of my dealings with her.
But she went on with an astonishing frankness—a frankness that was very disagreeable to me.
“I could not dare to talk with you except where he can see me,” she said. “For, so long as he can see me, he does not care what I say. He is too able to read my mind in my face.”
And she smiled upon me.
I thought that this was exceedingly odd conversation to a new acquaintance, however, and my attempt to answer that smile was a lamentable failure.
“You understand?” she asked.
“Señorita,” I said, “I haven’t a very sharp mind. I really don’t understand. Forgive me.”
Here I thought that she started a very little and looked more keenly aside at me. But I could not be sure.
Presently she said more gravely than ever: “I am glad of that. I think that I have never known as simple a man in my life.”
I was happy to say one honest word after all the half truths and the innuendoes among which I had been living for so much of this day.
“Señorita, in the name of heaven believe that I am no counterfeit.”
She laughed like the musical bubbling of water in a brook, far off. And while she laughed, I remembered with a stab of conscience, how truly and vastly I was a counterfeit. For there was I in her father’s house, hunting desperately for the slayer or the cause of the slaying of Truck Janvers, and with a grisly feeling in my heart that her lover, her handsome young Lewis Vidett was the man that I wanted.
However, my answer on the face was honest enough. For I was a simple man and to this day I remain one. I leave dexterity of wits to those who prize such things.
“I do believe you,” she said, when her laughter had died away pleasantly. “I do believe you. And now I am wondering if I cannot tell you, frankly, just what dangers you will be expected to face for us while you are in this house?”
“I hope that you may be open with me,” I said.
She was studying me steadily, carefully, her eyes very busy with my features.
“I cannot tell,” she said at last. “It may be real honesty . . . and my father apparently thinks that it may be. But the danger is too terrible! Señor, I cannot confide in you . . . as yet. But perhaps the day will soon come.”
You will imagine that it was a little difficult to hear oneself analyzed and rejected as not quite the pure quill. I managed to keep my face fairly well in spite of those prying eyes, however.
“And,” she went on, “seeing that I have to come to know you better, I suppose there isn’t a bit of reason why I should keep you here just now . . . and keep my poor Lewis on pins and needles every second of the time you stay.”
I stood up. She rose with me and gave me her hand. I almost liked the impulsive light in her eyes.
“I hope that we shall understand each other better when we sit together again,” she said.
“Señorita, it is my hope, also.”
I left her in that fashion.
XVIII
When I sat in the room that had been assigned to me that night, I thought the matter over carefully. I mean, the whole affair and everyone connected with it, and I assure you that there was not a single face in the entire group that appealed to me. Whether the young and handsome faces of Vidett and Rosa, or the old and evil ones of Caporno and Pedro, or of the Negro, José, whose villainy I had tested with a consummate accuracy, I knew not which I disliked most intensely. No, I cannot say that. For, from the very first moment, I loathed and I hated Lewis Vidett with an absorbing passion of revolt.
Now, then, sitting in my room, I told myself that I was at last consigned to a nest of vipers and that any moment might be my last moment in life. A very grim situation, and yet there was something appealing about it, of course, as you can well imagine.
I undressed, finally. I was in pajamas, blowing out the light, when a whisper from the window iced my blood.
“Hugo Ames!”
I did not hesitate. There were two windows leading to my room, and each was a big casement, and each was wide open. From one the hissing whisper had come. It was through the other that I leaped the next instant and landed on my bare feet on the soft flagstones beneath the colonnade of the patio.
I saw the man I wanted crouched beside the other casement in the act of peering cautiously into it, and in his hand there was the deadly glimmer of steel. He did not see me—he could not—but I suppose that my hurtling flight through the other window must have made a noise like that of a gust of wind, and then there was the soft thudding of my feet and my hands on the flags.
It stiffened him with fear and surprise that kept him from whirling about for an instant, and that instant of delay was what I needed. I leaped again, and he was not halfway turned around when my weight ground him against the wall of the house. My shoulder bore against his chest and crunched the wind out of his lungs at a single pressure.
It was so thorough that I did not have to pause to ask questions or to strike a blow. The fellow was as limp as a half-filled sack. So I simply chucked him through the window and heard him fall with a flop on the floor of my bedchamber. Then I bounded after and kindled the lamp that I had just blown out. Its light showed me a twisted form on the floor. I picked it up by the hair of the head and found myself looking down on the black, handsome features of José.
My stomach grew as small and as hard as a clenched fist. How much had this rat talked in the house of his suspicions that I was the same man who had accompanied him from the north—a little distance in his rear? For, if he had spoken so much as a single word, I could be reasonably sure that Caporno would finish the guesswork and cut the Gordian knot with a swift touch of the knife.
I threw a glass of water in the face of José and sat down to watch him gasp back his breath. He was in an agony until he could breathe easily again, and, after that, he crouched in a corner against the wall, gaping at me. I have never seen fear so eloquent in any face; the black of his skin was dusted over with his terror.
“Tell me, José,” I said gently.
He made an eloquent gesture with both of his hands.
“Kill me at once,” he breathed.
“Tell me,” I said, “why did you not fire at once through the window, and then ask your questions about me afterward?”
He drew in a gasping breath, as though he were still expecting death from my hand.
I added to explain to myself: “You were not quite sure, José? The beard fooled you? And the mustaches with the shar
p points? So you had to ask the question first? Oh, foolish José.”
A spasm of terror and of regret flashed into his eyes at that.
“I meant you no harm, señor,” he vowed to me.
“No more harm, certainly, than you did when you stole the mule and went off on its back.”
The rascal stared wildly around him. “Ah, señor,” he said at last, “my heart was breaking with terror of you. With the rising of every sun I wondered in what form my death would come at your hands before it set again.”
I shook my head and still smiled at him. “You lie foolishly but completely, José,” I said. “You lie very foolishly, because remember that I lived with you for whole weeks, and you understood that I could not injure a man who had drunk my liquor and eaten my food and accepted my care through all of that time . . . through all of that time when he might have been rotting on the side of the mountain . . . eh, José? A white skeleton, by this time.”
“Ah, señor, how I have sinned against you!” cried out José, with so much frankness that my heart thrilled in me. “And I also know,” he went on, “that you will not harm me now, as I lie helpless in your hands, after you have given me so much kindness. You have poured it out upon me like water.”
“On a desert . . . yes. No, José. I am allowing you to live for these few moments because I have not yet been able to decide in exactly what form I shall deal out a death to you. Death, of course, it must be. In self-respect . . . as a man with a duty to other men, I must, of course, kill you.”
José licked his dry lips. He tried to speak and brought forth only a dry whisper.
“I have thought of the whip, and a night of exposure to the sharp air. That is a slow death, when the back is flayed. Slow, certain, and terrible. But then there is much to be said in favor of a fire built of green wood so that the flames are always in a low welter. Those flames would rot off your feet in the fire. There would be time enough for you to make your prayers. Time enough for you to do everything except sing your hymns, because, of course, I should have to gag you first. And, perhaps, the pain might make you strangle on the gag. That would be the most merciful thing, José.”
