Kerry

by Grace Livingston Hill

  “Yes,” said McNair, still gravely, “I think he would. I have known of instances of such recoveries on other voyages. And I happen to know this man. You can trust him. But—may I know a little more about the circumstances? I don’t like to give advice off hand, although perhaps you would rather confide in the steward.”

  “No!” said Kerry quickly. “I would much rather tell you. I am not sure but I am very silly in imagining anything wrong. I have tried all night to be sensible and think the paper would turn up by daylight, although I had thoroughly searched the room several times, and asked the stewardess. But this morning when I began to search again I found a fountain pen just under the edge of my berth, and inside my locked trunk was a strange pencil that did not belong to me. The fountain pen had a blue and white mottled barrel, and the pencil was yellow with a rubber band wound around its middle.”

  “Ah!” said McNair under his breath.

  “But of course there are many yellow pencils and blue penholders in the world,” argued Kerry.

  “What reason has Dawson to want that paper?” asked McNair. “Do you know? Or do you suspect? Of course I’ve seen such a pen and pencil sticking from his vest pocket.”

  “I’d better tell you everything,” said Kerry with troubled brow, looking with unseeing eyes off to sea. “Of course his particular pen and pencil may still be in his vest pocket this morning. I want to be fair.”

  “I think you had better tell me the whole story,” said the young man. “I perhaps can help a lot. And if I can’t it won’t do you any harm, I’ll promise that.”

  “Well,” began Kerry, dropping her voice, “yesterday morning I did not go down to breakfast. I wanted to work. When I opened my door to go out at noon one of the pages I had been copying, which had escaped my notice when I gathered the papers up to put them away, blew out of the door and a little way down the corridor. I reached after it, but Professor Dawson, who was coming from the other end of the corridor, got it first and instead of giving it to me at once as I expected, he held it for what seemed to me like a full minute, while he read it.”

  “What unspeakable rudeness!”

  “When he did give to it to me he seemed almost—reluctant—to give it up. I tossed it inside the door and it landed on the bed. I locked the door. I was vexed but I walked with him down the corridor. We did not talk. He seemed rather absentminded. We went into the dining room together, and later when others had been seated he left the table for a few minutes, professedly to get a joke he wished to read to us. Perhaps you remember that he followed me from the table. You certainly heard him try to make a ‘conference’ date with me last night, as he called it. So he followed me and demanded that I come out on deck at once as he said he had something very important to say to me.”

  “Had he ever been associated with your father?” asked McNair suddenly.

  “Not that I know of,” said Kerry. “He is an utter stranger to me. So I was the more surprised when he began to talk. He said that he wanted to help me, and when I asked him what he meant he said he knew that I was getting my father’s book ready for publication, and he would be glad to help in any revising or altering that was necessary. He said that he, being a scientist, would be more fitted to do the work than I would. He insinuated a friendship and association with my father, which I am sure never existed. I was so angry that I could scarcely answer him, but I managed to control my voice and make him understand that whatever my father had written needed no altering or revising, and that I was not engaged in any such business as he seemed to suppose. I have been my father’s typist of course, for some time past, and there were a few remaining pages that needed copying after he died, because of corrections and alterations he had made, but I would as soon attempt to pull one of the stars to pieces and put it together in another way, as to alter anything that my father had written, unless he had given me explicit instructions to do so. Besides, I thought the man impertinent. I do not know how he even knew my father had been writing a book unless some hints had got into the scientific magazines. I was so dreadfully upset about it that I am afraid I was very rude to him. But—when I went back to my room that page of manuscript that I had thrown on my bed was gone! I rang for the stewardess, but she said she had not been in the room!”

  “Where is the rest of that manuscript now?” demanded McNair in sudden panic.

  “Right here in my arms!” laughed Kerry, hugging her new woolly bag with the trailing fringe of vivid green. “I’ve had it with me ever since.”

  “Mercy!” said McNair drawing her away from the rail, “what if it should fall overboard! Come away and let’s sit down somewhere. Is that the only copy you have?”

  “Well, practically. Of course I have the notes. They are carefully hidden. I don’t think anyone would find them—”

  “You could put it in the safe,” suggested McNair, “there is provision on the boat for valuables.”

  “Yes,” said Kerry, “but I was putting the last touches to the manuscript. There were erasures to be made and some diagrams—I wanted to finish it entirely before I landed.”

  “But you did not tell me about the pen and pencil,” reminded McNair when he had her comfortably seated.

  “Well, I stepped on the pen when I got out of my berth this morning. I forgot to tell you that last night when I came in I found my briefcase which I am positive I filled with newspapers and left strapped and tucked between the dresser and my trunk when I went down to dinner, lying open and empty on the bed. The newspapers were gone! They happened to be just old newspapers however, not of any value. But when I opened my trunk to see if that had been disturbed I found the pencil lying on the top of everything.”

  “Well, I should say decidedly this is a case for the steward. But one thing first. Do you know, or didn’t you remember, that Dawson was in the bookshop that morning when you came in to sell those books to Peddington? He overheard all that you said about your father’s book.”

  Kerry turned a startled look upon the young man.

  “He was!” she said. “Oh, what a fool I was to talk! My father taught me better than that!” And then as comprehension came into her eyes, “Then—you were the other one. That is why your eyes looked so familiar!”

  Something warm and glowing came into the young man’s eyes. “That’s nice,” he said gently, “then we are friends, aren’t we?”

  Kerry answered him with a bright glow from her own eyes, and a rare smile lit her worried face.

  Then in quite another tone McNair spoke hurriedly.

  “Someone is coming down the deck. Suppose we vanish. You go to your stateroom, and I’ll send the steward to you. Tell him everything. You can trust him perfectly. By the way, have you had breakfast?”

  “No, but that doesn’t matter. I’d much rather get this off my mind.”

  “Nice morning!” said Dawson in his hard voice, wheeling on them by evident intention as they rose.

  “Not so nice as it was earlier,” said McNair meaningfully, “Miss Kavanaugh is going in. How about a little tennis, you and I, Dawson, say in about fifteen minutes? All right. Meet you at the court.”

  “What are you going to do to him?” grinned Kerry as they walked away out of hearing.

  “Keep him where I know he is safe until the steward gets a chance to search his room,” said McNair grimly. “You know that paper of yours has got to be found, as well as any copies of it he may have made, or you may have a lot of trouble on your hands.”

  “Oh, do you think they can find my paper?” asked Kerry eagerly. “I didn’t suppose that would be possible. I didn’t know what to do. I’m so glad I asked your advice.”

  “Well, don’t worry. We’ll keep our eyes on that lad from now on. And be sure you keep your manuscript safe. What’s the number of your stateroom? Right. I’ll get the steward at once!” He smiled and left her at her own door, and Kerry suddenly felt comforted to know that she did not have to carry the whole responsibility. Oh, if it had been this man who had professed
friendship and association with her father how certain she would have been that he was telling the truth!

  The steward arrived very soon and asked keen questions. McNair had evidently made plain the situation.

  “Just where did you find the pen? Yes, and what time was it that the paper blew out of your door? Will you show me where you found the pencil? What could he want of the paper? What did the page contain?”

  He jotted down her answers in a little notebook and was presently possessed of the whole story. Then he opened the door and called in the stewardess, who had evidently been told to wait there for him, and questioned her about the hours of her duties in the different staterooms.

  Kerry felt when he left that she had put her troubles into capable hands and that if there was any possibility of her lost property being recovered, he would do it. But she was not prepared to have him return so soon with a sheaf of papers in his hand, her own lost seventy-fifth page on the top. He was smiling grimly.

  “I hadn’t far to look,” he said, “they were all on the top of his writing pad in the dresser drawer. Is this one yours, this seventy-fifth page?”

  “Indeed it is!” she exclaimed. “Oh, I am so thankful! I was so worried. And it seemed terrible to charge any man with doing such a thing.”

  “Well, you needn’t worry about that part. More men than you’d think are capable of doing such things, and I’m glad we got this bird with so little trouble. He evidently had no idea you would dare bring your loss to notice. Now, will you just look over these other papers that were with it and see if he has been doing any copying yet? McNair said that would be likely. Of course we can’t erase it all from his memory, but the disappearance of all evidence of it may scare him into keeping still about it until your book is out.”

  Kerry took the pages and ran over them quickly. The first five were a somewhat irrelevant, rather disconnected dissertation of a minor scientific discussion that had been going on in the newspapers for several months. With her training she saw at once and with relief that it was not particularly well done, not very strong, and was quite illogical in places. An article like this could scarcely have much weight anywhere.

  But when she came to the sixth page, she found a most scurrilous attack on her father, and his supposed view of the subject, diabolically clever, supported by quotations from the stolen page. She saw at once that what Dawson lacked in scientific knowledge and cleverness, he made up in cunning. He had taken her father’s words out of their context, and had diverted from their original meaning whole sentences that her father had written. It was the cunning of a fox that had done that, not the brain of an honest scientist.

  When she had finished reading, she explained to the steward, reading him the parts that had to do with her page, and showing him the context of her father’s page in the original.

  The steward studied the papers for a few minutes and then said, “I see, Miss Kavanaugh. He’s been quite sly, has he not? Now, I think you would do well to keep the pages that have to do with your own, but I will return these first five pages to his room where I found them. I think that the disappearance of some of his papers will be enough to cause that bird to think a little and watch his step.”

  “Oh, you have been very kind,” said Kerry, “I was terribly worried! But—how do you know I am telling the truth? How do you know that I haven’t stolen his papers?”

  “Well, Miss Kavanaugh, I couldn’t be in the business of steward for twenty years on a great Atlantic liner and not be a pretty good judge of faces, character, if you want to call it that. But if I had needed any backing in what I’m doing it would have been enough that Graham McNair thought you were all right. I’ve known him since he was a little kid, and he’s a rare man, he is. Besides, anyone with half an eye, and a day at sea with him, can see what this other bird is. But now, I hope you won’t have any more trouble, Miss Kavanaugh. I’m having a special extra lock put on your door to make you feel comfortable. And any time you want us to put that manuscript in the safe, when you finish working with it, I’ll be glad to look after it for you. We’ll keep a lookout for this room, too. I don’t think you’ll have any more monkey business this trip. Good morning, Miss Kavanaugh! Don’t hesitate to call on me any time you need me. That’s what I’m here for.”

  He was gone, and Kerry, standing there with the papers in her hand, was so relieved she found tears of joy coming into her eyes. Of course there was still a possibility that that man would dare to write an article, but even if he did he had nothing to bear him out, no evidence that could stand in court. If it came to real trouble about it, she had it all!

  She was still standing there studying the Dawson paper when there came another tap at her door, and there was a tray. Coffee and rolls and grapefruit, a tempting array! Across one corner of the tray lay a dozen lovely deep-hearted yellow roses, and tucked between their stems was a note.

  The color framed into her face as she accepted the tray and smiled at the waiter who had brought it. Roses! The first roses she had ever received! There had often been roses in the family, but always for the beautiful little mother. She bent her head, laid her cheeks against their cool soft petals, and touched them with her lips.

  “You lovely, lovely things!” she said softly to them when she was alone. And then she sat down to read the note.

  Dear Miss Kavanaugh: it read,

  Eat your breakfast, and forget your troubles. I’m going to give this bird a battle on the deck this morning and see if I can get him tired out so he won’t bother us this afternoon. See you at lunchtime.

  There was no name signed but Kerry had no difficulty in identifying the writer, and she sat for several minutes cooling her cheeks against the roses, and thinking of what the steward had said about McNair. A great longing suddenly seized her to tell her father about this new friend she had found. Oh, if her father had only lived to know him. But of course, she must remember that the voyage was almost over, and she would probably never see him again after they landed. Still it was nice to have known him anyway, and she would always count him a good friend even if she never saw him again. Roses of course did not mean anything under the circumstances. They were just a little token of his sympathy and help, to remind her not to worry. She must not get any “ideas” from them.

  Nevertheless she hummed a little tune as she went to put them in water, and afterward she sat down to her tempting breakfast tray and found she was very hungry.

  After she had finished she got out the long envelope and opened it. She wanted to get all the hard things done and out of the way. She knew it would be hard to read her dear father’s last directions, even though they might and probably would be most commonplace. Just to think he had penned them when his hand trembled and he was so weak he could hardly write would wring her heart.

  There was the letter of introduction to the publisher, as she had expected, a beautiful letter, terse and clear, and she read it over slowly. Her father had left it open for her to read she knew, so that she might understand everything fully.

  Then there were full directions what to do when she arrived in New York, how to find the publisher, what to say, and what would probably be said to her. She memorized everything carefully, feeling that she wanted to understand every step of the way when she landed, and not have to hunt up a letter to see if she were right.

  She had purposely left until the last the small envelope marked “Kerry” in trembling penciled writing, knowing that it contained her father’s last word to her about the book itself.

  With tears raining down her face, she finally opened it.

  It was long, and obviously written in separate paragraphs at different times, a paragraph at a time. It was like reading his spiritual will.

  Dear Kerry:

  The book is done, and I find myself feeling that it is your book. If it had not been for you it would never have been finished. I know definitely now that I have only a few more days left. The doctor told me so this morning. But I am satisfied. I have do
ne the work I had set myself to do. The book will give you a little something to live on, and while I regret that I was unable to give you and your beautiful little mother the luxury I always hoped for, yet I know you two can get along very well on the income you will have. You must guide your mother somewhat in its expenditure, Kerry, for you know her lack of judgment, but she is such a dear, beautiful little mother—

  Here the paragraph broke off suddenly as strength evidently failed, and then took up again on an entirely new theme, probably hours later.

  I have been thinking over the book, Kerry! I am glad it is done. Glad I was able to finish it before I went. Glad I could demonstrate a few facts that others have failed to follow through to the finish. But Kerry—I am wondering whether it was worth it all—whether it has been worth while to keep my soul down to this thing. Of course it was great to be able to search out truth, and truth is always wonderful, the more wonderful the more hidden.

  But Kerry, I’ve been wondering, if after all, there wasn’t other truth—bigger truth I might have digged for—truth that would have reached and helped more people.

  The last few days I’ve been reading an old Book. You remember the day I told you to hunt me out my Bible? Well, dear, I’ve been browsing through it every day since then. It has taken possession of my mind to the exclusion of everything else. I have found new truths there, and I have found a great many deep things which I do not understand. It has intrigued me more than any study of science. I have come suddenly face-to-face with the thought that perhaps, after all, the key to all knowledge, the basis of all science, was here hidden, and I did not understand in time.

  I think if I had my life to live over I would begin with this old Book, and never touch science until I had mastered at least its possibilities, searched out its hidden meanings, got a key to its rare language of types and patterns, which I have come to feel are hidden here away from common sight as much as ever the secrets of life and creation and power is hidden in nature—