The World's Great Snare

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  * * * * *

  After a while he sat up, lit a pipe, and tore open the envelope of his letter. The moonlight was just strong enough to enable him to decipher it slowly.

  “18, MARLOWE COURT, STRAND, LONDON, W. C.

  “August 17th.

  “DEAR SIR,

  “After considerable trouble and some expense, we have become acquainted with some further details concerning the man, Maurice Huntly, who visited you at Denton on the first of last month. We find that his real name is Marriot, and that seven years ago a warrant was issued for his arrest on a charge of forgery. The warrant was never executed, as he fled the country, but, on his recent visit to England, the police obtained some clue as to his identity, and were on his track. It was to escape from them, and not to avoid completing his disclosures to you, that he quitted England so abruptly. We trust that this will enable you to come across him in the States, as he certainly has no object in keeping out of your way. We believe that he took another name in New York, but that you will doubtless have ascertained for yourself. Our information further goes to show that he was the son of a clergyman, and started life with every advantage. Should anything further transpire we will let you know. In the meantime we remain,

  “Your obedient Servants,

  “MASON AND WILLIAMS.

  “P.S.—It is never our desire to extract from our clients an unwilling confidence, but at the same time, we cannot refrain from submitting to you that we should be in a far better position to work on your behalf, if we possessed sonic information as to the nature of the disclosures so important to yourself, referred to by the man Marriot during his brief visit to you at Denton.”

  He read it through twice, and remained for some time afterwards deep in thought. Then, with an effort to conquer his restlessness, he lay down, pulled a rug over him, and tried to sleep. Through half-closed eyes he watched the fireflies gleaming in the valley below, and listened to the faint, lulling music from the pine forest away overhead. Gradually he grew drowsy. He was almost dozing, when a sound close at hand disturbed him. The door of the shanty was softly opened, and Myra came out.

  She walked noiselessly towards him, with bare feet, and wrapped in the long white garment which he had given her, and which certainly had never seemed destined to fall into such graceful folds around so dainty a form. He caught one glimpse of her dusky face, strangely soft in the waning moonlight, the lips a little parted in a faint smile, and the deep, glowing eyes full of a wonderful liquid fire; and he realized as he had never done before the wild, strange beauty of the girl who was stealing like a ghost to his side. Then he closed his eyes and breathed heavily.

  She stooped down till her warm breath fell upon his bronzed, sunburnt cheek. Then, seeing that he made no movement, she gave a wistful little sigh, and kissed him so lightly that her lips seemed scarcely to brush his. Still he did not move, or give any sign of wakefulness. Presently he felt her sink down by his side, and her head drooped upon his shoulder. In a few moments she was asleep. As soon as he was sure of it, he threw the rug over her, and rising softly, walked away in the darkness.

  III. A WESTERN LOVE

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  By six o’clock in the morning a bright sun, mounting into a sky of dazzling clearness, began to make its power felt. An hour later the Englishman, who had been working on his claim since the first gray streaks of dawn, took off his clothes and plunged into a deep pool of the river. Emerging, he dried himself leisurely, dressed, and scrambled up the gorge side to the small platform of green turf on which he had built his cabin.

  His guest was at the door in her cowboy’s clothes, patched and mended up. She welcomed him with a little cry of delight, and then a swift, deep blush, as she saw his lips part with amusement.

  “That’s real mean!” she declared. “It’s bad enough to have to wear such things, without being laughed at. I shall go and put on my gown!”

  He laughed outright, pushing her before him into the cabin, and glancing apprehensively down into the valley, and across to the opposite shanty. There was no one in sight.

  “You won’t do anything of the sort, if you please,” he said decidedly. “You look very well as you are. Come and let’s get some breakfast. I’m starving!”

  “It’s ready and waiting—all that I can find. Bryan, this is the most elegant place in the world. I never saw anything half so beautiful.”

  He turned round and stood by her side in the doorway, looking across the valley to where a dim blue haze shrouded the distant mountain-tops. In the pure, fine air all colours seemed intensified—the green of the alder and hazel-trees rising sharp and clear against the sky, and the deeper shade of the broad belt of pine-trees which fringed the mountain’s side; a great flowering cactus with bright scarlet blossoms drooped over the precipice below, and the rocks and bushes were starred with flowers of strange and brilliant colours growing out of every crack and in every corner. The dry morning air was sweet, too, with the perfume of many herbs and flowers, and far down in the valley the sun-smitten river gleamed like a bed of silver. The girl, to whom nature in such a guise as this was a revelation, stood there with bright, thoughtful eyes, and with the languid morning breeze stealing through her dark wavy hair, no longer coiled up and concealed. She was feeling the touch of a new power in the world, a new sensation. Hereafter she sometimes associated a new phase of life into which she was to pass, with this morning.

  “I like this!” she said softly. “It’s better than the city. I’d like to live here always!”

  The Englishman frowned.

  “You’d be tired of it in a week, Myra. No shops, no theatre, no drives in the park! I doubt whether you’d stand it for a week. Come along, and let’s see what you’ve made of breakfast.”

  The girl turned away with a sigh, and followed him into the shanty.

  “I’ve found some tea,” she said, “and some bacon—I cooked that. The stove don’t go very well; guess it wants cleaning.”

  “That’s all right. Things look real tidy for once. Sit down and let us have some breakfast. Afterwards I want to talk to you.”

  She obeyed Him in silence. Her cheeks had suddenly grown pale again. She ate but little, watching her companion most of the time. What was he going to do with her? Would he send her back after all—away from him, and back to the life she hated with a great soul-shuddering hate? Oh, he would not be so cruel as that; surely he would not! Go back to that great hideous city with its garishness and glitter, its cheap vice and all its brazen show of falseness and iniquity! She had drifted there on the broad bosom of an unkind fate; a fate which should surely have marked her out for better things. Vice had no allurements for her. The pleasures of the demi-monde, the cheap theatre and the tawdry dancing saloon, were flavourless to her. She thought of them now as she gazed out at the glorious blue sky, and the panorama of bold and magnificent scenery, with a shudder which came from her very soul. The sweet scented breeze which swept in through the open doorway, tasted to her jaded senses like the elixir of life. A passionate disgust of cities and all their ways leaped up within her. From that moment the life of the past had become impossible to her. She had been born one of nature’s children outside the ken of cities, almost of civilization, and it was but the return to an old allegiance.

  The Englishman had finished his breakfast, calmly unconscious of all that was passing through the mind of his companion. He lit a pipe, dragged the form into the sunshine, and motioned her to sit at the other end of it.

  “Myra,” he said gently, after a few moments’ meditative silence, “you’ve done me a real good turn. You’ve shown uncommon grit, and you’ve accomplished a thing which a good many men wouldn’t have cared about. I haven’t said much about it; I was so surprised to see you last night that you might have thought I wasn’t grateful. But I am. I want to show it, if I can. I want to repay you so far as a man is able to repay a service of that sort; and so—”

  “I want no repayment—only to stop right here,”
she interrupted breathlessly. “I should be perfectly happy. I could look after things and cook for you, and keep the place clean, and—oh, Bryan, for God’s sake, let me stop! You were fond of me once—anyway, you used to tell me so. Don’t drive me away! I don’t care how you treat me. I will be your slave if you like—nothing more. Only don’t send me back! Let me stay, Bryan! Do let me stay!”

  She had slipped from the form on to the ground, and was kneeling at his feet, her eyes bright with tears, and the colour coming and going in her cheeks. She even ventured to lay her arms imploringly on his shoulders, and turn them round his neck. The Englishman gently unwound her fingers, retaining possession of one of her hands. He looked down into her flushed face with a troubled shade in his own.

  “Myra, it wouldn’t do,” he said kindly. “You’ll think me a brute, of course. Dare say I am. But I want you to leave here with the expressman, the day after to-morrow, and go right back to San Francisco. I can’t keep you here, little woman, if I wanted to; and if I could, I wouldn’t, so there!”

  Her bosom heaved. She drew herself right away from him, and stood leaning against the wall, with a crimson colour in her cheeks and her eyes afire.

  “You—you don’t care for me any more, then? It was true, what I feared! You came here to get rid of me. You were tired, you wanted to escape.”

  “Steady, Myra. You know that’s not right. I came here for two reasons. First, to make money. Secondly, because I was satisfied that the man whom I had come from England to find, was not in San Francisco. I had no trace of him, nothing to go by. I thought to myself that if he was the restless sort of chap every one made him out to be, he would most likely be off on the gold fever, like the rest of them. That’s why I came, Myra. It’s all very well for me here. I’m a rough sort of chap, and I can find my level anywhere, but it’s not the place for a woman.”

  “Any place is good enough for such as I!” she cried passionately. “It’s only an excuse; you want to get rid of me. You do! And I have come all this way just to see you, just to bring you that letter. Just to be with you! Oh, I hate myself! I hate you! I wish I were dead!”

  Her eyes strayed to the revolver which lay upon the table. She made a quick movement towards it, but he caught her wrist and held it firmly.

  “That’ll do, Myra,” he said firmly. “Just listen to me. If I am brutal it is your own fault—so here goes. You came to me of your own free will—ay, of your own accord. Is it not so? I met you in Josi’s cafi at San Francisco, whilst I was idling about waiting for—you know what. Well, you came and kept house with me for a month or two. I was not the first. You told me so yourself. The thing was common enough. I never made you any promises. I never gave you to understand that it would be likely to last. When I heard that the man for whom I was lying in wait had left the city, I gave you notice that I was off. Well, you were sorry, and I was sorry. I shared up all that I had in the world, and I left you. I may have made you some sort of promise about coming back again, but never as a permanency, you understand. I’m as fond of you now as I ever was—fonder, if anything, after what you’ve done for me—but you must take this little affair with me as you took the others—see? Now I’ve made you feel badly. I’m sorry, but I’d got to do it.”

  The changing shades in the girl’s countenance had been a study for which many an eastern painter would willingly have bartered every model in his studio. At first her dusky face had darkened, and her eyes had blazed with all the wild free fury of a woman whose vanity, or love, or both, are deeply wounded. But as he went on, as the whole bitter meaning of his words, winged with a kindness which seemed to her like the poison on the arrow’s tip, sank into her understanding, the anger seemed to die away. When he had finished she was crouched upon the ground with her back to him. She did not answer him or address him in any way; only he knew that she was sobbing her heart out, and, being by no means a stone, he began to relent.

  “Myra,” he said kindly, stretching out his hand and laying it upon her shoulder, “come and sit with me for a minute or two before I go! I must be off to work again directly, and I can’t leave you like this.”

  She got up meekly, dried her eyes, and sat at the extreme end of the form, with her hands folded in her lap, and gazing listlessly out of the open doorway. Alas! the music of the winds and the deep, soft colouring of the hills and far-off mountains were nothing to her now! All the buoyancy of life seemed crushed and nerveless. Even that sudden strong, sweet joy in these glories of nature which had leaped up in her breast, a new-born and joyous thing, was dead. Watching her as she sat there, the Englishman felt like a guilty man. He had made some clumsy attempt at doing the thing which seemed to his limited vision right and kind. He was not accustomed to women or their ways, but he felt instinctively that he had made a mistake somehow. A sense almost of awe came upon him. He felt like a man who has destroyed something immeasurably greater than himself; something so grand that no power in this world could build it up again. He was penitent and remorseful, even sorrowful, without any very clear idea as to what this evil thing was that he had done. Only he looked into this girl’s downcast face, and he felt like some wanton schoolboy who has dashed to the ground one of those dainty, brilliant butterflies with peach-coloured wings, and a bloom so beautiful that a single touch from coarse fingers must mar it for ever. A moment before it was one of God’s own creatures, a dream of soft elegance and refined colouring. Now it lies upon the ground bruised and shapeless, fluttering its broken wings for the last time, and breathing out its sad little life. In a minute or two some passer-by will kick it into the dust. That will be the end of it. The Englishman looked at the girl by his side, and his eyes twitched convulsively. There was an odd lump in his throat.

  “Myra, I don’t want to be a brute!” he said softly. “I want to act squarely to you. That’s what makes me seem unkind, perhaps. I’m quite unsettled here! I’ve heard nothing of the man I’m in search of, but directly I have found him, I shall be leaving the country for good. It wouldn’t be fair to take up with you again, would it? You’re not like the others. I wouldn’t mind if you were!”

  She shuddered and looked up at him, dry-eyed and callous. “You are quite right! I do not want to be a burden upon any one!” she said slowly. “I am ready to do just what you think best. If you like, I’ll go back the same way I came. I dare say I could find it all right. If not, it wouldn’t much matter!”

  The dull despair of her tone, and the mute abandonment of herself to his wishes, moved him strangely. For the first time he hesitated. He had been prepared for reproaches, he had steeled his heart even against her tears, her caressings, her beseechings; but this was something quite different. From feeling altogether in the right, he began to wonder vaguely whether he was not attempting something singularly brutal and unmanly. He hesitated, and every moment the words which he desired to say became more impossible. He turned to her abruptly.

  “Aren’t you just a little rough on me, Myra?” he said softly. “Don’t you see that it is for your sake I wanted to go!”

  She looked at him, and his eyes fell before hers. “For my sake!” she repeated bitterly.

  He began to feel absolutely conscience-stricken. After all, the reproach in her tone was just. It was as much for his own sake as hers that he had wanted to be rid of her. There was an element of Puritanism in the man which rebelled against all the irregularities of this wild western life. He liked to be his own man and live his own life! Well, he should have been consistent! Here was a harvest of his own sowing. If his heart had not been moved by the wild, beseeching pathos of this girl’s dark eyes shining at him through a cloud of thick tobacco smoke in Josi’s saloon, he would never have found himself in such a quandary. Bah! it was useless to waste time on empty regrets, to rail at the past while the girl’s heart was breaking. He got up, and bent over her.

  “Look here, Myra,” lie said kindly. “I guess I’m not so sure about being right after all. I’ll think it over whilst I’m at work. See? Don
’t fret! We’ll see if we can’t fix up something.”

  “Very well.”

  He relit his pipe, and kissed her hesitatingly upon the forehead, a salute which she accepted with perfect impassiveness. Then he strode out of the cottage, and down the gorge to the river-bed.

  IV. THE LAUGH OF MR. JAMES HAMILTON

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  Three men, the last to leave their claims after the day’s work, climbed up the gorge in the heavy twilight. The Englishman and his partner were a little in front, Mr. James Hamilton brought up the rear.

  At the parting of the ways they were separating, as usual, without a word, when the Englishman looked back over his shoulder.

  “No cards to-night, you chaps—not at my shanty, anyhow!” he said briefly. “Do you hear, Jim?”

  “Yes, I hear!” Mr. Hamilton repeated surlily. “You want me to sit and get the miserables in this cussed hole! I’ll see myself d—d first. If you chaps ain’t playing I’m off to Dan Cooper’s saloon. Who the hell’s that dodging about your hut?” he added, peering upwards through the brambles. “Here goes for them, at any rate! I’d shoot anything to-day, from a dog to a Christian!”

  He raised his gun to his shoulder with a savage scowl. The Englishman stooped down quickly and knocked the barrel into the air, where it exploded harmlessly.

  “I’ll do my own shooting, thank you, Jim!” he said carelessly. “I’ve got a stranger up there, a boy who’s found his way from San Francisco. You can go to Cooper’s store if you like, and be fleeced, and catch a fever, and get drunk on poison at a dollar a glass! It’s no business of mine, but if you take my advice, you’ll stop where you are and go to bed early for once! There’s enough blackguardism going on down there, without your being mixed up in it.”