by Talbot Mundy
Will Tryon came up to the house to dinner, bringing young Jansen with him. Will Tryon stood up square and grey-eyed, looked a stranger in the face, and cared for neither hell nor hour’s as long as the day’s work was done and to-morrow’s lay mapped out. He had a hard-lined face with a suggestion of the Indian’s stoicism at the corners of the mouth and eyes — a rather homely face, but honest to the end of time, and his hollow back and shoulders and loose loins were those of a man, if ever I saw one.
Janson was something different — a rather fair haired Scandinavian sort, very quick indeed with his agreeable remarks, and a trifle ostentatiously respectful — built lightly, rather nervous on his feet, alert, and cut out more for figuring, I should say, or ferreting, than for managing a big concern. You see his sort around legations, doing the detail work and keeping tabs on other folk rather than constructing anything. He wouldn’t have made an honest fortune in a million years, I was sure of that, and I wondered what Tryon saw in him; yet Tryon seemed to treat him with considerable friendliness, and Tryon is hardly the man to trust business in a mere human ferret’s hands.
They were probably all wondering what might have brought Joan Angela back so unexpectedly, but nobody asked questions. Will Tryon talked with her about the oil developments, and Fritz Jansen flirted half-mischievously with Clara Mulready all through dinner; I wouldn’t have given ten cents for her chance of catching him, supposing that were what she really wanted, nor one cent for her judgment if she did. He had his eye on the main chance, that fellow, but I was puzzled about her.
She had one sure virtue that partly explained Joan Angela’s affection for her, although only partly, because nothing you can do for Joan makes any difference; she likes you or she doesn’t. It was Clara who made music after dinner — Chopin, on the Steinway Grand — while we three sat round the great hearth drinking the divine stuff in. The only fault I find with all out-doors is that its music isn’t tameable, as rocks and forests and rivers are; the only good I see in town life is the music you can spread out like a feast of the gods within four walls. It always seems to me that if Judas Iscariot had owned a parlour Grand, and used it, the world would not have slipped backward twenty centuries.
I got no chance to talk with Will Tryon — had in fact no inclination to do anything but listen — until Joan Angela and Clara went off to bed and left us three before the low wood fire. Very shortly after that Fritz Jansen pulled out, making some excuse about early rising, but Tryon stayed on to act the part of host.
We talked about wind in the trees for a while, For the music had drawn that vein uppermost, but I had to broach business somehow, so at last I drove at him bow-on, for he isn’t the sort of man who likes suggestions and evasiveness.
“How soon were you thinking of going to ‘Frisco?” I asked him, and he looked up suddenly and stared hard.
“When I’m ready. Why?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute. Could you go tomorrow?”
“I could, yes. If it was Joan’s business I could start to-night,”
“It is her business —
“I’m listening:’ he answered quietly.
“Have you in mind to sell a small piece of real estate in the city?”
“Yes. It’s sold.”
“You have to deliver the title deed?”
“I thought of sending Jansen:”
“Did he ask to go?”
“Yes. He has private business there.”
“Joan Angela told me this morning that only you and she ever have access to her strong-box in Sacramento.”
“She’s most always truthful.”
“Then either you or she would go to Sacramento in that case, to get the title deed out of the box?”
“I figured on going. There’s other things to see to at the bank.”
“You would take the deed out of the box, give it to Jansen, and send him to San Francisco with it?”
“That’s right. Joan seems to have been gossiping. She’s quiet about business as a rule.”
“There’s a scheme on foot to rob her, and I suspect the idea is to make you an innocent accomplice.”
“Innocent is good.”
“To whom is that title deed to be delivered?”
“John Doe. The lawyers who did the business are Zezwinski and Zoom, known all over the West as the Zee-bar-Zee outfit. They’re skunks.”
“Do you think you could have Zezwinski come here himself and get that deed?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Why?”
“I’d like to catch Zezwinski.”
“That would suit me. He skinned Joan once, when she was away in Egypt. What is the idea this time?”
“I don’t know, positively. I only know a corporation is already being formed in Nevada as a holding company for this estate and Joan Angela’s land in Egypt.”
“Say, that’s interesting! Who’s the hopeful incorporator?”
“A man named Noureddin Moustapha Pasha, an Egyptian of more or less Armenian ancestry. The plan is apparently this: Inside that envelope containing the title deed to the piece of real estate in San Francisco that you have just sold, I think will be found the receipt that the late Mr. Collins gave to Joan Angela. You know the receipt I mean?”
“I sure do. That’s what cinches her title to this ranch. Who put it in that envelope?”
“Neither you, nor she, nor I, at any rate.’”
“Um-m-m! I get you.”
“The envelope is sealed. I know that. It’s all ready, on top of everything in the box, with the contents written in blue pencil on the outside. You might be able to recognize the handwriting.”
He nodded. His mouth had set hard long ago, and he was listening to me with his granite-like jaw resting on one fist.
“You get the idea? You would take that envelope from the box and send it by Jansen straight to Zezwinski without opening it. I’ve been thinking that perhaps it might be better if you were to ask Zezwinski to come here and get the title deed himself.”
“He’d smell a rat,” said Tryon.
“Can you think of a better idea?”
“Maybe not. I’ll take a car at dawn, and get there when the bank opens. Fritz Jansen shall come with me. I’ll let him see me take that envelope out of the box and put it in my pocket. Then I’ll go in and see the bank manager; and when I come out of there, I’ll tell Fritz there’s been a ‘phone message from the ranch and we’re both needed. I’ll have him call up Zezwinski, and if it’s true that Fritz is mixed up in this, it’s a safe bet he’ll persuade Zezwinski to come at once before I open that envelope. Then we’ll have Zezwinski, and whoever else has had a hand in the business, backed up proper. I hope you’re wrong, but if you’re right, I’ll thank you. Good night. Mr. Ramsden.”
I was up with the birds, just in time to catch sight of Will Tryon’s car departing in a cloud of dust, with young Jansen in the rear seat. Evidently Tryon was in no mood for conversation with anybody, and he had left it to me to explain the plan of operations to Joan Angela, which I had no opportunity to do for several hours because Clara Mulready was in her most clinging mood that morning and not to be shaken off by any means.
We spent most of the day riding about the ranch, and I had to watch my opportunity to tell her about Tryon’s arrangements. Thereafter she behaved toward Clara Mulready exactly as usual.
Tryon returned about four o’clock, and gave Jansen plenty to do at once to keep him occupied; but I detected one exchange of signals between Fritz and Clara as he passed the porch. She raised her eyebrows, and he nodded; that was all.
Zezwinski arrived in a great yellow battle-wagon of a car about an hour before dinner-time, bragging of the speed he had made, and trying to turn the boasting into flattery.
“A chance to see Miss Leich in her home, you know — a tortoise would have broken records!”
There was somewhere near two hundred pounds of him, all shark. He had a great, indecent nose, too broad at the lower end and much too narrow at the top, bro
wn crocodilian eyes with heavy lids, and a mouth that was all lips — flappy, mobile lips that would have earned his fortune as a maker of grimaces on the stage. It was a big, powerful head on a strong neck, and his shoulders too were powerful, but he was in poor condition, as the size of his stomach testified. His manner, like his partner Zoom’s, was that of a man who has adopted the West without being adapted to it, free enough, and easy enough, but deliberately built up from the surface instead of naturally growing outward from a core of manliness.
“Let’s get the business over first,” Joan Angela suggested, and he was more than agreeable.
“That’s right, Miss Leich. Never let business interfere with pleasure; get it out of the way and done with! If you’ve that title deed, I’ve got my cheque-book. My clerks will attend to registering the transfer.”
We all went into the library — Joan Angela, Will Tryon, Clara. Mulready, Fritz Jansen, Zezwinski, and I. Zezwinski rather wondered at that, and hadn’t manners enough not to comment on it.
“Business quite a family affair, isn’t it? Well, the more witnesses the better to a straight transaction.”
It is an enormous library. There is a fireplace built of Barstow granite, and in front of that, in the middle of the room, a large rectangular table that used to belong to Marie Antoinette, or some such extravagant patron of the fine arts. The evenings weren’t in the least chilly in that neck of the valley, but the room was big, the windows were open, and a fire looked cheerful, so the Chinaman had started a blaze. We all sat down — Joan Angela at one end of the table, Zezwinski at the other, facing her; Will Tryon on Joan Angela’s right, and Jansen facing him, with his back to the fire. Clara Mulready took one armchair near the fireplace, and I the opposite, for, in theory at any rate, I had nothing to do with the business, and had no excuse for approaching the table. I thought that Clara Mulready’s face betrayed signs of nervousness, but Jansen seemed perfectly at ease.
The business didn’t take long.
“There’s the deed,” said Will Tryon, and tossed a long envelope on to the table. Zezwinski produced his fountain-pen and began to write a cheque. I could see the big envelope easily from where I sat. But Clara could not see it, and Jansen’s eyes were on the writing of the cheque. Will Tryon’s face was an enigma-passive — the face of a man who has drawn three cards to a pair and has raised the bet.
Zezwinski reached for the envelope and tore it open. Then he peered down into it, and pulled out the deed with two fingers, using his thumb, or so it seemed to me, to push another paper back into the envelope.
“Yes,” he said, glancing at the deed, “that seems to be in order. You’ve endorsed it in blank.”
He pushed the cheque toward Tryon and slipped the deed into his pocket, then crumpled up the envelope very casually. “No waste-basket? Well, the fire will do.”
He stood up to make sure of his aim, and threw the crumpled ball of paper well to the back of the burning sticks, where it caught instantly. I jumped for the poker, and burned my hand trying to grab the envelope before it was consumed entirely. Joan Angela jumped up, but sat down again at a nod from Will Tryon.
“That’s all right,” said Tryon. “What d’you think you’ve burned?” he asked, looking straight at Zezwinski.
“Why — my dear man — burned an envelope-you saw me.”
“Yes. I was looking to see you do it. Young Jansen here ‘phoned you this morning, didn’t he?”
“He did.”
“He used a desk ‘phone in the bank in Sacramento. I was at the switchboard in the back room, listening in. This morning that deed was in another envelope. I changed it. The handwriting on the one you’ve burned was mine. Inside it, signature upward, there was another piece of paper, wasn’t there? You caught sight of the name Collins. That was my handwriting, too. Here’s the real receipt that Collins gave to Miss Leich to establish her clear title to this ranch.”
Will Tryon drew a sheet of foolscap from his inner pocket and displayed it. It was good poker — Joan Angela’s pot. Fritz Jansen’s face was ashen — grey, and his fingers below the table opened and closed convulsively. Clara Mulready’s face was as white as the dress she was wearing. Joan Angela looked utterly sorry. Will Tryon’s look was stern. The only man who showed no particular emotion was Zezwinski.
“Well? What are you going to do about it?” he demanded.
“We’ll give you your dinner in the kitchen with the Chinamen,” Joan Angela answered. Then she glanced at Clara Mulready, wondering. “Clara dear, will you come with me into the next room?”
Zezwinski got up to go, shrugging his shoulders with a cynicism that I don’t think was assumed. He was a shark who had missed his fish, that was all, ready to forget that one and pursue the next.
“Sit down!” commanded Tryon. His voice was like two cracks of a whip, and Zezwinski obeyed.
“Jansen! Get out of here! Get out of California! You’ve one hour, by my watch, to hit the trail! Take one of our light trucks and a man to drive. You may burn our gas for a hundred miles, and send the car back-any direction you see fit. But don’t cross my path or Miss Angela’s again! That’s all. Beat it!”
Jansen left the room with a sheepish sort of washed-out grin on his face.
Zezwinski rose from his chair again and started to follow him.
“I said sit down!”
Zezwinski glanced at me and then at Tryon, and obeyed. Either of us could have managed him with one hand.
“Now, what’s at the bottom of this? Out with the whole story!”
“I’ve no remarks to make,” Zezwinski answered, pursing up his mouth.
“I didn’t call for no remarks from you,” said Tryon. “What I’m going to have is facts—”
“Facts, eh?”
“You heard me right.”
“Well, I’m no poor sport,” said Zezwinski, leaning back and thrusting both hands deep into his pockets. “You’re talking through your hat, you know. You can’t prove anything. I can afford to be generous. What do you want to know? The property belongs to Miss Leich as long as you’ve that Collins receipt to put in evidence; that’s legal advice which I’ll charge you nothing. It’s free, gratis. What else?”
“Any fool knows why you wanted this place, and why you can’t get it,” Tryon answered. “What for did you want that Egyptian property?”
“Oh, that’s nothing to do with me. That’s a side issue.
“No use lying. Ramsden here has had a talk with Zoom. Facts, now! What for did you want that Egyptian property?”
“Didn’t Zoom tell you?”
“Zoom’s not here. You out with it!”
“I’d nothing to do with that part; don’t take much stock in it either; sounds like a mare’s nest to me. A client of ours happened to want it. He was so anxious to be in a strong position to bargain with Miss Leich that he paid a stiff figure for the Collins heirs’ claim against this ranch. The idea of a holding company for both properties grew out of that. The Egyptian land is said to be valuable, but I’ve no proof of it.”
“In what way valuable?”
“There’s some talk about a tomb — a king’s tomb, I guess he said. I don’t remember the King’s name. My opinion is he kids himself.”
“There’s a nigger in this wood-pile yet,” said Tryon. “What I’m going to know from you before you leave this room is: Who corrupted Mrs. Mulready and Fritz Jansen? Who put you up to it, and put them up to it, and linked the lot together? That’s what I’m driving at.”
“Privilege!” Zezwinski answered. “You can’t expect me to divulge a confidence.”
“Confidence? You don’t know what that is! D’you know what to expect if you don’t answer? You won’t rob anybody for quite a while if your discretion isn’t working good.”
Zezwinski didn’t care ten cents about divulging confidences. What rattled him was being forced to do it. Being a born bully, he hated his own medicine, and he was no such fool as to doubt that Tryon would make good whatever he thre
atened.
“If you had asked me civilly, as one man to another—” he began.
“‘I’ll give you sixty seconds!” Tryon interrupted, Pulling out his watch.
“Oh, well — Mrs. Isobel Aintree is the name.”
“Her address?” demanded Tryon.
“All right,” I said. “I know her address. So does Joan Angela.”
“Go and eat with the Chinamen!” commanded Tryon, opening the door and standing back to let Zezwinski through.
CHAPTER VI. “A land in which death is not difficult, but life has its complexities”
High up behind Joan Angela’s home, reached by a winding track that in places is barely practicable for a horse, there rises a promontory from which you can get a view of all that countryside. Once on top, you find a level forty acres and about thirty sugar-pines irregularly spaced, great, splendid fellows three feet thick that rise as straight as arrows for fifty or sixty feet before throwing a branch.
On the morning after Zezwinski’s defeat we turned the horses loose up there, to nibble and play the goat, and Joan Angela, Will Tryon, and I made a picnic breakfast, which is to other breakfasts as a full moon is to a whale-oil lamp; there’s no comparing them.
Below us the whole ranch lay divided into a geometrical pattern by the ugly well-rigs and the dusters of made-to-order bungalows that housed the gangs. It was a strange view, on the whole pretty typical of the birth- throes by which new orders come into being, and I dare say beautiful if you have an eye for interpretation.
Joan Angela was silent. We had seen nothing of Clara Mulready since she followed Joan out of the library the day before, and although, personally, I wouldn’t have trusted her in the first place, or have worried about her in the second — and I knew Will Tryon agreed with me — with Joan it was another matter. Neither of us knew what to say to console her, and, man-fashion, I supposed that scorn of someone else might help.
“I’d have thought better of Zezwinski if he’d accepted that offer of a meal among the Chinamen,” I said. “He stalked out of the house as if we were the devils and he an angel with his feathers pulled. I’m all in favour of finishing the brute, if we can manage it.”
