by John Jakes
Gideon tried to concentrate on his surroundings. Hubble was somewhere behind him—out of sight.
Courtleigh seemed to sense an advantage. He smoothed his hair with a palm, brought his strident breathing under control, continued.
“But of course, what you said earlier was entirely correct. You can’t touch me, or prove a single one of your allegations. Should you be foolish enough to print any of them in that rag you publish, no one would believe them—least of all anyone charged with enforcing the law.”
“Because you’re above it, aren’t you?”
Courtleigh smiled again. “So I like to think. I take your remark as a compliment, Kent. Since we’re being so frank, let me tell you one more thing. Hubble has botched several assignments for me, and he’ll be a long while regaining my full favor. One of the botches involved Miss Sedgwick. On my instructions, Mr. Hubble sent a man after her. The man followed her for several days before he found his opportunity. Now I understand she’s still alive. I presume she was the mutual acquaintance to whom you referred?”
No answer. Courtleigh shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I hope she dies. But if she doesn’t, be assured of this. The next man I send will succeed.”
Gideon’s control broke. He shot his left hand out and caught Courtleigh’s throat, and with his right hand seized the blade on the desk.
iv
Courtleigh was soft. Gideon had no trouble dragging him forward with one hand. Or perhaps the rage that he finally released lent him unexpected strength. Courtleigh’s thighs struck the edge of his desk. Gideon kept pulling, his face red. As he pulled, he pressed the point of the opener against Courtleigh’s neck and watched the man’s expression.
“Hubble!” That was the one word Courtleigh managed to squeal as Gideon dragged him across the desk, spilling more papers and ledgers. With his right hand he dug the opener deeper into the skin. Another moment and he’d pierce it, draw the first blood. He’d keep pulling and pulling until he’d impaled Courtleigh’s throat on—
Remember the family you represent.
Don’t let one rash act eradicate everything—
“Help! Someone help in here!” Hubble was shouting while Gideon silently cried out for Payne to leave him alone and let him do what was deserved and long past due.
Hubble’s voice seemed far away: “Let go of him, Kent! I have a gun—”
It didn’t matter. Only Courtleigh’s huge, horrified eyes mattered, and his face bloating under Gideon’s constricting hand. The metal point went deeper.
Deeper—
Don’t let the Kents be accused—
Bellowing like some gored animal, Gideon jerked the opener back and flung it behind him. With the frustration pouring through him, he doubled his right hand and smashed it into Courtleigh’s face, which had somehow become his own.
All of it had taken no more than a few seconds. Hubble leaped forward to grab Gideon’s shoulder—“Stop it, Kent!”—as Courtleigh’s nose exploded with blood. Hubble’s fingers tore Gideon’s coat. He twisted his head to the left and saw a pistol in the lawyer’s hand, evidently drawn from a concealed holster.
Hubble’s face contorted as he aimed at point-blank range. Gideon released Courtleigh and flung himself to the right. He heard the office doors crash open an instant before the pistol thundered.
The bullet grazed the side of Gideon’s neck, or at least he thought so as he fell. His back was toward the desk and the reception area. He broke his fall with his hands. Dragging himself to his knees, he shook his head to try to clear it. He heard a pained cry.
Courtleigh was bracing himself on the desk with one hand. He had a sick, disbelieving expression on his face. So did the lawyer. Hubble’s fat fist all but hid the mechanism of his pistol. A curl of smoke climbed from the barrel.
“You stupid—stupid—” Courtleigh gasped. He couldn’t go on. There were tears in his eyes as he fell forward, his face striking the desk and sliding off. He struck the carpet and lay still. Hubble’s bullet had found the wrong victim.
Frantic, Hubble glanced at the gun. Gideon was vaguely aware of voices behind him. People in the doorway. Two or three of them. One—it might have been one of the clerks—exclaimed, “Don’t let anyone else in here! Block the corridor—”
All at once a sly glint showed under Hubble’s half-closed lids. He looked at Gideon, then flung the pistol. It hit the carpet and skidded up near Gideon’s braced left hand. Hubble spun toward the people in the doorway.
“Get the police. He killed Mr. Courtleigh. You saw it. You all saw it and you’ll testify to it, won’t you?”
The bald clerk nodded quickly. “I saw it, Hubble. I’ll swear to it.”
And then someone else spoke—the cheaply dressed guard who’d replaced Freeman in the outer office. “I won’t testify to that, Hubble. You shot him. I watched you do it right after I opened the door, you dishonorable son of a bitch.”
Slowly, Gideon raised his head. He knew he had gone insane. The deterioration of his mind must have started when he let grief persuade him to put all his principles aside and plan Courtleigh’s death. It had started then and culminated in this—mirage, this—hallucination of a damned, deranged man … who heard his dead brother’s voice … who saw his dead brother’s face.
v
The guard was looking at Gideon with disbelief and something akin to agony. Gideon staggered to his feet. In a barely audible voice, he said, “Jeremiah?”
The bald clerk glowered. “What the hell’s he saying, Kane?”
“Jeremiah, it’s impossible that—” Gideon began.
Hubble didn’t understand either. But he had more pressing worries. “For Christ’s sake, Kane, how much do you want? Five thousand dollars? Ten?”
“I won’t take a penny,” Jeremiah said. “You killed him.”
“Nobody’ll accept the word of a known killer!” Hubble shrieked.
“Maybe not, but after I tell my story, they’ll break down these other witnesses and get the truth. You’re not going to send this man to prison on my say-so.”
“Why do you care about him?” Hubble, screamed. “He’s a radical! A Communist! Courtleigh hated him!”
“Never mind,” Jeremiah said, gazing at Gideon. “I won’t lie.”
Hubble yelled a wordless syllable of rage. Gideon couldn’t believe the incredible ruin he saw in his brother’s face. Jeremiah was a young man. A young man. Born when? Forty-six? That made him thirty-one. He had the look of middle age. His upper lip puffed as if he wore false teeth that fit badly. A pair of spectacles stuck from the breast pocket of his jacket. There was a white streak in his hair. Phlegm rasped in his voice; it had the sound of diseased lungs.
But he was alive. How? How?
Suddenly Hubble came lumbering at Gideon, who was too startled to do more than sidestep and push him away. Hubble ducked for the floor. Gideon shouted, “He’s going for his gun!”
But Jeremiah saw. His lips compressed and he reached under his coat with his right hand. Hubble snatched up his own revolver.
Jeremiah’s gun tangled in the lining of his coat. Hubble fired. Jeremiah stepped backward, hit in the middle. But he got his revolver loose at last. Hubble saw that and tried to aim a second shot.
Jeremiah’s gun boomed. Hubble shrieked, in genuine pain this time. He staggered backward, spun and crashed against one of the tall windows. He broke it and fell over the shards still in the frame.
Pedestrians below saw the revolver from Hubble’s hand land in the street, frightening a dray horse. A wagon driver shouted and pointed upward at the grisly sight of a man slumped over the sill of a broken window on the top floor. From beneath the man’s head, streams of blood began to flow down the face of the building.
vi
Jeremiah lay on the anteroom carpet. It was wonderful and peaceful to know that it was all finished, and that he’d never again need to fear Kola’s prophecy or the irreversible disease eating in his lungs. He’d never again suffer the torment of having oth
ers fail to recognize his name or have to endure the misery of the animal teeth wired to metal rods and badly fitted into his mouth to replace all the teeth that had rotted.
He couldn’t believe he’d found his brother here in Chicago. He’d had no time to wonder how it came about. But the attempt to ramrod Gideon into the hands of the police had been all too clear, and he’d done what he had to, and now there was a bullet in him and he could rest.
He felt cool and comfortable as Gideon knelt beside him. How had Gideon lost an eye? In the war? If Michael Boyle had ever informed him about that loss, he couldn’t remember.
Gideon looked well for his age. Jeremiah hadn’t seen him enter the W & P offices. It must have happened in those moments he was away, racked by another fit of coughing.
Someone said, “The police are coming.”
Someone else said, “Yes, Hubble’s dead. I looked at him.”
“Jeremiah—Jeremiah—how did you get here?” Gideon said in a hoarse voice, touching his brother’s face. “We thought that after Atlanta—we thought—”
“Oh,” Jeremiah said, “that’s a long story, as they say.”
And one I’d be ashamed to have you hear.
“Why does he keep calling him Jeremiah?” a distant voice put in. “His name’s Jason Kane.”
“What are they talking about?” Gideon asked.
“I had some—different names—because—it was necessary.”
Someone said, “He’s Jason Kane around here. He was a famous trigger artist once, before the liquor got him.”
And a lot of other things.
“Jason Kane,” his brother said. “My God, Jeremiah, my newspaper almost ran a piece about a gambler named Jason Kane who was tarred and feathered in Kansas City.”
“Same customer, I’m”—violent coughing—“sorry to say.”
“My God,” Gideon said again. “Out of nowhere, you saved me from prison or worse—Jeremiah, can you hear me?”
“Just—fine.”
“They say there’s an ambulance on the way. We’ll get you fixed good as new. Then there are a hundred things I have to ask you—”
He felt the cold sweeping up through his limbs. In panic, he thought, Jason Kane made a mark. Not a good one. Not till the end. Maybe what he’d done for Gideon would balance a little of the rest.
“Lots—of things—I want to ask—you—too—”
His voice was weakening. He felt tears, just like the ones he saw on Gideon’s face.
Suddenly the pain pierced him. He groped out with his right hand. “Oh, Gid—hold on to me.”
His eyes widened. Gideon closed his fingers around Jeremiah’s, cradling one hand in both of his and crying as his brother’s pain-racked face smoothed abruptly.
A strange half smile quirked Jeremiah’s mouth. His eyes cleared for a moment. He looked at Gideon with absolute lucidity.
“I just—realized—it was—you who did this. Hubble—shot me but it—was because of you.”
Gideon knew his brother was out of his head because he was saying something that sounded like an accusation. Yet he was smiling.
“So—everything happened as it was supposed to. Just as it was supposed—”
His head fell over.
Gideon spoke his brother’s name twice, then picked him up in his arms. Kneeling there, he held Jeremiah while the warmth drained out of the body. All the questions would be forever unanswered.
vii
With Thomas Courtleigh and Lorenzo Hubble dead, the office clerks had no reason to risk perjury. They told a straightforward story to the Chicago police. Gideon was ordered to come to headquarters to give a statement, and to attempt to clarify the puzzling matter of the identity of the dead guard, whom the clerks said was named Jason Kane. That sure had a familiar sound, one of the policemen thought. He couldn’t place it, though.
Gideon continued to insist the man known as Kane was also his brother. It confused the police. It would take some sorting out. Meanwhile, one of the policemen was dispatched to get an undertaker.
Gideon’s engraved card earned him polite treatment from the police despite the way he kept confusing them on the matter of names. When he insisted he wanted to telegraph New York for his attorney, the policemen saw no reason to deny the request. He was, after all, a newspaper publisher. One of the clerks verified that.
He was too numb to feel much of anything as they escorted him out of the building and into a police wagon. One of the officers even apologized for the shabbiness of the transportation. He wasn’t a prisoner, but they wanted to accompany him to the station and had no other vehicles available.
He didn’t care. He felt dead inside, condemned to a life without Julia.
And Jeremiah, who had been alive, after all, was dead.
God help him, he’d never forget the sight of that ravaged face. Nor would he ever be able to unravel the riddle of his younger brother’s strange words there at the end.
Well, what did it matter, any of it? The world belonged to his children: to Eleanor and Will, and to Louis’ son. There was nothing left in it that he wanted or cared about.
A police inspector accompanied him into the Western Union office where he wrote a telegraph message to the law firm that represented the Union. He asked one of the firm’s senior men to board the first express for Chicago, to help him clear up certain difficulties with the police. He said he didn’t believe he was being charged, but that a lawyer’s presence was probably advisable.
As he started to leave, the clerk held out a sheet on which a message had been penciled.
“Your reply came in about forty minutes ago, Mr. Kent.”
He didn’t want to take it. The clerk forced it on him.
Gideon glanced at the four words. New tears sprang to his eye.
The message was signed PAYNE. It said SHE WILL LIVE.
A Biography of John Jakes
John Jakes is a bestselling author of historical fiction, science fiction, children’s books, and nonfiction. He is best known for his highly acclaimed eight-volume Kent Family Chronicles series, an American family saga that reaches from the Revolutionary War to 1890, and the North and South Trilogy, which follows two families from different regions during the American Civil War. His commitment to historical accuracy and evocative storytelling earned him the title “godfather of historical novelists” from the Los Angeles Times and led to his streak of sixteen consecutive New York Times bestsellers.
Born in Chicago in 1932, Jakes originally studied to be an actor, but he turned to writing professionally after selling his first short story for twenty-five dollars during his freshman year at Northwestern University. That check, Jakes later said, “changed the whole direction of my life.” He enrolled in DePauw University’s creative writing program shortly thereafter and graduated in 1953. The following year, he received his master’s degree in American literature from Ohio State University.
While at DePauw, Jakes met Rachel Ann Payne, whom he married in 1951. After finishing his studies, Jakes worked as a copywriter for a large pharmaceutical company before transitioning to advertising, writing copy for several large firms, including Madison Avenue’s Dancer Fitzgerald Sample. At night, he continued to write fiction, publishing two hundred short stories and numerous mystery, western, and science fiction books. He turned to historical fiction, long an interest of his, in 1973 when he started work on The Bastard, the first novel of the Kent Family Chronicles. Jakes’s masterful hand at historical fiction catapulted The Bastard (1974) onto the bestseller list—with each subsequent book in the series matching The Bastard’s commercial success. Upon publication of the next three books in the series—The Rebels (1975), The Seekers (1975), and The Furies (1976)—Jakes became the first-ever writer to have three books on the New York Times bestseller list in a single year. The series has maintained its popularity, and there are currently more than fifty-five million copies of the Kent Family Chronicles in print worldwide.
Jakes followed the success of his fi
rst series with the North and South Trilogy, set before, during, and after the Civil War. The first volume, North and South, was published in 1982 and reaffirmed Jakes’s standing as a “master of the ancient art of story telling” (The New York Times Book Review). Following the lead of North and South, the other two books in the series, Love and War (1984) and Heaven and Hell (1987), were chart-topping bestsellers. The trilogy was also made into an ABC miniseries—a total of thirty hours of programming—starring Patrick Swayze. Produced by David L. Wolper for Warner Brothers North and South remains one of the highest-rated miniseries in television history.
The first three Kent Family Chronicles were also made into a television miniseries, produced by Universal Studios and aired on the Operation Prime Time network. Andrew Stevens starred as the patriarch of the fictional family. In one scene, Jakes himself appears as a scheming attorney sent to an untimely end by villain George Hamilton.
In addition to historical fiction, Jakes penned many works of science fiction, including the Brak the Barbarian series, published between 1968 and 1980. Following his success with the Kent Family Chronicles and the North and South Trilogy, Jakes continued writing historical fiction with the stand-alone novel California Gold and the Crown Family Saga (Homeland and its sequel, American Dreams).
Jakes remains active in the theater as an actor, director, and playwright. His adaptation of A Christmas Carol is widely produced by university and regional theaters, including the prestigious Alabama Shakespeare Festival and theaters as far away as Christchurch, New Zealand. He holds five honorary doctorates, the most recent of which is from his alma mater Ohio State University. He has filmed and recorded public service announcements for the American Library Association and hasreceived many other awards, including a dual Celebrity and Citizen’s Award from the White House Conference on Libraries and Information and the Cooper Medal from the Thomas Cooper Library at the University of South Carolina. Jakes is a member of the Authors Guild, the Dramatists Guild, the PEN American Center, and Writers Guild of America East. He also serves on the board of the Authors Guild Foundation.
