The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge (4 page)

“But next time—” I hinted.

“Next time,” he grated harshly, “you get no chance for monkey-shines!”

“Thanks!” I said. “Good night!”

He got to his feet slowly and turned away slowly, glaring at me the while and plainly loath to go. The fury that was in his eyes, the fixed hatred that smoldered behind it, told me what a dangerous enemy I was loosing. And no wonder. For it was I, according to his evident belief, who had wreaked havoc upon his life and condemned him to years of solitary brooding in a prison cell.

I recalled with an inward grimace how Osborne had shaken hands with me that morning and wished me well, knowing, as he must have known, that I was marked for the vengeance of this man. What chance had he really felt there was that he would ever see me again? Or had it really been his belief—and possibly his hope—that I’d kill Hardridge instead? Every thread of the tangle went back to the central mystery of Osborne’s purpose in the matter.

I remembered that I had had to give some proof of my ability to take care of myself in a pinch before Osborne would open negotiations with me at all. Surely that indicated no desire to furnish Hardridge with a victim.

Mystified as I was, however, I think I did not permit Hardridge to guess it, and it was with an intent to carry the thing off lightly that I said to him—

“I suppose you’ll haunt the house like a specter and all that sort of thing.”

“By ——, you know I will,” he shot viciously over his shoulder.

Letting him go was really taking a little flyer in Death, Limited, and I knew it.

Then happened the second peculiar thing of the night. Just as Hardridge put out his hand to open the door, in the silence following the cessation of our footsteps, I heard unmistakably the sound of some one else moving in the house.

It was difficult to believe, for early in the afternoon I had carefully barred all doors and windows. It could hardly be an accomplice of Hartridge, but, to cover the sound from him, I asked him if he had another gun and ran my hand over his pockets. His snarl at my touch was like a wild beast’s.

“Then you may need this one,” I said as I pushed him out into the night.

And, as I closed the door upon him, I flung his revolver after him. The act was, I think, based upon sound strategic principles. It would be very easy for him to get another gun but very difficult to forget my carelessness as to whether he had one.

But, the moment the key was turned in the lock, I whirled and darted across the room. The inner door of the room opened into a hall that ran the length of the house. I passed through that door and was about to cross the hall into the parlor opposite when another sound decided me. I ran down the hall and through the first door to the left into the library, which adjoined the parlor to the rear. After fumbling for a moment for the electric light switch, I finally found it.

I’d been prepared for strange things when I came to Cragcastle. Indeed, the remoteness and solitude of its setting, surrounded by miles of black rock and chaparral-covered mountainside, save to the east, where the water eternally beat and lapped against its foundations, gave the house an appearance of being fashioned for mystery and framed in it. And my interview with Hardridge had been sufficiently remarkable to have prepared me for almost anything. Nevertheless, I admit my credulity was staggered then.

A woman’s figure flashed through the doorway that led back into the parlor. The door slammed shut behind her.

It was in no gentle mood that I pursued her. Remember, to me she was at best a housebreaker, and I suppose my nerves were somewhat tense and jumpy, too. She got into the hall before I caught her arm in a grip that must have hurt, and I’m afraid it was with scant courtesy that I drew her back into the parlor.

But, once there and the lights turned on, I like to remember I released her quickly.

“I beg your pardon, miss,” I said.

II

IT’S been a saving principle of mine to apply as little thought as possible to feminine beauty. This from, I hope, no innate lack of appreciation in me—but I’ll omit self-analysis and simply say that it was something more than beauty that made me instinctively apologize to the intruder. Character was stamped on her sensitive yet sanely strong and sensible face. Whatever the reason for her presence in Cragcastle, it could not be a guilty one, and suddenly I felt guilty under the blazing wrath of her clear blue eyes. As for the unveiled contempt in them, it was as hard to endure as it was, for a moment, to understand.

But, when she spoke, I understood it—at least in part.

“Well, Cousin John,” with icy bitterness, “what are you going to do?”

She, too, like Hardridge, had immediately accepted me in my assumed character of John Maxon. That was quite natural, for who else would be occupying Cragcastle? But to be addressed by her as “Cousin” was somewhat different. The late John Maxon, Jr., had, according to Osborne, no near relatives at all. That had been one of Osborne’s best arguments why I might, in safety and with no great moral guilt, take his place. If it had been a lie, Osborne must have known I would very shortly discover it. I suppose my stare at the girl must have been quite idiotic.

“Have you come back witless as well as everything else?” she asked sharply. “Can’t you speak?”

I could see that under the surface she was really frightened. She was trying the old device of simulating—and perhaps stimulating—courage by hard words.

“I’m naturally astonished,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“Merely paying a cousinly call, of course.” She laughed mirthlessly.

“I think you’d better answer me,” I told her quietly. “This is my house; it’s nearly midnight; you’ve evidently gained entrance by stealth. In other words, you’re in the position of a common burglar. The fact that you’re my cousin will not prevent me from turning you over to the police.”

“I suppose not. The tarred stick would blacken the whole branch. The family name—”

“You should have thought of that before breaking into my house.” It was a rare part, for me, playing the stern landlord.

“I’m not begging,” she replied tartly. “Do what you will. Of course, you know what I’m doing here. There’s only one thing worth coming for—and that by rights belongs to me, anyway. Or rather, to my father. If your father hadn’t stolen it—”

“What do you mean? Don’t say that.”

“He did, and you know it. It belonged to father. It was willed to him—all he got out of the estate—because he was the eldest son. It’s always been so, and grandfather wouldn’t break the chain even for your father’s lies. Then it disappeared. Who could have taken it except the man who got everything else, who had every opportunity—your father! Why, didn’t he tell father he had it—gloat over it—and that it would never be discovered save by his son, you?”

I was getting quite beyond my depth. One thing was clear, however; I was relieved of all obligation toward Lawyer Osborne. By his multiplied falsehoods he had discredited once more the pretty bedraggled saying, “Honor among thieves.” Moreover, it seemed likely I might progress faster in solving the riddle if I doffed my mask before this girl—in whose presence, I admit, the wearing of it had become rather odious.

“Why, no,” I said. “I must admit all that’s a riddle to me. Because, you see, I’m not your cousin.”

“Not my—cousin?”

In her bewilderment and increased fear she retreated a step, her hand going up as if to ward me off.

“Merely an imposter,” I told her as gently as I could, “but, I assure you, a perfectly harmless one. Your cousin being dead, I planned to take his place—for a day or so, and—”

In the middle of my stumbling half-explanation I observed incredulity come into her face, part of which, I flattered myself, was caused by a new and swift appraisal of me.

“But that’s impossible,” she interrupted.

“Thank you,” I said, “but it’s unfortunately true.”

“But how— I don’t understand! Oh, it isn’t possible!”

Neither could I understand why her credulity had passed so swiftly into absolute disbelief. Her only question now seemed to be as to my motive in denying myself.

It was unpleasant. I’m not accustomed to having my word doubted, and I particularly wanted to be believed by this girl. So I told her as convincingly as possible and in as few words the whole story of my presence in Cragcastle.

I’d really been brought into touch with Lawyer Osborne through a want ad., obviously designed to attract every near-respectable world tramp in San Francisco between certain age, weight and height limits. Osborne had quizzed me until he discovered that I had no acquaintances within a thousand miles and that I apparently matched his misuse of the law with a profound contempt for it—which, incidentally, was his error. Then he’d told me that one of his clients, John Maxon, had just died; that his son and only heir, John Maxon, Jr., had been killed about the same time in a saloon brawl in Hong Kong; that this son had been absent about five years, a ne’er-do-well wanderer, much of the time under assumed names; that in feature and stature I bore a very strong resemblance to him, and that only he, Osborne, knew of this son’s death.

Osborne’s proposal was, of course, that I substitute for this dead son, which I might do the more easily since a freak provision in old man Maxon’s will provided that his son live alone in Cragcastle six months before inheriting. This evidently because he had fled from some danger and his father wished to test his courage and worthiness—but of this Osborne knew nothing. At the end of six months my identity as John Maxon would be easily established—to Osborne’s satisfaction, at least—and Osborne and I would split the estate.

WHILE I was telling her this, the girl’s expression gradually changed from incredulity to utter amazement, and she apparently had hard work to keep from interrupting me. At the end, after hesitating a moment, she confounded me and upset my whole tale by four astounding words—

“But John isn’t dead.”

“What!”

The girl’s confidence came slowly. But, after all, I had given her mine, and frankness begets frankness. Finally, after apparently considering the matter, she went on:

“No! At least he sailed from China alive. Osborne himself showed me his cable at date of sailing. Then I have a letter he wrote a few days before—a very brief business letter. We weren’t friends. His ship reached San Francisco last Saturday.”

“Then Osborne lied all around,” I said slowly. “After all, I sensed it. But, in the name of reason, why?”

It appeared like a stiff enough problem, but I was more than ever glad I’d come to Cragcastle.

The girl continued to regard me appraisingly, cautiously, but I seemed to have leaped several points in her estimation from legal cousin to illegal impostor—as strong a commentary as I’d yet had on John Maxon’s character. Nevertheless, I still considered her apparent lack of fear as largely brave subterfuge, and I tried hard to reassure her. We were both searchers—I for the truth, she for something materially valuable—and, if I could win her confidence, there might be a chance of mutual help.

“I want you to believe,” I told her earnestly and truthfully, “that I didn’t intend to go through with the thing. Curiosity isn’t wholly a feminine vice, Miss Maxon. I knew Osborne was lying, and I wanted to see what was really in his mind. And he never said a word about you. According to him, John Maxon was the only heir. I thought I’d step into the affair without troubling any one, and get out the same way. If I’d really intended to stick, would I have confessed my masquerade to you as quickly as I did?”

I still think that last was a logical argument, and it was to that I returned several times during the five minutes talk that followed. But perhaps the reason Miss Maxon finally permitted herself to believe me was that she wanted to. Perhaps she had all the time held the idea of enlisting me in her own search. But, when I finally brought the talk around to it again, she refused to discuss it.

“No,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have come, anyhow. Oh, I must go now.”

And she made a hurried move as if to escape into the night.

At that I suddenly remembered that Death watched Cragcastle that night, and, though I stood squarely in her path, I refused to stir.

“Wait!” I said earnestly. “I’ve something else to tell you. Something for your own safety. Tell me first when and how you came here and how you got into the house?”

“Why, I walked out from the village—Mill Valley, I mean—this morning. I had a bundle of old keys and finally got the front door open. I was here when you came. We had a fine game of hide-and-seek, though you didn’t know it. I thought I’d escape discovery till you went to sleep and then leave.”

“After searching a little more, I suppose,” I supplied. “Well, you came out of your hiding-place to see if I’d settled down, and— Did you hear voices just before I caught you?”

“Yes.”

And then I told her of my interview with Hardridge and tried to make it clear to her that it would be difficult to leave Cragcastle that night without stopping a bullet. I argued the more convincingly because even then, in a nebulous way, the plan I later acted on was forming in my mind.

But, to put it through, I must win Miss Maxon’s confidence completely.

My exact arguments don’t matter. And, anyway, the personal element figures mainly in matters of this kind. Any one would find it hard to tell me why she should not have stayed in the house. And she admitted, at last, that no one would be concerned about her whereabouts. She was teaching in San Bernardino, had come north during the few days of vacation and was merely registered at one of the San Francisco hotels.

After that she quite readily told me the object of her search in Cragcastle. I’d already divined that it was family jewelry; she centered the search to a single sapphire—a sapphire that had come down in the Maxon family for many generations, always from elder son to elder son, until John Maxon, Sr., had broken the chain. He was the younger of two brothers and the favorite with their father. Indeed, between the other son and their parent had come a wide estrangement—the girl gave me to understand that it was through some machination on the part of John Maxon. Anyway, all the family estate had been willed to John Maxon, except only the famous sapphire—and that had disappeared.