Kennedy Square Part 31

St. George recovered the piece and laid it as gently on the table beside his plate as if it had been a newly laid egg.

"No, I don't think you do," he laughed, "or you wouldn't hold it upside down. Now go on and give me the rest."

Gadgem emitted a chuckle--the nearest he ever came to a laugh: "To have it go ON, sir, is infinitely preferable than to have it go OFF, sir.

He-he! And you have, I believe you said, two of these highly valuable implements of death?"

"Yes, five altogether--two of this kind. Here, Todd"--and he picked up the gun--"put it back behind the door."

Gadgem felt in his inside pocket, produced and consulted a memorandum with the air of a man who wanted to be entirely sure, and in a bland voice said:

"I should think at your time of life--if you will permit me, sir--that one less gun would not seriously inconvenience you. Would you permit me, sir, to hope that--"

St. George looked up from his plate and a peculiar expression flitted across his face.

"You mean you want to buy it?"

The bill collector made a little movement forward and scrutinized St.

George's face with the eye of a hawk. For a man of Temple's kidney to be without a fowling piece was like a king being without a crown. This was the crucial moment. Gadgem knew Temple's cla.s.s, and knew just how delicately he must be handled. If St. George's pride, or his love for his favorite chattels--things personal to himself--should overcome him, the whole scheme would fall to the ground. That any gentleman of his standing had ever seen the inside of a p.a.w.n-shop in his life was unthinkable. This was what Gadgem faced. As for Todd, he had not drawn a full breath since Gadgem opened his case.

"Not EXactly buy it, sir," purred Gadgem, twisting his body into an obsequious spiral. "Men of your position do not traffic in such things--but if you would be persuaded, sir, for a money consideration which you would fix yourself--say the ORIGinal cost of the gun--to spare one of your five--you would greatly delight--in fact, you would overWHELM with grat.i.tude--a friend of mine."

St. George hesitated, looked out of the window and a brand-new thought forced its way into his mind--as if a closet had been suddenly opened, revealing a skeleton he had either forgotten or had put permanently out of sight. There WAS need of this "original cost"--instant need--something he had entirely forgotten. Jemima would soon need it--perhaps needed it at that very minute. He had, it was true, often kept her waiting: but that was when he could pay at his pleasure; now, perhaps, he couldn't pay at all.

"All right, Gadgem," he said slowly, a far-away, thoughtful look on his face--"come to think of it I don't need two guns of this calibre, and I am quite willing to let this one go, if it will oblige your friend."

Here Todd breathed a sigh of relief so loud and deep that his master turned his head in inquiry. "As to the price--I'll look that up. Come and see me again in a day or two. Better take the gun with you now."

The fight had been won, but the risk had been great. Even Pawson could hardly believe his ears when Gadgem, five minutes later, related the outcome of the interview.

"Well, then, it will be plain sailing so long as the rest of the things last," said Pawson, handling the piece with a covetous touch. He too liked a day off when he could get it. "Who will you sell the gun to, Gadgem?"

"G.o.d knows--I don't! I'll borrow the money on it somehow--but I can't see him suffer--no, sir--can't see him SUFfer. It's a pleasure to serve him--real gentleman--REAL--do you hear, Pawson? No veneer--no sham--no lies! d.a.m.n few such men, I tell you. Never met one before-never will meet one again. Gave up everything he had for a rattle-brain young scamp--BEGgared himself to pay his debts--not a drop of the fellow's blood in his veins either--incredible--inCREDible! Got to handle him like gunpowder or he'll blow everything into matchsticks. Find out the price and I'll bring the money to-morrow. Do you pay it to him; I can't.

I'd feel too d.a.m.n mean after lying to him the way I have. Feel that way now. Good-day."

The same scene was practically repeated the following month. It was an English saddle this time, St. George having two. And it was the same unknown gentleman who figured as "the much-obliged friend," Pawson conducting the negotiations and securing the owner's consent. On this occasion Gadgem sold the saddle outright to the keeper of a livery stable, whose bills he collected, paying the difference between the asking and the selling price out of his own pocket.

Gradually, however, St. George awoke to certain unsuspected features of what was going on around him. The discovery was made one morning when the go-between was closeted in Pawson's lower office, Pawson conducting the negotiations in St. George's dining-room. The young attorney, with Gadgem's a.s.sistance, had staved off some accounts until a legal ultimatum had been reached, and, having but few resources of his own left, had, with Todd's help, decided that the silver loving-cup presented to his client's father by the Marquis de Castullux could alone save the situation--a decision which brought an emphatic refusal from the owner. This and the discovery of Pawson's and Gadgem's treachery had greatly incensed him.

"And you tell me, Pawson, that that scoundrel, Gadgem, has--Todd go down and bring him up here immediately--has had the audacity to run a p.a.w.nshop for my benefit without so much as asking my leave?--peddling my things?--lying to me straight through?" Here the door opened and Gadgem's face peered in. He had, as was his custom, crept upstairs so as to be within instant call when wanted.

"Yes--I am speaking of you, sir. Come inside and shut that door behind you. You too, Todd. What the devil do you mean, Gadgem, by deceiving me in this way? Don't you know I would rather have starved to death than--"

Gadgem raised his hand in protest:

"EXactly so, sir. That's what we were afraid of, sir--such an uncomfortable thing to starve to death, sir--I couldn't permit it, sir--I'd rather walk my feet off than permit it. I did walk them off--"

"But who asked you to tramp the streets with my things uuder your arm?

And you lied to me about it--you said you wanted to oblige a friend.

There wasn't a word of truth in it, and you know it."

Again Gadgem's hand went out with a pleading "Please-don't" gesture.

"Less than a word, sir--a whole dictionary, less, sir, and UNabridged at that, if I might be permitted to say it. My friend still has the implement of death, and not only does he still possess it, but he is ENORmously obliged. Indeed, I have never SEEN him so happy."

"You mean to tell me, Gadgem," St. George burst out, "that the money you paid me for the gun really came from a friend of yours?"

"I do, sir." Gadgem's gimlet eye was worming itself into Temple's.

"What's his name?"

"Gadgem, sir--John Gadgem, of Gadgem & Coombs--Gadgem sole survivor, since Coombs is with the angels; the foreclosure having taken place last month: hence these weeds." And he lifted the tails of his black coat in evidence.

"Out of your own money?"

"Yes, sir--some I had laid away."

St. George wheeled suddenly and stood looking first at Gadgem, then at Pawson, and last at Todd, as if for confirmation. Then a light broke in upon him--one that played over his face in uncertain flashes.

"And you did this for me?" he asked thoughtfully, fixing his gaze on Gadgem.

"I did, sir," came the answer in a meek voice, as if he had been detected in filching an apple from a stand; "and I would do it again--do it over and over again. And it has been a great pleasure for me to do it. I might say, sir, that it has been a kind of exTREME bliss to do it."

"Why?" There was a tremor now in Temple's voice that even Todd had never noticed before.

Gadgem turned his head away. "I don't know, sir," he replied in a lower tone. "I couldn't explain it on oath; I don't care to explain it, sir."

No lie could serve him now--better make a clean breast of the villany.

"And you still own the gun?" Todd had never seen his master so gentle before--not under a provocation such as this.

"I do, sir." Gadgem's voice was barely audible.

"Then it means that you have locked up just that much of your own money for a thing you can never use yourself and can't sell. Am I right?"

Gadgem lowered his head and for a moment studied the carpet. His activities, now that the cat was out of the bag, were fair subjects for discussion, but not his charities.

"I prefer not to answer, sir, and--" the last words died in his throat.

"But it's true, isn't it?" persisted St. George. He had never once taken his eyes from Gadgem.

"Yes, it's true."

St. George turned on his heel, walked to the mantel, stood for an instant gazing into the empty fireplace, and then, with that same straightening of his shoulders and lift of his head which his friends knew so well when he was deeply stirred, confronted the collector again:

"Gadgem!" He stopped and caught his breath. For a moment it seemed as if something in his throat choked his utterance. "Gadgem--give me your hand! Do you know you are a gentleman and a thoroughbred! No--don't speak--don't explain. We understand each other. Todd, bring three gla.s.ses and hand me what is left of the old Port. And do you join us, Pawson."

Todd, whose eyes had been popping from his head during the entire interview, and who was still amazed at the outcome, suddenly woke to the dangers of the situation: on no account must his master's straits be further revealed. He raised his hand as a signal to St. George, who was still looking into Gadgem's eyes, screwed his face into a tangle of puckers and in a husky whisper muttered, so low that only his master could hear:

"Dat Port, Ma.r.s.e George"--one eye now went entirely out in a wink--"is gittin' a leetle mite low" (there hadn't been a drop of it in the house for six months) "an' if--"

"Well, then, that old Brown Sherry--get a fresh bottle, Todd--" St.