The Fortune Hunter Part 25

Requests the Pleasure of your Company at a Lawn Fete and Dance to be held at the residence of her Parents, Mr. & Mrs. Geo. Lockwood, Sat.u.r.day July 15, at 8 p. m. R.S.V.P.

The envelope fluttered to the floor while the card was crushed between the girl's hands. For a moment her face was transfigured with delight, her eyes blank with rapturous visions of the joys of that promised night.

"Oh!... it 'ud be grand!..."

Then suddenly the light faded. Her eyes clouded, her face settled into its discontented lines. She stuffed the card heedlessly into the pocket of her dingy ap.r.o.n, and took up another gla.s.s.

"But I can't go; I've got nothin' to wear...."

XI

BLINKY LOCKWOOD

She was scrubbing blindly at the same gla.s.s when, a quarter of an hour later, Blinky Lockwood strode into the store, his right eye twitching more violently than usual, as it always does in his phases of mental disturbance--as when, for instance, he fears he's going to lose a dollar.

Lockwood is that type of man who was born to grow rich. He inherited a farm or two in the vicinity of Radville and the one over Westerly way, to which I have referred, and ... well, we've a homely paraphrase of a noted aphorism in Radville: "Them as has, gits." Lockwood had, to begin with, and he made it his business to get; and, as is generally the case in this unbalanced world of ours, things came to him to which he had never aspired. Fortune favoured him because he had no need of her favours; the discovery of coal under his Westerly acres was wholly advent.i.tious, but it made him far and away the richest man in Radville--with the possible exception of old Colonel Bohun's traditional millions.

In person he is as beautiful as a snake-fence, as alluring as a stone wall. Something over six feet in height, he walks with a stoop (one hand always in a trouser-pocket jingling silver) that materially detracts from his stature. His face, like his figure, is gaunt and lanky, his nose an emaciated beak; his mouth ill.u.s.trates his att.i.tude toward property--is a trap from which nothing of value ever escapes; his eyes are small and hard and set close together under lowering brows. He's grizzled, with hair not actually white, but grey as the iron from which his heart was fashioned. Aside from these characteristics his princ.i.p.al peculiarity is a nervous twitching of the right eye which has earned him his sobriquet of Blinky. Legrand Gunn said he contracted the affliction through squinting at the silver dollar to make sure none of its milling had been worn off. ... I have never known the man to wear anything but a rusty old frock coat, black, of course, and black and shiny broadcloth trousers, with a hat that has always a coating of dust so thick that it seems a mottled grey.

He grunts his words, a grunt to each. He grunted at Betty when he saw her.

"Where's your father?"

She put down her gla.s.s and dish-rag. "I don't know, sir."

"Don't know, eh?" he asked in an indescribably offensive tone.

"I think he went to the bank to see you."

"Oh, he did, eh? Did he have anything for me."

The girl took up another gla.s.s. "I don't know, sir," she said wearily.

"I'm afraid not."

"Well, if he didn't there's no use see in' me. It won't do him any good."

"I guess he knows that," she returned with a little flash of spirit.

Lockwood looked her up and down as if he had never seen her before, then summarised his resentful impression of her att.i.tude in an open sneer. "Does, eh? Well, that's a good thing; saves talk."

She contained herself, saying nothing. He glared round the place, remarking the improvements.

"You don't do no business here, not to speak of, do ye?"

"No," she admitted without interest, "not to speak of."

"Then what's the good of all this foolishness, fixing up?"

"I don't know."

"Costs money, don't it?"

"I guess so."

"And that money belongs to me."

"It's Mr. Duncan's doing. Father ain't paying for it. He can't."

"What's he doin', then? Sittin' round foolin' with his inventions, ain't he?"

"Yes."

"What's he inventin' now?"

"I don't know much about it." She pointed to the model beneath the window. "That's the last thing, I guess."

Blinky snorted and stamped over to the window, stooping to peer at the machine. "What's the good of that?" he demanded, disdainful; and without waiting for her response went on nagging. "Foolishness! That's what it is. Why don't you tell him not to waste his time this way?"

"Because he likes it," said Betty hopelessly. "It's the only thing that makes life worth while to him. So I let him alone."

"What difference does that make? It don't bring him in nothin', does it?"

"No ..."

"Nor do any good?"

"No."

"No, siree, it don't. He'd oughter stop it. What does he do with them things when he gets 'em finished?"

"Patents them."

"And then what?"

"Nothin' that I know of."

"That's it; nothing--nor ever will. Well, he's been getting money from me for those patents--I thought at fust there might be somethin' in 'em--but he won't any more. I'd oughter had more sense."

A little colour spotted the girl's sallow cheeks. "He'd never ha' got money from you if he hadn't thought he could pay it back," she told Blinky hotly.

"No, nor if I hadn't thought he could----"

She interjected a significant "Huh!" He broke off abruptly, pale with anger.

"Well, I want to see him, and I want to see him before noon," he snapped. "I'm goin' over to the bank, an' if he knows what's good for him he'll come there pretty darn quick."