The Indian Drum Part 35

"5:04, No. 25 is replying to Frankfort, 'Holding bare headway; stern very low.'

"5:10, No. 26 is calling No. 25, 'Are you throwing off cars?'

"5:14, Petoskey is calling Manitowoc, 'We are receiving S.O.S. What is wrong?' Petoskey has not previously been in communication with sh.o.r.e stations or ships.

"5:17, No. 25 is signalling No. 26, 'Are throwing off cars; have cleared eight; work very difficult. We are sinking.'

"5:20, No. 25 is calling the _Richardson_, 'Watch for small boats.

Position doubtful because of snow and changes of course; probably due west N. Fox, twenty to thirty miles.'

"5:24, No. 26 is calling No. 25, 'Are you abandoning ship?'

"5:27, No. 25 is replying to No. 26, 'Second boat just getting safely away with pa.s.sengers; first boat was smashed. Six pa.s.sengers in second boat, two injured of crew, cabin maid, boy and two men.'

"5:30, Manitowoc and Frankfort are calling No. 25, 'Are you abandoning ship?'

"5:34, No. 25 is replying to Manitowoc, 'Still trying to clear cars; everything is loose below...'

"5:40, Frankfort is calling Manitowoc, 'Do you get anything now?'

"5:45, Manitowoc is calling the _Richardson_, 'Do you get anything?

Signals have stopped here.'

"5:48, The _Richardson_ is calling Petoskey, 'We get nothing now. Do you?'

"6:30, Petoskey is calling Manitowoc, 'Signals after becoming indistinct, failed entirely about 5:45, probably by failure of ship's power to supply current. Operator appears to have remained at key.

From 5:25 to 5:43 we received disconnected messages, as follows: 'Have cleared another car ... they are sticking to it down there ...

engine-room crew is also sticking ... h.e.l.l on car deck ... everything smashed ... they won't give up ... sinking now ... we're going ...

good-by ... stuck to end ... all they could ... know that ... hand it to them ... have cleared another car ... sink ... S.O.... Signals then entirely ceased.'"

There was no more than this. Constance let the papers fall back upon the desk and looked to her mother; Mrs. Sherrill loosened her fur collar and sat back, breathing more comfortably. Constance quickly shifted her gaze and, trembling and with head erect, she walked to the window and looked out. The meaning of what she had read was quite clear; her mother was formulating it.

"So they are both lost, Mr. Corvet and his--son," Mrs. Sherrill said quietly.

Constance did not reply, either to refuse or to concur in the conclusion. There was not anything which was meant to be merciless in that conclusion; her mother simply was crediting what probably had occurred. Constance could not in reason refuse to accept it too; yet she was refusing it. She had not realized, until these reports of the wireless messages told her that he was gone, what companionship with Alan had come to mean to her. She had accepted it as always to be existent, somehow--a companionship which might be interrupted often but always to be formed again. It amazed her to find how firm a place he had found in her world of those close to her with whom she must always be intimately concerned.

Her mother arose and came beside her. "May it not be better, Constance, that it has happened this way?"

"Better!" Constance cried. She controlled herself.

It was only what Henry had said to her months ago when Alan had left her in the north in the search which had resulted in the finding of Uncle Benny--"Might it not be better for him not to find out?" Henry, who could hazard more accurately than any one else the nature of that strange secret which Alan now must have "found out," had believed it; her mother, who at least had lived longer in the world than she, also believed it. There came before Constance the vision of Alan's defiance and refusal to accept the stigma suggested in her father's recital to him of his relationship to Mr. Corvet. There came to her sight of him as he had tried to keep her from entering Uncle Benny's house when Luke was there, and then her waiting with him through the long hour and his dismissal of her, his abnegation of their friendship. And at that time his disgrace was indefinite; last night had he learned something worse than he had dreaded?

The words of his telegram took for her more terrible significance for the moment. "Have some one who knew Mr. Corvet well enough to recognize him even if greatly changed meet..." Were the broken, incoherent words of the wireless the last that she should hear of him, and of Uncle Benny, after that? "They are sticking to it ... down there ... they won't give up ... sinking ... they have cleared another car ... sink..." Had it come as the best way for them both?

"The _Richardson_ is searching for boats, mother," Constance returned steadily, "and Number 26 must be there too by now."

Her mother looked to the storm. Outside the window which overlooked the lake from two hundred feet above the street, the sleet-like snow was driving ceaselessly; all over the western basin of the great lakes, as Constance knew--over Huron, over Michigan, and Superior--the storm was established. Its continuance and severity had claimed a front-page column in the morning papers. Duluth that morning had reported temperature of eighteen below zero and fierce snow; at Marquette it was fifteen below; there was driving snow at the Soo, at Mackinac, and at all ports along both sh.o.r.es. She pictured little boats, at the last moment, getting away from the ferry, deep-laden with injured and exhausted men; how long might those men live in open boats in a gale and with cold like that? The little clock upon her father's desk marked ten o'clock; they had been nearly five hours in the boats now, those men.

Constance knew that as soon as anything new was heard, it would be brought to her; yet, with a word to her mother, she went from her father's room and down the corridor into the general office. A hush of expectancy held this larger room; the clerks moved silently and spoke to one another in low voices; she recognized in a little group of men gathered in a corner of the room some officers of Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman's ships. Others among them, whom she did not know, were plainly seamen too--men who knew "Ben" Corvet and who, on hearing he was on the ferry, had come in to learn what more was known; the business men and clubmen, friends of Corvet's later life, had not heard it yet. There was a restrained, professional attentiveness among these seamen, as of those in the presence of an event which any day might happen to themselves. They were listening to the clerk who had compiled the report, who was telephoning now, and Constance, waiting, listened too to learn what he might be hearing. But he put down the receiver as he saw her.

"Nothing more, Miss Sherrill," he reported. "The _Richardson_ has wirelessed that she reached the reported position of the sinking about half-past six o'clock. She is searching but has found nothing."

"She's keeping on searching, though?"

"Yes; of course."

"It's still snowing there?"

"Yes, Miss Sherrill. We've had a message from your father. He has gone on to Manistique; it's more likely that wreckage or survivors will be brought in there."

The telephone switchboard beside Constance suddenly buzzed, and the operator, plugging in a connection, said: "Yes, sir; at once," and through the part.i.tions of the private office on the other side, a man's heavy tones came to Constance. That was Henry's office and, in timbre, the voice was his, but it was so strange in other characteristics of expression that she waited an instant before saying to the clerk,

"Mr. Spearman has come in?"

The clerk hesitated, but the continuance of the tone from the other side of the part.i.tion made reply superfluous. "Yes, Miss Sherrill."

"Did you tell him that mother and I were here?"

The clerk considered again before deciding to reply in the affirmative.

There evidently was some trouble with the telephone number which Henry had called; the girl at the switchboard was apologizing in frightened panic, and Henry's voice, loud and abusive, came more plainly through the part.i.tion. Constance started to give an instruction to the clerk; then, as the abuse burst out again, she changed her plan and went to Henry's door and rapped. Whether no one else rapped in that way or whether he realized that she might have come into the general office, she did not know; but at once his voice was still. He made no answer and no move to open the door; so, after waiting a moment, she turned the k.n.o.b and went in.

Henry was seated at his desk, facing her, his big hands before him; one of them held the telephone receiver. He lifted it slowly and put it upon the hook beside the transmitter as he watched her with steady, silent, aggressive scrutiny. His face was flushed a little--not much; his hair was carefully brushed, and there was something about his clean-shaven appearance and the set of his perfectly fitting coat, one which he did not ordinarily wear to business, which seemed studied. He did not rise; only after a moment he recollected that he had not done so and came to his feet. "Good morning, Connie," he said. "Come in.

What's the news?"

There was something strained and almost menacing in his voice and in his manner which halted her. She in some way--or her presence at that moment--appeared to be definitely disturbing him. It frightened him, she would have thought, except that the idea was a contradiction.

Henry frightened? But if he was not, what emotion now controlled him?

The impulse which had brought her into his office went from her. She had not seen nor heard from Henry directly since before Alan's telegram had come late yesterday afternoon; she had heard from her father only that he had informed Henry; that was all.

"I've no news, Henry," she said. "Have you?" She closed the door behind her before moving closer to him. She had not known what he had been doing, since he had heard of Alan's telegram; but she had supposed that he was in some way cooperating with her father, particularly since word had come of the disaster to the ferry.

"How did you happen to be here, Connie?" he asked.

She made no reply but gazed at him, studying him. The agitation which he was trying to conceal was not entirely consequent to her coming in upon him; it had been ruling him before. It had underlain the loudness and abuse of his words which she had overheard. That was no capricious outburst of temper or irritation; it had come from something which had seized and held him in suspense, in dread--in dread; there was no other way to define her impression to herself. When she had opened the door and come in, he had looked up in dread, as though preparing himself for whatever she might announce. Now that the door shut them in alone, he approached her with arms offered. She stepped back, instinctively avoiding his embrace; and he stopped at once, but he had come quite close to her now.

That she had detected faintly the smell of liquor

about him was not the whole reason for her drawing back. He was not drunk; he was quite himself so far as any influence of that kind was concerned. Long ago, when he was a young man on the boats, he had drunk a good deal; he had confessed to her once; but he had not done so for years. Since she had known him, he had been among the most careful of her friends; it was for "efficiency" he had said. The drink was simply a part--indeed, only a small part--of the subtle strangeness and peculiarity she marked in him. If he had been drinking now, it was, she knew, no temptation, no capricious return to an old appet.i.te. If not appet.i.te, then it was for the effect--to brace himself. Against what? Against the thing for which he had prepared himself when she came upon him?

As she stared at him, the clerk's voice came to her suddenly over the part.i.tion which separated the office from the larger room where the clerk was receiving some message over the telephone. Henry straightened, listened; as the voice stopped, his great, finely shaped head sank between his shoulders; he fumbled in his pocket for a cigar, and his big hands shook as he lighted it, without word of excuse to her. A strange feeling came to her that he felt what he dreaded approaching and was no longer conscious of her presence.

She heard footsteps in the larger room coming toward the office door.

Henry was in suspense. A rap came at the door. He whitened and took the cigar from his mouth and wet his lips.

"Come in," he summoned.

One of the office girls entered, bringing a white page of paper with three or four lines of purple typewriting upon it which Constance recognized must be a transcript of a message just received.

She started forward at sight of it, forgetting everything else; but he took the paper as though he did not know she was there. He merely held it until the girl had gone out; even then he stood folding and unfolding it, and his eyes did not drop to the sheet.