The Rose in the Ring Part 23

"I am making you my first lieutenant--no, my aide-de-camp, Jack. All you are required to do is to obey orders. Don't run the risk of a court-martial, my lad. It occurs to me that an uncle of yours has had an experience of that--but, never mind. Your first duty, sir, is to convince the ladies that I shall expect them to be in better humor when I return from the East."

The words came from his lips with biting emphasis; the smooth oily tone was gone. There was no pretense now; he was showing his fangs.

David could only glare at him, white to the lips. He could not speak.

He could only look the hatred that welled in his heart. But down in that heart he was telling himself that some day he would crush this monster.

Colonel Grand studied the clean-cut, aristocratic face for a moment. A conciliatory smile came to his lips.

"Don't forget that I am doing you a good turn," he said. "Christie is a very pretty girl. She's fond of you. If you're smart, you'll make the most of her. You ought to thank me instead of--ah, but I see you do thank me." He willfully misjudged the expression on David's face. "I see no reason why you can't spend a most agreeable season with us.

Jack."

"Colonel Grand," said David very slowly, controlling himself admirably, "if it were not that I now regard it as my sacred duty to stay with this show, I would defy you, sir, and denounce you, let the consequences be as disastrous to me as you like. I am not afraid of you. I _can_ go back home--to jail--with my head up and my heart clean, if you choose to send me there. I am not afraid of even that. But I _am_ afraid of something else. That is why I am ready to bear your insults, to humble myself, to submit to your--your commands. Not for my own safety, but for the safety of others. Permit me, sir, as a gentleman, to a.s.sure you that you can depend on me to carry out at least a part of your instructions as faithfully as G.o.d will let me. I mean by that, sir, your instructions to _protect the ladies!_"

He turned on his heel and left the Colonel standing there, a flush mounting to his flabby cheek.

"Braddock," he said, a few minutes later, "I'm going to break that Jenison boy if it takes me a year--yes, ten years."

"What's up?" demanded Braddock, rolling his cigar over uneasily. "Been sa.s.sing you?"

"People of his cla.s.s do not sa.s.s, as you call it," said Colonel Grand shortly.

"Well, shall I kick him out of the show?" asked the other, perplexed.

Remembering David's money, he supplemented quickly: "Say in a week or two?"

"No. That is just what I don't want you to do. He stays, Braddock.

Understand?"

"All right," agreed the other hastily. "I like the kid. He's good company for Christie, too. _Tony_ sort of a chap, ain't he? I can tell 'em every pop. I said to my wife that first night--"

"Yes, yes, you you've told me that," interrupted Grand impatiently.

"You keep him here, that's all. When I'm through with him you may kick him out. There won't be much left to kick."

For a long time after the departure of his new partner, Thomas Braddock's att.i.tude of extreme thoughtfulness puzzled those who took the trouble to observe him. At last, when his cigar was chewed to a pulp and the night's performance was half over, light broke in upon him. He fancied that he had solved the Colonel's designs regarding David Jenison. His face cleared, but again clouded ominously; he conversed with himself, aloud.

"By thunder, if he thinks I'm going to let him gobble up that kid's money, he's mistaken. Why didn't I think of this before? I might have known. It's the long green he's after. I wonder who told him about the two thousand." He scratched his head in sudden perplexity. "I wonder what's got into d.i.c.k Cronk. He's too blamed good, all of a sudden. That brother of his might try the job, but--no, he'd bungle it. Besides, he'd probably stick a knife into Davy if the kid made a motion." He began chewing a fresh cigar; his pop-eyes were leveled with unseeing fierceness at a certain patch in the "main top"; his brain was seeing nothing but that packet of banknotes. How to get it into his possession: that was the question that produced the undiverted stare and the lowering droop at the corners of his mouth.

"I've got to get that wad," he was saying to himself, over and over again, with almost tearful insistence. Driven by the value of propinquity, he finally made his way to the dressing-tent. The performers were surprised to find him unnaturally sober and quite jovial. A certain nervousness marked his manner. He chatted amiably with the leading men and women in his company; the fact that he removed the cigar from his lips while conversing with Ruby Noakes and the Iron-jawed Woman, created no little amazement in them. He was especially gentle with his wife, and superlatively so with his daughter, both of whom were slow to show the slightest sense of responsive warmth. He proudly, almost belligerently, proclaimed Christine to be the loveliest creature that ever stepped into the sawdust ring. In spite of that fact, however, it was his plan to have her retire at the end of the season, when, if all went well, she was to go to a splendid school for young ladies.

Mrs. Braddock eyed him narrowly. She was searching for the cause of this sudden ebullience, this astounding surrender to her own views regarding their daughter. As for Christine, she was more afraid of him than she had been in all her life. This new mood suggested some vague, undefinable trouble for her mother. The girl's rapidly developing estimate of her father was taking away all the illusions she had been innocently cherishing up to the last few weeks. To her horror, she was beginning to look for something sinister in all that he undertook to do or say.

Unable to face the speculative anxiety in the eyes of his wife and child, Braddock edged off to the men's section of the tent. His furtive, nervous glances about the small apartment escaped the notice of the men who were changing their apparel. To his own disgust, a cold perspiration began to ooze out all over his body--the moisture of extreme nervousness and indecision. He took a stiff pull at his brandy flask.

His shifting gaze ultimately rested on David Jenison's neatly deposited clothing. The boy was in the ring. His "street-wear" lay on a "keester"

somewhat apart from the heterogeneous pile of men's apparel on the adjacent boxes. David's "pile" was close to the outside wall of the tent. Braddock marked its location in respect to a certain side pole.

He began to tremble; a weakness fell upon him; the resolution partly formed in the big tent, and which had drawn him resistlessly to this very spot, gained strength as his blinking eyes swerved their gaze from time to time in the direction of the "pile." All the while he was talking volubly and without a sentient purpose.

After fifteen minutes he sauntered from the section, cold with apprehension but absolutely determined on the action which was to follow. Leaving the tent, he strolled off toward the ticket wagon, carefully noting the position of the men who were loading the menagerie tent for the trip ahead. A cautious _detour_ brought him back to the dressing-tent, and directly in front of the spot where David's clothing was deposited.

The trembling increased. His mouth filled with saliva. He felt of his hair. It was wet. As he stood there shivering and irresolute, the band struck up the tune that signified much to his present venture,--the tune heralding the approach of the entire company of male performers in the "ground and lofty tumbling act." It meant that the men's section would be entirely deserted for five or ten minutes.

Thomas Braddock was not a thief. He never had stolen anything in his life. He did not intend to steal now. Before he entered the dressing-tent, half an hour ago, he had justified himself unto himself: he was not going to steal David's money. His purpose was an honest one, or so his conscience had been resolutely convinced. He meant to surrept.i.tiously borrow the idle money, that was all. Toward the end of the season, when he was vastly prosperous--as he was sure to be--he would go to David and restore the money, with interest; whereupon the grateful young man would fall upon his neck and rejoice. He needed the money. David did not need it.

What would his wife say if she came to know of this? What would Christine think of him? They were harsh questions and they troubled him. But above these questions throbbed a still greater one--the one that made his body damp with fear: was the money still in the boy's pocket, or was he carrying it with him in the ring?

Of one thing he was sure: David trusted to the integrity of his fellow performers. As for that, so did Thomas Braddock. In all his experience with circus performers he had never known one of them to steal; somewhat irrelevantly he reminded himself that circus women were notably chaste. No; David's money was quite safe in that dressing-tent.

Two full minutes pa.s.sed before he could whip the conscience into submission. It was, as it afterwards turned out to be, the last stand of the thing called honor as it applied to whiskey-soaked Tom Braddock.

Then he shot forward across the black shadows to the side pole he had been glaring at for a quarter of an hour. Through the lacings in the sidewall he saw that the section was empty.

When David put his hand inside the lining of his waistcoat an hour later, he turned pale and his eyes narrowed with suspicion. For an instant he permitted them to sweep the laughing, unconscious group of men surrounding him.

"Joey," he said a moment later, taking the clown aside, "my pocketbook is gone."

"Wot!" gasped Joey. "'Ave you lost it?"

"It has been stolen."

Joey's face grew very sober. "Don't say that, Jacky. It was in your ves'cut--as usual?"

"Yes. The lining is slashed with a knife."

"Jacky, are you sure?" almost groaned the clown. "Why--why, there ain't n.o.body 'ere as would steal a pin. No, sir, not one of--"

"I know that, Joey," said David. He was very white and his eyes were heavy with pain. "I know who stole it."

Grinaldi looked up sharply. Something darted into his mind like a flash of lightning.

"You--you don't mean--"

"I won't say the name. And you mustn't say it either, Joey. But I am as sure of it as I am sure my heart beats. Casey said he--the man came in here for half an hour--I can't believe he is a thief! Joey, _they_ must never know. We must not mention this thing to any one. I don't mind the money. It is nothing--"

Joey wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

"Right-o! Not a blooming word. I see your meaning. By Gripes, he's sinking pretty low. But," hopefully, "mebby he didn't do it."

"I hope he didn't, but--" The boy shuddered. "Joey, I pa.s.sed him as I came from the ring awhile ago. He was leaning against a quarter pole.

The look he gave me was so queer, so ferocious, that I turned away; I couldn't understand it. But I do now, Joey. It's as clear as day to me.

He had discovered that instead of twenty-five hundred dollars, there were but six ten-dollar notes in that pocketbook. Do you understand? He was black with rage and disappointment--"

"I see! Well, blow me, I--I--" Here Joey began to chuckle. "He's wondering where the balance of it is. He was trying to look through your shirt, Jacky. He--"

"Do you remember that he followed us in here and watched us change clothes? Well, I noticed that he never took his eyes off me. He was watching to see if I had anything hidden about me--a belt, a package, or--anything. Joey, it's as plain as day."

"And he did kick that little property boy a minute ago. I remember that. He is mad! He's crazy mad, Jacky, we've got to keep our eyes peeled, you and me--and another pusson, too. We got to stand by tonight to protect 'er. He probably thinks that pusson can tell 'im where it is."

But Thomas Braddock was not thinking of his wife in connection with the disappointment that had come to him in that last hour of degradation.

He was thinking of Colonel Bob Grand and wondering what magic influence he had exercised over the boy to compel him to deliver so much money into his hands. Down in the darkest corner of his soul he was cursing Bob Grand for a scheming thief, and David Jenison for a hopeless imbecile.

Before the wagons were well under way for the next stand he was dead drunk in the alley back of the hotel bar, having first thrashed a porter who undertook to eject him from the place.