The Wishing Moon Part 28

"Get Sebastian. Where is the fellow? Is he afraid?" demanded the Honourable Joe from the extreme rear. Some one laughed hysterically. It was Mrs. Burr. The laugh was quickly hushed, but the new guest had heard it, though no other sound seemed to have impressed him. He laughed, too, a dry, broken ghost of a laugh, as cracked and strange as his voice, which he now found abruptly.

"Lillie," he called. "h.e.l.lo, Lillie dear."

Mrs. Burr was not heard to reply to this affectionate greeting, but he hardly paused for a reply. His light, high, curiously detached sounding voice talked on with a kind of uncanny fluency.

"Lillie," he urged cordially, "I heard you. I know you're there. Come out and let's have a look at you. I don't see anything of you lately.

You're too grand for me. I don't care. I'm in love with a prettier girl.

But you used to treat me all right, Lillie dear, and I treated you right, too. I never told. A gentleman don't tell. And you were straight with me. You never double-crossed me, like you and the dago Sebastian do to Everard. Everard! That's who I want to talk to. Where is he?"

At the mention of the name his wavering gaze had steadied and concentrated suddenly on the centre of the group in the garden, and now, while he looked, the crowd parted. Pushing his way through, the Colonel faced his uninvited guest.

The great man was not at his best. His most ardent admirer could hardly have claimed it. He had pulled the m.u.f.fling scarf down from his eyes, but was still tearing at the knot impatiently. Mrs. Kent had come fluttering ineffectively after him, catching at his arm. He struck her hands away, and pushed her back, addressing her with a lack of ceremony which outsiders were not often permitted to hear him employ toward a member of his favoured circle.

"Keep out of this, Edith, and you keep quiet, Lil. You girls make me sick," he snapped. "Half the trouble in this town comes because you can't learn to hold your tongues. You'd better learn. You're going to pay for it if you don't, and don't you lose sight of that. Well, Brady, what does this mean? What can I do for you?"

The ring of authority was in his voice again, as if he had called it back by sheer will power. He had stepped forward alone, and stood looking up at his guest, still framed in the sheltering trellis, and his blurred eyes cleared and grew keen as he looked, regarding him indifferently, like some refractory but mildly amusing animal. His guest's defiant eyes avoided his, and the ineffective, swaying figure seemed to shrink and droop and grow smaller, but it was a dignified figure still and a dangerous one. There was the snarling menace of impotent but inevitable rebellion about it, of men who fight on with their backs against the wall; a menace that was not new born to-night, but the gradual growth of years, just the number of years that the Colonel had spent in Green River.

"I'm sorry, sir," stammered his guest.

"Then apologize and get out."

"I can't."

"I think you'll find you can, Brady."

"I can't. I've got to ask you a few questions."

They seemed to be slow in framing themselves. There was a little pause, the kind of pause that for no apparent reason deprives you for the moment of any desire to move or speak. The una.s.suming figure of the young man under the trellis stood still, swaying only slightly from side to side. A deprecating smile appeared on his lips, as if his errand were distasteful to him and he wished to apologize for it. Gradually the smile faded and the eyes grew steady again and unnaturally bright. He held himself stiffly erect where he stood for a moment, took a few lurching steps forward, paused, and then plunged suddenly across the garden toward Colonel Everard.

It would have been hard to tell which came first, the little, stumbling run forward, the Colonel's instinctive move to check it, the stampede of the devotees of the time-honoured game of blind-man's buff, acting now with a promptness and spontaneity which they had not displayed in that game, Lillian Burr's hysterical scream, the snarling words from the Colonel that silenced it, or the quick flash of metal. It had all happened at once. But now, in an amphitheatre of scared faces, as far behind as the limits of the garden enclosure would allow, Mr. Brady and his host stood facing each other alone, and the Colonel, now entirely himself, with the high colour fading out of his cheeks, was looking with cool and unwavering eyes straight into the barrel of Mr. Brady's revolver.

It was a clumsy, old-fashioned little weapon. Brady's thin hand grasped it firmly, as if some stronger hand than his own were steadying his. He laughed an ineffective laugh, like a boastful boy's, but there was a threat in it, too.

"What have you got to say for yourself? I'll give you a chance to say it," he stated magnanimously, "but you shan't say a word against her.

She was always a good girl. She is a good girl. What have you done with her? Where is she?"

"You don't make yourself altogether clear, Brady," said the Colonel smoothly.

"Where's Maggie?"

"Maggie?" The Colonel's eyes swept the circle of his guests deliberately, as if to a.s.sure himself that no lady of that name was among them.

"Maggie. You know the name well enough." The sound of it seemed to give the lady's champion new courage; it flamed in his eyes, hot, and quick to burn itself out, but while it lasted, even a gentleman who had learned to face drawn revolvers as indifferently as the Colonel might do well to be afraid of him. "Maggie's missing. I'm going to find her.

That's all I want of you. I won't ask you who's worked on her and made a fool of her. I won't ask you how far she's been going. But I want her back before the whole town knows. I want to find her and find her quick.

She's a good girl and a decent girl. She's going to keep her good name.

She's coming home."

"Commendable," said the Colonel, not quite smoothly enough. His guest was past listening to him.

"Maggie. That's all I want. You're getting off easy. Luck's with you.

I've stood a lot from you, the same as the town has. It will stand a lot more, and I will. Get Maggie back. Get her back and give her to me and leave her alone, and I'll eat out of your hand and starve when you don't feed me, the same as the rest"--he came two wavering steps nearer, and dropped his voice to a dry quaver meant to be confidential, a grotesque and sinister parody of a confidence--"the rest, that don't know what I know."

"What do you mean?"

"I won't tell. Don't be afraid. A gentleman don't tell, and there's n.o.body that can but me. Young Neil don't know. The luck's with you, sir, just the same as it always was."

"I've had enough of this. Get home, Brady," cried the Colonel, in a voice that was suddenly wavering and high, like an old man's, but his guest only smiled and nodded wisely, beginning to sway as he stood, but still gripping the clumsy revolver tight.

"Just the same as it was when old Neil Donovan died."

"Get home," shrilled the Colonel again, but his guest pursued the tenor of his thoughts untroubled, still with the look of an amiably disposed fellow-conspirator on his weak face, a maddening look, even if his words conveyed no sting of their own.

"Neil Donovan," he crooned, "my father's own half-brother, and a good uncle to me, and a gentleman, too. He sold rum over a counter, but he was a gentleman, for he didn't talk too much. A gentleman don't tell."

But the catalogue of his uncle's perfections, whether in place here or not, was to proceed no further. The audience pressed closer, as eager to look on at a fight as it was to keep out of one. There was a new and surprising development in this one. The two men had closed with each other, and it was not the half-crazed boy who had made the attack, but the Colonel himself.

It was a sudden and awkward attack, and there was something stranger about it still. The Colonel was angry. He had tried to knock the weapon out of the boy's hand, failed, and tried instinctively, still, to get possession of it, but he was not making an adequate and necessary attempt to disarm him, he was no longer adequate or calm. He was angry, suddenly angry with the poor specimen of humanity that was making its futile attempt at protest and rebellion, as if it were an equal and an enemy. His face was distorted and his eyes were dull and unseeing. His breath came in panting gasps, and he made inarticulate little sounds in his throat. He struck furious and badly directed blows.

It was a curious thing to see, in the heart of the great man's admiring circle, at the climax of his most successful party of the year. It did not last long. The two struggling figures broke away from each other, and the boy staggered backward and stood with the revolver still in his hand. He was a little sobered by the struggle, and a little weakened by it, pale and dangerous, with a fanatic light in his eyes. Some one who had an eye for danger signals, if the Colonel had not, had made his un.o.btrusive way forward, and joined him now. He was not the most formidable looking of allies, but he stood beside them as if he had a right to be there, and the Colonel turned to him as if he recognized it.

"Hugh, you heard what he said?" he appealed; "you heard?"

"Judge, you keep out of this," Brady called, "keep out, sir."

Judge Saxon, keeping a casual hand on his most prominent client's arm, stood regarding Mr. Brady with mild and friendly blue eyes. He had quite his usual air of being detached from his surroundings, but benevolently interested in them.

"Charlie," he said, as if he were recognizing Mr. Brady for the first time at this critical moment, and deriving pleasure from it. "Why, Charlie," his voice became gently reproachful, but remained friendly, too. "Everard, this boy don't mean a word he says," he went on, with conviction, "he's excited and you're excited, too. This is a pretty poor time for you to get excited, Everard."

"You're right, Hugh," muttered the Judge's most prominent client thickly; "you're right. Get him away. Get him home."

"He's a good boy," p.r.o.nounced the Judge.

It was not the obvious description of Mr. Brady just at that moment.

There was only friendly amus.e.m.e.nt in the Judge's drawling voice and shrewd eyes, but back of it, unmistakably there, was something that made every careless word worth listening to. Mr. Brady was resisting it. His face worked pitifully.

"Judge, I told you to keep out. I don't want to hurt you."

"Thanks, Charlie."

"Every word I say is G.o.d's truth, Judge."

The Judge did not contradict this sweeping statement. He was studying Mr. Brady's weapon with some interest. "Your uncle's," he commented, pleased. "Why, I didn't know you still owned that thing, Charlie."

"I want Maggie. I want----"

"I'll tell you what you want," offered the Judge, amicably, "you want to hand that thing to me, and go home."

Mr. Brady received this suggestion in silence, a silence which left his audience uncertain how deeply he resented it. Indeed, they were painfully uncertain, and showed it. Bits of advice reached the Judge's ears, contradictory, though much of it sound, but he took no notice of it. He only smiled his patient and wistful smile and waited, like a man who knew what would happen next.