The Wrong Twin Part 50

"Yes, it looks good," conceded Wilbur.

"Then listen, young man! You're to live there. It'll be your headquarters. You're going to manage the four other farms from there, and give me a chance to be seventy-three years old next Tuesday without a thing on my mind. You ain't a farmer, but you're educated; you can learn anything after you've seen it done; and farming is mostly commonsense and machinery nowadays. So that's where you'll be, understand? No more dubbing round doing this and that, printing office one day, garage the next, and nothing much the next. You're going to settle down and take up your future, see?"

"Well, if you think I can."

"I do! You're an enlightened young man. What I can't tell you Juliana can. I got a dozen tractors out of commission right now. Couldn't get any one to put 'em in shape. None of them dissipated n.o.blemen round the Mansion garage would look at a common tractor. You'll start on them.

You're fixed--don't tell me no!"

"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.

"You done your bit in a fighting war; now you'll serve in a peaceful one. I don't know what the good Lord intends to come out of all this rumpus, but I do know the world's going to need food. We'll raise it."

"Yes, sir."

Sharon glanced shrewdly at him sidewise.

"You're a better Whipple than any one else of your name ever got to be."

"He didn't understand; he was misled or something."

"Or something," echoed Sharon. "Listen! There's one little job you got to do before you hole up out here. You heard about him, of course--the worry he's been to poor Harvey and the rest. Well, he's down there in New York still acting squeamishy. I want you should go down and put the fear of G.o.d into him."

"I understand he's mixed up with a lot of reds down there."

"Red! Him? Humph!" Sharon here named an equally well-known primary colour--not red. Wilbur protested.

"You don't get him," persisted the old man. "Listen, now! He cast off the family like your father said he would. Couldn't accept another cent of Whipple money. Going to work with his bare hands. Dressed up for it like a hunter in one of these powder advertis.e.m.e.nts. All he needed was a shotgun and a setter dog with his tail up. And everybody in the house worried he'd starve to death. Of course no one thought he'd work--that was one of his threats they didn't take seriously. But they promised to sit tight, each and all, and bring him to time the sooner.

"Well, he didn't come to time. We learned he was getting money from some place. He still had it. So I begun to get my suspicions up. Last night I got the bunch together, Gid and Harvey D. and Ella and Juliana, and I taxed 'em with duplicity, and every last one of 'em was guilty as paint--every goshed last one! Every one sending him fat checks unbeknownst to the others. Even Juliana! I never did suspect her. 'I did it because it's all a romance to him,' says she. 'I wanted him to go his way, whatever it was, and find it bright.'

"Wha'd you think of that from a girl of forty-eight or so that can tinker a mowing machine as good as you can? I ask you! Of course I'd suspected the rest. A set of mushheads. Maybe they didn't look shamed when I exposed 'em! Each one had pictured the poor boy down there alone, undergoing hardship with his toiling workers or whatever you call 'em, and, of course, I thought so myself."

"How much did you send him?" demanded Wilbur, suddenly.

"Not half as much as the others," returned Sharon in indignant triumph.

"If they'd just set tight like they promised and let me do the little I done----"

"You were going to sit tight, too, weren't you?"

"Well, of course, that was different. Of course I was willing to sh.e.l.l out a few dollars now and then if he was going to be up against it for a square meal. After all, he was Whipple by name. Of course he ain't got Whipple stuff in him. That young man's talk always did have kind of a nutty flavour. You come right down to it, he ain't a Whipple in hide nor hair. Why, say, he ain't even two and seventy-five-hundredths per cent.

Whipple!"

Sharon had cunningly gone away from his own failure to sit tight. He was proving flexible-minded here, as on the links.

They were silent, looking out over the spread of Home Farm. The red house still shimmered in the heat waves. The tall trees about it hung motionless. The click of the reaper in the south forty sounded like a distant locust.

"Put the fear of G.o.d into him," said Sharon at last. "Let him know them checks have gosh all truly stopped."

"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.

"Now drive on and we'll look the house over. The last tenant let it run down. But I'll fix it right for you. Why, like as not you'll be having a missis and young ones of your own there some day."

"I might; you can't tell."

"Well, I wish they was going to be Whipple stock. Ours is running down.

I don't look for any prize-winners from your brother; he'll likely marry that widow, or something, that wants to save America like Russia has been. And Juliana, I guess she wasn't ever frivolous enough for marriage. And that Pat--she'll pick out one of them boys with a head like a seal, that knows all the new dances and what fork to use. Trust her! Not that she didn't show Whipple stuff over there. But she's a rattlepate in peacetime."

"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.

He left a train at the Grand Central Station in New York early the following evening. He had the address of Merle's apartment on lower Fifth Avenue, and made his way there on foot through streets crowded with the war's backwash. Men in uniform were plentiful, and he was many times hailed by them. Though out of uniform himself, they seemed to identify him with ease. Something in his walk, the slant of his shoulders, and the lean, browned, watchful face--the eyes set for wider horizons than a mere street--served to mark him as one of them.

The apartment of Merle proved to be in the first block above Washington Square. While he scanned doors for the number he was seized and turned about by a playful creature in uniform.

"Well, Buck Cowan, you old son of a gun!"

"Gee, gosh, Stevie! How's the boy?"

They shook hands, moving to the curb where they could talk.

"What's the idea?" demanded ex-Private Cowan. "Why this dead part of town for so many of the boys?"

Service men were constantly sauntering by them or chatting in little groups at the curb.

"She's dead, right now," Steve told him, "but she'll wake up p.r.o.nto.

Listen, Buck, we got the tip! A lot of them fur-faced boys that hurl the merry bombs are goin' to pull off a red-flag sashay up the Avenoo. Get it? Goin' to set America free!"

"I get it!" said Wilbur.

"Dirty work at the crossroads," added Steve.

"Say, Steve, hold it for twenty minutes, can't you? I got to see a man down here. Be good; don't hurt any one till I get back."

"Do my best," said Steve, "but they're down there in the Square now stackin' up drive impedimenta and such, red banners, and so forth, tuning up to warble the hymn to free Russia. Hurry if you want to join out with us!"

"I'll do that little thing, Steve. See you again." He pa.s.sed on, making a way through the jostling throng of soldiers and civilians. "Just my luck," he muttered. "I hope the kid isn't in." Never before had he thought of his brother as "the kid."

He pa.s.sed presently through swinging gla.s.s doors, and in a hallway was told by a profusely b.u.t.toned youth in spectacles that Mr. Whipple was out. It was not known when he would be in. His movements were uncertain.

"He might be in or he might be out," said the boy.

He was back in the street, edging through the crowd, his head up, searching for the eager face of Steve Kennedy, late his sergeant.

Halfway up the next block he found him pausing to roll a cigarette.

Steve was a scant five feet, and he was telling a private who was a scant six feet that there would be dirty work at the crossroads--when the fur-faces started.

"We're too far away," suggested Wilbur. "If they start from the Square they'll be mussed up before they get here. You can't expect people farther down to save 'em just for you. Where's your tactics, Steve?"

They worked slowly back down the Avenue. It was nine o'clock now, and the street was fairly free of vehicles. The night was clear and the street lights brought alert, lean profiles into sharp relief, faces of men in uniform sauntering carelessly or chatting in little groups at the curb. A few unseeing policemen, also sauntering carelessly, were to be observed.