CHAPTER IV
THE SECOND WRECK
That third nut was cracked just five weeks later in the firelit libraryof what had been Mr. Hartley Graham's home--the home of a man who duringhis lifetime, so it was occasionally said, had been, in some ways,almost as eccentric as his madcap brother--and concerning the latter hiscollege chums, those who knew him long ago, were of the opinion that hewas a freak whose "head grew beneath his shoulder."
The house, a white marble mansion on Opal Avenue, finest of the oldresidential streets in the University city of Clevedon, was now occupiedby the sister of the two, the mother of Una, who had snapped her fingersat the Thunder Bird, calling it a joke, a dummy, a Quaker gun.
That jeering nickname still rankled in the breast of Pemrose, who lookedmore like a colorless March Primrose, owing to the lingering shock ofthat train wreck, upon the spring morning in early April when the familylawyer whose duty it was to settle the affairs of the man who had leftthree separate portions of his will in as many drawers, to be opened onthree successive anniversaries of his death, drew forth the last.
She was not the only pale girl present.
By her side was Una, neighbor again in heart as in body, who laid onelittle agitated fist on Pem's knee while preparations for reading thewill were being made, the two girls nestling together, as in chummydays, three years before, when in the peacock pride of thirteen they hadconceitedly measured eyelashes.
And the remorseful affection mirrored in that little near-sighted standin one of Una's pretty dark eyes was only typical of an entirely similarstate of feeling in the once scornful breasts of her father and mother.
Mrs. Grosvenor was no longer "on her high ropes," as Pem had said in herfather's laboratory; to-day she seemed to be, rather, on a snubbing-linewhich brought her up short now and again, even in the middle of aspeech, when she looked at the inventor's blue-eyed daughter, his trustylittle pal--and that, sometimes, with spray in her eyes, too.
Also, her glances in the direction of the inventor himself, ProfessorLorry, with whose name the world was already beginning to ring, wereappealing--not to say apologetic.
She was quite sure now that any man who could turn out a daughter, notyet sixteen, to behave in a fearful emergency as Pem had done--withoutwhom her own daughter would not be here to-day, as Una constantly keptrepeating--could never forge a gun, be it rocket or rifle, that wouldhit no mark!
She even expressed some agitated interest in the great invention,inquiring when the first experiments with the little model Thunder Bird,upon a mountain-top, were to take place.
And as for her husband, he boldly declared himself deeply interested inthe conquest of the upper air and space--so far beyond the goal whichany aviator had dreamed of reaching yet.
He even went so far as to say that he would be glad to see the remainderof a fortune, represented by that third section of a will, go for thefurtherance of the professor's wonderful moon-reaching, planet-reachingscheme, instead of being "hung up" awaiting the return of the dead man'syounger brother who had been such a queer flimflam fellow inyouth,--whose family did not even know whether he was dead or alive.
And, at first, while the shell of that third nut was being solemnlycracked by the reading of opening sentences of the will--oh! how theheart of Pemrose jumped, like a nut on a hot shovel--it did seem as ifthe kernel were going to be a rich one for the Thunder Bird.
For now, according to the testator's wish, if his brother, TreffreyGraham, had not yet returned to claim his portion of his elder brother'swealth, then the money--a little bonanza, indeed, a solid fortune--wasto be turned over, forthwith, to the University of his native city, tobe used for developments in the science of the air--the upper air andwhat lay beyond it--chiefly for the furtherance of any inventions thatmight be put forward by the dead man's trusted friend, Professor Lorry.
It was here that two pale girls, abruptly transformed from Aprilprimroses to June roses--oh! such pinkly blooming tea-roses--gavesimultaneously a wild little shriek.
It was here that Pem, dazzled, saw the Thunder Bird, with a clear sky,tear--tear away moonward--and noticed at the same time, through somelittle loophole in the watch-tower of her excitement, the figure of aman with a gray tourist's cap pulled down to his eyes, rather waveringlycrossing the street without.
He circled to avoid an April puddle,--she saw him clearly through thebroad library window, at a distance of some fifty yards, beyond a flightof marble steps and a graveled entrance.
A queer little shiver, a horrid little shiver--a snowflake insummer--drifted down her spine!
The figure had an icy background. She had seen it before amid theterrors of that February train-wreck. The boy who saved her, the boywith the jolly tongue in his head, humorous amid the "horripilation,"had addressed it as Dad.
And then--then, she caught her breath sharply, as something blew uponher, hot and cold together--and came back to the library, to the presentmoment.
For the gray-haired lawyer, with his mouth opening gravely, wide as achurch door, with a little forward pounce of his body upon thetypewritten sheets, the sheets that meant life or death--flight orstagnation--for the Thunder Bird, was beginning to read again.
"Ah, but that's not all, even yet!" he said. "This curious will hasdragged its slow length over three years--and now we haven't finishedwith it, quite. Here's a codicil still to be read--its last word,written later, just two days before Mr. Graham's death, so it seems."
Alack and alas! that was the moment of the second wreck; the moment forone jubilant girl of the dire breakdown, when the Victory Express toClover Land, goal of blossoming success, crashed through into zerowaters of blankest disappointment,--almost as bitter as those in whichshe had held up her friend.
For the last word of the strung-out will set forth that, whereas itseemed borne in upon Mr. Hartley Graham, with life drawing to a close,that he had not been quite fair to his madcap brother in youth, and thatthe latter would some day return, the disposal of his wealth in theother direction named--to the University and for invention--should notcome into effect for at least twelve years after the opening of thatthird drawer.
"And so--and so, it's all hung up for another dozen years--unlessTreffrey Graham comes back to claim the money! Well! I'm sorry,Professor Lorry; there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip," said thelawyer, laying down the codicil with a blue look; he was interested ininvention, progressive invention--he had never thought that the ThunderBird was a Quaker gun.
"And so it's all hung up for the next twelve years," was the baffled crywhich went around the circle, with no single note of longing for thewanderer's return.
It would not have been very flattering to the terrible Treff, if he wasalive and present to hear, thought a gnashing Pemrose: to the exile whohad been such a hazing firebrand at college, burning out the fine flameof youth in the straw blaze of senseless pranks,--a griffin andshatterpated jester.