Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: As Constance started away, Spearman suddenly drew herback to him and kissed her.]
THE INDIAN DRUM
BY
WILLIAM MacHARG
AND
EDWIN BALMER
FRONTISPIECE BY
W. T. BENDA
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1917,_
BY EDWIN BALMER
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I THE MAN WHOM THE STORM HAUNTED II WHO IS ALAN CONRAD? III DISCUSSION OF A SHADOW IV "ARRIVED SAFE; WELL" V AN ENCOUNTER VI CONSTANCE SHERRILL VII THE DEED IN TRUST VIII MR. CORVET'S PARTNER IX VIOLENCE X A WALK BESIDE THE LAKE XI A CALLER XII THE LAND OF THE DRUM XIII THE THINGS FROM CORVET'S POCKETS XIV THE OWNER OF THE WATCH XV OLD BURR OF THE FERRY XVI A GHOST SHIP XVII "HE KILLED YOUR FATHER" XVIII MR. SPEARMAN GOES NORTH XIX THE WATCH UPON THE BEACH XX THE SOUNDING OF THE DRUM XXI THE FATE OF THE MIWAKA
THE INDIAN DRUM
CHAPTER I
THE MAN WHOM THE STORM HAUNTED
Near the northern end of Lake Michigan, where the bluff-bowedore-carriers and the big, low-lying, wheat-laden steel freighters fromLake Superior push out from the Straits of Mackinac and dispute theright of way, in the island divided channel, with the white-and-gold,electric lighted, wireless equipped passenger steamers bound forDetroit and Buffalo, there is a copse of pine and hemlock back from theshingly beach. From this copse--dark, blue, primeval, silent at mosttimes as when the Great Manitou ruled his inland waters--there comes attime of storm a sound like the booming of an old Indian drum. Thisdrum beat, so the tradition says, whenever the lake took a life; and,as a sign perhaps that it is still the Manitou who rules the waters inspite of all the commerce of the cities, the drum still beats its rollfor every ship lost on the lake, one beat for every life.
So--men say--they heard and counted the beatings of the drum tothirty-five upon the hour when, as afterward they learned, the greatsteel steamer _Wenota_ sank with twenty-four of its crew and elevenpassengers; so--men say--they heard the requiem of the five who wentdown with the schooner _Grant_; and of the seventeen lost with the_Susan Hart_; and so of a score of ships more. Once only, it is told,has the drum counted wrong.
At the height of the great storm of December, 1895, the drum beat theroll of a sinking ship. One, two, three--the hearers counted the drumbeats, time and again, in their intermitted booming, to twenty-four.They waited, therefore, for report of a ship lost with twenty-fourlives; no such news came. The new steel freighter _Miwaka_, on hermaiden trip during the storm with twenty-five--not twenty-four--aboardnever made her port; no news was ever heard from her; no wreckage everwas found. On this account, throughout the families whose fathers,brothers, and sons were the officers and crew of the _Miwaka_, therestirred for a time a desperate belief that one of the men on the_Miwaka_ was saved; that somewhere, somehow, he was alive and mightreturn. The day of the destruction of the _Miwaka_ was fixed asDecember fifth by the time at which she passed the government lookoutat the Straits; the hour was fixed as five o'clock in the morning onlyby the sounding of the drum.
The region, filled with Indian legend and with memories of wrecks,encourages such beliefs as this. To northward and to westward a halfdozen warning lights--Ile-aux-Galets ("Skilligalee" the lake men callit), Waugaushance, Beaver, and Fox Islands--gleam spectrally where thebone-white shingle outcrops above the water, or blur ghostlike in thehaze; on the dark knolls topping the glistening sand bluffs tonorthward, Chippewas and Ottawas, a century and a half ago, quarreledover the prisoners after the massacre at Fort Mackinac; to southward,where other hills frown down upon Little Traverse Bay, the black-robedpriests in their chapel chant the same masses their predecessorschanted to the Indians of that time. So, whatever may be the origin ofthat drum, its meaning is not questioned by the forlorn descendants ofthose Indians, who now make beadwork and sweet-grass baskets for theirsummer trade, or by the more credulous of the white fishermen andfarmers; men whose word on any other subject would receiveunquestioning credence will tell you they have heard the drum.
But at bottom, of course, this is only the absurdest of superstitions,which can affect in no way men who to-day ship ore in steel bottoms tothe mills of Gary and carry gasoline-engine reaped and threshed wheatto the elevators of Chicago. It is recorded, therefore, only as asuperstition which for twenty-years has been connected with the loss ofa great ship.
* * * * *
Storm--the stinging, frozen sleet-slash of the February northerwhistling down the floe-jammed length of the lake--was assaultingChicago. Over the lake it was a white, whirling maelstrom, obscuringat midafternoon even the lighthouses at the harbor entrance; beyondthat, the winter boats trying for the harbor mouth were bellowingblindly at bay before the jammed ice, and foghorns and sirens echoedloudly in the city in the lulls of the storm.
Battering against the fronts of the row of club buildings, fashionablehotels, and shops which face across the narrow strip of park to thelake front in downtown Chicago, the gale swirled and eddied the sleettill all the wide windows, warm within, were frosted. So heavy wasthis frost on the panes of the Fort Dearborn Club--one of the staidestof the down-town clubs for men--that the great log fires blazing on theopen hearths added appreciable light as well as warmth to the rooms.
The few members present at this hour of the afternoon showed by theirlazy attitudes and the desultoriness of their conversation the dullingof vitality which warmth and shelter bring on a day of cold and storm.On one, however, the storm had had a contrary effect. With swift,uneven steps he paced now one room, now another; from time to time hestopped abruptly by a window, scraped from it with finger nail thefrost, stared out for an instant through the little opening he hadmade, then resumed as abruptly his nervous pacing with a manner souneasy and distraught that, since his arrival at the club an hourbefore, none even among those who knew him best had ventured to speakto him.
There are, in every great city, a few individuals who from theirfullness of experience in an epoch of the city's life come to epitomizethat epoch in the general mind; when one thinks of a city or of asection of the country in more personal terms than its square miles,its towering buildings, and its censused millions, one must think ofthose individuals. Almost every great industry owns one and seldommore than one; that often enough is not, in a money sense, thepredominant figure of his industry; others of his rivals or even of hispartners may be actually more powerful than he; but he is thepersonality; he represents to the outsiders the romance and mystery ofthe secrets and early, naked adventures of the great achievement.Thus, to think of the great mercantile establishments of State Streetis to think immediately of one man; another very vivid and picturesquepersonality stands for the stockyards; another rises from the wheatpit; one more from the banks; one from the steel works. The man whowas pacing restlessly and alone the rooms of the Fort Dearborn Club onthis stormy afternoon was the man who, to most people, bodied forth thelife underlying all other commerce thereabouts but the least known, thelife of the lakes.
The lakes, which mark unmistakably those who get their living fromthem, had put their marks on him. Though he was slight in frame with aspare, almost ascetic leanness, he had the wiry strength and enduranceof the man whose youth had been passed upon the water. He was veryclose to sixty now, but his thick, straight hair was still jet blackexcept for a slash of pure white above one temple; his brows were blackabove his deep blue eyes. Unforgettable eyes, they were; they gazed atone directly with surprising, disconcerting intrusion into one'sthoughts; then, before amazem
ent altered to resentment, one realizedthat, though he was still gazing, his eyes were vacant withspeculation--a strange, lonely withdrawal into himself. Hisacquaintances, in explaining him to strangers, said he had lived toomuch by himself of late; he and one man servant shared the great housewhich had been unchanged--and in which nothing appeared to have beenworn out or have needed replacing--since his wife left him, suddenlyand unaccountably, about twenty years before. At that time he hadlooked much the same as now; since then, the white slash upon histemple had grown a bit broader perhaps; his nose had become a trifleaquiline, his chin more sensitive, his well formed hands a little moreslender. People said he looked more French, referring to his fatherwho was known to have been a skin-hunter north of Lake Superior in the50's but who later married an English girl at Mackinac and settled downto become a trader in the woods of the North Peninsula, where BenjaminCorvet was born.
During his boyhood, men came to the peninsula to cut timber; youngCorvet worked with them and began building ships. Thirty-five yearsago, he had been only one of the hundreds with his fortune in the fateof a single bottom; but to-day in Cleveland, in Duluth, in Chicago,more than a score of great steamers under the names of variousinterdependent companies were owned or controlled by him and his twopartners, Sherrill and young Spearman.
He was a quiet, gentle-mannered man. At times, however, he sufferedfrom fits of intense irritability, and these of late had increased infrequency and violence. It had been noticed that these outburstsoccurred generally at times of storm upon the lake, but the mere threatof financial loss through the destruction of one or even more of hisships was not now enough to cause them; it was believed that they werethe result of some obscure physical reaction to the storm, and thatthis had grown upon him as he grew older.
To-day his irritability was so marked, his uneasiness so much greaterthan any one had seen it before, that the attendant whom Corvet hadsent, a half hour earlier, to reserve his usual table for him in thegrill--"the table by the second window"--had started away withoutdaring to ask whether the table was to be set for one or more. Corvethimself had corrected the omission: "For two," he had shot after theman. Now, as his uneven footsteps carried him to the door of thegrill, and he went in, the steward, who had started forward at sight ofhim, suddenly stopped, and the waiter assigned to his table stoodnervously uncertain, not knowing whether to give his customary greetingor to efface himself as much as possible.
The tables, at this hour, were all unoccupied. Corvet crossed to theone he had reserved and sat down; he turned immediately to the windowat his side and scraped on it a little clear opening through which hecould see the storm outside. Ten minutes later he looked up sharplybut did not rise, as the man he had been awaiting--Spearman, theyounger of his two partners--came in.
Spearman's first words, audible through the big room, made plain thathe was late to an appointment asked by Corvet; his acknowledgment ofthis took the form of an apology, but one which, in tone different fromSpearman's usual bluff, hearty manner, seemed almost contemptuous. Heseated himself, his big, powerful hands clasped on the table, his grayeyes studying Corvet closely. As Corvet, without acknowledging theapology, took the pad and began to write an order for both, Spearmaninterfered; he had already lunched; he would take only a cigar. Thewaiter took the order and went away.
When he returned, the two men were obviously in bitter quarrel.Corvet's tone, low pitched but violent, sounded steadily in the room,though his words were inaudible. The waiter, as he set the food uponthe table, felt relief that Corvet's outburst had fallen on othershoulders than his.
It had fallen, in fact, upon the shoulders best able to bear it.Spearman--still called, though he was slightly over forty now, "young"Spearman--was the power in the great ship-owning company of Corvet,Sherrill, and Spearman. Corvet had withdrawn, during recent years,almost entirely from active life; some said the sorrow andmortification of his wife's leaving him had made him choose more andmore the seclusion of his library in the big lonely house on the NorthShore, and had given Spearman the chance to rise; but those mostintimately acquainted with the affairs of the great ship-owning firmmaintained that Spearman's rise had not been granted him but had beenforced by Spearman himself. In any case, Spearman was not the one toaccept Corvet's irritation meekly.
For nearly an hour, the quarrel continued with intermitted truces ofsilence. The waiter, listening, as waiters always do, caught at timessingle sentences.
"You have had that idea for some time?" he heard from Corvet.
"We have had an understanding for more than a month."
"How definite?"
Spearman's answer was not audible, but it more intensely agitatedCorvet; his lips set; a hand which held his fork clasped and unclaspednervously; he dropped his fork and, after that, made no pretense ofeating.
The waiter, following this, caught only single words."Sherrill"--that, of course, was the other partner. "Constance"--thatwas Sherrill's daughter. The other names he heard were names of ships.But, as the quarrel went on, the manners of the two men changed;Spearman, who at first had been assailed by Corvet, now was assailinghim. Corvet sat back in his seat, while Spearman pulled at his cigarand now and then took it from his lips and gestured with it between hisfingers, as he jerked some ejaculation across the table.
Corvet leaned over to the frosted window, as he had done when alone,and looked out. Spearman shot a comment which made Corvet wince anddraw back from the window; then Spearman rose. He delayed, standing,to light another cigar deliberately and with studied slowness. Corvetlooked up at him once and asked a question, to which Spearman repliedwith a snap of the burnt match down on the table; he turned abruptlyand strode from the room. Corvet sat motionless.
The revulsion to self-control, sometimes even to apology, whichordinarily followed Corvet's bursts of irritation had not come to him;his agitation plainly had increased. He pushed from him his uneatenluncheon and got up slowly. He went out to the coat room, where theattendant handed him his coat and hat. He hung the coat upon his arm.The doorman, acquainted with him for many years, ventured to suggest acab. Corvet, staring strangely at him, shook his head.
"At least, sir," the man urged, "put on your coat."
Corvet ignored him.
He winced as he stepped out into the smarting, blinding swirl of sleet,but his shrinking was not physical; it was mental, the unconsciousreaction to some thought the storm called up. The hour was barely fouro'clock, but so dark was it with the storm that the shop windows werelit; motorcars, slipping and skidding up the broad boulevard, withheadlights burning; kept their signals clattering constantly to warnother drivers blinded by the snow. The sleet-swept sidewalks werealmost deserted; here or there, before a hotel or one of the shops, alimousine came to the curb, and the passengers dashed swiftly acrossthe walk to shelter.
Corvet, still carrying his coat upon his arm, turned northward alongMichigan Avenue, facing into the gale. The sleet beat upon his faceand lodged in the folds of his clothing without his heeding it.
Suddenly he aroused. "One--two--three--four!" he counted the long,booming blasts of a steam whistle. A steamer out on that snow-shroudedlake was in distress. The sound ceased, and the gale bore in only theordinary storm and fog signals. Corvet recognized the foghorn at thelighthouse at the end of the government pier; the light, he knew, wasturning white, red, white, red, white behind the curtain of sleet;other steam vessels, not in distress, blew their blasts; the long fourof the steamer calling for help cut in again.
Corvet stopped, drew up his shoulders, and stood staring out toward thelake, as the signal blasts of distress boomed and boomed again. Colorcame now into his pale cheeks for an instant. A siren swelled andshrieked, died away wailing, shrieked louder and stopped; the fourblasts blew again, and the siren wailed in answer.
A door opened behind Corvet; warm air rushed out, laden with sweet,heavy odors--chocolate and candy; girls' laughter, exaggeratedexclamations, laughter again came with it; and
two girls holding theirmuffs before their faces passed by.
"See you to-night, dear."
"Yes; I'll be there--if he comes."
"Oh, he'll come!"
They ran to different limousines, scurried in, and the cars swept off.
Corvet turned about to the tearoom from which they had come; he couldsee, as the door opened again, a dozen tables with their white cloths,shining silver, and steaming little porcelain pots; twenty or thirtygirls and young women were refreshing themselves, pleasantly, aftershopping or fittings or a concert; a few young men were sippingchocolate with them. The blast of the distress signal, the scream ofthe siren, must have come to them when the door was opened; but, ifthey heard it at all, they gave it no attention; the clatter andlaughter and sipping of chocolate and tea was interrupted only by thosewho reached quickly for a shopping list or some filmy possessionthreatened by the draft. They were as oblivious to the lake in frontof their windows, to the ship struggling for life in the storm, asthough the snow were a screen which shut them into a distant world.
To Corvet, a lake man for forty years, there was nothing strange inthis. Twenty miles, from north to south, the city--its businessblocks, its hotels and restaurants, its homes--faced the water and,except where the piers formed the harbor, all unprotected water, anopen sea where in times of storm ships sank and grounded, men foughtfor their lives against the elements and, losing, drowned and died; andCorvet was well aware that likely enough none of those in that tearoomor in that whole building knew what four long blasts meant when theywere blown as they were now, or what the siren meant that answered.But now, as he listened to the blasts which seemed to have grown moredesperate, this profoundly affected Corvet. He moved once to stop oneof the couples coming from the tearoom. They hesitated, as he staredat them; then, when they had passed him, they glanced back. Corvetshook himself together and went on.
He continued to go north. He had not seemed, in the beginning, to havemade conscious choice of this direction; but now he was following itpurposely. He stopped once at a shop which sold men's things to make atelephone call. He asked for Miss Sherrill when the number answered;but he did not wish to speak to her, he said; he wanted merely to besure she would be there if he stopped in to see her in half an hour.Then--north again. He crossed the bridge. Now, fifteen minutes later,he came in sight of the lake once more.
Great houses, the Sherrill house among them, here face the Drive, thebridle path, the strip of park, and the wide stone esplanade whichedges the lake. Corvet crossed to this esplanade. It was an ice-banknow; hummocks of snow and ice higher than a man's head shut off view ofthe floes tossing and crashing as far out as the blizzard let one see;but, dislodged and shaken by the buffeting of the floe, they let thegray water swell up from underneath and wash around his feet as he wenton. He did not stop at the Sherrill house or look toward it, but wenton fully a quarter of a mile beyond it; then he came back, and with anoddly strained and queer expression and attitude, he stood staring outinto the lake. He could not hear the distress signals now.
Suddenly he turned. Constance Sherrill, seeing him from a window ofher home, had caught a cape about her and run out to him.
"Uncle Benny!" she hailed him with the affectionate name she had usedwith her father's partner since she was a baby. "Uncle Benny, aren'tyou coming in?"
"Yes," he said vaguely. "Yes, of course." He made no move butremained staring at her. "Connie!" he exclaimed suddenly, with strangereproach to himself in his tone. "Connie! Dear little Connie!"
"Why?" she asked him. "Uncle Benny, what's the matter?"
He seemed to catch himself together. "There was a ship out there introuble," he said in a quite different tone. "They aren't blowing anymore; are they all right?"
"It was one of the M and D boats--the _Louisiana_, they told me. Shewent by here blowing for help, and I called up the office to find out.A tug and one other of their line got out to her; she had started acylinder head bucking the ice and was taking in a little water. UncleBenny, you must put on your coat."
She brushed the sleet from his shoulders and collar, and held the coatfor him; he put it on obediently.
"Has Spearman been here to-day?" he asked, not looking at her.
"To see father?"
"No; to see you."
"No."
He seized her wrist. "Don't see him, when he comes!" he commanded.
"Uncle Benny!"
"Don't see him!" Corvet repeated. "He's asked you to marry him, hasn'the?"
Connie could not refuse the answer. "Yes."
"And you?"
"Why--why, Uncle Benny, I haven't answered him yet."
"Then don't--don't; do you understand, Connie?"
She hesitated, frightened for him. "I'll--I'll tell you before I seehim, if you want me to, Uncle Benny," she granted.
"But if you shouldn't be able to tell me then, Connie; if youshouldn't--want to then?" The humility of his look perplexed her; ifhe had been any other man--any man except Uncle Benny--she would havethought some shameful and terrifying threat hung over him; but he brokeoff sharply. "I must go home," he said uncertainly. "I must go home;then I'll come back. Connie, you won't give him an answer till I comeback, will you?"
"No." He got her promise, half frightened, half bewildered; then heturned at once and went swiftly away from her.
She ran back to the door of her father's house. From there she saw himreach the corner and turn west to go to Astor Street. He was walkingrapidly and did not hesitate.
The trite truism which relates the inability of human beings to knowthe future, has a counterpart not so often mentioned: We do not alwaysknow our own past until the future has made plain what has happened tous. Constance Sherrill, at the close of this, the most important dayin her life, did not know at all that it had been important to her.All she felt was a perplexed, but indefinite uneasiness about UncleBenny. How strangely he had acted! Her uneasiness increased when theafternoon and evening passed without his coming back to see her as hehad promised, but she reflected he had not set any definite time whenshe was to expect him. During the night her anxiety grew stillgreater; and in the morning she called his house up on the telephone,but the call was unanswered. An hour later, she called again; stillgetting no result, she called her father at his office, and told him ofher anxiety about Uncle Benny, but without repeating what Uncle Bennyhad said to her or the promise she had made to him. Her father madelight of her fears; Uncle Benny, he reminded her, often acted queerlyin bad weather. Only partly reassured, she called Uncle Benny's houseseveral more times during the morning, but still got no reply; andafter luncheon she called her father again, to tell him that she hadresolved to get some one to go over to the house with her.
Her father, to her surprise, forbade this rather sharply; his voice,she realized, was agitated and excited, and she asked him the reason;but instead of answering her, he made her repeat to him herconversation of the afternoon before with Uncle Benny, and now hequestioned her closely about it. But when she, in her turn, tried toquestion him, he merely put her off and told her not to worry. Later,when she called him again, resolved to make him tell her what was thematter, he had left the office.
In the late afternoon, as dusk was drawing into dark, she stood at thewindow, watching the storm, which still continued, with one of thosedelusive hopes which come during anxiety that, because it was the timeof day at which she had seen Uncle Benny walking by the lake the daybefore, she might see him there again, when she saw her father's motorapproaching. It was coming from the north, not from the south as itwould have been if he was coming from his office or his club, and ithad turned into the drive from the west. She knew, therefore, that hewas coming from Uncle Benny's house, and, as the car swerved andwheeled in, she ran out into the hall to meet him.
He came in without taking off hat or coat; she could see that he wasperturbed, greatly agitated.
"What is it, father?" she demanded. "What has happened?" r />
"I do not know, my dear."
"It is something--something that has happened to Uncle Benny?"
"I am afraid so, dear--yes. But I do not know what it is that hashappened, or I would tell you."
He put his arm about her and drew her into a room opening off thehall--his study. He made her repeat again to him the conversation shehad had with Uncle Benny and tell him how he had acted; but she sawthat what she told him did not help him. He seemed to consider itcarefully, but in the end to discard or disregard it.
Then he drew her toward him.
"Tell me, little daughter. You have been a great deal with Uncle Bennyand have talked with him; I want you to think carefully. Did you everhear him speak of any one called Alan Conrad?"
She thought. "No, father."
"No reference ever made by him at all to either name--Alan or Conrad?"
"No, father."
"No reference either to any one living in Kansas, or to a town therecalled Blue Rapids?"
"No, father. Who is Alan Conrad?"
"I do not know, dear. I never heard the name until to-day, and HenrySpearman had never heard it. But it appears to be intimately connectedin some way with what was troubling Uncle Benny yesterday. He wrote aletter yesterday to Alan Conrad in Blue Rapids and mailed it himself;and afterward he tried to get it back, but it already had been taken upand was on its way. I have not been able to learn anything more aboutthe letter than that. He seems to have been excited and troubled allday; he talked queerly to you, and he quarreled with Henry, butapparently not about anything of importance. And to-day that name,Alan Conrad, came to me in quite another way, in a way which makes itcertain that it is closely connected with whatever has happened toUncle Benny. You are quite sure you never heard him mention it, dear?"
"Quite sure, father."
He released her and, still in his hat and coat, went swiftly up thestairs. She ran after him and found him standing before a highboy inhis dressing room. He unlocked a drawer in the highboy, and fromwithin the drawer he took a key. Then, still disregarding her, hehurried back down-stairs.
As she followed him, she caught up a wrap and pulled it around her. Hehad told the motor, she realized now, to wait; but as he reached thedoor, he turned and stopped her.
"I would rather you did not come with me, little daughter. I do notknow at all what it is that has happened--I will let you know as soonas I find out."
The finality in his tone stopped her from argument. As the house doorand then the door of the limousine closed after him, she went backtoward the window, slowly taking off the wrap. She saw the motor shootswiftly out upon the drive, turn northward in the way that it had come,and then turn again, and disappear. She could only stand and watch forit to come back and listen for the 'phone; for the moment she found itdifficult to think. Something had happened to Uncle Benny, somethingterrible, dreadful for those who loved him; that was plain, though onlythe fact and not its nature was known to her or to her father; and thatsomething was connected--intimately connected, her father hadsaid--with a name which no one who knew Uncle Benny, ever had heardbefore, with the name of Alan Conrad of Blue Rapids, Kansas. Who wasthis Alan Conrad, and what could his connection be with Uncle Benny soto precipitate disaster upon him?