CHAPTER XI
A CALLER
As the first of the month was approaching, Wassaquam had brought hishousehold bills and budget to Alan that morning directly afterbreakfast. The accounts, which covered expenses for the month justending and a small amount of cash to be carried for the monthbeginning, were written upon a sheet of foolscap in neat, unshadedwriting exactly like the models in a copybook--each letter formed ascarefully and precisely as is the work done upon an Indian basket. Thestatement accounted accurately for a sum of cash in hand upon the firstof February, itemized charged expenses, and totaled the bills. ForMarch, Wassaquam evidently proposed a continuance of the establishmentupon the present lines. To provide for that, and to furnish Alan withwhatever sums he needed, Sherrill had made a considerable deposit inAlan's name in the bank where he carried his own account; and Alan hadaccompanied Sherrill to the bank to be introduced and had signed thenecessary cards in order to check against the deposit; but, as yet, hehad drawn nothing.
Alan had required barely half of the hundred dollars which BenjaminCorvet had sent to Blue Rapids, for his expenses in Chicago; and he hadbrought with him from "home" a hundred dollars of his own. He had usedthat for his personal expenses since. The amount which Wassaquam nowdesired to pay the bills was much more than Alan had on hand; but thatamount was also much less than the eleven hundred dollars which theservant listed as cash on hand. This, Wassaquam stated, was incurrency and kept by him. Benjamin always had had him keep that muchin the house; Wassaquam would not touch that sum now for the payment ofcurrent expenses.
This sum of money kept inviolate troubled Alan. Constance Sherrill'sstatement that, for her family at least, to keep such a sum would havebeen unusual, increased this trouble; it did not, however, preclude thepossibility that others than the Sherrills might keep such amounts ofcash on hand. On the first of the month, therefore Alan drew upon hisnew bank account to Wassaquam's order; and in the early afternoonWassaquam went to the bank to cash his check--one of the very fewoccasions when Alan had been left in the house alone; Wassaquam'shabit, it appeared, was to go about on the first of the month and paythe tradesmen in person.
Some two hours later, and before Wassaquam could have been expectedback, Alan, in the room which had become his, was startled by a soundof heavy pounding, which came suddenly to him from a floor below.Shouts--heavy, thick, and unintelligible--mingled with the pounding.He ran swiftly down the stairs, then on and down the service stairsinto the basement. The door to the house from the areaway was shakingto irregular, heavy blows, which stopped as Alan reached the lowerhallway; the shouts continued still a moment more. Now that the noiseof pounding did not interfere, Alan could make out what the man wassaying: "Ben Corvet!"--the name was almost unintelligible--"Ben Corvet!Ben!" Then the shouts stopped too.
Alan sped to the door and turned back the latch. The door bore backupon him, not from a push, but from a weight without which had fallenagainst it. A big, heavy man, with a rough cap and mackinaw coat,would have fallen upon the floor, if Alan had not caught him. Hisweight in Alan's arms was so dull, so inert that, if violence had beenhis intention, there was nothing to be feared from him now. Alanlooked up, therefore, to see if any one had come with him. The alleyand the street were clear. The snow in the area-way showed that theman had come to the door alone and with great difficulty; he had fallenonce upon the walk. Alan dragged the man into the house and went backand closed the door.
He returned and looked at him. The man was like, very like the onewhom Alan had followed from the house on the night when he wasattacked; certainty that this was the same man came quickly to him. Heseized the fellow again and dragged him up the stairs and to the loungein the library. The warmth revived him; he sat up, coughing andbreathing quickly and with a loud, rasping wheeze. The smell of liquorwas strong upon him; his clothes reeked with the unclean smell ofbarrel houses.
He was, or had been, a very powerful man, broad and thick through withoverdeveloped--almost distorting--muscles in his shoulders; but hisbody had become fat and soft, his face was puffed, and his eyes wateryand bright; his brown hair, which was shot all through with gray, wasdirty and matted; he had three or four days' growth of beard. He wasclothed as Alan had seen deck hands on the steamers attired; he was notless than fifty, Alan judged, though his condition made estimatedifficult. When he sat up and looked about, it was plain that whiskeywas only one of the forces working upon him--the other was fever whichburned up and sustained him intermittently.
"'Lo!" he greeted Alan. "Where's shat damn Injin, hey? I knew BenCorvet was shere--knew he was shere all time. 'Course he's shere; hegot to be shere. That's shright. You go get 'im!"
"Who are you?" Alan asked.
"Say, who'r _you_? What t'hells syou doin' here? Never see you before... go--go get Ben Corvet. Jus' say Ben Corvet, Lu--luke's shere. BenCorvet'll know Lu--luke all right; alwaysh, alwaysh knows me...."
"What's the matter with you?" Alan had drawn back but now went to theman again. The first idea that this might have been merely some oldsailor who had served Benjamin Corvet or, perhaps, had been a comradein the earlier days, had been banished by the confident arrogance ofthe man's tone--an arrogance not to be explained, entirely, by whiskeyor by the fever.
"How long have you been this way?" Alan demanded. "Where did you comefrom?" He put his hand on the wrist; it was very hot and dry; thepulse was racing, irregular; at seconds it seemed to stop; for otherseconds it was continuous. The fellow coughed and bent forward. "Whatis it--pneumonia?" Alan tried to straighten him up.
"Gi' me drink! ... Go get Ben Corvet, I tell you! ... Get Ben Corvetquick! Say--yous shear? You get me Ben Corvet; you better get BenCorvet; you tell him Lu--uke's here; won't wait any more; goin' t'havemy money now ... sright away, your shear? Kick me out s'loon; I guessnot no more. Ben Corvet give me all money I want or I talk!"
"Talk!"
"Syou know it! I ain't goin'...." He choked up and tottered back;Alan, supporting him, laid him down and stayed beside him until hiscoughing and choking ceased, and there was only the rattling rasp ofhis breathing. When Alan spoke to him again, Luke's eyes opened, andhe narrated recent experiences bitterly; all were blamed to BenCorvet's absence; Luke, who had been drinking heavily a few nightsbefore, had been thrown out when the saloon was closed; that was BenCorvet's fault; if Ben Corvet had been around, Luke would have hadmoney, all the money any one wanted; no one would have thrown out Lukethen. Luke slept in the snow, all wet. When he arose, the saloon wasopen again, and he got more whiskey, but not enough to get him warm.He hadn't been warm since. That was Ben Corvet's fault. Ben Corvetbetter be 'round now; Luke wouldn't stand any more.
Alan felt of the pulse again; he opened the coat and under-flannels andfelt the heaving chest. He went to the hall and looked in thetelephone directory. He remembered the name of the druggist on thecorner of Clark Street and he telephoned him, giving the number onAstor Street.
"I want a doctor right away," he said. "Any good doctor; the one thatyou can get quickest." The druggist promised that a physician would bethere within a quarter of an hour. Alan went back to Luke, who wassilent now except for the gasp of his breath; he did not answer whenAlan spoke to him, except to ask for whiskey. Alan, gazing down athim, felt that the man was dying; liquor and his fever had sustainedhim only to bring him to the door; now the collapse had come; thedoctor, even if he arrived very soon, could do no more than perhapsdelay the end. Alan went up-stairs and brought down blankets and putthem over Luke; he cut the knotted laces of the soaked shoes and pulledthem off; he also took off the mackinaw and the undercoat. The fellow,appreciating that care was being given him, relaxed; he slept deeplyfor short periods, stirred and started up, then slept again. Alanstood watching, a strange, sinking tremor shaking him. This man hadcome there to make a claim--a claim which many times before,apparently, Benjamin Corvet had admitted. Luke came to Ben Corvet formoney which he always got--all he wanted--the altern
ative to givingwhich was that Luke would "talk." Blackmail, that meant, of course;blackmail which not only Luke had told of, but which Wassaquam too hadadmitted, as Alan now realized. Money for blackmail--that was thereason for that thousand dollars in cash which Benjamin Corvet alwayskept at the house.
Alan turned, with a sudden shiver of revulsion, toward his father'schair in place before the hearth; there for hours each day his fatherhad sat with a book or staring into the fire, always with what this manknew hanging over him, always arming against it with the thousanddollars ready for this man, whenever he came. Meeting blackmail,paying blackmail for as long as Wassaquam had been in the house, for aslong as it took to make the once muscular, powerful figure of thesailor who threatened to "talk" into the swollen, whiskey-soaked hulkof the man dying now on the lounge.
For his state that day, the man blamed Benjamin Corvet. Alan, forcinghimself to touch the swollen face, shuddered at thought of the truthunderlying that accusation. Benjamin Corvet's act--whatever it mightbe that this man knew--undoubtedly had destroyed not only him who paidthe blackmail but him who received it; the effect of that act was stillgoing on, destroying, blighting. Its threat of shame was not onlyagainst Benjamin Corvet; it threatened also all whose names must beconnected with Corvet's. Alan had refused to accept any stigma in hisrelationship with Corvet; but now he could not refuse to accept it.This shame threatened Alan; it threatened also the Sherrills. Was itnot because of this that Benjamin Corvet had objected to Sherrill'sname appearing with his own in the title of the ship-owning firm? Andwas it not because of this that Corvet's intimacy with Sherrill and hiscomradeship with Constance had been alternated by times in which he hadfrankly avoided them both? What Sherrill had told Alan and evenCorvet's gifts to him had not been able to make Alan feel that withoutquestion Corvet was his father, but now shame and horror were makinghim feel it; in horror at Corvet's act--whatever it might be--and inshame at Corvet's cowardice, Alan was thinking of Benjamin Corvet ashis father. This shame, this horror, were his inheritance.
He left Luke and went to the window to see if the doctor was coming.He had called the doctor because in his first sight of Luke he had notrecognized that Luke was beyond the aid of doctors and because tosummon a doctor under such circumstances was the right thing to do; buthe had thought of the doctor also as a witness to anything Luke mightsay. But now--did he want a witness? He had no thought of concealinganything for his own sake or for his father's; but he would, at least,want the chance to determine the circumstances under which it was to bemade public.
He hurried back to Luke. "What is it, Luke?" he cried to him. "Whatcan you tell? Listen! Luke--Luke, is it about the _Miwaka_--the_Miwaka_? Luke!"
Luke had sunk into a stupor; Alan shook him and shouted in his earwithout awakening response. As Alan straightened and stood hopelesslylooking down at him, the telephone bell rang sharply. Thinking itmight be something about the doctor, he went to it and answered it.Constance Sherrill's voice came to him; her first words made it clearthat she was at home and had just come in.
"The servants tell me some one was making a disturbance beside yourhouse a while ago," she said, "and shouting something about Mr. Corvet.Is there something wrong there? Have you discovered something?"
He shook excitedly while, holding his hand over the transmitter lestLuke should break out again and she should hear it, he wondered what heshould say to her. He could think of nothing, in his excitement, whichwould reassure her and merely put her off; he was not capable ofcontrolling his voice so as to do that.
"Please don't ask me just now, Miss Sherrill," he managed. "I'll tellyou what I can--later."
His reply, he recognized, only made her more certain that there wassomething the matter, but he could not add anything to it. He foundLuke, when he went back to him, still in coma; the blood-shot veinsstood out against the ghastly grayness of his face, and his stertorousbreathing sounded through the rooms.
Constance Sherrill had come in a few moments before from an afternoonreception; the servants told her at once that something was happeningat Mr. Corvet's. They had heard shouts and had seen a man poundingupon the door there, but they had not taken it upon themselves to goover there. She had told the chauffeur to wait with the motor and hadrun at once to the telephone and called Alan; his attempt to put heroff made her certain that what had happened was not finished but wasstill going on. Her anxiety and the sense of their responsibility forAlan overrode at once all other thought. She told the servants to callher father at the office and tell him something was wrong at Mr.Corvet's; then she called her maid and hurried out to the motor.
"To Mr. Corvet's--quickly!" she directed.
Looking through the front doors of her car as it turned into AstorStreet, she saw a young man, carrying a doctor's case, run up the stepsof Corvet's house. This, quite unreasonably since she had just talkedwith Alan, added to her alarm; she put her hand on the catch of thedoor and opened it a little so as to be ready to leave the car as soonas it stopped. As the car drew to the curb, she sprang out, andstopped only long enough to tell the chauffeur to be attentive and towait ready to come into the house, if he was called.
The man with the bag--Constance recognized him as a young doctor whowas starting in practice in the neighborhood--was just being admittedas she and her maid reached the steps. Alan stood holding the dooropen and yet blocking entrance when she came up. The sight of him toldher that it was not physical hurt that happened to him, but his faceshowed her there had been basis for her fright.
"You must not come in!" he denied her; but she followed the doctor sothat Alan could not close the door upon her. He yielded then, and sheand her maid went on into the hall.
She started as she saw the figure upon the couch in the library, and asthe sound of its heavy breathing reached her; and the wild fancy whichhad come to her when the servants had told her of what was going on--afancy that Uncle Benny had come back--was banished instantly.
Alan led her into the room across from the library.
"You shouldn't have come in," he said. "I shouldn't have let you in;but--you saw him."
"Yes."
"Do you know him?"
"Know him?" She shook her head.
"I mean, you've never seen him before?"
"No."
"His name is Luke--he speaks of himself by that name. Did you everhear my father mention a man named Luke?"
"No; never."
Luke's voice cut suddenly their conversation; the doctor probably hadgiven him some stimulant.
"Where'sh Ben Corvet?" Luke demanded arrogantly of the doctor. "You goget Ben Corvet! Tell Ben Corvet I want drink right away. Tell BenCorvet I want my thousan' dollar...!"
Constance turned swiftly to her maid. "Go out to the car and wait forme," she commanded.
Luke's muffled, heavy voice went on; moments while he fought for breathinterrupted it.
"You hear me, you damn Injin! ... You go tell Ben Corvet I want mythousan' dollars, or I make it two nex' time! You hear me; you go tellBen Corvet.... You let me go, you damn Injin!"...
Through the doorway to the library they could see the doctor force Lukeback upon the couch; Luke fought him furiously; then, suddenly as hehad stirred to strength and fury, Luke collapsed again. His voice wenton a moment more, rapidly growing weaker:
"You tell Ben Corvet I want my money, or I'll tell. He knows what I'lltell.... You don't know, you Injin devil.... Ben Corvet knows, and Iknow.... Tell him I'll tell ... I'll tell ... I'll tell!" Thethreatening voice stopped suddenly.
Constance, very pale, again faced Alan. "Of course, I understand," shesaid. "Uncle Benny has been paying blackmail to this man. For years,perhaps...." She repeated the word after an instant, in a frightenedvoice, "Blackmail!"
"Won't you please go, Miss Sherrill?" Alan urged her. "It was good ofyou to come; but you mustn't stay now. He's--he's dying, of course."
She seated herself upon a chair. "I'm going to stay with yo
u," shesaid simply. It was not, she knew, to share the waiting for the man inthe next room to die; in that, of itself, there could be nothing forhim to feel. It was to be with him while realization which had come toher was settling upon him too--realization of what this meant to him.He was realizing that, she thought; he had realized it; it made him, atmoments, forget her while, listening for sounds from the other room, hepaced back and forth beside the table or stood staring away, clingingto the portieres. He left her presently, and went across the hall tothe doctor. The man on the couch had stirred as though to start upagain; the voice began once more, but now its words were whollyindistinguishable, meaningless, incoherent. They stopped, and Luke laystill; the doctor--Alan was helping him now--arranged a quite inertform upon the couch. The doctor bent over him.
"Is he dead?" Constance heard Alan ask.
"Not yet," the doctor answered; "but it won't be long, now."
"There's nothing you can do for him?"
The doctor shook his head.
"There's nothing you can do to make him talk--bring him to himselfenough so that he will tell what he keeps threatening to tell?"
The doctor shrugged. "How many times, do you suppose, he's been drunkand still not told? Concealment is his established habit now. It's aninhibition; even in wandering, he stops short of actually tellinganything."
"He came here--" Alan told briefly to the doctor the circumstances ofthe man's coming. The doctor moved back from the couch to a chair andsat down.
"I'll wait, of course," he said, "until it's over." He seemed to wantto say something else, and after a moment he came out with it. "Youneedn't be afraid of my talking outside ... professional secrecy, ofcourse."
Alan came back to Constance. Outside, the gray of dusk was spreading,and within the house it had grown dark; Constance heard the doctor turnon a light, and the shadowy glow of a desk lamp came from the library.Alan walked to and fro with uneven steps; he did not speak to her, norshe to him. It was very quiet in the library; she could not even hearLuke's breathing now. Then she heard the doctor moving; Alan went tothe light and switched it on, as the doctor came out to them.
"It's over," he said to Alan. "There's a law covers these cases; youmay not be familiar with it. I'll make out the deathcertificate--pneumonia and a weak heart with alcoholism. But thepolice have to be notified at once; you have no choice as to that.I'll look after those things for you, if you want."
"Thank you; if you will." Alan went with the doctor to the door andsaw him drive away. Returning, he drew the library portieres; then,coming back to Constance, he picked up her muff and collar from thechair where she had thrown them, and held them out to her.
"You'll go now, Miss Sherrill," he said. "Indeed, you mustn't stayhere--your car's still waiting, and--you mustn't stay here ... in thishouse!"
He was standing, waiting to open the door for her, almost where he hadhalted on that morning, a few weeks ago, when he had first come to thehouse in answer to Benjamin Corvet's summons; and she was where she hadstood to receive him. Memory of how he had looked then--eager,trembling a little with excitement, expecting only to find his fatherand happiness--came to her; and as it contrasted with the way she sawhim now, she choked queerly as she tried to speak. He was very white,but quite controlled; lines not upon his face before had come there.
"Won't you come over home with me," she said, "and wait for fatherthere till we can think this thing out together?"
Her sweetness almost broke him down. "This ... together! Think thisout! Oh, it's plain enough, isn't it? For years--for as long asWassaquam has been here, my father has been seeing that man and payingblackmail to him twice a year, at least! He lived in that man's power.He kept money in the house for him always! It wasn't anythingimaginary that hung over my father--or anything created in his ownmind. It was something real--real; it was disgrace--disgrace andworse--something he deserved; and that he fought with blackmail money,like a coward! Dishonor--cowardice--blackmail!"
She drew a little nearer to him. "You didn't want me to know," shesaid. "You tried to put me off when I called you on the telephone;and--when I came here, you wanted me to go away before I heard. Whydidn't you want me to know? If he was your father, wasn't heour--friend? Mine and my father's? You must let us help you."
As she approached, he had drawn back from her. "No; this is mine!" hedenied her. "Not yours or your father's. You have nothing to do withthis. Didn't he try in little cowardly ways to keep you out of it?But he couldn't do that; your friendship meant too much to him; hecouldn't keep away from you. But I can--I can do that! You must goout of this house; you must never come in here again!"
Her eyes filled, as she watched him; never had she liked him so much asnow, as he moved to open the door for her.
"I thought," he said almost wistfully, "it seemed to me that, whateverhe had done, it must have been mostly against me. His leavingeverything to me seemed to mean that I was the one that he had wronged,and that he was trying to make it up to me. But it isn't that; itcan't be that! It is something much worse than that! ... Oh, I'm gladI haven't used much of his money! Hardly any--not more than I can giveback! It wasn't the money and the house he left me that mattered; whathe really left me was just this ... dishonor, shame..."
The doorbell rang, and Alan turned to the door and threw it open. Inthe dusk the figure of the man outside was not at all recognizable; butas he entered with heavy and deliberate steps, passing Alan withoutgreeting and going straight to Constance, Alan saw by the light in thehall that it was Spearman.
"What's up?" Spearman asked. "They tried to get your father at theoffice and then me, but neither of us was there. They got meafterwards at the club. They said you'd come over here; but that musthave been more than two hours ago."
His gaze went on past her to the drawn hangings of the room to theright; and he seemed to appreciate their significance; for his facewhitened under its tan, and an odd hush came suddenly upon him.
"Is it Ben, Connie?" he whispered. "Ben ... come back?"
He drew the curtains partly open. The light in the library had beenextinguished, and the light that came from the hall swayed about theroom with the movement of the curtains and gave a momentary semblanceof life to the face of the man upon the couch. Spearman drew thecurtains quickly together again, still holding to them and seeming foran instant to cling to them; then he shook himself together, threw thecurtains wide apart, and strode into the room. He switched on thelight and went directly to the couch; Alan followed him.
"He's--dead?"
"Who is he?" Alan demanded.
Spearman seemed to satisfy himself first as to the answer to hisquestion. "How should I know who he is?" he asked. "There used to bea wheelsman on the _Martha Corvet_ years ago who looked like him; orlooked like what this fellow may have looked like once. I can't besure."
He turned to Constance. "You're going home, Connie? I'll see you overthere. I'll come back about this afterward, Conrad."
Alan followed them to the door and closed it after them. He spread theblankets over Luke. Luke's coats, which Alan had removed, lay upon achair, and he looked them over for marks of identification; themackinaw bore the label of a dealer in Manitowoc--wherever that mightbe; Alan did not know. A side pocket produced an old briar: there wasnothing else. Then Alan walked restlessly about, awaiting Spearman.Spearman, he believed, knew this man; Spearman had not even venturedupon modified denial until he was certain that the man was dead; andthen he had answered so as not to commit himself, pending learning fromConstance what Luke had told.
But Luke had said nothing about Spearman. It had been Corvet, andCorvet alone, of whom Luke had spoken; it was Corvet whom he hadaccused; it was Corvet who had given him money. Was it conceivable,then, that there had been two such events in Corvet's life? That oneof these events concerned the _Miwaka_ and Spearman and some one--someone "with a bullet hole above his eye"--who had "got" Corvet; and thatthe other event had concer
ned Luke and something else? It was notconceivable, Alan was sure; it was all one thing. If Corvet had had todo with the _Miwaka_, then Luke had had to do with it too. AndSpearman? But if Spearman had been involved in that guilty thing, hadnot Luke known it? Then why had not Luke mentioned Spearman? Or hadSpearman not been really involved? Had it been, perhaps, only evidenceof knowledge of what Corvet had done that Spearman had tried todiscover and destroy?
Alan went to the door and opened it, as he heard Spearman upon thesteps again. Spearman waited only until the door had been reclosedbehind him.
"Well, Conrad, what was the idea of bringing Miss Sherrill into this?"
"I didn't bring her in; I tried the best I could to keep her out."
"Out of what--exactly?"
"You know better than I do. You know exactly what it is. You knowthat man, Spearman; you know what he came here for. I don't meanmoney; I mean you know why he came here for money, and why he got it.I tried, as well as I could, to make him tell me; but he wouldn't doit. There's disgrace of some sort here, of course--disgrace thatinvolves my father and, I think, you too. If you're not guilty with myfather, you'll help me now; if you are guilty, then, at least, yourrefusal to help will let me know that."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Then why did you come back here? You came back here to protectyourself in some way."
"I came back, you young fool, to say something to you which I didn'twant Miss Sherrill to hear. I didn't know, when I took her away, howcompletely you'd taken her into--your father's affairs. I told youthis man may have been a wheelsman on the Corvet; I don't know moreabout him than that; I don't even know that certainly. Of course, Iknew Ben Corvet was paying blackmail; I've known for years that he wasgiving up money to some one. I don't know who he paid it to; or forwhat."
The strain of the last few hours was telling upon Alan; his skinflushed hot and cold by turns. He paced up and down while hecontrolled himself.
"That's not enough, Spearman," he said finally. "I--I've felt you,somehow, underneath all these things. The first time I saw you, youwere in this house doing something you ought not to have been doing;you fought me then; you would have killed me rather than not get away.Two weeks ago, some one attacked me on the street--for robbery, theysaid; but I know it wasn't robbery--"
"You're not so crazy as to be trying to involve me in that--"
There came a sound to them from the hall, a sound unmistakably denotingsome presence. Spearman jerked suddenly up; Alan, going to the doorand looking into the hall, saw Wassaquam. The Indian evidently hadreturned to the house some time before; he had been bringing to Alannow the accounts which he had settled. He seemed to have been standingin the hall for some time, listening; but he came in now, lookinginquiringly from one to the other of them.
"Not friends?" he inquired. "You and Henry?"
Alan's passion broke out suddenly. "We're anything but that, Judah. Ifound him, the first night I got here and while you were away, goingthrough my father's things. I fought with him, and he ran away. Hewas the one that broke into my father's desks; maybe you'll believethat, even if no one else will."
"Yes?" the Indian questioned. "Yes?" It was plain that he not onlybelieved but that believing gave him immense satisfaction. He tookAlan's arm and led him into the smaller library. He knelt before oneof the drawers under the bookshelves--the drawer, Alan recalled, whichhe himself had been examining when he had found Wassaquam watching him.He drew out the drawer and dumped its contents out upon the floor; heturned the drawer about then, and pulled the bottom out of it. Beneaththe bottom which he had removed appeared now another bottom and a fewsheets of paper scrawled in an uneven hand and with different coloredinks.
At sight of them, Spearman, who had followed them into the room,uttered an oath and sprang forward. The Indian's small dark handgrasped Spearman's wrist, and his face twitched itself into a fiercegrin which showed how little civilization had modified in him theaboriginal passions. But Spearman did not try to force his way;instead, he drew back suddenly.
Alan stooped and picked up the papers and put them in his pocket. Ifthe Indian had not been there, it would not have been so easy for himto do that, he thought.