"Skeels lurks in the jungle! Life still holds a grain of interest."
"Why the devil couldn"t you keep me advised of your movements?" I demanded.
"d.y.k.eman"s hounds," he grinned. "Had them guessing. They"d have picked me up if I"d gone to your office."
"You could have written or wired. They"ve picked you up anyway," I grunted. "One"s on the job now. Saw him as I came in."
"Eh? What"s that?" cried Vandeman, a man snooping in the shrubbery outside getting more attention from him than one dodging pursuit three hundred miles away. "What do you mean, hounds?" and when he had heard the explanation of d.y.k.eman"s trailers, "I call that intolerable!"
"Oh, I don"t know." Worth reached over my shoulder for a cigarette.
"Lose "em whenever I like."
I wasn"t so certain. There were men in my employ he couldn"t shake.
Perhaps those reports in d.y.k.eman"s desk might have offered some surprises to this c.o.c.k-sure lad. My exasperation at Worth mounted as I listened to Vandeman talking.
"Those bank people should do one thing or another," he gave his opinion.
"Just because you got gay with them and handed them their payment in the suitcase it left in, they"ve no right to have you watched like a criminal. In a small town like this, such a thing will ruin a man"s standing."
"If he has any standing," Worth laughed.
"See here," Vandeman"s smile was persuasive. "Don"t let what I said out in front embitter you."
"I"ll try not to."
"Mr. Boyne"--Vandeman missed the sarcasm--"when I got back to this town to-day, what do you suppose I found? The story going around that a quarrel with Worth, over money, drove his father to take his own life."
"That"s my business here," I nodded. And when he looked his surprise, "To stop such stories."
He stared at me, frankly puzzled for a moment, then said,
"Well, of course you know, and I know, that they"re scurrilous lies; but just how will you stop them?"
I had intended my remark to stand as it was; but Worth filled in the pause after Vandeman"s question with,
"Jerry"s here to get the truth of my father"s murder, Bronse."
"Murder?" The mere naked word seemed to shock Vandeman. His sort clothe and pad everything--even their speech. "I didn"t know any one entertained the idea your father was murdered. He couldn"t have been--not the way it happened."
"Nevertheless we think he was."
"Oh, but Boyne--start a thing like that, and think of the talk it"ll make! They"ll commence at once saying that there was n.o.body but Worth to profit by his father"s death."
"Don"t worry, Mr. Vandeman." He made me hot. "We know where to dig up the motive for the crime."
"You mean the diaries?" Worth"s voice sounded unbelievably from beside me. "Nothing doing there, Jerry. I"ve burned them."
I sat and choked down the swears. Yet, looking back on it, I saw plainly that Jerry Boyne was the man who deserved kicking. I ought never to have left them with him.
"You read them and burned them?" said Vandeman.
"Burned them without reading," Worth"s impatient tones corrected.
"Without reading!" the other echoed, startled. Then, after a long pause, "Oh--I say--pardon me, but--but ought that to have been done? Surely not. Worth--if you"d read your father"s diaries for the past few years--I don"t believe you"d have a doubt that he committed suicide--not a doubt."
Worth sat there mute. Myself, I was rather curious as to what Vandeman would say; I had read much in those diaries. But when it came, it was the same old line of talk one hears when there"s a suicide: Gilbert was a lonely man; his life hadn"t been happy; he cut himself off from people too much. Vandeman said that of late he believed he was pretty nearly the only intimate the dead man had. This last gave him an interest in my eyes. I broke in on his generalities to ask him bluntly why he was so certain the death was suicide.
"Mr. Gilbert was breaking up; had been for two years or more. Worth"s been away; he"s not seen it; but I can tell you, Boyne, his father"s mind was affected."
Worth let that pa.s.s, though I could see he wasn"t convinced by Vandeman"s sentimentalities, any more than I was. After the man had gone, I turned on Worth sharply, with,
"Why the devil did you tell that pink-tea proposition about your dealings with the Van Ness Avenue bank?"
"Safety valve, I guess. I get up too heavy a load of steam, and it"s easy to blow it off to Vandeman. Told him most of it in the smoker, coming up. You"ll talk about anything in a smoker."
"Oh, will you?" I said in exasperation. "And you"ll burn anything, I suppose, that a match"ll set fire to?"
"Go easy, Jerry Boyne." His chin dropped to his chest, he sat glowering out through the window. "Cleansing fires for that sort of garbage," he said finally. "I burned them on the day of his funeral."
CHAPTER XVIII
THE TORN PAGE
My coming had thrown dinner late; we were barely through with the meal and back once more in the living room when the latch of the French window rattled, the window itself was pushed open, and a high imperious voice proclaimed,
"The Princess of China, calling on Mr. Worth Gilbert."
There stood Ina Vandeman in the gorgeously embroidered robes of a high caste Chinese lady, her fair hair covered by a sleek black wig that struck out something odd, almost ominous, in the coloring of her skin, the very planes of her features. Outside, along the porch, sounded the patter of many feet; Skeet wriggled through the narrow frame under her tall sister"s arm, came scooting into the room to turn and gaze back at her.
"Doesn"t she look the vamp?"
"Skeet!" Ina had sailed in by this time, and Ernestine followed more soberly. "You"ve been told not to say that."
"I think," the other twin backed her up virtuously, "with poor mother sick and all, you might respect her wishes. You know what she said about calling Ina a vamp." And Skeet drawled innocently,
"That it hit too near the truth to be funny--wasn"t that it?"
Through the open window had followed a half dozen more of the Blossom Festival crowd, Barbara and Bronson Vandeman among them. Ina paid no attention to any one, standing there, her height increased by the long, straight lines of the costume, her bisque doll features given a strange, pallid dignity by the raw magnificence of its crusted purple and crimson and green and gold embroidery and the dead black wig.
"Isn"t it an exquisite thing, Worth?" displaying herself before him.
"Bronse has a complete Mandarin costume; we lead the grand march as the emperor and empress of Mongolia. Don"t you think it"s a good idea?"
"First rate." Worth spoke in his usual unexcited fashion, and it was difficult to say whether he meant the oriental idea or the appearance of the girl who stood before him. She came close and offered the cuff of one of her sleeves to show him the embroidery, lifting a delicate chin to display the jade b.u.t.tons at the neck.
Barbara over on the other side of the room refused to meet my eye. Mrs.