The Indian Drum, William MacHarg [e reader pdf best .TXT] 📗

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 protect yourself in some way."

"I came back, you young fool, to say something to you which I didn't want Miss Sherrill to hear. I didn't know, when I took her away, how completely you'd taken her into—your father's affairs. I told you this man may have been a wheelsman on the Corvet; I don't know more about him than that; I don't even know that certainly. Of course, I knew Ben Corvet was paying blackmail; I've known for years that he was giving up money to some one. I don't know who he paid it to; or for what."

The strain of the last few hours was telling upon Alan; his skin flushed hot and cold by turns. He paced up and down while he controlled 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, you were 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, they said; 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 denoting some presence. Spearman jerked suddenly up; Alan, going to the door and looking into the hall, saw Wassaquam. The Indian evidently had returned to the house some time before; he had been bringing to Alan now the accounts which he had settled. He seemed to have been standing in the hall for some time, listening; but he came in now, looking inquiringly 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. I found him, the first night I got here and while you were away, going through my father's things. I fought with him, and he ran away. He was the one that broke into my father's desks; maybe you'll believe that, even if no one else will."

"Yes?" the Indian questioned. "Yes?" It was plain that he not only believed but that believing gave him immense satisfaction. He took Alan's arm and led him into the smaller library. He knelt before one of the drawers under the bookshelves—the drawer, Alan recalled, which he himself had been examining when he had found Wassaquam watching him. He drew out the drawer and dumped its contents out upon the floor; he turned the drawer about then, and pulled the bottom out of it. Beneath the bottom which he had removed appeared now another bottom and a few sheets of paper scrawled in an uneven hand and with different colored inks.

At sight of them, Spearman, who had followed them into the room, uttered an oath and sprang forward. The Indian's small dark hand grasped Spearman's wrist, and his face twitched itself into a fierce grin which showed how little civilization had modified in him the aboriginal 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. If the Indian had not been there, it would not have been so easy for him to do that, he thought.

CHAPTER XII THE LAND OF THE DRUM

Alan went with Wassaquam into the front library, after the Indian had shown Spearman out.

"This was the man, Judah, who came for Mr. Corvet that night I was hurt?"

"Yes, Alan," Wassaquam said.

"He was the man, then, who came here twice a year, at least, to see Mr. Corvet."

"Yes."

"I was sure of it," Alan said. Wassaquam had made no demonstration of any sort since he had snatched at Spearman's wrist to hold him back when Alan had bent to the drawer. Alan could define no real change now in the Indian's manner; but he knew that, since Wassaquam had found him quarreling with Spearman, the Indian somehow had "placed" him more satisfactorily. The reserve, bordering upon distrust, with which Wassaquam had observed Alan, certainly was lessened. It was in recognition of this that Alan now asked, "Can you tell me now why he came here, Judah?"

"I have told you I do not know," Wassaquam replied. "Ben always saw him; Ben gave him money. I do not know why."

Alan had been holding his hand over the papers which he had thrust into his pocket; he went back into the smaller library and spread them under the reading lamp to examine them. Sherrill had assumed that Corvet had left in the house a record which would fully explain what had thwarted his life, and would shed light upon what had happened to Corvet, and why he had disappeared; Alan had accepted this assumption. The careful and secret manner in which these pages had been kept, and the importance which Wassaquam plainly had attached to them—and which must have been a result of his knowing that Corvet regarded them of the utmost importance—made Alan certain that he had found the record which Sherrill had believed must be there. Spearman's manner, at the moment of discovery, showed too that this had been what he had been searching for in his secret visit to the house.

But, as Alan looked the pages over now, he felt a chill of disappointment and chagrin. They did not contain any narrative concerning Benjamin Corvet's life; they did not even relate to a single event. They were no narrative at all. They were—in his first examination of them, he could not tell what they were.

They consisted in all of some dozen sheets of irregular size, some of which had been kept much longer than others, a few of which even appeared fresh and new. The three pages which Alan thought, from their yellowed and worn look, must be the oldest, and which must have been kept for many years, contained only a list of names and addresses. Having assured himself that there was nothing else on them, he laid them aside. The remaining pages, which he counted as ten in number, contained nearly a hundred brief clippings from newspapers; the clippings had been very carefully cut out, they had been pasted with painful regularity on the sheets, and each had been dated across its face—dates made with many different pens and with many different inks, but all in the same irregular handwriting as the letter which Alan had received from Benjamin Corvet.

Alan, his fingers numb in his disappointment, turned and examined all these pages; but they contained nothing else. He read one of the clippings, which was dated "Feb. 1912."

>BR?

The passing away of one of the oldest residents of Emmet county occurred at the poor farm on Thursday of last week. Mr. Fred Westhouse was one of four brothers brought by their parents into Emmet county in 1846. He established himself here as a farmer and was well known among our people for many years. He was nearly the last of his family, which was quite well off at one time, Mr. Westhouse's three brothers and his father having perished in various disasters upon the lake. His wife died two years ago. He is survived by a daughter, Mrs. Arthur Pearl, of Flint.

He read another:

Hallford-Spens. On Tuesday last Miss Audrey Hallford, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Bert Hallford, of this place, was united in the bonds of holy matrimony to Mr. Robert Spens, of Escanaba. Miss Audrey is one of our most popular young ladies and was valedictorian of her class at the high school graduation last year. All wish the young couple well.

He read another:

Born to Mr. and Mrs. Hal French, a daughter, Saturday afternoon last. Miss Vera Arabella French, at her arrival weighed seven and one-half pounds.

This clipping was dated, in Benjamin Corvet's hand, "Sturgeon Bay, Wis., Aug. 1914." Alan put it aside in bewilderment and amaze and took up again the sheets he first had looked at. The names and addresses on these oldest, yellowed pages had been first written, it was plain, all at the same time and with the same pen and ink, and each sheet in the beginning had contained seven or eight names. Some of these original names and even the addresses had been left unchanged, but most of them had been scratched out and altered many times—other and quite different names had been substituted; the pages had become finally almost illegible, crowded scrawls, rewritten again and again in Corvet's cramped hand. Alan strained forward, holding the first sheet to the light.