The Night-Born
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“Men were wax in her hands. She melted them, or softly molded them, or incinerated them, as she pleased. There wasn’t a steward, even, grand and remote as she was, who, at her bidding, would have hesitated to souse the Old Man himself with a plate of soup. You have all seen such women – a sort of world’s desire to all men. As a man-conqueror she was supreme. She was a whip-lash, a sting and a flame, an electric spark. Oh, believe me, at times there were flashes of will that scorched through her beauty and seduction and smote a victim into blank and shivering idiocy and fear.
“And don’t fail to mark, in the light of what is to come, that she was a prideful woman. Pride of race, pride of caste, pride of sex, pride of power – she had it all, a pride strange and wilful and terrible.
“She ran the ship, she ran the voyage, she ran everything, and she ran Dennitson. That he had outdistanced the pack even the least wise of us admitted. That she liked him, and that this feeling was growing, there was not a doubt. I am certain that she looked on him with kinder eyes than she had ever looked with on man before. We still worshiped, and were always hanging about waiting to be whistled up, though we knew that Dennitson was laps and laps ahead of us. What might have happened we shall never know, for we came to Colombo and something else happened.
“You know Colombo, and how the native boys dive for coins in the shark-infested bay. Of course, it is only among the ground sharks and fish sharks that they venture. It is almost uncanny the way they know sharks and can sense the presence of a real killer – a tiger shark, for instance, or a gray nurse strayed up from Australian waters. Let such a shark appear, and, long before the passengers can guess, every mother’s son of them is out of the water in a wild scramble for safety.
“It was after tiffin, and Miss Caruthers was holding her usual court under the deck-awnings. Old Captain Bentley had just been whistled up, and had granted her what he never granted before… nor since – permission for the boys to come up on the promenade deck. You see, Miss Caruthers was a swimmer, and she was interested. She took up a collection of all our small change, and herself tossed it overside, singly and in handfuls, arranging the terms of the contests, chiding a miss, giving extra rewards to clever wins, in short, managing the whole exhibition.
“She was especially keen on their jumping. You know, jumping feet-first from a height, it is very difficult to hold the body perpendicularly while in the air. The center of gravity of the male body is high, and the tendency is to overtopple. But the little beggars employed a method which she declared was new to her and which she desired to learn. Leaping from the davits of the boat-deck above, they plunged downward, their faces and shoulders bowed forward, looking at the water. And only at the last moment did they abruptly straighten up and enter the water erect and true.
“It was a pretty sight. Their diving was not so good, though there was one of them who was excellent at it, as he was in all the other stunts. Some white man must have taught him, for he made the proper swan dive and did it as beautifully as I have ever seen it. You know, headfirst into the water, from a great height, the problem is to enter the water at the perfect angle. Miss the angle and it means at the least a twisted back and injury for life. Also, it has meant death for many a bungler. But this boy could do it – seventy feet I know he cleared in one dive from the rigging – clenched hands on chest, head thrown back, sailing more like a bird, upward and out, and out and down, body flat on the air so that if it struck the surface in that position it would be split in half like a herring. But the moment before the water is reached, the head drops forward, the hands go out and lock the arms in an arch in advance of the head, and the body curves gracefully downward and enters the water just right.
“This the boy did, again and again, to the delight of all of us, but particularly of Miss Caruthers. He could not have been a moment over twelve or thirteen, yet he was by far the cleverest of the gang. He was the favorite of his crowd, and its leader. Though there were a number older than he, they acknowledged his chieftaincy. He was a beautiful boy, a lithe young god in breathing bronze, eyes wide apart, intelligent and daring, a bubble, a mote, a beautiful flash and sparkle of life. You have seen wonderful glorious creatures – animals, anything, a leopard, a horse-restless, eager, too much alive ever to be still, silken of muscle, each slightest movement a benediction of grace, every action wild, untrammeled, and over all spilling out that intense vitality, that sheen and luster of living light. The boy had it. Life poured out of him almost in an effulgence. His skin glowed with it. It burned in his eyes. I swear I could almost hear it crackle from him. Looking at him, it was as if a whiff of ozone came to one’s nostrils – so fresh and young was he, so resplendent with health, so wildly wild.
“This was the boy. And it was he who gave the alarm in the midst of the sport. The boys made a dash of it for the gangway platform, swimming the fastest strokes they knew, pellmell, floundering and splashing, fright in their faces, clambering out with jumps and surges, any way to get out, lending one another a hand to safety, till all were strung along the gangway and peering down into the water.
“‘What is the matter?’ asked Miss Caruthers.
“‘A shark, I fancy,’ Captain Bentley answered. ‘Lucky little beggars that he didn’t get one of them.’
“‘Are they afraid of sharks?’ she asked.
“‘Aren’t you?’ he asked back.”
She shuddered, looked overside at the water, and made a move.
“‘Not for the world would I venture where a shark might be,’ she said, and shuddered again. ‘They are horrible! Horrible!’
“The boys came up on the promenade deck, clustering close to the rail and worshiping Miss Caruthers who had flung them such a wealth of backsheesh. The performance being over, Captain Bentley motioned to them to clear out. But she stopped him.
“‘One moment, please, Captain. I have always understood that the natives are not afraid of sharks.’
“She beckoned the boy of the swan dive nearer to her, and signed to him to dive over again. He shook his head, and along with all his crew behind him laughed as if it were a good joke.
“‘Shark,’ he volunteered, pointing to the water.
“‘No,’ she said. ‘There is no shark.’
“But he nodded his head positively, and the boys behind him nodded with equal positiveness.
“‘No, no, no,’ she cried. And then to us, ‘Who’ll lend me a half-crown and a sovereign!’
“Immediately the half dozen of us were presenting her with crowns and sovereigns, and she accepted the two coins from young Ardmore.
“She held up the half-crown for the boys to see. But there was no eager rush to the rail preparatory to leaping. They stood there grinning sheepishly. She offered the coin to each one individually, and each, as his turn came, rubbed his foot against his calf, shook his head, and grinned. Then she tossed the half-crown overboard. With wistful, regretful faces they watched its silver flight through the air, but not one moved to follow it.
“‘Don’t do it with the sovereign,’ Dennitson said to her in a low voice.
“She took no notice, but held up the gold coin before the eyes of the boy of the swan dive.
“‘Don’t,’ said Captain Bentley. ‘I wouldn’t throw a sick cat overside with a shark around.’
“But she laughed, bent on her purpose, and continued to dazzle the boy.
“‘Don’t tempt him,’ Dennitson urged. ‘It is a fortune to him, and he might go over after it.’
“‘Wouldn’t YOU?’ she flared at him. ‘If I threw it?’”
This last more softly.
Dennitson shook his head.
“‘Your price is high,’ she said. ‘For how many sovereigns would you go?’
“‘There are not enough coined to get me overside,’ was his answer.
“She debated a moment, the boy forgotten in her tilt with Dennitson.
“‘For me?’ she said very softly.
“‘To save your life – yes. But not otherwise.’
“She turned back to the boy. Again she held the coin before his eyes, dazzling him with the vastness of its value. Then she made as to toss it out, and, involuntarily, he made a half-movement toward the rail, but was checked by sharp cries of reproof from his companions. There was anger in their voices as well.
“‘I know it is only fooling,’ Dennitson said. ‘Carry it as far as you like, but for heaven’s sake don’t throw it.’
“Whether it was that strange wilfulness of hers, or whether she doubted the boy could be persuaded, there is no telling. It was unexpected to all of us. Out from the shade of the awning the coin flashed golden in the blaze of sunshine and fell toward the sea in a glittering arch. Before a hand could stay him, the boy was over the rail and curving beautifully downward after the coin. Both were in the air at the same time. It was a pretty sight. The sovereign cut the water sharply, and at the very spot, almost at the same instant, with scarcely a splash, the boy entered.
“From the quicker-eyed black boys watching, came an exclamation. We were all at the railing. Don’t tell me it is necessary for a shark to turn on its back. That one did not. In the clear water, from the height we were above it, we saw everything. The shark was a big brute, and with one drive he cut the boy squarely in half.
“There was a murmur or something from among us – who made it I did not know; it might have been I. And then there was silence. Miss Caruthers was the first to speak. Her face was deathly white.
“‘I never dreamed,’ she said, and laughed a short, hysterical laugh.
“All her pride was at work to give her control. She turned weakly toward Dennitson, and then, on from one to another of us. In her eyes was a terrible sickness, and her lips were trembling. We were brutes – oh, I know it, now that I look back upon it. But we did nothing.
“‘Mr. Dennitson,’ she said, ‘Tom, won’t you take me below!’
“He never changed the direction of his gaze, which was the bleakest I have ever seen in a man’s face, nor did he move an eyelid. He took a cigarette from his case and lighted it. Captain Bentley made a nasty sound in his throat and spat overboard. That was all; that and the silence.
“She turned away and started to walk firmly down the deck. Twenty feet away, she swayed and thrust a hand against the wall to save herself. And so she went on, supporting herself against the cabins and walking very slowly.” Treloar ceased. He turned his head and favored the little man with a look of cold inquiry.
“Well,” he said finally. “Classify her.”
The little man gulped and swallowed.
“I have nothing to say,” he said. “I have nothing whatever to say.”
TO KILL A MAN
THOUGH dim night-lights burned, she moved familiarly through the big rooms and wide halls, seeking vainly the half-finished book of verse she had mislaid and only now remembered. When she turned on the lights in the drawing-room, she disclosed herself clad in a sweeping negligee gown of soft rose-colored stuff, throat and shoulders smothered in lace. Her rings were still on her fingers, her massed yellow hair had not yet been taken down. She was delicately, gracefully beautiful, with slender, oval face, red lips, a faint color in the cheeks, and blue eyes of the chameleon sort that at will stare wide with the innocence of childhood, go hard and gray and brilliantly cold, or flame up in hot wilfulness and mastery.
She turned the lights off and passed out and down the hall toward the morning room. At the entrance she paused and listened. From farther on had come, not a noise, but an impression of movement. She could have sworn she had not heard anything, yet something had been different. The atmosphere of night quietude had been disturbed. She wondered what servant could be prowling about. Not the butler, who was notorious for retiring early save on special occasion. Nor could it be her maid, whom she had permitted to go that evening.
Passing on to the dining-room, she found the door closed. Why she opened it and went on in, she did not know, except for the feeling that the disturbing factor, whatever it might be, was there. The room was in darkness, and she felt her way to the button and pressed. As the blaze of light flashed on, she stepped back and cried out. It was a mere “Oh!” and it was not loud.
Facing her, alongside the button, flat against the wall, was a man. In his hand, pointed toward her, was a revolver. She noticed, even in the shock of seeing him, that the weapon was black and exceedingly long-barreled. She knew black and exceedingly long it for what it was, a Colt’s. He was a medium-sized man, roughly clad, brown-eyed, and swarthy with sunburn. He seemed very cool. There was no wabble to the revolver and it was directed toward her stomach, not from an outstretched arm, but from the hip, against which the forearm rested.
“Oh,” she said. “I beg your pardon. You startled me. What do you want?”
“I reckon I want to get out,” he answered, with a humorous twitch to the lips. “I’ve kind of lost my way in this here shebang, and if you’ll kindly show me the door I’ll cause no trouble and sure vamoose.”
“But what are you doing here?” she demanded, her voice touched with the sharpness of one used to authority.
“Plain robbing, Miss, that’s all. I came snooping around to see what I could gather up. I thought you wan’t to home, seein’ as I saw you pull out with your old man in an auto. I reckon that must a ben your pa, and you’re Miss Setliffe.”
Mrs. Setliffe saw his mistake, appreciated the naive compliment, and decided not to undeceive him.
“How do you know I am Miss Setliffe?” she asked.
“This is old Setliffe’s house, ain’t it?”
She nodded.
“I didn’t know he had a daughter, but I reckon you must be her. And now, if it ain’t botherin’ you too much, I’d sure be obliged if you’d show me the way out.”
“But why should I? You are a robber, a burglar.”
“If I wan’t an ornery shorthorn at the business, I’d be accumulatin’ them rings on your fingers instead of being polite,” he retorted.
“I come to make a raise outa old Setliffe, and not to be robbing women-folks. If you get outa the way, I reckon I can find my own way out.”
Mrs. Setliffe was a keen woman, and she felt that from such a man there was little to fear. That he was not a typical criminal, she was certain. From his speech she knew he was not of the cities, and she seemed to sense the wider, homelier air of large spaces.
“Suppose I screamed?” she queried curiously. “Suppose I made an outcry for help? You couldn’t shoot me?.. a woman?”
She noted the fleeting bafflement in his brown eyes. He answered slowly and thoughtfully, as if working out a difficult problem. “I reckon, then, I’d have to choke you and maul you some bad.”
“A woman?”
“I’d sure have to,” he answered, and she saw his mouth set grimly.
“You’re only a soft woman, but you see, Miss, I can’t afford to go to jail. No, Miss, I sure can’t. There’s a friend of mine waitin’ for me out West. He’s in a hole, and I’ve got to help him out.” The mouth shaped even more grimly. “I guess I could choke you without hurting you much to speak of.”
Her eyes took on a baby stare of innocent incredulity as she watched him.
“I never met a burglar before,” she assured him, “and I can’t begin to tell you how interested I am.”
“I’m not a burglar, Miss. Not a real one,” he hastened to add as she looked her amused unbelief. “It looks like it, me being here in your house. But it’s the first time I ever tackled such a job. I needed the money bad. Besides, I kind of look on it like collecting what’s coming to me.”
“I don’t understand,” she smiled encouragingly. “You came here to rob, and to rob is to take what is not yours.”
“Yes, and no, in this here particular case. But I reckon I’d better be going now.”
He started for the door of the dining-room, but she interposed, and a very beautiful obstacle she made of herself. His left hand went out as if to grip her, then hesitated. He was patently awed by her soft womanhood.
“There!” she cried triumphantly. “I knew you wouldn’t.”
The man was embarrassed.
“I ain’t never manhandled a woman yet,” he explained, “and it don’t come easy. But I sure will, if you set to screaming.”
“Won’t you stay a few minutes and talk?” she urged. “I’m so interested. I should like to hear you explain how burglary is collecting what is coming to you.”
He looked at her admiringly.
“I always thought women-folks were scairt of robbers,” he confessed. “But you don’t seem none.”
She laughed gaily.
“There are robbers and robbers, you know. I am not afraid of you, because I am confident you are not the sort of creature that would harm a woman. Come, talk with me a while. Nobody will disturb us. I am all alone. My – father caught the night train to New York. The servants are all asleep. I should like to give you something to eat – women always prepare midnight suppers for the burglars they catch, at least they do in the magazine stories. But I don’t know where to find the food. Perhaps you will have something to drink?”
He hesitated, and did not reply; but she could see the admiration for her growing in his eyes.
“You’re not afraid?” she queried. “I won’t poison you, I promise. I’ll drink with you to show you it is all right.”
“You sure are a surprise package of all right,” he declared, for the first time lowering the weapon and letting it hang at his side. “No one don’t need to tell me ever again that women-folks in cities is afraid. You ain’t much – just a little soft pretty thing. But you’ve sure got the spunk. And you’re trustful on top of it. There ain’t many women, or men either, who’d treat a man with a gun the way you’re treating me.”
She smiled her pleasure in the compliment, and her face, was very earnest as she said:
“That is because I like your appearance. You are too decent-looking a man to be a robber. You oughtn’t to do such things. If you are in bad luck you should go to work. Come, put away that nasty revolver and let us talk it over. The thing for you to do is to work.”
“Not in this burg,” he commented bitterly. “I’ve walked two inches off the bottom of my legs trying to find a job. Honest, I was a fine large man once… before I started looking for a job.”
The merry laughter with which she greeted his sally obviously pleased him, and she was quick to note and take advantage of it. She moved directly away from the door and toward the sideboard.
“Come, you must tell me all about it while I get that drink for you. What will it be? Whisky?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, as he followed her, though he still carried the big revolver at his side, and though he glanced reluctantly at the unguarded open door.
She filled a glass for him at the sideboard.
“I promised to drink with you,” she said hesitatingly. “But I don’t like whisky. I… I prefer sherry.”
She lifted the sherry bottle tentatively for his consent.
“Sure,” he answered, with a nod. “Whisky’s a man’s drink. I never like to see women at it. Wine’s more their stuff.”
She raised her glass to his, her eyes meltingly sympathetic.
“Here’s to finding you a good position – ”
But she broke off at sight of the expression of surprised disgust on his face. The glass, barely touched, was removed from his wry lips.
“What is the matter!” she asked anxiously. “Don’t you like it? Have I made a mistake?”
“It’s sure funny whisky. Tastes like it got burned and smoked in the making.”
“Oh! How silly of me! I gave you Scotch. Of course you are accustomed to rye. Let me change it.”
She was almost solicitiously maternal, as she replaced the glass with another and sought and found the proper bottle.
“Better?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am. No smoke in it. It’s sure the real good stuff. I ain’t had a drink in a week. Kind of slick, that; oily, you know; not made in a chemical factory.”
“You are a drinking man?” It was half a question, half a challenge.
“No, ma’am, not to speak of. I HAVE rared up and ripsnorted at spells, but most unfrequent. But there is times when a good stiff jolt lands on the right spot kerchunk, and this is sure one of them. And now, thanking you for your kindness, ma’am, I’ll just be a pulling along.”
But Mrs. Setliffe did not want to lose her burglar. She was too poised a woman to possess much romance, but there was a thrill about the present situation that delighted her. Besides, she knew there was no danger. The man, despite his jaw and the steady brown eyes, was eminently tractable. Also, farther back in her consciousness glimmered the thought of an audience of admiring friends. It was too bad not to have that audience.
“You haven’t explained how burglary, in your case, is merely collecting what is your own,” she said. “Come, sit down, and tell me about it here at the table.”
She maneuvered for her own seat, and placed him across the corner from her. His alertness had not deserted him, as she noted, and his eyes roved sharply about, returning always with smoldering admiration to hers, but never resting long. And she noted likewise that while she spoke he was intent on listening for other sounds than those of her voice. Nor had he relinquished the revolver, which lay at the corner of the table between them, the butt close to his right hand.
But he was in a new habitat which he did not know. This man from the West, cunning in woodcraft and plainscraft, with eyes and ears open, tense and suspicious, did not know that under the table, close to her foot, was the push button of an electric bell. He had never heard of such a contrivance, and his keenness and wariness went for naught.
“It’s like this, Miss,” he began, in response to her urging. “Old Setliffe done me up in a little deal once. It was raw, but it worked. Anything will work full and legal when it’s got few hundred million behind it. I’m not squealin’, and I ain’t taking a slam at your pa. He don’t know me from Adam, and I reckon he don’t know he done me outa anything. He’s too big, thinking and dealing in millions, to ever hear of a small potato like me. He’s an operator. He’s got all kinds of experts thinking and planning and working for him, some of them, I hear, getting more cash salary than the President of the United States. I’m only one of thousands that have been done up by your pa, that’s all.
“You see, ma’am, I had a little hole in the ground – a dinky, hydraulic, one-horse outfit of a mine. And when the Setliffe crowd shook down Idaho, and reorganized the smelter trust, and roped in the rest of the landscape, and put through the big hydraulic scheme at Twin Pines, why I sure got squeezed. I never had a run for my money. I was scratched off the card before the first heat. And so, to-night, being broke and my friend needing me bad, I just dropped around to make a raise outa your pa. Seeing as I needed it, it kinda was coming to me.”
“Granting all that you say is so,” she said, “nevertheless it does not make house-breaking any the less house-breaking. You couldn’t make such a defense in a court of law.”
“I know that,” he confessed meekly. “What’s right ain’t always legal. And that’s why I am so uncomfortable a-settin’ here and talking with you. Not that I ain’t enjoying your company – I sure do enjoy it – but I just can’t afford to be caught. I know what they’d do to me in this here city. There was a young fellow that got fifty years only last week for holding a man up on the street for two dollars and eighty-five cents. I read about it in the paper. When times is hard and they ain’t no work, men get desperate. And then the other men who’ve got something to be robbed of get desperate, too, and they just sure soak it to the other fellows. If I got caught, I reckon I wouldn’t get a mite less than ten years. That’s why I’m hankering to be on my way.”
“No; wait.” She lifted a detaining hand, at the same time removing her foot from the bell, which she had been pressing intermittently. “You haven’t told me your name yet.”
He hesitated.
“Call me Dave.”
“Then… Dave,” she laughed with pretty confusion. “Something must be done for you. You are a young man, and you are just at the beginning of a bad start. If you begin by attempting to collect what you think is coming to you, later on you will be collecting what you are perfectly sure isn’t coming to you. And you know what the end will be. Instead of this, we must find something honorable for you to do.”