Munsey's Magazine/Volume 86/Issue 4/The Unwritten Story/Chapter 14
XIV
On the following day Professor Veazie telephoned to Mrs. Forrester. His message left her pale and shaken. It also drew her from the house on Beacon Hill to the professor's dimly lit apartment on Huntington Avenue, where torments lay in store for her.
“Well, Harriet,” he queried, with an introductory smirk, after she was seated in his study, “how are things going?”
“As if you cared!”
“Oh, I do care, a lot! Getting acquainted with any of the Beacon Hill highbrows?”
“No—Mr. Lockwood doesn't have much company.”
“No one comes to see him? To meet the charming daughter, and the still more charming granddaughter?”
“Did you make me come here, Brackett, to insult me?” Her eyes hardened. “If you did—”
“You'd stay and listen to me, anyhow,” he mocked, “because you've got to. Tell me, who visits the house?”
“So far, only one old cousin, a State Street broker; and Dr. Mayhew.”
“What Mayhew?”
“He's Mr. Lockwood's old family physician—lives a few doors down Beacon Street. They drink tea and smoke together, and play chess.”
“Have a hot old time, eh? H-m-m-m! Either of the callers seem to think there's anything phony in this business?” The professor's suavity had been sloughed off, and now he spoke as aforetime in his more or less underworld days. “Well, do they?”
“If they do, I haven't heard anything about it. Both of them seem to accept us as genuine.”
“Fine, so long as it lasts; but there's no telling how long it 'll last, before something breaks; so it's about time we were getting down to brass tacks.” He rubbed his hairy hands together, and smiled with a gleam of gold. “I'm not in this game for my health. I'm in it for cash, and so far I haven't seen any—not a nickel. I'm out, so far; so the quicker the shakedown begins, the better. Get me?”
Mrs. Forrester only peered at him with frightened, pleading eyes.
“Old Lockwood's not a very good insurance risk,” he continued. “I've got a line on him, and he has a leaky heart. He's liable to cave in, 'most any old time. You've got to get busy!”
“What—what do you mean?”
“Oh, you don't know!” Veazie gibed. “Of course you don't! Innocent as the day is long! But the day isn't very long, this time of year.”
“If you think I'm going to—”
“If you think you're not, you've got several more thinks coming!” Sheer brutality coarsened his voice, now not at all the clerical voice of his séances. “Cash! Coin! Kale! I want it, and I'm going to have it—see?”
The woman made a gesture of shuddering repulsion.
“Time hasn't changed you, Brackett! You're still—”
“Now, looka here, you! No preaching!” He leaned forward, tapping his desk with a flabby index finger. “I've landed you and the girl in a fat cinch. The old boy's worth half a million, at least—take his house, cash, securities, and all. A million, maybe, but I'm conservative. It's about time some of it was trickling my way. It's going to trickle, too, or—well, you know me!”
“It's been the curse of my life that I do! If it hadn't been for you, I—”
“All right, all right, my love! Why not get rid of me, then, for a good long time? I'm reasonable—always have been. I don't want it all. I don't want even the lion's share. No, I'll take my bit and clear out. I'll go so far you won't hear from me in a good many years—on my word and honor I will!”
Her laugh was bitterly eloquent.
“Oh, you needn't laugh!” the professor rebutted. “There's honor even among thieves. Slip me mine, Harriet, and I'll hunt fresh fields and pastures new. This is a big world. Come on, now, be reasonable. Cough up, and let's call it a job!”
“What—how much—do you want?”
“Oh, no great grab. A hundred thousand will do.”
“A hundred thousand?” the woman cried. “My God, Brackett, you're crazy!”
“You'll be worse than crazy if I don't get it! What? You think I'm a cheap skate, to take five or ten and call it off? Nothing stirring! Look at all the good I've done,” he argued casuistically. “I've made Lockwood happy, and you, and Disney. I'm a benefactor—that's what I am; and it comes high, my work does. A hundred thousand—that's the figure.”
“Never!”
“All right, then, darling! You'll be exposed as a rank fraud—you and that precious girl of yours! What 'll she think of you then? What 'll happen to you? If you don't get a fine long stretch behind the bars, you'll be damned lucky!”
“You can't—do it!” Mrs. Forrester gasped, in white agony. She shook with consuming terror. “You can't, without exposing yourself, too!”
“Can't, eh? Try it and see! I won't be sticking around to be exposed!” He laughed with a snarling kind of cackle. “I'll be—elsewhere; but the letter I'll write Lockwood—the letter I'll write the police department! It 'll be anonymous, but it 'll get results, never you fear!”
“Lockwood won't believe it, ever! He's convinced that I'm his daughter. He loves me more than you can ever change, and he's simply wild about Disney!”
“He'll be wilder when I get through with him. I know these broken-down old boys. They're like children—can be turned for or against anything. Soft as putty in a clever man's hands!” The professor closed his own. “And I'm clever, even if not handsome. See here, Harriet, you're in a jam, and you know it, too. You've got to come clean!”
“What,” she stammered, blenching, “what—do you want me—to do?”
“Do? Shake him down, of course! Make him change his will, and—”
“I don't even know whether he's made a will!”
“Oh, he's made one, all right!” the professor affirmed, his red mustache bristling with ugly and greedy vehemence. “Whatever he is now, he used to be a keen old boy. It's dollars to doughnuts he's made a will! I'll bet his old witch of Endor, there—Grush—is in for a good whack; and probably he's endowed a dozen homes for homeless cats and dogs and cockroaches. First thing you've got to do is play up to him about your being a lone, unprotected widow. Coax him a little, find out about the will—and if it's not O.K., if you're not the sole beneficiary—that is, you and the girl—make him write a new one!”
“What good 'll that do you? Even if everything was left to me, what good—”
“Oh!” The professor smiled crookedly. “It 'll be a comfort to me, knowing my dear ex-wife and her lovely daughter are well taken care of. Perhaps in my old age it might come in handy for me, too—who knows?”
“Brackett, if I inherited a million, you'd never get a penny from me!”
“Wouldn't, eh? Trust me to get it! All I'm worrying about is the will. If that was made right, this minute, it would certainly be the goods if the great moratic change came to that old baby, P. D. Q., with no spirit of returnity whatever! But there's another slant to all this. I can't take chances even on a new will, and on his kicking off. These old boys sometimes hang on for a hundred years, and I want quick action. I want some cash, in addition to any prospects from you under the will, and I want that cash now!”
“From—me?”
“Who else, sweetheart? You find out what he's worth, and how he's got it tied up. Get him to make some kind of a settlement right away—a big one. Tell him life's uncertain, and while there's a will there's a way to break it. Get him to put a couple of hundred grand in some bank, to your credit. Then split with me, fifty-fifty, and I fade out of the picture—for a while. You're safe, then. What could be more of a cinch?”
“I'll never do it!”
“Won't, eh? Humph!” The alcoholic veins in Veazie's cheeks swelled with venomous rage. “I rather think you will! If you don't—well, things 'll happen to you. I'll give you just two weeks from to-day—that 'll be Saturday, April 2, get me?—to turn the trick, get the cash settlement, and divvy with your darling first husband. You've got to get busy, old girl, and work quick!”
“Brackett, you can't make me do this terrible thing!”
“Can't? I thought you knew me!”
“I mean, you—won't!”
“Oh, no! I'm a downy cherub, with pin feathers just sprouting!” His voice grew venomous as a cobra's fang. “I've had enough of this. You know what's what, now. Don't let me detain you!”
Vainly Mrs. Forrester tried to argue, to entreat. The professor summarily dismissed her, and thrust her out of his study, out of the apartment. His last words were:
“Two weeks you've got; and if you don't perform—you know!”