Old Scores

by Owen Oliver

Old Scores

THE TRAGIC TRIANGLE OF
LITTLE UNCLE DAVEY, DAN-
CING MARGARET AND BAN-
NERMAN THE RELENTLESS

By Owen Oliver

I KNEW Bannerman a hundred yards off, by his walk. It reminded me of a prison-yard! He did not seem to recognize me; but he had a heavy, motionless face, and one could never tell what he saw. Anyhow, he walked on till I turned back and overtook him, and laid a hand on his arm.

“Bannerman!” I whispered. “Don’t you know me? I’m Davey.”

“Hush!” he muttered, looking around. “Mortlock,” he told me. “That’s the name at present. Come in a tea-shop to talk.”

“I’m Francis Whitesmith now,” I said in his ear as I followed him. We selected a quiet corner and sat down at a table behind a screen,

“Shake hands,” I offered then. “I’m glad to see you, old man—the only bit of the past I wanted to meet again! I thought I’d find you round here when I read about Craig. Suicide, eh?” I rubbed my hands and laughed. “One old score wiped out!”

“One old score paid,” he agreed. “It was suicide, as a matter of fact. Did you read what he wrote? It was in all the papers. Fear of exposure hanging over him night and-day. Temporary insanity, the verdict was. Fear of exposure a delusion. Highly respected citizen with nothing to expose.”

Bannerman’s huge body shook silently. It was the way he always laughed.

“One score paid,” he repeated. “Eh, Davey?”

I nodded.

“The father’s dead,” I said. “I suppose he did die? No fake?”

“No fake,” Bannerman assured me. “I inquired as soon as I came out. Oh, yes! He’s as dead as his son.”

“Then there’s only the daughter,” I reflected. “She’s the one with the big score to pay, I’ve been looking for her ever since I came out of that prison. Any trace, old man?”

He nodded fiercely.

“Killing’s too good for her,” he told me. “It was she who did us in. They were only her tools. No brains, father or son. Yes, I’ve traced her.”

He moistened his lips, and shook with that awful silent laugh of his.

“Tell me.” I laid my hand on his arm in my eagerness. “It is my turn. Let me deal with her.”

“You would do it clumsily,” he objected. “There was never any finesse about you, Davey.”

“I was always too straight for a crook,” I agreed. “But, straight or crooked, I paid my reckoning to my enemies and to my friends. Are you as prosperous as you look?”

“No,” he told me.

“I don’t look prosperous, do I? But I am—crookedly!”

“Well?”

“Let me deal with her, and I’ll give you ten thousand.”

He shook silently again.

“Not for all the money in the world,” he hissed. “You are not the only one who pays scores. Do you remember what we swore when we were in hell, as you called it? When we could only whisper a word in passing, it was ‘Craig.’ Why am I not a rich man? Because I’ve given these last five years to looking for them, instead of looking for money—because I wouldn’t risk prison, to delay my revenge. I pay my scores. She shall pay hers in two days more; pay, for the rest of her life. God grant her a long one to pay in.”

HE laughed silently again; but his still face was not quite still then.

“Let me help,” I begged. “It’s what I’ve lived for—what I consoled myself with, all those damnable years in a cell. Why, I prayed for revenge on them—prayed, man! It’s burned into my soul, if I’ve the misfortune to have one. The father’s dead, and you killed the son. Let me have her?”

He shook his head.

“Let me see it, then?” I entreated.

“No, no! You'd be too impatient. Besides, you were always soft with a woman, and you liked the girl. … Little Uncle Davey, she used to call you, didn’t she? What's the use of swearing? I’ll do it alone; but I'll tell you about it afterward, if you like.”

“Tell me now,” I implored. “At least you can tell me. What are you going to do?”

He rubbed his hands softly.

“I could send her to prison,” he said. “I have proofs enough. For the matter of that, so have the police, if they knew that Mrs.—a certain highly esteemed and much admired lady of position, was Maggie Craig—Dancing Margaret! But this would involve the confession that Mr. Alec Mortlock—not quite unprosperous—was once Tom Bannerman.”

“I’ll sacrifice my prosperity for the sake of jailing the hussy!” I cried. “Leave her to me!”

“You were always headstrong,” he commented. “We can jail our charming friend without sending her to prison. Our Maggie was always affectionate, you know. Little Uncle Davey! Why swear? There’s no humbug about our Maggie’s worship for her husband, no humbug about her fondness for her step-daughter, no doubt that she’s in a seventh heaven in her present position. She’s going to leave it and drudge for her bread—going away without a word to them!”

“With you?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “but they shall think she did! She sha’n’t know that part of the plan till afterward, or she wouldn’t go. The stepdaughter—she calls Maggie Angel Mummy—is going to be married the day after to-morrow. In the morning, her Angel Mummy will have disappeared, if she accepts my terms. I think she will.”

He shook silently once more.

“You have offered them?” I asked.

“Not yet. To-morrow evening I shall. I have summoned her to meet me.”

“Let me be there?” I begged.

“No,” he refused. “You'd only spoil it. She’d get over you.”

“You fool!” I cried. “You fool!”

“I may be,” he said; “but I’ll have my fool’s revenge. You can’t buy it, Davey, not with a million.”

I could not move him. I left him in anger—that is, he thought I left him. I returned on his track, set agents to watch him. I followed him to the country the next afternoon. I was disguised as a bent little old man, different from the bent little old man that I am. They used to call me Bender, because the stoop was a favorite disguise of mine. I can never get quite rid of the bend since I was in prison. Ah! there was a score to pay—a heartbreaking score; and Dancing Margaret was a lovely creature. I was afraid that Bannerman might be too easy with her; and I knew that I shouldn’t be!

I WATCHED through the railings of the great garden and saw Mrs. Montague Lester pass the bowing footman and the tall electric lamps and sweep down the steps of the Hall. She looked like a queen, in her furs. I should not have recognized her in the distance, and scarcely when she passed the lights of the lodge. It was not her face which had altered, or the wonderful profusion of soft brown hair. The years had fallen lightly on Dancing Margaret. Her figure was still slim, and she tossed her head a little as she walked. The change seemed to be in the woman herself. She had grown into a different class, I put it to myself. Her voice was different when she spoke to Bannerman; class again. I know breeding, if I have none. They stood just beside the bushes which hid a bent old countryman, sleeping off a carouse at the Bell and Dragon. I had poured beer over my clothes and false beard. I do not think Bannerman would have recognized me.

“It’s no use trying blackmail,” she began, as if she were the salt of the earth and he the dirt under her feet. “I can give you very little—a few hundred out of my dress allowance or housekeeping money. You know that I have nothing of my own.”

“You can’t settle this score with money,” he told her. “Do you know what you’ve to pay for? Five years of a man’s life, half-starved, housed like a dog in prison—five years since, spent in tracing you. Now I can send you to prison, exalted lady.”

I rubbed my hands.

“Since you haven’t done so,” she answered calmly, “I presume you wish to make some bargain that will benefit you more than ruining me. What is it?”

“One that will ruin you in a different way,” he hissed in her ear. “To send you to prison involves disclosing myself. I am prepared to do that if necessary, to get my revenge. You traitress! Don’t delude yourself that I wouldn’t do it. My revenge is what I have lived for these ten years. I would like to break you into little pieces. …. What was that?”

I had touched a twig as I leaned toward them to listen better.

“A coward’s conscience,” she told him scornfully. “You coward and woman-bully! Well, what do you want?”

“That you shall suffer as I have suffered,” he said. “It isn’t stone walls that will hurt you. It is losing your position, your comfort, your friends, your husband—yourself!” He shook when he said that. “You shall leave here without a word to anyone, now or ever—take nothing but what a little bag can carry, sew or beg or steal for your daily bread and perhaps not get it, disgrace your husband and his daughter. Those are my terms. The police shall take you to-morrow—or you shall creep away to-night. I will wait at the crossroads in a motor and drive you a hundred miles before dawn. Then I will set you down to go where you like. …. It is no use pleading with me.”

“I am not pleading,” she answered. She stood like a statue, and the voice seemed to come from a talking-machine.

“There is a third possibility. I might kill myself.”

“Your brother did,” he told her. “I dogged him; and he preferred that way out. You wont. Shall I tell you why? Because I should expose you all the same, if you were dead. You happen to care for your husband.”

SHE stood very still and silent for a long time.

“Will it satisfy you,” she asked presently, “if I meet my death by an accident? I will pay my score, since I can’t avoid it; but he has done you no harm. Spare him!”

Bannerman laughed aloud. I had never heard him do that before.

“If I had a knife!” she gasped, as if a statue had come to life. “If I had a knife!”

“Words!” he taunted her. “Words! Your brother talked like that; but he is dead, and I live safe from him—and safe from you. A knife! Bah! None of the gang had courage to use it.”

I frowned behind the bush.

“Oh, yes!” she said. “There was one who had courage enough—only, he was a man! You tracked my brother, and you have tracked me. Perhaps Davey is tracking you. He’d use a knife to the scoundrel who sold him!”

I drew a deep breath. I saw him look around in the dark, but he evidently concluded that the sound came from her.

“Little Davey!” he said. “Pah!”

“He was no traitor,” she taunted him, “and no coward. You need not lie to me. You betrayed Davey; and you were going to betray us, but we were too quick for you. I was behind the curtain when you gave him away to that detective man—Andrews. That was the name. I tried to get the motor to go and warn him, but I couldn’t. Good little Davey! Suppose he tracks you, Bannerman?”

“You lie!” he growled.

“I do not lie,” she answered. “It is true.”

I shook so violently that I feared they might hear—held my shaking limbs to steady them. It was true. I remembered many little things now. It was Bannerman who had betrayed me, not the Craigs; and it was Bannerman who had put the idea about them into my head, while we were in prison.

“I know this,” he said, “my fine beauty: You sent me to prison. Now I can send you. I have given you your choice. Choose now.”

“Oh!” she cried. “Are you a fiend? It will do you no good. It will hurt so many. I—I was young then.” She wrung her hands. “I am such a different woman now—such a different woman now!”

He struck her, and she reeled back a little way. My teeth gritted; but he thought the clashing teeth were hers.

“Choose!” he commanded. “Or shall go straight to the police. … One o’clock at the crossroads. You will come, I suppose.” She turned to go, and he seized her arm so roughly that she gave a hurt cry. “Answer me.”

“Oh, my God!” she wailed. “I can do nothing else.”

She staggered away, and he stood there, shaking as if he laughed silently. Then he went away. I rose to my feet and stretched myself. I shook too, but I did not laugh.

I CLIMBED the railings at half-past twelve and lurked about the grounds till nearly one. Then I saw movement at the big French windows. I was near them, and I crouched down behind a shrub outside. They opened slowly and cautiously, and she stood between them—a big, slim woman, taller than I, unless I straightened the prison bend. It hurt to do that; but I could bear a little hurt to-night. She was heavily veiled, and she carried a tiny bag in her hand. When she was outside, she knelt on the ground with her face toward the window.

“God bless you, dears,” she said in a whisper, “and forgive me; and remember that the woman who leaves this house is not the wicked girl who entered it nine years ago. … Made whole by your love! God bless you, dears. God bless you!”

She shook with suppressed sobs. I waited till they died away and she was rising. Then I whispered.

“Hush!” I said. “It is a friend, Margaret. Come here—behind the shrub—the one on your left. … Do you know me?”

“Little Uncle Davey,” she said. “You were always a friend.”

“Ah!” I said. “I have been feeling very unfriendly these ten years, my dear. Bannerman persuaded me that it was the Craigs who put me in; and you were the brains of them, I knew. When you were a little girl, I used to take you on my knee and give you sweets. You wouldn’t have betrayed old Uncle Davey, would you, Maggie?”

“I would sooner have died,” she said simply. “And to-night I wish I had. Have you been in this, with Bannerman? Do you know why I am going now?”

“Yes, I know. I listened behind the bushes, when you and he were talking. He would not have me in it. He said that I should bungle, or be too merciful. … He feared that, if we spoke, I should learn that it was he who jugged me, not you. … Well, I have learned. … I was very fond of you, when you were a girl. I am very glad it was not you, my child.”

I stroked the great mass of hair piled up on her head.

“Very, very glad, Maggie,” I repeated. “I have done you a long injustice; but I pay my debts to foes and friends. I have come to help you, my dear. You need not go to Bannerman to-night. I have laid a little trap for him.”

I laughed very softly.

“I will not help you to—do—” She put her face close to mine to try to read it by the starlight. The sky was clear and full of twinkling stars. The air was soft and warm and full of the scent of the garden. “What are you going to do to him, Uncle Davey?”

“Just teach him a little lesson,” I declared. “That is all. He put me in prison. I will put him in.”

“But he has served his sentence,” she objected.

“Ah! This is a different affair, quite a different affair! He is going to drive you to town, he thinks. He shall drive me! I want you to lend me your cloak and veil and gloves. You must lend me a wrap to make a bunch under my hood, like your hair. You always had a lot of hair, my dear. Such beautiful hair! You were a great delight to your old Uncle Davey. …. I’m glad you’ve grown into a good woman, my child. It was always in you. I—I liked you, Maggie. …. Give me the things, and dress me up. He wont know me from you in the dark. When he finds out his mistake—ha-ha-ha!

“HUSH!” she whispered. “Hush! What are you going to do when he finds out?”

“Point a revolver at his head and make him drive himself to the police-station,” I told her. “Poetic justice, eh, Maggie? Years ago, you would have laughed.”

“I do not think I shall ever laugh again,” she told me.

“Yes, yes,” I comforted her. “You will laugh to think how happy you are making your good husband. He is good, eh, Maggie?”

“So good!” she cried. “Oh, so good!”

“And you are very fond of him?”

“So very, very fond!” she declared.

“And he, of course, is fond of you. Do you know, my dear, I was. That was why I felt so hurt when I believed you'd done me in. I—we wont talk about that any more. He’s expecting you at one. You must make haste and dress me up. You've done that before for little Uncle Davey—the Bender, eh? The bend comes a little too natural nowadays. I'll have to straighten up instead. Ha-ha-ha! Get a wrap for my hair.”

She took me inside and fetched things to disguise me before the drawing-room mirror. It was a grand room, and I was glad to see that she had such a fine home. Before she started to work she hesitated.

“But you wont kill him?” she said apprehensively.

“What if I did? He killed your brother. … No, no. I wont kill him. Death pays too quickly. Fix me up, my dear.”

“Swear you wont kill him,” she persisted.

I swore it with great oaths.

I made a fine upstanding lady when I straightened my bend. That hurt, but I did not tell her. I kissed her forehead before I went.

“My kiss needn’t soil the good woman that you are now,” I said, “because for that second I was a good man. May God bless you and set your goodness against the old scores. Good-by, my dear.”

She took my right hand and kissed it.

“Now you will not stain it,” she told me.

“Never,” I promised.

I chuckled at that when I was outside. My left hand would do for Bannerman, if I took him unaware!

I FOUND him at the crossroads, pacing up and down beside the motor.

“You’ve taken your time, my lady,” he sneered. “Found it hard to tear yourself away, eh? Will you honor me by sharing the front seat, or sit behind?”

I motioned to the seat behind the driver’s. He shook with silent laughter.

“I never say ‘Get thee behind me, Satan,’” he remarked. “I like to see what he’s doing; and I don’t know what you might have in that little muff. It would be foolish, you know, Maggie; but I’m afraid you mightn’t be prudent to-night. I’ll put the bag inside, and you shall ride with me in front. Do you care where you go?”

I shook my head.

“Then I’ll take you to Landham Junction,” he said. “It’s a mere matter of sixty miles—something over two hours. You can get an early train to London from there. London’s a good place to disappear from. If I were you, I should disappear pretty completely.”

He started the engine, and we plunged away into the night. The warm air seemed to grow cold as we drove into it. He drew a big rug over his heavy motor-coat and let me shiver.

“It was cold in prison,” he remarked. It occurred to me that he was no gentleman. I should have made the same remark in his place, but I should have given her the rug.

I answered him only in my thoughts. “I can keep my hands warm in the muff, Bannerman! Especially the left one. … It was always the stronger. Maggie forgot that.”

The stars seemed to grow as we drove into them, like the spreading of a firework. The crescent moon appeared on the horizon and passed the clouds as if it ducked under them. I chafed my hands inside the muff, because I saw that it made him uneasy.

“You are wondering if I might have a little revolver,” I thought. I made a faint noise in my throat then. He shook with his silent laugh at that. He thought that I cried. …. He wasn’t a gentleman. I should have relented a little in his place—possibly enough to give her a hundred or so at the end of the journey, for a start. I'd like to think that I’d have turned the car and driven her back again; but I wouldn’t have, if she had betrayed me.

“The last motor-ride you'll get for some time, my grand lady,” he taunted, with one eye on my muff and the other on the road. I moved my hands violently in the muff. “Don’t be a fool!” he advised. “If you could kill me,—and you can’t,—your dear husband would be disgraced still worse. …. Dancing Margaret! Doesn’t it make you laugh to think how you've taken him in?” I bent my head almost on the muff, as if I cried. It eased my back to bend. He thought I shook with weeping, because I shivered; and he shook with laughter because he thought I wept.

THE clouds thickened in the sky as we went on, and rain threatened. He pulled up his fur collar, laughing in his awful silent way that I had none. Three struck by a village clock. A little rain came soon afterward. We reached a parting of the ways. He stopped the car to read the signs, turning his head because we had slightly overridden them. I stood up then and leaned over him from the back. I got my hand inside his collar, against his throat—my left hand! I held his right arm back with my right hand,—I had torn away my veil first,—and I put my face over that shoulder for him to see.

“Old scores!” I said. “Old scores, Bannerman! If there’s any hell, there’s a hot corner for traitors, Bannerman!”

He tried to turn on me, but I had too much leverage on his right arm. Then he attempted to throw us both into the road, but I got my body against the steering-wheel. He clawed at my hand on his throat with his nails several times, kicked backward at my shins twice. Then he was quiet.

I kept my grip for a long time—long enough. Then I lowered him to the ground, got out and carried him through a gate, and laid him behind the hedge. I took off Margaret’s cloak and hood and everything of hers, emptied a bag of his that I found inside the car and crammed them in that, put on his fur coat and cap, and drove away. It was lucky that I could drive. I was a hundred miles from the place at breakfast time.

I left the car at a country inn—it was three days before they connected it with the execution, which they called a murder—and took trains to town. I took five trains, altogether, for I went by a circuitous route. I traveled to my flat by the help of seven cabs, and alighted from the last four streets away. I cut and broke all Margaret’s belongings into little pieces and disposed of them beyond discovery one by one. That took a fortnight; and then at last I smiled a real smile.

“I owed to an enemy,” I said, “and I owed to a friend. I’ve paid both scores. Let them trace me if they can. It wont help Bannerman, and it wont hurt Margaret.”