The Indian Drum (1917)/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
VIOLENCE
AT half-past three, Alan left the office. Sherrill had told him an hour earlier that Spearman had telephoned he would not be able to get back for a conference that afternoon; and Alan was certain now that in Spearman's absence Sherrill would do nothing further with respect to his affairs.
He halted on the ground floor of the office building and bought copies of each of the afternoon papers. A line completely across the pink page of one announced "Millionaire Ship Owner Missing!" The other three papers, printed at the same hour, did not display the story prominently; and even the one which did failed to make it the most conspicuous sensation. A line of larger and blacker type told of a change in the battle line on the west front and, where the margin might have been, was the bulletin of some sensation in a local divorce suit. Alan was some time in finding the small print which went with the millionaire ship owner heading; and when he found it, he discovered that most of the space was devoted to the description of Corvet's share in the development of shipping on the lakes and the peculiarity of his past life instead of any definite announcement concerning his fate.
The other papers printed almost identical items under small head-type at the bottom of their first pages; these items stated that Benjamin Corvet, the senior but inactive partner of the great shipping firm of Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman, whose "disappearance" had been made the subject of sensational rumor, "is believed by his partner, Mr. Henry Spearman, to have simply gone away for a rest," and that no anxiety was felt concerning him. Alan found no mention of himself nor any of the circumstances connected with Corvet's disappearance of which Sherrill had told him.
Alan threw the papers away. There was a car line two blocks west, Sherrill had said, which would take him within a short distance of the house on Astor Street; but that neighborhood of fashion where the Sherrills—and now Alan himself—lived was less than a half hour's walk from the down-town district and, in the present turmoil of his thoughts, he wanted to be moving.
Spearman, he reflected as he walked north along the avenue, plainly had dictated the paragraphs he just had read in the papers. Sherrill, Alan knew, had desired to keep the circumstances regarding Corvet from becoming public; and without Sherrill's agreement concealment would have been impossible, but it was Spearman who had checked the suspicions of outsiders and determined what they must believe; and, by so doing, he had made it impossible for Alan to enroll aid from the newspapers or the police. Alan did not know whether he might have found it expedient to seek publicity; but now he had not a single proof of anything he could tell. For Sherrill, naturally, had retained the papers Corvet had left. Alan could not hope to obtain credence from Sherrill and, without Sherrill's aid, he could not obtain credence from any one else.
Was there, then, no one whom Alan could tell of his encounter with Spearman in Corvet's house, with probability of receiving belief? Alan had not been thinking directly of Constance Sherrill, as he walked swiftly north to the Drive; but she was, in a way, present in all his thoughts. She had shown interest in him, or at least in the position he was in, and sympathy; he had even begun to tell her about these things when he had spoken to her of some event in Corvet's house which had given him the name "Miwaka," and he had asked her if it was a ship. And there could be no possible consequent peril to her in telling her; the peril, if there was any, would be only to himself.
His step quickened. As he approached the Sherrill house, he saw standing at the curb an open roadster with a liveried chauffeur; he had seen that roadster, he recognized with a little start, in front of the office building that morning when Constance had taken him down-town. He turned into the walk and rang the bell.
The servant who opened the door knew him and seemed to accept his right of entry to the house, for he drew back for Alan to enter. Alan went into the hall and waited for the servant to follow. "Is Miss Sherrill in?" he asked.
"I'll see, sir." The man disappeared. Alan, waiting, did not hear Constance's voice in reply to the announcement of the servant, but Spearman's vigorous tones. The servant returned. "Miss Sherrill will see you in a minute, sir."
Through the wide doorway to the drawing-room, Alan could see the smaller, portièred entrance to the room beyond—Sherrill's study. The curtains parted, and Constance and Spearman came into this inner doorway; they stood an instant there in talk. As Constance started away, Spearman suddenly drew her back to him and kissed her. Alan's shoulders spontaneously jerked back, and his hands clenched; he did not look away and, as she approached, she became aware that he had seen.
She came to him, very quiet and very flushed; then she was quite pale as she asked him, "You wanted me?"
He was white as she, and could not speak at once. "You told me last night, Miss Sherrill," he said, "that the last thing that Mr. Corvet did—the last that you know of—was to warn you against one of your friends. Who was that?"
She flushed uneasily. "You mustn't attach any importance to that; I didn't mean you to. There was no reason for what Mr. Corvet said, except in Mr. Corvet's own mind. He had a quite unreasonable animosity—"
"Against Mr. Spearman, you mean."
She did not answer.
"His animosity was against Mr. Spearman, Miss Sherrill, wasn't it? That is the only animosity of Mr. Corvet's that any one has told me about."
"Yes."
"It was against Mr. Spearman that he warned you, then?"
"Yes."
"Thank you." He turned and, not waiting for the man, let himself out. He should have known it when he had seen that Spearman, after announcing himself as unable to get back to the office, was with Constance.
He went swiftly around the block to his own house and let himself in at the front door with his key. The house was warm; a shaded lamp on the table in the larger library was lighted, a fire was burning in the open grate, and the rooms had been swept and dusted. The Indian came into the hall to take his coat and hat.
"Dinner is at seven," Wassaquam announced. "You want some change about that?"
"No; seven is all right."
Alan went up-stairs to the room next to Corvet's which he had appropriated for his own use the night before, and found it now prepared for his occupancy. His suitcase, unpacked, had been put away in the closet; the clothing it had contained had been put in the dresser drawers, and the toilet articles arranged upon the top of the dresser and in the cabinet of the little connecting bath. So, clearly, Wassaquam had accepted him as an occupant of the house, though upon what status Alan could not guess. He had spoken of Wassaquam to Constance as his servant; but Wassaquam was not that; he was Corvet's servant—faithful and devoted to Corvet, Constance had said—and Alan could not think of Wassaquam as the sort of servant that "went with the house." The Indian's manner toward himself had been noncommittal, even stolid.
When Alan came down again to the first floor, Wassaquam was nowhere about, but he heard sounds in the service rooms on the basement floor. He went part way down the service stairs and saw the Indian in the kitchen, preparing dinner. Wassaquam had not heard his approach, and Alan stood an instant watching the Indian's tall, thin figure and the quick movements of his disproportionately small, well-shaped hands, almost like a woman's; then he scuffed his foot upon the stair, and Wassaquam turned swiftly about.
"Anybody been here to-day, Judah?" Alan asked.
"No, Alan. I called tradesmen; they came. There were young men from the newspapers."
"They came here, did they? Then why did you say no one came?"
"I did not let them in."
"What did you tell them?"
"Nothing."
"Why not?"
"Henry telephoned I was to tell them nothing."
"You mean Henry Spearman?"
"Yes."
"Do you take orders from him, Judah?"
"I took that order, Alan."
Alan hesitated. "You've been here in the house all day?"
"Yes, Alan."
Alan went back to the first floor and into the smaller library. The room was dark with the early winter dusk, and he switched on the light; then he knelt and pulled out one of the drawers he had seen Spearman searching through the night before, and carefully examined the papers in it one by one, but found them only ordinary papers. He pulled the drawer completely out and sounded the wall behind it and the partitions on both sides but they appeared solid. He put the drawer back in and went on to examine the next one, and, after that, the others. The clocks in the house had been wound, for presently the clock in the library struck six, and another in the hall chimed slowly. An hour later, when the clocks chimed again, Alan looked up and saw Wassaquam's small black eyes, deep set in their large eye sockets, fixed on him intently through the door. How long the Indian had been there, Alan could not guess; he had not heard his step.
"What are you looking for, Alan?" the Indian asked.
Alan reflected a moment. "Mr. Sherrill thought that Mr. Corvet might have left a record of some sort here for me, Judah. Do you know of anything like that?"
"No. That is what you are looking for?"
"Yes. Do you know of any place where Mr. Corvet would have been likely to put away anything like that?"
"Ben put papers in all these drawers; he put them up-stairs, too—where you have seen."
"Nowhere else, Judah?"
"If he put things anywhere else, Alan, I have not seen. Dinner is served, Alan."
Alan went to the lavatory on the first floor and washed the dust from his hands and face; then he went into the dining-room. A place had been set at the dining table around the corner from the place where, as the worn rug showed, the lonely occupant of the house had been accustomed to sit. Benjamin Corvet's armchair, with its worn leather back, had been left against the wall; so had another unworn armchair which Alan understood must have been Mrs. Corvet's; and an armless chair had been set for Alan between their places. Wassaquam, having served the dinner, took his place behind Alan's chair, ready to pass him what he needed; but the Indian's silent, watchful presence there behind him where he could not see his face, disturbed Alan, and he twisted himself about to look at him.
"Would you mind, Judah," he inquired, "if I asked you to stand over there instead of where you are?"
The Indian, without answering, moved around to the other side of the table, where he stood facing Alan.
"You're a Chippewa, aren't you, Judah?" Alan asked.
"Yes."
"Your people live at the other end of the lake, don't they?"
"Yes, Alan."
"Have you ever heard of the Indian Drum they talk about up there, that they say sounds when a ship goes down on the lake?"
The Indian's eyes sparkled excitedly. "Yes," he said.
"Do you believe in it?"
"Not just believe; I know. That is old Indian country up there, Alan—L'arbre Croche—Cross Village—Middle Village. A big town of Ottawas was there in old days; Pottawatomies too, and Chippewas. Indians now are all Christians, Catholics, and Methodists who hold camp meetings and speak beautifully. But some things of the old days are left. The Drum is like that. Everybody knows that it sounds for those who die on the lake."
"How do they know, Judah? How do you yourself know?"
"I have heard it. It sounded for my father."
"How was that?"
"Like this. My father sold some bullocks to a man on Beaver Island. The man kept store on Beaver Island, Alan. No Indian liked him. He would not hand anything to an Indian or wrap anything in paper for an Indian. Say it was like this: An Indian comes in to buy salt pork. First the man would get the money. Then, Alan, he would take his hook and pull the pork up out of the barrel and throw it on the dirty floor for the Indian to pick up. He said Indians must take their food off of the floor—like dogs.
"My father had to take the bullocks to the man, across to Beaver Island. He had a Mackinaw boat, very little, with a sail made brown by boiling it with tan bark, so that it would not wear out. At first the Indians did not know who the bullocks were for, so they helped him. He tied the legs of the bullocks, the front legs and the back legs, then all four legs together, and the Indians helped him put them in the boat. When they found out the bullocks were for the man on Beaver Island, the Indians would not help him any longer. He had to take them across alone. Besides, it was bad weather, the beginning of a storm.
"He went away, and my mother went to pick berries—I was small then. Pretty soon I saw my mother coming back. She had no berries, and her hair was hanging down, and she was wailing. She took me in her arms and said my father was dead. Other Indians came around and asked her how she knew, and she said she had heard the Drum. The Indians went out to listen."
"Did you go?"
"Yes; I went."
"How old were you, Judah?"
"Five years."
"That was the time you heard it?"
"Yes; it would beat once, then there would be silence; then it would beat again. It frightened us to hear it. The Indians would scream and beat their bodies with their hands when the sound came. We listened until night; there was a storm all the time growing greater in the dark, but no rain. The Drum would beat once; then nothing; then it would beat again once—never two or more times. So we knew it was for my father. It is supposed the feet of the bullocks came untied, and the bullocks tipped the boat over. They found near the island the body of one of the bullocks floating in the water, and its feet were untied. My father's body was on the beach near there."
"Did you ever hear of a ship called the Miwaka, Judah?"
"That was long ago," the Indian answered.
"They say that the Drum beat wrong when the Miwaka went down—that it was one beat short of the right number."
"That was long ago," Wassaquam merely repeated.
"Did Mr. Corvet ever speak to you about the Miwaka?"
"No; he asked me once if I had ever heard the Drum. I told him."
Wassaquam removed the dinner and brought Alan a dessert. He returned to stand in the place across the table that Alan had assigned to him, and stood looking down at Alan, steadily and thoughtfully.
"Do I look like any one you ever saw before, Judah?" Alan inquired of him.
"No."
"Is that what you were thinking?"
"That is what I was thinking. Will coffee be served in the library, Alan?"
Alan crossed to the library and seated himself in the chair where his father had been accustomed to sit. Wassaquam brought him the single small cup of coffee, lit the spirit lamp on the smoking stand, and moved that over; then he went away. When he had finished his coffee, Alan went into the smaller connecting room and recommenced his examination of the drawers under the bookshelves. He could hear the Indian moving about his tasks, and twice Wassaquam came to the door of the room and looked in on him; but he did not offer to say anything, and Alan did not speak to him. At ten o'clock, Alan stopped his search and went back to the chair in the library. He dozed; for he awoke with a start and a feeling that some one had been bending over him, and gazed up into Wassaquam's face. The Indian had been scrutinizing him with intent, anxious inquiry. He moved away, but Alan called him back.
"When Mr. Corvet disappeared, Judah, you went to look for him up at Manistique, where he was born—at least Mr. Sherrill said that was where you went. Why did you think you might find him there?" Alan asked.
"In the end, I think, a man maybe goes back to the place where he began. That's all, Alan."
"In the end! What do you mean by that? What do you think has become of Mr. Corvet?"
"I think now—Ben's dead."
"What makes you think that?"
"Nothing makes me think; I think it myself."
"I see. You mean you have no reason more than others for thinking it; but that is what you believe."
"Yes." Wassaquam went away, and Alan heard him on the back stairs, ascending to his room.
When Alan went up to his own room, after making the rounds to see that the house was locked, a droning chant came to him from the third floor. He paused in the hall and listened, then went on up to the floor above. A flickering light came to him through the half-open door of a room at the front of the house; he went a little way toward it and looked in. Two thick candles were burning before a crucifix, below which the Indian knelt, prayer book in hand and rocking to and fro as he droned his supplications.
A word or two came to Alan, but without them Wassaquam's occupation was plain; he was praying for the repose of the dead—the Catholic chant taught to him, as it had been taught undoubtedly to his fathers, by the French Jesuits of the lakes. The intoned chant for Corvet's soul, by the man who had heard the Drum, followed and still came to Alan, as he returned to the second floor.
He had not been able to determine, during the evening, Wassaquam's attitude toward him. Having no one else to trust, Alan had been obliged to put a certain amount of trust in the Indian; so as he had explained to Wassaquam that morning that the desk and the drawers in the little room off Corvet's had been forced, and had warned him to see that no one, who had not proper business there, entered the house. Wassaquam had appeared to accept this order; but now Wassaquam had implied that it was not because of Alan's order that he had refused reporters admission to the house. The developments of the day had tremendously altered things in one respect; for Alan, the night before, had not thought of the intruder into the house as one who could claim an ordinary right of entrance there; but now he knew him to be the one who—except for Sherrill—might most naturally come to the house; one, too, for whom Wassaquam appeared to grant a certain right of direction of affairs there. So, at this thought, Alan moved angrily; the house was his—Alan's. He had noted particularly, when Sherrill had showed him the list of properties whose transfer to him Corvet had left at Sherrill's discretion, that the house was not among them; and he had understood that this was because Corvet had left Sherrill no discretion as to the house. Corvet's direct, unconditional gift of the house by deed to Alan had been one of Sherrill's reasons for believing that if Corvet had left anything which could explain his disappearance, it would be found in the house.
Unless Spearman had visited the house during the day and had obtained what he had been searching for the night before—and Alan believed he had not done that—it was still in the house. Alan's hands clenched; he would not give Spearman such a chance as that again; and he himself would continue his search of the house—exhaustively, room by room, article of furniture by article of furniture.
Alan started and went quickly to the open door of his room, as he heard voices now somewhere within the house. One of the voices he recognized as Wassaquam's; the other indistinct, thick, accusing—was unknown to him; it certainly was not Spearman's. He had not heard Wassaquam go down-stairs, and he had not heard the doorbell, so he ran first to the third floor; but the room where he had seen Wassaquam was empty. He descended again swiftly to the first floor, and found Wassaquam standing in the front hall, alone.
"Who was here, Judah?" Alan demanded.
"A man," the Indian answered stolidly. "He was drunk; I put him out."
"What did he come for?"
"He came to see Ben. I put him out; he is gone, Alan."
Alan flung open the front door and looked out, but he saw no one.
"What did he want of Mr. Corvet, Judah?"
"I do not know. I told him Ben was not here; he was angry, but he went away."
"Has he ever come here before?"
"Yes; he comes twice."
"He has been here twice?"
"More than that; every year he comes twice, Alan. Once he came oftener."
"How long has he been doing that?"
"Since I can remember."
"Is he a friend of Mr. Corvet?"
"No friend—no!"
"But Mr. Corvet saw him when he came here?"
"Always, Alan."
"And you don't know at all what he came about?"
"How should I know? No; I do not."
Alan got his coat and hat. The sudden disappearance of the man might mean only that he had hurried away, but it might mean too that he was still lurking near the house. Alan had decided to make the circuit of the house and determine that. But as he came out on to the porch, a figure more than a block away to the south strode with uncertain step out into the light of a street lamp, halted and faced about, and shook his fist back at the house. Alan dragged the Indian out on to the porch.
"Is that the man, Judah?" he demanded.
"Yes, Alan."
Alan ran down the steps and at full speed after the man. The other had turned west at the corner where Alan had seen him; but even though Alan slipped as he tried to run upon the snowy walks, he must be gaining fast upon him. He saw him again, when he had reached the corner where the man had turned, traveling westward with that quick uncertain step toward Clark Street; at that corner the man turned south. But when Alan reached the corner, he was nowhere in sight. To the south, Clark Street reached away, garish with electric signs and with a half dozen saloons to every block. That the man was drunk made it probable he had turned into one of these places. Alan went into every one of them for fully a half mile and looked about, but he found no one even resembling the man he had been following. He retraced his steps for several blocks, still looking; then he gave it up and returned eastward toward the Drive.
The side street leading to the Drive was less well lighted; dark entry ways and alleys opened on it; but the night was clear. The stars, with the shining sword of Orion almost overhead, gleamed with midwinter brightness, and to the west the crescent of the moon was hanging and throwing faint shadows over the snow. Alan could see at the end of the street, beyond the yellow glow of the distant boulevard lights, the smooth, chill surface of the lake. A white light rode above it; now, below the white light, he saw a red speck—the masthead and port lanterns of a steamer northward bound. Farther out a second white glow appeared from behind the obscuration of the buildings and below it a green speck—a starboard light. The information he had gained that day enabled him to recognize in these lights two steamers passing one another at the harbor mouth.
"Red to red," Alan murmured to himself. "Green to green—Red to red, perfect safety, go ahead!" he repeated.
It brought him, with marvelous vividness, back to Constance Sherrill. Events since he had talked with her that morning had put them far apart once more; but, in another way, they were being drawn closer together. For he knew now that she was caught as well as he in the mesh of consequences of acts not their own. Benjamin Corvet, in the anguish of the last hours before fear of those consequences had driven him away, had given her a warning against Spearman so wild that it defeated itself; for Alan merely to repeat that warning, with no more than he yet knew, would be equally futile. But into the contest between Spearman and himself—that contest, he was beginning to feel, which must threaten destruction either to Spearman or to him—she had entered. Her happiness, her future, were at stake; her fate, he was certain now, depended upon discovery of those events tied tight in the mystery of Alan's own identity which Spearman knew, and the threat of which at moments appalled him. Alan winced as there came before him in the darkness of the street the vision of Constance in Spearman's arms and of the kiss that he had seen that afternoon.
He staggered, slipped, fell suddenly forward upon his knees under a stunning, crushing blow upon his head from behind. Thought, consciousness almost lost, he struggled, twisting himself about to grasp at his assailant. He caught the man's clothing, trying to drag himself up; fighting blindly, dazedly, unable to see or think, he shouted aloud and then again, aloud. He seemed in the distance to hear answering cries; but the weight and strength of the other was bearing him down again to his knees; he tried to slip aside from it, to rise. Then another blow, crushing and sickening, descended on his head; even hearing left him and, unconscious, he fell forward on to the snow and lay still.