CHAPTER VIII

MR. CORVET'S PARTNER

The instant of meeting, when Alan recognized in Sherrill's partner the man with whom he had fought in Corvet's house, was one of swift readjustment of all his thought—adjustment to a situation of which he could not even have dreamed, and which left him breathless. But for Spearman, obviously, it was not that. Following his noncommittal nod of acknowledgment of Sherrill's introduction and his first steady scrutiny of Alan, the big, handsome man swung himself off from the desk on which he sat and leaned against it, facing them more directly.

"Oh, yes—Conrad," he said. His tone was hearty; in it Alan could recognize only so much of reserve as might be expected from Sherrill's partner who had taken an attitude of opposition. The shipmasters, looking on, could see, no doubt, not even that; except for the excitement which Alan himself could not conceal, it must appear to them only an ordinary introduction.

Alan fought sharply down the swift rush of his blood and the tightening of his muscles.

"I can say truly that I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Spearman," he managed.

There was no recognition of anything beyond the mere surface meaning of the words in Spearman's slow smile of acknowledgment, as he turned from Alan to Sherrill.

"I'm afraid you've taken rather a bad time, Lawrence."

"You're busy, you mean. This can wait, Henry, if what you're doing is immediate."

"I want some of these men to be back in Michigan to-night. Can't we get together later—this afternoon? You'll be about here this afternoon?" His manner was not casual; Alan could not think of any expression of that man as being casual; but this, he thought, came as near it as Spearman could come.

"I think I can be here this afternoon," Alan said.

"Would two-thirty suit you?"

"As well as any other time."

"Let's say two-thirty, then." Spearman turned and noted the hour almost solicitously among the scrawled appointments on his desk pad; straightening, after this act of dismissal, he walked with them to the door, his hand on Sherrill's shoulder.

"Circumstances have put us—Mr. Sherrill and myself—in a very difficult position, Conrad," he remarked. "We want much to be fair to all concerned—"

He did not finish the sentence, but halted at the door. Sherrill went out, and Alan followed him; exasperation—half outrage yet half admiration—at Spearman's bearing, held Alan speechless. The blood rushed hotly to his skin as the door closed behind them, his hands clenched, and he turned back to the closed door; then he checked himself and followed Sherrill, who, oblivious to Alan's excitement, led the way to the door which bore Corvet's name. He opened it, disclosing an empty room, somewhat larger than Spearman's and similar to it, except that it lacked the marks of constant use. It was plain that, since Spearman had chosen to put off discussion of Alan's status, Sherrill did not know what next to do; he stood an instant in thought, then, contenting himself with inviting Alan to lunch, he excused himself to return to his office. When he had gone, closing the door behind him, Alan began to pace swiftly up and down the room.

What had just passed had left him still breathless; he felt bewildered. If every movement of Spearman's great, handsome body had not recalled to him their struggle of the night before—if, as Spearman's hand rested cordially on Sherrill's shoulder, Alan had not seemed to feel again that big hand at his throat—he would almost have been ready to believe that this was not the man whom he had fought. But he could not doubt that; he had recognized Spearman beyond question. And Spearman had recognized him—he was sure of that; he could not for an instant doubt it; Spearman had known it was Alan whom he had fought in Corvet's house even before Sherrill had brought them together. Was there not further proof of that in Spearman's subsequent manner toward him? For what was all this cordiality except defiance? Undoubtedly Spearman had acted just as he had to show how undisturbed he was, how indifferent he might be to any accusation Alan could make. Not having told Sherrill of the encounter in the house—not having told any one else—Alan could not tell it now, after Sherrill had informed him that Spearman opposed his accession to Corvet's estate; or, at least, he could not tell who the man was. In the face of Spearman's manner toward him to-day, Sherrill would not believe. If Spearman denied it—and his story of his return to town that morning made it perfectly certain that he would deny it—it would be only Alan's word against Spearman's—the word of a stranger unknown to Sherrill except by Alan's own account of himself and the inferences from Corvet's acts. There could be no risk to Spearman in that; he had nothing to fear if Alan blurted an accusation against him. Spearman, perhaps, even wanted him to do that—hoped he would do it. Nothing could more discredit Alan than such an unsustainable accusation against the partner who was opposing Alan's taking his father's place. For it had been plain that Spearman dominated Sherrill, and that Sherrill felt confidence in and admiration toward him.

Alan grew hot with the realization that, in the interview just past, Spearman had also dominated him. He had been unable to find anything adequate to do, anything adequate to answer, in opposition to this man more than fifteen years older than himself and having a lifelong experience in dealing with all kinds of men. He would not yield to Spearman like that again; it was the bewilderment of his recognition of Spearman that had made him do it. Alan stopped his pacing and flung himself down in the leather desk-chair which had been Corvet's. He could hear, at intervals, Spearman's heavy, genial voice addressing the ship men in his office; its tones—half of comradeship, half of command—told only too plainly his dominance over those men also. He heard Spearman's office door open and some of the men go out; after a time it opened again, and the rest went out. He heard Spearman's voice in the outer office, then heard it again as Spearman returned alone into his private office.

There was a telephone upon Corvet's desk which undoubtedly connected with the switchboard in the general office. Alan picked up the receiver and asked for "Mr. Spearman." At once the hearty voice answered, "Yes."

"This is Conrad."

"I thought I told you I was busy, Conrad!" The 'phone clicked as Spearman hung up the receiver.

The quality of the voice at the other end of the wire had altered; it had become suddenly again the harsh voice of the man who had called down curses upon "Ben" and on men "in Hell" in Corvet's library.

Alan sat back in his chair, smiling a little. It had not been for him, then—that pretense of an almost mocking cordiality; Spearman was not trying to deceive or to influence Alan by that. It had been merely for Sherrill's benefit; or, rather, it had been because, in Sherrill's presence, this had been the most effective weapon against Alan which Spearman could employ. Spearman might, or might not, deny to Alan his identity with the man whom Alan had fought; as yet Alan did not know which Spearman would do; but, at least, between themselves there was to be no pretense about the antagonism, the opposition they felt toward one another.

Little prickling thrills of excitement were leaping through Alan, as he got up and moved about the room again. The room was on a corner, and there were two windows, one looking to the east over the white and blue expanse of the harbor and the lake; the other showing the roofs and chimneys, the towers and domes of Chicago, reaching away block after block, mile after mile to the south and west, till they dimmed and blurred in the brown haze of the sunlit smoke. Power and possession—both far exceeding Alan's most extravagant dream—were promised him by those papers which Sherrill had shown him. When he had read down the list of those properties, he had had no more feeling, that such things could be his than he had had at first that Corvet's house could be his—until he had heard the intruder moving in that house. And now it was the sense that another was going to make him fight for those properties that was bringing to him the realization of his new power. He "had" something on that man—on Spearman. He did not know what that thing was; no stretch of his thought, nothing that he knew about himself or others, could tell him; but, at sight of him, in the dark of Corvet's house, Spearman had cried out in horror, he had screamed at him the name of a sunken ship, and in terror had hurled his electric torch. It was true, Spearman's terror had not been at Alan Conrad; it had been because Spearman had mistaken him for some one else—for a ghost. But, after learning that Alan was not a ghost, Spearman's attitude had not very greatly changed; he had fought, he had been willing to kill rather than to be caught there.

Alan thought an instant; he would make sure he still "had" that something on Spearman and would learn how far it went. He took up the receiver and asked for Spearman again.

Again the voice answered—"Yes."

"I don't care whether you're busy," Alan said evenly. "I think you and I had better have a talk before we meet with Mr. Sherrill this afternoon. I am here in Mr. Corvet's office now and will be here for half an hour; then I'm going out."

Spearman made no reply but again hung up the receiver. Alan sat waiting, his watch upon the desk before him—tense, expectant, with flushes of hot and cold passing over him. Ten minutes passed; then twenty. The telephone under Corvet's desk buzzed.

"Mr. Spearman says he will give you five minutes now," the switchboard girl said.

Alan breathed deep with relief; Spearman had wanted to refuse to see him—but he had not refused; he had sent for him within the time Alan had appointed and after waiting until just before it expired.

Alan put his watch back into his pocket and, crossing to the other office, found Spearman alone. There was no pretense of courtesy now in Spearman's manner; he sat motionless at his desk, his bold eyes fixed on Alan intently. Alan closed the door behind him and advanced toward the desk.

"I thought we'd better have some explanation," he said, "about our meeting last night."

"Our meeting?" Spearman repeated; his eyes had narrowed watchfully.

"You told Mr. Sherrill that you were in Duluth and that you arrived home in Chicago only this morning. Of course you don't mean to stick to that story with me?"

"What are you talking about?" Spearman demanded.

"Of course, I know exactly where you were a part of last evening; and you know that I know. I only want to know what explanation you have to offer."

Spearman leaned forward. "Talk sense and talk it quick, if you have anything to say to me!"

"I haven't told Mr. Sherrill that I found you at Corvet's house last night; but I don't want you to doubt for a minute that I know you—and about your damning of Benjamin Corvet and your cry about saving the Miwaka!"

A flash of blood came to Spearman's face; Alan, in his excitement, was sure of it; but there was just that flash, no more. He turned, while Spearman sat chewing his cigar and staring at him, and went out and partly closed the door. Then, suddenly, he reopened it, looked in, reclosed it sharply, and went on his way, shaking a little. For, as he looked back this second time at the dominant, determined, able man seated at his desk, what he had seen in Spearman's face was fear; fear of himself, of Alan Conrad of Blue Rapids—yet it was not fear of that sort which weakens or dismays; it was of that sort which, merely warning of danger close at hand, determines one to use every means within his power to save himself.

Alan, still trembling excitedly, crossed to Corvet's office to await Sherrill. It was not, he felt sure now, Alan Conrad that Spearman was opposing; it was not even the apparent successor to the controlling stock of Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman. That Alan resembled some one—some one whose ghost had seemed to come to Spearman and might, perhaps, have come to Corvet—was only incidental to what was going on now; for in Alan's presence Spearman found a threat—an active, present threat against himself. Alan could not imagine what the nature of that threat could be. Was it because there was something still concealed in Corvet's house which Spearman feared Alan would find? Or was it connected only with that some one whom Alan resembled? Who was it Alan resembled? His mother? In what had been told him, in all that he had been able to learn about himself, Alan had found no mention of his mother—no mention, indeed, of any woman. There had been mention, definite mention, of but one thing which seemed, no matter what form these new experiences of his took, to connect himself with all of them—mention of a ship, a lost ship—the Miwaka. That name had stirred Alan, when he first heard it, with the first feeling he had been able to get of any possible connection between himself and these people here. Spoken by himself just now it had stirred, queerly stirred, Spearman. What was it, then, that he—Alan—had to do with the Miwaka? Spearman might—must have had something to do with it. So must Corvet. But himself—he had been not yet three years old when the Miwaka was lost! Beyond and above all other questions, what had Constance Sherrill to do with it?

She had continued to believe that Corvet's disappearance was related in some way to herself. Alan would rather trust her intuition as to this than trust to Sherrill's contrary opinion. Yet she, certainly, could have had no direct connection with a ship lost about the time she was born and before her father had allied himself with the firm of Corvet and Spearman. In the misty warp and woof of these events, Alan could find as yet nothing which could have involved her. But he realized that he was thinking about her even more than he was thinking about Spearman—more, at that moment, even than about the mystery which surrounded himself.

Constance Sherrill, as she went about her shopping at Field's, was feeling the strangeness of the experience she had shared that morning with Alan when she had completed for him the Indian creation legend and had repeated the ship rhymes of his boyhood; but her more active thought was about Henry Spearman, for she had a luncheon engagement with him at one o'clock. He liked one always to be prompt at appointments; he either did not keep an engagement at all, or he was on the minute, neither early nor late, except for some very unusual circumstance. Constance could never achieve such accurate punctuality, so several minutes before the hour she went to the agreed corner of the silverware department.

She absorbed herself intently with the selection of her purchase as one o'clock approached. She was sure that, after his three days' absence, he would be a moment early rather than late; but after selecting what she wanted, she monopolized twelve minutes more of the salesman's time in showing her what she had no intention of purchasing, before she picked out Henry's vigorous step from the confusion of ordinary footfalls in the aisle behind her. Though she had determined, a few moments before, to punish him a little, she turned quickly.

"Sorry I'm late, Connie." That meant that it was no ordinary business matter that had detained him; but there was nothing else noticeably unusual in his tone.

"It's certainly your turn to be the tardy one," she admitted.

"I'd never take my turn if I could help it—particularly just after being away; you know that."

She turned carelessly to the clerk. "I'll take that too,"—she indicated the trinket which she had examined last. "Send it, please. I've finished here now, Henry."

"I thought you didn't like that sort of thing." His glance had gone to the bit of frippery in the clerk's hand.

"I don't," she confessed.

"Then don't buy it. She doesn't want that; don't send it," he directed the salesman.

"Very well, sir."

Henry touched her arm and turned her away. She flushed a little, but she was not displeased. Any of the other men whom she knew would have wasted twenty dollars, as lightly as herself, rather than confess, "I really didn't want anything more; I just didn't want to be seen waiting." They would not have admitted—those other men—that such a sum made the slightest difference to her or, by inference, to them; but Henry was always willing to admit that there had been a time when money meant much to him, and he gained respect thereby.

The tea room of such a department store as Field's offers to young people opportunities for dining together without furnishing reason for even innocently connecting their names too intimately, if a girl is not seen there with the same man too often. There is something essentially casual and unpremeditated about it—as though the man and the girl, both shopping and both hungry, had just happened to meet and go to lunch together. As Constance recently had drawn closer to Henry Spearman in her thought, and particularly since she had been seriously considering marrying him, she had clung deliberately to this unplanned appearance about their meetings. She found something thrilling in this casualness too. Spearman's bigness, which attracted eyes to him always in a crowd, was merely the first and most obvious of the things which kept attention on him; there were few women who, having caught sight of the big, handsome, decisive, carefully groomed man, could look away at once. If Constance suspected that, ten years before, it might have been the eyes of shop-girls that followed Spearman with the greatest interest, she was certain no one could find anything flashy about him now. What he compelled now was admiration and respect alike for his good looks and his appearance of personal achievement—a tribute very different from the tolerance granted those boys brought up as irresponsible inheritors of privilege like herself.

As they reached the restaurant and passed between the rows of tables, women looked up at him; oblivious, apparently, to their gaze, he chose a table a little removed from the others, where servants hurried to take his order, recognizing one whose time was of importance. She glanced across at him, when she had settled herself, and the first little trivialities of their being together were over.

"I took a visitor down to your office this morning," she said.

"Yes," he answered.

Constance was aware that it was only formally that she had taken Alan Conrad down to confer with her father; since Henry was there, she knew her father would not act without his agreement, and that whatever disposition had been made regarding Alan had been made by him. She wondered what that disposition had been.

"Did you like him, Henry?"

"Like him?" She would have thought that the reply was merely inattentive; but Henry was never merely that.

"I hoped you would."

He did not answer at once. The waitress brought their order, and he served her; then, as the waitress moved away, he looked across at Constance with a long scrutiny.

"You hoped I would!" he repeated, with his slow smile. "Why?"

"He seemed to be in a difficult position and to be bearing himself well; and mother was horrid to him."

"How was she horrid?"

"About the one thing which, least of all, could be called his fault—about his relationship to—to Mr. Corvet. But he stood up to her!"

The lids drew down a little upon Spearman's eyes as he gazed at her.

"You've seen a good deal of him, yesterday and to-day, your father tells me," he observed.

"Yes." As she ate, she talked, telling him about her first meeting with Alan and about their conversation of the morning and the queer awakening in him of those half memories which seemed to connect him in some way with the lakes. She felt herself flushing now and then with feeling, and once she surprised herself by finding her eyes wet when she had finished telling Henry about showing Alan the picture of his father. Henry listened intently, eating slowly. When she stopped, he appeared to be considering something.

"That's all he told you about himself?" he inquired.

"Yes."

"And all you told him?"

"He asked me some things about the lakes and about the Miwaka, which was lost so long ago—he said he'd found some reference to that and wanted to know whether it was a ship. I told him about it and about the Drum which made people think that the crew were not all lost."

"About the Drum! What made you speak of that?" The irritation in his tone startled her and she looked quickly up at him. "I mean," he offered, "why did you drag in a crazy superstition like that? You don't believe in the Drum, Connie!"

"It would be so interesting if some one really had been saved and if the Drum had told the truth, that sometimes I think I'd like to believe in it. Wouldn't you, Henry?"

"No," he said abruptly. "No!" Then quickly:

"It's plain enough you like him," he remarked.

She reflected seriously. "Yes, I do; though I hadn't thought of it just that way, because I was thinking most about the position he was in and about—Mr. Corvet. But I do like him."

"So do I," Spearman said with a seeming heartiness that pleased her. He broke a piece of bread upon the tablecloth and his big, well-shaped fingers began to roll it into little balls. "At least I should like him, Connie, if I had the sort of privilege you have to think whether I liked or disliked him. I've had to consider him from another point of view—whether I could trust him or must distrust him."

"Distrust?" Constance bent toward him impulsively in her surprise. "Distrust him? In relation to what? Why?"

"In relation to Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman, Connie—the company that involves your interests and your father's and mine and the interests of many other people—small stockholders who have no influence in its management, and whose interests I have to look after for them. A good many of them, you know, are our own men—our old skippers and mates and families of men who have died in our service and who left their savings in stock in our ships."

"I don't understand, Henry."

"I've had to think of Conrad this morning in the same way as I've had to think of Ben Corvet of recent years—as a threat against the interests of those people."

Her color rose, and her pulse quickened. Henry never had talked to her, except in the merest commonplaces, about his relations with Uncle Benny; it was a matter in which, she had recognized, they had been opposed; and since the quarrels between the old friend whom she had loved from childhood and him, who wished to become now more than a mere friend to her, had grown more violent, she had purposely avoided mentioning Uncle Benny to Henry, and he, quite as consciously, had avoided mentioning Mr. Corvet to her.

"I've known for a good many years," Spearman said reluctantly, "that Ben Corvet's brain was seriously affected. He recognized that himself even earlier, and admitted it to himself when he took me off my ship to take charge of the company. I might have gone with other people then, or it wouldn't have been very long before I could have started in as a ship owner myself; but, in view of his condition, Ben made me promises that offered me most. Afterwards his malady progressed so that he couldn't know himself to be untrustworthy; his judgment was impaired, and he planned and would have tried to carry out many things which would have been disastrous for the company. I had to fight him—for the company's sake and for my own sake and that of the others, whose interests were at stake. Your father came to see that what I was doing was for the company's good and has learned to trust me. But you—you couldn't see that quite so directly, of course, and you thought I didn't—like Ben, that there was some lack in me which made me fail to appreciate him."

"No; not that," Constance denied quickly. "Not that, Henry."

"What was it then, Connie? You thought me ungrateful to him? I realized that I owed a great deal to him; but the only way I could pay that debt was to do exactly what I did—oppose him and seem to push into his place and be an ingrate; for, because I did that, Ben's been a respected and honored man in this town all these last years, which he couldn't have remained if I'd let him have his way, or if I told others why I had to do what I did. I didn't care what others thought about me; but I did care what you thought; yet if you couldn't see what I was up against because of your affection for him, why—that was all right too."

"No, it wasn't all right," she denied almost fiercely, the flush flooding her cheeks; a throbbing was in her throat which, for an instant, stopped her. "You should have told me, Henry; or—I should have been able to see."

"I couldn't tell you—dear," he said the last word very distinctly, but so low that she could scarcely hear. "I couldn't tell you now—if Ben hadn't gone away as he has and this other fellow come. I couldn't tell you when you wanted to keep caring so much for your Uncle Benny, and he was trying to hurt me with you."

She bent toward him, her lips parted; but now she did not speak. She never had really known Henry until this moment, she felt; she had thought of him always as strong, almost brutal, fighting down fiercely, mercilessly, his opponents and welcoming contest for the joy of overwhelming others by his own decisive strength and power. And she had been almost ready to marry that man for his strength and dominance from those qualities; and now she knew that he was merciful too—indeed, more than merciful. In the very contest where she had thought of him as most selfish and regardless of another, she had most completely misapprehended.

"I ought to have seen!" she rebuked herself to him. "Surely, I should have seen that was it!" Her hand, in the reproach of her feeling, reached toward him across the table; he caught it and held it in his large, strong hand which, in its touch, was very tender too. She had never allowed any such demonstration as this before; but now she let her hand remain in his.

"How could you see?" he defended her. "He never showed to you the side he showed to me and—in these last years, anyway—never to me the side he showed to you. But after what has happened this week, you can understand now; and you can see why I have to distrust the young fellow who's come to claim Ben Covert's place."

"Claim!" Constance repeated; she drew her hand quietly away from his now. "Why, Henry, I did not know he claimed anything; he didn't even know when he came here—"

"He seems, like Ben Corvet," Henry said slowly, "to have the characteristic of showing one side to you, another to me, Connie. With you, of course, he claimed nothing; but at the office— Your father showed him this morning the instruments of transfer that Ben seems to have left conveying to him all Ben had—his other properties and his interest in Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman. I very naturally objected to the execution of those transfers, without considerable examination, in view of Corvet's mental condition and of the fact that they put the controlling stock of Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman in the hands of a youth no one ever had heard of—and one who, by his own story, never had seen a ship until yesterday. And when I didn't dismiss my business with a dozen men this morning to take him into the company, he claimed occasion to see me alone to threaten me."

"Threaten you, Henry? How? With what?"

"I couldn't quite make out myself, but that was his tone; he demanded an 'explanation' of exactly what, he didn't make clear. He has been given by Ben, apparently, the technical control of Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman. His idea, if I oppose him, evidently is to turn me out and take the management himself."

Constance leaned back, confused. "He—Alan Conrad?" she questioned. "He can't have done that, Henry! Oh, he can't have meant that!"

"Maybe he didn't; I said I couldn't make out what he did mean," Spearman said. "Things have come upon him with rather a rush, of course; and you couldn't expect a country boy to get so many things straight. He's acting, I suppose, only in the way one might expect a boy to act who had been brought up in poverty on a Kansas prairie and was suddenly handed the possible possession of a good many millions of dollars. It's better to believe that he's only lost his head. I haven't had opportunity to tell your father these things yet; but I wanted you to understand why Conrad will hardly consider me a friend."

"I'll understand you now, Henry," she promised.

He gazed at her and started to speak; then, as though postponing it on account of the place, he glanced around and took out his watch.

"You must go back?" she asked.

"No; I'm not going back to the office this afternoon, Connie; but I must call up your father."

He excused himself and went into the nearest telephone booth.

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.