Chapter 17

"Here--this last year.... You know I had everything my heart desired until the governor cashed in; and I used to think I was a pretty happy kid in those days. But now I've learned that you can beat that kind of happiness to death. Harry"--Duncan was growing almost sententious--"the real way to be happy is to work and have your work amount to something and--and to have someone who believes in you to work for."

"Is this a sermon, Nat?"

"Call it what you like: it goes, just the same. ... That's what I've found out this year."

Kellogg let his chair fall forward and rose, imprisoning Nat's shoulders with two heavy but kindly hands. "And you're right!" he cried heartily. "I'm glad you had the backbone to back out, Nat. It was a low-down trick and I'm ashamed of myself for proposing it. I did it, I presume, simply because I'm a schemer at heart, and I knew it would work. It did work, but it's worked a finer way than I dreamed of: it's made a man of you, Nat, and I'm mightly glad and proud of you!"

Nat swayed with amazement. "What's changed you all of a sudden?" he demanded blankly.

Releasing him, Kellogg resumed his seat, laughing. "Well, a number of things. Among others, I've talked with Graham and I've met his daughter."

"Oh-h!"

"And that reminds me," Kellogg changed the subject briskly; "I understood from you that Graham was sole owner of that patent burner."

"So he is."

"He says not. I had a proposition to make him from the Mutual people, and he referred me to you, saying that you controlled the matter."

"I've not the slightest interest in it!" Nat protested.

"I know you haven't, but Graham insisted you owned the whole thing. I pressed him for an explanation, and he finally furnished one in his rambling, inconsequent, fine old way. He admitted that there wasn't any sort of an existing contract or agreement of any sort, even oral, between you, but just the same you'd been so good to him and his girl that he'd made up his mind--some time ago, I gather--to make you a present of the burner; but naturally he forgot to tell you about an insignificant detail like that."

"Of course that's nonsense; I wouldn't and shant accept."

"Of course you won't. I did you the honour to discount that. But he wouldn't say a word about the offer--yes or no--just left it all up to you. He says you're a business man, and that he's often thought what a help you must have been to me before you left New York."

Nat laughed outright. "Can you beat that? ... But what is the offer?"

"Fifty thousand cash and ten thousand shares of preferred stock--hundred dollars par."

"What's that worth?"

"At the market rate when I left town, seventy-eight." Kellogg waited a moment. "Well, what do you say?"

"Say? Great Caesar's Ghost! What is there to say? Wire 'em an acceptance before they get their second wind.... You don't know how good this makes me feel, Harry; I can't thank you enough for what you've done. This'll square me with Graham to some extent, and I can clear out----"

"No, you can't, Mr. Smarty! You ain't been 'cute enough."

Both men, startled by the interruption, wheeled round to discover Roland Barnette dancing with excitement in the doorway, the while he beckoned frantically to an invisible party without. "Come on!" he shouted. "Here he is!"

"What's eating you, Roly-Poly?" inquired

Nat, too happy for the money to cherish animosity even toward his one-time rival.

"You'll find out soon enough," snarled Roland. "Mr. Lockwood's got something to say to you, I guess."

And on the heels of this announcement Lockwood strode into the store, Josie clinging to his arm, Pete Willing--a trifle more sanely drunk than he had been some hours previous--bringing up the rear.

"So!" snarled Blinky, halting and transfixing Nat with the stare of his cold blue eyes. "So we've found you, eh?"

"Oh? I didn't know I was lost."

"No nonsense, young man. I ain't in the humour for foolin'." Blinky was unquestionably in no sort of a humour at all beyond an evil one. "I come here to have a word with you."

"Well, sir?" Nat's tone and attitude were perfectly pacific.

"Ah, there ain't no use beatin' 'round the bush. You've behaved yourself ever since you come to Radville, and insinooated yourself into our confidence, 'spite of the fact that nobody in town knows who you were before you came. But now Roland's laid a charge again' you, and I want to know the rights to it."

"Well," Roland interposed cockily, "I accused him of it to-night and he didn't deny it."

"What's more," Lockwood continued with rising colour, "Roland says he can prove it?"

"Prove what?" Nat insisted. "Get down to facts, can't you?"

"That you're a thief with a reward out for you," said Roland. "You're that Mortimer Henry what absconded from the Longacre National Bank in Noo York."

There fell a brief pause. Nat bowed his head and tugged at his moustache, his shoulders shaking with emotion variously construed by those who watched him. Presently he looked up again, his features gravely composed.

"Roly," said he, "Balaam must miss you terribly."

"That ain't no answer." Lockwood put himself solidly between Nat and the object of his obscure remark--who was painfully digesting it. "I want to know about this. You got my daughter to say she'd marry you this evenin', and you've got to explain to me about this bank business before it goes any further."

"Yes?" commented Nat civilly.

"Yes!" thundered Blinky. "Do you deny it? ... Answer me."

To Kellogg's huge diversion, Nat struck an attitude, "I refuse to answer," said he.

"Aha! What'd I tell you?" This was Roland's triumphant crow.

"Nat!" Josie advanced, trembling with excitement. "Tell me, what does this mean?"

Duncan perforce avoided her gaze. "Don't ask," he said sadly.

"Is it true?" she insisted.

"You heard what Roly said," he replied, with a chastened expression.

"Then you admit it?"

"I admit nothing."

"Oh-h!" The girl drew away from him as from defilement. "I--I hate you!" she cried in a voice of loathing

"That's all right," he told her serenely; "I've despised myself all evening."

The girl showed him a scornful back. "Papa----" she began.

"Don't thank me, Josie. Roland done it all: he got onto him." Lockwood continued to watch Duncan with the air of a cat eyeing a mouse.

Impulsively Josie moved to Roland's side and caught his arm. He drew himself up proudly.

"I do thank you, Roland; I can never be grateful enough. I've been so foolish.

"That's all right." Roland tucked the girl's hand beneath his arm and patted it down. "You wasn't to blame. I never seen anyone from Noo York yet that wasn't a crook."

"Won't you please take me away from this--place, Roland?" she appealed.

"I'll be mighty glad to see you home, Josie," he assured her generously, turning.

In the act of leaving, Josie caught Nat's eye. She hung back for an instant, withering him with a glare. "Oh-h!" she cried. "How did you dare pretend to care for me?"

He bowed politely. "It was one of the rules, Josie."

"There's no need to tell you, I guess, that the engagement is broken."

"None whatever, Miss Lockwood. Good-evening."

"Come, Roland!"

Arm in arm they left, with the haughty tread of the elect, while Pete Willing lurched to Duncan's side and caught his arm.

"Come 'long to jail, Mish'r Duncan," he said with sympathy. "Mush bessher."

"You look after him, Pete." Lockwood turned to leave with a final shot for Duncan. "I'll 'tend to your case in the mornin', young man, and I'll make you wish you never came to this town."

"You needn't trouble. I feel that way about it already. _Good_-night."

Lockwood left them, snarling. Nat caught Kellogg's eye and began to giggle. But Pete was still holding him fast, partially, beyond doubt, for support.

"You've been saved just in time, Mish'r Duncan," he commented; "y'are mighty lucky man. Now lissen: you better make tracks. I ain't got no warrant to hold you, 'nd I wouldn't if I had."

"You're a good fellow, Pete; but you needn't worry. I'm not the man they think me, and it'll be easy to prove."

"Wal," said Pete, "jus' the same, you better git out, 'r you may have to marry her aft'all."

"No, I won't."

"Thank Gawd f'r that!" Pete exclaimed in maudlin gratitude. He swung widely toward the door, and by a miracle found it. "G'night, Mish'r Duncan. I feel s' good 'bout thish I'm goin' try goin' home 'nd face m' wife. G'night."

"Good-night, Pete."

"Well!" said Kellogg after a pause, "that was a bit of luck!"

"Luck!" Nat seized his hat and began to turn off the lights. "It's more luck than I thought there was in the whole world. Come along."

"Where are you going?"

"First, to see Lockwood and have it out with him."

"No, you aren't," Kellogg laughed as Nat locked the door. "You're going to leave Lockwood to me; I'll manage to ease his mind. You've got infinitely more important matters to attend to--and the sooner you find her, the better, Nat!"

XXIII

THE RAINBOW'S END

The air was heavy with moisture and very still and warm; a heady fragrance of precocious blooms flavoured the air, vying with the scent of rain. The silence was profound, but shaken now and then by a grumble of distant thunder. The world hung breathless on the issue of the night.

Since evenfall a wall of cloud, massive and portentous, had been climbing up over the western hills, slowly but with ominous steadiness obscuring the moon-swept sky with its far, pale wreaths of stars, blotting it out with monstrous folds and convolutions of impenetrable purple-black. Along its crest fire played like swords in the sunlight, and now and again sheeted flame lightened the monstrous expanse so that it glowed with the pale phosphorescence of a summer sea.

As Duncan hurried homeward over sidewalks chequered in silver and ink, the advance of the cloud army seemed to become accelerated. With increasing frequency gusts of air set the trees a-shiver until their sibilant whispers of warning filled the valley. The rolling of the thunder grew more sharp, more instant upon the flashes.... When there was no wind the air seemed to quiver with terror--as a dog cringes to the whip....

But of this Duncan was barely conscious.

He gained the gate in the fence of wood paling, opened it, and entered. The lawn and house were lit with the unearthly radiance of moonlight threatened by eclipse. He could see the light in Graham's study and, through the open doors, the faint glow of the hall-lamp. But there was no one visible.

He hurried up the path, tortured by impatience, fear, longing, despair....

Then he saw what seemed at first a pale shadow detach itself from darker shades in the shrubbery and move toward him.

"Nat, is it you?"

"Betty!"

His whole heart was in that cry; the girl thrilled to its timbre as though a master hand had struck a chord upon her heart-strings.

"Nat, what--what is it?"

"Betty, I want to tell you something."

She came very slowly toward him, torn alternately by fear and hope. What did he mean?

"Do you happen to remember that I told you a while ago I was engaged to Josie Lockwood?"

"Nat! Could I forget? ... Why?"

"Because ... it's broken off, Betty."

"Broken off! ... How? Why?"

"Because it had to be, sweetheart: because I love you."

She was very close to him then. Her uplifted face shone like marble in the fading light. "Nat, I ... I don't understand."

"Then, listen--I must tell you. It was all a plan, a scheme, my coming here, Betty. Everything I did, said, thought, was part of a contemptible trick.... I meant to marry Josie Lockwood, whom I'd never seen, for her money. ... Now you know what I was, dear.... But it's different, now. I'm not the same man who came to Radville ten months ago. I've learned a little to understand the right, I hope: I've learned to love and reverence goodness and purity and unselfishness and ... And I want to be a man, the kind of a man you thought me: a man worthy of you and your love, Betty.... Because I love you. I want you to be my wife. ... And, O Betty, Betty, I need you to help me!"

His voice broke. He waited, every nerve and fibre of him tense for her answer. While he had been speaking, the onrush of the storm had blotted out the moon. There was only darkness there in the garden--deep, dense darkness, so thick he could not even see the shimmer of her dress....

Then suddenly she was in his arms, shaking and sobbing, straining him to her.

"Oh, Nat, my Nat! I've loved you from the first day I ever saw you! You know I have." "Betty! ... sweetheart..."

There came an abrupt, furious patter of heavy drops of water, beating upon the foliage, splashing and rebounding from the house.

"Forever and ever, Nat?"

"Forever and ever and a day, my dear ... my dear!"

End of Project Gutenberg's The Fortune Hunter, by Louis Joseph Vance