Part 60 (1/2)
He went out. The door of the outer shop slammed. Jed wiped the perspiration from his forehead and groaned helplessly and hopelessly.
The captain had reached the gate when he saw Phillips coming along the road toward him. He waited until the young man arrived.
”h.e.l.lo, Captain,” hailed Charles. ”So you decided not to come back to the bank this afternoon, after all?”
His employer nodded. ”Yes,” he said. ”I've been kept away on business. Funny kind of business, too. Say, Charlie,” he added, ”suppose likely your sister and you would be too busy to see me for a few minutes now? I'd like to see if you've got an answer to a riddle.”
”A riddle?”
”Um-hm. I've just had the riddle sprung on me and it's got MY head whirlin' like a bottle in a tide rip. Can I come into your house for a minute and spring it on you?”
The young man looked puzzled, which was not surprising, but his invitation to come into the house was most cordial. They entered by the front door. As they came into the little hall they heard a man's voice in the living-room beyond. It was Major Grover's voice and they heard the major say:
”It doesn't matter at all. Please understand I had no thought of asking. I merely wanted you to feel that what that fellow said had no weight with me whatever, and to a.s.sure you that I will make it my business to see that he keeps his mouth shut. As for the other question, Ruth--”
Ruth Armstrong's voice broke in here.
”Oh, please,” she begged, ”not now. I--I am so sorry I can't tell you everything, but--but it isn't my secret and--and I can't.
Perhaps some day-- But please believe that I am grateful, very, very grateful. I shall never forget it.”
Charlie, with an anxious glance at Captain Hunniwell, cleared his throat loudly. The captain's thoughts, however, were too busy with his ”riddle” to pay attention to the voices in the living-room. As he and Phillips entered that apartment Major Grover came into the hall. He seemed a trifle embarra.s.sed, but he nodded to Captain Sam, exchanged greetings with Phillips, and hurried out of the house. They found Ruth standing by the rear window and looking out toward the sea.
The captain plunged at once into his story. He began by asking Mrs. Armstrong if her brother had told her of the missing four hundred dollars. Charles was inclined to be indignant.
”Of course I haven't,” he declared. ”You asked us all to keep quiet about it and not to tell a soul, and I supposed you meant just that.”
”Eh? So I did, Charlie, so I did. Beg your pardon, boy. I might have known you'd keep your hatches closed. Well, here's the yarn, Mrs. Armstrong. It don't make me out any too everlastin'
brilliant. A grown man that would shove that amount of money into his overcoat pocket and then go sa.s.shayin' from Wapatomac to Orham ain't the kind I'd recommend to s.h.i.+p as cow steward on a cattle boat, to say nothin' of president of a bank. But confessin's good for the soul, they say, even if it does make a feller feel like a fool, so here goes. I did just that thing.”
He went on to tell of his trip to Wapatomac, his interview with Sage, his visit to the windmill shop, his discovery that four hundred of the fourteen hundred had disappeared. Then he told of his attempts to trace it, of Jed's anxious inquiries from day to day, and, finally, of the scene he had just pa.s.sed through.
”So there you are,” he concluded. ”I wish to mercy you'd tell me what it all means, for I can't tell myself. If it hadn't been so-- so sort of pitiful, and if I hadn't been so puzzled to know what made him do it, I cal'late I'd have laughed myself sick to see poor old Jed tryin' to lie. Why, he ain't got the first notion of how to begin; I don't cal'late he ever told a real, up-and-down lie afore in his life. That was funny enough--but when he began to tell me he was a thief! Gracious king! And all he could think of in the way of an excuse was that he stole the four hundred to buy a suit of clothes with. Ho, ho, ho!”
He roared again. Charlie Phillips laughed also. But his sister did not laugh. She had seated herself in the rocker by the window when the captain began his tale and now she had drawn back into the corner where the shadows were deepest.
”So there you are,” said Captain Sam, again. ”There's the riddle.
Now what's the answer? Why did he do it? Can either of you guess?”
Phillips shook his head. ”You have got me,” he declared. ”And the money he gave you was not the money you lost? You're sure of that?”
”Course I'm sure of it. In the first place I lost a packet of clean tens and twenties; this stuff I've got in my pocket now is all sorts, ones and twos and fives and everything. And in the second place--”
”Pardon me, just a minute, Captain Hunniwell. Where did he get the four hundred to give you, do you think? He hasn't cashed any large checks at the bank within the last day or two, and he would scarcely have so much on hand in his shop.”
”Not as much as that--no. Although I've known the absent-minded, careless critter to have over two hundred knockin' around among his tools and chips and glue pots. Probably he had some to start with, and he got the rest by gettin' folks around town and over to Harniss to cash his checks. Anthony Hammond over there asked me a little while ago, when I met him down to the wharf, if I thought Shavin's Winslow was good for a hundred and twenty-five. Said Jed had sent over by the telephone man's auto and asked him to cash a check for that much. Hammond said he thought 'twas queer he hadn't cashed it at our bank; that's why he asked me about it.”
”Humph! But why should he give his own money away in that fas.h.i.+on?
And confess to stealing and all that stuff? I never heard of such a thing.”
”Neither did anybody else. I've known Jed all my life and I never can tell what loony thing he's liable to do next. But this beats all of 'em, I will give in.”