Part 12 (1/2)
”Hood, this is my father,” said Billy.
”A great pleasure, I'm sure,” Hood responded courteously, extending his hand. ”I suppose it was inevitable that we should meet sooner or later, Mr. Deering.”
”You--you _are_ Bob--Bob--Tyringham?” asked Deering anxiously.
”Right!” cried Hood in his usual a.s.sured manner. ”And I will say for you that you have given me a good chase. I confess that I didn't think you capable of it; I swear I didn't! Tuck, I congratulate you; your father is one of the true brotherhood of the stars. He's been chasing me for a month and, by Jove, he's kept me guessing! But when I heard that he'd been jailed for speeding, with a prospect of spending Sunday in this hole, I decided that it was time to throw down the mask.”
Lights began to dance in the remote recesses of Billy's mind. Hood was Robert Tyringham, for whom his father held as trustee two million dollars. Tyringham had not been heard of in years. The only son of a most practical father, he had been from youth a victim of the _wanderl.u.s.t_, absenting himself from home for long periods. For ten years he had been on the list of the missing. That Hood should be this man was unbelievable. But the senior Deering seemed not to question his ident.i.ty.
He sat down with a deep sigh and then began to laugh.
”If I hadn't found you by next Wednesday, I should have had to turn your property over to a dozen charitable inst.i.tutions provided for by your father's will--and, by George, I've been fighting a temptation to steal it!” His arms clasped Billy's shoulder convulsively. ”It's been horrible, ghastly! I've been afraid I might find you and afraid I wouldn't! I tell you it's been h.e.l.l. I've spent thousands of dollars trying to find you, fearing one day you might turn up, and the next day afraid you wouldn't.
And, you know, Tyringham, your father was my dearest friend; that's what made it all so horrible. I want you to know about it, Billy; I want you to know the worst about me; I'm not the man you thought me. When I started away with Constance and told you I was going to California I decided to make a last effort to find Tyringham. I read a d.a.m.ned novel that acted on me like a poison; that's why I've made a fool of myself in a thousand ways, thinking that by masquerading over the country I might catch Tyringham at his own game. And now you know what I might have been; you see what I was trying to be--a common thief, a betrayer of a sacred trust.”
”Don't talk like that, father,” began Billy, shaken by his father's humility. ”I guess we're in the same hole, only I'm in deeper. I tried to rob _you_. I tried to steal some of that Tyringham money myself, but--but----”
Hood, wis.h.i.+ng to leave the two alone for their further confidences, walked to the rec.u.mbent Fogarty, roused him with a dig in the ribs, and conferred with him in low tones.
”You took the stuff from my box, Billy?” Mr. Deering asked.
Billy waited apprehensively for what might follow. It was possible that his father had already robbed the Tyringham estate; the thought chilled him into dejection.
”I _had_ stolen it. My G.o.d, I couldn't help it!” Deering groaned. ”I left that waste paper in the box to fool myself, and put the real stuff in another place. I hoped--yes, that was it, I hoped--I'd never find Tyringham and I could keep those bonds. But all the time I kept looking for him. You see, Billy, I couldn't be as bad as I wanted to be; and yet----”
He drew his hand across his face as though to shut out the picture he saw of himself as a felon.
”Oh, you wouldn't have done it; you couldn't have done it!” cried Billy, anxious to mitigate his father's misery. ”If you hadn't hidden the real bonds, I'd have been a thief! Ned Rans...o...b..was trying to corner Mizpah and needed my help. I put in all I had--that two hundred thousand you gave me my last birthday, and then he skipped. When I get hold of _him_----!”
”You put two hundred thousand in Mizpah?”
”I did, like a fool, and, of course, it's lost! Ned went daffy about a girl and dropped Mizpah--and my money!”
Mr. Deering was once more a business man. ”What did Rans...o...b..buy at?” he asked curtly.
”Seven and a quarter.”
”Then you needn't kick Ned! The Rans...o...b.. put through their deal and Mizpah's gone to forty!”
Hood rejoined them, and they talked till daylight. He told them much of himself. The responsibility of a great fortune had not appealed to him; he had been honest in his preference for the vagabond life, but realized, now that he was well launched upon middle age, that it was only becoming and decent for him to alter his ways. Billy's liking for him, that had struggled so rebelliously against impatience and distrust, warmed to the heartiest admiration.
”Of course I knew you were married,” the senior Deering remarked for Billy's enlightenment, ”and now and then I got glimpses of you in your gypsy life. Your wife had a fortune of her own--she was one of Augustus Davis's daughters--so of course she hasn't suffered from your foolishness.”
”My wife shared my tastes; there has never been the slightest trouble between us. Our daughter is just like us. But now Mrs. Tyringham thinks we ought to settle down and be respectable.”
”I knew your wife and daughter had come home. I had got that far,” Mr.
Deering resumed. ”And after I began to suspect that you and Hood were the same person I put my own daughter into your house on the Dempster road as a spy to watch for you.”