Free and Other Stories

FREE AND OTHER STORIES

At the mention of these, as at the mention of the automobile accident, there was something which seemed to click like a camera shutter in her eyes, only this time there was no sign of pain, none even of confusion. She seemed, except for a faint trace of color, to be fairly calm and poised. She opened her mouth slightly, but more in an attempted smile of tolerance than anything else.

“The Union Bank? Mr. Swayne? Mr. Tilney? What are you talking about?” she persisted. “Who is Mr. Swayne, and where is the Union Bank?”

“Really, now, Miss Carle,” he said with a kind of dogmatic fury, “if you want me to have any regard of any kind for you in the future, quit lying about this. You know well enough what I mean. You know who Mr. Swayne is, all right, and why he left Eastridge. You also know Mr. Diamondberg, although I heard you say you didn’t, and that right after I had seen you walking with him out here on the dunes three weeks ago. You don’t remember that, I suppose?” this as she fluttered slightly.

She stared, completely shaken out of her composure, and a real flush spread over her cheeks and neck. For the moment her expression hardened the least bit, then gave way to one of mingled weakness and confusion. She looked more or less guilty and genuinely distrait.

“Why, Mr. Gregory,” she pleaded weakly, “how you talk! Positively, I haven’t the slightest idea of what you mean, and I wish you wouldn’t be so rough. I don’t think you know what you’re talking about, or if you do you certainly don’t know anything about me. You must have me mixed up with some one else, or with something that I don’t know anything about.” She moved as if to leave.

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“Now listen to me a minute,” he said sharply, “and don’t be so ready to leave. You know who I am, and just what I’m doing. I’m running an investigation bureau on my own account with which I mean to break up the present city political ring, and I have a lot of evidence which might cause Mr. Tilney and the mayor and some others a lot of trouble this fall, and they know it, and that’s why you’re out here. Mr. Tilney is connected with the mayor, and he used to be a bosom friend of your friend, Jack Swayne. And Diamondberg and Mrs. Skelton are in his employ right now, and so are you. You think I don’t know that Castleman and his friends were working with you and Mrs. Skelton, and Diamondberg and these ‘brokers’ also, and that Castleman tried to run into us the other night and kill me, and that I’m being watched here all the time and spied on, but I am, and I know it, and I’m not in the dark as to anything – not one thing – not even you,” and he leered at her angrily.

“Now wait a moment,” he went on quickly as she opened her mouth and started to say something. “You don’t look to me to be so crafty and devilish as all this seems, or I wouldn’t be talking to you at all, and your manner all along has been so different – you’ve appeared so friendly and sympathetic, that I’ve thought at times that maybe you didn’t know exactly what was going on. Now, however, I see that you do. Your manner the other morning at breakfast made me think that possibly you were not so bad as you seemed. But now I see that you’ve been lying to me all along about all this, just as I thought, only I must say that up to now I haven’t been willing to believe it. This isn’t the first time an attempt has been made to get people in this way, though. It’s an old political trick, only you’re trying to work it once more, and I don’t propose that you shall work

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it on me if I can help it. Plainly, you people wouldn’t hesitate to kill me, any more than Tilney hesitated to ruin Crothers three years ago, or than he would hesitate to ruin me or any other man or woman who got in his path, but he hasn’t got me yet, and he’s not going to, and you can tell him that for me. He’s a crook. He controls a bunch of crooks – the mayor and all the people working with him – and if you’re in with them, as I know you are, and know what you’re doing, you’re a crook too.”

“Oh, oh, oh! Don’t!” she exclaimed. “Please don’t! This is too terrible! To think that you should talk to me in this way!” but she made no attempt to leave.

“Now I want to tell you something more, Miss Carle – if that’s your real name – “ Gregory went on as she was putting her hands to her temples and exclaiming, and she winced again. “As I said before, you don’t look to me to be as bad as you seem, and for that reason I’m talking to you now. But just see how it is: Here I am, a young man just starting out in the world really, and here you are trying to ruin me. I was living here with my wife and my little two-year-old baby peacefully enough until she had to go to the mountains because our little boy was taken sick, and then you and Mrs. Skelton and Diamondberg and Castleman and the ‘brokers’ and all the rest of the crowd that are and have been around here watching and spying, came and began to cause me trouble. Now I’m not helpless. And you needn’t think I wasn’t warned before you came, because I was. There are just as many influential men on my side of the fence right now as there are on Tilney’s – will be – and he isn’t going to get away with this thing as easily as he thinks. But just think of your part in all this! Why should

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you want to ruin me or help these people? What have I ever done to you? I can understand Tilney’s wanting to do it. He thinks that I have facts which will injure him, and I have, and that because I haven’t made any public statement the evidence is still in my hands, and that if I am put out of the way or discredited the whole thing will blow over and nothing will happen to him – but it won’t. Not now any more. It can’t. This thing will go on just the same, whether I am here or not. But that isn’t the point either. I was told two months ago that you would come, not by Mrs. Skelton, but by friends of mine, and that an attempt would be made on my life,” and at that she opened her eyes wide and sat there apparently amazed, “and here you are on schedule time and doing just as you were told, and apparently you aren’t the least bit ashamed to do it. But don’t you think it’s a pretty shabby game for you to play?” He stared at her wearily and she at him, but now for the moment she said nothing, just sat there.

“That big blue machine that was to have killed me the other night,” he went on, stretching matters a little in so far as his own knowledge was concerned, “was all arranged for long before you came down here. I haven’t the slightest idea why you work for Tilney, but I know now that that’s what you’re doing, and I’m sick of you and the whole thing. You’re just a plain little crook, that’s all, and I’m through with you and this whole thing, and I don’t want you to talk to me any more. What’s more, I’m not going to leave this hotel, either, and you can take that news to Tilney if you want to, or Mrs. Skelton or whoever else is managing things here for him. I’ve kept a day- to-day record of everything that’s happened so far, and I have witnesses, and if anything more happens to me here I’m going

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to the newspapers and expose the whole thing. If you had any sense of decency left you wouldn’t be in on anything like this, but you haven’t – you’re just a shabby little trickster, and that lets you out, and that’s all I have to say.”

He stood up and made as if to walk off, while Miss Carle sat there, seemingly dazed, then jumped up and called after him:

“Mr. Gregory! Please! Please! Mr. Gregory, I want to tell you something!”

He stopped and turned. She came hurriedly up to him. “Don’t go,” she pleaded, “not just yet. Wait a minute. Please

come back. I want to talk to you.” And though he looked at her rather determinedly, he followed her.

“Well?” he asked.

“You don’t understand how it is,” she pleaded, with a look of real concern in her eyes. “And I can’t tell you either, just now, but I will some time if you will let me. But I like you, and I really don’t want to do you any harm. Really, I don’t. I don’t know anything about these automobile things you’re telling about – truly I don’t. They’re all terrible and horrible to me, and if they are trying to do anything like that, I don’t know it, and I won’t have anything more to do with it – really I won’t. Oh, it’s terrible!” and she clenched her hands. “I do know Mr. Diamondberg now, I admit that, but I didn’t before I came down here, and Mr. Swayne and Mr. Tilney. I did come here to see if I could get you interested in me, but they didn’t tell me just why. They told me – Mrs. Skelton did – that you, or some people whom you represented, were trying to get evidence against some friends of theirs – Mr. Tilney’s, I believe – who were absolutely innocent, that you weren’t happy with your wife, and that if some one, any one, were able to make you fall

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in love with her or just become very good friends, she might be able to persuade you not to do it, you see. There wasn’t any plan, so far as I know, to injure you bodily in any way. They didn’t tell me that they wanted to injure you physically – really they didn’t. That’s all news to me, and dreadful. All they said was that they wanted to get some one to get you to stop – make it worth your while in a money way, if I could. I didn’t think there was anything so very wrong in that, seeing all they have done for me in the past – Mr. Tilney, Mrs. Skelton and some others. But after I saw you a little while I – “ she paused and looked at him, then away, “I didn’t think you were that kind of a man, you see, and so – well, it’s different now. I don’t want to do anything to hurt you. Really I don’t. I couldn’t – now.”

“So you admit now that you do know Mr. Tilney,” he commented sourly, but not without a sense of triumph behind it all.

“I just told you that,” she said.

She stopped, and Gregory stared at her suspiciously. That she liked him was plain, and in a sense it was different from that of a mere passing flirtation, and as for himself – well, he couldn’t help liking her in a genial way. He was free to admit that to himself, in spite of her trickery, and that she was attractive, and as yet she personally had not done anything to him, certainly nothing that he could prove. She seemed even now so young, although so sophisticated and wise, and much about her face, its smoothness, the delicate tracery of hair about her forehead, the drooping pout of the upper lip, sharpened his interest and caused him to meditate.

“Well?” he inquired after a time.

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“Oh, I wish you wouldn’t turn on me so and leave me,” she pleaded. “I haven’t done anything to you, have I? Not yet, anyhow.”

“That’s just the point – not yet. There’s the whole story in a nutshell.”

“Yes, but I promise you faithfully that I won’t, that I don’t intend to. Really I don’t. You won’t believe me, but that’s true. And I won’t, I give you my word, – truly. Why won’t you still be friends with me? I can’t tell you any more about myself now than I have – not now – but I will some time, and I wish you would still be friends with me. I promise not to do anything to cause you trouble. I haven’t really, have I? Have I?”

“How should I know?” he answered testily and roughly, the while believing that this was a deliberate attempt on her part to interest him in spite of himself, to get him not to leave yet. “It seems to me you’ve done enough, being with these people. You’ve led me into going about with them, for one thing. I would never have gone with them on most of these trips except for you. Isn’t that enough? What more do you want? And why can’t you tell me now,” he demanded, feeling in a way the authority of a victor, “who these people are and all about them? I’d like to know. It might be a help to me, if you really wanted to do something for me. What are their plans, their game?”

“I don’t know. I can’t tell you any more than I have, truly I can’t. If I find out, maybe I will some time. I promise to. But not now. I can’t, now. Can’t you trust me that much? Can’t you see that I like you, when I tell you so much? I haven’t any plan to injure you personally, truly I haven’t. I’m obliged to these people in one way and another, but nothing that would make

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me go that far. Won’t you believe me?” She opened her eyes very wide in injury. There was something new in her expression, a luring, coaxing something.

“I haven’t any one who is really close to me any more,” she went on, “not anybody I like. I suppose it’s all my own fault, but – “ her voice became very sweet.

In spite of his precautions and the knowledge that his wife was the best and most suitable companion for him in the world, and that he was permanently fixed through his affection for his child and the helpful, hopeful mother of it, nevertheless he was moved by some peculiarity of this girl’s temperament. What power had Tilney over her, that he could use her in this way? Think of it – a beautiful girl like this!

“What about Mrs. Skelton?” he demanded. “Who is she, anyhow? And these three gardeners around here? What is it they want?” (There were three gardeners of the grounds who whenever he and Imogene had been alone together anywhere managed somehow to be working near the scene – an arrival which caused him always instanter to depart.) “And Diamondberg?”

She insisted that in so far as the gardeners were concerned she knew absolutely nothing about them. If they were employed by Mrs. Skelton or any one, it was without her knowledge. As for Diamondberg, she explained that she had only met him since she had come here, but that she really did not like him. For some reason Mrs. Skelton had asked her to appear not to know him. Mrs. Skelton, she persisted, had known her years before in Cincinnati, as she had said, but more recently in the city. She had helped her to get various positions, twice on the stage. Once she had worked for Mr. Swayne, yes, for a

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year, but only as a clerk. She had never known anything about him or his plans or schemes, never. When Gregory wanted to know how it was that he was to be trapped by her, if at all, she insisted that she did not believe that he was to be trapped. It was all to have been as she said.

Gregory could not quite make out whether she was telling him the exact truth, but it was near enough, and it seemed to him that she could not be wholly lying. She seemed too frank and wishful. There was something sensuously affectionate in her point of view and her manner. He would know everything in the future, she insisted, if he wanted to, but only not now – please not now. Then she asked about his wife, where she was, when she was coming back.

“Do you love her very much?” she finally asked naively. “Certainly I love her. Why do you ask? I’ve a two-year-old

boy that I’m crazy about.”

She looked at him thoughtfully, a little puzzled or uncertain, he thought.

They agreed to be friends after a fashion before they were through. He confessed that he liked her, but still that he did not trust her – not yet. They were to go on as before, but only on condition that nothing further happened to him which could be traced to her. She frankly told him that she could not control the actions of the others. They were their own masters, and, after a fashion, hers, but in so far as she could she would protect him. She did not believe that they intended to try much longer. In so far as she was concerned, he might go away if he chose. She could see him anywhere, if he would. She was not sure if that would make any difference in their plans or not. Anyhow, she would not follow him if he did go

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unless he wished it, but she would prefer that he did. Perhaps nothing more would happen here. If she heard of anything she would tell him, or try to, in time. But she could not say more than that now. After a while, maybe, as soon as she could get out of here . . . there were certain things over which she had no control. She was very enigmatic and secretive, and he took it to mean that she was involved in some difficult situation and could not easily extricate herself.

“I wouldn’t take too much stock in her, at that,” Blount reflected when Gregory had told him about it. “Just keep your eyes open, that’s all. Don’t have anything to do with her in a compromising way. She may be lying to you again. Once a crook, always a crook.” Such was his philosophy.

Mrs. Skelton returned on the third day after his long conversation with Imogene, and in spite of the fact that they had seemed to come closer together than ever before, to have established a friendly semi-defensive pact, still he sensed treachery. He could not make out what it was. She seemed to be friendly, simple, gay, direct, even wooing – and yet – what? He thought at one time that she might be the unconscious psychologic victim of Mrs. Skelton or of some one else; at other times, an absolutely unprincipled political philanderer. While pretending to be “on the level,” as he phrased it, with him, she was crossing his path in such odd ways, making him uncertain as to whether, in spite of all she had said and was saying, she was still engaged in trying to compromise him. The whole thing began to take on the fascination of a game with the unconquerable lure of sex at the bottom of it – steeled as he was against compromising himself in any way.

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