Three sevens A detective story
readjust his expression, let alone to escape. The flame was in his
heart. The heat of it was in his face.
Joan saw that something was up instantly. She had been glad to see
him. Now she stopped short.
“Well?” she said.
There was no use bluffing. Anyway, that was foreign to their
natures, especially in their own relationship.
“I saw your letter by accident,” said Gary.
“That’s all right, Gary.” She had an urge to consolation. “Sit down.”
Gary sat down. He wanted to master himself, but his desire to protest
was the greater.
“Writing to him?” he said.
“Yes.”
“‘Daniel Craig, Esquire!’”
“If you’ve come here to quarrel with me----”
“I came here to call--make up--ask you to take a spin, and I find----”
He stopped. His voice was getting husky. He was trembling with rage.
Joan felt sorry for him. Her family and his had been friends. He and
she had been playmates. His temper was a disease. She tried to reason
with him.
“Gary, you have everything in the world--a good name, a good family,
wealth, a fine brain----”
“Bah!”
“Every one says so. Don’t you think it would be the nice thing, and
the noble thing, to be a little charitable?”
“Pleading for him, are you?”
“I’m pleading for you,” she said gently.
“I need it more than he does.”
“You’re here. You’re hurt.”
“I know I’m hurt. I’ll admit it. You know I can’t tolerate this--this
felon intruding himself into your life. You don’t care. You encourage
him.”
“I want to encourage him,” said Joan steadily, “but not the way you
mean.”
“What, in Heaven’s name, is your father thinking about?”
“He himself is now convinced that Craig was never guilty of the crime
for which he was punished.”
“You persuaded him.”
Joan slowly shook her head. “There’s a man in San Pedro now who heard
a boy in Chicago tell about the shooting--a boy who takes drugs. The
boy says he himself shot the man Beekman.”
“This letter writing, I mean. What does your father think of that?”
“He doesn’t know anything about it.”
“He doesn’t?”
“For two reasons. He’s always trusted me in such matters. And this is
the first letter I’ve written.”
“Then tear it up.”
“No.”
“Tear it up! Joan, tear it up!”
“Gary, you’re unreasonable.”
“Unreasonable! I love you. I’m going to make you marry me. I find
you writing to an outlaw, an escaped convict--dazzled by his fame,
Napoleon of the Underworld! Bah! And I tell you--you call me
unreasonable----”
He hadn’t been speaking very loudly, but he had gradually been
letting his passion get the better of him. He went incoherent. His
voice was strangled. He seized the letter from the hammock and
lacerated it with his fists.
It was all up, all over. There was never going to be a marriage of
Joan Gracie and Gary Lee. Knowledge of this possibly came to both of
them right then and there. Perhaps neither of them, in spite of Lee’s
declarations, had ever suspected before just what a large place this
possibility had had in their lives. It had been a mountain in the
mental landscapes of both of them, even in Joan’s. Now the mountain
was gone.
The surprising discovery was not a signal for fresh passion, not
of emotion, even. The resultant coldness between them, as they
stood there and faced each other on the porch, could not be called
emotion. It was a vacuity; still, with that hint of an ache in it
which vacuity so often entails.
“I--didn’t--mean to go so far,” said Gary.
“Sit down,” said Joan.
He reseated himself. He lit a moody cigarette. His eyes were on the
floor of the porch. There was a passage of seconds before he found
that he was looking at the letter he had twisted. He picked it up. He
returned it to the hammock. Joan also had seated herself. She made a
blind movement to pick up a bit of sewing.
Her eyes were down. He looked at her.
“You know how I feel,” he said.
She gave him a bright look. It was manifest there was no anger in her
at all.
“I think I do, Gary.”
“Then what’s the trouble all about?”
“It’s because,” she hesitated, “I don’t want you to think me unjust.”
“Say it.”
“It’s because you don’t seem to know how other people feel.”
He meditated.
“We might as well beat this thing out.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve known me all your life--known my family, my family history.”
“We’ve quarreled and made up,” said Joan. “If your sister, Alice--you
know how she and I loved each other even when we were mere babies--if
Alice had lived, she couldn’t have taken a greater interest and pride
in you than I have, Gary.”
“Yet you let this convict--that’s what he is; there’s no use in
mincing matters--wreck our friendship.”
“It’s you who are wrecking it, Gary.”
“In what way?”
“By your injustice--by trying to dictate to me.”
“I won’t stand by and see you ruin yourself and your father. This
fellow isn’t worth it. All the jailbirds in the country aren’t worth
it. If you’re blind I’ll show you the light.”
“In what way?”
“First, by putting him back behind the bars, where he belongs.”
“And if he doesn’t belong there?”
“But he does. He broke jail. That’s a felony in itself. He compounded
the felony by turning the others loose.”
“But there is evidence that he is innocent, that he should never have
gone to prison.”
“That’s irrelevant. I know where he is. It’s my duty--my double duty,
in the light of all that I know, and have done, to get him back.”
He got up. His anger was warming again, but this time his brain was
in control.
“Gary!”
“I’m going to send a telegram.”
“Stop! You mustn’t.”
“Why?”
“In a little while--just a little while--he’ll be pardoned. And in
the meantime he is trying to pay a debt.”
Gary laughed.
“There’ll be high times,” he said, “when women are running things:
sentimentality for justice, intuition instead of logic.”
It was his tone more than his words that made Joan flare. All of her
carefully suppressed feeling of a little while ago began to show
through her reserve like little tongues of flame.
“You’re silly.”
“Am I?”
“You’re making yourself unhappy, and you’re making others unhappy. I
don’t care. Do what you want to.”
“It’s just because you don’t care that I’m going to straighten this
thing out.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll wire the governor. There is
just about time to get the requisition papers through. Our man ought
to be on his way back to San Pedro by to-morrow night.”
He picked up his hat. She blocked his way, panted into speech.
“You talk about caring. You! What a mockery it was! You, who
pretended to love me, who talked of my marrying you! What a mockery
it was! You!”
“I started out to say something along that line,” he said tensely,
but quietly enough. “You turned me off. I offered you everything I
have and am. You seem to prefer this outlaw.”
“I’m not considering him as an outlaw.”
“Perhaps you’re considering him as a friend.”
“What if I should?”
“I dare say he’d be delighted.”
“Do you want to read the letter that he wrote me?”
“No, I do not.”
“There’s nothing in it that any one might not read. You’re wronging
him, Gary.”
“By heavens, Joan,” he exploded--still softly--“you’ll end by making
me think that you’re in love with this brute.”
“He’s not a brute.”
“You do love him.”
“Maybe I do.”
“The daughter of Major Gracie in love with----”
“Keep quiet! Don’t talk to me! Love! You don’t know the meaning of
the word. You babble it as if it were a plaything or an acre of land.”
“I loved you long enough.”
“You never did. You wanted me for yourself! You meant to take me for
yourself! And you called that love!” Her voice faltered a little. She
bit her lip. She turned her face away. But immediately she was facing
him again, her eyes darker than usual, blue and liquid fire. “And
it’s giving--not taking--that is love.”
For a moment longer they were facing each other, each of them a frail
human dike to the big emotions storming back of them; or, rather,
perhaps, the head of an arrow in a bent bow.
Their eyes were clashing, but neither spoke, as Gary passed the girl
and descended the steps.
CHAPTER XXIV
IN THE THROES
From that first interview of his with the field marshals of the
reform movement, Craig had slipped back again into the camp of the
enemy. There was that girl named Violet, whom Bartow had incidentally
mentioned to him as a friend of Trick O’Ray. Through her he had
learned of the hiding place of Ben Jarvis.
Dangerous business, with danger lurking around a dozen corners; a
nether region, sure enough, where all was darkness, figuratively
speaking, and the nerves of the inhabitants thereof were what might
be expected of the nerves of those who live in the dark. Each one
uncertain as to what the next minute might show; each one ready to
strike his neighbor; with friends and foes all intermingled; no man
or woman fully trustful of any one but himself or herself.
Something of an event, though, the arrival of this distinguished
stranger known and honored as Three Sevens.
It didn’t matter very much where he came from, or what his remote
ancestors were. He was young. He was good to look at. He apparently
had all the money in the world. He was famous. He had emptied a
prison single-handed. Here he was, still at large, defying arrest,
with all the audacity of a pirate walking the streets of old
Charleston.
It wasn’t only the audacity, though, that appealed to Violet’s heart.
Here was a gentleman. Where did she get it--that hankering for
politeness and consideration? Where did the flower, her namesake,
get its hankering for sun and air? Violet was young. Violet was
comely.
There was another lady--a lady, perhaps, the other way round. That is
to say, well-bred, educated, beautiful, costumed like a Fifth Avenue
heiress. The lady who was the friend of Max, who was the friend of
Count Wolf. And yet, so they said, a lady who would have poisoned
one’s wine as quickly as anybody, should that be necessary--either
on her own account or on account of any one with sufficient power or
sufficient money to get her to act.
“_La Marebello_”--the Marebello--some even called her the Princess
Marebello!
With her also Craig became acquainted. In her also it is just
possible that Craig may also have awakened some faint murmur of
long-forgotten voices. How strange, when he was so young, that he
should hold so aloof from flattery, from wooing.
It was she who told Craig not only about Max and Count Wolf, and
where the latter could be reached, and most hastily brought to
Chicago; she gave him also queer bits of information from high
official sources, things that ensnared his reputation, gave him
moments of uneasiness, made him hasten his plans.
For example, she told him that Artie, the lawyer, had been arrested.
“By the police?”
No, not by the police, but by the detectives attached to the district
attorney’s office, and that the maneuver had thrown a scare into
certain persons.
“The crooks?”
No; the police; especially the head of the police system; to be
particular, into the stout person of Captain Fleyenhall.
“Who’s Fleyenhall?”
Didn’t he know? What a baby he was! Ah, my dear little Three Sevens!
Why, Fleyenhall was the real ruler of the police department, the
minister plenipotentiary--the Marebello could use words like that--of
all the crooked politicians.
There was even a third woman, a retired little widow in a retired
little street, who had lost all her money once in a crooked mining
scheme, with the crookedness whereof the widow, needless to say,
had nothing to do. And it was to her house that the once wealthy
and powerful Taylor Leamy, reported dead in San Francisco as the
result of a drowning accident, but none the less very much alive, was