Chapter XXVII: A Man with a Gun

Carleton Lynne raised himself in the bed, not without some difficulty, and stared at the intruder. He was weak, and therefore unable to defend himself, but no trace of fear showed upon his features, or in his eyes, which gazed quite calmly into the eyes of the man who had quietly seated himself upon a chair ten feet away and who was holding an automatic pistol so that the muzzle of it menaced him.

Carleton Lynne had stared death in the face too many times to be greatly frightened by the present episode. Experience had taught him that when one man threatens another with a gun, he does not intend to make use of it unless the necessity arises; and as yet there was no necessity that this gun should be used.

“Well?” he inquired composedly, and with the ghost of a smile upon his lean face which plainly showed the ravages of the long illness he had undergone.

“You’re a cool one,” was the response, delivered in a heavy bass voice which was yet modulated to the necessities of the occasion so that the sound of it would not penetrate beyond the walls of the sleeping room of the present master of the Lynne mansion.

“I am also a sick one--or, rather, a very weak one, as a consequence of having been extremely ill for a long time,” was the calm reply. “I could not fight you if I tried, there is no electric button within my reach, and I have no weapon under the pillow, or in the bed, so your present attitude with that gun in your hand is quite unnecessary.”

The unexpected, uninvited guest chuckled and grinned, and lowered the gun, which he dropped into the side pocket of his sack coat.

“You are Carleton Lynne,” he said--as one might have said “this is a room in a house.”

“I am,” was the reply.

“You are the master of millions, too.”

“About a dozen of them, I think--more or less.”

“What are you going to do with them?”

“Really, I don’t know. I haven’t given much thought to that aspect of the subject, as yet.” This reply was given with a smile, and Lynne hitched himself farther up in the bed and crowded the extra pillow behind him.

“It’s time you did, then.”

“Very possibly. Is it because you wished to give me some disinterested advice on the subject that I am indebted to this midnight call?”

“Do I look like a fellow who goes around giving disinterested advice?” was the gruff response.

“No; to tell you the truth, you do not. On the contrary, you bear a very close resemblance to an unmitigated scoundrel, coward, and squaw man whom I once knew in the Klondike. He was known up there as Red Mike.” This answer was delivered as coolly and as imperturbably as it might have been had their positions been reversed.

But the man seated on the chair seemed to accept it as a compliment rather than as an affront. He grinned affably and shifted one leg across the other knee.

“I’m glad you haven’t forgotten me, Lynne,” he said. “The fact may hasten the adjustment of matters between us.”

“One does not soon forget an enforced association with vermin,” said Lynne.

“That will be about all of that sort of twaddle, Mr. Carleton Lynne,” Red Mike remarked, with a slow scowl. “We can talk decently together, without slinging mud, or I’ll fix you so that you won’t be able to talk at all. Take your choice.”

“Very well; talk away--if you have anything to say that can be listened to by a self-respecting gentleman. I find that I have been mistaken about you, and I’m very sorry that it was a mistake.”

“What about?”

“I had been informed--authentically, I supposed--that you were dead.”

“Well, I heard the same thing about you; only I’m glad that it has turned out to be a mistake, for otherwise you would not have come into these millions.”

“Quite true, Michael the Red.”

“Hank Carroll would have raked in the pot, eh?”

“Oh, no, he wouldn’t. He’d have got what is coming to him now, within a short time, just the same. It happens in a room with a little door, and it is done by shifting an electric switch. The explanation may interest you, Michael, because that is what you are destined to get, too.”

“It will be long after you are dead and buried, if I do.”

“Possibly; but that, if it be true, does not alter the inevitable. Might I venture to ask what brought you here?”

“Your millions, Lynne. I want a couple of them.”

“Oh, you do, eh?”

“I do--and you’re going to give them to me.”

“Oh, no, I’m not. You’re quite mistaken about that.”

“If you do not--if you refuse the terms I shall offer you, I’ll----”

“Don’t say it, Mike.”

“Why not? Have I scared you for once?”

“I’m not one of the scary kind, as you know; and you’d only be indulging in another lie. You wouldn’t kill me; not now, at least.”

“Why not?”

“Because if you did that there would be no show at all for you to get something out of me, while on the other hand while there is life there is also hope. Eh, Mike? I am wondering how you ever scraped up courage to come here and face me, even though you know that I am physically unable to defend myself. Who is behind you in this affair, Mike? You never would have dared to undertake it alone; never at all if you had not been egged on to it by some one with a stronger will. It must have been a woman, Mike; men never had much influence over you.”

Red Mike moved uneasily in his chair, and shifted his legs; also he gave the subject a different channel.

“I took the trail of Henry Carroll, and kept it for two years after I found out what he was up to,” he said. “I was just about to fall on him when----”

“Well, why do you hesitate?”

“When Nick Carter spoiled it all after Hank was fool enough to murder those two women in that flat at the Creotoria.”

Carleton Lynne laughed aloud. Then he said:

“You would never have ‘fallen’ upon Carroll, Mike, and you know it.”

“Why not, I’d like to know.”

“Because you were afraid of him; you always were--more afraid of him than you were of me in those old days, and that is saying considerable.”

“Afraid of nothing!”

“Afraid of everything, rather. You always were a despicable coward, Michael--don’t look so savage; words can’t hurt you--and Carroll was never afraid of anything. Have you forgotten the time he made you crawl on your hands and knees out of the saloon at Nome? And that, without showing a gun, while you held one in your hand all the time and were afraid to attempt to use it.”

The scowl on Red Mike’s face grew threatening, for, after all, the man on the bed was at his mercy.

He dropped his right hand into the coat pocket again and fondled the automatic gun, as if half inclined to use it; and Lynne, without changing the tone of his voice but realizing the danger of the moment, added:

“Maybe the effect upon you was hypnotic.”

The scowl disappeared, and the right hand came out of the pocket, without the gun.

“That was it. He always did half hypnotize me, Lynne. I was never really afraid of Carroll, but those deadly cold eyes of his always affected me somehow so that I could not move a muscle.”

“Quite so,” replied the man on the bed ironically.

“Say, are you going to give me a slice off of that fortune of yours?”

“I am--not!”

“Then it’s yours for the long, dark journey, Lynne.”

“Nonsense, Mike; and besides, I have followed that trail so near to the end of it so many times that it has become quite familiar. I’m not at all afraid of it. Who is the woman, Mike?”

“What woman? What are you talking about?”

“The woman who induced you to come here.”

“There isn’t any woman.”

“Oh, isn’t there? I thought that perhaps you had hit it off with Mrs. Hurd-Babbington. She has had her eyes upon the Lynne millions for a long time, and the gentleman you mentioned a moment ago, Mr. Nicholas Carter by name, has told me that she won’t lose sight of them. I suppose I could buy you both off with a million apiece, eh?”

“I want two. I don’t know anything about any woman.”

“You want two millions, do you? What would you do with them if you had them?” Lynne pulled himself still farther up in the bed as he asked the question.

“I’ll tell you one thing that I would do,” was the eager reply, for he evidently believed that Lynne was weakening, and might, after all, give up. “I’d get out of your sight and mind, and stay out of them.”

“Would a check satisfy you, if I should get out of this bed and write one now?”

“No, it would not. I’m not such a fool as all that.”

“Well, you don’t suppose that I am in the habit of taking two million dollars, in cash, to bed with me, do you?”

“No, but I do know one thing about you, Lynne.”

“Do you, really? What is that interesting thing that you do know about me?”

“I know you to be a man of your word. If you should give me your solemn promise that you would put two millions in cash in my hand to-morrow or next day, and give me fourteen days’ start without attempting to follow, or to find out where I had gone, you’d keep your word to the letter. I know that.”

“You pay me quite a compliment, Red Mike.”

“Will you do that, Lynne?”

“I am considering it. Don’t hurry me. Will you tell me the name of the woman?”

“Yes, if you consent.”

“So there really is a woman behind you, after all, eh?”

“Stow that, Lynne. If you do not give your consent”--he drew the automatic from his pocket--“I’ll use this little toy, right here, and now. That’s final, and I’ll give you just five minutes to answer.”