Chapter XIII: “a Little Relaxation”

Somers watched them out of sight. Then he turned and opened the jail door with the key Satterfield had given him. Over his shoulder he asked:

“That the constable, McGregor? Call him back, will you?”

When Rufe had strolled pompously back, puffed with pride at his success in scattering the crowd, Somers surveyed him with distaste. Over one lank shoulder, he remarked acidly: “You’re a fine cop! Stick around, now. You’re quite safe; the danger’s all over, no thanks to you! Stay there till we come out; then I’ll give you the jail key.”

“And who are you, feller, that talks so biggety?” demanded Rufe.

Somers ignored him and stalked into the dark lockup. “Come on, you two,” he said. “We’ll give old Parker a look.”

I hesitated; but, seeing that Rufe had decided to make the best of a bad business and wait to get his key back, I followed presently.

Fumbling for a switch, Somers turned on the lights. My poor nephew sat in the steel cage at the right, huddled on the edge of his bunk, chin in hands. His face was very white; he blinked in the sudden illumination, then rose and faced us with quiet defiance.

“You’ve come to lynch me, I suppose,” he said calmly. “All right! Take me out, and let’s get it over with.”

“My poor boy!” I cried, moved almost to tears. If I had suffered, how dreadful this waiting must have been for him! “It’s all over, Lewis! They’ve gone; it’s all right--all right, boy!”

He shaded his eyes. Then, as they became used to the light: “Why, it’s you, unk! And Peter--and old Somers! Glad to see you, Floyd, old top, how are you?”

He reached an unsteady hand through the bars and then, quite suddenly, withdrew it and fell to sobbing. “I--I’m a fool,” he declared chokingly. “C-can’t help it!”

I snatched the key, unlocked the inner cage, and went in to him. “There, my boy! It’s all right now--all right now!” I patted his shoulder, but he turned from me and buried his face in the blankets.

“All over,” repeated Somers sagely. “That’s what ails him--reaction. Come along now; leave him alone. He’d rather we went; wouldn’t you, Parker, old top?” The black, rumpled head nodded violently. “He prefers to do his breaking down in private,” explained Somers softly. “Naturally--so do I. And between friends,” he continued aloud, “I could pull a couple of weeps myself on the very slightest provocation. It’s been rather a drag, you know!”

I noticed suddenly that his dark face was unwontedly sallow and colorless. His lean cheeks seemed to have hollowed further; his curiously light eyes had receded deep into their sockets.

“Buck up, Parker!” The brusque, indifferent voice wavered, almost broke. “Be back in the morning. ’By!” He herded us out before him, leaving Lewis to a solitude which, I fancy, was not unwelcome. Yet it cut me to leave the boy there so weary and broken.

Outside Somers locked the door, then beckoned Wakefield, who hung uncertainly in the nearer shadows. “Here! Take your key and get out! And mind”--his fierce hawk’s face was thrust out, his pale eyes glowed coldly--“take better care of it hereafter. If anything should happen to your prisoner, Heaven help you, that’s all! For I’ll take the matter up with you myself.” And the huge, burly constable quailed before the bitter menace of tone and gesture.

Somers gathered his bundle of papers and envelopes, rolled it loosely up and tucked it under one long arm. “Come along,” he urged--almost sullenly. “Let’s get home. I’m tired.”

We started obediently. Peter, glowing, took the taller man’s arm, though he had to reach up to do it.

“Oh, man, man!” he declared. “You’re a wonder!”

“Let go!” he answered peevishly. “What’s that?”

The man who had withstood so nonchalantly the menace of an angry mob flinched and gibed like a skittish colt as the shadows of a dark hallway moved, rustling.

A little, trembling voice answered. “It’s only me, Dorothy. Are you--is Lewis safe?”

She came forward timidly, and now I saw that Rosina was with her, bulkily maternal, one fat arm about the girl’s slender waist.

“I--I just couldn’t stay at home,” she explained, talking very fast, as against an expected rebuke. “So I persuaded Rosina to come along, and started for the j-jail. I thought maybe if I talked to them, or something--I--I----And anyway I wanted to be there my own self, if anything dreadful h-happened. I thought maybe I could s-save him.”

“Yah!” sneered Doctor Somers. “Schoolgirl romantics!” His voice was unpleasant; Peter let go his arm abruptly.

“I s-suppose so,” replied Dorothy meekly. “Anyway we were there, right around the corner. I came near running out, one time. But then they began to laugh that way, and I was sure, pretty near, that it must be all right. We were just starting home again.”

“You ought to have had more sense,” declared Somers severely. “Roaming around alone at this time of night! Didn’t I tell you Parker was perfectly safe? Well, come along. McGregor, where did you park that flivver? Let’s get home; there’s been foolishness enough for one night.”

He stalked off, and we followed. Dorothy took my arm and squeezed it. “I don’t care,” she whispered rebelliously. “I think he’s just _mean_! Anybody’d think Lewis belonged to some other body, instead of to me. Why, I had to come, Uncle George; I l-love him! What happened, anyway?” Feminine curiosity triumphed over her pique. “What made them laugh so?”

“It was Somers,” answered Peter. “He’s a wonder, that man! He stood ’em off with a basket of eggplants--made ’em think they were hand grenades--bombs, you know. He bluffed ’em to a standstill. Oh, he’s a prince, Somers is!”

“Yah!” said the “prince,” overhearing this last. “Don’t be a fool!”

Peter helped Dorothy and Rosina into the flivver’s rear seat, then clambered after. “Oh, yes!” he whispered to me. “But, my word, his manners are atrocious.”

In silence we drove back to Fort House. It was a clear, starlit night, and at my urging Peter left the flivver outside. To take it over to Lewis’ house, lock it in the garage and walk back seemed, to my weariness, an impossible labor.

We entered the big living room, and Peter snapped on the lights. “Ho-hum!” he said, as he yawned. “I’m for bed.” His pistol was in one hand, the shotgun in the other.

“Careful of that gun,” said Somers. “You’ll shoot somebody.” He advanced to the table and laid down his big bundle of note paper. “Oh, no, Peter, my son,” he went on amiably. His ill temper seemed to have dissipated itself entirely; he gave us that sudden, disarming smile. “None of you are for bed yet, except, maybe, Uncle George here.” He eyed my face, which was haggard enough, I suppose, with compassion. The familiar name came from his lips with such unaffected kindliness that I warmed to him again. “You’re done out, Uncle George; better get some rest. We young folks can manage.”

I shook my head. Between curiosity and stubborn pride, I was bound to remain. “I’m not superannuated yet,” I told him tartly. “What are you up to now?”

Somers laughed, and it was a friendly sound. “Oh, just a little relaxation after our late excitement,” he replied, unwrapping his bundle. “Peter, get ink and some pens. Dorothy”--and again the first names came so naturally, with such unassuming intimacy, that we could not but be softened--“you get your list--the addresses of all the people to whom you sent invitations. You saved it, didn’t you?”

“Why, yes,” said Dorothy, wondering. “What of it?”

Somers smiled at her rebellious glance. It was as if he had elected himself a member of the family and therefore ignored such little flashes of pettishness, as, I began to see, he expected us to ignore his brusqueness, his irritability.

“We’ve got to address all these notes,” he explained, “so they can be mailed in the morning. It’s pretty late, of course, but I hope most of your guests will get them in time. Don’t you see”--as the girl still looked at him blankly--“your wedding’s got to be postponed?”

“Oh-h! I f-forgot.”

A sudden light struck me. I stared at our amazing visitor with my mouth wide open. “Is that what you wanted the paper for?”

“Of course! I’ve done a hundred and four. Better write fifty more, to be safe.” He unfolded a note and handed it to Dorothy.

“‘Miss Mary McGregor regrets,’” she read, “‘that the marriage of her niece, Dorothy May, must be postponed indefinitely because of a serious accident.’”

“The wording may not be exactly right,” Somers apologized. “I didn’t have a chance to consult you about that. I thought it was as well to make the explanation rather vague.”

“Why, you wonderful man!” Dorothy beamed on him, holding his long, bony hand in both of hers. “It’s just perfect! How did you ever think of it? We--we’ve all been so upset.” Her lips quivered, and her soft eyes filled with tears. It was a dreadful situation for the poor child; no wonder she had forgotten this detail.

But my mind was filled with a wondering admiration for this lank, bony alienist. He had seemed brusque, casual, culpably indifferent to our troubles; yet it was he whose ready wit had saved my nephew. And it was he who, in the hurry and excitement of planning a defense against a lynching party, had yet found time and forethought to buy this note paper and, while waiting on the jail steps for an angry mob, had coolly phrased this unexceptionable announcement and had written it over and over, more than a hundred times!

I opened an envelope at random and glanced at the note which Dorothy still held; then I picked up the last note, still unfolded and only half written. All were done in the same flowing, copperplate script; they seemed facsimiles, each of the other. Not a letter was misformed, not a comma out of place; “postponed,” the last word of the unfinished note, was as carefully written as any, and the pen had not trembled or made a scrawl, as he laid his writing by to face the mob. Truly this Somers was a remarkable man, and I resolved that hereafter no mannerisms of his should irritate me.

Dorothy ran upstairs, to return presently with a long list of names and addresses. Somers divided the pile of envelopes, gave us each pen and ink, and set us to work around the library table.

“Working together we ought to be able to finish in two hours,” he declared. “When does the morning train leave? Eight-ten? I’ll take them down and get them stamped in time for that.”

Silence fell, broken only by the scratching of four pens.

It might have been an hour later--the hall clock had just struck two--when Miss Christie appeared in the doorway. Her eyes were heavy, her round face was flushed with sleep, and I noted for the first time how thick and glossy was her fine, fair hair. She was muffled to the chin in a shapeless, woolly bath robe; she yawned, shielding her mouth with a slender, well-modeled hand.

“Miss McGregor can’t sleep,” she explained in her pleasant, throaty drawl. “She sent me out to ask if you-all aren’t ever going to bed?” Her eyes widened a little; they were beautiful eyes; and a demure smile tugged at her mouth corners. “She says nobody thinks about her any more; and she wants to see you, Miss Dorothy. She says she just knows something underhand is going on in this house, and everybody’s trying to keep it from her.” And then, with a flash of curiosity unusual in her, normally the most incurious of women, she asked: “What _has_ happened anyway? And why are you-all sitting up so late?”

“Doctor Parker was nearly lynched to-night,” said Peter. “But it’s all right now; and Somers can prove he couldn’t have killed Gaskell anyhow--that the body was cold before he came out.”

“Oh-h-h!” Miss Christie’s cheeks went white, and her violet eyes opened. Again a sudden shock had brought startling beauty into her dull face. After a breathless moment she disappeared.

“Go see to your aunt, Dorothy,” said Somers, his eyes still fixed on the waving portières. “We’ll finish these up.”

When she had gone, he sat for a moment, staring absently at the doorway. “Hypothyroidism,” he murmured vaguely. “You know, Uncle George, that girl’s got the makings of a raving beauty in her!”

“Who, Dorothy? She’s a beauty now,” I replied.

“Huh? Oh, she’s well enough, but I meant the other one, Miss Christie. Wait till I’ve treated her a while, and you’ll see what I mean.”

He sighed, passed a lank, bony hand across his eyes, and picked up his pen once more: “Mr. and Mrs. R. Lawton McGregor, 42 Bank Street, Toronto, Canada.”