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Title: Honor BrightAuthor: Max Brand (Frederick Faust)* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *eBook No.: 1402051h.htmlLanguage: EnglishDate first posted: May 2014Most recent update: May 2014This eBook was produced by Paul Moulder and Roy Glashan.Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editionswhich are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright noticeis included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particularpaper edition.Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check thecopyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing thisfile.This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictionswhatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the termsof the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online athttp://gutenberg.net.au/licence.htmlTo contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au
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ADRIENNE stepped into the library through the French window—her family'sgarden adjoins mine—and sat down in the red tapestry chair near thefire. MyAdrienne—your Adrienne, every man's Adrienne—selected that chairbecause itmade a perfect background for her black velvet evening wrap, and she wanted tobe near the fire so that the bright blaze of it would throw up little goldenlights into her hair. I got up and poured her favorite drink, which is a bit ofplain water without ice, just stained with Scotch.
"This is very pretty, Adrienne," I said. "With your profile just so andyour head leaning a little, you look like a child."
"When you know the truth, does it matter how I look?" she said. "How isyour poor back, Uncle Oliver?"
I had been moving some great heavy pots of hydrangeas a few days before onthe terrace and had given myself a wrench, but it was not sympathy that causedAdrienne to ask that question; something in my speech had annoyed her, and shewished to remind me, in her sweetly poisonous way, that the first sign of ageis weakness in the small of the back.
"I'm perfectly well," I said.
"I'm very glad,darling" said my Adrienne, "but don't insist onbeing so strong and manly just now, dear."
I looked up from filling my pipe and waited.
"You know you prefer cigarettes," she explained.
I put the pipe aside without a word and picked up a cigarette.
Adrienne rose and came, rustling, to stand over me with her fragrance whileshe held the lighter. "Isn't that the wrong end, dear?" she suggested.
I reversed the infernal cigarette, and she lighted it. These nearapproaches or forays of Adrienne's often make me nervous, and of this truth sheis exquisitely aware.
"Are you angry?" she asked.
"Just enough to give you my full attention," I told her.
"It's your usual system."
"But I don't come here to annoy you, do I, Uncle Oliver?" she wanted toknow. "You don't really feel that I come here to annoy you, Uncle Oliver?" shesaid sadly.
"You come here to think out loud, because I'm so old and safe," Ianswered.
"Oh no; not really sosafe," she said.
"Well, well! Who is it this time?" I asked.
"Something terrible happened," she told me.
"What's his name?" I asked cannily. "And who is he?"
"It's not so much a 'who' as a 'what,'" decided Adrienne."Will you help me, dear Uncle Oliver?"
"I suppose so," I said.
She went back to her chair and held out one hand to be gilded by thefirelight, yet I felt that only part of her attention was being given to thecomposition of this picture and that she was in real trouble. I was astonishedand touched.
"I have an appointment for eight o'clock," she said. "You won't let me belate? It's frightfully important."
"Very well," I answered. "I won't let you be late. But now let's get onwith your problem. What's his name?"
"Gilbert Ware," she said.
I felt a shock of loss and regret. For years I had realized that myAdrienne was growing up, but still it had remained easy for me to think of herin short skirts and with her hair in braids. A child belongs to every man; awoman belongs to one only; and so my heart shrank at the name of Gilbert Ware.He filled both the imagination and the eye. If he was not one of the richestten men in the country, he was not far behind them. On his mother's side hewent back to the best of Massachusetts, and by his father he was Old Virginia;placed in the diplomatic corps by the Ware dynasty, he had tasted the best theworld offers by the time he was thirty; and finally he had the beauty, togetherwith the raised eyebrows, of one of the Founding Fathers. I daresay that he wasthe catch of the whole country. Such a man did not waste his time on children,which meant that my Adrienne was now a woman.
She explained, "He gave a week-end party at his house in the country, and Iwas there."
"At his country house?" I said. "Why, Adrienne, you really are gettingon."
She did not answer but continued to look sidelong thoughts, so that Iunderstood she was about to tell her story. I took my drink in hand, comfortedmy sight with her, and prepared to listen. Of course, "uncle" is merely a titlethat she chose for me, but I have watched Adrienne and listened carefully forseveral years without coming to the end of her. She is strangely combined ofwarmth and aloofness. Not even her school friends could nickname her "Addie,"and no one fails to put the accent on the last syllable of "Adrienne" becauseshe seems, if not a Latin, at least very different. Actually, her blood ismostly of the far north—Norwegian, I think—and those people of theendlessnights have gifts of deep brooding and long, long dreams.
Adrienne is continually in and out of love like a trout in sun and shadow,but the net never seems to take her. When I thought of the name and place ofGilbert Ware in the world, I wondered if this might not be the time. I wonderedalso how much truth might be mingled in this story with the fictions ofAdrienne, for, though I hope she is not a deliberate teller of untruths, she isat least a weaver who loves to have many colors in her web. With the questionthere came to me a sudden surety that tonight, at least, I should hear nothingbut the truth. Also I knew, for no proper reason, that she was to speak of agreat event. At this point in my thoughts she began to talk in that voice solight and musical that more than once, it surprises me to say, she has talkedme to sleep.
She was quite excited, she said, when the invitation came, for she had seenGilbert Ware only a few times and, though she had done her very best, she hadnot been sure that he noticed her. Now she put her mind thoroughly upon thefuture, as she laid out the things for her maid to pack. She hesitatedparticularly over the jewels for, if she took none, she might seem dull, andtoo many might be pretentious. At last she hit on a diamond bracelet—amerethread of light—and a little ruby pendant of the finest pigeon's blood.The twotogether might be worth some thirty-five hundred or four-thousand dollars.(Adrienne is very good at figures.)
Long before her packing was finished or her thoughts arranged, young HarryStrode stopped by to drive her down to the country. She permitted this servicefrom him, but not with pleasure. She had been quite fond of Strode at one timeand, during an extremely dull evening, she had permitted herself to tell himso. But, since Adrienne cannot endure sulky men with long memories, her likingafterwards had turned the other way.
Once in the car, she was as pleasant as possible. However, this was a darkafternoon with such a roar and rushing of rain that conversation meantstraining the voice. She had intended to be kind to Harry, but not in the faceof such difficulties. Adrienne, who has more than one of the talents of a cat,found herself, while considering the next subject for talk, so comfortable thatpresently she was asleep.
She roused when Harry paused to take a hitchhiker in out of the downpour.He was a pale man of about my age, she said, with his head thrust forward atthe end of a long neck like a caricature of all the bookkeepers in the world. Acertain restless hunger in his eyes intrigued her for a moment, but then, inspite of the best intentions, she was asleep again; and the fellow sat quietlyin the back seat.
At the entrance to Ware's driveway, Strode let out his extrapassenger—thelights of a town were only a short distance down the road—and Adrienneremembers how the poor fellow stood in the rain with his hat in his hand,thanking them and waiting for the car to pass on. This roused her so that shewas wide awake when they entered the house.
The place was quite a disappointment to her for it combined two faults: itwas both baronial and new. Yet she could understand that a man like Ware mightsimply pick the best of architects and say to him, "Here is the land. Select aproper site and build me an appropriate country house. Suppose you take a yearto do it, gardens and all." But the moment she went into the living room shewas warmed by the realization that Ware was giving the party entirely for her.Every one of the dozen or more house guests had been chosen from among heryounger friends. It was only a pity, said Adrienne, that he had not includedsome of the older ones. Saying this, she smiled at me.
In the great living room, huge as a Tudor hall, tea was being served indelicate porcelain with faint chimings of silver; and there was Gilbert Ware,as ingratiating and observant a host as though he were by no means the catch ofa continent. Adrienne made up her mind to have him. Her tactics were to strikeat once and to keep on striking.
When Ware asked her about the trip down, she said, "I don't want to thinkabout it."
"Why not?"
"No—please! It was only a hitchhiker we picked up, and I simply startedimagining things about him."
"Something is bothering you," said Gilbert Ware, "so let's have it out." Hehad a doctor's air, attentive for humane reasons even to foolish stories.
"It was like something you're afraid of seeing by night," said Adrienne.
The storm jumped suddenly at the house and set the tall windows trembling.Since it was only twilight, the curtains had not been drawn, and she looked outover a shimmer of lawn into the green gloom.
"Harry had his eyes glued to the road," she said. "He's such a carefuldriver, but it seemed to me that hemust have known what I was seeing asI sat there, pretending to be asleep. In the mirror I could see the man's face;I think I'll always see it."
"The hitchhiker's?"
"It was so pale," said Adrienne. "It was so long and dead and white...Please don't make me remember."
"Don't talk about it; you look sick," said Ware.
"I'll be all right. It was only a dream. There wasn't any reality about it.Nothing so evilcould be real. You know, the sort of horror that smilesat you in the dark?"
Ware was listening to her but with plenty of reservation in those raisedeighteenth-century eyebrows. She realized then that, if she married him, shemight find herself playing a part forever. The thought excited her as she wenton with the embroideries of her little story. Actually therehad beensomething strange about the hitchhiker. Now she enlarged upon him.
She said she had seen the devil wake up in the eyes of the man when, as sheraised her hand to her hat, her sleeve fell back and showed the diamondbracelet; she had seen the beast of prey in him appear like some grisly shapethat floats up under water, never clearly seen. It wasn't the thought of mererobbery and loss that troubled her but that brooding sense of a monstrouspresence.
Gradually the man leaned forward in his seat, preparing to act. She wastrying desperately to convey a warning to Harry Strode. If it were too overt,the signal would bring the attack on them instantly. She tried to signal withher eyes, with her hand. She slipped her foot over and touched Strode's. But heremained impervious, simply fixing his eyes on the road and singing a song,said Adrienne, which declared that for alma mater he would stand like a walland never, never fall; also, when he took the field, he would never yield.
When she talked about the college hymn, something melted in Ware's eyes. Abarrier fell, admitting her, and whether or not he believed all the tale,plainly he enjoyed the art of it.
She made a quick ending. A police car, she said, suddenly came up behindthem, used its siren, and went by. This was enough to make the hitchhikerchange his mind. Perhaps the sight of the uniforms recalled to him certainunforgettable years of punishment. He relaxed in his seat, and a moment laterthey were letting him out at the entrance to the Ware place. She never wouldforget him standing in the rain with that faint white mockery of a smile,thanking them for the ride. She had reached the house still half sick, but whatsaved the day for her was a desire to laugh, because Harry Strode had gonethrough it all aware of nothing but a desire to rally around a banner and, witha heart so true, die for the red and blue.
Ware chuckled at this. Then he said that the guest rooms of his place werecottages scattered through the grounds but, if she were nervous after herexperience, she should have a place in the main building.
"No, no!" said Adrienne. "I've talked it all out now, and I won't think ofit again. You wereso right to make me tell you everything. I didn'twant to say anything about it before the rest of them; there's something sougly about that kind of a story, don't you think?"
Ware's eyes dwelt on her for a moment before he agreed; then he let thegeneral conversation flow in upon them, and Adrienne found the eyes of theother girls fixed on her a little grimly. They took it for granted that shemerely had succeeded in putting herself on trial, but her resolution washardening every instant. She would take this man, to have and to hold; shewould take him—if for no other reason—because he was hard toget.
Everyone went to change, and Adrienne was shown to her cottage. There werea number of these cabins, each tucked into a special environment: one by apool, another drenched in vines, one lost in towering woods, and a fourthsunning itself on a little green hilltop, though there was only rain streamingdown when Adrienne was taken to it. It was built snug and tight as a ship'scabin, but it was a complete job even to a sunken pool in the bathroom.
When she had dressed—in black, she said, with only her rubypendant—she puton overshoes and a featherweight cellophane slicker which were provided andwent back to the house with a flashlight. There was only a misting rain, bythis time, but the trees still looked a little wild from the storm.
A few moments after her return to the house, dinner was announced. Whenthey went in, she found herself at the right hand of Ware and felt that thegame was half won. Yet he made no particular effort at the table; he preferredto watch her and smile.
She was surprised when suddenly he asked her what she thought of thehouse.
"Doesn't it need something?"
"Does it? What would you say? More color?"
"No, but more time."
This seemed to please him. For an instant he came out of the distance andsat within touch of her, his eyes clear and keen, but after that she felt thathe had drawn away again. She did not feel that she had failed but that heneeded more leisure to make up his mind. She determined to give it to him, soshe pleaded a frightful headache and went off to bed early.
By this time the storm had slid away down the sky and out of sight, but afew clouds were flying. The moon hit one of them and dashed the whole weight ofit into a shining spray like a bow wave. Adrienne enjoyed these things. Sheknew that she was on trial—for fifty million, so to speak—but hereye wasturned confidently to the future.
She decided, as she lay stretched on her bed in the cottage, looking at theapple-green ceiling, that Gilbert Ware probably wanted a restful creature for awife. He was an unhurried sight-seer in life, determined to take nothing butthe best. She, with her imaginings and her acting, had amused him for a time.She should have adopted an entirely different role and made herself, like him,a quiet observer, a little tired by the game. Adrienne decided that in themorning she would show him a change of pace.
The moment she reached this intelligent conclusion she grew sleepy, but asshe yawned, her arms wide open to welcome the aching drowsiness, she heard aslight sound and observed that the knob of her door was turning. She had lockedthe door, but a thrill of horror froze her heart. Not since she was a child andghosts had haunted her in dark corridors had she felt such a thoroughlysufficient chill. She reached for the telephone and turned the dial. The bellin the main house began to buzz with a deep, soft voice. The buzzing continued,a far-away sound on the wire and a hollow echoing in Adrienne. Then not aservant but Ware himself spoke.
"It's Adrienne Lester," she whispered. "Someone is trying to get into mycottage!"
He said, with his eternal calm, "Someone with a long, white, evil face, nodoubt?" He laughed and rang off.
She could not believe it, but there it was. Her play-acting had beenperfectly patent to him.
The doorknob no longer was turning. Instead, there was a very discreetsound of metal scratching on metal. She remembered now not the sins of her pastbut the old fable about the little boy who had called "Wolf! Wolf!" once toooften. For an instant she thought of being merely beautiful and helpless;instead, she got up and seized the heavy poker which stood in the brass bucketbeside the fire. At the same time the door opened.
A gust of night air came in along with her hitchhiker who looked "like acaricature of all the bookkeepers in the world." He closed the door with hisfoot and pushed his hands into his coat pockets. He was very wet. When hemoved, his feet made squashy sounds in his shoes. The rim of his hat, which hedid not remove, hung down around his long, pallid face. A thin purple dye,which soaked out of his coat, had streaked the white of his shirt and, sincethe coat collar was turned up, had left a mark like a cut across his throat. Helooked at Adrienne and at the poker she held, then turned his back on her andwent to the bedside table where her jewels were lying. He dropped them into acoat pocket.
He was quite hunched and so thin that she could almost count the vertebraethrough his coat, but in spite of his apparent weakness she put the poker backinto the brass bucket. She was young, swift, strong, but only as a woman. And,though he was by no means a big man, she knew that he could pluck the weaponout of her hands with ease. The knowledge sickened her a little; for the firsttime she was insufficient in an emergency. My Adrienne slipped quietly towardthe door.
"No," said the hitchhiker, and shook his head at her.
She turned for an instant toward the blackness of the outer night, but shedared not flee because of the nightmare that might pursue her. She went back tothe fire.
A small pool was collecting around the man's feet; she watched the growthof it on the Chinese rug across the tongue and lower jaw of a little dragon.
"How do you feel?" he asked.
"I'm all right," said Adrienne.
"You're not afraid?"
"I was, terribly. But it's better now that you're talking," she said.
She thought that it was a pleasant remark, and she made it with a smile,but all the time the sickness of the fear was deepening in her, thickening likea new taste, because the hitchhiker was aware of her from head to foot and fromfoot to head. It was only for a moment that his eyes touched her in thisfashion, but the screaming muscles began to tremble in her throat.
He kept nodding his head up and down in understanding. He ran the tip ofhis tongue over his lips. "It always makes me kind of laugh," he said, "the wayyou people get scared. Once I got into a place and in the first bedroom, whereI didn't expect it, there was a young fellow lying reading. He'd heardsomething. He knew I was inside the room, but he didn't dare to turn his head.I stood there and watched. The magazine was resting on his chest, and his heartwas thumping so hard that it made the pages keep stirring like leaves in awind. He was young, and he was twice as big as me; but nothing is as big as thethings that come out of the night."
"What happened, then? What did you do?" asked Adrienne.
"Don't scream or nothing," said the thief. "I'm gonna turn out thelight."
He turned out the light so that there was only the fire to send his shadowand hers up the wall and over the ceiling in waves and tremblings.
Adrienne picked up the poker again.
"Yeah, you'd fight, wouldn't you?" he said, and laughed a little. "Gotanything to drink in here?"
"No," said Adrienne.
"What's over here?" and he pulled open a small door set into the wall.
Two flasks of cut glass glimmered inside the niche. He sniffed at them.
"Brandy and Scotch. Funny how you people never know that bourbon is betterthan Scotch... Have some?"
"No," said Adrienne.
"Here's down the hatch!"
"Don't drink it!" cried Adrienne.
"Why not?"
"Please don't drink it!" she begged.
"Ah, that's what you think, is it? Well, here's down the hatch!"
He took a good swallow, and while his head was back, his eyes half closed,she freshened her grip on the poker, but still she could not act. She put thepoker back in place for the second time, because it came to her that all thedanger she dreaded was, in fact, closed in the room with her and that she wouldhave to meet it with a different kind of force.
He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, which made a smear across hisface, and then he sat down beside the fire. Adrienne sank into the oppositechair.
"They spent some money onyou all right," he said. "I rememberhearing a rich feller say, once... I used to be a plumber, and plumbers hearwhat people say, but a length of cast-iron pipe rolled on me, and it gave me akind of a twist in the back, so I wasn't any good, after that. I had to use theold bean, so I used it..." He seemed to have lost his place in theconversation. "Where was I at?" He took another drink.
"You were about to say how much money is spent on us."
"This feller was saying that his girl cost ten thousand a year from twelveyears up. Travel, governess, maid, school—he said ten thousand wouldn'tcoverit. Ten thousand for ten years. That's a hundred grand. How many languages yougot?"
"French and Italian, a little. And a bit of German."
"You don't look like you would know any German."
"They sent me to Vienna for a year. To study singing."
"I guess you can do that pretty good."
"Not very."
"Sing 'Home on the Range,' dead soft."
She sang "Home on the Range" softly. He finished the flask of Scotch whilehe listened. He hummed the last part of it in unison with her.
"I never was West," he said, "but I like that song. It's kind of American.It reminds me how big we are... I've heard plenty sing it better than you."
"Of course you have." She managed to smile again.
He stared hard watching for the end of the smile, but she kept it, after afashion, in the corners of her mouth and in her eyes.
"There ain't hardly a good swallow in one of these flasks. Go fetch me theother one, will you?"
"Certainly," said my Adrienne.
She rose and went to the little cupboard. As she turned with the flask ofbrandy in her hand, she saw that the plumber sat a little higher in his chair,and then she was aware that his body was rigid as she came up behind him. Hewas waiting, tense and set, for whatever she might attempt to do, but he wouldnot turn his head an inch toward her. She went slowly by him and gave him theflask—and her smile.
He relaxed in his chair. "You feel better, don't you?"
"A lot better," she said.
"I guess you been scrubbed clean every day of your life. I guess you neverwear anything but silk?"
"Oh, yes. Oh, lots of other things," she said.
"You don't mind me now if I drink this?"
"I don't mind at all."
"Look," he said.
"Yes," said my Adrienne.
"Maybe there's better singers, but I never heard nobody talk so good. Youbet I never heard anybody talk so good." He stood up. "You been pretty allright, and I sort of hate taking your stuff. You know?"
For the first time, in a way that was strange to Adrienne, he opened hiseyes and looked at her with an appeal for understanding. He was apparentlyabout to go, and she would not have to keep on smiling. She felt she had doneenough acting in those few minutes to last her the rest of her life.
"It's all right," she said to him." We all have to get along somehow."
"Thanks. I believe you're on the square, but I'll fix this first." Hepulled the telephone wire from the wall socket. Then he lifted a finger at her."You won't budge out of here for ten minutes?"
"I won't budge."
"Ten whole minutes? Honor bright?"
"Honor bright," said Adrienne, and crossed herself automatically.
"Well, I guess that's all right then. Good night to you."
He went out of the cottage.
There was a little clock above the fireplace. She noted the hands at fivepast eleven and resolved to wait for the ten whole minutes, honor bright; butall at once, said Adrienne, she thought of what a scene there would be when sherushed into the big house and told them, how everyone would be roused, andthere would be calls for the police, and Gilbert Ware looking frightfullymortified and, for once, thoroughly alert. She thought of these things and ranfrom the cottage, but before she had taken three steps, the man moved out frombehind the corner of the little building. He came straight toward her, slowly,with his hands in his coat pockets, and his black shadow slid silently over theground beside him, like a man and his ghost or a man and the black devil, saidAdrienne. I wonder why she did not use those quick feet of hers to fly away tothe big house, but all she could do was to creep away from him through the opendoor of the cottage. She backed up until the wall stopped her. Her knees gaveway. My Adrienne crouched with her eyes closed, because she dared not look foranother instant at the long, white, deadly face of the hitchhiker. But shecould feel his shadow falling over her, cold on her face and breast, shesaid.
"Well, so there isn't any honor bright," he said. "I thought maybe you wereone of the things for the country to be proud of. But you ain't. You ain't allright at all. You're dirt. You're just dirt."
It seemed to Adrienne that the chill of his shadow still was falling onher, but when she looked up, after a long time—after a long time when thebreath seemed to be stopping in her body—she saw that he was gone, andshe wasable to get to the chair by the fire and drop into it.
Only a moment later Gilbert Ware came in. He looked at the black, wetfootprints on the floor, and then dropped on one knee beside her chair. She wasreminded dimly of other young men who had taken the same position—myAdriennealways is reminded of someone else, no matter what a man does.
"I've been a fool—I've been a goddamned fool!" said Ware, in just astrembling a passion of regret as any other man. "What happened? What has hedone?"
My Adrienne said nothing, not because she was incapable of speech, norbecause she was remembering the theft and her fear, but because she wasthinking of a loss far more vital, for which she could not find a name. So shekept on thinking until her thoughts went jogging all the way back to childhood,which was the last time "honor bright" had troubled her soul. She was holdingout her hands to the fire which, against all nature, gave her no comfort.
Gilbert Ware took those hands and turned her suddenly toward him so thatshe had to see his face, all savage with resolution. There was no trace now ofthat astute and critical spirit which had looked so carefully through her.
"When did he go? Has he hurt you? Tell me. Do you hear me, dear Adrienne?What has he done?"
There was one word in this speech which could not help partially revivingsuch a practical girl as my Adrienne, and yet she still was half lost in thatunhappy dream as she answered,
"He took the bracelet and pendant. I don't know when he left. Thehitchhiker..."
"Was itthat fellow? And I thought it was only a story!" criedWare.
He jumped for the phone, found it was disconnected, sprang back to her.
"Let him go!" she said. "I don't want ever to see him again. Don't make mesee him again, Gilbert."
Gilbert Ware threw a blanket around her and lifted her to her feet. Hehelped her along the path to the main house.
"You won't have to see him. Of course you won't have to see him. Don'ttalk, my sweet girl, my Adrienne. You've had a frightful shock. Will you beable to forgive me?"
Miserable as she was, she could not help thinking how easy it might be toforgive fifty million and Gilbert Ware.
The party at the house had not broken up, and everyone hurried to be ofhelp. Faces leaned over Adrienne as she lay on the couch wrapped in theblanket. Someone chafed her feet. Her fingers were around a mug of hot toddythat warmed her hands and her lips and her throat but could not melt the icearound her heart.
She was conscious of much telephoning back and forth, but she was notprepared for the return of her philosophical hitchhiker, flanked by a pair ofproud policemen. In that frame he was a wretchedly starved picture of a man. Hehad left the muddy country lanes for a highway, and the police had picked himup at once. Ware, bending close beside Adrienne, was saying, "There's only oneword for you to speak, and then it's all over. Simply identify the jewels andthe man. The law takes on after that. Don't move, Adrienne. Don't sit up."
She did sit up, however, because it was mortally necessary for her to faceagain those eyes which had looked into her so shamefully far. But the inquiringmind was gone from the thief. All that had been free and dangerous and of thenight now was faded into a dim creature who had suffered before and wasprepared once more to endure.
"I guess this is the stuff, Miss?" said one of the policemen, holding outthe jewels in the palm of his hand. "You just identify it, and he'll take atrip."
She kept trying to catch the glance of the thief, but he stared straightforward at the years of labor, of silence and of shame. His wet hat, now ashapeless sponge, was crushed in one hand, and it was upon this hand thatAdrienne was forced, most unwillingly, to focus her attention. There wassomething abnormal, misshapen and oversized about it. By contrast, Gilbert Warehad such slender fingers, such a rounded but inadequate wrist, that onewondered how he could swing a polo mallet. The thumb of the hitchhiker, forinstance, was broadened, thickened and fleshed on the inside to a surprisingdegree. Across his wrist lay two forking veins as big as her little finger, andall at once she penetrated the mystery. It was simply that the thief had been alaborer. By swinging sledge hammers, by tugging with all his might at powerfulwrenches, he had deformed and desensitized his hands until they were merelygross tools, vaguely prehensile.
". . . just a matter of identification," a policeman was saying.
"They aren't mine," she said.
The smiles of the policemen persisted a moment, wavered and went out likelanterns in a sudden wind.
"But wait—but, Adrienne!" said Gilbert Ware.
She shook her head. "Not mine."
"But this is the very fellow you were talking about!" cried Ware.
"I never saw him before."
"My dear Adrienne," said Ware, looking hard at her, "if you're doing thisout of charity, please remember that the law has a rightful place in thisaffair."
She lost track of his voice, watching comprehension break up the calm ofthe plumber, but even as the hope entered him, and he saw that after all sheseemed to be giving him some chance of escape, the manhood seemed to go out ofhim. Something of his spirit came leering, groveling at her feet.
Ware asked everyone to leave the room. Then he sat down beside Adrienne."Now what's it all about?" he asked, and he looked at her as a dealer mightlook at a picture of uncertain authentication.
"I don't know."
"I'm sure you always think your way through before you do anything."
"I try to," she admitted, and she kept searching her mind only to discoverthat the deeper she went, the more unknown was this new Adrienne.
He was waiting.
"I don't know what the whole truth about this is," she said, "but I have ahorrible, naked feeling that I'm going to tell it."
After all, he had lived a bit. He showed it now by saying nothing.
"Did you see his hands?" she asked. "They were real, don't you think?"
"Real?"
"He's worked like an honest man, and he's been a thief. He's been inprison, too, and that's real enough. He could see that I'm all make-believe.I'm not even honestly looking for a husband. I'm just as honest as a cat thatwants kittens. I try to be clever, but I'm only silly and young. I've nevereven made a beginning. I hate it. Oh, you don't know how I hate it.'
"There's something pretty final about this," he said. "I think you'rewriting me down as one of the people who never have made a beginning."
And now, in this interval, Adrienne found that she could not tell apleasant lie. She knew that every second of the silence was saying good-by tofifty million dollars but, instead of speaking, she could only remember thevoice of the thief saying, "You're dirt! You're just dirt!"
After a while Ware stood up slowly, still with something between anger andentreaty in his eyes, but when that frightful silence continued, he said, "I'lltell them the hitchhiker isn't the man."
He left the room.
A fortune vanished with him, but with a very convinced longing Adriennewanted to be out of that house. That was what she told the doctor, when he camea few minutes later.
He said, "You've had a shock, my girl."
"Have I? I'm going to be better, though, now."
"You'd better stay in bed for two or three days."
"Oh, no; I won't need to do that. There's someone I have to see.
"You'd better do as I say, though," he advised.
"But I know me so well," said my Adrienne.
Here she finished her drink, and I knew that her story was finished also;her timing is so perfect.
I blew some smoke upward and watched it vanish. "Fifty million dollars allgone?" I said, but then I saw that there was a shadow on Adrienne, a strangedimness.
"Now tell me about everything," she said, looking at the place where thesmoke had vanished.
"Why, it's not difficult, my dear," I told her. "You're unhappy about itbecause you don't understand the big, quick movement of your own heart; whenyou saw Ware bearing down with all the dogs of the law on that poor, hunteddevil—"
"Oh, nonsense," said Adrienne. "Just as poor and hunted as a wolf. Youdon'tknow. I mean, a wolf that's perfectly at home in the woods, snowor shine. Don't you see? What am I looking for? Why, I'm looking for aman, and that evening I thought I'd found him. But I hadn't. I'd onlyfound a sort of beautiful social legend, or something. The hitchhiker was moreof a man."
"Well, yes. Well... of course," I said, and gave myself a twist that hurtmy back. "I hadn't thought of that. But—just to return a bit—whowas it youwanted to see in the pinch? You remember you spoke to the doctor about him."
"Oh, an old, old friend," said Adrienne. "His voice was with me all throughit. He's the one I'm to see tonight."
"Better be on your way, then," I told her. "It's ten to eight now."
"Really? Is it as late as that? Then may I ring for Jericho?"
She was pressing the button as I said, "What the devil do you want withhim?"
Jericho came in. He is made of white hair, yellow parchment, and heavenlyspirit.
"Jericho dear," said Adrienne, "is there any cold, cold champagne?"
"There is one just barely turnin' to ice," said Jericho.
"Then we'll have that for an aperitif," she told him. "And is that pheasantbig enough for two?"
"Just perfect, Miss Adrienne."
"Then serve it that way, please," said Adrienne.
"Do you mean thatI'm the appointment?" I asked, when Jericholeft.
"You're the only person who knows enough to tell me what's wrong with me,"she said desolately. "But I don't need the telling actually. I know already.Say something or I'm going to cry," said Adrienne, who now was sitting on thearm of my chair.
Jericho brought in the champagne and paid no attention to Adrienne as hebegan opening the bottle.
"Well, I'll tell you a fact that's better than a story," I said.
"I hate facts," said Adrienne.
"When the Arab mare comes out of the tent in the morning—because theArabsvalue their mares most, you know..."
"What silly people!"
"They're not silly at all."
"Oh, aren't they?"
"No, they're not. But when the mare comes out of the tent, she looks awayoff beyond the tribe and over the heads of the family that owns her, and acrossthe desert to the edge of the horizon. She has her tail arched and her headraised, and there's a tremendous expectation in her eyes that makes her mastersad."
"But why?"
"Because he knows she's saying to herself: 'When will the real mastercome!'"
"How rather lovely," said Adrienne.
Jericho had placed in my hand a glass in which the bubbles broke with acrisping sound. "Here's to the real master, my dear," I said.
"Will you find him for me?"
"This is just nonsense, Adrienne," I told her with severity.
"But I'm tired—oh, I'm tired to death!" she said. "I want my life tostart."
"Come, come! Let's have this drink."
"Not until you promise me."
"But what?"
"Either find me a husband—I'll ask no questions—or marry meyourself."
"Adrienne!"
"Are you really so shocked?"
"But I'm old enough to be—"
"Youare old enough, you see. Shall we drink to it!"
"Ishall find you somebody," said I.
"Of course you will," said Adrienne, raising her glass slowly as thoughwaiting for permission.
I lifted mine in turn and, looking up, saw her all shining and goldenthrough the color of the wine.
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