Black Jack - Max Brand (top 10 most read books in the world TXT) 📗

class="calibre1">health. I’m afraid she cannot see you.”

 

This repulse made Kate thoughtful. She was not used to such bluff talk

from men, however smooth or rough the exterior might be. And under the

quiet of Vance she sensed an opposition like a stone wall.

 

“I guess you ain’t a friend of Terry’s?”

 

“I’d hardly like to put it strongly one way or the other. I know the boy,

if that’s what you mean.”

 

“It ain’t.” She considered him again. And again she was secretly pleased

to see him stir under the cool probe of her eyes. “How long did you live

with Terry?”

 

“He was with us twenty-four years.” He turned and explained casually to

Waters. “He was taken in as a foundling, you know. Quite against my

advice. And then, at the end of the twenty-four years, the bad blood of

his father came out, and he showed himself in his true colors. Fearful

waste of time to us all—of course, we had to turn him out.”

 

“Of course,” nodded Waters sympathetically, and he looked wistfully down

at his blueprint.

 

“Twenty-four years you lived with Terry,” said the girl softly, “and you

don’t like him, I see.”

 

Instantly and forever he was damned in her eyes. Anyone who could live

twenty-four years with Terry Hollis and not discover his fineness was

beneath contempt.

 

“I’ll tell you,” she said. “I’ve got to see Miss Elizabeth Cornish.”

 

“H’m!” said Vance. “I’m afraid not. But—just what have you to tell her?”

 

The girl smiled.

 

“If I could tell you that, I wouldn’t have to see her.”

 

He rubbed his chin with his knuckles, staring at the floor of the

veranda, and now and then raising quick glances at her. Plainly he was

suspicious. Plainly, also, he was tempted in some manner.

 

“Something he’s done, eh? Some yarn about Terry?”

 

It was quite plain that this man actually wanted her to have something

unpleasant to say about Terry. Instantly she suited herself to his mood;

for he was the door through which she must pass to see Elizabeth Cornish.

 

“Bad?” she said, hardening her expression as much as possible. “Well, bad

enough. A killing to begin with.”

 

There was a gleam in his eyes—a gleam of positive joy, she was sure,

though he banished it at once and shook his head in deprecation.

 

“Well, well! As bad as that? I suppose you may see my sister. For a

moment. Just a moment. She is not well. I wish I could understand your

purpose!”

 

The last was more to himself than to her. But she was already off her

horse. The man with the blueprint glared at her, and she passed across

the veranda and into the house, where Vance showed her up the big stairs.

At the door of his sister’s room he paused again and scrutinized.

 

“A killing—by Jove!” he murmured to himself, and then knocked.

 

A dull voice called from within, and he opened. Kate found herself in a

big, solemn room, in one corner of which sat an old woman wrapped to the

chin in a shawl. The face was thin and bleak, and the eyes that looked at

Kate were dull.

 

“This girl—” said Vance. “By Jove, I haven’t asked your name, I’m

afraid.”

 

“Kate Pollard.”

 

“Miss Pollard has some news of Terry. I thought it might—interest you,

Elizabeth.”

 

Kate saw the brief struggle on the face of the old woman. When it passed,

her eyes were as dull as ever, but her voice had become husky.

 

“I’m surprised, Vance. I thought you understood—his name is not to be

spoken, if you please.”

 

“Of course not. Yet I thought—never mind. If you’ll step downstairs with

me, Miss Pollard, and tell me what—”

 

“Not a step,” answered the girl firmly, and she had not moved her eyes

from the face of the elder woman. “Not a step with you. What I have to

say has got to be told to someone who loves Terry Hollis. I’ve found that

someone. I stick here till I’ve done talking.”

 

Vance Cornish gasped. But Elizabeth opened her eyes, and they

brightened—but coldly, it seemed to Kate.

 

“I think I understand,” said Elizabeth Cornish gravely. “He has entangled

the interest of this poor girl—and sent her to plead for him. Is that

so? If it’s money he wants, let her have what she asks for, Vance. But I

can’t talk to her of the boy.”

 

“Very well,” said Vance, without enthusiasm. He stepped before her. “Will

you step this way, Miss Pollard?”

 

“Not a step,” she repeated, and deliberately sat down in a chair. “You’d

better leave,” she told Vance.

 

He considered her in open anger. “If you’ve come to make a scene, I’ll

have to let you know that on account of my sister I cannot endure it.

Really—” “I’m going to stay here,” she echoed, “until I’ve done talking.

I’ve found the right person. I know that. Tell you what I want? Why, you

hate Terry Hollis!”

 

“Hate—him?” murmured Elizabeth.

 

“Nonsense!” cried Vance.

 

“Look at his face, Miss Cornish,” said the girl.

 

“Vance, by everything that’s sacred, your eyes were positively shrinking.

Do you hate—him?”

 

“My dear Elizabeth, if this unknown—”

 

“You’d better leave,” interrupted the girl. “Miss Cornish is going to

hear me talk.”

 

Before he could answer, his sister said calmly: “I think I shall, Vance.

I begin to be intrigued.”

 

“In the first place,” he blurted angrily, “it’s something you shouldn’t

hear—some talk about a murder—”

 

Elizabeth sank back in her chair and closed her eyes.

 

“Ah, coward!” cried Kate Pollard, now on her feet.

 

“Vance, will you leave me for a moment?”

 

For a moment he was white with malice, staring at the girl, then suddenly

submitting to the inevitable, turned on his heel and left the room.

 

“Now,” said Elizabeth, sitting erect again, “what is it? Why do you

insist on talking to me of—him? And—what has he done?”

 

In spite of her calm, a quiver of emotion was behind the last words, and

nothing of it escaped Kate Pollard.

 

“I knew,” she said gently, “that two people couldn’t live with Terry

for twenty-four years and both hate him, as your brother does. I can tell

you very quickly why I’m here, Miss Cornish.”

 

“But first—what has he done?”

 

Kate hesitated. Under the iron self-control of the older woman she saw

the hungry heart, and it stirred her. Yet she was by no means sure of a

triumph. She recognized the most formidable of all foes—pride. After

all, she wanted to humble that pride. She felt that all the danger in

which Terry Hollis now stood, both moral and physical, was indirectly the

result of this woman’s attitude. And she struck her, deliberately

cruelly.

 

“He’s taken up with a gang of hard ones, Miss Cornish. That’s one thing.”

 

The face of Elizabeth was like stone.

 

“Professional—thieves, robbers!”

 

And still Elizabeth refused to wince. She forced a cold, polite smile of

attention.

 

“He went into a town and killed the best fighter they had.”

 

And even this blow did not tell.

 

“And then he defied the sheriff, went back to the town, and broke into a

bank and stole fifty thousand dollars.”

 

The smile wavered and went out, but still the dull eyes of Elizabeth were

steady enough. Though perhaps that dullness was from pain. And Kate,

waiting eagerly, was chagrined to see that she had not broken through to

any softness of emotion. One sign of grief and trembling was all she

wanted before she made her appeal; but there was no weakness in Elizabeth

Cornish, it seemed.

 

“You see I am listening,” she said gravely and almost gently. “Although I

am really not well. And I hardly see the point of this long recital of

crimes. It was because I foresaw what he would become that I sent him

away.”

 

“Miss Cornish, why’d you take him in in the first place?”

 

“It’s a long story,” said Elizabeth.

 

“I’m a pretty good listener,” said Kate.

 

Elizabeth Cornish looked away, as though she hesitated to touch on the

subject, or as though it were too unimportant to be referred to at

length.

 

“In brief, I saw from a hotel window Black Jack, his father, shot down in

the street; heard about the infant son he left, and adopted the child—on

a bet with my brother. To see if blood would tell or if I could make him

a fine man.”

 

She paused.

 

“My brother won the bet!”

 

And her smile was a wonderful thing, so perfectly did it mask her pain.

 

“And, of course, I sent Terry away. I have forgotten him, really. Just a

bad experiment.”

 

Kate Pollard flushed.

 

“You’ll never forget him,” she said firmly. “You think of him every day!”

 

The elder woman started and looked sharply at her visitor. Then she

dismissed the idea with a shrug.

 

“That’s absurd. Why should I think of him?”

 

There is a spirit of prophecy in most women, old or young; and especially

they have a way of looking through the flesh of their kind and seeing the

heart. Kate Pollard came a little closer to her hostess.

 

“You saw Black Jack die in the street,” she queried, “fighting for his

life?”

 

Elizabeth dreamed into the vague distance.

 

“Riding down the street with his hair blowing—long black hair, you

know,” she reminisced. “And holding the crowd back as one would hold back

a crowd of curs. Then—he was shot from the side by a man in concealment.

That was how he fell!”

 

“I knew,” murmured the girl, nodding. “Miss Cornish, I know now why you

took in Terry.”

 

“Ah?”

 

“Not because of a bet—but because you—you loved Black Jack Hollis!”

 

It brought an indrawn gasp from Elizabeth. Rather of horror than

surprise. But the girl went on steadily:

 

“I know. You saw him with his hair blowing, fighting his way—he rode

into your heart. I know, I tell you! Maybe you’ve never guessed it all

these years. But has a single day gone when you haven’t thought of the

picture?”

 

The scornful, indignant denial died on the lips of Elizabeth Cornish. She

stared at Kate as though she were seeing a ghost.

 

“Not one day!” cried Kate. “And so you took in Terry, and you raised him

and loved him—not for a bet, but because he was Black Jack’s son!”

 

Elizabeth Cornish had grown paler than before. “I mustn’t listen to such

talk,” she said.

 

“Ah,” cried the girl, “don’t you see that I have a right to talk? Because

I love him also, and I know that you love him, too.”

 

Elizabeth Cornish came to her feet, and there was a faint flush in her

cheeks.

 

“You love Terry? Ah, I see. And he has sent you!”

 

“He’d die sooner than send me to you.”

 

“And yet—you came?”

 

“Don’t you see?” pleaded Kate. “He’s in a corner. He’s about to go—bad!”

 

“Miss Pollard, how do you know these things?”

 

“Because I’m the daughter of the leader of the gang!”

 

She said it without shame, proudly.

 

“I’ve tried to keep him from the life he intends leading,” said Kate. “I

can’t turn him. He laughs at me. I’m nothing to him, you see? And he

loves the new life. He loves the freedom. Besides, he thinks that there’s

no hope. That he has to be what his father was before him. Do you