Colonel Starbottle's Client. Bret Harte
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Colonel slightly straitened his clean-shaven mouth. “A kind of expiation or amercement by fine, known to the Mosaic, Roman, and old English law. Gad, sir, the Jews might have made you MARRY his widow or sister. An old custom, and I think superseded—sir, properly superseded—by the alternative of ordeal by battle in the mediaeval times. I don't myself fancy these pecuniary fashions of settling wrongs—but go on.”
“I wrote her,” continued Corbin, “that her son was dead, but that he and me had some interests together in a claim, and that I was very glad to know where to send her what would be his share every month. I thought it no use to tell her I killed him—may be she might refuse to take it. I sent her a hundred dollars every month since. Sometimes it's been pretty hard sleddin' to do it, for I ain't rich; sometimes I've had to borrow the money, but I reckoned that I was only paying for my share in this here business of his bein' dead, and I did it.”
“And I understand you that this Jeffcourt really had no interest in your claim?”
Corbin looked at him in dull astonishment. “Not a cent, of course; I thought I told you that. But that weren't his fault, for he never had anything, and owed me money. In fact,” he added gloomily, “it was because I hadn't any more to give him—havin' sold my watch for grub—that he quo'lled with me that day, and up and called me a 'sneakin' Yankee hound.' I told you he drove me hard.”
The Colonel coughed slightly and resumed his jaunty manner. “And the—er—mother was, of course, grateful and satisfied?”
“Well, no—not exactly.” He stopped again and took up his letters once more, sorted and arranged them as if to play out his unfinished but hopeless hand, and drawing out another, laid it before the Colonel. “You see, this Mrs. Jeffcourt, after a time, reckoned she ought to have MORE money than I sent her, and wrote saying that she had always understood from her son (he that never wrote but once a year, remember) that this claim of ours (that she never knew of, you know) was paying much more than I sent her—and she wanted a return of accounts and papers, or she'd write to some lawyer, mighty quick. Well, I reckoned that all this was naturally in the line of my trouble, and I DID manage to scrape together fifty dollars more for two months and sent it. But that didn't seem to satisfy her—as you see.” He dealt Colonel Starbottle another letter from his baleful hand with an unchanged face. “When I got that—well, I just up and told her the whole thing. I sent her the account of the fight from the newspapers, and told her as how her son was the Frisbee that was my pardner, and how he never had a cent in the world—but how I'd got that idea to help her, and was willing to carry it out as long as I could.”
“Did you keep a copy of that letter?” asked the Colonel, straitening his mask-like mouth.
“No,” said Corbin moodily. “What was the good? I know'd she'd got the letter—and she did—for that is what she wrote back.” He laid another letter before the Colonel, who hastily read a few lines and then brought his fat white hand violently on the desk.
“Why, d—n it all, sir, this is BLACKMAIL! As infamous a case of threatening and chantage as I ever heard of.”
“Well,” said Corbin, dejectedly, “I don't know. You see she allows that I murdered Frisbee to get hold of his claim, and that I'm trying to buy her off, and that if I don't come down with twenty thousand dollars on the nail, and notes for the rest, she'll prosecute me. Well, mebbe the thing looks to her like that—mebbe you know I've got to shoulder that too. Perhaps it's all in the same line.”
Colonel Starbottle for a moment regarded Corbin critically. In spite of his chivalrous attitude towards the homicidal faculty, the Colonel was not optimistic in regard to the baser pecuniary interests of his fellow-man. It was quite on the cards that his companion might have murdered his partner to get possession of the claim. It was true that Corbin had voluntarily assumed an unrecorded and hitherto unknown responsibility that had never been even suspected, and was virtually self-imposed. But that might have been the usual one unerring blunder of criminal sagacity and forethought. It was equally true that he did not look or act like a mean murderer; but that was nothing. However, there was no evidence of these reflections in the Colonel's face. Rather he suddenly beamed with an excess of politeness. “Would you—er—mind, Mr. Corbin, whilst I am going over those letters again, to—er—step across to my office—and—er—bring me the copy of 'Wood's Digest' that lies on my table? It will save some time.”
The stranger rose, as if the service was part of his self-imposed trouble, and as equally hopeless with the rest, and taking his hat departed to execute the commission. As soon as he had left the building Colonel Starbottle opened the door and mysteriously beckoned the bar-keeper within.
“Do you remember anything of the killing of a man named Frisbee over in Fresno three years ago?”
The bar-keeper whistled meditatively. “Three years ago—Frisbee?—Fresno?—no? Yes—but that was only one of his names. He was Jack Walker over here. Yes—and by Jove! that feller that was here with you killed him. Darn my skin, but I thought I recognized him.”
“Yes, yes, I know all that,” said the Colonel, impatiently. “But did Frisbee have any PROPERTY? Did he have any means of his own?”
“Property?” echoed the bar-keeper with scornful incredulity. “Property? Means? The only property and means he ever had was the free lunches or drinks he took in at somebody else's expense. Why, the only chance he ever had of earning a square meal was when that fellow that was with you just now took him up and made him his partner. And the only way HE could get rid of him was to kill him! And I didn't think he had it in him. Rather a queer kind o' chap—good deal of hayseed about him. Showed up at the inquest so glum and orkerd that if the boys hadn't made up their minds this yer Frisbee ORTER BEEN killed—it might have gone hard with him.”
“Mr. Corbin,” said Colonel Starbottle, with a pained but unmistakable hauteur and a singular elevation of his shirt frill, as if it had become of its own accord erectile, “Mr. Corbin—er—er—is the distant relative of old Major Corbin, of Nashville—er—one of my oldest political friends. When Mr. Corbin—er—returns, you can conduct him to me. And, if you please, replenish the glasses.”
When the bar-keeper respectfully showed Mr. Corbin and “Wood's Digest” into the room again, the Colonel was still beaming and apologetic.
“A thousand thanks, sir, but except to SHOW you the law if you require it—hardly necessary. I have—er—glanced over the woman's letters again; it would be better, perhaps, if you had kept copies of your own—but still these tell the whole story and YOUR OWN. The claim is preposterous! You have simply to drop the whole thing. Stop your remittances, stop your correspondence—pay no heed to any further letters and wait results. You need fear nothing further, sir; I stake my professional reputation on it.”
The gloom of the stranger seemed only to increase as the Colonel reached his triumphant conclusion.
“I reckoned you'd say that,” he said slowly, “but it won't do. I shall go on paying as far as I can. It's my trouble and I'll see it through.”
“But, my dear sir, consider,” gasped the Colonel. “You are in the hands of an infamous harpy, who is using her son's blood to extract money from you. You have already paid a dozen times more than the life of that d——d sneak was worth; and more than that—the longer you keep on paying you are helping to give color to their claim and estopping your own defense. And Gad, sir, you're making a precedent for this sort of thing! you are offering a premium to widows and orphans. A gentleman won't be able to exchange shots with another without making himself liable for damages. I am willing to admit that your feelings—though, in my opinion—er—exaggerated—do you credit; but I am satisfied that they are utterly misunderstood—sir.”
“Not by all of them,” said Corbin darkly.
“Eh?” returned the Colonel quickly.
“There was another letter here which I didn't particularly point out to you,” said Corbin, taking up the letters again, “for I reckoned it wasn't evidence, so to speak, being from HIS