The Second Western Megapack. Zane Grey
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at the Capitol card rooms. He had an insatiable passion for gambling, and he was one of the few men who make it pay.
“About a week before the dance, Larry’s cousin, Harry Burns, who was a reporter on the London Times, stopped in Cheyenne on his way to ’Frisco, and Larry came up to meet him. We took Burns up to the club and I noticed that he acted rather queerly when Freymark came in. Burns went down to Grover to spend a day with Larry, and on Saturday Larry wired me to come down and spend Sunday with him, as he had important news for me.
“I went, and the gist of his information was that Freymark, then going by another name, had figured in a particularly ugly London scandal that happened to be in Burns’s beat, and his record had been exposed. He was, indeed, from Paris, but there was not a drop of Jewish blood in his veins, and he dated from farther back than Israel. His father was a French soldier who, during his service in the East, had bought a Chinese slave girl, had become attached to her, and married her, and after her death had brought her child back to Europe with him. He had entered the civil service and held several subordinate offices in the capital, where his son was educated. The boy, socially ambitious and extremely sensitive about his Asiatic blood, after having been blackballed at a club, had left and lived by an exceedingly questionable traffic in London, assuming a Jewish patronymic to account for his oriental complexion and traits of feature. That explained everything. That explained why Freymark’s hands were those of a centenarian. In his veins crept the sluggish amphibious blood of a race that was already old when Jacob tended the flocks of Laban upon the hills of Padan-Aram, a race that was in its mort cloth before Europe’s swaddling clothes were made.
“Of course, the question at once came up as to what ought to be done with Burns’s information. Cheyenne clubs are not exclusive, but a Chinaman who had been engaged in Freymark’s peculiarly unsavory traffic would be disbarred in almost any region outside of Whitechapel. One thing was sure: Miss Masterson must be informed of the matter at once.
“‘On second thought,’ said Larry, ‘I guess I’d better tell her myself. It will have to be done easy like, not to hurt her self-respect too much. Like as not I’ll go off my head the first time I see him and call him rat-eater to his face.’
“Well, to get back to the day of the dance, I was wondering whether Larry would stay over to tell Miss Masterson about it the next day, for of course he couldn’t spring such a thing on a girl at a party.
“That evening I dressed early and went down to the station at nine to meet Larry. The extra came in, but no Larry. I saw Connelly, the conductor, and asked him if he had seen anything of O’Toole, but he said he hadn’t, that the station at Grover was open when he came through, but that he found no train orders and couldn’t raise anyone, so supposed O’Toole had come up on 153. I went back to the office and called Grover, but got no answer. Then I sat down at the instrument and called for fifteen minutes straight. I wanted to go then and hunt up the conductor on 153, the passenger that went through Grover at 5:30 in the afternoon, and ask him what he knew about Larry, but it was then 9:45 and I knew Miss Masterson would be waiting, so I jumped into the carriage and told the driver to make up time. On my way to the Mastersons’ I did some tall thinking. I could find no explanation for O’Toole’s nonappearance, but the business of the moment was to invent one for Miss Masterson that would neither alarm nor offend her. I couldn’t exactly tell her he wasn’t coming, for he might show up yet, so I decided to say the extra was late, and I didn’t know when it would be in.
“Miss Masterson had been an exceptionally beautiful girl to begin with, and life had done a great deal for her. Fond as I was of Larry, I used to wonder whether a girl who had led such a full and independent existence would ever find the courage to face life with a railroad man who was so near the bottom of a ladder that is so long and steep.
“She came down the stairs in one of her Paris gowns that are as meat and drink to Cheyenne society reporters, with her arms full of American Beauty roses and her eyes and cheeks glowing. I noticed the roses then, though I didn’t know that they were the boy’s last message to the woman he loved. She paused halfway down the stairs and looked at me, and then over my head into the drawing room, and then her eyes questioned mine. I bungled at my explanation and she thanked me for coming, but she couldn’t hide her disappointment, and scarcely glanced at herself in the mirror as I put her wrap about her shoulders.
“It was not a cheerful ride down to the Capitol. Miss Masterson did her duty by me bravely, but I found it difficult to be even decently attentive to what she was saying. Once arrived at Representative Hall, where the dance was held, the strain was relieved, for the fellows all pounced down on her for dances, and there were friends of hers there from Helena and Laramie, and my responsibility was practically at an end. Don’t expect me to tell you what a Wyoming inaugural ball is like. I’m not good at that sort of thing, and this dance is merely incidental to my story. Dance followed dance, and still no Larry. The dances I had with Miss Masterson were torture. She began to question and cross-question me, and when I got tangled up in my lies, she became indignant. Freymark was late in arriving. It must have been after midnight when he appeared, correct and smiling, having driven in from his ranch. He was effusively gay and insisted upon shaking hands with me, though I never willingly touched those clammy hands of his. He was constantly dangling about Miss Masterson, who made rather a point of being gracious to him. I couldn’t much blame her under the circumstances, but it irritated me and I’m not ashamed to say that I rather spied on them. When they were on the balcony I heard him say:
“‘You see I’ve forgiven this morning entirely.’
“She answered him rather coolly:
“‘Ah, but you are constitutionally forgiving. However, I’ll be fair and forgive too. It’s more comfortable.’
“Then he said in a slow, insinuating tone, and I could fairly see him thrust out those impudent red lips of his as he said it: ‘If I can teach you to forgive, I wonder whether I could not also teach you to forget? I almost think I could. At any rate I shall make you remember this night.
Rappelles-toi lorsque les destinées
M’auront de toi pour jamais séparé.’
“As they came in, I saw him slip one of Larry’s red roses into his pocket.
“It was not until near the end of the dance that the clock of destiny sounded the first stroke of the tragedy. I remember how gay the scene was, so gay that I had almost forgotten my anxiety in the music, flowers and laughter. The orchestra was playing a waltz, drawing the strains out long and sweet like the notes of a flute, and Freymark was dancing with Helen. I was not dancing myself then, and suddenly I noticed some confusion among the waiters who stood watching by one of the doors, and Larry’s black dog, Duke, all foam at the mouth, shot in the side and bleeding, dashed in through the door and eluding the caterer’s men, ran half the length of the hall and threw himself at Freymark’s feet, uttering a howl piteous enough to herald any sort of calamity. Freymark, who had not seen him before, turned with an exclamation of rage and a face absolutely livid and kicked the wounded brute halfway across the slippery floor. There was something fiendishly brutal and horrible in the episode, it was the breaking out of the barbarian blood through his mask of European civilization, a jet of black mud that spurted up from some nameless pest hole of filthy heathen cities. The music stopped, people began moving about in a confused mass, and I saw Helen’s eyes seeking mine appealingly. I hurried to her, and by the time I reached her Freymark had disappeared.
“‘Get the carriage and take care of Duke,’ she said, and her voice trembled like that of one shivering with cold.
“When we were in the carriage she spread one of the robes on her knee, and I lifted the dog up to her, and she took him in her arms, comforting him.
“‘Where is Larry, and what does all this mean?’ she asked. ‘You can’t put me off any longer, for I danced with a man who came up on the extra.’
“Then I made a clean breast of it, and told her what I knew, which was little enough.
“‘Do you think he is ill?’ she asked.
“I replied, ‘I don’t know what to think.