CHAPTER XXVI

WRENN’S STORY

I WAS born in the West,” said Wrenn, “and I was fairly well educated, but while I was still in college—a small, fresh-water university—I got into bad company, and was expelled. My people disowned me after that, and I drifted into the sort of ‘adventurous’ life that attracts so many young men. I never really liked the idea of living dishonestly, but I didn’t seem good for much else. I had not worked hard at college, and I had no particular ambitions, one way or another. I suppose I was lazy, and I know that I was very weak. Eventually I became what you, sir, would call a crook, though for a long time I tried to gloss it over and pretend it was just taking a chance or living by my wits, and the rest of it! Then I got more hardened, and admitted even to myself that I was no better than the rest of the crowd I went with—a cheat, a card sharper, a petty criminal. Twice I was in jail for short terms, and I don’t think either experience improved me much.

“Then I married. She was a high-class Mexican girl—very beautiful. She was a Catholic, and had an idea of reforming me. So she did, for a short time, but the old wild longings came back. I’d settled down in a job as foreman on an Arizona ranch, and I was working hard and drawing good pay. We had two little girls, and things were going pretty well. Then my wife died, and I got reckless again.

“There was a tough bunch of cow-punchers in our outfit, and we got to gambling a lot, and pretty soon I found out that it was easier and more exciting to win when I played crooked than when I played straight. And there were others who felt the same way. We formed a sort of combination—a gang. And we did very well, indeed.”

Barrison sat and stared at the mild, respectable old fellow, who so patently and typically looked the part of a decent, sober, and trusty servant, and tried to visualize him as a bold, bad man of the wicked West. But some things are past the powers of the human imagination. He thought, with a sort of grimly humorous awe, of the strange alchemy of time, and shook his head, giving the problem up, as have better and wiser men before him.

Wrenn went on with his story:

“My girls were brought up in a rough-and-tumble way, I’m afraid. It affected them differently. The older Caterina—she was named for her mother—never took kindly to it. She was selfish and headstrong—they both were, for that matter. But I think Marita had more heart. Not that I ever called out much affection in either of them!”

He bent his gray head for a moment.

“Anyway, I didn’t give them much of a bringing up. Marita knocked about with the boys and learned to ride like a puncher herself. But Caterina—Kitty, we called her—hated the whole life, and when a rich prospector came along, she threw us over like a shot and went away with him. She was only just eighteen, but she was ambitious already. She wanted to get some pleasure out of life, as she had said twenty times a day since she could speak. I—I shall not mention her name, sir—the name which she is known by now, for—you would know it.”

It was odd, the way he dropped so constantly into the respectful “sir,” and all the air and manner of a servant. It was clear that his was one of those pliable natures that can be molded by life and conditions into almost any shape. His instinct of fatherhood, his late-awakened sense of conscience, responsibility and compunction, were struggling up painfully through the accumulated handicap of a lifetime of habit.

“I know her name,” Barrison said quietly. “You mean Kitty Legaye, don’t you?”

The start that Wrenn gave now betrayed an even livelier terror than had yet moved him.

“I didn’t say it!” he gasped in fright and agitation. “I have never said it—never once, through all these years! She always made us swear we would tell nobody. I don’t know what she would do if she thought I had spoken! She was so ashamed of us—and I can hardly wonder at that, sir. She has done so well herself! Oh, sir, if ever it comes up, you—you’ll see that she knows that it wasn’t I who told?”

“I certainly will,” said the detective, pitying—though with a little contempt—this father’s abject fear of his unnatural daughter’s displeasure. “As a matter of fact, I found it out by accident. I only told you that I knew just now to show you that you have nothing to conceal about her. Nor,” he added, entirely upon impulse, “about Mr. Dukane!”

This time Wrenn’s jaw dropped, in the intensity of his astonishment.

“You—you know about—him—too!” he muttered breathlessly. “Is there anything you—do not know?”

“Several things, else I should not be here now,” rejoined Jim, with an inner thrill of elation over the success of his half-random shot. “Suppose you go on with your story, and then I shall know more.”

The other sighed deeply, and proceeded:

“Since you know so much, sir, there is no sense in my hiding anything. Not that I think I should have hidden anything, in any case. As I told you, I am an old man, and all this has been hard to bear. But you don’t want me to tell about my feelings, sir; you want the story.

“When Kitty had been gone a year or more, and Marita was about seventeen, Nicholas Blankley came to the town where we lived. It was a little Arizona settlement, where I ran a saloon and gambling place. Blankley was one of us—I mean he was a natural-born crook, but he wasn’t a bad sort of fellow at that, if you know what I mean, sir. He was a good sport, and square with his pals, which is more than can be said for most of us! He was in the theatrical line, and had worked on all sorts of jobs of that kind—advance man, stage manager, all sorts of things. He was interested in Rita from the first—saw her possibilities as a ‘cowgirl,’ and was fond of her, too—for she was young and fresh in those days, and the daring, reckless sort that got men. Nick got the daredevil name from her; that’s what he used to call her.

“His idea was to start a sort of wild-West show, on the cheap; get some down-and-outers who could ride and shoot and who wouldn’t want much pay, and do short jumps at low prices. We would have to carry the horses, but no scenery, and no props to speak of, and we could use a big tent like the small circus people. It looked like a good venture, and I was tired of staying in one place. Marita was wild about it from the first. So I sold out my business, and we started. We made a success of it, though nothing very big, and kept at it fifteen years! Fifteen years! It seems impossible that it could have been as long as that, but it was. In that time Marita married Nick, and we ran across Alan Morton—I might as well go on calling him Mortimer, though.

“There’s no use pretending that we were running our outfit strictly on the straight. We weren’t. We were out to get what we could out of the public, and we didn’t care much how we did it. But we didn’t do anything very bad; I, for one, was getting careful as time went on, and Nick had a notion of reforming after he married Rita. We did run a gambling business in connection with the show, and we did cheat a bit, and we did take in any sort of thug or gunman or escaped convict who had ever learned to ride, and Nick got away with a very good thing in phony change at one place. Very neat, indeed, it was, and he never had any trouble with it, either.”

Wrenn spoke of this with a sort of pride which made Barrison shake his head again. He was the queerest felon with whom the detective had ever come in contact.

“But as I say,” resumed Wrenn, “we got along all right, and did no great harm for all those years. Then we struck Mortimer. He was a bad one—just a plain bad one, from the very first.”

“And I always thought you were so fond of him!” ejaculated the detective.

“But I was, sir,” said the old man at once. “I was very fond of him, indeed! He was a—a very lovable person, sir, when he cared to be.”

Barrison, again rendered speechless, simply stared at him for a moment or two.

“Go on!” he managed to articulate, after a bit.

“Well, sir, it was this way. Mortimer’s blood was younger than ours, and he was more venturesome, more energetic, more daring.”

“Like your daughter.”

“Yes, sir,” said the ex-gambler, rather sadly. “Like her. There was a time when I was afraid that she was getting too fond of him—he had such a way with women! Wherever he went there was trouble, as you might say. He helped the show—put new life into it, and he could ride—oh, well, no one ever rode better than he did. And you know how handsome he was?”

Strangely enough, the old man’s voice choked a bit just there.

“I don’t know why I always felt just the way I did about him,” he went on quietly. “He was often very rough and careless in his ways, but—but I was as fond of him as if he’d been my own son—and that, sir, is the gospel truth.

“Mortimer had a scheme to branch out bigger, and get a sort of organized company together, with capital, and a circus arena somewhere with the right sort of scenery and music, and that sort of thing. Mr. Dukane had seen our show once, and had taken an interest in it—at least, had taken an interest in the lad—and Mortimer wrote to him for a loan to back the new plan.”

“Wrote Dukane—for a loan?” repeated Jim, in admiration.

“Yes, he did. I felt just as surprised as you, sir, when he told me what he had done. And—to this day, I’m not sure whether it was just plain, pure nerve on his part, or whether he—he—had in mind what the result might be.”

“Result?”

“Yes.” For the first time the old scapegrace’s utterance was slow and troubled—hardly audible. He would not meet Barrison’s eyes. What he said now seemed to be dragged up from the depths of his sinful and unwilling soul.

“You know—you must know, sir,” he said, in those new and halting accents, “since you know so much—about the deal with Dukane?”

“I know something,” said Jim, truthfully, but very cautiously—his heart was beating hard. “I know that there was a deal at all events.”

“It—it doesn’t sound very well—put into words, does it, sir?” Poor old Wrenn’s tone was tired and appealing. “But there! I said I was going to make a clean breast of it, and I might as well. Dukane and Mortimer fixed it up between themselves——”

“Dukane and Mortimer only?” interrupted Barrison, with a sudden intuition.

Wrenn’s poor, weak, tragic eyes met his piteously, shifted, and fell.

“Dukane and Mortimer and—I—fixed it up, sir,” he confessed humbly. “We were to double-cross Nick Blankley, and Dukane was to star Mortimer.”

“He must have had a pretty high opinion of him!” exclaimed Jim Barrison wonderingly, for the great manager, while a shrewd gambler, was no plunger.

“He knew that he had the makings of a favorite, sir; any one could see it. Mr. Dukane wanted him the way the owner of a racing stable wants a fine horse. He knew there was money in him if he was put out right. And Dukane was the man to do that. Anyway, that was the idea. They—I mean we—were to get Blankley out of the way, and Dukane would take care of us afterward.”

“How do you mean get him out of the way?”

“Oh, not kill him, sir!” Wrenn’s tone was virtuously shocked. “You wouldn’t think that, surely? It was just my way of putting it, as it were. No; he’d done a number of shady things, Nick Blankley had, and——”

“So had you!” interpolated Jim Barrison, rather cruelly.

“Oh, yes, sir! But we had—if you’ll pardon the expression—got away with it.”

There it was, the point of view of the born criminal. If you weren’t found out, it was all right! Jim looked at the wretched creature before him, and mused on man as God made him.

“Well?” he demanded, somewhat impatiently.

“Mortimer told Dukane something that Blankley had done; it wasn’t very much—just a fraud.”

“And Dukane lent himself to this!”

“He’s a business man, sir. He suggested it, I believe. At least, Mortimer said so.”

No wonder the manager did not care to talk about it!

“Anyway,” continued Wrenn, “it was on Mortimer’s testimony that Blankley went to jail.”

“For six months.”

“You know that, sir? But it was eight months. He got pardon for good behavior. We”—he stumbled over this—“we hadn’t expected it yet a while.”

“Great Scott!” said Barrison, looking at him. “And you tell all this! You mean that you double-crossed—betrayed your pal, your partner—got him out of the way, so that you could be free of him while you got rich in the new venture?”

“It—it comes to that, sir; I told you it didn’t sound well when you put in into words. But it’s the truth, and I don’t care any longer who knows it. I’m tired. And, anyway, I think it’s more Dukane’s fault than ours.”

Barrison thought so, too, but he said nothing, only waited in silence.

“I came as Mortimer’s valet because there wasn’t much of anything else that I could do, and I swore I’d stick to him, and—and he liked me, and wanted me round him. And I did stick to him! I was fond of him, and I took care of him as well as I knew how. No one could have looked out for him better—no one, sir!”

“I believe that. It’s queer; but, no matter, I believe it! What were you to get out of it?”

“When he made his hit, I was to have ten thousand dollars.”

“And what did your daughter—the one married to Blankley, whom you had sent to jail—what did she say about this pleasant little arrangement?”

Wrenn’s head drooped once more.

“Marita was always hard to manage, sir,” he said, in a faint voice. “She turned against me—her own father, and——”

“I should think she might!”

“And she turned against Mortimer, and against Mr. Dukane, who offered her money. She said she would wait for Nick to come out of prison, and would spend the rest of her life in getting even!”

“Well, I sympathize with her!” said Barrison sincerely. So that was the meaning of the tragic and haggard lines about her mouth and the weary look in her eyes.

“Well, Wrenn,” he went on quietly, “I don’t know just how the blame is to be divided in all this, but I imagine you’ve had almost your share of suffering. And Mortimer is done for. Dukane will get his eventually. I shall be sorry personally if your daughter Marita has to pay the penalty for the death of a rotter like the man who died the other night. I wish you could tell me something about her visit which would make her case look a little better.”

Then Wrenn broke down, and, burying his head in his hands, cried like a child. He might have been a crook, a weakling, neglectful of his children through all the days of his life, but he was suffering now. His gaunt old body quivered under the storm of grief that swept him. In that abasement and sorrow it was even possible for Barrison to forget the despicable things he had just admitted. He was now merely an old man, bitterly punished not only for the sins of his youth, but those of his age.

“That’s what I keep saying,” he panted at last, lifting his swollen eyes to the younger man’s pitying gaze. “I keep asking myself if there isn’t something that’ll clear her. Though we’ve been apart so long, and I was always a bad father to her, and a false friend to her husband, it will kill me altogether if I find that she is guilty of murder!”

“She wrote those letters—the ones threatening Mortimer?”

“Yes.”

“And she took advantage of the time permitted her by the hours of her act at Coyne’s to come to the theater that night?”

“Yes, sir. Let me tell you just how it was. She slipped in while Roberts was out getting the taxi for Kitty.” He spoke his daughter’s name shyly and with embarrassment. “She came straight into the dressing room—though why no one saw her I can’t see! She was dressed just as she had come from the theater, in a khaki skirt and a white waist. And she pulled a pistol out of her dress as she came in. I knew the pistol, because it was always a fad of hers, in all her stunts, to carry guns like that—very small, and very much decorated, and with a letter that might be either an M or a W, according as you looked at it.

“The moment she and Mortimer saw each other they flew out like two wild cats. I’d always tried to keep this from happening, because I knew that they were both past controlling when their blood was up, and they both had a lot to fight for.”

“Both!” repeated Barrison. “I can’t see that. Your daughter had something to fight for, because of the wrong done to her husband, and incidentally to herself. But where was Mortimer’s grievance?”

“Well, sir,” said Wrenn slowly, as though he were seriously trying to express something rather beyond the intelligence of his hearer, “you see—maybe it hasn’t struck you, sir, but, if you’ve risked a great deal on a thing, and find that something is going to interfere with it, after all, at the last moment, you—well, sir, you are apt to lose your head over it. Aren’t you?”

Barrison laughed a trifle grimly.

“Crooked logic,” he remarked, “but excellent—for the crooked kind! So you sympathize with Mortimer in his annoyance at seeing your daughter?”

“I don’t sympathize, sir. In a way, I may say I understand it. But when she pulled out that gun, I fell into a sweat of fear, sir, for I knew that she was afraid of nothing, and that if she’d said she’d kill him——”

“Never mind how you felt! Tell me what happened!”

Wrenn wiped his forehead. “She went for Mortimer, and he got to her first, and caught hold of her arms. He was very strong, but she struggled like a demon, and every minute I expected one of two things to happen, the pistol to go off or some one to hear and knock at the door. After, I suppose, two or three minutes like that, I pulled her away from him—her waist was torn in the struggle, you remember.”

“I remember.”

“And I managed to get her out of the door, begging her to make a run for the stage entrance and to get away if possible without being seen. It was nearly dark then, you see—not the regular dark scene, but all the lights were being lowered, because there was to be so little light on the stage.”

There was silence for a moment, then Wrenn went on again: “I’ve wondered, you know, sir, several times, whether she and Kitty met that night. I’ve—I’ve been afraid of it, I confess, because I don’t believe my daughter Kitty would feel much sisterly affection for Rita. She might even give it away if she had seen her.”

Barrison sat plunged in deep thought for at least two minutes, while the shaken and troubled old man watched him very anxiously indeed. At last he spoke, not ungently:

“Wrenn, will you give me your word that you will not leave this place, this address, until I see you again?”

He supposed that he was rather mad in asking the word of a self-confessed crook like Wrenn, but he thought he had got to the end of his tether. At any rate, the old man lifted his head with quite an influx of pride, as he answered:

“Yes, Mr. Barrison!”

Jim departed, with just one determination in his brain—to pay Kitty Legaye a second call as fast as a taxi would take him to the Golden Arms!