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Page 47
"For God's sake, Kenny," he said. "Close the door. Where did you get
that thing?" he demanded with a scowl.
"It's Hughie's and the very sight of it was an inspiration."
"Give it to me!"
"On the contrary I intend to cure your deafness."
Adam stared.
"I mean just this: You can hear as well as I can. You pretend to be
deaf when you don't want to hear."
"What?" snapped the old man with a glance like lightning.
"You told me to practice the truth," reminded Kenny, dropping into a
chair. "I'm merely beginning. I've a lot to say. And the health of
your hearing, Adam, is an indispensable adjunct to my practice hour and
my peace of mind. I'm merely insuring myself against your refusing
with a feint of deafness to hear what I have to say."
"For once," said Adam insolently, "you've scored. But if ever I get my
hands on that damned megaphone, I'll burn it."
"You won't get your hands on it," retorted Kenny. "And if you do I'll
buy a bigger one."
It was hard to begin but Kenny with his mouth set thought of Joan. He
told Adam Craig he was a miser.
In the dreadful silence the tick of the old clock on the mantel seemed
to Kenny's distracted ears a perpetuity of measured taps upon a
death-drum. He thought of Poe and the pit and the pendulum. He
thought of Joan and told himself fiercely that he did it all for her;
for her he was winding around himself a chain foredoomed to clank. And
he wondered why on earth the old man did not speak.
The suspense became intolerable. Intensely excited, Kenny swung to his
feet.
"Well?" he said.
"Well!" said Adam and smiled a curious, inscrutable, twisted sort of
smile. He had never looked so evil-eyed and subtle. "One of your
greatest drawbacks, Kenny, is an Irish temper and a habit of
excitement."
"A miser!" repeated Kenny with defiance. He must keep his feet upon
the path. It was the prelude to all that he must say for Joan's
emancipation.
"A miser!" said Adam, nodding. "Well, what of it?"
Kenny struck himself fiercely on the forehead, wondering if the word
had pleased and not provoked him. The possibility shocked him into
fresh courage. He said everything that was on his mind with deadly
quietness and an air of fixed purpose. Then he picked up his megaphone
and started for the door.
"Adam," he said, "I've told you the truth, so help me God, in an hour
of practice. Now, you can practice facing facts."
And he was gone.
He was courageous and persistent, with the thought of Joan always
spurring him to further effort. Night after night he played his game
of truth and fought with desperation for the happiness of the girl
whose eyes had committed him irrevocably to a vow of honesty and fact.
He could not see that he was making any headway.
Adam listened with baffling intentness while his strange guest
practiced strangely the telling of truth. He refuted nothing. He
accepted everything that Kenny said with a corroborative, birdlike nod
of politeness. With the megaphone upon the floor by Kenny's chair, he
made no further pretense of deafness. He said nothing at all and Kenny
found his new inscrutable trick of silence unendurable. One singular
fact loomed out above all others. Adam shamelessly accepted the word
miser with a gloating chuckle. He seemed to like it. For Kenny,
generous to a fault and prodigal with money, the word embodied all
things hideous.
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