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Page 28
She caught herself, biting her lip to keep back the word.
"Tell me," he urged. "Do I remember what?"
"How you used to come in at the very last and tuck me in at night,
Derry? And how we used to whisper to ourselves there in the darkness,
and at last you would kiss me good-night? It was the kiss that always
made me go to sleep."
He nodded. "Yes, I remember," he said.
He led her to the spare room, and brought in her two travel-worn bags,
and turned on the light. It was a man's room, but Mary Josephine stood
for a moment surveying it with delight.
"It's home, Derry, real home," she whispered.
He did not explain to her that it was a borrowed home and that this was
his first night in it. Such unimportant details would rest until
tomorrow. He showed her the bath and its water system and then
explained to Wallie that his sister was in the house and he would have
to bunk in the kitchen. At the last he knew what he was expected to do,
what he must do. He kissed Mary Josephine good night. He kissed her
twice. And Mary Josephine kissed him and gave him a hug the like of
which he had never experienced until this night. It sent him back to
the fire with blood that danced like a drunken man's.
He turned the lights out and for an hour sat in the dying glow of the
birch. For the first time since he had come from Miriam Kirkstone's he
had the opportunity to think, and in thinking he found his brain
crowded with cold and unemotional fact. He saw his lie in all its naked
immensity. Yet he was not sorry that he had lied. He had saved
Conniston. He had saved himself. And he had saved Conniston's sister,
to love, to fight for, to protect. It had not been a Judas lie but a
lie with his heart and his soul and all the manhood in him behind it.
To have told the truth would have made him his own executioner, it
would have betrayed the dead Englishman who had given to him his name
and all that he possessed, and it would have dragged to a pitiless
grief the heart of a girl for whom the sun still continued to shine. No
regret rose before him now. He felt no shame. All that he saw was the
fight, the tremendous fight, ahead of him, his fight to make good as
Conniston, his fight to play the game as Conniston would have him play
it. The inspiration that had come to him as he stood facing the storm
from the western mountains possessed him again. He would go to the
river's end as he had planned to go before McDowell told him of Shan
Tung and Miriam Kirkstone. And he would not go alone. Mary Josephine
would go with him.
It was midnight when he rose from the big chair and went to his room.
The door was closed. He opened it and entered. Even as his hand groped
for the switch on the wall, his nostrils caught the scent of something
which was familiar and yet which should not have been there. It filled
the room, just as it had filled the big hall at the Kirkstone house,
the almost sickening fragrance of agallochum burned in a cigarette. It
hung like a heavy incense. Keith's eyes glared as he scanned the room
under the lights, half expecting to see Shan Tung sitting there waiting
for him. It was empty. His eyes leaped to the two windows. The shade
was drawn at one, the other was up, and the window itself was open an
inch or two above the sill. Keith's hand gripped his pistol as he went
to it and drew the curtain. Then he turned to the table on which were
the reading lamp and Brady's pipes and tobacco and magazines. On an
ash-tray lay the stub of a freshly burned cigarette. Shan Tung had come
secretly, but he had made no effort to cover his presence.
It was then that Keith saw something on the table which had not been
there before. It was a small, rectangular, teakwood box no larger than
a half of the palm of his hand. He had noticed Miriam Kirkstone's
nervous fingers toying with just such a box earlier in the evening.
They were identical in appearance. Both were covered with an exquisite
fabric of oriental carving, and the wood was stained and polished until
it shone with the dark luster of ebony. Instantly it flashed upon him
that this was the same box he had seen at Miriam's. She had sent it to
him, and Shan Tung had been her messenger. The absurd thought was in
his head as he took up a small white square of card that lay on top of
the box. The upper side of this card was blank; on the other side, in a
script as exquisite in its delicacy as the carving itself, were the
words:
"WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF SHAN TUNG."
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