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Page 35
Yes, it was funny if one looked at it right, and Keith found himself
swinging back into his old view-point. It was the hugest joke life had
ever played on him. His sister! He could fancy Conniston twisting his
mustaches, his cool eyes glimmering with silent laughter, looking on
his predicament, and he could fancy Conniston saying: "It's funny, old
top, devilish funny--but it'll be funnier still when some other man
comes along and carries her off!"
And he, John Keith, would have to grin and bear it because he was her
brother!
Mary Josephine was tapping at his door.
"Derwent Conniston," she called frigidly, "there's a female person on
the telephone asking for you. What shall I say?"
"Er--why--tell her you're my sister, Mary Josephine, and if it's Miss
Kirkstone, be nice to her and say I'm not able to come to the 'phone,
and that you're looking forward to meeting her, and that we'll be up to
see her some time today."
"Oh, indeed!"
"You see," said Keith, his mouth close to the door, "you see, this Miss
Kirkstone--"
But Mary Josephine was gone.
Keith grinned. His illimitable optimism was returning. Sufficient for
the day that she was there, that she loved him, that she belonged to
him, that just now he was the arbiter of her destiny! Far off in the
mountains he dreamed of, alone, just they two, what might not happen?
Some day--
With the cold chisel and the hammer he went to the chest. His task was
one that numbed his hands before the last of the three locks was
broken. He dragged the chest more into the light and opened it. He was
disappointed. At first glance he could not understand why Conniston had
locked it at all. It was almost empty, so nearly empty that he could
see the bottom of it, and the first object that met his eyes was an
insult to his expectations--an old sock with a huge hole in the toe of
it. Under the sock was an old fur cap not of the kind worn north of
Montreal. There was a chain with a dog-collar attached to it, a
hip-pocket pistol and a huge forty-five, and not less than a hundred
cartridges of indiscriminate calibers scattered loosely about. At one
end, bundled in carelessly, was a pair of riding-breeches, and under
the breeches a pair of white shoes with rubber soles. There was neither
sentiment nor reason to the collection in the chest. It was junk. Even
the big forty-five had a broken hammer, and the pistol, Keith thought,
might have stunned a fly at close range. He pawed the things over with
the cold chisel, and the last thing he came upon--buried under what
looked like a cast-off sport shirt--was a pasteboard shoe box. He
raised the cover. The box was full of papers.
Here was promise. He transported the box to Brady's table and sat down.
He examined the larger papers first. There were a couple of old game
licenses for Manitoba, half a dozen pencil-marked maps, chiefly of the
Peace River country, and a number of letters from the secretaries of
Boards of Trade pointing out the incomparable possibilities their
respective districts held for the homesteader and the buyer of land.
Last of all came a number of newspaper clippings and a packet of
letters.
Because they were loose he seized upon the clippings first, and as his
eyes fell upon the first paragraph of the first clipping his body
became suddenly tensed in the shock of unexpected discovery and amazed
interest. There were six of the clippings, all from English papers,
English in their terseness, brief as stock exchange reports, and
equally to the point. He read the six in three minutes.
They simply stated that Derwent Conniston, of the Connistons of
Darlington, was wanted for burglary--and that up to date he had not
been found.
Keith gave a gasp of incredulity. He looked again to see that his eyes
were not tricking him. And it was there in cold, implacable print.
Derwent Conniston--that phoenix among men, by whom he had come to
measure all other men, that Crichton of nerve, of calm and audacious
courage, of splendid poise--a burglar! It was cheap, farcical, an
impossible absurdity. Had it been murder, high treason, defiance of
some great law, a great crime inspired by a great passion or a great
ideal, but it was burglary, brigandage of the cheapest and most
commonplace variety, a sneaking night-coward's plagiarism of real
adventure and real crime. It was impossible. Keith gritted the words
aloud. He might have accepted Conniston as a Dick Turpin, a Claude
Duval or a Macheath, but not as a Jeremy Diddler or a Bill Sykes. The
printed lines were lies. They must be. Derwent Conniston might have
killed a dozen men, but he had never cracked a safe. To think it was to
think the inconceivable.
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