CHAPTER X
The sun still hung an hour high above the horizon. No faintest breath of wind was stirring, and the tall pines along the island's shore stood mirrored in the broad lake's placid calm. The wildfowl, true to their custom, were bedded in huge flocks far out towards the center of the lake, and what few ducks there were stirring, kept for the most part warily out of range of the point.
Gordon sat in the blind alone, and for so keen a sportsman the poor shooting seemed to trouble him but little. On the contrary, his thoughts, which were of the pleasantest, had strayed far away from ducks and duck-shooting. He had played a difficult and a dangerous game, and had played it boldly and well. Rose and Mrs. Holton had acted their parts to perfection, and Palmer had behaved exactly as they had hoped he would. Gordon permitted himself a quiet smile of self-satisfaction. That was true enjoyment, after all. The ability to handle one's fellow-men; to humor them, to learn their weaknesses, and then to turn these weaknesses to one's own account; in that there was true satisfaction, in that there was the feeling of getting something really worth while from the game of life. So much for the past, and now for the future a hundred questions lay waiting to be solved. The problem as to whether a partner would be desirable, the best and quickest way of finding the right mine, the advertising campaign, the gaining of the public confidence, surely there were many things to be thought of yet, before the victory should be won.
At last, as the sun sank lower still, the folly of waiting any longer for the wildfowl to fly became apparent, and Gordon, rousing himself, was already beginning to gather up the decoys, when he caught sight of one of the little rowing skiffs putting out from the mainland. An instant feeling of uneasiness crept over him. "That's queer," he muttered to himself. "Vanulm isn't due till to-morrow, and he wouldn't be rowing at that rate, anyway. I wonder who it can be."
The boat was certainly approaching at high speed, the long furrowed wake stretching away behind, and a little curl of white foam showing under her bow. As she passed out of sight around the easterly point of the island, Gordon gave a sudden start of surprise. "By God," he muttered, "it looks like Palmer. I wonder what's gone wrong now."
He had not long to wait for his answer. Five minutes passed, and then down the path, walking rapidly, came striding a man now easily recognizable as Palmer. Straight on he came, and Gordon, as he watched him, felt his heart suddenly begin to beat loud and fast.
Palmer's face was flushed to a dull, angry red, his eyes were glaring, his upper lip was drawn upwards from his teeth, and his whole face was working convulsively. He was still some distance away when he began to speak, his voice pitched high in an ecstasy of rage.
"Damn you, Gordon!" he shouted, shaking his clenched fist. "You dirty blackguard! You blackmailer! You canting hypocrite! I've got you to rights now, you skulking hound!"
He laughed a strained, unnatural laugh as he paused a few feet away, fairly trembling with excitement. Then he went on: "You smooth, dirty villain. You pretty nearly did for me, didn't you? But, by heavens, I've got you where I want you now. I've blocked your pretty little game. It's state's prison for you, you and your precious gang."
Gordon stood staring at him, while an expression of utter amazement came over his face. "Harry," he cried, "what do you mean? What are you talking about? Are you going crazy, or am I?"
Palmer laughed sneeringly. "Good," he cried; "she told me you'd try to bluff it out somehow." Then, with sudden change of tone, he added fiercely, "Drop it, Gordon. It's no use. Don't be a fool. I tell you the thing's up. Did you ever hear of a girl named Annie Holton?"
An instant change came over Gordon's face, followed quickly by a look almost of relief. "Know Annie Holton," he cried. "I should say I had reason to. The most unprincipled woman on earth, and one who hates me as much as one human being can hate another. What lies has she been telling you, Harry?"
He spoke frankly and fearlessly, and for the first time an expression of doubt came over Palmer's face, but he did not hesitate.
"No lies," he exclaimed, "but a lot more truth than you'll care to have known, I'll warrant. I know now that those charming relations of yours were women of the street, got up for the occasion. I ruined a young girl, did I?" He roared and shook with unwholesome laughter. "I was made a fool of by one of your mistresses. I was—"
Gordon took a quick step forward, his eyes blazing with wrath.
"Stop it!" he cried sharply, and his voice rang with the tone of absolute command. "Another word, and I'll kill you in your tracks. I won't stand it, Palmer. I won't take such talk from you or from any man living. You're either drunk or crazy, man. You're out of your mind."
Palmer hesitated, cowed in spite of himself. "I don't believe you," he said sulkily. "And you've got to come back with me now and face the music. If I've slandered you or any one else, I'll make it right, and if I haven't—" his voice rose again, "I'll make you pay the piper for the fun you've had."
He stopped abruptly, and for a moment both men stood silent. Gordon was thinking hard and fast. The game was up; that much was obvious. Rose had been right. One little slip, she had said from the first, would ruin everything, and now, just as it all seemed safe and sure, just as the game was all but won, that slip had come. Somehow Annie Holton had got the story from her mother, and had gone straight to Palmer with it. The mischief was done, unless—
Mechanically, as one does the most trivial things in the moments of greatest strain, he went on putting away the decoys. Suddenly he straightened up, and looked Palmer squarely in the face. "Harry," he said more quietly, "this whole thing is an awful mistake from beginning to end, but we certainly won't make things any better by standing here quarreling. I won't say one word in criticism of your action in coming on to a man's private property as you've done, and using the language you've used to me, for I can understand the provocation you think you're laboring under. On the contrary, I'll go back with you with all the pleasure in the world. All I want is to have you bring that Holton woman before us, and have her dare repeat a word of that story. That's all I ask. But in the meantime, Harry, remember we've been friends a long time, and let's both try to act a little more like gentlemen, at any rate."
The unnatural flush had slowly receded from Palmer's face, leaving him deathly pale. Evidently the strain upon him had been terrific. He nodded shortly. "All right," he said, his voice sounding hard and unnatural, "that's fair enough. But back to town we go to-night. I can't stand this much longer. I've lived through hell to-day. So it's back to town to-night. Is that understood?"
Gordon nodded. "Certainly," he assented readily. Then with apparent irrelevance, he added, "How did you know where to find me? Ring up the office?"
Palmer stared at him sullenly. "I don't see what difference that makes," he said; "but if you want to know, your friend the Holton girl told me."
"Ah, yes," said Gordon, "that was it, of course. I might have thought. Stupid of me."
Slowly they walked along toward the house, until suddenly, near the little cluster of pines, Gordon stopped. "Look here, Palmer," he cried, "I don't want to ask favors of you when you're naturally impatient and worked up over this thing, but on the other hand, my conscience is clear, and half an hour more or less won't make any difference, anyway. The last two nights there's been a big flock of Canada geese trading by the point here, and I'm keen to get a crack at them. In fact, that was what I came over for to-night. If it isn't too trivial at such a time, do you mind letting me try them?"
Palmer hesitated, and Gordon hastened to add, "Unless, of course, you're anxious to get to the station earlier for any other reason. I suppose, though, you left word at your office or your home where you'd gone, so that you don't really care particularly when you do get back."
Palmer shook his head. "No, I didn't," he answered. "This thing broke me all up, Gordon, and I posted right out here to see you. If you really want to try the geese, go ahead. I suppose it won't make any difference as to the train, anyway."
"No," Gordon assented; "that's true. There's no train we can get for two hours yet. A worse little branch road, I suppose, was never run anywhere. That station agent's going to get fired one of these fine days. He's never at the station when I come out."
"He wasn't there to-day," growled Palmer. "You've got the damnedest, out-of-the-way place to get to I ever saw. Your ducks aren't worth your trouble."
They had reached the edge of the little grove as Palmer finished speaking. Gordon's whole bearing seemed to have changed entirely. His eye was watchful, his step alert, as he snapped the sixteen-gage open and quietly slipped in a couple of shells. "We'll only wait a few minutes," he said. "Sometimes they come straight from the north. Would you mind looking out that way?"
Palmer obeyed, staring moodily out across the placid surface of the water. The sun had set, and in the faint, gathering dusk the brooding silence of the lake had about it something sinister, unearthly, threatening. Man, and his petty passions, his childish hopes and fears, seemed somehow strangely dwarfed into utter insignificance in the midst of nature's impassive, inscrutable calm. Involuntarily Palmer shivered.
"I'm afraid it's too late for them, Gordon," he said slowly. "I don't really believe—"
The sentence was left unfinished. With a motion quick as thought, Gordon threw the sixteen-gage to his shoulder, pressed the barrel to Palmer's back just below the left shoulder blade, and pressed the trigger.
At the muffled report the murdered man's arms flew out and up as if grasping for support, his head twitched back sharply, and like a log he fell. A horrible choking sound issued from his distorted lips, his body twitched convulsively once or twice, and he lay still, his head twisted to one side, the bared teeth grinning upward from the mouth contorted into the ghostly semblance of a smile.
Mechanically Gordon leaned his gun against a tree; then looked fearfully about him. Still, calm, motionless, the lake lay before him. No wind stirred the pines. The silence was the silence of death. A sickening faintness crept over him. He stifled an impulse to shout for help, and set his teeth sharply together. "God!" he muttered, "God!" Then, with averted face, he picked up the ghastly, inert thing that had been Harry Palmer, and, staggering with it to the very edge of the quicksand, cast it from him with all his strength. A moment, and it had disappeared from sight.
