Captains and The Kings (21 page)

almost illegible when he gave this reluctant information, and possibly he gave it truthfully after my warning. But I have never been balked by illegible writing. It is one of my hobbies." "And not even a Rosary in his room, or a holy medal or picture," said Mr. Healey. "Nor in yours," said Mr. Montrose, smiling again. "Well, I am-different," said Mr. Healey. Mr. Montrose saw that Mr. Healey seemed somewhat depressed, or hurt, and this amused Mr. Montrose. He loved paradoxes, especially those concerning human nature. "Young heathen," said Mr. Healey, and Mr. Montrose assumed a grave expression. "Excommunicated, perhaps." Mr. Montrose said, "Certainly, we will not betray to young Mr. Francis that we know his true and full name. That would be most vulgar of us. It is none of our business, as you know, sir." "True, that it is," said Mr. Healey, but he fumed slightly. "Well, I never took a false name, or shortened mine, but once, and that was when I had a little difficulty with the police in Philadelphia, when I was very young. I had a little pride, I had." "We shall not question young Mr. Francis's reasons," said Mr. Montrose. Mr. Healey looked at him curiously. What was Mr. Montrose's true name? But no one ever asked. Mr. Montrose owned no leases; he had no businesses with the courthouses. He dealt only with banks. Mr. Healey, though it was difficult, always suppressed his normal Irish inquisitiveness, for inquisitiveness could be dangerous. They settled down to business. Gun-running to the embattled South was somewhat different from running in food supplies, wool lengths, tools and such, in which Mr. Healey had been heavily and profitably engaged since the outbreak of the war. For contraband such as weapons Washington had threatened the death penalty. Still, at this time, the Federal Government was in dire difficulties with the wild and chaotic draft riots all over the North, and the constant threats against the life of Mr. Lincoln- in the North-and the various victories of the Confederacy. (Mobs in the North were carrying placards around courthouses and Federal buildings depicting Mr. Lincoln as "The Dictator," for he had suspended the law of habeas corpus among other Constitutional guarantees, and the American people were still suspicious of government, remembering that governments are usually men's deadliest enemies.) "I don't want anybody killed, or caught," said Mr. Healey. "Or anybody who would talk. You are right, you are. I'll have a talk with Joe Francis Xavier. Sound him out," "I want you to do something for me," said Mr. Healey to Joseph, after he had called him into the study. "A little-dangerous. And no questions." "What?" asked Joseph, frowning. Mr. Healey raised a pacific hand. "Now, now, don't you get on your high horse. I'm not asking you this time to look about you in Pittsburgh and bring some nice pretty little girls to some of my boardinghouses, where they'll be well-fed and protected and make a bit of solid cash. I don't understand you," complained Mr. Healey. "The girls I have always- protected, call it-come from wretched homes or have no homes, or are in slavery service, starving and what not. What's the harm in their earning some good money and having a gay time with many a spark? But not you, you monk, you Joe St. Francis Xavier, not you. It ain't moral, or something, you think. But I have my ears out, and you didn't find it amiss just lately to use that there little token I gave you, did you?" Joseph was silent. Mr. Healey laughed, leaned across his table and slapped Joseph on one of the cold slender hands which rested tensely on the wood. "Don't give it a second thought, Joe. You're young, and it's only envious I am. What it is to be young! Never mind. The job I have in mind for you, Joe, is something you never dreamed of before, and I never engaged in it, myself. Not out of your morality, you righteous humbug, but out of lack of opportunity. Now, no questions. It's gun-running down to a little port in Ole Virginny, as they call it." Joe studied him. His expression did not change. He said, "And how will I manage that?" Mr. Healey, before replying, opened his desk drawer and removed a packet of gold bills from it and a new pistol and a box of ammunition. "Now here," he said, "is what you will use to grease your way, if things get a little sticky, which we hope they won't. Never saw a man whose eyes don't shine when he sees these. And this here gun is for you. It's yours, for always. Fine gun, isn't it? Best made; Barbour & Bouchard, right here in this here Commonwealth. They made those four thousand eight-chamber rifles you'll be delivering down South. Mr. Montrose will go with you. Time you faced a little danger, took on some of the responsibilities my other lads have been doing right along, as you know only too well. But you've been snug in my offices, like a flea in a dog's ear, and the only danger you ever had was when you spent those two nights a month in the file room. My lads're not getting younger, and you're young, and it's hard to recruit the proper men for the proper jobs. Haven't found anyone but you in three-four long years, and that's a compliment, sir, that's a compliment." Joseph thought of his brother and his sister, and then he took the pistol in his hand and tested it. It had a fine balance, an excellent "feel," a certain competent smoothness, a certain deadly reassurance. "You've said no questions," said Joseph. "But I need to ask a few." "Go ahead," said Mr. Healey, with a large wave of his hand. "But that don't mean I have to answer them." "Is there any chance I may be killed, or caught?" Mr. Healey watched him closely, then nodded. "I'll be honest with you. Yes. Not a big chance, but some. Depends on what you do, what you say, how you conduct yourself, and your luck. But you got the luck of the Irish, don't you?" Joe's hands caressed the pistol but he looked silently at Mr. Healey for several moments. He said, "And how much will you pay me for this?" Mr. Healey affected incredulous astonishment. "You get your pay, don't you? Pay my other lads didn't get until they'd worked for me at least ten whole years, and you've been around only little over two. It's the soft heart I have, and I'm getting sentimental in my old age. I'll forget you ever asked that question." Joseph smiled faintly. "I owe you one thousand eight hundred dollars still. You've treated me fair and square, as you call it, Mr. Healey, and you've collected your interest, too, which is only right. So, to be brief, when I return after this job you will cancel the balance of my debt to you." He lifted his own hand. "I take care of your books, Mr. Healey. You do pay the men a handsome salary, but for certain tricky jobs you give them a fine gift. I know. I write out the cheques myself, for your signature. I may be your eyes and your ears, as you have kindly mentioned yourself several times, but I do have eyes and ears of my own, too, though I keep my tongue to myself." "You're mad, that you are," said Mr. Healey. Joseph said nothing, but waited. "Your first important job, and God knows if you'll do it right, and you want one thousand eight hundred dollars for it!" "Mr. Healey, there is a good chance, and that I know, that I may never come back. I will leave a letter with-someone-who will deliver my options to another person in another city, if I am killed or caught. You need have no anxieties. I will not tell that-someone-where I am going or what I am going to do. I will only tell him that if I don't return he is to go to you and you will give him the canceled agreement, and he will send it off to another person. You see, Mr. Healey"-and Joseph smiled his grimace of a smile again-"I am giving you my absolute trust that you will act honorably." Mr. Healey was alarmed. He sat up straight, his face swelling and turning crimson. "And who, may I ask, is that person in another city?" Joseph almost laughed. "Only a nun, sir, only a nun." "A nun!" "Yes. A harmless old nun-she once did me a great favor." "I think," said Mr. Healey with awe, "that you're daft. A nun! You! And who's your messenger right here, who'll take the papers to that nun, not that I believe a word of it." "Harry Zeff." "And he knows that nun?" Mr. Healey slapped his forehead in despair. "No. He does not. He won't even need to know her or see her. He will only send her the papers when he reads her address in the letter I will leave him." "Good God, why all these secrets?" "No secrets, Mr. Healey. A nun is not a secret, and we Irish do have a penchant for the Religious, don't we?" "What's that-that pen-?" "A weakness for, let us say." "So, you want to be charitable, to an old nun who probably never saw twenty dollars in her life!" "No. Not charitable. Just a-remembrance, I'll call it." Mr. Healey repeated, "I think you're daft." He chewed furiously on his cigar, then spat. He glared at Joseph. "You're deeper than a well," he said. "Maybe deeper than hell, even. Any connection of yours, that nun?" "No." "I don't believe any of this," said Mr. Healey. "Nobody, sir, is going to force you to believe anything. I just want your word of honor that you will deliver that canceled agreement to Harry Zeff to be sent to that nun, if I don't return." "You think of everything, don't you?" "Yes." "What makes you think you can trust Harry?" "What makes you think you can trust Bill Strickland?" "Hah!" Mr. Healey leaned back in his chair. "I saved Bill from the gallows." "And I saved Harry's life, or at least his leg." "But Harry's sharp, and Bill's a dog." Joseph did not answer. Mr. Healey studied him. "So you finally got yourself to trust somebody, eh?" "I tested him, and he asked no questions." "You could take a lesson from him," said Mr. Healey with sourness. When Joseph made no comment Mr. Healey said irascibly, "Why can't you leave that letter with me, and not with Harry? Don't you trust me? And I don't like that smile of yours, I'm thinking." "Mr. Healey, you once said the fewer people you need to trust the better. I've already trusted Harry. Besides, you are a busy and important man and I don't wish to burden you with trifles like this." "Hum," said Mr. Healey. "Trying to diddle me, are you? You got a right sarcastic mouth on you, Irish, for all your smooth way of speaking." "I am not planning on being killed or caught, Mr. Healey. The letter is only for an unforeseen emergency, which I hope will not occur. I can trust Harry to return that letter to me unread in case I return. I've trusted him before. I didn't like to do it but I was forced to." "All I know," said Mr. Healey, "is that in some way you outsmarted me and got me to say you can have that money I lent you. I didn't intend to. All right, get on with you. Get out of this room." Joseph stood up and said, "Thank you, Mr. Healey. You are a gentleman." Mr. Healey watched the young man leave the room and silently close the door after him. He ruminated. He began to smile, and it was both a rueful and affectionate smile, and then he shook his head as if laughing at himself. "The damned Irish!" he said aloud. "You can't beat us." Joseph wrote the letter to Sister Elizabeth, and enclosed the deeds to the options he had bought near Corland. He wrote that the options were to be held for his brother and his sister, and then offered for sale in a year for a certain price to Mr. Healey. He mentioned that a cheque would be reaching her shortly in the amount of several hundred dollars, for the board of his family. "This will protect their future, which I leave in your hands," he wrote, "for if you receive this letter I will probably be dead." He sealed the letter carefully and wrapped paper about it, which he sealed also. Then he wrote a short note to Haroun Zieff and sealed it also, the hot red wax dripping on his fingers. The candle he had lighted for this purpose flickered and smoked. On the envelope he wrote, Not to be opened unless I am dead. He blew out the candle and the wan and sharper light of his table lamp filled his bedroom. A fire burned quietly in the grate. It was April i, 1863, a cold bleak April after a desperately bitter winter. Joseph put the two packets together, placed them in a drawer of the rosewood desk and turned the key and pocketed it. The packets would be given to Haroun on the day he left for New York. He threw more coals on the fire and opened a book and began to read. He had marked a place with Sister Elizabeth's last letter. He would reread it again, then burn it. He never left any incriminating item behind him. He had put the thought of his coming mission to New York, and then Virginia, out of his mind for there was no need to think of it at present. Unnecessary thought was an impediment and made one too hesitant about the future. He had given a very brief consideration as to what he would do on his return, for now he owed no one anything and could borrow again, probably from Mr. Healey, for a string of tools and the hire of a few men to work them on the property on which he held options. However, there was a good possibility that he would not return, and there was no intelligence in planning unless there was a sound assurance behind the planning. Until he returned he would waste no time even on probabilities. A week from today and he would be in New York. He did not even try to remember New York. If a vague and uneasy pain touched him occasionally from the suppressed remembrance he was hardly aware of it, though he moved restlessly once or twice in his green velvet rocking chair. He had learned how to deal with sorrow; of that he was certain. One had only to make up one's mind that nothing in the world would ever hurt him again, not even memory, and that was sufficient. If natural apprehension nibbled a little at the edge of his intense concentration on the book he ignored it and dismissed it. Fear did not make him stare sightlessly at the page. What had to be done must be done, and as his life had always been joyless and he knew nothing of laughter and gaiety he found nothing particularly valuable in it for himself. He had money in the bank in Titusville; he had his options. All would be used for his family's future, combined with the sale of the options to Mr. Healey if he, Joseph, did not return. The options, a year from now, ought to be worth twice what he had paid for them and far more, for drilling had already begun in Corland and wells had come in in a very satisfactory way. All in all, the family was protected. It did not occur to Joseph, who trusted no one very much, not even Haroun, that he was trusting Sister Elizabeth to use the money wisely and well in behalf of Scan and Regina. Deep in his hidden consciousness lay that trust, though he did not know it consciously. He was reading Macaulay's Essay on Machiavelli, and it came to him with grim humor that he, himself, was not of the cut of a Machiavelli. The airy and delicate art of supreme irony-in contrast with the acid