The Nail and the Oracle (8 page)

He stood still then, head down, hauling uselessly at the relentless grip on his arms, and breathed hoarsely.

A blaze of light appeared across the room. It was only a match, but it was so unexpected it hurt him more than fists and made him grunt. The flare dwindled as it stroked the wick of a lamp, and then the lamp-flame came up, yellow and steady.

The room was fixed up like an office. There was a bookcase and a cabinet and, on the wall, a claims map. A big desk stood parallel with the far wall with a heavily curtained window behind it. The lamp stood on the desk, and seated behind it was a thin man with pale gray hair and the brightest blue eyes he had seen yet. The man wore a black coat and a tight white collar and an oversized black Ascot, from the top bulge of which gleamed a single pearl. The man was waving the match slowly back and forth to put it out.

He was smiling. His teeth were very long, especially the eyeteeth.

“So, Mr. Bronzeau,” he said in a soft, mellow voice. “We meet at last.”

Younger Macleish was far too dazzled to respond. He pulled suddenly at the arms which held him, glanced right and left. He got a blurred picture of one man, heavy-set and running to fat, who smelled of beer and sweat, and another, much younger, with the crazed, craven face of one who can be frightened into being snake-dangerous. One thing was certain: the two of them knew how to hold a man so he couldn’t move. To them he said, “Turn me loose.”

At this there was a movement in the shadows and a fourth man moved out of the corner. He was a wide man with a wide hat on, and small eyes, and he put two big white hands in the pool of light under the lamp and began to fiddle with a big black and gold signet ring with a black-letter B on it. He was smiling. Younger Macleish said again, “Turn me loose.”

“Oh,” said the gray-headed man pleasantly, “we will—we will, Mr. Bronzeau. But first Mr. Brannegan here will relieve you of anything sharp or explosive or which in any way might disturb the peace and quiet of our little conversation.” He smiled, and then waved his hand in a small flourish at the man with the signet ring. He said, like one politician introducing another politician, “Mr. Brannegan.”

The big man came over. Macleish tensed. “Hold real still, sonny,” said Brannegan, and went over Macleish rapidly and with an expert touch. He checked everything—even his boot-tops, where men have been known to stash a knife. In the process he got Younger Macleish’s money, his cigars, his matches, and even a walnut he had borrowed from Miz Appleton’s alcove. These things he put neatly on the desk.

“I shall now show you, Mr. Brannegan, that even you can at times be careless; and you, Mr. Bronzeau, that I know a great deal more about you than you thought I did. Our young friend,” he informed Brannegan, “has been seen to reach up as if to scratch his ear, and suddenly hang a weighted throwing knife he carries in a four-by-four thirty yards away. If you will be good enough to look, I think you will find the knife in a sheath between his shoulder blades.”

Brannegan swore and reached over Macleish’s shoulder, to pound him heavily on the back. The two men holding him tightened their grip as Brannegan grasped Macleish’s collar and with one painful wrench broke his string tie and tore out his collar buttons. He slid a hand down the back of Macleish’s neck and scrabbled around as if he expected to find the weapon under the skin rather than on it.

“It ain’t here,” said Brannegan.

For a split second the gray-headed man’s eyes got round; then they slitted again and he took to wagging his head sadly, side to side. “You have surprised me,” he said to Macleish, “Mr. Bronzeau, you have indeed surprised me, and I concede that I never thought you would. I knew you would follow me here, and I knew you could be induced to come into this room; but I will allow that I never expected you to come unarmed. There is a difference, Mr. Bronzeau, between courage and foolhardiness. I think you will agree that you have passed it. Well then,” he barked in a business-like way, “we can settle our little matter all the better, then.”

He took a paper out of his breast pocket, unfolded it and put it on the desk. “Here, my young friend, is a transfer form, properly executed, lacking only your signature. Here,” he said, moving an inkwell and a feather pen next to the paper, “is something to—”

“Now you looky here,” said Younger Macleish, who had suddenly had enough and to spare, and was able to pull his startled wits
back into shape. “I don’t know you or nothing about you or no paper. Now turn me loose!” he yelled at the two men at his sides, and gave a mighty wrench that ought to be enough to pull a horse off its feet—and wasn’t enough to break free of these two.

“Mis-ter Bronzeau!” cried the gray-headed man. He sounded aggrieved—astonished and hurt. “You interrupted me!” He turned to Brannegan, complaining: “Mister Brannegan, he interrupted me.”

Brannegan tsk-tsked like a deacon, settled his big ring just the way he wanted, and hit Macleish on the left cheek-bone with it. Then he stepped back and smiled. He said, “You hadn’t ought to interrupt, sonny.”

The craze-frightened youth snickered. The beer-smelling man brayed. The gray-headed man waited until it was quiet again except for Macleish’s heavy breathing. The blood began running from the place the ring had hit.

“First I talk,” the gray-headed man explained patiently, “and then you talk, and that’s the way gentlemen conduct business. Now then—where were we? Here is a paper, and here is the pen you are going to use to sign it with, and here is something”—he put out a short-handled, long-bladed knife, picked up the matchstick he had used to light the lamp, and delicately split it in two—“we can use to keep this conversation going if we have to; and here,” he said as he put the knife down exactly parallel with the pen and opened the desk drawer, “is a little something for dessert, you might say,” and next to the knife he put down a nickel-plated, four-barrel gambler’s gun. “Just a toy, really, and guaranteed not to hit what you aim at unless,” he added, picking up the gun and pointing it playfully at Macleish’s belt-buckle, “you’ve got some way of holding the target still.” He laughed genteelly; Brannegan haw-hawed; and late, the youth tittered and the beery man brayed. “Now then,” said the gray-headed man, “Mr. Bronzeau had something to say. Go ahead, Mr. Bronzeau.”

Younger Macleish looked from one to the other of them and concluded that they were waiting for him to speak. He said, “My name ain’t Bronzeau or whatever it was you said. I just rode in an’ I’m goin’ to ride out in the morning and you got yourselves the wrong man.”

“Ah,” said the gray-headed man tiredly, “come off it, Bronzeau. We know you. Don’t make this take any longer than it has to.”

“It’s the truth all the same,” said Younger Macleish.

“All right, all right; I’ll hear it out. Where is it you pretend to be coming from, and what lie have you got ready about where you’re going?”

“That,” said Macleish, “is my business.”

“He’s rude, Mr. Brannegan,” complained the gray-headed man.

Brannegan hit Macleish on the same place with his ring. It seemed to grow dark in there for a time, or perhaps it was only that the lamp and the room and all the men moved far off for a moment. Then he straightened up and shook his head, and it all came back again, and Brannegan was rubbing his ring and saying, “Don’t be rude, sonny.”

“Are you going to sign it?”

“No, I ain’t.”

“Not quite so hard this time, Mr. Brannegan.” But Macleish guessed Brannegan did not hear the gray-headed man in time.

The next question he was aware of hearing was “Why? Why? Why put yourself through this, Mr. Bronzeau? Why won’t you sign it? Just tell me that.”

“Because I told you,” said Macleish hoarsely. “I ain’t who you think, and this has nothin’ to do with me. Now you whoa!” he roared suddenly at Brannegan, who was cocking his signet hand for another pass; and, surprisingly, Brannegan whoaed. Macleish said, “Whatever that is, it won’t be worth nothing if I sign it. You might’s well sign it yourself. I tell you it’s got nothin’ to do with me.”

“Reasonable, reasonable,” nodded the gray-headed man. “Only we just don’t believe you.” But Macleish noticed he didn’t call him “Mr. Bronzeau” this time.

Brannegan said to the gray-headed man, “He ought to’ve had that there throwin’ knife.”

“A point, a point,” allowed the gray-headed man, who apparently always repeated himself when he was thinking. “What impresses me most is that our Mr. Bronzeau is too intelligent to carry this performance of injured innocence on so long. Ergo, this man is as stupid as he acts. Which would indicate that he is after all not our Mr.
Bronzeau.” He pulled his low lip carefully away from his lower teeth. They were too long too. “On the other hand, such stupidity might be covering up a very clever man indeed. Indeed.” Abruptly he turned from his contemplation of Younger Macleish and said briskly, “Mr. Brannegan, we need to know a little more about our young friend.”

Brannegan said to Macleish, “Where at’s your horse?”

Macleish said, “In my hip pocket.”

“Sonny,” said the big man, stroking his ring, “I owe you one for that.”

“Take care of it when you come back,” said the gray-headed man. “I’m sure all he meant was that his horse is at the livery, and would hardly be anywhere else.”

“That’s right,” said Macleish.

Brannegan went to the door. The gray-headed man said, “If by any chance this is not our Mr. Bronzeau, Brannegan, I should like to know it quickly. I tire soon in the presence of stupid people,” and he smiled at Macleish.

“Be right back,” said Brannegan, and went out.

The gray-headed man picked up the little gambler’s gun and checked the load. “You may as well sit down and be comfortable,” he said, waving at a corner chair. “Turn him loose, boys,” he said, mimicking Macleish’s earlier demand, “and stand by the door, and if he makes a play,” he added, smiling his most pleasant smile, “kill him.”

The men let go, and Macleish gave each of them a memorizing kind of look, and went and sat in the corner, folding his arms and massaging his biceps.

It grew very quiet in there. Macleish looked at the three, and the three looked back at him. After a while, the gray-headed man rose and came around to the front of the desk, holding the gun loosely. He stood back against the desk and stared at Macleish.

“Didn’t you win a silver-digging in a crap game and then put it up in a poker deal with a certain gentleman?”

“Not me,” said Younger Macleish.

“And didn’t you lose the pot, and renege, and then cut out here to see if the digging was worth-while after all?”

“Not me,” said Macleish.

“It was worthwhile,” said the gray-headed man.

“Well now,” said Macleish.

“Sign this,” said the gray-headed man softly, “and nobody reneged, and nobody’s mad.”

“I ain’t mad,” said Macleish. He rose suddenly.

The little gun swung to point steadily at him. Late, as usual, the beery man said a wordless
hup!
and his gun was out and, noisily, cocked. The loco-looking youth began to breathe loudly with his mouth open.

“Foot’s asleep,” said Macleish. He jiggled on it a couple of times and then sat down again.

After that nobody said anything until Brannegan got back.

The gray-headed man went back to his desk chair as Brannegan came in. Brannegan glanced at no one, but went straight to the desk and put down a packet of letters, a piece of polished rock crystal hanging from a fine gold chain, and a pincushion made like a little shepherdess with a full skirt. “Looky yere,” said Brannegan. “He plays with dolls.”

The gray-headed man was interested only in the letters. He fanned them and dealt them, one by one, picked up one and glanced through it, opened another and closed it right up again. He stacked them neatly and put them away from him next to the doll and the crystal pendant. Then he folded his long pale hands and seemed to close his eyes.

Macleish looked at the things on the desk and wondered if one or the other sister would get the pincushion and the pendant, or if it would be the schoolteacher after all.

The gray-headed man didn’t move, but his sharp bright eyes were suddenly on Younger Macleish. “You’re really just riding in, riding out.”

“I told you,” said Macleish.

The gray-headed man cursed. Coming from him, and coming as it did with such violence, the effect was like that match flame a little earlier, which had made Macleish grunt.

“Mr. Brannegan,” said the gray-headed man mildly, after he had his breath again, “We’ve got the wrong man.”

Brannegan eyed Macleish with enmity, and said, “All that trouble.”

To Macleish, the gray-headed man said, “Say you had a man to see, and you knew he was so good-looking he was practically pretty, and he’d dress so fancy he looked like a clown; and say you knew about him that he’d smoke the best cigars, call for the oldest brandy, and make for the nearest pretty face; and say you set up a trail he had to follow and an ambush he had to walk into. Then suppose just such a clown walked into it.”

“I’d say you made a mistake,” said Macleish.

“Just so, a mistake.” Then he added, showing he was thinking, “A mistake.” He sighed. “Mr. Brannegan, we’ve got to make it up to this young man.”

“Sure,” said Brannegan heavily.

“Return this man’s property to him, Mr. Brannegan.”

Brannegan got the things off the desk and gave Macleish his matches, his cigars, his poke, his letters, the crystal pendant. “That’s awful pretty,” he murmured as he gave Macleish the doll.

Macleish stowed the things in the various pockets of his fancy vest while the gray-headed man went on talking. He said, “I wouldn’t want you to resent any of this, you know. An honest mistake. And I wouldn’t want you to complain to the sheriff or anything like that. Not that it would make any difference. And I would be especially sad if you should talk about this to anyone you might meet on the trail.” He stopped then, and waited.

Younger Macleish said, “I don’t never complain.”

“Oh fine,” said the gray-headed man. Then he said it again, and, “I’d like to be sure of that. I really would.”

Macleish shrugged at him. He couldn’t think of anything to say.