CHAPTER XXI.
CYRUS GETS ANOTHER SHOCK.
Alone and waiting for the coming of the girl, Cyrus' mind suddenly changed. It was as though a mist charged with electricity had split, giving him for a moment a clear view of the world, himself and his position.
No, he couldn't kill Yakoff and then commit suicide. A moment ago the plan was clear in his head, even to the vision of Yakoff being held before the pistol point, shuddering, white, gibbering with terror, suffering agonies of mind before the pull of the trigger sent him to the devil.
That vision, begotten of fury and the desire for revenge, had vanished. Cyrus was not a killer, and the easy years had sapped his daring and the vital energy which finds its expression in recklessness.
No, he could not kill his tormentor and then commit suicide. There was another way out of the whole business—social extinction. To disappear again as he had disappeared after the killing of Leeson, only this time with money to spare tucked away and with June for a companion. Was it possible? Quite, if he carefully made his plans, and if June acquiesced.
He was thinking this when the door opened and the girl came in; she had not retired when the steward gave her the message and she was in the same dress in which she had dined. When the message came to her that Cyrus wanted to see her, she could not imagine what it could be. They had parted almost in anger over the business of Fernand. Could it be possible that Cyrus was on it still—wanted to chew the rag?
She was quite prepared for battle, but the sight of him as she came into the room calmed her mind.
Cyrus was standing sidewise to her with his hand on the bureau top, looking down at a paper opened on the flap. He looked tired, and as he turned to her she noticed that he was somehow changed.
“Sit down, June,” said he. “I've sent for you to have a moment's chat. I've got to tell you something I have always held back. Sit down—sit down. No, I'm all right, and if I look a bit shaken up it's only from thinking and worrying over a business that comes up to me now and then from the past.
“After all it's only my own affair. I never told your mother. There are things in a man's life that can't very well be told and are better left covered. Well, it's short work to tell what this thing was—just a man killed.
“I killed a man once; it was in my own defense, but the circumstances would be read against me. Things happen like that.”
He stopped and looked at the girl and was surprised at her calmness.
“You understand me,” said he. “Away years ago, it was. I shot him over the card table because he'd already drawn a six-gun on me—the thing misfired and before he could raise the hammer again, I'd drilled him. If I hadn't, he'd have drilled me. You see, I'd won all his money and he wanted it back.”
June sighed deeply. It was as though a weight had been taken off her shoulders.
Cyrus was innocent of murder. Yakoff's threat against him would lose its power.
But why had Cyrus sent for her to tell her this? The answer came on the heels of the thought.
“I sent for you to tell you this,” said Cyrus, “because there is a man here on this atoll who has recognized me, and who has threatened me. He threatened to give information about that old happening if I don't hand him over two hundred thousand dollars as hush money. His name is”
“Yakoff,” she replied.
Cyrus drew back sharply as though some one had struck at him.
“Good Lord!” said he. “Who told you that? How did you know anything of this business? How”
“Dad,” said she, “I've known it since this afternoon.”
“And who told you?”
“Fernand.”
“That young chap?”
“Yes, the man we nearly fought over an hour or so ago.”
“But—great Scott! How did he know?”
“He overheard Yakoff telling a man named Chales; he overheard the whole thing. That was yesterday. To-day early and before you were up he saw me on deck and took a canoe off. He wanted to tell me the whole business, and that is why he asked me to come in the afternoon onto the reef. You accused me a little while ago of making an appointment to go on the reef with Fernand without telling you. Well, that was why I made it.”
“But why couldn't he come and tell me?”
“Dad, think! He has never spoken to you; he doesn't know you. How would you like to go to a dead stranger and break the news that some one was going to attack him for something done in his past? But Fernand knows me and he told me all. He was in great distress of mind.
“You don't know him and you can scarcely imagine him. He is so primitive and so innocent and so free from any double motive that anything like this hits him hard. It isn't only that he cares for me; if you were an absolute stranger—that is to say, if he didn't care for me—he would still be out to try and stop Yakoff.”
Cyrus was silent for a moment. Here was a new complexity. This scamp of a Fernand as a defender! Could irony rise higher than that? Only a couple of hours ago he had been telling June that Fernand was not good enough for her, that Fernand was socially below them, and all that time she must have known that he, Cyrus, was a man outside the law and that Fernand was trying to help him.
A momentary irritation threw him off his balance.
“But how can the chap do anything?” he asked. “How on earth can he help? I sent for you because I wanted to put before you the position of things and tell you what is in my mind. The only thing for me to do is to dive under, quit everything, change my name”
“But why?” cut in June. “Why not stand up to him and fight? You are innocent.”
“Because, little girl,” said Cyrus, “Yakoff has fixed things so that, though I am innocent, my best friend, if he knew the facts as Yakoff has fixed them, would say that I was guilty. He came into the room where I had left that man dead, boned the money I had left on the table and made it appear that I had killed the chap for his money and done a bunk. He didn't do this out of simple devilishness, but for profit. He nailed two thousand five hundred pounds and threw the blame on me.”
“And now,” said June, “he wants to repeat the business.”
“That is so.”
“Well,” said the girl, “I believe there is a Providence.”
“There seems to be for chaps like Yakoff.”
“No, for people like us.”
Cyrus was silent. He was pouring himself out some soda water.
“There's one thing, thank Heaven,” said he. “Your poor mother has been saved this trouble. Well, well, who knows; it may be all for the best, though it's hard to see it.”
“If you can't stand up to him and fight,” said June, “perhaps something will happen to help. You asked me what Fernand could do. Perhaps he can do a lot. Perhaps he can do a lot. It's this way: First of all, Yakoff insulted him the day we came in here, then again Yakoff has nearly killed his diving partner by selling him opium, then again there is this vile attack on you, and again there is the fact that Fernand cares for me. Fernand told me he was going to make Yakoff fight a fair fight with equal weapons.”
“A duel?”
“Yes.”
“To kill. Why did you not tell me all this before?”
“Because,” said June, “it was not mine to tell. I should not have told you now, but I could not help doing so—my mind is so upset—and you had to know the truth about Fernand.”
Cyrus stood looking at the girl without a word. This amazing business had been sprung on him only a couple of hours ago, yet for several days it had been brewing. Unknown to him people had been plotting and counterplotting, plotting to destroy him and plotting to save him.
Here in this outlandish place, where, above all places in the world, one might fancy oneself disregarded and unknown, his fate had been decided—was being decided, perhaps at this very minute, out there in the moonlit night that was sending its sounds and sea scents through the open portholes.