A Good Man by Vanderhaeghe Guy

Author:Vanderhaeghe, Guy [Vanderhaeghe, Guy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780771086120
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2011-09-12T16:00:00+00:00

Two weeks after his former lawyer was laid in the ground – an interment that John Harding had not given a second thought to attending – the mining magnate is drowsily considering the gold, scarlet, and orange autumn leaves fluttering above him. This is baffling, since something else in the back of his mind reminds him he is warm in his bed, it is winter, and every tree has been bare for months. What’s more, he can feel his wife’s plump haunch nestled against his leg, and a pillow tucked under his head. When he rolls over, searching for an explanation for this puzzle, he can see the same bright colours leaping and throbbing on the windowpane. That’s when his feet strike the floor and carry him to the window in a headlong rush. In the yard below, the gazebo he had erected at the insistence of his daughters and wife is enveloped in flames. Fire crawls up its pillars, greasy black smoke rolls out from beneath its cupola.

Nightgown flapping, Harding snatches open the bedroom door, runs to the stairs, and bellows to the help, “Fire! Fire, damn you!”

But the alarm is raised too late to save Mrs. Harding’s charming pergola. The servants’ efforts to quench the conflagration are unavailing. Master and mistress stand at their bedroom window watching the blaze until the roof collapses, cascading embers into the snow where they hiss derisively.

For the first time, Mr. Harding feels a twinge of regret at Randolph Tarr’s passing. It seems that with the lawyer gone, the madman Gobbler Johnson has now put his eye on him. The next day he sends a wire to Fort Benton.

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