The Iron Trail by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand [Brand, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Western
Publisher: Roy Glashan's Library
Published: 2020-11-03T23:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

In the Dark

WHEN he raised his head above the railing, all was mild darkness along the row of opened windows and doors which gave upon the balcony; but, though that blackness surely meant a great deal, so far as the rooms of the members of the family were concerned, it might mean nothing at all for young Eddie Clewes.

Going back over his own actions of the evening and the words which he had used to Eddie, he found that he had much to regret. And certainly he had said enough to put Clewes on his guard. On the other hand, he felt that two great forces worked to dull all suspicion in the mind of the great Eddie.

The first was that, for his old teacher, the confidence man felt nothing but contempt, which he rarely cared to so much as casually veil. The second was that Eddie had certainly fallen in love, and love, as Mr. Pritchard knew, was a great stupefier.

“Almost like beer,” said Dandy Dick in his philosophical moments.

Now the secret fear of Mr. Pritchard was that, when he entered that darkened chamber of his disciple, he would be walking upon a dreadful danger—Eddie Clewes lying in the dark with his eyes opened and his ears listening. What Eddie could do, unarmed as he was, was not the point. Mr. Pritchard did not analyze. He only knew that, as Eddie himself had said, there was nothing in the whole world which he feared with such thoroughgoing intensity as his young scholar.

The corresponding secret hope of Mr. Pritchard was that Eddie, excited, delirious with happiness after his interview with the girl, would have completely forgotten the ring of keys which the colonel had given to him earlier in the day.

From the balcony and through the door went Mr. Pritchard.

There he paused like a great squat spider, its claws upon the nerve-threads of the web. So did Mr. Pritchard pause, and, with his raw soul open to every whisper of sound, every hint of movement, he probed the blackness before him.

The glimmer of the stars and the radiance of the moon at length no longer left their images in his eyes, and he could see what was before him with as much distinctness as he could hope.

There was the bed, a faint outline against the wall. Yonder was a chair, here a table, here another chair, and there the closet door, its polished knob shining with the single ray of a star like an infinitely distant eye.

Mr. Pritchard gripped his Colt, but he changed his mind. For yonder wild devil of a boy, he would not trust the slow action of a Colt. He took the automatic.

And then he remembered that an automatic will jam.

With nerves that prickled up and down his spine, he sneaked to the closet door, opened it a fraction of an inch at a time, and felt for the coat that was hanging inside.

He found it at once. His huge hand became more delicate in touch than the fingers of a great musician.

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