Kenny Part 35

Kenny took the will from his pocket and spread it on the table.

The doctor wearily fumbled for his gla.s.ses and put them on.

"Hum!" he said. "The old man's will, eh? I've been wondering about it. Well, he didn't leave much but the farm, did he? And it might have been better for Don and Joan if he'd taken it with him. n.o.body around here would buy it. A barn of a place! And the land's full of stone."

"Ah!" said Kenny significantly. "But Adam Craig was a miser!"

"Pooh!" said the doctor with a sniff. "Who told you that?"

Kenny stared.

"I found it out for myself," he said stiffly. "Since then I have learned that it is common rumor in the village. And the old man, even when I--I spoke of it directly to him, never troubled to deny it."

"Shucks!" said the little doctor crossly. "He liked it. It saved his pride."

"Saved--his--pride!"

The doctor nodded.

"Mr. O'Neill," he said, "country folks stare less unkindly at a miser than at some other things. It hurt Adam, knowing his guilt, to see the old Craig home going to rack and ruin. Had a lot of money when his father died. A lot. And he wanted folks to think he still had it.

But he didn't. Went through it, Mr. O'Neill, hitting the high spots.

Came home a penniless wreck of a man, body and soul and pocketbook warped beyond recall. I was there when they settled up his estate. As a matter of fact my brother was his lawyer. And what he hadn't lost in gambling and dissipation he lost speculating in Wall Street. Oh, he never tried the miser stunt with me. He knew that I knew that he hadn't a cent."

"Not a cent!" echoed Kenny feebly. "Not a cent!" He cleared his throat. "Not--a cent."

"Not a cent," said the doctor cheerfully. "And barely a living from that farm."

"Dr. Cole," said Kenny steadily, "he may have lost his own money. Of that I know nothing. But what about his sister's?"

"Why," said the doctor at once, "she hadn't any. Old Craig senior left it all to Adam. She ran away, you know, and went on the stage. He never forgot it. 'Tisn't much of a story. She was a darned pretty girl, high-spirited and clever, and the old man was a devil like Adam.

A scandal of that kind fussed us up pretty much in those days. I remember I went to see Cordelia once in some old-time play. She was wearing those old gowns that Joan, poor child, wears now. Always had a feeling after that that I was a part of the scandal. Mother," he added dryly, "felt so too."

The doctor shook his head lugubriously.

"She was a widow when she died," reminded Kenny.

"Yes."

"The money I mean must have come from her husband and she entrusted it to Adam for Joan and Donald."

"But my dear fellow," said the doctor kindly, "he hadn't any. He was an actor chap. Cordelia came home to the farm to die while Adam was in Europe. She hadn't a cent."

"Not a cent!" said Kenny again. "Not a cent!"

"Not a cent," repeated the mystified doctor.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" said Kenny. "And I've dug up the farm!"

It was the doctor's turn to stare.

"You dug up the farm!" he said blankly.

Sick with discouragement Kenny pointed to the will.

"Read it," he said bitterly. "Particularly the 'remainder, residue and situate' part."

The doctor read and he read slowly. Before he reached the clause in question Kenny was on his feet, mopping his forehead. He told of the fairy mill and the chair by the fire.

The doctor poured himself another cup of coffee and looked at Kenny with a shade of asperity. Fairies, it would seem, were a little out of his line.

"Adam had a good many spells like that," he said, "'specially when he was drinking hard. Off like a shot, hanging out of his chair. Mere coincidence. As for the night he staggered out to the sitting room, it is possible as you suggest that he did it in a fit of drunken superst.i.tion. But there wasn't any money on his conscience. Couldn't be for there wasn't any. If he feared at all to have his sister revisit her home--queer notion, that, Mr. O'Neill! You Irish run to notions!--it was simply because he hadn't given her kids a square deal and he knew it."

Again the doctor adjusted his gla.s.ses and went back to the will.

"Doctor," flung out Kenny desperately, "I myself have seen indisputable proof in that house that Adam Craig was a miser--even the way he handled money."

The doctor sighed and looked up. And he smiled his weary, understanding smile.

"What you saw, Mr. O'Neill," he said soberly, "was something very close to poverty. He was selfish and he had to have his brandy. His economy in every other way was horrible. Horrible! As for the way he handled money, as I said before, he wanted you to think he was a miser. It seems," added the doctor dryly as he went back to his reading, "that he was a grain too successful."

"He hated his sister," blurted Kenny. "Why would he hate her and revile her memory unless he knew he had wronged her? Why did he have black wakeful hours in bed and have to drink himself to sleep?"

"Adam," said the doctor with weary sarcasm, "fancied his sister had brought disgrace upon the grand old family name of Craig. She was a good girl and clever. But Adam believed in sacrifice and conventional virtue--for women. Most men do. And he knew the way folks feel up here about the stage. The world's queer, Mr. O'Neill. And Adam was just a little queerer than the rest of it. In a sense he had wronged her. G.o.d knows he was cruel enough to those two poor youngsters. As for his pa.s.sion for drinking himself to sleep--well, when a man's had straight legs and plenty of health, such a fate as Adam's. .h.i.ts hard.

"He hated Joan and Donald," said Kenny. "Why?"

"He resented their drain upon his pocket-book. He hadn't enough left for them and brandy too. Though the Lord knows they never cost him much. Nellie Craig had them for a while after Cordelia died. Good old soul, Nellie. But her tongue hung in the middle and worked both ways like a bell-clapper. I always blamed her for the start of the miser yarn. Adam managed to get it over on her and that was enough."

He made a final effort to read the will and while Kenny sat in stony silence, choking back a creepy feeling of despair, reached the clause pertaining to the residue of Adam's wealth.

"Ah!" he said.

"Well?" choked Kenny. "Is there some d.a.m.ned commonplace explanation for that, too?"

The doctor tapped the paper with his stubby finger.

"And you," he marveled, "who knew so well his devilish cunning! That clause I think was his last cruel jest."

Kenny turned white.

"A trap!" he said.

"A trap," said the doctor. "And you've swallowed bait and trap and all."

"How he must have hated me?"

"On the contrary," said the little doctor warmly, "I think in his way he was fond of you. He counted the hours until nightfall, that I know."

"And I--" said Kenny with a sharp intake of his breath, "I killed him with that story of the chair."