The clock on the wall struck ten times, a series of thin, reedy notes that followed each other wonderingly about the empty hotel lobby and then dwindled away into nothing. The stillness that followed seemed an anti-climax, as if the clock had spoken out of turn and been embarrassed into apologetic silence.
Andy Brown, the night clerk, glanced briefly up at the clock, then returned his full attention to the book in his hands. The hotel was as quiet as only a very full hotel can be, with the consciousness of sleeping people around every corner and behind every door. Nearly every hotel in town was in similar case, for it was the night before the fourth of July; though there was still light and activity in the barrooms of the larger establishments. In this one, however, which lay in a quieter section of town, only a single lamp burning in the lobby shed a round yellow pool of light over the front desk behind which the young clerk sat reading. One of the double doors to the street stood half open, and outside it was dark.
Ten minutes had passed since the striking of the clock, though Andy Brown, absorbed in his book, had noticed none of them, when there came a faint tread in the street, followed by the more distinct sound of a booted foot on the floorboards of the porch. As the door creaked, and footsteps crossed the floor to the desk, Andy sat forward in his chair and began to turn his head, his eyes staying on the page until the last possible instant. Reluctantly he pulled them away and stood up, one finger between the pages of the book, to meet the newcomer, who had stopped and leaned one elbow on the desk as though too tired to stand on his own.
He was young, probably no more than Andy’s recently attained twenty, with unruly, dark-gold hair curling on his forehead beneath a hat worn somewhat askew. There was a slackness about his shoulders and a hollow, disheartened look in his eyes that for some reason caught the young clerk’s notice, although tired travelers were certainly nothing new on the night shift.
“Room for the night?” said the boy dully.
Andy shook his head regretfully. “Sorry. We’re full up.”
“You can’t be full,” said the other, with disbelief.
Andy shrugged. “It’s always this way on the Fourth, with the rodeo and all. You might try the Whitmore over on Bell Street; they might have a room left, but—”
“I’ve been there already; they’re full.” The boy put a hand to his eyes and rubbed them wearily, then blinked twice as though trying to keep himself awake. “Look, there’s got to be someplace you can put me—I don’t care what it is, a closet, attic or what. Any place.”
“But there isn’t any. All the rooms are full. Some are already doubled up, and there’s ladies in others. There’s not a corner empty except the reserved room, and of course that’s out—”
The other boy straightened slightly. “A reserved room—with nobody in it? You mean they didn’t show?”
“No, no. That’s Mr. Wynant’s room. He’s part owner. He always reserves it in advance when he comes in from Denver. It’s strictly against rules to put anybody in there if he’s expected.”
“He isn’t there now.”
“No, but he’ll be here tomorrow afternoon. Mr. Donovan would skin me alive if I put anybody else in that room—and then fire me,” Andy added practically. “Why don’t you go down to one of the liveries, or the wagon yard—you can find a place to camp out there. Lots of fellows doing that already, I’ll bet.”
“No,” said the young stranger abruptly. “No, I can’t do that.” He shook his head again several times, not, seemingly, to add emphasis to his denial, but for some reason known only to himself. He leaned further forward, his arm on the edge of the desk. “Listen, just let me stay in that empty room tonight and I’ll be out of here first thing in the morning. I won’t cause any trouble. I’ll pay you double, if you want. Just—”
“Look here, don’t try to bribe me,” said Andy, becoming stiff with the dignity of a very young official.
“No, no, I didn’t mean that. I don’t know what I mean. I’ve just got to have a room for tonight. Just let me stay and I’ll—well, I can’t give you anything. I’m just asking for a favor—please.” The last word came in a lower, limp voice, without any effort at persuasion, which somehow made the appeal more affecting.
Andy scrutinized him with an uncertain expression, one eyebrow bent in a puzzled manner. The other boy’s dejection had touched on an unexpected reserve of pity in him. The look in his eyes was not merely physical exhaustion. And the hopeless, mute importuning in them was something Andy could answer, if he would. Andy stood undecided. He had told the truth; he would indeed lose his job (a very good job) if his trafficking with the reserved room was discovered. But it did not have to be, he reasoned. In a moral sense, surely no one could object to his giving a weary traveler a place to rest, so long as the hotel accounts were kept square.
“Well,” he said, still doubtful, but clearly relenting.
He took a piece of paper from a drawer, got out a pen, and pushed them both across the top of the desk. “Put your name on there,” he said, “and you can give me the money, I guess, and I’ll work it into the accounts.”
“How?” said the other boy, glancing up from the paper, a sidelong, deliberating glance.
Andy flipped open the hotel register and turned it around to look at it. “There’s usually somebody leaving on the midnight train,” he reflected. “As soon as someone checks out, I’ll make believe you came in then and put you into their room till tomorrow morning. In the book, that is.”
“You do this regular?” said the other with a kind of dull interest.
“No, this is my first time. But it shouldn’t be hard,” said Andy equably.
The boy finished writing his name and let the pen fall on the paper, from whence it proceeded to roll slowly away across the desk. He rubbed his hand across his forehead and the bridge of his nose and remained with his head bent for a few seconds, his eyes hidden by his hand. Andy took down the key to the reserved room, held it in the palm of his hand for a second, and then turned around and resolutely handed it over. “Upstairs and to your left.”
The other nodded without looking at him, his eyes half closing with weariness. He bent over and picked up a pair of saddlebags from the floor, and started toward the darkened staircase to the right of the desk.
Andy returned the pen to the inkstand, and drew the piece of paper toward him. He turned it around to look at the signature, wondering how difficult it would be to copy. The name was scrawled unevenly in a round, youthful-looking hand—John Smith.
The expression of the young clerk’s eyebrows became rather curious. He looked toward the staircase, which stood empty and silent once more, and again at the paper in his hand. He considered for a moment, biting thoughtfully at one side of his lower lip, and then he put the paper away into one of the innumerable small drawers of the desk and shut it up safely. Then he glanced up at the clock, picked up his book again, and sat down and opened it.
For the space of about twenty pages the lobby was silent, excepting the ticking of the clock, and the slight rustle of paper at intervals as Andy turned over a page, a calmly absorbed expression on his face.
He had just turned another when a faint breath of cool air invaded the region of the desk, which did not come from the street door, but had wandered down the dark tunnel of the staircase. Andy lifted his head and listened. A small, irregular muffled knocking sound was coming from somewhere above. Andy laid aside his book and got up. The hall window at the head of the first flight of stairs had a loose catch, and was in the habit of coming open and letting in an unwanted night draft, while the swinging window bumped gently against the wall. He had been required to go up and shut it several times during his shifts.
He went up the stairs to the open window, dark with long white curtains stirring on either side of it like undulating ghosts. Andy shut the window, giving the faulty catch a little twist and rattle in hopes of making it stay put, and turned around to go back down.
As he turned something in the hall to his left arrested him. A thin yellow line showed under one of the doors, a puddle of dim light picking out the pattern of the carpet in front of it. It was the door of the reserved room.
Andy moved toward it with his mouth set in disapproval. He stopped close to the door and knocked on it with two knuckles, trying to keep the sound low enough that no one but the room’s occupant would hear. He waited. There was no response, which seemed to indicate his caution had kept it too low even for that, so he tried again, just a hint louder. As before, no answer.
Frowning, Andy put his ear to the door. He listened, his eyes moving back and forth in concentration. There was not the least sound from within the room, not the least whisper of movement; nothing that would indicate a human presence except the burning light. He put his hand to the doorknob and tried it, and it turned easily. Andy pushed the door inward a few inches, but still there was no response from within the room, so he opened it still further and put his head in.
The lamp was burning unattended on the night-table. In its full light the young stranger lay back across the bed, one arm outflung and one leg draped over the edge, apparently sunk in a deep sleep. He seemed to have dropped at once and lay where he had fallen, for he still wore his coat and had not even bothered to take off his boots. The saddlebags lay at the foot of the bed and his hat on the floor beside it. Andy Brown, mindful of the reason that had brought him to the room, stepped in and closed the door behind him. He came a few steps toward the bed. The boy did not move; he seemed entirely insensible to all sounds. Andy came closer and leaned over him, wrinkling his nose apprehensively, for the unpleasant idea of a sick or dead occupant in the reserved room made him a little sick himself at the thought of the double unpleasantness it would entail for him. He was relieved at once on the latter score, for close up he could hear the other boy’s soft, heavy breathing. But he certainly did not look well, Andy thought. His face was almost colorless, with gray shadows under the hollows of his closed eyes.
Andy put a hand on his arm and shook him a little. He had to do this twice more before the boy showed any sign of life. At Andy’s third try he slowly opened clouded, heavy eyes without moving any other part of his body.
“Say, you’re showing a light,” said Andy. The boy stared up at him uncomprehendingly. Andy spoke again: “The light from this lamp’s showing out in the hall. Somebody sees that light and mentions there was someone in this room, I’m in trouble.”
A belated consciousness seemed to force its way to the surface of the other boy’s mind, and the dazed look in his eyes changed swiftly to suspicion. He stiffened as if to rise and his head lifted slightly, but he could not that quickly collect the strength.
“How’d you get in here?” he demanded.
Andy, somewhat taken aback, gestured uncertainly behind him. “The door.”
The boy stared at him with hostility that was clearly only a mask for alarm. “It wasn’t locked?”
“No.”
The boy let his head drop back onto the bed. “Not locked,” he said aloud, though evidently to himself. “After all this—and I forget to lock the door—!”
He shut his eyes and drew a deep breath. Andy Brown peered down into his face with some concern.
“Say, you don’t look so good,” he said. “What’s the matter with you—sick?”
The other boy made a negative motion with his head on the pillow. “No—just missed eating a few times.” He opened his eyes and looked at Andy for a few seconds, as if he were trying to process an idea in his mind. “Listen…you think you could get me a drink? I just need something to brace me up, that’s all.”
Andy considered this. “I guess I could,” he said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
He paused on his way out to push one of the braided rag rugs on the floor over in front of the door where it would block most of the offending light streaming underneath, then closed the door carefully behind him and went down the stairs with the utmost caution. The hotel was still silent. Andy went down into the barroom, and edged his way cautiously behind the bar into the glimmering, unfamiliar world of the bartender’s stock in trade, which looked like some strange scientist’s laboratory in the dark. He found a bottle of brandy already half empty, so the difference would not be noticed, and poured a small amount into a glass. This he prudently and liberally diluted with water, and then carried it out and upstairs to the reserved room.
The young stranger was propped up on one elbow when Andy entered. He sat up to take the glass, and drank it slowly, pausing every now and then. When he finished there was a little more color in his face, and he seemed to have regained some self-possession. He returned the empty glass a little awkwardly, his eyes meeting Andy’s only briefly with a somewhat furtive expression.
“Thanks,” he said. He added after a second, “I appreciate it.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble,” said Andy Brown with a half-smile—and added rather dryly as he turned to leave the room, “Even though I may be compounding a felony by doing it…”
He heard a slight movement behind him, and then as his hand touched the doorknob, a distinct click made him halt. “Hold it,” said the other boy’s voice, low but swift.
Andy turned around, slowly, to behold him sitting up straight in the middle of the bed, a gun in his hand directed at the clerk. His face was tense, his eyes wary.
“Just what do you mean by that?” he said.
Andy, his attention somewhat divided between the hostile yet dreading expression in the boy’s eyes and the weapon in his hand, observed that the muzzle of the gun trembled a little.
He did not feel exactly frightened, yet neither did he feel inclined to move, so he essayed to speak without moving more than he could help, holding his head a little stiffly. “Well,” he said, “it doesn’t take too much effort to figure that you’re running from something.”
“Why?” said the boy, his eyes not leaving Andy’s face.
“Well, for one thing, because your name is John Smith—or more likely because it isn’t.” Andy felt safe enough to make an explanatory gesture with the hand that held the empty glass. “You’ve been traveling without eating for a while, you’re kind of touchy about unlocked doors, and—er—you point guns at people. And you had some really good reason for wanting this room.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
Andy shrugged. “There’s not much I can do,” he said. “Matter of fact there’s really nothing either of us can do. You know I can’t split on you without losing my job over letting you in here. I know you can’t shoot me; you’d bring half the population of the State in at the door if you did that. But I’d like to know what I’m going to be prosecuted for when they catch you, if you don’t mind.”
The boy let the gun down slowly, and his expression slid into the same dreary misery he had shown earlier. “Nothing—I haven’t committed any crime.”
“Well, then, gee whiz, what are you getting so worked up over?” said Andy frankly.
The boy had settled back slowly on his elbow, his fingers still loosely around the butt of the gun that lay beside him on the quilt. He flashed Andy a dark look, some latent streak of temper coming to the surface. “I guess you’d be pretty worked up too, if your own father had set a sheriff after you!”
As Andy’s own father was a mild, middle-aged bookkeeper who would have been confounded at the notion of setting a sheriff after anybody, his son may perhaps be forgiven for responding to this sensational statement with only a lift of the eyebrows.
“What is your name, anyway?” he asked, after a moment’s thought.
The boy measured him as if calculating the risks of admission, then shifted his eyes away and spoke abruptly, as though giving up any effort at concealment. “Owen Moore.”
Andy, after a few seconds’ reflection, shrugged. “Doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“I guess word hasn’t gotten this far yet,” Owen muttered with bitter sarcasm.
He put the gun aside on the night-table and rolled back onto the pillow. He stared at the ceiling for a second, and then glanced down at Andy. “Think you could get me another drink?”
“I don’t think you need it this time,” said Andy shrewdly. (Owen’s opinion of this remark was unintelligible.) “How about something to eat? That’ll make you feel some better anyway.”
“I guess so,” said Owen without enthusiasm. He let out a breath that could almost have been called a sigh, had it not exhibited that same guarded restraint that lurked in his every move. Andy eyed him for a second, his nose wrinkling up in mildly puzzled curiosity, and then he turned to go. “All right. I’ll see if I can find something.”
He went downstairs, became aware of the empty brandy glass still in his hand as he reached the lobby, and temporarily concealed it behind the desk. Then he picked his way through the dark hotel dining-room, edging carefully through the obstacle-course of tables and upturned chairs, and made a foray into the even darker recesses of the kitchen. After poking about blindly and cautiously for a few minutes, he found some stew, cold, with a sheen of congealed grease on top, and half a loaf of slightly stale bread. Andy sawed an end off this very gingerly, reflecting that one never knew how much noise it took to cut a slice of bread until one tried it in the middle of the night. Laden with these spoils he returned upstairs.
Owen Moore took the food with a short word of thanks and ate it ravenously, sitting on the side of the bed, without comment on its quality—Andy judged correctly that he hardly tasted it. He seemed abstracted while he ate, staring hard at the wall opposite, and when he had finished he handed the scraped and empty plate off to Andy without even looking at him.
Then he glanced up. “Is there some paper and a pen around here that I can use?”
Andy gestured with an elbow. “Ought to be some in the table drawer over there.”
Owen looked and nodded briefly. “Can you mail a letter for me?—How about a stamp?”
“I can get you one from the desk downstairs, I think.”
“I’ll pay you for it,” said Owen with a return of that sharp, almost defiant edge to his voice. Andy looked at him, and started to open his mouth, but thought better of it.
“I’ll just go wash the dishes,” he said, feeling something of the incongruity of the words with the situation, “and then I’ll bring you the stamp. Should be an envelope in the drawer there too, I guess.”
Andy went down and washed the dishes, feeling that engaging in these mildly illicit activities in the darkened hotel corridors was at least an enlivening change from his usual quiet vigil in the lobby. He contrived to return plate, fork and the glass he had remembered to retrieve from behind the desk to their proper places without much noise, and then he got a stamp from the desk and went upstairs once more. He wondered if anyone in the hotel was awake, what they thought of this continual parade of stealthy footsteps past their door.
Owen Moore was seated at the table by the wall when Andy came in, writing rapidly. His face was nearly expressionless, but the way his lips set and tightened and the force with which his hand drove the pen gave some idea of the tone of the letter. His tousled hair fell over his forehead almost into his eyes. Andy sat down in the chair in the corner and rested one foot across his knee, and watched him. Owen had filled two sheets of paper already, and was midway through a third, the vicious scratches and stabs of the pen noisy in the silence of the room. He drove the pen so hard at last that the nib broke, forcing him to pause in exasperation.
The mishap seemed to break his momentum somewhat. He looked in the drawer for another nib, pulled the broken one out and fitted the new one in. He glanced at Andy Brown more than once while doing this—a glance that seemed defensive, though Andy had said nothing.
Owen wrote the last few lines with a more normal stroke, blotted the paper and then folded the whole letter and put it in an envelope. Then he slid around in his chair, put one hand on his knee, and gave Andy that defensive look again.
“What are you looking at me like that for?” he said.
Andy lifted his shoulders innocently. “I’m not saying anything,” he said. “I can’t help wondering, of course. You wouldn’t expect me to keep from wondering.”
Owen stood up abruptly and turned away. He flung himself down again on the bed, lying on his back with one leg bent, and stared at the lamplight on the ceiling.
Andy said, “If you didn’t commit any crime, why’d your father set a sheriff after you?”
The answer came back with a quickness which betrayed how much the boy needed to talk. “He thinks I did. That’s all he knew.”
“Well, if you can prove you’re innocent, why couldn’t you go and—”
Owen clicked his teeth shut. “No. Because I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.”
He sat up, propped on both elbows. “You want to hear about it? I’ll tell you.”
It was more of a challenge than an invitation, but Andy conveyed his willingness to listen by lifting his eyebrows inquiringly and looking as attentive as possible.
Owen did not begin for a minute. He shifted onto his side, scraped with his thumbnail at an ink stain on his other index finger, and stared at a rug on the floor. “I don’t know why it is,” he began; “maybe it doesn’t matter—my father and I haven’t gotten along for a long time. Not since—my mother died, six months ago. We’ve been at each other’s throats all the time. Nothing I do is right, and he just seems set on aggravating me whenever he can.” He scraped harder at the finger and his hand slipped with a jerk. “I’d asked him for some money to buy a horse, a few weeks ago. He said he’d think about it. Well, the other night we had a fight; what it was about doesn’t matter. Just the usual. He wound up by saying I wouldn’t get a penny from him till I started acting right. It wasn’t about the horse; he just threw it in.”
Owen drew a deep breath, as if trying to steady himself from the memory of the anger. “I got up before dawn next morning—I hadn’t slept much—and packed a camp outfit to ride out on my own. I’d done it before when I needed to cool off from a temper—stayed out for a day or two, and shot a rabbit or something for dinner—he knew that. I left early, before any of the men in our bunkhouse were up.
“I rode for a few hours, alone, out in the open, and then I circled around so I came on one of the roads nearby. I ran into a friend of mine, Bill Anthony, on the road. He looked surprised to see me, and asked if I knew what’d happened. I said no, what? He’d just come from our place—he said my father had gotten up that morning and found five hundred dollars missing from the safe in his office—supposed to be our month’s payroll and more. Bill said my father was raging mad; he was sure I’d taken it—he said he’d set the sheriff after me. He was leaving for town to do it when Bill left.” Owen bit his lip. Then his face hardened again. “After I left Bill I cut over the hills to the nearest railway siding and got on the train there. I left my horse; I knew if they were looking for me someone would find him and take him back. I had a little money and the stuff in my saddlebags…I figured I’d get to Denver, it’d be harder to find me there.
“That was yesterday morning, and I haven’t eaten or slept since—till tonight. I changed trains twice. Nobody was going to catch up with me. You see why I couldn’t sleep out in the wagon yard…somebody might find me there easy. That’s why I had to have this room.”
“Well, it seems to me like a stupid thing to do,” said Andy, with the wide-eyed candor that seemed to disarm the possible offense of his remarks.
Owen lifted his head, and frowned at him. “Why?”
“Well, if you didn’t take the money, seems to me it’d be pretty easy to prove. You haven’t got the money, and I suppose anybody could have broken into the safe and—”
“The safe wasn’t broken open,” said Owen in a low, tired voice. “It was unlocked. The only ones who knew the combination besides Dad were me and our foreman, Joe Nader. Dad trusts him completely, and anyway he wasn’t even there—he’d gone with a shipment of cattle we sold and wasn’t going to be back till the day before the Fourth.”
“Oh,” said Andy. He added, “So you got scared—and ran?”
“I wasn’t scared!” said Owen with sudden vehemence. “I didn’t take the money. I could have proved it. I wasn’t worried about that. I was angry. I wasn’t going to be arrested and taken back there and humiliated over something I didn’t do—something he ought to know I didn’t do. I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of pointing fingers and saying, ‘See, I’ve been telling you you’re behaving rotten, and this proves it,’ when I don’t deserve it.”
“Well, yes, but, with the safe being open like that, you can’t really blame him for jumping to conclusions—”
“I’m his son!” said Owen fiercely, sitting up again. “He raised me. He taught me right from wrong—drilled it into me. I’ve never done anything to shame him. But he was ready to believe in an instant that I’d steal from him, without even thinking there might be another answer. He couldn’t even come looking for me himself first and find out if it was true, instead of going and blazing it up and down the county that his son was a thief and a sneak. He didn’t think twice about yelling it out for everybody who was there to hear.”
“Sounds like he was mad,” said Andy pensively.
This mild understatement did not seem to require a reply. Owen lay back on his side, propping his head on his hand. When he was silent, the expression on his face was more bleak than bitter. With the dark shadows under his eyes and the low lamplight touching his curly hair, he looked very young and forlorn.
“I still think it was a pretty dumb idea running off like that,” Andy resumed. “You act like you wanted to make yourself look guilty. If you haven’t got the money, you could have walked right back to him before he ever got near the sheriff and said so.”
Owen lifted his chin from his hand and stared at him. “You’re not even sure I’m telling the truth, are you,” he said, disbelievingly. “You think I’m making all this up for your benefit? I didn’t have to tell you anything, you know. Your mouth would have been shut anyway because of this room.”
Andy hastily tried to make a disclaimer. “Well, no, I didn’t—”
“If. You keep saying if. You think I’ve got the money? Try me. I dare you to look for yourself and see.” He struck out with one leg and kicked the saddlebags off the bed onto the floor, where they fell in the middle of the braided rug.
Andy considered them for a minute, looking rather as if he were making up his mind what to have for breakfast. “Well, you don’t seem like the type to bluff,” he said at last, “but—”
He got out of his chair and knelt down on the rug, and proceeded to unbuckle the saddlebags. He unpacked the contents deliberately: socks, shirts, shaving materials…When it was all piled on the rug he shook the empty leather bags, peered inside, and then began to put the things back in as methodically as he had taken them out. Owen watched him with a touch of foggy bewilderment from the edge of the bed—in his overwrought state of mind, he did not seem able to comprehend Andy’s unruffled attitude.
Andy glanced up from his task, and met Owen’s eye. “Sorry,” he said, awkwardly.
Owen looked away, as if stung with shame. “You’re a stranger,” he said. “You’ve got every right not to believe me.” He added, “I ought to be the one apologizing for all the trouble I’ve given you.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Andy. And he added, “I did believe you, anyway. I just thought I’d check.”
Owen gave something that might have been a faint laugh. Andy stood up, and slung the saddlebags around the bedpost at the foot of the bed.
“Well,” he said, “what are you going to do now?”
Owen looked steadily across the room at the table where the envelope lay. “I’m going to mail that letter,” he said, “and I’m going to take the first train for Denver in the morning.”
Andy hesitated. “You’re sure that’s what you want to do?”
“That’s what I’m going to do,” said Owen. He added, a little more sharply, “Will you mail the letter?”
“I’ll mail it,” said Andy, not with the best grace. He picked it up off the table.
He glanced round the room before going. “Anything else I can get you?”
Owen laughed again, off-key with strain. “‘Anything else I can get you?’ You’ve got the hotel business down all right. No, there’s not much more you can do for me.”
There was a pause, and his eyes met Andy’s again. “Sorry. You’ve been darned decent to me.” He offered his hand. Andy accepted it willingly and they shook hands.
“Well, goodnight,” said Andy. “I’m going to call you pretty early—reserved room, you know. Better get some sleep now.”
Owen was already lying back on the pillow, his eyes half-closed; he nodded drowsily. Andy tapped the letter against his hand, and turned around and went out—forgetting, in his abstracted mood, to turn out the lamp.
He went downstairs, still fingering the envelope. Of a serene temperament himself, he was vaguely disturbed by the tides of strong emotion that lashed round the Moores, though he had only felt the storm at second hand. And the lack of resolution made him unhappier. If the father was anything like the son, the acridity and accusation that he had no doubt the letter contained would be only so much tinder to the flames.
Andy tapped the envelope sharply against his fingers again as he reached the desk, looking at it as though reproving it; and then slid it into the space reserved for outgoing mail. He went behind the desk and sat down, threw up one foot across his knee, pulled his book to him and opened it. The swivel chair seemed uncomfortable. He glanced at the clock—a quarter to eleven.
At ten minutes to twelve, a hotel patron came down the stairs with a grip in his hand, still rubbing sleep from his eyes, paid his bill and went out into the now sharply cool night to catch the midnight train. Andy put the money in the till, and then he took out the scrap of paper with “John Smith” scrawled on it and examined it again. He found another sheet of paper and tried copying the handwriting, practicing it several times over. A conscientious forger was Andy; to his mind even an ultimately meaningless alias ought to look right on the hotel register.
The midnight train came and went while he was thus occupied; the station was almost too far across town for him to hear the faint whistle. Andy was still bent over the paper imitating individual letters when a step on the floor just beyond the desk startled him. He straightened up and hastily brushed the papers off the desk out of sight—a guilty action, but the man did not appear to have seen; he was looking down and his hat shaded his eyes.
“Can I help you, sir?” said Andy, trying to regain his jumbled composure.
The man nodded. “I’d like a room, if you’ve got one,” he said, in the distant, dispirited voice of a midnight traveler.
“Just one,” said Andy, glancing toward the cubbyhole which held the key just returned by the man who had checked out. “How long do you want it for?”
“Just for the night. I’ll pay in the morning.”
“Very well, sir. If you’ll sign right here…”
The man picked up the pen and scribbled at the register, then put it down with a sigh and rubbed his hand over his eyes. Andy turned the register around and gave it his customary glance. His brain registered the signature, and then gave a violent jolt. The name on the last line was Ira Moore.
Andy gave him a quick wide-eyed look, which Ira Moore, looking down still, did not see. The resemblance to his son was not obvious; he was of stockier build, his face was more square; but the likeness was there in faint glimpses—something about the coloring and the shape of the head. He lifted his head resignedly and looked across at the clerk, and Andy saw the weariness in his eyes. It was the same man he had heard about, and yet a different one. It was easy to read in his face a man who had raged and been angry, and now, in a later, quieter hour, was tired out and rebuked by his own anger and the trouble it had caused.
Andy said, hesitantly, “Is there anything else I can get you, sir?”
Ira Moore smiled half-heartedly. “No, there’s nothing else you can do, son.”
Andy Brown turned around to face the rows of cubbyholes on the wall and raised his hand toward the one with the key he wanted. And then suddenly a daring thought came over him. He paused, staring at his own uplifted hand, and then he did perhaps the only audacious thing he had ever done in his life. He took down the spare key to the reserved room.
He turned and pushed the key across the desk. “Upstairs and to your left,” he said. “All doubled up tonight, I’m afraid; we’re always this full over the Fourth.”
Moore seemed to have only half heard; he nodded absently and pulled the key off the desk. He turned and walked toward the dark stairs.
He climbed them slowly and turned to the left at the top of the flight. He went along the hall: unlike Andy Brown, making no attempt to soften his already heavier, though slower footsteps. At the door, he fumbled a few seconds with the key, rattling it, before realizing that the door was not locked. He shook his head as if to clear away his own dullness, twisted the knob and pushed the door inward.
He took one step in and half halted at the unexpected glow of lamplight revealed by the door’s swinging open—and then he stood stock-still, unable to move or speak. Owen Moore stood opposite with his back against the wall, only a few yards away—his face, half in shadow, was set and desperate, his eyes haunted, and there was a gun in his hand. It was pointed toward the door.
Ira Moore did not move. He looked slowly from the gun to his son’s face—his eyes watchful, as he tried to gather his wits. He noted the boy’s strained, pallid face, the way he leaned back into the wall, and how the hand that gripped the gun was unsteady. His father realized that in the wrong speech or movement there lay actual danger.
There was only one way he could possibly think to begin, and the word came cautious and a little husky from his throat: “Owen—”
“Don’t come any closer,” said Owen—through his teeth, but the words shook a little. “Do you think I won’t shoot? I’m not going back with you. I won’t be taken back—and humiliated any more. You’re not going to lay a hand on me.”
“Owen,” said Ira Moore again—his face full of distress, but still not daring to move— “now don’t—”
Owen tried to laugh, but his voice cracked and made it sound like a hysterical sob. “I’ll bet you’d like me to shoot—and hang for it. That’s what you think I deserve, isn’t it?”
Moore was silent half a minute, looking at him, trying to decide what to do. Then he gathered his nerve and began to speak slowly.
“I made a mistake,” he said. “I know you didn’t take that money.”
“You believed I did.”
“You were angry enough to do something reckless, and I was angry enough to believe for a minute that you’d do it. I thought you’d know that.”
Owen’s voice grew harsh, as though he were choking back emotion. “You wouldn’t have gone to the sheriff if you hadn’t believed it. You never bothered to ask. You could have come after me yourself, instead of letting everyone in the county know—exactly what you thought of me.”
“If I’d been in my right senses—that’s what I would have done,” said Ira Moore, his forehead knitting painfully. “Can’t you at least allow for a mistake?”
There was a hard silence. Owen blinked, staring a little, as if his vision had wavered, and his sweaty fingers took a fresh grip on the gun.
Somehow, Moore managed a cracked smile. “Do you want to know what really happened, Owen? Joe came home that morning a day early, sometime after you left and before I got up. He went into the office and was going to count out the money for the payroll—because we were giving them a half day on Friday, remember? The boys were going into town early to get ready for the races on the Fourth. Joe opened the safe and took out the sack of money, but before he could count it out one of the boys came in and told him he had to come look at some cattle that had come down sick. Joe put the money in the desk drawer and locked it and went with him, thinking he’d only be fifteen minutes. He didn’t get back for two hours…he came back right in the middle of the uproar…told me where the money was right away.”
Moore added, even more quietly, “I was just leaving to go and look for you—somehow I felt like I wanted to talk things over with you, after all that—when I met Bill Anthony. He’d come back to tell me he’d seen you and he was sure it was all a mistake—and I knew the story you must have had from him. I never even got near the sheriff, son. I started right out to find you, and I’ve been trying to track you down ever since…to find you and tell you…I’m sorry.”
Almost imperceptibly, he had been moving closer. His voice was gentle and sure—one would never have guessed how much of that speech had been put together as he spoke it, dragged straight from the heart in the extremity of the moment.
“There’s a lot of things been wrong between us since—your ma died. We’ve both been angry—said a lot of things we regret.” A pause. “I came looking for you because I—I know how you must have felt. You ran off because you were angry with me for doubting you. I don’t hold it against you, Owen…please don’t hold it against me.”
He had approached so that the gun in Owen’s hand trembled only a few inches from the front of his coat. Owen’s head was down. Without taking his eyes from his son, Ira Moore lifted his hand to the gun; his fingers closed gently around it. Owen’s hand loosened, and Ira Moore drew the gun slowly, quietly away, and laid it on the table to his right without a sound.
Owen slowly lifted his head, as if it were a heavy weight. His face had loosened to shame and exhaustion, his eyes were blurred with tears. His father said nothing, but he reached out and put a hand on his son’s shoulder—and Owen leaned quickly forward into his father’s embrace, his face hidden against the solid shoulder, gripping his arm tightly.
Outside in the dark hall, Andy Brown drew a long, deep breath. It was a full half-minute before he decided that his shaky knees would bear his weight. The door of the room had swung back noiselessly by itself to within a few inches of being closed, and he very carefully turned the knob and closed it the rest of the way. Then he went back downstairs to the desk.
Once there, he did several things. He took an envelope from the outgoing-mail slot, turned up the lamp, and held the corner of the envelope in the flame until it caught. He transferred it to the ashtray on the desk and poked at it with a pen until it was reduced to gray cinders. Next went several scraps of paper scrawled with the name “John Smith.” Then he completed his benevolent forgery, carefully entering the number of the room vacated at midnight, and then he sat down in the swivel chair and opened his book.