Black Jack | Page 7

made the walls cool and fresh. The solemn engravings no longer hung above the bookcases. And the bookcases themselves had been replaced with built-in shelves pleasantly filled with rich bindings, black and red and deep yellow-browns. A tall cabinet stood open at one side filled with rifles and shotguns of every description, and another cabinet was loaded with fishing apparatus. The stiff-backed chairs had given place to comfortable monsters of easy lines. Vance Cornish, as one in a dream, peered here and there.
"God bless us!" he kept repeating. "God bless us! But where's there a trace of Father?"
"I left it out," said Elizabeth huskily, "because this room is meant for--but let's go back. Do you remember that day twenty-four years ago when we took Jack Hollis's baby?"
"When you took it," he corrected. "I disclaim all share in the idea."
"Thank you," she answered proudly. "At any rate, I took the boy and called him Terence Colby."
"Why that name," muttered Vance, "I never could understand."
"Haven't I told you? No, and I hardly know whether to trust even you with the secret, Vance. But you remember we argued about it, and you said that blood would out; that the boy would turn out wrong; that before he was twenty-five he would have shot a man?"
"I believe the talk ran like that."
"Well, Vance, I started out with a theory; but the moment I had that baby in my arms, it became a matter of theory, plus, and chiefly plus. I kept remembering what you had said, and I was afraid. That was why I worked up the Colby idea."
"That's easy to see."
"It wasn't so easy to do. But I heard of the last of an old Virginia family who had died of consumption in Arizona. I traced his family. He was the last of it. Then it was easy to arrange a little story: Terence Colby had married a girl in Arizona, died shortly after; the girl died also, and I took the baby. Nobody can disprove what I say. There's not a living soul who knows that Terence is the son of Jack Hollis--except you and me."
"How about the woman I got the baby from?"
"I bought her silence until fifteen years ago. Then she died, and now Terry is convinced that he is the last representative of the Colby family."
She laughed with excitement and beckoned him out of the room and into another--Terry's room, farther down the hall. She pointed to a large photograph of a solemn-faced man on the wall. "You see that?"
"Who is it?"
"I got it when I took Terry to Virginia last winter--to see the old family estate and go over the ground of the historic Colbys."
She laughed again happily.
"Terry was wild with enthusiasm. He read everything he could lay his hands on about the Colbys. Discovered the year they landed in Virginia; how they fought in the Revolution; how they fought and died in the Civil War. Oh, he knows every landmark in the history of 'his' family. Of course, I encouraged him."
"I know," chuckled Vance. "Whenever he gets in a pinch, I've heard you say: 'Terry, what should a Colby do?'"
"And," cut in Elizabeth, "you must admit that it has worked. There isn't a prouder, gentler, cleaner-minded boy in the world than Terry. Not blood. It's the blood of Jack Hollis. But it's what he thinks himself to be that counts. And now, Vance, admit that your theory is exploded."
He shook his head.
"Terry will do well enough. But wait till the pinch comes. You don't know how he'll turn out when the rub comes. Then blood will tell!"
She shrugged her shoulders angrily.
"You're simply being perverse now, Vance. At any rate, that picture is one of Terry's old 'ancestors,' Colonel Vincent Colby, of prewar days. Terry has discovered family resemblances, of course--same black hair, same black eyes, and a great many other things."
"But suppose he should ever learn the truth?" murmured Vance.
She caught her breath.
"That would be ruinous, of course. But he'll never learn. Only you and I know."
"A very hard blow, eh," said Vance, "if he were robbed of the Colby illusion and had Black Jack put in its place as a cold fact? But of course we'll never tell him."
Her color was never high. Now it became gray. Only her eyes remained burning, vivid, young, blazing out through the mask of age.
"Remember you said his blood would tell before he was twenty-five; that the blood of Black Jack would come to the surface; that he would have shot a man?"
"Still harping on that, Elizabeth? What if he does?"
"I'd disown him, throw him out penniless on the world, never see him again."
"You're a Spartan," said her brother in awe, as he looked on that thin, stern face. "Terry is your theory. If he disappoints you, he'll be simply