In Search of the Unknown | Page 7

that
his table was worth sitting down to and his wine was sound as a bell.
"Yah!" he snapped, "I'm sick of this cursed soup--and I'll trouble you to
fill my glass--"
"It is dangerous for you to touch claret," said the pretty nurse.
"I might as well die at dinner as anywhere," he observed.
"Certainly," said I, cheerfully passing the decanter, but he did not
appear overpleased with the attention.
"I can't smoke, either," he snarled, hitching the shawls around until he
looked like Richard the Third.
However, he was good enough to shove a box of cigars at me, and I
took one and stood up, as the pretty nurse slipped past and vanished
into the little parlor beyond.
We sat there for a while without speaking. He picked irritably at the
bread-crumbs on the cloth, never glancing in my direction; and I, tired
from my long foot-tour, lay back in my chair, silently appreciating one
of the best cigars I ever smoked.
"Well," he rasped out at length, "what do you think of my auks--and
my veracity?"

I told him that both were unimpeachable.
"Didn't they call me a swindler down there at your museum?" he
demanded.
I admitted that I had heard the term applied. Then I made a clean breast
of the matter, telling him that it was I who had doubted; that my chief,
Professor Farrago, had sent me against my will, and that I was ready
and glad to admit that he, Mr. Halyard, was a benefactor of the human
race.
"Bosh!" he said. "What good does a confounded wobbly, bandy-toed
bird do to the human race?"
But he was pleased, nevertheless; and presently he asked me, not
unamiably, to punish his claret again.
"I'm done for," he said; "good things to eat and drink are no good to me.
Some day I'll get mad enough to have a fit, and then--"
He paused to yawn.
"Then," he continued, "that little nurse of mine will drink up my claret
and go back to civilization, where people are polite."
Somehow or other, in spite of the fact that Halyard was an old pig,
what he said touched me. There was certainly not much left in life for
him--as he regarded life.
"I'm going to leave her this house," he said, arranging his shawls. "She
doesn't know it. I'm going to leave her my money, too. She doesn't
know that. Good Lord! What kind of a woman can she be to stand my
bad temper for a few dollars a month!"
"I think," said I, "that it's partly because she's poor, partly because she's
sorry for you."
He looked up with a ghastly smile.

"You think she really is sorry?"
Before I could answer he went on: "I'm no mawkish sentimentalist, and
I won't allow anybody to be sorry for me--do you hear?"
"Oh, I'm not sorry for you!" I said, hastily, and, for the first time since I
had seen him, he laughed heartily, without a sneer.
We both seemed to feel better after that; I drank his wine and smoked
his cigars, and he appeared to take a certain grim pleasure in watching
me.
"There's no fool like a young fool," he observed, presently.
As I had no doubt he referred to me, I paid him no attention.
After fidgeting with his shawls, he gave me an oblique scowl and asked
me my age.
"Twenty-four," I replied.
"Sort of a tadpole, aren't you?" he said.
As I took no offence, he repeated the remark.
"Oh, come," said I, "there's no use in trying to irritate me. I see through
you; a row acts like a cocktail on you--but you'll have to stick to gruel
in my company."
"I call that impudence!" he rasped out, wrathfully.
"I don't care what you call it," I replied, undisturbed, "I am not going to
be worried by you. Anyway," I ended, "it is my opinion that you could
be very good company if you chose."
The proposition appeared to take his breath away--at least, he said
nothing more; and I finished my cigar in peace and tossed the stump
into a saucer.

"Now," said I, "what price do you set upon your birds, Mr. Halyard?"
"Ten thousand dollars," he snapped, with an evil smile.
"You will receive a certified check when the birds are delivered," I said,
quietly.
"You don't mean to say you agree to that outrageous bargain--and I
won't take a cent less, either--Good Lord!--haven't you any spirit left?"
he cried, half rising from his pile of shawls.
His piteous eagerness for a dispute sent me into laughter impossible to
control, and he eyed me, mouth open, animosity rising visibly.
Then he seized the wheels of his invalid chair and trundled away, too
mad to speak; and I