7
MOOSEHEART MAGAZINE
A Mouth of Gold
less than perfection?” demanded the young man. “Detective Hilger can not say so with any regard for the — truth. I do not want money. If father would only take my hand and say ‘I believe you, Alvin,’ I would go on my way rejoicing and never bother him again! Never!”
Doctor Gibson blew his nose with vigor and a handkerchief of bed-sheet proportions as he produced a note book and said:
“Be calm, my boy, and answer the questions I am about to put to you.”
He began briskly with his interrogations, referring occasionally to a memorandum, and now and then jotting down a note or two. The young man followed him with an air of satisfied serenity, giving his age, birthplace, where he went to school, why and when he left Barnesville, and the circumstances that had prevented him from informing his father of his whereabouts.
“That’s all,” said Doctor Gibson at length. “Allen, would you like to ask the boy anything?”
With an effort pitiably futile, Allen Blundell strove to lift himself out of his chair, but falling back with a gesture of resignation, gasped: “Yes, Gibson—in a moment.”
It was every bit of five minutes before the sick man spoke. “Do you remember your step-mother, boy?”
“Distinctly, sir. She hated me and never lost a chance to show it?”
“You once stole a dollar bill from your mother’s purse—where did you conceal it?”
“In the toe of a woolen stocking in which I kept my marbles.”
Allen Blundell’s roving eyes searched the younger man’s face with the inquiring distress of a dumb animal that is being hurt.
“Do you remember your own mother?” softly.
“Yes, sir; she was small and sweet, with red-gold hair, and had a habit of mispronouncing words to make you laugh.”
“And you called her?”
“I called her ‘Mumsie‘!”
Allen Blundell opened his mouth and shut it again without emitting a sound. The muscles of his face were twitching, and he was fighting hard to control his emotions.
“Why did you run away?” he gasped .
“I did not run away!” The young man’s voice rose and he leaned forward in his chair. “My stepmother beat me and abused me, but you would always take her side and believe whatever she said. One day I came upon her in the garden in the arms of Mr. Weber, the druggist, and I said I would tell you. She asked me if I wouldn’t like to see the world, and when I said I would, she gave me a hundred dollars and bought me a ticket for New York. Then she wrote that the money h״d been stolen from your desk, and that you had blamed me for it and placed detectives on my track.”
Allen Blundell nodded his head with vacanfy ruminative eyes.
“You married her when my mother was only a few months dead,” continued the young man, h's tone as emphatic as it could be without vehemence. “Why, sir,” swinging around on Doctor Gibson, “this Henrietta Wildare was a mere girl—an actress and an adventuress, who had to be given money to leave Barnesville after she had disgraced his name!”
Allen Blundell’s head fell forward, his chin thudding against his chest. In the light of the fire that crackled in the grate his face was ghastly. His staring eyes did not flicker in the elfin lights thst danced through the warm gloom of the library, touching now the gleaming sides of prismatic porcelains, now causing some bronze poet to emerge from the shadows, or again on costly bookbindings behind their sheltering glass.
Doctor Gibson bent above the sick man. Astonishment, incertitude, even frank disbelief struggled together in his face. He was a moment or two getting himself in hand.
“What is it?” asked the young man huskily.
“The end, I fear,” whispered the old physician, and turned his head.
Allen Blundell’s heavy lids suddenly popped open. “Tell him, Gibson,” he said, and closed his eyes again.
(Continued on page 27)
By WILL H. GREENFIELD
I will fetch Mr. Blundell. He is just recovering from another of his heart attacks.”
He tottered out and very soon returned with his arm about a tubercular wisp of a man whose respiration sounded like the clicking of a rusty ratchet wheel, and whose vague, purposeless face beamed with a shy sociability.
“This is Mr. Blundell,” announced the doctor, placing his charge in a big lounge chair and tucking a steamer robe around him. “He will hear your story.”
The young man coughed, then smiled a golden smile and edged forward in the chair the old doctor had placed for him directly in front of Allen Blundell.
“I don’t want you to suffer any injustice, my boy,” wheezed the latter. “I had a son, Alvin, whom I have mourned as dead for thirteen years. All the world knows that, and the fact that he is supposed to have died in New York. The detective I engaged to investigate your claim believes that you are an impostor, the confidant of my boy, and not Alvin himself. Doctor Gibson here, my old friend and family physician, is a fair man, and an honest one. You are fortunate in having such a
*‘But I never knew what it was to have a father’s love!”
man on your side, for he is inclined to believe that —that your claim is genuine. He brought my son into the world, and if you had your natural teeth both he and myself think we could recognize their peculiar formation. Doctor Gibson is predisposed in your favor, but I feel, looking at you now, that you are not Alvin Blundell!”
The young man’s widening eyes filled with a quick anguish.
“Father!” he protested in an aggrieved tone.
Doctor Gibson dropped a kindly hand upon his shoulder.
“Alvin,” he said softly, “we must be hideously business-like for a moment. Upon me devolves the duty of asking some very personal questions, but I think you can pass the ordeal with entire satisfaction to all concerned. If a mistake has been made it will be speedily corrected.”
“I will do anything you say, sir, anything at all. I have a feeling here that my father must feel also—something deep down in my heart leaps at the sound of his voice, sir.” His voice fluttered as though, in spite of his will, it was slipping away from his control. “I was only thirteen years old when I left home, sir, and I will admit that my record is not a good one. But I do not think I am quite beyond redemption. My falls from grace have been more a matter of environment than inclination or innate depravity. I was thrown among evil companions, and I was weak and I was wicked. But I never knew what it was to have a father’s love!”
“Poor boy!” murmured Doctor Gibson. “You haven’t denied what the detective has found to your discredit, and I like you for that.”
“Have I tried to pose as something more flaw-
“T TNLESS we have all been taken |) in, Hilger, my boy has been found!”
Allen Blundell, his face flushed with excitement, paced back and forth across the room. He clasped and un-c:asped his long, thin hands and his eyes were like burning fires.
“I’m surprised that he was not found long ago,” said Douglas Hilger, his eyes shining with a light that suggested a sort of quiet amusement. “When a fortune is waiting for the appearance of an heir in these days it is not long before there is someone ready to put in a claim.”
“You think I am the victim of an imposter?”
_ “I have said that you were the prospective victim of some clever rogue,” said Hilger quietly, “and you have engaged me to prove the truth or falsity of this man’s claim. You’re in a position where it would not be very difficult for a clever rascal to make you believe—anything! Old Doctor Gibson would not see you defrauded, but neither him nor you are prepared to cope with the situation.”
“Which is why I sent for you, sir,” said Allen Blundell, pausing on the hearth rug. “I’m a bit foggy as to what the past should hold in the way of identification, but Gibson is almost convinced, and he has seen the lad.”
“So have I—seen him and had a long, cozy chat with him. In fact, I told him that I had seen him before and after studying his manner and face for a while I expressed the belief that he was a vaudeville actor.
From the cut of his clothes anybody would say he was either a vaudeville actor or a Jewish politician. He is a vaudeville actor, however, even though he did deny it.”
“Is a vaudeville actor a person to be despised then?” queried Allen Blundell plaintively.
“No,” said Hilger curtly, “but a liar is.”
“And this lad—you have found him to be a liar, Hilger?”
Douglas Hilger put his palms on his knees, leaned forward, and looked the other man straight in the eyes.
“For some reason which I choose to believe criminal, this fellow did not want me to think him an actor, but when I insisted that I had seen him on the stage and had a dim recollection of a sketch in which he had appeared with a woman, he laughed and told me that he had been a movie actor for a time.” Here Hilger chuckled softly. “As if the detective of today doesn’t keep up with the times!”
“But what is there so improbable about his being a screen actor?”
“Don’t ask me that,” said Hilger in tones that were warm with sheer disgust. “Moving picture cameras sometimes works freakish tricks. A gown of gorgeous orange shade will photograph a dead black and shiny white material will produce an effect known as ‘halation,’ creating a ghostly double which seems to follow the wearer about the room. The camera photographs gold like dead black, and if an actor smiles his gold teeth make his jaw appear quite toothless, Consequently, when new actors are engaged they are asked to open their mouths much as a horse-breeder might do when trying to ascertain the age of a new pony. This young man who is claiming to be your son has two shining rows of gold molars.”
A gradual distress formed in Allen Blundell’s eyes and he sank wearily into a chair.
“Why do you think he lied to you, Hilger?” “Because he has very good reasons for not wanting me to associate him with the vaudeville sketch he appeared in, or with the female who appeared with him,” growled the detective. “You know I was on the stage myself, and I can tell even a ham actor if he has served any time behind the footlights. If he lied about this it is time we found out just why he had to lie, for a rogue in his position would want to tell the truth if he could.” “What do you wish me to do, Hilger?”
“Write this man now that you will see him tomorrow afternoon if he will call and submit to a little questioning.”
The following afternoon at a little before three Doctor Gibson ushered into the library of Allen Blundell, the millionaire manufacturer, a thin, dark, flashily-dressed young man with something about him like a live wire—something tense and crackling that was evidenced even in his speech.
“Be seated,” said the old family physician, “and