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The Precipice
By Ray Cummings
OLD MAN MACPHERSON was dying. There was no argument on that. You could see it in the gray pallor of his face, and hear it in his labored, gasping breaths. And he seemed to know it. He had sent for me in a hurry, late that Friday afternoon, a Friday in mid-October. I found him lying propped up in bed, in his room in the little wooden hotel which stands opposite the Cathedral in the village of St. Catherine de Belfort.
His hand clung to mine as I sat beside him on the bed. "Ye came quick, Tom," he murmured. "Thank ye verra much. I made a big mistake, Tom. Ye'll have to be fixin' it. I jus' thought of it."
"Mistake? That's out of your line, Mac." I grinned at him. "I didn't know you were really sick when you left the plant this morning in such a hurry or I'd have come with you. Tell me—"
"'Twill finish me, this time." He tried to smile, and gasped with an effort to take a deeper breath. "The heart, not so good. Ye've known about that, Tom? The doc, he can't fool me. Not this time."
Old Man MacPherson was my assistant at the plant I'm Tom Roberts, Paymaster of the Jacques Cartier Lumber Company. We're a small concern, located in the woods about a mile from St. Catherine.
"I jus' happened to remember it, lyin' here," MacPherson was saying. "Yesterday, when I sent to the bank for our payroll money for termorrer—I wasn't feelin' so good, even then, Tom."
Mac had completely forgotten that our payroll was considerably increased this week. We had a rush of overtime work and for a new night shift we had been fortunate in getting quite a few additional men. There's no way in and out of St. Catherine except by road—and a pretty rough road at that— through the woods to the town of Pont Noir, some thirty miles away. The armed mailman would arrive tomorrow morning with the registered package of our payroll money from the small branch of the Banque Canadienne Nationale in Pont Noir. But it wouldn't be enough, this week, not by some five thousand dollars.
"My mistake," MacPherson was saying. "An' that's verra strange, Tom, me to be workin' so many years an' then—to finish up with a mistake like that."
"Mine as much as yours," I assured him. "I should have reminded you, Tom. After all, I'm the boss."
Which was true enough. But it wasn't in Mac's line ever to forget anything.
"Ye can fix it, Tom?"
"Sure I can." I had already figured how I could fix it. "I'll send Maurice Leclair in his old caleche at daybreak tomorrow. He'll have our check at the bank before noon, and by nightfall he'll be back with the money."
"We can trust him, Tom?"
Old Leclair was a Canuck who had been with the Jacques Cartier Lumber Company most of his life. There wasn't any question in my mind of his honesty.
"That will fix it," I told Mac. "A lot of the men don't get paid off until tomorrow evening. Five thousand will cover it."
ORDINARILY I could have telephoned the bank manager and had him send someone up. St. Catherine has a telephone line, of sorts. But in a storm a few days ago it had gone out of whack somewhere in the woods between here and Pont Noir; and what with war shortages and such the telephone people hadn't yet been able to get it working.
I sat with Mac nearly an hour that afternoon, with the old Canuck woman who was his nurse hovering around. Then Doc Bedard came in. I had a private talk with him. Poor old Mac wasn't going to pull through. Not this time.
It was about six o'clock when I left the hotel.
I was pretty well shot. I'd worked with old MacPherson some eight years. It wasn't easy for me to say with a grin, "Well, so long, old man. See you later," when I knew there was a pretty good chance I'd never see him again alive.
As a matter of fact, I didn't. In mid-evening he had another seizure, and he was dead before I could get there.
St. Catherine has only one what you'd call restaurant. When I left Mac, I headed for it. Our little village sells only beer; it wasn't what I wanted or needed, after that hour with the dying Mac, but it would have to do. Then as I entered the restaurant, a jovial voice hailed me:
"Hello, Roberts. Good Lord, man, you look all in! What's gone wrong?"
It was a man named Carter Johnson. I slumped down at his table where his dinner was spread out; and Johnson, with another look at me, reached for his pocket and produced a flask. You can get the stuff if you take the trouble to get somebody to bring it up to you from the government liquor stores in Quebec. And Johnson was forehanded like that.
"Thanks," I said. "Don't skimp it."
He didn't, and I gulped it down. It helped a little maybe. "Now," he demanded. "What happened to you, unless it's none of my business? I didn't know anything ever happened in this little burg."
I had known this Carter Johnson for quite a few years. Like myself, he was an American. I had met him first, I think, down in New York. And again, a couple of years later, I had bumped into him in Montreal. He was in his early thirties. A big, graceful, handsome fellow with a swagger. Now he had been here in St. Catherine about a month. Vaguely he was looking into the openings to buy a tract of timber, and poking into the possibilities of mineral deposits around here. Not that he had any money himself. He was the wandering, gentleman-adventurer type. But now he claimed to represent American capital which, on a word from him, would plunge in up here and flood our little section with prosperity.
Carter Johnson was a glib talker, but I never took much stock in it. Certainly he was likable enough...
"Old Man MacPherson," I was saying. "Guess you've met him, haven't you?" I told him about poor old Mac; the pathos of making that mistake in ordering our payroll money, when it was destined probably to be the last important thing Mac ever did at the plant where he had worked so long.
"Tough," Johnson agreed. "But since you've fixed it by sending Leclair, what of it? Mac feels all right about it now, doesn't he?"
Hindsight is easy. I can recall now the gleam in Johnson's dark eyes. But at the time, what with my worry over Mac, I certainly thought nothing of it.
I ordered my dinner, and Johnson and I talked casually of other things. "How you making out?" I asked.
He grinned. "Well, maybe at your age you don't worry about it, Roberts." He grimaced. "What I mean, things are sort of circumscribed around here, wouldn't you say?"
WHAT I'd meant was how was his business coming on, his chances now of making that sudden big money out of his New York capitalists. But what Johnson meant was women. It was his favorite subject. Undoubtedly he was the type which attracts many women. And he had made it his specialty. For me, whatever of the predatory wolf there might have been in me in my younger days, I had only to look in the mirror now to see the idea was ridiculous. I'm a widower, entering my sixties. Not that I'm bald and fat. Far from it. I've always lived a pretty ruggedly outdoor life. Right now I could run out onto a nasty log-jam and break it up; and none of these young squirts who call themselves woodsmen could do it better. But with my weather-beaten face, bushy brows and close-clipped thatch of brown and white hair, mostly white, well... I'm the sort with whom women instinctively feel quite comfortable.
"Circumscribed?" I said. "Well, yes, I see what you mean, Johnson."
For a man of Johnson's type, nothing could be worse than St. Catherine de Belfort The French- Canadians are a devout, highly moral people. It's bred in them, and trained into them from the time they can talk. And if any of them, going through their 'teens, should have any sneaking ideas to the contrary, it's forced on them. A young girl can start a minor scandal, in St. Catherine, by walking alone with a young man anywhere but maybe on the main street in broad daylight. She can't even sit alone in the parlor of her home with him, unless her watchful mother is in the kitchen, and the door between is open. Maybe that's good, maybe it isn't. I'm not moralizing; I'm just stating facts. And it certainly couldn't help but put a crimp in Johnson's style.
Except perhaps with little Gisele Hamel. I suppose, living here in this isolation, I've turned into a nosey busybody. But New York is one thing, up here is quite different. I guess I'd been worried about Gisele, ever since I discovered, soon after he arrived, that Johnson had met her. She was seventeen; for a year she had been working in our company's bookkeeping department. She was a slim, dark-haired, dark-eyed little thing, quite pretty and with a pert, alert manner and ready smile that won you at once.
In Gisele's case, the normal safeguards of Habitant life had suddenly been withdrawn a few months ago. Originally she had come from a much larger town far down on the Gaspe Peninsula. She spoke English quite as well as French, Her aged father, and a brother somewhat older than herself had come with her. Then her brother had gone to war, and quite suddenly her father had died. And Gisele went on living, alone now, in the little cabin at the edge of town. Intelligent, and with self- reliance forced upon her, she saw no reason why she should not live alone, and there was no one to stop her.
Then Johnson had come. Never once had Gisele let him inside the door of her home. I'm convinced of that. But because she was attracted to him, she walked with him, walks, that took them far beyond the conventional two main blocks of the village. They generally went on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, often up to the ragged cliff a few miles from the village. I remember meeting them there one Sunday afternoon soon after Johnson arrived. A rock cairn stands there at the edge of the precipice. It's supposed to mark where in the early days Jacques Cartier might have stood surveying the great forests, the terraced ranks of the Laurentides Mountains and the noble St. Lawrence River up which he was venturing into this new land.
Gisele and Johnson always were back before dark. Despite that, it certainly created more than a minor scandal in little St. Catherine. But Gisele ignored it. I admit I'm a busybody. I once spoke to her myself about it And she had laughed, gazing at me sidewise from under her long dark lashes.
"Why Papa Roberts, and I thought you were an American!"
"Up here it—well, it just seems unusual," I said lamely. How could I try to tell her what I thought of Johnson? Anyway, I didn't try.
"Well," I said awkwardly, "take care of yourself, Gisele."
She tweaked my nose. "That I will do, Papa Roberts. I am not a child, or do you think so?"
"No," I agreed.
BUT there was one afternoon when on one of my walks I found myself near the foot of the Jacques Cartier precipice. And I stood among the crags, looking up to the brink some two hundred feet above me where the Jacques Cartier cairn stood outlined against the sky. It was where Gisele and Johnson so often sat, watching the sunset. And I thought of a bit of poetry I had once read: "Standing with reluctant feet where the brook and river meet." That was little Gisele Hamel. But it seemed to me also that with childish self- confidence, she was standing on a brink....
Johnson's voice now, while we had supper in the little St. Catherine restaurant, brought me out of my roaming thoughts.
"Still worried over old MacPherson, Roberts? I've never seen you moody like this."
"Yes, I guess so."
"You'd better finish your dinner and get back and see him. If there's anything I can do—"
"Thanks," I agreed.
I left Johnson presently. I'll always wish I'd gone back to poor old Mac. But I wanted to see Maurice Leclair first, and arrange with him to take his caleche at daybreak and drive to Pont Noir for our extra payroll money.
"Why, sure t'ing," Maurice said. "My mare an' my caleche, we go swell. Then I give her good rest, two or t'ree hours maybe, an' I am back here before dark."
I was up at daybreak, that Saturday morning, to start Leclair off. He'd bought his dilapidated old caleche in Quebec and he was very proud of it. And his oldish sorrel mare too. For about a third of the way to Pont Noir all we have is a pretty rough corduroy road through the woods. If Leclair hurried, that would about finish up the old caleche.
"Take it easy," I suggested. "No hurry, just so you get back before dark."
He waved at me gaily from the high front seat of the caleche, slapped his reins and started off.
"Sure t'ing," he said. "You watch here an' you see I am come before the dark."
I stood watching him as he rattled happily down the slope, hit the corduroy road and vanished into the deep woods.
That October Saturday dawned cloudless. It wasn't until afternoon that the weird green-black clouds began gathering in the northern sky.
I recall it was about midafternoon when I had occasion to go into our bookkeeping department— and saw Gisele.
"'Ello, Papa Roberts," she greeted me. "Hello, Gisele."
Her pert little face, framed by her waving, unruly black hair, was glowing with animation. Her eyes glowed.
"You sure look happy, Gisele," I added. "Something good happen to you?"
She hesitated, then drew me down over her desk. "Maybe it will," she said. "What would you say should I tell you, Papa Roberts, there might be a wedding soon in the Cathedral of St. Catherine? You would come to it, Papa Roberts? You would kiss the bride and be so proud of her, maybe? Would you do that?"
"Your wedding, Gisele?"
"Maybe. Who knows? And if it is my wedding, then my aunt and uncle down in Gaspe, they will be sent money to come here to the wedding. And then I shall travel, with my husband. To New York, maybe. And maybe we will live there in the great city, and each summer I will go to Gaspe with him, to see my people. If that should happen, you will be sorry to lose me here, Papa Roberts? But you will be happy, because I am so happy."
What I could have said to her breathless little flood of words I have no idea. I was called away from her desk just then, and I never did get back to it the rest of the afternoon.
All afternoon, up there in the north, the black clouds were gathering. An hour before sundown, they were splitting and wheeling out to the east and to the west, coming closer. And a wind was springing up, a wind that was murmuring through the forests, and with puffs for a minute or two at a time, was roaring.
SOMEHOW, I began to be worried about Maurice Leclair. Several times I had gone out to the top of the declivity where you can see the corduroy road entering the forest. But there was no sign of him. Then at five o'clock when most of our employees were paid off and let out, twilight began settling, the coming of darkness hastened by the coming of the storm. Again I was standing, gazing down at the woods, when suddenly a slowly moving blob caught my attention. It was just a dim blur against the dark background of the underbrush. An oblong blob. You can get a shudder that turns you sick in the middle. I felt like that as I ran down the slope. It was Leclair's sorrel mare, browsing calmly on the underbrush leaves. I dashed up to her. All her harness was on her, and she was dragging the split, broken shafts of the caleche.
That sent me into a panic. I dashed down the corduroy road. I called:
"Maurice? Where are you, Maurice? Maurice Leclair—!"
There was only the soughing of the gusty wind up in the giant tops of the trees. Rain was sifting down now, and it was almost dark down here in the forest aisles. But still light enough for me to see the caleche. It had dipped against a tree and overturned so that both the shafts had broken, releasing the mare. And she, quite evidently, had wandered on toward home and then gotten interested in browsing on the underbrush.
"Maurice, where are you?"
I found him at last, a good mile farther down, the road, in the full depths of the forest.
His body was lying just a few feet from the edge of the road. Horrified, I bent down over it. Blood stained his chest from a bullet wound. Blood had gushed from his mouth, from his punctured lung. And there was another, a horrible wound in the side of his head, a bullet wound, with the powder marks around it.
The evidence was all too plain. The killer, hiding in the underbrush, had toppled Leclair from the caleche, by that shot in the chest. His mare in fright had bolted, dashing away and wrecking the caleche. And the killer had come from the brush, and to make sure his victim was dead had put the muzzle close down and calmly blown that wound in the temple. The horrible, cold-blooded calmness of that turned me cold.
And the payroll money was gone. Leclair had gotten it from the bank all right. The little locked bank sack lay here beside the body. The sack was ripped open by a knife-slash. I stood up, for a minute numbed. Then I turned and ran for the village. The storm was roaring now. A blast of wind and driving sheets of almost freezing rain was coming out of the north. It was almost full night when I got to St. Catherine, where I dashed to Parker's. He's our nearest approach to a constable.
He gaped at me. "Well, Roberts old man, somebody shot and killed old Leclair? Well, I mean to say—but listen, old boy, why would anybody do that? They wouldn't, what I mean. We're a peaceful little place here—"
An Englishman sometimes isn't very succinct when he's excited. Then I told Parker about the extra payroll money.
"Well, well, that's different. Or is it, Roberts? Nobody knew he was carrying it, did they? I say, what I mean, all they'd think is that he was coming back from Pont Noir where he'd gone just to pick up a spot of brandy or what-not, relayed on to him from Quebec. He does that sometimes, doesn't he? Now who would kill him just for a little bottle? They wouldn't."
I LEFT Parker after a minute or two. His plan was to round up a few men and go bring the body in. Beyond that he was pretty blank. Nobody knew that Leclair was carrying that money? Nobody but Carter Johnson. I cursed my miserably incautious words to Johnson, in the restaurant the night before. But I didn't mention it now to Parker. I figured I'd look up Johnson first. He lived in the hotel.
I went now to his room. He wasn't there. The door was unlocked and I went in. For a few minutes I poked around. There was no sign of a gun here. But in a bureau drawer I came upon some of his business letters. He was in touch with several New York capitalists. That much seemed evident. But Johnson's business affairs, judging by these letters at least, certainly were far from promising. None of Johnson's schemes for the investment of American money in this Habitant country had met with anything but rebuffs. There was certainly no quick, big money in sight for Johnson. Quite obviously these shrewd capitalists wanted none of him.
I left his room, wandered out into the storm. And suddenly I thought of little Gisele. Her excitement this afternoon. Were she and Johnson planning to meet up on the Jacques Carrier cliff, as they usually did on Saturdays? Had the sudden storm caught them up there? I was in a sort of blur of stunned confusion. I recall that I hurried down the windy, rain-lashed little St. Catherine street and found myself heading out toward the cliff.
I'm pretty hardy, but I didn't get very far, not more than a mile. Then when I struck the open crags of the uplands, I'd had enough. The wind was a lashing roar; the rain felt like a solid sheet blasting me.
I turned, stumbled back. It was freezing cold, and getting colder every minute as the Arctic blast tore in. My drenched mackinaw was stiffening. And now abruptly I found that I was nearer Gisele's home than I was to the village, so that I turned toward her cabin, reached it, opened on its door.
"I'm Tom Roberts. Let me in, Gisele."
"Come in," she called.
The door was unlatched. I shoved it open. Her living-room was yellow with firelight. In the huge fireplace, a log fire was crackling.
"Why, Papa Roberts, come in. What are you doing out in a storm like this? Why, you look almost frozen. Come here by me."
She was wrapped in a heavy dressing-gown, seated in a chair by the hearth. She jumped up, drew a chair for me beside her on the hearth.
"Why, Papa Roberts—"
"I was on my way back to the village," I said, "You were closer, so I came. Nasty storm, Gisele. You won't mind if I ride it out here with you for a while?"
I must have stammered it lamely. Gisele's dark hair was wet, stringy. And on a little chair to one side of the hearth her wet clothes were spread out, her mackinaw and a little gay-colored fringed scarf that I had often seen her wear around her throat lay here sodden with the rain.
"Gisele," I murmured, "you were out in this storm? I wondered ... I was thinking, by what you said this afternoon—"
"I went to the Lookout Cairn," she said. Her troubled dark eyes met mine; her face, usually so smiling, was clouded with apprehension. "Have you seen Carter, Papa Roberts?"
Silently I shook my head.
"We had planned to meet at the cairn," she said, "and watch the sunset tonight. I went there, and then the storm came up, and he didn't come. So then I got frightened and came running back, but the rain caught me. You didn't see him down at the hotel, Papa Roberts?"
Again I shook my head. "I'll look him up when I get back," I assured her. "Don't worry, Gisele."
THE storm eased a bit in a little while, and I left her. But we couldn't find Johnson around St. Catherine. We searched all night. I had told Parker and the others now about my wretched, confiding words to Johnson last night. There was a chance, perhaps, that Johnson had hurried to the cliff to keep his tryst, even though he was late, too late to meet Gisele. And once there, he could still be up there, trapped by the storm.
We couldn't get there before dawn; there wasn't one of us who wanted to try it. But in the dawnlight, with the wind and rain still lashing us, we went there.
And there we found him! At the foot of the precipice, his broken body was lying on the rocks, with the Lookout Cairn almost directly above it. Parker and the rest of us had spread out, but almost all of us saw it at once.
"There he is!" Parker shouted. "Lost his footing up there in the storm and fell."
It happened that I was closer than the rest of them to the body. Johnson had no gun; we never did find it. But the money was still on him, his pockets stuffed with the little brown pay envelopes which the bank manager so kindly packaged for me each week. I was turning away when I noticed that one of the dead hands was clenched, and something was there between the fingers. I had my back to Parker and the others as I bent down again.
An accident? Johnson's stiff hand was clutching a few strands of gay-colored fringe from a gay little neck scarf. I dropped them into my pocket. There are some things you don't tell anybody.