Ride the River (1983) (3 page)

He stood up, and he was very tall. Tall as Regal, maybe, but not so muscular. "Will you come in, please? My clerk has gone home, I believe." He came around the desk. "I am Finian Chantry."

Taking a further step into the room, I stood, my feet together, very erect, very prim. "I am Echo Sackett."

He gestured to a chair, then turned back to his desk, pausing in midstride. "Sackett, did you say? Sackett?"

"Yes, sir. I am afraid I am presuming, sir, but there was no one in the outer office and I hoped to have a word with you, sir."

"Sit down, Miss Sackett. Echo, did you say? What a pretty name!"

"I am glad you think so, sir. Many think it strange, but we live in the mountains, sir, and my father loved the echoes."

"The mountains? Tennessee, no doubt?"

"Why, yes, sir. How did you know? Oh! My accent!"

"On the contrary, Miss Sackett. I once knew someone of your name, a very long time ago, and he was from Tennessee."

Finian Chantry moved some papers aside, and marking his place in the open book, closed it. "He was a fine man, a great man in his way. Were it not for him, I might not be here tonight. He was a good friend to me, and an older friend of my brother's."

"If you could tell me his name, sir?"

"Daubeny Sackett. He fought in the Battle of King's Mountain, among others."

"He was my grandfather, sir."

Finian Chantry sat back in his chair. With his shock of white hair and his lean, strong features, he was a strikingly handsome man.

"Then perhaps I can call you Echo?" His face became serious. "Now, Echo, what can I do for you?"

Seated across from him, I told him my story as simply and directly as possible. How we had seen the notice in the Penny Advocate and how I had written to James White and had come to claim my inheritance.

"This inheritance. Do you know from whom it comes?"

"No, sir. It was to go to the youngest of Kin Sackett's line, so whoever left the money must have known our family for a very long time. Kin Sackett has been dead for two hundred years."

"Strange," Chantry agreed, "but interesting, very interesting. And this James White advertised in the Penny Advocate ?"

"Yes, sir, and anyone who knew of Kin Sackett would know we lived in Tennessee or west of there."

He got to his feet. "Miss Sackett, I shall escort you home. It is not well for a young girl to be on the streets of Philadelphia at night, even if she is a Sackett."

When we went outside, a carriage pulled up before the door and a man stepped down to open the door for us. Riding in a carriage! If only Ma could see me now!

"Tomorrow when you call upon Mr. White, I shall attend you. I scarcely believe there will be trouble."

James White sat at his desk staring at the accumulated papers, a disgusted expression on his face. He glanced up as the thickset man in the square gray hat entered.

"What is it, Tim? I am busy!"

"You'll be busier if you expect to pull this off. You take my advice an' get to that hillbilly girl an' get her to sign a release."

"When did I ask your advice?"

"You never did. That ain't to say you couldn't have used it a time or two. That hillbilly girl's no damn fool. She's gone to another lawyer."

"What? Who?"

"She went right from here to Chantry's office. Walked right in."

"That's impossible!"

"You believe that an' you're liable to find yourself in jail. Old Chantry's nobody to fool with. You know it an' I know it."

White brushed his mustache with a forefinger, throwing a quick, angry look at Tim Oats. Inwardly he was cursing. It had all looked so simple! Everybody on the O'Hara side was dead, the money was in his hands, and Brunn's widow trusted him implicitly. He had made an attempt to find the heirs that would pass muster with her, and he could do what he wished with the money until he found the heirs, which he had hoped never to do. Who would dream a copy of that little sheet would ever find its way into the backwoods of Tennessee?

"Chantry doesn't handle such cases," White said impatiently. "His practice is in admiralty law or international trade. Anyway, how could a hillbilly girl even get his attention?"

"All I know is that she left here and went right to his office. She opened the door and walked right in."

"And probably came right out."

"I figured I'd best get to you. Chantry is tough, an' you know how he feels about the law. To him it's a sacred trust, an' if he finds you playin' fast an' loose, he'll put you behind bars."

"You don't have to explain Finian Chantry to me. I know all about him."

James White was irritated and a little frightened. Still, he had done nothing wrong ... yet. He touched his tongue to dry lips. Thank God he had been warned. Grudgingly he glanced at Tim Oats. "Thanks. You did the right thing, coming right to me."

Finian Chantry had fought in the Revolution. He had been an important government official at the time of the War of 1812. It was said he had refused a seat on the Supreme Court for reasons of health. He was a man accustomed to power and the use of power.

Tim Oats was right. He should have smoothed things over and gotten the Sackett girl to sign a release. He could have given her a few dollars ... After all, the girl had no idea what was involved.

Of course, that was what he had planned. To take her to a plush restaurant, give her a couple of glasses of wine, then produce some gold money and get her to sign a release as "paid in full." Then she turned him down.

Turned him down! Who did she think she was, anyway?

Yet slowly caution began to slip through the cracks in his ego. Chantry, he was sure, would not give her the time of day, but the sooner the Sackett girl was back in her mountains, the better.

When old Adam Brunn died suddenly, his widow had asked White to settle her husband's legal affairs. The old man had a small but solid practice, mostly with estates and land titles, but White agreed immediately. Had the widow known anyone else, she would not have asked him, but a friend of White's had been helping her through the trying period after her husband's death, and had recommended White.

Most of what Brunn had left unfinished was routine and offered no chance for chicanery. Then he had come upon the O'Hara papers.

Apparently, many years before, one Kane O'Hara had been an associate of Barnabas Sackett, whoever he was, and later, of his son, Kin Sackett. Partly due to the Sackett association, Kane O'Hara had done well financially, leaving a considerable estate to his heirs. In his will he left a provision that if at any time the O'Hara family was left without an heir in the immediate line, what remained of the estate should go to the youngest living descendant of Kin Sackett.

To White it seemed a foolish document, but all of the subsequent heirs had included the provision in their wills as well, and for a while there had been some association with the Sackett family. At last the event had taken place, and a search for the youngest Sackett had begun.

Adam Brunn's conscientious search for the heirs discovered the Sackett family living in Tennessee, and Brunn had drawn up an advertisement to appear in some Tennessee newspapers just before he died. His widow was determined Brunn's wishes be carried out, as apparently this was one facet of his business he had discussed with her. White proceeded to advertise, but deliberately chose a paper unlikely to be found in Tennessee.

The letter from Echo Sackett had come as a shock, for he was already devising ways by which the money could remain in his hands. White's income varied between six and seven hundred dollars per year, a goodly sum in 1840. The inheritance came to something more than three thousand dollars, and in addition, there was a small iron cube, a puzzle box of some sort, composed of many movable parts, each one a small square with its own symbol or hieroglyphic.

That iron box or cube or whatever it was had become an irritation to White. It must have some significance, for it was mentioned in the will and was obviously important. He had worked over it, turning the various bits and pieces. Some of the squares slid from place to place and could be realigned to make different combinations of the symbols, but what they meant, he could not guess.

Tim Oats was vastly intrigued. "That there's valuable," he declared. "I began life workin' with metals, worked for a jeweler, I did, an' whoever put that thing together was a craftsman! He really knew what he was doin'!"

"It isn't Latin," White said irritably. "It isn't any language I know."

"It's old," Oats said, "but there's not a speck of rust. I heard tell of iron like that made long ago in India."

"A children's toy," Brunn had written in his notes, "of only family interest."

James White, a devious man himself, did not accept that conclusion. In the weeks since it had come into his possession, he had moved, twisted, and turned it - but to no avail. If it had a secret, it was beyond him.

Since three thousand dollars represented four to five years of income for James White, he had no intention of giving it up to any ignorant hillbilly girl. He stared at the papers on his desk and swore bitterly. Three thousand dollars to that impudent slip of a girl! It was preposterous!

Yet, suppose he had to pay it to her? What then? It was a long way back to Tennessee, most of it by stage. White rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, then brushed his mustache with a forefinger.

Maybe ... just maybe ...

Finian Chantry entered the library of the club and looked about. He nodded here and there to the regulars, men with whom he frequently had dealings, business or political, most of whom he had known for years, and in some cases their fathers before them. When his wife had been alive, they dined out often, but of late he had become more and more of a recluse, preferring his books to most of the conversation about matters whose conclusions were obvious.

The club was different. It was one place that held no memories of his wife. It was a gathering place for men, and men only. As he grew older he liked less and less to be involved in disagreements of any kind, and here, in the quiet precincts of the club, over brandy and cigars, he had settled some of his most difficult cases.

It was easier, sometimes, to meet with people on neutral ground, to discuss probable outcomes and resolve problems without going to court. Chantry was, as they all knew, a thorough student of the law, who prepared his cases with infinite skill. His memory was fantastic and he seemed to forget nothing, recalling with ease rulings made fifty years before. He seemed to have read everything and forgotten nothing. Most other attorneys preferred to settle his cases out of court rather than go to trial and almost certain defeat.

Pendleton was a cheerful man with a bald head and muttonchop whiskers. He glanced up as Chantry approached.

"Finian! Come and sit down! We don't see much of you these days!"

"Busy, George, busy! Reading a lot, too. This fellow Dickens, you know? The Englishman?"

"Indeed, I do know! My wife and daughter can scarcely wait for the ship to get in with the next installment. Pity we don't have such writers here!"

Chantry seated himself. "George, do you know anything about a lawyer named White? James White?"

"I know him." He twisted in his seat and spoke to the black waiter who was approaching.

"Archie? Get Mr. Chantry something, will you? And bring us some cigars."

"Calvados, sir?"

"Please."

"White's a scoundrel. Be disbarred one of these days. Mixes in all sorts of shady dealings. Nothing we can do about it, but we're watching the man."

When the calvados arrived, Finian took but a sip before putting down his glass.

He drank rarely, but the apple brandy from Normandy seemed about right. He accepted a cigar, bit off the end, and accepted a light from Archie.

"He is handling an estate in which a client of mine is interested."

"Your client should be careful. The man's a shyster. If not an actual criminal." Pendleton drew on his cigar. "Some of Adam Brunn's business, I suspect. When Adam died, his widow put the business in White's hands - why, I can't imagine.

"Adam was a nice old gentleman, but when he died, his widow asked White to handle his affairs. I heard her housekeeper recommended White."

Pendleton glanced at Chantry. "A client of yours, you say? I didn't know you handled cases of that sort."

"The client is a young lady who walked in out of nowhere."

"With White involved? I'd be careful, Finian. You are a wealthy man, you know."

"Nothing like that. She recognized my nameplate and came for advice, as she did not trust White. She had recognized the name, and as soon as she mentioned hers, it took me back. I knew her grandfather, George, knew him in the war, and had it not been for him, I'd not be here at all."

"The war?"

"The Revolution. He was from Tennessee. The greatest woodsman I ever met or expect to meet. We met by accident, but he had known my older brother, had dealings with him. In fact, there's been a shadowy connection between our families for many years. I expect it happens more often than we realize, but our families have rubbed elbows a dozen times."