Galveston Between Wind and Water - By Rachel Cartwright Page 0,77
your intentions toward Gabrielle.”
Caden looked down at his shoe. A long scratch ran along the side of the new leather upper, ruining his best pair. He been so distracted by Mr. DeRocha’s underhanded tricks and craftiness that he had neglected to judge the best path to walk in the dark, the cruel irony of which now enraged him and reaffirmed his commitment to his plan.
“To be honest, Tim, your motives elude me. Since Weems requires more money to reconfirm our original intentions then he shall receive it because the story serves all our needs. I’m satisfied because my niece has finally seen reason and ended her infatuation with this lying oil schemer.”
He looked up again, smiling, and took a step toward Timothy. “Why is this so difficult for you to comprehend? Regardless of her lingering feelings for the man, Arley Caldwell will never approve of any business relationship between his daughter and that social pariah while Gabrielle will always look upon Bret McGowan as nothing more than a wretched creature only worthy of her pity and shame.”
He lowered his chin, fixing his unwavering gaze into the rapid blinking eyes of the smaller man. “Being an extraordinary woman, she is now free to fulfill the needs of her greater aspiration . . . and man.”
Timothy’s chest was heaving as though he had just completed strenuous labor. His open mouth appeared to gulp at the air as if there was not enough to share between the two of them.
He raised his pudgy fist up to Caden’s nose and shook it. “Have you not been listening to what I’ve said? You stand here and ridicule my respect and love for Gabrielle to my face? I thought you were a noble man filled with high ideals, but . . . but you’re lower than the crimes your man, Wallace, will be charged with once I’ve spoken with the police.”
Caden felt the unwelcomed flush of humiliation warming his cheeks. He glanced down the alley to the left, then to the right, back the way they had entered.
“Perhaps Bret and Mr. Wallace can’t help their weakness, but you?” Timothy turned to face him again. “Gabrielle will loathe you forever once she knows the truth.”
Caden removed his pocket watch from his vest and clicked open the cover. “Fluorescence,” he remarked. “Such a remarkable thing the way it glows in the dark.”
A puzzled expression flitted across Timothy’s face.
Caden snapped the cover closed and placed the watch back in his vest pocket.
“I believe our business is finished, Doctor, and I would think so is your work in Galveston.”
Caden turned, fixing his dark dilating eyes on the short, swarthy man beneath his gaze. All the forces of nature had converged on this place and time so that the past could reconcile with the present and together, bow before the future. So what manner of groveling thing was this to threaten the greater destiny of the ascendant race?
He reached down and gripped the shorter man by the shoulder. “Timothy,” said Caden, his voice the tone of a deep, lost sigh. “We shouldn’t part company like this. You and I come from higher breeding. If my assistant is guilty of any transgression in your eyes then I would like to make amends for his actions.”
“I think that is too late, Doctor Hellreich,” Timothy answered without turning around. “For both of you.”
“Perhaps not, good friend.” He pulled back slowly on the young man’s shoulder. “Remember when I spoke on the seven root races of mankind?”
Timothy turned around, his face flinching with bafflement at the question. “Vaguely, but I’m not in a mood for anymore of your fancy words.”
“Please, Tim,” Caden smiled. “Give me a final moment to leave you with something to always remember me by.” He put his gloved hand back into the pocket of his long walking coat. “After many thousands of years, the fourth race—the Atlanteans—interbred with beasts.”
He stepped closer until he was only an arm’s length away. “This tragedy split our ancestral stock into two separate species, one of pure, human Aryan and the other, all manner of bestial strain, whose descendants now overpopulate our world and tax its resources to the limit. So, as you can see, Timothy . . .”
Caden grinned, shifting his weight forward. “If the best of humanity is to survive, the others must be removed no matter what the cost.”
They stood in front of the rear door of the hall. From the opposite alleyway there came the growing din and clatter of a motor