Then he tossed it aside and returned to his own calculations. All at
once he roused himself and addressed the chauffeur:
"Harkness, Mrs. Braddon's. Take the park."
But as the automobile, turning from the river, descended by way of green
woods, he began restlessly to repent of his choice. His hatred of men
had made him strangely dependent on women. It was not that they were
able to establish any empire over his senses, but that they supplied a
curious outlet to his vanity. At times, especially as in the present,
when he felt the necessity of assembling every resource to meet a
crisis, it became absolutely necessary for him to find, in the tribute
he exacted from them, that self-confidence which he needed to override
other obstacles. Often he would take in his automobile three or four
women of that class which is half professional, half of the world, and,
running slowly through the pleasant country, recount stories of his
early struggles, of how he had railroaded an enemy to prison, or caught
an adversary in a turn of the market and broken him. And when these
tales of unrelenting enmity made his audience shudder, he keenly
perceived it, and enjoyed almost a physical delight.
But this afternoon, as the car came to a stop before one of the great
apartment-houses that front the park, he remained seated, unsatisfied
and defrauded. It was not a woman of the superficial wit of Mrs. Braddon
who could occupy and stimulate his mind in this crisis.
"Drive on," he said sharply. "Turn the corner and stop at the hotel."
There he descended, and entering went to the telephone.
"Mrs. Kildair?" he said eagerly, a moment later.
"Who is it, please?"
"This is Slade--John Slade. I'm coming over."
"I can't see you now," said a voice with a curious musical quality of
self-possession. "I told you five o'clock."
"What difference does half an hour make?" he said impatiently.
"I have other company. You will have to be patient. At five."
The connection was shut off. He rose angrily, unaccustomed to any check
to his immediate impulses. At the steps a boy came skipping down for the
toll he had forgotten. He paid the exact amount, contrary to his
custom, and drove his body back into the cushioned seat.
"Where to, sir?" said Harkness, turning.
"Anywhere," he answered gruffly, and, thwarted in his desire, he said to
himself furiously: "That woman always opposes me! I must teach her a
lesson. I won't go at all."
But at the end of a moment he pulled out his watch impatiently and
calculated the time.
"Home," he said suddenly.
At the house, he ran rapidly through the opening doors and up the stairs
to his bedroom, where he unlocked a little safe fixed in the wall behind
a tapestry that hid it, and took out a tray of rings. Sorting them
quickly, with a low, cynical chuckle, he selected a magnificent ruby,
slipped it into his pocket, closed the safe, and passed out of the house
with the same rapidity with which he had entered.
"Mrs. Kildair's, Harkness," he said. "Drive so as to get me there at
five-fifteen."
"Now we shall see," he said to himself, with a smile, gazing at the ring
in the palm of his hand with a man's contemptuous contemplation of the
stone which could hold such fascination over a woman's soul. For him it
was absolutely necessary, as a first step toward his conquest of all his
enemies, to feel his power over this one present resistance.
The idea that had come into his head restored his good humor and aroused
in him a certain joy of energy. He had forgot momentarily his errand,
absorbed in his own battle for existence.
"Today is Thursday," he said, with renewed energy. "Next Wednesday will
be the crisis. I must find out what Majendie is going to do.
Snelling's the man to know--or Garraboy."
The car stopped. He sprang out and, without giving his name, entered
the elevator. At the apartment a Japanese servant took his things and
ushered him into the low-lit greens of the studio, which ran the height
of the two floors that formed the duplex apartment.
Mrs. Rita Kildair was stretched on a low Recamier sofa, watching him
with amused eyes as he entered with that atmosphere of strife and fury
that seemed always to play about him. She waited until he had come to
her side before she raised her hand to his, in a gesture that had no
animation, saying:
"How do you do?"
Something in the tranquil, amused self-possession of her pose made him
stupidly repeat the question. Then, forgetting his resolve to show no
impatience, he said impetuously:
"Why did you keep me waiting?"
"Because I did not wish to see your highness then."
"Not dressed?"
"No, I was simply amusing myself with a very nice boy."
"Who?"
She smiled, and, without heed to his question, motioned him to a chair
with a little gesture, not of her arm, but of her fingers, on which she
wore several rings of unusual luster. She had, as a woman, that same
magnetic self-consciousness that distinguishes the great actress, aware
that every eye is focused on her and that the slightest change of her
hand or shift of her head has an instantaneous importance.
Slade obeyed her with a sudden sense of warm content.
"Smoke?" he said, taking out a cigar. "Permission?"
He helped himself to a match, sunk himself in the great chair, crossed
his legs, and looked at her.
Rita Kildair gave that complex appearance of a woman much younger than
she seemed, or of a woman much older. She was at that mental phase in
her life when she exhaled to the fullest that perfume of mystery which
is the most feminine and irresistible of all the powers that a woman
exerts over the masculine imagination, if indeed it is not the sum of
all seductions. The inexplicable in her own life and individuality was
heightened in every way by the subservience of outward things, whether
by calculation or by an instinctive sense of interpretation.
The great studio, to the neglect of the electric chandelier, was lit by
half a dozen candles, which flung about conflicting eddies of wavering
lights and shadows. In farther corners were a divan, a piano, a
portrait on an easel, lounges, waiting like so many shadows to be called
forth. A standing lamp, not too near, bathed the couch on which she lay
with a softened luster. Her tea-gown of liberty silk, with tones that
changed and mingled with each other, was of the purple of the grape, an
effect produced, too, by the superimposition of one filmy garment on the
other. A slippered foot and ankle came forth from the fragrant disorder
of the skirt, either by studied arrangement or by the impulse of a woman
who is confident of all her poses. Her nose, quite the most individual
feature, was aquiline, yet not such as is associated with a masculine
character. Rather, it was vitally sensitive, and gave, in conjunction
with the intent and instantaneous aspect of her grayish eyes, the
instinctive, almost savage appetite for possession and sensation that is
characteristic of her sex. No one looked at her without asking himself a
question. Those who believed her under thirty wondered at the
experiences that must have crowded in upon her. Those who believed her
nearer forty still marveled at her mastery over youth. Those of an
analytical mind left her always with a feeling of speculation framed in
two questions--whence had she come and where would she end?
It was this latter speculation more than any other that absorbed Slade,
irresistibly intrigued by the elusiveness of a fascination which he
could not analyze. She endured his fixed glance without annoyance,
absorbed, too, in the thoughts which his entrance had brought her.
Finally, adapting her manner to his, she said with his own abruptness:
"Well, what do you want to say to me?"
"I'm wondering what you are after in this life, pretty lady?" he said
directly.
"What do you want?"
"Power."
"Not to be bored."
They smiled by common consent.
"And now we know no more than we did before," he said.
She stretched out her slender hand against the purple folds of her gown,
and her eyes lingered on the jewels that she held caressingly before
them--a look that did not escape the man.
"By thunder, you're the strangest thing I've run into," he said,
shifting his legs.
"On each of the eight times we have been alone," she said, smiling, "you
have made precisely that same discovery. Did you forget?"
"I'd like to know something about you," he said.
"How old I am--about my husband--what I am doing here--am I rich--what's
my past--and so on. Consider all these questions asked and refused--for
the ninth time. And now, what--why did you come here?"
He put aside his cigar impatiently, propelled himself to his feet, and
came forward until his knee touched the couch. She looked up,
pleasantly aware of so much brute strength held in leash above her.
"Sit down."
And, as he remained standing, she took a little electric button attached
to a coil that was on the couch, and pressed it. In the hall outside a
buzz was heard, and then the soft, sliding step of Kiki.
"Tea?" she said, turning to him with an amused look, the little button
pressed against her thin, sharp row of teeth, that were clear and tiny
as a child's.
"No, of course not," he said furiously.
"No tea, Kiki," she said, in that same round, musical tone from which
she seldom varied. She held the button in her long fingers, caressing
her cheek with it, and, looking at him with half-closed eyes, repeated:
"Sit down."
Though the forward movement of Slade had been unconscious and quite
devoid of any personal object, he was angrily aware that she had availed
herself of his action to introduce a tantalizing defiance which awakened
all the savage in him, as he realized the helplessness of his crude
strength before the raillery that shone from her eyes.
He drew his chair closer to her, sat down on its edge, one knee forward,
his chin in his hand half concealing his face, looking at her with the
shrewd cruelty of a prosecuting attorney.
"What's your game?" he said.
"The game itself," she answered, with a little animation in her eyes and
a scarcely perceptible, gradual turning of her whole body toward him.
"What's your game?" he repeated.
She looked at him a moment as she might have looked at a child, and
then, imitating the gesture with which he had sunk his chin in his palm,
said:
"What a convenient formula! And is that the way you always begin?"
"Perhaps."
"Do you know," she continued, "it is extraordinary how simple you big
men--you trust kings--are. You have the vision of an eagle on one side,
and the groping glance of a baby when you deal with us. Sometimes I
think that it's all instinct, that all you understand is to throw down
what resists you--that you haven't great minds at all, and that that is
all that interests you in business and in us. That is why a big man will
always end up by meeting some little woman who will lead him around by
the nose. Any little fool of a woman who knows enough never to cease
resisting you can do it."
"Do you like me?" he said brutally.
"Yes."
"Much?"
"Quite a good deal."
"Are you planning to marry me?"
She smiled her languid, amused smile without shifting her glance from
his.
"Why don't you come to the point?" she said.
"What do you mean?"
"I don't have to ask your game; I know it."
"What do you know?"
"Shall I tell you why you came here at a moment when you are at bay,
attacked everywhere?"
"Why?"
"To find out what I know about Majendie."
"Do you know anything?"
"He is coming here tonight," she said.
"No, that is not it," he said scornfully, rising and again approaching
her. "You know better. You exhilarate me--you wake me up; and I need
to be stimulated. So you've got it back in your little brain to marry
me," he said, looking down with amused contemplation at the reclining
figure, that was not so much human as a perfumed bed of flowers; "that
is, if I pull through and keep my head above water."
He hesitated a moment, and then said:
"Why did you keep me waiting? Just to annoy me?"
"I wonder," she said, looking up from under her eyelashes at his
towering figure. "Perhaps it was to teach you some things are
difficult."
"That's it, eh?"
"Perhaps--and I'm afraid I shall irritate you many more times."
He took a step nearer and said abruptly:
"Look out! I don't play fair."
"Neither do I," she said.
She took the button up again, frowning in a nonchalant way, and held it
a moment while she waited for his decision. He shrugged his shoulders
and stood back, taking several steps toward the center of the room.
"Listen, John G. Slade," she said, her tone changing from the felinely
feminine to the matter-of-fact, "don't let's continue as children. You
are no match for me at this game. I warn you. Come. Be direct. Will
you have me as an ally?"
He turned and looked at her, considering.
"In what way?"
"Is it of importance to you to know the probable fate of Majendie and
the Atlantic Trust?"
"Yes--in a way."
"I may have means of learning just that information tonight."
"What do you want in return?"
"Full confidence. I want two questions answered."
"What?"
She had raised herself to a sitting position out of the languor which
was not the indolence of the Oriental, but rather the volcanic
slumbering of the Slav, always ready to break forth into sudden
tremendous exertion.
"Can the Associated Trust meet its Wednesday obligations without
assistance?"
"And second?" he said, amazed at the detailed knowledge that her
question implied.
"Second, if it can't, will the Clearing-house help it through?"
"What difference to you would it make to know?"
"It would."
"How long have you known Bernard Majendie?" he said slowly.
She accepted the question as a rebuff.
"There are my terms," she said, sinking back on the couch. "You don't
wish an ally, then?"
"No."
"You don't trust me?"
"No."
"I knew you wouldn't," she said indolently; "and yet, I could help you
more than you think."
"I trusted a man once," he said scornfully. "I have never made that
mistake with a woman."
"As you wish."
"Are you trying a flyer?" he said, smiling. "That's the game, is it--a
tip?"
"I have told you," she said coldly and in a tone that carried
conviction, "that what interests me is to win the game itself, the
excitement and the perils. And I have been behind the scenes many
times."
"I believe it," he said abruptly. "I should like to hear--"
"I am a woman who keeps the secrets of others and her own," she
answered, interrupting his question.
"And if you marry?" he said curiously.
"Even then." She dismissed the return to the personal with the first
quick movement of her hand and continued: "I should say, you are the
best hated man in Wall Street."
"That's not exactly inside information."
"No one is going to come to your help out of friendship."
"True."
"If Majendie and the Atlantic Trust Company fail, nothing in this world
can pull you through," she said, seeking in some uncontrolled movement
of his an answer to the statement that was in reality a question.
From the moment she had begun to question him, he experienced a sudden
change. He was no longer dealing with a woman, but with an element he
had outguessed a hundred times.
All at once an odd idea came to him which struck him as stupendously
ridiculous, and yet made him glower in covert admiration at the woman
who watched him while seemingly engaged with the rearrangement of her
draperies.
"Is it possible, after all," he thought, "that that ambitious little
head is playing with both Majendie and me, and that she is setting her
cap for the survivor?"
He came back, reseated himself, and said, with an appearance of candor
which would have deceived most people:
"You say Majendie is coming here tonight?"
"Yes."
"Do you know where he is this afternoon?"
"Yes."
"And the object of his visit?"
"The object is easy to guess," she said indifferently. "You know
perfectly well that he is in conference with Fontaine, Marx, and
Gunther, and what you wish to know is whether they are going to stand
aside and let him sink. Are you ready to answer my two questions?"
"And when will you know if he has failed or succeeded?"
"Tonight."
"He will tell you?"
"I shall know tonight," she said, with an evasive smile.
"What's your private opinion?"
"They will come to his assistance," she said carefully.
"Because they are his personal friends," he said, with an accent of
raillery.
"Naturally."
"You believe Majendie will pull through?"
"I do." She looked at him a moment, and asked the question, not so much
to receive an answer as to judge from his manner: "Can the Associated
Trust meet its obligations on Wednesday without assistance?"
"I can," he said quietly, and to himself he added: "There--if Majendie
has set her to pump me, little good that'll do him."
"But if the Atlantic Trust Company shuts its doors," she persisted, "you
are caught?"
"That is the general opinion."
"Will you fail?"
"No."
She was quiet a moment, dissatisfied, looked away from him and then
said:
"So you don't care to know what I shall learn to-night?"
"My dear lady, I won't tell you a thing," he said, with a laugh, "so
stop trying. Leave us to fight our own battles. Plot all you want in
your cunning head your little feminine plans, but don't get beyond your
depth."
"I see you believe I'm interested in Majendie," she said, with a shrug
of her shoulders. "You are not very well informed."
"No," he said bluntly; "you are interested in no one but Rita Kildair.
I know that much." He rose, took several strides back and forth, and,
returning, stood by her. "I hate allies," he said; "I prefer to
consider you as a woman."
His remark brought a sharp gleam of curiosity to her eyes, a spark of
instinctive sex antagonism that flashed and disappeared.
"Remember, I have warned you," she said, retiring as abruptly into the
feline languor of her pose.
He stood, swayed by two emotions, the purely gentle, almost caressing
effect her indolence brought him, and the desire to establish some
sudden empire over her--to feel his strength above hers.
"What's the weak point in your armor?" he said savagely.
"I wouldn't tell you."
"I think I know one."
"Really?"
He drew his chair still closer, and, leaning over, touched with his
stubby forefinger the rings on her outstretched hand.
"Jewels?" she said, smiling.
"Yes."
"Any woman is the same."
"Why?"
"I don't know--it is so," she said, and, raising the deep lusters, she
allowed her glance to rest on them as in a dream of opium.
He drew from his pocket the ring with the ruby, and held it out.
"Try this on."
She took it between her finger-tips slowly, looking at him with a glance
that was a puzzled frown, and slipped it on her finger. Then she
extended her hand gradually to the full length of her white arm against
the purple, and half closed her eyes. There was no outward sign; only a
deep breath went through her, as though an immense change had taken
place in the inner woman.
"Now I know what I want to know," he said, watching her closely with
almost an animal joy in this sudden revelation of an appetite in her.
"It's a wonderful stone," she said in a whisper; then she drew it off
slowly, as though the flesh rebelled, and held it out to him, turning
away her eyes.
"Keep it."
She raised her eyes and looked at him steadily.
"You are cleverer than I thought," she said.
"Keep it."
"Is this for information about Majendie?" she said slowly.
"Not for that."
"For what, then?" she said steadily.
"For a whim."
"Thanks; I don't trust your whims."
For all reply, he took her hand and again placed the ring on it.
"Wear it," he said.
She turned the stone quickly inside her palm as though unable to endure
its lure, and looked at him profoundly.
"_Are_ you going to pull through?" she said angrily.
"Will it make a difference?" he asked, rising, with a quick glance at
his watch.
She rose in her turn, facing him with a sudden energy.
"Do you know the one great mistake you have made?"
"What?"
"You have condemned yourself to success."
"What do you mean by that?" he said.
"You must always succeed, and that is terrible! At the first defeat
every one will be up in arms against you--because every one wants to see
you ruined."
"Every one?" he said, looking in her eyes.
A second time she took off the ring and gave it to him, and as he
protested she said coldly:
"Don't make me angry. The comedy has been amusing. Enough. Also,
don't trouble yourself about my motives. I haven't the slightest
intention of marrying you or any one else."
And she accompanied the words with a gesture so imperative that, amazed
at the change, he no longer insisted. As he put out his hand, she said
suddenly, as if obeying an intuition:
"I will tell you what you want to know. Gunther is almost sure to come
to Majendie's aid. I know it by a woman. Take care of yourself."
"And I will tell you exactly the opposite," he said, bluffing. "Gunther
will not lend a cent; Majendie will go under, and I'll pull through."
"You'll pull through even if the Atlantic Trust closes?"
"Exactly."
"Good-by," she said, with a shrug.
"Remember what I said," he repeated, and went out.
Five minutes later the bell rang, and Kiki brought her a little box and
an envelope. She recognized Slade's writing, and read: