P.S. Please find McKenna if you possibly can.
"By Jove--McKenna!" he exclaimed, and hastened toward the door, only to
be stopped by Gunther.
"Ted, you blockhead, what are you doing?"
"Going after McKenna."
"Just what he doesn't want."
Beecher stopped short, suddenly comprehending.
"That's it, is it?" he said, returning. "He wants to keep clear of Mrs.
Kildair's, then?"
"You see," said Gunther, "it is not often that McKenna gets
double-crossed. When he does, he doesn't particularly relish it. Mrs.
Kildair may be perfectly right in bottling up the whole affair; but,
after what happened yesterday, Mac isn't going to stop until he gets to
the bottom."
"But why disappear?"
"Because, you little white fluffy toy donkey, the last thing in the
world Mrs. Kildair wants is to have him do anything at all, and, as you
are putty in the hands of any pretty woman, he doesn't intend to have
you call him off."
"I'll see Mrs. Kildair at Louise's. What am I to say?"
Gunther shrugged his shoulders.
"Wonder if she's really playing to be Mrs. Slade," he said grimly. "If
she is, she'll give that up after tonight."
"What's going to happen to him, Bruce?"
"He'll come out with so little left that a Committee on Virtue will
arrest him for indecent exposure--and the country will be saved."
Beecher stopped before the telephone.
"Wonder if Mrs. Kildair really was on the 'phone?" he said meditatively.
The thought recalled Miss Charters, but without disturbing his
equanimity.
"Bruce," he said joyfully, rushing to dress, "Tilton's crazy to have me
go to Africa with him. By Jove, I've half made up my mind! Give me a
man's life; a life with men, out in the open--dogs and horses, and
nothing but a few lions and fat elephants to bother you!"
When they arrived at Mrs. Fontaine's, they found, to their surprise,
that Mrs. Kildair had been delayed by an automobile breaking down, and
would only join them later at the opera.
Not one of them had the faintest suspicion, when later Mrs. Kildair
calmly entered the box, that she had passed through two hours of supreme
agitation that had left her torn between hope and dread--her whole
future staked on one turn. Slade, face to face with the crisis that
would determine whether he would survive as one of the figures of the
financial world, or return staggering into the oblivion of the
commonplace, had gone to see her in the afternoon.
Confronted, too, by the imminent outcome of a gamble that had absorbed
all her ambitions and her hopes, she had recklessly thrown aside all the
restraints which she had interposed between them; and by an impulse of
daring which makes such women irresistible to men, having invented an
excuse for Mrs. Fontaine, had kept him to dinner, trusting to his
protection, insisting on his confidence.
Afterward she had driven him to the gray, prison-like structure which
Gunther called a home, and seen him, defiant with a defiance she had
breathed into him, with the scorn of the gambler who comes at length to
the ultimate stake walk up the steps past the group of newspaper men,
who, suddenly ceasing their chatter, huddled together and watched him
with a unanimous craning of their heads.
*CHAPTER XVII*
Mrs. Craig Fontaine's box was in the lower grand tier in that favored
circle which, in the present struggle for social supremacy, is the
ultimate battlefield. Her entrance was one of the six important
arrivals of the night which affected the immense audience with a
curiosity only less intense than the entrance of the prima donna. Mrs.
Fontaine, approaching the curtain that shut out the swimming vision of
faces, took a preparatory glance, and as the row of boxes still showed a
profusion of gaps, she delayed their entrance on the pretext of waiting
for Mrs. Kildair. Besides Gunther and Beecher, there were in the party
Lady Fitzhugh Mowbray, a young woman of the striking English blonde
type, and the Duke de Taleza-Corti, of the royal house of Italy, a
cosmopolite, dry, frail in body, affecting the English monocle, with a
perpetual introspective smile on his keen lips.
The absence of Mrs. Kildair had left Mrs. Fontaine in very bad humor.
Not only did she consider an invitation to her box as a sort of royal
command that should take precedence over all calamities, and render
accidents impossible, but she felt that she would miss the effect which
her well-balanced party had promised. Fortunately, at that moment the
door opened and Mrs. Kildair entered.
"My dear Mrs. Fontaine," she said immediately, in a voice that could not
be heard by the rest, "the explanation I sent you is not true. It was
not a question of a break-down. There are crises in our lives that
cannot be put off. I can tell you no more than this, but I know you
will understand that nothing except a matter of supreme importance would
ever make me miss an invitation of yours."
Mrs. Fontaine looked at her and, seeing beyond the surface calm the
fires of a profound agitation, was pleased that Mrs. Kildair had not
sought an easy excuse, but had thrown herself on her woman's generosity.
Also she perceived that she was strikingly dressed in a robe of that
luminous, elusive green that breaks forth in the flickering driftwood,
subdued and given distance by a network of black lace. It was exactly
the contrast that she would have chosen as a foil to her own costume.
She smiled, pressed her guest's hand sympathetically and signaled to
Gunther, who removed her wrap.
Mrs. Kildair murmured an involuntary tribute while the Duke de
Taleza-Corti, with the over-frank admiration which the Latin permits,
said point blank:
"If I am to sit behind you, Madame, you must bandage my eyes."
Mrs. Fontaine had chosen the one color which, above all others, seemed
to have been created to frame her dark imperious beauty--a warm purple,
the tone of autumn itself, which gave to her shoulders and throat the
softness of ivory. About her neck was a double string of pearls which
were worth ten times the receipts of the house.
"Let's go in," she said, glancing at Gunther with a hope that she might
find his eyes a little troubled. She signed to him to take the seat
behind hers, placing Beecher back of Mrs. Kildair, and while the rest of
her party immediately swept the house with their opera-glasses, she
remained quiet, conscious of the sudden focus, unwilling to show herself
curious of other women.
"Look," said Mrs. Kildair to Beecher in a low aside; "Mrs. Bloodgood is
in her box. What daring!" she added after a moment's examination. "She
has dressed herself in black."
Beecher, following her directions, beheld Mrs. Bloodgood, without a
single jewel or a relieving touch of color, sitting proudly, looking
fixedly at the stage, disdainful of the stir and gossip which her
dramatic appearance occasioned. Behind in the crowded box Mr. Bloodgood
was standing, smiling and contented, showing himself with a malicious
enjoyment.
"How can she do it?" he said.
"After the first act," said Mrs. Kildair, with a sudden impulse of
generosity, "go and see her. Take Mr. Gunther. It will give her
strength."
"It is decidedly brilliant," said Lady Mowbray. "The parterre is much
more effective than Covent Garden."
"There should be a guide to tell us all the histories of these boxes,"
said Taleza-Corti, with his keen perception of values. "The opera is
the record of society. The history of America for the next twenty years
will be written here by those who descend from the galleries into the
orchestra, and those who force their way from the orchestra into the
boxes. I like to think of your millionaires who might have begun up
there under the roof. Fonda, our great novelist, says that the opera is
the city reduced to the terms of the village. It always impresses me.
Magnificent!"
No one listened to him. The women nodded from time to time as their
glasses encountered those of acquaintances; Beecher, troubled at a
figure which he had half perceived in the orchestra and which he sought
to distinguish, fancied a resemblance to Nan Charters; Gunther, bored by
a spectacle which had no novelty for him, watched Mrs. Kildair, noting
the nervous hands and the occasional quickly taken breaths, asking
himself what had been the real cause of her absence, half divining in a
confused way the truth.
Mrs. Fontaine was languidly curious of those who had a right to her
interest. She was in her element--jealous of this multitude as an
actress, pleased at the fine effect she had produced. And in her
triumph she was recalled to the one thing she desired to complete her
ambition, to give her that command of this assemblage which she was
forced to acknowledge to another. Her glance went to the box in the
middle of the horseshoe, as it did covetously each night.
"Your father isn't here tonight," she said to Bruce Gunther with a
little surprise.
"No. There is some big pow-wow on," he answered.
Mrs. Kildair took up her glasses suddenly, turning them haphazard. The
remark revived in her all the agitation of the afternoon.
"I shall never be able to sit through this," she said to herself,
leaning forward. "If I only knew--"
Mrs. Fontaine, could she have known the thoughts that were galloping
through the brain of her guest, would have been astounded at their
similarity. Mrs. Kildair, too, had her ambitions, ambitions as
passionately held and nourished on one hope. The interview that
afternoon with Slade, an interview in which for the first time she had
made him feel the need of her, had all at once brought the prize within
her grasp. If he could but emerge from this one supreme danger, she
said to herself that she had at last the opportunity to rate herself
here among the leaders of this society which she coveted, had always
coveted and would never cease to covet.
"Give me Slade and twenty millions even," she said to herself with a
great intaking of breath, "and I can do anything. I will dominate this
in five years." But the more violently burned the fire of her desire,
the more weak and faltering was her hope. "Ah, will he win out--can
he--how is it possible?" she said bitterly. "Oh, what a gamble it all
is--and I must sit here--continue to sit here like a stone--while in an
hour it may all be decided!"
"You've seen Fornez in _Carmen_?" said Taleza-Corti to Gunther. "Very
fine."
"First appearance here," said Gunther briefly. He touched Beecher on the
arm. "Friends of yours over there, Ted."
"Who?"
"The Cheevers--little to your right--row above. Hello," he added
suddenly. "See who's with them?"
"Who?" said Beecher, who did not recognize the rest of the party.
Gunther placed his finger on his lips, with a warning glance at Mrs.
Kildair, and then, bending forward, said:
"I say, Mrs. Kildair, who is that tall, rather black chap in the box
with the Stanley Cheevers? He's looking this way now."
Mrs. Kildair raised her glasses.
"Mr. Mapleson," she said directly.
"He's the head of Sontag & Company, the jewelers, isn't he?"
"Yes, I believe so."
"Queer looking chap--ever know him?"
"Yes. Why?"
She turned, looking at the questioner with a fixity that told him she
was not entirely ignorant of his real interest.
"He must have been in Paris when you were," he said quickly. "I hear he
had quite a career there."
She turned away with indifference, gazed once more through her glasses
and said:
"Yes, there were quite a number of stories about his rise. He is a man
with a genius for friendships."
"Rather attentive to Mrs. Cheever, isn't he?" persisted Gunther.
"I didn't know it."
Beecher did not then seize the drift of the inquiry, still absorbed as
he was in the attempt to gain a clearer view of the profile in the
orchestra which reminded him of Nan Charters. Lady Mowbray continued
silent, busy as a true Briton in the search for the ridiculous in this
assemblage which at first glance had impressed her.
All at once the lights went out and the first act was on. The entrance
of Emma Fornez was eagerly awaited as a new sensation to an audience
which yearly must be served with the novel and startling. It had been
rumored that her impersonation was even a bit shocking, and the house,
stirred by the expectation, waited hopefully. At the end of the act
opinions were divided: the galleries applauded frantically, moved by the
sure magnetism of a great artist, but the boxes and most of the
orchestra waited undecided, each afraid to be the leader.
"But I don't see anything shocking at all," said the voice of a young
woman in the next box, a note of complaint in her voice.
"Wait--it's in the second act," answered the sarcastic note of a man.
"Ah, the love scene," said the woman mollified.
The two young men rose, giving their places to arriving visitors, and
went into the corridors on their rounds. Beecher was thoughtful. He
had at last assured himself that he had not been mistaken--Miss Charters
was present. He had detected her with her glasses on his box, but he
had not succeeded in seeing who was her companion.
"I'd give a good deal to know how well Mrs. Cheever knows Mapleson,"
said Gunther eagerly.
"I say, what do you mean by poking me?" asked Beecher suddenly.
"Didn't you get on? Mapleson is the head of Sontag & Company; Sontag &
Company sold the ring to Slade. Now if Mapleson and Mrs. Cheever are
intimate it's possible--just a chance--Mrs. Cheever may have known the
facts. See?"
Beecher shrugged his shoulders.
"It's a long shot."
"But a chance. I'll pick up some one here in five minutes who can tell
me."
Beecher entered the Bloodgood box and, making his way to the front, gave
his hand to Mrs. Bloodgood. Four or five men, impelled by curiosity,
were before him, mentally registering their reports to add to the fund
of gossip. Mrs. Bloodgood, glad to avail herself of the opportunity,
had turned her back on the audience and was holding her head against
these social scouts, who discussed Slade, which was a manner of
discussing Majendie.
She welcomed Beecher's arrival as that of an ally and made him the
pretext of withdrawing from the general conversation. The moment he
looked at her, he had the tact to perceive that any display of sympathy
would be an offense. There was no trace left of the weak and desperate
woman. Instead, he was aware of an immense change in her, a
transformation that was moral, and looking into her eyes he could not
realize that he had ever seen them weep.
"They'll force out Slade," said a voice.
"Where are you tonight?" she asked quietly.
"In Mrs. Craig Fontaine's box," he said.
"Mrs. Kildair is there, isn't she?"
"Yes." He hesitated, but did not deliver her message. The woman before
him asked compassion from no one. In the commotion at his side he
caught a phrase: "Wonder if Slade will kill himself too?"
"Do you like Fornez?" he said hastily, and despite himself he looked
into her eyes to see what effect the remark had made.
"Very much," she said coldly, a little staccato. And then calmly, to end
a subject that was disagreeable to her, she turned to the other.
"Fornez has made a success, don't you think?"
Beecher left presently, oppressed by the hardness that he felt in her.
"There's a woman who will never have any pity," he thought as he left.
Mr. Bloodgood, who remembered him with a malicious smile, shook his hand
with extra cordiality.
"Did you give my message?" asked Mrs. Kildair as he took his place.
"It was wiser not," he said. Then all at once, struck by the fatigue in
her face, he asked anxiously: "Are you very tired?"
"Yes, very," she said.
In this box, too, nothing had been spoken of except the drama, which at
that moment was centered about John G. Slade. As nothing could possibly
be known, every one arrived with a fresh rumor, and the burden of all
was the annihilation of the Westerner. The sudden darkness came to her
as a relief. She relaxed wearily in her chair and forced her mind to
forget itself in the sudden access of gaiety from the stage.
This second act was a veritable triumph for Emma Fornez. In the scene
of Don Jose's return she acted with such fine and natural primitive
passion that all the constricted little feminine natures in the audience
were stirred by the pulsing exhibition of an emotion they had carefully
choked or reduced to mathematics, and, really moved, trembling in their
imprisoned bodies, they applauded for the first time. Then suddenly
they ceased--a little ashamed.
In descending the stairway to go behind the stage, Beecher perceived
Miss Charters in the distance of the shifting crowd. He stopped, by a
movement he did not analyze, to speak to a purely chance acquaintance,
hoping that she would perceive him. Then he continued to the
dressing-room of the prima donna.
Emma Fornez was in a state of frenzied delight.
"I have them, Teddy--I have them! Is it not so?" she cried, clapping
her hands together as a child. She flung her arms about him, embracing
him. In fact, she embraced every one--even Victorine, her maid.
"The house is wild with enthusiasm," he said, laughing.
"Aha! I made them sit up, didn't I--your cold women! It's the second
act, Teddy--the second--you get them there. Bah! They don't even know
what I did to them." All at once she stopped, seriously assuming a
countenance of terror. "Oh, but the critics--what will the monsters
say! They never like it when the audience is too enthusiastic."
[Illustration: "'Aha! I made them sit up, didn't I--your cold women!'"]
"I saw Macklin applauding, Madame," said Spinetti, putting his head into
the room.
"Angel!" cried Emma Fornez, and she embraced Spinetti. Then, knowing in
herself that the day was won, she began to amuse her audience. "Do you
know what the critics will write? I'll tell you. The audience was
carried off its feet in the second act. They will praise the first.
They will say the second was obvious, and they will praise the third
act, because there I shall do a little trick to them--in the card scene.
I shall be very noble--very tragic. I will make a little picture of
death before my eyes--with all his bones rattling and his great big
hollow eyes, and they shall see it on my face--so! And I'll look very
steady--noble--profound--like a queen. See?--a thing which Carmen would
nevere, nevere do, for she's a little wretch of an animal that would be
frightened to death. But you will see they will all like it--it's their
moral that you have to serve up to them."
"Third act--third act," came the running call from the flies. "All on
the stage for the third act."
When Beecher entered the corridor, Miss Charters was only a short
distance away. He was prepared for Lorraine as a companion, but he felt
a sudden anger at the sight of Garraboy, who in turn, suddenly
comprehending the aim of his partner's maneuvers, looked anything but
pleased.
She nodded to him, holding out her hand.
"She is wonderful, Teddy, wonderful. Have you seen her? Is she
pleased?"
"She is a great, great artist," he said with extra warmth. "She is
pleased as a child."
The two men had nodded with that impertinent jerk of the head which in
society conveys the effect of a bucket of water.
"Come and see me after the next act," she said, looking at him closely.
"If I can," he said hastily.
He went up the steps and from the tail of his eye saw her linger,
watching him as he went. A little contrition, a sudden sympathy came to
him, but he repressed it angrily, saying to himself between his teeth:
"Garraboy--how can she stand for that!"
When he returned to the box, Mrs. Kildair and Mrs. Fontaine were in the
anteroom in low converse. He was suddenly struck with the look of age
in Mrs. Kildair's face.
"But I assure you--I can go alone," she was saying.
"I would not allow it," said Mrs. Fontaine firmly. Then turning to
Beecher she said, so as not to reach the others: "Teddy, as soon as the
curtain is up, step out. Mrs. Kildair is not well. You will take her
home. I have ordered the automobile. You can get back for the last
act."
Mrs. Kildair made no further remonstrance--she was at the end of her
tether.
"Sit here," she said to Beecher, sitting down on the couch. "I don't
want to be noticed."
"You're ill!" he said alarmed.
"Yes, ill," she said mechanically.
At this moment the house became still. She rose with a return of energy
and signaled him that she was ready. Five minutes later they were in
the automobile fleeing uptown.
A moment of weakness was rare in her life, yet she comprehended it
without seeking to delude herself.
"At twenty I should not even have trembled," she said to herself,
sinking back into the cushioned seat and watching the lights of the
streets flash past the window with a comforting emotion of speed. "Now
it is different. Every life has one supreme opportunity--this is mine.
I know it."
Had a woman been at her side instead of Beecher, she would have given
her confidence in the terrible necessity for sharing the emotion that
was too vital to her. As it was, she restrained herself, remaining
silent by a last effort of her will, but her hand on the window-frame
began a nervous syncopated beating, imitating the click of the fleeing
rails which one hears on a railroad train.
"You are feeling better?" said the young man in a troubled voice.
"Open the window--just for a moment," she answered.
The sudden blast of cold air, damp as though laden with the tears of the
city, terrified her with its suggestion of despair and defeat.
"No, no, shut it!" she said hurriedly.
He obeyed and then to distract her, began:
"I received your note, Rita, just before coming, McKenna--"
"No, no," she said, interrupting him, "that is nothing. Just let me be
quiet a moment--get hold of myself."
But in a few moments she was forced to seek the stimulus of the air
again, and she cried hurriedly, not concealing her agitation:
"Open, open quick!"
The crisis which she felt approaching with every block which fell behind
was so immense, the stake so ardently coveted, so weakly feared, that
she had in the last eternal waiting moments a sensation of vertigo, that
swept down and seized her even as on the football field before the
blowing of the whistle the stanchest player feels his heart lying before
him on the ground. She opened her lips, drinking in the chill,
revivifying draught, unaware of the strange impression her disordered
countenance in the embrasure of the window made on the occasional
passers-by.
"Better first in a village than second in Rome."
She found herself repeating the saying mechanically, without quite
understanding how it had so suddenly leaped into her mind. Then, as the
automobile turned into her street, and she felt that he was there
waiting as he had promised, successful or ruined; that now in ten
minutes all would be over, she would know; all at once, without that
sense of humor which deserts us in great stress, she began to pray
confusedly to some one immense, whom she had never understood, but one
who seemed to hold all fates in the balancing of his fingers.
"Are you better? What shall I do? Shall I come up with you?" asked
Beecher, totally in the dark.
"No, no--wait," she said hurriedly, as the machine ground to a stop.
She did not rise at once, stiffening in her seat, grasping the arm of
the young man until he winced under the contraction of her fingers.
"Good!" she said suddenly; and before he could prevent her she was out
on the sidewalk. "No, no; stay in. Thanks, thanks a thousand times.
I'll send you back."
Before he could protest, she shut the door firmly and nodded to the
chauffeur.
The elevator boy was already at the swinging glass doors, holding them
open for her entrance.
"Mr. Slade here, Jo?" she said instantly.
"Yes, ma'am; upstairs."
"How long?"
"About half an hour."
She entered the elevator and descended at the landing, waiting until it
had disappeared.
"Now for it!" she said, pressing the bell. And by a last display of her
will, she sent through her body a wave of cold resolution that left her
outwardly impassive with a little touch of scorn on her lips.
*CHAPTER XVIII*
It is only in the supreme crisis of a colossal disaster that a nation,
which fondly believes it elects its governing bodies, perceives its real
masters, and then in the alarm and confusion of its apprehension, it
does not recognize what it is shown. The group of ten men who were
assembled at Gunther's, awaiting the arrival of Slade, either in
themselves or through the influences they represented, could bring to
their support over ten billions of capital. If it were possible to
conceive of a master spirit who could unite these ten men, forgetting
mutual jealousy and distrust, into one unanimous body with but a single
object, in five years these ten men, without the impediment of law,
could own every necessary newspaper and magazine in the country, operate
every railroad, and, by the simple process of reinvesting their earnings
annually, control every important industry, every necessary chain of
banks, the entire food supply of the nation, and, at the cost of twenty
million dollars every four years and by remaining unknown, control the
necessary number of candidates in both political parties in matters
essential to their financial interests. That such a coalition will
remain a fantasy, is due to two factors: the human nature of such
individuals and the human nature of multitudes which, were they
successful, would find the corrective in massacre. When such a monetary
alliance does take place, it is usually from the necessity, as they see
it, of saving the country by the simple process of enriching themselves.
When Slade arrived, he entered by the separate entrance to Gunther's
personal apartments, which were situated in a lower wing of the
monstrous turreted granite structure which might have served for a
miniature Bastile. One of the secretaries was at the door carefully
scrutinizing all arrivals. The moment he entered, he was aware that his
fate was not the only one that was under discussion.
The wing of the house was laid out in the form of a Maltese cross, with
a square anteroom in the center, heavily spread with silk Persian rugs,
and furnished with easy divans and upholstered chairs. Above was a
skylight, now transformed into a vast reflector for the burst of
electric lights.
Four entrances of equal height in heavy Florentine relief gave on this
anteroom; from Gunther's private office, from the library, from the
rooms of the private secretaries, and from the outer entrance by which
Slade advanced. In the middle of the anteroom Gunther was seated at a
small card-table, studiously engrossed in a game of solitaire. He was a
medium-seized man who, without an effect of bulk, conveyed an instant
impression of solidity, while the head, remarkable in the changed
physiognomy of the present day, had the falcon-like, eerie quality,
characteristic of the spreading eyebrows and deep-set glance of the
American before the Civil War. Slow in movement, slow in speech, he was
likewise slow in the deliberation with which his scrutiny left the face
he was considering.
At the vigorous shock of Slade's coming, he completed a row of carefully
laid cards and lifted his head.
"How do you do, Mr. Gunther?" said Slade, whose eye was instantly set on
the half-opened doors leading into the library, from which sounds of
altercation were issuing.
Slade's arrival seemed to surprise Gunther, who looked at his watch and
said, without rising:
"You're ahead of time, Mr. Slade."
"Always like to look over the ground when there's a battle," said Slade,
who in fact had intentionally effected a surprise.
"Sit down."
He motioned to the secretary, who, moving on springs, brought cigars and
a light.
"I'll have to keep you waiting, Mr. Slade. There is a conference taking
place."
Slade glanced from the library to the closed doors of the secretaries'
room.
"How many conferences have you?"
Gunther turned over a card, studied it and carefully laid it down. It
was his manner of settling a question he did not wish to answer.
Slade was not offended by the rebuff. Holding most men in antagonism,
he had conceived a violent admiration for Gunther and as he was the man
above all others whom he wished to impress, he imitated his taciturnity,
turning his imagination on the probable groups behind the three double
doors, which once had closed on a famous conspiracy in a palace of
turbulent medieval Florence.
Gunther at this moment was probably the most powerful personal force in
the United States, and, what was more extraordinary, in an era of public
antipathy to its newly created magnates, enjoyed universal respect. As
he showed himself rarely, never gave interviews, and surrounded himself
by choice with that inciting element of seclusion which Napoleon by
calculation adopted on his return from Italy, the public had magnified
what it could not perceive. Even as royal personages of distinctly
bourgeois caliber have been impressed on history by the exigencies of
the kingly tradition as models of tact and statesmanship, so events and
the necessities of the public imagination had combined to throw about
the personality of Gunther an atmosphere of grandiose mystery. Just as
it is true that what is a virtue in one man is a defect in another, the
imagination he possessed was much less than he was credited with and his
power lay in his ability to control it. For imagination, which is the
genius of progress, in a banker approaches a crime.
His strength lay in being that inevitable man who results as the balance
wheel of conflicting interests. For beyond the Stock Exchange, which is
a purely artificial organization, the financial powers will always
create what amounts to a saving check, around one inevitable
personality, whom they can trust and about whom, in times of common
danger, they can rally as to a standard. At this moment, the invested
wealth of the country, frightened at the cataclysm which threatened it,
had thrown its resources implicitly into the hands of this one man, who
came forward at the psychological time to stop the panic, issuing his
orders, and marshaling his forces with a response of instant obedience.
"What's going on here?" said Slade to himself. "And what's the
proposition they're reckoning on squeezing out of me? I'd like to know
what's going on behind those doors."
As though in response to his wish the doors of the secretaries' room
swung, and a round, rolling little man of fifty, in evening dress, came
hurriedly out, holding in his hand a slip of paper. He approached the
stolid player with precipitation, and yet, obeying a certain instinct of
deference, which showed itself despite his disorder, he waited until
Gunther had completed a play he had in hand before blurting out:
"Mr. Gunther, this is the best we can do."
Gunther took the slip which was offered to him, glanced at it and
returned it abruptly.
"Not sufficient," he said and took up his pack of cards.
The emissary, crestfallen and desperate, returned to the conference and
at the opening of the door the sound of violent discussion momentarily
filled the anteroom as a sudden blast of storm.
"I have it," said Slade, who had recognized Delancy Gilbert, of the firm
of Gilbert, Drake & Bauerman, brokers and promoters of mining interests
in Mexico, whose failure had been circulated from lip to lip in the last
forty-eight hours. "I see that game. Gilbert's to be mulcted of his
Osaba interests--for whom though? The United Mining, undoubtedly."
Five minutes later the doors of the library opened in turn and a
military figure, gray, bent, with tears in his eyes, came slowly out,
the type of convenient figureheads which stronger men place in the
presidencies of subsidiary corporations. He likewise placed a sheet of
paper before the financier, watching him from the corner of his eye, his
white finger working nervously in the grizzled mustache.
"We've agreed on this, Mr. Gunther," he said desperately, in a voice
shaken by suppressed emotion. "That's as far as we can go--and that
means ruin!"
Gunther examined the sheet with slow attention, nodding favorably twice;
but at a third column he shook his head and, seizing a pencil, jotted
down a figure, carefully drawing a circle around it.
"That's what I must have," he said and returned to his solitaire.
The emissary hesitated, seemed about to argue, and then, with a hopeless
heave of his shoulders, retired. Gunther frowned but the frown was
called forth by an unfavorable conjunction of the cards. Not once had he
seemed to notice the presence of Slade. In the same position the
promoter could not have helped stealing a glance to witness the effect.
Slade registered the observation, mentally admitting the difference.
"What does he keep me here for?" he thought, but almost immediately
answered the question: "Effect on the others, of course. Well, let them
pull their own chestnuts out of the fire."
In the last emissary he had recognized General Arthur Roe Paxton,
President of the Mohican Trust, exploiter of certain Southern oil
fields, equally involved in the Osaba speculation. The knowledge of the
operations which were being discussed--which he readily divined were the
surrender of important holdings--prepared him for the demands he must
expect to meet.
At this moment Gunther swept the cards together, glanced at his watch,
and pressed an electric button.
"Mr. Slade," he said, fixing his lantern-like stare upon the promoter,
"I need not tell you that we are in a desperate situation, that it is
time for action--decisive and immediate action."
Slade answered by an impatient jerking of his thumb, and, rising as he
beheld the secretary returning from the private office where he had been
sent by a look of Gunther's, said:
"I understand perfectly. If the gentlemen whom I am to meet understand
the situation as well as I do, we shall have no trouble."
Gunther continued to study him thoughtfully, struck by the confidence of
his attitude where desperation might have been expected. He seemed for
a moment about to say something, but presently, giving a sign to his
secretary, began thoughtfully to shuffle the cards.
In the private office a group of men were assembled about the long
table. The disposition of Slade had been but an incident in the
discussion which had been called to decide upon the methods to be
pursued in coming to the support of the market, and the deliberation had
left its marks of dissension. Slade, on entering, rapidly surveyed the
group, perceived its discord, and divided it into its component
interests.
"The United Mining is the key," he said, on recognizing Haggerty and
Forscheim.
The group was like a trans-section of that conflicting America which
seems to hold the destiny of types. Fontaine, one of the landed
proprietors of the city, French of descent and aristocratic by the
purifying experience of two generations, was next to Haggerty, a
cross-grained, roughly hewn type of the indomitable Irish immigrant of
the seventies, who had risen to power out of the silver mines of the
eighties. Leo Marx, olive in tint, whispering in manner, thin-veined
and handsome, represented the Jewish aristocracy that had ingrained
itself in the great banking houses of New York; while Forscheim, leading
spirit of five brothers, abrupt, too aggressive or too compliant,
cunning and unsatisfied, was the Hebrew of speculation, the creator of
the great corporation known as the United Mining.
Judge Seton B. Barton, representative of the great oil interests, was
the grim Yankee, unrelieved by his modifying humor, implacable in small
things as well as great, knowing no other interest in life except the
passion of acquiring.
Kraus, an ungainly, bulky German-American, had not moved from the
half-retreating position he had taken on seating himself. He answered
with a short movement of his head, watching every one with covetous,
suspicious eyes that glimmered weakly over the spectacles which had
slipped to the bridge of his nose, never suggested a move, and gave his
assent the last. He was the owner of a fortune estimated at three
hundred millions, acquired in lumber holdings over a territory in the
West which would have made another Belgium.
McBane, one of the strongest figures which the rise of the great steel
industry had propelled into the public light, was a short, fussy, brisk
little man, tenacious, agile, obstinate in opinion, while outwardly
smiling with a general air of delighted surprise at his own success. He
was the present active force in the group of steel magnates whose
personal fortunes alone amounted to over three quarters of a billion.
Marcus Stone, president of the greatest banking force of the country,
the Columbus National, was a middle-westerner, sprung from the hardy
soil of Ohio, virile, deep-lunged, direct and domineering, agent of
colossal enterprises, rooted in conservatism and regarding his vocation
as an almost sacred call. He accounted himself a poor man; he was worth
only three millions.
Rupert V. Steele, head of the legal firm of Steele, Forshay & Benton,
corporation lawyers, was the type of the brilliant Southerner,
adventuring into the Eldorado of New York as the Gascon seeks Paris or
the Irishman the lure of London. He might almost be said to have
created a new profession--the lawyer-promoter--and in his capacious,
fertile head had been evolved the schemes of law-avoiding combinations
that others received the credit for. In public he was one of the
stanchest defenders of the Constitution and an eloquent exponent of the
sanctity of the judiciary.
With the exception of Fontaine and Marx, in this varied group of
master-adventurers, all had begun life with little better than the coats
on their backs, and the colossal fortunes which roughly totaled two
billions had been amassed in virtually twenty years. This is a point
which future economists may ponder over with profit.
At Slade's entrance the conversation abruptly ceased and each in his own
manner studied the new arrival; some with languid, confident curiosity;
Forscheim, who had old scores to settle, with a glance of unrestrained
satisfaction; Steele, leaning a little forward, eager in his
inquisitorial mind to divine the attack, already convinced that such a
personality as Slade would not come without an aggressive defense.
The second glance reassured Slade, for he distinguished in the group the
conflicting rivalries and perceived by what slender checks the
irrepressible jealousies and antagonisms had been stilled.
"If they've got together," he said to himself with a sudden delight in a
favorable hazard, "it's because they're scared to the ground and they
want to shut off the panic first and trim me second. Good! That's what
I wanted to be sure of."
He advanced to the head of the table, swinging into place a heavy chair
which he swept through the air as though it had been paper, and,
resolved to acquire the advantage of initiative, said:
"Well, gentlemen, let's get right down to business. I've come to get
five millions."
In their astonishment several pushed back their chairs with a harsh,
grating sound. Forscheim laughed aloud insolently, but Steele,
sensitive to small things, instantly determined to employ caution, to be
the last to crush him if he failed, and the first to support him if he
had indeed the power to survive.
"Mr. Slade," said Stone in his blasting manner, "your remark is in bad
taste. The situation you are facing is an exceedingly serious one and
only a prompt compliance on your part with the measures we have
determined upon to avert a national calamity, will save you from
bankruptcy"--he stopped, but not from hesitation, adding with a sudden
flush of anger--"and worse."
"We are here," said McBane, in tones of conviction which produced a
nodding of assenting heads, "in the performance of a public duty. In
carrying that out we do not intend to allow the fate of one man or a
dozen to interfere with the steps we intend to take to restore public
confidence."
"And I repeat," said Slade, with a disdainful smile, "that I am here to
get five millions; and you are going to give it to me."
An outburst of exclamations followed this assertion, half angry, half
contemptuous, above which was heard Forscheim's shrill nasal voice
saying:
"Dere is a shtate examiner, Mr. Shlade, don't forget dat."
"My books are kept as carefully as yours, Forscheim," said Slade, with a
sudden angry concentration of his glance. He had once in a committee
meeting taken Forscheim by the throat and flung him out of doors--a fear
which the other could never forget. Then he struck the table a
resounding blow with his fist, stilling the clamor.
"Wait!" he exclaimed, rising until his bulky figure towered over the
table. "Don't let's waste time. Come to the point. You think I've
come here to receive your terms. You are mistaken. I've come here to
deliver an ultimatum--my ultimatum."
"Do you realize, sir," said Judge Barton sternly, "what the object of
this meeting is? We are here to preserve the prosperity of this country
for the next ten years, the homes and savings of millions of persons."
"No, that is not why you are here," said Slade contemptuously. "I'll
tell you why you are here. You are here to protect your own
interests--first, last, and always! Because a panic to you means
hundreds of millions, the end of development, the closing of markets;
because at the end of a stock market panic is an industrial panic, and
the end of any protracted individual depression means the colossal
flattening out of your billion dollar trusts. That's why there'll never
be another '93--that's the one good thing in the present situation the
public doesn't know. There isn't going to be a '93 now, and you know it
and I know it."
"Suppose, Mr. Slade, you listen to our stipulations first," said McBane,
but in a more conciliatory tone.
Beyond his exposition which had struck all with its piercing verity,
Slade had effected over them an almost physical mastery, which men
grudgingly are forced to yield to masculine strength.
"I know your demands," said Slade instantly. "Oh, there is no informer
present. Nothing difficult. I know you and the way your minds work.
You have three conditions: first, I am to resign the presidency of the
Associated Trust; second, sell my stock control to a syndicate you have
organized, which will stand as a guarantee to the public; third, the
taking over of all my holdings in the Osaba territory by the United
Mining Company. Am I right?"
He did not need to wait for a reply; the answer was plain upon their
countenances.
"Now, gentlemen, I'm going to finish up," he said, pursuing his
advantage. "Remember one thing: I'm not a Majendie. I fight to the
last breath and when I'm downed I carry everything I get my hands on
down with me.
"Now, let's be perfectly plain. I know where I stand. If Majendie and
the Atlantic Trust hadn't gone to smash, there wouldn't be a ghost of a
show for me; you'd squeeze every last cent I had. I know it. I knew it
then when I knew it was Majendie or me. But you see Majendie's dead and
the Atlantic Trust--three hundred and eighty millions--has closed its
doors. That makes all the difference in the world. You don't want to
trim me--not primarily. Forscheim and the United Mining do--that's
their private affair. What you men who count want, I repeat, is to stop
this panic--to get me out of the way and stop the panic if you can; if
you can't get me out of the way, to stop the panic at once--now--within
twenty-four hours! Now, gentlemen, I defy you to let the Associated
Trust close its doors tomorrow and prevent, with all your money, the
wreck of every industry in the country."
"You overestimate the importance of such a failure," said Fontaine
slowly, but without aggressiveness.
Slade's attack had made a profound impression.
"I have taken particular care that if the Associated fails, it'll be the
biggest smash on record," said Slade, ready now to play his trump card.
"What do you mean?" demanded Haggerty, startled, while the others waited
expectantly.
"Just that," said Slade, not unwilling that they should know the depth
of his game. "If the Associated fails, sixty-seven institutions fail
from here to San Francisco. I have taken care of that in the last two
months."
"You haf ingreased your oplications at sooch a time!" fairly shrieked
Forscheim, who saw his victory eluding him.
"You bet I did," said Slade. "I made sure that I couldn't be _allowed_
to fail."
He took from his pocket a folded sheet and handed it to Steele, who had
a moment before finally determined to come to his support.
"That's what failure means. Pass it around," he said.
The lawyer elevated his eyebrows in astonishment. The disclosure of how
Slade by negotiating loans with a number of subsidiary institutions
throughout the country had made them united in his general fate,
completed the dawning recognition of a master which had been forming in
his mind.
"He will beat them," he thought, passing on the paper. "He will go far.
I must be his friend." Aloud he said carefully: "Of course, Mr. Slade,
at the bottom the affairs of the Associated Trust are absolutely
solvent."
"Solvent under any system of banking in the world which does not
withhold ready money on proper guarantees," said Slade, looking at him
with a glance that showed the lawyer he had received his alliance;
"solvent as the Atlantic Trust was, is, and will be proved to be. You
gentlemen know that as well as I do."
"Of course, Mr. Slade," said Steele, with an appearance of
aggressiveness which the other understood perfectly, "one thing must be
understood--the present speculative operations of the Trust Companies
can not go on."
"Now, gentlemen, to finish up," said Slade, who seized the hint.
"Here's my answer: I will agree to any legislation, in fact will urge
it, that will place the Trust Companies on the basis of the National
Banks; that is, on the same conservative basis of loans and
transactions. That is right. I am now convinced that it is for the
best." He allowed a slight smile to show and continued: "I will resign
as President of the Associated Trust three months from to-day. That I
had already determined on. For what I wish to do, that would only be an
embarrassment. You will lend me the five millions I wish and, better
still, tomorrow morning make a simple announcement to the effect that,
having consulted on the affairs of the Associated Trust, you have found
no reasons for apprehension, and announce that you will come to its
support. Sign it Fontaine, Gunther, McBane, Marx and Stone, and the run
on the banks will end in twenty-four hours. Tomorrow morning I will
personally assure Mr. Steele, by an examination of my books, that
affairs are as I have described. After this examination you can place
five millions to my disposal--if necessary. Believe me, this is a much
better way to end the panic. You reassure public confidence by your
guarantee. The other way, by forcing my resignation, you create an
impression that everything is rotten. Besides, the first way has this
advantage--it is the only way. That's my word, gentlemen; if you intend
to stop the panic you've got to float me!"
An hour later, having yielded not a jot of his position, turning a deaf
ear to threats, expostulations and arguments, he rose victorious.
In the anteroom he went up to Gunther, who was still bowed over his
solitaire, waiting grimly until his word had been carried out.
"Mr. Gunther," said Slade, stopping at the table, "we have come to an
understanding. The gentlemen in the other room were agreeably surprised
at my exposition of the affairs of the Associated Trust. They are going
to lend me five millions."
"Indeed!" said Gunther in a sort of grunt but with a countenance so
impassive that Slade was moved to admiration.
"Gunther," he said, suddenly carried away by a feeling of prophetic
elation, "up to now you've known me only as a speculator. Now I'm going
to become a conservative force. In a month I'm coming to you with a
proposition. You're the only man I would ever trust. Good-night."
His automobile was waiting. He threw himself riotously into it, giving
the address of Mrs. Kildair's apartment; and as he felt the pleasant,
exhilarating sensation which the speed of his machine conveyed to him,
he repeated, feeling suddenly how at last he had emerged from the perils
of the first phase which he had once so frankly defined:
"Now, I'll be conservative!"
Unlike Gunther, who had behind him the traditions of generations of
authority, Slade had that typical quality so perplexing in the American
millionaire of sudden fortune--the childlike eagerness for admiration.
When he arrived at Mrs. Kildair's and found that she was still absent,
he was consumed with a nervous impatience. He seated himself at the
piano, playing over clumsily refrains of the crude ranch songs which
came to him as an echo of his earlier struggling days. But these echoes
of a past conflict seemed only to whet his impatience. He ended with a
crashing discord and rose, lighting another cigar, pacing the broad
space of the studio with rapid, restless strides, surprised at the
annoyance which her absence brought him.
When Mrs. Kildair entered, let in by Henriette, her maid, Slade flung
aside his cigar and strode impatiently forward.
One glance at his triumphant face told her what she wanted to know. She
made a quick sign to him with her hand and turned her back, disengaging
her opera cloak with exaggerated slowness, drawing a deep breath. Then
she sent Henriette upstairs to her room to wait until she called.
"Congratulations," she said calmly, entering the studio and extending
her hand. "You have won!"
"How do you know?" he said, taken back by her composure.
"It is there--in your eyes," she said, passing her fingers so close to
them that he seemed to feel their soft contact. "Tell me all about it."
"Yes, I've beaten them--Fontaine, Barton, Forscheim, Haggerty, the whole
lot of them," he cried with a gleeful laugh. "More, I've forced myself
into their hidebound circle. You'll see--in a month I'll be one of
them."
At times roguishly delighted as a boy, at others with flashes of
primitive power, he related to the eager woman all the details of the
night and the desperate stake he had played to make a failure so
colossal that they themselves would recoil before it.
"And if Majendie had not killed himself?" she said breathlessly,
womanlike perceiving the hazards of fate.
"But he did!" he cried impatiently, unwilling to admit the element of
chance in the destiny he had hewn for himself. But the thought sobered
him. He looked down from the height to which his ambition had flung him.
"It's true. It was either Majendie or me," he said quietly. "Shall I
tell you something? That night we were here I knew he was lost--that he
would do it. Don't ask me how I knew!" Then, shaking off the memory as
an evil dream, he continued, extending his arm in crude magnetic
gestures: "Well, that's over. I am where I want to be; the rest is
easy. In a month--two months--they will see, Forscheim and Haggerty,
how the trap they laid for me has sprung against them. Tonight will be
worth twenty millions to me."
"How do you mean?" she said eagerly, but she did not look at him.
Slade, triumphant in his brute power, inspired her with an emotion she
did not dare to show him yet.
"Forscheim and Haggerty, the United Mining," he said, forgetting his
habitual caution in the now present desire to dazzle and overcome this
woman who had so resisted him, who had become so suddenly necessary to
him, "have laid their trap to get hold of the Osaba territory. They've
stripped Gilbert and old General Paxton of their holdings, and they were
sure they'd strip me. The Osaba gold fields will be one day worth
hundreds of millions--another Eldorado. Well, they'll get a third
interest tonight. I've got a third, and Striker and Benz. Mexican
United, who've fought them tooth and nail, have another third. Each now
has got to have what I've got or get out. I've got the control and when
I sell--" He ended with a laugh. "I've licked Forscheim before but it
will be nothing to this. They thought they had me down and they played
into my hands!"
Suddenly he changed his tone as the memory came to him of Gunther
impassively waiting in his anteroom.
"Now they'll see what I can do," he said savagely. "Gunther's the only
real man among them. I must have Gunther. With him I can do what I
want--construct, construct!"
She rose, stopping him as he most wanted to continue.
"You must go now," she said quietly; "I've already done what I
shouldn't."
He stopped, infuriated at this check to his inclinations, for, beyond
his victory over the men he had fought, she still eluded him.
"Did you care what happened to me--much?" he asked savagely.
"Yes; I was surprised how much I cared," she said slowly, keeping her
eyes on his.
There are certain strong, direct characters who are most vulnerable in
the moment of their greatest exaltation as the generality of men are
weakest in their defeats. She saw in his eyes how much she lacked to
his complete triumph and suddenly seized the opportunity by the
forelock.
"Why are you afraid to marry?" she said vigorously. "You are a child;
you don't understand life. You don't know how to draw from it the
incitements it can give you. You wish to be a great figure and you
think you can remain an outcast."
"What do you mean?" he said roughly, and advancing he took her by the
shoulders without her recoiling.
"You want to be another Gunther," she said, meeting his glance with an
intensity of ambition greater than his, "and you wish to fight like a
guerrilla. You think you need no one, and you need admiration,
confidence, to be spurred on, flattered, cajoled, made to feel your
greatness, to have it dinned into your ears day and night, to be
surrounded by it. You have the vanity of a god and you don't know how
to feed it."
"Well, what would you do?" he said, still holding her from him.
"I would make you what you should be: a personage--not a wanderer," she
said with extraordinary energy. "I'd make your home a court; I'd show
you what it meant to step into your box at the opera and have the
feeling that every eye in the house turned to you. You want to do great
things--but you want to feel that you have done great things, that
others are impressed by them, envy and look up to you. You want that
stimulus and there is only one way to get it. Take your place in
society, where you belong among the great figures."
"I find my own stimulus," he said, looking at her.
"Listen, John Slade," she said furiously. "You think because you have
always done what you want with women that that will continue. It won't.
You are at a dangerous age. You have depended upon women; you cannot
shake it off. The day will come when you'll be caught as every man is
who plays beyond his youth and strength. Women will either hinder you
or push you on. Make up your mind now. Which do you want?"
"I want you!" he said, suddenly caught by her words that came as an
answer to his new view of himself; and violently, characteristically, he
added, enfolding her: "And when I want a thing, I want it now! Get your
wraps on. We're going over to Jersey now and get married."
"No, no," she said firmly though her heart was beating so that she
thought he must hear it.
"You've got me. I never expected it, but I've got to have you," he said
and brutally, without thinking whether he hurt her or not, he forced her
head up to his. She did not resist, intoxicated, carried away by her
absolute helplessness in his arms. Then, confident, he renewed his
demand that they should be married that night, at once.
"No, no," she said, disengaging herself, and though all her natural
being responded to his demand, her intellectual self conquered, knowing
full well that beyond winning him, she must always maintain over him a
certain moral superiority. "No. To do what I want to do, we must not
give any one the slightest occasion to talk. Such an act as this would
be suicidal."
"When then?" he said furiously.
"Announce our engagement tomorrow," she said, "and in a week we can be
married very quietly."
"A week!" he cried indignantly.
"Or less," she said, smiling; "and now you must go."
"You haven't said, 'I love you,'" he said with a last flash of
antagonistic suspicion.
"When I say it you will be satisfied," she said, with a look that
revealed to him a new, undiscovered world.
"Rita," he persisted doggedly, seizing her wrist, "I know what you can
do, what you'll make of us, but that's not all. I don't want any
cold-blooded reason-and-logic marriage. Look here. You've got to love
me--like hell--do you understand?"
She turned on him swiftly, opening her lips until her white teeth showed
in their tense grip. Then, suddenly veiling her emotion in a relaxing
smile, she said, as she rang for Henriette:
"No woman could find it hard to love you, John Slade."
When he had left she remained standing a long while very thoughtfully.
Then she went quietly upstairs and fell almost immediately into a quiet,
profound sleep. Her own self-possession surprised her; but unusual
natures have this over common-place ones that they are continually
surprising themselves.
*CHAPTER XIX*
When the next day Beecher reached his club he found all discussions
centered upon John G. Slade and the astonishing and incomprehensible
outcome of the conference at Gunther's of which naturally only the usual
misinformation was known. The morning papers had contained a reassuring
statement, backed by powerful names, of the condition of the Associated
Trust, with promises of support. Gunther had publicly announced that he
would bring twenty millions of ready money to relieve the financial
stringency and, if that were not sufficient, twenty millions more. When
the man in the Street comprehended that the great fortunes of the
country had authorized this step, the effect was instantaneous. The
stock market opened with loss of two to three points and immediately
recovered this decline and, for the first time during the week,
registered distinct advances. The runs on the banks still continued,
but the lines of depositors were apparently less. At eleven o'clock
Rupert V. Steele visibly entered the offices of the Associated Trust
and, advancing to the deserted window of the cashier, made the first
deposit. In a minute it was publicly announced that five millions of
dollars had just been deposited to the credit of the great Columbus
National. Half of the waiting line, wavered, turned and went home.
"Well, Slade's turned the trick," said Gunther, joining his friend.
"But how he managed to wriggle through is a mystery."
"Haven't seen the papers," said Beecher. "What do they say about Emma
Fornez?"
"Couldn't be better. The third act bowled 'em over," said Gunther,
laughing. Beecher had told him of the diva's prophecy. "By the way,
Ted, my long shot may not prove such a wild one. Mapleson is a close
friend of the Cheevers--rather attentive to the lady, who from all
accounts is a rather frisky one. I telephoned McKenna about it and he
seemed distinctly interested."
"McKenna?" said Beecher, opening his eyes.
"Well, yes," said Gunther, laughing; "but forget I told you. Besides, I
have a feeling that things will open up now."
"Is McKenna on the trail of any one?"
"Well, yes," said Gunther slowly; "and I don't think it'll be long now
before we hear of him. How about lunch?"
At this moment a boy arrived with summons for Beecher to the telephone.
He did not recognize the voice immediately.
"You don't know who it is?" said a woman.
He thought he recognized the tones of Miss Rivers, whom he had
shamefully neglected in the excitement of the last days; but, warily, he
did not commit himself.
"You're disguising your voice," he said cautiously.
"Not at all. You are not very flattering--but when one listens so much
to the voice of Emma Fornez--"
"Miss Charters," he said instantly.
"At last."
He was suddenly troubled at the discovery, for he had sincerely
persuaded himself that he did not intend to see her again.
"She is going to reproach me," he thought uneasily, "for not returning
to see her last night. The devil! Well, I shall tell her the truth--I
didn't like her companion."
But instead of reproaches she said in very good humor:
"Look out, I can be very jealous. What are you doing tonight?"
"I am dining out," he said, fibbing promptly, determined to remain firm.
"Oh--I'm sorry," she said, with a quick dropping of her tone. "I wanted
you to take me to a dress rehearsal that will be very amusing."
"I'm sorry too."
"What are you doing this afternoon, around tea time?"
"I have an engagement," he said truthfully.
"With Emma Fornez?"
"Yes."
"I am not very lucky, am I?" she said.
The wounded tone in her voice made him feel a bit ashamed. He saw that
she would not ask him again and relented a little.
"Will you be in at four? I can drop in for a little chat then," he
said, amazed at his own yielding even as he spoke the words.
"Come then. I want very much to see you," she answered but without
lightness.
"Now I'm in it again!" he said ruefully as he left the telephone. "What
the deuce made me say I'd go. Just because I didn't want to hurt her--O
Lord! Steady, old boy, steady!"
Outside the booth he found Gunther, an afternoon's paper in his hand,
scanning it with excitement on every feature.
"I say, Ted, here's news indeed," he cried. "What do you think of that?"
He pointed to the headline on the front page where the engagement of
John G. Slade to Mrs. Rita Kildair was announced in large type. The two
young men looked at each other in profound astonishment.
"By Jove!" said Beecher, suddenly enlightened. "That's what was at the
bottom last night! Now I understand." In a moment he comprehended the
full measure of the agony of uncertainty she must have suffered at his
side in the returning automobile. "So that was her game after all!"
"Now things'll begin to move," said Gunther eagerly. "If she really
knows who's the thief, as McKenna believes, the ring ought to be
returned in forty-eight hours."
"Why?"
"Because now that she is publicly engaged to Slade, any one who has been
trading on the knowledge of how she got the ring won't have a shred to
blackmail her with. You see it now becomes the engagement ring that
Slade gave her and she can move openly; and from what I've seen of her,
she'll lose no time. Ted, I'll prophesy in forty-eight hours we'll hear
something about that ring."
"I believe you're right," said Beecher as they went into luncheon; and,
thinking of the curious conjunction of Mrs. Kildair's and Miss Charters'
prophecy as to the return of the ring, he said to himself unwillingly:
"If the ring is returned, does that mean that Mrs. Bloodgood took it?"
A little after four he went to pay his call on Miss Charters and as he
had become accustomed to her perplexing change of moods, he wondered in
what temper she would receive him. She was in a Russian blouse of gray
corduroy relieved by a broad lace collar and fitted loosely to her
straight, lithe body by a belt at the waist, an effect of girlish
simplicity, very yielding and artless.
She did not wait for him in the sitting-room but came out into the hall,
taking his hat and stick herself and leading the way. Once in the cosy
sitting-room she stopped, turning to face him and suddenly taking his
hands in hers.
"Let me look at you," she said, drawing off and raising her eyes to his
thoughtfully, while her lips twisted a little into a most serious
sternness.
"Little imp!" he thought grimly, prepared against her wiles and yet a
little startled at this figure of a young girl which so tantalizingly
confronted him.
She saw at once, in the amused composure of his face, that she had been
mistaken in ascribing his absence to the pique of jealousy. What she
had on her lips she did not say, and suddenly alert at the realization
that her presence no longer troubled him she drew him toward the
fireplace, leading him to a great armchair.
"There," she said, laughing, "you will see how we treat the prodigal
son. Sit down." She brought a cushion and insisted upon placing it
behind his back. "Don't get up. A scotch and soda? Sit still--I like
to mix it."
She went to a table and presently came back with the tumbler, offering
it to him with a well simulated attitude of submission. When he took
it, she dropped a curtsey and going to the library table, returned with
a box of cigars and the matches. Continuing always the same game,
determined to force a laugh, she lit the match, holding it to him
between her rosy palms.
"Is your lordship satisfied?"
"I am."
She lit a cigarette in turn and camping down on the bear rug, Eastern
fashion, puffed a ring of smoke in the direction of the fire. For a
moment neither spoke, she studying the embers, he enjoying this new side
to her and awaiting the next development.
"I'm very unhappy," she said at last, without looking at him.
"I'm sorry," he answered sympathetically.
"I have had a great disappointment. I read that play of Hargrave's
again--there's nothing to it."
"You surprise me."
The fact was that Brockway, Stigler's stage director had torn it to
pieces. She continued, repeating what Brockway had said:
"The trouble is, it's not actable. It's like all plays that read
well--I should have known it. There's no dramatic action. Then, it has
one great fault--all young writers have it--you see, every scene should
be a unit in itself, express one dramatic emotion, develop it, and
increase it; and Hargrave puts three or four emotions in the same
page--five or six," she continued indignantly. "It's all mixed
up--topsy-turvy--no actress could make an effect." (This had been its
chief merit two days before.) "It's very sad; I shall never find a
play."
"You were very enthusiastic a few days ago," he said.
"Was I?" she said resentfully. "You see, the trouble is, in reading you
imagine things that aren't there."
"So Hargrave isn't a genius after all?" he asked.
"He is very conceited--insufferably so," she said abruptly. "But you
don't understand--it's the disappointment to me--I shall never find a
play. Sometimes I feel like giving it all up. It's terrible--breaking
your heart day after day. Yes, sometimes I feel like never acting
again."
"You are in a blue mood," he said cheerfully.
"Everything has gone wrong," she said, pouting. "Even you have changed!"
She looked at him with a look of a tired child, longing to climb into
his lap to be consoled.
"How so?" he said, opening his eyes.
"Teddy, have I offended you?" she asked gently, seeing that she could
not unbend him by playing upon his sympathy.
"Not the least."
She would have preferred any answer but this.
"Why wouldn't you go with me tonight?" she said quickly.
"Because I have another engagement," he said, instinctively glancing at
the clock.
She saw the look, sprang up from the rug furiously, and leaping toward
the mantelpiece seized the offending clock and flung it across the room
in a tantrum.
"Go to your Emma Fornez!" she said, stamping her foot. "If you are
going to sit here and measure the minutes, you can go!"
He rose, startled at the passion of jealousy he had aroused.
"I told you I had an engagement," he began.
"Nonsense!" she burst out, still the prey of her anger. "You know very
well you can keep her waiting half an hour if you wish, and you know
very well that you can put off your engagement to-night--or is it with
her, always with her?"
"I don't care to discuss my engagements," he said coldly, an emotion
which he was far from feeling, for the sudden wild-eyed fury into which
he had plunged her awoke in him something that thrilled him, as he had
been thrilled the day he had returned Mrs. Bloodgood to her home, at the
thought of what a consuming passion might be.
"Why do you tag around with her?" she continued heedlessly. "I should
think you'd have more regard for your dignity--for what people
think--Emma Fornez--ah!"
She stopped, pressing her handkerchief to her eyes and then, feeling he
had perceived it, she exclaimed: "If I cry it's because I am
disappointed--disillusionized--angry!"
She turned her back and went quickly to the window where the little
Dresden clock lay shattered in a corner. She picked it up and looked at
it, swallowing her anger. Then, as he continued to keep the silence,
she came back, without looking at him, placed the clock on the
mantelpiece again and said coldly:
"Well, it is time for you to go--not to keep her waiting."
"Good-afternoon," he said with a bow, and left the apartment.
When he reached the street, he was overcome with surprise.
"By Jove!" he said, swinging joyfully along. "Is it possible after all
that she does care about me? How her eyes blazed--the little fury.
That at least wasn't acting!"
And though he remained until late, amused at Emma Fornez, he felt the
flame of the other presence about him, obtruding itself at every moment;
and he who had seen the play of strong emotions in Mrs. Bloodgood and
Mrs. Kildair, avidly began to feel what it would mean to be loved with
such intensity.
Emma Fornez questioned him about Miss Charters but for the first time he
resolutely concealed from her what had taken place.
That night on his return to his rooms, he found a short note from Bruce
Gunther: