LOVEMAN’S FINAL PLEA
As the taxi-cab spun northward through the two-o’clock streets,
Clifford continued to gaze at the taut figure of Mary Regan, and at her
white, set face. It had certainly been an hour to try her soul, that
experience ending a few minutes since at the Midnight Café.
To Clifford it seemed that all Mary’s shrewd scheming had brought her
up at last against an unsurmountable wall. Again Clifford wondered
what was passing behind that pale face: wondered what was going to be
the ending of her great worldly plan, which thus far had had so many
undreamed-of developments: wondered how all this tangled affair was
going to come out for her--and again wondered which of the two persons
he knew in her was to be the dominant Mary Regan when this matter had
played itself through to its unguessable conclusion.
The taxi-cab halted, and Clifford escorted her to the door of her
apartment house.
“What are you going to do next, if you don’t mind telling?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet--perhaps nothing,” she said absently. And then, with
quiet vigor: “Jack’s not to blame so much for what he is. It’s chiefly
his father’s fault. I wish I could make his father pay!” Her dark eyes
flashed, her figure tensed with sudden purpose. “Yes, somehow I am
going to make his father pay!”
She held out her hand, and gave him a steady look. “At any rate, I want
to thank you. You’ve done all you could for me. Good-night.”
“Good-night.”
He watched her in--this strange, confident young woman, so tangled in
the web of her own spinning, whom he had drifted into so strangely
helping, and whom, though she could now have no part in his life, he
knew he still loved. But back in the taxi-cab, his mind at once was
on another matter. He had glimpsed Peter Loveman lurking within the
doorway during the end of that scene in front of Le Minuit; and he knew
that keen little lawyer was no man to give up merely because he seemed
to be beaten. In fact Loveman would act all the more quickly for just
that reason.
Clifford drove two blocks to the south, a block west, and a block
north, then, ordering his cab to wait, he stepped out and walked north
to the next corner. He peered around this and waited. Presently he saw
what he more than half expected to see--Loveman crossing from a taxi to
the entrance of Mary’s apartment house. He saw him press Mary’s button,
and after a space saw Loveman push open the door and enter.
Clifford tried to guess what plan the little lawyer, whose wiles he
had exposed to Mary only an hour before at Le Minuit, could regard
as so important that it had to be undertaken at two o’clock in the
morning, without the loss of a single possible minute. He wanted to
slip down the street, enter the house, and try to watch and overhear;
but the chauffeur in Loveman’s waiting taxi might also be Loveman’s
lookout and personal guard. There was nothing for it but to wait where
he was and watch.
Within, up on the fourth floor, Mary stood outside her open door,
looking down into the dark, narrow stairway, with its sharp turns and
tiny landings. When the dim, mounting figure started up the last flight
and she saw it was Loveman, she drew sharply back and tried to close
her door. But Loveman, quick despite his plump figure, sprang up the
final steps and thrust his walking-stick into the closing aperture. He
tried to force the door with his shoulder, but Mary’s strength on the
other side was fully equal to his own and the door did not budge. He
desisted, but kept the advantage held by his walking-stick.
“Come, Mary, my dear, don’t be so inhospitable,” he said through the
crack, in a pleasantly complaining voice. “You know, I wouldn’t have
come at such an hour unless it was important. And you know I’m your
friend.”
The door did not move.
“This is a raw way to treat your old nurse and playmate,” complained
Loveman. “Particularly when I’ve come to tell you something that it’s
your business to know--something about Jack.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then suddenly the door swung wide open,
and Loveman found himself looking at a small automatic and beyond that
at the cold face of Mary.
“Come in, but behave yourself,” she said briefly.
He entered and closed the door. “Your suspicion hurts me, Mary, dear,”
he said in his amiably injured tone. He raised his two hands, one
holding the cane and the other his silk hat, high above his shining
dome. “Just to allay your suspicions, so we can talk as good friends
should talk, I suggest that you first frisk me.”
“Don’t be a fool, and don’t try to be humorous. Put down your hands.
I don’t care how many guns you have--I can beat you to the first
shot--and there’ll be only one shot. What do you want?”
Loveman lowered his hands and laid stick and hat upon a table. “Mind if
an asthmatic, dropsical, and almost moribund gentleman sits down while
he talks?” He eased himself into a chair without waiting her consent.
“Sit down, too, Mary. If you’re going to murder me, let’s make it a
comfortable affair for both of us.”
She took a chair, and sat alert with automatic held in her lap. “What
do you want?” she repeated.
“First?” he replied with a smile of amiable frankness, “I’ve got to say
that on the surface you do seem to have every reason to suspect me.
The way that business at Le Minuit turned out, and especially the way
Clifford twisted it, it did look as though I’d tried to do you dirt.
But those were only the looks--they were not the facts.”
“Do you mean to deny that that affair was a frame-up?” she demanded
sharply.
“I do not, for it was,” he returned promptly. “Further, it was a
frame-up chiefly against you. That brings me to the point that made me
hurry here--a point that had to have immediate explanation. It was a
frame-up, yes--but, honest, Mary, I framed you for your own good.”
“For my own good!” she exclaimed skeptically.
“Exactly. Listen, Mary. I’ve got to repeat myself--but I can’t help
that if I am to make myself clear. Your big idea in this secret
marriage with Jack Morton has grown to be to keep Jack at work--to
do what no one else has ever been able to do, make a man out of
him--so that after a time, when the big blow-off comes and they find
out who you are, you will have established yourself so thoroughly by
the service you have rendered that the Mortons will have to overlook
everything shady about your past and your part in this affair. That’s
the way you had it doped out to yourself, now, isn’t it?”
Mary did not answer.
“That was your plan--exactly. And your plan, all the big future you saw
for yourself, was based upon your making a man out of Jack. Mary,--I’m
talking straight goods now,--I saw you could never make a man out of
Jack. Nobody could or can. The stuff’s not there. I saw you were headed
toward certain failure--and wasting good months, and big chances, in
trying to put your grand dream across. I told you all this and tried to
talk you out of it, but you wouldn’t listen to me. So I decided to try
to prove my point by showing you the facts. I decided to frame you.
“To-night, I let you stumble across, as if by accident, Jack
chloroformed by grape juice and in the company of those ladies. I
admit I helped lead Jack into that. But I hoped you would see it as
the real thing, see how hopeless any dream was that was based on
making a man of Jack--and that you would quit the game right there.
But my little act was a fizzle. Still, Mary,”--and the little lawyer’s
voice was persuasively emphatic,--“even though Jack was led into this
to-night, the picture you saw of him, that wine and woman stuff, is an
honest-to-God picture of what Jack will be in a few months. Broadway
hasn’t yet got him completely--but Broadway is going to get him! I’m
telling you, Mary!”
Mary’s face was expressionless. “You didn’t come here merely to deliver
that speech, Peter Loveman.”
“Naturally, there is something else.” His round, large eyes regarded
her meditatively; then he leaned forward. “Mary, I’m going to lay all
my cards on the table. First, here’s a bit of a confession: I hung
around Le Minuit, and heard your offer to Mr. Morton to straighten Jack
out, and heard him turn you down flat, and saw him drive away with
Jack.”
“Well?”
“Wasn’t that just so much more evidence to show you that your big dream
can never, never come true?” he argued, quietly, but with the driving
force of the great lawyer that he was. “So I say again, for God’s sake,
drop it all! And, Mary,--you’d never have been happy even if you had
worked that game with the Mortons. You’re too much the daughter of
‘Gentleman Jim’ Regan for that sort of life--your father’s blood would
have sent you back to the old ways.
“Listen, Mary,--the sensible thing to do is for us all to cash in on
this Morton affair, before it breaks. I’ve said most of this before,
but I’ve got to say it again. Let me discover the secret marriage
between you and Jack; I’ll soak Mr. Morton hard for a detective bill,
and give you a half of what he pays. And by playing the thing this
way, I’ll keep solid with Mr. Morton and will be in a position where
I can milk him for a long time to come. And then, of course, you’ll
make him pay big for a divorce-- Morton will want to hush the matter
up as far as he can, and he’ll want to keep details out of court. And
since I’ll be representing Mr. Morton, I can put you wise to the very
limit he’ll pay. What you get there will be all your own; I’ll get
mine out of handling Mr. Morton’s end. And that business all settled,
and you with the name of Mrs. Jack Morton--why, there’s nothing big we
couldn’t put across as team-mates! And everything safe--and everything
big! And a little later, if you wanted it, I could, by watching chances
and playing the cards right, help you make a marriage that would be a
headliner in regard to wealth and respectability and position. Don’t
you see it all!”
She saw it, and it was a dazzling vision of its own kind. Moreover, she
knew this shrewd little lawyer could bring it all to pass. And among
other things his plan offered was the definite and immediate chance
to strike vengefully at Mr. Morton, who an hour before had so coolly
rebuffed her when, swayed by unaccustomed emotion, she had made him the
proposal to devote herself to Jack.
At length she spoke. “That was another good speech, Peter,” she said
quietly, “but you didn’t come here merely to deliver that speech
either. Just what is the big thing that’s in your mind?”
“Why, that you should drop your present game, instanter, and switch to
something worth while.”
“That’s not what brought you here between two and three o’clock in the
morning,” she insisted steadily.
He shifted slightly. “It’s like this, Mary,” he said abruptly, changing
from his persuasive tone--“you and I went into this thing together,
and I hope we’re going to stick it out together along the lines I’ve
just suggested. But matters took such a twist with to-night’s events
that I had to know definitely, at once, whether you were going to work
along with me.”
“And that’s the question you really want answered?”
“It is. And I’m hoping your answer is going to be ‘yes.’”
“I do not know what I am going to do,” she said quietly, her dark eyes
fixed upon his large blue ones. “But whatever I do, I shall do alone
and exactly as I please.”
He slowly wet his full, loose lips. “Is that final?”
“It is.”
“You mean that you are going to leave me out of it.”
“I am not going to think of you one way or the other.” She stood up.
“If that is all you came for, I suggest you now say good-night.”
His soft hands gripped the arms of his chair. Fury flamed within
him; words of menace surged to his lips. But Peter Loveman never had
more self-possession than when his situation was most dangerous--and
dangerous he certainly now felt it to be. So as he rose he smiled with
good-natured regret.
“I’m sorry it’s all off, Mary; it would have been big for us both. But
you have the right to do as you choose. Well, good luck to you--and
good-night.”
With a look of almost fatherly benignity, Loveman went out. Mary
suspected that regretful, genial smile--but she thought of it only
for a moment, for the next instant her mind was on other things. She
switched out her lights, and stepping to a window she looked out into
the deep silence of the night.
What should she do? At last she was alone face to face with her life’s
greatest crisis. She had played for big game--for wealth and worldly
position--and she had played daringly--and now, at the end, after all
her time and bold dreams and care and cleverness, it seemed that she
had lost, and lost finally, unalterably. And after all, even had she
won, would the winning have been worth the while?...
And then there was a resurgence of that self-confidence, that
determination, which were such strong elements of her nature. Should
she not make one last desperate effort to carry through her plan,
despite them all? Her resentment toward Jack’s cold, worldly father
suddenly flamed high. Just to balk the older Morton she would like to
save Jack and win out herself.
But how might it be done?... Almost unconsciously her mind began to
revert with nervous intensity to certain methods of that period spent
under the influence of her father and later of her uncle Joe--that
period of artful criminality that she had long thought of as forever
ended. By use of her old skill she might so outwit Jack’s father, might
so involve him, that he would gladly come to terms.
She stood there in the silent dark, thinking feverishly.