Just what I'd been hoping for I don't know, but I knew that my chance
had come that morning.
For a week I had been talking Obermuller's comedy to Mason, the
secretary. In the evenings I stood about in the wings and watched the
Van Twiller company in Brambles. There was one fat role in it that I
just ached for, but I lost all that ache and found another, when I
overheard two of the women talking about Obermuller and me one night.
"He found her and made her," one of 'em said; "just dug her out of the
ground. See what he's done for her; taught her every blessed thing she
knows; wrote her mimicking monologues for her; gave her her chance,
and--and now--Well, Tausig don't pay salaries for nothing, and she gets
hers as regularly as I draw mine. What more I don't know. But she
hasn't set foot on the stage yet under Tausig, and they say
Obermuller--"
I didn't get the rest of it, so I don't know what they say about
Obermuller. I only know what they've said to him about me. 'Tisn't
hard to make men believe those things. But I had to stand it. What
could I do? I couldn't tell Fred Obermuller that I was making over his
play, soul and as much body as I could remember, to Tausig's secretary.
He'd have found that harder to believe than the other thing.
It hasn't been a very happy week for me, I can tell you, Maggie. But I
forgot it all, every shiver and ache of it, when I came into the office
that morning, as usual, and found Mason alone.
Not altogether alone--he had his bottle. And he had had it and others
of the same family all the night before. The poor drunken wretch
hadn't been home at all. He was worse than he'd been that morning
three days before, when I had stood facing him and talking to him,
while with my hands behind my back I was taking a wax impression of the
lock of the desk; and he as unconscious of it all as Tausig himself.
The last page I had dictated the day before, which he'd been
transcribing from his notes, lay in front of him; the gas was still
burning directly above him, and a shade he wore over his weak eyes had
been knocked awry as his poor old bald head went bumping down on the
type-writer before him.
The thing that favored me was Tausig's distrust of everybody connected
with him. He hates his partners only a bit less than he hates the men
outside the Trust. The bigger and richer the Syndicate grows, the more
power and prosperity it has, the more he begrudges them their share of
it; the more he wants it all for himself. He is madly suspicious of
his clerks, and hires others to watch them, to spy upon them. He is
continually moving his valuables from place to place, partly because he
trusts no man; partly because he's so deathly afraid his right hand
will find out what his left is doing. He is a full partner of Braun
and Lowenthal--with mental reservations. He has no confidence in
either of them. Half his schemes he keeps from them; the other half he
tells them--part of. He's for ever afraid that the Syndicate of which
he's the head will fall to pieces and become another Syndicate of which
he won't be head.
It all makes him an unhappy, restless little beast; but it helped me
to-day. If it'd been any question of safe combinations and tangled
things like that, the game would have been all up for Nancy O. But in
his official safe Tausig keeps only such papers as he wants Braun and
Lowenthal to see. And in his private desk in his private office he
keeps--
I stole past Mason, sleeping with his forehead on the type-writer
keys--he'll be lettered like the obelisk when he wakes up--and crept
into the next room to see just what Tausig keeps in that private desk
of his.
Oh, yes, it was locked. But hadn't I been carrying the key to it every
minute for the last forty-eight hours? There must be a mine of stuff
in that desk of Tausig's, Mag. The touch of every paper in it is slimy
with some dirty trick, some bad secret, some mean action. It's a pity
that I hadn't time to go through 'em all; it would have been
interesting; but under a bundle of women's letters, which that old fox
keeps for no good reason, I'll bet, I lit on a paper that made my heart
go bumping like a cart over cobbles.
Yes, there it was, just as Obermuller had vowed it was, with Tausig's
cramped little signature followed by Heffelfinger's, Dixon's and
Weinstock's; a scheme to crush the business life out of men by the
cleverest, up-to-date Trust deviltry; a thing that our Uncle Sammy just
won't stand for.
And neither will Nancy Olden, Miss Monahan.
She grabbed that precious paper with a gasp of delight and closed the
desk.
But she bungled a bit there, for Mason lifted his head and blinked
dazedly at her for a moment, recognized her and shook his head.
"No--work to-day," he said.
"No--I know. I'll just look over what we've done, Mr. Mason," she
answered cheerfully.
His poor head went down again with a bob, and she caught up the
type-written sheets of Obermuller's play. She waited a minute longer;
half because she wanted to make sure Mason was asleep again before she
tore the sheets across and crammed them down into the waste-basket;
half because she pitied the old fellow and was sorry to take advantage
of his condition. But she knew a cure for this last sorry--a way she'd
help him later; and when she danced out into the hall she was the very
happiest burglar in a world chock full of opportunities.
Oh, she was in such a twitter as she did it! All that old delight in
doing somebody else up, a vague somebody whose meannesses she didn't
know, was as nothing to the joy of doing Tausig up. She was dancing on
a volcano again, that incorrigible Nance! Oh, but such a volcano,
Maggie! It atoned for a year of days when there was nothing doing; no
excitement, no risk, nothing to keep a girl interested and alive.
And, Maggie darlin', it was a wonderful volcano, that ones that last
one, for it worked both ways. It paid up for what I haven't done this
past year and what I'll never do again in the years to come. It made
up to me for all I've missed and all I'm going to miss. It was a
reward of demerit for not being respectable, and a preventive of
further sins. Oh, it was such a volcano as never was. It was a drink
and a blue ribbon in one. It was a bang-up end and a bully beginning.
It was--
It was Tausig coming in as I was going out. Suddenly I realized that,
but I was in such a mad whirl of excitement that I almost ran over the
little fellow before I could stop myself.
"Phew! What a whirlwind you are!" he cried. "Where are you going?"
"Oh, good morning, Mr. Tausig," I said sweetly. "I never dreamed you'd
be down so early in the morning."
"What're you doing with the paper?" he demanded suspiciously.
My eye followed his. I could have beaten Nancy Olden in that minute
for not having sense enough to hide that precious agreement, instead of
carrying it rolled up in her hand.
"Just taking it home to go over it," I said carelessly, trying to pass
him.
But he barred my way.
"Where's Mason?" he asked.
"Poor Mason!" I said. "He's--he's asleep."
"Drunk again?"