After the low scream that came moaningly up from her breast, which was
drowned in the echoes of the report, Mary Burton made no outcry. She no
longer leaned limp and nerveless against the support of the doorway.
Something had seemed to snap the cords of her paralysis and out of her
blanched face her eyes stared wide and piteous. As the older banker
staggered back she was quick to reach the motionless figure and to lift
its head to her breast. Yet she did not really have to look, something
fateful and unquestionable told her from the first instant that no human
aid could avail--and that he would not speak again or move a muscle in
life. His employees found her supporting the weight of his shoulders
against her bosom and seeking to staunch with her handkerchief the flow
of blood from the temple.
In one trivial respect the cruelties of her day of cumulative tragedy
were abated. The steel-nosed bullet, even at that close range, had cut
clean and spared his face, save for the trickle of red and the smirch of
powder burn--such defacement as she could not have endured. The eyes,
not yet glazed, gazed out with their accustomed resolute calm and the
lips were firm, a little grim with the purpose of thwarting another's
death, but it was still, though lifeless, a face without surrender.
The girl bent low, whispering into the ear which could not hear her,
and then she raised her eyes, still holding his head against her
shoulder, to see the little circle of stunned faces, and hear Fairley's
voice announcing in broken syllables, but very quietly, "I
was--attempting suicide--and he grappled with me."
She knew even while she awaited the physicians that no spark of life
remained and that this was the last time her arms would ever be closed
around him in life or death, and as she stood there, for the time upheld
by a strength beyond her ordinary physical powers, strange
inconsequential little fragments of talk, things he had said to her and
she to him, were repeating themselves in her memory, and the exact
inflections of his voice were renewing themselves in her ears.
Then as two physicians hurried in, closely heeled by two policemen, she
surrendered her beloved burden to stronger hands, and, as she moved back
with still no trace of tears in her wide eyes, the whole picture
darkened and out of muscle and nerve and brain-cell went every vestige
of autonomy and consciousness. They caught her as she fell and laid her
on a broad upholstered window seat. When her eyes next opened hot pains
were scorching her temples and her gaze turned instinctively toward the
desk. It was empty of its human burden, and, save for the clerk who had
that morning received her in the outer room and a physician, the private
office was empty, too.
Following the hungry question of her mismated eyes, the doctor gravely
nodded his head.
"It was instantaneous and painless," he said. Then he added, "We have
sent for your brother. He was not in his office, but--"
With the startling ferocity of an aroused tigress, Mary strove to rise
and make her way to the door, but the physician restrained her. "Not
yet," he gently commanded. "You are hardly ready for exertion;" and even
before he had finished speaking her knees gave way and she sank back.
"My brother!" she whispered, and her eyes burned feverishly. "It will
kill me to see him. I shall try to murder him--I--"
She was interrupted by the noiseless opening of the door, and Hamilton
Burton stood across the threshold of the enemy whose life he had that
day broken.
He was no longer the Napoleonic Burton. For the instant he was stunned
and pale. It was breaking on him that the price of conquest may be
excessive. Even before this staggering news had reached him he had seen
the headlines of the extras, had read his name coupled with the open and
bitter denunciation of public hate.
At his shoulder stood young Carl Bristoll, as pallid as a specter. But
the brother came swiftly over, dropped to his knees by the girl's side.
At sight of her stricken face all the tenderness of family love leaped
into a freshly blazing power in his heart until for the time it burned
out the remembrance of every other thing. He thrust out his arms and
said in a shaken voice, "Little sister, little sister!"
But with a cry as though for protection from the touch of something
unspeakably foul, she threw both arms across her face and turned,
shuddering, from his touch.
"Doctor," she besought in a voice of supreme loathing, "in God's name
protect me from this murderer!"
She struggled to her feet and stood with her back to the wall, her
breast heaving and her pupils blazing out of the death-like pallor of a
drawn face. Her hands lay flat against the wainscoting with spread
fingers that convulsively twitched as if she were seeking to press back
the solid partition and escape that way.
"Listen to me, or you will break my heart," pleaded Hamilton tensely. "I
thought it was a curable infatuation. If I had known you cared so
much--"
"Break your heart! I wish to God I could, but you have no heart," she
screamed, and she swayed to the side until, had the doctor not supported
her shoulder, she would have fallen, but her words poured on in a fierce
torrent. "You have broken my heart, and you have killed him. You knew
how much I cared. You are a monster, but not an idiot. You have
sacrificed a country to your one unspeakable Moloch of a god--I hope
you--and your god--are satisfied."
For an instant some echo of the old dominance flickered into the man's
face. "Edwardes fought and defied me," he said. "I punished--" But his
sister interrupted with a wrath which nothing could stem:
"You have overreached yourself--you, too, will go down in this carnage.
I shall pray God that you do--my God who is over your god; my God and
his." Her voice became calmer, but her phrases were broken by gasping
pauses. She spoke as though her God had commanded her to read this
bitter indictment against her brother.
"Because he shrined his honor above your insatiable greed you undertook
to doom him. You have written a page ... into history ... a page full of
horror ... you have made criminals of honest men ... and suicides of
brave ones. Now in the trail of your incendiary malice you cast his
life--" her voice fell in a tortured sob--"the life ... he so bravely
fought for there in the hills ... and after it you toss my heart."
The financier moved a step forward and his lips opened, but the doctor
laid a hand on his arm. "You must leave her, sir," he said quietly, but
finally. "She is in no condition to stand more of this."
"How can I leave her like this?" remonstrated Hamilton and once more the
physician raised his hand. "In such a case the doctor must be
obeyed--unless--" his own voice hardened--"you are anxious to add even
worse results to today's work."
Hamilton Burton turned. "Do what you can," he said. "I will send Paul."
So he left the place, passing between the employees of the bankrupt firm
of Edwardes and Edwardes in the anterooms.
At his elbow followed young Bristoll, but when they had reached the
ground floor the secretary halted his chief with an impetuous touch on
the arm.
"It's no use, sir--we separate here," he said passionately. "I must give
you my resignation, at once."
At another time such an announcement would have been greeted by this
imperious master with swift acceptance and quiet irony. This day he had
smitten his enemies and they had withered before his power. Results had
differed in no respect from the outlines of his preparations and yet so
poignantly personal had been the recoil that he found himself, when his
brain needed its most alert resourcefulness, inwardly admitting a new
and strange sense of uncertainty--almost of uneasiness.
Once before for a weak moment he had felt that flagging of
confidence--when Mary had left his house, but he had swiftly conquered
it. He would as summarily conquer its repetition. His nerves were not
such uncontrolled agents as to be shaken by the wild folly and accidents
that grew out of weaker natures. All battlefields leave black scars and
pictures which are not pretty pictures. To pause and surrender to
brooding over these details is to clip one's wings and dull one's
talons. He forced a smile.
"As you please, Carl," he said. "Though I had made the mistake of
counting on your loyalty as dependable."
The young man answered with an effort.
"It's a hard thing to do. I haven't just worked for the salary. I have
made a hero of you, and been very proud of even my small part in your
career. It was as though I were a staff officer to a Man of Destiny."
"And now," the voice was bitingly satirical, "finding that the Man of
Destiny can't always fight with confetti and the blowing of kisses, you
grow faint-hearted."
"Put it as you like, Mr. Burton.... All I know is that, after today, I
should no longer feel proud.... I should feel like an accomplice in
crime."
Hamilton Burton laughed. It was a short and not a pleasant laugh.
"Please yourself. To me no man is indispensable. Good-night."
Mary did not wait for Paul. As she drove up-town with the physician, she
had in her ears the shouts of newsboys heralding the death of Jefferson
Edwardes--and other deaths.
When she was in her own bed they mercifully gave her something which
smoothed her brain into the black velvet softness of sleep. The future
must tell whether her body and mind could ever be brought back to the
harbor of health.
* * * * *
Hamilton Burton's lights burned late that night in his office, and up to
them many baleful glances turned from the sidewalks below. The financier
told himself that he was the same man that he had been, safeguarded by
his star; but as he worked he found himself instinctively turning to the
chair where Carl Bristoll should be and where now sat a more inept
subordinate. Each such moment brought its tiny stab at his pride and
self-assurance, and the brain which he must concentrate kept straying to
the disquieting vision of a grief-maddened girl leaning against the
wall, with her fingers twitching in little groping gestures as her lips
rained accusation. Today he had made a panic, but between the opening
and closing peals of tomorrow's gong each hour must be filled with the
most exact and brilliant maneuverings.
All day today he had borne down the market on a scale unprecedented. All
day tomorrow he must be in a position to reap the harvest he had
sown--else he might find himself the victim of a trap which he had
prepared, at a mighty cost, for others. No one knew so well as he how
even his colossal strength had been strained with the titanic effort of
pushing apart the masonry of the temple's pillars.
He had no doubts of the morrow, but these troubling remembrances came
blurringly across the crystal of his brain.
Abruptly he took up his telephone and rang his house number. "Yamuro,"
he said when he heard the sibilant, quaintly distorted voice of the
Japanese from the other end, "ask Mr. Paul to wait for me there until I
come in." Paul's music should soothe him.
"'Scuse, please," came the apologetic reply. "Mr. Paul, she no here.
When she come, Yamuro tell. Thanks."
It was late when the financier left his car at his own door and demanded
of Harrow, "Where is my brother?"
"In the music-room, I think, sir." Hamilton thought he detected in the
butler's voice a note of anxiety and for a moment he glanced with a keen
scrutiny into the servitor's eyes, and the eyes dropped under his gaze.
"Very well, I sha'n't need you again tonight." The Titan turned and
climbed the stairs.
The lights of the music-room were burning brilliantly and on a table
stood siphons and bottles and glasses. At the door Hamilton paused and
glanced uneasily about, then he saw Paul, and smiled. Weary with his
vigil Paul, the affectionate and faithful, had evidently fallen asleep
in his chair. Hamilton crossed and laid a hand on his brother's
shoulder. Then as quickly he withdrew it. Something unaccustomed in the
younger man's appearance arrested him and he stood gazing down.
The musician sprawled in an attitude of demoralized inertia and over his
cameo face the dark hair hung disordered. His hands fell grotesquely and
his closed eyes were puffed. Hamilton bent down and with a low oath
studied his brother. His sleep was no natural napping. It was a drunken
stupor proclaiming itself in a stertorous and uneasy breathing.
Angrily Hamilton shook the sagging shoulders until the sleeper's lids
opened heavily and the lips voiced some incoherent thing. Then Paul
attempted to turn his face away and go to sleep again.
"So," exclaimed the elder as he dragged his brother to his feet and
restored him to a semblance of consciousness, "so this is the way you
waited for me?"
Paul blinked owlishly through the stupidity of his condition, and upon
his delicate features the unaccustomed and swollen flush dwelt in a
disfiguring blot. He shook his head and informed thickly, "Jefferson
Edwardes's dead."
"I know that--and you're drunk."
The musician stupidly nodded his assent to so incontrovertible a
statement and as he gradually awoke to a fuller realization, he rose and
made his way unsteadily to the piano. But his fingers were stiff and
unresponsive, and after a brief effort he gave that up.
Once more he looked up and an expression of deep terror spread over his
face. Tears welled into his eyes and he wept for awhile in silence as
Hamilton looked on.
"Jeff'son Edwardes's dead," he reiterated with parrot-like singleness of
idea. "Mary's heart's broke.... I'm drunk." One hand waved broadly in an
oratorical gesture. After a moment he added in solemn afterthought,
"Father's drunk, too."
Hamilton ground his teeth. "I suppose," he said bitterly, "you regard
the first two facts as justification for the others."
Paul rose and through his condition something of his more normal self
asserted itself. He laid his hands on his brother's shoulders.
"Hamilton, I think my heart's broke, too. Mary's a sweet girl. I haven't
slept f'r a long, long time--been worrying--an' tonight I--"
"Never mind explaining." Out of the elder brother's voice the wrath had
died. "That won't help now. Come, I'll put you to bed."
As he turned away from Paul's bedroom a half-hour later the face of
Hamilton Burton was not the face of the conqueror. In his own room he
went to a window and looked out. He saw a star and some fancy identified
it as the same star that had caught his eye that night when he came back
to the farm-house and found his father ill. Once more it was not in the
east riding toward the upper heavens, but in the west, setting beyond
the Palisades of Jersey--soon to drop from view.
For a breathing-space Hamilton Burton felt faint and uncertain, as one
may feel in a dream which is half-wakefulness.
Then he was conscious of his own voice speaking half-aloud:
"Slivers Martin paid me ten for 'em an' I got 'em for seven--an' he had
to go after 'em."
The words had come involuntarily--as from another personality speaking
with his tongue, and they startled him. With a fiercely impatient
gesture he brushed his hand across his forehead and picked up from a
table a new appreciation of the life and campaigns of Napoleon
Bonaparte.
Yamuro slipped in with his cushioned tread and stood awaiting orders,
and after a while the master whose attention refused to remain fixed
even on Napoleon glanced up.
"You may go, Yamuro," he said in a wearied voice, but the Japanese valet
did not go. Instead he approached and his face grew anxious as he noted
the confused and fatigued droop of his master's eyes and lips.
"'Scuse, please," he hazarded as his white teeth flashed in an
apologetic grin. "You tired. You go down gymnasium--take ex'cise--one
half-hour. Yes, one half-hour and me rub you Japanese way; make you
sleep--yes, please."
Hamilton Burton raised his head slowly. "Perhaps," he acceded in a dull
voice, "that mightn't be a bad idea. I do feel a bit fagged--for some
reason--and I need to be fit tomorrow. Tomorrow will be a decisive day."
So with the narrow-eyed little servitor in whose breast beat a heart of
unquestioning loyalty, the untriumphant victor went down into the
basement of his house, where between marble slabs and porphyry columns
he had equipped a small gymnasium finished with the magnificence of a
Roman bath.
Beyond an arched portal was another room where the basin of a
swimming-pool spread cool and inviting between mosaic floors.
Here each morning Hamilton plunged into the icy water and came out with
a splendid vitality glowing on his firm flesh. But at night he used only
the warm shower and when they came into the gymnasium they did not touch
the switch which lighted the pool.
Then Hamilton Burton stripped and attacked the punching bag until his
muscles glistened and shone as if they had been freshly oiled. Yamuro
stood looking on with sparkling eyes. Hamilton Burton stripped and in
action would have brought a glow of delight to the face of those
Hellenic masters of training who saw in the human body the most sacred
temple of the human soul, and paid tribute to physical perfection. The
flow and ripple of these strong, justly modeled sinews were like the
play of steel under satin and their smoothness was as rhythmic and full
of power as some young gladiator's, who might have stirred the
appreciation of Phidias or Praxiteles. When at last he had burned his
mental restlessness into physical weariness, Burton halted and stood
with his shoulders thrown back and his head erect, the breathing of
chest and abdomen as regular and deep as the sequence of waves at flood
tide. Yamuro went out into still another room for the accessories of his
Japanese art of muscle-kneading, and Hamilton turned idly toward the
darkened swimming pool. He strolled over to the edge of the marble basin
and walked out on the spring-board. It was all very dark in here, but
his feet were familiar with every foot of space.
"I might as well cap it with a plunge," he told himself, and, lifting
his hands above his head, launched outward in a graceful arc.
Yamuro came back a moment later and looked about the empty gymnasium.
His face suddenly went pale. "Mr. Burton--please!" he screamed, and in
his excitement his voice was more than ordinarily sibilant. Then he
turned on the pool light and rushed frantically back. It had not
occurred to him to warn his chief that that afternoon the basin had been
emptied and repaired, and that below the diving-board were only six
inches of water--just enough to give back, in semi-darkness, a liquid
reflection, and, beneath that, solid slabs of marble.
Yamuro peered over the edge and a deep groan broke from him. At the
bottom lay the figure of Hamilton Burton, with its head bent to one
side. It lay very still, and the water was slowly coloring from a wound
in the scalp.