"Tommy rot. Don't believe a word of it. Mary's mother was one of the
Thornhills. Don't believe there ever was a Virginia branch. But I'll
soon find out. Also about this Josef Zattiany. That girl is Mary
Ogden's daughter."
They were seated in a corner of Mr. Dinwiddie's favorite club, where
they had met by appointment. Clavering shrugged his shoulders. He had
no intention of communicating his own doubts.
"But you'll dine there tonight?"
"Won't I? And I'll keep my ears open."
Clavering privately thought that the Countess Josef Zattiany would be
more than a match for him, but replied: "After all, what does it
matter? She is a beautiful and charming woman and no doubt you'll have
a very good dinner."
"That's all very well as far as it goes, but I've never been so
interested in my life. Of course if she's Mary's daughter I'll do
anything to befriend her--that is if she'll be honest enough to admit
it. But I don't like all this lying and pretence----"
"I think your terms are too strong. There have been extraordinary
resemblances before in the history of the world, 'doubles,' for
instance, where there was no known relationship. Rather remarkable
there are enough faces to go round. And she confesses to be of the
same family. At all events you must admit that she has not made use of
her alibi to force her way into society."
"Probably knows her alibi won't stand the strain. The women would soon
ferret out the truth. . . . What I'm afraid of is that she's got this
power of attorney out of Mary when the poor girl was too weak to
resist, and is over here to corral the entire fortune."
"But surely Judge Trent----"
"Oh, Trent! He's a fool where women are concerned. Always was, and
now he's got to the stage where he can't sit beside a girl without
pawing her. They won't have him in the house. Of course this lovely
creature's got him under her thumb. (I'll see him today and give him a
piece of my mind for the lies he's told me.) And if this girl has
inherited her mother's brains, she's equal to anything."
"I thought that your Mary was composite perfection."
"Never said anything of the sort. Didn't I tell you she always kept us
guessing? I sometimes used to think that if it hadn't been for her
breeding and the standards that involves, and her wealth and position,
she'd have made a first-class adventuress."
"Was she a good liar?"
"She was insolently truthful, but I'm certain she wouldn't have
hesitated at a whopping lie if it would have served her purpose. She
was certainly _rusée_."
"Well, the dinner should be highly interesting with all these
undercurrents. I'll call for you at a quarter past eight. I must run
now and do my column."
Clavering, often satirical and ironic, was positively brutal that
afternoon. The latest play, book, moving picture, the inefficiency of
the New York police, his afflicting correspondents, were hacked to the
bone. When he had finished, his jangling nerves were unaccountably
soothed. Other nerves would shriek next morning. Let 'em. He'd been
honest enough, and if he chose to use a battle-axe instead of Toledo
steel that was his privilege.
He called down for a messenger boy and strolled to the window to soothe
his nerves still further. Dusk had fallen. Every window of the high
stone buildings surrounding Madison Square was an oblong of light. It
was a symphony of gray and gold, of which he never tired. It invested
business with romance and beauty. The men behind those radiant panels,
thinking of nothing less, made their brief contribution to the beauty
of the world, transported the rapt spectator to a realm of pure
loveliness.
A light fall of snow lay on the grass and benches, the statues and
trees of the Square. Motors were flashing and honking below and over
on Fifth Avenue. The roar of the great city came up to him like a
flood over a broken dam. Black masses were pouring toward the subways.
Life! New York was the epitome of life. He enjoyed forcing his way
through those moving masses, but it interested him even more to feel
above, aloof, as he did this evening. Those tides swept on as
unconscious of the watchers so high above them as of the soaring beauty
of the Metropolitan Tower. Ground hogs, most of them, but part of the
ever changing, ever fascinating, metropolitan pageant.
The arcade of Madison Square Garden was already packed with men and he
knew that a triple line reached down Twenty-sixth Street to Fourth
Avenue. There was to be a prize fight tonight and the men had stood
there since noon, buying apples and peanuts from peddlers. This was
Tuesday and there was no half-holiday. These men appeared to have
unbounded leisure while the rest of the city toiled or demanded work.
But they were always warmly dressed and indubitably well-fed. They
belonged to what is vaguely known as the sporting fraternity, and were
invariably in funds, although they must have existed with the minimum
of work. The army of unemployed was hardly larger and certainly no
bread line was ever half as long. Mounted police rode up and down to
avert any anticipation of the night's battle. A loud barking murmur
rose and mingled with the roar of the avenues.
The great clock of the Metropolitan Tower began to play those sad and
sweetly ominous notes preliminary to booming out the hour. They always
reminded him of the warning bell on a wild and rocky coast, with
something of the Lorelei in its cadences: like a heartless woman's
subtle allure, poignantly difficult to resist.
There was a knock on the door. Clavering gave his daily stint to the
messenger boy. He was hunting for change, when he recaptured his
column, sat down at his desk, and, running it over hastily, inserted
the word "authentic." New York must have its Word, even as its topic.
"Authentic," loosed upon the world by Arnold Bennett, was the rage at
present. The little writers hardly dared use it. It was, as it were,
the trademark of the Sophisticates.
The boy, superior, indifferent, and chewing gum, accepted his tip and
departed. Clavering returned to the window. Gone was the symphony of
gold and gray. The buildings surrounding the Square were a dark and
formless mass in the heavy dusk. Only the street lights below shone
like globular phosphorescence on a dark and turbulent sea.
Two hours later he left his hotel and walked up Madison Avenue.
Twenty-sixth Street was deserted and as littered with papers, peanut
shells, and various other debris as a picnic train. The mounted police
had disappeared. From the great building came the first roar of the
thousands assembled, whether in approval or the reverse it would be
difficult to determine. They roared upon the slightest pretext and
they would roar steadily until half-past ten or eleven, when they would
burst out of every exit, rending the night with their yells, while a
congested mass of motors and taxi-cabs shrieked and honked and squealed
and coughed; and then abruptly the silence of death would fall upon
what is now a business quarter where only an occasional hotel or little
old brownstone house--sole reminder of a vanished past when Madison
Square was the centre of fashion--lingered between the towering masses
of concrete and steel.