DOUBTS.
There was more squabbling over the division of the booty, and much more
champagne was disposed of before an agreement was reached. But at last,
with a grudging look, Louden Powers brought out a leather wallet and
slowly counted out ten hundred-dollar bills to each of his companions.
“There you are!” he grunted. “But it is a foolish thing to draw all
the capital out of a business before the time comes to wind it up. I’m
going to bed. It’s early—not much after eleven. But I’m tired. I have
to go down to New York to-morrow, to see how things are at the office.”
“Hear that, chief?” whispered Chick.
“Of course I do.”
“Well, he may be going to make a get-away.”
“He won’t succeed.”
“How do you know?”
“Patsy Garvan will be with you,” was the chief’s short reply. “Now,
keep still and watch.”
Louden Powers staggered to his feet, and Carter realized, for the first
time, how drunk he was.
“I’ll have to get some help to find my way to the elevator,” he
mumbled. “What kind of wine is that, anyhow, Howard?”
“You’ll have to ask my father—if you know where he is,” laughed Howard
Milmarsh. “He bought it.”
“Good for the old man!” squealed Andrew Lampton. “I say it’s durned
good booze! I wish I never had to drink anything worse! Whee! Come on,
old top! We’ll find the elevator!”
He lurched over to Louden Powers, and the two worthies reeled out of
the room, and across the hall to the elevator, which was operated by an
electric button by the passenger.
“I doubt whether they will be able to get upstairs in that,” muttered
Chick. “I wish we could sail in and knock their heads together!”
“Why?”
“We’d make such a racket that somebody might tell the actual truth in
the confusion. I can’t believe that fellow sitting at the table is the
real Howard Milmarsh.”
“Neither can I, Chick. But he has possession, and he could not have
got that if he had not convinced the lawyers. And Johnson, Robertson &
Judkins are not easily convinced.”
“That guy down there at the table is a blackguard. The real Howard
Milmarsh never behaved that way, did he?”
Nick was thoughtful for a few moments, and he did not answer until he
saw the man in the dining room reach down into the pail on the floor at
his side, in which was still an unopened bottle of champagne, and take
out a large piece of ice, which he pressed to his forehead.
“I have seen the real Howard Milmarsh do just what this fellow is doing
now. Of course, that does not prove that they are the same person, but
it is an indication. I have not _quite_ made up my mind yet.”
For another fifteen minutes the young man at the table sat there
holding ice to his forehead. Occasionally he drank some water from the
carafe on the table.
At last he got up and walked the length of the room and back, as if to
test his ability to do it without staggering.
He was fairly successful, and he uttered a mirthless laugh as he
dropped again into his seat.
“The blackguards!” he burst out suddenly. “The infernal, low-bred
rascals! They can’t even be decent crooks! This game they’ve played
on the poor devils who are paying for that swamp land is worse than
stealing the pennies from a blind man’s dog!”
He took from a pocket the ten hundred-dollar notes and gazed at them
thoughtfully.
“For two cents I’d put a match to these. I may not be a saint, but, by
the big bull of Bashan, I never was a robber of widows and orphans. At
least, not when I knew it!”
He reached over to the silver match box on the table, and savagely
struck a light. He held the lighted match till it burned up brightly,
and then, with the notes in his left hand and the match in his right,
laughed again in the hollow way he had before.
“Look!” whispered Chick excitedly. “The dub is going to burn up a
thousand dollars!”
But he didn’t do it. Just as he was about to touch the flame to the
money, he shook his head, and, with another dry chuckle, blew out the
match and dropped it in an ash tray.
“No, I won’t!” he mumbled. “What would be the use of that? The people
who paid it in wouldn’t get it. Besides, if those two scoundrels have
a thousand apiece, why shouldn’t I? And I need cash. This business of
having a big house, with servants and everything else, but no money,
isn’t the kind of thing I like. I suppose there’ll be hail Columbia
when it comes time to pay these servants, to say nothing of the butcher
and groceryman and all the rest of the tradesmen.”
He was about to pour himself out another glass of champagne, but
changed his mind and took some water from the carafe instead. It looked
as if he were trying to sober up.
“Well, I’ll go to bed,” he exclaimed, after another pause, during which
he seemed to be trying to collect his thoughts in some sort of orderly
array. “And, in the morning, I’ll begin to have this affair brought to
a focus. I’m tired of going on this way for nothing at all, just to
please other people.”
He got up from his chair, and made his way out of the room with much
better grace than had the other two men.
In a moment or two a man in livery, who seemed to have been waiting
somewhere close by until the convivial trio should disappear, came into
the room and began to clear away the remnants of the feast, as well as
the glasses and other paraphernalia that spoke of a carouse.
He had not proceeded far in his work when another man, dressed just
like him, also stole into the room and silently assisted the first.
When they had taken everything out of sight, including the tablecloth,
leaving the handsome mahogany table, with its highly polished surface,
glittering in the light of the chandelier, one of the men solemnly
addressed the other:
“What do you think of it, Dobbs?”
“Don’t know! How does it strike you, Kelly?”
“I’ll tell you better at the end of the month.”
“Ah! I could tell you now—if I wanted to,” blurted out Dobbs.
“Better not. Don’t give yourself away,” interrupted Kelly.
“Well, I say that if I don’t get my wages the day they’re due, it will
be a lawyer for mine.”
“That’s different. The same here.”
“Then you think it is——”
“I’m not saying.”
“Punk?”
“Nothing doing!”
“Hum! Let’s get out! There’s some good bottled beer downstairs.”
“I’m with you,” responded Kelly, with alacrity.
When they’d both gone out of the room, Chick again turned to his chief,
with a grin:
“Isn’t this the queerest joint you ever struck, chief?”
“It seems so. At the same time, I have more serious work here than to
speculate on the intentions of footmen, or even of the men who have
the privilege of drinking champagne ordered by my old friend, the late
Howard Milmarsh. I made him a promise the last time I saw him alive,
and I’m going to keep my word. Follow me, and I’ll show you something
more about this house that you may regard as curious.”