As Judge Healey, gray-haired, but erect, walked up the avenue his keen
glance fell on Gerry Lansing standing across the street before an art
dealer’s window. Gerry’s eyes were fastened on a picture that he had
long had in mind for a certain nook in the library of the town house.
It was the second anniversary of his wedding, and though it was already
late in the afternoon, Gerry had not yet chosen his gift for Alix. He
turned from the picture with a last long look and a shrug, and passed
on to a palatial jeweler’s farther up the street.
For many years Judge Healey had been foster-father to Red Hill in
general and to Gerry in particular. With almost womanly intuition
he read what was in Gerry’s mind before the picture, and acting on
impulse, the judge crossed the street and bought it.
While the judge was still in the picture shop, Gerry came out of the
jeweler’s and started briskly for home. He had purchased a pendant of
brilliants, extravagant for his purse, but yet saved to good taste by a
simple originality in design.
He waited until the dinner-hour, and then slipped his gift into Alix’s
hand as they walked down the stairs together. She stopped beneath the
hall light.
“I can’t wait, dear; I simply can’t,” she said, and snapped open the
case.
“Oh!” she gasped. “How dear! How perfectly dear! You old sweetheart!”
She threw her arms about his neck and kissed him twice; then she flew
away to the drawing-room in search of Mrs. Lansing and the judge, the
sole guests at the little anniversary dinner. Gerry straightened his
tie and followed.
Alix’s tongue was rippling, her whole body was rippling, with
excitement and pleasure. She dangled her treasure before their eyes.
She laid it against her warm neck and ran to a mirror. The light in her
eyes matched the light in the stones. The judge took the jewel and laid
it in the palm of his strong hand. It looked in danger of being crushed.
“A beautiful thing, Gerry,” he said, “and well chosen. Some poet
jeweler dreamed that twining design, and set the stones while the dew
was still on the grass.”
After dinner the four gathered in the library, but they were hardly
seated when Alix sprang up. Her glance had followed Gerry’s startled
gaze. He was staring at the coveted picture he had been looking at in
the gallery that afternoon. It hung in the niche in which his thoughts
had placed it. Alix took her stand before it. She glanced inquiringly
at the others. Mrs. Lansing nodded at the judge. Alix turned back to
the picture, and gravity stole into her face. Then she faced the judge
with a smile.
“We live,” she said, “in a Philistine age, don’t we? But I’ve never let
my Philistinism drive pictures from their right place in the heart.
Pictures in art galleries--” she shrugged her pretty shoulders--“I have
not been trained up to them. To me they are mounted butterflies in a
museum, cut flowers crowded at the florist’s. But this picture and that
nook--they have waited for each other. You see the picture nestling
down for a long rest, and it seems a small thing, and then it catches
your eye and holds it, and you see that it is a little door that opens
on a wide world. It has slipped into the room and become a part of
life.”
A strange stillness followed Alix’s words. To the judge and to Gerry
it was as though the picture had opened a window to her mind. Then she
closed the window.
“Come, Gerry,” she said, turning, “make your bow to the judge and bark.”
Gerry was excited, though he did not show it.
“You have dressed my thoughts in words I can’t equal,” he said, and
strolled out to the little veranda at the back of the house. He
wanted to be alone for a moment and think over this flash of light
that had followed a dark day. For the first time in a long while Alix
had revealed herself. He did not begrudge the judge his triumph. He
knew instinctively that coming from him instead of from the judge the
picture would not have struck that intimate spark.
The next day Gerry gave his consent to Alix’s plan for a flying trip
abroad, but with a reservation. The reservation was that she should
leave him behind.
Judge Healey heard of this arrangement only when it was on the point
of being put into effect. In fact, he was only just in time at the
steamer to wave good-by to Alix. Leaning over the rail, with her high
color, moist red lips, and excited big eyes making play under a golden
crown of hair and over a huge armful of roses, Alix presented a picture
not easily forgotten.
The judge turned to Gerry.
“She ought not to be going without you, my boy.”
“Oh, it’s all right,” said Gerry, lightly. “She’s well chaperoned. It’s
a big party, you know.”
But during the weeks that followed the judge saw it was not all right.
Gerry had less and less time for golf and more and more for whisky and
soda. The judge was troubled, and felt a sort of relief when from far
away Alan Wayne cropped into his affairs and gave him something else to
think about.
When Angus McDale of McDale & McDale called without appointment, the
judge knew at once that he was going to hear something about Alan.
“Lucky to find you in,” puffed McDale. “It isn’t business exactly or
I’d have ’phoned. I was just passing by.”
“Well, what is it?” asked the judge, offering his visitor a fresh cigar.
“It’s this. That boy, Alan Wayne--sort of protégé of yours, isn’t he?”
“Yes, in a way--yes,” said the judge, slowly, frowning. “What has Alan
done now?”
“It’s like this,” said McDale. “Six months ago we sent Mr. Wayne out
on contract as assistant to Walton. Walton no sooner got on the ground
than he fell sick. He put Wayne in charge, and then he died. Now, this
is the point. Mr. Wayne seems to have promoted himself to Walton’s pay.
He had the cheek to draw his own as well. He won’t be here for weeks,
but his accounts came in to-day. I want to know if you see any reason
why we shouldn’t have that money back, to say the least.”
The judge’s face cleared.
“Didn’t he tell you why he drew Walton’s pay?”
“Not a word. Said he’d explain accounts when he got here, but that sort
of thing takes a lot of explaining.”
“Well,” said the judge, “I can tell you. Walton’s pay went to his
widow, through me. I’ve been doing some puzzling on this case already.
Now will you tell me how Alan got the money without drawing on you?”
“Oh, there was plenty of money lying around. The job cost ten per cent.
less than Walton’s estimate. If he’d come back, we’d have hauled him
over the coals for that blunder. There was the usual reserve for work
in inaccessible regions, and then the people we did the job for paid
ten days’ bonus for finishing that much ahead of contract time.”
The judge mused.
“Was the job satisfactory to the people out there?” he asked.
“Yes, it was,” said McDale, bluntly; “most satisfactory. But there was
a funny thing there, too. They wrote that while they did not approve of
Mr. Wayne’s time-saving methods, the finished work had their absolute
acceptance.”
The judge was silent for a moment.
“You want my advice?” he asked.
“Yes; not for our own sake, but for Wayne’s.”
“Well,” said the judge, “I’m going to give it to you for your sake.
When you stumble across a boy that can cut ten per cent. off the
working and time estimates of an old hand like Walton, you bind him
to you with a long contract at any salary he wants. And just one
thing more: when Alan Wayne steals a cent from you, or fifty thousand
dollars, you come to me, and I’ll pay it.”
McDale’s eyes narrowed, and he puffed nervously at his cigar. He got up
to take his leave.
“Judge,” he said, “your head is on right, and your heart’s in the right
place, as well. I begin to see that widow business. Wayne sized us up
for a hard-headed firm when it comes to paying out what we don’t have
to, and we are. It wasn’t law, but he was right. Walton’s work was done
just as if he’d been alive. Even a Scotchman can see that. You needn’t
worry. A man that you’ll back for fifty thousand is good enough for
McDale & McDale.”