I imagine it is only in fiction that a man is able to live a double
life successfully to the grand climax. I failed because the mounting
fortunes of the Little Clean-Up, my share of which was as yet merely
giving me money to squander on the extravagant whims and caprices of
Agatha Geddis, were making all three of us, Gifford, Barrett and
myself, marked men.
One incident of the marking timed itself in one of my trips to Denver.
I had breakfasted at the Brown and was leaving my room-key with the
clerk when I ran up against the plain-clothes man who had arrested me
on the day of my arrival as a runaway. I should have passed him
without recognition, as a matter of course, but he stopped and accosted
me.
"Carson's my name," he said, offering me his hand and showing his
concealed badge in one and the same motion. Then: "You'll excuse me
for butting in, Mr. Bertrand, but there is something you ought to know.
You've got a double kicking around here somewhere; a fellow who has
swiped your name and looks just a little like you. He's a crook, all
right, and we've got his thumb-print and his 'mug' in the headquarters
records. I ran across his dope the other day in the blotter, and
thought the next time I saw you I'd give you a tip. You never can tell
what these slick 'aliases' 'll do. He might be following you up to get
a graft out of you. That's done, every day, you know."
Naturally, there was nothing to do but to thank the purblind city
detective, to press a bank-note into his hand, and to beg him to be on
the lookout for this dangerous "double" of mine. But the incident
served to show what the bonanza-fed publicity campaign was doing for us.
Gifford, grubbing in the various levels of the mine, had the most
immunity; the newspaper reporters let him measurably alone. But
neither Barrett nor I could dodge the spotlight. Every move we made
was blazoned in type, and I lived in daily fear of the moment when some
enterprising newspaper man would begin to make copy of the theater
parties and road-house rides and midnight champagne suppers.
I knew that the blow had fallen one morning when Phineas Everton came
unannounced into my private office and asked me to send the
stenographer away. The _debacle_ had arrived, and I was no more ready
to meet it than any other spendthrift of good repute caught red-handed
would have been.
"I think you can guess pretty well what I have come to say, Bertrand,"
Everton said, after the door had closed behind the outgoing shorthand
man. "I have been putting it off in the hope that your own sense of
the fitness of things would come to the rescue. I may be old-fashioned
and out of touch with the times and the manners of the new generation,
but I can't forget that I am a father, or that common decency still has
its demands."
Out of the depths of my humiliation there emerged, full-grown, a huge
respect for this quiet-eyed ex-schoolmaster who, for the few of us who
knew him, lived the life of a studious recluse among his technical
mechanisms in the laboratory. He was a salaried man, and I was one of
his three employers. That he was able to ignore completely the
business relation was a mark of the man.
He waited for his reply but I had none to make. After a time he went
on, without heat, but equally without regard for anything but the
despicable fact.
"For quite a long time, if I am informed correctly, you have been
associating in Denver with a set of people who, whatever else may be
said about them, are not people with whom my daughter would care to
associate. More than this, you have allowed your name to become
coupled with that of a woman whose reputation, past and present, is not
altogether of the best. Tell me if I am accusing you wrongfully."
"You are not," I admitted.
"I have been waiting and postponing this talk in the hope that you
would realize that you are not doing Polly fair justice. Like most
American fathers, I am not supposed to know how matters stand between
you, and I deal only with the facts as they appear to an onlooker. The
home has been open to you, and you have made such use of your welcome
as to lead others to believe that you are Polly's lover."
"I am," I asserted.
"Ah," he said; "that clears the ground admirably. I like you,
Bertrand, and I shall be glad to hear your defense, if you have any."
What could I say? Driven thus into a corner, I could only protest,
rather incoherently, that I loved Polly, and that, in other
circumstances, I should long since have asked her to be my wife.
"The 'circumstances' are connected with Miss Geddis?" he asked
pointedly.
"Only incidentally. Considered for herself, Miss Geddis is a woman for
whom any self-respecting man could have little regard."
For the first time in the interview the ex-schoolmaster's mild eyes
grew hard.
"Then I am to infer that she has a hold of some sort upon you?"
"She has," I rejoined shortly.
"That simplifies matters still more," he averred, with as near an
approach to severity as one of his characteristics could compass. "I
don't wish to make or meddle to the extent of telling Polly what I have
heard and what you have admitted. But in justice to her and to me, you
should be man enough to stay away from the house and let Polly alone.
Am I unreasonable?"
"Not in the least. You might go much farther and still be blameless.
I have no valid excuse to offer, but if I should say that there are
extenuating circumstances----"
He raised a thin hand in protest.
"Let us leave it at the point at which there will be the least
ill-feeling," he cut in; and from that he switched without preface to a
discussion of the varying ore values in a newly opened adit of the mine.
When he was gone I went into Barrett's room. As I have intimated, one
of the troubles of mine-owning--if the mine be a producer--is to hold
the smelter people in line. Like other Cripple Creek property owners,
we had been up against the high costs of reduction almost from the
first, and we were constantly sending test consignments of our ore to
various smelters throughout the country, and even to Europe, in order
to obtain checking data.
"About that car-load of Number Three ore we are sending to Falkenheim
in California," I said to Barrett. "I'm going to break away and go
with it if you have no objections."
Barrett looked up quickly.
"I think that is a wise move, Jimmie; a very wise move," he said
gravely; and this meant that he, too, had been reading the Denver
newspapers. Then he added: "We can get along all right without you,
for awhile, and you may stay as long as you like. When will you go?"
"To-day; on the afternoon train."
"Straight west?--or by way of Denver?"
"Straight west, over the Midland, I guess."
This is what I said, and it is what I meant to do when I went back to
my own office to set things in order for the long absence--for I fully
meant it to be long. My office duties were not complicated, and the
few things to be attended to were soon out of the way. One of the
letters to be written was one that I did not dictate to the
stenographer. It was to the Reverend John Whitley, enclosing a draft
to be forwarded to my sister in Glendale. Ever since he had served me
in the matter of returning Horace Barton's pocketbook, I had used him
as an intermediary for communicating, money-wise, with my people. He
had kept my secret, and was still keeping it.
The business affairs despatched, I crossed to the hotel to pack a
couple of suit-cases. All these preliminary preparations included no
word or line to Polly. I promised myself that I should write her when
it was all over. The thing to be done now and first was to drop out as
unostentatiously as possible. So ran the well-considered intention.
But when I went down to an early luncheon there was a telegram awaiting
me. It was from Agatha Geddis, and its wording was a curt mandate.
"Expect you on afternoon train. Don't fail."
During the half-hour which remained before train-time I fought the
wretched battle all over again, back and forth and up and down until my
brain reeled. At the end there was a shifty compromise. I was still
fully determined to drop out and go to California; at one stroke to
break with Polly Everton, and to put myself beyond the reach of the
woman with claws; but I weakly decided to go by way of Denver, taking
the night train west from the capital city over the Union Pacific. It
was a cowardly expedient, prompted wholly by the old, sharp-toothed
fear of consequences if I should fall to obey the wire summons, and I
knew it. I offer nothing in extenuation.
Agatha met me at the Denver Union Station, and at her suggestion we
went together to dinner at the Brown Palace. I did not know until
later why she had sent for me, or why she chose a particular table in
the dining-room, or why she went to pieces--figuratively
speaking--when, at the serving of the dessert, a note was handed her.
After that, I should have said that she had been drinking too much
champagne, if I had not known better.
"I want you to go with me up to my suite, Bertie; I've moved to the
hotel," she said hurriedly as we were leaving the dining-room.
If I went reluctantly it was not owing to any new-born squeamishness.
Heaven knows, I had been compromised with her too many times to care
greatly for anything that could be added now. In the sitting-room of
her private suite she punched the light switch and came to sit on the
arm of my chair. If she had put an arm around my neck, as she did now
and then when the wine was in and what few scruples she had were pushed
aside, I think I should have strangled her.
"You are going to be awfully sweet to me to-night, Bertie," she began,
with honey on her tongue. "You are going to be my good angel. I need
a lot of money, and I want you to be nice and get it for me."
"No," I refused briefly. "You've bled me enough."
"Just this one more time, Boy," she coaxed. "I've simply _got_ to have
it, you know."
"Why don't you get it from your father?"
"He has quit," she said, with a toss of the shapely head. "Besides,
you are so much easier."
"How much do you want, this time?"
She named a sum which was a fair measure of my entire checking account
in the Cripple Creek bank; no small amount, this, though by agreement
Gifford, Barrett and I had set aside a liberal portion of the mine
earnings as undivided profits. When I hesitated, fairly staggered by
the enormity of her demand, she added: "Don't tell me you haven't got
it; I know you have. You don't spend anything except the little you
dole out for me."
"If I have that much, I am not carrying it around with me."
"I didn't suppose you carried it in your pocket. But you are well
known here in Denver, and you can get your checks cashed at any hour of
the day or night, if you go to the right places. You've done it
before."
I was desperate enough to be half crazed. Not content with making me
lose the love of the one woman in the world, she was preparing to rob
me like a merciless highwayman.
"Nothing for nothing, the world over," I said, between set teeth. "I
mean to have the worth of my money, this time."
With a quick twist on the arm of the chair she leaned over and put her
cheek against mine. "There are others," she laughed softly, "but there
has never been a day or an hour when you couldn't make them wait,
Bertie, dear." And then: "No; I haven't been drinking."
"You will give me what I want, if I will pay the price?" I demanded.
"You heard what I said," she whispered.