* * * * *
She heard Mr. Warner's door open and shut. Footsteps sounded in the
corridor--that was Mr. O'Hearn's voice. She glanced at her wrist-watch.
Half-past nine. The partners had arrived early this morning, of all
mornings. They were night birds, all three, seldom appearing before
half-past ten, and often working in the office late after she had gone.
Susannah stopped mid-sentence a letter which she was tapping out to a
widow in Iowa, rose, moved toward the door. At the threshold, she
stopped, a deep blush suffusing her face. So she paused for a moment,
irresolute. When finally she started down the corridor, Mr. Warner
emerged from the door of his own office, met her face to face. And as
his eyes rested on hers, she was puzzled by the expression on his smooth
countenance. Was it anxiety? His expression seemed to question her--then
it flowed into his cordial smile.
Susannah was first to speak:
"Good-morning, Mr. Warner. May I see you alone for a moment?"
"Certainly!" With his best courtliness of manner, he bowed her into his
private office. "Won't you have a seat?"
Susannah sat down.
"It's about--about Mr. Cowler and last night." She paused.
"Oh," asked Mr. Warner, carelessly, casually, "did you have a pleasant
evening?"
"It's about that I wanted to talk with you," Susannah faltered.
Suddenly, her embarrassment broke, and she became perfectly composed.
"Mr. Warner, I dislike to tell you all this, because I know how it will
shock you to hear it. But you will understand that I have no choice in
the matter. It is very hard to speak of, and I don't know exactly how to
express it, but, Mr. Warner, Mr. Cowler insulted me grossly last evening
... so grossly that I left the table where we were eating after the
theater and ... and ... well, perhaps you can guess my state of mind
when I tell you that I was actually afraid to take a taxi. Of course, I
see now how foolish that was. But I ... I ran all the way home."
For an instant, Mr. Warner's fine, incisive geniality did not change.
Then suddenly it broke into a look of sympathetic understanding. "I am
sorry, Miss Ayer," he declared gravely, "I am indeed sorry." His
clergyman aspect was for the moment in the ascendent. He might have been
talking from the pulpit. His voice took its oratorical tone. "It seems
incredible that men should do such things--incredible. But one must, I
suppose, make allowances. A rural type alone in a great city and
surrounded by all the intoxicating aspects of that city. It undoubtedly
unbalanced him. Moreover, Miss Ayer, I may say without flattery that you
are more than attractive. And then, he is unaccustomed to drinking--"
"Oh, he had not drunk anything to speak of," Susannah interrupted. "A
little claret at dinner. He had ordered champagne, but this ... this
episode occurred before it came."
"Incredible!" again murmured Mr. Warner. "Inexplicable!" he added. He
paused for a moment. "You wish me to see that he apologizes?"
"I don't ask that. I am only telling you so that you may understand why
I can never speak to him again. For of course I don't want to see him as
long as I live. I thought perhaps ... that if he comes here again ...
you might manage so that he doesn't enter through my office."
"We can probably manage that," Mr. Warner agreed urbanely. "Of course we
can manage that. He is, you see, a prospective client, and a very
profitable one. We must continue to do business with him as usual."
"Oh, of course!" gasped Susannah. "Please don't think I'm trying to
interfere with your business. I understand perfectly. It is only that
I--but of course you understand. I don't want to see him again." She
rose. Her lithe figure came up to the last inch of its height; the
attitude gave her the effect of a column. Her head was like a glowing
alabaster lamp set at the top of that column. All the trouble had faded
out of her face. The set, scarlet lines in her mouth had melted to their
normal scarlet curves. The light had come back in a brilliant flood to
her turquoise eyes. In this uprush of spirit, her red hair seemed even
to bristle and to glisten. She sparkled visibly. "And now, I guess I'll
get back to work," she said. "Oh, by the way, I found in my mail this
morning a letter addressed, not to the women's department, but to the
firm. I opened it, but of course by accident."
Mr. Warner drew the letter from its envelope, began casually running
through it. The conversation seemed now to be ended; Susannah moved
toward the door. From his perusal of the letter, Mr. Warner stabbed at
her back with one quick, alarmed glance, and:
"Oh, Miss Ayer, don't go yet," he said. His tone was a little tense and
sharp. But he continued to peruse the letter. As he finished the last
page, he looked up. Again, his tone seemed peculiar; and he hesitated
before he spoke.
"Er--did you make out the signature on this?" he asked.
"No--it puzzled me," replied Susannah.
"Sit down again, please," said Mr. Warner. Now his manner had that
accent of suavity, that velvety actor quality, which usually he reserved
solely for women clients. "I'm awfully sorry, but I'm afraid I shall
have to ask you to see Mr. Cowler again."
"Mr. Warner, I ... I simply could not do that. I can never speak to him
again. You don't know.... You can't guess.... Why, I could scarcely tell
my own mother ... if I had one...."
"It seems quite shocking to you, of course, and--Wait a moment--" Mr.
Warner rose and walked toward the door leading to Byan's office. But he
seemed suddenly to change his mind. "I know exactly how you must feel,"
he said, returning. "Believe me, my dear young lady, I enter perfectly
into your emotions. Shocked susceptibilities! Wounded pride! All
perfectly natural, even exemplary. But, Miss Ayer, this is a strange
world. And in some aspects a very unsatisfactory one. We have to put up
with many things we don't like. I, for instance. You could not guess the
many disagreeable experiences to which I submit daily. I hate them as
much as anyone, but business compels me to endure them. Now you, in your
position as manager of the Women's Department--"
"Nothing," Susannah interrupted steadily, "could induce me knowingly to
submit again to what happened last night. I would rather throw up my
job. I would rather die."
"But, my dear Miss Ayer, you are not the only young lady in this city
who has been through such experiences. If women will invade industry,
they must take the consequences. Actresses, shopgirls, woman-buyers
accept these things as a matter of course--as all in the day's work.
Indeed, many stenographers complain of unpleasant experiences. You have
been exceedingly fortunate. Have we not in this office paid you every
possible respect?"
"Of course you have! It is because you have been so kind that I came to
you at once, hoping ... believing ... that you would understand. It
never occurred to me that you...."
"Of course I understand," Mr. Warner insisted, in his most soothing
tone. "It's all very dreadful. What I am trying to point out to you is
that whatever you do or wherever you go in a great city, the same thing
is likely to happen. I am trying to prove to you that you are especially
protected here. You like your work, don't you?"
"I love it!" Susannah protested with fervor.
"Then I think you will do well to ignore the incident. Come, my
child,"--Mr. Warner was now a combination of guiding pastor and
admonishing parent,--"forget this deplorable incident. When Mr. Cowler
comes in this afternoon, meet him as though nothing had happened.
Undoubtedly he is now bitterly regretting his mistake. Unquestionably he
will apologize. And the next time he asks you to go out with him, he
will have learned how to treat a young lady so admirable and estimable,
and you can accept his invitation with an untroubled spirit."
"If I meet Mr. Cowler I will treat him exactly as though nothing had
happened," Susannah declared steadily. "I mean that upon meeting him I
will bow. I will even--if you ask it--give him any information he may
want about the business. But as to going anywhere with him again--I must
decline absolutely."
"But that is one of the services which we shall have to demand from time
to time. Clients come to town. They want an attractive young lady, a
lady who will be a credit to them--a description which, I may say,
perfectly applies to you--to accompany them about the city. That will be
a part of your duties in future. Had the occasion arisen before, it
would have been a part of your duties in the past. If Mr. Cowler asks
you again to accompany him for the evening, we shall expect you to go."
"You never told me," said Susannah after a perceptible interval, during
which directly and piercingly she met Mr. Warner's gentle gaze, "that
you expected this sort of thing."
"My dear young lady," replied Mr. Warner with a kind of bland elegance,
"I am very sorry if I did not make that clear."
"Then," said Susannah--so unexpectedly that it was unexpected even to
herself--"I shall have to give up my position. Please look for another
secretary. I shall consider it a favor if you get her as soon as
possible."
Another pause; and then Mr. Warner asked:
"Would you mind waiting here for just a few moments before you make that
decision final?"
"I will wait," agreed Susannah. "But I will not change my decision."
Mr. Warner did not seem at all surprised or annoyed. He arose abruptly,
started toward Byan's office. This time he entered and closed the door
behind him. A moment later, Susannah realized from the muffled sounds
which filtered through the partition that the partners were in
conference. She caught the velvety tones of Byan; O'Hearn's soft lilt.
And as she sat there, idly tapping the desk with a penholder, something
among the memories of that confused morning crept into her mind; spread
until it blotted out even the memory of Mr. Cowler. That letter--what
did it mean? In her listless, inattentive state of mind, she had opened
it carelessly, read it through before she realized that it was addressed
not to the Women's Department, but to the company. Had anyone asked her,
a moment after she laid it down, just what it said, she could not have
answered. Now, her perplexed loneliness brought it all out on the
tablets of her mind as the chemical brings out the picture from the
blankness of a photographic plate. She glanced at the desk. The letter
was not there--Mr. Warner had taken it with him.
The man with the illegible signature wrote from Nevada. He had seen,
during a visit to Kansas City, the circulars of the Carbonado Mining
Company. After his return, he had passed through Carbonado. "I wondered,
when I saw your literature, whether there had been a new strike in that
busted camp," he wrote. "There hadn't. Carbonado now consists of one
store-keeper and a few retired prospectors who are trying to scrape
something from the corners of the old Buffalo Boy property. That camp
was worked out in the eighties--and it was never much but promises at
that." As for the photographs which decorated the Carbonado Company's
circulars, this man recognized at least one of them as a picture of a
property he knew in Utah. Finally, he asked sarcastically just how long
they expected to keep up the graft. "It's the old game, isn't it?" he
inquired, "pay three per cent for a while and then get out with the
capital." Three per cent a month--that _was_ exactly what the Carbonado
Company was paying. She wondered--
Conjecture for Susannah would have been certainty could she have heard
the conversation just the other side of that closed door. At the moment
when the contents of this letter flashed back into her mind, the letter
itself lay on Mr. Byan's polished mahogany table. Beside it lay a pile
of penciled memoranda through which fluttered from time to time the
nervous hand of H. Withington Warner. Susannah would scarcely have known
her genial employer. The mask of actor and clergyman had slipped from
his face. His cheeks seemed to fall flat and flabby. His eyes had lost
their benevolence. His mouth was set as hard as a trap, the corners
drooping. Across the table from him, too, sat a transformed Byan. His
smooth, regular features had sharpened to the likeness of a rat's. His
voice, however, was still velvety; even though it had just flung at
Warner a string of oaths.
"I told you we ought to've let go and skipped six weeks ago," he said,
"that was the time for the touch-off. Secret Service still chasin'
Heinies--everythin' coming in and nothin' going out. The suckers had
already stopped biting and then you go and hand out two more monthly
dividends and settle all the bills like you intended to stay in business
forever. What did we want with this royal suite here, and ours a
correspondence game? What do we split if we stop today? Twelve hundred
dollars. Twelve hundred dollars! We land this Cowler--see!"
Warner, unperturbed, swept his glance to O'Hearn, who sat huddled up in
his chair, searching with his glance now one of his partners, now the
other.
"Mike," he said, "you're certain about your tip on the fly cops?"
"Dead sure!" responded O'Hearn. "The regular bulls ain't touching mining
operations just now. It's up to the Secret Service. In two weeks more
they'll be all cleaned up on the war, and then they'll be reorganizing
their little committee on high finance. That there Inspector Laughlin
will take charge. He knows you, Boss. Then"--O'Hearn spread his hands
with a gesture of finality--"about a week more and they'll get round to
us. Three weeks is all we're safe to go. They stop our mail and
then--the pinch maybe. The tip's straight from you-know-who. The
pinch--see!"
At the repetition of that word "pinch," Byan's countenance changed
subtly. It was as though he had winced within. But he spoke in his usual
velvety tone.
"Less than three weeks--h'm! How much is Cowler good for?"
"About a hundred thou'--big or nothing," replied Warner. He was drawing
stars and circles on the desk blotter. "He can't be landed without the
girl. If he'd tumbled for the Lizzies you shook at him--but he
didn't--it's this red-headed doll in our office or nothing. And I've
told you--"
Here O'Hearn threw himself abruptly into the conversation.
"Lave out th' girrul," he said. Usually O'Hearn's Irish showed in his
speech only by a slight twist at the turn of his tongue. Now it reverted
to a thick brogue. "I'll not have anythin' to do--"
"We'll leave in or take out exactly what I say," put in Warner smoothly.
"Exactly what I say," he repeated. At this direct thrust, Byan lifted
his somewhat dreamy eyes. He dropped them again. Then Warner, his gaze
directly on O'Hearn's face, made a swift, sinister gesture. He drew a
forefinger round his own throat, and completed the motion by pointing
directly upward. O'Hearn, his face suddenly going a little pale,
subsided. Warner broke into the sweet, Christian smile of his office
manner. Subtly, he seemed to take command. His personality filled the
room as he leaned forward over the table and summed everything up.
"As for your noise about quitting six weeks ago," he said, "how was I to
know that the suckers were going to stop running? We looked good for
three months then. We've got three weeks to go. All right. As for the
pinch, they won't get us unless the wad gives out. Every stage of this
game has been submitted to a lawyer. We're just a hair inside--but
inside all the same. _But_ if we can't come through liberally to him
when we're really in trouble, we might as well measure ourselves for
stripes. He's that kind of lawyer. With a hundred thousand dollars--" he
seemed to roll that phrase under his tongue--"we can stay and make
snoots at the Secret Service or beat it elsewhere, just as we please.
Ozias Cowler can furnish the hundred thou'. But he'll take only one
bait. I've tried 'em all--flies, worms, beetles, and grasshoppers--and
there's only one. And that one is trying to wriggle off the hook. I
thought last night when I sent her out with him that maybe she would
fall for him. The rest would have been easy. But she only worked up a
case of this here maidenly virtue. On top of that, she reads this
letter. Of course, she has read it, though she don't know I know. I
squeezed that out of her.
"There," concluded Warner, "that's the layout, isn't it?" He turned to
Byan; and his smiling, office manner came over his expression. "What
would you say, Joe? You're by way of being an expert on this kind of
bait." In the Carbonado Mining Company, Warner ruled partly through his
quality of personal force, but partly through fear, the cement of
underworld society. Just as he shook at O'Hearn from time to time the
threat conveyed by that sinister gesture, he held over Byan the
knowledge of that trade and traffic, shameful even among criminals, from
which Byan had risen to be a pander of low finance. At this thrust,
however, Byan did not pale, as had O'Hearn. His expression became only
the more inscrutable.
"You should have let me break her in when I wanted to, months ago," he
said. "I'd 'a' had her ready now. He won't fall for anyone else. I've
offered those other Molls to him, but he's crushed on her and won't look
at anybody else. So we've got to put the screws on her. They're all
cowards inside--yellow every one."
"Meaning?" inquired Warner.
"She's in it up to her neck with us," said Byan. "We saw to that. All
right. If we should go up against it, she'd have a hell of a time
proving to a jury that she didn't know what her letters to customers
were all about. Now wouldn't she? Ask yourself. Looked like hard luck to
me when she saw that letter just when she'd slapped the face of this
Cowler. But maybe it's a regular godsend. Put it to her straight that
this business is a graft, that we're due to go up against it in three
weeks unless something nice happens, and that she's in it as deep as any
of us. When she's so scared she can't see, let her know that she has got
one way out--fall for Cowler and help us touch him for his hundred
thousand. Make her think that it's the stir sure if she don't, and a
clean getaway if she does."
"Suppose," continued Warner in the manner of one weighing every chance,
"she goes with her troubles to some wise guy?"
"She's got no friends here," said Byan. "I looked into that. Runs around
with one fluff, but she don't count. If she's scared enough, I tell you,
she'll never dare peep--and she'll come round."
"Suppose she beats it?" suggested Warner.
"Well, Mike and I can shadow her, can't we?" replied Byan. "If she tries
to get out by rail, we can stop her and put on the screws right away.
The screws!" repeated Byan, as one who liked the idea. "And if she does
hold out a while, nothin's lost. You've got the old dope worked up to
the idea she's interested in him, haven't you? Well, if she don't fall
right away, you can take a little time explaining to him why she acted
that way last night. Maybe best to dangle her a while, anyway--get him
so anxious to see her that he'll fall for anything when you bring her
round. I'll be tightening up the screws, and when he's ripe I'll deliver
her."
"The screws," repeated O'Hearn. "Meanin'--?"
"Leave that to me," said Byan. "I know how."
Warner smiled; but it was not the genial beam of his office manner. For
when the corners of his drooping mouth lifted, they showed merely a
gleam of canine teeth, which lay on his lip like fangs.
"I suppose, when it's over, she's your personal property," he concluded.
"Oh, sure!" responded Byan carelessly.
"You'll not--" began O'Hearn; but this time it was Warner who
interrupted.
"Mickey," he said, "any arrangements between this lady and Byan are
their own private affair--after the touch-off, which may stand you
twenty-five thousand shiners. Besides--" He did not make his threatening
gesture now, but merely flashed that smile of fangs and sinister
suggestion. Then he rose.
"All right," he said. "Come on--all of you--and I'll give her that
little business talk, before she's had time to think and work up another
notion. Maybe she'll fall for it right away."
"Not right away, she won't," Byan promulgated from the depths of his
experience, "but before I'm through, she will."
* * * * *
The three men came filing into the room where Susannah sat, her elbows
on the desk, her chin on her hands. She rose abruptly and faced them,
eyes wide, lips parted. Mr. Warner wore his office manner; his smile was
now benevolent.
"I have been telling Mr. Byan and Mr. O'Hearn about your experience and
your decision, Miss Ayer," began Mr. Warner.
Susannah blushed deeply; and for an instant her lashes swept over a
sudden stern flame in her eyes. Then she lifted them and looked with a
noncommittal openness from one face to the other. "I think I have
nothing to add," she said.
"Yes, but perhaps we have," Mr. Warner informed her gently. "Sit down,
Miss Ayer. Sit down, boys."
The three men seated themselves. "Thank you," said Susannah; but she
continued to stand. Byan rose thereupon, and stood lolling in the
corner, his vague smile floating on his lips. O'Hearn dropped his chin
almost to that point on his chest where his folded arms rested. His lips
drooped. Occasionally he studied the situation from under his
protuberant forehead.
"Miss Ayer," Warner went on after a pause, "you read that letter--the
one you handed to me this morning?"
Susannah hesitated for an almost imperceptible moment. "Yes," she
admitted, "entirely by mistake."
"I am going to tell you something that it will surprise you to hear,
Miss Ayer. What this fellow says is all true. Carbonado is merely a--a
convenient name, let us say. In other words, we are engaged in selling
fake stocks to suckers. To be still more explicit, we are conducting a
criminal business. We could be arrested at any moment and sent to jail.
To the Federal penitentiary, in fact. I suppose that is a great surprise
to you?"
Though she had guessed something of this ever since she recalled the
contents of the letter, the cold-blooded statement came indeed with all
the force of a surprise. Susannah's figure stiffened as though she had
touched a live wire. The crimson flush drained out of her face. And she
heard herself saying, as though in another's voice and far away, the
inadequate words: "How perfectly terrible!"
"Exactly so!" agreed Warner. "Only you haven't the remotest idea how
terrible. Miss Ayer, this company--you as well as the rest of us--needs
money and needs it right away. Ozias Cowler has money--a great deal of
money. Somebody's bound to get it--and why not we? We use various means
to get money out of suckers. There's only one way with Cowler. He's
stuck on you. You can get it from him. We want you to do that--we expect
you to do that."
Susannah stared at him. "Mr. Warner, I think you are crazy. I could no
more do that ... I couldn't ... I wouldn't even know how ... my
resignation goes into effect immediately. I couldn't possibly stay here
another minute." She turned to leave the office.
"Just one moment!" Mr. Warner's words purled on. His tone was low, his
accent bland--but his voice stopped her instantly. "Miss Ayer, you don't
understand yet. Unless we get some money--a great deal of money--we
shan't last another two weeks. The situation is--but I won't take the
time to explain that. Unless we clean up that aforesaid money, we go to
jail--for a good long term. If we get the money--we don't. Never mind
the details. I assure you it's true."
"I'm sorry," said Susannah, her lips scarcely moving as she spoke, "but
I fail to see what I have to do with that--"
"I was about to go on to say, Miss Ayer, that you have everything to do
with it. You must be aware, if you look back over your service with us,
that you are as much involved as anyone. Your name is on our letterhead.
You have signed hundreds and perhaps thousands of letters to woman
investors. Putting a disagreeable fact rather baldly, what happens to us
happens to you. If it's the stir--if it's jail--for us, it's jail for
you."
Susannah stared at him. She grew rigid. But she roused herself to a
trembling weak defense.
"I'll tell them, if they arrest me ... all that has gone on here ..."
she began.
"If you do," put in Mr. Warner smoothly, "you only create for yourself
an unfavorable impression. You put yourself in the position of going
back on your pals, and it will not get you immunity. If Mr. Cowler comes
through, you are entitled to a share of the proceeds. Whether you take
it or no is a matter for your private feelings. But the main point is
that with Cowler in, this thing will be fixed, and without him in, you
are in jail or a fugitive from justice."
He paused now and looked at Susannah--paused not as one who pities but
as one who asks himself if he has said enough. Susannah's face proved
that he had.
"Now of course you won't feel like working this morning. And I don't
blame you. Go home and think it over. Your first instinct, probably,
will be to see a lawyer. For your own sake, I advise you not to do that.
For ours, I hope you do. If he tells you the truth, he will show you how
deeply involved you are in this thing. No lawyer whom you can command
will handle your case. What you'd better do is lie down and take a nap.
Then at about five o'clock this afternoon, send for hot coffee and doll
yourself up--Mr. Cowler will call for you at seven."
* * * * *
Susannah took part of Mr. Warner's advice. She went home immediately.
But she did not take a nap. Instead, she walked up and down her bedroom
for an hour, thinking hard. She could think now; in her passage home on
the Subway, her first wild panic had beaten its desperate black wings to
quiet. What Warner had told her she now believed implicitly. She was as
much caught in the trap as any one of the three crooks with whom she had
been associated. The only difference was that she did not mean to stay
in the trap. She meant to escape. Also she did not mean to let it drive
her from the city in which she was challenging success. She meant to
stay in New York. She meant to escape. But how?
If there were only somebody to whom she could go! She had in New York a
few acquaintances--but no real friends. Besides, she didn't want anybody
to know; all she wanted was to get away from--to vanish from their
sight. But where could she go--when--how?
Fortunately she had plenty of money on hand, plenty at least for her
immediate purposes. She owned a few pawnable things, though only a few.
But at present what she needed, more even than money, was time. She must
get away at once. But again where? For a moment resurgent panic tore
her. Then common sense seemed to offer a solution. Here she was in the
biggest city in the country; the biggest in the world. She had heard
somewhere that a big city was the best place in the world to hide in.
She would hide in New York. Then--
She had forgotten one terrifying fact. Byan boarded in the same house.
She realized why now. A fortnight before--shortly after Mr. Cowler
appeared in the office--he had come to her for advice. He had given up
one bachelor apartment, he said, and was taking another. Repairs had
become inevitable in the new apartment. He did not want to go to a
hotel. Did she know of a good boarding-house in which to spend a month?
She did, of course--her own. Byan came there the next day; although,
curiously enough, she saw but little of him. They had separate tables,
and his meal-hours and hers were different.
Byan usually came in at about six o'clock. But today he might follow
her. She must work quickly.
She pulled her trunk out from under the bed and began in frenzied haste
to pack it. Down came all the pictures from her walls. Into the trunk
went most of her clothes; some of her toilet articles; her half-dozen
books; her stationery; all her slender Lares and Penates. When she had
finished with her trunk, she packed her suitcase. As many thin dresses
as she could crush in--inconsequent necessities--her storm boots; her
tooth-brush--
Then she wrote a note to her landlady. It read: "Dear Mrs. Ray: I have
been suddenly called away from the city. Will you keep my trunk until I
send for it? Yours in great haste and some trouble, Susannah Ayer." She
put it with her board money in an envelope, addressed to Mrs. Ray, and
placed it on the trunk.
At three o'clock, her suitcase in one hand, her bag and her umbrella in
the other, her long cape over her arm, she ventured into the hall.
It was vacant and silent.
She stole silently down the stairs. She met nobody. She noiselessly
opened the front door. Apparently nobody noticed her. She walked briskly
down the steps; turned toward the Avenue. At the corner something
impelled her to look back.
Byan, his look directed downward, two fingers fumbling in his side
pocket for his key, was briskly ascending the steps.