"Oh, Katy!" he said brokenly. "Sometimes I thought you looked at me as
if--my mistake, I suppose. Don't you like me, Katy?"
"One doesn't marry on liking. I used to like you as a poor boy; But
money changes people's characters. I'll have to wait and see."
4
Having left Kate at the office to which she most unreasonably insisted
on returning, Jack bethought himself of the charge laid upon him to
visit Silas Gyde's rooms alone. Kate's last words had not been too
discouraging, and there was a pleasant suggestion of mystery in this
new errand. Jack's spirits were good.
Another taxi-cab whirled him up-town to the Madagascar. Even now,
occasionally the feeling came over him that he was living in a dream.
He fingered the roll of bills in his pocket for reassurance.
"This is certainly me, Jack Norman," he thought. "And this is my
money! The roll's not much smaller either. It must be real money
because I have eaten it, drunk it, smoked it and am wearing it!"
He entered the hotel, one of Manhattan's greatest, with an odd little
thrill in his breast. "This is mine," he told himself, "all this
marble and onyx and plate glass; these tapestries, these Oriental rugs,
these tropical plants, all mine! These good-looking bell-hops work for
me; the Duke himself yonder at the desk will have to bend his haughty
head when he finds out who I am!"
Jack was a little shy of asking to be shown to the late Mr. Gyde's
rooms. Having no credentials, he suspected that his story might very
well be laughed at, and he himself be shown the door. Anyway, he felt
an instinctive repugnance to telling his story to all and sundry. If
he could only find out where the rooms were he needn't apply at the
desk, since he had the keys.
An attractive young woman at the news counter caught his attention. He
bought a magazine from her, and while she made change sought to engage
her in conversation.
"They say Mr. Silas Gyde used to live here."
"Yes, he owned this hotel."
"He must have been a queer Dick if you can believe what you read."
"Oh, the half of his queerness hasn't been printed."
"Was he a customer of yours?"
"No indeed. He never bought anything in the hotel. Said he could get
it cheaper outside. Got his meals over on Eighth avenue and around."
"I wonder he lived here at all. Did he have a fine suite?"
"No, the cheapest rooms in the house."
"Where were they?"
"On the second floor at the back on the Forty ----th street side."
"He must have been a funny sight here in the lobby with his old
hand-me-downs."
"He seldom showed himself here. He went in and out by his private
entrance on Forty ----th street."
"So he had a private entrance, eh?"
"Yes, it was a regular thing to see him going in and out carrying his
little oil-can."
"Oil-can!"
"Well, you see, when he rented the hotel to the management, he saved
out his rooms rent free, but there wasn't anything said about steam
heat or electric current, and when the management sent him a bill for
heat and light, he made them take out the radiators and the fixtures,
and he burned an oil lamp and a little oil heater."
"Here, in the Madagascar! Well, that beats all!"
"It sure does!"
In this little colloquy Jack had learned all that he desired. It was a
simple matter to leave the hotel, turn the corner into Forty ----th
street and proceed to the private entrance. It was at the extreme end
of the hotel building, a modest door with the street numeral painted on
it. Adjoining the hotel on this side was a deserted dwelling with
boarded up windows below, and blinds pulled down above, the whole
bearing the signs of long neglect.
One of Jack's keys fitted the door. Inside he found a single flight of
stairs ending on a dark landing with another door. This door was not
locked. Opening it he found himself in the sitting-room of the suite,
a small room with two windows looking out on the street he had just
left.
It was a typical hotel room, furnished by contract expensively but
without taste. An amusingly incongruous note was furnished by the oil
heater in the center of the rug, and the cheap lamp on the table. The
naked ugliness of the latter object was not even mitigated by a shade.
There was nothing to suggest that the room had been a man's home for
several years, no personal belongings of any description.
Yet it was neat enough, and Jack guessed that Silas Gyde's arrangement
with the hotel must have included maid service. From the bedroom there
was a door to the hotel corridor, through which servants might have
entered. This bedroom and a bathroom, both almost entirely without
light or air, completed the suite. Jack had no difficulty in believing
that it was one of the least desirable apartments in the hotel.
Jack's first glance around revealed nothing out of the common. The
only signs of human occupancy were a few cheap toilet articles on the
bureau. But there were several closets. That in the bedroom was
locked. Opening it with one of his keys, Jack was faced by his first
surprise--a modern and highly efficient steel vault door.
An alluring picture of heaped coin, greenbacks, securities, stored
inside, arose before him, but the door was locked of course, and he had
no instructions as to the combination. He wondered, not without
chagrin, if Silas Gyde had been a practical joker. Why had he been
instructed to proceed there alone merely for the pleasure of looking at
a locked vault.
He went through the rooms more carefully. In the sitting-room there
was a little fancy desk. He had a key to this, and upon its being
opened, one of the pigeon-holes yielded up a packet of dusty, faded
papers. He went over them one by one; advertisements, unimportant
business letters, receipts for small amounts; not until he reached the
last envelope of all was he rewarded.
This was sealed, and on it was written in an old man's cramped and
tremulous hand:
"For my heir."
It was like a voice from beyond the grave.
But the contents were matter-of-fact enough: no more than this:
"_You are to go to James Renfrew, 120 Broadway, who will hand you a
communication from me._"
This simple sentence revived the lure of mystery, and another taxi-cab
was soon bearing Jack downtown. Since the old man's note had been
written, the famous office building at 120 Broadway had burned down,
and had risen again to five times its former height. The firm of
Renfrew, Bates and Meldrum, the eminent lawyers, still had their
offices there, and Jack succeeded in seeing the senior member without
too much delay.
This testy old gentleman with a snort of scorn for what he termed
"Gyde's foolishness" put Jack through a cross-examination similar to
that he had undergone from Delamare earlier in the day. Jack's answers
being satisfactory, he received another note in Silas Gyde's cramped
hand.
This contained a row of cabalistic figures, and further instructions
for him to go to Nathan Harris, the well-known banker. At this office
the performance was exactly repeated, with the exception that Mr.
Harris evinced a good deal of curiosity on his own account. But since
it was no part of Jack's instructions to take him into his confidence,
he confined himself to polite and non-committal answers.
The note he received here, besides giving him more figures, sent him to
the office of Sanford Gair, another eminent lawyer. At this stage Jack
was brought to a stand by the information that Mr. Gair had been dead
for a year. But Jack's blood was up now: persistent questioning
finally elicited the fact that Mr. Gair's son and executor did indeed
have a note for him.
This contained another line of figures followed by the word:
"Complete." Underneath was written: "You are to enter alone."
"Complete?" thought Jack with knitted brows. "What is complete? What
am I to enter alone?"
Then a light broke upon him. "The Vault of course! This is the
combination!"
He lost no time in returning to the Madagascar.
It may be remarked here, that when Jack afterwards told Mr. Delamare
about these visits the banker laughed heartily. "Isn't that like old
Gyde! Renfrew, Nathan Harris and Gair, bitter enemies! He wasn't
going to take any chances of their getting together!"
It was about five o'clock when Jack entered Silas Gyde's rooms the
second time. He double-locked the door leading to the hotel corridor,
and set to work on the combination with a burglarious feeling, which
all his assurances to himself that it was his own property could not
quite dissipate.
Jack had had no experience with such elaborate locks as this, but after
all the principle was the same as that of Fisher's safe where he had
been accustomed to keeping his books at night. After a number of false
starts and misses, the steel bolts finally rang back, and the great
door swung noiselessly outward.
Alas for Jack's expectations! The vault inside was as bare as Mother
Hubbard's cupboard. There was not so much as a scrap of paper to be
seen, let alone the dazzling stores he had pictured. The wall down
each side were lined with shelves on which lay a thick, undisturbed
coating of dust. Apparently there never had been anything kept there;
at least not for a long time.
Jack was thoroughly disgusted. All that chasing around town for
nothing! Was his benefactor's only purpose in taking those elaborate
precautions to make a fool of his heir? Perhaps the old man had been
really insane.
But having taken all that trouble Jack did not mean to give up until he
had made very sure there was nothing to be gained from it. He examined
the vault anew, and presently made a curious discovery in the steel
door. Differing from any safe he had ever seen, the handle which
operated the bolt ran right through to the inside of the door, also the
dial and knob of the combination were reproduced inside.
"What did he want that for?" thought Jack, with perplexed brow.
"Almost looks as if he wanted to lock himself up inside."
It was dark within the vault, and Jack lit the oil lamp and carried it
in. He had not paid much attention to the back of the vault, for his
eye had told him it was flush with the outer wall of the building, but
he was now struck by the fact that whereas the sides of the vault were
of concrete the back wall was of steel, and there were no shelves
covering it.
In short, the lamp revealed the outline of a door in the back wall, a
steel door so beautifully fitted that only the tiniest of lines marked
its boundaries. In it was a tiny slit that Jack's fourth and last key
exactly fitted. When it was pressed home, the door swung towards him
on a spring.
Here he received another surprise. Instead of the shallow wall
cupboard he expected, for he knew he was against the outer wall of the
hotel, the beams of the lamp illuminated a large cupboard heaped with
rubbish in the corners. At the same moment he was greatly startled to
hear an electric bell start ringing somewhere further within.
He realized of course that he had stumbled on a secret way into the
house adjoining the hotel. He remembered the aspect of that house from
the street, shuttered, neglected, dirty. What would the inside reveal?
The feeble, fretful alarm of the electric bell perturbed him. He
closed the steel door and it stopped: he let it swing open and the
sound recommenced. For whom was it a warning? Inside the closet on
his right there was an ordinary wooden door. It did not help to
compose his nerves to hear a soft urgent whining and scratching on the
other side of it. The lamp trembled a little in his hand.
However there was nothing for it but to advance. Jack was boy enough
to refuse to take a dare. He had been instructed to enter alone, and
he was not sufficiently frightened to disobey. There was a kind of
fascination in entering upon this voyage of discovery alone. Moreover
he had no reason to suppose that a trap had been prepared for him.
Before venturing in, he took a careful survey of the closet. The
litter in the corners consisted of old clothes, old boots, newspapers.
A musty smell arose from it. His attention was caught by a broad black
belt painted on the floor at his feet. Stooping, he touched it, and
the black came off on his finger.
"Soot," he thought. He took care to step over it when he entered.
The scratching still continued on the other side of the inner door, but
Jack was reassured by the sound of an anxious little bark. "That's not
a very formidable animal," he thought, smiling, and opening the door.
His first impression was of a little black and tan terrier, who waited
just inside the door with an expression of anxiety, human in its
intensity. At the sight of Jack the dog snarled and attempted to
retreat, but weakness overcame it and it fell.
"Poor beastie!" murmured Jack.
The little animal, whether reassured by Jack's voice or prompted by his
own great need, attempted to make friends. He approached wagging a
feeble tail. He dragged himself towards the fireplace, and with
piteous, speaking glances, directed Jack's attention to a tin box upon
the mantel. A human voice could scarcely have been plainer.
"Is that where they keep it, old man?" said Jack.
In the box were some crusts. He made haste to toss them to the little
dog, and filled his dish with water.
Jack found himself in a good-sized room to which no ray of daylight
penetrated. His sense of direction told him it must be the second
floor rear of the dwelling house. There was no lack of character here.
The place was both sordid and piteous, and very eloquent of Silas
Gyde's strange life.
"This was his real home," thought Jack, looking around. "The hotel
apartment was simply a blind.... Poor old fellow!"
5
Jack as an instinctive precaution returned to close the vault door, and
the inner steel door. The latter was provided with a handle on the
closet side to draw it to. When Jack closed it the irritating little
bell stopped ringing.
"That was to warn him if any one opened it while he was inside,"
thought Jack. "And the band of soot on the floor was to inform him if
his stronghold had been entered during his absence. What a queer old
boy to take so much trouble to hide himself!"
Silas Gyde's room in its architectural features was exactly like
thousands of second floor backs in the endless rows of houses built
from forty to fifty years ago. As Jack stood inside the closet door by
which he had entered, two windows faced him, looking out on the back
yards he knew, though they were closely curtained. At his right was a
fireplace with a composition mantel, at his left was the door leading
to the stair hall. The bed was below the hall door: it is always
there. And adjoining the room on that side would be the bath room.
Jack had lived in many such houses.
The air in the room was heavy, but less foul than might have been
expected. Jack found behind the curtains that ventilators had been
ingeniously contrived, which could be opened and shut without one's
showing oneself at the window. For that matter the glass of the
windows was well-nigh opaque with the accumulation of years of dust.
The bed was tumbled but clean. Jack suspected that the old man had
changed linen with the bed in the hotel. There was a similar oil lamp
and oil heater in here.
"Those outside were a plant while these got the oil he carried in,"
thought Jack.
The room was hideously cheerless. Rubbish was piled everywhere. There
was an old flat-topped desk with its back to the windows, and a sort of
path had been cleared from the desk to the closet door with a branch to
the bed midway. Elsewhere the litter had swamped everything. It was
principally newspapers. Jack had never seen so many old newspapers in
his life. One corner of the room was filled by a small mountain of
scrap books containing faded clippings. When Jack came to examine them
he found that all the items related to Silas Gyde, and most of them
were abusive.
Yet from the walls of this unlovely room looked down a few rarely
beautiful old pictures, and, as Jack was to learn later, they were of
almost priceless value. Evidently at some period of his career the old
miser had had generous stirrings. One of these pictures caused Jack a
great start. It occupied the space next to the closet door, hence he
did not see it until he had come into the room and had turned around.
It was his mother. An enlargement by a talented hand of the wistful
girlhood picture Delamare had given him that morning. She looked down
on the fusty disarray with pitying eyes: she was startlingly young and
alive in that dark place. The tears welled up in Jack's eyes again.
"Think of her presiding over a den like this! I'll give her a sunnier
prospect. But he must have loved her well! I'll credit him with that."
A tour of the rest of the house from cellar to garret revealed only
emptiness, darkness and a smell of must.
Returning to Silas Gyde's room, Jack went to his desk. This spot alone
of all the room was in good order. On it lay a book open and face down
at the page where the dead man had left off reading. It was the
_Ordeal of Richard Feveril_, and it was open at the page describing the
first meeting of Richard and Lucy. Jack read a few lines and wondered
that Silas Gyde could have cared for that sort of thing. It didn't
seem to go with the rest of him. Jack slipped the book in his pocket,
against an opportunity to make its better acquaintance.
There was also a fat red leather note book, a sort of journal, in which
Silas Gyde had entered the details of his financial transactions. Jack
saved that for his lawyer. Finally there was a manuscript which Death
had interrupted in the middle of a sheet. Turning back to the first
page Jack was not a little astonished to find that it was a sort of
letter addressed to himself. From the dates upon it, it had been
started five years before and added to from time to time.
Jack sat down to read it. The little dog, making it clear that he had
adopted a new master, lay at his feet.
"To John Farrow Norman:
"Dear Jack:
"Everybody knows old Silas Gyde--or thinks he does. Miser, usurer,
skinflint, champion tightwad--I quote from the collection of clippings
I have made. What everybody says must be true, I suppose, but it is
not the whole truth. There is another Silas Gyde--or there was once,
and it is he who writes to you.
"Little did you guess that I have been keeping track of you since you
were quite a small boy. I have always from that time intended to make
you my heir. I suppose you wonder why I never made myself known to
you. There were several reasons. For one thing I have noticed that
the relations between a rich man and his heir are seldom happy. I
didn't care to read in your eyes that you wished the old fool would
hurry up and die and be done with it.
"Another thing, and this is the real reason: as the years pass it
becomes more and more difficult for me to make overtures to anybody.
It sounds silly for an old fellow of near sixty to confess that he is
shy, but such is the fact. And shyness in the old is a torturing
thing. They call me queer, cranky, crazy, and the truth is simply that
I am shy. I never could run with the herd.
"It is true what they say, that I have not a friend in the world, and
now I would not know how to set about making one. Especially a young
one. I am afraid of you, my boy; afraid of your terrible, pitiless
youthfulness. And so I just imagine you are my friend. I have long
talks with you, and give you quantities of good advice, to which you
give dutiful heed.
"At the same time I have always kept a sort of watch over you. And if
actual misfortune had overtaken you I would have found a way to come to
your assistance. A little poverty and hard work will enable you to
appreciate riches later.
"By this time you have learned that I was once your mother's suitor.
She refused me for the first Jack Norman, your father. I wonder if
your mother ever talked to you about me. Probably not. She was never
a talker. Well, I hope you will never have such a blow as that was to
me. I don't think you will. You have a certain grace (I have seen
you), Phoebe's grace, that will endear you to your chosen maiden. As
for me, even as a youth I was a dry stick.
"What made it harder for me was that I despised your father as a weaker
man than myself. When I let this out to your mother in my anger and
bitterness, she retorted that if he was less strong he was certainly
more lovable.
"I left Cartonsville in my bitterness. My one idea, like so many
galled young men before me, was to do something that would force Phoebe
Farrow to acknowledge to herself that she had chosen the wrong man. I
resolved to make myself a rich man, the richest in America. To gain
this end I was prepared to deny myself everything above the barest
necessities of life. Every cent was to be set to work to earn five.
"I succeeded, as every man must, who is bent on a thing so determinedly
as I was. I did not return to Cartonsville for fifteen years. Fifteen
years of slavery they were. Those were the years that formed me for
life--deformed me I should say. I was already a rich man when I went
back.
"I found the situation much as I had imagined it. Your mother was the
hard-working wife of a poor man--a man destined to die poor. She lived
in a small inconvenient house without any servant, and her pretty hands
were red and rough. And I was a millionaire. You were five years old
at that time and your parents' only child. Both your elder brothers
had died in an epidemic.
"But my triumph did not come off as I had pictured. Phoebe pitied me.
"'No wife nor chick?' she said, with her rare soft smile. 'Poor Silas!
How useless your wealth must seem to you!'
"Then I saw as in a great white light that I had only been a fool for
my pains. I returned to New York and automatically resumed the
business of making money. I could not stop. It was all I knew. It
filled my days and kept me from thinking.
"I often wished to change my way of life, but it was too late then. I
was already known as Silas Gyde the usurer, and men had hardened their
hearts against me. My diffident attempts to make friends were
rebuffed. I was forced back into the rut I had worn for myself. There
was nothing for me to do but earn the reputation the world had given me.
"I have told you that in fancy I often gave you advice. But it is not
as a good example that I desire to hold myself up to you. I urge you
to avoid my example. Never let money get the upper hand of you. Old
Silas Gyde the miser tells you money is no good except to spend. I
have succeeded in creating the incubus of wealth, and in so doing lost
my soul. I leave you the harder task of ridding yourself of it,
without losing yours.
"Your well-wisher,
"Silas Gyde."
Under a date two years later the letter was resumed:
"I have opened this to add a warning. When you inherit my money, you
are bound to inherit my cares also. Ever since I became rich enough to
be notorious, I have been a target for men's envy and hate. I expected
it. Indeed, I enjoyed it in a way. I gloated over my books of
clippings. Their hatred gave me a sense of being somebody in the world.
"In my daily mail I received, and still receive, hundreds of letters,
appealing, threatening, abusive; letters from every kind of crank. I
ignore them. But lately a real danger has begun to threaten me in the
spread of anarchistic doctrines among the people. And there are not
lacking those to turn the justifiable discontent of the people to their
own blackguardly advantage. My threatening missives now have an
organized hatred behind them.
"The culmination was reached a month ago in the shocking death of Ames
Benton, the first tragedy of the kind that has occurred in America--but
not the last I fear. I knew the man; I did business with him; I had
talked to him the day before his death. What brought it closer home to
me was the fact that Benton was what you'd call a popular man;
openhanded, affable, of a kindly nature. If they did this to him, what
will my fate be!
"The affair may be forgotten by the time you read this, so I will say
Benton was a prominent and wealthy man--though not so rich as
I--president and director in many corporations. He was blown to pieces
in his bed at night by an anarchist's bomb. The man that threw it
likewise lost his life in the explosion. How he succeeded in reaching
Mr. Benton's bedroom will always remain a mystery. Among Mr. Benton's
effects were found threatening letters similar to those I have
received. The assassin's accomplices--it is believed that he must have
had accomplices--have never been found.
"This affair has not helped me to sleep better of nights. My courage
is of the daylight variety. So long as I can have my eyes open and my
wits about me, I am willing to take my chances, but at the thought of
being attacked in my bed I confess my heart turns to water. So I have
taken my measures.
"The Madagascar Hotel which I was building was all but complete. To
secure light and air on the West I had already bought the adjoining
dwelling on Forty ----th street. I got it cheap because it had been a
private insane asylum and was in bad odor in the neighborhood. The
transaction had been effected through agents, and it was not known that
I was the owner.
"I had an opening cut between the hotel and this dwelling. By
distributing the work among many hands I was able to conceal my
eventual purpose from all. The people who put in the steel doors
thought that the rear door was to give on a shallow cupboard in the
wall. When the doors were in I knocked out this cupboard myself and
had a clear way through. Nobody who knew thought it at all out of the
way that Silas Gyde should put in a steel vault in connection with his
suite in the hotel.
"I have installed myself in a rear room of the old dwelling. The front
of the house which has been boarded up for years I was careful not to
disturb. Here I can sleep in peace. If the ghosts of the poor insane
patients stalk through the halls, they do not trouble me.
"But they may get me yet, of course, and I am writing to put you in
possession of all the particulars. I am sure now, that there is a
devilishly able brain using the anarchistic agitation to further a
blackmailing scheme on a gigantic scale.
"For instance, immediately after poor Benton's death I received a
letter threatening me with the same fate, and I have reason to believe
that many other rich men received similar letters. I promptly put mine
in the hands of the police, as did others, with what result? None,
except that I instantly received another letter apprising me that my
act was known, and that if I did not immediately cease all dealings
with the police I would be shot down in the street.
"I ignored this letter, and three days later I got a bullet through my
hat in City Hall Square. The newspapers seemed to take the attitude
that it was no more than my due. But the other rich men appreciated
the significance of the act, and I have no doubt the blackmailing
business was much stimulated thereby. Still the police did nothing,
and I resolved to have no more to do with those gentry, but to protect
myself.
"Now observe. A week after the attack on me I was called upon in my
office by a polite young man who handed me the card of the 'Eureka
Protective Association.' His proposition in brief was, that for a
stated sum paid every month (four hundred dollars was the amount named)
his organization would guarantee to protect me against all threats from
Anarchists, and would warn me in advance of any plans that were laid to
attempt my life. Since the police had failed to suppress the Reds, he
said, his people had succeeded in placing their agents in every circle
of anarchists, to take note of and report on all their activities.
"Ingenious, was it not? I could well imagine that many of my timorous
wealthy acquaintances would fall for it eagerly after all the
agitations of the past few weeks. But to me it smelled rank of
blackmail. It seemed to me that if I once submitted, the impost would
promptly be doubled, trebled, quadrupled, and instead of securing peace
I would be letting myself in for a life of continuous alarms. I might
as well die at once. Anyhow, I thought, it wasn't possible that every
rich man would submit, and they couldn't very well assassinate us all.
My chance was as good as another's.
"So I turned the polite young man down, and took my own measures. I
closed my office down-town, and carried my business under my hat, as
they say. I traded impartially through every broker in town. I have
moved into my retreat in the old house, and venture out only by
daylight, keeping to the crowded streets. The secret of my
sleeping-place is still a secret I am sure. I have had no more
threatening letters, and I hope they have crossed me off their lists as
a hopeless prospect. But if they do get me, you will know all the
circumstances."
The next entry had been made nine months later.
"My dear boy:
"The long evenings are hard to get through. My eyes tire with reading,
and my thoughts are not cheering. I have tried playing solitaire, but
it seems like the last resource of the feeble-minded. I have got me a
little dog for company, picked him up half-starved, but he's a great
sleepyhead.
"I think of you more and more. I wish I dared go to you and make
myself known. But I have put it off too long. I know now that I shall
never go. This is the only medium I can use to communicate with you.
You will know me after I am gone. Who knows, perhaps I shall have left
a friend here after all."
Several pages of good advice followed here; cynical, humorous,
friendly, out of the old millionaire's store of experience. A very
different Silas Gyde was revealed from him the world knew. But for the
moment Jack skimmed over this part hastily in his anxiety to learn more
of the facts bearing on his benefactor's end.
The last entry was only three days old.
"Three years have now elapsed since I told you of the first threats
against my life. The threats have been renewed from time to time.
That I am still above ground is due to no lack of effort on the part of
my enemy, I am sure. More and more I feel that one man is behind it
all. One attempt has been made on my life that I know of, and no doubt
others. My supposed room in the Madagascar has been entered. But my
real abiding-place is still my secret, I believe.
"Now I want to tell you of a new direction their activities have taken.
"About three weeks ago in the flock of begging letters that assail me
every day there was one which caught my attention. It purported to be
from a young girl struggling to make her way in New York as a visiting
stenographer, and asked me if I could give her occasional work. An
affecting note of simplicity seemed to distinguish it from the usual
type of such letters. 'Why shouldn't even Silas Gyde do a good act?' I
asked myself, and sent for her to come to the public writing room of
the hotel.
"Previous to that I had been dictating to public stenographers wherever
I happened to drop in. They didn't know me of course, and thus my
business secrets were safeguarded. So you see it was at somewhat of a
sacrifice that I engaged my pretty petitioner.
"She was extremely pretty, and seemingly well-bred. Her modest manner
carried out the promise of her letter. Perhaps I am not sufficiently
experienced with the sex. No man ever fooled me for long. For two
weeks she came every day that I needed her. She was not a very expert
stenographer but filled my simple demands. I noticed on her part a
willingness to enter into more personal relations with her employer,
but I didn't blame her for that, poor girl. A hundred millions I
supposed was enough to sugar even such an old pill as Silas Gyde.
"But a week ago in amongst the bundle of completed letters she left
with me, had been slipped by chance the page of a letter she had been
writing on her own account. The beginning was missing, but the piece I
had was sufficiently significant. I will paste it below."
The inserted typewritten page read as follows:
"_--where the old man sleeps. You say you are sure he doesn't occupy
his bed in the Madagascar, but I haven't been able to find out anything
to the contrary. Apparently he comes down from his room to give me
dictation. He never has me up there, though I have complained about
the noise down-stairs, etc. I got in touch with the chambermaid that
does up his room, as you suggested. She doesn't suspect that the bed
is not slept in every night. I understood that she has to make it up
in the mornings, like all the other beds. So I think you are mistaken
in saying that suite is a blind. Give me a little more time and I will
make sure through one of the clerks (with whom I am friendly) if S.G.
has another suite somewhere in the hotel._
_M.C._
Silas Gyde's ms. resumed:
"When my young lady came the following day I observed a certain anxiety
in her glance. Evidently she was not sure where she had lost that
tell-tale paper. She sounded me discreetly. I was careful to show her
an unchanged front, and she finally made up her mind that I had not
seen it. I continued to give her work just as before, and after
several days quietly dropped her. That was yesterday.
"This incident has made me thoughtful of course, showing how close they
had come to my secret. They may get me at any time. If they do, they
will most assuredly transfer their attentions to you as soon as it is
published that you are my heir. Therefore I wish you to be armed with
all the information possible.
"The name this precious young lady gave me was Beatrice Blackstone.
That means nothing of course. But her good looks were really notable,
even to my dim old eyes, and I will try to give you a description that
will put you on your guard, should she ever bring her fascinations to
bear on you.
"She said she was twenty-three, but seemed in unguarded moments to be a
good five or six years older. She was a brunette with lustrous, wavy
chestnut hair and hazel eyes of extraordinary size and brilliancy. By
hazel I mean gray eyes with a rim of brown around the iris. With me
she played a demure part, but there were moments when I saw that she
could do the haughty and imperious too. She was tall for a woman,
about five feet seven I should say, and of a very elegant figure which
seemed slimmer than it was. Weight about a hundred and thirty-five.
She walked with a peculiar undulating motion, bobbing her head slightly
with each step. When she was taking dictation I noticed on the index
finger of her right hand a large pale mole, round in shape and of the
bigness of a button on a woman's glove. So much for Beatrice
Blackstone.
"I find that the pleasure of writing to you is growing on me and I mean
to make a regular thing of it hereafter."
Those were the last words.
6
Jack sat staring at the letter he had just read, deeply stirred by
feelings new to him. Youth generally is profoundly unaware of the
hearts of the aged. The feeling is that the old have had their day,
have cooled off and hardened, and practically ceased to exist. It came
with a shock of surprise to Jack to learn that an old man might be
misunderstood, bitter, hungry for affection--just the same as a young
one.
"Poor old fellow!" he murmured. "He thought of me a lot! He was good
to me. And I never knew. If I had known him I might have made his
last days easier. I might have prevented what happened."
Hard on these softer feelings rose a slow tide of anger. "Oh, the
devils! To think up such a fiend's game! And then to get away with
it! It's too much for an honest man to stand! I wish I could pay them
off! ... I _will_ pay them off. I have power now. That shall be my
job. If I live I'll square this account!"
He registered his vow with an involuntary glance upward at his mother's
portrait. It seemed to him that the wistful face softened on him in
approval.
The impulse to action brought Jack to his feet. Peeping through the
curtains he saw that darkness had fallen outside.
"Good Lord!" he thought astonished. "How long have I been here!"
His watch informed him that it was eight o'clock. He picked up the
lamp, and with a last look around the strange room turned to leave. He
had a feeling that that place marked a turning point in his life. He
would never again be quite the light-hearted boy that had entered it.
He had forgotten the dog. The little beast seeing his purpose, and
terrified of being left alone again, threw himself against Jack's legs
in a desperate appeal to be taken along.
Jack stooped to caress him. "Poor old fellow!" he said. "I wonder how
long it is since you saw the light of the sun. I can't take you now,
honest I can't. But you be patient. I'll be back to-morrow."
But the tiny animal thrust himself into Jack's embrace and would not be
denied. Jack finally picked him up and thrust him in his coat pocket.
He settled down quite contentedly, only his nozzle and his bright eyes
showing.
"Well I guess you must be accustomed to this mode of travel," said
Jack. "I'm going to call you Jumbo because that's not your name."
Carefully locking all the doors behind him, he left the lamp in the
hotel sitting-room, and made his way out by the private entrance. His
impulse was to seek his own hall bedroom, the nearest thing to home
that he knew, and there alone, amidst familiar surroundings, to try to
bring some order out of his whirling thoughts.
Jack's boarding house was in the West Forties near Eighth avenue, in
the center of that vast colony of boarders. His way from the
Madagascar lay up Broadway for three short blocks, then westward for a
long one. He passed through the throng hurrying theaterward without
seeing anybody; he forgot that he had had no dinner; he forgot that his
pocket was full of money and was tempted by none of the alluring
show-windows.
The burden of his thoughts was: "It's a big job! A big job! I can't
afford to make any mistake at the start!"
In front of a corner newsstand he was brought up all standing by a
glimpse of the staring headlines of the night editions.
HEIR TO THE GYDE MILLIONS
FOUND IN A HALL BEDROOM
A POOR BOY IS ENRICHED BEYOND THE DREAMS OF
AVARICE
_Old Romance in the Dead Millionaire's Life Revealed_
Jack bought several papers, and standing in a doorway out of the press
of the crowd, experienced the first wonderful thrill of finding himself
famous. There is nothing else quite like it. How you became famous is
a secondary matter. To find yourself on the first page is enough: to
see the shape of your name in print. Many a good head has been turned
for life by it.
All the papers offered sensational versions of Jack's story, more or
less accurate. It had apparently been given out at Delamare's office
in the first place, and so far they had it pretty straight. But they
went on to embroider it. The more reckless sheets even printed
interviews which caused Jack to grind his teeth, they made him out such
a fool. One paper printed an alleged photograph, but it was a safely
fuzzy photograph that might have been taken for almost anybody. They
had discovered the address of his boarding-house, but in his absence
his landlady, Mrs. Regan, had refused to be drawn out.
"Good old girl!" thought Jack.
The soberer sheets promised an interview in later editions.
"They're looking for me now!" thought Jack.
Being human, Jack could not but feel a pleasurable thrill, but his head
was not quite turned. He glanced at the hurrying passers-by
whimsically.
"They wouldn't rush by so fast if they knew this was he," he thought.
But he had no intention of calling their attention to the fact. Silas
Gyde's reference to the danger of too much publicity was present in his
mind.
He turned into his own street keeping a wary eye ahead. Mrs. Regan's
boarding house was three-quarters of the way down the block, one of a
long row of dwellings with little grass plots in front and iron
railings. Sure enough by the light of a street lamp Jack made out the
figures of a group of men at her gate. As he came closer he saw that
several of them carried cameras with flash light attachments.
His first impulse was to flee, but recollecting that they could not
possibly know yet what he looked like, he walked boldly up to the
group, and asked the New Yorker's stock question of a street crowd:
"Somepin the matter here?"
One replied: "This where Jack Norman lives. We're waitin' for him to
come home."
He was already so famous no further explanation was deemed necessary.
"Gee!" said Jack with a glance at the shabby façade. "I guess he'll
soon be moving."
A laugh greeted this witty sally.
"Oh boy!" groaned one youth. "Think of having a hundred millions
handed you, just like that. It's too much!"
A photographer said: "Well, I'm gonna ast him for one million. He'd
never miss it."
"What like fellow is he?" asked Jack.
"Same aged guy as us."
"Worked for twelve per until this morning. Say his old boss was sore
as a pup when he heard what he come in for."
"They say he's a bad actor all right."
"Sure, a whale! They say he's already burned up Broadway from Herald
Square to the Circle."
"You're wrong, fellow! I heard his roll's as adhesive as rubber tape.
Same as the old man's before him. Wouldn't even pry off a nickel to
give the poor boy who told him the news."
"Say, when a guy once gets in the papers, scandal begins!" said Jack
disgustedly. Seeing Mrs. Regan at her parlor window, and fearful that
she might give him away, he walked on.
From a drug-store on Eighth avenue he telephoned back to Mrs. Regan,
asking her to come to him there. "Don't let anything on to those guys
at the gate," he warned her. "I want to keep out of sight for a few
days."
She came into the store in a breathless state of fluster. She was a
good-hearted Irishwoman of considerable energy of character and a racy
style of speech. But at present she was considerably overcome.
"Oh, Mr. Norman! Oh, Mr. Norman!" she gasped.
"Easy with my name!" warned Jack. "I'm going to be Mr. Robinson for
awhile now."
"Is it true what they say in the papers?"
"More or less."
"Oh law! To think of anything like this happening in my house! And
the third floor rear hall at that! But that's always the way ain't it,
like a story like? The telephone's been going like a Big Ben ever
since twelve o'clock, asking for you. And you such a pleasant ordinary
young fellow--not to say ordinary-like, but not stuck up at all, just
like one of us!" She paused for breath.
"Easy, Mrs. Regan," whispered Jack. "That clerk's got ears like a
water pitcher."
"I'll be careful. What did you want of me, Mr. Nor--Robinson?"
"First, I want you to know my friend Jumbo," said Jack, handing him
over. "Let him have my eats while I'm away."
"Laws! Ain't he cute!"
"I'll telephone in every little while for news. Please pack up my
things for me. I'll tell you later where to send them."
"You're going to leave!" cried Mrs. Regan. "But of course it's
natural," she added quickly.
"Don't you make any mistake," said Jack. "I'm not going to forget any
of the friends who knew me when I was poor."
"I done my best for you! But with prices the way they is----!"
"I know. Now I want you to promise not to give out a thing about me,
no descriptions of me, no information of any kind. I know it will be
hard to resist those taking young reporters, but I ask it as a favor."
"Oh, Mr. N--Robinson! Go on! At my age!-- It's little they'll get
out of me, I can tell you!"
"I knew I could bank on you. I'll tell you all about it some day.
I've got to beat it now."
"Good-by. Oh--wait! I almost forgot. I'm that excited! A messenger
boy left a note for you at the door this evening. I brought it along."
Jack took the note and left. Mrs. Regan, a little disappointed at not
being taken further into his confidence, turned in the other direction.
When she was out of sight, Jack stopped under a street lamp and
examined what she had given him.
It was a cheap, flimsy envelope much soiled. The address was scrawled
in an illiterate hand. He opened it, and this was what he read:
"_Jack Norman_:
"_We don't call you dear sir, because this ain't no friendly letter.
We know all about you. We're the gang what croaked old Silas Gyde, and
we're going to get you next, see? You needn't think you're going to be
let to blow in his tainted money. You millionaires are a dirty
disgrace, and we're going to rid the country of you. You can't hide
away from us. We are everywhere. Gun, knife, bomb or dope: it's all
the same to us. And if you show this to the police you'll only get
yours quicker._
"_The Red Gang._"
Jack's young face turned grim. "So it's begun!" he thought. "Well,
I'm just as glad they didn't keep me in suspense. I'm ready to start.
We'll see who's got the best set of wits!"
7
Jack, forbidden the refuge of his own little room, continued to walk
the streets, while he debated how best to meet the complicated
situation that faced him. Stumbling at last on Bryant Park in his
wanderings, he dropped on a bench. His eyes moved sightlessly over the
scene before him.
"Once the newspaper guys get hold of me, and print my picture on the
front page, I'm a marked man," he was thinking, "I couldn't walk down
the street then, without a crowd following. It would be a cinch for
this gang to keep tab on me, and a fat chance I'd have of getting
anything on them. So I've got to keep out of the papers if I can.
That's decided.
"But it's not going to be so easy. For the more of a mystery I make of
myself the hotter they'll get on my trail. A paper like the _Sphere_,
I suppose, would spend a hundred thousand to run me down. What I ought
to do is to get some harmless young fellow to take the part of Jack
Norman, while I lie low and do my work."
"Who could I get in our gang? There's Bill Endicott; good fellow, but
too much of a talker, specially with a girl. He'd never do. There's
Joe Welland, he's close enough--but too thick. He couldn't take a part
any more than a bronze statue. They say Stan Larkin and I look alike.
He might do. No! He's too hard-headed. He wouldn't do what I wanted.
It's too risky anyhow to let one of the gang in on this. The others
would have to know. I'd better keep away from them for the present."
Jack's reflections were interrupted by an appeal from alongside: "Say,
fella, can you help a fella to a meal?"
He became aware for the first that he shared the bench with another.
It was a fat youth of about his own age with an expression at once
piteous and absurd. There is bound to be something ludicrous in the
spectacle of a fat beggar. Chubby cheeks were designed to wear a
good-natured smile. The shame-faced look that accompanied the appeal
did not suggest the professional beggar in this case.
Jack had reached the point where he was glad of a diversion. His
thoughts had begun to chase themselves in circles. "What's the
trouble, 'Bo?" he asked in friendly fashion.
"Down on my luck, that's all. I'm an actor. Got a job to walk on in a
big show called 'Ulysses.' Rehearsed three weeks and then they
flivved. I had borrowed every cent I could on the job, and now I
dassent be seen where my friends are. I'm done! Ain't eaten since
yesterday. Say, it's Hell for a fat man to be hungry!"
Jack laughed. Moreover the word "hunger" started something insistent
in his own internals. He dropped a further consideration of his
problems until that should be satisfied.
"By Gad! That reminds me I haven't had any dinner myself! Come on,
let's see what we can find."
"You mean it!"
"Where'll we go."
"There's Little's over here on Sixth."
"To Hell with Little's! I'm fed up on beaneries. It would take a
hundred of Little's little portions to fill me. No, I got money 'Bo!
Us for the big eats. Let's try that swell French café on the south
side of the square. The French know how to eat."
"Ahh! They wouldn't serve a guy like me in there!"
"Well, the clothing stores over on Broadway are open yet. Let's go and
get you an outfit. An actor's got to show his Tuppenheimers they say,
before he can pull down a salary."
"Ahh! You're stringin' me!"
"Come along! I got a wad that's burning a hole in my jeans! I might
as well blow it on you!"
The fat youth made up his mind that Jack had been drinking. He had an
open countenance, and upon it was clearly visible his thankfulness to
Heaven for sending such a one his way. As Jack started off he took his
arm, either with the idea of guiding his footsteps, or in fear that he
might escape. His anxious glance, prepared for any sudden, unfavorable
change in the weather, never left Jack's face. He even pretended for
the sake of camaraderie to be a little spiffed himself.
Jack was vastly tickled by the whole incident. It gave him a new
luxurious sensation of opulence. Besides, he had reached the point
where he felt he had to blow off a little steam.
"What a fool I was to worry myself to a standstill! Too much thinking
is worse than none at all. If you mull over a thing too long, your
thoughts begin to go round like a squirrel in a revolving cage. Here's
the whole town open to us! We'll have us a time and forget our
troubles!"
The fat youth who had no idea of the nature of these troubles made
haste to agree. "You're dead right, fellow! Eat, drink and be merry,
as the poet says, for to-morrow the rent falls due!"
"What's your name?" asked Jack.
"Private or professional?"
"Oh, anything you like."
"Well, I'm generally known as Guy Harmsworth."
"Some name, 'Bo!"
However, the really significant names seem to come out of the air.
Jack started calling his friend 'Bo. From that it was but a little
step to Bobo. In the sound of Bobo there was something subtly
descriptive. It stuck. He is Bobo still.
As they entered the big clothing store Jack said: "Get the best. I'll
stand for it."
Bobo thus encouraged, proved to have a very nice taste in wearing
apparel. They bought hurriedly, for the pangs of hunger were pressing.
But when the main articles, suit, hat, shoes, were out of the way both
young men plunged in the smaller and more luxurious articles; shirts of
heavy silk that crinkled richly between thumb and finger; wonderful
cravats that would almost stand alone. Few youngsters attain their
desires in this direction, and Bobo and Jack, long denied, fairly
wallowed. They each bought a valise to carry away their surplus
purchases.
In half an hour Bobo was transformed. To call Bobo fat was merely to
indicate his type. He was not all over the place, but a well set-up
youngster of a rather melting style of beauty, which promised obesity
later perhaps, but in youth was not unpleasing. At least not in his
new clothes.
When finally Jack produced the roll of yellow backs to pay for what
they had bought, Bobo's look of anxiety disappeared and was not seen
again. A little sigh escaped him. It was as if he had said:
"It is not a dream."
Bobo leaving the outfitters was metamorphosed in more than his apparel.
He stuck his chest out now, and looked passers-by in the eye. A
stage-English accent crept into his unadorned Manhattanese. Jack
seeing him cast sheep's-eyes at a stand of walking-sticks, purchased
him a yellow malacca, such as his own soul had hankered after earlier
in the day. It was the finishing touch. Bobo swung it with a
delightful arrogance. He even adopted a certain condescension of tone
towards Jack who had no stick.
"I say, old chap, these togs are really not half bad for ready-made,
what! Not what a London tailor would turn out of course. But they
fit, because I happen to have a normal figure."
"Perfect forty-six," murmured Jack.
They returned for their dinner to the famous café on Bryant Square. It
was the first eating-place in New York that dared to veil its interior
from the vulgar gaze. Those alluring, closely-drawn pink curtains
cause the envious poor to suspect the delightful worst. It is not so
well known in the provinces as flashier resorts, but it is certainly
the place where most New Yorkers go first when they get money.
When they finally penetrated the mystery the plainness of the interior
was rather disappointing, and the place was almost empty for it was
half way between the dinner and the supper hours. But the food when it
came justified the café's great reputation.
Jack had ordered blindly from the French _carte-de-jour_, choosing the
most expensive dish from each subdivision; _Petite Marmite; Cotelotte
des Ecrivisses au diable; Filet Mignon au Moelle: pommes de terre
Florizel; Choux-fleur hollandaise; plombière_, etc. The result was
eminently satisfactory. Bobo groaned with delight. It appeared that
Bobo had a special and particular talent for eating.
"Don't wake me! Don't wake me!" he prayed. "Many's the time I've
dreamed of this, but it was always snatched away just as I sat down.
Say, are we going to have coffee and cigars?"
"Sure thing. Fifty centers."
"O Lord, let me sleep till then and afterwards. You can do what you
like to me!"
"You seem to have a nice taste in fancy eats," said Jack.
"A nice taste! I was born with the tongue of an epicure, a delicate
tongue, a high-toned tongue! For me to be obliged to eat in lunch
wagons and beaneries was a crime against nature!"
"Well, how would you like to keep this up for a while?" said Jack with
an offhand air.
"Hey?" said Bobo opening his eyes.
Jack studied him. "He's something of a fool," he thought. "But maybe
that's what I need. I couldn't control a hard-headed guy. And he's an
actor. He ought to be able to play a part. And he'd be grateful for
his meals, I could do what I wanted with him. Anyhow I have to take a
chance, and I might do worse."
"What d'ye mean, keep it up?" demanded Bobo.
"This is only a sample," said Jack. "How would you like the real thing
for a while; a suite of rooms at the Madagascar; a yacht, a motor
car---- Oh, half a dozen motors; all the clothes you wanted from the
best tailor in America; as for the eats--all you'd have to do would be
press a button and give your order."