A BOTTLE OF WINE
George stood irresolutely upon the steps. A new keyhole! What the deuce
did the agent mean by putting a new keyhole in the door without
notifying him? As the caretaker never entered that door, it was all the
agent's fault. There was no area-way in front, but between George's
house and the next there was a court eight feet in width, running to the
dividing wall between the bank property and his own. A grille gate
protected this court. George had a key. The gate opened readily enough.
His intention was to enter by the basement-door. But he suddenly paused.
To his amazement he saw just below the library curtain a thin measure of
light. Light! Some one in the house! He did the most sensible thing
possible: he stood still till the shock left him. Some one in the house,
some one who had no earthly or heavenly business there! Near the window
stood a tubbed bay-tree. Cautiously he mounted this, holding the ledge
of the window with his fingers. That he did not instantly topple over
with a great noise was due to the fact that he was temporarily
paralyzed.
Here was the end of the puzzle. The riddle of the United Romance and
Adventure Company was solved. At last he understood why Mrs. Chedsoye
had sought him, why Ryanne had kidnapped him. But for his continuing his
journey upon the German-Lloyd boat, he would have come home a week too
late; he would have missed being a spectator (already an innocent
contributor) to one of the most daring and ingenious bank-robberies
known in the pages of metropolitan crime. There was Mrs. Chedsoye,
intrusively handsome as ever; there was her rascally card-sharper
brother, that ingrate who called himself Ryanne, and three unknown men.
The impudence of it; the damnable insolence of it! And there they were,
toasting their success in a brace of his own vintage-champagne! But the
wine was, after all, inconsequential. It was what he saw upon the floor
that caught him by the throat. His knees weakened, but he held on grimly
to his perch.
White bags of gold, soiled bags of gold, and neat packets of green and
yellow notes: riches! Twenty bags and as many packets of currency; a
million, not a penny under that! George was seized with a horrible
desire to yell with laughter. He felt the cachinnations bubble in his
throat. He swallowed violently and gnawed his lips. They had got into
his house under false pretenses and had tunneled back into the
Merchant-Mechanic Bank, of which Horace's brother was president and in
which he, George P. A. Jones, always carried a large private balance! It
was the joke of the century.
As quietly as he possibly could, he stepped down from his uncertain
perch. In the fine fury that followed his amazement, his one thought was
to summon the police at once, to confront the wretches in their
villainy; but once outside in the street, he cooled. Instantly he saw
the trial in court. Fortune as witness against her own mother. That was
horrible and not to be thought of. But what should he do? He was shaken
to his soul. The stupendous audacity of such a plan! To have worked out
every detail, down to the altering of the keyhole to prevent surprise!
He saw the automobiles. They were leaving that night. If he acted at
all, it must be within an hour; in less than that time they would be
loading the cars. His mind began to rid itself of its confusion. Without
the aid of the police; and presently he saw the way to do it.
He was off at a dog-trot, upon the balls of his feet, silently. Within
five minutes he was mounting the steps to the Mortimer home, and in
another minute was inside. The others saw directly that something
serious had happened.
"What's the trouble, George? House vanished?" asked Mortimer.
"Have you got a brace of revolvers?" said George quietly.
"Two automatics. But...."
"Give them to me," less evenly in tone. "Will you call up Arthur
Wadsworth, president of the Merchant-Mechanic Bank?"
"The bank?"
"Yes, the bank. You know, it is just in the rear of my house."
Here Fortune came forward. All the bright color was gone from her
cheeks; the old mask of despair had re-formed. She needed no further
enlightenment.
"Are you going back there?" she asked.
"Yes, dear; I must. Mr. Mortimer will go with me."
"And I?"
"No, heart o' mine; you've got to stay here."
"If you do not take me with you, you will not find me here when you
return."
"My child," began Mortimer soothingly, "you must not talk like that.
There will be danger."
"Then notify the police, and let the danger rest upon their shoulders,"
she said, her jaws set squarely.
"I can't call in the police," replied George, miserable.
"Shall I tell you why?"
"Dearest, can't you understand that it is you I am thinking of?"
"I am determined. If I do not go with you, you shall never see me again.
My mother is there!"
Tragedy. Mrs. Mortimer stretched out a hand, but the girl did not see
it. Her mother; her own flesh and blood! Oh, the poor child!
"Come, then," said George, in despair. "But you are hurting me,
Fortune."
"Forgive me, but I _must_ go with you. I _must_!"
"Get me the revolvers, Mr. Mortimer. We'll wait for Wadsworth. Will you
please telephone him? I'm afraid I couldn't talk steadily enough.
Explain nothing save that it concerns his bank."
George sat down. Not during those early days of the journey across the
desert had he felt so pitiably weak and inefficient.
Fortune paced the room, her arms folded tightly across her breast.
Strange, there was neither fear nor pain in her heart, only a wild
wrath.
When Mortimer returned from the telephone, saying that Wadsworth would
be right over, he asked George to explain fully what was going on. It
was rather a long story. George managed to get through it with a
coherency understandable, but no more. Mrs. Mortimer put her motherly
arms about the girl, but she found no pliancy. There was no resistance,
but there was that stiffness peculiar to felines when picked up under
protest. And there was a little more than the cat in Fortune then; the
tigress. She was not her mother's daughter for nothing. To confront her,
to overwhelm her with reproach, to show her not the least mercy, stonily
to see her led away to prison!
George inspected the revolvers carefully to see if they were loaded.
The bell rang, and Arthur Wadsworth came in. Mortimer knew him; George
did not. He drew his interest as it fell due and deposited it in another
bank. That was the extent of his relations with Arthur Wadsworth,
president of the Merchant-Mechanic Bank of New York.
Arthur was small, thin, blond like his brother, but the hair was so
light upon the top of his head that he gave one the impression that he
was bald. His eyes looked out from behind half-shut lids; his cheeks
were cadaverous; his pale lips met in a straight, unpleasant line. There
was not the slightest resemblance between the two brothers, either in
their bodies or in their souls. George recognized this fact immediately.
He disliked the man instinctively, just as he could not help admiring
his rogue of a brother.
"I want you to go with me to my house at once," began George.
"Please explain."
George disliked the voice even more than the man himself. "Everything
will be explained there," he replied.
"This is very unusual," the banker complained.
"You will find it so. Come." George moved toward the hall, the revolvers
in his coat-pocket.
"But I insist...."
"Mr. Wadsworth, everything will be fully explained to you the moment you
enter my house; More I shall not tell you. You are at liberty to return
home."
"It concerns the bank?" The voice had something human in it now; a note
of affection.
Arthur Wadsworth loved the bank as a man loves his sweetheart, but more
explicitly, as a miser loves the hoard hidden in the stocking. He loved
every corner of the building. He worshiped the glass-covered marbles
over which the gold passed and repassed. He adored the sight of the bent
backs of the bookkeepers, the individual-account clerks, the little
cages of the paying and receiving tellers, always so beautifully
littered with little slips of paper, packets of bills, stacks of gold
and silver; he loved the huge steel-vault, stored with bags of gold and
bundles of notes, bonds, and stocks. Money was his god. Summed up, he
was a miser in all that contemptible word implies: stingy, frugal,
cautious, suspicious, sly, cruel, and relentless; he was in the concrete
what his father had been in the abstract.
"It concerns the bank?" he repeated, torn by doubt.
George shrugged. "Let us be going."
"Will it be necessary to call in the police?"
"No."
"I suppose, then," said Wadsworth bitterly, wondering, too, over the
strange animosity of this young man he did not know--"I suppose I must
do just as you say?"
"Absolutely." George's teeth came together with a click.
The four of them passed out of the house, each singularly wrought with
agitation. Fortune walked ahead with George. Neither spoke. They could
hear the occasional protest from the banker into Mortimer's ear; but
Mortimer did not open his lips. They came to the house, and then George
whispered his final instructions to Wadsworth. The latter, when he
understood what was taking place, became wild with rage and terror; and
it was only because George threatened to warn the conspirators that he
subsided.
"And," went on George, "if you do not obey, you can get out of it the
best you know how. Now, silence, absolute silence."
He pressed back the grille gate, and the others tiptoed after him.
* * * * *
Ryanne tipped the third bottle delicately. Not a drop was wasted. How
the golden beads swarmed up to the brim, to break into little essences
of perfume! And this was good wine; twelve years in the bottle.
"It's like some dream; eh?"
Wallace smacked his lips loudly.
"Wallace," chided Ryanne, "you always drink like a sailor. You don't
swallow champagne; you sip it, like this."
Major Callahan swayed his glass back and forth under his nose. "Smells
like a vineyard after a rain.
"There's poetry for you!" laughed the butler.
Mrs. Chedsoye alone seemed absorbed in other things. She was trying to
discover what it was that gave this supreme moment so flat a taste. It
was always so; it was the chase, the goal was nothing. It was the
excitement of going toward, not arriving at, the destination. Was she,
who considered herself so perfect, a freak after all, shallow like a
hill-stream and as aimless in her endeavors? Had she possessed a real
enthusiasm for anything? She looked back along the twisted avenue of
years. Had anything really stirred her profoundly? From the bags of gold
her glance strayed up and over to Ryanne. Love? Love a man so weak that
he could not let be the bottle? She had a horror of drunkenness, the
inane giggles, the attending nausea; she had been through it all. Had
she loved him, or was it because he loved the child? Even this she could
not tell. Inwardly she was opaque to her searchings. She stirred
restlessly. She wanted to be out of this house, on the way. The gold, as
gold, meant nothing. She had enough for her needs. What was it, then?
Was she mad? What flung her here and about, without real purpose?
"We could have taken every dollar from the vault," said Wallace
cheerfully.
"But we couldn't have made our get-away with it," observed the butler,
holding his empty glass toward Ryanne, who was acting as master of
ceremonies.
"A clear, unidentified million," mused Ryanne. "Into the cars with it;
over to Jersey City; on to Philadelphia; but there for Europe; quietly
transfer the gold to the various Continental banks; and in six months,
who could trace hair or hide of it?" Ryanne laughed.
"It's all right to laugh," said the Major. "But are you sure about
Jones? He could have arrived this afternoon."
"Impossible! He left Alexandria for Naples on a boat that stopped but
thirty hours. With Fortune on his hands he could not possibly sail
before the following week, and maybe not then. Sit tight. I know what I
am talking about."
"He might cable."
"So he might. But if he had we'd have heard from him before now. I'm
going to tell you a secret. My name is not Ryanne."
"We all know that," said the Major.
"It's Wadsworth. Does that tickle your mind any?"
The men shook their heads. Mrs. Chedsoye did not move hers.
"Bah! Greatest joke of the hour. I'm Horace Wadsworth, and Arthur
Wadsworth, president of the Merchant-Mechanic Bank, is my beloved
brother!"
"Ay, damnable wretch!"
A shock ran through them all. In the doorway leading to the rear hall
stood George, his revolvers leveled steadily. Peering white-faced over
his shoulder was the man who had spoken, Arthur Wadsworth.