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THE WOOD FIRE IN No. 3
BY F. HOPKINSON SMITH
ILLUSTRATED IN COLORS BY
ALONZO KIMBALL
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK 1913
Copyright, 1905, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SON
_Published, October, 1905_
[Illustration: Mac had the floor this afternoon.]
_A WORD OF WELCOME:_
_To those of you who love an easy chair, a mug, a pipe, and a story; to
whom a well-swept hearth is a delight and the cheery crackle of hickory
logs a joy; the touch of whose elbows sends a thrill through responsive
hearts and whose genial talk but knits the circle the closer,--as well
as those gentler spirits who are content to listen--how rare they
are!--do I repeat Sandy MacWhirter's hearty invitation: "Draw up, draw
up! By the gods, but I'm glad to see you! Get a pipe. The tobacco is in
the yellow jar."_
_Yours warmly,_
_THE BACK LOG._
THE HEARTH,
Room No. 3, Old Building,
October, 1905.
CONTENTS
I. In which Certain Details regarding a Lost Opal are set Forth
II. Wherein the Gentle Art of Dining is Variously Described
III. With Especial Reference to a Girl in a Steamer Chair
IV. With a Detailed Account of a Dangerous Footpad
V. In which Boggs Becomes Dramatic and Relates a Tale of Blood
VI. Wherein Mac Dilates on the Human Side of "His Worship, the Chief
Justice" and his Fellow Dogs
VII. Containing Mr. Alexander MacWhirter's Views on Lord Ponsonby, Major
Yancey, and their Kind
VIII. In which Murphy and Lonnegan Introduce Some Mysterious Characters
IX. Around the Embers of the Dying Fire
ILLUSTRATIONS
_From drawings in color by Alonzo Kimball_
Mac had the floor this afternoon
MacWhirter
But the perfume of the violets and the way she looked at me
The men pressed closer to look. "Roses, on a man like him!"
Not a tramp; rather a good-looking, well-mannered man, who had evidently
seen better days
Again his fingers tightened; my breath was going
"It's a better advertisement than two columns in a morning paper"
Pushed the Engineer into the salon
Around the embers of the dying fire
THE WOOD FIRE IN No. 3
PART I
_In which Certain Details regarding a Lost Opal are Set Forth._
Sandy MacWhirter would have an open fire. He had been brought up on
blazing logs and warm hearths, and could not be happy without them. In
his own boyhood's home the fireplace was the shrine, and half the
orchard and two big elms had been offered up on its altar.
There was no chimney in No. 3 when he moved in--no place really to put
one, unless he knocked a hole in the roof, started a fire on the bare
floor, and sat around it wigwam fashion; nor was there any way of
supporting the necessary brickwork, unless a start was made from the
basement up through every room to No. 3 and so on to the roof. But
trifling obstacles like these never daunted MacWhirter. Lonnegan, a
Beaux Arts man, who built the big Opera House, and who also hungered for
blazing logs, solved the difficulty. It was only a matter of fifteen
feet from where Mac's easel stood to the roof of the building that
sheltered him, and it was not many days before Lonnegan's foreman had a
hole in the roof and a wide and spacious chimney breast rising from
Mac's floor, which filled the opening in the ceiling and rose some ten
feet above it, the whole resting on an iron plate bolted to four upright
iron rods which were in turn bolted to two heavy timbers laid flat on
the roof. Lonnegan's men did the work, and Lonnegan settled with the
landlord and forgot ever afterward to send Mac the bill, and hasn't to
this day.
No one else inside the four walls of the Old Building had any such
comfort. All the other denizens had heaters; or choked-up, shivering,
contracted grates; or a half-strangled flue from the basement below.
Poor Pitkin relied on a rubber tube fastened to his gas light, which was
connected with a sort of Chinese tea-caddy of a stove propped up on four
legs, and which was shifted about so as to thaw out the coldest spots in
his studio.
It was a great day when Mac's fireplace was completed. Everybody crowded
in to see it--not only the men from below and on the same floor, but
half a dozen and more cronies from the outside. No one believed
Lonnegan's yarn about the bolts, so natural and old-timey did the
fireplace seem, until the great architect picked the plaster away with
his knife and showed them the irons, and even then one doubting Thomas
had to mount the scuttle stairs and peer out through the trap-door
before he was convinced that modern science had lent a helping hand to
recall a boyhood memory.
And the friends that this old fire had; and the way the men loved it
despite the liberties they tried to take with it! And they did, at
first, take liberties, and of the most exasperating kind to any
well-intentioned, law-abiding, and knowledgeable wood fire. Boggs, the
animal painter, whose studio lay immediately beneath MacWhirter's, was
never, at first, satisfied until he had punched it black in the face;
Wharton, who occupied No. 4, across the hall, would insist that each log
should be stood on its head and the kindling grouped about it; while
Pitkin, the sculptor, who occupied the basement because of his dirty
clay and big chunks of marble, was miserable until he had jammed the
back-log so tight against the besmoked chimney that not a breath of air
could get between it and the blackened bricks.
But none of these well-meant but inexperienced attacks ever daunted the
spirit of this fire. It would splutter a moment with ill-concealed
indignation, threatening a dozen times to go out in smoke, and then all
of a sudden a little bubble of laughing flame would break out under one
end of a log, and then another, and away it would go roaring up the
chimney in a very ecstasy of delight.
Now and then it would talk back; I have heard it many a time, when Mac
and I would be sitting alone before it listening to its chatter.
"Take a seat," it would crackle; "right in front, where I can warm you.
Sit, too, where you can look into my face and see how ruddy and joyous
it is. I'll not bore you; I never bored anybody--never in all my life. I
am an endless series of surprises, and I am never twice alike. I can
sparkle with merriment, or glow with humor, or roar with laughter,
dependent on your mood, or upon mine. Or I can smoulder away all by
myself, crooning a low song of the woods--the song your mother loved,
your cradle song--so full of content that it will soothe you into
forgetfulness. When at last I creep under my gray blanket of ashes and
shut my eyes, you, too, will want to sleep--you and I, old friends now
with our thousand memories."
Only MacWhirter really understood its many moods--"Alexander MacWhirter,
Room No. 3," the sign-board read in the hall below--and only MacWhirter
could satisfy its wants; and so, after the first few months, no one
dared touch it but our host, whose slightest nudge with the tongs was
sufficient to kindle it into renewed activity.
It was not long after this that a certain sense of ownership permeated
the coterie. They yielded the chimney and its mechanical contrivances to
MacWhirter and Lonnegan, but the blaze and its generous warmth belonged
to them as much as to Mac. Soon chairs were sent up from the several
studios, each member of the half-circle furnishing his own--the most
comfortable he owned. Then the mugs followed, and the pipe-racks, and
soon Sandy MacWhirter's wood fire in No. 3 became the one spot in the
building that we all loved and longed for.
And Mac was exactly fashioned for High Priest of just such a Temple of
Jollity: Merry-eyed, round-faced, with one and a quarter, perhaps one
and a half, of a chin tucked under his old one--a chin though that came
from laughter, not from laziness; broad-shouldered, deep-chested, hearty
in his voice and words, with the faintest trace--just a trace, it was so
slight--of his mother-tongue in his speech; whole-souled, spontaneous,
unselfish, ready to praise and never to criticise; brimming with
anecdotes and adventures of forty years of experience--on the Riviera,
in Sicily, Egypt, and the Far East, wherever his brush had carried
him--he had all the warmth of his blazing logs in his grasp and all the
snap of their coals in his eyes.
"By the Gods, but I'm glad to see you!" was his invariable greeting.
"Draw up! draw up! Go get a pipe--the tobacco is in the yellow jar."
This was when Mac was alone or when no one had the floor, and the
shuttlecock of general conversation was being battledored about.
If, however, Mac or any of his guests had the floor, and was giving his
experience at home or abroad, or was reaching the climax of some tale,
it made no difference who entered no one took any more notice of him
than of a servant who had brought in an extra log, the lost art of
listening still being in vogue in those days and much respected by the
occupants of the chairs--by all except Boggs, who would always break
into the conversation irrespective of restrictions or traditions.
Mac had the floor this afternoon.
[Illustration: MacWhirter.]
I knew this from the sound of his voice through the half-closed door as
I reached the top-floor landing.
"Refused, gentlemen, refused point blank," I heard Mac say. "He wouldn't
let them search him; wouldn't empty his pockets as the others had done;
it made a most disagreeable impression on every one at the table.
Collins, his host, was amazed; so was Moulton."
My own head was now abreast of the old Chinese screen.
"What reason did he give?" Boggs asked.
"Didn't give any. Just hemmed and hawed, and blushed like a girl."
I was inside the cosy room now, its air etched with wavy lines of
tobacco smoke, showing blue in the dim glare of the skylight overhead;
had nodded to Boggs, whose face was just visible over the top of Mac's
most comfortable chair--Boggs always hides his bulk in this particular
chair, having furnished none of his own, a weakness or selfishness which
we all recognize and permit--and was adding my snow-covered coat and hat
to a collection, facing the blazing logs, and within reach of their
genial warmth, when Mac's voice again dominated the hum of questioning
raised by the half-circle of toasting shins.
"Collins, of course, never said a word--how could he? The old fellow had
been his friend for years; went to school with him. Now, gentlemen, what
would you have thought?"
It was easy to see that our host had full possession of the floor. His
feet were firmly planted on the half-worn Daghestan, his square, erect
back turned to the crackling blaze, his head raised, arms swinging,
hands extended, accentuating every point that he made with that peculiar
twist of the thumb common to all painters. I dropped quietly into a
chair. Better keep still and smoke on with my ear-shutters fastened back
and my eyes fixed on the speaker's face. The cue would come my way
before Mac had got very far in his story.
Again Mac put the question, this time in a rising voice, demanding an
answer.
"What would you have thought?"
"I give it up," said Pitkin. "I knew Peaslee. Life went against him, but
that old fellow was as straight as a string. Why, he has been
book-keeper for that bank for half a century, more or less; I used to
keep an account there; queer-looking chap, all spectacles."
"Collins must have put the jewel in his pocket and had not been able to
find it," remarked Ford, discussion now being in order; "like a man
losing his railroad ticket and discovering it in his hat-band after he
has searched every part of his clothes."
"Old fellow was short in his balance and wanted to make it up," growled
Boggs. Boggs did not mean a word of it, but it was his turn and he must
hazard an opinion of some kind.
Mac smiled and a laugh went round. Poor old Tim Peaslee stealing Sam
Collins's or anybody else's opal to straighten out a deficiency in his
account was about as absurd a deduction to those who remembered him, as
Diogenes losing his lantern in the effort to scrape acquaintance with a
thief.
Marny, his face blue-white with his tramp through the snow, and Jack
Stirling, in a new English Macintosh, now entered, shook their wet
garments, filled their pipes from the yellow jar, and dragged up chairs
to join the half-circle, the puffs of their newly filled pipes adding
innumerable wavy lines to the etched plate of the atmosphere.
"Mac has got the most extraordinary story, Marny, that you ever heard,"
cried Wharton. "What do you think of old Tim Peaslee helping himself to
Sam Collins's jewelry?"
"Never heard of Peaslee or Collins in my life," answered Marny, dragging
his chair closer and opening his chilled fingers to the blaze. "Jack
may, he knows everybody--some he oughtn't to. Who are they, burglars or
stockbrokers?"
"Why, Collins, who has that opal mine in Mexico. Old Tim was for years
the book-keeper of the Exeter Bank. You must have known Peaslee,"
persisted Wharton.
Marny shook his head, and Wharton turned to Mac.
"Begin all over again, old man, and we'll take a vote. Marny's head is
as thick as one of his backgrounds."
"At the beginning?" asked MacWhirter, between the puffs of his pipe,
freshly lighted now that his story had been told.
"Yes, from the time Sam Collins came to New York--everything."
Mac laid his pipe once more on the mantel, threw an extra stick on the
fire from the pile by the chimney, raked the ashes clear of the front
log, and resumed his position on the rug. Now that the circle was larger
and he had been challenged to give every detail he intended to make his
second telling of the extraordinary story more interesting, if possible,
than the first.
"I'll give it to you exactly as Collins gave it to me; and, Boggs, you
will please keep still until I get through. Wharton, change your seat so
you can clap your hand over Boggs's mouth when he breaks out. Thanks.
"About two years ago Sam Collins came back to New York, first time in
nearly twenty years. He had been up in Peru living in the clouds,
digging for copper and not finding any, he told me; then he kept on to
Ceylon, wandered around there for a while, and finally landed at Vera
Cruz and went up into Mexico, until he struck the town of Queretaro.
You've been there, Wharton; I remember your sketch of the old
Cathedral."
Wharton nodded, and settled himself deeper in his chair.
"Shot Maximilian there," whispered Boggs under his breath.
Mac glanced savagely at Boggs, but continued:
"On taking in the town Collins found that everybody, from the beggars in
the Plaza to the bankers in the palaces, had their pockets full of
opals, wads and wads of them, some big as duck-shot, some big as birds'
eggs. Collins is an expert on anything that comes out of the ground, and
the next morning he was astride of a burro and off to the mines, noting
how the minerals lay and the dip of the land, and the next week he was
away prospecting, and before the month was out he had bought a hill that
was as bare as your hand of everything but bunch grass and sand fleas,
and had ten half-breeds at work, and by the end of the year he had
struck hard-pan, with enough opals lying around loose to make him rich.
This was two years ago, remember. Pretty soon Sam discovered that he
needed more money to develop his mine, and he started for New York to
look up his old friends to help him raise it.
"When Collins arrived he found that a lot of things could happen in
twenty years: half of his friends were dead; some were scattered over
the world, wandering as he had been; and out of fifty or more old chums
who had known him at college only a dozen or more were left. Tim Peaslee
was one of them.
"Sam loved Tim; he always had. For years they had kept up their letters;
then Tim lost track of Collins, and communication ceased. All the way to
New York Collins was thinking of Tim. If he was rich, they'd go in
together on the mine; and if he was poor, he'd share what he had with
him. The Tim he loved was not the kind of man to shake hands with. His
Tim was the sort of a fellow to hug and keep your hand on his knee while
you talked to him.
"Sam found him in an old house in Bond Street--one of those
high-stooped, passed-by wrecks that are being turned into Italian
tenements, with wood and coal shops in the basement and sign painters in
the garret. He was living with his old sister, Miss Peaslee--older than
Tim. The two had a life interest in the property, and none of the heirs
could take possession until these two were buried.
"It was dark when he reached Tim's and mounted the steps; too dark for
him to notice the queer iron railings and newel posts red with rust, and
the front door that hadn't had a coat of paint on it for years, nor the
knob and knocker that were black with the weather. At his first ring no
one answered; at the third, a woman with a basket opened the door. She
was on her way out--that's why she opened it.
"'Yes, Mr. Peaslee and his folks lives on the top floor. He's our
landlord. Walk right up. This door ain't locked till twelve o'clock, so
ye can just shut it to behind ye. We have the first floor, and another
family has the second, but they're moved out.'
"On the way upstairs, in the dim light of the single gas-jet, Sam made
out the slender banisters and on each landing the solid mahogany doors
that opened into the several rooms, showing him that it had once been a
house of some pretensions.
"He knocked gently; there was a hurried scuffle inside, as if someone
wanted to escape being seen, and Tim thrust out his head. He had on an
old calico dressing-gown and was in his slippers, his glasses pushed
back on his forehead.
"Sam told me he never had such a shock in his life as when he saw Tim.
He had to look into his face twice and wait until he spoke before he was
sure it was he. He had left his chum a springy, enthusiastic young
fellow of twenty-five, full of go and life, and he found him a dried-up,
wizen-faced, bald-pated old fellow near fifty, who looked a hundred.
While he had been climbing mountains, sleeping in the open air, working
with a pick or rounding up cattle, poor old Tim had been driving a quill
behind a desk, getting drier and drier, like an old gourd hung in an
attic--all the hope shrunk out of him, all his joyousness gone.
"Who wants me?'
"'Don't you know me, Tim? I'm Collins--Sam Collins,' and he caught hold
of his limp hand.
"'Collins?' muttered Tim, drawing back. 'I don't know but one--' here
the light in the hall fell on Sam's face--'Not Sam, are you?' He knew
him now. 'Come inside!' and he dragged him past the door, his shrivelled
hand on the miner's collar. 'Ann, here's Sam--old Sam Collins! Where
have you been, you old rascal, all these years? My sister--you remember
her, of course--we've been living here--Oh, Sam, but I'm glad to see
you! What a great girth you've got on you, and so big in the shoulders!
And what a queer hat! How did you find me?--Oh, you rascal!'
"This running fire of exclamations and questions was kept up until Sam
had found a seat next the old sister, who was thinner even than Tim, and
with a look in her eyes of a hungry child peering into a cake-shop. All
this time Tim was holding on to Sam's big shoulders as if he was afraid
he would escape.
"When Sam's gaze was free to wander about the room he found it choked
full of old furniture of the oldest and most dilapidated kind--a
mahogany sideboard with the knobs gone; sofas with the hair-cloth seats
in holes, all good in their day, but all wanting the upholsterer and the
cabinet-maker. Not a dollar had been spent upon them for years. The
life interest, Sam found out afterward, went with the furniture as well
as the house.
"One thing struck Sam more than anything else, and that was Tim's
tenderness over Miss Ann. When she coughed--and she coughed most of the
time--Tim would start as if it hurt him. Once he went into the next room
and brought her a shawl, and just before Sam left Tim poured out a
spoonful of medicine for her and made her take it right before Sam,
adding:
"'It's only Sam; he's got a heart as big as an ox, and will understand.
Won't you, Sam?'
"Next day Collins started in to raise the money for his mining. Tim
introduced him to the cashier and the president of the Exeter, and they
both looked Sam over and took in his wide sombrero and queer clothes,
and examined his samples--one was a beauty, which Tiffany offered him a
big sum for--and then they wrote him a letter--that is, the president
did--on the bank's paper, saying that they appreciated greatly the
opportunity, etc., but the charter of the bank prevented, etc., and they
had no money of their own, etc.--same old kind of a lying letter these
men write when they can't get one hundred per cent. on an investment.
"Tim nearly fell off his stool with disappointment when Sam read him the
letter, but Sam never turned a hair. If the old fossils in the Exeter
didn't have the money, somebody else would; and, sure enough, a
dry-goods man and a retired physician turned up, and the two roped in a
young millionnaire, a fellow by the name of Moulton, who thought he knew
it all, and _did_. The money was raised, and Sam got ready to go back to
Mexico and start the mine on an enlarged scale. All this time he had
been looking up his old school-friends, and the night before he started
he got them all together, including the new subscribers, the young
millionnaire among them, and Sam, at the millionnaire's suggestion,
called on old Solari, down in University Place, and arranged for a
farewell dinner. Tim was to sit on his right hand and the retired
physician on his left, and Sam was to make a proposition to his guests,
half of whom were directors in the new company, the nature of which he
kept secret even from Tim.
"The old book-keeper begged off, and vowed he couldn't go--hadn't been
to a dinner for years; Sister Ann wasn't well, and needed him; and,
besides, on that very night he would be up late at his home making up
the month's returns--all the excuses a man hunts up when he is hiding
the real reason that keeps him away. But Sam understood Tim by this
time.
"'I forgot to tell you, Tim,' he came back to say, 'that you mustn't put
on your black evening clothes.' (Tim hadn't any, as Sam knew.) 'I'm
going in my rough togs, so as to let everybody see me as I am every day,
and the others will dress the same, and I want you to oblige me by not
wearing yours. It will help me in my deal.'
"So Tim went, the only addition to his toilet being a new black tie
which Miss Ann had made for him.
"The dinner was upstairs on the third floor, in Solari's back room--you
all know it--same room Lonnegan had last year for that supper he gave
us. Sam had told Solari to spare no expense, and to keep setting things
up as long as anybody wanted them; and Solari carried out Collins's
orders to the last bottle--way down to Chartreuse and Reina Victorias.
There were oysters on the half-shell, and crab soup and an entree of
mushrooms, and a filet with trimmings, and plump little quail on dry
toast, salads, desserts, and so on.
"Tim, to the delight of everybody, and especially Sam, thawed out under
the influence of the first bottle, and sang a comic song he had not sung
since he and Sam had parted, and took every dish in its turn--he was
twice helped to quail--and was so happy that Sam could hardly wait for
the time to come when the secret he had up his sleeve was to be slipped
out and exploded.
"When the coffee was served Sam got up on his feet, and in welcoming his
guests took out the opal that Tiffany wanted to buy, and saying how
confident he was that before the year was out he would be able to ship
to them many more of even greater value and brilliancy, passed it to Tim
to hand around the table, some of his old friends never having seen it.
"Tim passed it across the young millionnaire to a man next him, and
after everybody had said how beautiful it was, and how they each wanted
one just like it, it was handed back to Tim, who laid it on the table
beside his plate. There was no mistake about this part of the story, for
the millionnaire called the retired physician's attention to it,
remarking that as it lay on the white cloth by Tim's hand it looked like
a drop of frozen absinthe--which wasn't bad for a millionnaire.
"Sam had the secret now well in hand--fuse all lighted, ready to be
touched off:
"'Gentlemen,' he began, 'there are some men you have known for a short
time, and you like them, and some go back to your boyhood, and those you
love. I've got a friend here who is like that opal--clear as crystal
and--Hand me the opal, Tim; I just want to dilate on it, and I can do it
better if I have it in my hand and look into its eyes and yours.'
"Tim colored scarlet, and moved his arm quickly. The friend from
boyhood, he knew, was himself, and he was not accustomed to praise.
"'Pass it along, old man!'
"'I haven't got it, Sam,' came the reply.
"'Yes, you have,' called out the young millionnaire. 'It's right there
beside your glass; I saw it there a minute ago.'
"'Well, if it was,' Tim stammered, 'it isn't here now.' It was the
complimentary speech that Sam was about to make that was upsetting Tim,
so Sam thought.
"By this time half the guests were on their feet.
"'Look around among the glasses,' suggested one.
"'Maybe it's under your napkin,' remarked another.
"'I gave it to _you_, I thought,' said Tim, turning to the physician.
"'No, you didn't. You've got it somewhere around; perhaps you've slipped
it in your pocket.' There was a slight tone of suspicion in the voice
which jarred on Sam.
"'No,' answered Tim helplessly. 'I didn't put it in my pocket. I don't
know what I did with it.'
"'Send for Hawkshaw the detective--lock the doors, and search every man
down to his underwear!' shouted Sam in a serio-comic voice.
"Chairs were now being pushed back, and some of the men were on their
knees groping around the floor near where Tim sat, the head waiter
holding a candle from the table.
"All this time Sam was standing waiting to finish his speech, to him the
event of the evening. The table was moved, and every square foot of the
carpet gone over, Tim assisting in the search, but in a perfunctory way
that attracted Sam's attention.
"'Never mind, gentlemen, let it go,' Sam said. 'I can do without it. It
will turn up somewhere; you've all seen it, anyhow, and so it's just as
good as if I held it up before you.'
"'Some men, as I said, I have known from boyhood----'
"The young millionnaire now jumped up.
"'Hold on, Mr. Collins; I'd like to find that opal before we do anything
else. Nobody has swallowed it'--constant association with money had
warped his judgment of human nature, perhaps. 'Here's what's in my
clothes,' and he began unloading his keys, knife, loose change, and
handkerchief from his coat-pocket and piling them up on the table.
"Every man followed his lead, the contagion of his example having spread
through the room. The unloading was as much a part of the merriment of
the evening as Tim's comic song or Sam's sallies of wit. Tim, all this
time, had been edging near where Sam stood.
"'Out with your stuff, Peaslee,' shouted the millionnaire--'here, right
on the table--everything.'
"Tim turned pale and made a step nearer Sam.
"'I haven't got the opal, Sam; indeed I haven't!' There was a tone in
his voice that was almost pathetic.
"'Of course you haven't, old man, but out with your stuff, just as the
others have. Hurry up!'
"'I can't, Sam!' groaned Tim.
"You can't!'
"'No, I can't! Please don't ask me. I must bid you good-night,
gentlemen. Please let me go away,' and he moved to the door and shut it
behind him.
"Every man looked at Sam. For a moment no one spoke. Collins himself was
dumfounded.
"Damn queer, isn't it?' whispered the millionnaire to Sam. 'What do you
think is the matter with him?'
"'Nothing that YOU think!' said Sam, looking him square in the face, a
peculiar glitter in his eye that some of his workmen knew when there was
any trouble in the mine. 'Let us drink to his health. He is not
accustomed to being out, and the wine has perhaps gone to his head.'"
* * * * *
MacWhirter reached for his pipe, knocked the bowl against the brickwork
of the big fireplace to free it from its dead ashes, and turned again to
the circle about him. At the same instant the back-log settled itself
with a sigh of satisfaction, and a crackling of sparks--the fire's
applause, no doubt--filled the hearth.
"Is that all?" broke in Boggs.
"Not quite," Mac answered. "All for that night, and all for the next
day, so far as Tim was concerned, for the old fellow shut himself up in
his room and said he was sick, and Sam had to leave for Mexico without
seeing him."
"What did the others think?"
"Just what you would have thought, and _did_, when I told it awhile ago.
That's why I asked you. The millionnaire believed, of course, Tim had
stolen it, and so did the physician. Made such an impression on the new
directors present that Sam smothered his intended surprise and left his
speech unfinished.
"Three months after that Sam came back to New York with more opals, many
of them much larger and finer than the one which had so mysteriously
disappeared. He arrived after everybody had gone to bed--Tim Peaslee
among them--and remembering the dinner, and where he had eaten it, and
how good it was, he got into a cab and drove to Solari's. The head
waiter looked him over for a moment--he still wore the same
sombrero--and went out and got the clerk, who asked him his name; and
then Solari came in and asked him more questions and laid the lost opal
in his hand. It had been found under a corner of the carpet when it had
been taken up and shaken the week before, and Solari had been trying
ever since to find some way of letting Sam know.
"It was now eleven o'clock, but that didn't make any difference to Sam.
He laid a five-dollar bill on the table to pay for the supper he had
ordered and hadn't time to eat, made a rush for the door, jumped into a
cab and drove like mad to Bond Street. The outer door was open. He
mounted the stairs three steps at a time and banged away at Tim's door.
It happened to be Tim's night for working over his accounts, and he was
still up.
"'I've got it, Tim--rolled under the carpet. Here it is. Let me hug you,
you old fraud! Where's Miss Ann? I want to see her. Go and dig her out
of bed, I tell you!'
"All this time Sam was hugging Tim like a bear, lifting him up and down
as if he had been a baby. When they got inside and Tim had shut the hall
door, and had tiptoed toward his sister's room and had seen that her
door was shut tight--so tight that she couldn't hear--he came back to
where Sam stood and nearly shook his arm off.
"'Found it under the carpet, did they? Oh, I'm so glad! I never shall
forget that night, Sam. They wanted me to empty my pockets, and I
couldn't. I didn't care what they thought. Oh, Sam, it was awful! You
didn't think I had taken it, did you?'
"'No, old man, I didn't, and that's square. But why didn't you unload
with the others?'
"Tim craned his head toward Miss Ann's door, listened intently for a
moment, and said:
"'I had one of those little fat quail in my coat-tail pocket; they
passed me two. Ann used to love them, and I knew you wouldn't mind; and
I lied about it when I gave it to her and told her you sent it. Don't
tell her, please.'"
As Mac finished, a log which had perhaps leaned too far forward in its
effort to listen, lost its balance and rolled over on the hearth,
sending a shower of astonished sparks scurrying up the chimney. Marny
bent forward and sent it back into place with his foot. Wharton pushed
back his chair and without a word reached for his coat; so did Pitkin
and the others. The story had evidently made a deep impression on them,
so much so that Marny didn't speak to Pitkin or Wharton until they
reached the Square, and then only to say: "Regular old trump, that
book-keeper--wasn't he?"
Boggs still sat hunched up in his chair. He was less emotional than dear
old Marny, but his heart was in the right place all the same.
"Bully story, Mac--one of your best. Heard something like that before.
Heard it in two or three ways--as a peach in a Bishop's pocket; as a
snuff-box in an admiral's. You're a daisy, Mac, for warming over club
chestnuts. But that's all right. Now, what was the surprise Collins had
up his sleeve when he got up to make his speech that night?"
"Why, Tim's appointment as book-keeper of the new company. His refusal
to be searched of course knocked that in the head. He's treasurer now;
has a big slice of the stock that Sam gave him for luck; has lost all
his wrinkles, looks ten years younger, and is getting a new crop of
hair. Miss Ann has got over her cough and is spry as a kitten--spryer.
They are all out at the mine; she keeps house for them both."