Part 21

At sight and feeling of the money in his fingers, a great wave of hope surged over Rollie. It was a solid assurance of escape. With this assurance, there came to the young man a sharp, definite impulse to begin at once the work of character building. As an initial step, he wrote upon one of his personal cards: "I.O.U. $1,100," and signed it, not with his initials, but boldly in vigorous chirography, to express the stoutness of his purpose, with the whole of his name, "Rollo Charles Burbeck." When putting this card carefully back in the envelope from which he had extracted the currency, and placing the envelope on the top of the papers in the box, the young man experienced a fine glow of satisfaction. He had done a good and honorable act in this bold assumption of his debt and in thus leaving the written record there behind him.

But when Rollie took up the currency from the table and slipped the long, thin package into his inside pocket, his fingers came in contact with that other envelope, the presence of which, under the strain of what he must go through this morning, threatened to break down his nerve completely.

With the preacher's box lying there open before him, came a sudden inspiration. What safer place for the Dounay jewels than in it? Doctor Hampstead's character put him absolutely above suspicion. He was the one guest at the supper before whose door no process of elimination would ever halt to point the finger of suspicion. His box, at the moment, was the safest place in the world for the Dounay diamonds.

Rollie was all alone in the closed room. No glance could possibly rest on him; yet, as furtively as if a thousand eyes were peering, he slipped the envelope containing the diamonds from his pocket into the box and heaved a sigh of relief when he saw the lid cover the package from his sight. Returning to the vault room, he locked the box in its chamber and went upstairs to his desk in quite his usual debonair manner.

With a new feeling of confidence which made him bold and precise in all his movements, Rollie laid the safe deposit key, with its innocent little red rubber band about it, exactly in the center of the blotter upon his desk, where it might be every moment under his eye. Then, in the most casual way in the world, he pinned a penciled note to the stack of bills representing the "Wadham currency" and sent it by one of the bank messengers across the wide aisle to a receiving teller's cage. When it arrived, the gap in his financial fences had narrowed to thirty-one hundred dollars. This lessening of the breach increased his self-control and strengthened his resolution. He had only to wait now until the minister appeared with the additional currency, and then at the first opportunity he would slip down to the vault, get the diamonds, and go straight to Miss Dounay.

And in the meantime his premonition that reporters would lean heavily upon him for information about the actress's supper party proved correct. When he talked to these reporters, Rollie noticed that it gave him a fresh sense of security to let his eye turn occasionally to where the little flat key with the red band about it lay upon his desk, lay, and almost laughed. It was really such a good joke to think where the diamonds were.

What made this joke better was that each reporter shrewdly inquired whether Rollie thought the diamonds had actually been stolen, or whether this might not be the familiar device of dramatic press agents. Begging in each instance that he be not quoted, Rollie admitted that of course the whole affair might be no more than the latter.

Yet after the reporters had gone, Rollie wished he had not done this. It was clever, but it was not just to the woman to whom he was going to make his first exhibition of new character by returning her jewels and making a plea for mercy. That was not going to be an easy job--that confession? Besides, everything depended on whether she would grant his plea or not. Ruin stared again at this angle; for Miss Dounay might hand him over to Benson. Once more he had that distasteful vision of a chalky head and a suit of stripes. The thought produced a physical sensation as if his whole body were being stung by nettles.

But here came a big man down the aisle, his features expressing grave consideration, and his gray eyes twinkling with evident satisfaction. It was Doctor Hampstead. Courage and increase of confidence seemed to come into the office with the minister, and more was imparted by his cordial hand-clasp, as he leaned close and asked in a low voice:

"You got the Wadham currency?"

"Yes," Rollie answered eagerly and in an excited whisper told how he had laid the foundation stone of his new character by his I.O.U. left in the place of the currency.

"That is good," agreed the minister, his face beaming. "The right start, my boy, exactly."

Then, with a replica of that smile, sweet as a woman's, with which he had two hours before passed over his vault key to Rollie, he now placed in his hands an envelope like that which had contained the Wadham currency, only thicker. The young man seized it gratefully, but with fingers trembling so he could hardly get behind the flap of the envelope.

"It is there," said the minister, a little gurgle of emotion in his own throat.

"It is here," mumbled Rollie woodenly, a surge of relief and gratitude rising so high in his breast that it felt like a tense hard pain, and for a moment stifled the power of speech so that for want of words he reached out and touched the hand of the minister caressingly with his clammy fingers.

Hampstead, happier, if possible, than Rollie, understood his emotion.

"It's all right," he whispered. "Courage, boy, courage!" At the same time he laid a hand upon the young man's arm, with a pressure almost of affection. With the word and touch came clarity both of thought and feeling.

"Will you excuse me three or four minutes, Brother Hampstead?" Rollie inquired, the sudden leap of joy in his heart that the embezzlement was now to be legitimately wiped out so great that he could not this time stop to send the money across by a messenger.

The minister smiled understandingly, and Rollie stepped out of the little gate and across to the teller's window.

When he returned, old J.M. himself had come out of his office and was chatting with the minister. There was nothing unusual about this, since wherever Hampstead went persons of every sort were anxious to get a word with him. Presently Parma too joined the group at Rollie's desk. Of course the topic of conversation was Miss Dounay and her diamonds, for both the president and the cashier had learned that the minister and their own social ambassador were present at the supper, which every hour became more famous. In the midst of this conversation, a telephone call for Mr. Manton was switched to Rollie's desk.

"Yes," said the president, talking into the 'phone. "We will send a man over to represent us. Are you ready now?"

The bank president hung up the telephone and turned to Rollie. "Step right over to the Central Trust, Burbeck, and see us through on those transfers, will you? They are waiting now."

There was nothing for Rollie to do but to go immediately, much as he desired to whisper one more word of gratitude to the minister, and to receive the additional installment of moral strength which he felt sure would follow from a few quiet minutes with this man on whom his soul had begun to lean so heavily.

"Certainly, Mr. Manton," he answered, and then as he reached for his hat, he turned to the minister, saying: "Shall I find you here when I return?"

"That depends on how long before you return," laughed the minister, but the blandness of his expression indicated that he was in no hurry, and Rollie went out expecting to see him again in a few minutes.

But the matter of the transfers was not so easily dispatched. Over one detail and another the young man was held for nearly forty minutes. The delays, too, were of that vexatious sort which detained him without employing him; so that most of the irritating interval could be and was devoted to a consideration of his own very private and very pressing affairs.

Giving up hope of finding the minister in the bank upon his return, he addressed both his thoughts and his fears to the subject of Miss Dounay and her diamonds. The prospective interview with this passionate, self-willed, and no doubt wildly excited woman loomed before him oppressively, and the nearer it drew, the more ominous it seemed. A man going unarmed to return a stolen cub to a tigress in a jungle lair would be going upon a mission of peace and safety compared to his. He feared that in her passionate vehemence she would never permit him to get the full truth before her. How was he to turn aside the impact of her sudden burst of rage? She would assault him--tear him! If that curious Morocco dagger he had seen some of the guests fumbling with last night were at hand, she might even kill him.

The idea occurred to him that he had best lie to her, or at least begin by lying to her; that he might play the role of restorer of her diamonds, and put her under a debt of gratitude, explaining that the thief had brought them to him to borrow money on them; then, in the softer mood that would come through joy over their prospective recovery, he might elaborate the story, touch her sympathies, and make his full confession. She might even be happy enough over their recovery to cease the hunt for the criminal, and thus make confession unnecessary. That in itself would be a great relief.

Yet the common sense, if not the moral sense, of the young man rejected a proposal to lay the bricks of new-found honesty in the mortar of a lie. If he were true to the trust which Hampstead had reposed in him, he would walk straight into Miss Dounay's apartments and say, "Here are your diamonds. I am the thief. I throw myself upon your mercy!" This was what he resolved to do.

Reentering the bank, young Burbeck walked first to the open door of Mr. Manton's office. That gentleman was engaged with a caller, but the shadow at the door caused his eye to rove in that direction. Rollie waved his hand; J.M. nodded. The transfers had been accomplished; the president had taken note of that fact, and the assistant cashier's mission was discharged.

Rollie went immediately to his desk. There was a litter of papers representing matters of greater or less importance which had required attention during the interval of his absence from the office. He sifted them quickly. Some received his penciled O.K. and went into a basket for the messenger; two or three took him on errands to other desks about, or to the windows opposite; the rest went into a drawer. He had not removed his hat from his head, for he proposed to go immediately to Miss Dounay before the remnants of his fast oozing resolution could entirely trickle away.

But when he turned to pick up the vault key which his eye had seen so many times this morning, it was not at hand. He removed everything from the desk, he searched every nook and cranny of it. He took up the waste-basket, dumped the contents upon his desk, and examined every scrap and fold of envelope or paper. He even got down upon his knees and made sure the key was not upon the carpet, going so far as to move the desk. The key had disappeared. He searched his own pockets, realizing that when he left the bank that was where the key should have been placed.

In the excitement of the moment when Hampstead had brought in the money that saved him from being a defaulter, and in the disconcerting presence of J.M. and Parma, when he wanted to be alone with his benefactor, and especially with the more disconcerting instruction to go out and look after the transfers, he had, for the time being, forgotten the key. Now it was not to be found.

Rollie stood nonplussed first, and then aghast. His guilty conscience instantly suggested that some one had seen or suspected his visit to the vault and what had occurred there. This idea brought a rush of blood to the head. He was dizzy and had almost an attack of vertigo. Yet with a few clearing minutes of thought, the explanation leaped plainly into mind. Doctor Hampstead had taken the key. In the interval while Rollie was at the teller's window, he must have seen it lying there upon the desk, recognized it by the red rubber band, and having been assured that the key had served its purpose, had done the perfectly natural thing of dropping it in his pocket, and thinking no more of it.

Where was the minister now? Until Rollie could find him and get the key, he could make no confession to Miss Dounay.

*CHAPTER XXVI*

*UNEXPECTEDLY EASY*

Following his instincts rather than any rule of sense, Rollie hurried out upon the street, posted himself upon a conspicuous corner, and for several minutes indulged the wildly improbable hope that he might spy the minister passing in the throng. When a little reflection had convinced him that this was time wasted, he made a hasty inventory of near-by places where his benefactor might have gone, and even went so far as to hurriedly visit two of them, threading the tables of the Forum Cafe, where sometimes Hampstead ate his luncheon, and scanning the chairs in the St. Albans barber shop, where from time to time the dominie's tawny fleece was shorn.

But by this time a new probability forced itself into the distracted young man's consciousness. This was that the minister had gone to pay his sympathetic respects to Miss Dounay and condole with her over her loss. Rollie was so near the Dounay apartment that to go upstairs and inquire if the minister were there would have been easy, but the peculiar circumstances made it difficult. Indeed only to recall how near he was to that fearsome lair of the tigress threw him into cold shivers and made him fly to the safer vantage ground of the telephone upon his own desk at the bank. But even merely to inquire for the Reverend John Hampstead from there was hard. In his nervous state, depleted by gloomy forebodings and now unfortified by the possession of the diamonds, Rollie felt utterly unequal to even a long-distance contact with that high-powered personality. All the morning he had been in terror lest she herself should call him up. All the morning he had known that in his character as an interested friend he should have telephoned to her. Now, the moment she recognized his voice, he would be taxed with this breach! What was he to say? Why, that he had not telephoned because he was intending to call in at the first moment he could get away from the bank, and that he would be up very soon now. She would be sarcastic, but the explanation would positively have to do. Besides, he had to locate the minister! and so, struggling to command a tone of indifference, he gave the St. Albans number.

Of course Julie or the secretary would answer, anyway. But evidently Miss Dounay, in her highly aroused mental state, was keeping an ear upon the telephone bell, for it was her own animated note that rasped at him through the instrument. It appeared, mercifully, that she did not recognize his voice,--a fact which at first relieved him, but on later reflection, at the conclusion of the incident, shook his remaining self-confidence still further to pieces, for it showed how completely out of hand he had allowed himself to get.

When, moreover, Rollie launched his timid inquiry if the Reverend John Hampstead was there, he got a negative so sharp that the receiver seemed to bite his ear. He broke the connection hastily and sat eyeing the telephone apprehensively, expecting the mouthpiece to open like a solemn eye, scan him inquiringly, and report to Miss Dounay. When it did not, he shrugged his shoulders and elongated his neck to get rid of that noose-like feeling which had just come upon him from nowhere. He had not killed anybody. What was the noose for, then? But this reflection got a most disagreeable answer: "It would kill your mother to know you are an embezzler and a thief. You would then be her murderer." Again he shrugged himself free of the distasteful sensation. "Buck up, Burbeck," he commanded himself, "or you are done for." Once more he grabbed the telephone, and this time more determinedly, for in the midst of his misery one really first-class inspiration had come to him: this was to communicate with the county jail. The minister was really much more likely to have friends in the county jail than in the St. Albans; and it was a safe wager that he went there more frequently. Rollie knew the jailer well.

"Hello--Sam," he called. "This is Rollie. Has Doctor Hampstead been there this morning?"

"Yeh!"

"There now?"

"Nope."

"Know where he went?"

Evidently Sam turned to some one else in the room for information. Rollie heard a voice answering him and caught the words "San Francisco" and "Red Lizard."

"Did you get that?" called Sam into the 'phone. "He's gone to San Francisco."

"Yes,--but what's that got to do with the Red Lizard?"

"He came down to see the Red Lizard."

"The Red Lizard!" Rollie could not restrain a gasp, and then wondered if gasps are transmitted over the telephone--but went on to ask: "Is the Red Lizard in?"

"Yeh!"

"What for?"

Rollie was clinging to the telephone now like a drowning man to a rope's end.

"He got in some kind of a row with a service elevator man at the St. Albans last night and landed on him with the brass knucks. This morning the judge gave him three months in the county."

Rollie clenched his teeth, and his shoulders rocked for a moment. So that was what happened to the Red Lizard! What a long time ago last night was! How many things had happened! Last night he was a crook and a defaulter. To-day he was an honest man, and his accounts would bear the scrutiny of an X-ray. Now if only those diamonds--

But Sam had gone right on talking.

"We think Doctor Hampstead went to San Francisco on some sort of errand for the Lizard--Red's got a woman sick over there or something. But, say, the parson telephoned his house before he left here, and they can tell you sure."

"All right, thanks."

"So long, Rollie!"

Gone to San Francisco! Worse and worse. Rollie huddled in his chair. But there was still a grain of hope. Sam might be mistaken, or the trip might be a short one, or the minister might have left a telephone number that would reach him.

But the voice of Rose Langham dashed these hopes one by one. Her brother had gone to San Francisco on an uncertain quest; he would not be back until very late at night, and he had no idea himself where in the city his search would lead him.

For the second time that day Rollie found himself in a state bordering on physical collapse. The very stars were fighting against him. After the strain of a year in which the fear of detection, however masked, had always been present, his nerves were in none too good condition, anyway. The events of the last twenty-four hours had racked them to the limit of self-control. And yet, when safely past the danger of discovery of his defalcation, the growing sense of the enormity of the crime of theft had brought him to a point where in sheer self-defense he felt he must seize the jewels and literally fling them at their owner. Now, goaded, tricked, tantalized, defeated--everything was in a conspiracy against him! It was enough to drive a man insane. Burbeck felt himself very near the maniacal point. Again he was seeing things. One moment the street outside was full of patrol wagons, all ringing their gongs at once, while platoons of police were marching and surrounding the bank. Another moment he had decided to anticipate the police by rushing out to the corner by the plaza, tossing his hat high in the air, and shouting and shrieking until a crowd had gathered, when he would exhibit the diamonds and proclaim himself the thief.

But he was spared the possibility of this insane freak by the fact that he could not exhibit the diamonds. They were in the vault. Damn the vault! To hell with them! To hell with everything! To hell with himself! That was where he was going!

Suddenly he looked up, trembling. Mercer, the assistant cashier whose desk was next to his own, must have overheard him. But no, Mercer was calmly writing. He had heard nothing, because nothing had been spoken. Rollie had been thinking in shouts, not speaking. And yet he looked about him wonderingly, like a man coming out of a temporary aberration.

"I will be shouting it next," he said to himself. "I am getting dotty; I'll burst if I have to hold this much longer. I'll burst and give the whole thing away."

His hat had been pushed back from his brow; he drew it forward and down until it shaded his face, and then with his jaws set in the most determined mood he could muster, he walked out of the bank and piloted his steps, with knees that were sometimes stiff and sometimes tottering, in the direction of the Hotel St. Albans.

Without waiting to be announced, he went up and knocked at the door of Miss Dounay's apartment. It was opened a mere crack to reveal a nose and a bit of an eyebrow. This facial fragment belonged to Julie, and with it she managed to convey an expression at once forbidding and inquisitorial.

"Oh, la la!" she exclaimed, after her survey. "It is the handsome man. Come in," and the door swung wide. "Madame will be glad to see you. Perhaps you bring the diamonds."

Julie said all this in her slight but charming accent with an attempt at good-humored vivacity, but that last was a very embarrassing remark to a caller in young Mr. Burbeck's delicate position. It caused one of his knees to knock sharply against the other as he manoeuvered to a position where he could lean against a heavy William-and-Mary chair, and thus remain standing until Miss Dounay should enter the room; since to sit down and then rise again suddenly was a feat that promised to be entirely beyond him.

Moreover, light as had been Julie's manner, Rollie saw that her appearance belied it. Her eyes were red, her sharp little nose was also highly colored, and in her hand was a tight ball of a handkerchief that had been wetted to such compactness by tears.

Mercifully Miss Dounay did not leave time for the young man's apprehensions to increase. She entered almost as Julie disappeared, wearing something black and oddly cut, a baggy thing, like a gown he remembered once seeing upon a sculptress when at work in her studio. It was the nearest to an unbecoming garb that he had ever known Marien to wear, and yet unbecoming was hardly the word. It did become her mood, which was somber. Her face was pale, and there were shadows beneath her eyes. She looked subdued, defeated even; but by no means broken. There were hard lines about her mouth, lines which Rollie had never seen there before. She wore a sullen expression, and a passion that was volcanic appeared to smoulder in her eyes. She greeted him rather perfunctorily, as if her mind had been brooding and, after bidding him be seated and sinking herself upon a couch, cushion-piled as usual, shrouded herself again in a state of aloofness which reminded him of the weather when a storm is brooding.

Rollie had expected her to be raging like a wild woman,--alternately hurling anathemas at the thief for having stolen her gems and heaping denunciations upon the police because they had not already captured the criminal and recovered the necklace.

Her apparent indifference to that subject only emphasized to Rollie what he had before observed,--that it was impossible ever to forecast the mind of this woman upon any subject, or under any circumstances. At the same time, the young man was extremely grateful for this abstraction, because it made what he had to do vastly easier.