Part 22

"I suppose," he ventured huskily, "you are worried to death about your diamonds."

The sentence drew one lightning flash from her eyes, and that was all.

"To tell you the truth, I have hardly thought of them," she snapped.

Rollie sat with open mouth, totally unable to comprehend, staring until his stare annoyed her.

"I say I have hardly thought of them," she repeated, with an asperity entirely sufficient to recall the young man from his amazement at her manner to the real object of his visit.

"But wouldn't you like to get your diamonds back?" he asked perspiringly.

"Of course, silly!" the actress replied, not bothering to conceal the fact that she regarded Burbeck as a child, sometimes useful and sometimes a nuisance. Apparently, she had hailed his advent because her ill humor required a fresh butt, Julie's face having indicated clearly that she had been made to suffer to the breaking point.

But Rollie was in no position to insist upon niceties of speech or manner. He had a trouble compared to which all other troubles of which he had ever conceived were nothing at all. He was haunted by a terrible fear, and to escape its torture he plumped full in the face of it by blurting:

"I have come to tell you that you are going to get your diamonds back."

If Marien's demeanor were a pose, it must have proved that she really was what her press agents claimed,--the greatest actress on the English speaking stage. She did not start, or speak. For a few seconds not even the direction of her glance was changed. Then her face did shift sufficiently for the black piercing eyes to stab straight into Rollie's, while her brows were lifted inquiringly. The glance said, "Well, go on!"

The young man obeyed desperately: "I am an ambassador for the--"

Still Miss Dounay did not speak; she did not move nor change an expression even; and yet Rollie felt himself interrupted. He could not tell how this was done, but he was sure that this woman had detected him in the first note of insincerity and by a thought-wave had emphatically said, "Don't lie to me!"

All at once, too, he realized that this motionless, marble-lipped creature sitting there before him was more implacable, more potential for evil than the raging tigress he had expected to confront. He felt somehow that she was not a woman, but a super-devil into whose clutches he was being drawn. He even had a sense that he was not going to be allowed any increased issue of moral stock on the ground of telling this woman the truth. He was going to tell her the truth because he had to, because she hypnotized it out of him.

"I say," he began, and stopped to wet his lips, but found his tongue so furred that it could not function in that behalf. "I say," he went on again, croaking hoarsely, "that I am the thief."

"You? The banker?"

Rollie fell to wondering how blue vitriol bites. Certainly it could not be more biting than the sarcasm in look and tone with which the woman had asked this question.

"Yes, I--"

The young man was going to prepare the soil for throwing himself upon her mercy--this woman whom he was now positive knew no such thing as mercy--by telling her about his defalcation; but in the wooden state of his mind, one quivering gleam of intelligence suggested that it was quite unnecessary to tell her anything about his defalcation; that it might give her an added set of pincers for the torture she might choose to inflict.

"Yes, I stole them," he affirmed doggedly. "And I am going to bring them back."

"Going to?" she asked, again making the fine shade of her meaning clear with the slightest expenditure of sound.

"Yes, a little accident happened."

"An accident!" The woman's eyes blazed, her cheeks were aflame, and her whole attitude expressive of menace. "You didn't lose them?"

"I only lost control of them for a few hours through a bit of stupidity," he confessed, and hurried on to explain: "For safe keeping this morning I locked them in John Hampstead's safe deposit box, and he went off with the key. He's wandering around the tenderloin of San Francisco now on an errand for a man in the county jail, and they don't even expect him home before to-morrow morning. We can get them--"

Again Rollie felt himself mentally interrupted, although Miss Dounay had not spoken.

This time, however, her features did change unmistakably. She had been listening with a cynical expression that somehow suggested the manner of a cat about to pounce; and suddenly this manner had departed. It was succeeded by a look of surprise and then of thoughtful interest, followed by that indefinable something which bade him cease to speak. He paused abruptly with his tongue in air, as it were; yet she neither spoke nor looked at him. Her features were a sort of moving picture of complex and swift-flying mental processes which succeeded one another with astonishing rapidity and ended in a queer expression of glory and triumph, while she stiffened her body and drew a full breath so quickly that the air whistled in her narrowing nostrils.

Then, as if becoming suddenly aware of the visitor's presence, Miss Dounay turned her eyes directly upon him and exclaimed, with a manner quite the most pleasant she had yet displayed:

"Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Burbeck. Something you said started such an interesting train of thought."

Her cordiality extended to the point of reaching out a hand and laying it reassuringly upon Rollie's arm, while she asked, and this time with a tone of real consideration:

"Will you be kind enough to tell me again, very carefully, and a little more in detail, just why you couldn't bring the diamonds to-day?"

Rollie, greatly relieved at this softening in Marien's mood at the very point where he had feared she might actually leap on him and throttle him, retold the story, only being careful to omit all reference as to why he chanced to be visiting Doctor Hampstead's box, and why Doctor Hampstead happened to come into his office so that he might pick up the key, as he did.

"What an odd coincidence!" commented Marien, when the recital was finished. Actually, she was laughing. Rollie's heart went out to her completely. He felt a sting of self-reproach at the harshness of his judgment of her, and was sensible of a new charity growing in his life for all mankind. It was really going to be made easy for him to take "the way up." He felt like singing a little psalm of thanksgiving.

"And the minister has no idea that the diamonds are in his vault?" that mercurial lady inquired, with a chuckle.

"Not the least in the world," assured Rollie, anxious to relieve his benefactor of any slightest odium of indiscretion.

"And when did you say Doctor Hampstead was expected home from San Francisco?"

Miss Dounay had stopped laughing and had an intent look, as if desiring to understand something very clearly.

"Perhaps the last boat to-night--possibly not till to-morrow morning."

"Then there is no way of getting the jewels until to-morrow morning?"

"None at all," confessed Rollie. "But as a matter of fact, they are perfectly safe there--safer than they are in your own apartment."

"So I should say," Miss Dounay observed dryly, "unless I revise my guest list."

Rollie flushed.

"That was coming to me," he confessed, frowning at himself. "That and much more."

His tone was serious and full of bitter self-reproach. Miss Dounay's surprisingly indulgent attitude emboldened him to pursue the disagreeable subject farther.

"I have not told you," he went on, "that I came to ask you for mercy."

"Do you not perceive that you are getting it without asking?" the actress replied, with a liquid glance that was really full of gentleness and sympathy.

"Of course," Rollie averred. "But I am so grateful that I did not want you to think I could take it for granted. I was in a terrible position, Miss Dounay. The crime was not accidental, but deliberate; that it miscarried was the accident. But that your diamonds are to be restored to you, and that I myself am on my way to a sort of character restoration, if I ever had any, which I begin to doubt, is all due to one good friend whom I saw to-day, and who is also a good friend of yours."

Again Rollie was interrupted; but this time there was nothing intangible about it.

Miss Dounay's face grew suddenly hard; cruel lines that were tense and threatening appeared about her mouth, while her eyes bored straight into his, as she exclaimed: "Never mind about that now. As for the theft: you need never hear from me one word about what you have done. The only injunction that I lay upon you is to keep absolute silence about it yourself. Remember, no matter what comes to pass, you know nothing and have nothing to say. So long as you are silent, I will protect you absolutely. Break the silence, and you will go where you belong!"

Of all the hard glances Miss Dounay had given young Burbeck, the look which accompanied this last menacing sentence was positively the hardest. A spasm of mortal terror wrung the young man's heart, as he saw how deliberately implacable this woman could be, and how completely he was in her power.

But presently, Miss Dounay, as if suddenly ashamed of her outburst of feeling over so slight an occasion, broke into radiant smiles, took Rollie by the arm, and led him a few steps in the direction of the door. Her manner was gracious and almost affectionate, proclaiming that at least as long as all went well with her moods, the whole wretched incident was past and forgotten absolutely.

As if to make this emphatically clear, she inquired:

"And when is it that you go out with Mrs. Ellsworth Harrington upon her launch party?"

"With Mrs. Harrington's launch party?" Rollie asked, in a dazed voice, his mind groping as at some elusive memory.

"Yes," the actress replied crisply. "You told me yesterday you were going out to-day with her party for a cruise on the Bay."

"Yesterday!" confessed Rollie dreamily. "By Jove, so I did. But," and as though it made all the difference in the world, "that was yesterday!"

"And isn't to-day to-day?" Miss Dounay asked significantly. "Going to buck up, aren't you?" she continued with intimate friendliness of tone. "You are still to continue as the Amalgamated's social ambassador?"

"Why, of course," the young man replied, although weakly, for after what he had passed through of hope and fear in the past few hours and even the past few minutes, he felt quite unequal to any such prospect as the immediate resumption of his social duties.

But it was a part of the swiftly forming plans of the strong willed woman that he should take them up immediately, and she cleverly recalled his mind to the necessity of special attention to Mrs. Harrington's projects by inquiring tentatively: "I suppose Mrs. Harrington was very much put out because I did not attend her dinner last night?"

"I should say!" confessed Rollie, turning a wry face at the memory.

"Suppose," suggested Miss Dounay in calculating tones, "that I went with you upon her launch party this afternoon."

"You? Oh! Miss Dounay!" Rollo exclaimed, with another of his looks of dog-like gratefulness. "Could you be as good as that? Why, say!" and the young man's enthusiasm actually began to kindle. "You'd undo the damage of last night and fix me with her for life. Positively for life; because," and he hesitated while an expression half ludicrous and half painful crossed his face; "because you are ten times as big a social asset now that--that--" he could not bring himself to finish the sentence.

But Miss Dounay relieved him of his embarrassment by appearing not to notice and broke in with a practical question:

"What time does the launch leave the pier?"

"At four. It is now one-thirty."

For a moment Miss Dounay's brow was threaded with lines of thought, as if she were making calculations and tying the loose ends of some project together in her mind.

"Yes," she said, her face clearing and a look of impish happiness coming into her eyes, "I can go. It will be a delightful relief. I have been bored beyond measure by my own company to-day. Come here at three-thirty and Francois will take us to the pier."

*CHAPTER XXVII*

*THE FIRST ALARM*

Doctor Hampstead was more successful than he had dared to hope in his quest for the woman of the underworld to whom the Red Lizard, from his position in the county jail, acknowledged a tardy obligation. By five o'clock the sufferer was located, her condition inquired into, and the services of a nurse from the Social Settlement near by arranged for, with instructions that the minister be notified of any serious change in the patient's condition.

His breast warmed comfortably with the sense of duty done, the clergyman made his way toward the water front, congratulating himself that he would get the six o'clock boat and be at home in time for dinner; but as he walked through the ferry building, his eye was caught by a headline in one of the evening papers. "MINISTER TO BE ARRESTED" it proclaimed in tall characters of glaring black; and he reflected cynically at the eagerness with which the headline makers seize upon that word "minister" or any of its synonyms. It made the black letters blacker when they spelled minister, priest, or clergyman.

Wondering what preacher could have got himself in trouble, and feeling a slight sense of resentment at the creature, whoever he might be, to have thus brought notoriety and possible dishonor upon the calling, Doctor Hampstead bought a copy of the paper from fat Hermann of the crutch and red face, who has stood so many years at the ferry gate; but reading no farther than the headline, he doubled the paper in his hand and elbowed his way through the crowd to a seat on the exposed upper deck of the ferryboat. Wearied from the exertions of his day, the minister found temporary diversion in watching the fountains of humanity gushing up the stairways. Many of the people he knew, and those who saw him nodded as they passed. Once or twice it struck him that there was something peculiar in these glances of recognition, a startled look of surprise or wonder that he could not quite understand. Occasionally the bold look of a man he did not know but who apparently recognized him had in it a quality of cynicism or of gloating.

With a disagreeable feeling of embarrassment which he did not undertake to explain, the minister turned away from the crowd and fell to watching the sweep of bay and the plowing craft upon it. The fresh salt breeze was very grateful to his face and lungs after the noisome alleys through which his mission had taken him. The water this evening was amethyst blue, and under the prows of the passing boats broke into foam of marble whiteness. The sky above was a pure turquoise, except towards the west, where the descending sun kindled a conflagration of glory in the low-lying clouds. All this wealth of refreshing color and the tonic in the stiffening breeze made the world not only seem fresh and pure, but full of power; as if to give assurance that the ocean and the coming night were big enough and strong enough to swallow all the unpleasantness and all the weakness and wickedness of men, and send the sun up to-morrow morning upon a new day that was fresh and pristine, like the day of creation itself.

Hampstead remembered his prayer of the morning that this particular day might be a great one, and felt a trifle disappointed. In a kind of a way it had been big. Rollie Burbeck had come to him, broken and cowering. He had helped him; he believed he had saved him. Surely, for the time being, he had saved that gifted mother of his from the awful shock of knowing that her son was a defaulter and a thief. True, he had plunged heavily in rescuing that boy; yet the money came from people who believed in Hampstead sufficiently to give him of their surplus wealth for just such ventures. If the effort failed, they would regret the loss of the man more than the loss of the money.

Yet the minister really believed that Rollie was going to take the "way up", and assuring himself once more of this, fell to wondering how Miss Dounay received the penitent when he brought back the diamonds, and whether she had acted generously or spitefully. Speculating next whether the story of the return of the diamonds had been given to the newspapers yet, and anxious to know how they had handled it, if it had, Hampstead bethought him of the paper in his hand and unfolded it for inspection.

But the make-up of the front page forced his attention back upon the matter of the minister who was to be arrested. The sub-head startled him, for it contained his own name, while the opening sentence revealed that it was himself who was to be arrested, and that the occasion of the arrest was the charge that he had stolen the Dounay diamonds.

At the first impact of this astounding piece of news, an exclamation of amazement broke from the minister's lips; but immediately his teeth were set hard as his eye dived down the column, lapping up the words of the story by sentences and almost by paragraphs.

Miss Dounay, it appeared, had gone to the office of District Attorney Miller at three o'clock that afternoon by appointment, and had there sworn to a complaint, charging him, the Reverend John Hampstead, with the theft of her diamond necklace, valued at twenty-two thousand dollars. There were a few lines of an interview with District Attorney Miller, in which that official stated that at first he had not regarded Miss Dounay's charges seriously, but that the actress was so emphatic in her demand for the warrant of arrest that he had not felt himself justified in refusing it. At the same time, the District Attorney expressed his personal belief in the innocence of the minister.

An attempt to serve the warrant immediately, the story said, had been frustrated by the temporary absence of the Reverend Hampstead in San Francisco upon one of his accustomed missions of mercy.

The article concluded with the statement that while it was generally known that Doctor Hampstead was one of Miss Dounay's guests on the night before, the report that he had been charged with the theft of the diamonds was everywhere received with a smile, and there was some harsh criticism of the District Attorney for issuing a complaint, the only effect of which must be to gratify the enemies of the clergyman, and to lessen his influence, thus hampering him in the good work he was doing in the community. This would be all to no purpose, since even a preliminary hearing must be sufficient to show that there was no evidence against him, and that the complaint itself was due to the extravagant suspicion of a highly nervous woman, laboring under great emotional strain.

That the actress herself, a woman of moods and caprices, had no adequate appreciation of the seriousness of her act in thus attacking the character of Doctor Hampstead was made evident to the reporters, when a telephone call to her apartments revealed that in the very hour when an endeavor to serve the warrant of arrest was being made, the actress was leaving her hotel in the company of a well-known young business man for a pleasure cruise upon the Bay.

The minister saw with satisfaction how completely the facts as developed had been edited into a story, the assumptions of which were entirely favorable to him. That was good. It was also right. That in itself would show this reckless woman that the people would refuse to believe ill of him upon the word of any mere stranger.

Nevertheless, reflection on the sheer impudence of the woman's attack made Hampstead angry, and with a quick, nervous movement he crushed the paper into a ball and hurled it over the side.

Was there ever a story of blacker ingratitude? Was there ever a weaker, more craven specimen of a man? Was there ever a more clever, more devilish woman?

So this was the way she made good her threat. She had set this trap, had persuaded Rollie to pretend to steal the diamonds and to make a false confession to him, during which the minister had actually sealed the diamonds in one of his own envelopes. John wished he could be sure whether the young rascal actually took the diamonds away with him, as he appeared to do, or whether he didn't drop them in a drawer of the desk or about the study, where a search would reveal them.

With facial expression quite unministerial Hampstead's mind raced on to the question whether the story of the defalcation was also trumped up? But at this point his excited mental processes halted, puzzled for a moment; and then abruptly his face cleared, as he saw the untenableness of his suddenly conceived theory. No; it would not do. Rollie had undoubtedly been perfectly sincere, and this scheming Jezebel of a woman had merely taken advantage of him in the moment of confession, and made him either consciously or unconsciously, and perhaps helplessly, a tool of her desperate vengeance.

And vengeance for what? Hampstead kept asking himself that, and never got farther with an answer than the rage of a self-centered, heartless woman at his failure to pay the supreme tribute to vanity by making love to her as once he had done, and giving her the gloating satisfaction of spurning him as she had spurned him before. This was the extent of his crime against her, and this bold, bald attempt to destroy him was the punishment she had devised. Heavens! Had the woman no sense of responsibility at all? No consciousness of all the terrible harm she would be doing to so many others besides himself if she succeeded in ruining him? Think of the men and women who trusted him, the young boys and girls to whom he was pointed out as a shining example, the struggling people who found inspiration and courage in the spectacle of his own dauntless battlings for the right.

John felt that it was not egotism to think of himself in this way. He knew it as a fact because he had to know it, because men told him so continually, and because it was a supremely steadying influence upon his own life. He dared not swerve. Rollie Burbeck was not the only man in the community who owed him for escape from a fall, or who was toiling laboriously upward, with an eye on the minister climbing far above and turning cheerfully to beckon or lower an Alpine rope for part of the weakened climber's load.

And the Dounay woman knew all of this. Some of it he had shown to her in the hope that it would be an inspiration. Some of it she had seen for herself. But now, in her malice and hatred, she took no account of all that. Unable to make him swerve, she was wickedly determined to hurl him down. And having used Rollo Burbeck this far, John had no doubt at all that her genius would be entirely equal to using him still further, by binding him to absolute secrecy as to his knowledge of the minister's innocence.

But this thought brought home another with shocking force,--the realization that Rollie, the one man who could vindicate him of this charge must not vindicate him! For Rollie to speak and ruin himself seemed only fair, rather than for the minister to be ruined; yet for the young man to confess would be a terrible blow to the mother,--would in fact most likely kill her. That was unthinkable. That blow must be prevented at all hazards.

But even eliminating the mother, and supposing the young man too craven to speak out for himself, Hampstead knew, thinking back a few hours, that on his honor as a minister he had sealed his own lips concerning the young man's confession; he had hinged his appeal to the moral consciousness of that misguided youth upon his own fealty as a priest of God to the sacred trust of confession. How presumptuous this afternoon sounded that speech which he had made to the wretched penitent this morning with such easy assurance.