Chapter 5

"And the boy with the gouged eye--he would hold his pants up like this. He had just come in, and there was nothing to fit him. And he'd put his other hand over his bad eye and blink up at her like this. And the littlest boy--oh, ha! ha! ha!--you ought have seen that littlest boy. He was in skirts, an old dress they'd given me to wear the first day I came; there were no pants small enough for him. He'd back up into the corner and hide his face--like this--and peep over his shoulder; he had a squint that way, that made his face so funny. See, it makes you laugh yourself. But his body--my God!--it was blue with welts! And me--I'd put the baby down that'd been left on the door-steps of the Cruelty, and I'd waltz up to the lady, the nice, patronizing, rich lady, with her handkerchief to her nose and her lorgnette to her eyes--see, like this. I knew just what graft would work her. I knew what she wanted there. I'd learned. So I'd make her a curtsy like this, and in the piousest sing-song I'd--"

There was a heavy step out in the hall--it was the policeman! I'd forgot while I was talking. I was back--back in the empty garret, at the top of the Cruelty. I could smell the smell of the poor, the dirty, weak, sick poor. I could taste the porridge in the thick little bowls, like those in the bear story Molly tells her kid. I could hear the stifled sobs that wise, poor children give--quiet ones, so they'll not be beaten again. I could feel the night, when strange, deserted, tortured babies lie for the first time, each in his small white cot, the new ones waking the old with their cries in a nightmare of what had happened before they got to the Cruelty. I could see the world barred over, as I saw it first through the Cruelty's barred windows, and as I must see it again, now that--

"You see, you don't know it quite all--yet, Mr. Manager!" I spat it out at him, and then walked to the cop, my hands ready for the bracelets.

"But there's one thing I do know!" He's a big fellow but quick on his feet, and in a minute he was up and between me and the cop. "And there isn't a theatrical man in all America that knows it quicker than Fred Obermuller, that can detect it sooner and develop it better. And you've got it, girl, you've got it! ... Officer, take this for your trouble. I couldn't hold the fellow, after all. Never mind which way he went; I'll call up the office and explain."

He shut the door after the cop, and came back to me. I had fallen into a chair. My knees were weak, and I was trembling all over.

"Have you seen the playlet Charity at the Vaudeville?" he roared at me.

I shook my head.

"Well, it's a scene in a foundling asylum. Here's a pass. Go up now and see it. If you hurry you'll get there just in time for that act. Then if you come to me at the office in the morning at ten, I'll give you a chance as one of the Charity girls. Do you want it?"

God, Mag! Do I want it!

V.

Do you remember Lady Patronesses' Day at the Cruelty, Mag? Remember how the place smelt of cleaning ammonia on the bare floors? Remember the black dresses we all wore, and the white aprons with the little bibs, and the oily sweetness of the matron, and how our faces shone and tingled from the soap and the rubbing? Remember it all?

Well, who'd 'a' thought then that Nance Olden ever would make use of it--on the level, too!

Drop the Cruelty, and tell you about the stage? Why, it's bare boards back there, bare as the Cruelty, but oh, there's something that you don't see, but you feel it--something magic that makes you want to pinch yourself to be sure you're awake. I go round there just doped with it; my face, if you could see it, must look like Molly's kid's when she is telling him fairy stories.

I love it, Mag! I love it!

And what do I do? That's what I was trying to tell you about the Cruelty for. It's in a little act that was made for Lady Gray, that there are four Charity girls on the stage, and I'm one of 'em.

Lady Gray? Why, Mag, how can you ever hope to get on if you don't know who's who? How can you expect me to associate with you if you're so ignorant? Yes--a real Lady, as real as the wife of a Lord can be. Lord Harold Gray's a sure enough Lord, and she's his wife but--but a chippy, just the same; that's what she is, in spite of the Gray emeralds and that great Gray rose diamond she wears on the tiniest chain around her scraggy neck. Do you know, Mag Monahan, that this Lady Harold Gray was just a chorus girl--and a sweet chorus it must have been if she sang there!--when she nabbed Lord Harold?

You'd better keep your eye on Nancy Olden, or first thing you know she'll marry the Czar of Russia--or Tom Dorgan, poor fellow, when he gets out! ... Well, just the same, Mag, if that white-faced, scrawny little creature can be a Lady, a girl with ten times her brains, and at least half a dozen times her good looks--oh, we're not shy on the stage, Mag, about throwing bouquets at ourselves!

Can she act? Don't be silly, Mag! Can't you see that Obermuller's just hiring her title and playing it in big letters on the bills for all it's worth? She acts the Lady Patroness, come to look at us Charity girls. She comes on, though, looking like a fairy princess. Her dress is just blazing with diamonds. There's the Lady's coronet in her hair. Her thin little arms are banded with gold and diamonds, and on her neck--O Mag, Mag, that rose diamond is the color of rose-leaves in a fountain's jet through which the sun is shining. It's long--long as my thumb--I swear it is, Mag--nearly, and it blazes, oh, it blazes--

Well, it blazes dollars into Obermuller's box all right, for the Gray jewels are advertised in the bill with this one at the head of the list, the star of them all.

You see it's this way: Lord Harold Gray's bankrupt. He's poor as--as Nance Olden. Isn't that funny? But he's got the family jewels all right, to have as long as he lives. Nary a one can he sell, though, for after his death, they go to the next Lord Gray. So he makes 'em make a living for him, and as they can't go on and exhibit themselves, Lady Gray sports 'em--and draws down two hundred dollars a week.

Yep--two hundred.

But do you know it isn't the two hundred dollars a week that makes me envy her till I'm sick; it's that rose diamond. If you could only see it, Mag, you'd sympathize with me, and understand why my fingers just itched for it the first night I saw her come on.

'Pon my soul, Mag, the sight of it blazing on her neck dazzled me so that it shut out all the staring audience that first night, and I even forgot to have stage fright.

"What's doped you, Olden?" Obermuller asked when the curtain went down, and we all hurried to the wings.

I was in the black dress with the white-bibbed apron, and I looked up at him still dazed by the shine of that diamond and my longing for it. You'd almost kill with your own hands for a diamond like that, Mag!

"Doped? Why--what didn't I do?" I asked him.

"That's just it," he said, looking at me curiously; but I could feel his disappointment in me.

"You didn't do anything--not a blasted thing more than you were told to do. The world's full of supers that can do that."

For just a minute I forgot the diamond.

"Then--it's a mistake? You were wrong and--and I can't be an actress?"

He threw back his head before he answered, puffing a mouthful of smoke up at the ceiling, as he did the night he caught me. The gesture itself seemed to remind him of what had made him think in the first place he could make an actress of me. For he laughed down at me, and I saw he remembered.

"Well," he said, "we'll wait and see... I was mistaken, though, sure enough, about one thing that night." I looked up at him.

"You're a darn sight prettier than I thought you were. The gold brick you sold me isn't all--"

He put out his hand to touch my chin. I side-stepped, and he turned laughing to the stage.

But he called after me.

"Is a beauty success going to content you, Olden?"

"Well, we'll wait and see," I drawled back at him in his own throaty bass.

Oh, I was drunk, Mag, drunk with thinking about that diamond! I didn't care even to please Obermuller. I just wanted the feel of that diamond in my hand. I wanted it lying on my own neck--the lovely, cool, shining, rosy thing. It's like the sunrise, Mag, that beauty stone. It's just a tiny pool of water blushing. It's--

How to get it! How to get away with it! On what we'd get for that diamond, Tom and I--when his time is up--could live for all our lives and whoop it up besides. We could live in Paris, where great grafters live and grafting pays--where, if you've got wit and fifty thousand dollars, and happen to be a "darn sight prettier," you can just spin the world around your little finger!

But, do you know, even then I couldn't bear to think of selling the pretty thing? It hurt me to think of anybody having it but just Nance Olden.

But I hadn't got it yet.

Gray has a dressing-room to herself. And on her table--which is a big box, open end down--just where the three-sided big mirror can multiply the jewels and make you want 'em three times as bad, her big russia-leather, silver-mounted box lies open, while she's dressing and undressing. Other times it's locked tight, and his Lordship himself has it tight in his own right hand, or his Lordship's man, Topham, has it just as tight.

How to get that diamond! There was a hard nut for Nance Olden's sharp teeth to crack. I only wanted that--never say I'm greedy, Mag--Gray could keep all the rest of the things--the pigeon in rubies and pearls, the tiara all in diamonds, the chain of pearls, and the blazing rings, and the waist-trimming all of emeralds and diamond stars. But that diamond, that huge rose diamond, I couldn't, I just couldn't let her have it.

And yet I didn't know the first step to take toward getting it, till Beryl Blackburn helped me out. She's one of the Charities, like me--a tall bleached blonde with a pretty, pale face and gold-gray eyes. And, if you'd believe her, there's not a man in the audience, afternoon or evening, that isn't dead-gone on her.

"Guess who's my latest," she said to me this afternoon, while we four Charities stood in the wings waiting. "Topham--old Topham!"

It all got clear to me then in a minute.

"Topham--nothing!" I sneered. "Beryl Big-head, Topham thinks of only one thing--Milady's jewel-box. Don't you fool yourself."

"Oh, does he, Miss! Well, just to prove it, he let me try on the rose diamond last night. There!"

"It's easy to say so but I don't see the proof. He'd lose his job so quick it'd make his head spin if he did it."

"Not if he did, but if they knew he did. You'll not tell?"

"Not me. Why would I? I don't believe it, and I wouldn't expect anybody else to. I don't believe you could get Topham to budge from his chair in Gray's dressing-room if you'd--"

"What'll you bet?"

"I'll bet you the biggest box of chocolate creams at Huyler's."

"Done! I'll send for him to-night, just before Gray and her Lord come, and you see--"

"How'll I see? Where'll I be?"

"Well, you be waiting in the little hall, right of Gray's dressing-room at seven-thirty to-night and--you might as well bring the creams with you."

Catch on, Mag? At seven-thirty in the evening I was waiting; but not in the little hall of Gray's dressing-room. I hadn't gone home at all after the afternoon performance--you know we play at three, and again at eight-thirty. I had just hidden me away till the rest were gone, and as soon as the coast was clear I got into Gray's dressing-room, pushed aside the chintz curtains of the big box that makes her dressing-table--and waited.

Lord, how the hours dragged! I hadn't had anything to eat since lunch, and it got darker and darker in there, and hot and close and cramped. I put in the time, much as I could, thinking of Tom. The very first thing I'd do after cashing in, would be to get up to Sing Sing to see him. I'm crazy to see him. I'd tell him the news and see if he couldn't bribe a guard, or plan some scheme with me to get out soon.

Afraid--me? What of? If they found me under that box I'd just give 'em the Beryl story about the bet. How do you know they wouldn't believe it? ... Oh, I don't care, you've got to take chances, Mag Monahan, if you go in for big things. And this was big--huge. Do you know how much that diamond's worth? And do you know how to spend fifty thousand?

I spent it all there--in the box--every penny of it. When I got tired spending money I dozed a bit and, in my dream, spent it over again. And then I waked and tried to fancy new ways of getting rid of it, but my head ached, and my back ached, and my whole body was so strained and cramped that I was on the point of giving it all up when--that blessed old Topham came in.

He set the big box down with a bang that nearly cracked my head. He turned on the lights, and stood whistling Tommy Atkins. And then suddenly there came a soft call, "Topham! Topham!"

I leaned back and bit my fingers till I knew I wouldn't shriek. The Englishman listened a minute. Then the call came again, and Topham creaked to the door and out.

In a twinkling I was out, too, you bet.

Mag! He hadn't opened the box at all! There it stood in the middle of the space framed by the three glasses. I pulled at the lid. Locked! I could have screamed with rage. But the sound of his step outside the door sobered me. He was coming back. In a frantic hurry I turned toward the window which I had unlocked when I came in four hours ago. But I hadn't time to make it. I heard the old fellow's hand on the door, and I tumbled back into the box in such a rush that the curtains were still waving when he came in.

Slowly he began to place the jewels, one by one, in the order her Ladyship puts them on. We Charity girls had often watched him from the door--he never let one of us put a foot inside. He was method and order itself. He never changed the order in which he lifted the glittering things out, nor the places he put them back in. I put my hand up against the top of the box, tracing the spot where each piece would be lying. Think, Mag, just half an inch between me and quarter of a million!

Oh, I was sore as I lay there! And I wasn't so cock-sure either that I'd get out of it straight. I tried the Beryl story lots of ways on myself, but somehow, every time I fancied myself telling it to Obermuller, it got tangled up and lay dumb and heavy inside of me.

But at least it would be better to appear of my own will before the old Englishman than be discovered by Lord Gray and his Lady. I had my fingers on the curtains, and in another second I'd been out when--

"Miss Beryl Blackburn's compliments, Mr. Topham, and would you step to the door, as there's something most important she wants to tell you."

Oh, I loved every syllable that call-boy spoke! There was a giggle behind his voice, too; old Topham was the butt of every joke. The first call, which had fooled me, must have been from some giddy girl who wanted to guy the old fellow. She had fooled me all right. But this--this one was the real article.

There was a pause--Topham must be looking about to be sure things were safe. Then he creaked to the door and shut it carefully behind him.

It only took a minute, but in that minute--in that minute, Mag, I had the rose diamond clutched safe in my fingers; I was on the top of the big trunk and out of the window.

Oh, the feel of that beautiful thing in my hand! I'd 'a' loved it if it hadn't been worth a penny, but as it was I adored it. I slipped the chain under my collar, and the diamond slid down my neck, and I felt its kiss on my skin. I flew down the black corridor, bumping into scenery and nearly tripping two stage carpenters. I heard Ginger, the call-boy, ahead of me and dodged behind some properties just in time. He went whistling past and I got to the stage door.

I pulled it open tenderly, cautiously, and turned to shut it after me.

And--

And something held it open in spite of me.

No--no, Mag, it wasn't a man. It was a memory. It rose up there and hit me right over the heart--the memory of Nancy Olden's happiness the first time she'd come in this very door, feeling that she actually had a right to use a stage: entrance, feeling that she belonged, she--Nancy--to this wonderland of the stage!

You must never tell Tom, Mag, promise! He wouldn't see. He couldn't understand. I couldn't make him know what I felt any more than I'd dare tell him what I did.

I shut the door.

But not behind me. I shut it on the street and--Mag, I shut for ever another door, too; the old door that opens out on Crooked Street. With my hand on my heart, that was beating as though it would burst, I flew back again through the black corridor, through the wings and out to Obermuller's office. With both my hands I ripped open the neck of my dress, and, pulling the chain with that great diamond hanging to it, I broke it with a tug, and threw the whole thing down on the desk in front of him.

"For God's sake!" I yelled. "Don't make it so easy for me to steal!"

I don't know what happened for a minute. I could see his face change half a dozen ways in as many seconds. He took it up in his fingers at last. It swung there at the end of the slender little broken chain like a great drop of shining water, blushing and sparkling and trembling.

His hands trembled, too, and he looked up at last from the diamond to my face.

"It's worth at least fifty thousand, you know--valued at that."

I didn't answer.

He got up and came over to where I had thrown myself on a bench.

"What's the matter, Olden? Don't I pay you enough?"

"I want to see Tom," I begged. "It's so long since he--He's up at--at--in the country."

"Sing Sing?"

I nodded.

"You poor little devil!"

That finished me. I'm not used to being pitied. I sobbed and sobbed as though some dam had broken inside of me. You see, Mag, I knew in that minute that I'd been afraid, deathly afraid of Fred Obermuller's face, when it's scornful and sarcastic, and of his voice, when it cuts the flesh of self-conceit off your very bones. And the contrast--well, it was too much for me.

But something came quick to sober me.

It was Gray. She stormed in, followed by Lord Harold and Topham, and half the company.

"The diamond, the rose diamond!" she shrieked. "It's gone! And the carpenters say that new girl Olden came flying from the direction of my dressing-room. I'll hold you responsible--"

"Hush-sh!" Obermuller lifted his hands and nodded over toward me.

"Olden!" she squealed. "Grab her, Topham. I'll bet she stole that diamond, and she can't have got rid of it yet."

Topham jumped toward me, but Obermuller stopped him.

"You'd win only half your bet, my Lady," Obermuller said softly. "She did get hold of the Gray rose, worth fifty thousand dollars, in spite of all your precautions--"

The world seemed to fall away from me. I looked up at him. I couldn't believe he'd go back on me.

"--And she brought it straight to me, as I had asked her to, and promised to raise her salary if she'd win out. For I knew that unless I proved to you it could be stolen, you'd never agree to hire a detective to watch those things, which will get us all into trouble some day. Here! Scoot out o' this. It's nearly time for your number."

He passed the diamond over to her, and they all left the office.

So did I; but he held out his hand as I passed. "It goes--that about a raise for you, Olden. Now earn it."

Isn't he white, Mag--white clean through, that big fellow Obermuller?

VI.

I got into the train, Mag, the happiest girl in all the country. I'd a big basket of things for Tom. I was got up in my Sunday best, for I wanted to make a hit with some fellow with a key up there, who'd make things soft and easy for my Tommy.

I had so much to tell him. I knew just how I'd take off every member of the company to amuse him. I had memorized every joke I'd heard since I'd got behind the curtain--not very hard for me; things always had a way of sticking in my mind. I knew the newest songs in town, and the choruses of all the old ones. I could show him the latest tricks with cards--I'd got those at first hand from Professor Haughwout. You know how great Tom is on tricks. I could explain the disappearing woman mystery, and the mirror cabinet. I knew the clog dance that Dewitt and Daniels do. I had pictures of the trained seals, the great elephant act, Mademoiselle Picotte doing her great tight-rope dance, and the Brothers Borodini in their pyramid tumbling.

Yes, it was a whole vaudeville show, with refreshments between the acts, that I was taking up to Tom Dorgan. I don't care much for a lot of that truck--funny, isn't it, how you get to turn up your nose at the things you'd have given a finger for once upon a time? But Tom--oh, I'd got everything pat for him--my big, handsome Tom Dorgan in stripes--with his curls all shaved off--ugh!

I'd got just so far in my thoughts, sitting there in the train, when I gave a shiver. I thought for a minute it was at the idea of my Tom with one of those bare, round convict-heads on him, that look like fat skeleton faces. But it wasn't. It was--

Guess, Mag.

Moriway.

Both of us thought the same thing of each other for the first second that our eyes met. I could see that. He thought I was caught at last. And I thought he'd been sharp once too often.

And, Mag, it would be hard to say which of us would have been happier if it had been the truth. Oh, to meet Moriway, bound sure enough for Sing Sing!

He got up and came over to me, smiling wickedly. He took the seat behind me, and leaning forward, said softly:

"Is Miss Omar engaged to read to some invalid up at Sing Sing? And for how long a term--I should say, engagement?"

I'd got through shivering by then. I was ready for him. I turned and looked at him in that very polite, distant sort o' way Gray uses in her act when the Charity superintendent speaks to her. It's the only decent thing she does; chances are that that's how Lord Gray's mother looks at her.

"You know my sister, Mr.--Mr.--" I asked humbly.

He looked at me, perplexed for just a second.

"Sister be hanged!" he said at last. "I know you, Nat, and I'm glad to my finger-tips that you've got it in the neck, in spite of all your smartness."

"You're altogether wrong, sir," I said very stately, but hurt a bit, you know. "I've often been taken for my sister, but gentlemen usually apologize when I explain to them. It's hard enough to have a sister who--" I looked up at him tearfully, with my chin a-wabble with sorrow.

He grinned.

"Liars should have good memories," he sneered. "Miss Omar said she was an orphan, you remember, and had not a relative in the world."

"Did she say that? Did Nora say that?" I exclaimed piteously. "Oh, what a little liar she is! I suppose she thought it made her more interesting to be so alone, more appealing to kind-hearted gentlemen like yourself. I hope she wasn't ungrateful to you, too, as she was to that kind Mr. Latimer, before he found her out. And she had such a good position there, too!"

I wanted to look at him, oh, I wanted to! But it was my role to sit there with downcast eyes, just--the picture of holy grief. I was the good one--the good, shocked sister, and though I wasn't a bit afraid of anything he could do to me, or any game he could put up, I yearned to make him believe me--just because he was so suspicious, so wickedly smart, so sure he was on.

But his very silence sort of told me he almost believed, or that he was laying a trap.

"Will you tell me," he said, "how you--your sister got Latimer to lie for her?"

"Mr. Latimer--lie! Oh, you don't know him. He expected a lady to read to him that very evening. He had never seen her, and when Nora walked into the garden--"