Part 19

"You mentioned five. That was a pretty large order, but I got some of my pals who are taxicab drivers to help me, and between us we kept a pretty close watch on all of them. He didn't come near the one I was watching myself, and I didn't hear anything from the others till five o'clock. Then one of the boys sent word to me that he had entered the Grill Club on Monroe Street. I went right over and hung around there for nearly three hours. It was a quarter to eight when he came out. He took a taxi, and I followed in another. He drove to St. John's Hospital over on the West Side. I was right after him and followed him into the building. He doesn't know me, of course, and paid no attention to me. He spoke to the nurse at the desk and then stepped into a waiting room. The nurse looked hard at me, but I said, 'I'm with him,' and stepped back towards the door. She thought I was his man and took no further notice of me. Pretty soon Dr. Hobart came down. He didn't see me, but I saw him plainly. He looked pretty much worried--scared, I thought. He and Mr. Crockett talked for a while in the waiting room, but I couldn't hear anything they said. Then Mr. Crockett left, and Dr. Hobart went back upstairs. I could have spoken to him after Mr. Crockett had gone out, but I thought I had better not let them know that any one was on their trail--for fear they would move him again. Then I had an idea. I went up to the desk again. I said to the nurse: 'How is Mr. Merriam?' She looked at me. 'He's pretty sick,' she said, and turned away. I didn't see what more I could do, so I took my taxi back to the De Soto and went up to the Senator's suite and found Miss Wayward and Mrs. Norman, and Miss Wayward brought me here."

For a moment Rockwell seemed sunk in thought. Then he roused himself, glanced around the circle of faces, and spoke:

"First of all, Mr. Simpson, I want to say that you have done a very clever bit of work. We were about to engage a private detective to undertake what you have already accomplished. I think I can safely say that we will see that you are suitably rewarded."

"You can," said Mr. Wayward emphatically--which was satisfactory since he was the person present from whom any substantial monetary reward must come.

"Thank you, sir," said Simpson.

The Mayor broke in:

"It's pretty clear what has happened. They got Norman downstairs while Miss Norman and Mrs. Norman were at breakfast, put him in a taxi, drove to the hospital, and entered him under the name of Merriam. And Dr. Hobart has stayed in attendance."

"And he's still sick--perhaps worse," said Aunt Mary anxiously.

"Why did they enter him as Merriam?" asked Rockwell, thinking aloud. "It must mean that Crockett doesn't dare denounce us or doesn't wish to do so, that he means to make terms with us and preserve the secrecy of the whole affair. As I see it, there will have to be one more substitution"--he addressed the real owner of the name of Merriam,--"of you for Norman--at the hospital. You have reported yourself to your Riceville people as sick. Very well, you have gone to a hospital. From the hospital you return to your work. It will strengthen your alibi. And Norman will be restored to us--on Crockett's conditions, of course. But we shall escape the worst. We shall come off safe yet. But it must happen at once," he continued, with a note of new anxiety. "The whole State knows that Norman's speaking tour has been abandoned, that he came back to Chicago to-day, that he is in the City now. We must get hold of Crockett some way to-night. The final substitution must be made before morning."

Mr. Wayward was looking at his watch. "It's eleven o'clock now," he said. "But you'd better try telephoning. His clubs, I think."

"Yes," said Rockwell. "The Grill Club! That's where you found him, Simpson? He may have gone back there for the night. I'll try that first."

He went quickly to the telephone.

While Rockwell was looking up the number and the rest waiting in painful expectancy, the doorbell for the third time startled them.

"I'll go, sir," said Simpson.

In a moment he had opened the door.

On the threshold stood Crockett--a pale, hesitant, almost seedy Crockett, very different from the serene, confident, well-groomed financier whom Merriam had first encountered forty-eight hours before at Jennie's.

Rockwell dropped the book:

"Come in, Mr. Crockett. I was just going to 'phone to you."

Crockett advanced a couple of steps into the room. Then he stopped. There was something portentous in his air of mournful gravity. His eyes travelled from face to face. For a moment they rested on Merriam. Then they came to a full stop on Aunt Mary.

The whole roomful remained silent, fascinated by his look, which seemed to speak, not of threat, which they might have expected, but of some disaster beyond threat.

At last with an effort he turned his eyes from Aunt Mary to Rockwell.

"I have to tell you," he said, "that George Norman is dead."

*CHAPTER XXIX*

*THE FINAL DILEMMA*

I do not suppose Mr. Crockett desired to be unnecessarily cruel. Doubtless he would have preferred to break his devastating news more gently. But he was himself in a state of nervous exhaustion from fatigue, worry, and perhaps remorse, and the circle of anxious faces had proved too much for his self-control.

Realising too late the brutal bluntness of his announcement, he broke into a hurried flow of words:

"We took him from the hotel this morning to St. John's Hospital. We thought he would be just as well off there--even better off. Dr. Hobart thought he was nearly well anyway. But the ride and the effort of listening to Hobart's explanations apparently fatigued him. By the time they got to the hospital he was very sick again. His bronchitis--if it ever was bronchitis--turned into pneumonia--double acute pneumonia. He got worse and worse all day. Dr. Hobart and the physicians and nurses at the hospital did everything possible for him. But it was no use. He died at nine o'clock."

All eyes turned suddenly to Aunt Mary, who had risen, holding on to the back of her chair.

Father Murray was at her side in an instant, and Alicia hurried to her.

"No," said Aunt Mary, brokenly, "I'm not going--to faint--or anything. But I want--to be alone."

Rockwell sprang to his feet. "My bedroom," he said, and led the way to the door of his chamber, which opened off the sitting room.

In a moment Aunt Mary, walking between Father Murray and Alicia, had passed into the bedroom.

Mr. Wayward's voice broke the stillness.

"Poor fellow!" he said.

For a minute or two they all paid the tribute of silence to the dead. But it was impossible to be really very sorry for George Norman. He had had an easy, pleasure-filled life--wealth, luxury, fame, and a good time, according to his own conception of a good time, up to the very beginning of his brief illness. That his last few, largely unconscious hours had been passed in a hospital away from his friends had certainly been almost no grief to him. The only sorrow genuinely possible was over the common folly, and the universal final tragedy, of humankind. In a few moments the thoughts of the entire group that remained in Rockwell's sitting room were irresistibly drawn back to the strange and somewhat dangerous situation in which the unexpected death had left them.

Presently Rockwell spoke:

"Technically, Mr. Crockett, I suppose it is not Senator Norman but Mr. Merriam who died at St. John's Hospital."

(Merriam was somewhat startled at this turn of thought; this phase of the matter had not yet occurred to him.)

"You have made no announcement?" Rockwell asked.

"No," said Crockett. "I have done nothing. When Hobart telephoned me that--what had happened, I rushed out to the hospital again--I don't know why. I couldn't believe it. Then I telephoned from the hospital to the De Soto and got Mrs. Norman, and she told me you were all here, so I came here. I have done nothing."

While he was speaking Alicia and Father Murray returned from the bedroom.

"She is all right," said Alicia. "She asked us to leave her alone for a few minutes. Did you tell Mrs. Norman?" she added, addressing Crockett.

"What had happened? Yes," said Crockett.

Merriam's thoughts flew to Mollie June, alone in the vast, heartless hotel with the news of her husband's death.

"Ought not some one to go to her?" he asked.

"Presently," said Rockwell. "We must first consider the situation a little--hers as well as ours."

Mayor Black spoke up:

"It will be pretty awkward for her--aside from natural grief and all that--that her husband should have died in a hospital under another name without her being present, while the man to whom the other name belongs was impersonating him in public. And awkward for Miss Norman. For the rest of us, too. Damned awkward!"

"It is a hard thing to have to close the career of George Norman with such a story," said Mr. Wayward.

"It must never happen!" said a voice behind them.

They all turned. Aunt Mary was standing in the door of the bedroom. She already looked more like herself. She was one of those souls who may sink under passive anxiety and suspense but find themselves again immediately when a call for action comes. She had scarcely been left alone, apparently, when the same thought which the Mayor and Mr. Wayward had expressed had occurred to her--the peril to the name of Norman, which was perhaps even more dear to her than her brother himself had been. And instantly, by some powerful effort of will, she had put grief behind her and turned to face this new danger.

"It must never happen," she repeated, advancing into the room, where Alicia, and the men too, unmindful of the etiquette which should have brought them to their feet, sat staring at her. "The secret must be kept. It is more important now than ever. With George alive, it would not have mattered so much. He would have lived it down triumphantly. Only the rest of us would have suffered--not he, nor the Name. But now--_it must be kept_!"

"But how _can_ it be kept?" said Crockett, in a tone of desperation.

For a moment no one spoke.

Then Rockwell, looking from face to face, drew a deep breath.

"There is just one way," he said. "It was John Merriam who died. Senator Norman is alive." He waved his hand at Merriam. "He must go on living!"

"But that is impossible," said Mayor Black and Merriam together.

"Face the alternative first," said Rockwell. "George--the real George--was admitted to the hospital about nine o'clock this morning. At that same hour Senator Norman was making a speech at Cairo before an audience representing the entire county. That is known all over the State. He took the next train back to Chicago. But that train did not reach Chicago until after--after the death."

"We could have the hour of the death changed on the records," proposed Mr. Wayward. "It is already announced all over the State that Senator Norman is ill again. He could be rushed from the train to the hospital and die there during the night."

"Then we should have two deaths on our hands," said Rockwell, "and only one body. Unless we bring Merriam to life again. How are we to do that? It is pretty hard to get hospital authorities to falsify their records. And dozens of people must know the supposed facts--nurses, doctors, clerks at the hospital. We could never keep them all from talking. The reporters would get hold of it within twenty-four hours. No, Senator Norman cannot have died at the hospital. He is alive. He must go on living!"

"Can't he die at the hotel--to-night or to-morrow?" said Merriam.

"Then what becomes of you?" asked Rockwell.

"Why, I should go back to Riceville."

"You can't. You're dead! And how can Senator Norman die at the hotel when we should not be able to produce his body there?"

"We could get the body," said Mr. Wayward, speaking in a lowered tone. "As Mr. Merriam's friends we would take his body away from the hospital to be buried and bring it to the hotel."

"We shall have to send for the real Merriam's friends," said Rockwell. "From Riceville and--wherever your people live." He looked at Merriam. "We should have no body to show them. We could bury a loaded casket. But why should we, who must be strangers to him from their point of view, have been in such a hurry when they could get here in a few hours? Probably they would want to take his body elsewhere for burial. Very likely they would have the coffin we had buried raised and opened. And how could we get a dead body into the Hotel De Soto? Up a fire escape?"

In the earnestness of his argument Rockwell evidently did not realise the gruesomeness of his language.

Aunt Mary shuddered.

"No!" she said. "I will not have George's body smuggled about the city."

She paused, looking strangely at Merriam. None of the others, not even Rockwell, ventured to speak.

"Alicia told me, I believe, that you have no near relatives?" she said presently.

"None nearer than cousins," Merriam replied.

For a long minute more Aunt Mary stared at him. She closed her eyes, opened them, and looked again. Then her lips shut tight for a moment in an expression of momentous decision. She leaned forward.

"You have the Norman blood in you," she said to Merriam, "on your mother's side. You are fine stuff. We have all seen that. We will make a Norman of you, if you will. You shall take George's place--to save his name!"

"But----" Merriam began.

But Rockwell cut in:

"It's absolutely the only way," he cried. "The only other alternative is to let the whole story come out."

"Then that's what we have to do," said Mr. Wayward. "Make a clean breast of it."

"No!" said Aunt Mary.

"No!" echoed Rockwell. "Think what that means--to George's memory, first of all. That in his last hours his relatives and friends were conspiring against him, with the help of a stranger double, to force him to abandon the kind of life he was leading and the disreputable interests with which he was associated.--I beg your pardon, Mr. Crockett!"

Crockett waved a feeble hand to indicate forgiveness or indifference.

"And then to Mollie June," Rockwell continued. "That she had connived at the impersonation of her husband during his last illness by another man. How far did that other man take her husband's place, will be the question every man and woman in the State will ask. And all the rest of us. Aunt Mary. And Mr. Merriam, who will lose his job and his professional standing. And the Mayor and myself, who will be ruined politically and every other way. Even you, Mr. Wayward, would find yourself in an exceedingly unpleasant situation. And Mr. Crockett, on the other side, would be no better off. For the story of the kidnapping must come out."

The wilted financier uttered a sort of groan.

"But can the other thing be done?" asked the Mayor, the perspiration of mental anguish showing on his forehead.

"Certainly it can," said, Rockwell eagerly. "Senator Norman has come back to Chicago. Here he is. Presently he will arrive at the hotel. He will be pretty sick. You and I"--he looked at Mr. Wayward--"will support him to the elevator and to his rooms. He will be ill for several days. We must get hold of Hobart again to attend him. Then we will announce that he is threatened with tuberculosis and is to retire from public life. He must resign his seat in the Senate. We daren't go ahead with that. It would be too dangerous--and too serious a fraud besides." (Evidently there was some limit to a Reformer's unscrupulousness.) "He will go to his ranch in Colorado to recuperate. You will actually go." He was addressing Merriam now. "You must live there for a year or so. During that time only a few of Norman's private friends will visit you. We will coach you up on these a few at a time. If any of them notice any slight changes in you, they will lay it to your illness. You will easily take your place in the whole circle of his private life."

"But the property," said Mr. Wayward. "The Norman fortune."

"Reverts to me and Mollie June," said Aunt Mary, who was evidently heart and soul with Rockwell. "If we are satisfied----"

She stopped. The mention of Mollie June had recalled a phase of the situation which Rockwell and the Mayor and even Mr. Wayward had apparently forgotten--so little are men accustomed to consider their women folk when the real game of business or politics is on. Merriam and Alicia had not forgotten it, but had not been able so far to get a word in. As for Aunt Mary I cannot say--she was so near to being a man herself.

"Mollie June!" repeated Rockwell aghast.

"Exactly," said Merriam, somewhat bitterly. Him, too, Rockwell had been treating pretty much as a lifeless pawn in the game.

But Aunt Mary, when roused, was equal to anything.

"We shall manage that," she said. "I will go to Colorado with Mr. Merriam. Mollie June can return to her father for a time. We can arrange a separation--or----"

Even Aunt Mary hesitated. But Alicia took the cue.

"Or they can be married--or remarried," she said, fixing her bright eyes, with a gleam of mischievous understanding in them, on Merriam.

The argument had come to a full stop. The whole roomful sat looking at Merriam, who tried to think and found he could not, except that he realised that all the rest had tacitly accepted Rockwell's plan.

"Come!" said Alicia vivaciously. "It isn't so bad, is it? The Norman fortune and--Mollie June!"

Bad! The prospect was so dazzling to Merriam that he could not take his mind off it in order to think calmly. To die to his old self--to his poverty and loneliness, to his teaching with which he had long been bored,--and to step as if by magic into a new life with wealth, leisure--and Mollie June! For surely she loved him, and she had not loved George Norman. She would marry him--after an interval, of course.

"I must think," he said, weakly, in response to Alicia's exhortation.

"Of course you must," said Rockwell. "You must accustom your mind to it. But it will all be perfectly easy. You were brought up on a farm, weren't you? You will take to the ranch life like anything. It's mostly stock-raising. You can go in for scientific farming. After a few months it would probably be a good thing for you to travel, perhaps for a year or two--especially if you and Mollie June should marry. Get out of the country, so as to leave Norman's old life entirely behind you for a while. You might take a trip around the world."

Merriam's youthful heart bounded in spite of himself. A trip around the world with Mollie June!

"As to your old self," Rockwell continued, "that's quite simple, too. Norman was entered at the hospital under your name. A death certificate must have been given by now." He looked at Crockett.

"I don't know," said Crockett. "Hobart may have held off on that."

"At any rate it can be. In fact, it will have to be. Hobart shall telegraph to Riceville and to your cousins, wherever they are. He was the house physician at the De Soto where you took sick. That was how he came to be attending you. When you got bad he took you to the hospital. Nothing more natural. The rest of us will not need to appear at all."

"Aunt Mary will have to appear," said Alicia. "She will want to attend the funeral."

"She became acquainted with you at the hotel, then," said Rockwell. "Took an interest in a young man who was alone and ill. When your relatives and friends come Hobart will have the body already laid out in a casket. He can advise immediate burial here in the city. Aunt Mary can offer a lot in the Norman plot at Lakewood. Would your cousins probably consent to that?"

"Very likely," said Merriam, rather in a daze. It was confusing to be discussing the details of one's own interment.

"Then everything will follow in regular course," said Rockwell, speaking as if all difficulties were solved. "George will be buried with his family, and you can start for Colorado."

For a second time the talk came to a full stop. The new plan was outlined in full. It remained only to decide upon it or to reject it and face the alternative of a public confession. All of them except Merriam had already accepted the scheme, apparently, gruesome and bizarre as it was. It was for all the rest so much the easiest way and the most advantageous. But it did not require any of them to die--to die to his own self, his friends, his very name. On the other hand it did not offer them any such positive rewards as were proffered to Merriam--a fortune and love. We can hardly wonder that he was somewhat stupefied by the alternatives that beat upon his mind. The loss of all that up to this point in his life had been his identity versus Mollie June--that was the essence of the struggle within him.

He sat beside Rockwell's table, staring at the now silent percolator, trying to think but able only to feel. The others were looking uneasily at him and at one another. Aunt Mary's eyes and Alicia's demanded of Rockwell, who had always managed everything, that he should manage this too. Once he started to speak, but gave it up and looked appealingly at Alicia instead. Indeed he might justifiably feel that this was Alicia's job. She acknowledged as much in her own mind and was trying to decide what to do or say, when the one person present who had not spoken throughout the entire scene came to the rescue.

Through all their long discussion Simpson had stood unobtrusive and unnoticed in the background, but he had followed every word. For his fortunes too, humble, indeed, but sufficiently important to him, were bound up in this decision. If the deception was to be continued, his assistance, in the matter of silence at least, would be necessary, and he could expect a large--honorarium; if it came to a public confession, he could still expect something, but probably a good deal less; and to win and hold Jennie he needed a considerable sum of money.

So now he advanced a step and spoke:

"Shall I call a taxi for you, Mr. Merriam, to take you to the hotel?"

"Of course!" cried Alicia, jumping up. "You must go and see Mollie June. It all depends now upon her."

The others too stirred and expressed more or less audible acquiescence, and Simpson had his reward in the shape of approving glances from Rockwell and Mr. Wayward.

Merriam got to his feet with the other men because Alicia had risen. He was not so obtuse nor so much dazed that he did not see what they were doing. They were trying to rush him. They calculated that though Mollie June in the abstract might contend indecisively with other abstract considerations, Mollie June in the flesh would decide him in the twinkling of an eye. He saw that plainly enough. Nevertheless, for his part it did now depend altogether upon Mollie June. If he was to do this thing--to abandon his old self and enter upon what must be in some degree a lifelong career of deception,--it would be for her sake--not only in order to win her sooner, years sooner, than he could otherwise have the slightest hope of doing, but to save her from scandal, and because she loved him and wanted him too at once (comparatively speaking) as he wanted her.

So his decision was made almost as soon as he was on his feet. He looked with some dignity from one waiting face to another about the circle.

"Yes," he said quietly, "it does depend on her. You may call a taxi, Simpson."

*CHAPTER XXX*

*MOLLIE JUNE*

Almost before Merriam's brief sentence was out of his mouth Simpson had started for the telephone. But Mayor Black spoke up:

"My car and chauffeur are below. We came up from the hotel in it. You can use it."