Part 10

Miss Keogh was beautiful--and when an Irish girl is beautiful she is beautiful in so many ways! She had the wonderful complexion of her race and a mouth carved out of heaven's prize strawberry. Her eyes were an incredibly deep blue when they were not an incredibly deep pansy-purple, and they were abysses of velvet. In the darkness, without seeing them--just by remembering them--you loved those eyes. In the light, when you could see them, you simply worshiped! Her throat was one of those paradoxical affairs, soft and hard, which made you think at one and the same time of marble and rose-leaves--Solomon's tower of ivory, crowned by the glory of golden-brown hair, so fine that you thought of clouds of it!

If you looked at her eyes you suspected, and if you looked at her throat you were certain that you, a respectable married man, had in you the makings of a criminal--the crime being bigamy. Also you would have sworn to her only too cheerfully that she was the only girl you had ever loved. With one look, remember!

Jemingham looked at her with a cold, impersonally appreciative eye, as he might have scrutinized a clock that was both beautiful and costly.

Miss Keogh understood it perfectly. It piqued her, accustomed as she was to instant adoration. Yet it was not entirely displeasing. This man knew as a connoisseur knows--with his head. That he had not permitted the silly heart to disturb the critical faculties was less flattering, of course. It deferred the inevitable triumph and thus would make it sweeter.

“Has Mrs. Morris told you what I should like you to do?” Jemingham's voice was coldly emotionless, and his gray eyes showed frosty lights.

“She has told me what you doubtless told her. But I must confess I am not very clear in my own mind,” answered Miss Keogh.

Her voice was what you would have expected an artistic Providence to give her. It complemented the lips. If you closed your eyes and heard the voice you saw her eyes and felt the heavenly strawberries on your own lips!

Jemingham had not taken his cold eyes off her. He asked as if she were anybody--a woman of forty, for example, “Will you listen to me carefully?”

“Oh yes!”

“I provide transportation, first-class, to London. I pay you thirty-five dollars a week for your services and allow ten dollars a day for hotel expenses, and so on. At the end of the case your contingent fee will depend upon your success. We don't want to skimp--but we are not throwing away money. It may be one hundred or five hundred dollars. But forget all about it.”

“I have--in advance,” said the marvel, calmly.

Jemingham looked at her steadily. She looked back unflinchingly and yet not at all defiantly as a lesser person would.

“If you accept my offer you will go when in London to Thornton's Hotel--an old-fashioned but very select hotel--where you will find a nice room reserved for you; I will cable for it. It will cost you a guinea a day--for the room and table board. You will thus have five dollars a day for cabs and incidentals. In that hotel lives Mrs. Margaret Deering, an elderly American widow, who looks healthy enough. We fear she is not so strong as she looks, and don't want her to be alone. But she will not take hints. I wish you to make friends with her, so that if she should become ill enough to need attention you may see that she gets proper care and induce her to cable to her only daughter.” He stopped and looked at Miss Keogh inquiringly, as if to convince himself that Miss Keogh had understood.

“What,” said Miss Keogh, calmly, “is the rest of it?” Her eyes were very dark. They always seemed to deepen in color when she frowned. She always frowned when she concentrated--all women do, notwithstanding their dread of wrinkles.

Jerningham stared at her. Then he said, “The lady is not insane.”

“Nervous?”

“Not yet!”

“Ah!” Miss Keogh nodded her head. Her color had risen somewhat.

“Is there anything in what I have said so far that makes you unwilling to take this case?” asked Jerningham.

“Nothing--so far,” she said, looking steadily into his cold, gray eyes. She was, of course, Irish.

“Very well. You can save her family much worriment by suggesting to Mrs. Deering that she ought to have a trained nurse in constant attendance.”

“By the name of Keogh?” interjected the most wonderful.

“No. You are supposed to be a young lady with an income of your own. You might explain that you took up trained nursing to help your only brother, a physician.”

“Very well. And--”

“After you meet Mrs. Deering you might make judicious remarks about her health.”

“For example--”

“Well, at breakfast you say: 'You didn't sleep well last night, did you?' If she says no, you can immediately suggest a physician. If she says she did, you say: 'Well, there is something wrong with you! Did you ever have your kidneys examined?' A simple remark in the proper tone of voice sometimes does it--like, 'Whatever in the world is the matter with you, dear Mrs. Deering?' You understand?”

“If you mean that I must suggest to her that she is ailing--”

“Precisely. The idea is not to frighten her to death, my dear young woman with the beautiful but suspicious eyes, but simply to induce her to send for her only daughter, so that afterward the two will not be separated. And the old lady, I may say for the benefit of your still suspicious eyes, is not very rich, though the daughter is. So your imagination need not invent any devilish plot. I think you can accomplish your work in six weeks. For every day under the six weeks you will receive five pounds. That's twenty-five dollars a day. That is intended, Miss Keogh, to make you hurry. But you must be tactful.”

“Make it a fixed sum. You look like a clever man.”

She looked at him challengingly. He stared back, and gradually a look of admiration came into his eyes. He said, with a smile of appreciation:

“You win! You are certainly the most wonderful girl in the world! I'll make it one thousand dollars, win, lose, or draw. But the quicker the cablegram--”

“--grams,” she corrected--“plural. For greater effect at this end!”

“--grams!” he echoed. “And now you must come with me to the bank to get your letter of credit and some English money. I'll pay in advance.”

He rose. Miss Keogh motioned to him to sit down again. He did so, and looked at her alertly. It might have disconcerted some girls--but not the only absolutely perfect one. Not at all!

“There remains something,” she said.

“What?” he queried, sharply.

“You forgot it!” she told him, with one of those utterly maddening smiles of forgiveness with which beautiful women rivet the fetters and make one grateful.

“What? What?” he asked, impatiently.

“Why?” she answered. “That is what! Why?”

Her beautiful head nodded twice with a birdlike gracefulness. Her eyes were very blight--and very dark! Her cheeks were flushed. Her ripe lips, slightly parted, were overpoweringly tempting.

Jerningham stood up again and stared fixedly at her as though he would read miles and miles beyond her wonderful eyes--into the very depths of her soul! He approached her and held out both his hands. After a scarcely perceptible hesitation she placed hers in his. He shook them with profound gravity; then bowed and raised her right to his lips--and kissed it twice. Still holding her hands in his, he said to her, earnestly:

“My dear child, you are the most wonderful woman in all the world. You are simply the last word in utter perfection. I am a millionaire, but not a crook. I am forty, but still strong. I have never been in love with a woman; but I now know I could be. If you ever wish to marry for the ease and comfort that great wealth gives, or if you ever feel like using your wonderful gifts to make a man who has both money and brains become an important personage in the world--just say the word. There is nothing--nothing, do you hear?--that we could not do together, you and I. My name is--” He paused and looked at her as if to make sure again.

“Yes?” she said, in her most heavenly voice. She released her hands, but her eyes never left his. “Jerningham.”

“The Klondike millionaire who--”

“The same!”

“Ah!” said Miss Keogh, calmly, but her flowerlike cheeks were azalea-pink, and her eyes were full of light. She had read the _Planet's_ articles. She did not remember how many million dollars Jerningham was supposed to have; but she did remember how the fairest of the fair had tried--and failed!

“Remember--any time, with or without notice. My offer is open until you accept it or definitely refuse it. Perhaps I never could make you love me; but I know I could love you if I let myself go.”

“You have not answered me,” said Miss Keogh. “Ask again,” he smiled.

“Why?” There was no smile in her eyes.

It made him serious. He answered:

“For friendship.”

“To a woman?”

“To a man.”

“Again I ask, Why?”

There was a pause. Then he said:

“Mrs. Ashton Welles is the only daughter of Mrs. Deering.”

“And--”

“She is twenty-two.”

“And--”

“Her husband is fifty-two. That's all!”

“Is it?”

“So far as I am concerned, it is--really!”

“Is Mr. Ashton Welles your friend?”

“No. But he is no enemy, either.”

“No? But you have a friend, a Mr. Wolfe--a Mr. Francis Wolfe?” She knew it from a newspaper item.

But Mr. Jerningham jumped up from his seat. “Marry me, dear girl! Marry me, I beg of you! You are the only woman in the world! You are the most beautiful ever created and, beyond all question, the cleverest. You are a genius! Why isn't all mankind on its knees worshiping? Will you marry me? Wait! Don't speak. I know what your answer will be.”

“You do?” She smiled inscrutably.

Imagine the Sphinx--if the Sphinx were Irish and very beautiful--with those eyes and those lips! Guess? You couldn't guess where your soul was--or whose!

“Yes, I do,” answered Jerningham, confidently. “I will write it on a piece of paper and prove it. But first tell me this: Will you take Mrs. Deering's case?”

She looked at him, and said, “Yes.”

“Very well.” He wrote something on one of his cards, doubled it so she could not see what he had written, and gave it to her, saying, “Now answer me: Will you marry me?”

She looked at him a long time. He met her gaze squarely. Presently she said, very seriously:

“Not yet!”

“Look in the card,” he said, also very seriously.

She did. It said: _Not yet!_

A vague alarm came into her purple-blue eyes. She was on the point of speaking, but he held up his hand, and said, earnestly:

“Please don't say it. We'll meet in London. You will enjoy the Continent later on. Now let us go and get your letter of credit, and see whether you like the stateroom that I ordered reserved.” They did.

On the next day Jerningham's limousine took Miss Keogh and her hand-luggage to the steamer.-Jerningham was there to see her off. She had invited a dozen of her friends to do the same, and they were there--all of them women and most of them frankly envious, for her stateroom was full of beautiful flowers and baskets of wonderful fruit--quite as if she already were a millionaire!

As she said good-by to Jerningham there was in her eyes a look of intelligent, almost cold-blooded, gratitude which seemed to embrace Mr. Jerningham's kindness, his thoughtfulness, and his bank account.

“I wish you a very pleasant voyage!” he said. “Think over my offer. When you get to London will you mail these letters for me? Remember, you are to cable if you need anything, money or advice--or a husband. And cable at once if Mrs. Deering cables. Good-by! _Bon voyage!_”

When Miss Keogh came to open the package of letters she found in it thirty-three, stamped with British stamps, on stationery of Thornton's Hotel'! They were addressed in a woman's handwriting to various business houses, some of which she recognized as manufacturers of medical goods and agents of mineral waters of the kind used by people who suffer from kidney diseases. It made her think that if--between the deluge of medical prospectuses and Miss Keogh's efforts--Mrs. Deering did not cable for her only daughter it would be a wonder! Jerningham was neglecting nothing to succeed.

V

Frank Wolfe's first task in his new and now famous job consisted of helping Jerningham buy two automobiles. Then, when the weather permitted, they toured Westchester County and Long Island.

Usually they took along some of Frank's men friends. It was pleasant work---at the rate of twenty-five thousand dollars a year.

Jerningham did not again refer to his love-affair, and Frank could not very well allude to it; but it was perfectly plain to the young man that within a very short time their friendship would be sufficiently strong to justify Mr. Jerningham in asking Frank to help actively in the search of the vanished Naida Deering.

One day Mr. Jerningham waited in vain for young Mr. Wolfe. They had planned to go to Mount Kisco to look at a farm that was offered for sale, Mr. Jerningham having developed the usual millionaire's desire to own an estate. At one o'clock the telephone-bell rang. Jerningham answered in person. He heard a feminine voice say that Mr. Wolfe regretted that a severe indisposition had prevented him from going as usual to Mr. Jerningham's rooms, but he hoped to be sufficiently recovered to have that pleasure on the next day.

Jerningham merely said, “Say I hope it is nothing serious--and ask him, please, whether there is anything I can do.”

Silence. Then: “He says, 'No--thanks!' It is nothing very serious.”

“Tell him not to come down until he has entirely recovered and to take good care of himself. Good-by!”

If Mr. Jerningham heard the tinkling music of an irrepressible giggle at the other end of the wire he did not show it. His face was serious as he found an address in the telephone-directory. He called up the Brown Lecture Bureau and made an appointment to see Captain Brown, the manager, at 3 p.m. At that hour, to the minute, he was ushered into the private offices of the world-famous manager of the lecture bureau.

“Captain Brown?”

“Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”

“I should like to know what lecturers you have available at the moment,” said Jerningham.

The Klondiker did not look like the chairman of a church entertainment committee or like a village philanthropist. So Captain Brown asked:

“Where is the--er--Is it a club?”

“No. It is myself. Here in New York.”

“Well, we provide speakers and lecturers, not exactly entertainers, to--”

“I know all that. I wish to know whom you could send me to entertain me. Let me see! Is Commander Finsen, the explorer, here now?”

“Yes.”

“And his terms?”

“It depends upon where it is.”

Evidently Jerningham did not think Captain Brown realized what was wanted, for he said, earnestly:

“Captain Brown, get this clearly fixed in your mind, if you please: I am anxious to hear some of your lecturers by myself alone, in my own apartments. I wish men who have done things--men who are, above all things, brave and resourceful. I don't want decadent poets, but explorers, gentlemen adventurers, humanists, or scientists, who have a knack of imparting their knowledge in such a way as to interest men who are neither old nor scientific. I am perfectly willing to pay your usual rate. What's the odds if one of your clients spends an evening with me or whether he spends it in Norwalk, Connecticut, or Boundbrook, New Jersey? Do you get me?”

“Oh, perfectly. I might suggest--”

Here the genial manager ceased speaking to smile, grateful that so unusual a man as Jerningham should condescend to listen. It was a habit--this thankful smiling--that came from having dealt with geniuses for thirty years. Then Captain Brown permitted himself to suggest a dozen or more men who had very interesting stories to tell. Jerningham asked him to make a memorandum of the men and their specialties, and agreed to call on Captain Brown when he needed entertainment. After Captain Brown had given him the names and prices, Jerningham gave his own name and address.

Captain Brown looked grieved. He read the newspapers. He might have asked double the fees from the Alaskan Monte Cristo!

On the next day, when Mr. Francis Wolfe showed up with never a trace of anything but good health on his pleasing face, Jerningham invited him to spend the next evening in the apartments and hear Finsen tell how he had discovered the tribe of Antarctic giants, the shortest of whom was seven feet three inches; and how he had captured alive, thirty-three white bears. He asked Frank to invite five friends who might be interested, first, in dining with Jerningham and Commander Finsen, and then in hearing Finsen spin his yarn.

Frank gladly undertook to find the audience.

So they had a very nice little dinner, with just enough to drink and no killjoys in activity. And later, in Jerningham's little sitting-room at the hotel, they heard the great Dane, who was a prosaic viking with iron muscles and pale-blue eyes that made you uncomfortable for reasons unknown, tell them all about his remarkable voyage of discovery and his hunts--no end of things that he could tell them, but could not tell a mixed audience: perfectly amazing details, of which Frank and his friends talked for weeks.

Then there was a little midnight supper, at which they all told stories that left no unpleasant aftereffects.

One day after luncheon Jerningham, who had been in a particularly jovial mood, suddenly became very serious. He aimed at Frank one of those searching looks that seemed to go to the young man's soul. Then he said:

“My boy, I'd like to say something to you.”

“Say it.”

“I shall probably hurt your feelings, so you must be prepared to keep your temper well in hand.”

“You ought to know me better than that by now, Jerningham,” retorted Frank. He had grown not only to like, but even to admire, this strange miner.

“Wolfe,” said Jerningham, slowly, “you are one of those unfortunate chaps who are cruelly handicapped by perennial youth. It is doubtless a pleasing thing to feel at fifty as you did at twenty. Nevertheless, it is bad business. It is all very nice to shun responsibility, but it makes you careless; and you can't expect to saddle consequences on your guardian after you are twenty-one. A boy of forty can't be trusted to take care of his own property.”

“I can take care of mine,” laughed Frank, “without any trouble.” His property was about minus thirty thousand.

“Your property now--yes. But suppose you had a million or two left you--or even more? Do you know what would happen to those millions, and do you know what would happen to you?”

“I know--but I won't tell.”

“Will you let me tell you?” asked Jerningham, so earnestly that Frank almost stopped smiling.

“I'll hear you to the bitter end.”

“The millions would go from your pocket into the pockets of--well, you know whose pockets! And your life would go into the Big Beyond by the W. W. route.”

“I bite. What's W. W.?”

“Wine and woman. You would last perhaps five years. You would die a dipsomaniac at thirty or thereabout. The chief folly of fighting booze when you are rich is that it renders wealth utterly futile.”

“How?”

“Well, you can get just as drunk on ten dollars a day as you can on one thousand dollars--with this difference, that in the one case you would have to get drunk on whisky by yourself and in the other you might get drunk on vintage champagne in the company of paid parasites. The morning after is the same in both cases: you don't remember any more of the ten-dollar jag than of the thousand-dollar orgy! When a drunkard sets out to squander a million all he really does is to carry a sign on his back with letters a mile high--the sign reading, 'I am a d------d fool!”'

Frank took it good-naturedly because he liked Jemingham and because he was not a millionaire. It really would be asinine to be a millionaire and try to drink all there was; so he said, amiably:

“Having downed the Demon Rum, then what?”

“I'll put it up to you this way: I have no family and I may never marry. I certainly won't if I don't find my first and only sweetheart. Suppose I felt like leaving you some of my money? You are a nice boy, but you also have been a D. F., and you must admit that no man likes to see his friend trying to beat all D. F. records. Don't get mad and don't look indignant! I want to make a proposition to you: I'll agree to deposit to your account in a trust company one hundred dollars a day for every day you don't touch a drop! I don't want to reform you. I merely want to train you--in case! There will be some times when you will forfeit that. It will amount to paying one hundred dollars for a Martini. It will become a luxury.”

“Too expensive for me!” said Frank, seriously. “And, my boy, it is more than being on the water-wagon--it's being able to stay on! Booze is so foolish! I want to give you some business matters--for you to handle for me.”

“You know what I know about business--”

“Can't you do as you are told? Don't you know enough to look clever and say, 'Sign here!' in a frozen voice?”

“Oh yes. But--”

“I know you will miss your evenings at first. But I'll tell you what to do. I am no killjoy. Well, you spend as many evenings as you wish with me. Invite as many friends as you please--sex no bar. Will you?”

“Jemingham, you are a nice chap. I'll do it. But you must not think of that one hundred dollars--”

“Tut-tut! Can't you understand that I want to do it--that I love to see your bank account grow? Run along now. I want to read Lucretius.”

From that day Francis Wolfe became Jemingham's inseparable companion. Every night they went to the theater together or else they spent the evening in Jemingham's rooms, listening to celebrities. Their evenings soon became famous. Indeed, people began to talk about Frank Wolfe's reform. Even his fairest and frailest friends, knowing that Frank forfeited one hundred dollars a day by falling off the water-wagon, kept him firmly on the seat--and borrowed the hundred. In due time the miracle reached the ears of Frank's sisters and of his aunt, Mrs. Stimson. They had a talk with Frank. They were first amazed, then delighted, when they saw Frank and when they heard about Jerningham's intention of making him his heir.

Thus it came about that, out of gratitude for the man who was making a man of their brother, Mrs.

John Burt and Mrs. Sydney Walsingham accepted Mr. Jerningham's invitation and attended one of the lectures at the Klondiker's apartments. The little supper that followed was a great success. Mr. Jemingham talked little, but extremely well--as when he said to Mrs. Jack in a low voice that he loved Frank Wolfe and some day everybody would be sure of it!

“I am merely training him. But don't think I am asking the impossible. I wish him to know enough to hold on to what I'll leave him.”

Of course after that Mr. Jerningham was not only in society, but even in a fair way of becoming a fad. Gerald Lanier, the short-story writer, said that Jerningham was society's gold cure and had climbed into the inner circles on a ladder made of tightly corked wine-bottles; in fact, he wrote what his nonliterary friends called a skit--and Frank's friends a knock--entitled: “How to Capitalize Intemperance.” But that did not hinder Jerningham from receiving invitations from families with thirsty younger sons.

VI

One morning Jemingham, who had seemed preoccupied, said to Frank:

“I wonder if I can ask you--” He paused and looked doubtfully at Frank.

“What?”

“A favor.”

“Of course. Why, you can even touch me if you want to.”

“I wonder if your--if Mrs. Burt would invite Mrs. Ashton Welles to dinner?”

“I guess so. I'll ask her.”

“That way you could meet Mrs. Welles, and--”

“You mean,” said Frank, trying to look like Sherlock Holmes, “I could ask her about your--about her sister?”

Jerningham jumped to his feet in consternation.

“Great Scott, no! No!” he shouted.

“Why, I thought--”