Part 13

Of course other people who did not wish Welles well heard about it, and the whisper ran about the Street, getting blacker and blacker as it ran, until everybody knew something had happened--everybody except the directors of the VanTwiller Trust Company. And when the transfer-books closed for the annual meeting of the stockholders it was found that Mr. Alfred Jerningham owned, by purchase or option, and had irrevocable proxies on, a little more than twenty-eight thousand shares of the stock. This, together with the twelve thousand shares owned jointly by Patrick T. Behan and Oliver Judson, the street-railroad magnates, and the blocks controlled by the Garvin brothers, Tammany contractors, and Mayer & Shanberg, F. R. Chisolm, John Matson & Company, and others of the Behan-Judson clique, which once tried to secure control of the company and were foiled by Ashton Welles, made a combination that was bound to win at the annual election.

Jerningham ceased going to the VanTwiller Trust Company because Ashton Welles had sailed for London on the receipt of a cablegram that read:

_Leaving for Continent. Mother and I cannot return before three months. Will write soon._

_Anne_.

Instead of calling on his friend Stewardson, Jerningham preferred to spend hours and hours conversing with Patrick T. Behan, “the most dangerous man in Wall Street!”--and the slickest. But on the day before the election Jerningham did call on Stewardson and offered to sell his holdings of VanTwiller stock at six hundred dollars a share.

“Why, I thought you--” began the vice-president.

“I know you did. I wanted you to. But six hundred dollars is only twenty-five dollars a share more than Behan, and Judson, and Garvin, and the rest of those pirates have offered me. I've decided not to be a stockholder of the trust company; so just get your friends together and tell them if they want to retain the control they can give you a check for me--six hundred dollars a share on twenty-eight thousand, one hundred and twenty-three shares. Put it down--twenty-eight thousand, one hundred and twenty-three shares. Good day!”

“Wait! I want to say--”

“Don't say it! Write it! I'm still at the Brabant,” said Jerningham, coldly. “I advise you to get at Mr. Welles on the steamer by wireless. Good day!”

“But, I--” shouted Stewardson.

Jerningham paid no attention to him and walked away.

Later in the day negotiations were resumed. In the end Jerningham accepted a little less; but the deal yielded him a net profit of about two million dollars. He insisted upon being paid in gold coin. This convinced Stewardson and the other victims that Jerningham was out of his mind; but there is no law that enables officers of a trust company to imprison a gold maniac or to take away his gold, particularly when his lawyers stand very high in the profession.

Five minutes after getting the gold coin in his possession--and drawing every cent of it--Jerningham told Stewardson he would leave the dust in the VanTwiller vaults. That reassured Stewardson, who otherwise might have suspected Jerningham of various crimes. He then sent two cablegrams to London. One was to

_Kathryn Keogh,_

_Thornton's Hotel, London._

_Your services are no longer needed. Go ahead and have a nice time! Thanks awfully!_ _Jerningham_.

The other was to Francis Wolfe--same address. It read:

_You ought to marry Kathryn Keogh. Never mind anything else. I am disappearing for good. God bless you both, my children! Letter follows._

_Jerningham._

Francis Wolfe showed his cablegram to Miss Keogh and Miss Keogh did not show hers to Francis Wolfe.

A week later Frank asked Miss Keogh to read a letter he had received from Jerningham, and to tell him what to do.

This was the letter.

Dear Boy,--We needed a million or two out of Ashton Welles, and the only way we could see of getting it was by selling to him what he already had--to wit, the control of the VanTwiller Trust Company. From previous operations the syndicate I have the honor to represent had accumulated enough cash to render this operation feasible; but Welles watched the trades in VanTwiller stock so closely that we could not have bought a thousand shares without blocking our own game. So we planned our operations very carefully, as we always do. And because I like you I will tell you how we went about it--that you may profit by our example.

First, I had to become instantly and sensationally known as the possessor of vast wealth. The mere deposit of a million or two in a bank would not do it. We must have the cash and a stupendous cash-making property--hence the mines in the Klondike. Purely mythical mines, dear lad! We sent to Alaska, bought $1,686,000 of gold-dust, put it in boxes, and put a lot of lead in other boxes--now in the VanT. vaults!--thereby increasing our less than two million into more than eight--and nobody hurt thereby! Then the shipment to Seattle, so that every step could be verified--and the special bullion train to New York; and the eccentric miner--myself--with his gold--no myth about the gold--what? in a New York hotel; and of course the reporters were only too willing to help and to magnify our gold-dust.

The _Planet's_ articles were our letters of introduction to the trust company and to Wall Street. Could not have done better--could we? But how to catch Welles off his guard? By breaking it down, of course. Best way? By rousing jealousy. That's where you come in. Mrs. Welles must go to England with you on the same steamer. How? By winning your friendship and rousing your romantic interest in an unhappy love-affair--that would, moreover, explain my interest in Mrs. Welles. Of course there never was any Naida Deering for me to be interested in!

But you had to meet Welles's wife. How? By means of your sisters. How did I make friends of them? By reforming you and making you my heir.

How did I make Mrs. Welles take the same steamer that you did? By having her mother cable for her. How did I do that? Ask Miss Keogh.

I admit that much of what we were compelled to do was not gentlemanly; but, after all, our only crime is the crime of having been business men--buying something at four dollars and selling it at five or six dollars.

Take my advice, dear boy, and stay on the water-wagon! If you marry Miss Keogh I think you can show this letter to A. Welles and ask him to give you a nice position in the trust company.

I am sorry I cannot see you again; but believe me, dear boy, that we are very grateful for your efficient assistance. We would send you a check--only we need it in our business. Tell Jimmy Parkhurst to tell you and Amos F. Kidder all about it.

Yours truly,

The Plunder Recovery Syndicate, Per Alfred Jerningham.

But it was a long time before Frank Wolfe returned to New York--without Miss Keogh, who flatly refused to marry him. Jerningham had disappeared, leaving absolutely no trail. Parkhurst introduced Frank Wolfe to Fiske, but all that came of it was that Fiske added a few fresh notes to his collection.

IV--CHEAP AT A MILLION

I

TOM MERRIWETHER, only son and heir of E. H. Merriwether, finished the grape-fruit and took up the last of that morning's mail. He had acquired the feminine habit of reading letters at the table from his father, who had the wasteful American vice of time-saving.

He read the card, frowned, glanced at his father, and seemed to be on the point of speaking; but he changed his mind, laughed, and tore the card into bits.

The day was Monday, and this was what the card said:

_If Mr. Thomas Thorne Merriwether will go to 777 Fifth Avenue any forenoon this week and answer just one little question about his past life he will hear something to his advantage._

Idle men who live in New York are always busy. Tom had many things to think about; but all of them were about the present or the future. His past caused him neither uneasiness nor remorse.

On the following Monday young Mr. Merriwether received, among other invitations, this:

_If Tom Merriwether will call at 777 Fifth Avenue any forenoon this week and answer one question he will do that which is both kindly--and wise!_

It was in the same handwriting, on the same kind of card, and in the same kind of ink as the first. Now Tom had the Merriwether imagination. His father exercised it in building railroads into waterless deserts whereon he clearly saw a myriad men labor, love, and multiply, thereby insuring freight and passengers to the same railroads. The son had to invent his romances in New York.

Ordinarily the second invitation would have given him something to busy himself with; but it happened that he was at that moment planning to do a heartbreaking thing without breaking any heart. Billy Larremore, the veteran whose devotion to polo was responsible for so many of the team's victories in the past, was not aware that age had bade him cease playing. It would break his loyal heart not to play in the forthcoming international match. Tom Merriwether had been delegated to break the news.

Thinking about it made him forget all about the letter until the following Monday, when he received the third invitation:

_Merriwether,--Come to 777 Fifth Avenue Tuesday morning at ten-thirty without fail and answer the question._

He crumpled the card and was about to throw it away when he changed his mind. Perhaps it would be wise to give it to a detective agency. But what could he say he feared? Then he decided it was probably a joke. Somebody wished to put him in the ridiculous position of ringing the bell of 777, showing the card--and being told to get out. It was to be regretted that this would seem funny to some of his perennially juvenile intimates at the Rivulet Club.

An hour later, as he walked down the Avenue, he looked curiously at 777. It was one of those newcomer houses erected by speculative builders to sell furnished to out-of-town would-be climbers or to local stock-market bankers who, being Hebrews, were too sensible to wish to climb, but were not sensible enough not to wish to live on Fifth Avenue.

Tom resolved to ask Raymond Silliman, who played at being in the real-estate business, to find out who lived at 777. Meantime he did a little shopping--wedding-presents--and went to luncheon at his club. He had not quite finished his coffee when he was summoned to the telephone.

“Hello! Mr. Merriwether?” said a woman's voice--clear, sweet, and vibrant, but unknown. “This is Miss Hervey--the nurse--Dr. Leighton's trained nurse. They asked me to tell you about your father. Don't be alarmed!”

“Go on!” commanded young Merriwether, sharply.

“It is nothing serious--really! But if you could come home it probably--Yes, doctor! I am coming!” And the conversation ceased abruptly.

Tom instantly left the club. He took the solitary taxicab that stood in front of the club. He afterward recalled the fact that there was only one where usually there were half a dozen.

“Eight-sixty-nine Fifth Avenue. Go up Madison to Sixtieth and then turn into the Avenue. Hurry!”

“Very good, sir,” said the chauffeur.

The taxicab dashed madly up Madison and up Fifth Avenue, and finally stopped--not before the Merriwether home, but in front of Number 777. Before he could ask the chauffeur what he meant by it both doors of the cab opened at once and two men sandwiched between them Mr. Thomas Thorne Merriwether. The one on the west, or Central Park, side threateningly held in his hand a business-like javelin--not at all the kind that silly people hang on the walls in their childish attempts at decorative barbarity. The man who half entered the taxicab from the east, or sidewalk, side held in his left hand a beer-schooner full of a colorless liquid that smoked, and in his right something completely but loosely covered by a white-linen handkerchief.

“Please listen, Mr. Merriwether!” said the man with the glass. “Do nothing! Don't even move! Hear me first!”

“Is my father--”

“I am glad to say he is well and happy, and working in his office down-town. The message that brought you here was a subterfuge. Your father is as usual. We arranged it so you had to take this particular taxicab. Don't stir, please!”

“What does all this mean?” asked Tom, impatiently.

“I am about to have the honor of telling you,” answered the man.

He had no hat and wore clerical garments. His clean-shaved face was pale--almost sallow--and young Merriwether noticed that his forehead was very high. His dark-brown eyes were full of the earnestness of all zealots, which makes you dislike to enter into an argument--first, because of the futility of arguing with a zealot; and, second, because said zealot probably knows a million times more about the subject than you and can outargue you without trouble. So Tom simply listened with an alertness that would not overlook any chance to strike back.

“This glass contains fuming sulphuric acid. It will sear the face and destroy the eyesight with much rapidity and completeness. Also”--here he shook off the handkerchief from his right hand and showed a revolver--“this is the very latest in automatics; marvelously efficient; dumdum bullets; stop an elephant! I am about to solicit a great favor.”

Tom Merriwether looked into the earnest, pleading eyes. Then he glanced on the other side, at the bull-necked husky with the business-like spear. Then he turned to the clerical garb.

“I see I am in the hands of my friends!” said Tom, pleasantly.

“The doctor was right,” said the man with the glass, as if to himself.

“Come! Come!” said young Mr. Merriwether. “How much am I to give? You know, I never carry much cash with me.”

“We, dear Mr. Merriwether,” said the pale-faced man in an amazingly deferential voice, “propose to be the donors. If you will kindly permit us we shall give you what is more costly than rubies.”

“Yes?” Tom's voice was perhaps less skeptical than sarcastic.

“Yes, sir. Would you be kind enough to accept our invitation--the fourth, dear Mr. Merriwether--to join us at 777 Fifth Avenue--right here, sir--and answer one question? Please listen carefully to what I am saying: You don't have to go. Moreover, if you should go you don't have to answer any question. We would not, for worlds, compel you. But, for your own sake, for the sake of your father's peace of mind and of the Merriwether fortune, for the sake of your happiness in this world and in the next; for all that all the Merriwethers hold most dear--come with me and, if you are very wise, answer the question that will be asked you by the wisest man in all the world.”

“He must be a regular Solomon--” began Tom, but the man held up the glass and went on, very earnestly:

“Listen, please! If you decide to accept our invitation I shall spill this acid in the street and I shall give you this revolver. I repeat, you do not have to answer the question. You will not be harmed or molested. I pledge you my word. Will you, in return, give me yours to follow me at once into 777, and that you will not shoot unless you sincerely think you are in danger?”

Tom Merriwether looked at the pale-faced man a moment. He was willing to take his chances with that face. Also, he could not otherwise find the solution of this puzzling affair. Therefore he said: “Yes. I give you my word.”

Instantly the pale-faced man with the high forehead laid the revolver on the seat beside young Mr. Merriwether and withdrew from the cab. Tom saw him spill the fuming acid into the gutter. The burly javelin-man took himself off. The temptation to use the butt of the revolver on the clerical-garbed man with the earnest eyes came to Tom, but he saw in a flash that if he should do such a thing he would be compelled in self-defense to tell a story utterly unbelievable.

Moreover, the pale-faced man was a slender little chap of middle age and no match for big Tom Merriwether. So, assuring himself that the revolver was in truth loaded and that it worked, he put it in his pocket, kept his grasp on it there, and got out of the taxicab. His one impelling motive now was curiosity. Afraid? With the pistol and his muscles and his youth, on Fifth Avenue, at two-thirty in the afternoon?

The pale-faced man, the empty glass in one hand, walked toward the door of 777 without so much as turning his head. Tom followed.

The door was opened by a man in livery who took Mr. Merriwether's hat and cane. Tom saw in the furnishings of the house--complete with that curious unhuman completeness of a modern hotel--the kind of furnishings that interior decorators usually sell to first-generation rich on their arrival at Fifth Avenue residenceship. The furniture had every qualification possessed by furniture in order not to suggest a home to live in. Wherefore Tom, whose mind always worked quickly, reasoned to himself:

“Rented for the occasion to the man who has made me come to him.”

Also Tom noticed four men-servants, all of them well built and all of them owning faces that somehow were not servant faces. The revolver, which had seemed amply sufficient outside, seemed less so within the house. Supposing he killed one--or even two--the other two would down him in an affray. He tightened his grip on the revolver and planned and rehearsed a shooting affair in which four men in livery were disabled with four shots. A great pity E. H. Merriwether was such a very rich man--a great pity for his son Tom.

At a door, on the center panel of which was a monogram in black, red, and gold the last of the footmen knocked gently. The door was thereupon opened from within.

“Mr. Thomas Thome Merriwether, 7-7-77!” announced the intelligent-looking footman, with a very pronounced English accent.

Mr. Thomas Thorne Merriwether entered. It was a _nouveau-riche_ library. The Circassian-walnut bookcases and center-table were over-elaborately carved, and the hangings of rich red velvet were over-elaborately embroidered. The bronzes on the over-elaborate mantel looked as though they had been placed there by somebody who was coming back in a minute to take them away again.

Altogether the apartment suggested a salesroom, and there was a note of incongruity in a golden-oak filing-cabinet of the Grand Rapids school.

At one end of the room in an arm-chair, with his back to a terrible stained-glass window, sat a man of about forty. He had a calm, remarkably steady gaze, with a sort of leisureliness about it that made you think of a drawling voice. Also, an assurance--a self-consciousness of knowledge--that was compelling. His chin was firm and there was a suggestion of power and of control over power that reminded Tom of a very competent engineer in charge of a fifty-thousand-horse-power machine.

“Kindly be seated, sir,” said the man in a tone that subtly suggested weariness.

Tom sat down and looked curiously at the man, who went on:

“Sir, I have a question to ask you. If you see fit to answer, be good enough to answer it spontaneously and in good faith. Do not, I beg you, in turn, ask me questions--such as, for example, why I wish to know what I ask. If you decide not to answer you will leave this house unharmed, accompanied by our profound regret that you should be so unintelligent at your life's crisis.” The man looked at Tom with a meditative expression, then nodded to himself almost sorrowfully.

Tom, though young, was a Merriwether. He said, politely, “Let me hear the question, sir.”

He himself was thinking in questions: What can the question be? Who is this man? What is the game? What will be the end of it all?

“One question, sir,” repeated the stranger.

“I am listening, sir,” Tom assured him, with a quiet, but quite impressive, earnestness.

“_Where did you spend your vacation at the end of your Freshman year?”_

Tom was so surprised, and even disappointed, that he hesitated. Then he answered:

“In Oleander Point, Long Island, in the cottage of Dr. Charles W. Bonner, who was tutoring me. I had a couple of conditions and I stayed until the third of September!”

“Thank you! Thank you! That is all--unless, Mr. Merriwether, you wish to do me and yourself three very great favors. Three!”

He looked at Tom with a sort of intelligent curiosity, as of a chemist conducting an experiment.

“Let's hear what they are,” said young Mr. Merriwether, calmly.

It was at times like these that he showed whose son he was--alert, his imagination active, his nerves under control, and his courage steady and at par. He had, moreover, made up his mind that he would do some questioning later on.

“First favor: Concentrate your mind on how you used to spend your bright, sunshiny days in Oleander Point and your beautiful moonlight nights. Recall the pleasant people you were friendly with during those happy weeks. Visualize that summer! Make an effort! Think!”

It was a command, and Tom Merriwether found himself thinking of that summer. He closed his eyes. His grip on the revolver in his pocket relaxed.... He saw his friends. Some of them he had not seen in years. Others he saw almost daily. And somehow it seemed to him that all the girls were pretty and kindly; and in particular--well, there were in particular three. But the affairs had come to nothing.

He could not have told how long his reverie lasted--the mind traverses long stretches of time, as of space, in seconds.

“Well?” said Tom at length.

“Thank you,” said the man, with the matter-of-fact gratitude a man feels toward a servant for some attention.

He took from his pocket a small black-velvet bag, opened it, and spread on the table before Tom Merriwether a dozen pearls, ranging in size from a pea to a filbert. They were all of a beautiful orient.

“I beg you to select one of these. You need not use it. You may give it to your valet if you wish, or throw it out of the window. Only accept it as a souvenir of our meeting. That, Mr. Merriwether, would be favor number two.”

He pointed toward the pearls. Tom picked one--pear-shaped, white, beautiful--and put it in his waistcoat pocket. The man swept the rest into one of the drawers of the long library table.

“I thank you very much,” said Tom. He was not sure the pearls were not genuine.

“No; please don't,” said the man. There was a pause. Presently he asked, “Do you know anything about pearls, sir?”

“I am no expert,” answered Tom. “Characteristic. You Merriwethers are brave enough to be truthful, and wise enough to be cautious. Have you any opinions?”

“I think they are beautiful,” said Tom.

“They are more than that. They represent, Mr. Merriwether, the hope of the Kingdom of Heaven. The pearl is the symbol of purity, humility, and innocence. Do you know the legend of the mild maid of God--Saint Margaret of Antioch?”

“No.”

“Margaret is from Margarites--Greek for pearl. And the reason why faith--But I beg your pardon. Men who live alone talk too much when they are no longer alone. I beg you to forgive me. Tell me, Mr. Merriwether, did you ever hear of Apollonius of Tyana?”

“Not until this minute,” answered Tom.

He felt almost tempted to ask whether the poor man was dead, but refrained because he was honest enough to admit to himself that the question would savor of bravado. Tom was consumed by curiosity as to what would be the end of it all. To think of it--on Fifth Avenue, New York, in broad daylight--all this!

How money was to be made out of him he could not yet see.

“I will show his talisman to you--the Dispeller of Darkness!” The man clapped his hands twice. At the summons a negro walked in. He was dressed in plain black and wore a fez. The man spoke some guttural words and the negro salaamed and left the room. Presently he returned with a silver tray on which were seven gold or gilt candlesticks and candles, and seven gold or gilt small trays or plates, on each of which was a pastil.