Part 17
“Will you be good enough to send my card to Mr. Starrett, the owner of this hotel? He knows who I am and who my father is; but if he should have forgotten, say that he is to call up Major Wilkinson, of Pierce, Wilkinson & Company, the bankers, or Mr. Blandy, of the Moontucket National Bank, or anybody who knows where New York is on the map. Good heavens! there must be somebody in Boston who hasn't been asleep for the last twenty years!” The clerk decided to be polite. The name Merriwether had a familiar sound, but he could not associate it. He said, more politely:
“I am sorry, Mr. Merriwether, but the room you want--and three others with it--have been engaged.”
“By whom?”
“You are asking me to break one of our rules.”
“Well, can you tell me whether it has been engaged since yesterday?”
“Oh, longer than that!” He disappeared, consulted a book, and came back with the triumphant expression human beings put on when they do not wish to say “I told you so,” aloud, “Engaged and paid for since the eighth, Mr. Merriwether. That's nine days ago. So, you see, we can't do what you ask us to. Sorry!”
Wherever he went, Tom thought he was confronted by crude attempts at mystery. To send him to this particular room, 77 on the seventh floor, was merely the same as an effort to impress children by using the magical number seven.
Who had engaged the room? Was it an accomplice or some stranger guiltless of participation in the rather juvenile joke?
Still, Tom was in Boston to do a particular thing; and, though much of the spring restlessness had gone from his veins, there remained the desire to see the affair through to the end, whether the end should be a smile or a mild oath. Therefore, after a pause, Tom said to the clerk:
“Can you give me the room exactly opposite 77 on the seventh floor?”
The clerk hesitated, then said:
“Just a minute, please.”
He consulted one of the bookkeepers, from whom he must have learned whose son Tom was. And, though Boston is not New York, money is money, even in Massachusetts; and the heir to fifty or a hundred million dollars is something, whether or not he is somebody.
“Certainly,” said the clerk, and handed the key to a young man called, in New York, a bell-boy. The young man now preceded Tom to the seventh floor and ushered the New-Yorker into Room 78.
Tom gave the studious youth a dollar and never noticed that the boy regarded the bill with a mixture of suspicion and alarm, put it gingerly into his pocket, and left the room, closing the door. Tom opened the door. The boy thought it had opened itself and returned to close it. Tom waved him away. The boy hastily retreated. He did not, however, throw away the dollar. He had discovered it was not “phony.”
The bell-boy found the room clerk engaged in conversation with two men. He, divining that the talk concerned the generous lunatic, flung at the room clerk that look of exaggerated perplexity which will cause any normal human being inevitably to ask: “What is it?”
The room clerk saw the look and still kept on talking with the men; whereupon the bell-boy walked up to the desk, frowned fiercely, and muttered, “He is in his room!”
“What's that, boy?”
“I said,” retorted the studious youth, glacially, “he was in his room--78. He gave me a dollar and left the door open. I tried to close it, but he opened it again--after he gave me the dollar.”
The clerk, awe in his face, turned to the men and nodded confirmatively.
“Your man!” he said. “Of course we don't want any fuss--”
“We'll telephone Mr. McWayne, the private secretary. The young fellow isn't violent, you know.”
The hotel clerk said the inevitable thing:
“Only son, too--isn't he?”
“Yes. Over a hundred million dollars, I've heard.” The detective, induced thereto by the invitation in the clerk's voice, had vouchsafed inside information.
“Too bad!” murmured the clerk, thinking of the hundred million and Tom. “Too damned bad!” he almost whimpered, thinking of the hundred million and himself. To show that he was unimpressed by vast wealth he added, sternly, “No trouble, you understand!”
One of the men whom McWayne had instructed to shadow Tom sat in the lobby just in front of the elevator. The other, with the clerk's permission, went up to the seventh floor and sat down by the floor telephone operator. From there he could keep a ten-dollar-a-day eye on Room 78.
Meantime Tom's impatience had reached such a point that he could not sit still. Through his open door he could see the closed door of Room 77. The thought came to him to see who was in that room. Then it struck him that perhaps the mysterious man in New York had reckoned precisely on rousing the Merriwether curiosity. Perhaps an unpleasant surprise awaited the man who should enter Room 77. Perhaps the room was occupied by some one who had nothing to do with her--and therefore nothing to do with him. Perhaps he should put himself in a ridiculous predicament. Perhaps a million disagreeable things might happen, making it obviously the unwise thing to do to go into Room 77.
All these reflections, however, weighed no more than a shadow with him. The more he thought of why he should not go into Room 77 the more difficult it became to resist the call of adventure. He walked across the hall and knocked sharply on the door. No answer came. He knocked again. A hotel maid approached him.
“I beg your pardon, sir. Are you in the party?”
“What party?”
“In Room 77.”
“No. I am in 78.”
“I am very sorry--but it is against the rules of the house, sir.”
Tom had nothing to say to the maid; so he closed the door of his own room, conscious that his actions must appear erratic, but not much concerned over it. Presently he went out for a walk and did not go to either of his Boston clubs. This omission was duly noted by the clever Mr. McWayne's star sleuths.
Tom returned to the hotel, feeling almost cured. He realized that he had come on a fool's errand; and yet there was something that told him it was not a fool's errand. It was too elaborate for a practical joke. So long as no motive was apparent the mystery remained a mystery; and no mystery is laughable--at least, not while in the act of mystifying.
So he decided for the tenth time to go through with his part, absurd or not. He walked about the lobby, utterly unconscious that he was a marked man. He could not see that the clerks and the bellboys and the two men from the New York agency followed his movements, not only with the liveliest curiosity, but with deep pity.
All he was doing was to wait more or less impatiently for seven o'clock; but impatience is so natural a feeling, and comes so easily to most human beings, that it always rouses suspicion. Tom did not “act right” to the watchers. Any perfectly sane and intelligent man, accused of being mad, will confirm the accusation if he is watched for five minutes. People who never think and never imagine are never taken for lunatics. That nowadays is about the only compensation for being an ass.
At 6.56 p.m. he walked into the hotel library and found that the green-plush arm-chair in the corner by the window was occupied by an elderly woman. It annoyed him because he desired to sit in that chair at exactly seven o'clock. Absurd or not, the problem became how to get rid of the old woman quickly and without disturbing the peace or alarming the office.
His mind worked logically enough for a man under observation for insanity, and his sense of humor acted as a safety-valve for his inventiveness. He merely drew his chair very close to the startled old lady and opened a magazine. He found a poem and began to read it in the exasperating undertone used by the demons who have the next seats to yours at the opera.
Presently he began to drum on his thigh with the tips of his fingers, and at regular intervals of ten seconds he thumped it with his clenched fist bass-drumwise. Every twenty-five seconds he pulled out his watch, looked at it, exclaimed, “Gracious!”--and blew his nose loudly and determinedly.
Within two and three-quarter minutes the old lady glared at him, rose, looked at the clock, glared again at him to make sure, and left the room. In the hall she stopped and spoke to the young lady who checked hats and coats near the entrance of the main dining-room.
“I had to leave the reading-room. A perfectly horrible person came in! He simply drove me out.”
“Yes, madam. He is insane. It is a very sad case.”
“Goodness! What a narrow--“.
“Oh, he is quite harmless, madam.”
“It's a wonder a first-class hotel, like this claims to be, allows--”
“You are right!” agreed the wise young woman, whose business was to encourage generosity.
The old lady went away, muttering. Thomas Thome Merriwether sat down in the vacated chair, put his hat between his knees, and waited. The mahogany clock on the mantel presently began to chime the hour and Tom felt a pang of angry disappointment. Nothing had happened--except that he again had made an ass of himself!
A tall, strongly built man at that moment entered the room, looked at Tom, saw the hat held between the knees, and turned away as if the last person in the world he wished to see was young Mr. Merriwether.
Tom saw him stretch his hand toward a panel in the wall. Instantly the room was in darkness. It occurred to Tom that this would be a good way to attack him; but there instantly followed the reflection that it was not a good place in which to do any robbing or murdering.
Therefore young Merriwether sat on quietly. He felt something drop into his hat. A faint odor of sweet peas came to his nostrils--the odor he had associated with his youth until he began to associate it with her, and therefore with love.
This evanescent perfume that made vague memories stir within him--that made him desire to see the woman who was to be his wife--that made him thrill obediently at the call of adventure--made him feel that the mysterious man of 777 Fifth Avenue was not a cheap charlatan.
Suddenly the light was turned on again. Tom saw a slip of paper within his hat, fished it out, and, without stopping to see what it was or what it said, rushed from the room into the corridor.
He saw men and women coming and going. He could not tell whether she was among them or whether the man who had entered the library--who probably was the man that put out the light--was among the crowd. But the sleuths and the bell-boy and the coat-girl watched him. What doubt could remain? In their minds there was none.
Tom abandoned the chase. The key to the mystery eluded him, as usual. He was not clever enough to catch the mystery-manipulator in the act, as it were. He looked at the paper. It was an envelope. On it was written in a woman's hand:
_For T. M._
He opened the envelope and pulled out a sheet of the hotel note-paper, on which he read, in the same handwriting:
_Too late!_
He walked to the desk and spoke to the room clerk.
“I must--” he began, but stopped.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Merriwether!” The clerk used the voice and manner of a man saying nice things to a child in order to propitiate its mother.
“About Room 77 on the seventh floor,” said Tom.
“We can give it to you now, if you wish. Yes, sir.”
“What? Has she--Is it vacant?”
“Given up this very minute. If you'll wait until we send up and see whether it is ready to be occupied, I'll--”
“I'll take it; but I'd like to go up at once.”
He wished to see whether there was any clue left by the previous occupants.
“Certainly. Front!”
Tom followed the bell-boy. The room was empty and undisturbed. He thought he smelled sweet peas and sat down in an arm-chair to think; but the odor, which made her recognizable in his dreams of her, prevented him from thinking as you would expect a healthy young man to think. There was no sharpness of outline in the visions of her seen through the mist of dreams and longings.
He knew there was a girl somewhere whom he would marry. Indeed, he often had wondered what his wife would be like. Every man, when he endeavors to look ahead, thinks that some day he shall have a wife--the mother of his children--the woman whose mere existence will influence his life more than anything else in the world; whose love will make him a different man; whose necessities will give to him an utterly different point of view.
Our lives depend on our point of view; and Tom knew that his point of view would be utterly changed by this girl he had never seen. Would she be the girl the man in 777 Fifth Avenue said she would be? Was she the mysterious person with whom, of course, he was not in love, but with whom he might fall in love--adventuress or not? His love of love had not yet changed into love of somebody; but he was keen to enter into a definite love-affair with a concrete being, and he rather suspected that this affair was being stage-managed for his benefit.
He would forgive everything so long as in the end something happened--something in which there was a girl, whether or not she was the girl. What most irritated him was the indefiniteness of the mystery so far. The spice of danger; the tragical possibilities; the lure of adventure; the call of the unusual; the attraction of the unknown and therefore of the interesting--were no longer quite enough. The glimpse of a face--of a living face--and a hand to shake, a waist to clasp and lips to kiss--these things he now desired.
His irritability over his failure to develop an adventure in Boston grew keener until it became anger. He would have it out once for all with the mysterious man at 777 Fifth Avenue.
He went down-stairs, paid his bill, and took the midnight train for New York.
VII
Some men are so picturesque that they do not need publicity agents, and so intelligent that they wish to be let alone by the public prints. E. H. Merriwether was one. He employed the ablest experts for his corporations and they got more than their share of publicity; but for himself--nothing. Possibly he realized that ungratified curiosity is a valuable asset; and, of course, he knew that in a democracy the less a man raises his head above the level of the mass the better it will be for his comfort.
He took pains to make it plain that he cared only for his work, because that proved he had no thoughts for mere money-making; and, since he was not interested in money-making, he could not be primarily concerned with despoiling the public--which, in turn, clearly proved he was not dangerous. And, of course, the more he kept himself out of the papers the more the papers wanted to see him in their hospitable columns. Everything he did or thought was, therefore, news. Anecdotes about him were so hard to get that the brightest minds in the profession manufactured a few. They had to be very good anecdotes--and they were.
To the metropolitan reporters, however, E. H. Merriwether was known to be mute, dumb, silent, constitutionally incapable of speech, and, besides, devoid of vocal cords. His office was always free from reporters, because they had learned to save themselves time by the simple expedient of writing their interviews with him in their own offices, after this fashion:
_Mr. Merriwether refused to discuss the matter. Neither confirmation nor denial could be obtained at his office._
The financial editors of the newspapers fared no better. He was never too busy to see them; but all news about his work came from his bankers.
On the same day that Tom went to Boston, a young man went to the Merriwether offices in the Transcontinental Trust Company Building. A stout, rather high railing fenced off the bookkeepers' room from the general and unwelcome public.
At a small, flat desk near the gate sat, not a frecklefaced boy, but a man, powerful of build, keen-eyed and quick-muscled. He, was writing a letter on a very good quality of note-paper. He said: “Well?”--but kept on writing. He did not look up. This always discouraged strangers; by making them feel their utter insignificance. The effect on millionaire magnates, who similarly found themselves ignored, also was salutary.
“I wish to see Mr. E. H. Merriwether,” said the young man, pleasantly and unimpressed.
The gate-keeper wrote two paragraphs and then, still writing, asked, wearily:
“Got an appointment?”
“No; but--”
The over-mature office-boy, in one breath and in a voice that dripped insolence, said, still without looking up:
“What do you want to see him about? He is very busy. Cannot possibly see any one to-day. Good day!”
There was a laugh, not at all ironical, or in the nature of an exaggerated and audible sneer, but full of amusement; and then the stranger without the gate said:
“When I tell you what I am you will bring Mr. E. H. Merriwether to me.”
The voice was not menacing at all or cold, but there was an assurance about it that made the Merriwether hireling look up. He saw a young man, of about thirty, with very intelligent, gray-blue eyes, a straight, well-modeled nose, and a determined chin. His square shoulders and general air of muscular strength made him look as if he could give as good an account of himself in a rough-and-tumble fight as in a battle of wits.
The Merriwether gateman felt his entire being permeated by a feeling of hostility. This was neither a crank to turn over to a complaisant police nor an alms-seeker to be shooed away; nor yet a millionaire in good standing. He must be, therefore, a reporter of the new school made possible by the eccentricities of the Administration in Washington.
“My good James,” said the new-school reporter, with a mocking superciliousness, “I would see your boss. Be expeditious.”
The gate-keeper, whose name was not James but Doyle, flushed dangerously; but his wages were high, and he forced himself to keep his temper under control. For all that, his voice shook as he said:
“If you have no appointment, you ought to know it's no use. No stranger from a newspaper ever sees Mr. Merriwether. I--I'm sorry!” Here Doyle gulped. Then he finished: “Good day!”--and resumed, his writing.
The reporter said, “Look at me!” so sharply that Doyle in a flash pushed back his chair, jumped to his feet, and looked pugnaciously at the man who dared to give commands in E. H. Merriwether's office.
“My Celtic friend,” pursued the reporter, in a voice of such cold-blooded vindictiveness that Doyle listened with both astonishment and respect, “for years the domestics of this office have been rude and impolite to my profession. Mr. Merriwether never cared how angry reporters might feel or what they said about him; but to-day I am the one who does not care, and E. H. Merriwether is the man who is vitally concerned. _I_ don't give a damn whether he sees me or not. And as for you, in order to avenge the poor chaps to whom you have been intelligently rude, I, to whom you have been unintelligently impolite, shall have you fired. I've got E. H. Merriwether where I want him. If I can end your boss I can end your job--can't I? Oh no, Alexander! I am not crazy. I simply have the power. It was bound to happen, for Waterloo comes to all great men who are not clever enough to die at the right time. Now you go and get McWayne--and be quick about it!”
Doyle at times saw things through the top of his head, which was red. He said, a bit thickly:
“When you tell me in plain English, so I can understand--”
“You are not paid to understand; you are paid to use common sense and discrimination. You go to McWayne and say to him a reporter is here and wishes to speak to him about a sad Merriwether family matter.”
Doyle knew from the office gossip that something was supposed to be wrong with Tom Merriwether; so, his heart overflowing with anger because chance had put the one weapon in the hands of an insolent newspaper man, Doyle went off to tell the boss's private secretary. Presently McWayne, walking quickly, came from an inner office, and asked: “You wish to see me?”
“No!” answered the reporter, flatly.
“Then--” began McWayne.
“I don't wish to see you. I wish to see if you have the sense to understand that I wish to do Mr. E. H. Merriwether the favor of letting him talk to me. Do you want me to tell you what I want you to tell Mr. E. H. Merriwether?”
The reporter looked as though he hoped McWayne would say no. Reporters did not usually look that way; therefore McWayne was perturbed. He replied, with a polite anxiety:
“If you please--”
“Tell Mr. Merriwether that I wish to see him about his son's marriage. Tell him that if he does not wish to talk about it, he needn't. You might add that there is absolutely no use in his trying to keep it out of the newspapers. Make that plain to him, McWayne.”
McWayne did not dare deny the marriage. Tom was, alas! capable of even worse things. He did the only thing possible while there was still a chance to suppress the news; he said:
“And you represent which paper, please?”
Reporters do not always know why or how news is suppressed, nor the price; but this reporter laughed good-naturedly, and replied:
“McWayne, the trouble with you Irish is that you are so infernally clever that plain jackasses like myself are prepared for you. I represent myself and I don't want to be paid to suppress. No blackmail here; no threats; nothing except amiability and good-will. Have you begun to accumulate a few suspicions that your taciturn boss is going to talk to me?”
“I'll see!” promised McWayne, non-committally; but he was so perturbed that he could not help showing it.
Doyle, who had made a pretense of resuming his letter-writing, noticed it, and felt uncomfortable.
“And--say, McWayne,” pursued the reporter, “could you let a fellow have a photograph or two? You know we've got some, but we'd prefer to publish those you think the family consider the best. Some people are queer that way.”
McWayne shook his head and went away, convinced of the worst. He returned and beckoned to the reporter, who thereupon said, sharply, to Doyle:
“Open the door--you! Quick!” And Doyle, who saw McWayne beckoning, had to do it.
Four hundred and seventeen reporters were avenged!
Doyle was so angry that he was full of aches. He was tempted to throw up his job. Then he hoped E. H. Merriwether, who was a very great man, would order him to throw the insolent dog out of the office. Doyle would earn a bonus.
E. H. Merriwether, autocrat of fifteen thousand miles of railroad, fearless fighter, iron-nerved stock gambler, but, alas! also a father, was seated at his desk. He turned to the reporter the inscrutable poker-face of his class:
“You wished to see me?”
“Yes, sir,” said the reporter, and waited; two could play at that game. The great financier was compelled to ask:
“About what?”
“About what McWayne told you.” The reporter spoke unemotionally.
“About some rumor concerning my son?”
“No, sir.”
“No?” E. H. Merriwether looked surprised.
“No. I wished to know what statement you desire to make about your son's engagement and marriage. If you do not care to say anything we shall not publish any fake interview, no matter what opinion I personally may form as to the real state of your feelings.”
“I take it you are from one of the yellow papers, young man?” E. H. Merriwether spoke coldly; but, within, his heart-tragedy was being enacted.
“You usually take what you wish if it isn't nailed down, I have heard; but that, doubtless, is one of the slanders that automatically grow up about a great man, sir,” said the reporter, without the shadow of a smile or frown.
“If I am mistaken about the newspaper you represent--” Here Mr. Merriwether paused, as if to allow the young man to introduce himself; but the young man said: