Part 2

It was to this establishment, then, that Challoner directed a cabby to take him after hours of unsuccessful attempts to borrow money from his friends--unsuccessful, because they had come to know his irresponsibility, and to realise that his obligations were not the obligations of his wife. The consequence was that man after man invented an excuse or refused him emphatically. And finally, in desperation, he had offered to sell the Mastodon. But the dealers knew who owned the car--one of the handsomest cars in town--and on Challoner disgustedly ordering his chauffeur home, a dealer more daring than the others had said to him with aggressive familiarity:--

"Get your wife's bill of sale, Challoner we'll buy it then, all right."

A spark of anger immediately lit up Challoner's eyes, resentment was deep down in his inmost soul; but his brain had been absinthiated for days, his sensibilities blunted, and indignities fell from him like the proverbial water from a duck's back. Nor was it solely with his mentalities that the dissipations of the last five years had played havoc: his face, his body, were unnaturally thin, and his glance had become fixed and strained. Nevertheless, over-indulgence had not grossened him, he was still good-looking, and there was an air about him that few men had. In all his recklessness, whenever he wanted money he had not forgotten that fact. It had always counted with Miriam--until now. It counted still with Miss Letty Love of the Frivolity!

There had been moments, it is true, when rushing madly about town for funds, that he had felt it would surely have been better for him if he had never gone to Cradlebaugh's; but then like a flash would come the thought that if he had not gone to Cradlebaugh's he would never have known Letty Love! And by no means had he arrived at the state where he could have wished that ...

With the thought of Letty Love there came another indissolubly connected with it: Was Colonel Hargraves slowly undermining, ousting him out of her affections? Not without reason he argued that Colonel Hargraves had plenty of money, and the man with money was going to win out in the graces of the Frivolity actress! Challoner could see it, could feel it, and now in this crisis he could not raise a paltry thousand or two ...

Suddenly a voice from overhead broke in upon his thoughts with:--

"Front entrance, sir?"

Challoner started. The query was pertinent, frequently important, sometimes vital. But in all the times that Challoner had driven to Cradlebaugh's, never until now had this question been put to him. The entrance on the street above, he was quite well aware, was for those whose livelihood supplied sufficient reason for preferring the more secret way, while the man-about-town,--such as he flattered himself that he still was,--the credential-bearing stranger, even those whose reputation might suffer, found that the arrangement of the main entrance furnished them with ample protection. Nevertheless, far from feazing him, Challoner felt that in some subtle way the question fitted in with his scheme of things. For a shadowy purpose was slowly forming in his mind--a purpose that required thought. His answer was of paramount importance, he must make no mistake ...

"The rear--no," he quickly corrected, "the front entrance."

Before the main street door the driver pulled up his horse, and Challoner hurriedly walked--as one whose nose was straight and who followed his nose--into the whited sepulchre called Cradlebaugh's.

No one greeted Challoner as he passed into the main hall: it happened there was no one present at the table that he knew. In the old days it had been the custom of Cradlebaugh, the human spider, frankly to exhibit himself in the middle of his net, his grim smile and dry hand extended to each guest who came or went. But of late years--since he had shuffled off this mortal coil--there had been no one to make these obsequious greetings; for, though Cradlebaugh's still was Cradlebaugh's, its ownership remained a mystery. And whether it was a syndicate, an association, a reincarnated spirit, or a man, no one could tell. Of one thing, however, its patrons were certain: there was but one Cradlebaugh's!

For fully half an hour Challoner stood at the buffet, every now and then unsteadily tilting the decanter. And while this course of refreshment may have dulled his wits, it certainly strengthened his courage, for presently he said to himself:--

"I'll try him, yes, why not?"

And a moment later, still optimistic, he called a servant and asked:--

"Where is Pemmican?"

"Faro, sir."

Challoner ascended swiftly to the second floor, and paused at one room whose door was open.

"How long?" he inquired, thrusting in his head, by way of greeting to the group at the table.

Four of the men there did not glance up from their cards; hollow-eyed, cigars between their teeth, they were alive only to the hundredth chance that still eluded them. The fifth man, a railroad president, coatless, alone nodded to Challoner, and said sententiously:--

"Forty hours--for me."

Half way down the corridor Challoner met Pemmican, head card-dealer of Cradlebaugh's, a man with a pasty face, a low brow and shifty eyes--a man who knew his business. This Pemmican seemed the all-and-all of Cradlebaugh's, apparently general factotum; but though he simulated the appearance of an owner, in reality he was a servile servant stamped with a dread of the pseudo-Cradlebaugh, of the man higher up. Nevertheless, whoever controlled the destinies of this gambling-house had chosen him wisely.

Challoner came at once to the point.

"Pemmican, I want some money--about--" and broke off abruptly, for the other was eyeing him coldly.

Instinctively Pemmican of the low brow knew that the game was up with Challoner; moreover, he saw that, although the man seemed sober, in reality he was very drunk. He walked away quickly, dismissing him with:--

"I'm sorry, sir, but it's against the rules. I can't----"

"What rot!" interrupted Challoner.

But by this time Pemmican had reached the end of the hall, leaving the other to gather what he could of his mumbled excuses.

In anything but an amiable mood, Challoner resumed his position at the buffet. Suddenly he was conscious of a light touch on the arm. Turning slowly, he found himself face to face again with Pemmican.

"Why don't you try Colonel Hargraves?" whispered the latter.

"What?" came from the clogged brain of Challoner.

"Try Hargraves," the other went on. "He's been down to Gravesend for two days; and he's back...."

Pemmican's meaning was lost on Challoner, for he merely exclaimed:--

"Well?"

Before answering, Pemmican of the low brow shrugged his shoulders and spread out his palms, then he said pointedly:--

"Only that he pulled out ten thousand on Flora McQueen--that's all!"

"What?" Challoner began to understand.

Pemmican nodded.

"Sure thing--ten thousand dollars!"

Slowly and deliberately Challoner refilled his glass to the brim. For a moment there was silence, then Pemmican repeated tantalisingly:--

"Ten thousand dollars--not a cent less!"

Challoner thought for a moment.

"How did you come out?" he asked, much to the other's surprise.

Pemmican shook his head.

"I lost a cool thousand because I did not back the mare. I played on Tigerskin. I've got to get that thousand back, somehow."

Challoner emptied his glass.

"Was Colonel Hargraves down there alone?" His voice was thick, hoarse.

"Where?" returned Pemmican, as if he had misunderstood.

"At Gravesend?"

Pemmican looked long and quizzically into Challoner's eyes.

"He was ... not," was his simple but significant answer, and moved away.

But Challoner followed him up, and seizing his arm, said somewhat gruffly:--

"Look here, Pemmican, if Hargraves comes in--I want to see him--tell him to wait for me."

For the first time Pemmican's eyes lost their curious tiredness, an enigmatical smile played about the corners of his mouth.

"Yes," he said simply, and nodding, went his way.

Left alone, Challoner found himself a prey to all the black fiends of rage, jealousy and desire for revenge. For a time everything was blotted out from his vision except the face of Letty Love and the face of Colonel Hargraves. "This small world," he muttered to himself, "is much too small for me and Colonel Hargraves!" With that there loomed up out of the mists of his mind the brilliantly lighted and ornate entrance of a certain apartment-house a short distance away; and a few minutes later, obedient to his subconscious will, his feet carried him down the stairs to a door evidently leading to the outside. A few words of explanation from Challoner to the man on duty there were necessary before he would proceed to undo the complicated system of bolts; and then he passed out and was under the starry skies. Challoner was not the first man of social prominence in the community that could directly trace the beginning of his life as an outcast to passing through that door!

III

Hiram Edgar Love--so read a faded yellow card on the door-panel of Suite 10 in the "Drelincourt," an apartment hotel in a section of the city which has ever been popular with a class that has been well termed the "fringe of society." The name was not printed, not engraved, but written in ancient India ink in copper-plate perfection by the careful, cleanly, genteel Englishman that Hiram Edgar Love had been--Hiram Edgar Love, that long since had been laid to rest in a quiet Surrey churchyard leagues distant, though his name still did yeoman service, for it spelt respectability; it covered a multitude of peccadilloes; his soul went marching on! For was it not the shade of Hiram Edgar Love that had rented the Love suite in the "Drelincourt," his shade that paid the rent, his pipe and his slippers that lay near the fireplace for the world to see?--Hiram Edgar Love the myth, the constantly expected but never-coming master of the house!

Before the entrance of this suite Challoner came to a halt.

"I wonder if she's alone?" he mused, as with something like the palpitating deference of a stranger he pressed the button underneath the faded card and waited to learn his fate at the hands of the one woman in all the world for him. Nor was it by any means the first time that he had asked himself that question; all the way through the streets it had been in his mind every moment, and so absorbed was he with the thought, that he failed to see the familiar nod with which the diminutive god of the "Drelincourt" lift acknowledged his advent as he proceeded to carry upward his human freight.

"Same, sir, I suppose?" asked the boy.

Challoner made no answer; but leaving the car at the desired landing, he had turned to the right and directed his steps to the extreme end of the corridor.

It was a new experience to Challoner to wait among the shadows of the dimly lighted hall; hitherto his custom had been to let himself in, _sans_ ceremony; but the apparently successful campaign of the racing Colonel had changed that--put him on a different footing.

"If _he's_ there," he assured himself as he pressed the button again impatiently, "I'll know what to do, all right...."

But if Hargraves were not there! That was the contingency that sent a chill over him. He could deal with a man--but the woman! A woman who had never cared and who, he was only too well aware, would never even pretend to care for him unless he had the wherewithal with which to lure her back.

"If it were not for Hargraves--" he broke off abruptly, for the door had opened with such unexpected suddenness that it required not a little effort to pull himself together, and demand of the trim, little maid who stood there:--

"Your mistress--is she at home?"

"Miss Love is not at home, sir."

Challoner was not so sure about that; in a trice he was past her, going through room after room until he had covered the entire apartment; and she had barely recovered from the shock that his strange behaviour had given her than he was back again in the small, square hall, eyeing her suspiciously.

"I want to see your mistress."

"Miss Love is not in, sir," she told him, just as if he did not already know it.

"But you know where she went?" he asked meaningly.

"Indeed, sir, I do not," she replied, not at all disconcerted by his manner; and her eyes as they fixed their gaze on his were as steady as the lips that said: "She should be with her father, sir."

Challoner raged inwardly; he thought he detected a gleam of mockery in her eyes. Once more he plunged through the apartment, seeking some incriminating scrap of paper, some evidence that would betray his divinity's whereabouts. But after a few minutes he was back again, standing over the girl, menacingly.

"I want you to tell me where Letty is?" he said in a tone that told plainly that such lies were not for him; but it had little effect on the maid: long practice in fencing with Miss Love's admirers had made trickery her forte.

"You might try Atlantic City, sir," she suggested blandly; "it's quite possible that they went there."

At this, Challoner looked ugly, and seizing her roughly by the arm, he led her to her mistress' boudoir, where, pointing to a Verne-Martin cabinet that stood in a corner, he exclaimed:--

"Who put him there?"

For answer the girl shrugged her shoulders. She made no attempt to disengage herself from his grasp, merely watched Challoner as his gaze rested angrily on a plain gold frame in which was an unconventional half-length photograph--Colonel Richard Hargraves, his arms akimbo upon a table, his shoulders forward, his smug, full, self-satisfied face thrust into the face of the world--of Challoner.

Even on paper Hargraves's lazy eyes seemed to insult and tantalise him, and an insane desire to crush, batter and destroy this counterfeit presentment came over him. For an instant he had a vague sensation of suffocation, almost to choking, and releasing the girl, his hand sought his throat; it encountered a scarf-pin--a trifle that his wife had given him long ago. Tearing it quickly from his scarf, he extended it toward the maid.

"That may fetch the truth from her," he said to himself, and aloud: "Tell me where Letty is, and ... no"--the girl was reaching for the jewel, but he held it from her--"no, tell me first," he added hoarsely, toying with the pin.

"Well, then, if you must know, sir," she stammered, "she went to Gravesend--the races, sir."

Challoner's mind received this information with a certain morbid exultation; and thrusting his face into hers and pointing with the pin to the portrait, he cried:--

"Then she _is_ with him?"

The girl was silent; she was figuring the value of the pin. It was worth fifty dollars, she finally decided, and looking up at Challoner, admitted the truth with a nod.

The pin fell into her ready grasp.

When Challoner spoke again his voice was calm and steady.

"Sit down there." He motioned to a seat and he took the one opposite. "We'll wait until they come back--just wait."

For minutes that seemed hours they sat facing each other, Challoner dogged but quiescent, the girl with a growing unrest upon her--a cat with a cornered mouse.

At last a buzzer sounded.

"Stay where you are!" Challoner commanded, as the girl made a movement to go. "If it's somebody else," he added quickly, still looking at her, but with a changed eye, "we don't care about them; they can go away."

Again the buzzer sounded.

"Has she a key?" he whispered.

"Yes," she answered, matching his tone.

"Has he?" persisted Challoner.

The girl held up her hand for reply: the jingling of keys in the outer hall, followed by the clink of metal in the lock, had reached their ears; then came the closing of the door, the click of high heels, the swish of skirts, the odour of violets, and then Letty Love, in all her pink and white loveliness, tall, supreme, her face flushed, her lips parted, her eyes sparkling, stood framed in the doorway. At the sight of the man and the girl sitting there like two culprits, she burst into laughter--a long peal of laughter that was her stock in trade, and which ran the gamut of her deep, contralto voice. And still neither the man nor the girl spoke, but continued to look ill at ease. To Miss Love the situation was amusing--too amusing for words.

"Inconstant!--Naughty Lawrence!" she exclaimed, leaving his name stranded in the air--a coquettish way she had in speaking--and pointing her tiny gloved finger at him: "Perhaps I interrupt?" And now turning to the girl: "Patricia, I didn't know you could be so interesting...."

The maid gasped with relief as she left the room in obedience to a dismissing wave of her mistress' hand.

"Well, why don't the rest of you come in?" Challoner growled, fastening his eyes on the woman.

Letty Love opened her blue eyes wide--eyes that could look the innocence of a child or the wisdom of the ages--and feigned not to understand. And then as if his meaning had dawned upon her, she said with a good-natured smile:--

"Oh--why, I'm alone!"

"It's a good thing you are," he told her pointedly.

At once a hardness crept into her voice, and she asked coldly:--

"For whom?" And for a moment she delayed pulling off her wraps.

"For the other man."

"Silly boy! How ridiculous you are!" she returned lightly, as she tossed her wraps over a chair and began to pull off her gloves.

Challoner went over to the photograph, picked it up and wheeling round said threateningly:--

"Did you put _him_ in that frame?"

"I did," she answered sweetly. "I'm very domestic, you know," and she smiled one of her most bewildering smiles; "I always arrange these little things myself."

"And what did you do with mine?"

Letty looked dubious. She touched a button, and to the maid who entered asked with mock anxiety:--

"Patricia, what did you do with the half-tone of this gentleman that I gave you?"

The maid regarded first one and then the other somewhat curiously.

"It's in my room, Madam."

"With the other notables?" And Letty Love lifted her eyebrows. "Patricia's room is quite a picture-gallery," she went on gaily. "You may investigate it, if you like--no?" And dismissing the maid, went over to the piano and began to strum the refrain of a popular song.

Challoner's lips emitted:--

"You--" They closed on a gasp of rage, disappointment, despair and impotent admiration. Had he dared, he would have gone on his knees to her then and there, taken her in his arms and kissed her; but the woman's indifference appalled him, and instead he gritted his teeth, dug his nails into the palms of his hand. Then, for the first time, it dawned on him that she had worn for Hargraves the gown that he, Challoner, had selected for her--a gown white, immaculate, simple, which followed religiously the lines of the superb figure, that left nothing to be desired, of Letty Love, full-throated, full-bosomed, with her jet-black hair that gave no sign of fastening, with her blue eyes and dark eyebrows, with her milk-white flesh, which, artificial though it were, concealed nothing, revealed nothing but the loveliness of the woman.

The man's eyes shone with pride as he observed her finished appearance; for was it not he who had taught her to gown herself like that, showed her how to live, lifted her into the high places?

"And this is how she repays me!" he muttered to himself, and then aloud: "What's the matter with you, Letty--is it because my money has given out...."

This startled the woman into earnestness, and rising to her feet, she drew herself to her full height, and pointing to the door declared with an injured air:--

"No man can talk to me of money in this house!"

Challoner's face was a study, but he did not move.

"Especially when it's all gone!" he sneered, searching her countenance. Never until now had he realised the monumental, stupendous power of money. Now that he had none and the car of juggernaut was slowly crushing him, he could understand that he belonged in the ditch with the maimed, the lame, the dying. There was no necessity for a reply from Letty. The woman's face revealed the contempt with which she regarded him. What mattered it to her that the man had surrendered everything that was worth while in life, that he had sacrificed himself at her shrine! She was one who demanded the firstlings of the flock; he was nothing save carrion for daws to peck at. The fruit was devoured; of what value was the rind?

"You had better go," she said superciliously; "there is no need of coming any more."

In a sort of daze Challoner was shambling toward the door when the telephone-bell rang. Instantly it roused all the deviltry and cunning that had oozed from him the moment before. Seizing the receiver, he thrust it silently against his ear.

"Hello!" began the voice at the other end.

Challoner did not answer.

"Is that you, Letty?" the voice went on.

Still Challoner did not answer. Then, as the woman stepped forward, he handed the receiver to her, at the same time placing his left hand over the mouthpiece, and said:--

"It's Hargraves--tell him to come up, will you?"

She shook her head.

Again the voice at the other end of the wire sounded, but she could not answer, for the thickness of Challoner's hand lay between her and communication. The suspense was unbearable--getting on her nerves. There was nothing to do but to comply with his wish; and upon her eyes suddenly yielding to his, he released the mouthpiece, standing on guard the while she obeyed him. Then he drove her, literally drove her into a far corner of the room.

"Now, let him come! We'll see ..." he exclaimed, holding a revolver in his right hand; and as he stood there watching her as a tiger does a tigress, it was with a certain sense of gratification that he noted written across her face the altogether new sensation of fear, terror, and therefore respect for him. And he rejoiced in the knowledge that the hand that could no longer count out banknotes to her or sign cheques was a hand that held life and death within its grasp. Letty Love realised this, too, as she stood there cowed, trembling, listening, watching the door. Suddenly there flashed through her mind a way out of the situation, and smiling, she said lightly:--

"Oh, pshaw, Lawrence, the heavy is not your line! Come--suppose we have something to drink."

And without waiting for him to answer, she crossed the room and pressed the button there. Somewhat sheepishly Challoner slipped the revolver back into his pocket and dropped into a chair, while she ordered the maid to fetch some Bengal--a cordial, a distilled delight that had come down to her from a period so remote that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. In his lifetime Hiram Edgar Love had possessed gallons of it; it had come to him in the night from the mysterious East, in the teeth of the revenue guns. And Challoner knowing it for the thing it was, his face flushed with the pleasure of anticipation. Letty took her place beside a small table, and presently a silver-topped, cut-glass decanter was in her hand, which she held over a glass, saying:--

"Will you help yourself or shall I ..."

Challoner nodded.

"Go ahead--fill it for me, Letty."

Challoner drank--drank. He forgot Hargraves, forgot everything but the face of Letty Love, a kiss that he wanted, but that somehow he could not get, an utterance in a thick voice, a momentary hand-to-hand struggle, not with Hargraves, but with her, then, somehow, she eluded him and he was left alone--alone in the darkness that the Bengal had cast upon him!

But in all this there was no Hargraves.

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