Part 17

"I wonder," he asked himself, as under his gruelling cross-examination the clerk searched the remotest confines of his memory, "I wonder what Wilkinson had in that brown paper bundle, and what became of it. Was it drowned, too?"

But of all the people down at Brighton Beach, only one man _knew_ the movements of Peter V., and that was Peter V. himself. He had had his swim; he had gone far out, ducked and swam under water for a distance, and finally had gone ashore near Helmstaedter's pavilion--Helmstaedter's pavilion, where he belonged and where he was not known. Dripping, glowing from his bath, he had entered the pavilion with hundreds of bathers and gone at once to his booth.

The rest was simple. Having dried himself, he once more donned the dry, Obermeyer bathing-suit, drew on top of that his second-hand suit of clothes, smashed his soft hat down on his head, and left the pavilion by the street entrance. And pushing through the back streets and alleyways which were crowded with the cheaper order of pleasure-seekers, eating "hot-dogs," he darted into a barber-shop and leaned back in the chair with a grunt of satisfaction.

"Too hot for spinach, Tony," he remarked in the genial vernacular of the day, "so shave her off."

Tony did as he was bid; and when Wilkinson rose and glanced into Tony's glass, he looked upon a countenance that he would never have recognised for his own. In former days his cheeks were plump and muscular, his chin bold, and his lips expressive. But for some years now a beard had covered his face; his lips and chin and jowls had been unused. So that not only was he not the Peter V. Wilkinson of the present day, but he was not the Peter V. Wilkinson of any day: he was just a very average man in a second-hand suit of clothes.

"So long, Tony!" he sang out, and soon he was lost in the crowd.

XXI

Wandering aimlessly through Madison Square Park one evening ex-Governor Beekman suddenly felt someone tugging at his arm, and swinging round quickly to shake himself from the other's grasp, yet glancing down to see what sort of a person had accosted him, he saw that it was a woman, that she looked pale and weary, that her clothes were very shabby, and that she seemed to be in sad straits. Instantly he was conscious of a feeling of pity for her, at the same time he was angry with himself, angry with the fates that prevented him from doing what he had repeatedly done under similar circumstances in times past. For Beekman, always a tender, kind-hearted fellow, had never been one to look down upon less fortunate beings, and rarely lost an opportunity whereby he might do a kindness to some poor unfortunate.

"What do you want of me?" he asked, not unkindly.

"I--I've been looking for you," said the woman. "I----"

The man pulled himself up quickly. Here was someone who knew him, and of late he had been shunning the sight of his acquaintances. Again he shot a sharp glance at the woman: the intruder was Madeline Braine. The moment that he recognised her, Beekman was aware of a spasm of pain; too well she brought back to his memory the things he was trying to forget; nevertheless, he said with a pleasant smile:

"Why, of course, you're Miss Braine. I know you now. How stupid of me.... But what do you want of me?"

The woman did not immediately answer. She stood by him silent, motionless, looking vaguely into space. After a while she said falteringly:

"I--I don't know what I wish with you. Really I--misery----"

" ... loves company," he finished for her under his breath while reflecting: "How can one man be responsible for so much?" for it had been borne in upon him that the woman, like himself, was a social outcast with the hand of Wilkinson heavy on her, still pressing her down though he was no more.

The woman seemed to have read his thoughts, for she broke in upon them with:

"Oh, you didn't know Peter V. Wilkinson as I did! I've felt his force, sir, indeed I have.... But we won't talk about my story.... Won't you tell me yours, for I know----" She stopped abruptly and looked up at him, a strange, pathetic look in her eyes. And whether it was her rare beauty that appealed to him, or that she was so intensely human toward one who had been thrust into the gutter, at any rate she seemed like a bit of heaven opening up to him.

Therefore it was not long before he was pouring out into her ears all his sufferings at the hands of Wilkinson, and already he was beginning to like her because of the sorrow they had in common.

"Tell me," he said to her, "how can a man like that set my friends against me--hound me out of my clubs."

"I read about you and the Barristers'. You were treasurer--they claimed your books were crooked. I knew----"

"My bookkeeper must have been one of Wilkinson's men. Of course I made it good. But that was nothing compared with the charge itself--enough to damn any man! I had investments, mortgages, but how he succeeded in tying up those properties in a night, destroy the neighbourhood, cut their value in two, is what dazes me. The power of the man is beyond me--I can't understand it."

"I can understand it all," she answered, "only you've injured him more than I ever did."

"There is Judge Gilchrist, for instance," he went on, "what hasn't he done to him? The man's reputation is gone, and as for mine...." He held his head very high. "They may have robbed me of my money, my clients may have been forced to leave me, but there's one thing they can't do to me--they can't take my profession from me. The Judges know--they believe...."

"But Wilkinson could have you disbarred if he were alive, you must know that," she insisted hopelessly.

"Never!" he answered defiantly. "He can't fool the courts. And some day I'm going to climb back ... even if I have to crawl there on my hands and knees."

"I'd like to help you win your place back in the world," she spoke up, remembering his kindness to her, then she stopped, her face flushing with the sudden realisation which was forcing itself upon her, that who was she to stand beside any man in his fight against the world, she, a creature rejected by everyone, penniless, with a fight of her own on her hands?

"I shouldn't have said this," she went on by way of explanation. "I'm rather a weak ally to"--she paused to push back a stray lock that the wind insisted upon blowing in her face, but in reality it was to brush away the tears that clung to her eyelids. Beekman saw this, and his heart went out to her, for he knew that hard as was his lot, hers must be infinitely harder.

"It wouldn't have been so," presently she continued. "But there was no one to care for me--no one to care what became of me. I was a silly, vain creature like thousands of others...."

For some time the conversation held to this strain. At last the girl put out her hand and said with a faint little smile on her lips:

"Governor Beekman--for I must still call you so--it looks like a case of down and out for both of us. If you'll give me your address, I'll give you mine. One can never tell, you know...."

"That's very true," he answered sadly, and proceeded to scribble his name and address on a leaf of his note book, tore out the leaf and passed it over to her; then scribbling her address, as she repeated it, upon another leaf, he added with genuine sincerity: "If I can ever be of service to you, Miss Braine, don't hesitate to call upon me." He took the hand which she gave him, and once more their ways parted.

The next morning Beekman's superior--Beekman had obtained a job with the Title Company, after he had been frozen out of his law practice--called him into the inside office.

"I'm sorry to tell you," he began, "it's not personal with me at all, but the company have given me orders to ask you to resign...."

"I knew they would," said Beekman, pocketing his salary. "I expect to spend the rest of my natural life in resignation. I've resigned from six positions now, and am being kicked out of the seventh. I bear no malice to anybody except the man above.... If he's alive, I hope to get him one of these days; if he isn't," he smiled genially, "why, he's getting his reward right now."

The hounding of Beekman had become an easy matter. Once driven out of independent business and shunned by people of his kind, he was forced to apply for salaried positions. After that the story was always the same, except that each time he kept asking lower and lower wages, getting them until he was turned off. And he was always turned off--no longer was his resignation requested.

" ... we can't have a thief in our employ," was the customary remark. Some imputed to him hideous morals; others charged him with drunkenness, but always with the same result.

In the beginning he had thought of leaving town and going West; but the Beekman grit was in him and it declined to capitulate.

"I'll fight it out here, alone," he had told himself a thousand times, "here, where I belong--where she is. I'll fight--I'll never run away...."

The temptation to escape he had put behind him long ago, but there were other things that assailed him. He had the name of everything that was disreputable, he knew that. Even the newspapers from time to time referred to him as being connected with fracases that never had occurred, or if they had, had happened in his absence. Day after day, night after night he walked the streets with shame clinging to him. To-day he held his position, but never knowing when the merciless hounds of the Wilkinson system would corrupt his employers and turn him out. He grew shabby, shabbier, and all too swiftly, too. But he was glad of one thing: his pride had never left him; he kept himself neat and clean. He felt, though, that these were things that would slip from him as he slumped down into the army of the unknown. Many times he had to combat the temptation to take to drink, to drugs, to the comfortable vices of the vagabond.

"I've got the name," he told himself, "the name,"--and unquestionably Leslie believed it--for would not he have believed these things of his dearest friends had the evidence been the same as it was in his own case?--"And that's where Wilkinson was strong--he always had proofs.... Yes. I've got the name, why not the game?" he would reason, as he kept slipping down, down, down.

But through it all the same instinct kept him straight. "I'll stick it out alone," he kept saying over and over again. Leslie had told him once that he was a man of destiny, and he still felt it. As long as there was life there was hope. Help must come to him in some form some day, and when he faced her, he must face her clean. Never once did he blame her for his plight. He saw too well and clearly that she, too, was the victim of the Wilkinson system, and all the more so because she was Wilkinson's daughter. In Beekman's mind the truth was slowly forcing itself that Leslie's plight was worse than his, for she was unconsciously the innocent instrument of vengeance.

"I've got to stay decent for her sake," he kept repeating to himself. But as time went on, one horrible temptation kept pressing, closing in upon him.

Night after night he haunted the more isolated East Side piers. Night after night he glanced down into the smooth, dark waters flowing silently past him, with a glance that held within it some deep meaning. Night after night as his body became lean and gaunt, as the lines deepened in his young face, as his pockets emptied themselves, magically, so it seemed, as he stared starvation in the face, the waters seemed to beckon to him, and death seemed, somehow, pleasanter than life.

The time had come when he knew, when he was assured past all mistake, that he was at his rope's end.

"I'm down at the bottom of the pit and there's no way up," he whispered to himself, and held out his arms for an instant toward the waters. "There's no way out but you, you," he went on, his purpose clinging desperately to him. He stopped and drew back from the edge and crouched against the stringpiece. For across the pier something had arrested his attention. A shadow deeper than the night, and part and parcel of the night itself, was creeping toward the edge. This shadow was the only moving thing that Beekman had ever seen upon this lonely pier. His nerves became suddenly alert, for now he saw that this shadow was a human being--a woman bent upon a woman's desperate purpose. He watched the shadow spellbound.

Suddenly the woman lifted her hands high above her head, and with the wail of a hunted animal, cast herself off the stringpiece and into the river underneath.

In the twinkling of an eye he had jerked off his coat and shoes and thrown himself into the stream. He caught her as she came up, but she clutched him and struggled, not to save herself, but to cast him off. Like a maniac she fought and the two went down together, Beekman gurgling in distress. By some superhuman effort he conquered her underneath the water, and coming up, held her, limp and inert with one hand, while he swam slowly, for his strength, owing to starvation, was fast ebbing. Somehow he managed to climb up the rough sides of the pier, bundling her up ahead of him, and laid her down, unconscious, on the stringpiece, where she lay for some time. When she had revived, however, the mania once more possessed her.

"Leave me alone, please leave me alone!" she cried, her strength returning. "You've no right to interfere--no right to touch me...."

Beekman held her tight until her paroxysm ceased, and once more she lay inert in his arms. Finally she opened her eyes and looked about her.

"You're going to come along with me," he told her gently, forcing her on; but she tried to tear herself loose again. After a little while he succeeded in getting her to the street, but there, with some strength more powerful than his, she suddenly jerked herself from him and held him at arm's length, though he still held his grip upon her wrists.

"Let me go! Let me go, I say! I'm tired--tired of men--tired of men like you!" she wailed. "I want to go home--I want to go back to my father--back to my father...."

And still he held on to her, held on until he got her underneath the street lamps, where he looked into her face. She was worn and haggard, but her dark, lustrous eyes were something to remember. "She must have been very beautiful," he thought, and wondered.

"Look at me!" he said in a voice that startled her into consciousness; "you've got to trust me! I'm going to take you home----"

"My home?" she cried feebly.

"Yes. Where is your home?"

The girl made no answer, but commenced to weep. At length, she said:

"If I had a home, do you suppose I would have attempted what you have just prevented me from doing? Home? Let me go, please let me go!" and again she fell to sobbing.

"Then I'll take you to my own home," he said; and added to himself: "I'm good for one more day there at any rate."

"No, no, no!" she cried, trying to break away from him. "I want my father, just father--Oh, father...."

"Don't fight against me. I'm going to help you to find your home, your father. Come, trust me!"

And the girl, too weak to resist him any longer, allowed herself to be led away by him.

* * * * *

In a cheap hotel on this same East Side a man sat among other men of his own type, drinking with apparent gusto a huge glass of beer. Between sips he smoked a pipe. His clothes were soiled, stained with tobacco, they reeked with the odour of the place. He had just finished telling a story to an English sailor, who slapped his thigh and howled in glee.

"That's a good 'un, matey!" cried the sailor. "But I arn't got one to match it, stow the luck!"

The storyteller's last chuckles had subsided and he had drained his glass to the dregs, when suddenly a man entered the place and thrust himself into the group that sat around the table. This newcomer was of a different class from the others. He was tall, square, handsome, and his air and clothes and manner betokened one of the better classes. The genial storyteller set down his glass, grinned once more at the English sailor, and then following the sailor's glance, looked up at the stranger. He found the stranger was glancing down at him with an intentness that was disconcerting, to say the least.

The stranger slowly extended his hand toward the group, his forefinger levelling itself in the direction of the genial storyteller.

"I want to talk to you," he said.

The man at whom he pointed faltered for an instant. His first instinct was to give the signal and get his cronies to bear down upon this stranger and throw him to the ground.

The stranger--who was no other than Leech, an Assistant District Attorney of the County of New York, who had become famous chiefly as the lawyer who had sent Peter V. Wilkinson up for a ten-years' term--saw the look, interpreted it correctly, but he only laughed in the man's face.

"There are three of my men outside," he whispered, bending down, and then straightened up once more. "Where can we talk?" he asked.

The other man lumbered to his feet and bowed awkwardly, saying:

"Excuse me, gents."

At the foot of the stairs that opened near the street, Leech held the other in conversation for an instant--just long enough to permit three men without to see his man. None of the three knew who he was, but all knew that they should know him at any future time.

The next instant the two had passed upstairs, where the man had a room.

"Well, Wilkinson," said Leech, once they were behind closed doors, and passing over a fifty-cent cigar, "you turned it pretty neat, but you didn't fool me."

"I see I didn't," returned Wilkinson, limply.

"You were going to stay here until you could make a get away, I suppose," went on Leech. "You did it cleverly, but," he shook his head, "there was a man cleverer than you in little old New York--that's me."

"You're an intruder," retorted Wilkinson, leaning over toward the other. "I was just getting used to the life here--liked it, in fact."

"It's the butcher blood coming out in you," conceded Leech. "Reversion to a type. I suppose this is really where a man like you belongs."

"Who else knows about me?" asked Wilkinson, coolly enough.

Leech screwed up an eye.

"Did you think I was fool enough to give you away?" He paused a moment to watch the effect of his words upon the other, then he went on: "Nobody followed you up--nobody knows but myself. Listen, Wilkinson, and I'll tell you how you did it."

And Leech proceeded to detail Wilkinson's escape and the method of it in such correct and graphic terms that Wilkinson's eyes bulged wide with terror.

"How did you know?" gasped Wilkinson.

Leech crooked his forefinger.

"Because," he declared, "there's nothing new under the sun. The thing you did was done by a bank cashier in California ten years ago, and one of the few people who knew about it was myself. It's not down in the books. You thought it was new; I knew...."

They smoked in silence for a while, Wilkinson all the time staring at the other. Finally he spoke.

"Well, the jig is up, so far as you and I are concerned, and the question now is, what do you want of me?"

Leech hesitated a moment, before answering:

"I want a cool million to let you go."

Wilkinson grunted.

"When you told me you were the only man who knew, I figured out that was your game. But what about these chaps downstairs?"

"They're not county men," assured Leech, "and they don't know a thing about it."

"A million dollars," mused Wilkinson. "Where would I get it?"

Leech blew smoke rings toward the ceiling.

"I refuse to discuss that part of it," he answered, "only it's a million now. Later on it may be two, you know."

The banker knitted his brows.

"And what do you do for that million?" he said.

"Keep my hands off and my mouth shut, that's all."

"How long a time will you give me to think it over?"

"How long do you want?"

"Three days."

Leech shook his head.

"It will be three millions by that time; besides, this thing has cost me money. I've got to keep these chaps on the job, you know."

Wilkinson rose, and said:

"Give me until eight o'clock to-morrow morning. You'll find me here."

Leech thought a moment, and then shaking his finger at the millionaire, he said:

"Don't you try to get away, Wilkinson, because...."

"That part of it is all right," growled the other. "By the way, won't you stay and have a schooner of beer? No? Well, eight to-morrow morning, then."

Leech left, Wilkinson looking after him wistfully as he went out.

"Clean-cut proposition, that Leech," he reflected to himself.

There was a tap on the door. And to Wilkinson's "Come in," Leech reappeared.

"I merely wanted to send my regards to Miss Leslie," he said, "in case you call her up."

"I won't call anybody up," growled Wilkinson. "My people don't know anything about me other than that I'm dead."

Nor did Wilkinson call anybody up. He merely stopped drinking beer, went downstairs and got a handful of black cigars, and then returning to his room smoked all through the long night, that is, until two o'clock in the morning. At that hour he heard a church bell chime and started for the window. In the moonlight the dingy backyard seemed peaceful and deserted. He took off his shoes and stole out upon the fire-escape; and climbing carefully down rung after rung until at last he stood on _terra firma_, he then started for a secret alleyway which, as he had ascertained, had been used in frequent evasions of the police. But no sooner had he started toward it than a hand was laid upon his arm; and turning, he found himself face to face with one of Leech's plain-clothesmen.

"Taking the air?" queried the man, pleasantly, deepening his hold on the arm of Wilkinson.

"No," said Wilkinson, looking about the squalid backyard, "but I saw somebody moving around down here--must have been you--and mistook him for a burglar. Thought I'd scare him off."

"He didn't scare," said the sleuth, drily. "Shall we--er--return?"

They returned, the detective lounging, wide-eyed and comfortable, upon the fire-escape above, while Wilkinson drew off his clothes and slept like a log for the remainder of the night. At eight o'clock in the morning he was up and dressed; and at eight o'clock Leech appeared. But no sooner was he in the room than Wilkinson drew on his slouched hat and seized Leech by the arm, saying:

"Come on, I'm ready."

"Where are you going?" cried Leech, in alarm.

Wilkinson grinned.

"I'm going to give myself up to Murgatroyd," he said.

Leech winced. It was a blow between the eyes and he felt it.

"The devil you are!" he cried. "But why?"

"Because," said Wilkinson, slowly, "I know chaps like you. A man who can be bought for a million, can't be bought for ten million, that's what I mean."

"Explain yourself," stammered Leech.

"When you get the million you'll come back for more. You'll never lose sight of me--eh?" Wilkinson's grin widened as he saw the telltale flush upon the cheek of the man before him. "You'd come back for more and more. That I wouldn't mind, but in the end when I refused you'd call my bluff--you'd kill the goose that was laying the golden egg. You'd give me up one year, two years hence--you know you would."

Leech was silent; he was floored.

"Besides," went on Wilkinson, calmly, "there would always be the danger of my discovery by Murgatroyd. The sword of Damocles would forever be over my head. I'll make an end of it; I'll give myself up...."