Part 18

"Just as you say, Wilkinson," returned Leech, feeling all the while that the other was bluffing. "I'll take you down to Murgatroyd's myself," he went on, now bluffing, too. "By George, that's just what I will do! Hereafter it will be said that Wilkinson may have been too smart for Murgatroyd, but that there was one man he couldn't fool; and that was Assistant District Attorney Leech. That ought to get me the chief's job next November. Come on! I've got a taxi-cab--my men will follow in another."

Wilkinson climbed into the cab. At the second corner he called out to the driver: "Turn west!" Leech leaned back smiling at this new turn, and let Wilkinson do his own ordering.

"I want to get out here for a minute, Leech," he said, presently stopping the cab before a white marble building. "Come in with me.... I want to telephone to someone I know."

The two men, each occupied with his own thoughts, stalked up the steps of the Millionaires' Club. At the entrance they were stopped, and Wilkinson was rudely thrust aside. Leech got a cold and distant obeisance from the doorman, who nevertheless politely asked:

"Beg your pardon, sir, did you desire to see any member of the club?"

Wilkinson came forward and roared out:

"Confound you, I'm a member of the club--I'm Peter V. Wilkinson!"

The doorman laughed in his face, and again bowing to Leech, asked if the other was with him.

"Why, Bowles," roared Wilkinson, "I know you like a book. I'm Peter V. Wilkinson, I tell you."

Bowles started at the voice. He recognised it as Wilkinson's, but the man before him bore no resemblance to the Wilkinson that he knew, and he refused to believe him. And in the end, Wilkinson and Leech were forced, to their discomfiture, to retire.

"Hang it!" muttered Wilkinson. "He ought to know me if anybody does. He doesn't know me, and yet you did. How do you account for that?"

"I was looking for a bigger tip," laughed Leech.

At the next corner they stopped and Wilkinson entered a public telephone booth, closed the glass door behind him and then called up the Barristers' Club. Presently the man he called for was at the other end, was answering "Hello." Wilkinson smiled, for the voice held excitement in it.

"Peter!" yelled Morehead in delight.

"Yes, and I'm coming to the Barristers'."

"In broad daylight?"

"Yes, right now. I want to talk to you and talk to you hard. I've read all the New York papers and know all that's going on.... And say, look here, you'd better tell your people there to be on the look-out for a tramp and a con man, for they'll never let us in unless you do."

"Who's the con man?" queried the Colonel, not fully recovered from the shock that Wilkinson had given him.

Whereupon Wilkinson without reply rang off.

Fifteen minutes later Colonel Morehead threw open his bedroom door in the Barristers' Club and threw his arms about his disreputable-looking client.

"Peter, the sight of you is good for sore eyes!" he cried.

Colonel Morehead stiffened for an instant at the sight of the other man, and bowing gravely merely said:

"How do you do, sir?"

"Colonel," began Wilkinson, as he threw himself into a chair and stretched his legs wide apart. "I'll come to the point at once." The Colonel was all attention. "I note by the papers that you are keeping the legislature a devil of a long time selecting a new man to replace Beekman. You will naturally want to know," Wilkinson went on, "why we call upon you in such haste this morning." He waved his hand toward Leech. "Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Leech, at present an assistant district attorney of this county, and the next Governor of the State of New York."

Morehead stared at Wilkinson as one hypnotised.

"Why?" he demanded, at length.

Wilkinson did not answer at once, but drew him into the adjoining room where he related, among other things, the happenings of the last two days. At the conclusion, he remarked:

"A man who asks for a million-dollar bribe is our man, isn't he, Morehead? But there is one thing more I want to say: Don't you forget it that I figured out this thing myself."

XXII

Some few weeks after his visit to Colonel Morehead at the Barristers' Club, Peter V. Wilkinson presented himself at the Riverside Drive house. He had waited until he had grown a stubbly beard once more before introducing himself to his family, and then one morning, feeling very much as he looked, he had come in straggling, half-dazed, tired, bedraggled, a sad object to behold, but in spite of all he was received, like the proverbial prodigal, with open arms.

Then followed days of explanation and secret conferences. His family physician had diagnosed his case as one of loss of memory; Murgatroyd had thrown up his hat in glee; the county force at once became active; the newspapers chattered in cold type like magpies; and what is more, the final stay obtained by Colonel Morehead was drawing to a close.

But all the time that Murgatroyd felt that he had at last landed Wilkinson, Leech kept his own counsel, and secretly he was very happy. For did he not hold within his grasp the governorship, wealth, and in his arms, almost, the daughter of Peter V. Wilkinson?

They were sitting in Leslie's room at the top of the house one morning, Wilkinson and his daughter. The father was puffing away at a big black cigar, and looking very much out-of-place in the dainty apartment with its poppy-covered walls and chintz furnishings, the girl wearing a far more cheerful look than had been on her face for many moons, was luxuriating in a silken-covered chair.

"It's coming out all right, isn't it, father? How many nights have I prayed that you would get away--even if I never saw you again. And now it's coming out all right." She smiled a sad little smile; presently she added: "You've got a man that the National Banks can't buy...."

Her tone was the least bit cautious and reserved--as one who withholds judgment. This did not escape Wilkinson. But he pressed his point.

"You're sure you want Leech?" he asked. "I don't want to force you, but he's a loyal friend of ours. He's run the National conspiracy to earth, is brave enough to face fire for me--he's a true friend, girlie."

Leslie's eyes glowed. She caught her father about the neck, and hiding her face against his shoulder, she whispered:

"Of course I want him, father. I--I would not have anybody else...."

"I'm glad of that," answered her father, nodding. "He's head over heels in love with you, dear--and he seems, somehow, to make it a condition of----"

"Father," she interrupted, "I knew long, long ago that he admired me. I could tell--why, I'm so glad, so glad...."

Nevertheless the girl was very tired, was keyed up to the highest pitch. Her father had but three short weeks of respite, Morehead could do no more, and the legislature was ready to appoint its man in the place that Morehead with some desperate instinct had held vacant for so long. It was still a race, a running fight with Leslie, and she revelled in the fight. It was all a part of a desperate game, with her father for the stakes; and she played it with all her might and main.

"You will grant a pardon to my father?" she had implored of Leech, struggling feebly in his warm embrace.

"Yes," he had answered, drawing her still closer; and Leslie had submitted, persuading herself into the belief that this man was the one man for her.

"You promise?"

"I promise."

Ten days later he resigned his office as Assistant District Attorney of New York; and two weeks later he was lifted into the high place by the legislature. One day after he took his oath of office the petition for the pardon of Peter V. Wilkinson was handed to him; and faithful to his promise, he signed it on the spot.

For what did it matter to him or to Wilkinson, either, that there was a storm of protest--the storm of protest coming chiefly from the office of Murgatroyd? What did it matter to Leech that his name henceforth would be upon the black list at the Criminal Courts Building? He had made good and had won his reward--or almost. At any rate, for one thing, he was Governor....

The _Morning Mail_ made but a feeble protest, for the _Star_ and the _Reporter_ had become bitter and exultant adversaries and gave harder than they took.

To Leslie the whole thing was a triumph.

"And yet it's a funny thing," she thought to herself, "that Eliot Beekman, who defended father, wouldn't pardon him, and here is Newton Leech, who persecuted him, now lets him go."

It was in the Den a few days later that Leslie found upon the leather lounging seat two fat volumes of the printed case of her father's trial. She picked them up listlessly and started in to read them. But she had not gotten very far when voices forced themselves upon her ear. One was Leech's--he had come down from Albany. For some unaccountable reason she did not want to see him just at this time. There was a wedding day to be set--he had pressed her on this subject --and she was not ready to set it. She slipped temporarily behind the thick curtains that hung suspended by the wall, just as Leech and her father stepped into the Den.

Leech's attitude toward the head of the family, as time went on, had been growing more and more insolent; and to-day he was worse than ever.

"Mr. Wilkinson," he said, "I've done my part and I've been well roasted for it."

"That's immaterial to me," gurgled Wilkinson, who had become a different man. The lines had faded from his face, he was rounding out once more, he slept nights and ate with regularity, within him all was peace and happiness. The shadow of the prison had slipped from him like a noose--he was free. He looked at the other tantalisingly for a moment, and then asked: "Well, what do you want ...?"

"Just what you promised me," said Governor Leech, "for setting you free. I want my million dollars, to begin with."

"Come now," grumbled Wilkinson, lighting a cigar, "you've got the governorship--that's enough for any man, my boy."

"It's not enough for me," insisted Leech, alarmed. "I want two things right away--two things you promised me: A million dollars and your daughter Leslie; and the sooner she can marry me, the better."

Wilkinson laughed until he was red in the face, then he said:

"Look here, Leech, I'll compromise with you. You take half a million...."

"Not in a hundred years!" exclaimed Leech, threateningly.

Wilkinson continued to chuckle.

" ... a half million," he repeated, "and I'll let the old lady, my wife, get a divorce, and you can have her. But Leslie...."

Leech gripped the table with both hands.

"Wilkinson," he said firmly, "the girl will marry me, never fear! She likes me, loves me, and she's promised to be my wife. But you've promised to cough up a million to me, and I want it."

"What if I don't?" growled the other.

"If you don't," cried Leech, "I'll let the whole world know that you've got a hundred million or so salted away in your daughter Leslie's name, and then you'll have a hornet's nest about your head."

"Never thought of that," returned Wilkinson, paling slightly. "By the way," he mused, "after Leslie marries you I'll have to find some other dummy to hold those stocks and bonds for me, otherwise, you'll get your hooks on them." He laughed. "Cleverest scheme in the world, boy--Flomerfelt and I concocted it. Why, look here, I've been joking, nothing else. I'm not going to give you a million."

"You're not!" cried Leech, growing white.

"No!" roared Wilkinson. "Hang it all, I'm going to give you two...."

"That's better," assented Leech, sinking back into his seat. "But when?"

"Leslie's got to sign."

"Can you close this to-day?"

"As soon as I can get her. Come on--she's probably upstairs."

Wilkinson and Leech left the room, and Leslie, her face flushed with the knowledge of what she had heard, crept from the room and through the hall back to the postern stair. There, in an empty room she crouched down until she heard them coming down again, then made a dash for her boudoir and locked herself in. After a while a servant rapped on her door and informed her that he had been looking all over for her.

"Who wants me?" she inquired.

"Your father, Miss, and Mr. Leech," he told her.

"Tell my father to come up," said Leslie.

Presently her father, with a document in his hand, entered the room, and smilingly announced:

"Just wanted you to sign this, girlie."

Leslie glanced at it cursorily, saw that it was what she believed it to be--a means of payment to Leech, and signing, passed it over without looking at her father. He stood for an instant at the door.

"Newton has come up to see you," he said. "The Governor is getting kind of lonely up in Albany--he can hardly wait to get a Mrs. Governor up there."

Leslie drew her hand across her face.

"Please tell Mr. Leech," she answered, "that I'm ill. I can't possibly see him to-day--no," she persisted, "don't ask me--not to-day." She pushed her father playfully from the room and once more locked the door. Then she went back to the window and read the printed case of the People _versus_ Peter V. Wilkinson until the shadows deepened into darkness.

"It's all so clear now," she sighed. "How could they have acquitted him? How could Eliot Beekman have pardoned him, even if he had wanted to? Oh, he's guilty, guilty, guilty!"

Completely exhausted, Leslie laid down the volume and threw herself upon the bed, where she lay until the early morning sunlight peered in through the windows. Throughout the long night she had not closed her eyes, but lay there thinking, planning, some way out of it all. The morning found her resolved upon one point: She would never marry the man her father wanted her to marry.

And so it happened that some weeks later Governor Leech, looking down upon her, his face suddenly gone pale, his breath coming short, protested:

"But, Leslie, you can't mean it. Don't you know that I've held you in my arms, that my kisses are on your lips! Those made you mine. You've promised, your eyes have answered mine, you belong to me just as much as though--by heaven! if you don't belong to me for any other reason, you belong to me because I've earned you! Look what I did for your father--what I did for you!"

"You've been paid enough," she answered stubbornly. "I've paid you out of the money in my hands. Oh, don't stare! I know--I know...." She paused a moment, her face flushing, her breath coming fast. "Governor Leech," she resumed, "while my father was in danger I could think of nothing but to save him; but now that strain, that terrific strain is over, and I have come to my senses. I can't even think of you, much less marry you with this taint on you. Yes, I broke my promise to you, it is true, but I had to, don't you see?" She lifted her head proudly, and then added: "I had to for the reason that I am just beginning to find out that I'm a woman, and that you, Governor--you are not--a man."

The following evening while Leslie waited in a small waiting-room near the entrance to the house a man was ushered in--a man with grey hair and bowed shoulders, a man enveloped in a long cloak--for the mist was heavy and the night was wet without. Leaping to her feet, Leslie grasped him by the hand, and said:

"It was good of you to come, Mr. Ilingsworth, and you've found him, I can see by your eyes. Oh, how can I thank you enough! I was to help you, and here you're helping me."

"I'm helping him," said Giles Ilingsworth, steadily, but kindly. He straightened up, and went on: "I haven't seen him, but I've located him--I know the floor he lives on. He--he's always in evenings. They say he has a job with some labourers on the new subway."

"Come!" she cried, seizing his arm.

"Wait," he said, "why don't you send for him?"

Leslie shook her head.

"He would never come. I've got to go to him to-night. I can't wait another minute--not another minute."

In the open doorway while she drew her cloak tight about her, they stood and peered out into the Drive.

"We'll get a cab," she said, taking his arm; but Ilingsworth was adamant.

"There's one thing that I forgot to tell you," he went on, hesitatingly. "I--it's only what they tell me down there--they say Beekman does not live alone. I thought you ought to know...."

Leslie flushed for an instant and drew back, and then pressed on again.

"I know," she said, "that is, I suppose--but never mind that. I've wronged this man and I won't let another day pass over my head without trying to right the wrong--if it ever can be righted." She tightened her grasp on the man's arm. "How can a wrong like that ever be righted?" she asked.

But Ilingsworth himself knew something about wrongs, and muttered half-aloud as he glanced at the darkened heavens:

"Are my wrongs ever to be righted?"

XXIII

Before one of a long row of dilapidated tenement houses away over on the East Side of the city, the cabman halted. Leslie had ordered him to drive like the wind, promising double fare; and consequently he had covered the ground in a ridiculously short period of time.

To the girl, familiar only with the better localities of the city, the squalor of the place was appalling. It all looked so dark and mysterious that she hesitated for a time before consenting to go in; but at last, overcoming her repugnance, she brought herself to the point where she could make the ascent of the narrow stairway which led to Beekman's room, and she began to climb the stairs, clutching at Ilingsworth as they went.

"They said he was always at home," repeated Ilingsworth, knocking gently at the door.

A moment more and the door was suddenly thrust open, flooding the hall with light, and a woman, wearing a hat and a long coat, stood in the doorway. It was Madeline Braine.

For a second that lapsed into another, the women stood staring at each other, but did not speak.

"I was just going home," finally announced Miss Braine. "I----"

"It isn't true, then, you don't live here?" faltered Ilingsworth, blurting out things in his excitement that should have been left unsaid.

"Were you looking for me?" asked the woman. "I live at...."

"For Mr. Beekman," interrupted Leslie, in a low voice. "Can we find him here?"

Madeline Braine pressed her hand against her lips.

"He's asleep," she whispered. "They're both asleep."

"Both!" The exclamation fell from Leslie's lips.

"Who else is there here?" proceeded Ilingsworth, without formality.

"Nellie, the girl that lives here," she told him in lowered tones. "He takes care of her. She's been sick--he's had to stay up nights and work all day, and it's a pity to wake him up...."

"He hasn't retired yet, then?" asked Leslie, inanely, for want of something better to say.

But whatever would have been the woman's reply it did not reach her lips, for just at that moment there was a stir, an exclamation from the corner of the room, and a man rising to his full height--a man, tall, strong, bronzed, clad in workman's clothes, cried out sharply:

"Who's voice was that? I thought I heard a voice...."

The woman waved the two out in the hall, and answered:

"No, she hasn't stirred."

Beekman stretched his arms, and replied, lowering his voice:

"I don't mean Nell. I mean her voice--Leslie's. Who's out there, Miss Braine?"

Madeline motioned to Ilingsworth and Leslie to come in, but at the very moment they entered a young voice rose from the next room, and cried in all its weakness:

"Madeline! Eliot! Oh, Eliot...."

"We've awakened her," said Madeline Braine, contritely, hurrying toward the inner door. But Giles Ilingsworth interrupted her flight and caught her as in a grip of iron.

"Just wait a moment, if you please," he said.

Again the voice raised itself in supplication.

"Madeline! Eliot...."

"You recognised a voice," said Ilingsworth to Beekman, "but I recognise a voice, too." He caught up the lamp and started for the next room, but Beekman was before him standing at the threshold.

"That's a bedroom," he explained.

"Let go of me, Beekman!" cried the old man. "I know what I'm about!" And with a steady step he marched on into the next room.

All of a sudden a loud cry, a woman's cry of sudden joy, reached their ears. Madeline hastened in. The next instant, while Leslie and Beekman stood facing one another, they heard a muffled groan and Ilingsworth came out again. Holding up the light to Beekman's eyes, he looked into them sternly.

"My daughter," he said, "she's a living wreck, almost."

"You should have seen her when she first came here, Mr. Ilingsworth," answered Beekman, returning the other's gaze with interest.

"You saved my life, Beekman," went on Giles Ilingsworth, his voice trembling; "but for how much of this are you responsible?"

Madeline Braine pressed to his side and said:

"Let me answer that. Governor Beekman did more than save your life, he saved hers--saved her from drowning, nursed her, fed her, lodged her, he has brought her back to life--back to you."

But Giles Ilingsworth was not satisfied.

"Let him answer," he persisted.

"There is nothing more to tell. Upon my honour, there is not," spoke up Beekman.

In sudden relief, then, Giles Ilingsworth started for the room; and Leslie, pressing close to him, asked if she might see the girl.

"She needed someone to take care of her, and she found Eliot," she sighed a moment later as she stood in the shadow and saw Elinor lying propped up against white pillows, her eyes very large and lustrous, a faint smile on her lips. And then she softly left the room.

Within, Ilingsworth sat on the edge of the bed and babbled like a child, happiness suffusing his countenance; a little while longer and his voice became firm once more, had the ring of conviction in it, weakness had dropped from him as a mantle.

"I'm happy, oh, so happy, Elinor!" he cried.

There were no questions on his lips for her to answer; she knew there never would be. Nothing mattered to her nor to him now save that they were together and were happy in each other's love.

Madeline knelt suddenly on the other side of the couch.

"Mr. Ilingsworth," she whispered in a choking voice, "there's something that I've got to tell you, something that's been driving me almost mad, for a long time." Her face grew white and her eyes widened as she met the old man's gaze. "It was I," she confessed, "I shot Mr. Pallister."

In a bound Ilingsworth was on his feet, his eyes fixed upon hers.

"You!" he exclaimed. "You ...!"

"Don't--don't let them hear!" she moaned, hiding her face in her hands. "I'm weak--I've always been weak, and if it hadn't been for me none of this would have happened."

"It was Wilkinson," cried Ilingsworth, clenching his hands, "Wilkinson is at the bottom of it all!"

The woman grasped at his sympathetic tone.

"Yes, yes," she answered; and turning to Elinor: "I was like you, dear--I had nobody to take care of me."

"But," he protested, "it was my gun...."

"Yes. That day when you talked to his daughter I was there--behind the hangings. You laid the gun behind you on a table, dropped it there behind a book."

Ilingsworth placed his hand against his forehead and thought a moment.

"So I did. It all comes back to me now," he returned. "I forgot even that at my trial. I have never been able to account for its disappearance."

"I picked it up and kept it here," said the woman, placing her hand upon her bosom. "Some instinct made me do it. I was going to break with Wilkinson--I had made up my mind never to see him again, and I didn't know but that I would need it to threaten him, so I kept it." Her eyes grew dark with anger. "Afterwards he treated me cruelly, told something, well, something that has ruined my life. I was in the crowd that day, and,--well, you know the rest. Don't--don't tell anybody," she pleaded. "They'd kill me, kill me before I had a chance to redeem myself. I don't want to die--I can't die. I did my best for you, Mr. Ilingsworth,--after I had done my worst," she ended in a sob.