Part 4

Peter V. Wilkinson in the Den below was having a bad quarter of an hour with his daughter Leslie. For, truth to tell, there was no person in the universe whose judgment he dreaded more than the judgment of this girl who sat before him: it was his one passion to appear well in her eyes. He had listened, with keen interest, to what she had to say, invariably seeking her glance, at times leaning forward with unusual intentness in order not to lose a single word. Time and time again her words, unintentionally it is true, stung him to the quick. And yet, he had not even gulped down his emotion. He had faced her, quiet, calculating, with a countenance at times interested, at times amused. Not once had he interrupted her; not once apologised. At the start he had wondered just what he should say when she had finished, had thought of denials, of indignation, of calling on the absent accuser for his proofs; but as her tale unfolded, he merely continued to chew the black, unlighted cigar that he held in his mouth.

"Have you told me all?" he asked, glancing up at the high window with its leaded panes.

The girl, shamefaced, downcast, because of her doubts of her father, flushed and nodded a "yes."

Wilkinson smiled, and leaning across the table, looked her full in the eyes.

"Girlie," he told her, suavely, "you know I'm glad you told me this. I want you to be just as frank in telling me everything else that bothers you--especially about myself. I'm glad you told me this," he repeated, "because, because it's true."

The girl jumped up from her seat, and exclaimed incredulously:

"True! Father, it can't be true!"

He waved her back again to her chair, took a fresh cigar, lighted it, and then said squarely:

"It's the Gospel truth. With just one exception--an immaterial correction that I want to make--what you have said is fact, only you've got the wrong sow by the ear."

"The what!" stammered the girl.

Wilkinson waved a deprecating hand.

"I should have said that your story is all right, but it's told about the wrong man," he explained.

Leslie's eyes sparkled.

"Then you mean to say----"

"I mean to say," interrupted her father grimly, "that the man who concocted that very clever scheme was not myself, but quite another person."

"You don't mean Mr. Flomerfelt?" she put in quickly.

Wilkinson rose, his eyes blazing with righteous indignation.

"Who understands the methods of a thief better than a thief! Who can tell you how to rob a bank so well as the thug who robbed it! Leslie, the man who tried that scheme," he went on with great emphasis, "and who, trying it, dragged us all to ruin, is the man who told you his story in this room to-day. It is Giles Ilingsworth of the Tri-State Trust Company."

Leslie fell back before him in astonishment.

"I--I can't believe it," was all she could say.

Wilkinson laughed gently, generously.

"I don't ask you to believe it, girlie. But let me ask you a question: A year ago, did you ever hear my trust companies questioned? was there any doubt of the integrity of the Interstate and Tri-State?--you know there wasn't. Well, thirteen months ago we took on this Giles Ilingsworth--new blood, you understand--who brought in a whole lot of new bloods with him. We didn't understand then that he was a get-rich-quick proposition." Wilkinson chuckled in spite of his indignation. "We believed, rather, that he was an honest, sober-minded, experienced chap, solid and, well, I thought I could take my ease, thought I had a man who would run things right and let me have the fun I've earned so hard. I let him go his gait. And what did he try to do for us? Just what he accused me of doing this afternoon."

Wilkinson sank into his chair and covered his face with his hands. Leslie darted around the corner of the big desk and threw her arms about him.

"I knew--I knew----" she sobbed in her joy. She pressed her young, fair face against his grizzled jowl. "My father ..." she whispered softly to him, as though to some lover, "my father, will you believe that I never really doubted you? It sounded so true on the instant----"

Wilkinson drew her to his knee and kissed her.

"I don't wonder you believed him, girlie," he said after a while. "Why shouldn't he fool you, when he fooled your old father."

The girl still clung to him, but Wilkinson felt the strain beginning to tell, felt that his face was growing ashen with fatigue, and now that it was over he needed solitude. So he placed her lightly on her feet, and tapping her affectionately on the shoulder, said:

"Run along now, girlie. And on your way out you might tell Jordan that I'm not to be disturbed for fifteen minutes--not even by that Flomerfelt, who seems to be wandering around upstairs in our private apartments. That man gets on my nerves so that I can't think."

After Leslie had gone, for some moments Wilkinson, in silence, puffed away at his black cigar. Then, with considerable deliberation, he rose, went over to the door, and locked and bolted it. Absorbed in his thoughts, he remained standing there for a long time. When he turned back toward the desk, a woman stood there, facing him--a woman, young, tall, slender, with very dark hair and dark blue eyes, a woman with a strange mixture of hope and trouble in her eyes.

Wilkinson's face paled; he was angry through and through. Nevertheless he struggled to appear calm.

"Confound it, Madeline," he said tactfully, "I forgot all about you. This blamed excitement put it all out of my head." But in the next breath his manner changed, and he burst out with: "What the deuce is your car doing at my door?"

"Your car, not mine," she reminded him gently.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"It happens to be yours," he corrected, "for I gave it to you, didn't I?"

"We won't go into that," wearily she replied.

Wilkinson looked her sternly in the eye.

"We'll cut out the question of ownership. What's more to the point, is, what the devil you're doing in my house? If you wanted to see me, why didn't you wait for me to come to you? My wife is upstairs," he went on severely, "and my daughter all around the place. They probably both know you, even though they don't know.... You might have waited----"

"I couldn't do that," she answered, faltering. "I--I had to see you, and I couldn't wait. Do you suppose I would have come here--to your home--if there hadn't been some urgency about it. I wrote; you did not answer."

"The Tri-State kept me on the jump," he half apologised. "I had no time to read love letters----"

"Love letters? Indeed!" she interjected, and then went on: "I called at the Trust Company office to see you, sent messages, called you up on the 'phone, but to no avail. I had to see you even at the risk of your displeasure. Besides, no one has seen me but you."

Wilkinson started.

"You've been here in this room all the time--what?"

"Behind those curtains," she informed him, emphasising her words with a nod toward them.

Wilkinson advanced on the woman as if he were about to strike her, for now he knew that she had been spying upon him, had been a witness to Flomerfelt's confidences, had listened to the colloquy between Leslie and himself; but, making a great effort, he checked his mad impulse, and, instead, endeavoured to make no point whatever of her presence there. He knew Madeline Braine's comprehension of business schemes was nil. To direct her attention to anything she had heard would be unwise.

"You couldn't have chosen a better place," he told her genially.

And then it was that suddenly something seemed to snap within his brain. The terrible excitement of the past few weeks was beginning to tell on him; a wild yearning to escape all further responsibility, to rove free, careless, reckless, took possession of him. The woman before him was lovely to look upon, he liked her, and why not chuck the whole game, so he termed it, take her away with him, anywhere, to South America, to the ends of the world?

"Why not?" he exclaimed, touching her on the shoulder.

The woman looked at him, surprised.

"I say, Madeline," he went on, happily, "I've been so busy of late that I haven't seen as much of you as I would have liked. Besides, you were good enough to be out the last two times I looked you up. Do you know," he was close to her now, his hot breath upon her face, "I don't think I ever loved you quite as much as now. Suppose I take a rest from business, and we'll take a ten-days' trip in the _Marchioness_. We'll have a bully good time! Come, Madeline, say the word, and I'll do it."

Madeline eluded his amorous embrace, and slipping to the side of the desk placed upon it a small black bag.

"One of the things, Peter V.," she said quietly, "I came for, was to bring these back."

Wilkinson looked at the bag inquisitively. He wondered what surprise she had in store for him, and smilingly proceeded to open it.

"Jewels!" he exclaimed, eyeing her for a moment in uncertainty; and the next moment his hand brought forth a handful of rings.

"Yes, those and the automobile," she faltered, forcing the words out, "I want to give them back to you."

The man broke suddenly into a good-natured, affectionate laugh.

"You've been reading the papers, I see, and thought the old man was down and out. You were going to put up your jewels and truck to help me out? Well, I'll be----" He caught her hand impulsively. "Say, Madeline, you're a good sort, and no mistake about it!" And now, snapping the little bag together, he passed it back to her. "But you're all wrong, my dear, I'm not strapped--not much! This is between ourselves, though, understand. You keep your jewels, and the car, too. There's many a good time coming to us yet. Don't you worry, now--and don't forget that I appreciate your goodness to me. I do, indeed."

"You don't understand me," she said, retreating under his advances. "I brought these back to you, because I'm going to break with you. I----"

Wilkinson looked at her dumbfounded.

"Break with me! What? Surely you're joking. Why, no woman ever broke with Peter V. Wilkinson voluntarily. I've broken with a score or more, but this is a new one on me. Break with me? What for?" He leaned back against his desk.

There was nothing more to say; the girl had spoken in finality. She drew herself up to her full height and looked down upon him. And as she stood there in all her slenderness, she had never seemed more beautiful to him.

"I think I understand now," presently he said, white with anger. "You really thought, like the rest, that I was a sinking ship; and you were going to desert me, like the rats, before I sank. That's the idea, is it? Well, you're mightily mistaken, my girl." And now he held out his hand to her in appeal. "You don't want me to prove that I'm as sound as a dollar, do you? For I can and will." And then he went on to tell her that he had all his money stowed away. "I have, for a fact," he concluded; "but this is in confidence. And now you won't leave me, will you? Somehow, I can't let you go."

"Peter, I thought I might be able to do this without telling you the truth," she said, with a note almost of tenderness in her voice. "But I see I've got to make myself plain to you. I'm going to break with you for the reason that--that there's someone else."

The words fell dully on his ears.

" ... Someone else," he repeated. He looked at her long and searchingly before continuing:

"But how can there be anyone else? I've got all the money that there is in little old New York! What more do you want? Who else----" And then, without waiting for a reply: "It isn't Wilgerot? No? Then it's Debevoise?"

She shook her head.

"Look here, Madeline, it isn't that Dumont Mapes?" he cried. "You wouldn't shake me for a rake like that, would you?"

"I can't tell you who it is," was all the girl would say.

"But I want to know," insisted the man. "You've got to tell me."

"If you must know, then, it is a man I love--a man I'm going to marry," she answered softly.

Wilkinson returned to his desk, to a fresh cigar. This was another problem, and problems were in his line, it seemed.

"You're going to marry somebody rich, I suppose," he said at length.

A smile crossed her face.

"Somebody poor," she answered.

"Poor! Why in heaven's name should you marry somebody that's poor?"

"Peter, I told you I loved him," she repeated, still smiling.

Wilkinson was conscious of a curious, indefinable sensation; an emotion that heretofore had been foreign to his nature.

"And--and," he stammered, battling with this new sensation, "he loves you, I suppose?"

"I know he does," she answered.

The millionaire puffed silently.

"He must love you," he went on at length, in brutal tones, "to--to forgive all this." And stretching his arms wide into a circle that included her and himself, he added: "He's willing to forget the past?"

The girl did not answer. But on her face was a death-like pallor.

"Ah!" he cried, quickly noting her change of colour. "Then he doesn't know!"

No one better than Madeline Braine could better realise the full import of this sneer. Advancing toward him, her limbs dragging against her skirts, giving her the appearance of a woman struggling forward on her knees, she caught at one corner of the desk and leaned against it, crying:

"Peter, I love this man. You won't--why should he know----"

"Why shouldn't he?" was the man's cruel answer. "You love him...."

"No, no, no!" she cried. "Don't you understand--we're going away--going West, never to come back. If he doesn't know, all will be well...."

"Oh, so everything is going to be lovely," grinned Peter, "until he finds out. But when he finds out? What then?"

For a long time she pleaded with him, while he, lolling back comfortably in his chair, leisurely blew rings of smoke in the air. Finally he rose, and held out his hand.

"You're sure, Madeline, that you've made up your mind to leave me? Sure?"

For answer, the girl inclined her head.

Wilkinson frowned.

"This interview is at an end. From now on, madam, we'll deal at arm's length." Then he added, laughing brutally: "Until you find it desirable to come back again to me." He unlocked the door and opened it sufficiently to permit her to pass. "Good-day."

Without a word she passed out and down the hall. At the entrance she found Jordan, who rose and bowed.

"Tell my man," she ordered, pointing to the blue limousine without, "that he need wait no longer--that I shall remain here to-night."

Jordan's heart popped into his mouth at this unexpected declaration. With difficulty he asked her to repeat her message, after which he stepped out to the curb and delivered it. And it was not until the machine started up and had gathered speed for its homeward journey that she gave the order to the footman to open the door for her.

With a sigh of relief the footman cheerfully complied, and bowed her out.

"First she said she was going to stay all night, and then she said she wasn't," he repeated rhythmically, "and now I wonder where the devil she's gone?"

Madeline Braine was hardly out of hearing when Wilkinson sent post-haste for Flomerfelt.

"Flomerfelt," he cried, the minute that worthy entered the room, "I've got a new job for you. Forget the Tri-State,--it's trivial, compared with this,--and find out the name of the man Madeline Braine is going to marry."

"Marry!" gasped Flomerfelt.

Wilkinson clutched him by the wrist, and continued: "And when you've found out his name, find the man. And when you find the man, buttonhole him...."

"Buttonhole him!" echoed the astonished Flomerfelt. "Don't you mean throttle him?"

"Buttonhole him," repeated Wilkinson savagely, "and then tell him all about the girl he loves--and me."

* * * * *

A few days later, alone in a bare, hall-bedroom, on the east side of the big city, Madeline Braine sat staring, with eyes that saw not, into the gloom without. Well might she reflect that nothing but a miracle could save her now; well might her reason totter at the thought of what life held for her in the future. The letter in her lap read:

" ... There's no use in my seeing you again. I take it from your silence that you prefer not to explain what I have learned about you--what I have proved to myself to be a fact--the truth of your relations with Peter V. Wilkinson. I start West to-night.

"Yours,

"H. T."

V

In Mrs. Pallet-Searing's house on Fifth Avenue was an authorised hiding-place intended, evidently, for no more than two persons, which was reached by a short journey through the interior flower-garden: an undignified plunge between some half-dozen palm-tubs, and a short ascent up a wide, circular staircase.

In this haven--known only to the initiated,--a week later, Eliot Beekman and Leslie Wilkinson had been sitting for some time.

"We must have been here three hours!" the girl suddenly exclaimed in tones of deep contrition. "Half the people must have gone. I've deliberately cut every man on the last half of my card," she rattled on., "thereby completely ruining my chances of ever marrying any of them; and besides," she concluded limply, "what will Mrs. Pallet-Searing have to say ..."

"How did we get here anyway?" questioned the young man.

"I led the way," confessed the girl, opining wide her eyes, and glancing daringly into his. "Mrs. Pallet-Searing says that this place is a trap; and, that Pallet-Searing says, that she's a terribly designing woman. She says that he says that more--more matches have been made on account of this moonlit spot than in any other place in the Borough of Manhattan."

The face of Eliot Beekman flushed, his eyes were unnaturally bright. If only he had dared, with his strong right arm he would have drawn the dainty head of Leslie Wilkinson down on his shoulder and would have kissed her then and there. But he understood the girl too well--or thought he did.

"A match-making cosy-corner," he mused. "How many others have you fetched here before--have preceded me?"

Leslie laughingly rose and stood looking down upon him.

"You're quite the first, I assure you, Mr. Beekman," she answered, still smiling.

"Are you--are you sure?" he faltered, becoming suddenly serious.

"Quite sure," she answered, catching his mood.

Beekman rose, the flush deepening on his face. His breath came fast.

"Why, then----" he began; but the girl quickly held up her hand.

"Now, don't be silly, don't!" she pleaded. "We've been foolish enough as it is. People will talk, you know; they'll say that it's the get-rich-quick strain in me that makes me do these ill-bred, extraordinary things. But indeed it is not. My own mother, Mr. Beekman," she went on soberly, "was a charming woman--a lady who would never have associated with some of the people that one meets here, even. It must be the pure deviltry in me that makes me do some things--pure deviltry, I assure you, that's all."

"To lead some impecunious devil to the most exclusive match-making place in America, and then refuse to.... Pure deviltry! I should think----"

Leslie's brow wrinkled.

"But Mrs. Pallet-Searing? What is she going to say?" broke in the girl.

"Say! Say nothing at all, of course. She and Pallet-Searing must have occupied similar cosy-corners, I suppose, years ago," he answered, with a smile.

"I don't quite see the application," returned Leslie, puzzled. "Very likely they had the right: they were engaged, and afterwards married."

"True," said Beekman, his eyes feasting on her. "And I don't understand why history can't repeat itself right here and now. The fact is, your hostess will be disappointed--will be annoyed, I'm sure, at our stupidity, if we do not make the most of our opportunity."

Leslie smiled a glorious smile upon him.

"Mr. Beekman," she whispered softly, "do you think we've been so very stupid?"

She touched him lightly on the arm. He tried to seize her hand, but she drew it from him.

"I don't believe," he said, "that we've got any right to leave this fascinating retreat, and go down and face the crowd without being--well, without being engaged. That is, according to my idea of the Pallet-Searings' idea, we'd be considered a dull young couple, to say the least."

"But I'd be cutting myself out of many a delightful hour here!" Leslie shook her head.

"Not necessarily," he persisted.

She tilted her head critically.

"And this is all I'm to get for sitting out the best part of an evening with a girl, when I might have been down there with the madding crowd, having the time of my life," he added.

Leslie moved to go.

"We've made several false starts from here," she reminded him, "but we must go now without any further hesitation, and by separate routes. Good-bye," she said, and held out her hand. "Shall I see you at the landing-place at eight o'clock sharp in the morning?"

Beekman drew her back.

"At what landing-place?" he demanded, uncertain of her meaning. "What's going on?"

The girl fell back helplessly before him.

"Do you mean to tell me," she sighed forlornly, "that I have been here all this time with you without telling you the very thing I brought you here to tell?"

"I only know," he returned, likewise forlornly, "that you won't let me tell you the thing that for hours I've been trying to tell."

Leslie laughed gaily.

"It was very delightful listening, anyway," she admitted frankly. "But about this other thing--I told everybody here, that is, everybody that's to go, but you--and you, why I wanted you the most of all."

Beekman caught her hand and held it, despite her dignified little struggle.

"You're sure of that?"

"Quite sure," she replied, in a matter-of-fact tone. "You need a little tan--the sail would do you good. Why, twenty of us boys and girls,--besides some half-dozen chaperones--are going for the week-end on the _Marchioness_. Away out to sea as far as she can stand it, and back again. It ought to be good fun! There'll be only congenial people aboard--the right men for the right girls."

"But for yourself, Miss Wilkinson, who----"

"My dear young friend," she broke in upon his question, "inasmuch as I am hostess, I see no reason why I shouldn't have the whole ten men most of the time, do you? I'm a pretty fair manager about these things, you know," she went on interestedly, "and I thought for you that Jane Gerard...."

Beekman coughed slightly and glanced at his watch.

"A most delightful trip," he conceded, "and I should be glad, awfully glad to be able to take advantage of the opportunity if it were not that I am so very busy, and----"

Leslie was quick to detect his annoyance, but went on, still flirtatiously:

"Of course, I could pair off Jane Gerard with Larry Pendexter, though I was thinking of keeping him myself...." She pursed her lips, and stood for a moment with her eyes half-closed. Presently, she said: "I think maybe _it could_ be arranged." And laughing, now, added: "You'll surely come, won't you?"

"Come!" he exclaimed, beaming with joy. "I'd come in the face of a million-dollar retainer from John D. Rockefeller--I would, indeed!"

A few minutes later, when she faced her hostess to bid her good-night, that estimable lady, not altogether satisfied with Leslie's nonchalant manner, laid her hand on her young guest's shoulder, and drew her to one side.