Part 5

"I hope, my dear," she said insinuatingly, "that it's not going to be Eliot Beekman. He's all right, little one--handsome, and clean, too. But what you need is money--don't forget that--particularly now. Take my advice--Eliot is dangerous." The lady sighed. "I've known such men--I knew one of them once." Her eyes sought the portly form of Pallet-Searing across the big room. "And I married Pallet-Searing. It's been worth while." But there was a sigh in her voice, the girl thought, as she repeated again, "worth while. Run along now! Mrs. Wilkinson has been looking everywhere for you. Even Peter V. looked in to take you home. They've both gone. But here comes Eliot now." And turning to Beekman, the lady shook her finger at him. "I've been warning Leslie against you, Eliot," she said, frankly, telling him to his face what she had said behind his back. "I've been warning her that she must look for money. And, oh, by the way, Eliot! Somebody's been here after you to-night. We searched everywhere for you except in one place, and nobody is ever allowed to look there. Colonel Morehead is the man."

Beekman started.

"You don't by any chance happen to know----"

"Business," interposed Mrs. Pallet-Searing; "at least, he said it was."

Beekman gave vent to a slight gesture of annoyance.

"I wish I might have seen him. But he's gone, I suppose?"

Mrs. Pallet-Searing laughed outright.

"You surely don't regret the fact that we couldn't find you, Eliot?"

Beekman laughed sheepishly, and shot a glance of guilt toward Leslie.

"That isn't the point. It simply gives me an involuntary pang when somebody looks me up on business and I miss them. I have a feeling that, somehow, I may have lost an opportunity; and chaps like me can't well afford to miss a man like Colonel Morehead."

" ... How are you going to get home, child?" suddenly asked her hostess of Leslie. "Your machine is out there, but----"

Leslie hesitated for an instant.

"Possibly Mr. Beekman ..." she laughed mischievously.

Beekman looked up with mock gravity.

"Miss Wilkinson," he said, "you've heard that old saying about the game and the name? Come!" And he took her by the arm.

Mrs. Pallet-Searing watched the happy young couple leave her house, and her face took on an expression little in accord with the worldly and cynical advice that she had given the girl a few moments before.

From her corner of the limousine Leslie confided to Beekman:

"Do you know that every time I do something, have something, or give something, now that we live on Bankrupt Row, up there on the Drive, I have to explain to everybody that it's my money, and not my father's, as most people imagine."

"I wish I could do something for you or your father, but I'm only an atom of an aggregation here in New York, confound it!"

Leslie looked at him gratefully, but went on:

"My money must support the family. Father lost everything he had."

"I--I didn't know that you had any money." He laughed uncomfortably. "I'm one of these chaps who has to blurt things out, Miss Wilkinson, and so I'll tell you just what I thought. Of course I didn't really want Peter V. Wilkinson to fail--I was sorry when I heard about it. But when I knew it had to happen, that it was inevitable--Oh, confound it, I was glad, and for my own selfish reason."

"Very kind of you to gloat over our misfortune," was her brief comment, uttered by no means seriously.

"I thought," went on Beekman, grimly, "that it would put us more on an equal footing, that perhaps I would have the right to----"

"Oh, the right, did you say? I never thought you worried much over that," she said with truly feminine perversity.

There was a pause. Beekman was the first to speak.

"A terribly complicated matter, this making love to a rich girl. In the first place----"

"Is this an argument before a court?" she inquired, playfully.

"Before the last court of appeals," he answered quickly. "And the gist of it is this: How the deuce can a rich girl ever know that anybody ever loves her?"

"Do you suppose she cannot tell?"

"You can't. Look at the rich women who have been fooled--either fooled, or else satisfied to be sought for what they've got and not for what they are! You know them by the score."

"I think I should know if anyone loved me."

The man shook his head.

"There is only one way to make the perfect test," he told her, "and that's impossible. To rid yourself of every dollar for all time, and then see what happens."

The girl made no answer.

"Yes," he went on, "of all the women in the world, the rich American girl, in my opinion, stands the least chance to be mated as she should be. If she marries money, ten chances to one it's money she marries and not a man; if she marries a beggar, she gets an adventurer. The reason for this, is: the honest American men will not aspire to the hand of a girl of wealth; and those are the very men that the rich girl ought to marry. Unfortunately, however, they are just as independent in their way as she is in hers. You ought to come down and be poor," he concluded, helping her to alight, for the limousine was now in front of the Wilkinson house.

They crossed the pavement to the doorway. There she asked:

"Do you know any honest, poor man, who will----" She broke off abruptly, recognising her audacity, and then added: "Don't forget, at eight to-morrow morning. Those not on time will get left--for at two minutes past eight the _Marchioness_ will be out in the middle of the Hudson. Until then,"--and she gave him her hand,--"at the landing----"

"Not at the landing," he broke in. "I'm going to start from here. I'll call for you just to see that Larry Pendexter keeps himself to himself, or at least to Jane Gerard. Is it a go?"

Leslie did not answer. Instead she flashed him a bewildering smile as she passed through the door which Jeffries held open for her.

Half way down the hall, Leslie ran into Roy Pallister. His face was haggard and unduly white. She started back as she saw him.

"Why, Roy!" she cried, unconsciously calling him by his first name; "what has happened?"

The boy flushed as his name fell from her lips.

"Miss Leslie," he began stumblingly, seemingly embarrassed by the searching gaze she rested on him, "nothing--that is, nothing that's imminent. Your----"

"My father!" she queried. "Has anything----"

"They," pointing to the floor above, "seem to treat it lightly. I'm a beast for frightening you; but I think your father feels--fears----"

"Mr. Pallister, what are you keeping from me? What is the matter?"

The gentle little fellow steadied himself for a moment against the wall, and then, as she made a movement to go, he drew her back.

"Miss Leslie, I've been wanting to tell you something--I've been waiting for the chance. If ever in the future you need help--help of any kind, you'll let me know," he said with lips that trembled. "I want to be sure that you understand just what I mean. I've never done anything for you, Miss Leslie, and----"

"Why, yes you have; indeed you have...." she assured him, and her look was one of genuine affection.

The boy shook his head.

"I want your promise that you'll come to me if----"

Leslie did not wait to hear any more, but breaking from him, ran swiftly up the stairs. At the first landing she turned and looked back: he was standing very straight and very quiet by the newel post, glancing up at her with intense admiration. In a flash she was back to the foot of the stairs holding out her hand to him.

"I promise, Roy," she said impulsively. "You're the best-hearted fellow going! Good-night!"

At the door of her step-mother's apartment, Leslie paused. A babel of voices came from behind the closed doors--the voices of many men and one woman. Quickly in answer to her knock and question "May I come in?" the door was thrown back, and Flomerfelt, her father's confidential man, stood framed in the doorway, bowing elaborately. In a glance, despite the haze of cigar smoke, she saw that the company consisted of her father, her father's wife, and another man. With a glad cry, she rushed over to this other man and grasped his hand.

"Colonel Morehead! The sight of you...."

In an instant, Colonel Morehead's thin lips parted in a smile. He made an old-fashioned bow and then sank back into his chair.

"You were at Amy Pallet-Searing's to-night," the girl went on, "and you never looked me up. Be good enough to explain yourself, sir!"

Colonel Morehead removed his glasses and polished them upon his handkerchief before answering:

"I was busy looking up somebody else," he said, and Leslie saw that the smile had left his face as he resumed his tap-tapping on the table with his fingers; she saw, too, that her father's face was a bit white where the skin showed. He looked tired, but his thick Van Dyke bristled aggressively, and his eyebrows breathed the usual defiance.

"Where were you, Leslie, that we couldn't find you anywhere?" demanded her step-mother, irritably. "How did you get home?"

"Very comfortably in the limousine, thank you," replied Leslie. "Mr. Beekman was good enough----"

Colonel Morehead leaped to his feet.

"Not Eliot Beekman! What? He came home with you?" He started for the door. "Why, he's the man I've been looking for. Where is he now?"

"Undoubtedly home, by this time," said Leslie.

The Colonel again reseated himself and drummed loudly with his fingers.

"Hang it!" he ejaculated. "If I'd only known.... He could have been with us here now. We need him--and badly."

Wilkinson looked puzzled.

"Why do we need him?" Wilkinson asked the question in a voice in which excitement still held sway.

"That's what I should like to know!" put in Mrs. Wilkinson, gulping down, not without audible satisfaction, her customary night-cap.

Leslie blushed as she added that the question likewise was of interest to her.

"We're disgraced, that's all there is to it!" snapped the mistress of the house, her night-cap, even at this early stage, lending her asperity. "And I the most of all! I don't see how this Beekman can help us out?"

"I don't myself," admitted her husband. "However, nothing can happen so long as Colonel Morehead sticks to us--nothing."

"I have no intention of deserting you, don't be alarmed," declared Colonel Morehead. "But for all that, I want this man Beekman--I need him." And so saying he lifted from the small table a document consisting of several sheets of carbon-copy.

"Miss Wilkinson," he said gravely, handing it to her. "No--there's nothing in it to startle you, only you should know, I think, we all ought to understand.... If you'll read this, you'll know what happened to your father this afternoon."

Puzzled at first, the girl slowly read the flimsy document as she stood there in the middle of the room.

"Oh!" she wailed, as its meaning dawned upon her. "They had no right to do this--no right whatever!"

"You're sure you understand it?" interrogated the Colonel.

The girl bowed her head gravely. Then, going over to her father,--wholly unconscious of a curious look on Flomerfelt's face,--she threw her arms about his neck.

"Father, dear father," she whispered to him, "don't mind. We'll win out."

Her father submitted goodnaturedly but wearily to her embrace. He stretched his arms and yawned.

"I'm dog tired," he said, rising. "I'm going to bed. You'll stay all night, Morehead?"

"Not a bit of it," responded the Colonel. "You don't catch me deserting my own hard bed--not much! I'll go home." He shook hands with Mrs. Peter V. Wilkinson, and pressed a button.

"How about you, Flomerfelt? It's rather late ..." said Peter V.

"Don't care if I do," was the latter's answer. And on the servant's appearing, Peter V. ordered him to show Mr. Flomerfelt to one of the guest rooms, concluding with: "Show him to the one with the painted nymphs skylarking on the walls." Then he placed his arm around his daughter, and together they followed Colonel Morehead downstairs to the door, where they bade him good-night.

Mrs. Wilkinson and Flomerfelt listened to the sound of retreating footsteps.

"He'll not be coming back," she said, "and I want to talk to you." And pointing to the document that Leslie had been shown, she asked: "What does all this signify?"

"What it signifies," he answered, picking up the paper, "may depend on you."

The woman looked puzzled.

"How?"

Flomerfelt's eyes narrowed. Then, with a lithe and dexterous movement of his long arms, he shot his cuffs--hitherto out of sight--into view; extending them, with a jerk, below his coat-sleeves, so that they covered his lean wrists to the extent of three-quarters of an inch, a distance which he measured with mathematical certainty, apparently, for his nice adjustment of them was followed critically by his glance. He eyed and adjusted one cuff until it satisfied him, and then eyed and adjusted the other; finally he rubbed his hands together, and said:

"One of the richest women in the world--rich in her own right. How does that sound to you?"

Mrs. Peter V. stared at him.

"Who is?" she inquired.

"It's a possibility that affects a woman in this house."

"Leslie?"

He shook his head.

"I was thinking of you."

"I? I'm not rich. I've been a fool!" she cried. "I should have made him settle something on me--half, at any rate. Now it's all gone; he's lost everything; I might as well have had half of it--as well that, as to throw it in the gutter as he did."

Wilkinson's confidential man seated himself.

"Unquestionably you need me," he said frankly, and then stopped. Hitherto he had kept his own counsel. And yet, he reflected, there is a wisdom of disclosure just as there is a wisdom of suppression. Some new impulse seized him; his voice sank into a whisper. "There is a chance for us, Mrs. Peter V., to be rich, if we work together, unusually rich."

"But how?" she whispered back, excitedly.

Flomerfelt smiled inscrutably, and answered:

"Out of the wreck, there's a chance----"

"A good chance?" she interrupted eagerly.

"There's only one man who can prevent it," he went on.

"Peter V.----?"

A nod was her answer.

Immediately then she went back to first principles.

"What is going to happen to him? Will they put him in jail?"

Wilkinson's confidential man smiled.

"I've often wondered," he mused, "whether it would be good or bad for us if they jailed him. A man in prison is a man very much out of the way. But in this case he would be too much out of the way. Put him in jail and you discourage his defence--you encourage the public, his depositors. They'll do what we should do: infest the wreck and gobble up what is ours by right. No, so long as Peter Wilkinson lives, we must fight his battle for him--pull him through, keep him standing up, only to be able to knock him down later. That, so long as he lives, must be our policy. So long as he lives," he repeated.

"Suppose," she began, and then hazarded: "In case of his death, what would my rights be?"

"In case he dies----" suddenly he stopped. That was a possibility he had not foreseen. He had seen much strife ahead: first, a tremendous fight for Wilkinson, then a tremendous campaign against him. But what if the man should break down, die? There was food for thought, reasoned Flomerfelt.

"He might die," he resumed, holding her glance as he went on, "for everything must be considered. Disgrace wouldn't kill him, but his liver, or,----" he jerked his thumb over his shoulder,--"there might be violence--conspiracies. There have been rumours that the trust company depositors are wild, especially the poor ones--socialists, we'll say. So, he might die--be killed. Who knows?"

Flomerfelt rose and looked down upon her long and earnestly.

"But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, Mrs. Peter V. Good-night, my dear lady!" And bowing unusually low to her, he left the room.

VI

It was three o'clock in the morning when Eliot Beekman reached his club in Forty-fourth Street.

"There's a telegram for you, Mr. Beekman," called out a sleepy employé, from the office. "It was left here by your clerk to-night."

In his room Beekman switched on the light and read:

ELIOT BEEKMAN, ESQ., 32 Nassau St., N. Y.

Meet us at Hotel Iroquois, Buffalo, to-morrow six P. M. Important letter follows. Wire answer. Do not fail.

BANK LE BOEUF, _J. K. W., Cashier_.

"The Bank Le Boeuf of Buffalo! Sounds good; I hope it is good," mused Beekman. "If so, another big client added to my growing list."

Without hesitation he wrote an answering telegram, stating that he would be at the Hotel Iroquois at 6 P. M. the following night, took it downstairs, and left it in the office with instructions to send it as soon as possible.

And it was not until fifteen minutes later, in the midst of his speculations as to the nature of this business sent to him by the Bank Le Boeuf, that the thought of Leslie's yachting-party came to him.

"Confound it!" he muttered to himself. "I clean forgot all about it. What am I going to do?"

Yet Beekman was so consistent that he recognised at once that there was nothing to do save what he had done. He had built up his practice without pull, influence or money; and he had done it by religiously conserving the interests of his clients. He knew, therefore, that he must obey this summons. So, assuring himself that Leslie would understand it when he told her in the morning, he removed his evening dress, swathed himself in a dressing--gown, stepped into his library and began to work. An unfinished job lay upon his table--a job that, he knew, would take past dawn to finish, and early in the evening he had determined not to go to bed. So he started in.

There was a neat supply of law books in his rooms--a good working library, an average lawyer would call it. And from the hour that he donned his dressing--gown, Beekman nosed among these tan-coloured volumes, taking down one from its shelf, scanning the headnotes of a given case, reading the opinion, slapping the book together and replacing it. A hundred times, at least, he did this. Finally, weary of his search, and hopelessly downcast, for so far his search had been in vain, he found on the highest shelf a slender volume and opened it. And now, as he started to read, his eye brightened and he quickly seized pen and paper.

"Eureka!" he exclaimed. "On all fours--just in point. By George, this--this wins the trick!"

Half an hour was spent in jotting down the salient portions of the opinion of the Court of Appeals. Then, restoring the book to its accustomed place, he folded up his memorandum neatly and thrust it into a heavy brown envelope, labelled: Turner vs. Cooper. And now with considerable complacency he leaned back, saying to himself:

"I thought sure I was licked. But I've got 'em! I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that Jameson & Bowers never even heard of that decision! Now," he stretched out his arms, "I'm ready for Leslie Wilkinson and the _Marchioness_--or, no," he corrected himself, "I mean I'm ready for the Empire State Express."

A moment more and he had turned on the faucet, filled the tub to the brim, and had plunged in--holding his head under the cold water for half a minute at a time. Completely refreshed, he dressed carefully, ascertained from the appearance of the heavens that it was likely to be clear, then quietly left his room and started down the stairs and left the club. At the Grand Central Station he checked his grip. He had lots of time, even for the preliminary little journey that he proposed to take.

After getting some breakfast he strolled back to the West Side and sauntered up Sixth Avenue. The stores were all closed. One, however, as Beekman passed, opened up. From the door its proprietor, a little wizened Jew, nodded sleepily to Beekman. Returning the nod, the latter looked again at the store, and retracing his steps, entered.

"Ready for business?" inquired the lawyer.

The proprietor nodded.

"Always," he replied.

"This is a gun store?" queried Beekman.

The Jew yawned.

"Loogs like id," he conceded. "Did you vant to buy a gun?"

"I want ten cents' worth of shot," his customer replied, pointing out the size he wanted; and, after the storekeeper had weighed out the quantity and it had been dropped into his pockets, he started on his way rejoicing, making a bee line for Wilkinson's. It was getting-up time now, but not for people on the Drive. There silence reigned supreme.

But Beekman felt very wide awake. His conversation with Leslie the night before in the Pallet-Searing cosy-corner, and his successful night's work had gone to his head like wine. And it was this condition that led him to purchase a handful of shot; and now, regardless of the fact that he was operating on the residence that had cost ten million dollars, more or less, and, in fact, regardless of consequences, he took his station in the middle of the Drive and selecting half a dozen missiles from his pocket, he flung them lightly through the air, aiming for a wide window-pane on the third story of the house. Three times he did this. The fourth time he was stopped by a voice calling out:

"Hi, there!"

Turning quickly Beekman found himself confronted with the majesty of the law.

"What're you trying to do?" demanded the officer. "Isn't it a bit early in the morning, or a bit late in the evening, to be out on a drunk? What's doin', anyway?"

Beekman grinned, desisting, nevertheless.

"A bit of old-time romance," he explained; "trying to wake her up, that's all."

"Is her name Norah?" demanded the blue-coat, threateningly.

Beekman glanced aloft; then he plucked the officer by the sleeve.

"Look for yourself," he rejoined, "and see.... Is that Norah up there?"

While the officer scanned the housetop, Beekman gazed innocently out over the Hudson.

"It is--not," he assented joyfully. "And so long as it is not, I have nought to say, except," the policeman's voice trailed off into a whisper, "except, sir, that the lady is waving to you. Look now, and see."

Beekman looked. There she was, indeed.

"I've been up an hour!" she cried. "Wait until I come down."

In the music-room, she greeted him with:

"Have you had your breakfast?"

"Yes. I came to tell you...."

"Then you got my telegram all right?"

Beekman shook his head.

"You're not the Bank Le Boeuf of Buffalo?"

"I didn't phone you," she went on, ignoring his question, "because I couldn't, don't you know. But I sent a wire so you'd get it the first thing this morning--at your club."

"Crowd there too sleepy to get it to me, I suppose," he said, puzzled. "What was in it?" But without waiting for an answer, he went on: "I came to tell you about my telegram," and with that he passed it over to her. "Business before pleasure," he remarked tritely, and yet in a manner that he knew she would understand. "I can't go on the _Marchioness_, you see."

"The _Marchioness_," she responded, "is not going after all. That's why I wired you. But I'm glad you came, because, somehow, I wanted you to know--before it appeared in the papers----" She paused, and then added, with much feeling: "The Grand Jury has indicted my father--late yesterday afternoon. As yet no one knows it; but everybody will know it by nine o'clock this morning. It may be in the papers now, though they tried to keep it out. It's a terrible thing--a thing like that! I can't see how, or why, they indicted him! Can you?"

Beekman looked his sympathy. Presently he asked:

"Do you mind my asking just what they charge him with?"

VII

The Empire State Express had not travelled many miles when Eliot Beekman's attention was directed to a strange-looking man who sat across the aisle, facing him. From time to time the man's face flushed and gave little nervous starts and twitches, and, every now and then, he mumbled to himself. At first Beekman figured out that the man was recovering from an unaccustomed debauch; but afterwards he changed his mind: he decided that he was crazy.