Part 2

"Even then." She dismissed the return to the personal with the first quick movement of her hand and continued: "I should say, you are the best hated man in Wall Street."

"That's not exactly inside information."

"No one is going to come to your help out of friendship."

"True."

"If Majendie and the Atlantic Trust Company fail, nothing in this world can pull you through," she said, seeking in some uncontrolled movement of his an answer to the statement that was in reality a question.

From the moment she had begun to question him, he experienced a sudden change. He was no longer dealing with a woman, but with an element he had outguessed a hundred times.

All at once an odd idea came to him which struck him as stupendously ridiculous, and yet made him glower in covert admiration at the woman who watched him while seemingly engaged with the rearrangement of her draperies.

"Is it possible, after all," he thought, "that that ambitious little head is playing with both Majendie and me, and that she is setting her cap for the survivor?"

He came back, reseated himself, and said, with an appearance of candor which would have deceived most people:

"You say Majendie is coming here tonight?"

"Yes."

"Do you know where he is this afternoon?"

"Yes."

"And the object of his visit?"

"The object is easy to guess," she said indifferently. "You know perfectly well that he is in conference with Fontaine, Marx, and Gunther, and what you wish to know is whether they are going to stand aside and let him sink. Are you ready to answer my two questions?"

"And when will you know if he has failed or succeeded?"

"Tonight."

"He will tell you?"

"I shall know tonight," she said, with an evasive smile.

"What's your private opinion?"

"They will come to his assistance," she said carefully.

"Because they are his personal friends," he said, with an accent of raillery.

"Naturally."

"You believe Majendie will pull through?"

"I do." She looked at him a moment, and asked the question, not so much to receive an answer as to judge from his manner: "Can the Associated Trust meet its obligations on Wednesday without assistance?"

"I can," he said quietly, and to himself he added: "There--if Majendie has set her to pump me, little good that'll do him."

"But if the Atlantic Trust Company shuts its doors," she persisted, "you are caught?"

"That is the general opinion."

"Will you fail?"

"No."

She was quiet a moment, dissatisfied, looked away from him and then said:

"So you don't care to know what I shall learn to-night?"

"My dear lady, I won't tell you a thing," he said, with a laugh, "so stop trying. Leave us to fight our own battles. Plot all you want in your cunning head your little feminine plans, but don't get beyond your depth."

"I see you believe I'm interested in Majendie," she said, with a shrug of her shoulders. "You are not very well informed."

"No," he said bluntly; "you are interested in no one but Rita Kildair. I know that much." He rose, took several strides back and forth, and, returning, stood by her. "I hate allies," he said; "I prefer to consider you as a woman."

His remark brought a sharp gleam of curiosity to her eyes, a spark of instinctive sex antagonism that flashed and disappeared.

"Remember, I have warned you," she said, retiring as abruptly into the feline languor of her pose.

He stood, swayed by two emotions, the purely gentle, almost caressing effect her indolence brought him, and the desire to establish some sudden empire over her--to feel his strength above hers.

"What's the weak point in your armor?" he said savagely.

"I wouldn't tell you."

"I think I know one."

"Really?"

He drew his chair still closer, and, leaning over, touched with his stubby forefinger the rings on her outstretched hand.

"Jewels?" she said, smiling.

"Yes."

"Any woman is the same."

"Why?"

"I don't know--it is so," she said, and, raising the deep lusters, she allowed her glance to rest on them as in a dream of opium.

He drew from his pocket the ring with the ruby, and held it out.

"Try this on."

She took it between her finger-tips slowly, looking at him with a glance that was a puzzled frown, and slipped it on her finger. Then she extended her hand gradually to the full length of her white arm against the purple, and half closed her eyes. There was no outward sign; only a deep breath went through her, as though an immense change had taken place in the inner woman.

"Now I know what I want to know," he said, watching her closely with almost an animal joy in this sudden revelation of an appetite in her.

"It's a wonderful stone," she said in a whisper; then she drew it off slowly, as though the flesh rebelled, and held it out to him, turning away her eyes.

"Keep it."

She raised her eyes and looked at him steadily.

"You are cleverer than I thought," she said.

"Keep it."

"Is this for information about Majendie?" she said slowly.

"Not for that."

"For what, then?" she said steadily.

"For a whim."

"Thanks; I don't trust your whims."

For all reply, he took her hand and again placed the ring on it.

"Wear it," he said.

She turned the stone quickly inside her palm as though unable to endure its lure, and looked at him profoundly.

"_Are_ you going to pull through?" she said angrily.

"Will it make a difference?" he asked, rising, with a quick glance at his watch.

She rose in her turn, facing him with a sudden energy.

"Do you know the one great mistake you have made?"

"What?"

"You have condemned yourself to success."

"What do you mean by that?" he said.

"You must always succeed, and that is terrible! At the first defeat every one will be up in arms against you--because every one wants to see you ruined."

"Every one?" he said, looking in her eyes.

A second time she took off the ring and gave it to him, and as he protested she said coldly:

"Don't make me angry. The comedy has been amusing. Enough. Also, don't trouble yourself about my motives. I haven't the slightest intention of marrying you or any one else."

And she accompanied the words with a gesture so imperative that, amazed at the change, he no longer insisted. As he put out his hand, she said suddenly, as if obeying an intuition:

"I will tell you what you want to know. Gunther is almost sure to come to Majendie's aid. I know it by a woman. Take care of yourself."

"And I will tell you exactly the opposite," he said, bluffing. "Gunther will not lend a cent; Majendie will go under, and I'll pull through."

"You'll pull through even if the Atlantic Trust closes?"

"Exactly."

"Good-by," she said, with a shrug.

"Remember what I said," he repeated, and went out.

Five minutes later the bell rang, and Kiki brought her a little box and an envelope. She recognized Slade's writing, and read:

DEAR LADY,

Apologies for my rudeness. If you won't accept a gift, at least wear the ring for a week. I should like to know what effect it could have on your cold little soul. Oblige my curiosity. It's only a little reparation for the disappointment I gave you. J.G.S.

"Decidedly, he is cleverer than I thought," she said musingly. In the box was the great ruby ring. She took it up, examined it carefully, made a motion as though to replace it in the box, and then suddenly slipped it on her finger.

*CHAPTER II*

Mrs. Kildair knew pretty nearly every one in that indescribable society in New York which is drawn from all levels, without classification, and imposes but one condition for membership--to be amusing. Her home, in fact, supplied that need of all limited and contending superimposed sets, a central meeting-ground where one entered under the protection of a flag of truce and departed without obligation. She knew every one, and no one knew her. No one knew beyond the vaguest rumors her history or her resources. No one had ever met a Mr. Kildair. There was always about her a certain defensive reserve the moment the limit of acquaintanceship had been touched. Mrs. Enos Bloodgood, who saw her most and gave her the fullest confidence, knew no more than that she had arrived from Paris five years before, with letters of introduction from the best quarters. Her invitations were eagerly sought by leaders of fashionable society, prima donnas, artists, visiting European aristocrats, and men of the moment. Her dinners were spontaneous, and the discussions, though gay and usually daring, were invariably under the control of wit and good taste.

As soon as Slade's present had been received she passed into the dining-room to assure herself that everything was in readiness for the informal chafing-dish supper to which she had invited some of her most congenial friends, all of whom, as much as could be said of any one, were habitues of the studio. Then, entering her Louis Quinze bedroom, which exhaled a pleasant stirring atmosphere of perfume, she slipped off her filmy purple tea-gown and chose an evening robe of absolute black, of warm velvet, unrelieved by any color, but which gave to her shoulders and arms that softness and brilliancy which no color can impart.

Several times she halted, and, seating herself at her dressing-table, fell into a fascinated contemplation of the great ruby that trembled luminously on her finger like a bubble of scarlet blood. When, in the act of deftly ordering the masses of her dark ruddy hair, her white fingers lost themselves among the tresses, she stopped more than once, entranced at the brilliancy of the stone against the white flesh and the sudden depths of her hair.

She rose and began to move about the room; but her hand from time to time continued its coquetries above her forehead, as though the ring had suddenly added to her feminine treasury a new instinctive gesture.

At half-past seven, having finished dressing, she opened the doors which made a thoroughfare between the studio and the small dining-room, and passed into the larger room, where, at one end, Kiki had brought forth three Sheraton tables, joined them, and set them with crystal and silver.

"Put in order my bedroom," she said, with an approving nod, "and then you can go."

She moved about the studio, studying the arrangements of the furniture, seeing always from the tail of her eye the scarlet spot on her finger.

"I wonder what it's worth," she said softly. "Ten, fifteen thousand at the least." She held the ring from her, gazed at it dreamily. "I wonder what woman's eye has looked upon you, you wonderful gem," she whispered; and, as though transported with the vision of the past, she drew it slowly toward her and pressed her lips against it.

At this moment a buzz sounded from the hall, and she recovered herself hastily and, a little ashamed, said with a feeling of alarm as she went to the door:

"Slade is entirely too clever; I must send it back tomorrow morning."

Before she could reach the door it had opened, and there entered, with the informality of assured acquaintance, a young man of twenty-five or -six, smiling, boyish, delighted at having stolen a march on the other guests.

"You are early," said Mrs. Kildair, smiling with instinctive reflection of the roguish enjoyment that shone on his handsome, confident face.

"Heavens, haven't I been beating the pavements for fourteen minutes by the watch!" he said, laughing. "Regular kid trick." He took her hand, carrying it to his lips. "The way they do in France, you know."

"You're a nice boy, Teddy," she said, patting his hand. "Now, hang up your coat, and help me with the candles."

She watched him as he slipped his overcoat from the trim wide shoulders, revealing all at once the clean-cut, well-tailored figure, full of elasticity and youth. Teddy Beecher always gave her a sense of well-being and pleasant content, with his harum-scarum ways and inviting impudence. As he roused no intellectual resistance in her, she was all the more sensitive to the purely physical charm in him, which she appreciated as she might appreciate the finely strung body and well-modulated limbs of a Perseus by Benvenuto Cellini.

"Will I help you? Command me," he said, coming in eagerly. "Don't you know, there's a little silver collar about my neck, and the inscription is, 'This dog belongs to Rita Kildair.' Jove, Rita, but you're stunning tonight!"

He stood stock-still in frank amazement. He had known her but a short while, and yet he called her by her first name--a liberty seldom accorded; but the charm he unconsciously exerted over women, and which impatiently mystified other men, was in the very audacity of his enjoyment of life, which imparted to women the precious sense of their own youth.

"Really?" she said, raising her hand to her hair, that he might notice the glorious ruby.

"Look here--I've only got a miserable thirty thousand a year, but I've got a couple of uncles with liver trouble and a bum heart. Say the word--I'm yours."

While he said it with a mock-heroic air, there was in his eyes a flash of excited admiration that she understood and was well pleased with.

"Come, Teddy," she said, a little disappointed that he did not perceive the ring. "To work. Take this taper."

He took the wax, contriving to touch her fingers with feigned artlessness.

"I say, Rita, who's the mob here tonight? Do I know any one? I get the place next to you, of course?"

"Begin over there," she directed. "The Enos Bloodgoods are coming; you've met her here."

"I thought they were separated, or something."

"Not yet."

"By George, Rita, there's no one like you--serving us up a couple on the verge."

"That is not all--I like situations," she said, with her slow smile.

"I like Elise; but as for the old boy, he can slip on a banana peel and break his neck, for all I care.

"Then there's a broker, Garraboy, Elise's brother."

"Don't know him."

"Maud Lille, who's written clever books--a journalist."

"Don't know her--hate clever women."

"Nan Charters--"

"Who?" said Beecher, with upraised wick.

"Nan Charters, who played in 'Monsieur Beaucaire.'"

"Bully!"

She smiled at his impetuousness, and continued:

"Mr. Majendie and the Stanley Cheevers."

"Oh, I say--not those--"

"Well?" she said as he stopped.

"You know the gambling story," he said reluctantly.

"Club gossip."

"Of course," he said, correcting himself. "One of my friends was present. The Cheevers play a good game, a well-united game, and have an unusual system of makes. They are very successful--let it go at that. You don't mean to say that Majendie'll be here?"

"I expect him."

"He was a friend of the dad's--a corker, too. I don't know much about those things, but isn't he supposed to be up against it?"

Three knocks in close succession sounded on the outer door, and Garraboy entered with an air of familiarity that was displeasing to the younger man. The two saluted impertinently, with polite antagonism, detesting each other from the first look.

"Go on with the candles, Teddy," said Mrs. Kildair, signaling to the newcomer, a young man of forty who seemed to have been born bald, wrinkled, and heavy-eyed. The long, bald head on the thin, straight little body, and the elongated white collar, gave him somewhat the look of an interrogation-mark. He was heavily perfumed.

"What's the news of the market?" she asked.

"Another odd turn--went up a couple of points," he said, looking at her hand. Unlike Beecher, he had instantly noted the new acquisition with a malicious smile. His thumb gave a little jerk and he added softly: "Something new?"

"Yes. Why should the market go up?" she said, seeming to be intent only on the effect of the bracketed candles, that now licked the tapestried walls with their restless tongues.

"There's a general belief that a group of the big fellows will stand behind the trust companies in return for certain concessions. I say," he continued, watching the ruby ring, which instinctively she tried to conceal from him, "I hope Elise isn't going to make a fool of herself about Majendie."

"Teddy, Teddy, you've forgotten the two over the plaque!" she said aloud--and, a little lower: "She won't; don't fear."

"I know her better," he said, without, however, betraying the slightest brotherly agitation. "She is apt to do something crazy if anything went wrong with Majendie. Bloodgood's a hard-skinned old brute, but if there was anything public he'd cut up ugly."

"I hear he's in the market."

"Yes--on the short side, too--in deep."

"And you?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I thought we never told secrets, Mrs. Kildair. Who else is coming? Am I representing the element of respectability again tonight?"

"The what?" She looked at him steadily until he turned away nervously, with the unease of an animal. "Don't be an ass with me, my dear Garraboy."

"By George," he said irritably, "if this were Europe I'd wager you were in the Secret Service, Mrs. Kildair."

"Thank you," she said, smiling appreciatively, and returned toward young Beecher, who was waiting by the piano with ill-concealed resentment.

The Stanley Cheevers entered--a short, chubby man with a bleached, vacant face tufted with mustache and imperial, devoid of eyebrows, with watery eyes that moved slowly with the motion of his gourd-like head; Mrs. Cheever, voluble, nervous, over-dressed, young with the youth of a child and pretty with the prettiness of a doll.

Beecher, who knew them, bowed with a sense of curiosity to Mrs. Cheever, who held him a little with a certain trick she had of opening wide her dark, Oriental eyes; and dropped, with a sense of physical discomfort, the hand that Cheever flabbily pressed into his.

"Decidedly, I am going to have a grand little time by myself," he said moodily. "Where the deuce does Rita pick up this bunch?"

The Enos Bloodgoods were still agitated as they entered. His lips had not quite banished the scowl, nor her eyes the scorn.

"Permit me, my dear," he said, taking off her wrap, and the words struck those who heard them with a sudden chill.

He was of the unrelenting type that never loses its temper, but causes others to lose theirs, immovable in his opinions, with a prowling walk, a studied antagonism in his manner, while in his bulgy eyes was an impudent stare which fastened itself like a leech on the person addressed, to draw out his weakness.

Elise Bloodgood, who seemed tied to her husband by an invisible leash, had a hunted, resisting quality back of a certain desperate dash which she assumed, rather than felt, in her attitude toward society--just as she touched with red, cheeks that were meant to be simply the background of eyes that were extraordinary, with a lurking sense of tragedy.

"Rita, dear, I am almost frantic tonight," she said hastily, in one of those intimate moments of which women avail themselves in the midst of their enemies.

"The last rumors are good," said Mrs. Kildair, bending over her ostensibly to arrange her scarf.

"Who told you?"

"Your brother. Every one downtown believes the panic is stopped. The market has gone up. Gunther and Snelling are Bernard's personal friends."

"Friends?" she said bitterly. "Yes, that's just the trouble."

"Besides, he is coming tonight--you knew?"

"Yes, I knew," said Mrs. Bloodgood, with a glance at her husband, who, at the other side of the studio, seemed intent only on examining a reliquary in carved stone.

"Then he will tell you himself," said Mrs. Kildair, rearranging a little ornament that made a splash of gold on the black hair of her companion. "Be careful---don't talk too much now."

"What do I care?" she said rebelliously. "It has got to end sometime."

She passed her husband, her dark shoulder flinching unconsciously at his near presence, and gave her hand to Stanley Cheever and young Beecher, who, though utterly unconscious of the entanglements of the evening, was struck by the moody sadness in her eyes that so strangely contradicted the laugh that was on her lips. But as he was wondering, a little constrained, how best to open the conversation, the door opened once more and two women entered--Nan Charters, who arrived like a little white cloud, vibrantly alert and pleased at the stir her arrival occasioned, and Maud Lille, who appeared behind her as a shadow, very straight, very dark, Indian in her gliding movements, with masses of somber hair held in a little too loosely for neatness.

"Oh, dear, am I dreadfully late?" said Nan Charters, who swept into the studio the better to display her opera-cloak, a gorgeous combination of white and gold Japanese embroideries, which, mounting above her throat in conjunction with a scarf of mingling pinks, revealed only the tip of her vivacious nose and sparkling eyes.

"You are strangely early," said Mrs. Kildair, who presented Beecher with a gesture which at the same time directed him to attend to the wraps.

"Thank you," said Miss Charters, with a quick smile, and by an imperceptible motion she allowed the cloak to slip from her shoulders and glide into the waiting hands, revealing herself in a white satin shot with pigeon red, which caused the eyes of all the women present to focus suddenly. Garraboy, Cheever, and Bloodgood, who knew her, came up eagerly.

Teddy Beecher, his arms crowded with the elusive garment, which gave him almost the feeling of a human body, bore it to the hall and arranged it with care, pleasantly aware of the perfume it exhaled. He returned eagerly, conscious of the instantaneous impression her smile had made on him as she turned to thank him, a look that had challenged and aroused him. She was still chatting gaily, surrounded by the three men, and he was forced to occupy himself with Mrs. Bloodgood. His eyes, however, remained on the young girl, who was listening with unaffected pleasure to the compliments of her male audience. Something in the chivalry of the younger man revolted at the spectacle of the sophisticated Garraboy and the worldly appetites in the eyes of Cheever and Bloodgood. He felt almost an uneasy sense of her peril, which was in effect an instinctive emotion of jealousy, and, profiting by the moment in which Mrs. Bloodgood turned to Miss Lille, he slipped to Miss Charters' side and contrived to isolate her.

The studio was now filled with chatter. Mrs. Kildair passed from group to group, animating it with a word or two. With the exception of Teddy Beecher and Nan Charters, in the several groups there was but one question--the events of the day in the financial world and the probable outcome of the secret conference at Gunther's.

Every one watched the clock, awaiting the last arrival with an impatience that was too truly founded on the safety of their personal fortunes to be concealed.

"The conference ended at six-thirty," said Maud Lille to Bloodgood and Cheever; "Majendie left for his house immediately after. I had it from the city editor on the telephone."

"Was any statement given out?" said Cheever, who put one finger to his lip, as he did when a little nervous.

"None."

"If he goes under, it means the bottom out of the market," said Cheever, fixing his owlish stare on Bloodgood's smug face.

"Are you long?" asked Bloodgood, turning on him with curiosity.

"A thousand shares," answered Cheever, but in a tone that carried no conviction.

"He won't come," said Maud Lille obstinately.

"If he does," said Cheever slowly, "he's pulled through and the market ought to go up." And a second time his finger jerked up to his lips, with the gesture of the stutterer.

"He won't come," repeated Maud Lille.

Bloodgood gave her a short look, trying to fathom the reason of her belief, a question he did not care to put before Cheever.

At this moment Majendie appeared at the entrance of the studio. The conversation, which had been mounting in nervous staccatos, fell with the hollowness that one sometimes feels in the air before the first crash of a storm. By an uncontrollable impulse, each turned, eager to read in the first indication some clue to his personal fate.