Part 8

"Oh, no; I'm worth thousands," said Lynch, with a grin, "until the market opens to-morrow."

"Tough luck."

"Steve Plunkett's worse--he's got to negotiate his gold fillings, they say."

A party came up, clamoring for attention, and Lynch hastened to the rescue. Beecher continued curiously toward the faro table, admiring with an admiration tinged with compassion the _sang froid_ of the losers, who in a desperate attempt to recover the imminent loss of the morrow, were staking sums that made the spectators raise their eyebrows in amazement.

"Supposing that Jap came back and sneaked the ring the second time," said Gunther, taking his arm.

Beecher started in surprise.

"I wasn't thinking of that," he said.

"But I was. That puzzle of yours has been running in my head ever since. I've got six people now absolutely logically worked out for the thief--perfect deduction. Take me over to Mrs. Kildair; I want to meet that woman."

"I say, Bruce," said Beecher as they started to cross the room, "it's going to be an awful smash. All the boys are caught. There'll be the deuce to pay here later on."

"Shouldn't wonder--they started in pretty fierce."

"Eat, drink, and be merry--eh?"

"Sure."

By the hazards of the crowd they found themselves opposite Nan Charters, who was on the arm of Charlie Lorraine, a clean-cut, pleasant type of the racing set, decidedly handsome in a dark way.

"Hello, fellows, any old clothes to give away?" said Lorraine, who had the topic of the evening in jest. "I speak first. How the deuce did Eddie Fontaine miss you two? Heard what we are doing? We are organizing the Eddie Club. Every one who's taken his tip is going up to live on Eddie's farm for the winter--great idea, eh?"

While Gunther and Lorraine were laughing over this plan, a creation of Bo Lynch's, Beecher was listening to Nan Charters, with a difficult attempt at calming the sudden emotion which her appearance with Lorraine had fired within him.

"What a dreadful time you chose to call!" she said directly. "Don't you know that it takes a modern woman hours to mix her war-paint?"

She looked at him with a little tantalizing malice in her eyes.

"Coquette," he thought furiously. "She is delighted because I was ass enough to call and give her the opportunity to refuse to see me."

"Oh, not a call," he said aloud, committing the stupidity of lying. "I was just rushing downtown, and stopped to inquire how you were after last night."

This answer brought a natural pause. Each looked at the other, he with defiance, she with laughter in her eyes.

"You're staying late," he said at last, because her listening attitude forced him to say something.

"Yes, indeed."

"It'll be more amusing when it thins out," he said in a purposely languid tone.

"When the sight-seers have left--yes," she said, smiling.

Wishing to show what slight importance he attached to the encounter, he contrived to nudge Gunther as a signal that he was ready; but, his friend proving insensible, he was forced to proceed.

"Did you come with Mrs. Kildair?" he said perfunctorily.

"No."

"With whom?" he asked, regretting the question as soon as it was uttered.

"With Mr. Lorraine--of course," she said, looking down modestly, but beneath her eyelids he divined again the cunning malice.

At this moment, to his delight, Emma Fornez perceived him, and, being profoundly bored by her chance cavalier, a purely passive listener thoroughly bewildered by her sallies, gave a cry of joy:

"Teddy, traitor, where have you been?"

Dismissing her companion with a bob of her head, she seized Beecher's arm, exclaiming:

"Heavens--save me! I have been shrieking at a deaf-mute."

In the crowd, the head of her late companion could be seen, rolling his uncomprehending eyes. Beecher, overjoyed at the arrival, which gave him an advantage he was quick to perceive, nodded to Miss Charters and departed, exaggerating, for her benefit, the confidential intimacy which Mme. Fornez's attitude permitted.

"Who is that woman?" said Emma Fornez immediately. "She is watching us. She doesn't seem pleased. _Tant pis_!"

"Nan Charters--one of our younger actresses."

"Ah! Good?"

"Yes."

"She is pretty--in a way," said Mme. Fornez, using her lorgnette, without caring in the least that Miss Charters perceived it. "_Pas mal--pas mal_. Not much temperament--afraid to uncover her shoulders. It is not an actress; it is a woman. You are interested, Teddy?"

"No."

"Oh, _avec ca_. You are in love?"

"I met her last night for the first time."

"That's not an answer. Yes, you have a guilty look. You are a little taken--she provokes you--these little dolls always do. I will give you good advice; I will help you."

"How?" said Beecher, a bit confused.

"I will be very, very nice with you," said his companion gaily, her feet dancing to the music. "A woman always wants what another woman wants, particularly when she is a little actress and I am Emma Fornez. It's very simple, but it never fails; only, I will not help you if you are really in love, you understand?"

Beecher solemnly assured her that she need have no fear.

"Very well, then. Be sure to pay attention to Madame Fontaine too; she likes you. We are the two women most distinguished here tonight--both high, high above your little Charters. It will double the effect. Do as I say; it'll be amusing."

Gunther joined them, protesting.

"I say, Madame Fornez, it's not fair. We'll have to get up a Whitecaps party and kidnap Ted, if you don't stop."

"Oh, we understand each other perfectly," said Beecher, delighted to perceive that Nan Charters was still following his progress. "Whenever Emma wants to escape from some one, she remembers that she's crazy about me. It is all arranged."

Emma Fornez burst out laughing and gave him a little pat on his shoulder with the lorgnon.

"We are--chums, you say--_hein_, Teddy? Monsieur Gunthere is different. I like to talk with him--seriously."

But at this moment, in response to a clamor, one of the negroes began dancing a shuffle in a quickly formed circle. Emma Fornez rushed off, with a cry of delight, deserting both young men.

"You've made a killing, Ted," said Gunther, laughing.

"Pooh! she'll forget my name tomorrow," said Beecher, who, however, believed nothing of the sort. "Come on."

Mrs. Kildair was standing by the great Italian fireplace, her glance playing incessantly through the crowd, nodding from time to time, but without hearing the remarks of two or three older men who surrounded her. So different was the magnetic animation of her whole attitude from the ordinary feline languor of her pose, that Beecher noticed it at once, an impression heightened by the flash of the eyes and the almost electric warmth of her hand as she greeted him. Mrs. Kildair, who had followed his entrance with Mrs. Craig Fontaine and Emma Fornez and moreover was particularly pleased at his presenting young Gunther, was unusually gracious.

Gunther, with his direct, almost obtrusive stare, studied her with unusual curiosity, conversed a little, and departed, after receiving a cordial invitation from her to call.

"What is the matter with you, Rita?" said Beecher immediately.

"Matter--how do you mean?"

"I have never seen you so excited."

"Really, do I seem so?" she said, waving to some one on the floor.

"Extraordinarily so."

"I am generally--dormant," she said, laughing. "Yes, I am excited tonight."

"You are on the track of the ring--you have found it," he said instantly, with a pang of disappointment.

"No, not that," she said, with a frown.

An idea came to him. He imagined that she too, like the good gambler he felt her to be, was laughing before the irretrievable disaster of the morrow.

"Look here, Rita," he said sympathetically, "you're not caught in the stock market, are you?

"No, no, of course not." She saw the look on his face, and was touched by it. "Ruined and dying game? No, no; I am excited, very much excited, that's all. Will you ask me to dance, sir?"

"Are they dancing?"

"Of course. Hurry up!"

Some of the more ardent spirits, impatient for the crowd to thin out, were whirling about, clearing an expanding circle by force of their revolving attacks. In a moment they were moving among the dancers.

Mrs. Kildair danced remarkably well. In this lithe body, so pliant and yet so inspired with the vertigo of the waltz, Beecher was again aware of the strange excitement that seemed to animate her whole being, and continued to ask himself the cause of such an unusual emotion. From time to time, the light fingers on his arms contracted imperiously, urging him to a wilder measure. He had a strange sensation of mystery and flight, as though he were no longer dancing, but whirling around with her in his arms, each striving, in the frantic flight, to conquer the other.

The dance ended. The spectators burst into applause. Mrs. Kildair, half opening her eyes, thanked him with a grateful smile. He walked away with her on his arm, agitated and troubled. What all the brilliance of Emma Fornez had not been able to accomplish, one touch of Rita Kildair had effected.

"I've lots of things to ask you," he said hurriedly, remembering McKenna's suggestions.

"No, no; not now--tomorrow," she said breathlessly, with the same caressing, half-veiled look. She gave him her hand in dismissal.

He understood. The sensation which had come in the few moments of their vertigo had been too extraordinary to be dimmed by a descent to conversation.

He left her, as always, aware of the artist in her, that never failed in the conception of a situation.

"If I fall in love, it won't be with Nan Charters," he said, following Mrs. Kildair with his eyes.

Then, mindful of Emma Fornez's advice, he joined Mrs. Fontaine, staying with her until she gave the signal to leave for those who had come to watch.

With this departure, in which Mrs. Kildair joined, a certain element of restraint disappeared. The unmistakable rising note of loosened tongues freed from Anglo-Saxon restraint by the scientifically contrived punch, began to mount above the rhythmic beat of the music, which itself seemed suddenly possessed of a wilder abandon. At the roulette table the players, coldly concentrated, continued in strained attitudes, oblivious of all but the blinding green nap before them.

Toward two o'clock the thirty or forty who still remained formed a circle, camping on the floor, Indian fashion, clamoring for songs and vaudeville turns. Jack Lindabury and Bo Lynch gave their celebrated take-off on grand opera. Elsie Ware, riotously acclaimed, accompanied by an hilarious chorus, sang her famous successes, turning to and fro coquetting with first one man and then another.

Emma Fornez, excited as a child, without waiting to be urged, ran to the piano and struck the first riotous chords of the "Habanera" of _Carmen_. Instantly there was a scramble for the sides of the long piano, and when she looked up again it was into a score of comically adoring faces, each striving to attract her attention. But Beecher, first to a position of vantage, received the full concentration of the diva's glances. Flushed with the peculiar fleeting intoxication of exuberant youth--the knowledge of the evening's success with women others coveted--he leaned far over the piano, resting his chin in his hands, gazing with a provoking malice into the eyes of the singer, exaggerating the intensity of his look, maliciously obvious of Nan Charters, whom he felt at his side. Emma Fornez, lending herself to the maneuver, opened her wide, languorous eyes, singing to him alone, with a little forward leaning of her body:

"_L'amour est enfant de la Boheme,_ _Il n'a jamais connu de loi_ _Si tu m'aimes._"

The song ended in a furore. Mme. Fornez was overwhelmed with spontaneous adulation, and Beecher, laughing and struggling, was choked and carried away by the indignant suitors. Escaping, he came back, happy and resolved on more mischief. He had always had a passion for what is called fancy dancing, and in Europe had learned the dances of the country. He proposed to Emma Fornez a Spanish dance, and the idea was received with shouts of enthusiasm. Every one camped on the floor again, while three or four of the men, converting their sombreros into imaginary tambourines, shook them frantically in the air, led by Bo Lynch, who had somehow procured a great tin tray.

"You dance--are you sure?" asked Emma Fornez, looking at his flushed face with an anxious look; for some of the men, notably Lorraine and Lynch, were in a visibly excited state.

"Very well," he said confidently.

"_Allons_, then!"

The dance he had chosen was one somewhat akin to the tarantella, a slow movement gradually and irresistibly singing up into a barbaric frenzy at the climax--one of those dances that are the epitome of primal coquetry, of the savage fascinating allurements of the feline, provoking to the dancer, doubly provoking to the spectator, bewildered by the sudden antagonisms of the poses and the brusque yieldings. At the end, according to Spanish custom, the dance ended in an embrace. Emma Fornez, surprised to find so inspired a partner, transported by the mood, ended laughingly with a kiss, her warm arms remaining languidly a moment about the shoulders of the young man, whom she complimented with expressions of surprise. Besieged at every side with cries for an encore, they repeated the dance, freer in their revolving movements from the intimacy of the first passage.

From time to time Beecher had managed to steal a glance in the direction of Nan Charters. She was sitting straight and unrelaxing, her eyes never leaving him, the lines of her mouth drawn a little tightly. When Emma Fornez had embraced him for the second time, Beecher, relaxing, perceived that Nan Charters turned her back and was conversing volubly, her shoulders rising and falling with little rapid movements, while her fan had the same nervous lashing that one sees in the uneasy panther.

He was delighted at his success, at the revenge he had inflicted, at the superiority he had regained. The dances began again, but he did not dance. He held himself near the entrance, surveying the scene triumphantly. The experience was new to him; in the few years he had passed since college, he had been really out of the world. This game--the most fascinating of all the games of chance that can fascinate the gambler in each human being--the game between man and woman, came to him as a revelation, with a zest that was almost a discovery of his youth.

All at once a feminine hand was laid on his arm and the voice of Nan Charters said:

"Come outside--in the garden. I want to speak to you. Come quietly."

Elated by a strange, almost cruel feeling of conquest, he followed her, with a last look back at the studio, at the littered bar, where Bo Lynch was still calling raucously for customers, at the silent intensity of the gamblers, whom he occasionally perceived between the flitting dresses of the dancers. In the middle of the floor Lorraine and Plunkett, stumbling and unsteady, were solemnly waltzing in each other's arms--the specter of the morning forgotten.

He closed the door softly and joined the young actress, who was waiting for him at some distance.

"Can you take me home?" she asked directly. "Mr. Lorraine is in such a condition that I do not wish to go with him."

"Certainly," he said, a feeling of protection replacing the first victorious perception of the fire of jealousy he had awakened in her.

Gunther's automobile was waiting, and they entered it. She did not say a word to him, and he, determined to force her to begin the conversation, waited with a pleased enjoyment until three-quarters of the journey had been accomplished. All at once she turned, and, taking him by the lapels of the coat, brought him toward her as one scolds a child.

"Are you so angry because I didn't see you this afternoon?" she said, smiling.

The feminine defensive instinct of avoiding the issue by ambushing it with subterfuges, is equaled only by that instinct for attack which brushes aside all preliminaries and strikes directly. Beecher, taken off his guard, was a prey to two contrary impulses. Two replies, absolutely opposed and illogically joined, came to his lips. One brutal, still charged with the savageness of the evening, to say:

"Angry? Not at all. Aren't you claiming a little too much?"

And the other, a warm, yielding desire to blurt out frankly:

"Yes, I was angry. I wanted to see you."

She waited. Her large eyes, seeming larger in the dim light of the carriage, continued steadily on him. The first impulse dominated the second, but was modified by it.

"Angry? What a curious idea!" he began, with a half laugh. "You were so upset--"

She interrupted him, shaking her head.

"Why did you act the way you did tonight? Don't do things that are not like you. That is not the way we began."

He was silent, not knowing what to answer. Presently she withdrew into her corner, glanced out of the window, as if to assure herself that they were near their destination, and, placing her hand over his, said gently:

"You are very sympathetic to me. Keep it so."

For all that he said to himself that it was his favor with other women that made him precious to her, he felt a certain yielding of the spirit. He wondered if he could take her in his arms; but he restrained himself, and closed his two hands over hers.

"Yes, we are very sympathetic," he said; but he did not say all he meant.

"What a foolish boy you are," she said finally, looking up at him. "Don't you know that if I say one word you will go wherever I want you to?"

He was so taken by surprise at the audacity and confidence of her remark, that he could not collect himself for an answer, outgeneraled by the woman who had so calculated to a nicety her last words that the arrival of the automobile left him without response.

He went home, repeating to himself what she had asserted, resisting a wild desire to return to the Lindaburys' and forget there the disorder in his soul; and, though he rebelled scornfully against her confident assertion, the incessant repetition of it did leave an impression.

As he passed the great marble facade of the Atlantic Trust, an unusual sight made him bend out of the window. In the chill gray of the coming dawn, a thin line of depositors was waiting, some standing, others huddled on campstools. At the sight the seriousness of life smote him, and he returned home, the tremulous turns of the human gamble he had played feverishly blended and confused with the dark realities of the rising tragedy of speculation.

*CHAPTER X*

When, the next morning, Beecher struggled out of a profound stupor, it was to be awakened by the sounds of Bo Lynch at the telephone. He rolled out of bed after a startled gaze at his watch, recalling in a flash the incidents of the night before. As he emerged he heard the final phrase, and the click of the released receiver:

"Sell at once--throw them over."

Bo Lynch, a pad of paper in one hand, a tumbler of cracked ice in the other, already dressed for the day, greeted him nonchalantly:

"Morning."

"How late did you stay?" asked Beecher.

"Oh, we breakfasted together," said Lynch, with a wry smile; "charming little repast. But I picked up enough to pay for my winter's stabling."

Beecher glanced at the clock, which was approaching the hour.

"Waiting for the opening?"

"Yes." His glance followed Beecher's with a sudden concentration, and, taking up a matchbox, he struck a match and threw it away. "Waiting to see if I can escape working another year."

Beecher, comprehending that sympathy would be distasteful, picked up the morning papers. The scareheads were alive with the note of panic: a dozen banks were threatened with runs; a rumor was abroad that the Atlantic Trust and two other great institutions might close their doors within the next twenty-four hours; an interview with Majendie protested against the action of the Clearing-house, asserting the recklessness of the move and the solvency of the Trust Company; a riot was feared on the East Side, where the small Jewish depositors, always prey to alarms, were in a state of frenzy; vague, guarded hints of further actions to be expected by the Clearing-house against another prominent chain of banks, and a report that John G. Slade was to tender his resignation, were joined with rumors from the office of the State Examiner of Banks that there might be grounds for the criminal prosecution of certain officials.

The telephone rang. Lynch went to the receiver, arranging his pad methodically on the table. Beecher stopped reading, listening to the broken threads.

"All right, go ahead." ...

"How much?" ...

"Whew! Give me the Northern Pacific figures now." ...

"Yes--yes--I see." ...

"Something of a break, isn't it?" ...

"All right." ...

"No--that's all in the game. Thank you. I'll send my check to-day. Thanks."

He put up the receiver, glanced curiously at the clock, which marked twelve minutes after ten, and studied the pad.

Beecher had never been intimate with Lynch, but he liked him and his standards of Britannic phlegm. He belonged to that curious freemasonry of men, an indefinable, invisible standard of association, but one that cannot be counterfeited.

"How did you come out?" he said carelessly.

"About as I expected. The market has gone wild."

Bo Lynch poured out a morning peg, adjusted his cravat critically in the mirror, and took up his hat.

"Lunching at the club?"

"Not to-day."

"It'll be a cheerful funeral. So long."

After his departure Beecher studied the jotted figures on the pad. In the twelve minutes of the opening, Lynch had lost a clear thirty-two thousand dollars.

By the time he had dressed and breakfasted, he had answered the telephone a dozen times, messages from men he knew, anxious to learn if his intimacy with young Gunther had brought him any valuable information; inquiries as to the effect on his personal fortunes, and rumors of individual losses.

He himself remained undisturbed by the frenzy. His own fortune, thanks to the wise provision of a hard-headed father, was safely invested in solid properties, and the world of speculation had not entered his ken. He returned to his newspapers, read everything bearing on the personal fate of John G. Slade, which interested him extraordinarily since his encounter with that abrupt and forceful personality, and, rising, asked himself how he could kill the time until the hour of his luncheon with Rita Kildair.

The irritation he had felt at the end of his ride with Nan Charters had disappeared. Studying the evening calmly, he analyzed her words with a clearer perception. He comprehended that, beyond all the cleverness of her attitude, she had been veritably piqued by his indifference and his absorption by Emma Fornez, who treated her as a little actress. Considering the encounter thus, he smiled occasionally, congratulating himself that the conversation had ended so abruptly--when a continuance would have led him perhaps to say some of those sudden, illogical remarks which are irresistibly drawn from a man by the provoking contact of certain feminine personalities.

"She may say what she wants," he said, selecting a cigarette. "She was caught by her own tricks." He took several steps, and grinned to himself. "It's an amusing game, and a game that will be amusing to play."

Despite this feeling of confidence and elation, he had an irresistible desire to telephone her, to indulge himself in the pleasure of hearing her voice again. He had resisted the impulse several times, convincing himself of the tactical error; and yet, the more he argued against it, the more the desire haunted him.