Part 9

Ordinarily he spent an agreeable half-hour after breakfast, calling up on the telephone those of the opposite sex with whom he was in the relation of a good comrade. He enjoyed these morning snatches of intimacy, with an enjoyment untouched with any seriousness. This morning, as he took the telephone in hand, he thought first of Emma Fornez, but as he had neglected to make his adieu to her on leaving with Nan Charters, he considered a moment while he formulated an acceptable apology.

The prima donna answered him from the languid idleness of her bed, where she was resting in a state of complete exhaustion.

"I am ab-so-lutely _fini_," she said in an anguished tone. "It is fright-ful. I shall never be able to sing--never!" Then she remembered. "I am very angry with you--yes, yes,--very angry."

Beecher explained, with crocodile tears, how he had been forced to come to the aid of a distressed and helpless female.

"Ta-ta-ta! Stuff and nonsense! You could have boxed her up in a carriage and sent her home--yes, yes, you could. But you are in love--you are weak--you wanted an excuse--she made a fool of you--she twisted you around her finger!"

Beecher denied the charge with indignation.

"If you wanted to, you could have come back to me--yes, you could."

"But you had deserted me--I was furious."

The conversation continued ten minutes on these purely conventional lines and ended with a promise to drop in that afternoon for tea.

He had hardly ended when Mrs. Fontaine called up with an invitation to her box, for Mme. Fornez's debut in Carmen the following week.

Then he called up Miss Rivers, not because he particularly wished to talk with her, for he had determined on her decapitation, so to speak, but in order to appease somewhat the desire he had to telephone some one else. In conversing over the telephone, he felt a revival of interest and promised to try to drop in for a call that afternoon.

He rose, looking down at the telephone in a dissatisfied way, and, turning his back, went in search of his hat.

"She'll expect me to telephone, of course," he thought; "besides, what excuse could I give? I'm not going to play into her game--not by a long shot. I know the kind--entirely too much brain-work to suit me. Oh, yes, she'd like to annex me--because I've been attentive to Emma Fornez--sure; but when it comes down to business. Mr. Charles Lorraine has a hundred thousand a year and I have thirty. She knows that." He laughed disdainfully and repeated, "You bet she knows that--well, so do I."

He returned to the sitting-room and selected a cane, glancing out of the corner of his eye at the accursed telephone.

"I won't," he said, taking three steps toward it and then turning abruptly away.

At the moment when he stood wavering, it began to ring. He went to it hastily. Miss Charters was calling him...

"How lucky!" he said purposely. "I was just going out. I heard you from the hall."

"You know, I never realized until this morning what I had done," said the voice at the other end. "I was so upset by Mr. Lorraine's condition that I forgot you were there with Madame Fornez."

"Clever girl," he said to himself, smiling. Then aloud: "Oh, I explained matters."

"I was afraid I'd got you into trouble."

"No, indeed. Madame Fornez is a good sort; she understood at once."

"I'm so glad. You've 'phoned her already then?"

"Yes."

He remembered McKenna's suggestion, but he did not wish to make the demand direct.

"Something of a smash in Wall Street to-day," he said carelessly.

"You weren't caught, were you?" she said, with a note of quick sympathy which he admired.

"No; I don't speculate."

"I was afraid you might have."

"By Jove," he said, "I hope you didn't lose anything."

"No, I don't think so," she said doubtfully. "I had some money invested, but I suppose if I hold on that'll come up again."

"Not on margins?"

"No, indeed."

"Who's your broker?"

"Mr. Garraboy."

"Who?"

"Mr. Garraboy."

The news produced on him a strangely ominous effect. He forgot all the parleying and the tactical planning of his campaign, overshadowed by a sudden sense of sympathy.

"I want to talk to you about that," he said anxiously. "Have you much in his hands?"

"Much for me--about twenty thousand."

"Are you going to be in this afternoon? Can I see you?"

"I wish you would."

Something in her voice struck him by its weakness.

"You are not worried, are you?" he said.

"A little."

"Why don't you call him up?"

"I've been trying to."

He was going to offer to telephone for her, when he remembered the antagonism he had felt for the broker, and refrained until a fuller knowledge. He reassured her, making light of her doubts, though feeling an instinctive anxiety for himself. Then he called up McKenna; but the detective was out, and, leaving word that he would try later, he went for his morning ride.

A little before one o'clock he was in the softly lighted studio of Mrs. Kildair, waiting for his hostess with the pleasurable anticipation of a confidential tete-a-tete. On one thing he was thoroughly resolved--to convince her of the seriousness of his purpose in offering his assistance. As he paced slowly and irregularly about the room, his mind, perplexed by the mystery of the disappearance of the ring, instinctively considering the possibilities for concealment, he was surprised to hear, behind the closed doors of the bedroom, the sound of voices in agitated discussion. He stopped, perplexed, for in his walk about the room he had arrived at a point in such close proximity that the tones were easily distinguishable.

"But I have already made up my mind," cried a voice which he recognized at once as Mrs. Bloodgood's.

Mrs. Kildair answered her, but in a lower tone--a note of warning and remonstrance.

"Oh, what do I care for the world!" repeated the voice, on a higher note. "The world is all against me. I have only one life--I want to live some of it."

Beecher, ill at ease, realizing that he had stumbled on a situation which he had no right to surprise, tip-toed away. Hardly had he seated himself when the door opened brusquely, and Mrs. Bloodgood appeared, saying:

"No, no; it is decided. I'm going. My only regret is that we waited so long."

Two spots of red showed on her dark cheeks, while her head was carried defiant, alive with sudden energy. Beecher was struck with the unwonted brilliancy and youth which the emotion that possessed her had communicated to her whole body. Mrs. Kildair followed her, with the frown of one who disapproves, but who knows the futility of any contradiction.

Beecher rose hastily, emerging from the shadow. The two women stopped, surprised at his presence, considering him nervously. The few snatches of conversation he had heard, coupled with what Gunther had revealed to him of the infatuation of Mrs. Bloodgood and Majendie, made him divine the intention of elopement they had been discussing. His sympathy was touched by the distress of the young woman, and, advancing quickly, he said, with a pretense of shame:

"By Jove, I must have been nodding! A thousand pardons."

"How long have you been here?" said Mrs. Kildair.

"About ten minutes," he said, rubbing his eyes and laughing. "Confound that chair--it's infernally comfortable, after being up all night. You made me jump."

Mrs. Bloodgood had regained her calm. She embraced Mrs. Kildair and held out her hand to Beecher.

"Won't you let me see you to your carriage?" he said eagerly, with a smile of such good will that she perceived that whatever he had overheard, she had no need to fear.

"It's not necessary--but thank you," she said, giving him a grateful smile.

He went to the door, opening it with a little exaggerated courtesy, and returned thoughtfully to Mrs. Kildair, who was watching him fixedly.

"You overheard?" she said directly.

"A little."

"And what did you understand from it?"

"Why, frankly, knowing what I do, I should believe that Mrs. Bloodgood had decided to run away," he answered slowly; "which means, of course, one man. I am sorry. I could not help hearing."

Mrs. Kildair had seated herself on the Recamier sofa and was studying him, undecided as to what she should say.

"You have heard too much, Teddy, not to know all," she said, reassured by the directness of his glance. "Besides, in twenty-four hours it will be in every paper in the country. I do not need to ask your promise to keep secret what you have heard. She is leaving her home and going openly away with Mr. Majendie--this very afternoon."

"Majendie running off?" said Beecher, astounded.

"Yes."

"Now--at such a time as this--when he is under fire? I don't believe it!"

"I should not have believed it either," said Mrs. Kildair thoughtfully.

"I know his kind," declared Beecher warmly; "he would never commit such a folly--never!"

"And yet, that is what is going to happen."

"That is terrible. Doesn't she realize that he lays himself open to every charge? He'll be called a defaulter and an absconder--it is worse than death!"

"She realizes nothing," said Mrs. Kildair in a solemn voice, "except that she has hated one man and lived with him ten years, and that now, when everything is against the man she adores, she will sacrifice anything to be at his side."

"But the sacrifice he is making--"

"Her sacrifice is too great--she doesn't realize that," said Mrs. Kildair, rising. "Poor Elise! Her life has been terrible. She is wild with anxiety, with the thought of what Majendie may do. When one has suffered as much as she has, one more sorrow will not stop her."

Beecher was silent, overcome by the vision of an emptiness which he could divine only in a general way, having as yet little knowledge of the silent tragedies that pass at our elbows. When Mrs. Kildair turned again, it was with all her accustomed poise.

"We can do nothing," she said calmly. "Let us forget it. Luncheon is a little late. We shall be three; I asked Mr. Slade to join us. By the way, you were kind enough to offer me your help in the matter of my ring. I shan't need it now, but thanks all the same."

"What do you mean?" he asked, surprised.

"My detectives assure me they are on the right track," she said carelessly. "All I ask of you, as I have of every one, is to keep this unfortunate occurrence to yourself."

Beecher had been on the point of informing her of his retaining McKenna, confident of her approval. Ignorant as he was of Mrs. Kildair's dread that Slade's ownership of the ring might come to light, with all the consequent public misunderstanding, he was disagreeably impressed by her announcement. He did not for one moment believe her statement that the right clue had been found. All he understood was that, for some reason, she desired to keep him out of the case, and this understanding irritated him. And the introduction of Slade at what he had considered his privileged hour annoyed him even more. His curiosity increased twofold as he was forced to retain his information. Then he remembered McKenna's hint, and said carelessly:

"By Jove, that reminds me--I want the address of your detective agency."

She raised her eyes very slowly, and her glance rested on his for a full moment.

"Why do you ask that?" she said.

He repeated the story he had prepared of a friend's demand, mentioning Gunther's name.

Mrs. Kildair rose as though reluctantly, motioning him to wait, and, going to her room, returned after a long moment with an address on a slip of paper.

"There, Teddy," she said, giving it to him. Her manner had completely changed. She was again the Rita Kildair who treated him _en camarade_. "You are disappointed in not working out an exciting mystery," she said, laughing. "Do you know, Teddy, I am quite surprised at you."

"How so?" he said warily.

"I should have thought by this time you would have engaged half the detectives in New York," she said, turning from him to arrange the cushions at her back. "And here you have done nothing."

Beecher was not deceived by the innocence of the interrogation.

In the last days his wits had been trained by contact with different feminine personalities. He understood that she wished to find out what he had done and assumed at once an attitude of boyish candor.

"It's not my fault, Rita," he said contritely. "You put me off--you remember."

"That's so," she said. She motioned to him with a little gesture of her fingers and indicated a chair at her side. "Come here, you great boy," she said, smiling. "You are furious at me, aren't you?"

"Why?" he said, sitting near her, with a resolve to resist all her curiosity.

"You like to be the confidant of pretty women, Teddy," she said, laughing as he blushed. "To be on the inside--to know what others can't. Well, you shan't be deprived."

He looked at her in surprise.

"What I told you is not true," she said candidly. "I have no clue, as yet, and am quite in the dark. I give you permission to do all you can. You see," she continued, holding out her hand with a charming smile, "I give you my full confidence--confidence for confidence--_n'est ce pas_?"

Beecher made a rapid mental reservation and repeated her phrase, expecting a direct examination, but her manner became thoughtful again and she said pensively:

"Besides, you have stumbled on a confidence yourself, and if you are to be trusted with that you should be trusted entirely." She looked at him quietly for a moment, and then added: "As a proof of my trust, Teddy, I am going to ask you to be my ally now. Mr. Slade will be here shortly. I do not wish to be alone with him. Do not go until he is gone."

This request, implying as it did his own superior intimacy, delighted Beecher. He felt half of his suspicions vanish as he answered wisely:

"I understand. He is quite daffy about you, isn't he?"

"Quite. But he has to be kept in place."

"Oh, of course."

"And now you are happy again," she said, tapping his arm with a little friendly gesture and smiling inwardly at the satisfaction which began to radiate from his face. "Teddy, you are a nice boy. I will teach you what the world is; you shall be my confidant, and we will laugh together; only, you must not be sentimental, you understand."

"Never," he said with vigorous assertion. Then his conscience began to reprove him, and he blurted out: "I say, Rita, I haven't been quite honest, but you rubbed me the wrong way. I really have been on the job."

"Besides Gunther, whom else have you talked with?" she asked.

"McKenna, the detective; and he's dead keen on the case," he said enthusiastically, not noticing what she had implied.

"Oh, McKenna!" she said, nodding appreciatively. "You have done well."

She sat up, suddenly serious, and, extending her hand, took from him the address she had given him.

"Did McKenna tell you to find out my detective?" she said slowly.

Beecher comprehended all at once how he had played into her game, but, with her glance on his, it was impossible to deny.

"Yes," he said; "he told me that he'd been on a dozen cases where the detectives who had come in to make a search had gone partners with the thief. He wanted to be certain there had been a real search."

This seemed to reassure her, for she nodded with a return of her careless manner, as though comprehending the situation. Then, crumpling in her hands the paper with the address, she allowed her body to regain its former languid position and said:

"I should like to meet McKenna; you must bring him around. How is he starting on the case?"

Before Beecher could answer, the bell rang and Slade's bulky figure crowded the frame of the doorway. He entered, and the portieres, at his passing, rolled back like two storm clouds.

Whether or not Mrs. Kildair had calculated the effect of the intimacy of Beecher's position, Slade saw it at once as he noted savagely the involuntary separating movement which each unconsciously performed, and, perceiving it, exaggerated its importance. The look he gave the younger man revealed to the amused woman how much he would have liked in barbaric freedom to have seized him and crushed him in his powerful arms.

"Sorry to be late," he said abruptly, glancing at the clock. "I've taken the liberty to leave your telephone number, Mrs. Kildair, in case something important turns up."

They passed immediately into the dining-room, Mrs. Kildair enjoying this clash of opposite personalities. Slade was not a man of small talk, disdaining the easy and ingratiating phrases with which other men establish a congenial intimacy. For the first quarter of an hour he withdrew from the conversation, and, being hungry, ate with relish. Beecher, abetted by his hostess, taking a malicious pleasure in the superiority he enjoyed, chatted of a hundred and one things which he shared with his listener, incidents of the party at Lindabury's, gossip of the world they knew, Emma Fornez and Holliday, Mrs. Fontaine and Gunther. Then, naturally drawn to the one topic that charged the air with the electricity of its drama, he related the uproar in the city, the long lines of depositors before the banks, the incident of Bo Lynch in the morning, and the effect on the men they knew. In this both he and Mrs. Kildair had an ulterior motive--to make Slade talk: Mrs. Kildair, for reasons of her own, Beecher alive to his dramatic closeness to the one man about whose success or ruin all the storm of rumor and gossip was raging.

"Stocks are still dropping," said Mrs. Kildair, glancing at Slade, who appeared quite unconscious. "An enormous quantity of holdings have been thrown on the market."

"How long do you think it will keep up?"

"That depends; a day, a week--Mr. Slade knows better than any one."

Slade looked up suddenly.

"What do they say about me?" he asked grimly.

"Every one expects the Associated Trust to be the next," said Beecher frankly.

"Probably. I'll tell you one bit of news," he added quietly. "The Clearing-house will refuse to clear for us this afternoon."

"But that means failure," said Mrs. Kildair, with a quick glance at him.

"We shall see."

"But the run has already started."

"Oh, yes; we have paid off five depositors already," he said, with a smile that was almost imperceptible.

"Only five?"

"It takes a long time to verify some accounts. Then the law allows discretion in payment--takes quite a while to count out five thousand in half dollars." All at once he leaned forward heavily and began to speak, contemplatively interested. "The real truth is the thing that is never known. The newspapers never print the news. Sometimes it is given to them in confidence, to make certain that they won't print it. How much do you suppose will ever be known of the real causes of the present crisis? Nothing. They may let the market go to the dogs for three days, six days, a month, ruin thousands of victims, and the public will never know that the whole thing can be stopped now, in twenty-four hours, by ten men. And, when they get ready, ten men _will_ stop it. Then there'll be columns of adulation--patriotic services, unselfish devotion, and all that; and what will have happened--ten men will be in pocket a few millions as the result of their sacrificing devotion. The public must have a victim in order to be calmed, to be satisfied that everything has been changed. Then a weak man, some unlucky lieutenant, will be served up, and things will go on again, until one group of millions is ready to attack another. How the public will howl! Majendie has taken the gambler's risk; Majendie has failed. There's the crime--failure; and yet, ninety per cent. of the fortunes today have turned on the scale--up or down--win or lose. For every promoter that wins, twenty fail with a little different turn of the luck.

"We're all criminals--only we don't steal directly. We get it done for us. We want franchises for a great railroad system. We shut our eyes--hire an agent--go out and get this, no strings, no directions--show us only your results! Everything is in irresponsibility. A million dollars can commit no crime. After all, it's in the motive--a man who steals because he's hungry is a thief; a corporation that bribes a legislature and steals franchises, to create a great system of transportation, is performing a public service. It's all in what you're after. There're two ways to look at every big man; see the two periods--first, when he is trying to get together money--power; and second, what he creates when he has it. Same in politics--a man's better in office than running for it. Every man of power wants to arrive, anything to arrive, but when he gets there--then's the second period. The way to judge us is whether we want money only, or money to create something big."

"And you?"

"I want sixty millions," said Slade abruptly. "Will I get it?" He shrugged his shoulders, and taking a knife balanced it in seesaw on his finger, letting it finally drop with an exclamation of impatience. "That's the danger--the getting of it. I may have it in two years more and then again--" He opened his hand as though flinging sand in the air, and added: "In a week it may be over. _Rouge et noir_--one bad turn at the beginning and Napoleon Bonaparte would have been shot as a conspirator. Up to the present, I've been living the first period--afterward I'll justify it; I'll build."

"In what way?" said Mrs. Kildair, who, while following his brutal exposition with the tribute instinctive to force, was nevertheless aware that this unusual revelation of himself had likewise a trifling object--the over-awing of the younger rival.

"Railroads--a great system--an empire in itself," said Slade; and there came in his eyes a flash of the enthusiast which surprised her. But, unwilling to enlarge on this topic, he continued: "What I've said sounds raw, doesn't it? So it is. If I do what I want, I justify myself. There are only two classes of human beings--those like you two here, who get through life with the most pleasure you can, who get through--pass through; and then a few, a handful, who create something--an empire, like Rhodes, invent a locomotive or a system of electric production, add something to human history. What if they steal, or grind out the lives of others? They're the only ones who count. And the public knows it--it forgives everything to greatness; it's only petty crime it hates. Look at the sympathy a murderer gets on trial--look at the respect a great manipulator gets. Why? Because to murder and steal are natural human instincts. A couple of thousand years ago, it was a praiseworthy act for one ancestor, who coveted a hide or a cave that another ancestor had, to go out and kill him. All animals steal by instinct. We are only badly educated animals, and we admire in others what we don't dare do ourselves. Only succeed--succeed! Ah, there is the whole of it!"

At this moment the telephone rang, and Slade rose and went to it with a little more emotion than he usually showed.

"Is this the cause of his outburst?" thought Mrs. Kildair, while she and Beecher instinctively remained silent.

At the end of a short moment, Slade returned. The two observers, who glanced at him quickly, could not find the slightest clue of what had transpired. Only he seemed more composed.

"Speaking of stealing, take the case of the ring," he said, relaxing in a chair. "We know this--incredible as it may seem--that there were at least two thieves in the company; as a matter of fact, there were many more. My own opinion is that the crime was not an ordinary one--that whoever took it the second time took it out of an uncontrollable spirit of bravado, an overpowering impulse to do an almost impossible thing."

"By the way--" Beecher began, and then suddenly looked at Mrs. Kildair interrogatively. Then, receiving permission, he continued: "You know who returned that night?"

Slade nodded.