Chapter 10. The Seamy Side

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_ CHAPTER X. THE SEAMY SIDE

About four o'clock on the following afternoon Mrs. Mortimer's maid, who had almost finished drying and dressing her mistress' hair, was called to the door by a persistent knocking, which at first she had been bidden to disregard.

It was Mortimer's man, desiring to know whether Mrs. Mortimer could receive Mr. Mortimer at once on matters of importance.

"No," said Leila petulantly. "Tell Mullins to say that I can not see anybody," and catching a glimpse of the shadowy Mullins dodging about the dusky corridor: "What is the matter? Is Mr. Mortimer ill?"

But Mullins could not say what the matter might be, and he went away, only to return in a few moments bearing a scratchy note from his master, badly blotted and still wet; and Leila, with a shrug of resignation, took the blotched scrawl daintily between thumb and forefinger and unfolded it. Behind her, the maid, twisting up the masses of dark, fragrant hair, read the note very easily over her mistress' shoulder. It ran, without preliminaries:

"I'm going to talk to you, whether you like it or not. Do you understand that? If you want to know what's the matter with me you'll find out fast enough. Fire that French girl out before I arrive."

She closed the note thoughtfully, folding and double-folding it into a thick wad. The ink had come off, discolouring her finger-tips; she dropped the soiled paper on the floor, and held out her hands, plump fingers spread. And when the maid had finished removing the stains and had repolished the pretty hands, her mistress sipped her chocolate thoughtfully, nibbled a bit of dry toast, then motioned the maid to take the tray and her departure, leaving her the cup.

A few minutes later Mortimer came in, stood a moment blinking around the room, then dropped into a seat, sullen, inert, the folds of his chin crowded out on his collar, his heavy abdomen cradled on his short, thick legs. He had been freshly shaved; linen and clothing were spotless, yet the man looked unclean.

Save for the network of purple veins in his face, there was no colour there, none in his lips; even his flabby hands were the hue of clay.

"Are you ill?" asked his wife coolly.

"No, not very. I've got the jumps. What's that? Tea? Ugh! it's chocolate. Push it out of sight, will you? I can smell it."

Leila set the delicate cup on a table behind her.

"What time did you return this morning?" she asked, stifling a yawn.

"I don't know; about five or six. How the devil should I know what time I came in?"

Sitting there before the mirror of her dresser she stole a second glance at his marred features in the glass. The loose mouth, the smeared eyes, the palsy-like tremors that twitched the hands where they tightened on the arms of his chair, became repulsive to the verge of fascination. She tried to look away, but could not.

"You had better see Dr. Grisby," she managed to say.

"I'd better see you; that's what I'd better do," he retorted thickly. "You'll do all the doctoring I want. And I want it, all right."

"Very well. What is it?"

He passed his swollen hand across his forehead.

"What is it?" he repeated. "It's the limit, this time, if you want to know. I'm all in."

"Roulette?" raising her eyebrows without interest

"Yes, roulette, too. Everything! They got me upstairs at Burbank's. The game's crooked! Every box, every case, every wheel, every pack is crooked! crooked! crooked, by God!" he burst out in a fever, struggling to sit upright, his hands always tightening on the arms of the chair. "It's nothing but a creeping joint, run by a bunch of hand-shakers! I--I'll--"

Stuttering, choking, stammering imprecations, his hoarse clamour died away after a while. She sat there, head bent, silent, impassive, acquiescent under the physical and mental strain to which she had never become thoroughly hardened. How many such scenes had she witnessed! She could not count them. They differed very little in detail, and not at all in their ultimate object, which was to get what money she had. This was his method of reimbursing himself for his losses.

He made an end to his outburst after a while. Only his dreadful fat breathing now filled the silence; and supposing he had finished, she found her voice with an effort:

"I am sorry. It comes at a bad time, as you know--"

"A bad time!" he broke out violently. "How can it come at any other sort of time? With us, all times are bad. If this is worse than the average it can't be helped. We are in it for keeps this time!"

"We?"

"Yes, we!" he repeated; but his face had grown ghastly, and his uncertain eyes were fastened on her's in the mirror.

"What do you mean--exactly?" she asked, turning from the dresser to confront him.

He made no effort to answer; an expression of dull fright was growing on his visage, as though for the first time he had begun to realise what had happened.

She saw it, and her heart quickened, but she spoke disdainfully: "Well, I am ready to listen--as usual. How much do you want?"

He made no sign; his lower lip hung loose; his eyes blinked at her.

"What is it?" she repeated. "What have you been doing? How much have you lost? You can't have lost very much; we hadn't much to lose. If you have given your note to any of those gamblers, it is a shame--a shame! Leroy, look at me! You promised me, on your honour, never to do that again. Have you lied, after all the times I have helped you out, stripped myself, denied myself, put off tradesmen, faced down creditors? After all I have done, do you dare come here and ask for more--ask for what I have not got--with not one bill settled, not one servant paid since December--"

"Leila, I--I've got--to tell you--"

"What?" she demanded, appalled by the change in his face. If he was overdoing it, he was overdoing it realistically enough.

"I--I've used Plank's cheque!" he mumbled, and moistened his lips with his tongue.

She stared back at him, striving to comprehend. "Plank's!" she repeated slowly, "Plank's cheque? What cheque? What do you mean?"

"The one he gave you last night. I've used that. Now you know!"

"The one he--But you couldn't! How could you? It was not filled in."

"I filled it."

Her dawning horror was reacting on him, as it always did, like a fierce tonic; and his own courage came back in a sort of sullen desperation.

"You ... You are trying to frighten me, Leroy," she stammered. "You are trying to make me do something--give you what you want--force me to give you what you want! You can't frighten me. The cheque was made out to me--to my order. How could you have used it, if I had not indorsed it?"

"I indorsed it. Do you understand that!" he said savagely.

"No, I don't; because, if you did, it's forgery."

"I don't give a damn what you think it is!" he broke in fiercely. "All I'm worried over is what Plank will think. I didn't mean to do it; I didn't dream of doing it; but when Burbank cleaned me up I fished about, and that cursed cheque came tumbling out!"

In the rising excitement of self-defence the colour was coming back into his battered face; he sat up straighter in his chair, and, grasping the upholstered arms, leaned forward, speaking more distinctly and with increasing vigour and anger:

"When I saw that cheque in my hands I thought I'd use it temporarily--merely as moral collateral to flash at Burbank--something to back my I. O. U.'s. So I filled it in."

"For how much?" she asked, not daring to believe him; but he ignored the question and went on: "I filled it and indorsed it, and--"

"How could you indorse it?" she interrupted coolly, now unconvinced again and suspicious.

"I'll tell you if you'll stop that fool tongue a moment. The cheque was made to 'L. Mortimer,' wasn't it? So I wrote 'L. Mortimer' on the back. Now do you know? If you are L. Mortimer, so am I. Leila begins with L; so does Leroy, doesn't it? I didn't imitate your two-words-to-a-page autograph. I put my own fist to a cheque made out to one L. Mortimer; and I don't care what you think about it as long as Plank can stand it. Now put up your nose and howl, if you like."

But under her sudden pallor he was taking fright again, and he began to bolster up his courage with bluster and noise, as usual:

"Howl all you like!" he jeered. "It won't alter matters or square accounts with Plank. What are you staring at? Do you suppose I'm not sorry? Do you fancy I don't know what a fool I've been? What are you turning white for? What in hell--"

"How much have you--" She choked, then, resolutely: "How much have you--taken?"

"Taken!" he broke out, with an oath. "What do you mean? I've borrowed about twenty thousand dollars. Now yelp! Eh? What?--no yelps? Probably some weeps, then. Turn 'em on and run dry; I'll wait." And he managed to cross one bulky leg over the other and lean back, affecting resignation, while Leila, bolt upright in her low chair, every curved outline rigid under the flowing, silken wrap, stared at him as though stunned.

"Well, we're good for it, aren't we?" he said threateningly. "If he's going to turn ugly about it, here's the house."

"My--house?"

"Yes, your house! I suppose you'd rather raise something on the house than have the thing come out in the papers."

"Do you think so?" she asked, staring into his bloodshot eyes.

"Yes, I do. I'm damn sure of it!"

"You are wrong."

"You mean that you are not inclined to stand by me?" he demanded.

"Yes, I mean that."

"You don't intend to help me out?"

"I do not intend to--not this time."

He began to show his big teeth, and that nervous snickering "tick" twitched his upper lip.

"How about the courts?" he sneered. "Do you want to figure in them with Plank?"

"I don't want to," she said steadily, "but you can not frighten me any more by that threat."

"Oh! Can't frighten you! Perhaps you think you'll marry Plank when I get a decree? Do you? Well, you won't for several reasons; first, because I'll name other corespondents and that will make Plank sick; second, because Plank wants to marry somebody else and I'm able to assist him. So where do you come out in the shuffle?"

"I don't know," she said, under her breath, and rested her head against the back of the chair, as though suddenly tired.

"Well, I know. You'll come out smirched, and you know it," said Mortimer, gazing intently at her. "Look here, Leila: I didn't come here to threaten you. I'm no black-mailer; I'm no criminal. I'm simply a decent sort of a man, who is pretty badly scared over what he's done in a moment of temptation. You know I had no thought of anything except to borrow enough on my I. O. U.'s to make a killing at Burbank's. I had to show them something big, so I filled in that cheque, not meaning to use it; and before I knew it I'd indorsed it, and was plunging against it. Then they stacked everything on me--by God, they did! and if I had not been in the condition I was in I'd have stopped payment. But it was too late when I realised what I was against. Leila, you know I'm not a bad man at heart. Can't you help a fellow?"

His manner, completely changed, had become the resentful and fretful appeal of the victim of plot and circumstance. All the savage brutality had been eliminated; the sneer, the truculent attempts to browbeat, the pitiful swagger, the cynical justification, all were gone. It was really the man himself now, normally scared and repentant; the frightened, overfed pensioner on his wife's bounty; not the human beast maddened by fear and dissipation, half stunned, half panic-stricken, driven by sheer terror into a role which even he shrank from--had shrunk from all these years. For, leech and parasite that he was, Mortimer, however much the dirty acquisition of money might tempt him in theory, had not yet brought himself to the point of attempting the practice, even when in sorest straits and bitterest need. He didn't want to do it; he wished to get along without it, partly because of native inertia and an aversion to the mental nimbleness that he would be required to show as a law-breaker, partly because the word "black-mail" stood for what he did not dare suggest that he had come to, even to himself. His distaste was genuine; there were certain things which he didn't want to commit, and extortion was one of them. He could, at a pinch, lie to his wife, or try to scare her into giving him money; he could, when necessary, "borrow" from such men as Plank; but he had never cheated at cards, and he had never attempted to black-mail anybody except his wife--which, of course, was purely a family matter, and concerned nobody else.

Now he was attempting it again, with more sincerity, energy, and determination than he ever before had been forced to display. Even in his most profane violence the rage and panic were only partly real. He was, it is true, genuinely scared, and horribly shaken physically, but he had counted on violence, and he stimulated his own emotions and made them serve him, knowing all the while that in the reaction his ends would be accomplished, as usual. This policy of alternately frightening, dragooning, and supplicating Leila had carried him so far; and though it was true that this was a more serious situation than he had ever yet faced, he was convinced that his wife would pull him out somehow; and how that was to be accomplished he did not very much care, as long as he was pulled out safely.

"What this household requires," he said, "is economy." He spread his legs, denting the Aubusson carpet with his boot-heels, and glanced askance at his wife. "Economy," he repeated, furtively wetting his lips with a heavily coated tongue; "that's the true solution; economical administration in domestic matters. Retrenchment, Leila! retrenchment! Fewer folderols. I've a notion to give up that farm, and stop trying to breed those damfool sheep. They cost a thousand apiece, and do you know what I got for those six I sent to Westbury? Just twelve hundred dollars from Fleetwood--the bargaining shopkeeper! Twelve hundred! Think of that! And along comes Granby and sells a single ram for six thousand plunks!"

Leila's head was lowered. He could not see her expression, but he had always been confident of his ability to talk himself out of trouble, so he rambled on in pretence of camaraderie, currying favour, as he believed, ingratiating himself with the coarse bluntness that served him among some men, even among some women.

"We'll fix it somehow," he said reassuringly; "don't you worry, Leila. I've confidence in you, little girl! You've got me out of sticky messes before, eh? Well, we've weathered a few, haven't we?"

Even the horrible parody on wedded loyalty left her silent, unmoved, dark eyes brooding; and he began to grow a little restless and anxious as his jocularity increased without a movement in either response or aversion from his wife.

"You needn't be scared, if I'm not," he said reproachfully. "The house is worth two hundred and fifty thousand, and there's only fifty on it now. If that fat, Dutch skinflint, Plank, shows his tusks, we can clap on another fifty." And as she made no sound or movement in reply: "As far as Plank goes, haven't I done enough for him to square it? What have we ever got out of him, except a thousand or two now and then when the cards went against me? If I took it, it was practically what he owes me. And if he thinks it's too much--look here, Leila! I've a trick up my sleeve. I can make good any time I wish to. I'm in a position to marry that man to the girl he's mad about--stark, raving mad."

Mrs. Mortimer slowly raised her head and looked at her husband.

"Leroy, are you mad?"

"I! Not much!" he exclaimed gleefully. "I can make him the husband of the most-run-after girl in New York--if I want to. And at the same time I can puncture the most arrogant, the most cold-blooded, selfish, purse-proud, inflated nincompoop that ever sat at the head of a director's table. O-ho! Now you're staring, Leila. I can do it; I can make good. What are you worrying about? Why, I've got a hundred ways to square that cheque, and each separate way is a winner."

He rose, shook out the creases in his trousers, and adjusted the squat, gold fob which ornamented his protruding waistcoat.

"So you'll fix it, won't you, Leila?" he said, apparently oblivious that he had expressed himself as able to adjust the matter in one hundred equally edifying and satisfactory manners.

She did not answer. He lingered a moment at the door, looking back with an ingratiating leer; but she paid him no attention, and he took himself off, confident that her sulkiness could not result in anything unpleasant to anybody except herself.

Nor did it, as far as he could see. The days brought no noticeable change in his wife's demeanour toward him. Plank, when he met him, was civil enough, though it did occur to Mortimer that he saw very little of Plank in these days.

"Ungrateful beggar!" he thought bitterly; "he's toadying to Belwether now. I can't do anything more for him, so I don't interest him."

And for a while he wore either a truculent, aggrieved air in Plank's presence, or the meeker demeanour of a martyr, sentimentally misunderstood, but patient under the affliction.

Then there came a time when he needed money. During the few days he spent circling tentatively and apprehensively around his wife he learned enough to know that there was nothing to be had from her at present. No doubt the money she raised to placate Plank--if she had placated him in that fashion--was a strain on her resources, whatever those resources were.

One thing was certain: Plank had not remained very long in ignorance of the cheque drawn against his balance, if indeed, as Mortimer feared, the bank itself had not communicated with Plank as soon as the cheque was presented for payment. Therefore Plank must have been placated by Leila; how, Mortimer was satisfied not to know.

"Some of these days," he said to himself, "I'll catch her tripping, and then there'll be a decent division of property, or--there'll be a divorce." But, as usual, Mortimer found such practices more attractive in theory than in execution, and he was really quite contented to go on as things were going, if somebody would see that he had some money occasionally.

One of these occasions when he needed it was approaching. He had made a "killing" at Desmond's, and had used the money to stop up the more threatening gaps in the tottering financial fabric known as his "personal accounts." The fabric would hold for a while, but meantime he needed money to go on with. And Leila evidently had none. He tried everybody except Plank. He had scarcely the impudence to go to Plank just yet; but when, completing the vicious circle, he found his borrowing capacity exhausted, and himself once more face to face with the only hope, Plank, he sat down to consider seriously the possibility of the matter.

Of course Plank owed him more than he could ever pay--the ungrateful parvenu!--but what Plank had thought of that cheque transaction he had never been able to discover.

Somehow or other he must put Plank under fresh obligations; and that might have been possible had not Leila invaded the ground, leaving nothing, now that Plank was secure in club life.

Of course the first thing that presented itself to Mortimer's consideration was the engineering of Plank's matrimonial ambitions. Clearly the man had not changed. He was always at Sylvia's heels; he was seen with her in public; he went to the Belwether house a great deal. No possible doubt but that he was as infatuated as ever. And Quarrier was going to marry her next November--that is, if he, Mortimer, chose to keep silent about a certain midnight episode at Shotover.

It was his inclination, except in theory, to keep silent, partly because of his native inertia and unwillingness to go to the physical and intellectual exertion of being a rascal, partly because he didn't really want to be a rascal of that sort.

Like a man with premonitions of toothache, who walks down to the dentist's just to see what the number of the house looks like, and then walks around the block to think it over, so Mortimer, suffering from lack of money, walked round and round the central idea, unable to bring himself to the point.

Several times he called up Quarrier on the 'phone and made appointments to lunch with him; but these meetings never resulted in anything except luncheons which Mortimer paid for, and matters were becoming desperate.

So one day, after having lunched too freely, he sat down and wrote Plank the following note:

My Dear Beverly: You will remember that I once promised you my aid in securing what, to you, is the dearest object of your existence. I have thought, I have pondered, I have given the matter deep and, I may add without irreverence, prayerful consideration, knowing that the life's happiness of my closest friend depended on my judgment and wisdom and intelligence to secure for him the opportunity to crown his life's work by the acquisition of the brightest jewel in the diadem of old Manhattan.

"By George! that's wickedly good, though!" chuckled Mortimer, refreshing himself with his old stand-by, an apple, quartered, and soaked in very old port. So he sopped his apple and swallowed it, and picked up his pen again, chary of overdoing it.

All I say to you is, be ready! The time is close at hand when you may boldly make your avowal. But be ready! All depends upon the psychological moment. An instant too soon, an instant too late, and you are lost. And she is lost forever. Remember! Be faithful; trust in me, and wait. And the instant I say, "Speak!" pour out your soul, my dear friend, and be certain you are not pouring it out in vain. L. M.

Writing about "pouring out" made him thirsty, so he fortified himself several times, and then, sealing the letter, went out to a letter-box and stood looking at it.

"If I mail it I'm in for it," he muttered. After a while he put the letter in his pocket and walked on.

"It really doesn't commit me to anything," he reflected at last, halting before another letter-box. And as he stood there, hesitating, he glanced up and saw Quarrier entering the Lenox Club. The next moment he flung up the metal box lid, dropped in his letter, and followed Quarrier into the club.

Then events tumbled forward almost without a push from him. Quarrier was alone in a window corner, drinking vichy and milk and glancing over the afternoon papers. He saw Mortimer, and invited him to join him; and Mortimer, being thirsty, took champagne.

"I've been trying a new coach," said Quarrier, in his colourless and rather agreeable voice; and he went on leisurely explaining the points of the new mail-coach which had been built in Paris after plans of his own, while Mortimer gulped glass after glass of chilled wine, which seemed only to make him thirstier. Meantime he listened, really interested, except that his fleshy head was too full of alcohol and his own project to contain additional statistics concerning coaching. Besides, Quarrier, who had never been over-cordial to him, was more so now--enough for Mortimer to venture on a few tentative suggestions of a financial nature; and though, as usual, Quarrier was not responsive, he did not, as usual, get up and go away.

A vague hope stirred Mortimer that it might not be beyond his persuasive tongue to make this chilly, reticent young man into a friend some day--a helpful friend. For Mortimer all his life had trusted to his tongue; and though poorly enough repaid, the few lingual victories remained in his memory, along with an inexhaustible vanity and hope; while his countless defeats and the many occasions on which his tongue had played him false were all forgotten. Besides, he had been drinking more heavily all day than was his custom.

So Quarrier talked, sparingly, about his new coach, about Billy Fleetwood's renowned string of hunters, about Ashley Spencer's new stable and his chances at Saratoga with Roy-a-neh, for which he had paid a fabulous sum--the sum and the story probably equally fabulous.

Mortimer's head was swimming with ideas; he was also talking a great deal, much more than he had intended; he was saying things he had not exactly intended to say, either, in just that way. He realised it, but he went on, unable to stop his own tongue, the noise of which intoxicated him.

Once or twice he thought Quarrier looked at him rather strangely; but he would show Quarrier that he was nobody's fool; he'd show Quarrier that he was a friend, a good, staunch friend; and that Quarrier had long, long undervalued him. Waves of sentiment spread through and through him; his affection for Quarrier dampened his eyes; and still he blabbed on and on, gazing with brimming eyes upon Quarrier, who sat back silent and attentive as Mortimer circled and blundered nearer and nearer to the crucial point of his destination.

Midway in one of his linguistic ellipses Quarrier leaned forward and caught his arm in a grip of steel. Another man had entered the room. Mortimer, made partly conscious by the pain of Quarrier's vise-like grip, was sober enough to recognise the impropriety of his continuing aloud the veiled story he had been constructing with what he supposed to be a cunning as matchless as it was impenetrable.

Later he found himself upstairs in a private card-room, facing Quarrier across a table, and still talking and quenching his increasing thirst. He knew now what he was telling Quarrier; he was unveiling the parable; he was stripping metaphor from a carefully precise story. He used Siward's name presently; presently he used Sylvia's name. A moment later--or was it an hour?--Quarrier stopped him, coldly, without a trace of passion, demanding corroborative detail. And Mortimer gave it, wagging his head and one fat forefinger as emphasis.

"You saw that?" repeated Quarrier, deadly white of a sudden.

"Yes; an' I--"

"At three in the morning?"

"Yes; an' I want--"

"You saw him enter her room?"

"Yes; an' I wan' tersay thish to you, because I'm your fr'en'. Don' wan' anny fr'en's mine get fooled on women! See? Thash how I feel. I respec' the sect! See! Women, lovely women! See? Respec' sect! Gimme y'han', buzzer--er--brother Quar'er! Your m' fr'en'; I'm your fr'en'. I know how it is. Gotter wife m'own. Rotten one. Stingy! Takes money outter m' pockets. Dam 'stravagant. Ruin me! ... Say, old boy, what about dividend due 'morrow on Orange County Eclectic--mean Erlextic--no!--mean 'Letric! Damn!--Wasser masser tongue?"

Opening his fond and foggy eyes, and finding himself alone in the card-room, he began to cry; and a little later, attempting to push the electric button, he fell over a lounge and lay there, his shirt-front soiled with wine, one fat leg trailing to the floor; not the ideal position for slumber, perhaps, but what difference do attitudes and postures and poses make when a gentleman, in the sacred seclusion of his own club, is wooing the drowsy goddess with blasts of votive music through his empurpled nose?

In the meantime, however, he was due to dine at the Belwether house; and when eight o'clock approached, and he had not returned to dress, Leila called up Sylvia Landis on the telephone:

"My dear, Leroy hasn't returned, and I suppose he's forgotten about the Bridge. I can bring Mr. Plank, if you like."

"Very well," said Sylvia, adding, "if Mr. Plank is there, may I speak to him a moment?"

So Leila rose, setting the receiver on the desk, and Plank came in from the library and settled himself heavily in the chair:

"Did you wish to speak to me, Miss Landis?"

"Is that you, Mr. Plank? Yes; will you dine with us at eight? Bridge afterward, if you don't mind."

"Thank you."

"And, Mr. Plank, you had a note from me this morning?"

"Yes."

"Please disregard it."

"If you wish."

"I do. It is not worth while." And as Plank made no comment, "I have no further interest in the matter. Do you understand?"

"No," said Plank doggedly.

"I have nothing more to say. I am sorry. We dine at eight," concluded Sylvia hurriedly.

Plank hung up the receiver and sat eyeing it for a while in silence. Then his jaw began to harden and his under lip protruded, and he folded his great hands, resting them in front of him on the edge of the desk, brooding there, with eyes narrowing like a sleepy giant at prayer.

When Leila entered, in her evening wraps, she found him there, so immersed in reverie that he failed to hear her; and she stood a moment at the doorway, smiling to herself, thinking how pleasant it was to come down ready for the evening and find him there, as though he belonged where he sat, and was part of the familiar environment.

Recently she had grown younger in a smooth-skinned, full-lipped way--so much younger that it was spoken of. Something girlish in figure, in spontaneity, in the hesitation of her smile, in the lack of that hard, brilliant confidence which once characterised her, had developed; as though she were beginning her debut again, reverting to a softness and charm prematurely checked. Truly, her youth's discoloured blossom, forced by the pale phantom of false spring, was refolding to a bud once more; and the harsher tints of the inclement years were fading.

"Beverly," she said, "I am ready."

Plank stood up, dazed from his reverie, and walked toward her. His white tie had become disarranged; she raised her hands, halting him, and pulled it into shape for him, consciously innocent of the intimacy.

"Thank you," he said. "Do you know how pretty you are this evening?"

"Yes; I was very happy at my mirror. Do you know, the withered years seem to be dropping from me like leaves from an autumn sapling. And I feel young enough to say so poetically. ... Did Sylvia try to flirt with you over the wire?"

"Yes, as usual," he said drily, descending the stairs beside her.

"And really you don't love her any more?" she queried.

"Scarcely." His voice was low and rather disagreeable, and she looked up.

"I wish I knew what you and Sylvia find to talk about so frequently, if you're not in love."

But he made no answer; and they drove away to the Belwether house, a rather wide, old-style mansion of brown stone, with a stoop dividing its ugly facade, and a series of unnecessary glass doors blockading the vestibule.

A drawing-room and a reception-room flanked the marble-tiled hall; behind these the dining-room ran the width of the rear. It was a typical gentlefolk's house of the worst period of Manhattan, and Major Belwether belonged in it as fittingly as a melodeon belongs in a west-side flat. The hall-way was made for such a man as he to patter through; the velvet-covered stairs were as peculiarly fitted for him as a runway is for a rabbit; the suave pink-and-white drawing-room, the discreet, gray reception-room, the soft, fat rugs, the intricacies of banisters and alcoves and curtained cubby-holes--all reflected his personality, all corroborated the ensemble. It was his habitat, his distinctly, from the pronounced but meaningless intricacy of the architecture to the studied but unconvincing tints, like a man who suddenly starts to speak, but checks himself, realising he has nothing in particular to say.

There were half a dozen people there lounging informally between the living-room on the second floor and Sylvia's apartments in the rear--the residue from a luncheon and Bridge party given that afternoon by Sylvia to a score or so of card-mad women. A few of these she had asked to remain for an informal dinner, and a desperate game later--the sort of people she knew well enough to lose to heavily or win from without remorse--Grace Ferrall, Marion Page, Agatha Caithness. Trusting to the telephone that morning, she had secured the Mortimers and Quarrier, failing three men; and now the party, with Plank as Mortimer's substitute, was complete, all thorough gamesters--sex mattering nothing in the preparation for such a seance.

In Sylvia's boudoir Grace Ferrall and Agatha Caithness sat before the fire; Sylvia, at the mirror of her dresser, was correcting the pallor incident to the unbroken dissipation of a brilliant season; Marion, with her inevitable cigarette, wandered between Sylvia's quarters and the library, where Quarrier and Major Belwether were sitting in low-voiced confab.

Leila, greeted gaily from the boudoir, went in. Plank entered the library, was mauled effusively by the major, returned Quarrier's firm hand shake, and sat down with an inquiring smile.

"Oh, yes, we're out for blood to-night," tittered Major Belwether, grasping Quarrier's arm humourously and shaking it to emphasise his words--a habit that Quarrier thoroughly disliked. "Sylvia had a lot of women here playing for the season score, so I suggested she keep the pick of them for dinner, and call in a few choice ones to make a night of it."

"It's agreeable to me," said Plank, still looking at Quarrier with the same inquiring expression, which that gentleman presently chose to understand.

"I haven't had a chance to look into that matter," he said carelessly. "Some day, when you have time to go over it--"

"I have time now," said Plank; "there's nothing to go over; there's no reason for any secrecy. All I wrote you was that I proposed to control the stock of Amalgamated Electric and that I wished your advice in the matter."

"I could not give you any advice off-hand on such an extraordinary suggestion," returned Quarrier coldly. "If you know where the stock is, you'll understand."

"Do you mean what it is quoted at, or who owns it?" interrupted Plank.

"Who owns it. Everybody knows where it has dropped to, I suppose. Most people know, too, where it is held."

"Yes; I do."

"And who is manipulating it," added Quarrier indifferently.

"Do you mean Harrington's people?"

"I don't mean anybody in particular, Mr. Plank."

"Oh!" said Plank, staring, "I was sure you couldn't have meant Harrington; because," he went on deliberately, "there are other theories floating about that mysterious pool, one of which I've proved."

Quarrier looked at him out of his velvety-lidded eyes:

"What have you proved?"

"I'll tell you, if you'll appoint an interview."

"I'll come too," began Belwether, who had been listening, loose-mouthed and intent; "we're all in it--Howard, Kemp Ferrall, and I--"

"And Stephen Siward," observed Plank, so quietly that Quarrier never even raised his eyes to read the stolid face opposite.

Presently he said: "Do you know anybody who can deliver you any considerable block of Amalgamated Electric at the market figures?"

"I could deliver you several blocks, if you care to bid," said Plank bluntly.

Belwether grew red, then pale. Quarrier stiffened in his chair, but his eyes were only sceptical. Plank's under lip had begun to protrude again; he swung his massive head, looking from Belwether back to Quarrier:

"Pool or no pool," he continued, "you Amalgamated people will want to see the stock climb back into the branches from which somebody shook it out; and I propose to put it there. That is all I had meant to say to you, Mr. Quarrier. I'm not averse to saying it here to you, and I do. There's no secrecy about it. Figure out for yourself how much stock I control, and who let it go. Settle your family questions and put your house in order; then invite me to call, and I'll do it. And I have an idea that we are going to stand on our own legs again, and recover our self-respect and our fighting capacity; and I rather think we'll stop this hold-up business, and that our Inter-County friend will let go the sand-bag and pocket the jimmy, and talk business across the line-fence."

Quarrier's characteristic pallor was no index to his feelings, nor was his icy reticence. All hell might be boiling below.

When anybody gave Quarrier a letter to read he took a long time reading it; but if he was slow he was also minute; he went over every word again and again, studying, absorbing each letter, each period, the conformation of every word. And when he ended he had in his brain a photograph of the letter which he would never forget.

And now, slowly, minutely, methodically, he was going over and over Plank's words, and his manner of saying them, and their surface import, and the hidden one, if any.

If Plank had spoken the truth--and there was no reason to doubt it--Plank had quietly acquired a controlling interest in Amalgamated Electric. That meant treachery in somebody. Who? Probably Siward, perhaps Belwether. He would not look at the latter just yet; not for a minute or two. There was time enough to see through that withered, pink-and-white old fraud. But why had Plank done this? And why did Plank suspect him of any desire to wreck his own property? He did suspect him, that was certain.

After a silence, he spoke quietly and without emotion:

"Everybody concerned will be glad to see Amalgamated Electric declaring dividends. This is a shock to us," he glanced impassively at the shrunken major, "but a pleasant shock. I think it well to arrange a meeting as soon as possible."

"To-morrow," said Plank, with a manner of closing discussion. And in his brusque ending of the matter Quarrier detected the ringing undertone of an authority he never had and never would endure; and though his pale, composed features betrayed not the subtlest shade of emotion, he was aware that a new element had come into his life--a new force was growing out of nothing to confront him, an unfamiliar shape loomed vaguely ahead, throwing its huge distorted shadow across his path. He sensed it with the instinct of kind for kind, not because Plank's millions meant anything to him as a force; not because this lumbering, red-faced meddler had blundered into a family affair where confidence consisted in joining hands lest a pocket be inadvertently picked; not because Plank had knocked at the door, expecting treachery to open, and had found it, but because of the awful simplicity of the man and his methods.

If Plank suspected him, he must also suspect him of complicity in the Inter-County grab; he must suspect him of the ruthless crushing power that corrupts or annihilates opposition, making a mockery of legislation, a jest of the courts, and an epigram of a people's indignation.

And yet, in the face of all this, careless, fearless, frank to the outer verge of stupidity--which sometimes means the inability to be afraid--this man Plank was casually telling him things which men regard as secrets and as weapons of defence--was actually averting him of his peril, and telling him almost contemptuously to pull up the drawbridge and prepare for siege, instead of rushing the castle and giving it to the sack.

As Quarrier sat there meditating, his long, white fingers caressing his soft, pointed beard, Sylvia came in, greeting the men collectively with a nod, and offering her hand to Plank.

"Dinner is announced," she said; "please go in farm fashion. Wait!" as Plank, following the major and Quarrier, stood aside for her to pass. "No, you go ahead, Howard; and you," to the major.

Left for a moment in the room with Plank, she stood listening to the others descending the stairs; then:

"Have you seen Mr. Siward?"

"Yes," said Plank.

"Oh! Is he well?"

"Not very."

"Is he well enough to read a letter, and to answer one?"

"Oh, yes; he's well enough in that way."

"I supposed so. That is why I said to you, over the wire, not to trouble him with my request."

"You mean that I am not to say anything about your offer to buy the hunter?"

"No. If I make up my mind that I want the horse I'll write him--perhaps."

Lingering still, she let one hand fall on the banisters, turning back toward Plank, who was following:

"I understood you to mean that--that Mr. Siward's financial affairs were anything but satisfactory?"--the sweet, trailing, upward inflection making it a question.

"When did I say that?" demanded Plank.

"Once--a month ago."

"I didn't," said Plank bluntly.

"Oh, I had inferred it, then, from something you said, or something you were silent about. Is that it?"

"I don't know."

"Am I quite wrong, then?" she asked, looking him in the eyes.

And Plank, who never lied, found no answer. Considering him for a moment in silence, she turned again and descended the stairs.

The dinner was one of those thoroughly well-chosen dinners of few courses and faultless service suitable for card-players, who neither care to stuff themselves as a preliminary to a battle royal, nor to dawdle through courses, eliminating for themselves what is not good for them. The men drank a light, sound, aromatic Irish of the major's; the women--except Marion, who took what the men took--used claret sparingly. Coffee was served where they sat; the men smoking, Agatha and Marion producing their own cigarettes.

"Don't you smoke any more?" asked Grace Ferrall of Leila Mortimer, and at the smiling negative, "Oh, that perhaps explains it. You're growing positively radiant, you know. You'll he wearing a braid and a tuck in your skirt if you go on getting younger."

Leila laughed, colouring up as Plank turned in his chair to look at her closer.

"No, it won't rub off, Mr. Plank," said Marion coolly, "but mine will. This," touching a faint spot of colour under her eyes, "is art."

"Pooh! I'm all art!" said Grace. "Observe, Mr. Plank, that under this becoming flush are the same old freckles you saw at Shotover." And she laughed that sweet, careless laugh of an adolescent and straightened her boyish figure, pretty head held high, adding: "Kemp won't let me 'improve' myself, or I'd do it."

"You are perfect," said Sylvia, rising from the table, her own lovely, rounded, youthful figure condoning the exaggeration; "you're sufficiently sweet as you are. Good people, if you are ready, we will go through the ceremony of cutting for partners--unless otherwise you decide. How say you?"

"I don't care to enter the scramble for a man," cried Grace. "If it's to choose, I'd as soon choose Marion."

Plank looked at Leila, who laughed.

"All right; choose, then!" said Sylvia. "Howard, you're dying, of course, to play with me, but you're looking very guiltily at Agatha."

The major asked Leila at once; so Plank fell to Sylvia, pitted against Marion and Grace Ferrall.

A few moments later the quiet of the library was broken by the butler entering with decanters and ice, and glasses that tinkled frostily.

Play began at table Number One on a passed make of no trumps by Sylvia, and at the other table on a doubled and redoubled heart make, which sent a delicate flush into Agatha's face, and drove the last vestige of lingering thoughtfulness from Quarrier's, leaving it a tense, pallid, and expressionless mask, out of which looked the velvet-fringed eyes of a woman.

Of all the faces there at the two tables, Sylvia's alone had not changed, neither assuming the gambler's mask nor the infatuated glare of the amateur. She was thoughtful, excited, delighted, or dismayed by turns, but always wholesomely so; the game for its own sake, and not the stakes, absorbing her, partly because she had never permitted herself to weigh money and pleasure in the same balance, but kept a mental pair of scales for each.

As usual, the fever of gain was fiercest in those who could afford to lose most. Quarrier, playing to rule with merciless precision, coldly exacted every penalty that a lapse in his opponents permitted. Agatha, her teeth set in her nether lip, her eyes like living jewels, answered Quarrier's every signal, interpreted every sign, her play fitting in exactly with his, as though she were his subconscious self balancing the perfectly adjusted mechanism of his body and mind.

Now and then lifting her eyes, she sent a long, limpid glance at Quarrier like a pale shaft of light; and under his heavy-fringed lashes, at moments, his level gaze encountered her's with a slow narrowing of lids--as though there was more than one game in progress, more than one stake being played for under the dull rose glow of the clustered lights.

Sylvia, sitting dummy at the other tables mechanically alert to Plank's cards dropping in rapid sequence as he played alternately from his own hand and the dummy, permitted her thoughtful eyes to wander toward Agatha from moment to moment. How alluring her subtle beauty, in its own strange way! How perfect her accord with her partner! How faultless her intelligence, divining the very source of every hidden motive controlling him, forestalling his intent--acquiescent, delicate, marvellous intelligence--the esoteric complement of two parts of a single mind.

The collar of diamonds and aqua marines shimmered like the reflection of shadowy lightning across her throat; a single splendid jewel glowed on her left hand as her fingers flashed among the cards for the make-up.

"A hundred aces," broke in Plank's heavy voice as he played the last trick and picked up the scoring card and pencil.

Sylvia's blue eyes were laughing as Plank cut the new pack. Marion Page coolly laid aside her cigarette, dealt, and made it "without" in the original.

"May I play?" asked Sylvia sweetly.

"Please," growled Plank.

So Sylvia serenely played from the "top of nothing," and Grace Ferrall whisked a wonderful dummy across the green; and Plank's thick under lip began to protrude, and he lowered his heavy head like a bull at bay.

Once Marion, over-intent, touched a card in the dummy when she should have played from her own hand; and Sylvia would have let it pass, had not Plank calmly noted the penalty.

"Oh, dear! It's too much like business," sighed Sylvia. "Can't we play for the sake of the sport? I don't think it good sportsmanship to profit by a blunder."

"Rule," observed Marion laconically. "'Ware barbed wire, if you want the brush."

"I myself never was crazy for the brush," murmured Sylvia.

Grace whispered maliciously: "But you've got it, with the mask and pads," and her mischievous head barely tipped backward in the direction of Quarrier.

"Especially the mask," returned Sylvia, under her breath, and laid on the table the last card of a Yarborough.

Plank scored without comment. Marion cut, and resumed her cigarette. Sylvia dealt with that witchery of rounded wrists and slim fingers fascinating to men and women alike. Then, cards en regle, passed the make. Plank, cautiously consulting the score, made it spades, which being doubled, Grace led a "singleton" ace, and Plank slapped down a strong dummy and folded his great arms.

Toward midnight, Sylvia, absorbed in her dummy, fancied she heard the electric bell ringing at the front door. Later, having barely made the odd, she was turning to look at the major, when, beyond him, she saw Leroy Mortimer enter the room, sullen, pasty-skinned, but perfectly sober and well groomed.

"You are a trifle late," observed Sylvia carelessly. Grace Ferrall and Marion ignored him. Plank bade him good evening in a low voice.

The people at the other table, having completed their rubber, looked around at Mortimer in disagreeable surprise.

"I'll cut in, if you want me. If you don't, say so," observed Mortimer.

It was plain that they did not; so he settled himself in an arm-chair, with an ugly glance at his wife and an insolent one at Quarrier; and the game went on in silence; Leila and the major still losing heavily under the sneering gaze of Mortimer.

At last, "Who's carrying you?" he broke out, exasperated; and in the shocked silence Leila, very white, made a movement to rise, but Quarrier laid his long fingers across her arm, pressing her backward.

"You don't know what you're saying," he remarked, looking coldly at Mortimer.

Plank laid down his cards, rose, and walked over to Mortimer:

"May I have a word with you?" he asked bluntly.

"You may. And I'll help myself to a word or two with you," retorted Mortimer, following Plank out of the room, down the stairs to the lighted reception-room, where they wheeled, confronting one another.

"What is the matter?" demanded Plank. "At the club they told me you were asleep in the card-room. I didn't tell Leila. What is wrong?"

"I'm--I'm dead broke," said Mortimer harshly. "Billy Fleetwood took my paper. Can you help me out? It's due to-morrow."

Plank looked at him gravely, but made no answer.

"Can you?" repeated Mortimer violently. "Haven't I done enough for you? Haven't I done enough for everybody? Is anybody going to show me any consideration? Look at Quarrier's manner to me just now! And this very day I did him a service that all his millions can't repay. And there you stand, too, staring at me as though I were some damned importuning shabby-genteel, hinting around for an opening to touch you. Yes, you do! And this very day I have done for you the--the most vital thing--the most sacred favour one man can do for another--"

He halted, stammered something incoherent, his battered eyes wet with tears. The man was a wreck--nerves, stamina, mind on the very verge of collapse.

"I'll help you, of course," said Plank, eyeing him. "Go home, now, and sleep. I tell you I'll help you in the morning. ... Don't give way! Have you no grit? Pull up sharp, I tell you!"

But Mortimer had fallen into a chair, his ravaged face cradled in his hands. "I've got all that's c-coming to me," he said hoarsely; "I'm all in--all in! God! but I've got the jumps this trip. ... You'll stand for this, won't you, Plank? I was batty, but I woke up in time to grasp the live wire Billy Fleetwood held--three shocks in succession--and his were queens full to my jacks--aces to kings twice!--Alderdene and Voucher sitting in until they'd started me off hiking hellward!"

He began to ramble, and even to laugh weakly, passing his puffy, shaking hands across his eyes.

"It's good of you, Beverly; I appreciate it. But I've been good to you. You're all to the good, my boy! Understand? All to the good. I fixed it; I did it for you. You can have your innings now. You can have her when you want her, I tell you."

"What do you mean?" said Plank menacingly.

"Mean! I mean what I told you that day at Black Fells, when we were riding. I told you you had a chance to win out. Now the chance has come--same's I told you. Start in, and by the time you're ready to say 'When?' she'll be there with the bottle!"

"I don't think you are perfectly sane yet," said Plank slowly.

"Let it go at that, then," sniggered Mortimer, struggling to his feet. "Bring Leila back; I'm all in; I'm going home. You'll be around in the morning, won't you?"

"Yes," said Plank. "Have you got a cab?"

Mortimer had one. The glass and iron doors clanged behind him, and Plank, waiting a moment, sighed, raised his head, and, encountering the curious gaze of a servant, trudged off up-stairs again.

The game had ended at both tables. Quarrier and Agatha stood by the window together, conversing in low voices. Belwether, at a desk, sat muttering and fussing with a cheque-book. The others were in Sylvia's apartments.

A few moments later Kemp Ferrall arrived, in the best of spirits, very much inclined to consider the night as still young; but his enthusiasm met with no response, and presently he departed with his wife and Marion in their big Mercedes, wheeling into the avenue at a reckless pace, and streaming away through the night like a meteor run mad.

Leila, in her wraps, emerged in a few moments, looking at Plank out of serious eyes; and they made their brief adieux and went away in Plank's brougham.

When Agatha's maid arrived, Quarrier also started to take his leave; but Sylvia, seated at a card-table, idly arranging the cards in geometrical designs and fanciful arabesques, looked up at him, saying:

"I wanted to say something to you, Howard."

Agatha passed them, going into Sylvia's room for her wraps; and Quarrier turned to Sylvia:

"Well?" he said, with the slightest hint of impatience.

"Can't you stay a minute?" asked Sylvia, surprised.

"Agatha is going in the motor with me. Is it anything important?"

She considered him without replying. She had never before detected that manner, that hardness in a voice always so even in quality.

"What is it?" he repeated.

She thought a moment, putting aside for the time his manner, which she could not comprehend; then:

"I wanted to ask you a question--a rather ignorant one, perhaps. It's about your Amalgamated Electric Company. May I ask it, Howard?"

After a second's stare, "Certainly," he said.

"It's only this: If the other people--the Inter-County, I mean--are slowly ruining Amalgamated, why don't you stop it?"

Quarrier's eyes narrowed. "Oh! And who have you been discussing the matter with?"

"Mr. Plank," she said simply. "I asked him. He shook his head, and said I'd better ask you. And I do ask you."

For a moment he stood mute; then his lips began to shrink back over his beautiful teeth in one of his rare laughs.

"I'll be very glad to explain it some day," he said; but there was no mirth in his voice or eyes, only the snickering lip wrinkling the pallor.

"Will you not answer now?" she asked.

"No, not now. But I desire you to understand it some day--some day before November. And one or two other matters that it is necessary for you to understand. I want to explain them, Sylvia, in such a manner that you will never be likely to forget them. And I mean to; for they are never out of my mind, and I wish them to be as ineffaceably impressed on yours. ... Good night."

He took her limp hand almost briskly, released it, and stepped down the stairs as Agatha entered, cloaked, to say good night.

They kissed at parting--"life embracing death"--as Mortimer had sneered on a similar occasion; then Sylvia, alone, stood in her bedroom, hands linked behind her, her lovely head bent, groping with the very ghosts of thought which eluded her, fleeing, vanishing, reappearing, to peep out at her only to fade into nothing ere she could follow where they flitted through the dark labyrinths of memory.

The major, craning his neck in the bay-window, saw Agatha and Quarrier enter the big, yellow motor, and disappear behind the limousine. And it worried him horribly, because he knew perfectly well that Quarrier had lied to him about a jewelled collar precisely like the collar worn by Agatha Caithness; and what to do or what to say to anybody on the subject was, for the first time in his life, utterly beyond his garrulous ability. So, for the first time also in his chattering career, he held his tongue, reassured at moments, at other moments panic-stricken lest this marriage he had engineered should go amiss, and his ambitions be nipped at the very instant of triumphant maturity.

"This sort of thing--in your own caste--among your own kind," his panicky thoughts ran on, "is b-bad form--rotten bad taste on both sides. If they were married--one of them, anyway! But this isn't right; no, by gad! it's bad taste, and no gentleman could countenance it!"

It was plain that he could, however, his only fear being that somebody might whisper something to turn Sylvia's innocence into a terrible wisdom which would ruin everything, and knock the underpinning from the new tower which his inflated fancy beheld slowly growing heavenward, surmounting the house of Belwether.

Another matter: he had violated his word, and had been caught at it by his prospective nephew-in-law--broken his pledged word not to sell his Amalgamated Electric holdings, and had done it. Yet, how could Plank dominate, unless another also had done what he had done? And it made him a little more comfortable to know he was sharing the fault with somebody--probably with Siward, whom he now had the luxury of despising for the very thing he himself had done.

"Drunkard!" he muttered to himself; "he's in the gutter at last!"

And he repeated it unctuously, almost reconciled to his own shortcoming, because it was the first time, as far as he knew, that a Belwether might legitimately enjoy the pleasures of holding the word of a Siward in contempt.

Sylvia had dismissed her maid, the old feeling of distaste for the touch of another had returned since the last mad, crushed embrace in Siward's arms had become a memory. More and more she was returning to old instincts, old habits of thought, reverting to type once more, virgin of lip and thought and desire, save when the old memory stopped her heart suddenly, then sent it racing, touching her face with quick, crimson imprint.

Now, blue eyes dreaming under the bright masses of her loosened hair, she sat watching the last glimmer amid the ashes whitening on the hearth, thinking of Siward and of what had been between them, and of what could never be--never, never be.

One red spark among the ashes--her ambition, deathless amid the ashes of life! When that, too, went out, life must be extinct.

What he had roused in her had died when he went away. It could never awake again, unless he returned to awaken it. And he never would; he would never come again.

One brief interlude of love, of passion, in her life could neither tint nor taint the cool, normal sequence of her days. All that life held for a woman of her caste--all save that--was hers when she stretched out her hand for it--hers by right of succession, of descent; hers by warrant unquestioned, by the unuttered text of the ukase to be launched, if necessary, by that very, very old lady, drowsing, enthroned, as the endless pageant wound like a jewelled river at her feet.

So Siward could never come again, sauntering toward her through the sunlight, smiling his absent smile. She caught her breath painfully, straightening up; a single ash fell in the fire; the last spark went out. _

Read next: Chapter 11. The Call Of The Rain

Read previous: Chapter 9. Confessions

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