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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fc115a9 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #50203 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50203) diff --git a/old/50203-0.txt b/old/50203-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 6ab3fb5..0000000 --- a/old/50203-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8658 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wire Tappers, by Arthur Stringer - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: The Wire Tappers - -Author: Arthur Stringer - -Release Date: October 13, 2015 [EBook #50203] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIRE TAPPERS *** - - - - -Produced by David T. Jones, Paul Ereaut, Mardi Desjardins -& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team -(http://www.pgdpcanada.net) - - - - - - Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook. - - - - - OTHER BOOKS BY MR. STRINGER - - THE DOOR OF DREAD - THE MAN WHO COULDN’T SLEEP - THE HOUSE OF INTRIGUE - TWIN TALES - THE PRAIRIE WIFE - THE PRAIRIE MOTHER - THE PRAIRIE CHILD - - - - -[Illustration: Quite motionless, waiting over the sounder, bent the -woman] - - - - - THE - WIRE TAPPERS - - _By_ - ARTHUR STRINGER - - INDIANAPOLIS - THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY - PUBLISHERS - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1906, 1922 - BY THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY - - _Printed in the United States of America_ - - PRESS OF - BRAUNWORTH & CO - BOOK MANUFACTURERS - BROOKLYN, N. Y. - - - - - THE WIRE TAPPERS - - - - - CHAPTER I - - -The discharged prisoner hung back, blinking out at the strong sunlight -with preoccupied and unhappy eyes. When the way at last seemed clear he -thrust his hands deep in his pockets, and with an assumption of bravado -that seemed incongruous to the stern and thoughtful face, sauntered -toward Sixth Avenue. - -At the corner, a crowd of idlers watched two workmen on a scaffolding, -cleaning the stone of Jefferson Market with a sand-blast. It was not -until he had forced his way in on one side of this crowd, and edged -circuitously out on the other, that he felt at ease with the world. It -was like dipping into a stream: it seemed to wash away something scarlet -and flaming. A more resolute touch of self-respect came back to him. The -square shoulders took on some old-time line of natural dignity. He was -of the world again. - -He crossed Sixth Avenue with quicker steps, and then, smitten with the -pangs of sudden hunger, pushed his way into an oyster-bar on the next -street corner. With his reawakening to actualities came the question as -to what the next turn of the grim wheels of destiny would bring to him. -For, at heart, he was still sick and shaken and weak. It was his first -offense; and he felt the need of some obliterating stimulation. So, even -though the heavy odors of that transformed bar-room were as nauseating -as the mouldy gaol-smell he had left behind him, he calmly called for -coffee and a dozen raw. He ate the oysters as they were opened, between -gulps of the hot but rancid coffee. He next directed his attention to a -bowl of crackers, moistening them with catchup as he adroitly made away -with them. - -It was not until then that he noticed the stranger beside him, looking -at him pointedly. This stranger was corpulent, and friendly enough of -face, but for the blocked squareness of the flaccid jaw and the -indefinite pale green glint of the deep-set, predatory eyes that shifted -from side to side under the fringe of grayish eyebrow, as though the -great neck were too vast a thing to be lightly troubled. He was floridly -dressed, the younger man noticed, with a heavy, chased-gold band on one -fat finger, and a claw-mounted diamond in the stud on his shirt-front. -There was, too, something beefily animal-like in the confident, massive -neck that refused readily to move, and in the square upthrust of the -great shoulder. - -The discharged prisoner returned the other’s half-quizzical gaze of -inspection. He did so with a look that was unmistakably belligerent. -For, although they stood side by side, they were of two worlds, and the -prisoner was no longer a prisoner. - -The stranger, unabashed, merely smiled, and leaned amiably against the -stool-lined counter. - -“What’ll you have, Durkin?” he asked, easily. - -The other man still glared at him, in silence. Thereupon the stranger -with the diamond stud thrust his hands deep down in his pockets, and -rocking on his heels, laughed confidently. - -“Climb down, my boy, climb down!” - -Durkin buttoned up his coat: the gesture was as significant as the -slamming of a door. - -“Oh, smoke up, and have something with me!” - -“Who _are_ you, anyway?” demanded Durkin, wheeling on him, jealous of -his momentary isolation. - -“Me?—Oh, I was just keepin’ an eye on you, over yonder!” The stout man -jerked a thumb vaguely toward Jefferson Market, then turned to the -attendant. - -“Slip us a nip o’ that London Dry o’ yours, Terry, with a plate o’ hot -beans and sandwiches. Yes, I was kind o’ lookin’ on, over there. You’re -up against it, aren’t you?” - -“What do you mean by that?” asked the other, hungrily watching a leg of -boiled ham, from which the attendant was shaving dolefully thin slices. - -“Here, brace up on a swig o’ Terry’s watered bootleg; then we can talk -easier. Hold on, though—it won’t cost us any more to get comfortable, I -guess!” - -He ordered the luncheon over to a little round table in a corner of the -room. Durkin could already feel the illicit London Dry singing through -his veins; he was asking himself, wolfishly, if he could not snatch that -proffered meal before taking to flight. - -“Now, this isn’t monkey-work with me, it’s business,” announced the -newcomer. - -“Indeed?” said Durkin, hesitating, and then taking up a fork. - -“Now, first thing, I want to tell you something. That song and dance you -threw up to the Old Boy over on the bench, about your bein’ an electric -inventor in hard luck, caught my eye, first thing. Look here,—straight -off the bat, d’ you want to get a cinch on a good job?” - -“I do!” declared Durkin, through a mouthful of beans. “But doing what?” - -“Same old thing!” answered the other, offhandedly. - -Durkin put down his fork, indignantly. - -“What same old thing?” he demanded. - -“Operatin’, of course!” - -Durkin, in a sudden tremor of alarm, felt that the break would come -before even that steaming plate of beans was eaten. So he fought back -his affronted dignity, and giving no sign of either surprise or wonder, -parried for time. - -“I’m tired of operating,” he said, washing a mouthful of his lunch down -with a second glass of Terry’s London Dry. “My arm has been giving out.” - -“Well, I want a man, and I want him quick. You’re—er—not very well -fixed just now, are you?” - -“I haven’t a penny!” cried the other, passionately, surrendering to some -clutching tide of alcoholic recklessness. - -“Well, _my_ hours wouldn’t kill you!” began the older man, fraternally. - -“I’m sick of the sight of a key and sounder!” - -“You’d rather do the Edison act in a Third Avenue garret, I -s’pose—broodin’ round inventin’ electrical gimcrackery nobody wants and -nobody’s goin’ to buy!” - -“But I tell you somebody _will_ want what I’m going to do—and somebody -is going to pay money for it, and a heap of money, too!” - -“What’ve you got?” inquired the older man, with the slightest curl of -the lip. The younger man seemed nettled by the touch of contempt in the -other’s voice. - -“I’ve got an amplifier and I’ve got a transmitting camera—you needn’t -laugh, for when I get a relay so sensitive that I can sit in a St. Louis -office and send a message to London or Paris, or when I can send a -drawing of a train wreck somewhere outside of San Francisco right -through to New York, or telegraph a photo or a map or a sketch—why, -I’ve got something that men are going to pay for, and pay well!” - -“I’ve heard of ’em all before—in the dope page o’ the Sunday papers!” - -“But I tell you I’ve got this transmitting camera! All I want is time -and money to work it out, on the business side. Wait a minute, now, and -let me explain. If you’ve operated a key you’ll understand it easily -enough. You know what we call the Tesla currents, and you know what -selenium is. Well, when I first tackled this thing, my problem was to -get some special apparatus for reproducing the shadows and high-lights -on, say, a photograph. I had to have a different flow of current for -light and dark, to carry the impression from the transmitter to the -receiver. Well, I found that selenium did the trick, for a peculiarity -of that mighty peculiar metal is that it offers less resistance to a -current when in the light than in the dark. My next problem was to -control the light in the receiving camera. That’s where the Tesla -currents came in, inducing the rays of vacuum pipes under the high -tension. Do you follow me?” - -“Yes, go on!” said the other man, impatiently. But his tone was lost on -the young inventor, who, under the stress of his excitement, was leaning -forward across the little table, gesticulating now and then with long -and slender and strangely expressive fingers. - -“Now, if I was telegraphing a photograph of you to Chicago, it would -have to be in the form of a film, wrapped about a glass cylinder in the -transmitter. Light would be thrown on it by means of a convex lens. Now, -I cover the glass pipe with vulcanized rubber, or, say, with sealing -wax, so that no rays get out, except through the one little window where -they’ll fall on the film or the paper moving in front of it. Inside my -cylinder is a lens containing selenium, where the rays fall after -passing through the glass. But, pshaw, what’s all this to you?” - -“Go ahead—I’m listenin’!” - -“Well, as I was going to tell you, just so much light, or illumination, -I ought to say, is given to the selenium cell as you’d see in the light -and dark spots of the photograph. That, in turn, means a greater or less -resistance offered to the electric current. Its energy is controlled -automatically, of course, passing over the wire from the transmitter to -the receiver, so that while the transmitting film is passing in front of -the selenium at my end of the wire, the sealed tube of Tesla rays at the -Chicago office is being moved before a receptive film at the far end of -the wire. So the transmitted light escapes through the one little -window, and records its impression on the film—and there you are!” - -The other man put down his glass, unperturbed. - -“Yes, here we are—but if there’s so many millions in this apparatus for -you, what’s the use o’ hollerin’ it out to all Sixth Avenue? It’s fine! -It sounds big! It’s as good as perpetual motion! But coming down to -earth again, how’re you goin’ to get your funds to put all this -pipe-dream through?” - -“I’ll get them yet, some way, by hook or crook!” protested the younger -man, in the enthusiasm of his fourth glass of bootlegger’s gin. - -“Well, my friend, I’ll tell you one thing, straight out. Stick to me and -you’ll wear diamonds! And until you’re gettin’ the diamonds, what’s -more, you’ll be gettin’ your three square a day!” - -It was the lip of the indignant Durkin that curled a little, as he -looked at the glittering stud on the expansive shirt-front and the fat, -bejewelled hand toying with the gin glass. Then he remembered, and -became more humble. - -“I’ve got to live!” he confessed, mirthlessly. - -“Of course you have! And you’re a fool to go broke in the teeth of a -cinch like this. First thing, though, how’d you ever come to get pinched -by Doogan? Here, take another drink—hot stuff, eh! Now, how’d you ever -come to get you’self pulled that fool way?” - -“I had been living like a street cat, for a week. An Eighth Avenue -manufacturing electrician I went to for work, took me up and showed me a -wire on his back roof. He advanced me five dollars to short-circuit it -for him. Doogan’s men caught me at it, and Doogan tried to make me out -an ordinary overhead guerrilla.” - -“Lightnin’-slinger, eh?” - -“Yes, a lightning-slinger.” - -“But I s’pose you notice that he didn’t appear against you?” - -“Yes, I saw that! And _that’s_ a part of the business I can’t -understand,” he answered, puzzled by the stranger’s quiet smile. - -“Say, Durkin, you didn’t think it was your good looks and your Fifth -Avenue talkin’ got you off, did you?” - -The younger man turned on him with half-angry eyes. But the stranger -only continued to chuckle contentedly down in his throat. - -“You remind me of a hen who’s just laid an egg!” cried Durkin, in a -sudden flash of anger. The other brushed the insult carelessly aside, -with one deprecatory sweep of his fat hand. - -“Why, _I_ had Doogan fixed for you, you lobster!” he went on, as easily -and as familiarly as before. “You’re the sort o’ man I wanted—I saw -that, first crack out o’ the box. And a friend o’ mine named Cottrell -happens to stand pat with Muschenheim. And Muschenheim is Doogan’s -right-hand man, so he put a bee in the Boss’s ear, and everything -was—well, kind o’ dropped!” - -The younger man gazed at him in dreamy wonder, trying to grope through -the veil of unreality that seemed falling and draping about him. He was -marvelling, inwardly, how jolting and unlooked for came the sudden ups -and downs of life, when once the traveller is caught up out of the -ordinary grooves of existence,—how sudden and moving the drama, when -once the feral process is under way. - -Then he listened, with alert and quickly changing eyes, as the -stranger—to make sure of his man, the discharged prisoner -surmised—tapped with his knife on the edge of his chinaware plate. - -Durkin read the Morse easily—“Don’t talk so loud!” it warned him. And -he nodded and wagged his now swimming head, almost childishly, over the -little message. Yet all the time he felt, vaguely, that he was under the -keen eyes of the stranger across the table from him. - -“Where’d you work, before you went to the Postal-Union?” - -“Up in the woods,” laughed the other carelessly, yet still clear-headed -enough to feel inwardly ashamed of his laughter. - -“What woods?” - -“Up in Ontario. I was despatcher, and station-agent, and ticket-seller, -and snow-shoveller, and lamp-cleaner, and everything else, for the Grand -Trunk at Komoka, where the Tunnel trains cut off from the main line west -for Chicago,—and where they still keep their heel on the Union, and -work their men like dogs. They paid me forty-two dollars a month—which -was small enough!—but out of that salary they deducted any bad money -taken in through the ticket-window, when my returns were made up. I was -two weeks behind in my board bill when a Port Huron drummer bought a -ticket through to Hamilton with a twenty-dollar counterfeit. It came -back to me, with my next month’s twenty-two dollars, with ‘Counterfeit’ -stencilled out in big letters across the face of it. The loss of that -money kind of got on my nerves. I fumed and worried over it until I -spoilt my ‘send,’ and couldn’t sleep, and in some way or other threw an -Oddfellows’ excursion train into a string of gravel empties! My God, -what I went through that night! I knew it, I foresaw it, twenty minutes -before they touched. I pounded the brass between the Junction and Sarnia -until they thought I was crazy, but we had no way of getting at them, -any more than we could get at two comets rushing together. I wired in my -resign. I didn’t even wait to get my clothes. I struck out and walked -across country to St. Thomas, and boarded a Michigan Central for the -Bridge!” - -The older man watched the nervous hands go up to the moist forehead and -wipe away the sweat, but the gesture left him unmoved. - -“Then how’d you come to leave the Postal-Union?” he asked. - -A look of momentary resentment leaped into Durkin’s eyes. - -“They blacklisted me!” he confessed. “And just for playing their own -game!” - -The other held up a warning finger. - -“Not so loud,” he interrupted. “But go on!” - -“Of course, when I first came down to New York I went into the P. U. -‘carrying a fly.’ So I was treated fairly enough, in a way. But I had -telegrapher’s paralysis coming on, and I knew I was losing time on my -amplifier, and I _had_ to have money for my new transmitter experiments. -I tried to make it up doing over-time, and used to shoot weird codes -along Continental Press Association’s leased wires until I got so -neurasthenic that the hay-tossers up state would break and ask me to -fill in, and then I used to lose my temper and wonder why I didn’t stab -myself with a flimsy-hook. I knew I had to give it up, but I _did_ want -enough money to carry along my work with!” - -He hesitated for a moment, still gazing down at his plate, until his -companion looked at his watch with a brusque “Go on!” - -“So I tried another way. When some of the Aqueduct races were going -through, on a repeater next to my key, up to Reedy’s pool-rooms, I just -reached over and held up one side of the repeater. Then, say third horse -won, I strolled to the window and took out my handkerchief three times. -My confederate ’phoned to our man, and when he’d had time to get his -money up I let the result go through. But they discovered the trick, and -called me up on the carpet. And all the rest, you know!” - -He shook his head lugubriously; then he laughed aloud with a shrug of -the insouciant shoulder; then he added, regretfully, “I’d have made a -clear five hundred, if they’d only given me another day’s chance!” - -“Well, I guess maybe you can even up, with us!” And the stranger shook -his own head, knowingly, and returned the gaze of the younger man, who -was peering at him narrowly, unsteady of eye, but still alertly -suspicious. Even in that shadowy substratum to which he had been -temporarily driven, good grafts, he knew, had to be sought for long and -arduously. And he had no love for that ever-furtive underworld and its -follies. It was a life that rested on cynicism, and no man could be a -cynic and live. That he knew. He nursed no illusions as to the eventual -triumph of evil, in the ever-shifting order of things earthly; and he -remembered, with a sting of apprehension, the joy with which he had -plunged into the thick of that street-corner group of untainted -fellow-men. - -“I think I’d rather get at something decent again,” he grumbled, pushing -away his bean-plate, but still waiting, with a teasing sense of anxiety, -for the other to explain more fully. - -“I guess we’d all like to shy around the dirty work,—but a dead sure -thing’s good enough now and then.” - -“But where’s all the money, in this cinch?” demanded Durkin, a little -impatiently. - -“I can’t cackle about that here, but I tell you right now, I’m no piker! -Get into a taxi with me, and then I’ll lay everything out to you as we -drive up to the house. But here, have a smoke,” he added as he got up -and hurried to the door that opened on the side street. Durkin had never -dreamed that tobacco—even pure Havana tobacco—could be so suave and -mellow and fragrant as that cigar. - -“Now, you asked me about the money in this deal,” the older man began, -when he had slammed the taxi door and they went scurrying toward Fifth -Avenue. “Well, it’s right here, see!”—and as he spoke he drew a roll of -bills from his capacious trousers-pocket. From an inner coat-pocket that -buttoned with a flap he next took out a pig-skin wallet, and flicked the -ends of his paper wealth before Durkin’s widening eyes. The latter could -see that it was made up of one hundreds, and fifties, and twenties, all -neatly arranged according to denomination. He wondered, dazedly, just -how many thousands it held. It seemed, of a sudden, to put a new and -sobering complexion on things. - -“Money talks!” was the older man’s sententious remark, as he restored -the wallet to its pocket. - -“Undoubtedly!” said Durkin, leaning back in the cushioned seat. - -“Now, if you want to swing in with us, here’s what you get a week.” - -The stranger took the smaller roll from his trousers-pocket again, and -drew out four crisp fifty dollar bills. These he placed on the palm of -the other man’s hand, and watched the hesitating fingers slowly close on -them. “And if our _coup_ goes through, you get your ten per cent. -rake-off,—and that ought to run you up from five to seven thousand -dollars, easy!” - -Durkin’s fingers closed more tightly on his bills, and he drew in his -gin-laden breath, sharply. - -“Who _are_ you, anyway?” he asked, slowly. - -“Me? Oh, I’m kind of an outside operator, same as yourself!” - -He looked at Durkin steadily, for a moment, and then, seemingly -satisfied, went on in a different tone. - -“Did you ever hear of Penfield, the big pool-room man, the gay art -connoisseur, who hob-nobs with a bunch of our Wall Street magnates and -saunters over to Europe a couple o’ times a season? Well, I’ve been a -plunger at Penfield’s now for two months—just long enough to make sure -that he’s as crooked as they make ’em. I’m going to give him a dose of -his own medicine, and hit that gilt-edged gambler for a slice of his -genteel bank-roll—and an uncommon good, generous slice, too!” - -“But what’s—er—your special line of business? How are you going to get -at this man Penfield, I mean?” - -“Ever hear of the Miami outfit?” asked the other. - -“That cut in and hit the Montreal pool-rooms for eighty thousand?—well, -I guess I have, a little!” - -Durkin glanced at his companion, in wonder. Then the truth seemed to -dawn on him, in one illuminating, almost bewildering, flash. - -“You—you’re not MacNutt?” he cried, reading his answer even while he -asked the question. Half a year before, the Postal-Union offices had -been full of talk of the Miami outfit and MacNutt, buzzing with meagre -news of the cool insolence and audacity of Miami’s lightning-slingers, -who, when they saw they had worked their game to a finish, cut in with -their: “We’ve got your dough, now you can go to——” as they made for -cover and ultimate liberty ten minutes before their hillside cave was -raided, and nothing more than a packing-case, holding three dozen -Brumley dry batteries, a bunch of “KK,” and a couple of Crosby -long-distance telephones, was found. - -Durkin looked at the other man once more, almost admiringly, -indeterminately tempted, swayed against his will, in some way, by the -splendor of a vast and unknown hazard. He found a not altogether -miserable consolation, too, in the thought that this possible second dip -into illegitimate activities would be a movement not directed against -organized society, but against one already an enemy of that society. Yet -even this draught of sophistry left its after-taste of disgust. - -“You’re pretty confidential,” he said, slowly, looking the other up and -down. “What’s to stop me going to one of Doogan’s men and squealing on -the whole gang of you?” - -MacNutt smiled, gently and placidly, and stroked his short beard, -touched here and there with gray. “And what good would all that do you?” -he asked. - -“You _are_ a cool specimen!” ejaculated the other. - -“Oh, I guess I know men; and I sized you up, first thing, in the -court-room. You’re the sort o’ man I want. You’re not a funker, and -you’ve got brains, and—well, if you don’t come out of this quite a few -thousand to the good, it’s all your own fault!” - -Durkin whistled softly. Then he looked meditatively out at the flashing -motor-cars as they threaded their way up the crowded avenue. - -“Well, I guess I’m game enough,” he said, hesitatingly, still trying to -sweep from his brain the clouding mental cobweb that it was all nothing -more than a vivid nightmare. - -“I guess I’m your man,” he repeated, as they turned off the Avenue, and -drew up in front of a house of staid and respectable brownstone facing, -like so many of the other private houses of New York’s upper Forties. In -fact, the long line of brownstone edifices before him seemed so alike -that one gigantic hand, he thought, might have carved the whole block -from a single slab of that dull and lifeless-looking brownstone rock. - -Then, following MacNutt, he jumped out and went quickly up the broad -stone steps. - -“So you’re with us, all right?” the older man asked, as his finger -played oddly on the electric button beside the door. Durkin looked at -the blank glass and panels that seemed to bar in so much mystery, and -his last quaver of indecision died away. Yet even then he had a sense of -standing upon some Vesuvian-like lava-crust, beneath which smouldered -unseen volcanic fires and uncounted volcanic dangers. - -“Yes, I’m with you, anyway,” he asserted, stoutly. “I’m with you, to the -finish!” - - - - - CHAPTER II - - -It was a full minute before the door swung open; and the unlooked-for -wait in some way keyed the younger man’s curiosity up to the snapping -point. As it finally opened, slowly, he had the startled vision of a -young woman, dressed in sober black, looking half timidly out at them, -with her hand still on the knob. As he noticed the wealth of her waving -chestnut hair, and the poise of the head, and the quiet calmness of the -eyes, that appeared almost a violet-blue in contrast to the soft pallor -of her face, Durkin felt that they had made a mistake in the house -number. But, seeing MacNutt step quickly inside, he himself awkwardly -took off his hat. Under the spell of her quiet, almost pensive smile, he -decided that she could be little more than a mere girl, until he noticed -the womanly fullness of her breast and hips and what seemed a languid -weariness about the eyes themselves. He also noted, and in this he felt -a touch of sharp resentment, the sudden telepathic glance that passed -between MacNutt and the woman; a questioning flash on her part, an -answering flash on the other’s. Then she turned to Durkin, with her -quiet, carelessly winning smile, and held out her hand,—and his heart -thumped and pounded more drunkenly than it had done with all MacNutt’s -bootlegger’s gin. Then he heard MacNutt speaking, quietly and evenly, as -though talking of mere things of the moment. - -“This is Mr. Jim Durkin; Durkin, this is Miss Frances Candler. You -two’re going to have a lot o’ trouble together, so I guess you’d better -get acquainted right here—might as well make it Frank and Jim, you two, -for you’re going to see a mighty good deal of one another!” - -“All right, Jim,” said the woman, girlishly, in a mellow, English -contralto voice. Then she laughed a little, and Durkin noticed the -whiteness of her fine, strong incisors, and straightway forgot them -again, in the delicious possibility that he might hear that soft -laughter often, and under varied circumstances. Then he flushed hot and -cold, as he felt her shaking hands with him once more. Strangely -sobered, he stumbled over rugs and polished squares of parquetry, after -them, up two flights of stairs, listening, still dazed, to MacNutt’s -hurried questions and the woman’s low answers, which sounded muffled and -far away to him, as though some impalpable wall separated them from him. - -A man by the name of Mackenzie, Durkin gathered from what he could hear -of their talk, had been probing about the underground cable galleries -for half a day, and had just strung a wire on which much seemed to -depend. They stopped before a heavy oak-panelled door, on which MacNutt -played a six-stroked tattoo. A key turned, and the next moment a -middle-aged man, thin-lipped, and with blue veins showing about his -temples, thrust his head cautiously through the opening. The sweat was -running from his moist and dirt-smeared face; a look of relief came over -his features at the sight of the others. Durkin wondered just why he -should be dressed in the peaked cap and blue suit of a Consolidated Gas -Company inspector. - -The room into which they stepped had, obviously, once been a -sewing-room. In one corner still stood the sewing-machine itself, in the -shadow, incongruously enough, of a large safe with combination lock. -Next to this stood a stout work-table, on which rested a box relay and a -Bunnell sounder. Around the latter were clustered a galvanometer, a 1-2 -duplex set, a condenser, and a Wheatstone bridge of the Post-Office -pattern, while about the floor lay coils of copper wire, a pair of -lineman’s pliers, and a number of scattered tools. Durkin’s trained eye -saw that the condenser had been in use, to reduce the current from a -tapped electric-light wire; while the next moment his glance fell on a -complete wire-tapping outfit, snugly packed away in an innocent enough -looking suit-case. Then he turned to the two men and the woman, as they -bent anxiously over the littered table, where Mackenzie was once more -struggling with his instrument, talking quickly and tensely as he tested -and worked and listened. - -“Great Scott, Mack, it’s easy enough for you to talk, but it was fool’s -luck, pure fool’s luck, I ever got this wire up! First, I had forty feet -of water-pipe, then eighty feet o’ brick wall, then over fifty feet of -cornice, and about twice as much eave-trough, hangin’ on all the time by -my eyelashes, and dog-sick waitin’ to be pinched with the goods on! Hold -on, there—what’s this?” - -The sounder had given out a tremulous little quaver; then a feeble click -or two; then was silent once more. - -“Lost it again!” said Mackenzie, under his breath. - -“Let me look over that relay a minute!” broke in Durkin. It was the type -of box-relay usually used by linemen, with a Morse key attached to the -base-board; and he ran his eye over it quickly. Then, with a deft -movement or two he released the binding of the armature lever screws, -and the next moment the instrument felt the pulse of life, and spoke out -clearly and distinctly. Mackenzie looked up at the newcomer, for the -first time, with an actual and personal interest. - -“That’s the trick, all right!” he said, with an admiring shake of the -head. - -“Listen,” Durkin cried, gleefully, however, holding up a finger. “That’s -Corcoran, the old slob! He’s sending through the New Orleans returns!” -And he chuckled as he listened with inclined ear. - -“That’s Corcoran, same old slob as ever!” And still again he chuckled, a -little contemptuously, with the disdain of the expert for the slovenly -sender. He remembered, with a touch of pride, his own sending three -years before at the Kansas City Telegraphers’ Convention, and the little -cheer that broke from the audience in the great hall as he left the test -table. It was not at his mere speed they had cheered, for he could do -little more than forty-five words a minute, but because, as the chairman -had later said, it was so clean-cut and neat and incisive—“as pure as a -Rocky Mountain trout stream!” - -“There they are!” said Mackenzie. - -The four silent figures leaned a little closer over the clicking -instrument of insensate brass—leaned intent and motionless, with -quickened breathing and dilated nostrils and strangely altering faces, -as though they were far from a quiet little back sewing-room, and were -indeed beholding vast issues and participating in great efforts. - -“We’ve got ’em, at last!” said MacNutt, quietly, mopping his face and -pacing the little room with feverish steps. - -“Yes, we’ve got ’em!” echoed Mackenzie, jubilantly. - -Frances Candler, the woman, said nothing. But Durkin could feel her -breath playing on the back of his neck; and when he turned to her he -could see by her quick breathing and widened pupils that she, too, had -been reading the wire. And again he wondered, as he looked at her wide -forehead and those warm yet firm lips in which he could see -impulsiveness still waywardly lurking, how she ever came to such a -place. To Durkin—who had heard of woman bookies and sheet-writers and -touts in his day—she seemed so soft, so flower-like, in her pale -womanhood, that she still remained to him one of the mysteries of a -mysterious day. - -The woman saw the play of the quicker thought on his face, and the -impetuous warmth in his eyes as he gazed up at her, still half-timidly. -And seeing it, she looked quickly away. - -“No goo-gooin’ there, you folks,” broke in MacNutt, brusquely. As he was -turning hurriedly away he looked back for a hesitating moment, from -Durkin to the woman, and from the woman to Durkin again. If he was about -to say anything further on the point to them, he changed his mind before -speaking, and addressed himself once more to Mackenzie. - -“Now, Mack, we’ve got to get a move on! Get some of that grime off, and -your clothes on, quick!” Then he turned back to the other two at the -operating table. - -“I’ve certainly got a couple o’ good-lookers in you two, all right, all -right!” he said, Durkin thought half mockingly. “But I want you to get -groomed up, Durkin, so’s to do justice to that Fifth Avenue face o’ -yours! Better get rigged out complete, before trouble begins, for you’re -goin’ to move among some lot o’ swell people. And you two’ve got to put -on a lot o’ face, to carry this thing through.” - -Durkin laughed contentedly, for his eyes had just been following the -line of the woman’s profile. - -“Remember,” continued MacNutt, crisply, “I want you two to do the swell -restaurants—in reason, of course, in reason!—and drive round a good -deal, and haunt the Avenue a bit, and push through the Waldorf-Astoria -every day or two, and drop in at Penfield’s lower house whenever you get -word from me. You’d better do the theatres now and then, too—I want you -to be seen, remember,—but always _together_! It may be kind o’ hard, -not bein’ able to pick your friend, Durkin, but Frank knows the ropes, -and how much not to spend, and what to fight shy of, and who to steer -clear of—and I guess she can explain things as you go along.” - -He turned back once more, from the doorway. - -“Now, remember,—don’t answer that ’phone unless Mack or me gives the -three-four ring! If she rings all night, don’t answer! And ‘Battery -Park,’ mind, means trouble. When you’re tipped off with that, get the -stuff in the safe, if you can, before you break away. That’s all, I -guess, for now!” And he joined the man called Mack in the hall, and -together they hurried downstairs, and let themselves out, leaving Durkin -and his quiet-eyed colleague alone. - -He sat and looked at her, dazed, bewildered, still teased by the veil of -unreality which seemed to sway between him and the world about him. It -seemed to him as though he were watching a hurrying, shifting drama from -a distance,—watching it as, in his early days in New York, he used to -watch the Broadway performances from his cramped little gallery seat. - -“Am I awake?” he asked weakly. - -Then he laughed recklessly, and turned to her once more, abstractedly -rubbing his stubbled chin, and remembering to his sudden shame that he -had gone unshaved for half a week. Now that MacNutt was away he hoped to -see her in her true light. Some mere word or posture, he thought, would -brush the entire enigma away. - -“_Am_ I awake?” he repeated, pushing his hand up through his hair. He -was still watching her for some betraying touch of brazenness. He could -be more at ease with her, he felt, when once she had reconciled herself -with her uncouth surroundings, through the accidental but inevitable -touch of vulgarity which was to establish what she really was. - -“Yes; it is all very real!” she laughed quietly, but restrainedly. For -the second time he noticed her white, regular teeth, as she hurried -about, straightening up the belittered room. - -During his narrow and busy life Durkin had known few women; never before -had he known a woman like this one, with whom destiny had so strangely -ordained that he should talk and drive and idle, work and watch and -plot. He looked once more at her thick, tumbled chestnut hair, at the -soft pallor of her oval cheek, and the well-gowned figure, as she -stooped over a condenser,—wondering within himself how it would all -end, and what was the meaning of it. - -“Well, this certainly does beat me!” he said, at last, slowly, yet -contentedly enough. - -The young woman looked at him; and he caught a second glimpse of her -wistfully pensive smile, while his heart began to thump, in spite of -himself. He reached out a hesitating hand, as though to touch her. - -“What is it?” she asked, in her mellow English contralto. - -“I don’t exactly know,” he answered, with his hand before his eyes. “I -wish you’d tell me.” - -She came and sat down in a chair before him, pushing back her tumbled -hair with one hand, seeming to be measuring him with her intent gaze. -She appeared in some way not altogether dissatisfied with him; it seemed -almost as if she had taken his face between her two hands, and read it, -feature by feature. - -“I hardly know where to begin,” she hesitated. “I mean, I don’t know how -much they’ve explained to you already. Indeed, there’s a great deal I -don’t understand myself. But, of course, you know that we have tapped -Penfield’s private wire.” - -He nodded an assenting head toward the little brass sounder. - -“And, of course, you are able to judge why. He gets all the race returns -at the club house, and then sends them on by private ’phone to his other -two pool-rooms. He has to do it that way, now that New York is not so -open, and ever since the Postal-Union directors pretended to cut out -their sporting service.” - -Durkin knew all this, but he waited for the sake of hearing her voice -and watching the play of her features. - -“Every track report, you know, comes into New York by way of the race -department of the Postal-Union on lower Broadway. There, messenger boys -hurry about with the reports to the different wire-operators, who wire -the returns to the company’s different subscribers. Penfield, of course, -is really one of them, though it’s not generally known.” - -“And always most astutely denied,” scoffed Durkin. - -“Many things are astutely denied, nowadays, when a great deal of money -comes out of them,” she said, wearily. - -“But what have you and I to do with all this?” he broke in. - -“Quite enough! You see, there’s a delay of fifteen minutes, naturally, -in getting a result to the pool-rooms. That gives us our chance; so, we -hold up the message here, ’phone it at once over to MacNutt’s rooms, -three doors from Penfield’s, and, when he has had time to drop in, as it -were, and place his money, we send through our intercepted message.” - -“Then Penfield has no idea who or what MacNutt is?” - -“He knows him only as a real estate agent with a passion for plunging, a -great deal of money, and—and—” The girl shrugged a rounded shoulder, -flushed a little, and did not finish. - -“And you know him as—?” suggested Durkin. - -“That lies outside the area of essential information,” she answered, -with her first show of animation. - -“But you?” Durkin persisted. She met his eyes, but she refused to deal -with his cross-questioning. He was still waiting for that betraying sign -which was to conjure away the enigma. Yet he rejoiced, inwardly, at the -thought that it had not come. - -“Both you and I shall have to drop in, on certain days, and do what we -can at Penfield’s lower house, while Mackenzie is doing the Madison -Avenue place. We’ve been going there, on and off, for weeks now, getting -ready for—for this!” - -“Then MacNutt’s been working on this scheme for a long while?” - -“Yes, this house has been rented by the month, furnished, just as you -see it, simply because it stood in about the right place. We have even -lost a few hundred dollars, altogether, in Penfield’s different places. -But, in the end, the three of us are to hit Penfield together, on a -ragged field, when there’s a chance for heavy odds. But, of course, we -can do it only once!” - -“And then what?” asked Durkin. - -Again the girl shrugged a shoulder. - -“Penfield’s patrons are all wealthy men,” she went on, in a sort of -pedagogic explicitness. “The betting, particularly at the upper house, -is always very heavy. A book of a hundred thousand dollars is common -enough; sometimes it goes up to two or three hundred thousand. So, you -see, it all depends on our odds. MacNutt himself hopes to make at least -a hundred thousand. But then he has worked and brooded over it all so -long, I don’t think he sees things quite clearly now!” - -It was her first shadow of reflection on their chief, and Durkin caught -up the cue. - -“He seems sharp enough still, to leave you and me here, to take all the -risk in a raid,” he protested. - -“Yes,” she assented, with the touch of weariness that came into her -voice at times. “He is shrewd and sharp—shrewder and sharper than you -would dare believe.” - -“And of course you understand your risk, now, here, from this moment -on?” - -“Yes, I quite understand it,” she answered, with unbetraying evenness of -voice. - -His fingers were toying nervously with a little magnetic “wire finder.” - -“How in heavens did _you_ ever get mixed up with—with—in this sort of -thing?” Durkin at last demanded, exasperated into the immediate -question. He turned on her quickly, as he asked it, and the eyes of the -two met, combatively, for a moment or two. It was the girl who at last -looked away. - -“How did _you_?” she asked, quietly enough. She was strangely unlike any -woman bookie he had seen or heard of before. - -“Oh, me,—I’m different!” he cried, deprecatively. For some subtle -reason she went pale, and then flushed hot again. - -“You’re—you’re not MacNutt’s wife?” he asked her, almost hopelessly. - -She moved her head from side to side, slowly, in dissent, and got up and -went to the window, where she gazed out over the house-tops at the -paling afternoon. - -“No, I’m not his wife,” she said, in her quiet contralto. - -“Then why won’t you tell me how you got mixed up in this sort of thing?” - -“It’s all so silly and so commonplace,” she said, without turning to -look at him. - -“Yes?” he said, and waited. - -She wheeled about and wrung out with a sudden passionate “Oh, what’s the -good of all this! I am here tapping wires, and you are here doing the -same. Neither of us belongs at this sort of work, but—but, we’re here!” - -“Can’t you tell me?” he asked, more gently, yet inwardly more dogged. - -“Yes, I _shall_ tell you,” she answered him, at last. “It began, really, -six years ago when my mother died, in London, and my father went to -pieces, went pitifully to pieces, and had to give up his profession as a -barrister. I felt sorry for him, and stayed with him, through his months -of drunkenness, and his gradual downfall. He started a little office for -genealogical research—as we called it—digging up pretentious -alliances, and suitable ancestors for idle and wealthy nobodies. This -was bad enough, but little by little it degenerated into a sort of -next-of-kin agency, and wrung its money from the poor, instead of the -rich!” - -She paused for a moment, before she went on, gazing at the man before -her in grim and terrible candor, steeled with the purpose to purge her -soul of all she had to say, and have it over and done with. - -“But I stayed with father, through it all. I told myself I could live it -down, the squalor, and the meanness, and the deceits, and even the -drunkenness—I stayed with him because I pitied him. Even then he was a -brilliant man. And I would have worked and fought for him to the end, -only, at last, he wanted me to pose as a claimant for an estate then in -chancery. _That_ I would not and could not do. I went to Reading, and -became an invalid’s companion. Then, after father’s death—after his -horrible death—his older brother, at Oxford, offered to give me a home. -He was an old man, a curate with five daughters, and I felt, then, that -it would be unjust. So I answered an advertisement in a London paper, -and came to America to be a governess in a New York family, in the house -of a diamond importer named Ottenheimer. At the end of my first week -there my mistress unjustly suspected me of—Oh, I can’t explain it all -to you here, but she was a vulgar and unscrupulous woman, and said I was -too good-looking to be a governess, and discharged me without even a -reference. I was penniless in two weeks, and would gladly have crept -back to my uncle in Oxford, if I had been able. Then, when I was almost -starving, I was glad enough to become the secretary of an investment -company, with an office in Wall Street. They had trouble with the -Post-Office department in Washington, and then the police raided the -office, for it turned out to be nothing more than a swindling -scheme. . . . And then, oh, I don’t know, I seemed to drift from one -thing to another, until I was the English heiress in a matrimonial -bureau, and a French baroness in some foreign litigation scheme. But all -the time I was only waiting to get enough money to creep back to Oxford. -I kept telling myself that in a few weeks more I should be able to -escape. I kept dreaming of it, until Oxford seemed to grow into a sort -of sanctuary. But things went on and on, and still I waited.” - -“And then what?” demanded Durkin, startled at the rising note of -self-hate in her feverish declamation. - -“Then, at last, I thought I had escaped into honesty, even in America. -But it was the same as before. I met MacNutt!” - -“And then what?” Durkin’s customarily careless shoulders were very -upright. - -“Oh, first it was a woman’s get-rich-quick concern in Chicago; then a -turf-investment office in St. Louis; then a matrimonial bureau of our -own, until the police put a stop to it because of the post-office -people; then it was chasing the circuit for a season; and, finally, this -wire-tapping scheme!” - -She looked at him, weary-eyed, hiding nothing, smiling hopelessly. - -“They write to me, from time to time,” she went on, more quietly, but -none the less tragically. “My uncle’s parish is just outside Oxford, a -quiet little high-walled place full of flowers and birds. But he is -getting very old, and there are six of them, five girls, and Albert, the -youngest. Some day I shall go back and live with them—only, in some -way, I grow more and more afraid to face them. So I search for excuses -to send them money and gifts. They think I’m still a governess here, and -I write lying letters to them, and tell them things out of my own head, -things quite false and untrue! So, you see, I’ve been nothing but -cowardly—and—and wicked, from the first!” - -“And is that all?” demanded Durkin, not trusting himself to show one jot -of feeling. - -“Yes,” she answered, drearily; “I think that is all.” - -“But you’re—you’re too good for all this!” he cried impetuously, -indignantly. “Why don’t you break away from it, at once?” - -“I’m going to,—some day! I’ve always waited, though, and everything has -dragged on and on and on, and I’ve been half afraid of MacNutt—he’s the -type of man, you know, who never forgives a person—and half-afraid of -myself. But, some day—” - -“Oh, I know what it’s like,” cried Durkin, drawn toward her, strangely -nearer to her, in some intangible way. She read the sudden look on his -face, and blushed under it, almost girlishly, once more. - -“I want to rest, and be quiet, and live decently, away from the world, -somewhere,” she said dreamily, as though speaking only to herself. - -Durkin walked to the window where she stood, checked himself, strode -back to the relay on the work-table, and looked at the huddled -instruments, absently. - -“So do I,” he said, earnestly, with his heels well apart. - -“Do you?” she asked. He went over to where she stood. - -“Yes, and I mean to,” he declared, determinedly, turning with her to -look at the gathering twilight of the city, and then lapsing into -awkward silence once more. - - - - - CHAPTER III - - -More than once, during the feverish, kaleidoscopic days that followed, -Durkin found himself drawing aside to ask if, after all, he were not -living some restless dream in which all things hung tenuous and -insubstantial. The fine linen and luxury of life were so new to him that -in itself it half intoxicated; yet, outside the mere ventral pleasures -of existence, with its good dinners in quiet _cafés_ of gold and glass -and muffling carpets, its visits to rustling, dimly-lighted theatres, -its drives about the open city, its ever-mingled odors of Havana and cut -flowers,—there was the keener and more penetrating happiness of -listening to the soft English voice of what seemed to him a -bewilderingly beautiful woman. - -She was that, at least to him; and Durkin was content to let the world -think what it liked. He found work to be done, it is true,—rigorous and -exacting work while it lasted, when the appointed days for holding up -Penfield’s despatches came around. But the danger of it all, for some -reason, never entered his mind, as he sat over his instrument, reading -off the horses to the woman at his side, who, in turn, repeated them -over the telephones, in cipher, to MacNutt and Mackenzie; and then, when -the time allowance had elapsed, cutting in once more and sending on the -intercepted despatches, even imitating to a nicety the slip-shod erratic -volubility of Corcoran’s “blind send.” - -Once only did a disturbing incident tend to ruffle the quiet waters of -Durkin’s strange contentment. It was one afternoon when Mackenzie had -been sent in to make a report, and had noticed certain things to which -he did not take kindly, Durkin thought. - -“I’m not saying anything,” he blurted out, when they were alone, “but -don’t you let that woman make a fool of you!” - -“You shut up about that woman!” retorted Durkin, hotly. Then, imagining -he saw some second and deeper meaning in the other’s words, he caught -him by the lapel of the vest, and held him against the wall. - -“You _are_ saying something, you hound! What do you mean by that, -anyway?” he cried, with a white face. The man against the wall could see -that a word would bring the onslaught, but he was used to trouble of -that sort, and many a keener menace. So he only laughed contemptuously, -with his shoulders up, as he pulled the other’s fingers from his throat. - -“You damned lobster, you!” he said, going off on the safer tack of -amiable profanity. Then feeling himself free once more, his old bitter -audacity proclaimed itself. - -“You fool, you, don’t you know that woman’s been—” - -But here the entrance of the girl herself put a stop to his speech. Yet, -troubled in spirit as some currish and unspoken insinuation left him, -Durkin breathed no word to the girl herself of what had taken place, -imperiously as she demanded to know what Mackenzie had been saying. - -On the day following, as MacNutt had arranged, the two paid their first -visit to Penfield’s lower house, from which Durkin carried away confused -memories of a square-jawed door-keeper—who passed him readily enough, -at a word from the girl—of well-dressed men and over-dressed women -crowded about a smoke-wreathed, softly lighted room, one side of which -was taken up with a blackboard on which attendants were feverishly -chalking down entries, jockeys, weights and odds, while on the other -side of the room opened the receiving and paying-tellers’ little -windows, through which now and then he saw hurrying clerks; of bettors -excitedly filling in slips which disappeared with their money through -the mysterious pigeon-hole in the wall; of the excited comments as the -announcer called the different phases and facts of the races, crying -dramatically when the horses were at the post, when they were off, when -one horse led, and when another; when the winner passed under the wire; -of the long, wearing wait while the jockeys were weighing in, and of the -posting of the official returns, while the lucky ones—faded beauties -with cigarette-stained fingers, lean and cadaverous-looking “habituals,” -stout and flashy-looking professionals, girlish and innocent-looking -young women, heavy dowagers resplendent in their morning -diamonds,—gathered jubilantly at the window for their money. The vaster -army of the unlucky, on the other hand, dropped forlornly away, or -lingered for still another plunge. - -Durkin found it hard, during each of these brief visits, to get used to -the new order of things. Such light-fingered handling of what, to his -eyes, seemed great fortunes, unstrung and bewildered him. He had never -believed the newspaper story that when the District Attorney’s men had -broken open a gambling-house safe a few months before, they had found -deposited there a roll of greenbacks amounting to over three-quarters of -a million dollars. That story now seemed likely enough. Yet, with him, -the loss of even a hundred dollars on a horse, although not his own -money, in some way depressed him for the day. Frances Candler picked her -winners, however, with studious and deliberate skill, and, though they -bet freely, it was not often that their losses, in the end, were heavy. - -She had no love for this part of the work; and in this Durkin heartily -agreed with her. - -“The more I know of track-racing and its army of hangers-on,” he -declared to her, “the more I hate it, and everything about it! They say -there are over fifty thousand men in the business, altogether—and you -may have noticed how they all—the owners and the bigger men, I -mean—dilate on their purpose of ‘improving the breed of the -thoroughbred’—but to my mind, it’s to improve the breed of rascality!” - -He noted her habitual little head-shake as she started to speak. - -“Yes, I think more unhappiness, more wrecked lives and characters, more -thieves and criminals, really come from the race-track than from all the -other evils in your country. It’s not the racing itself, and the -spectacular way of your idle rich for wasting their money! No, it’s not -that. It’s the way what you call the smaller fry cluster about it, so -cruelly and mercilessly ‘on the make,’ as they put it, and infect the -rest of the more honest world with their diseased lust for gain without -toil. I have watched them and seen them. It is deadly; it stifles every -last shred of good out of them! And then the stewards and the jockey -clubs themselves try to hide the shameful conditions of things, and -drape and hang their veil of lies and hypocrisy and moral debauchery -over these buzzing clouds of parasites; and so it goes on! For, indeed, -I know them,” she ended, bitterly. “Oh, I know them well!” - -Durkin thought of the four great Circuits, Eastern, Southern, Western, -and Pacific slope, of the huge and complicated and mysteriously -half-hidden gambling machinery close beside each great centre of -American population, New York and Washington, Chicago and St. Louis, -Memphis and New Orleans, where duplicity and greed daily congregate, -where horses go round and round in their killing and spectacular -short-speed bursts, and money flashes and passes back and forth, and -portly owners sit back and talk of the royal sport, as they did, Durkin -told himself, in the days of Tyre and Rome. But day by day, with the -waning afternoon, the machinery comes to a stop, the sacrificial -two-year-olds are blanketed and stabled, the grand-stands disgorge their -crowds, and from some lower channel of the dark machine drift the -rail-birds and the tipsters, the bookmakers and touts, the dissolute -lives and the debauched moral sensibilities, the pool-room feeders and -attendants in the thick of the city itself, the idlers and the -criminals. - -The thought of it filled him with a sudden emotional craving for honesty -and clean-living and well-being. He rejoiced in the clear sunlight and -the obvious respectability of the Avenue up which they were walking so -briskly—for about Frances Candler, he had always found, there lurked -nothing of the subterranean and morbidly secretive. She joyed in her -wholesome exercise and open air; she always seemed to be pleading for -the simplicities and the sanities of existence. She still stood -tantalizingly unreconciled, in his mind, to the plane of life on which -he had found her. - -It was one night after a lucky plunge on a 20 to 1 horse had brought him -in an unexpected fortune of eighteen hundred dollars, that Durkin, -driving past Madison Square through the chilly afternoon of the late -autumn, with a touch of winter already in the air, allowed his thoughts -to wander back to what seemed the thin and empty existence as a -train-despatcher and a Postal-Union operator. As he gazed out on the -closed cars and the women and the lights, and felt the warmth of the -silent girl at his side, he wondered how he had ever endured those old, -colorless days. He marvelled at the hold which the mere spectacular side -of life could get on one. He tried to tell himself that he hated the -ill-gotten wealth that lay so heavy and huge in his pocket at that -moment; and he smothered his last warmth of satisfaction with the phrase -which she had used a few days before: “Their diseased lust for gain -without toil.” Then he tried to think of the life he was leading, with -one figure eliminated; and the blankness of the prospect appalled him. - -With a sudden impetuous motion he caught up her hand, where it lay idly -in her lap, and held it close. She tried to draw it away, but could not. - -“Everything seems so different, Frank, since I’ve known you!” he said, a -little huskily. - -“It’s different with me, too!” she all but whispered, looking away. Her -face, in the waning light, against the gloom of the dark-curtained -taxi-cab, looked pale, and, as he had so often felt, almost flower-like. - -“Frank!” he cried in a voice that started her breathing quickly. “Won’t -you—won’t you marry me?” - -She looked at him out of what seemed frightened eyes, with an unnatural -and half-startled light on her pale face. - -“I love you, Frank, more than I could ever tell you!” he went on, -impetuously. “You could walk over me, you could break me, and do what -you like with me, and I’d be happy!” - -“Oh, you don’t know me, you don’t know me!” she cried. “You don’t know -what I’ve been!” And some agony of mind seemed to wrench her whole body. - -“I don’t care what you’ve been—I know what you _are_! You’re the woman -I’d give my life for—I’d lay it down, without a thought, for you! And, -good Lord, look at me! Don’t you think I’m bad enough myself—and a -hundred times more weak and vacillating than you! I love you, Frank; -isn’t that enough?” - -“No!” she mourned, “it’s not enough!” - -“But you’ve got to be loved, you want to be loved, or you wouldn’t have -eyes and a mouth like that! It’s the only thing, now, that can make life -worth while!” - -She let him catch her up to his shoulder and hold her there, with her -wet cheek against his; she even said nothing when he bent and kissed her -on the lips, though her face grew colorless at his touch. - -“I do love you,” she sighed weakly. “I do love you! I do!” and she clung -to him, childishly, shaken with a sob or two, happy, yet vaguely -troubled. - -“Then why can’t we get away from here, somewhere, and be happy?” - -“Where?” she asked. - -“Anywhere, where there’s daylight and honesty and fair play!” - -“There’s MacNutt!” she cried, remembering, opening her drooping eyes to -grim life again. “He’d—he’d—” She did not finish. - -“What’s he to us?” Durkin demanded. “He hasn’t bought our _souls_!” - -“No, but we have to live—we have to work and pay as we go. And he could -stop everything!” - -“Let him interfere,” cried the other, fiercely. “I’ve never been afraid -of him! I’m as good a fighter as he is, by heaven! Just _let_ him -interfere, and he’ll find his filthy money isn’t everything!” - -The woman at his side was silent. “I only wish I had a few of his -thousands,” added Durkin, more humbly. - -She looked up quickly, with the flash of some new thought shadowed on -her white face. - -“Why _shouldn’t_ we?” she cried, half bitterly. “We have gone through -enough for him!” - -“And it’s all rottenness, anyway,” assuaged Durkin. “The Postal-Union -directors themselves, who feed MacNutt and all his fry,—they make over -four million a year out of their pool-room service! And one of them is a -pillar of that church we passed, just above the Waldorf!” - -“No, it’s not that,” she hesitated. She had long since grown afraid of -that ancient sophistry. - -“But why shouldn’t we?” he persisted. - -“Then we might go away somewhere,” she was saying dreamily, “away to -England, even! I wonder if you would like England? It always seems so -much of yesterday there, to me. It’s always tomorrow over here. But at -home everything doesn’t seem to live in the future, as we do now. I -wonder if you would like England?” - -“I’d like any place, where you were!” - -“_He’s_ always been a welcher with the people he uses. He will be a -welcher with you—yes, and with me, some day, I suppose.” - -She turned to Durkin with a sudden determination. “Would you risk it, -with me?” - -“I’d risk anything for you!” he said, taking her hand once more. - -“We have a right to our happiness,” she argued, passionately. “We have -our life, all our life, almost—before us! And I’ve loved you, Jim,” she -confessed, her gloved fingers toying with a button on his sleeve, “from -the first day MacNutt brought you up!” - -Then a silence fell over her, and he could see the reflection of some -strange conflict going on in her mind. Although he could perceive the -unhappiness it brought to her, he could in no wise surmise the source of -it, so that when she spoke again, the suddenness of her cry almost -startled him. - -“Oh, why didn’t I know you and love you when I was a young and -heart-free girl, singing and laughing about my quiet home? Why couldn’t -love have come to me then, when all my heart and life were as white as -the plain little cambric gown I wore—when I was worthy of it, and could -have received it openly, and been glad of it!” - -He could not follow her, but, lover-like, he tried to kiss away her -vague fears and scruples. In this effort, though, he found her lips so -cold and lifeless, that he drew away from her, and looked at her in -wonder. - -“_Is_ it too late?” he implored, persistently. - - - - - CHAPTER IV - - -For all the calm precision with which Frances Candler had planned and -mapped out a line of prompt action with Durkin, she was shaken and -nervous and unstrung, as she leaned over the sounder, breathlessly -waiting for the rest of the day’s returns to come through on Penfield’s -wire. - -Durkin, with two thousand dollars of his own and an additional eight -hundred from her, had already plunged his limit at Penfield’s lower -house, on the strength of her tip over the ’phone. There was still to be -one final hazard, with all he held; and at five o’clock they were to -meet at Hartley’s restaurant, and from there escape to a new world of -freedom and contentment. But the fear of MacNutt still hung over her, as -she waited—fear for certain other things besides their secret revolt on -the very eve of their chief’s gigantic coup. For she knew what MacNutt -could be when he was crossed. So she leaned and waited and watched, -listening with parted lips, wishing it was all over with, torn by a -thousand indefinite fears. - -Then, to her sudden terror, Mackenzie called her up sharply. - -“Is that you, Frank?” he cried. - -“Yes; what is it, Mack?” she asked back, calmly enough, but with quaking -knees. - -“Doogan’s men are watching me here—they’ve got on to something or -other. Cut this wire loose from outside, and get your ’phone out of -sight. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t cut in on Penfield’s wire. I’ve -just tipped off MacNutt—he’s off his dip, about it all. Look out for -yourself, old girl!” he added, in a different tone of voice. - -She rang off, feverishly, and vowed passionately that she _would_ look -out for herself. Catching up a pair of pliers, she cut the telephone -wire from the open window, leaving two hundred feet of it to dangle -forlornly over the little back house-courts. Then she ran to the door -and locked and bolted it, listening all the while for the wire to speak -out to her. - -A minute later MacNutt himself rang up, and asked for Durkin. She made a -movement as though to drop the receiver, and leave her presence -unbetrayed; but the other had already heard her mellow “Hello?” of -inquiry. - -“What are _you_ doing there?” he demanded, with a startled unsavory -oath. - -She tried to stammer out an adequate excuse, but he repeated his -challenge. There was a moment’s pregnant pause. Then he hissed one ugly -word over the wire to the listening woman. Mackenzie had been hinting to -him of certain things; now, he knew. - -He did not wait even to replace the receiver. While she still stood -there, in the little sewing-room, white and dazed, he was in a swaying -taxi, rattling and pounding nearer her, block by block. - -He let himself in with his own pass-key, and raced up the long stairs, -his face drawn, and a dull claret tinge. He found the door closed and -bolted; he could hear nothing from within but the muffled clicking of -the sounder as it ticked out the later New Orleans returns. - -He paused for a moment, panting, but no answer came to his pound on the -panels. He could spell out, in the dead silence, the names of the horses -going over the wire. - -“Open this door, by God, or I’ll kill you!” he cried, in a frenzy, -throwing the weight of his huge body against it in vain. - -He seized an old-fashioned walnut arm-chair from the next room, and -forced it, battering-ram fashion, with all his strength, against the oak -panels. They splintered and broke, and under the second blow fell in, -leaving only the heavier cross-pieces intact. - -Quite motionless, waiting over the sounder, bent the woman, as though -she had neither seen nor heard. “White Legs————Yukon -Girl————Lord Selwyn”————those alone were the words which the -clicking brass seemed to brand on her very brain. In three seconds she -stood before the telephone, at the other end of which she knew Durkin to -be waiting, alert for the first sound and movement. But she saw the -flash of something in the hand of the man who leaned in through the -broken panel, and she paused, motionless, with a little inarticulate -cry. - -“Touch that ’phone, you welcher, and I’ll plug you!” the man was -screaming at her. His lip was hanging loose on one side, and his face, -now almost a bluish purple, was horrible to look at. - -“I’ve got to do it, Mack!” she pleaded, raising one hand to her face. He -flung out a volley of foul names at her, and deliberately trained his -revolver on her breast. She pondered, in a flash of thought, just what -chance she would have at that distance. - -“Mack, you wouldn’t shoot _me_, after—after everything? Oh, Mack, I’ve -got to send this through! I’ve got to!” she wailed. - -“Stop!” he gasped; and she knew there was no hope. - -“You wouldn’t shoot me, Mack?” she hurried on, wheedlingly, with the -cunning of the cornered animal; for, even as she spoke, the hand that -hovered about her face shot out and caught up the receiver. Her eyes -were on MacNutt; she saw the finger compress on the trigger, even as her -hand first went up. - -“Jim!” she called sharply, with an agony of despair in that one quick -cry. She repeated the call, with her head huddled down in her shoulders, -as though expecting to receive a blow from above. But a reverberation -that shook shreds of plaster from the ceiling drowned her voice. - -The receiver fell, and swung at full length. The smoke lifted slowly, -curling softly toward the open window. - -MacNutt gazed, stupefied, at the huddled figure on the floor. How long -he looked he scarcely knew, but he was startled from his stupor by the -sound of blows on the street door. Flinging his revolver into the room, -he stumbled down the heavily carpeted stairs, slunk out of a back door, -and, sprawling over the court-fence, fell into a yard strewn with heavy -boxes. Seeing a nearby door, he opened it, audaciously, and found -himself in a noisy auction-room filled with bidders. Pushing hurriedly -through them, he stepped out into the street, unnoticed. - -When the wounded woman had made sure that she was alone—she had been -afraid to move where she lay, fearing a second shot—with a little groan -or two she tried to rise to her knees. She felt that there might still -be time, if she could only crawl to the ’phone. But this, she found was -beyond her strength. The left sleeve of her waist, she also saw, was wet -and sodden with blood. She looked at it languidly, wondering if the -wound would leave a scar. Already she could hear footsteps below, and -again and still again she struggled to shake off her languor, and told -herself that she must be ready when Durkin came, that he, at least, must -not be trapped. She, as a mere pool-room stenographer, had little to -fear from the law. But as she tried, with her teeth and her free arm, to -tear a strip from her skirt, the movement, for all her tight-lipped -determination, was too much for her. She had a faint memory of hearing -footsteps swarming about her, and then of ebbing and pulsing down -through endless depths of what seemed to her like eider-downed -emptiness. - -When she came to, one of Doogan’s men was leaning over her, with a glass -of water in his hand. She could feel some of it still wet on her chin -and waist-collar. She looked up at him, bewildered, and then from him to -the other four men who stood about her. Then the events of the afternoon -came back to her. - -She closed her eyes again, vaguely wondering if some teasing, -indeterminate mishap, which she could not quite remember, had yet come -about. At first, she could not grasp it, as she lay there moaning with -pain, the breeze from the open window blowing on her face. Then the -truth came to her in a flash. - -It was Durkin. He was coming back; and they were watching there, waiting -to trap him. Again she told herself that she must keep her head, and be -cool. - -Without moving her head, she let her roving eyes take in the five men -about her in the room; three of them, she knew, were plain-clothes men -from the Central Office, the other two were Doogan’s agents. If Durkin -came while they were still there—and now he _could_ not be long!—they -would let him in, and of course say nothing, and there they would have -him, like a rat in a trap. - -She grew hysterical, and cried out to them that she was dying, yet -waiting all the time for the sound of Durkin’s step, trying to think how -she might save him. At last, to her sudden joy, she remembered that he -was to bring from her rooms her own handbag, filled with a few things -she had gathered up to take away with her. He would surely carry that -bag in with him when he came; that was her salvation. - -She fell to shrieking again that she was dying, demanding shrilly why -her doctor had not come. Through her cries, her alert ears heard the -sound of voices at the street-door. It was Durkin, at last; he had -spoken a word or two with the two plain-clothes men, who, she knew, -would readily enough let him pass. - -“Doctor!” she screamed, as she heard his steps on the stair. “Doctor! -I’m dying, doctor! Are you never coming!” - -She wondered, in her agony of mind and body, if he would be fool enough -not to understand. _Would_ he be fool enough? - -Doogan’s agents and the three plain-clothes men gathered about her -silently, as they saw the intruder hurry in and drop on his knee beside -the woman. “Is it you, doctor?” she wailed, with chattering teeth, -shaking with an on-coming chill. - -Durkin, in his dilemma, did not dare to look away from her face. He was -blindly trying to grope his way toward what it all meant. The others -stood above him, listening, waiting for the least word. One of them -moved to the open window, and closed it. - -He bent lower, trying to read the dumb agony in the woman’s face. Then -another of the men went to the door, to guard it. Durkin could see the -shoes and trousers-legs of the others, up to the knee. Each pair of -boots, he noticed inconsequently, had a character and outline of their -own. But still his frantic brain could not find the key to the enigma. - -Then, out of the chaos and the disorder of the chattering of her teeth, -seemed to come a hint, a whisper. She was sounding the double “i” of the -operator about to “send”—she was trying to catch his attention, to tell -him something, in Morse. He bent still closer, and fumbled artfully with -the sleeve, wet and sodden with her warm blood. - -He read the signal, as she lay there with chattering teeth: “All up—Get -away quick—these are police—meet you in London—hotel Cecil—in two -months—hurry.” - -“Where—write?” he implored her, by word of mouth, covering the question -by shifting his busily exploring fingers from the wounded left shoulder -to the right. - -She closed her eyes. “C-N,” she answered. She repeated it, in the -strange Morse, weakly, and then fainted dead away. - -Durkin dropped the sleeve he was carefully turning up. He looked at the -men about him with a sudden towering, almost drunken madness of relief, -a madness which they took for sudden rage. - -“You fools, you,” he called at them. “You fools, couldn’t you see -it—this woman’s dying! Here, you, quick—compress this artery with your -thumb—hard, so! You, you—oh, I don’t care _who_ you are—telephone for -my instruments—Doctor Hodgson, No. 29 West Thirtieth!”—luckily he -remembered a throat doctor Frank had once consulted there—“and get me a -sheet off one of the beds, quick!” - -He tossed his hat into the hall, jerked up his cuffs, almost believing, -himself, in the part he was acting. - -“Water—where’ll I get a water-tap?” he demanded, feverishly, running to -the door. Outside the room, he suddenly kicked his hat to the foot of -the back-stairs. He caught it as it rebounded from the second step, and -bolted noiselessly up the stairway, never turning or looking back until -he had gained the roof. There he crept, cat-like, across half-a-dozen -houses, and slipped down the first fire-escape that offered. - -At the third window, which was open, a stalwart Irish house-maid barred -his progress. He told her, hurriedly, he was a fire-escape inspector for -the City Department. Seeing that she doubted his word, he thrust a five -dollar bill in her hand. She looked at it, laughed cynically—and time, -he felt, was worth so much to him!—looked out at him again dubiously, -and then in silence led him through the passage and down to the -street-door. - -As he turned hurriedly into Madison Avenue, toward the Grand Central -station, he heard the clang of a bell, and saw an ambulance clatter down -the street. Then, to make sure of it, he repeated her message to -himself: “Hotel Cecil—two months—C-N.” - -For a moment or two the “C-N” puzzled him. Then he remembered that only -the day before he had been telling her the episode of the Charleston -earthquake, how every wire was “lost” after the final shock, and how -every operator for hundreds of miles about, during the next day of -line-repairing, kept calling “C-N” until an answer finally came from the -debris of the dead city. - -Through some trick of memory, he then knew, she had recalled the Morse -signal for that southern city, in her emergency. There had been no time -for thought, no chance for even momentary deliberation. “Charleston!” -From that day the very name took on a newer and stranger meaning. He -knew that during weeks of loneliness and wandering it would be the one -city toward which his eyes and his heart would turn. - - - - - CHAPTER V - - -“Tomorrow for the States—for me England, and Yesterday,”—murmured -Frances Candler as she stood at her window looking down over the tangle -and tumult of the Strand. “For me, England and Yesterday!” she repeated, -and it was not until she had said the lines twice over that she -remembered how she had first copied them into her day-book, during her -early homesick weeks in New York. - -It was the lassitude of her week at sea, and the loneliness of her -second week in a London hotel, she told herself, that had brought about -the change. If there were deeper and more dormant reasons, she was -content to let sleeping dogs lie. But she did not deceive herself as to -the meaning of the move. It was more than flight; it was surrender. It -was, indeed, the bitter and desperate remedy for a bitter and desperate -condition. For, inappositely, on the very brink of what seemed the -waiting and widening vista of all her life, she had decided to go back -to Oxford and her uncle’s home. - -The steps that led to this determination were no longer clear to her -questioning mind. She was also able, hour by brooding hour, to pile up -against it ever new objections. But she clung to it blindly, with a -forlorn tenacity of spirit that swept aside all momentary issues and all -dread of the future. For out of that seeming defeat, she contended, she -would wring her belated and her inner victory, even while her active -imagination, playing lambently ahead of dragging reality, showed her how -painful would be that return to old conditions and outgrown -surroundings. - -For a woman who has known the world to go back to such a roof is always -a sign and a confession of defeat. Yet the sweep of her aggressive young -mind, once made up, flung blindly aside each half-accumulated bar of -indecision. - -But was it fair to them?—she suddenly demanded of herself, as she -pictured the scenes and the faces that would confront her, the gentle -and mild-mannered women, the venerable and upright-hearted curate, so -jealous of equity and honor, with his unbending singleness and -narrowness of outlook. And as she asked this question each familiar -figure seemed to stalk grimly from its muffling childhood memories and -confront her, a challenging sentinel at the very threshold of that quiet -little home which she had dreamed as always open to her, as always a -harbor of ultimate refuge. - -But now, could she face the unspoken deceit, the daily attrition of it, -month after month and year after year? For clearly she foresaw what her -life would be, from sunrise to sunset, from youth to old age, from the -moment the quiet parsonage gate closed between her and the outer world. -She foresaw it plainly, as distinctly and indelibly as though it had -been set down in black and white before her eyes—the long and narrow -and grimly defined path leading from a narrow and weather-beaten gate to -a still narrower open grave. In summer time, in the quiet grounds behind -the shielding gray walls, there would be the Provence roses to tend and -the border-flowers to cut and trim, the sedate visiting and receiving, -the frugal jam-making, the regular Bible-readings and the family -prayers, the careful mending and remaking, the hemming of the clerical -old-fashioned white cravats, the lonely cawing of the rooks through the -quiet mornings and the long afternoons. And in the winter there would be -the woollen jackets and cough mixtures to distribute throughout the -parish, the stockings to be knit for the workhouse children, the long, -silent games of chess in the mullion-windowed study, the lettering and -numbering of the new books for the parish lending library, the -pathetically threadbare suit of respectable broadcloth to press and -repair, the summer linens and serges to be made over, the discussions of -impending Disestablishment and the Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill, the -languid flow of life within doors and the gentle diversions of life -without, punctuated by long Sundays, in gloomy high-partitioned pews -with faded crimson cushions. - -“Oh, it is useless! It is too late, now!” she cried, hopelessly, as she -paced the floor, and the weight of her past life hung heavy upon her. -The roots of it lay too deep, she told herself, to be torn out. She was -already too tainted with the dust of that outer world, too febrile, too -passionately avid of movement and change. The contrast was too great. -They would make it too hard for her, too rigidly exacting. For what did -_they_ know of the dark and complicated and compelling currents of the -real world, lapped in their gentle backwaters of old-world clerical -life, secluded and sheltered and untried! She would still have been one -of them, if her paths had been theirs, if she had only breathed the -quiet air they breathed! - -“It is too hard!” she moaned, in her misery. The test of life itself was -so crucial—that was the thought that kept recurring to her—the ordeal -by fire was foredoomed to be so exacting! All their old lessons and -creeds, which she had once chimed so innocently and so cordially, now -seemed to fall empty and enigmatic on her older and wiser heart. They -seemed to solve none of her imminent problems. Their mysticism only -bewildered her. And she sat amid the roar of London, idle and sick at -heart, unhearing and unseeing. - -“I will do it!” she at last said aloud. “It will be my punishment!” She -could no longer demand so much of life. She looked on existence, now, -with older and disillusioned eyes. For what she had taken she must stand -ready to pay. It would be her penance and penalty for past -transgressions. And it would have to be borne; it was obligatory. It was -not happiness or well-being that was at stake, she argued, in that new -mood of amendment; it was something vast and undying and eternal within -her, something that came before happiness itself, something she had seen -her defiant and broken and dying father ignore and surrender and suffer -for. - -While this new expiatory passion was still warm in her blood, she packed -her boxes, soberly, and then as soberly wrote to Durkin. It was not a -long letter, but she spent much time and thought in its composition. In -it, too, she seemed to cast off her last vestige of hesitation. For she -felt that the very note of impersonality in its unnatural stiffness of -phrasing was a new means of support. It was a support as clumsy and -retarding as a child’s walking-chair, but she was willing enough to -catch at it, whimsically, in those first tottering steps of -renunciation. - -“My Dear Jim,” she began, after much hesitation, and with many long and -thoughtful pauses as she wrote, “it will surprise you, I know, but I -have decided to go back to Oxford—to the Oxford I have so often told -you about. Do not think it is only cruelty on my part, or cowardice, or -self-interest. I have thought over everything long and carefully. And it -has led, always led, to one end—that end is: neither you nor I must go -on leading the lives we have been leading! It will hurt me, and it will -hurt you, I believe, to break the ties that time has made. But there is, -today, all the width of the Atlantic between us—and it is there, I -think, that I am the coward. For it is only this that makes it possible -for me to do what I’m doing. With you, I would bend to your will; here -it will be easier. Now, above all things, both you and I must learn not -to look on ourselves as beings apart from the rest of the world. If we -have ever been enemies of society we must learn not to remember it—for -it is this feeling, I know, which holds the key of our undoing. I have -often wondered and looked to see in what ways I reproduced the atavistic -conditions of the primitive woman—for they say that we evil doers are -only echoes out of the past—but I’m going to do it no more. We are both -of us ill-fitted for the things and the deeds we have drifted into. They -make us suffer too much. It is work that should fall to souls dwarfed -and stunted and benumbed. We are not morbid and depraved and blind; we -have intelligence and feeling. We have only been unhappy and unlucky, -let’s say. So now we must fight along and wait for better luck, as you -used to put it. We are not what they call ‘recidivists.’ We are not -abnormal and branded; we must fight away the deadly feeling that we are -detached from the rest of the world, that mankind is organized and -fighting against us, that we are the hunted, and all men the hounds! -What we have done, we have done. But I know that we were both initiated -into wrong-doing so quietly and so insidiously that the current caught -us before we knew it. Yet I feel that I have none of the traits of the -Female Offender, though in my anxiety and crazy search for causes and -excuses I have even taken my cephalic index and tested my chromatic -perception and my tactile sensitiveness and made sure that I responded -normally to a Faraday current! Yes, we are both too normal to succeed -happily in the ways we began. . . . I shall miss you, but I shall always -love you. Oh, Jim, pray for me; as I, daily, shall pray for you! I can’t -write more now. Go back to your work, though it means being hungry and -lonely and unhappy, fight out the problem of your amplifier, and -struggle along with your transmitting camera, until you accomplish -something we can both take pride in and be happy over! Sometime, later, -when I write, I shall be able to explain everything more fully. . . . I -was eleven days in the hospital, and crossed on the _Nieuw Amsterdam_. -There will always be a scar—but a very small one—on my arm. That will -be the only reminder. Good-bye, dear Jim, and God bless and keep you, -always, in the right.” - -She read over the letter, slowly, dispassionately, and fought back the -temptation to write further, to fling more of her true feeling into it. -That, at best, would be only a cruel kindness. - -As she folded and sealed the letter she felt that she was sealing down -many years of her past youth. She already felt that she had passed over -some mysterious Great Divide, that some vast morainic loop already -walled her back from her former existence. And then, as a sudden, -rushing sense of her isolation swept over her, she broke down, in that -very hour of her ironic triumph, and wept miserably, passionately, -hopelessly. - -Her misery clung to her all that day, until, late in the afternoon, she -caught the first glimpse of Oxford from her compartment window. At one -touch it carried her back to the six long years of her girlhood, for she -had been little more than a child when first taken from the dubious care -of her father—and the happiest stretch of her life had been lived -within sound of Oxford’s tranquil bells. - -It had been her first plan, when she left the train, to take a carriage -and drive leisurely through the old university town. It would be her one -hour of freedom, before crossing that final Rubicon; it was only, she -protested, a human enough hesitation before the ultimate plunge. Vividly -and minutely she remembered the town, as she had seen it from the -familiar hills, wrapt in sunlight and purplish shadows by day, lying -cool and dark and tranquil under the summer moon by night, steeped in -the silences and the soft mistiness of the river valley, with here and -there a bell tinkling and a roof glimmering through the gloom. She even -used to say she found a strange comfort in the number of these bells and -in the thought of their wakefulness throughout the night. But now, -through some underground circuit of memory, they carried her thoughts -back to the clanging brilliance of Broadway at midnight, to the movement -and tumult and press of light-hearted humanity. And by contrast, they -now seemed to her to toll lugubriously. The quiet city about her seemed -tainted with antiquity, autumnal, overshadowed by the grayness of death. -It almost stifled her. She had forlornly hoped that the calm beauty of -that town of bells and towers would still fall as a welcome balm on her -torn feelings. But she had changed—oh, how she had changed! It was not, -she told herself, the mere fruit of physical exhaustion. Her one desire -on that day, indeed, was to reach that condition of bodily weariness -which would render her indifferent to all mental blows. It was only her -past, whimpering for its own. - -She still felt the sheer need of fatigue to purge away that inner -weariness that had settled over her soul, so on second thoughts she -turned homeward, and went on foot, through the paling English afternoon. -Often, as a girl, she had walked in over the neighboring hills; and -there seemed something more in keeping with her return to go back alone, -and quietly. And as she walked she seemed to grow indifferent to even -her own destiny. She felt herself as one gazing down on her own tangled -existence with the cool detachment of a mere spectator. Yet this was the -landscape of her youth, she kept telling herself, where she had first -heard nightingales sing, where she had been happy and hopeful and looked -out toward the unknown world with wide and wondering eyes. But the very -landscape that once lay so large and alluring now seemed cramped and -small and trivial. It seemed like a play-world to her, painted and laid -out and overcrowded, like the too confining stage-scene of a theatre. - -The afternoon was already late when the familiar square tower of the -church and the gray walls of the parsonage itself came into view. She -gazed at them, abstracted and exalted, and only once she murmured: “How -different, oh, how different!” - -Then she opened the gate of that quiet home, slowly and deliberately, -and stepped inside. The garden was empty. - -One great, annihilating sponge-sweep seemed to wipe five long years, and -all their mottled events, from her memory. Then as slowly and -deliberately she once more closed the gate. The act seemed to take on -that dignity attaching to the ceremonial, for with that movement, she -passionately protested to herself, she was closing the door on all her -past. - - - - - CHAPTER VI - - -It was one week later that Frances Candler wrote her second letter to -Durkin. She wrote it feverishly, and without effort, impetuous page -after page, until she came to the end. Then she folded and sealed it, -hastily, as though in fear that some reactionary sweep of hesitation -might still come between her and her written purpose. - -“I was wrong—I was terribly wrong,” was the way in which she began her -letter. “For as I told you in my cable, _I am coming back_. It is now -all useless, and hopeless, and too late. And I thought, when I was once -away from you, that it would be easy to learn to live without you. But -during these last few weeks, when I have been so absolutely and so -miserably alone, I have needed and cried for you—oh, Jim, how I have -needed you! I have learned, too, how even an inflexible purpose, how -even a relentless sense of duty, may become more sinister than the -blindest selfishness. It was cruel and cowardly in me—for as you once -said, we must now sink or swim together. I forgot that you, too, were -alone, that you, too, needed help and companionship, even more than I. -And I had thought that morality and its geography, that mere flight from -my misdoings meant that they were ended, that here in some quiet spot I -could be rid of all my past, that I could put on a new character like a -new bonnet, that life was a straight and never-ending lane, and not a -blind mole-run forever winding and crossing and turning on itself! I -thought that I could creep away, and forget you, and what I had been, -and what I had lived through, and what had been shown to me. But the -world is not that easy with us. It defeats us where we least expect it; -it turns against us when we most need it. I had always dreamed that my -uncle’s high-walled home at Oxford could be nothing but a place of quiet -and contentment. I had always thought of it as a cloister, into which I -could some day retire, and find unbroken rest and a solemn sort of -happiness. Then came the revelation, the blow that cut the very ground -from under my feet. _They_ had their troubles and their sorrows, as well -as I. Life could hang as dark for them as it hung for me. My cousin -Albert, a mere boy, reading for the Bar in London, had a friend in the -City named Singford. I will try to tell you everything as clearly and as -briefly as possible. Young Singford is rather a black sheep, of an idle -and wealthy family. He involved Albert in a stock-gambling scheme—oh, -such a transparent and childish scheme, poor boy!—and Albert, in -despair, went to his father. He had to have money to cover his losses; -it would be paid back within the month. His father, the soul of -uprightness, borrowed the money from what was, I think, the Diocesan -Mission Fund, in the belief that it would be promptly repaid. Then came -the crash. I found them broken and dazed under it, helpless, hopeless, -bewildered. It was so new to them, so outside their every-day life and -experience! I went straight to London, and hunted up my cousin, who was -actually talking about shooting himself. I found that young Singford, -who had been sent down from Balliol, had blindly plunged with Albert on -some foolish Texas Oil enterprise. I needn’t tell you more, except that -the whole sum was not quite two hundred pounds. But it meant Albert’s -giving up his study, and my uncle’s disgrace. I straightened it out for -the poor boy—it all seemed so easy and natural and commonplace for _my_ -practised hand!—and I believe I brought some little peace and comfort -back to that crushed and despairing household. But it all means, of -course, that now I’ll have to go back to America. Still, whatever I may -have to go through, or whatever happens to me, I shall always have the -consolation of knowing that I made that one small sacrifice and did that -one small kindness. But from the first I saw that my sanctuary was no -longer a sanctuary. And when I saw that I should really have to go back, -I was almost glad. The very thought of it seemed to give a new zest to -life. I had been trying to tell myself that my future there would not be -empty and lonely. But all along, in my secret heart of hearts, I knew -better. I could not close my eyes to anticipation; I could not shut -activity out of my life. It seemed suddenly to people all my lonely -future with possibilities, that first thought of going back. And then -there was _you_. Yes, I believe all along that it was you I wanted. I -tried to argue myself away from the feeling that I was deserting you, -but I knew it was true. It was this feeling that saved me, that made me -feel almost elated, when I saw that fate was once more flinging me into -the life from which I had been fighting to escape. You don’t know what -the very word ‘America’ now means to me—it’s like the shrill of a -call-bell, it’s like the double ‘i’ of our operating days, warning us to -be ready! I want to go home; and home, now, is where you are. I can’t -entomb myself yet—I am too young. I want to live, Jim, I want to live! -Those feverish years must have left some virus in my veins, some virus -of recklessness and revolt. And there is so much to do, so many things -are challenging us, waiting for us. I can not be satisfied with -memories, and Yesterday. I want Tomorrow, and You! It may be blind, and -wrong, and wicked—but, oh, Jim, the wires are all down between my head -and my heart!” - - - - - CHAPTER VII - - -Durkin sat at the restaurant table, smoking, his watch in his hand. It -was already seven minutes to four. As the seventh minute slipped into -the sixth, and the sixth into the fifth, some first vague sense of -impending disaster stole over him. - -“Is this seat taken, sir?” - -It was a waiter speaking, with a short, florid man at his heels. - -“Yes,” said Durkin, quietly, “I’m expecting a lady—in five minutes.” - -The florid man bowed. The waiter said “Yes, sir,” tipped the chair -against the table edge, and went on in search of a seat. - -Durkin smoked hard once more, relishing the touch of irony in it all. He -did not, naturally enough, explain that the lady he was expecting had -made the engagement three thousand miles away from the table at which he -sat and at which he was to meet her precisely on the stroke of four. -Such things were theatrical, and unnecessary; besides, one had to allow -for accidents. And once more, with a puzzled brow, he took up his paper -and looked through the _Majestic’s_ passenger list, still involuntarily -cast down by a wayward sense of possible calamity. - -He imagined some dark coalition of forces against him, obscurely -depressed, for the moment, by the shadow of some immense, seemingly -impassive, and yet implacable animosity of eternal rule toward the -accidental revolter. The same vague feeling had possessed him that -infelicitously happy day when, after abandoning his operator’s key, he -had become an “overhead guerrilla.” Still later it had come to him, from -time to time, as, dazzled by the splendor of that vast hazard which had -ended in such disastrous triumph, he had revolted against MacNutt, and -preyed on the preyer himself. He had begun to feel, and he had felt, -from that time forward, that he was existing under a series of -conditions other than those of the men about him. He was no longer one -of them. He was out of the fold. He carried the taint of the pariah. He -was, henceforth, however he might try, as Frances Candler had warned -him, to muffle or forget it, a social anomaly. - -To the consciousness of this he applied his customary balm, which lay in -the thought that now the older creeds and ethics of life had crumbled -away. The spirit which dominated America today, he felt, was that of the -business man’s code of morals; it was the test, not of right, but of -might, as it flowered in intelligence and craftiness. And that first -dubious victory, of his own, he argued with himself, had been one of -intelligence—should not victory, then, always be with the alerter head -and the warier hand? And this vague and mysterious enemy whose -emissaries, even though relentless, were always so temptingly -dull—would they not always meet and clash, and the battle be to the -strong? - -A woman, dressed in black, with a dark veil caught up around the rim of -her hat, pushed her way through the crowded restaurant toward the table -in the corner. She might have passed for a mere girl, but for the heavy -shadows about the weary-looking, violet eyes and the betraying fullness -of her soberly gowned figure. She glanced at the clock, and smiled a -little, with her calm, almost pensive lips, as she placed a pearl-gloved -hand on the back of the tilted chair. - -“I am on time, you see,” she said, quietly in her soft contralto, as she -sank into the chair with a contented sigh, and began drawing off her -gloves. “It is precisely four o’clock.” - -Outwardly she appeared at ease, well-poised and unruffled. Only the -quick rise and fall of her bosom and the tremulousness of her hands gave -any sign of her inner agitation. - -“Why—Frank!” cried Durkin, with eloquent enough inadequacy, his face -paling a little, for all his own assumption of easy fortitude. He -continued to look at her, a sudden lump in his throat choking back the -hundred stampeding words that seemed clamoring to escape. He noticed, as -he had so often noticed before, how rapid and easy were her movements, -and how, through all her softness, she impressed one with a sense of her -great muscular agility. - -For one wavering moment she let her eyes lose their studied calmness, -and, inwardly surrendering, gazed at him recklessly, abandonedly, with -her very soul in her face. - -“Is it safe here?” she murmured, as she drew her chair up. - -He nodded. “As safe as anywhere,” he was on the point of replying, but -did not speak the words. - -“Dearest!” she whispered to him, with her eyes still on his face, and -her back to the crowded room. - -He tried to seize her ungloved hand in his, but she drew him up with a -sudden monitory “Hsssssh!” Then he, too, remembered, and they took up -their rôle of outward indifference once more. - -“I had to come back, you see!” she confessed, with what seemed a shamed -and mournful shake of the head. - -“Something told me you would, all along, even after your first letter. I -saw it, as surely as I see you now!” - -“Oh, Jim, what I wrote you was true!—it showed me that we can’t bury -our past, in a day, or a week or a month! It’s made me afraid of myself -and taught me how weak I am!” - -And again she looked at him, across the quiet but abysmal gulf of her -reawakening despair. - -“But there is just where we make ourselves so unhappy—we’re so afraid -about being afraid! Life without some fear—what is it?” - -“Oh, I am without defence!” she lamented, indeterminately and -inconsequently. She sighed again, and still again gazed into his face -with her shadowy and unhappy and seemingly hungry eyes. Then, with a -sudden abandoning uptoss of her reckless hands, that seemed to fling -both solemnity and memory from her, she laughingly declared that it was -already too late to cry over spilt milk. Yet the sound of her careless -laughter fell, in some way, more lugubriously on Durkin’s ear than had -all her earlier lamentation. - -“But _why_ did you ever write that first letter?” he persisted. - -She knew she could not explain, satisfactorily. “It was the result of -being lonesome, let’s say, and perhaps being morbid, after my illness!” - -Durkin called the waiter and gave him an order, puffing his cigar with -assumed unconcern, while the woman murmured across the table to him: -“You look quite foreign, with that magnificent Vandyke! And, by the way, -how do you like my English bang?” - -“Why, it’s dyed!” said Durkin, for the first time missing the sunny -glint in the familiar crown of chestnut. - -“Jim,” said the woman, in lower tones, sobering again, “there’s trouble -ahead, already!” - -She drew her chair a little closer, and leaned forward, with her elbows -on the table and her chin in her hands. Durkin lighted another cigar, -and lounged toward her with the same careless pose, his face alert with -new and different interest. - -“MacNutt?” - -“No, not him, thank heaven!” - -“You don’t mean Doogan’s men?” - -“Not so loud, dear! No, not Doogan’s men, either. It’s nothing like -that. But tell me, quickly, has anything gone wrong over here?” - -“Not a thing—except that you were away!” - -“But hasn’t _anything_ happened since I saw you?” - -“Nothing worth while—no. It’s been so dull, so deadly dull, I all but -jumped back into the old game and held up a Charleston pool-room or two! -Five whole weeks of—of just waiting for you!” - -She caught up her veil, where a part of it dropped down from her -hat-rim, and smiled her wistfully girlish smile at him. Then she glanced -carefully about her; no one seemed within earshot. - -“Yes, I know. It seemed just as long to me, dearest. Only, because of -several things, _I_ had to jump into something. That’s what I must tell -you about—but we can’t talk here.” - -“Then we’ll have William call a taxi?” - -She nodded her assent. - -“We can talk there without having some one hanging over our shoulders.” - -“Do you know,” she went on, as she watched the waiter push out through -the crowded, many-odored room, “I often think I must have lived through -the ordinary feelings of life. I mean that we have already taken such -chances together, you and I, that now only a big thing can stir me into -interest. I suppose we’ve exhausted all the every-day sensations.” - -“Yes, I know the feeling,” said Durkin, through his cigar-smoke. “I -suppose it’s really a sort of drunkenness with us now. I couldn’t go -back to the other things, any more than I could go back to—to stogies. -All this last four weeks of hanging about I have felt like—oh, like a -sailor who has pounded round every strange sea in the world, and has -come home to be told not to go out of his own back yard.” - -“That’s how I felt, towards the last, in London, with nothing to do, -nothing to think about, or plan, or live for. I got so I nearly screamed -every time I faced the four dull walls of that hotel room. But, you see -we have both fallen back on the wrong sort of stimulant. After all, what -I wrote you in that letter _was_ true! Neither of us two should ever -have been evil-doers. I am too—too much like other women, I suppose. -And you’re too thin-skinned and introspective—too much of a twentieth -century Hamlet. You should never have tapped a wire; and I should never -have been a welcher and robbed MacNutt. You ought to have gone on being -a nice, respectable young train-despatcher, with a row of geraniums in -front of your station window; and I ought to be a prim little -branch-office telegrapher in one of those big Broadway hotel corridors, -in a little wire cage, between the news-stand and the cigar-counter. -Then we should both have a lot still to look for and to live for.” - -She broke off inconsequently, and gazed out through the -lightly-curtained window, to where a street piano was throbbing out the -waltz-tune of _Stumbling_. - -“Do you remember our first days together?—the music and theatres and -drives! Oh, what a happy four weeks they were!” And she gazed at him -dreamily, as she hummed the tune of _Stumbling_ in her throaty, -low-noted contralto, ending with a nonchalant little laugh, as she -looked up and said, “But here’s our taxi, at last!” - -In the half-light of the taxi-cab, as they turned into Fifth Avenue, and -swung up toward Central Park, she let her tired body rest against his -shoulder, with her arm clinging to him forlornly. There was a minute or -two of silence, and then putting her face up to him, she said, with a -sudden passionate calmness: - -“Kiss me!” - -He felt the moist warmth of her capitulating lips, the clinging weight -of her inert body, and, deep down within his own consciousness he knew -that, if need be, he could die for her as the purest knight might have -died for some old-world lady of spotless soul and name. - -Yet after all, he wondered, as he held her there, were they so -irretrievably bad? Was it not only their game, this life they had -drifted into?—their anodyne, their safeguard against exhausted desires -and the corroding idleness of life? - -She must intuitively have felt what was running through his mind, as she -slipped away from him, and drew back into her own corner of the -taxi-cab, with a new look of brooding melancholy in her shadowy eyes. - -“If I were ignorant and coarse, and debased, then I could understand it. -But I’m not! I have always wanted to be honest. From the first I have -longed to be decent.” - -“You _are_ honest, through and through,” he protested. “You are as -strong and true as steel.” - -She shook her head, but he caught her in his arms, and she lay there -half-happy again. - -“Oh, Frank, for the twentieth time,” he pleaded, “won’t you marry me?” - -“No, no, no; not till we’re honest!” she cried, in alarm. “I wouldn’t -dare to, I couldn’t, until then.” - -“But we’re only what we have been. We can’t change it all in a day, can -we—especially when there is so much behind?” - -“I want to be decent,” she cried, in a sort of muffled wail. “No, no; I -can’t marry you, Jim, not yet. We may not be honest with other people, -but we _must_ be honest with ourselves!” - -One of the policemen directing the street-traffic at Forty-Second Street -glanced in at them, through the misty window, and smiled broadly. It -seemed to remind her of other worlds, for she at once sat up more -decorously. - -“Time! Time! we are losing time—and I have so much to tell you.” - -“Then give me your hand to hold, while you talk.” - -She hesitated for a half-laughing moment, and then surrendered it. - -“Now, tell me everything, from the first!” - - - - - CHAPTER VIII - - -“It’s the Blue Pear,” she said, hesitatingly, wondering how to -begin—“which, of course, means nothing to you.” - -“And just what _is_ it, please?” - -“The Blue Pear, Jim, is a diamond. It’s a diamond that you and I, in -some way or another, have got to get back!” - -“To get back? Then when did we lose it?” - -“_I_ lost it. That’s what I’ve got to tell you.” - -“Well, first tell me what it is,” he said, wondering at her seeming -gaiety, not comprehending her nervous rebound from depression to -exhilaration. - -“It’s a very odd diamond, and a very big diamond, only tinted with a -pale blue coloring the same as the Hope Diamond is tinged with yellow. -That’s how it came to get its name. But the odd thing about it is that, -when it was cut in Amsterdam, rather than grind away a fifteen-carat -irregularity, it was left in a sort of pear-shape. Even before it was -mounted by Lalique, it sold in Paris for well over six thousand pounds. -Later, in Rio de Janeiro, it brought something like seven thousand -pounds. There it was given to a French actress by a Spanish-American -coffee-king. It was an African stone, in the first place.” - -“But what’s all this geography for?” asked Durkin. - -“Wait, dear heart, and you’ll understand. The coffee-king quarrelled -with the Paris woman. This woman, though, smuggled the stone back to -France with her. It was sold there, a few months later, for about -one-fourth its market value. Still later it was bought for a little -under six thousand pounds, by the late Earl of Warton, who gave it to -his younger daughter, Lady Margaret Singford, when she married young -Cicely—Sir Charles Cicely, who was wounded the first year of the war, -you remember. Well, Sir Charles didn’t like the setting—it had been -made into a marquise ring of some sort—so he took it to Rene Lalique’s -work-shop in Paris, and had it mounted after his own ideas.” - -“But who is Lalique?” - -“A French _l’art nouveau_ goldsmith—the Louis Tiffany of the Continent. -But I’ve a lot to tell you, Jim, and only a little time to do it in, so -we shall have to cut out these details. Lalique made a pendant out of -the Blue Pear, hung on a thin gold stem, between little leaves of beaten -gold, with diamond dew-drops on them. Well, four weeks ago the Blue Pear -was stolen from Lady Margaret’s jewel case. No, Jim, thank you, not by -me; but if you’ll wait, I’ll try to explain. - -“I hardly know what made me do it—it was _ennui_, and being lonesome, I -suppose. Perhaps it was the money,—a little. But, you see, when Albert, -my innocently wayward young cousin, got mixed up with young Singford, I -found out a thing or two about _that_ less innocent gentleman. It -started me thinking; and thinking, of course, started me acting.” - -He nodded, as a sign that he was following her. - -“I had detective-agency cards printed, and went straight to the Cicelys. -Lady Margaret wouldn’t see me; she sent down word that the reward of -three hundred pounds was still open, and that there was no new -information. But I saw her at last—I shan’t explain just how. Before -very long I found out something further, and rather remarkable—that -Lady Margaret wanted to drop the case altogether, and was trying to -blind Scotland Yard and the police. And that made me more determined. - -“Before the end of the week, I found out that young Singford, Lady -Margaret’s brother, had been mixed up in a row at Monaco, had made a -mess of things, later, at Oxford, and had decided to try ranching in the -Canadian North-West. I had already booked my passage on the _Celtic_, -but the whole thing then meant too much for me, and, when I found young -Singford was sailing that week on the _Majestic_, I succeeded in getting -a berth on that steamer. Jim, as soon as I saw that wretched boy on -deck, I knew that I had guessed right, or almost right. Oh, I know them, -I know them! I suppose it’s because, in the last year or two, I have -come in contact with so many of them. But there he was, as plain as day, -a criminal with stage-fright, a beginner without enough nerve to face -things out. I rather think he may have been a nice boy at one time. And -I know just how easy it is, once you make the first little wrong turn, -to keep on and on and on, until you daren’t turn back, even if you had -the chance to.” - -“And you took pity on him?” inquired Durkin, “or did you merely vivisect -him at a distance?” - -“Not altogether—but first I must tell you of the second dilemma. Before -we sailed, and the first day out, I thought it best to keep to my cabin. -You can understand why, of course. After all, this is such a little -world, when you know the Central Office might be after you!” - -“Or some old business friend?” - -“That was precisely what I thought, only a good deal harder, when I was -sat down to dinner, the second day out, and glanced across the table. -You remember my telling you about my first experiences in America, when -I was a shrinking and pink-cheeked young English governess, and never -knew a bold thought or a dishonest act? Do you remember my describing -the woman—it’s always a woman who is hard on another woman!—who -accused me of—of having designs on her husband? Her husband, a -miserable, oily little Hebrew diamond-merchant who twice insulted me on -the stairs of his own house, when I had to swallow it without a word! -Well, it was that woman who sat across the table from me. They had put -me at the Captain’s table—my London gown, you see, looks uncommonly -well. But there was that woman, a little more faded and wizened and -wrinkled, looking at me with those beady old hawk eyes of hers; and I -knew there was trouble ahead. - -“A war-correspondent, who had been nice to me, had brought up about -everybody at our table worth while, and introduced them to me, that -night before going down. So, when I saw that yellow face and those hawk -eyes, I knew I had to think hard and fast.” - -“‘Are you not the young woman,’ she said, in a sort of _frappé_ of nasal -indignation, ‘are you not the young woman whom I once employed as a -governess and discharged for misconducting herself with—er—with the -other servants?’ - -“I was so busy trying to be cool that I didn’t bother thinking out an -answer. I did want to say, though, that it was not a servant, but her -own devoted and anointed husband. I kept on talking to the Captain, -deciding to ignore her icily. But that yellow hag deliberately repeated -her question, and I heard the war-correspondent gasp out an indignant -‘My God, madam!’ and saw the Captain’s face growing redder and redder. -So I went on and asked the Captain if intoxication was becoming commoner -on the high seas. Then she began to splutter and tremble. I kept looking -at her as languidly as ever, and a steward had to help her away. - -“But she knew that she was right. And she knew that I knew she knew. -Though I had all the men on my side, and the Captain cheerfully saw to -it that she was moved down to the tail end of the Doctor’s table, among -the commercial travellers and the school-ma’ms, I knew well enough that -she was only waiting for her chance. - -“It didn’t change the face of things, but it upset me, and made me more -cautious in the way I handled young Singford. In some way, I felt a bit -sorry for the poor chap, I thought a little sympathy might perhaps -soften him, and make him tell me something worth while. But he had too -much good old English backbone for that. And, although he told me I was -the best woman he ever knew, and a little more solemn nonsense like -that, I at last had to go for him very openly. It was a moonlight -night—the sea-air was as soft as summer. We were standing by the rail, -looking out over the water. Then I made the plunge, and very quietly -told him I knew two things, that he had stolen his sister’s diamond -pendant, and that for three days he had been thinking about committing -suicide. - -“I watched his hand go up to his breast-pocket—the moon was on his -terrified young face—and I came a little nearer to him, for I was -afraid of something—I tried to tell him there was no use jumping -overboard, and none whatever in throwing the Blue Pear into the -Atlantic. That would only make things past mending, forever. Besides, he -was young, and his life was still before him. I talked to him—well, I -believe I cried over him a little, and finally, without a word, he -reached in under his coat, and there, in the moonlight, handed me the -Blue Pear. I gave him my word of honor it would be taken back to his -sister, and even lent him twenty pounds—and you can imagine how little -I had left!” - -Durkin looked up, as though to ask a question, but she silenced him with -her uplifted hand. - -“That was the night we came up the Bay. I slipped down to my cabin, and -turned on the electric light. Then I opened the little case, and looked -at my pendant. You know I never liked diamonds, they always seemed so -cold and hard and cruel—well, as though the tears of a million women -had frozen into one drop. But this Blue Pear—oh, Jim, it was -beautiful!” - -“It _was_?—Good heavens, you don’t mean—?” - -“Shhhh! Not so loud! Yes, that is just it. There I stood trying it in -the light, feasting on it, when a voice said behind me, a voice that -made my hair creep at the roots, ‘A very unsafe stone to smuggle, young -lady!’ And there, just inside my door, stood the yellow hag. She had -stolen down, I suppose, to nose among my luggage a bit. I could have -shaken her—I almost did try it. - -“We stood staring at each other; it was the second battle of the kind -between us on board that ship. I realized she had rather the upper hand -in this one. I never saw such envy and greed and cruelty in a human -face, as she ogled that stone. - -“It seemed to intoxicate her—she was drunk to get her hands on it—and -she had enough of her own, too. So, once more, I had to think as fast as -I could, for I knew that this time she would be relentless. - -“‘No, I shan’t smuggle it,’ I said, in answer to her look. - -“‘_You_ pay duty—a thousand, two thousand dollars!’ she gasped at me, -still keeping her eyes on the stone, flashing there in the light. ‘Given -to you,’ she almost hissed, ‘by some loving father whose child you -guided into the paths of wisdom? Oh, I know you, you lying huzzy! It’s -mine!’ she cried, like a baby crying for the moon, ‘it’s mine! You—you -stole it from me!’” - -She paused, at the memory of the scene, and Durkin stirred uneasily on -the seat. - -“What made the fool say that?” he demanded. - -“Why, she meant that she could claim it, and intended to claim it, -insinuating that she would see that it was declared at the wharf, if I -kept it, and arguing that I might as well lose it quietly to _her_, as -to the Treasury officers. I knew in a flash, then, that she didn’t know -what the Blue Pear was. I closed the little gun-metal case with a snap. -Then I put it, Blue Pear and all, in her hand. She turned white, and -asked me what I meant. - -“‘I am going to give it to you—for a while, at least,’ I said, as -coolly as I could, making a virtue, of course, of what I knew was going -to be a necessity. - -“She looked at me open-mouthed. Then she tore open the case, looked at -the stone, weighed it in her fingers, gasped a little, held it to the -light again, and turned and looked at me still once more. - -“‘This pendant _was_ stolen!’ she cried, with sudden conviction. She -looked at the stone again—she couldn’t resist it. - -“‘You might call it the Robin’s Egg, when you have it re-cut,’ I told -her. - -“She gave a jump—that was what she was thinking of, the shrewd old -wretch. She shoved the case down in her lean old breast. - -“‘Then you will smuggle it in for me?’ I asked her. - -“‘Yes, I’ll get it through, if I have to swallow it!’ - -“‘And you will keep it?’ I asked; and I laughed, I don’t know why. - -“‘You remember my house?’ she cried, with a start. - -“‘Like a book!’ I told her. - -“‘But still I’ll keep it!’ she declared. - -“It was a challenge, a silly challenge, but I felt at that moment that -this was indeed a plunge back into the old ways of life. But, to go on. -She didn’t seem to realize that keeping the Blue Pear was like trying to -conceal a white elephant, or attempting to hide away a Sierra Nevada -mountain. Then that cruel old avaricious, over-dressed, natural-born -criminal had her turn at laughing, a little hysterically, I think. And, -for a minute or two, I felt that all the world had gone mad, that we -were only two gray gibbering ghosts talking in the enigmas of insanity, -penned up in throbbing cages of white enamelled iron. - -“I followed her out of the cabin, and walked up and down alone in the -moonlight, wondering if I had done right. At the wharf, I fully intended -to risk everything and inform on her, then cable to the Cicelys. But she -must have suspected something like that—my stewardess had already told -me there were two Treasury Department detectives on board—and got her -innings first. For I found myself quietly taken in charge, and my -luggage gone over with a microscope—to say nothing of the gentle old -lady who massaged me so apologetically from head to foot, and seemed a -bit put out to find that I had nothing more dutiable than an extra pair -of French gloves.” - -“Had you expected this beforehand?” interposed Durkin. - -“Yes, the stewardess had told me there was trouble impending—that’s -what made me afraid about the Blue Pear. Just as I got safely through -Customs, though, I caught sight of the yellow hag despatching her maid -and luggage home in a taxi-cab, while she herself sailed away in -another,—I felt so sure she was going straight to her husband’s store, -Isaac Ottenheimer & Company, the jeweller and diamond man on Fifth -Avenue, you know, that I scrambled into a taxi and told the driver to -follow my friend to Ottenheimer’s. When we pulled up there, I drew the -back curtains down and watched through a quarter-inch crack. The woman -came out again, looking very relieved and triumphant. And that’s the -whole story—only,—” - -She did not finish the sentence, but looked at Durkin, who was slowly -and dubiously rubbing his hands together, with the old, weary, -half-careless look all gone from his studious face. - -He glanced back at the woman beside him admiringly, lost himself in -thought for a moment, and then laughed outright. - -“You’re a dare-devil, Frank, if there ever was one!” he cried; then he -suddenly grew serious once more. - -“No, it’s not _daring_,” she answered him. “The true name of it is -_cowardice_!” - - - - - CHAPTER IX - - -Four hours later, in that shabby little oyster-house often spoken of as -“The Café of Failures,” lying less than a stone’s throw from the -shabbiest corner of Washington Square, Frances Candler met by -appointment a stooped and somewhat sickly-looking workman carrying a -small bag of tools. This strange couple sought out a little table in one -of the odorous alcoves of the oyster-house, and, over an unexpectedly -generous dinner, talked at great length and in low tones, screened from -the rest of the room. - -“You say it’s a Brandon & Stark eight-ton vault; but can’t you give me -something more definite than that to work on?” the man was asking of the -girl. - -“Only what I’ve told you about its position; I had to watch out for -Ottenheimer every moment I was in that store.” - -“I see. But while I think of it, providing we _do_ find the stone there, -do we turn it over again or—?” - -“I gave my word of honor, Jim!” - -The shadow of a smile on his face died away before her unyielding -solemnity. - -“Oh, of course! There’s three hundred pounds on it, anyway, isn’t -there?” - -She nodded her head in assent. - -“But I think we’ve got our trouble before us, and plenty of it, before -we see that three hundred pounds,” he said, with a shrug. - -“The time’s so short—that is the danger. As I was on the point of -telling you, Ottenheimer has an expert diamond-cutter in his shops.” - -“And that means he’ll have the apex off our Pear at the first chance, -and, accordingly, it means hurry for us. But tell me the rest.” - -“Ottenheimer himself owns, I discovered, the double building his store -is in. He has his basement, of course, his ground floor show-room and -store; and work-rooms, and shipping department, and all that, on the -second story. Above them is a lace importer. On the top floor there is a -chemical fire-apparatus agency. In the south half of the building, with -the hall and stairway between, is an antique furniture store, and above -them a surgical supply company. The third and top floors are taken up by -two women photographers—their reception room on the third floor, their -operating-room, and that sort of thing, on the top floor, with no less -than two sky-lights and a transom opening directly on the roof. I -arranged for a sitting with them. That is the floor we ought to have, -but the building is full. Three doors below, though, there was a top, -back studio to let, and I’ve taken it for a month. There we have a -transom opening on the roof. I looked through, merely to see if I could -hang my washing out sometimes. But barring our roof off from -Ottenheimer’s is an ugly iron fencing.” - -“Did you get a chance to notice their wiring?” - -“The first thing. We can cut in and loop their telephone from our back -room, with thirty feet of number twelve wire.” - -“Then we’ve got to get in on that line, first thing!” - -He ruminated in silence for a minute or two. - -“Of course you didn’t get a glimpse of the basement, under -Ottenheimer’s?” - -“Hardly, Jim. We shall have to leave that to the gas-man!” - -And they both laughed a little over the memory of a certain gas-man who -short circuited a private line in the basement of the Stock Exchange -building and through doing so upset one of the heaviest cotton brokerage -businesses in Wall Street. - -“Did you notice any of the other wires—power circuits, and that kind of -thing?” - -“Yes, I did; but there were too many of them! I know, though, that -Ottenheimer’s wires go south along our roof.” - -“Then the sooner we give a quiet ear to that gentleman’s conversations, -the better for us. Have you had any furniture moved in?” - -“It goes this evening. By the way, though, what _am_ I just at present?” - -Durkin thought for a moment, and then suddenly remembered her -incongruous love for needlework. - -“You had better be a hard-working maker of cotillion-favors, don’t you -think? You might have a little show-case put up outside.” - -She pondered the matter, drumming on the table with her impatient -fingers. “But how is all this going to put us inside that eight-ton -safe?” - -“That’s the trouble we’ve got to face!” he laughed back at her. - -“But haven’t you thought of anything, candidly?” - -“Yes, I have. I’ve been cudgeling my brains until I feel light-headed. -Now, nitro-glycerine I object to, it’s so abominably crude, and so -disgustingly noisy.” - -“And so odiously criminal!” she interpolated. - -“Precisely. We’re not exactly yeggmen yet. And it’s brain we’ve got to -cudgel, and not safe-doors! I mean, now that we really are mixed up in -this sort of thing, it’s better to do it with as clean fingers as -possible. Now, once more, speaking as an expert, by lighting a small -piece of sulphur, and using it as a sort of match to start and maintain -combustion, I could turn on a stream of liquid oxygen and burn through -that safe-steel about the same as a carpenter bores through a pine -board. But the trouble is in getting the oxygen. Then, again, if it was -a mere campaign of armour against the intruder, I could win out in quite -a different way. I could take powdered aluminum, mixed with some -metallic superoxide, such as iron-rust, and get what you’d call thermit. -Then I could take this thermit, and ignite it by means of a magnesium -wire, so that it would burn down through three inches of steel like a -handful of live coals through three inches of ice. That is, if we wanted -to be scientific and up-to-date. Or, even a couple of gallons of liquid -air, say, poured on the top of the safe, ought to chill the steel so -that one good blow from a sledge would crack it.” - -“But that, again, is only what cracksmen do, in a slightly different -way!” - -“But, of course, by tapping an exceptionally strong power-circuit -somewhere in the neighborhood, I could fuse portions of the steel with -electricity, and then cut it away like putty. Yet all that, you see, is -not only mechanical and coarse, and full of drawbacks, but it’s doing -what we don’t want to do. It’s absolutely ruining a valuable -deposit-vault, and might very well be interpreted as and called a -criminal destruction of property. We have no moral and legal right to -smash this gentleman’s safe. But in that safe lies a stone to which he -has neither moral nor legal right, and it’s the stone, and only the -stone, that we want.” - -“Then what are we to do?” - -“Use these thick heads of ours, as we ought. We must _think_, and not -_pound_ our way into that vault. I mean, Frank, that we have got to get -at that stone as Ottenheimer himself would!” - -They looked at each other for a minute of unbroken silence, the one -trying to follow the other’s wider line of thought. - -“Well, there is where our test comes in, I suppose,” said Frances, -valiantly, feeling for the first time a little qualm of doubt. - -Durkin, who had been plunged in thought, turned to her with a sudden -change of manner. - -“You’re a bad lot, Frank!” he said, warmly, catching her frail-looking -hands in his own. - -“I know it,” she answered, wistfully, leaning passively on her elbows. -“But some day I am going to change—we’re both going to change!” And she -stroked his studiously bent head with her hand, in a miserably -solicitous, maternal sort of way, and sighed heavily once or twice, -trying in vain to console herself with the question as to why a good -game should be spoilt by a doubtful philosophy. - - - - - CHAPTER X - - -Entrenched in her little top-floor studio, behind a show-case of -cotillion-favors, Miss Cecelia Starr sat in her wicker rocker, very -quietly and very contentedly sewing. She felt that it had been an -exceptionably profitable day for her. - -Three hairpins and a linen handkerchief held a watch-case receiver close -over her ear, after the style of the metallic ear-bands of a -central-office operator. Leading from this improvised ear-band and -trailing across the floor out into her private room at the back, ran a -green cloth-covered wire. This wire connected again with an -innocent-looking and ordinary desk-battery transmitter, rigged up with a -lever switch, and standing on a little table next to the wall, up which -might be detected the two bimetallic wires which, since ten o’clock that -morning, tapped and bridged the general wire connecting the offices of -Ottenheimer & Company with the outside world. - -From time to time the members of that firm went to their telephone, -little dreaming that a young lady, decorously sewing velvet -scissors-cases on a studio top-floor of another building, was quietly -listening to every message that passed in and out of their bustling -place of business. It was a strange medley of talk, some of it -incoherent, some of it dull, some of it amusing. Sometimes the busy -needle was held poised, and a more interested and startled expression -flitted over the shadowy violet eyes of Miss Cecelia Starr. At such -times she vaguely felt that she was a disembodied spirit, listening to -the hum of a far-away world, or, at other times, that she was an old -astrologer, gazing into some mystic and forbidden crystal. Still again, -as she listened, she felt like a veritable eagle, invisible, poised high -in ethereal emptiness, watching hungrily a dim and far-off sign of -earthly life and movement. - -Suddenly, from the street door sounded the familiar two-three ring of -Durkin. This door remained open during the day, and she waited for him -to come up. She went to her own door, however, and laughed girlishly as -he stepped into the room, mopping his moist forehead. There was a very -alert, nervous, triumphant expression in his eyes, and once again the -feeling swept over her that it was now crime, and crime alone, that -could stimulate into interest and still satisfy their fagged vitalities. -It was their one and only intoxication, the one thing that could awaken -them from their mental sloth and stir them from life’s shadowy valley of -disillusionment. - -Her quick eye had taken note of the fact that he wore a soiled blue -uniform, and the leather-peaked blue cap of a Consolidated Gas Company -employee, and that he carried with him a brass hand-pump. He laughed a -little to himself, put down his pump in one corner of the room, and -allowed his fingers to stray through his mutilated Vandyke, now a short -and straggly growth of sandy whiskers. Then he turned to her with an -unuttered query on his face. - -“I was right,” she said quietly, but hurriedly. - -“I never really doubted it!” - -“Ottenheimer has a private drawer in the vault. It’s in that. His wife -telephoned down very cautiously about it this morning. A little later, -too, Ottenheimer was called up from a Brooklyn drugstore, by a Mrs. Van -Gottschalk, or some such name, who said her husband was still in bed -with the grip, and couldn’t possibly get over until Monday. This man, -you see, is Ottenheimer’s diamond-cutter.” - -“Thank heaven, that gives us a little more time!” - -“Three days, at least! But what have you done, Jim?” - -“Been trying to persuade the janitor of the Ottenheimer Building that I -was sent to pump the water out of his gas-pipes,—but he was just as -sure that I wasn’t. I got down in his cellar, though, and had a good -look about, before I saw it wouldn’t do to push the thing too far. So I -insisted on going up and seeing the owner about that order. There was an -inside stairway, and a queer-looking steel door I wanted to get my -knuckles against. I started up there, but he hauled me back. I found -out, though, that this door is made of one-inch steel armor-plate. -There’s another door leading from the foot of the outer hallway into the -cellar itself. But that’s only covered with soft sheet-iron—more -against fire than anything else. Fifteen minutes will get through that -one, easily. It’s the inner door that is the problem. I tried it with a -knife-point, just one hard little jab. It took the end off my Roger’s -blade.” - -“But is this door the only way in?” - -“Absolutely; the rear is impossible, bricked-up; and the Avenue itself -is a little too conspicuous. The bolts of this door, as far as I can -make out, slide into heavy steel cups sunk in solid cement, and are -controlled, of course, from inside. Judging from the thickness of these, -and the sound of the door, it would take either a pound of soap and -nitro-glycerine on the one hand, or five hours of hard drilling with -diamond-point drills, on the other, to get through. We’ll say seven -hours, altogether, to get into the building. Then comes the safe, or, -rather, the vault itself. I had a casual glance at that safe this -morning, before I got these duds on—dropped in to purchase an -engagement ring, but was altogether too hard to suit. It’s a ten-tonner, -I believe, and about as burglar-proof as it can be made. Nothing but a -gallon of gun-cotton would make so much as a dent in it. But here again, -explosions are not in my line. We’ve got to use these wits of ours. -We’ve got to get in that safe, and we’ve got to get through that door! I -can’t risk six hours of machine-shop work down there; and I’m still too -respectable to drop into safe-cracking.” - -“Well, the combinations of that sort of vault, you know, aren’t often -advertised on the ash-barrels.” - -“What do you mean?” - -“I mean we have got to get it by our own wits, as you say.” - -“The janitor, old Campbell, leaves the building about ten-fifteen every -night. He’s also a sort of day-watchman, I find. He’s a pretty -intelligent and trusty old fellow, absolutely unapproachable from our -standpoint. Another thing, too, the place is webbed with Holmes’ -burglar-alarm apparatus. It would take another hour or so to get the -right wires cut off and bridged. I hate to feel squeamish at this stage -of the game—but that Ottenheimer safe does look uninviting!” - -Frances walked up and down, with the little watch-case receiver and its -handkerchief still crowning her heavy mass of dark hair, like a coronet, -and the green wires trailing behind her, like the outline of a -bridal-veil. She was thinking quickly and desperately. Suddenly she -stopped in the midst of her pacing, and looked hard at Durkin. - -“I’ve found it,” she said, in a feverish half-whisper. “We’ve got to do -it!” - -Durkin looked at her gloomily, still struggling with his own line of -fruitless thought. - -“Here, Jim, quick, take this and listen!” She placed the receiver close -to his ear as she spoke. “Now, that’s Ottenheimer himself at the ’phone. -Can you catch his voice distinctly? Well, do you notice what kind of -voice it is—its timbre, I mean? A plaintive-toned, guttural, suave, -mean, cringing sort of voice! Listen hard. He may not be at the ’phone -again today. Is he still talking?” - -“Yes, the old scoundrel. There, he’s finished!” - -“What was it about?” - -“Just kicking to some one down in Maiden Lane, because Judge Hazel, of -the District Court, has overruled the board of appraisers and imposed a -ten per cent. _ad valorem_ duty on natural pearls coming in.” - -“But his voice—Jim, you have got to learn to imitate that voice.” - -“And then what?” - -“Then cut in, presumably from Ottenheimer’s own house, and casually ask, -say, Phipps, the second salesman, and head of the shipping department, -just what your safe-combination happens to be. It has slipped your -memory, you see?” - -“And Phipps, naturally, in such a case, will ring up Central and verify -the call.” - -“Not necessarily. At the first call from him we shall cut his wire!” - -“Which cuts us off, and gives us away, as soon as a special messenger -can deliver a message and a lineman trace up the trouble.” - -“Then why cut him off at all? If that’s too risky, should the worst come -to the worst, we can tell Central it’s a case of crossed wires, bewilder -her a bit, and then shut ourselves off.” - -“I believe you’ve almost got it.” - -“But can you get anywhere near that voice?” - -“Listen, Frank; how’s this?” - -He drew in his chin, half-laughingly, and throwing his voice into a -whining yet businesslike guttural, spoke through an imaginary -transmitter to an imaginary Phipps. - -“That would never, never do!” cried the other, despairingly. “He’s a -German Jew, if you have noticed—he sounds his w’s like w’s, and not -like v’s, but he makes his _r_’s like w’s.” - -“Oh, I have it,” broke in Durkin, from a silent contemplation of his -desk-’phone. “We’ll just release the binding-posts on our transmitter a -little, and, let’s say, keep the electrode-bearing a trifle slack—fix -things up, I mean, so that any voice will sound as tinny as a -phonograph—decompose it, so to speak. Then, if necessary, we can lay it -to the fact that the wires are out of order somewhere!” - -“Good, but when—when can we do it?” - -Durkin paced the room with his old-time, restless, animal-like stride, -while Frances readjusted her receiver and restlessly took her seat in -the wicker rocker once more. - -“This is Friday. That leaves Saturday night the only possible night for -the—er—invasion. Then, you see, we get a whole day for a margin. -First, we’ve got to find out exactly what time Ottenheimer himself -leaves the place, and whether it’s Phipps, or some one else, who closes -up, and just what time he does it.” - -“They close at half-past five on Saturdays. Ottenheimer has already made -an engagement for tomorrow, about five at the Astor, with an importer, -to doctor up some invoice or other.” - -“We could make that do; though, of course, any one in his office would -be more likely to suspect a call from the Astor, being a public place. -You must find out, definitely, this afternoon, just who it is closes up -tomorrow. Then we must get hold of some little business detail or two, -to fling in at him in case he has any suspicions.” - -“That shouldn’t be so very difficult. Though I do wish you could get -something nearer Ottenheimer’s voice!” - -“I’ll have a rehearsal or two alone—though, I guess, we can muffle up -that ’phone to suit our purpose. My last trouble now, is to find out how -I’m going to get through those two doors without powder.” - -Again he fell to pacing the little room with his abstracted stride, -silently testing contingency after contingency, examining and rejecting -the full gamut of possibilities. Sometimes he stood before the woman -with the receiver, staring at her with vacant and unseeing eyes; at -other times he paced between her and the window. Then he paused before -the little green coils of wire that stretched across the room. He -studied them with involuntary and childish movements of the head and -hands. Then he suddenly stood erect, ran to the back window, and flung -it open. - -“My God, I’ve got it!” he cried, running back to where the woman still -sat, listening, “I’ve got it!” - -“How?” she asked, catching her breath. - -“I’ve got to eat my way through what may be, for all I know, a full inch -of Harveyized steel. I’ve got to burrow and work through it in some way, -haven’t I? It has to be done quickly, too. I’ve got to have power, -strong power.” - -He stopped, suddenly, and seemed to be working out the unmastered -details in his own mind, his eyes bent on a little shelf in one corner -of the room. - -“Have you ever seen an electric fan? You see this shelf, up here in the -corner! Well, at one time, an electric fan stood there—see, here are -the remnants of the wires. It stood there whirling away at five or six -thousand revolutions to the minute, and with no more power than it takes -to keep an ordinary office-lamp alight. Right at the back of this house -is a wire, a power-circuit, alive with more than two hundred times that -voltage, with power in plenty—a little condensed Niagara of -power—asking to be taken off and made use of!” - -“But what use?” - -“I can capture and tame and control that power, Frank. I can make it my -slave, and carry it along with me, almost in my pocket, on a mere thread -of copper. I can make it a living, iron-eating otter, with a dozen -fangs—in the shape of quarter-inch drills, gnawing and biting and -eating through that armor-plate door about the same as a rat would gnaw -through a wooden lath. Oh, we’ve got them, Frank! We’ve got them this -time!” - -“Not until we know that combination, though,” qualified the -colder-thoughted woman in the wicker rocker, still not quite -understanding how or in what the other had found so potent and so -unexpected an ally. And while he leaned out of the window, studying the -wire-distribution, she discreetly slipped her watch-case receiver over -her head, in case anything of importance should be going through over -the telephone. - - - - - CHAPTER XI - - -In the paling afternoon, with a pearl-mist of fine rain thinly shrouding -the city, Frances Candler waited for Durkin impatiently, with her watch -open before her. As the frail steel hand, implacable as fate, sank away -toward the half-hour mark, her own spirits sank with it. It was not -often Durkin was late. Another ten minutes would make him forever too -late. She debated within herself whether or not she should risk her own -voice over the wire to Ottenheimer’s office, while there was yet time, -or wait it out to the last. Then she remembered, to her sudden horror, -that the transmitter still stood in its perfectly-adjusted and normal -condition, that there could be no muffling, incompetent mechanism to -disguise the tones of her voice. - -She was still beating despairingly through a tangle of dubious -possibilities when the reassuring two-three ring of the door-bell -sounded out, through the quiet of the lonely twilight, with startling -clearness. A minute later Durkin came panting into the room. He was -clean-shaven, immaculate, and most painfully out-of-breath. - -“Is there time?” he gasped, putting down a heavy suit-case and peeling -off his coat as he spoke. - -“It’s twenty-one minutes after five. If Phipps is punctual, that gives -you only four minutes.” - -By this time Durkin had the suit-case open. In another half-minute he -had the casing off the transmitter. Then a deft turn or two with his -screw-driver, a tentative touch or two on the electrode, and in another -half minute the casing was restored, and he was gently tapping on the -diaphragm of the transmitter, with the receiver at his ear, testing the -sound. - -“Just a minute, now, till I cool down, and get my breath! I had endless -trouble getting my drill apparatus—at one time I thought I’d have to -take a dentist’s tooth-driller, or some such thing. But I got what I -wanted—that’s what kept me. Anything new?” - -He turned with the receiver still at his ear, and for the first time -looked at her closely. Her face seemed pale, and a little weary-looking, -against her black street-gown; the shadowy wistfulness about her eyes -seemed more marked than ever. - -“Yes,” she was laughing back at him, however, “something most prodigious -has happened. I have an order for one dozen cotillion-favors, to be done -in velvet and crimson satin, and delivered next Saturday afternoon!” - -Durkin himself laughed shortly, and faced the telephone once more, -asking her how time was. - -“You haven’t a second to lose!” - -His own face was a little paler than usual as he stood before the -transmitter, while Frances, with her watch in her hand, went on saying -that, if Phipps was punctual, he would be out and away in one minute’s -time. - -Durkin took a last look around, said under his breath, “Well, here -goes!” and placed the receiver to his ear. - -For a moment the woman, watching him, with half-parted lips, was haunted -by the sudden impression that she had lived through the scene before, -that each move and sound were in some way second-hand to her inner -consciousness, older than time itself, a blurred and dateless photograph -on the plates of memory. - -“Hello! Hello! Is that you, Phipps?” she heard him say, and his voice -sounded thin and far-away. There was a pause—it seemed an endless -pause—and he repeated the query, louder. - -“This is Ottenheimer. Yes, something wrong with the ’phone. Don’t cable -Teetzel—I say don’t cable Teetzel, about those canary diamonds, until -you see me. Yes, Teetzel. Did you get that? Well,—er—what the devil’s -our safe combination? Yes, yes, Ottenheimer!” - -“Slower—slower, Jim!” groaned the girl, behind him. - -“Combination’s slipped my mind, Phipps. Yes; after dinner; want to run -down and look over the books. Louder, please; I can’t hear. Yes, that’s -better. To the right three times, to seventy-four—back thirty—on -eighty-two—back one hundred and eight—and on seven. Yes. It’s the -second last figure slipped me. Better close up now. Better close up, I -say. All right,—good-bye!” - -The last minute vibration ebbed out of the transmitter’s tingling -diaphragm; but still neither the listening man nor woman moved. They -waited, tense, expectant, tossed between doubt and hope, knowing only -too well that the questioning tinkle of a little polished, nickel bell -would sound the signal of their absolute and irreparable defeat. - -Second by second, a minute dragged itself away. Then another, and -another, and still no call came from Ottenheimer’s office, for Central. -The woman moved a little restlessly. The man sighed deeply. Then he -slowly put down the receiver, and mopped his moist face and forehead. - -“I think he’s safe,” half-whispered Durkin, with his eyes still on the -transmitter. - -“He may suspect any moment though—when he’s had time to think it over, -especially.” - -“I rather doubt it. Our voices were nothing but broken squeaks. But if -he does ring up Central, we’ll have to risk it and jump in and claim a -wire’s crossed somewhere.” - -Then he repeated the strange formula: “To the right three times, to -seventy-four—back thirty—on eighty-two—back one hundred and -eight—and on seven. Can you get it down, Frank?” - -She nodded, as she wrote it in pencil, on a slip of paper. This he -placed in his waistcoat pocket, and mopped his face once more, -laughing—perhaps a little hysterically, as he watched the ’phone and -felt the passing minutes drip relievingly, like the softest of balm, on -his strained nerves. - -“And now what?” asked Frances, sharing his relief, as he went to the -window, and breathed the fresh air that blew in through the -low-ceilinged little studio. - -“Now,” said Durkin, jubilantly, “now we begin our real work!” He opened -his suit-case and handed her a heavy, cylindrical, steel implement. Into -one end of this odd-looking tool he slipped and clamped a slender, -polished little shaft of grooved steel. - -“That’s what nearly lost me everything,” he continued, carefully -unpacking, as he spoke, a condenser, a tangent galvanometer, a pair of -lineman’s-gloves, a Warner pocket battery-gauge, a pair of electrician’s -scissors and pliers, two or three coils of wire, a half-a-dozen pony -glass insulators, and a handful or two of smaller tools. - -“Here, you see, is what I set up business with,” he soliloquized, as he -studied the litter they made on the floor. He looked up quickly, as she -drew her little table out from the wall and lifted the transmitter up on -the empty electric-fan shelf. “Er—before I forget it,” he said, -absently, his eyes still on his widely strewn apparatus, “have you got -everything you want away from here?” - -She had; though she hated to leave her show-case, she said. Some day she -might like to take up fancy sewing again. “But before we do another -thing,” she insisted, “we ought to have dinner. Breakfast, this morning, -was our last meal, I know!” - -And to his utter astonishment, Durkin remembered that he was famished. - -It was a hurried and humble little meal they ate together in the failing -light,—a meal of sandwiches washed down with bottled milk. Their -thoughts as they ate, however, were on other things, grappling with -impending problems, wondering when and under what circumstances their -next meal would be eaten, almost glorying in the very uncertainty of -their future, tingling with the consciousness of the trial they were to -undergo, of the hazard they essayed. Then Durkin, as he smoked, laid out -his final plan of action, point by premeditated point. - - - - - CHAPTER XII - - -At twenty minutes to eleven, slipping off his shoes, Durkin climbed -cautiously through the transom opening out on the roof. Creeping as -carefully from chimney tier to chimney tier, he found himself face to -face with a roof-fence of sharpened iron rods. He counted down this -fence to the eighteenth rod, then carefully lifted on it. The lead that -sealed it in the lower cross-piece, and into the stone beneath that -again, had been strangely fused away, and the loosened rod slid up -through the top horizontal bar very much like a miniature portcullis. -Squeezing through this narrow opening, he carefully replaced the rod -behind him. With a flattened piece of steel, once used for a furnace -poker, and looking very much like a gigantic tack-drawer, he slowly and -gently forced the bolt that held shut the transom on the Ottenheimer -building. This he replaced, after passing through, paying out with him -as he went, two coils of rubber-coated wire, in appearance not unlike a -large size of incandescent lamp cord. - -From the photographer’s studio in which he found himself, nothing but a -draw-bolt kept him from an outside hallway. Making sure that the -building was deserted, and everything safe, he worked his way slowly -down, like a diver, stair by stair, to the basement. Here he made a -careful study of the little tunnel of electric wires at the back of the -lower hall, probing, testing, measuring, and finally, with cool -deliberation, “bridging” the necessary portion of the burglar-alarm -connection, which he knew to be operated on a closed circuit. This -circuit he diverted as a miner diverts a troublesome stream. Then, -holding before him his little two-candle incandescent lamp, scarcely -bigger than his thumb nail, he groped toward the iron covered door that -divided one-half of the building from the other. - -Here he directed his thin shaft of light into the crack between the -heavy door and its studding, and his squinting eyes made out the iron -lock-bar that held him out. From his vest pocket, where they stood in a -row like glimmering pencils, he took out one of the slim steel drills, -adjusted it noiselessly in the drill-flange, and snapped shut his -switch. There was the quick spit of a blue spark, and of a sudden, the -inanimate thing of steel throbbed and sang and quivered with mysterious -life. As he glanced down at it, in its fierce revolutions, he realized -that once more he had for an accomplice that old-time silent, and -ever-ready assistant which for years had been a well-tested and faithful -friend. The mere companionship with so familiar a force brought back to -him his waning confidence. - -He forced the whirling drill through the door-crack and in against the -bar. It ate through the soft iron as though it had been a bar of cheese. -Eight carefully placed perforations, side by side, had severed the end -of the lockshaft. He shut off the current, confidently, and swung open -the heavy door. The falling piece of iron made a little tinkle of sound -on the cement flooring, then all was silence again. He had at least, he -told himself, captured the enemy’s outposts. - -Cautiously he felt his way across the warm cellar, up the steps, and at -last faced his one definite barrier, the door of solid steel, abutted by -even more solid masonry. The builders of that door had done their best -to make it forbidding to men of his turn of mind, Durkin ruminated, as -he felt and sounded and tested despondently over its taciturn painted -surface. - -He studied the hinges carefully, through his tiny lamp. They were -impregnable. As he had surmised, his only way was to cut out, inch by -inch, the three heavy steel shafts, or bolt-bars, which slipped and -fitted into steel casings also, apparently, embedded in solid masonry. - -Adjusting his drill, he closed the switch once more, and, bracing the -instrument’s head against his breast-bone, watched the slender, humming, -spinning shaft bite and grind and burrow its way into the slowly -yielding bar. From a little pocket-can, every minute or two, he squirted -kerosene in on the drill-tip. The pungent smell of the scorching oil, as -it spread on the heated steel, rose almost suffocatingly to his nostrils -in the furnace-heated warmth of the cellar and for weeks afterwards -remained an indistinct and odious memory to him. - -When his first hole was bored, and his little drill raced wildly through -into space, like the screw of a liner on the crest of a wave, he started -a second, close beside the first; then a third, and a fourth, and a -fifth, slowly honeycombing the thick steel with his minute excavations. -Sometimes a drill would snap off short, and he would have to draw a -fresh one from his stock. Sometimes it did not bite sharply, and he -tried another. And still he stood drilling, directing the power of his -silent, insidious, untiring accomplice, whose spirit crooned and burned -and sighed itself out through the wire at his feet. - -As he worked, he lost all track of time; after he had started what he -knew to be the last hole, he stopped and looked at his watch, as -casually as he had done often enough after a night of operating the key -in a despatcher’s office. To his horror, he saw that it had stopped, -stunned with a natural enough electrolytic paralysis. It might not yet -be twelve, or it might be four in the morning; time, from the moment he -had taken off his shoes in Frances Candler’s little back room, had been -annihilated to him. He wondered, in sudden alarm, if she were still -maintaining her patrol outside, up and down the block. He wondered, too, -as he drove the little drill home for the last time, and cautiously -pried open the great, heavy door, if she had sent any signal in from the -street front, and he had missed it. He even wondered, quakingly, if -daylight would not overtake them at their work—when his startled eyes, -chancing to fall on a nearby clock-dial, saw that the hour was only -twenty-five minutes to twelve. - -Step by step he crept back to the inner offices, followed by the -murmurous ticking of a dozen noisy clocks, declaiming his presence. From -the door in front of where the safe stood, gloomy, ominous, -impregnable-looking, he lifted a seemingly innocent rubber mat. As he -thought, it had been attached to a burglar-alarm apparatus. Dropping on -one knee, he repeated his formula, number by number, each time listening -for the telltale click of the falling ward. Then, turning the nickel -lock-knob, he heard the many-barred lock chuck back into place. - -The next moment the ponderous doors were open, and Durkin’s little -thumb-nail electric lamp was exploring the tiers of inner compartments. - -He still carried his drill with him; and, once he had found the private -drawer he wanted, the softer iron of the inner fittings offered little -resistance to a brutally impatient one-eighth bit. After two minutes of -feverish work, he was able to insert the point of his furnace poker into -the drawer, and firmly but gently pry it open. - -The next moment his blackened and oily fingers were rummaging carelessly -through a fortune or two of unset stones—through little trays of -different tinted diamonds, through crowded little cases of Ceylon pearls -and Uralian emeralds. At last, in a smaller compartment, marked “I. -Ottenheimer,” he found a gun-metal case sealed up in an envelope. The -case itself, however, was securely locked. Durkin hesitated for one half -second; then he forced the lid open with his steel screw-driver. - -One look was enough. It held the Blue Pear. - -He stooped and carefully brushed up the steel cuttings under his -shoeless feet. As carefully he closed the inner drawers of the safe. His -hand was on the nickel lock-knob once more, to swing the ponderous outer -doors shut, when a sound fell on his ears, a sound that made his very -blood chill and tingle and chill again through all his tense body. - -It was Frank’s voice, outside the same building in which he stood, not a -hundred feet away from him, her voice shrilly screaming for help. - -His first mad impulse was to rush out to her, blindly. A second -precautionary flash of thought kept him rooted to the spot, where he -stood listening. He could hear confused, sharp voices, and the scuffling -of feet. He heard the quick scream again; then guttural, angry protests. -Some subliminal prompting told Durkin that that scream was not one of -terror, but of warning. - -Snapping out his incandescent lamp, he stole cautiously forward through -the row of partitioned, heavily-carpeted little offices, and, without -showing himself, peered toward the shop-front. As he did so, a second -involuntary thrill of apprehension sped up and down his backbone. The -street-door itself was open. Already half way in through that door was a -dark, stoutly-built man. He stood struggling in the arms of a determined -young woman. That woman, Durkin could see, was Frances Candler. And all -the while that she was clinging to him and holding him she was crying -lustily for help. - -The next moment Durkin made out the man. It was Ottenheimer, himself. -For some unknown reason, he hastily surmised, the diamond merchant had -intended to drop into his own office. But why, he still asked, was Frank -taking such risks? - -Durkin did not try to work the thing out in its minute details. Like a -flash, he darted back to the open safe. He swung the big doors to, -locked them, caught up his drill, and the loose strands of wire, and -then backed quickly out through the steel door, securing it with a deft -twist or two of a piece of his number twelve. The outer cellar door he -as quickly closed after him. - -Then he flew upstairs, two steps at a time, rebolted the photographers’ -hall door, replaced the transom as he swung up through it, and as -hurriedly refitted the loose iron bar in the roof-fencing. - -Three minutes later, a well-dressed gentleman, wearing a black hat and -carrying a large leather suit-case, stopped, with a not unnatural -curiosity, on his way up Fifth Avenue, to inquire the meaning of an -excited little crowd that clustered about two policemen and a woman in -the doorway of Ottenheimer & Company. - -He drew up, casually enough, and listened while a short, stout, and very -indignant man spluttered and gesticulated and angrily demanded how any -one should dare to stop him from going into his own store. He was the -owner of the place—there was his own watchman to identify him,—and -somebody would be “broke” for this tomfoolery, he declared, with a shake -of the fist toward the silent sergeant beside him. - -The young woman, who chanced to be veiled, explained in her -well-modulated, rich contralto voice that the hour had seemed so -unusual, the store had looked so dark inside, even the burglar-alarm, -she stubbornly insisted, had rung so loudly, that, naturally, it had -made her suspicious. She was sorry if it was a mistake. But now the -officers were there; they could attend to it—if some one would kindly -call a taxi for her. - -The sergeant between her and Ottenheimer agreed with her, and stepping -out and stopping an empty motor-cab on its way up the Avenue, turned -back to the still enraged owner of the store and solicitously advised -him to go home and cool down. - -“You hold that woman!” demanded Ottenheimer, husky with rage. “You hold -that woman, until I examine these premises!” - -The young woman, obviously, and also quite naturally, objected to being -held. There was a moment of puzzled silence, and then a murmur of -disapproval from the crowd, for about the carefully gloved girl in the -black street-gown and plumed hat clung that nameless touch of birth and -bearing which marked her as a person who would be more at home in a -limousine than in a wind-swept doorway. - -“The lady, of course, will wait!” quietly but deliberately suggested the -black-hatted man with the suit-case, looking casually in over the -circling crowd of heads. - -The sergeant turned, sharply, glaring out his sudden irritability. - -“Now, who asked you to butt in on this?” he demanded, as he impatiently -elbowed the pressing crowd further out into a wider circle. - -“I merely suggested that the lady wait,” repeated the man in the black -hat, as unperturbed as before. - -“Of course, officer, I shall wait, willingly,” said the girl, hurriedly, -in her equally confident, low-noted rich contralto. She drew her skirts -about her, femininely, merely asking that the shop-owner might make his -search as quickly as possible. - -Ottenheimer and the doubtful-minded sergeant disappeared into the gloom -of the midnight store. As the whole floor flowered into sudden electric -luminousness, Durkin thanked his stars that he had had sense enough to -leave the lighting wires intact. - -“Everything’s all right; you may go, miss,” said the sergeant, two -minutes later. “I guess old Isaac’s had an early nightmare!” And the -dispersing crowd laughed sympathetically. - -The woman stepped into the motor-cab, and turned toward Broadway. - -Safely round the corner, she picked up the waiting Durkin. - -“That was a close one—but we win!” he murmured jubilantly. - -“You’ve got it?” - -“I’ve got it,” he exulted. - -The woman at his side, for some vague reason, could not share in his -joy. Intuitively, in that moment of exhaustion, she felt that their -triumph, at the most, was a mere conspiracy of indifference on the part -of a timeless and relentless destiny. And in the darkness of the -carriage she put her ineffectual arms about Durkin, passionately, as -though such momentary guardianship might shield him for all time to -come. - -She shook her abstractedness from her, with a long and fluttering sigh. - -“Jim,” she asked him, unexpectedly, “how much money have you?” - -He told her, as nearly as he could. “It’s hanged little, you see!” he -added, not understanding the new anxiety that was eating at her -heart,—“but I’ve been thinking of a plan!” - -“Oh, what now?” she asked miserably, out of her weariness. - -She knew, well enough, the necessity of keeping up, of maintaining both -activity and appearances. She knew that wrong-doing such as theirs, when -without even its mockery of respectability and its ironical touch of -dignity, was loathsome to both the eye and the soul. But she found that -there were moods and times, occurring now more and more frequently, when -she dreaded each return to that subterranean and fear-haunted world. She -dreaded it now, not so much for herself, as for Durkin; and as he -briefly told her of his plan, this feeling grew stronger within her. - -“Then if it must be done,” she cried, “let _me_ do the worst part of -it!” - -He looked at her, puzzled, not comprehending the source of her -passionate cry, blindly wondering if her over-adventurous life was not -getting a deeper and deeper hold on her. But her next question put him -to shame. - -“Jim, if I help you in this, if I do all that has to be done, will you -promise me that you will make it bring you closer to your work on your -amplifier, and your transmitting camera? Can’t you promise to get back -to that decent work once more?” - -“I’ll promise, if you’ll make me one promise in return,” said Durkin, -after a moment of silent thought. - -“What is it?” she asked. - -“Will you let me hold over this Singford stone, for a few weeks?” - -“But why?” she asked, aghast. - -“To oil the curtain that has to go up on our next act!” he answered, -grimly. “I mean a few hundred, now, would make things so simple again.” - -“No,” she protested fiercely, “it must not, it shall not, be done. The -Blue Pear must go back to London tomorrow!” - -“It will mean some hard work for us both, then.” - -“I can’t help that, Jim. We’ll have to face it together. But this stone -is a thing we can’t trifle with, or equivocate over. I should hate -myself, I should even hate _you_, if I thought it wasn’t to go back to -London, by express, tomorrow morning!” - -“Then back it goes!” said the man at her side. He could see, even in the -dim light of the taxi, the rebellious and wounded look that had crept -into her face. - -“Whatever it brought me, I couldn’t endure your hate!” he said, taking -her hand in his. - - - - - CHAPTER XIII - - -As a result of her midnight conference with Durkin, Frances Candler -learned many things. One of these was the fact that the life into which -she had flung herself was proving a captor that already threatened to -extort a cruelly impossible ransom. Another was the discovery that -Durkin stood even deeper than she did in those conspiratorial quicksands -from which she tore one limb only to be engulfed by another. For all -along, she saw, he had been a quiet observant _intrigant_, conspiring -against a new field of activity toward which she had not even thought to -glance. - -For after that hurried midnight talk she knew that the Secretary of -Agriculture, at Washington, from time to time received sealed mail -reports from the South as to the condition of the cotton crop. She also -learned that there had been a series of startling and disastrous “leaks” -from these confidential government reports, and that a private wire now -connected the office of the Department with Savannah and New Orleans. -Durkin had already ascertained that over this wire, on the last day, or -the last “market” day, of each month, until the leakage had been -stopped, would pass those despatches and figures on which the Department -of Agriculture would verify and base its monthly report of the cotton -outlook. - -“That system is going to be kept up,” Durkin had explained to her, -“until the Secretary finds out who is stealing the figures and doing the -manipulating on them in the New York Cotton Exchange. At any rate, I -know he’s going to keep this wire in use until the decent brokers stop -bombarding him and the Census Bureau with their telegrams about -collusion and fraud. But here’s the point that interests us. If this -present wire report turns out to be favorable, the feverish way the -market stands now, it means, of course that there’s going to be a pretty -serious break in Cotton Exchange trading. But, on the other hand, if -this short-cut official report carries the news of a shortage, it’s as -plain as day that Curry and all the other New York bears will have a -lever to pry up the price of cotton with, high as it stands already.” - -“And what is it we want to know?” she had asked. - -“We’ve got to find out which way that report goes—whether it’s good or -bad. I’ll be here in New York, waiting to get your cipher message over a -Postal-Union wire. Whichever way it goes, I’ll govern myself -accordingly, jump into the market with every penny I have, and do -precisely what three hundred highly respectable brokers have been doing -for the last two months. The only thing that makes me hot is that I -haven’t a few thousand, instead of a paltry few hundred, to fling into -it!” - -Her instructions were brief, but explicit. While he waited in New York, -ready to act on word from her, she was to hurry to Washington, and from -Washington go on to the somnolent little Virginia town of Leeksville. -This town, Durkin had already made sure, lay on the route of the -Department of Agriculture’s New Orleans wire. - -On the main street of the little town through which this wire ran stood -a ramshackle, three-storied wooden hotel. From the top floor of this -hotel every wire that went humming like a harp of haste through that -avenue of quietness was easily accessible. Any person enlightened and -audacious enough to pick it out from among its companions and attach to -it a few feet of “No. 12” and a properly graduated relay would find the -rest of his task astoundingly easy. As Durkin had pointed out, already -knowing what they did, the one great problem lay in getting unsuspected -into the third-floor room of that wooden Leeksville hotel. - -With a jointed split-bamboo fishing-pole, neatly done up in a parasol -cover, and with her complete wire-tapping outfit as neatly packed away -in a dress-suit case, Frances Candler ten hours later registered at that -ancient and unsavory-looking hostelry. A weary and bedraggled theatrical -company, which had just made the late “jump” from Fredericksburg, -preceded her, and she made it a point to approach the desk at the heels -of a half-a-dozen noisy chorus girls. - -There she asked for a top-floor room. - -The over-gallant clerk insisted that she should go anywhere but on the -top floor. There would be no difference in the cost of the rooms, to -her. He would make that, indeed, a personal matter. - -“But I prefer the top floor,” she maintained, biting her lip and giving -no other sign of her indignation. - -The clerk insisted that the climb would be too much for her; and most of -the floor, he explained, was given over to the servants. - -She began to despair. - -“But I sleep lightly—and I _must_ have seclusion!” - -The perturbed clerk protested that in Leeksville noises were unknown by -day, much less by night. A circle of rotunda idlers now stood behind -her, taking in the scene. A flash of inspiration came to her. - -“I’ve _got_ to go up to the top, I tell you!” she cried, impatiently. -“Can’t you see I’ve got asthma!” - -And the angry asthmatic woman in the heavy veil was finally surrendered -to the loneliness and discomfort of her southwest corner room on the -barren and carpetless third floor. - -There she quietly unpacked her suit-case, jointed her pole of split -bamboo, attached and graduated her relay, and fingered noiselessly -through the tangle of wires beneath her window for that one and -essential thread of metal along which was to flash the departmental -cotton reports, between New Orleans and Washington. - -There, hour after hour, she sat and waited and watched; and it was late -in the next morning that, white and worn-out, she detached the -unobserved wire, hurried off her brief despatch in cipher, ordered -breakfast up to her room, and even before undressing fell into a long -and restless slumber. - -That day, in her narrow little corn-husk bed, she dreamed that she and -Durkin had tunnelled under the Potomac River and had carried away the -last ounce of gold from the United States Treasury. How many millions -they had taken it was beyond them even to count. But she knew they were -escaping in submarines and were being breathlessly pursued by the entire -North Atlantic fleet. And her one great fear, during all that agonized -and endless pursuit, seemed not that she was destined either to final -capture, or to final suffocation, but that, in some way, she might -become separated from Durkin. - - - - - CHAPTER XIV - - -Durkin waited, with the receiver at his ear. Once more the signal-bell -shrilled and cluttered its curtly hurried warning. A vague yet nasal and -half-impatient voice murmured brokenly out of somewhere to some one: -“You’re connected now—go ahead.” - -Then came a grating rasp and drone, a metallic click or two, and out of -the stillness there floated in to his waiting ear the space-filtered -music of an anxious “Hello”—flute-like, mellow, far-away. - -It seemed to him there, under the stress of his passing mood, that an -incorporeal presence had whispered the word to him. Suddenly, for the -first time in his life, the miracle of it all came home to him, the -mystery and magic of that tenuous instrument, which could guide, and -treasure, and carry in to him through the night the very tone and timbre -of that one familiar voice, flashing it so many miles through star-hung -forest and hill and valley, threading it on through sleeping towns and -turbulent cities, winging it through wind and water unerringly home to -his waiting ear. - -“Hello!” the anxious contralto was asking again. - -“Hello?” cried Durkin, pent in the little bald speaking-closet, yet his -face illuminated with a wonderful new alertness. “Hello! Is that you, -Frank?” - -A ripple of relieved laughter ebbed out of the wire. - -“Oh, Jim,” sounded the far-away voice in his ear, sighingly. “It seems -so good!” - -“Where are you?” - -“In Washington, at the Arlington office.” - -He chuckled a little, as though the accomplishment of the miracle, the -annihilation of so many miles of space, was a matter of his own personal -triumph. - -“Here we’re talking together through three hundred miles of midnight!” -he boasted to her. - -“Yes, I know; but I wish it wasn’t so far! Did you recognize my voice -there?” - -“I’d know that voice in—in Hell!” he answered, with a sudden grim but -inadequate earnestness. He had hoped to say something fitting and fine, -but, as always seemed to happen to him in such moments, his imagination -foundered in the turbulence of his emotions. - -“You may have to some day, my poor Orpheus!” she was laughing back at -him. - -But the allusion was lost on Durkin, and he cut in with a curt, “What’s -happened?” - -“I want to come home!” It must have been a good night for ’phoning, he -felt, as he heard those five cogent words, and an inconsequential little -glow suffused him. Not an ohm of their soft wistfulness, not a coulomb -of their quiet significance, had leaked away through all their hundreds -of miles of midnight travel. It almost seemed that he could feel the -intimate warmth of her arms across the million-peopled cities that -separated them; and he projected himself, in fancy, to the heart of the -far-off turbulence where she stood. There, it seemed to him, she -radiated warmth and color and meaning to the barren wastes of life, a -glowing and living ember in all the dead ashes of unconcern. And again -it flashed through him, as the wistful cadence of her voice died down on -the wire, that she was all that he had in life, and that with her, -thereafter, he must rise or sink. - -“I want to come home,” she was repeating dolefully. - -“You’ve _got_ to come, and come quick!” - -“What was that?” - -“I say, risk it and come,” he called back to her. “Something has -happened!” - -“Something happened? Not bad news, is it?” - -“No—but it will open your eyes, when you hear it!” - -“Everything at my end has been done, you know.” - -“You mean it came out all right?” - -“Not quite all right, but I think it will do. Is it safe for me to tell -you something?” - -“Yes, anything in reason, I guess.” - -“Curry’s men in New Orleans are working against him!” - -“Let me add something to that. Green and his men are trying to break -Curry, and Curry all the time is laying a mine under every blessed one -of them!” and Durkin gave vent to a triumphant chuckle, deep down in his -throat. - -“Where did you find this out?” the unperturbed and far-away contralto -was demanding. - -“You could never guess.” - -“Talk faster, or this telephoning will break us!” she warned him. - -“Oh, I don’t care—it’s worth the money.” - -“Hello—Hello! Oh, all right. Go on!” - -“You heard about the fire in the Terminal Room of the Postal-Union? -No—well, some dago with a torch got a little too careless in a P. U. -conduit, and set fire to a cable-splicer’s pot of paraffin down on lower -Broadway, not much more than a hundred yards from Wall Street itself. -Then the flames caught on the burlap and the insulating grease and stuff -round the cables—can you hear me? There was the dickens to pay, and in -about ten minutes they looked more like a cart-load of old excelsior -than the business wires of a few thousand offices!” - -“Yes, go on!” - -“Well, it stopped nine thousand telephones, and put over two hundred -stock-tickers out of business, and cut off nearly five hundred of the -Postal-Union wires, and left all lower New York without even fire-alarm -service. That’s saying nothing of the out-of-town wires, and the long -distance service,—did you get all that?” - -“Perfectly.” - -“Well, there’s a lot more to tell, but it will keep—say till Thursday -night. You may be able to imagine just what it is, from what I’ve told -you; but listen: I think I can open your eyes, when you get here!” he -repeated, slowly and significantly. - -“All right—even a Great Western wire might have ears, you know!” she -warned him. - -“Quite so, but how about your Savannah information? There’s nothing -new?” - -“Nothing. But you saw the newspaper stories?” - -“The Herald yesterday said the Secretary of Agriculture had demanded -from the Savannah Cotton Exchange the name of a wire-house that -bulletined a government crop report thirty minutes ahead of the official -release.” - -“Yes, that’s Dunlap & Company. They are frantic. They still declare -there was no leak, and are fighting it out with the department here at -Washington. In the meantime, luckily for us, they are, of course, -sending out press-statements saying it was all a coincidence between -their firm’s private crop-estimate and the actual government report. I -couldn’t give you much of a margin of time to work on.” - -“That thirty minutes just gave me time to get in on the up-town -quotations. I missed the lower office, of course.” - -“Hadn’t we better hold this over?” - -“Yes; I rather forgot—it’ll wait until you get here.” - -“Then Thursday night, at eight, say, at the Grenoble!” - -“No, no; make it nine forty-five—I don’t get away until then.” - -“What would the Grenoble people say?” - -“That’s so—you had better go to the Ralston. It’s free and easy. Yes, -the Ralston,” he repeated. “The Ralston, at nine forty-five, Thursday. -Good-bye!” - -A moment later he could hear the frantic signal-bell again. - -“Hello! Hello! What is it?” - -“Hello, New York! Not through yet,” said the tired and nasal voice of -the operator. - -“You forgot something!” It was the contralto voice this time, -reproachful and wounded. Durkin laughed a little as he leaned closer to -the mouth-piece of his transmitter. - -“Good-bye, dearest!” he said. - -“Good-bye, my beloved own!” answered the wire, across its hundreds of -miles of star-strewn midnight. - -Durkin hung up his receiver with a sigh, and stopped at the office to -pay his bill. All that was worth knowing and having, all that life held, -seemed withdrawn and engulfed in space. He felt grimly alone in a city -out of which all reality had ebbed. It seemed to him that somewhere a -half-heard lilt of music had suddenly come to a stop. - -A spirit of restless loneliness took possession of him, as he stepped -out into the crowded solitudes of Broadway. His thoughts ran back to the -day that he had first met Frances Candler, when, half unwillingly -joining forces with MacNutt, he had followed that most adroit of -wire-tappers to his up-town house. He remembered his astonishment as the -door swung back to MacNutt’s secret ring, and Frank stood there in the -doorway, looking half timidly out at them, with her hand still on the -knob. How far away it seemed; and yet, as the world went, it could be -counted in months. He had thought her a mere girl at first, and he -recalled how he imagined there had been a mistake in the house number, -as he saw the well-groomed figure in black, with its wealth of waving -chestnut hair, and the brooding violet eyes with their wordless look of -childish weariness. It was only later that he had taken note of the ever -betraying fulness of throat and breast, and the touch of mature -womanhood in the shadows about the wistful eyes. He remembered, point by -point, the slow English voice, with its full-voweled softness of tone, -as she answered MacNutt’s quick questions, the warm mouth and its -suggestion of impulsiveness, the girlishly winning smile with which she -had welcomed him as her partner in that house of underground operating -and unlooked-for adventure, the quick and nervous movements of the -muscular body that always carried with it a sense of steely strength -half-sheathed in softness. - -Bit by bit he recalled their tasks and their perils together. - -What touched him most, as he paced the odorous, lamp-hung valley of the -Rialto, was the memory of this wistful woman’s sporadic yet passionate -efforts to lead him back to honesty. Each effort, he knew, had been -futile, though for her sake alone he had made not a few unthought of -struggles to be decent and open and aboveboard in at least the smaller -things of life. - -But the inebriation of great hazards was in his veins. They had taken -great chances together; and thereafter, he felt, it could be only great -chances that would move and stir and hold them. Now he would never be -content, he knew, to lounge about the quiet little inns of life, with -the memory of those vast adventures of the open in his heart and the -thirst for those vast hazards in his veins. - -As he turned, in Longacre Square, to look back at that turbulent valley -of lights below him, he remembered, incongruously enough, that the -midnight Tenderloin was the most thoroughly policed of all portions of -the city—the most guarded of all districts in the world. And what a -name for it, he thought—the Tenderloin, the tenderest and most -delectable, the juiciest and the most sustaining district in all New -York, for the lawless egotist, whether his self-seeking took the form of -pleasure or whether it took the form of profit! - -A momentary feeling of repugnance at what was unlovely in life crept -over him, but he solaced himself with the thought that, after all, it -was the goodness in bad people and the badness in good people that held -the mottled fabric together in its tight-meshed union of contradictions. - -Then his spirit of loneliness returned to him, and his thoughts went -back to Frances Candler once more. He wondered why it was that her -casual woman’s touch seemed even to dignify and concentrate open crime -itself. He felt that he was unable, now, to move and act without her. -And as he thought of what she had grown to mean to him, of the -sustaining sense of coolness and rest which she brought with her, he -remembered his first restless night in New York, when he had been unable -to sleep, because of the heat in his stifling little bedroom, and had -walked the breathless, unknown streets, until suddenly on his face he -had felt a cool touch of wind, and the old-time balm of grass and trees -and green things had struck into his startled nostrils. It was Central -Park that he had stumbled on, he learned later; and he crept into it and -fell placidly asleep on one of the shadowy benches. - -His memory, as he turned to take a last look down the light-hung cañon -of the Rialto, was of the evening that he and his desk-mate, Eddie -Crawford, had first driven down that luminous highway, in a taxi, and -the lights and the movement and the stir of it had gone to his -bewildered young head. For he had leaned out over those titanic tides -and exclaimed, with vague and foolish fierceness: “My God, Eddie, some -day I’m going to get a grip on this town!” - - - - - CHAPTER XV - - -It was not until night had settled down over the city that Durkin opened -the back window of his little top-floor room and peered cautiously out. - -There was, apparently, nothing amiss. A noise of pounding came to him -from the shipping-room of a lace importer below. A few scattered shafts -of light glimmered from the windows opposite. A hazy half-moon slanted -down over the house-tops. - -When Durkin leaned out of the window for the second time he held in his -hand something that looked peculiarly like a fishing-rod. From it -dangled two thin green wires, and with the metal hook on the end of it -he tested and felt carefully up among the slovenly tangle of wires -running out past the overhanging eave. - -It was a silly and careless way of doing things, he inwardly decided, -this lazy stringing of wires from house-top to house-top, instead of -keeping them in the tunnels where they belonged. It was not only -violating regulations, but it was putting a premium on -“lightning-slinging.” And he remembered what Frances had once said to -him about criminals in a city like New York, how the careless riot of -wealth seemed to breed them, as any uncleanness breeds bacteria; how, in -a way, each was only a natural and inevitable agent, taking advantage of -organic waste, seizing on the unguarded and the unorderly. She had even -once argued that the criminal could lay claim to a distinct economic -value, enjoining, as he did, continual alertness of attention and -cleanliness of commercial method. - -Yet the devil himself, he had somewhere read, could quote Scripture for -his purpose; and his fishing-pole moved restlessly up and down, like a -long finger feeling through answering strings. For each time, almost, -that his hook rested on one of the wires the little Bunnell relay on the -table behind him spoke out feebly. To the trill and clatter of these -metallic pulsations Durkin listened intently, until, determining that he -had looped into the right wire, he made secure his switch and carefully -drew down the window to within an inch of the sill. - -Then he gave his studious attention to the little Bunnell relay. Its -action was feeble and spasmodic. It was doing scant justice to what -Durkin easily saw was a master-hand toying with the rubber button at the -far-distant end of the wire. It was not unusually quick operating, but, -as the dots and dashes flew on and on, the interloper for a moment or -two forgot the meaning of the messages in the clear-cut, crisp, and -precise beauty of the sender’s Morse. - -“That man,” commented the admiring craftsman in Durkin, “is earning his -eight dollars an hour!” - -Then, adjusting his rheostat, he slowly and cautiously graduated his -current, until new life seemed to throb and flow through the busy little -piece of clicking metal. A moment later it was speaking out its weighty -and secret messages, innocently, authoritatively, almost triumphantly, -it seemed to the eavesdropper, bending over the glimmering armature -lever. - -A quietly predaceous smile broadened on Durkin’s intent face. He -suddenly smote the table with an impetuous little rap of the knuckles, -as he sat there listening. - -“By heaven, this _will_ open her eyes!” he cried, under his breath. - -And he repeated the words more abstractedly, as he lifted his telephone -transmitter out on the table and threw open a switch on the wall, -well-concealed by the window curtain. - -He then adjusted the watch-case receiver to his ear, and settled quietly -down in his chair. Striking a match, he held it poised six inches away -from the cigar between his teeth. For the sounder had suddenly broken -out into life once more, and strange and momentous things were flashing -in to him over that little thread of steel. The match burned away and -fell from his fingers. He shook himself together with an effort. - -Then he snatched up a pencil, and with the watch-case receiver still at -his ear and the Bunnell sounder still busy before him, he hurriedly -wrote notes on the back of an envelope. - -He felt like a lean and empty wharf-rat that had tunnelled into a -storehouse of unlimited provision. The very vastness of it amazed and -stupefied him. He had been grubbing about for a penny or two, and here -he had stumbled across a fabulous-figured banknote. - -Then, as item by item he was able to piece his scattered shreds of -information together, his mind became clearer and his nerves grew -steadier. - -He looked at his watch. It was twenty-six minutes past nine. As he had -expected, and as had happened every night since Curry had installed the -private wire in his Madison Avenue residence, the operator on the -up-town end of the line switched off. The sounder grew still, like a -clock that had run down. The telephone wire still carried its occasional -message in to him, but he knew that he could wait no longer. - -It took him but a minute or two to detach his looping wire from the -Curry private line. Then he threw back the switch of his telephone, -concealed his transmitter, and caught up his hat and coat. - -Five minutes later he was careering up Fifth Avenue in a taxi-cab. A new -interest, submerged in the sterner tides of life, drifted in on him as -he drew nearer the Ralston and Frances Candler. He began to meditate on -how much he had been missing out of existence of late, and even how -empty all triumph and conquest might be, if unshared by or with another. -Some vague and gently disturbing inkling of just how much a woman could -become to a man, however preoccupied, crept into the quieter backgrounds -of his consciousness. And with a man of his walk in life, uncompanioned, -isolated, migratory, this muffling and softening element was doubly -essential. - -He sent his card up to Frances, with an unreasonably beating heart. Word -came down to him, in time, that she was engaged, but that she would see -him in twenty minutes. - -“But I must see her, and at once!” he told the impassive clerk. - -It would be possible in twenty minutes, was the second message that came -down to him. - -Frances engaged—and not able to see him! The very idea of it startled -and enraged him. Who had the right to stand between them?—he demanded -of himself, with irrational fierceness. And out of the very midst of his -soft and consuming eagerness to see her sprang up a mad fire of jealousy -and uncertainty. Who was there, he again demanded of himself,—who was -there that could come in this way between Frances Candler and himself, -at such a time and under such circumstances? After all, her career was -one of open and continuous deception. There was MacNutt! And -Ottenheimer! And a dozen more! She made it her business to deceive and -dupe others, so artfully, so studiously, so laboriously—why would she -not use her tools on him as well? Was she, indeed, as open and candid as -he had taken her to be?—she, with all her soft little feline graces, -and with all that ambiguous and unknown past of hers! - -And yet he remembered how she had held out against him, how he, with his -laxer code, had often hurt and wounded every feeling of her sensitive -nature. Even before this he had tried to argue that crime in one phase -of life implied moral weakness in all other phases of that same career. -Yet there she obdurately though pantingly stood, unyielding, stanch, -clean of mind and life, a woman of stern honor—and through it all an -adventuress and a robber! A black-leg with the conscience of a -schoolgirl!—and he laughed inwardly and bitterly at the cheap irony of -it all. - -His icy and exacting scrutiny of her, as he stepped into her private -room, sapped all the warmth out of her greeting. She had thrown on a -loose-fitting dressing-gown of pale blue, which showed the white fulness -of her arms and throat and darkened the violet of her brooding and -seemingly unsatisfied eyes. She was more than beautiful, Durkin had told -himself, with a little gulp of anguish. But why had the corroding poison -of criminal inclination been poured into a glass so tinted and fragile -and lovely to the sight! For there, as he looked at her with still angry -and suspicious eyes, he realized, for the first time, just what she was -to him, just how completely and implacably she had subjugated him. - -“What is it?” she demanded, with a sudden little flutter of fear, -standing halfway across the room. - -“Who was in this room with you?” he demanded. - -She studied his face for a moment or two, slowly shaking her head from -side to side. He noticed the tumbled wealth of her glinting chestnut -hair, here and there almost a golden red, and again a gulp of anguish -swelled at his throat. It was no wonder that MacNutt had good use for -her. - -“Who has been up here with you?” he repeated miserably, but inexorably. - -She seemed to sigh a little, and then her slow English laugh melted out -through the room. It was a quiet and sorrowful little laugh, but it -shattered the tragedy from the overstrained moment. - -“You foolish boy!” she said, half-sorrowfully, as she turned to put the -belittered room to rights. “It was the dressmaker I sent for, as soon as -I got here. I haven’t a rag! You know that! And you know how often you -have said that persons in our sort of business ought to dress well.” - -The mad wave of doubt that still tumbled him back and forth ebbed -suddenly away, as a woman of forty, short and stolid, stepped briskly -and quietly out of the inner bedroom. She bowed a businesslike good -night to them as she passed out into the hallway, carrying a handbag. - -“And this is the way you welcome me back!” reproved Frances, as she drew -away from him and fell to studying his face once more. “Well, we can at -least talk business,” she added bitterly, on the heels of his awkward -silence. “And that, I know, will appeal to you!” - -Durkin bowed to the stroke, and even made belated and disjointed efforts -of appeasement. But the petals seemed to have fallen from the shaken -flower; a teasing sense of her aloofness from him oppressed his mind. In -fact, it had always been in the full hue and cry of their adventures -with the grim powers of the law that she had seemed nearest to him. - -The thought came to him, with a quick sense of terror, of how he might -suffer at a time or in a situation not so ridiculously transparent as -the present. If, indeed, she ever did give him actual cause for -jealousy, how it would rend and tear those roots which had pierced so -much deeper than he had ever dreamed! And for a passing moment he felt -almost afraid of himself. - - - - - CHAPTER XVI - - -“Then it wasn’t so difficult, after all?” commented Durkin, as Frances -ended a description of her three days in Leeksville. - -“No, it wasn’t the trouble so much—only, for the first time in my life, -I felt so—so cruelly alone!” She found it hard to explain it to him -adequately. She wondered why it was she should always shrink from -undraping any inner corner of her soul to him, why, at times, she should -stand so reluctant to win any of the more intimate touches of -comradeship from him. - -“That’s the drawback,” he remarked, wide of her mood and thought, -“that’s the drawback in doing this sort of thing by oneself!” - -“We really ought to hunt in pairs, don’t you think, like timber wolves?” - -She turned and looked at him, with a still mocking and yet a warmer -light coming into her eyes. Some propulsion, not of mind, but of body, -seemed to drive her involuntarily toward him—like a ship on a lee -shore, she felt—as she sniffed delicately at his cigar-scented gloves, -so anomalously redolent of virility, of masculinity, of something -compelling and masterful, where they lay in her nervously toying -fingers. She tried to laugh at herself, with chastening scorn; but she -could not. - -“And out of it all,” he went on, “when brokerage fees and other things -are counted, we have made just three hundred and sixty-seven dollars!” - -“Only that?” - -“I had no more than the thirty minutes, you see, for a margin to work -on!” - -She pushed back her hair with a languid hand. - -“But why cry over spilt milk?” she asked, wearily. Firmer and firmer, -she felt, this mad fever of money-getting was taking hold on him. - -“Especially when we seem about to wade knee-deep in cream!” - -She made a last effort to fall in with his mood of ruthless aggression. - -“Yes; what’s this you were going to open my eyes with?” - -The final vestige of his clouded restraint slipped away from Durkin’s -mind. - -“I had better start right at the beginning, hadn’t I?” he queried, cigar -in hand, while she nodded comfortably to the silent question as to -whether or not he might smoke. - -“I suppose you know that Curry was once a New Orleans cotton broker. It -was a little over two years ago that he first came to New York, with -about a million and a half of his own, and an available three or four -million belonging to a pool that was to back him through thick and thin. -This they did, when he became a member of the Cotton Exchange. Then step -by step he began to plan out his campaign, patiently and laboriously -plotting and scheming and manipulating and increasing his power, until -the newspaper-men dropped into the habit of speaking of him as the -Cotton King, and the old home pool itself got a little afraid of him, -and held a few secret meetings to talk things over.” - -“But how did this campaign end?” - -“It has not ended. Of just how it will end only two men, outside of -Curry and his confidential old head-broker down on the Exchange floor, -have any inkling.” - -“Who is the _other_ man?” asked Frances quietly. - -Durkin smiled covertly, with a half-mockingly bowed “Thanks!” - -“The other man, of course, not counting myself, is the operator, or, -rather, the private secretary, he keeps at the home end of the wire he -has had put into his house, for carrying on his collateral -manipulations, as it were.” - -“I understand,” said Frances. - -“And then comes myself,” he added confidently. - -The woman settled back in her leather-lined arm-chair, locking her -slender white fingers together above her head. The clustered lights of -the chandelier threw heavy shadows about her quiet eyes, and for the -first time Durkin noticed the tender little hollow just under her -cheek-bones, lending an indescribable touch of tragedy to the old-time -softer oval of her face. - -“Now this is what our friend Curry has been doing, in a nutshell. For -months and months he has been the acknowledged bull leader of the -Exchange. Point by point, week by week and day by day, he has managed to -send cotton up. Where it was at first 11 and 12 and perhaps 13 cents, he -has shouldered, say, August cotton up to 16.55, and July up to 17.30 and -May up to 17.20. Day before yesterday July cotton advanced to 17.65 in -New Orleans. Some time, and some time mighty soon—if not tomorrow, then -the next day, or perhaps even the next—every option is going to go -still higher. And this man Curry is the imperial dictator of it all. He -is known to have interests behind him that amount to millions now. And -this is the point I’m coming to: this present week is to see the rocket -go up and burst.” - -Durkin was on his feet by this time pacing up and down the room. - -“The first, but not the final, climax of all this plotting is -twenty-cent cotton.” - -“Has it ever been that before?” - -“Never! It has not been above seventeen cents, not since 1873!” declared -Durkin, excitedly. “But here is the important part of it all, the second -climax, as it were. When it strikes nineteen his old home pool are going -to abdicate. They are going to turn traitor on him, I mean, and suddenly -stand from under. Then here is the third and last climax: Curry knows -this fact; he knows they’re making ready to crush him. And when they get -ready he’s going to turn and smash ’em, smash ’em and sling ’em down, -even though he goes with them in the crash. Which he won’t, if he’s the -Curry I take him to be. In other words, Frank, at the right moment he is -going to abdicate from the bull movement absolutely, before it is -publicly realized.” - -“It all seems vague and misty to me—but I suppose you know.” - -“Know? Why, I’ve been rioting through his holy of holies for two days -now. I’ve been cutting in and reading his own private wire. He firmly -intends to forsake this bull movement, which, apparently, he has spent -so much time and toil in building up. But in reality, out of the crash -that comes with a collapsing market—and it must collapse when he stands -from under!—he is to sit and see a million or two rain down into his -lap.” - -“But can he, one solitary man, do all this—I mean do it unmistakably, -inevitably?” - -“Yes, he can. I firmly believe that nothing short of a miracle can now -upset his plan. Today he is not only the leader of the cotton pit; he is -both openly and tacitly the supreme dictator of the market—of the -world’s market. Why, last week, when he publicly announced that he was -going down to Lakewood for a couple of days, the market fell back to -12.85 for an hour or two, and he had to jump in and start buying, just -to give a little order to things. Somebody even said that when his wife -and an actress friend of hers visited the Exchange gallery he asked them -if they’d like to see a little panic on the floor. The actress said -she’d love to see cotton go up a few points if he wouldn’t mind. Curry -said all right, to watch out for some real acting. So he started down -into the pit and pulled the strings until his puppets danced to their -hearts’ content.” - -Frances nodded her appreciation of the scene’s dramatic values, and -waited for Durkin to continue. - -“And one minor result of that was that one hour later a well-known -cotton merchant was found in his chair, with a slowly widening stain of -red on his shirt front, as the evening papers put it. He had shot -himself through the heart—utterly ruined by that last little capricious -rise in our Cotton King’s market.” - -“Who, after all, is not much better than a wire-tapper!” exclaimed the -woman, with her mirthless little laugh of scorn. - -“There’s a difference—he thinks in big figures and affairs; we, up till -now, have worked and worried and fretted over little things. This man -Curry, too, is a sort of Napoleon. ‘You have to smash the eggs to make -your omelet,’ was all he said when he heard that a big brokerage firm -had closed its one hundred and twenty-five offices because of his bull -operations. Why, this week he’s making his clerks eat and sleep right in -the offices—he’s turned one of the rooms into a sort of dormitory, and -has their meals sent up to them. And outside of all this he’s -manipulating his own underground movement, doing that over his home -wire, after his regular office hours.” - -“And this is the wire you have tapped?” - -“Yes, that’s the wire that has been giving me my information—or, -rather, little scattered shreds of it. But here, mind, is where the -difficulty comes in. Curry has got to let his partner, Green, down in -New Orleans, in on the last movement of his campaign, so that the two -can strike together. But he is wise, and he isn’t trusting that tip to -any open wire. When the time comes it’s to be a cipher message. It will -read, ‘Helen sails’—then such and such a time on such and such a day. -That message Curry’s confidential operator will send out over the wire, -under the protection of a quadruplex, from his Wall Street office. And -that is the message I have to intercept.” - -She was moving her head slowly up and down, gazing at him with unseeing -eyes. - -“And you have some plan for doing it?” - -“Precisely,” replied Durkin, wheeling nervously back and forth. “This is -where I’ve got to run the gauntlet of the whole Postal-Union system, cut -in on their double-guarded wires, and get away with my information -without being caught.” - -“But you can’t do it, Jim. It’s impossible.” - -“Oh, but it _is_ possible, quite possible!” he said, halting for a -moment before her. “Here’s where the climax comes to my story—the one I -started to tell you over the ’phone. You see, just at the time of that -little conduit fire the Postal-Union Company was having trouble with the -Electrical Workers’ Union. I happened to be laying in the supplies for -that up-town loop of mine when I found they were offering two dollars an -hour for expert work. I jumped on a Broadway car, and took the plunge.” - -“What plunge, Jim?” - -“I mean that I applied for work, down there, as a cable-splicer.” - -“Wasn’t it dangerous work—for _you_, I mean?” - -“Yes, a trifle so, I suppose. But none of the inside men were on the -force. No one knew me there, from Adam. And it was worth it, too!” - -“You mean, of course—?” - -“I mean that a certain cable-splicer has the entrée to that conduit, -that he has a hand-made chart as to its wire-disposition, and—well, -several other things!” - -He waited for some word of appreciative triumph from her. As she -remained silent, he went on again. - -“And I mustn’t forget to tell you that I’ve leased a little basement -place not far from Pine Street. I’m going to do commercial printing and -that sort of thing. I’ve got a sign out, and the power all ready, only -my presses are slow in coming!” - -“And will be still further delayed, I suppose?” - -“Yes, I’m afraid they will.” - -Some mysterious touch of his excitement at last communicated itself to -the listening woman, almost against her will. She was as fluctuant, she -told herself, as the aluminum needle of a quadrant electrometer. No, she -was more like the helpless little pith-ball of an electroscope, she -mentally amended, ever dangling back and forth in a melancholy conflict -of repulsion and attraction. Yet, as she comprehended Durkin’s plot, -point by point, she began to realize the vast possibilities that -confronted them, and, as ever before, to fall a victim to the zest of -action, the vital sting of responsibility. Nor did she allow herself to -lose sight of the care and minuteness of the continued artfulness and -finish, so teeming with its secondary æsthetic values, with which he had -reconnoitered his ever-menacing territory and laid his mine. And added -to this, she saw, was the zest of stalking the stalker: it carried with -it an ameliorating tang of dramatic irony, an uncouth touch of poetic -justice. - -As often happened with her in moments of excitement, the expanded pupils -of her violet eyes crept over and all but blotted out the iris, until -out of the heavy shadows that hung under her full brow, they glowed -faintly, in certain lights, with an animal-like luminousness. “Those -eyes—they look as though a halo had melted and run down into them!” -Durkin had once cried, half wonderingly, half playfully, as he turned -her face from shadow to light and back to shadow again. - -He had looked for some word of disapproval from her, for he could -remember how often, with her continuous scruples, she had taken the -razor-edge off his enthusiasm, when he stood on the brink of adventuring -with something big and momentous. So he studied her face abstractedly, -his own alight with an eager and predaceously alert look which only his -half-whimsical, half-boyish smile held above the plane of sheer vulpine -craftiness. - -“Why, this man Curry,” he went on, still standing in front of her, “has -got such a grip on the market that he can simply juggle with it. Before -this boom you or I could buy a bale of cotton on a dollar margin. Today, -most of the brokerage houses insist on a four dollar margin, some of -them demanding a five, and it’s said that a ten dollar margin can still -be looked for.” - -“But still, I don’t see how one man can do this, and keep it up!” - -“It’s mostly all the natural outcome of his own, individual, long-headed -plot. Beyond that, it’s a mere infection, a mania, an operation of -mob-law, the case of sheep following a sheep. Curry, all along, is -crying out that the demand has outgrown the supply, and that the -commercial world has got to get used to the idea of twenty-cent cotton. -In the old days it used to sell away down around six cents, and ever -since then mills have been increasing their spindles,—in ten years, -Curry’s papers claim, the mills have added more than seventeen million -spindles to swell this tremendous cry for cotton. That’s his argument, -to tide him along until he kicks the post out, and the drop comes. Then -of course, he and the rest of his bull pool have been buying, buying, -buying, always openly and magnificently, yet all the while, selling -quietly and secretly.” - -“And they call this legitimate business?” she demanded, with the -familiar tinge of scorn in her voice. - -“Yes, they call it high finance. But it’s about as legitimate, on the -whole, as the pea and thimble game I used to watch up at the county -fairs in Canada. In other words, Frank, when we carry on our particular -line of business cleanly and decently, we are a hanged sight more honest -than these Exchange manipulators.” - -“But not recognized!” she cut in, for she knew that with this unction of -comparison he was salving a still tender conscience. - -“That’s because we are such small fry,” he went on heatedly. “But, by -heavens, when we get this thing going, I guess we’ll rather count a -little!” - -“And what is to keep us from getting it going?” - -He wheeled on her suddenly. - -“One thing, and one hard thing!” - -“Well?” - -“Within twenty-four hours we have got to have ten thousand dollars!” - - - - - CHAPTER XVII - - -“Ten thousand dollars is a great deal of money!” said Frank, easily, -with a languid shrug of her shoulders. - -“It _is_ a great deal! But we’re up against a great deal! If we had -twice as much, it would be even better. I have a possible twelve hundred -now, altogether—just a scrawny, miserable twelve hundred! I got most of -it yesterday, through dabbling in this cotton of Curry’s. Tomorrow -morning every cent of it goes down to Robinson & Little, and if the -market is moderately steady, and he takes a two dollar margin, knowing -what I do, it means I double that amount before the day’s trading is -over.” - -“Robinson & Little? Who are they? New friends of yours?” - -“They are the big Wall Street people. I had to pay two hundred -dollars—in I. O. U. form,—for a letter to that firm. I still have a -suspicion it was forged, too. I’ve been getting acquainted with them, -however, and showing them that I’m all right. When the eleventh hour -comes, and when I have to cut in on Curry’s Postal-Union wire down-town, -we’ll have to tear around to Robinson & Little’s, flop over with the -market, and buy cotton short, on a stop-order. It all depends upon what -margin we may have to put up, whether we make forty thousand dollars, or -a hundred and forty thousand dollars. Curry, you may be sure, will try -to start the thing off as quietly as possible. So a normal market will -bring a more normal margin, and give us something worth while to play -on!” - -“Something worth while?” she mused absently. Then she came and stood by -Durkin, and studied his face once more. Some sense of his isolation, of -his unhappy aloofness from his kind, touched and wrung her feeling. She -caught at his arm with a sudden companionable enthusiasm, and joined him -in pacing the room. - -“After all, there _would_ be something big, and wide, and sweeping about -this sort of work, wouldn’t there?” - -“Yes; it’s a blamed sight better than pool-room piking!” he cried. “It’s -living; it’s doing things!” - -“I believe I could plunge in it, and glory in it!” she went on, -consolingly. - -“There’s just one drawback—just one nasty little blot on the face of -the fun,” he ventured, catching at the sustaining arm of her enthusiasm. - -“And that is—?” - -“We’ve got to get this ten thousand dollars just for a day or two!” - -“But have you any idea as to how, or where, or when?” - -“Yes, I have,” he answered, looking at her steadily. There seemed to be -some covert challenge in his glance, but she faced him unwaveringly. - -“Say it out, Jim; I’m not afraid!” - -“I mean _you_ must get it! You’ve got to borrow it!” - -He began bravely enough, but he hesitated before the startled scorn on -her face. - -“You mean I’ve—I’ve got to steal it?” - -He held up a protesting hand. Then he went to the half-open door of her -inner room and closed it carefully. - -“No; as I said before, we can not and must not steal it. It may be -called theft, of course, but every cent of it will be returned. No, no; -listen to me—I have it all figured out. Only, it has to be done this -very night!” - -“Tonight?” she said, with a reproving little cry. - -“Yes, tonight! And that is why I’ve been desperate, of course, and have -been looping every telephone wire that runs near my up-town room, hoping -against hope for a chance to pick up something to work on. The only -thing that gave me that chance was Theodore Van Schaick’s house wire. -Now, listen. Two days ago his daughter Lydia came of age. I could tell -you most of the things she got, and how she has been ’phoning gratitude -and thanks and girlish messages out round the city. But among other -things Miss Lydia Van Schaick received from her father, was a small and -neat bundle not long out of the Sub-Treasury. It was made up of one -hundred equally neat little pieces of parchment, and each one of them is -a one-hundred dollar banknote.” - -“And I’m to crawl through one of her windows, and burglarize the house -of this amount!” - -“No, no, Frank—listen to me a moment. Yesterday, Miss Lydia telephoned -her Uncle Cedric about this money. Not being used to a small fortune in -ready cash, naturally, she feels nervous about having it around, and -wants to put it somewhere. Her level-headed old Uncle Cedric advised her -to take it down tomorrow to the Second National Bank, and open a deposit -account with it. And this Lydia intends to do. Tonight her ten thousand -dollars are laid carefully away in a glove-box, in one of her chiffonier -drawers, in her own private bedroom. So tonight is our only chance!” - -“Couldn’t I sand-bag her in the morning, on her way down-town?” demanded -Frances, with mock seriousness. She had learned not to ask too much of -life, and she was struggling to school herself to the thought of this -new rôle. - -“No, my dear girl; it can be done so much easier than that. Her mother -and her younger sister are still at Driftwood, their summer place in -Mamaroneck. At four o’clock this afternoon they sent into the city a -certain Miss Annie Seabrooke. She is a St. Luke’s graduate, a -professional nurse who has been looking after old Mrs. Van Schaick. This -lady, apparently, is a good deal of a hypochondriac. The nurse, of -course, has to get things ready for her patient’s return. I have already -met Miss Seabrooke at the Grand Central Station. I have also, at Miss -Lydia’s urgent request, installed her at the Holland House, over night. -This, by the way, is the lady’s bag. I tried to explain to her that the -whole Van Schaick house wants to be given over to Miss Lydia’s -coming-of-age function.” - -Frances, already carried down again by her tidal reaction of feeling, -watched him through narrowed and abstracted eyes. - -“In this bag, among other things, you’ll find a nurse’s uniform,” Durkin -went on hurriedly, oblivious of her scrutiny. “It will fit a little -loose, I’m afraid—Miss Seabrooke is a big, wide-shouldered Canadian -girl. And in forty or fifty minutes from now you ought to be inside that -uniform and inside the Van Schaick house—if we ever want to carry this -thing through!” - -“And then—?” she asked, in her dead and impersonal voice, as though her -thoughts were leagues away. - -“Then,” cried Durkin, “then you’ve got to get hold of a glove-box in -Miss Lydia Van Schaick’s chiffonier drawer. By some means or other we’ve -got to get hold of that box, and—” - -She stopped him, by holding up a sudden silencing hand. Her face was -white and set; he could see none of the iris of her eyes. - -“It’s no use!” she said, evenly and quietly. “It’s no use. I can not and -will not do it!” - -Durkin fell back from her, aghast. Then he took her by the arm, and -turned her about so that the light fell on her face. He could see that -her lower lip was trembling. - -“You back down—_now_?” he demanded, with a touch of incredulity. - -“Yes, I back down!” she answered, letting her eyes meet his. - -“Why—” he began, inadequately. “What is it?” - -“It’s simply this, Jim,” she answered him—and her voice, now, was high -and thin and unmodulated, constricted, by some inward tension, to a -gramophonic tumult of syllables. “There has got to be a limit, -somewhere. At some point we have got to draw the line. We have been -forgetting a great many things. But I can not and will not be a common -thief—for you—or for anything you can bring to me—or to my life!” - -“You say _that_?” - -“Yes, I do; and if you cared for me—if you thought of my feelings—if -you thought of my happiness, you would never ask me to do such -things—you would never make me suffer like this!” - -He threw up his hands with what was almost a gesture of exasperation. - -“But you will _not_ be a common thief—it will not be stealing at all! -Can’t you see that?” - -“No, I can not. And you know as well as I know, that when we try to -justify it we do it only by a quibble!” - -“But I tell you every penny of that money will go back where it came -from!” - -“Then why can’t we go to Lydia Van Schaick and ask her to lend us the -money?” - -“That’s ridiculous!” - -“No more so than what you propose!” - -Durkin, drawing back from her, closed his right fist and with it pounded -angrily on the palm of his left hand. - -“If you’re going to back down I _will_ go to Lydia Van Schaick, and I’ll -get her money, too. I’ll go as a second-story man, as a porch-climber! -I’ll go after that money as a common burglar and house-breaker. But I’ll -get it, in the end, or know the reason why!” - -“Oh!” she gasped, horrified. “You wouldn’t! You couldn’t!” - -“I say I will!” he cried, in a passion. - -“Oh, you couldn’t!” she reiterated. - -“Couldn’t I?—I’ve got this machinery started, and it’s going to be kept -moving!” - -Something in the scene carried her years back, to the times when her -father, emerging from his prolonged orgies, sick and shaken, stormed and -wept for the brandy she struggled to keep away from him—and the -struggle would end only, when in fear of his collapse, she surrendered -the bottle to his quivering fingers. - -“My God—I’ve _got_ to have it!” Durkin was crying and storming. - -There crept over her the same, slowly eviscerating pity for the defiant -man who now stood before her, so tragically weak in his very protests of -strength. - -She turned and caught at his arm, with a sudden inward surrender that -left her dazed and tottering. She struggled in vain to keep down her -tears, once more torn by that old and costly and compromising hunger to -be loved and sustained by him. She could not live in the face of his -anger; she could not endure his hate. And the corroding bitterness, the -gnawing tragedy, of her life lay in the fact that the arm to which she -must turn for support was the very arm that would forever drag and hold -her down. - -Yet she was inarticulate, in the face of it all. She could not plead; -she could not explain. She could only break out with a sudden -unreasoning and passionate cry of: “_You are not kind to me!_” - -Durkin had already shaken her hand from his arm, and was on the point of -a second outburst. Then he stopped, and the gathering anger and revolt -ebbed out of his face, for at that tearful and passionate cry from her -he knew that the battle between them had come to an end. He knew, with -an exultation in which even pity and cruelty were strangely entangled, -that it was a sign of her inward capitulation, that he had won her over. - -“Frank!” - -He swung about, suddenly, and with one clasp of his arms let wide the -flood-gates of her strained emotions. - -“Good God!” he cried. “You know I hate it, as much as you do! But can’t -you see it’s too late now, to quibble and vacillate? Can’t you see that -I’m getting nothing more out of it than you?” - -He pleaded with her, hotly, impetuously. He showed her how he needed -her, how he was helpless without her. He held her, and kissed the tears -from her unhappy eyes—he could see them droop, pitifully, as with a -narcotic, at his first intimate and tender touch. He would have to sway -her now, he felt, not through her judgment, not by open attack, but only -by those more circuitous and subterranean approaches of feminine -feeling. And still he expostulated and pleaded, unnerving and breaking -her will with his cruel kindnesses of word and caress. - -“Oh, I’ll do it!” she cried, at last, mopping her stained face. “I’ll do -it, Jim, if I have to!” - -“But there’s nothing so terrible in it, Dear Heart,” he assuaged. “We’ve -been through worse things together. And it will be made right again, -every penny of it!” - -“Jim,” she said slowly, as she grew calmer once more; “Jim, I want you -to give me your word of honor that it _will_ be made right! I’m—I’m too -cowardly, yet, to do a thing that’s wickedness, through and through. -I’ve got to see some glimmer of right in it, I’ve got to feel that it -will end right, even—” - -“But this _will_ end right! It can’t help it. I give you my word of -honor, now, to save you from being what you might seem, that every cent -of this woman’s money goes back to her.” - -She was moving her head slowly up and down, as she studied his face. - -“Then you must remember, through it all, how much I’m trusting myself to -you,” she said, with a forlornness that brought a lump in his throat, as -she looked about the room with hopeless eyes. “Do you realize how hard -all this is going to be?” - -“It’s not easy, I know—but it’s our only chance.” - -“_Is_ it our only chance?” she suddenly asked. “Life is full of chances. -I saw one today, if I’d only known.” - -She looked at him again, with some new light sifting through all her -tangle of clouds. “Yes,” she went on, more hopefully, “there _might_ be -still another way!” - -“Well?” he asked, almost impatiently, as he glanced at his watch. - -“It was something that happened when I went into that little -Postal-Union office at Broadway and Thirty-seventh Street.” She was -speaking rapidly now, with a touch of his former fire. “The relays and -everything are in the same room, you know, behind the counter and a wire -screen. I wanted my dressmaker, and while I was sitting at a little -side-desk chewing my pen-handle and trying to boil seventeen words down -to ten, a man came in with a rush message. I could see him out of the -corner of my eye. It was Sunset Bryan, the race-track plunger, and it -occurred to me that it might be worth while to know what he was sending -out.” - -“Did he see you, or does he know you?” - -“I took good pains that he shouldn’t see me. So I scrawled away on my -blank, and just sat there and read the ticker as the operator took the -despatches off the file and sent them out. Here is the wording of Sunset -Bryan’s message, as well as I can remember it: -‘Duke—of—Kendall—runs—tomorrow—get—wise—and—wire—St. -Louis—and—South!’” - -“Well, what of it?” Durkin asked. - -“Why, this Bryan is the man who took one hundred and ten thousand -dollars out of the Aqueduct ring in one day. Since the Gravesend Meeting -began, people say he has made nearly half a million. He’s a sort of -race-track Curry. He keeps close figures on every race he plays. He has -one hundred men and more on his pay roll, and makes his calculations -after the most minute investigating and figuring. It stands to reason -that he manipulates a little, though the Pinkerton men, as I suppose you -know, have never been able to get him off the Eastern tracks. Now, Jim, -my firm belief is that there is something ‘cooked up,’ as they say, for -tomorrow afternoon, and if we could only find out what this Duke of -Kendall business is, we might act on it in time.” - -She waited for Durkin to speak. He tapped the top of his head, -meditatively, with his right forefinger, pursing his lips as his mind -played over the problem. - -“Yes, we might. But how are we to find out what the Duke of Kendall and -his mere running means?” - -“I even took the trouble to look up the Duke of Kendall. He is a -MacIntosh horse, the stable companion to Mary J., and ridden by Shirley, -a new jockey.” - -She could see that he had little sympathy for her suggestion, and she -herself lost faith in the plan even as she unfolded it. - -“My idea was, Jim, that this horse was going to run—is _sure_ to run, -under heavy odds, for what they call ‘a long shot.’” - -“But still, how would we be able to make sure?” - -“I could go and ask Sunset Bryan himself.” - -Durkin threw up his hand with a gesture of angry disapproval. - -“That beast! He’s—he’s unspeakable! He’s the worst living animal in -America!” - -“I shouldn’t be afraid of him,” she answered, quietly. - -“The whole thing comes too late in the game, anyway,” broke in Durkin, -with a second gesture of disgust. Then he added, more gently: “Good -heavens, Frank, I don’t want to see _you_ mixed up with that kind of -cur! It wouldn’t be right and fair! It’s infinitely worse than the thing -I’m suggesting!” - -“After all, we are not so different, he and I,” she responded, with -acidulated mildness. - -Durkin took her hand in his, with real pain written on his face. - -“Don’t talk that way,” he pleaded; “it hurts!” - -She smoothed his hair with her free hand, quietly, maternally. - -“Then you had rather that I—I borrowed this money from the Van Schaick -house?” she asked him. - -“It’s the choice of two evils,” he answered her, out of his unhappiness, -all his older enthusiasm now burnt down into the ashes of indifferency. - -“If only I was sure you could keep your promise,” she said, dreamily, as -she studied his face. - -“It _will_ go back!” he responded determinedly, shrugging off his -momentary diffidence. “Even though I have to make it, dollar by dollar, -and though it takes me twenty years! But I tell you, Frank, that it will -not be needed. Here we have the chance of a life time. If we only had -the money to start with, the whole business could be carried on openly -and decently—barring, of course,” he added, with his sudden shamefaced -smile, “the little bit of cutting-in I’ll have to do down-town on the -Curry wires!” - -“One minute—before we go any farther with this. Supposing we -successfully get this glove-box, and successfully watch Curry, and on -the strength of our knowledge invest this money, and get our returns, -and find ourselves with enough—well, with enough not to starve on—will -you promise me this: that it will be the last?” - -“But why should it be the last?” - -“You know as well as I do! You know that I want to be honest, to live -straight and aboveboard; but a hundred times more, that I want to see -you honest and aboveboard!” - -He studied the tense and passionate mood that flitted across her face, -that seemed to deepen the shadows about her brooding violet eyes. - -“I would do anything for you, Frank!” he said, with an inadequate and -yet eloquent little outthrust of the arms. - -“Then do this for me! Let us get back to the daylight world again!” - -“But would it satisfy us? Would we—?” - -“Would we—?” she echoed forlornly. Then she turned suddenly away, to -hide a trace of inconsequential tears. - -“We have got to!” she cried out passionately over her shoulder, as she -stooped to the suit-case and deftly opened it. A moment later she was -rummaging hurriedly through its neatly packed contents. - -“And I am Mrs. Van Schaick’s trained nurse?” she asked, ruminatively. - -“Yes, Miss Annie Seabrooke, remember!” - -“But the others—the servants—won’t they know me?” - -“You were engaged in Mamaroneck; not one of the city servants has seen -your face.” - -“But it will be eleven and after—was my train delayed?” - -“No, not delayed; but you took a later train.” - -She was silent for a minute or two, as she probed deeper into the -suit-case. - -“You haven’t promised!” she murmured, her face still low over the -womanly white linen, and the little cap and apron and uniform which she -was gently shaking out before her. - -She rose to her feet and turned to him. - -“I promise you—anything!” he cried, in the teeth of all his inner -misgivings. He followed her to the open window. - -“Then kiss me!” she said, with a little exhausted sigh of ultimate -surrender, as she sank into his arms and her lonely and hungry body felt -the solace of his strength about and above it. And in that minute they -lost all count of time and place, and for them, with the great -glimmering granite city stretching away at their feet, there was neither -past nor future. - - - - - CHAPTER XVIII - - -Frances Candler waited until complete quiet reigned over the house. Then -she noiselessly opened her door and peered up and down the darkened -hallway. - -A sudden thought came to her, as she stood there in the silence, and, -slipping back to her room, she took first a hot-water bottle out of her -nurse’s bag, and then a hypodermic syringe from its neat little morocco -case. Miss Annie Seabrooke, she decided, had been making melancholy use -of her knowledge of drugs. That enlightened young lady was, obviously, -addicted to the use of morphine, for beside the syringe-case Frances -found a little bottle bearing its telltale chemical formula: C_{17} -H_{19} NO_{3}. - -She removed the screw-top from the graduated “barrel,” and in its place -adjusted the glistening little hollow needle. Then she carefully filled -the graduated tube with its innocent-looking liquid, and, wrapping the -syringe in her pocket-handkerchief, thrust it into the bosom of her -bodice. Many things lay ahead of her, and before the night was out even -this might be of use. She devoutly hoped not—yet the present moment, -she warned herself, was no time for hesitations and compunctious -half-measures. - -The hot-water bottle she carried openly in her hand, as she once more -softly opened the door and crept out into the half-lighted hallway. - -They had given her a room on the third floor, a concession, she -imagined, to the established dignity of her profession. Most of the -servants slept on the fourth floor. It had, accordingly, been by way of -the front stairs that the bibulous English butler, with more than one -sidelong blink of admiration had brought her up to her quarters for the -night. - -She felt that she would like to find the back stairway, the stairway by -which the household servants came and went. - -She moved forward softly, listening a second at doorways as she passed. -It crept through her mind at that moment, incongruously enough, how like -her own future lay this silent and unknown house, with its dark -entanglement of possibilities, its network of unknown dangers and -surprises, its staid and unbetraying doors behind which so much or so -little might anywhere dwell. - -Then she suddenly stood transfixed, panting a little. For the sound of -approaching footsteps fell on her startled ear. - -To turn and run was out of the question, for she had no knowledge of -where or into what she might flee. To hesitate longer would be equally -fatal. Instant action only could save her. As quick as thought she -opened the door on her left, and stepped inside. - -“Is it you, Adolph?” a whispered voice asked quietly, out of the gloom. -It was a woman’s voice—she must have been a young woman, Frances -commiseratively felt—a voice that was neither startled nor unhappy. - -She stood, then, in one of the servants’ rooms. She pictured to herself -the different faces she had seen below stairs, though in none of them -could she remember any sign or hint of what she had now stumbled upon. -But the pregnancy of that muffled question gave her a flashing -consciousness of the wheels within even those inner wheels in the dark -and complicated mills of life. - -“Hsssssh!” said the intruder softly, as she quickly swung to the door, -padding it with her hand. - -She stood there, waiting until the steps passed by. They were brisk, -businesslike steps, those of a woman, mingled with the tinkling of a -chain of keys. She surmised that it was the housekeeper, on her last -rounds for the night. - -She realized the peril of another minute in the room. The wiring of the -house, she had already noticed, with the quickness of an expert, was -both thorough and modern. Any moment the turning of a bedside button -might flood the room with brilliant light and leave her there, betrayed -beyond redemption. - -“Sssssssh!” she said again sharply, as though in warning, and a moment -later dodged out through the door, going as noiselessly as she had come. - -But the ground was now dangerous, she felt; and she was glad to escape -to the comparative freedom of a wider hallway, running at right angles -to the one she had just left. This surely led to the back stairs, she -argued, as she groped her way steadily forward. She was even debating -whether it would not be better to risk the fully-lighted front stairs, -rather than lose time as she was doing, when her groping hands came in -contact with the cool wood of the polished balustrade. - -Her foot was on the carpeted second step, when she drew back, with a -terrified catch of the breath. - -The familiar click of the light-button had thrown the entire hall and -stairway into dazzling light. A man stood at the foot of the stairs, in -his slippered feet, with his hand still on the button. He had not yet -seen her; but it was too late to escape. - -It was the bibulous English butler who had shown her to her room. In a -crook of his arm he carried a Sauterne bottle and a nearly empty -champagne magnum, carefully recorked. It was plain, Frances argued, that -he was pilfering a nightcap for himself. That gave her at least a shred -of courage. - -She hesitated only the fraction of a second. Then she coldly and briskly -descended the stairs, with her hot-water bottle in her hand. - -The butler fell back a step or two at the sudden apparition, blinked at -her unsteadily in the strong light, and made a gigantic effort to draw -himself up. - -Her first intention had been to march disdainfully past him; but this, -she remembered, was out of the question. It was already midnight, or -more, and for all his unsteadiness of limb he was, she knew, a shrewd -and capable servant, well trained in his duties. - -“Well, miss, what is it?” She could see him putting on his official -attitude, just as he might draw on his serving-coat. The new nurse, -apparently, took cold easily, for she still wore her galoshes. - -“Which way do I go to the kitchen?” she demanded curtly. - -“The kitchen, miss, is closed.” He was looking at her with his pale and -beady little eyes. “What were you wanting?” - -“I must have some hot water,” she answered, swaying her instruments of -deliverance before her. - -“There is a bathroom on your floor, miss, two doors to the right of your -own door.” He spoke thickly but peremptorily. Frances could plainly see -that he was not to be juggled with. - -“I said hot water, not warm,” she retorted, almost angrily. - -“You’ll find an electric heater in the bathroom, miss,” he added, more -respectfully. She tried to wither him with a look, but it was -unavailing. He even preceded her to her own door, turning the lights on -and off as they went. - -A moment later, as she stood biting the end of her fingers in mingled -vexation and anxiety, she could hear the sound of running water. She -wondered, dreadingly, if she was never to get rid of the man. As she -waited she let down her hair. - -The butler appeared with a steaming pitcher. He entered unsteadily, to -her preoccupied “Come!” He looked at her over his shoulder as he put the -steaming pitcher down, on her dresser. - -“A damned fine girl!” he said to himself, as he looked at her for a -second time, and seemed loath to leave. In fact, months afterward, he -dilated to the second cook on the wonder of that chestnut hair, which -now fairly blanketed the girl’s head and shoulders. - -“Are you in pain, miss?” he asked anxiously, coming nearer to her. His -attitude was cogent, and yet non-committal. - -“No,” she said icily, and then she added, more discreetly, “No—not -much.” - -“Just—er—where does it seem to be?” he ventured, brazenly. - -She was silent now, distraught with mingled revulsion and anxiety. - -“Is it here, miss?” he persisted, with easy and masterful solicitude, -reaching out as though to touch her with his intrepid and insolent hand. -The woman drew back with a shudder, white to the very lips. This was the -penalty, she told herself, for the ways she had fallen into! This was -the possible degradation that even Durkin had been willing to lead her -into! - -She fell back from him, and stood against the wall, struggling to calm -herself. For the feeling swept over her that she must scream aloud, to -rend and scatter what seemed the choking mists of a nightmare. Yet her -masterful tormentor, misjudging the source of her emotion, still stood -blinking at her soulfully. - -“Isn’t there anything I can do for you?” he wheedled, meltingly, yet -militantly. - -It would have been laughable, under other circumstances, Frances tried -to make herself believe—this solicitous tenderness of an unmannerly -English butler, placidly extending to her the gallantries of the -servants’ quarters. Now, she saw only the perils of the situation. - -“You can leave this room,” she said, steadily, in answer to his -question. She saw the look of stolid revolt that swept over his face, -and she could have wrung her hands, in the extremity of her fear. - -“Won’t you want anything fetched, later?” he still persecuted her. - -“Yes, yes,” she cried, desperately; “but not now!” - -“When?” he demanded, wagging his head, sagely. - -“_The later the better!_” she answered, slowly, with a final and -desperate craftiness, pointing to the door. - -A sudden flame of audacious heat crept into the bloated face before her. -He would still have tarried an admiring moment or two, but she returned -his gaze, unfalteringly, for thirty resolute seconds. He wavered, -mumbled something in his throat, flung one final melting leer at her, -and then turned and crept from the room, nursing his two bottles in the -crook of his arm as he went. - -“Oh, thank God, thank God!” she cried, with a throaty little sob. - -Then a second shudder, as momentarily benumbing as a chill, swept over -her from head to foot. A sudden passion to get out where she could -breathe and move took its place—at whatever ultimate loss—only to get -away from that house of engulfing horrors. - -The mood passed, with the passing of her fright, and she shook her tired -nerves together with an effort. Then still once more she groped her way -out through the darkness. Now, however, there was neither trepidation -nor hesitancy in her silent movements, as she flitted through the -hallway and passed like a shadow down the dark stairs. - -She paused only once—at the door which she knew was Lydia Van Schaick’s -bedroom. In an oriel window, opposite this door, was a little alcove -fitted up with bookshelves, a highly polished writing-table, and two -low-seated rattan lounging-chairs. On one end of the writing-table stood -a flat silver vase holding a spray of roses; on the other end stood a -desk-telephone transmitter and an oblong folio of green morocco, with -“Telephone Addresses” stamped in gold on its richly tooled cover. All -this Frances noticed with one quick glance, as, nursing the knob in her -cautious fingers, she turned it slowly. - -The door was securely locked, from the inside. - -One chance remained to her—by way of the little white-tiled bathroom, -which she had caught a glimpse of on her first journey up through the -house. This bathroom, she knew, would open into the girl’s boudoir -itself. - -This door was unlocked. A moment later she was inside, and the door was -closed behind her. She groped carefully across the tiled flooring until -her finger-tips came in contact with the second door, which creaked a -little at her touch, for it stood a few inches ajar. - -This door she opened, inch by inch, in terror of that tiny hinge-creak. -It was a sleeping-room, she knew, the moment she had crept inside; and -it held a sleeper, for the air seemed laden with its subtle yet quite -immaterial fragrance of warmth—vivified, as it were, with some -intangible exhalation of its sleeping life. - -She listened with strained attention, hoping to overhear the quiet and -regular breathing of the sleeper. But no sound reached her ears. - -Through the muffled darkness she could dimly make out the open doorway -leading into what must be the girl’s sitting-room. In that room, Frances -felt, would stand the chiffonier. - -She felt her way to the foot of the bed. There she stood, strained -second after second, still listening. No sound came from the sleeper. -But, awed, for reasons that lay beyond the reach of her restless -thought, she could feel the presence of the other life there, as -distinctly as though the room had been steeped in noon-day light; and as -she waited and listened there came to her a sense of the mystery of -sleep, a feeling that, after all, this briefest midnight slumber was -only a lighter and younger sister to that endless sleep of death itself. - -Step by step, then, she crawled and edged her way into the second vault -of black silence, feeling with outstretched fingers for each piece of -furniture. The mirror-laden chiffonier, some womanly intuition told her, -would stand between the two heavily curtained windows. - -Her feelings had not misled her. It was a well-made piece of furniture, -and the top drawer opened noiselessly. This was explored with light and -feverish fingers, as a blind woman might explore it. But it held nothing -but laces and scattered bits of jewelry, and filmy things she could not -name and place. - -The second drawer opened less readily, and a key had been left in the -lock. She touched the little leather boxes, deciding that they must be -jewel-cases, and methodic little layers of silk and linen, and a package -or two of papers. Then her fingers fell on something cold, and hard, and -purposeful. It was a woman’s little revolver, obviously, with a jeweled -handle. She explored the trigger-guard and the safety-latch with -studious fingers, and decided that it was a 32-calibre hammerless. - -Then her startled hand went up to her lips, and she wheeled noiselessly -about where she stood. It could not have been a sound that she heard. It -was only a presence that had made itself felt, to some sixth sense in -her. - -No; it was nothing that she had heard or seen, but she leaned forward -and studied the surrounding gloom intently, from side to side. - -Acting under some quick subliminal impulse, she picked the little -hammerless weapon up out of the drawer, with one hand, while her other -hand explored its farther end. This exploring hand felt feverishly along -the edges of what seemed a mother-of-pearl writing-portfolio, and -rummaged quickly and deftly down among laces and silk, until her fingers -came in contact with the glazed surface of a little oblong box. - -There could be no two thoughts as to what that box was. It was the -glove-box which held that particular package for which she had already -dared so much. - -An awakened and alert sixth sense still warned her of something ominous -and imminent; but there was neither fear nor hesitation in her actions -as she drew out the little oblong box and with quick fingers thrust it, -along with the toy-like hammerless, into the bosom of her dress. - -Then she took three stealthy steps forward—and once again caught her -breath sharply. - -“_Somebody is in this room!_” - -The intruder and thief fell back, step by step, gropingly, until she -touched the chiffonier once more. - -“_Somebody is in this room!_” - -It was a woman’s voice that broke in on the black silence, a quiet but -sternly challenging voice, tremulous with agitation, yet strident with -the triumph of conviction, and with resolute courage. - -“Who is here?” - -Frances Candler did not move. She stood there, breathing a little -heavily, watching. For now that sudden challenge neither thrilled nor -agitated her. Consciousness, in some way, refused to react. Her tired -nerves had already been strained to their uttermost; nothing now could -stir her dormant senses. - -Then she felt the sudden patter of bare feet on the floor. - -Still she waited, wondering what this movement could mean. And, as she -had felt at other times, in moments of dire peril, a sense of detached -and disembodied personality seized her—a feeling that the mind had -slipped its sheath of the body and was standing on watch beyond and -above her. She suddenly heard the sound of a key being withdrawn. It was -from the door leading into the hallway. Then, almost before she realized -what it meant, the bedroom door had been slammed shut, a second key had -rattled and clicked decisively in its lock—and she was a prisoner! - -A moment later she caught the sound of the signal-bell in the alcove. - -“Central, quickly, give me the Sixty-Seventh Street police station!” It -was the same clear and determined young voice that had spoken from the -doorway. - -There was a silence of only a few seconds. Then Frances heard the girl -give her name and house number. This she had to repeat twice, -apparently, to the sleepy sergeant. - -“There is a burglar in this house. Send an officer here, please, at -once!” - -A chill douche of apprehension seemed to restore Frances to her senses. -She ran across the room and groped feverishly along the wall for the -electric-light button. She could find none. But on the chiffonier was a -drop-globe, and with one quick turn of the wrist the room was flooded -with tinted light. - -The prisoner first verified her fears; there was no possible avenue of -escape by way of the windows. These, she saw at once, were out of the -question. - -So she stopped in front of the mirror, thinking quickly and lucidly; and -for the second time that night she decided to let down her hair. She -could twist the bank-notes up into a little rope, and pin her thick -braids closely over them, and no one might think to search for them -there. It was a slender thread, but on that thread still hung her only -hope. - -She tore open her dress and flung the cover from the precious glove-box, -scattering the gloves about in her feverish search. - -The box held nothing. The money was not there. It had been taken and -hidden elsewhere. And she might never have known, until it was too late! - -Then methodically and more coolly she made a second search throughout -the now lighted room. But nowhere could she find the package she needed. -And, after all it _was_ too late! And in a sort of tidal wave of -deluging apprehension, she suddenly understood what life from that hour -forward was worth to her. - -She set to work to rearrange the chiffonier, inappositely and vacuously. -She even did what she could to put the room once more in order. This -accomplished, she took up her hot-water bottle, and still told herself -that she must not give up. Then she seated herself in a little -white-and-gold rocker, and waited, quietly blazing out through her -jungle of danger each different narrow avenue of expediency. - -“Poor Jim!” she murmured, under her breath, with one dry sob. - -The hum of voices came to her from the hallway—the servants, obviously, -had been awakened. She could hear the footsteps come to a stop without, -and the shuffling of slippered feet on the hardwood floor. Then came the -drone of excited whisperings, the creak and jar of the doors opening and -closing. - -Then, remote and muffled and far-away, sounded the sharp ringing of a -bell. Somebody out in the hallway gasped a relieved, “Thank heaven!” - -Frances looked at herself in the mirror, adjusting her hair, and taking -note of the two little circles of scarlet that had deepened and spread -across her feverish cheeks. - -Then she sat down once more, and swung the hot-water bottle from her -forefinger, and waited. - -She heard the dull thud of the front door closing and a moment later the -sound of quick footsteps on the stairs. - -She looked about the comfortable, rose-tinted room, with its gilded -Louis clock, with its womanish signs and tokens, with its nest-like -warmth and softness; she looked about her slowly and comprehensively, as -though she had been taking her last view of life. - -Then she rose and went to the door, for the police had arrived. - - - - - CHAPTER XIX - - -Durkin was both puzzled and apprehensive. That a taxi should follow his -own at eleven o’clock at night, for some twenty-odd blocks, was a -singular enough coincidence. That it should stop when he stopped, that -it should wait, not a square away, for him to come out of his _café_, -and then shadow him home for another thirteen circuitous blocks, was -more than a coincidence. It was a signal for the utmost discretion. - -It was not that Durkin, at this stage of the kaleidoscopic game, was -given to wasting tissue in unnecessary worry. But there had been that -mysterious cigar-light in the hallway. When he had glanced cautiously -down through the darkness, leaning well out over the bannister, he had -distinctly seen the little glow of light. Yet, with the exception of his -own top-floor rooms, the building was given over to business offices, -and by night he had invariably found the corridors empty and unused. No -Holmes watchman, no patrolman, not even a Central Office man, he knew, -indulged in fragrant Carolina Perfectos when covering his beat. - -But when he descended quietly to reconnoitre, he saw that no one went -down to the street door. And no one, he could see equally well, remained -on the stairs or in the halls, for he turned on the light, floor by -floor, as he went back to his rooms. - -Yet nobody, again, intelligently trying to secrete himself, would thus -flaunt a lighted cigar in the darkness. From the suave and mellow odor -of that cigar, too, Durkin knew that the intruder was something more -than the ordinary house-thief and night-hawk. - -As he thought the matter over, comfortably lounging back in a big -arm-chair up in his rooms, he tried to force himself to the pacifying -conclusion that the whole affair was fortuitous. He would keep a -weather-eye open for such casual occurrences, in the future; but he now -had no time to bother with the drifting shadows of uncertainty. He had -already that day faced more material dangers; there were more -substantial perils, he knew, rising up about him. - -He flung himself back, with a sigh, after looking at his watch, and -through the upward-threading drifts of his cigar smoke he wondered, -half-reprovingly, what was taking place in the house not two hundred -yards away from him, where Frances was so wakefully watching and -working, while he sat there, idly waiting—since waiting, for once, was -to be part of the game. - -He afterward decided that in his sheer weariness of body and mind he -must have dozed off into a light sleep. - -It was past midnight when he awoke with a start, a vague sense of -impending evil heavy upon him. - -His first thought, on awakening, was that some one had knocked. He -glanced at his watch, as he sprang to open the door. It was on the point -of one. - -Frank should have been back an hour ago. Then he _had_ fallen asleep, of -a certainty, he decided, with electric rapidity of thought. - -But this was she, come at last, he conjectured. Yet, with that sense of -impending danger still over him, he stepped back and turned off the -lights. Then he quietly and cautiously opened the door. - -No one was there. He peered quickly down through the gloom of the -hallways, but still neither sound nor movement greeted him. - -His now distraught mind quickly ran the gamut of possibilities. A -baffling, indeterminate impression seized him that somebody, somewhere, -was reaching out to him through the midnight silence, trying to come in -touch with him and speak to him. - -He looked at the motionless clapper of his transmitter signal-bell, -where he had discreetly muffled the little gong with a linen -handkerchief. It could not have been the telephone. - -Yet he caught up the receiver with a gesture of half-angered impatience. - -“. . . in this house—send an officer at once!” were the words that sped -along the wire to his listening ear. An officer at once! Six quick -strokes of conjecture seemed to form the missing link to his chain of -thought. - -“My God!” he exclaimed in terror, “that means Frank!” - -There had been a hitch somewhere, and in some way. And that was the Van -Schaicks telephoning for the police—yes, decided Durkin, struggling to -keep his clearness of head, it would be first to the Sixty-Seventh -Street station that they would send for help. - -He had already learned, or striven to learn, at such work, not only to -think and to act, but to essay his second step of thinking while he -accomplished his first in action. - -He rummaged through a suit-case filled with lineman’s tools, and -snatched up a nickel badge similar to that worn by inspectors of the -Consolidated Gas Company. It was taking odds, in one way, such as he had -never before in his career dared to take. But the case, he felt, was -desperate. - -Once off the Avenue he ran the greater part of the way round the block, -for he knew that in five minutes, at the outside, the police themselves -would be on the scene. And as he ran he let his alert imagination play -along the difficulties that walled him in, feeling, in ever-shifting -fancy, for the line of least resistance. - -He mounted the brownstone steps three at a time, and tore at the -old-fashioned bell. He pushed his way authoritatively up through a -cluster of servants, shivering and chattering and whispering along the -hall. - -At a young woman in a crimson quilted dressing-gown, faced with -baby-blue silk, he flashed his foolish little metal shield. She was a -resolute-browed, well-poised girl, looking strangely boyish with her -tumbled hair thrown loosely to one side. - -“I’m the plain-clothes man, the detective from the police station!” - -He looked at her abstractedly, and curtly shifted his revolver from his -hip-pocket to his side-pocket. This caused a stir among the servants. - -“Get those people out of here!” he ordered. - -The resolute-browed young woman in the dressing-gown scattered them with -a movement of the hand, and slipped a key into his fingers. Then she -pointed to a doorway. - -“This thing was half expected, ma’m, at Headquarters,” said Durkin -hurriedly, as he fitted the key. “It’s a woman, isn’t it?” - -The girl with the resolute brow and the tumbled hair could not say. - -“But I think I understand,” she went on hurriedly. “I had quite a large -sum of money, several thousand dollars, in my room here!” - -Durkin, who had stooped to unlock the door, turned on her quickly. - -“And it’s still in this room?” he demanded. - -“No; it worried me too much. I was going to keep it, but I took it down -to the bank, this afternoon.” - -Then the girl said “Sir!” wonderingly; for Durkin had emitted a quick -mutter of anger. They were doubly defeated. By this time the bedroom -door was open. - -“Ah, I thought it would be a woman,” he went on coolly, as he glanced at -Frank’s staring and wide eyes. “And, if I mistake not, Miss Van Schaick, -this is Number 17358, at the Central Office.” - -Frances knew his chortle was one of hysteria, but still she looked and -wondered. Once more Durkin flashed his badge as he took her firmly by -one shaking wrist. - -“Come with me,” he said, with quiet authority, and step by step he led -her out into the hallway. - -“Not a word!” he mumbled, under his breath, as he saw her parted lips -essay to speak. - -“It’s really too bad!” broke in the girl in the dressing-gown, -half-relentingly, with an effort to see the prisoner’s now discreetly -downcast face. - -“You won’t say so, later,” retorted Durkin, toying to the full with the -ironic situation. “An old offender!” Even the bibulous butler, in the -doorway, shook his head knowingly at this, thereby intimating, as he -later explained, with certain reservations, to the second maid, that he -all along knew as much. - -Durkin pushed the gaping servants authoritatively aside. - -“Have these people watch the back of the house—every window and door, -till the Inspector and his men come up. I’ll rap for the patrol from the -front.” - -Durkin waited for neither reply nor questions, but hurried his charge -down the stairway, across the wide hall, and out through the heavy front -doors. - -The audacity, the keen irony, the absurdity of it all, seemed to make -him light-headed, for he broke into a raucous laugh as he stood with her -in the cool and free night air. - -But once down on the sidewalk he caught her shaking hand in his, and ran -with her, ran desperately and madly, until the rattle and clatter of a -bell broke on his ear. It was a patrol-wagon rumbling round from the -Avenue on the east. He would have turned back, but at the curb in front -of the Van Schaick mansion already a patrolman stood, rapping for -assistance. - -In his dilemma Durkin dropped breathlessly down an area stairs, feeling -the limp weight of the woman on his body as he fell. To Frances herself -it seemed like the effortless fall in a nightmare; she could remember -neither how nor when it ended, only she had the sensation of being -pulled sharply across cold flagstones. Durkin had dragged her in under -the shadow of the heavy brownstone steps, behind a galvanized iron -garbage can, hoping against hope that he had not been noticed, and -silently praying that if indeed the end was to come it might not come in -a setting so sordid and mean and small. - -A street cat, lean and gaunt and hungry-looking, slunk like a shadow -down the area-steps. The eyes of the two fugitives watched it intently. -As it slunk and crept from shadow to shadow it suddenly became, to the -worn and depressed Durkin, a symbol of his own career, a homeless and -migratory Hunger, outlawed, pursued, unresting, a ravenous and -unappeased purloiner of a great city’s scraps and tatters. - -The soft pressure of Frank’s arm on his own drove the passing thought -from his mind. And they sat together on the stone slabs, silently, hand -in hand, till the patrol-wagon rattled past once more, and the street -noises died down, and hastily opened windows were closed, and footsteps -no longer passed along the street above them. - -Then they ventured cautiously out, and, waiting their chance, sauntered -decorously toward the corner. There they boarded a passing car, bound -southward and crowded to the doors with the members of a German musical -club, who sang loudly and boisterously as they went. - -It seemed the most celestial of music to Durkin, as he hung on a strap -in their midst, with Frank’s warm body hemmed in close to him, and the -precious weight of it clinging and swaying there from his arm. - -Suddenly he looked down at her. - -“Where are you going tonight?” he asked. - -Their eyes met. The tide of abandonment that had threatened to engulf -him slowly subsided, as he read the quiet pain in her gaze. - -“I am going back to the Ralston,” she said, with resolute simplicity. - -“But, good heaven, think of the risk!” he still half-heartedly pleaded. -“It’s dangerous, now!” - -“My beloved own,” she said, with her habitual slow little head shake, -and with a quietness of tone that carried a tacit reproof with it, “life -has far worse dangers than the Ralston!” - -She had felt unconditionally, completely drawn toward him a moment -before, while still warm with her unuttered gratitude. As she thought of -the indignity and the danger from which he had carried her she had -almost burned with the passion for some fit compensation, without any -consideration of self. Now, in her weariness of body and nerve, he had -unconsciously unmasked her own potential weakness to herself, and she -felt repelled from him, besieged and menaced by him, the kindest and yet -the most cruel of all her enemies. - - - - - CHAPTER XX - - -As she slowly wakened in response to the call that had been left at the -hotel office, Frances wondered, with the irrelevancy of the mental -machinery’s first slow movements, if Durkin, at that precise moment, was -still sleeping in his own bed and room in his own distant part of the -city. For his awakening, she felt, would be sure to be a gray and -disheartening one. It would be then, and then only, that the true -meaning of their defeat would come home to him. She wondered, too, if he -was looking to her, waiting for her to help him face the old-time, -dreaded monotony of inactive and purposeless life. - -“Oh, poor Jim!” she murmured again, under her breath. - -She hoped, as she waked more fully to her world of realities, that he at -least was still sleeping, that he at any rate was securing his essential -rest of nerve and body,—for some heavy dregs of her own utter weariness -of the previous night still weighed down her spirits and ached in her -limbs. - -She had always boasted that she could sleep like a child. “I make a -rampart of my two pillows, and no worries ever get over it!” Yet she now -felt, as she waited for a lingering last minute or two in her warm bed, -that, if fortune allowed it, she could lie there forever, and still be -unsatisfied, and cry for one hour more. - -But she had already made her rigorous plans for the day, and time, she -knew, was precious. After her bath she at once ordered up an ample -breakfast of fruit and eggs and coffee and devilled mutton -chops—remembering, as she religiously devoured her meat, that Durkin -had always declared she was carnivorous, protesting that he could tell -it by those solid, white, English teeth of hers. - -Then she dressed herself simply, in a white shirt-waist and a black -broadcloth skirt, with a black-feathered turban-hat draped with a heavy -traveling veil. This simple toilet, however, she made with infinite -care, pausing only long enough to tell herself that today, as never -before, appearances were to count with her. Yet beyond this she brushed -every thought away from her. She kept determinedly preoccupied, moving -feverishly about the room, allowing space for no meditative interludes, -permitting herself never to think of the day and what it was to hold for -her. - -Then she hurried from her room, and down into the street, and into a -taxi, and through the clear, cool, wintry sunlight drove straight to the -Guilford, an apartment hotel, where Sunset Bryan, the race-track -plunger, made his home when in New York. - -The Guilford was one of those ultra-ornamented, over-upholstered, -gaudily-vulgar upper Broadway hotels, replete with marble and onyx, with -plate glass and gilt and outward imperturbability, where a veneer of -administrative ceremonial covered the decay and sogginess of affluent -license. It was here, Frances only too well knew, that Little Myers, the -jockey, held forth in state; it was here that an unsavory actress or two -made her home; that Upton Banaster, the turf-man, held rooms; that -Penfield himself had once lived; it was here that the “big-ring” -bookmakers, and the more sinister and successful rail-birds and -sheet-writers and touts foregathered; it was here that the initiated -sought and found the court of the most gentlemanly blacklegs in all New -York. - -All this she knew, and had known beforehand; but the full purport of it -came home to her only as she descended from her taxi-cab, and passed up -the wide step that led into the sickeningly resplendent lobby. - -Then, for the second time in her career, she did a remarkable and an -unexpected thing. - -For one moment she stood there, motionless, unconscious of the tides of -life that swept in and out on either side of her. She stood there, like -an Alpine traveller on his fragile little mountain bridge of pendulous -pine and rope, gazing down into the sudden and awful abysses beside her, -which seemed to open up out of the very stone and marble that hemmed her -in. For at one breath all the shrouded panoramic illusions of life -seemed to have melted before her eyes. It left her gaping and panting -into what seemed the mouth of Hell itself. It deluged her with one -implacable desire, with one unreasoning, childlike passion to escape, if -only for the moment, that path which some day, she knew, she must yet -traverse. But escape she must, until some newer strength could come to -her. - -She clenched and unclenched her two hands, slowly. Then she as slowly -turned, where she stood, re-entered her taxi-cab, and drove back to her -own rooms once more. There she locked and bolted her door, flung from -her hat and gloves and veil, and fell to pacing her room, staring-eyed -and rigid. - -She could not do it! Her heart had failed her. Before that final test -she had succumbed, ignominiously and absolutely. For in one moment of -reverie, as she faced that hostelry of all modern life’s unloveliness, -her own future existence lay before her eyes, as in a painted picture, -from day to day and year to year. It had been branded on her -consciousness as vividly as had that picture of a far different life, -which had come to her behind the ivy-covered walls of her uncle’s -parsonage. It was a continuous today of evil, an endless tomorrow of -irresolution. Day by day she was becoming more firmly linked to that -ignoble and improvident class who fed on the very offal of social -activity. She was becoming more and more a mere drifting derelict upon -the muddy waters of the lower life, mindless and soulless and -purposeless. No; not altogether mindless, she corrected herself, for -with her deeper spiritual degradation, she felt, she was becoming more -and more an introspective and self-torturing dreamer, self-deceiving and -self-blighting—like a veritable starving rat, that has been forced to -turn and nibble ludicrously at its own tail. - -Yet why had she faltered and hesitated, at such a moment, she demanded -of herself. This she could not fully answer. She was becoming enigmatic, -even to herself. And already it was too late to draw back—even the -tantalizing dream of withdrawal was now a mockery. For, once, she had -thought that life was a single straight thread; now she knew it to be a -mottled fabric in which the past is woven and bound up with the future, -in which tangled tomorrows and yesterdays make up the huddled cloth. She -writhed, in her agony of mind, at the thought that she had no one to -whom to open her soul. This she had always shrunk from doing before -Durkin (and that, she warned herself, was an ill omen) and there had -been no one else to whom she could go for comradeship and consolation. -Then she began making excuses for herself, feebly, at first, more -passionately as she continued her preoccupied pacing of the floor. She -was only one of many. Women, the most jealously guarded and the most -softly shrouded women had erred. And, after all, much lay in the point -of view. What was criminality from one aspect, was legitimate endeavor -from another. All life, she felt, was growing more feverish, more -competitive, more neuropathic, more potentially and dynamically -criminal. She was a leaf on the current of the time. - -And her only redemption now, she told herself, was to continue along -that course in a manner which would lend dignity, perhaps even the -glorified dignity of tragedy itself, to what must otherwise be a squalid -and sordid life. Since she was in the stream, she must strike out for -the depths, not cringe and whimper among the shallows. By daring and -adventuring, audaciously, to the uttermost, that at least could still -lend a sinister radiance to her wrong-doing. That alone could make -excuse for those whimpering and snivelling sensibilities which would not -keep to the kennel of her heart. - -Yet it was only the flesh that was weak and faltering, she argued—and -in an abstracted moment she remembered how even a greater evil-doer than -she herself had buoyed her will to endure great trial. “_That which hath -made them drunk hath made me bold_,” she repeated to herself, -inspirationally, as she remembered the small medicine-flask of cognac -which she carried in her toilet bag. - -She hated the thought of it, and the taste of it,—but more than all she -hated the future into which she dare no longer look. As she medicined -her cowardice with the liquor she could not help marvelling at the -seeming miracle, for, minute by minute, with each scalding small -draught, her weak-heartedness ebbed away. She knew that later there -would be stern exaction for that strength, but she had her grim work to -do, and beggars can not always be choosers. - -Then she gathered up her veil and hat and gloves, and once more made -ready for her day’s enterprise. The pith-ball had passed from its period -of revulsion to its period of attraction. - - - - - CHAPTER XXI - - -Frances Candler’s fingers trembled a little at the Guilford office desk -as she took out her card and penciled beneath her name: “Representing -the Morning Journal.” - -She knew that Sunset Bryan’s success on the circuit, his midnight -prodigalities, his bewildering lavishness of life, and his projected -departure for New Orleans, had already brought the reporters buzzing -about his apartments. Even as she lifted the blotter to dry the line she -had written with such craven boldness, her eye fell on a well-thumbed -card before her, bearing the inscription: - - ALBERT ERIC SPAULDING - The Sunday Sun. - -A moment later she had it in her white-gloved hand, with her own card -discreetly hidden away, and in the most matter-of-fact of voices she was -asking the busy clerk behind the desk if she could see Mr. Bryan. - -“Mr. Bryan is a very late riser,” he explained. - -“I know that,” she answered coolly, “but he’s expecting me, I think.” - -The clerk looked at her, as he stamped the card, and he continued to -look at her, studiously and yet quizzically, as a bell-boy led her back -to the elevator. Sunset Bryan and the type of men he stood for, the -puzzled clerk knew well enough; but this type of woman he did not know. -Sunset, obviously, was branching out. - -“You needn’t bother to wait!” she said to the youth who had touched the -electric button beside the great, high-paneled door of the apartment. - -She stood there quietly until the boy had turned a corner in the -hallway; then she boldly opened the door and stepped inside. - -The big, many-mirrored, crimson-carpeted room was empty, but from an -inner room came the clinking of chopped ice against glass and the hiss -of a seltzer siphon. The race-track king was evidently about to take his -morning pick-me-up. A heavy odor of stale cigar-smoke filled the place. -She wondered what the next step would be. - -“Hello, there, Allie, old boy!” the gambler’s off-hand and surprisingly -genial bass voice called out, as he heard the door close sharply behind -Frances. - -That must mean, thought the alert but frightened girl, that Albert Eric -Spaulding and the plunger were old friends. Once more the siphon hissed -and spat, and the ice clinked against the thin glass. Here was a -predicament. - -“Hello!” answered the woman, at last, steeling herself into a careless -buoyancy of tone ill-suited to the fear-dilated pupils of her eyes. - -She heard a muffled but startled “Good God!” echo from the inner room. A -moment later the doorway was blocked by the shadow of a huge figure, and -she knew that she was being peered at by a pair of small, wolfish eyes, -as coldly challenging as they were audacious. - -She looked nervously at her gloved hands, at the little handkerchief she -was torturing between her slightly shaking fingers. Her gloves, she -noticed, were stained here and there with perspiration. - -If she had not already passed through her chastening ordeal with a -half-drunken English butler, and if the shock of that untoward -experience had not in some way benumbed and hardened her shrinking -womanhood, she felt that she would have screamed aloud and then -incontinently fled—in the very face of those grim and countless -resolutions with which she had bolstered up a drooping courage. It -flashed through her, with the lightning-like rapidity of thought at such -moments, that for all her dubiously honest career she had been strangely -sheltered from the coarser brutalities of life. She had always shrunk -from the unclean and the unlovely. If she had not always been honest, -she had at least always been honorable. Durkin, from the first, had -recognized and respected this inner and better side of her beating so -forlornly and so ineffectually against the bars of actuality; and it was -this half-hidden fineness of fibre in him, she had told herself, that -had always marked him, to her, as different from other men. - -But here was a man from whom she could look for no such respect, a -corrupt and evil-liver whom she had already practically taunted and -challenged with her own show of apparent evilness. So she still tortured -her handkerchief and felt the necessity of explaining herself, for the -big gambler’s roving little eyes were still sizing her up, -cold-bloodedly, judicially, terrifyingly. - -“You’re all right, little girl,” he said genially, as his six feet of -insolent rotundity came and towered over her. “You’re all right! And a -little dimple in your chin, too.” - -A new wave of courage seemed pumping through all of the shrinking girl’s -veins, of a sudden, and she looked up at her enemy unwaveringly, smiling -a little. Whereupon he smilingly and admiringly pinched her ear, and -insisted that she have a “John Collins” with him. - -Again she felt the necessity of talking. Unless the stress of action -came to save her she felt that she would faint. - -“I’m a Morning Journal reporter,” she began hurriedly. - -“The devil you are!” he said with a note of disappointment, his wagging -head still on one side, in undisguised admiration. - -“Yes, I’m from the Journal,” she began. - -“Then how did you get this card?” - -“That’s a mistake in the office—the clerk must have sent you the wrong -one,” she answered glibly. - -“Come off! Come off! You good-looking women are all after me!” and he -pinched her ear again. - -“I’m a Morning Journal reporter,” she found herself rattling on, as she -stood there quaking in mysterious fear of him, “and we’re going to run a -story about you being the Monte Cristo of modern circuit-followers, and -all that sort of thing. Then we want to know if it was true that you -copped one hundred and sixty thousands dollars on Africander at -Saratoga, and if you would let our photographer get some nice pictures -of your rooms here, and a good one of yourself—oh, yes, you would take -a splendid picture. And then I wanted to know if it is true that your -system is to get two horses that figure up as if they each had a good -square chance and then play the longer of the two and put enough on the -other for a place to cover your losses if the first one should lose. And -our sporting editor has said that you make that a habit, and that often -enough you are able to cash on both, and that you—” - -“Say, look here, little girl, what in the devil are you driving at, -anyway?” - -“I’m a reporter on the Morning Journal,” she reiterated, vacuously, -foolishly, passing her hand across her forehead with a weak little -gesture of bewilderment. She could feel her courage withering away. -Alcohol, she was learning, was an ally of untimely retreats. - -“Well, it’s a shame for a girl like you to get afraid of me this way! -Hold on, now, don’t butt in! It’s not square to use a mouth like that -for talking—I’d rather see it laughing, any day. So just cool down and -tell me, honest and out-and-out, what it is you’re after.” - -She flung herself forward and hung on him, in a quite unlooked for -paroxysm of hysteria, apparently reckless of the moment and the menace. - -“It’s this,” she sobbed in a sudden mental obsession, the tears of -actual anguish running down her face. “It’s this,” she went on shrilly, -hurriedly. “_I’ve put my money on the Duke of Kendall today—and if he -doesn’t come in, I’m going to kill myself!_” - -Sunset Bryan let his arm drop from her shoulder in astonishment. Then he -stepped back a few paces, studying her face as she mopped it with her -moistened handkerchief. She would never drink brandy again, was the idle -and inconsequential thought that sped through her unstable mind. For it -was not she herself that was speaking and acting; it was, she felt, some -irresponsible and newly unleashed spirit within her. - -“Why’d you do it?” he demanded. - -“Because—because Clara—that’s Clara Shirley, his rider’s sister—told -me the Duke of Kendall was fixed to win on a long shot this afternoon!” - -“Now, look here—are you, or are you not, a newspaper woman?” - -“No, I’m not,” she shrilled out. “I lied, just to get in to see you!” - -“And you’ve put your money on this Duke of Kendall?” - -“Every cent I own—every cent! If I lose it—oh—It will kill me to lose -it!” - -“But what the devil did you come here for?” - -“Because I am desperate! I’ve—I’ve—” - -“Now, don’t spoil those lovely eyes by crying this way, honey-girl! What -would I get if I told you something about that race this afternoon?” - -“Oh, I’d give you anything!” she cried, almost drunkenly, snatching some -belated hope from the change in his tone. - -“Do you mean that?” he demanded suddenly, stepping back and looking at -her from under his shaggy brows. - -“No—no, not that,” she gasped quickly, in terror, for then, and then -only, did she catch an inkling of his meaning. She felt that she had -floundered into a quagmire of pollution, and that the more fiercely she -struggled and fought, the more stained with its tainted waters she was -destined to remain. - -She was afraid to look up at the crafty, sunburnt, animal-like face -before her, with its wrinkles about the heavy line of the mouth, and its -minutely intersecting crow’s-feet in the corners of the shrewd and -squinting eyes. - -She felt that the very air of life was being walled and held away from -her. Still another fierce longing for escape took hold of her, and she -shuddered a little as she fought and battled against it. She seemed -without the strength to speak, and could only shake her head and try not -to shrink away from him. - -“Still afraid of me, eh?” he asked, as he lifted her drooping head -brazenly, with his forefinger under her chin. He studied her -tear-stained, colorless face for a minute or two, and then he went on: - -“Well, I’m not so rotten as I might be! Here’s a tip for you, little -girl! The Duke of Kendall is goin’ to come in on a long shot and what’s -more, he’s goin’ to run on odds of fifty to one!” - -“You’re certain of it?” she gasped. - -“Dead sure of it, between you and me! There’s a gang down at the -Rossmore’d cover this floor with gold just to know that tip!” - -“Then we _can_ win! It’s _not_ too late!” she broke out fervently, -forgetting where she stood, forgetting the man before her. She was -already reaching up to draw down her veil, with a glance over her -shoulder at the door. - -“Am I goin’ to see you again?” he still wheedled. - -Again their eyes met. She had to struggle desperately to keep down the -inward horror of it all. And now above all things there must be no -missteps. - -“Yes,” she murmured. - -“When?” he demanded. - -“I’ll come back—tomorrow!” - -She already had her hand on the door-handle, when he called to her -sharply. - -“Here, wait one minute!” - -She paused, in some deadly new fear of him. - -“Look here, little girl, I began to follow this business of mine when I -was nineteen years old. I’m forty-three now, and in those twenty-four -years I’ve hauled in a heap of money. Are you listening?” - -“Yes,” she murmured. - -“And I’ve hauled in something besides money!” - -Still she waited. - -“What I haven’t made by plunging I’ve made by poker. And I’d never have -come out the long end if I didn’t know a thing or two about faces. I -know a bluff when I see it. Now I want to tell you something.” - -“Well?” she faltered. - -“You’re not comin’ back tomorrow! You’re not comin’ back at all, my -pink-and-white beauty! I’m tellin’ you this for two reasons. One is that -I don’t want you to carry off the idea that you’ve been breakin’ me all -up, and the other is that I’m not so rotten bad as—well, as Bob -Pinkerton would try to make me out. That’s all.” - -“Good-bye!” murmured the humbled woman from the doorway. - -“Good-bye, and good luck!” answered Sunset Bryan in his genial bass. - - - - - CHAPTER XXII - - -For all the rest of that day Frances Candler hated herself, hated Durkin -for the mean and despicable paths into which he and his plottings had -forced her, hated her sordid and humiliating conquest of the gambler -Bryan and his secret. - -But most of all she hated what she saw was happening within herself, the -insidious and yet implacable hardening and narrowing of all her nature, -the accumulating of demeaning and corroding memories, the ripening of a -more and more morose self-contempt into a vague yet sullen malevolence -of thought and wish. - -She told herself, forlornly, that she still would not let her better -nature die without a struggle, for all that she had done, and for all -that she had been through. What crushed and disheartened her was the -conviction that this struggle once more, in the end, would prove a -futile one. She was not bad, though, not all bad, like women she had -known! She had always aspired and turned toward what was right and -good—her spirit cried out desolately. It was not that she had gained -anything through all her wrong-doing. From the first, she felt, she had -been the tool in some stronger hand; she had been only the leaf on the -winds of some darker destiny. At first it had been to live, and nothing -more. Now it was to love—only some day to love as she had always hoped -to do; not at once to win the crown, but some day to hope to be able to -win that crown. For this she was surrendering her womanhood, her -integrity of soul, even the last shred of her tattered self-respect. - -She would not die in a day, she told herself again, desperately. She -would not surrender everything without a struggle. What remained of her -scattered legions of honor, she passionately promised herself, would -still be gathered together and fostered and guarded. - -Above all things, she felt, she needed companionship. Durkin meant much -to her—meant far too much to her, for time and time again he had only -too easily shattered her card-house of good resolutions. She had blindly -submerged herself for him and his efforts. It was not that she stopped -to blame or reprove him; her feeling was more one of pity, of sorrow for -the unstable and unreconciled nature in the fell clutch of circumstance. -Yes, he meant more to her than she dare tell herself. But there were -moods and moments when he proved inadequate, and to allow that sad truth -to go unrecognized was more than blindness. If only she had, or could -have, the friendship of a woman,—that was her oft-recurring -thought,—the companionship of one warm nature quick to understand the -gropings and aspirations of another. With such a friend, she vaguely -felt, things might not yet be so ill with her. - -But she knew of none. There was no one, she realized, to whom she could -look for help. And she tried to console herself with the bitter unction -of the claim that with her the world had always been doggedly unkind and -cruel, that with an Æschylean pertinacity, morbidly interpreted as -peculiar to her case, fate, or destiny, or the vague forces for which -those words stood, had hounded and frustrated her at every turn. - -This maddening feeling of self-hate and contempt stayed with her all -that day. It made stiflingly hideous and sinister, to her brooding eyes, -the over-furnished woman’s pool-room which had once been Penfield’s own, -where she counted out her money and placed her bet on the Duke of -Kendall. The broken-spirited and hard-faced women who waited about the -operator’s wicket, the barrenness and malignity of their lives, the -vainly muffled squalidness of that office of envenomed Chance, the -abortive lust for gold without labor, the empty and hungry eyes that -waited and watched the figure-covered blackboard, the wolf-like ears -that pricked up at the report of some belated prey in the distance—it -all filled Frances with a new and disheartening hatred of herself and -the life into which she had drifted. - -“Oh, God!” she prayed silently, yet passionately, while the little -sounder in the operator’s stall clicked and sang; “Oh, God, may it turn -out that this shall be the last!” - -Listlessly she read the messages, as the report for the fifth Aqueduct -event of the afternoon began to flash in and the announcer cried out, -“They’re off!” Dreamily she interpreted the snatches of information as -they came in over the wire: “Scotch Heather leads, with White-Legs -second!” “Scotch Heather still leading at the quarter, and Heart’s -Desire pressing White-Legs close.” “Heart’s Desire leads at the half, -with the Duke of Kendall second.” “White-Legs, the Duke of Kendall, and -Heart’s Desire bunched at the turn.” “Duke of Kendall holds the rail, -with Heart’s Desire and White-Legs locked for second place.” Then, for a -minute or two, silence took possession of the little brass sounder. Then -thrilled out the news: “_The Duke of Kendall wins!_” - -Frances quietly waited, amid the hubbub and crowding and commotion, -until the wire report had been duly verified and the full returns -posted. - -Then, when the little window of the paying clerk slid open for the -making of settlements, she deposited her ticket, and quietly asked to -have it in hundreds. - -Her slip read for two hundred dollars on the Duke of Kendall at odds of -fifty to one. - -“I guess this shop shuts up mighty soon, on this kind of runnin’,” said -the paying clerk sourly, after consulting with his chief, and flinging -her money through his little wicket at her. She counted it methodically, -amid the gasps and little envious murmurs of the women at her elbow, and -then hurried from the room. - -“Well, you ought to be happier-looking!” snarled a painted woman with -solitaire diamond earrings, as Frances hurried down the half-lighted -stairway to the street. - -There the woman who ought to be happy signaled moodily for a taxi-cab, -and drove straight to Durkin’s apartments. - -She flung the pile of bills at him, in a heap before his astonished -eyes. - -“There it is,” she said, with shaking hands and quivering lips, flashing -at him a look in which he could see hatred, contempt, self-disgust and -infinite unhappiness. - -“There it is!” she called out to him, shrilly. “There it is—all you -wanted, at last, and I _hope it will make you happy_!” - -She tore the veil she had dragged from her head between her two -distraught hands and flung it from her, and then fell in the other’s -arms and wept on his shoulder like a tired child, convulsively, -bitterly, hopelessly. - - - - - CHAPTER XXIII - - -“Helen can not possibly sail tomorrow.” - -This was the cipher message which flashed from Samuel Curry to his New -Orleans partner, giving him hurried warning that the final movement in -their cotton coup had been again postponed for at least another -twenty-four hours. Frances Candler, keeping watch on the up-town wires, -had caught the first inkling of this relieving news. After a passionate -hour of talk and pleading from Durkin, and after twelve long hours of -unbroken sleep, much of her spirit of rebelliousness had passed away, -and she had unwillingly and listlessly taken up the threads of what -seemed to her a sadly tangled duty once more. - -But with the advent of Curry’s climactic message her old, more intimate -interest in the game gradually awoke. By daylight she had sent word down -to Durkin, who, about that time, was having quite trouble enough of his -own. - -For his underground guerrilla work, as it was called, had its risks in -even the remoter parts of the city. But here, in the Wall Street -district, by day the most carefully guarded area of all New York, just -as by night the Tenderloin is the most watched—here, with hundreds -hourly passing to and fro and Central Office men buzzing back and forth, -Durkin knew there were unusual perils, and need for unusual care. - -Yet early that morning, under the very eyes of a patrolman, he had -casually and hummingly entered the Postal-Union conduit, by way of the -manhole not sixty yards from Broadway itself. In his hands he carried -his instruments and a bag of tools, and he nodded with businesslike -geniality as the patrolman stepped over toward him. - -“Got a guard to stand over this manhole?” demanded the officer. - -“Nope!” said Durkin. “Three minutes down here ought to do me!” - -“You people are gettin’ too dam’ careless about these things,” rebuked -the officer. “It’s _me_ gets the blame, o’ course, when a horse sticks -his foot in there!” - -“Oh, cover the hole, then!” retorted Durkin genially, as he let himself -down. - -Once safely in the covered gloom of the conduit, he turned on his light -and studied a hurriedly made chart of the subway wire-disposition. The -leased Curry wires, he very well knew, were already in active service; -and the task before him was not unlike the difficult and dangerous -operation of a surgeon. Having located and cut open his cables, and in -so doing exposed the busy arteries of most of Wall Street’s brokerage -business, he carefully adjusted his rheostat, throwing the resistant -coils into circuit one by one as he turned the graduated pointer. It was -essential that he should remain on a higher resistance than the circuit -into which he was cutting; in other words, he must not bleed his patient -too much, for either a heavy leakage or an accidental short-circuiting, -he knew, would lead to suspicion and an examination, if not a prompt -“throwing it into the quad,” or the reversal to the protection of some -distant and indirect wire. - -When his current had been nicely adjusted and his sensitive little -polarized relay had broken into a fit of busy and animated chattering, -he turned his attention to the unused and rusted end of gas-pipe which -careless workmen, months, or even years, before, had hurriedly capped -and left protruding a good quarter-inch into the conduit. On this cap he -adjusted a pair of pocket pipe-tongs. It took all his weight to start -the rusted pipe-head, but once loosened, it was only a minute’s work to -unscrew the bit of metal and expose the waiting ends of the wires which -he had already worked through from the basement end of the pipe. He then -proceeded with great deliberation and caution to make his final -connections, taking infinite care to cover his footsteps as he went, -concealing his wire where possible, and leaving, wherever available, no -slightest trace of interference. - -When everything was completed, it was nothing more than an incision made -by a skilled and artful surgeon, a surgeon who had as artfully dressed -the wound, and had left only a slender drainage tube to show how deep -the cutting had been. - -Durkin then repacked his tools in his spacious double-handled club bag -of black sea-lion, put out his light, emerged whistling and dirt-soiled -from his manhole, and having rounded the block, slipped into his -basement printing-office and changed his clothes. - -What most impressed and amazed Durkin, when once his quadruplex had been -adjusted and pressed into service, was the absolute precision and -thoroughness with which the Curry line of action had been prearranged. -It was as diffusedly spectacular as some great international campaign. -This Machiavellian operator’s private wires were humming with messages, -deputies throughout the country were standing at his beck and call, -emissaries and underlings were waiting to snatch up the crumbs which -fell from his overloaded board, his corps of clerks were toiling away as -feverishly as ever, Chicago and St. Louis and Memphis and New Orleans -were being thrown into a fever of excitement and foreboding, fortunes -were being wrested away in Liverpool, the Lancaster mills were shutting -down, and still cotton was going up, up, point by point; timid clerks -and messenger boys and widows, even, were pouring their pennies and -dollars into the narrowing trench which separated them from twenty cent -cotton and fortune. - -Yet only two men knew and understood just how this Napoleon of commerce -was to abandon and leave to its own blind fate this great, -uncomprehending, maddened army of followers. Speculators who had made -their first money in following at his heels were putting not only their -winnings, but all their original capital, and often that of others, on -the “long” side of the great bull movement, waiting, always waiting, for -that ever alluring Fata Morgana of twenty cent cotton. Even warier -spirits, suburban toilers, sober-minded mechanics, humble store-traders, -who had long regarded ’Change as a very Golgotha of extortion and -disaster, had been tainted with the mysterious psychologic infection, -which had raced from city to town and from town to hamlet. Men bowed -before a new faith and a new creed, and that faith and creed lay -compactly in three pregnant words: Twenty Cent Cotton. - -Yet this magnetic and spectacular bull leader, Durkin felt, was -infinitely wiser and craftier than any of those he led. Curry, at heart, -knew and saw the utter hopelessness of his cause; he realized that he -was only toying and trifling with a great current that in the end, when -its moment came, would sweep him and his followers away like so many -chips. He faced and foresaw this calamity, and out of the calamity which -no touch of romanticism in his nature veiled to his eyes, he quietly -prepared to reap his harvest. - -As these thoughts ran through Durkin’s busy mind, some vague idea of the -power which reposed in his own knowledge of how great the current was to -become, and just what turn it was to take, once more awakened in him. He -had none of that romantic taint, he prided himself, which somewhere or -at some time invariably confused the judgment of the gambler and the -habitual criminal—for they, after all, he often felt, were in one way -essentially poets in spirit, though dreamers grown sour through -stagnation. Yet he could see, in the present case, how gigantic his -opportunities were. Properly equipped, with a very meagre sum, millions -lay before him, inevitably. But the stain of illegitimacy clung to his -methods, and as it was, his returns at best could be only a paltry few -thousands—fifty or sixty or even a hundred thousand at most. With Curry -it would be millions. - -Durkin remembered his frugal train-despatching days at the barren little -wooden station at Komoka Junction, where forty dollars a month had -seemed a fortune to him. He lighted a Carolina Perfecto, and inhaled it -slowly and deliberately, demanding to know why he ought not to be -satisfied with himself. In those earlier days he used to eat his dinner -out of a tin pail, carried each morning from his bald and squalid -boarding-house. Today, he remembered, he was to take luncheon with -Frances at the Casa Napoleon, with its exquisite Franco-Spanish cookery, -its tubbed palms, and its general air of exotic well-being. - -His luncheon with Frances, however, was not what he had looked for. He -met her in front of the West Ninth Street restaurant as she was stepping -out of her taxi-cab. She seemed unusually pale and worried, though an -honestly happy smile flitted across her lightly veiled face as she -caught sight of him. - -In a moment again her manner changed. - -“We are being watched,” she said, in a low voice. - -“Watched! By whom?” - -Their eyes met and he could see the alarm that had taken possession of -her. - -“By MacNutt!” - -Durkin grew a little paler as he looked down at her. - -“He has shadowed us for two days,” she went on in her tense, low, quick -tones. “He followed me out of our own building, and I got away from him -only by leaving my taxi and slipping through a department store.” - -“Did he speak to you?” - -“No, not a word. I don’t even think he dreams I have seen him. But it is -hard to say how much he has found out. Oh, Jim, he’s slow and sly and -cunning, and he won’t strike until the last minute. But when he does, he -will try to—to smash us both!” - -“I’ll kill that man as sure as I’m standing on this curbstone, if he -ever butts in on this game of ours! This isn’t pool-room piking we’re at -now, Frank—this is big and dangerous business!” - -He had remembered the cigar-light in the dark passageway, and the -mysterious disappearance, then later the taxi-cab that had strangely -followed his own. - -“No, no, Jim; you mustn’t say that!” she was murmuring to him, with a -little shiver. “I’m afraid of him!” - -“Well, _I’m_ not,” said Durkin, and he swore softly and wickedly, as he -repeated his threat. “What does _he_ want to come into our lives for, -now? He’s over and done with, long ago!” - -“We are never over and done with anything we have been,” she almost -sobbed, half tragically. - -Durkin looked at her, a little impatient, and also a little puzzled. - -“Frank, what is this man MacNutt to you?” - -She was silent. - -“What has he ever been to you, then?” - -“He is a cruel and cunning and bitterly vindictive man,” she said, -evading the question. “And if he determined to crush a person, he would -do it, although it took him twenty years.” - -“Then I certainly _will_ kill him!” declared Durkin, shaken with a -sudden unreasoning sweep of white passion. - -It was not until he had half finished his luncheon that his steadiness -of nerve came back to him. Here he had been shadowing the shadower, step -by step and move by move, and all along, even in those moments when he -had taken such delight in covertly and unsuspectingly watching his -quarry, a second shadow had been secretly and cunningly stalking his own -steps! - -“It will be a fight to the finish, whatever happens!” he declared -belligerently, still harping on the string of his new unhappiness. - - - - - CHAPTER XXIV - - -Durkin, bending restlessly over his relay, and dreamily cogitating on -the newly discovered fact that Morse was a language as harmonious and -mysterious and subtly expressive as music itself, sat up with a sudden -galvanic jerk of the body. - -“_Helen sails at one tomorrow!_” thrilled and warbled and sang the -little machine of dots and dashes; and the listening operator knew that -his time had come. He caught up the wires that ran through the gas-pipe -to the conduit, and bracing himself against the basement wall, pulled -with all his strength. They parted suddenly, somewhere near the cables, -and sent him sprawling noisily over the floor. - -He hurriedly picked himself up, flung every tool and instrument that -remained in the dingy basement into his capacious club bag, and -carefully coiled and wrapped every foot of telltale wire. As little -evidence as possible, he decided, should remain behind him. - -Five minutes later he stepped into Robinson & Little’s brokerage -offices. It was, in fact, just as the senior member of the firm was -slipping off his light covert-cloth overcoat and making ready for a -feverish day’s business. - -Ezra Robinson stared a little hard when Durkin told him that he had -thirteen thousand dollars to throw into “short” cotton that morning, and -asked on what margin he would be able to do business. - -“Well,” answered the broker, with his curt laugh, “it’s only on the -buying side that we’re demanding five dollars a bale _this_ morning!” - -He looked at Durkin sharply. “You’re on the wrong side of the market, -young man!” he warned him. - -“Perhaps,” said Durkin easily. “But I’m superstitious!” - -The man of business eyed him almost impatiently. - -Durkin laughed good-naturedly. - -“I mean I had a sort of Joseph’s dream that cotton was going to break -down to sixteen today!” - -“Well, you can’t afford to work on dreams. Cotton goes up to nineteen -today, and stays there. Candidly, I’d advise you to keep off the bear -side—for a month or two, anyway!” - -But Durkin was not open to dissuasion. - -“When May drops down to sixteen or so I’ll be ready to let the ‘shorts’ -start to cover!” he argued mildly, as he placed his money, gave his -instructions, and carried away his all-important little slip of paper. - -Then he hurried out, and dodged and twisted and ran through those -crowded and sunless cañons of business where only a narrow strip of -earth’s high-arching sky showed overhead. As he turned from William -Street into Hanover Square, through the second tier of half-opened plate -glass windows he could already hear the dull roar of the Cotton Pit. The -grim day’s business, he knew, was already under way. - -Four policemen guarded the elevators leading to the spectator’s gallery. -The place was crowded to the doors; no more were to be admitted. Durkin, -however, pushed resolutely through the staggering mass, and elbowed and -twisted his way slowly up the stairs. Here again another row of guards -confronted him. A man at his side was excitedly explaining that the -Weather Bureau had just issued flood warnings, for danger line stages in -the lower Black Warrior of Alabama and the Chattahoochee of Georgia. And -_that_ ought to hold the “bears” back, the man declared, as Durkin -elbowed his way in to the guards. - -“No use, mister, we can’t let you in,” said a perspiring officer. - -He stood with his back to the closed door. At each entrance a -fellow-officer stood in the same position. The receipts at Bombay, for -the half-week, cried still another excited follower of the market, were -only thirty-eight thousands bales. - -“Hey, stand back there! Let ’em out! Here’s a woman fainted!” came the -cry from within, and the doors were swung wide to allow the woman to be -carried through. - -Durkin wedged a five-dollar bill down between the guarding policeman’s -fingers. - -“There’s your chance. For God’s sake, get me in!” - -The doors were already being closed, and the din within again shut off -from the listening crowd in the hallway. - -“Here, stand back! Gentleman’s got a ticket!” and without further ado -the big officer cannonaded him into the midst of the gallery mob. - -Once there, Durkin edged round by the wall, squeezed himself -unceremoniously out, until, at last, he came to the brass railing -guarding the edge of the spectator’s gallery. Then he took a deep -breath, and gazed down at the sea of commotion that boiled and eddied at -his feet. - -It was one mad tumult of contending forces, a maelstrom of opposing -currents. Seldom was there a lull in that hundred-throated delirium, -where, on raised steps about a little circular brass railing, men -shouted and danced and flung up their hands and raced back and forth -through a swarming beehive of cotton-hunger. Some were hatless, some had -thrown coats and vests open, some white as paper, and some red and -perspiring; some were snowing handfuls of torn-up pad sheets over their -comrades, some were penciling madly in call-books, some were feverishly -handing slips to agile youths dodging in and out through the seething -mass. Every now and then a loud-noted signal-bell sounded from one end -of the hall, calling a messenger boy for despatches. - -In the momentary little lulls of that human tempest Durkin could catch -the familiar pithy staccato of telegraph keys cluttering and pulsating -with their hurried orders and news. He could see the operators, where -they sat, apathetically pounding the brass, as unmoved as the youth at -the light-crowned, red-lined blackboard, who caught up the different -slips handed to him and methodically chalked down the calls under the -various months. - -Then the tumult began afresh once more, and through it all Durkin could -hear the deep, bass, bull-like chest-notes of one trader rising loud -above all the others, answered from time to time by the clear, high, -penetratingly insistent and challenging soprano of another. - -Curry once more had cotton on the upward move. It was rumored that the -ginners’ report was to be a sensational one. Despatches from Southern -points had shown advancing prices for spot cotton. A weak point had been -found in the Government report. All unpicked cotton on the flooding -Black Warrior bottoms would never reach a gin. The mills, it had been -whispered about, were still buying freely, eagerly; yet already -purchasers were having more difficulty in getting the commodity than -when, weeks before, it had stood two hundred points lower. And still the -sea of faces fought and howled and seethed, but still the price of -cotton went up. - -Durkin searched more carefully through that writhing mass of frenzied -speculators for a glimpse of Curry himself. - -He caught sight of him, at last, standing cool and collected and -rosy-faced, a few paces in front of the New Orleans blackboard, at the -edge of the little sea of frantic men that fought and surged and battled -at his side. Spot cotton had already soared to 17.55. The wires were -reporting it at eighteen cents in New Orleans. Hurry orders from -Liverpool were increasing the tension. - -Durkin took a second and closer look at the great bull leader. He made -note of the large emerald flashing in his purple cravat, of the gaily -dotted white waistcoat, in the armholes of which were jauntily caught -the careless thumbs, of the black derby hat tilted a trifle down over -the careless, rosy face. This was the man who was so lavishly giving -away houses and jewels and automobiles. This was the man on whom men and -women in all walks of life, in every state and territory of the Union, -were pinning their faith for established twenty cent cotton and the balm -of affluence that it would bring them! This was the man at whose whisper -a hundred thousand spindles had ceased to revolve, and at whose nod, in -cotton towns half a world away, a thousand families either labored or -were idle, had food or went hungry. - -A momentary lull came in the storm, a nervous spasm of uncertainty. It -seemed only a sheer caprice, but in sixty seconds the overstrained price -had fallen away again twenty points. Curry, stroking his small mustache, -stepped in closer to the circular brass railing of the Pit, and said a -quiet word or two to his head-broker. His rosy face was expressionless, -and he pulled languidly at his little mustache once more. But his motion -had started the upward tendency again. Both May and July cotton bounded -up, point by point, capriciously, unreasonably, inexorably, as though at -the wafting of a magician’s wand. - -When the excitement seemed at its highest, when the shrill-noted chorus -of sellers and buyers was shrieking its loudest, Samuel Curry went out -to eat his luncheon. This was at once noticed and commented on,—for -dozens of eyes, both eager and haggard, watched the leader’s every move -and expression. - -The change that swept over the Pit was magical. The tumult subsided. The -shouting men about the brass railing stopped to take breath. The -sallow-faced young man who chalked prices up on the Pit-edge blackboard -rested his tired fingers. Brokers sat about on little camp-stools. For -the first time Durkin could catch the sound of the sustained note of the -telegraph keys clicking busily away. The sunlight fell across the -paper-littered floor. The crowd in the gallery grew less. The operators -were joking and chatting. A messenger boy had fallen asleep on his -bench. The army was waiting for the return of its leader. - -Curry re-entered the Pit quietly, with a toothpick in one corner of his -mouth. He stood there for a moment or two, his thumbs in his waistcoat -armholes, rocking comfortably back and forth on his heels, enigmatically -and indolently watching the floor which his reappearance had first -reanimated and then thrown into sudden confusion. - -Durkin, in turn, watched the leader closely, breathlessly, waiting for -the beginning of the end. He saw Curry suddenly throw away his toothpick -and signal to a bent and pale-haired floor broker, who shot over to his -leader’s side, exchanged a whispered word or two with him, and then shot -back to the brass railing. There he flung his hands up in the air, with -fingers outthrust, and yelled like a madman: - -“Buy July fifty-one! Buy July fifty-two! Buy July -fifty-three—four—five! Buy July fifty-six!” - -That single-throated challenge was like a match to waiting ordnance. - -With arms still extended and gaunt fingers outstretched he kept it up, -for one moment. Then the explosion came. Already, it seemed he had -imparted his madness to the men who screamed and fought and gesticulated -about him. - -“Buy July sixty-three! Buy July sixty-four! Buy July -sixty-five—sixty-seven—sixty-eight!” - -The frenzy in the Pit increased. Up, up went July cotton to seventy, to -seventy-one, even to seventy-two. In thirty years and over no such price -had ever been known. Eighty-five million dollars’ worth of cotton bales, -on paper, were deliriously exchanging hands. But, all things must reach -their end. The bow had been bent to the uttermost. The tide had flooded -into its highest point. - -A sudden change came over Curry. He flung up his two hands, and brought -them smartly together over his jauntily tilted black derby. This done, -he elbowed and pushed his way hurriedly to the ring-side. The market -hung on his next breath. - -“Sell twenty thousand May at sixty!” - -A silence; like that which intervenes between the lightning flash and -the thunder-clap, fell in the Pit. - -The leader was unloading. It was rumored that five thousand bales more -than the whole crop had been sold. The bubble had been overblown. There -was still time to be on the safe side. And like people fighting in a -fire-panic, they tore and trampled one another down, and blocked the way -to their own deliverance, through the very frenzy of their passion to -escape. - -But the downward trend had already begun. - -Everybody attempted to unload. Outside orders to follow the movement -promptly poured in. What before had been unrest was soon panic, and then -pandemonium. Men and youths bending over office tickers, women at quiet -home telephones, plungers and “occasionals” watching bulletin-boards, -miles and miles away—all took up the startled cry. - -Wire-houses promptly heard of the unloading movement, of the abdication -of the bull king, and a mad stream of selling orders added to the rout -of the day. - -Curry had started the current; he let it take its course. Through its -own great volume, he knew, it could easily carry all opposition down -with it. He even ostentatiously drew on his tan-colored gloves, and took -up his overcoat, as he announced, laughingly, that he was out of the -market, and that he was off to Florida for a holiday. - -Then a second panic—frenzied, irrational, desperate, self-destroying -panic—took hold of that leaderless mob, trampling out their last hope -with their own feverish feet. Curry had liquidated his entire holdings! -He was going South for the winter! He was carrying out his old threat to -take the bears by the neck! He had caught the pool on the eve of -betraying him! - -They had warned him that he would find no mercy if he did not draw in -with his manipulations. He had found treachery used against him, and as -he had promised, he was giving them a dose of their own medicine. - -July, in the mad rush, dropped fifty points, then a ruinous one hundred -more, then wilted and withered down another fifty, until it stood 173 -points below its highest quotation mark. The rout was absolute and -complete. - -Seeing, of a sudden, that the market might even go utterly to pieces, -without hope of redemption, the old-time bull leader, now with a pallor -on his plump face, leaped into the Pit, and tried to hold the runaway -forces within bounds. - -But his voice was lost in the din and tumult. He was a mere cork on the -grim tide of disaster. Even his own frantic efforts were in vain. The -_coup_ had been effected. The day had been won and lost! - -Durkin did not wait for the gong to sound. He hurried round to Robinson -& Little’s offices, racing past disheveled men as excited as himself. - -Neither member of the distraught firm of Robinson & Little was to be -seen. But a senior clerk, with a pale face and a wilted collar, quickly -and nonchalantly counted Durkin out his money, after verifying the slip, -and speaking a brief word or two with his master over the telephone. - -When his brokerage commission had been deducted, Durkin was still able -to claim as his own some forty-eight thousand dollars. - -It had been a game, for once, worth the candle. - -He walked out into the afternoon sunlight, pausing a moment at the -doorway to drink in the clear wintry air of the open street. After all, -it was worth while to be alive in such a world, with all its stir, with -all its— - -His line of thought was suddenly disrupted. A tingle of apprehension, -minute but immediate, was speeding up and down his backbone. - -“That’s your man,” a voice had said from the shadow of the doorway. - -Durkin took the two stones steps as one, and, without turning, hurried -on. His eyes were half-closed as he went, counting his own quick -footfalls and wondering how many of them might safely be taken to mean -escape. - -He walked blindly, with no sense of direction, each moment demanding of -himself if it meant defeat or freedom. - -At the twentieth step he felt a hand catch at the slack in his coat -sleeve. He jerked a startled and indignant arm forward, but the clutch -was one of steel. - -“I guess we want you, Jimmie Durkin,” said a grim but genial and -altogether commonplace voice to him over his averted shoulder. - -Then Durkin turned. It was Doogan’s plain-clothes man, O’Reilly. Beside -him stood a second plain-clothes man showing a corner of his Detective -Bureau badge. - -“Well?” said Durkin, vacuously. - -The men drew in closer, sandwiching him compactly between them. It was a -commonplace enough movement, but it made suddenly and keenly tangible to -his mind the fact that he had lost his freedom. - -“For God’s sake, boys, whatever it is, don’t make a scene here!” cried -the prisoner, passionately. “I’ll go easy enough, but don’t make a show -of me.” - -“Come on, then, quick!” said the Central Office plain-clothes man, -wheeling him about, and heading for the Old Slip Station. - -“Quick as you like,” laughed Durkin, very easily but very warily, as he -calculated the time and distance between him and the sergeant’s desk, -and told himself a second time admonitively that he was indeed under -arrest. - - - - - CHAPTER XXV - - -Durkin, with an officer at either elbow, tried to think far ahead and to -think fast. Yet try as he might, his desperate mind could find no -crevice in the blind wall of his predicament. Nothing, at any rate, was -to be lost by talking. - -“What’s this for, boys, anyhow?” he asked them, with sadly forced -amiability. - -“Different things,” said Doogan’s man O’Reilly, noncommittally. - -“But who made the charge—who laid the complaint, I mean?” - -“’Tis an old friend of yours!” chuckled O’Reilly, thinking of other -things. - -Durkin looked at the man studiously. “Not Robinson?” - -“And who’s Robinson?—better try another guess!” - -“Nor the Postal-Union people?” - -“And what have you been doin’ to _them_?” retorted the officer, as he -gnawed at the corner of his tobacco plug and tucked it away in his vest -pocket again. - -“They tried to soak me once, without cause,” lamented Durkin, -indignantly. But his hopes had risen. After all, he felt, it might be -only some old, unhappy far-off thing. - -“Who the devil was it, then?” - -“Twas MacNutt!” said O’Reilly, watching him. “MacNutt’s turned nice and -good. He’s a stool-pigeon now!” - -“MacNutt!” echoed Durkin, and as before, a great rage burned through him -at the sound of the name. - -Hope withered out of him, but he gave no sign. He wondered what, or just -how much, MacNutt dare reveal, even though he did stand in with the -Central Office. - -It was dark a minute or two for him, as his mind still leaped and groped -at the old blind wall. Then suddenly into the depths of his despair -swayed and stretched a single slender thread of hope. - -It was Custom House Charley’s saloon so artfully disguised as a -soda-bar. There the second waiter was Eddie Crawford—the same Eddie -Crawford who had worked with him on the Aqueduct pool-room plot, and had -been discharged with him from the Postal-Union. - -It seemed eons and eons ago, that poor little ill-fated plot with Eddie -Crawford! - -Eddie had struggled forlornly on as an inspector of saloon -stock-tickers, had presided over a lunch counter, and had even polished -rails and wiped glasses. But now he mixed drinks and dispensed -bootlegger’s gin for Custom House Charley. - -If Eddie was there— - -“Look here, you two,” cried Durkin decisively, coming to a full stop to -gain time. “I’ve struck it heavy and honest this time, and, as you -people put it, I’ve got the goods on me. I can make it worth five -thousand in spot cash to each of you, just to let this thing drop while -you’ve still got the chance!” - -The Central Office man looked at O’Reilly. Durkin saw the look, and -understood it. One of them, at any rate, if it came to a pinch, could be -bought off. But O’Reilly was different. “Look here, you two,” said -Durkin, showing the fringe of his neatly banded packet of notes. - -The Central Office man whistled under his breath. But O’Reilly seemed -obdurate. - -“Double that, young man, and then double it again, and maybe I’ll talk -to you,” Doogan’s detective said easily, as he started on again with his -prisoner. - -“And if I _did_?” demanded Durkin. - -“Talk’s cheap, young fellow! You know what they’re doing to us boys, -nowadays, for neglect of duty? Well, I’ve got to get up against more -than talk before I run that risk!” - -“By heaven—I can do it, and I _will_!” said Durkin. - -O’Reilly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The prisoner could -feel the two officers interrogating each other silently behind his back. - -“Step in here, then, before you’re spotted with me,” said Durkin. “Come -in, just as though we were three friends buying a soda, and shoot me, -straight off, if I make a move to break away!” - -“Oh, you’ll not break away!” said the man with the steel grip, -confidently, still keeping his great handful of loose coat-sleeve. But -he stepped inside, none the less. - -Durkin’s heart beat almost normally once more. There stood Eddie -Crawford, leisurely peeling a lemon, with his lips pursed up in a -whistle. One hungry curb-broker was taking a hurried and belated free -lunch from the cheese-and-cracker end of the counter. - -Durkin stared at his old friend, with a blank and forbidding face. Then -he drooped one eyelid momentarily. It was only the insignificant little -twitch of a minor muscle, and yet the thought occurred to him how -marvellous it was, that one little quiver of an eyelid could retranslate -a situation, could waken strange fires in one’s blood, and countless -thoughts in one’s head. - -“What will you have, gentlemen?” he asked, easily, briskly. - -“Scotch highball!” said the officer on his right. - -“Give me a gin rickey,” said the officer on his left. - -“A silver fizz,” said Durkin, between them. - -That, he knew, would take a little longer to mix. Then there came a -moment of silence. - -Durkin’s long, thin fingers were drumming anxiously and restlessly on -the polished wood. - -The busy waiter, with a nervous little up-jerk of the head, gave these -restlessly tapping fingers a passing glance. Something about them -carried him back many months, to his operating-desk at the Postal-Union. -He listened again. Then he bent down over his glass, for he was mixing -the silver fizz first. - -It was the telegrapher’s double “i” that he had heard repeated and -repeated by those carelessly tapping fingers, and then a further phrase -that he knew meant “attention!” - -Yet he worked away, impassive, unmoved, while with his slender little -sugar-spoon he signalled back his answer, on the rim of his -mixing-glass. - -“Get a move on, boss,” said O’Reilly, impatiently. - -“Sure,” said the waiter, abstractedly, quite unruffled, for his ear was -a little out of practice, and he wanted to make sure just what those -finger-nails tapping on the mahogany meant. - -And this is what he read: - -“Five—hundred—dollars—spot—cash—for—a—knock—out—to—each—of— -these—two!” - -“Too—expensive!” answered the sugar-spoon on the tumbler, as it stirred -the mixture. “I—would—have—to—migrate.” - -“Then—make—it—a—thousand,” answered the mahogany. “I’m pinched.” - -“Done,” said the spoon, as the silver fizz was put down on the bar. Then -came the gin rickey and the highball. - -“They’ll—get—it—strong!” drummed the idle bartender on a faucet of -his soda-fountain. - -A moment later the three glasses that stood before Durkin and his -guardians were taken up in three waiting hands. - -“Well, here’s to you,” cried the prisoner, as he gulped down his -drink—for that melodramatic little silence had weighed on his nerves a -bit. Then he wiped his mouth, slowly and thoughtfully, and waited. - -“But here’s a table in the corner,” he said at last, meaningly. “Suppose -I count out that race money that’s coming to you two?” - -O’Reilly nodded, the other said “Sure!” and the three men moved over to -the table, and sat down. - -Durkin had never seen chloral hydrate take effect, and Eddie Crawford -realized that his friend was foolishly preparing to kill time. - -“Here, boss, don’t you go to sleep in here,” called out Eddie, for -already the Central Office man was showing signs of bodily distress. - -Even the gaunt and threadbare-looking curb-broker was gazing with -wondering eyes at the two lolling figures. Then, having satisfied both -his hunger and his curiosity, the frugal luncher hurried away. - -The hand of steel dropped from Durkin’s coat-sleeve. - -“I’m—I’m queer!” murmured O’Reilly, brokenly, as he sagged back in his -chair. - -Durkin was watching the whitening faces, the quivering eyelids, the -slowly stiffening limbs. - -“My God, Eddie, you haven’t killed them?” he cried, as he turned to hand -over his fee. - -Eddie laughed unconcernedly. - -“They’ll be dead enough, till we get out of this, anyway!” he said, -already taking off his apron and drawing down a window-curtain in front -of the table in the corner. - -“What’s that for?” demanded Durkin, nervously, as the bartender dodged -round to the telephone booth. - -“Why, I’ve got to ’phone over t’ the boss t’ get back here and ’tend t’ -his business. You don’t suppose _I_ can afford t’ stay in this town now, -with a sucker like O’Reilly after me!” - -“But what can they do?” demanded Durkin, as he looked down at the -collapsed figures. “Even when they come back?” - -“Oh, they daren’t do much bleating, and go and peach right out, seeing -they were in after graft and we could show ’em up for neglect o’ duty, -all right, all right! But they’d just hound me, on the side, and keep -after me, and make life kind o’ miserable. Besides that, I always wanted -to see St. Louis, anyway!” - -The swing doors opened as he spoke, and Custom House Charley himself -hurried in. - -“I’ve got to climb out for a few minutes, Chink, with a friend o’ mine -here,” said his assistant, as he pulled on his coat. - -He turned back at the swing door. - -“You’d better put those two jags out before they get messin’ things up,” -he suggested easily, as he held the door for Durkin. - -A moment later the two men were out in the street, swallowed up in the -afternoon crowds swarming to ferries and Elevated stations, as free as -the stenographers and clerks at their elbows. - -Durkin wondered, as he hurried on with a glance at the passing faces, if -they, too, had their underground trials and triumphs. He wondered if -they, too, had explored some portion of that secret network of -excitement and daring which ran like turgid sewers under the asphalted -tranquillity of the open city. - -There was neither sign nor token, in the faces of the citied throng that -brushed past him, to show that any of life’s more tumultuous emotions -and movements had touched their lives. It was only as he passed a -newsboy with his armful of flaring headlines, and a uniformed officer, -suggestive of the motley harvest of a morning police court, that once -more he fully realized how life still held its tumult and romance, -though it was the order of modern existence that such things should be -hidden and subterranean. It was only now and then, Durkin told himself, -through some sudden little explosion in the press, or through the -steaming manhole of the city magistrate’s court, that these turgid and -often undreamed of sewers showed themselves. . . . After all, he -maintained to himself, life had not so greatly altered. - - - - - CHAPTER XXVI - - -Durkin’s first feeling, incongruously enough, once he was out in the -open air, was a ravenous sense of hunger. Through all that busy day his -only meal had been a hasty and half-eaten breakfast. - -His second thought was at once both to submerge and sustain himself in -one of those Broadway basement restaurants where men perch on seats and -gulp down meals over a seat-fringed counter. - -Then he thought of Frances, of her anxiety, of her long waiting, and he -tried to tell himself, valiantly enough, that another hour would make -little difference, and that they would take their dinner in state and at -their ease, at the Beaux-Arts, or at the Ritz, or perhaps even at the -St. Regis. - -The thought of her gave a sudden, warm glow to the gray flatness of -life, born of his hunger and weariness. He pictured her, framed in the -gloom of the open doorway, in answer to his knock, the slender oval of -her face touched with weariness, her shadowy, brooding, violet eyes -grown suddenly alert, even her two warm, woman’s arms open, like a very -nest, to receive and hold him, and her motherly young shoulder to shield -him. He laughed to himself as he remembered the time that he had -described her as the victim of an “ingrowing maternal instinct”—she had -always seemed so ready to nurture and guard and cherish. She was a -woman, he said to himself—with a sudden, strange foreboding of he knew -not what—who ought to have had children. She was one of those deeper -and richer natures, he knew, who would always love Love more than she -could love men. - -“What is electricity?” he had asked her one quiet night, touched into -wonder for the familiar miracle, as they bent together over their relay, -while an operator five hundred miles away was talking through the -darkness. “We live and work and make life tenser with it, and do wonders -with it, but, after all, who knows what it is?” - -He remembered how the great, shadowy eyes had looked into his face. “And -what is love?” she had sighed. “We live and die for it, we see it work -its terrible wonders; but who can ever tell us what it is?” - -Durkin had forgotten both his hunger and his weariness as he mounted the -stairs to his up-town apartment, where, he knew, Frances was waiting for -him. He decided, in his playful reaction of mood, to take her by -surprise. So he slipped his pass-key silently into the door-lock and was -about to fling the door wide when the unexpected sound of voices held -him motionless, with his hand still on the knob. - -It was Frank herself speaking. - -“Oh, Mack, don’t come between him and me now! It’s all I’ve got to live -for—his love! I need it—I need him!” - -“The devil you do!” said a muttered growl. - -“Oh, I do! I always wanted the love of an honest man.” - -“An honest man!” again scoffed the deep bass of the other’s voice, with -a short little laugh. It was MacNutt who spoke. “An honest man! Then -what were you hanging round Sunset Bryan for?” - -“Yes, an honest man,” went on the woman’s voice impetuously; “he is -honest in his love for me, and that is all I care! Leave him to me, and -I’ll give you everything. If it’s money you want, I’ll get you -anything—anything in reason! I can still cheat and lie and steal for -you, if you like—it was you who _taught_ me how to do that!” - -Durkin felt that he could stand no more of it; but still he listened, -spellbound, incapable of action or thought. - -“I’ve got to have money!” agreed MacNutt quietly. “That’s true enough!” -Then he added insolently, “But I almost feel I’d rather have you!” - -“No, no!” moaned the woman, seemingly in mingled horror and fear of him. -“Only wait and I’ll get you what money I have here—every cent of it! -It’s in my pocketbook, here, in the front room!” - -Durkin could hear her short, hard breath, and the swish of her skirt as -she fluttered across the bare floor into the other room. He could hear -the other’s easy, half-deprecating, half-mocking laugh; and at the sound -of it all the long-banked, smoldering, self-consuming fires of jealous -rage that burned within him seemed to leap and burst into relieving -flame. An invisible cord seemed to snap before his eyes—it might have -been within his very brain, for all he knew. - -“And now I kill him!” This one idea spun through his mind, the one -living wheel in all the deadened machinery of consciousness. - -Darting back until he felt the plaster of the narrow hallway behind him, -he flung himself madly forward against the door again. He kicked with -the solid flat of his boot-sole as he came, against the light pine, -painted and grained to look like oak. - -It crashed in like so much kindling, and a second later, white to the -very lips, he was in the room, facing MacNutt. - -In his hand he held his revolver. It was of blue metal, with the barrel -sawed off short. It had once been carried by a Chinaman, and had figured -in a Mock Duck Street feud, and had been many times in pawnshops, and -had passed through many hands. - -As he faced the man he was going to kill it flitted vaguely through -Durkin’s mind that somebody—he could not remember who—had said always -to shoot for the stomach—it was the easiest, and the surest. He also -remembered that his weapon had a rifled barrel, and that the long, -twisting bullet would rend and tear and lacerate as it went. - -“Before I kill you,” he heard himself saying, and the quietness of his -voice surprised even his own ears, “before I kill you, I want to know, -once for all, just _what that woman is to you_.” - -The other man looked vacantly down at the pistol barrel, within six -inches of his own gross stomach. Then he looked at his enemy’s face. A -twitching nerve trembled and fluttered on one side of his temple. Only -two claret-colored blotches of color remained on his otherwise ashen -face. - -“For the love of God, Durkin, don’t be a fool!” - -MacNutt’s fingers were working spasmodically, and his breath began to -come wheezily and heavily. - -“I’m going to kill you!” repeated Durkin, in the same level monotone. -“_But what is that woman to you?_” - -MacNutt was desperately measuring chance and distance. There was not the -shadow of escape through struggle. - -“It’s murder!” he gasped, certain that there was no hope. - -He could see Durkin’s preparatory jaw-clench. - -“You—you wouldn’t get mixed up in cold murder like this!” MacNutt half -pleaded, hurriedly and huskily, with his eyes now on the other man’s. -“Why, you’d swing for it, Durkin! You’d go to the chair!” - -Durkin uttered a foul name, impatiently, and closed out the picture with -his shut eyelids as he thrust his right hand forward and down. - -He wondered, with lightning-like rapidity of thought, if the blood would -stain his hand. - -Then he felt a quick bark, and a sudden great spit of pain shot through -him. - -The gun had exploded, he told himself dreamily, as he staggered to the -wall and leaned there weakly, swaying back and forth. But why didn’t -MacNutt go down? he asked himself unconcernedly, as he watched with dull -eyes where a jet of red blood spurted and pumped regularly from -somewhere in his benumbed forearm. - -Then he had a thin and far-away vision of Frances, with a smoking -revolver in her hand, drifting out from the other room. He seemed to see -her floating out, like a bird on the wing almost, to where his own -weapon lay, and catch it up, as MacNutt or some vague shadow of him, -leaped to put a heavy foot on it. - -A hundred miles away, seemingly, he heard her voice in a thin and high -treble telling MacNutt to go, or she would shoot him there herself, like -a dog. - -Succeeding this came a sense of falling, and he found something bound -tightly round his arm, and a new dull and throbbing pain as this -something twisted and twisted and grew still tighter on the benumbed -flesh. Then he felt the weight of a body leaning on his own, where he -lay there, and a hand trying to fondle his face and hair. - -“Oh, Jim, Jim!” the thin and far-away voice seemed to be wailing, “oh, -Jim, I had to do it! I had to—to save you from yourself! You would have -killed him. . . . You would have shot him dead. . . . And that would be -the end of everything. . . . Don’t you understand, my beloved own?” - -Some heavy gray veil seemed to lift away, and the wounded man opened his -eyes, and moved uneasily. - -“It’s only the arm, poor boy . . . but I know it hurts!” - -“What is it?” he asked vacantly. - -“It’s only the arm, and not a bone broken! See, I’ve stopped the -bleeding, and a week or two of quiet somewhere, and it’ll be all better! -Then—then you’ll sit up and thank God for it!” - -He could hear her voice more distinctly now, and could feel her hands -feverishly caressing his face and hair. - -“Speak to me, Jim,” she pleaded, passionately. “You’re all I’ve -got—you’re all that’s left to me in the whole wide world!” - -He opened his eyes again, and smiled at her; but it was such a wan and -broken smile that a tempest of weeping swept over the woman bending -above him. He could feel her hot tears scalding his face. - -Then she suddenly drew herself up, rigid and tense, for the sound of -heavy footsteps smote on her ear. Durkin heard them, too, in his languid -and uncomprehending way; he also heard the authoritative knock that came -from the hall door. - -He surmised that Frank had opened the splintered door, for in the dim -sidelight of the hall he could see the flash of metal buttons on the -dark blue uniform, and the outline of a patrolman’s cap. - -“Anything wrong up here, lady?” the officer was demanding, a little out -of breath. - -“Dear me, no,” answered her voice in meek and plaintive alarm. Then she -laughed a little. - -“She is lying—lying—lying,” thought the wounded man, languidly, as he -lay there, bleeding in the darkened room, not twelve paces away from -her, where the room was stained and blotched and pooled with blood. - -“H’m! Folks downstairs said they heard a pistol-shot up here somewhere!” - -“Yes, I know; that was the transom blew shut,” she answered glibly. “It -nearly frightened the wits out of me, too!” She opened the door wide. -“But won’t you come in, and make sure?” - -The officer looked up at the transom, wagged his head three times -sagely, glanced at the lines of the girl’s figure with open and -undisguised admiration, and said it wasn’t worth while. Then he tried to -pierce the veil that still hung from her hat and about her smiling face. -Then he turned and sauntered off down the stairs, tapping the baluster -with his night-stick as he went. Then Durkin tried to struggle to his -feet, was stung with a second fierce stab of pain, fell back drowsily, -and remembered no more. - -Frances waited, pantingly, against the doorpost. She listened there for -a second or two, and then crept inside and closed the door after her. - -“Thank God!” she gasped fervently, as she tore off her hat and veil once -more. “Thank God!” - -Then, being only a woman, and weak and hungry and tired, and tried -beyond her endurance, she took three evading, half-staggering steps -toward Durkin, and fell in a faint over his feet. - -The door opened and closed softly; and a figure with an ashen face, -blotched with claret-color, slunk into the silent room. Night had closed -in by this time, so having listened for a reassuring second or two, he -groped slowly across the bare floor. His trembling hand felt a woman’s -skirt. Exploring carefully upward, he felt her limp arm, and her face -and hair. - -Then he came to the figure he was in search of. He ripped open the wet -and soggy coat with a deft little pull at the buttons, and thrust a -great hungry hand down into the inside breast pocket. The exploring fat -fingers found what they were in search of, and held the carefully banded -packet up to the uncertain light of the window. - -There he tested the edges of the crisp parchment of the bank-notes, and -apparently satisfied, hurriedly thrust them down into his own capacious -hip-pocket. - -Then he crept to the broken door and listened for a minute or two. He -opened it cautiously, at last, tip-toed slowly over to the -stair-balustrade, and finally turned back and closed the door. - -As the latch of the shattered lock fell rattling on the floor a sigh -quavered through the room. It was a woman’s sigh, wavering and weak and -freighted with weariness, but one of returning consciousness. For, a -minute later, a voice was asking, plaintively and emptily, “Where am I?” - - - - - CHAPTER XXVII - - -Often, in looking back on those terrible, phantasmal days that followed, -Frances Candler wondered how she had lived through them. - -Certain disjointed pictures of the first night and day remained vividly -in her memory; unimportant and inconsequential episodes haunted her -mind, as graphic and yet as vaguely unrelated as the midday recollection -of a night of broken sleep and dream. - -One of these memories was the doctor’s hurried question as to whether or -not she could stand the sight of a little blood. A second memory was -Durkin’s childlike cry of anguish, as she held the bared arm over the -sheet of white oilcloth, pungent-odored with its disinfectant. Still -another memory was that of the rattle of the little blackened bullet on -the floor as it dropped from the jaws of the surgical forceps. A more -vague and yet a more pleasing memory was the thought that had come to -her, when the wound had been washed and dressed and hidden away under -its white bandages, and Durkin himself had been made comfortable on the -narrow couch, that the worst was then over, that the damage had been -repaired, and that a week or two of quiet and careful nursing would make -everything right again. - -In this, however, she was sadly mistaken. She had even thought of shyly -slipping away and leaving him to sleep through the night alone, until, -standing over his bed, she beheld the figure that had always seemed so -well-knit and self-reliant and tireless, shaking and trembling in the -clutch of an approaching chill. It seemed to tear her very heartstrings, -as she gave him brandy, and even flung her own coat and skirt over him, -to see him lying there so impotent, so childishly afraid of solitude, so -miserably craven, before this unknown enemy of bodily weakness. - -As the night advanced the fever that followed on Durkin’s chill -increased, his thirst became unappeasable, and from the second leather -couch in the back room, where she had flung herself down in utter -weariness of nerve and limb, she could hear him mumbling. Toward morning -she awakened suddenly, from an hour of sound sleep, and found Durkin out -of bed, fighting at his bedroom mantelpiece, protesting, babblingly, -that he had seen a blood-red mouse run under the grate and that at all -hazard it must be got out. - -She led him back to bed, and during the five days that his fever burned -through him she never once gave herself up to the luxury of actual -sleep. Often, during the day and night, she would fling herself down on -her couch, in a condition of half-torpor, but at the least word or sound -from him she was astir again. - -Then, as his mind grew clearer, and he came to recognize her once more, -her earlier sense of loneliness and half-helpless isolation crept away -from her. She even grew to take a secret pleasure in giving him his -medicine and milk and tablets, in dressing his wound, day by day, in -making his pillow more comfortable, in sending the colored hall-boy out -after fruit and flowers for him, and in all those duties which broke -down the last paling of reserve between them. - -And it was a new and unlooked for phase of Frances Candler that Durkin -slowly grew to comprehend. The constraint and the quietness of -everything seemed to have something akin to a spiritualizing effect on -each of them, and it was not long before he waited for her coming and -going with a sort of childish wistfulness. Her tenderness of speech and -touch and look, her brooding thoughtfulness as she sat beside him, -seemed to draw them together more closely than even their old-time most -perilous moments had done. - -“We’re going to be decent now, aren’t we, Frank?” he said, quietly and -joyously one morning. - -But there were times when his weakness and stagnation of life and -thought gave rise to acute suffering in both of them, times when his -imprisonment and his feebleness chafed and galled him. It was agony for -her to see him in passionate outbursts, to be forced to stand helplessly -by and behold him unmanned and weeping, sometimes when his nervous -irritability was at its worst, wantonly and recklessly blaspheming at -his fate. - -This sinfulness of the flesh she set down to the pain which his arm -might be giving him and the unrest which came of many days in bed. As he -grew stronger, she told herself, he would be his old, generous-minded -and manly self once more. - -But Durkin gained strength very slowly. A rent-day came around, and -rather than remind him of it Frances slipped out, on a rainy afternoon, -and pawned her rings to get money for the payment. - -It was as she was creeping shamefaced out of the pawnshop that she -looked up and caught sight of a passing automobile. It was a flashing -sports-model with a lemon-colored body, and in it, beside a woman with -lemon-colored hair, sat MacNutt, gloved, silk-hatted and happy-looking. - -At first she beheld the two with an indeterminate feeling of relief. -Then a hot wave of resentment swept over her, as she watched them drive -away through the fine mist. A consuming sense of the injustice of it all -took possession of her, as her thoughts went back to the day of the -theft, and she remembered what a little and passing thing Durkin’s money -would be to MacNutt, the spender, the prodigal liver, while to her and -to Durkin it had meant so much! She knew, too, that he would soon be -asking about it; and this brought a new misery into her life. - -It was, indeed, only a day or two later that he said to her: - -“Do you know, I’m glad we didn’t take that girl’s money—the Van Schaick -girl, I mean. It was all our own from the first!” - -Frances did not answer. - -“She was a decent sort of girl, really, wasn’t she?” he asked again, -once more looking up at her. - -“I wish I had a woman like that for a friend,” Frances said, at last. -“Do you know, Jim, it is years and years since I have had a woman -friend. Yes, yes, my beloved own, I know I have you, but that is so -different.” - -He nodded his head sorrowfully, and stretched out his hand for hers. - -“You’re better than all of ’em!” he said fondly. - -They were both silent for several minutes. - -“We’re going to be decent now, aren’t we, Frank?” he went on at last, -quietly, joyously. - -“Yes, Jim, from now on.” - -“I was just thinking, this town has got to know us a little too well by -this time. When we start over we’ll have to migrate, I suppose.” Then he -smiled a little. “We ought to be thankful, Frank, they haven’t got us -both pinned up by the Bertillon system, down at Headquarters!” - -“I’d defy Bertillon himself to find you,” she laughed, “underneath that -two weeks’ beard.” - -He rubbed his hand over his stubbled chin, absent-mindedly. - -“Where shall we go, when we migrate?” he asked, not unhappily. - -She gazed with unseeing eyes through the window, out over the house-top. - -“I know a little south of England village,” she said, in her soft, -flute-like contralto, “I know a little village, nestling down among -green hills, a little town of gardens and ivy and walls and thatches, in -a country of brooks and hawthorn hedges—a little village where the -nightingales sing at night, and the skylarks sing by day, and the old -men and women have rosy faces, and the girls are shy and soft-spoken—” - -“But we’d die of loneliness in that sort of place, wouldn’t we?” - -“No, Jim, we should get more out of life than you dream. Then, in the -winter, we could slip over to Paris and the Riviera, or down to Rome—it -can be done cheaply, if one knows how—and before you realized it you -would be used to the quiet and the change, and even learn to like it.” - -“Yes,” he said wearily. “I’ve had too much of this wear-and-tear -life—even though it has its thrill now and then. It’s intoxicating -enough, but we’ve both had too much of this drinking wine out of a -skull. Even at the best it’s feasting on a coffin-lid, isn’t it?” - -She was still gazing out of the window with unseeing eyes. - -“And there is so much to read, and study, and learn,” Durkin himself -went on, more eagerly. “I might get a chance to work out my amplifier -then, as I used to think I would, some day. If I could once get that -sort of relay sensitive enough, and worked out the way I feel it can be -worked out, you would be able to sit in Chicago and talk right through -to London!” - -“But how?” she asked. - -“I always wanted to get a link between the cable and the ordinary Morse -recorder, and I know it can be done. Then—who knows—I might in time go -Lee De Forest one better, and have my amplifier knock his old-fashioned -electrolytic out of business, for good.” - -Then he fell to talking about wireless and transmitters and conductors, -and suddenly broke into a quiet chuckle of laughter. - -“I don’t think I ever told you about the fun we had down in that -Broadway conduit. It was after the fire in the Subway and the -Postal-Union terminal rooms. A part of the conduit roof had been cleared -away by the firemen. Well, while we were working down there a big Irish -watering-cart driver thought he’d have some fun with us, and every time -he passed up and down with his cart he’d give us a shower. It got -monotonous, after the fourth time or so, and the boys began to cuss. I -saw that his wagon was strung with metal from one end to the other. I -also knew that water was a good enough conductor. So I just exposed a -live wire of interesting voltage and waited for the water-wagon. The -driver came along as bland and innocent-looking as a baby. Then he -veered over and doused us, the same as ever. Then the water and the wire -got together. That Irishman gave one jump—he went five feet up in the -air, and yelled—oh, how he yelled!—and ran like mad up Broadway, with -a policeman after him, thinking he’d suddenly gone mad, trying to soothe -him and quiet him down!” - -And Durkin chuckled again, at the memory of it all. The sparrows -twittered cheerily about the sunlit window-sill. The woman did not know -what line of thought he was following, but she saw him look down at his -bandaged arm and then turn suddenly and say: - -“What a scarred and battered-up pair we’d be, if we had to keep at this -sort of business all our lives!” - -Then he lay back among the pillows, and closed his eyes. - -“I say, Frank,” he spoke up unexpectedly, “where are you taking care of -that—er—of that money?” - -Her hands fell into her lap, and she looked at him steadily. Even before -she spoke she could see the apprehension that leaped into his colorless -face. - -“No, no; we mustn’t talk more about that today!” she tried to temporize. - -“You don’t mean,” he cried, rising on his elbow, “that anything has -happened to it?” - -He demanded an answer, and there was no gain-saying him. - -“There is no money, Jim!” she said slowly and quietly. And in as few -words as she could she told him of the theft. - -It was pitiable, to her, to see him, already weak and broken as he was, -under the crushing weight of this new defeat. She had hoped to save him -from it, for a few more days at least. But now he knew; and he reviled -MacNutt passionately and profanely, and declared that he would yet get -even, and moaned that it was the end of everything, and that all their -fine talk and all their plans had been knocked in the head forever, and -that now they would have to crawl and slink through life living by their -wits again, cheating and gambling and stealing when and where they -could. - -All this Frances feared and dreaded and expected; but desperately and -forlornly she tried to buoy up his shattered spirits and bring back to -him some hope for the future. - -She told him that he could work, that they could live more humbly, as -they had once done years before, when she had taught little children -music and French, and he was a telegraph agent up at the lonely little -Canadian junction-station of Komoka, with a boarding-house on one side -of him and a mile of gravel-pit on the other. - -“And if I have you, Jim, what more do I want in life?” she cried out, as -she turned and left him, that he might not see the misery and the -hopelessness on her own face. - -“Oh, why didn’t you let me kill him!” he called out passionately after -her. But she did not turn back, for she hated to see him unmanned and -weeping like a woman. - - - - - CHAPTER XXVIII - - -“Surely this is Indian Summer—strayed or stolen!” said Frank one -morning a few days later, as she wheeled Durkin and his big arm-chair -into the sunlight by the open window. - -His arm was healing slowly, and his strength was equally slow in coming -back to him. Yet she was not altogether unhappy during those fleeting -days of work and anxiety. - -Her darkest moments were those when she saw that Durkin was fretting -over the loss of his ill-gained fortune, burning with his subterranean -fires of hatred for MacNutt, and inwardly vowing that he would yet live -to have his day. - -She was still hoping that time, the healer, would in some way attend to -each of his wounds, though that of the spirit, she knew, was the deeper -of the two. Yet from day to day she saw that his resentment lay sourly -embedded in him, like a bullet; her only hope was that what nature could -neither reject nor absorb it would in due time encyst with indifference. -So if she herself became a little infected with his spirit of -depression, she struggled fiercely against it and showed him only the -cheeriest inglenooks of her many-chambered emotions. - -“See, it’s almost like spring again!” she cried joyously, as she leaned -over his chair and watched the morning sunlight, misty and golden on the -city house-tops. - -The window-curtains swayed and flapped in the humid breeze; the clatter -of feet on the asphalt, the rumble of wheels and the puff and whir of -passing automobiles came up to them from the street below. - -“It seems good to be alive!” she murmured pensively, as she slipped down -on the floor and sat in the muffled sunlight, leaning against his knees. -There was neither timidity nor self-consciousness in her attitude, as -she sat there companionably, comfortably, with her thoughts far away. - -For a long time Durkin looked down at her great tumbled crown of -chestnut hair, glinting here and there with its touch of reddish gold. -He could see the quiet pulse beating in the curved ivory of her throat. - -She grew conscious of his eyes resting on her, in time, and turned her -face solemnly up to him. He held it there, with the oval of her chin -caught in the hollow of his hand. - -“Frank, there’s something I’m going to ask you, for the twentieth time!” - -She knew what it was even before he spoke. But she did not stop him, for -this new note of quiet tenderness in his voice had taken her by -surprise. - -“Frank, can’t you—won’t you marry me, now?” - -She shook her head mournfully. - -“Isn’t it enough that I’m near you and can help you, and that we can -both still go and come as we want to?” - -“No, I get only the little fragments of your life, and I want all of it. -If you can’t do it willingly, of course, it’s as silly for me to demand -it as to try to nail that sunbeam down to the floor there! But tell me, -has there ever been another?” - -“No, never, Jim!” she cried. “There was never any one who could make me -so happy—and so miserable,—who could make me so unsatisfied with -myself and with my life!” - -He studied her upturned face. In it he imagined he could see all the old -opposition of the dual and strangely contending nature. About the -shadowy eyes seemed to lurk the weariness and the rebelliousness of the -inwardly pure woman who had been driven to face life in its more dubious -phases, the woman who had broken laws and essayed great hazards with -him. Yet about the fresh young mouth remained all the pride and virginal -purity of the woman whose inward life was till virginal and pure. In -this, he felt, lay the bitterest thing of all. She was still a good -woman, but the memory of how, through the dark and devious ways of the -career that seemed to have engulfed her, she had fought and struggled -for that almost incongruous purity of mind and body, remained to him a -tragic and autumnal emblem of what her unknown earlier, April-like -goodness of girlish soul must have been. He sighed as he thought of it, -before he began to speak again, for it gave him the haunting impression -that he had been cheated out of something; that the beauty and rapture -of that Aprilian girlhood should have been his, and yet had eluded him. - -“Even though there had been another,” he went on quietly, “I don’t -believe it would count. Isn’t it strange how we all beat and flutter and -break our wings around a beautiful face! One face, just a little softer, -one woman’s eyes, just a little deeper, and one voice, a little -mellower; and dear me, dear me—how this wayward mortal passion of ours -throbs and beats and surges about it! One beautiful face, and it sends -world-history all awry, and brings out armies and changes maps, and -makes men happy or miserable, as it likes!” - -“That’s the first time I ever knew you were a poet!” she cried in almost -a coo of pride. - -His hand lay heavily on her crown of tumbled gold hair. “Won’t you marry -me?” he asked again, as quietly as before. - -“Oh, Jim,” she cried, “I’m afraid of it! I’m afraid of myself, and of -you!” - -“But see what we’ve been through together—the heights and the depths. -And we never hated each other, there!” - -“But there were times, I know there were times when you might have, if -you were tied to me! We were each free to go and come. But it’s not -that, Jim, I’m so afraid of. It’s the keeping on at what we have been -doing, the danger of not keeping decent, of getting our thoughts and -feelings deadened, of getting our hearts macadamized. That’s why I could -never marry you until we are both honest once more!” - -“But if I do try to get decent—I can’t promise to turn angel all at -once, you know!—if I _do_ try to be decent, then will you marry me, and -help me along?” - -“I don’t look for miracles,—neither of us can be all good, anyway; it’s -the trying to be good!” - -“But we _have_ tried—so often!” - -“Who was it said that the Saints were only the sinners who kept on -trying?” - -“Wasn’t there a bishop in your family?” he asked, with a quizzical -little upthrust of his mouth corners. - -“A bishop?” she asked, all gravity. - -“There must have been a bishop, somewhere—you take to preaching so -easily!” - -“It’s only to make it easier for you,” she reproved him. Then she added -drearily, “Heaven knows, I’m not self-righteous!” - -“Then take me as I am, and you will be making it easier for me!” - -“I could, Jim, if I thought you would begin by doing one thing.” - -“And that is?” - -“Not try to get even with MacNutt.” - -She could feel the galvanic movement of uncontrol that sped down his -knees. - -“When that damned welcher gives me back what is mine, fair and square -and honest, then he can go his way and I’ll go mine—but not before!” - -“But, _was_ it fair and square and honest?” - -“About as much so as most of the money people get—and I’m going to have -it!” - -“And that means going back to all the old mean, humiliating ways, to the -old, degrading dodges, and the old, incessant dangers!” - -“But it’s ours, that money—every cent of it—it’s what we’ve got to -have to start over again with!” - -“Then you will scheme and plot and fight for it? And keep on and on and -on, struggling in this big quicksand of wrong-doing, until we are deeper -than ever?” - -“Do _you_ forgive MacNutt?” - -“No, I do not! I can’t, for your sake. But I would rather lie and scheme -and plot myself than see you do it. A woman is different—I don’t know -how or why it is, but in some way she has a fiercer furnace of -sacrifice. If her wickedness is for another, her very love burns away -all the dross of deceit and selfishness!” - -“I hate to hear you talk that way, when you know you’re good and true as -gold, through and through. And I want you to be my wife, Frank, no -matter what it costs or what it means.” - -“But will you make this promise?” - -“It’s—it’s too hard on _you_! Think of the grind and the monotony and -the skimping! And besides, supposing you saw a chance to get the upper -hand of MacNutt in some way, would you fold your hands and sigh meekly -and let it slip past?” - -“I can’t promise that _I_ would! But it’s you I’m afraid of, and that -I’m trying to guard and protect and save from yourself!” - -She caught up his free hand and held it closely in her own. - -“Listen,” he broke in irrelevantly, “there’s a hurdy-gurdy somewhere -down in the street! Hear it?” - -The curtains swayed in the breeze; the street sounds crept to them, -muffled and far away. - -“Can’t you promise?” she pleaded. - -“I could promise you anything, Frank,” he said after a long pause. -“Yes,” he repeated, “I promise.” - -She crept closer to him, and with a little half-stifled, half-hungry cry -held his face down to her own. He could feel the abandon of complete -surrender in the most intimate warmth of her mouth, as it sought and -clung to his own. - -When her uplifted arms that had locked about his neck once more fell -away, and the heavy head of dull gold sank capitulatingly down on his -knee, the hurdy-gurdy had passed out of hearing, and the lintel-shadow -had crept down to where they sat. - - - - - CHAPTER XXIX - - -On the following afternoon Frances Candler and Durkin were quietly -married. - -It was a whim of Durkin’s that the ceremony should take place on -Broadway, “on the old alley,” as he put it, “where I’ve had so many ups -and downs.” So, his arm in a black silk sling, and she in a gown of -sober black velvet, with only a bunch of violets bought from an Italian -boy on a street corner, they rode together in a taxi-cab to the rectory -of Grace Church. - -To the silent disappointment of each of them the rector was not at home. -They were told, indeed, that it would be impossible for a marriage -service to be held at the church that afternoon. A little depressed, -inwardly, at this first accidental cross-thread of fate, they at once -made their way up Fifth Avenue to the Church of the Transfiguration. - -“The way we ought to do it,” said Frances, as they rode up the -undulating line of the Avenue, “would be to have it all carried on over -a long-distance telephone. We should have had some justice of the peace -in Jersey City ring us up at a certain time, and send the words of the -service over the wire. That would have been more in the picture. Then -you should have twisted up an emergency wedding ring of KK wire, and -slipped it on my finger, and then cut in on a Postal-Union or an -Associated Press wire and announced the happy event to the world!” - -She rattled bravely on in this key, for she had noticed, in the strong -sidelight of the taxi-window, that he looked pale and worn and old, -seeming, as he sat there at her side, only a shadow of the buoyant, -resilient, old-time Durkin that she had once known. - -The service was read in the chapel, by a hurried and deep-voiced English -curate, who shook hands with them crisply but genially, before -unceremoniously slipping off his surplice. He wished them much -happiness. Then he told them that the full names would have to be signed -in the register, as a report of the service must be sent to the Board of -Health, and that it was customary to give the sexton and his assistant -two dollars each for acting as witnesses. - -Frances noticed Durkin’s little wince at the obtrusion of this -unlooked-for sordidness, though he glanced up and smiled at her -reassuringly as he wrote in the register, “James Altman Durkin,” and -waited for her to sign “Frances Edith Candler.” - -The service, in some way, had utterly failed to impress Durkin as it -ought. The empty seats of the chapel, with only one pew crowded with a -little line of tittering, whispering schoolgirls, who had wandered in -out of idle curiosity, the hurriedly mumbled words of the curate—he -afterward confessed to them that this was his third service since -luncheon—the unexpected briefness of the ceremony itself, the absence -of those emblems and rituals which from time immemorial had been -associated with marriage in his mind—these had combined to attach to -the scene a teasing sense of unreality. - -It was only when the words, “With all my worldly goods I thee endow,” -were repeated that he smiled and looked down at the woman beside him. -She caught his eye and laughed a little, as she turned hurriedly away, -though he could see the tear-drops glistening on her eyelashes. - -She held his hand fiercely in her own, as they rode from the little -ivy-covered church, each wondering at the mood of ineloquence weighing -down the other. - -“Do you know,” she said, musingly, “I feel as though I had been bought -and sold, that I had been tied up and given to you, that—oh, that I had -been nailed on to you with horseshoe nails! Do you feel any difference?” - -“I feel as though I had been cheated out of something—it’s so hard to -express!—that I ought to have found another You when I turned away from -the railing; that I ought to be carrying off a different You -altogether—and yet—yet here you are, the same old adorable You, with -not a particle of change!” - -“After all, what is it? Why, Jim dear, we were married, in reality, that -afternoon I opened the door to MacNutt’s ring and saw you standing there -looking in at me as though you had seen a ghost!” - -“No, my own, we were joined together and made one a million years ago, -you and I, in some unknown star a million million miles away from this -old earth; and through all those years we have only wandered and drifted -about, looking for each other!” - -“Silly!” she said happily, with her slow, English smile. - -In the gloom of the taxi-cab, with a sudden impulsive little movement of -the body, she leaned over and kissed him. - -“You forgot that,” she said joyously, from the pillow of his shoulder. -“You forgot about that in the chapel!” - -They drifted down through what seemed a shadowy and far-away city, -threading their course past phantasmal carriages and spectral crowds -engrossed in their foolish little ghost-like businesses of buying and -selling, of coming and going. - -“You’re all I’ve got now,” she murmured again, with irrelevant -dolefulness. - -Her head still rested on the hollow of his shoulder. His only answer was -to draw the warmth and clinging weight of her body closer to him. - -“And you’ll have to die some day!” she wailed in sudden misery. And -though he laughingly protested that she was screwing him down a little -too early in the game, she reached up with her ineffectual arms and -flung them passionately about him, much as she had done before, as -though such momentary guardianship might shield him from both life and -death itself, for all time to come. - - - - - CHAPTER XXX - - -Frances sent Durkin on alone to the Chelsea, where, he had finally -agreed, they were to take rooms for a week at least. There, she argued, -they could live frugally, and there they could escape from the old -atmosphere, from the old memories and associations that hour by hour had -seemed to grow more unlovely in her eyes. - -On wisely reckless second thought, she ran into a florist’s and bought -an armful of roses. These she thrust up into the taxi-seat beside him, -explaining that he was to scatter them about their rooms, so that he -could be in the midst of them when she came. Then she stood at the curb, -watching him drive off, demanding of herself whether, after all, some -Indian Summer of happiness were not due to her, wondering whether she -were still asking too much of life. - -Then she climbed the stairs to the little top-floor apartment, saying to -herself, compensatingly, that it would be for the last time. She felt -glad to think that she had taken from Durkin’s hands the burden of -packing and shutting up the desolate and dark-memoried little place. - -Yet it had taken her longer than she imagined, and she was still -stooping, with oddly mixed emotions, over the crumpled nurse’s dress and -the little hypodermic that she carried away from the Van Schaick house, -when she heard a hurried footfall on the stairs and the click of a -pass-key in the lock. She realized, with a start, that it was Durkin -come back for her, even after she had begged him not to. - -She ran over toward the door, and then, either petulantly or for some -stronger intuitive reason—she could never decide which—stopped short, -and waited. - -The door opened slowly. As it swung back she saw standing before her the -huge figure of MacNutt. - -“_You!_” she gasped, with staring eyes. - -“Sure it’s me!” he answered curtly, as he closed the door and locked it -behind him. - -“But, how dare you?” and she gasped once more. “What right have you to -break in here?” - -She was trembling from head to foot now, recoiling, step by step, as she -saw some grim purpose written on the familiar blocked squareness of his -flaccid jaw and the old glint of anger in the deep-set, predatory eyes. - -“Oh, I didn’t need to break in, my lady! I’ve been here before, more -than once. So don’t start doin’ the heavy emotional and makin’ scenes!” - -“But—but Durkin _will_ kill you this time, when he sees you!” she -cried. - -MacNutt tapped his pocket confidently. - -“He’ll never catch me that way twice, I guess!” - -“How dare you come here?” she still gasped, bewildered. - -“Oh, I dare go anywhere, after you, Frank! And I may as well tell you, -that’s what I came for!” - -She still shivered from head to foot. It was not that she was afraid of -him. It was only that, in this new beginning of life, she was afraid of -some unforeseen disaster. And she knew that she would kill herself, -gladly, rather than go with him. - -“Now, cool down, little woman,” MacNutt was saying to her in his placid -guttural. “We’ve been through enough scrapes together to know each -other, so there’s no use you gettin’ high-strung and nervous. And I -guess you know I’m no piker, when it comes to anybody I care about. I -never went back on you, Frank, even though you _did_ treat me like a dog -and swing in with that damned welcher Durkin, and try to bleed me for my -last five hundred. I tell you, Frank, I can’t get used to the thought of -not havin’ you ’round!” - -She gave forth a little inarticulate cry of hate and abhorrence for him. -She could see that he had been drinking, and that he was shattered, both -in body and nerve. - -“Oh, you’ll get over that! I’ve knocked around with women—I’ve been -makin’ and spendin’ money fast enough for anybody this season; but no -one’s just the same as you! You thought I was good enough to work with -once, and I guess I ought to be good enough to travel with now!” - -“That’s enough!” she broke in, wrathfully. She had grown calmer by this -time, and her thoughts were returning to her mind now, buzzing and -rapid, like bees in a fallen hive. - -“No, it’s not,” he retorted, with an ominous shake of the square jaw and -beefy neck. “And you just wait until I finish. You’ve been playin’ -pretty fast and loose with me, Frank Candler, and I’ve been takin’ it -meek and quiet, for I knew you’d soon get tired of this two-cent piker -you’ve been workin’ the wires with!” - -She opened her lips to speak, but no sound came from them. - -“I tell you, Frank, you’re not the sort of woman that can go half fed -and half dressed, driftin’ ’round dowdy and hungry and homeless, most of -the time! You’re too fine for all that kind o’ thing. A woman like you -has got to have money, and be looked after, and showed around, and let -take things easy—or what’s the use o’ bein’ a beauty, anyway! You know -all that, ’s well as I do!” - -“Yes, I know all that!” she said vacantly, wearily, for her racing -thoughts were far away. She was inwardly confessing to herself that they -who live by the sword must die by the sword. - -“Then what’s the use o’ crucifyin’ yourself?” cried MacNutt, seeming to -catch hope from her change of tone. “You know as well as I do that I can -hound this Durkin off the face o’ the globe. I can make it so hot for -him here in New York that he daren’t stick his nose within a foot o’ the -Hudson. And I’m goin’ to do it, too! I’m goin’ to do it, unless you want -to come and stop me from doin’ it!” - -“Why?” she asked emptily. - -“Didn’t you save my life once, Frank, right in this room? Damn it all, -you must have thought a little about me, to do a thing like that!” - -“And what did you do for it?” she demanded, with a sudden change of -front. Once again she was all animal, artful and cunning and crafty. -“You played the sneak-thief. You slunk back here and stole his money. -No, no; there’s no good your denying it—you came and stole his honestly -earned money!” - -“Honestly earned?” he scoffed. - -“No, not honestly earned, perhaps, but made as clean as it could be -made, in this low and mean and underhand business you taught us and -dragged us into! And you came and stole it, when it meant so much to me, -and to him!” - -“Yes, I said I’d knock him, and I did knock him! But, good heavens, -what’s his money to a high-roller like me! If that’s all you’re swingin’ -your clapper about, you may as well get wise. If it’s the money you’re -achin’ after, you can have it—providin’ you take it the way I’m willin’ -to give it to you!” - -“I can’t believe you—you know that!” - -“You think I’m talkin’ big? Well, look here. Here’s my wad! Yes, look at -it good and hard—there’s enough there to smother you in diamonds, and -let you lord it ’round this town for the rest of your life!” - -“You’re drunk,” she cried, once more consumed by a sudden fear of him. - -“No, I’m not; but I’m crazy, if you want to put it that way, and you’re -the cause of it! I’m tired o’ plottin’ and schemin’ and gettin’ mixed up -in all kinds o’ dirty work, and I want to take it easy now, and enjoy -life a little!” - -She gasped at his words. Were _his_ aspirations, then, quite as high as -hers? Were all the vague ideals she mouthed to Durkin and herself only -the thoughts of any mottled-souled evil-doer? - -Then she watched him slowly close the great polished pig-skin wallet, -replace it in his inside breast-pocket, and secure it there with its -safety-button. - -Frances gazed at him blankly, with detached and impersonal attention. He -stood to her there the embodiment of what all her old life had been. In -him she saw incarnate all its hideousness, all its degrading coarseness, -all its hopeless vileness and wickedness. And this was what she had -dreamed that at a moment’s notice she could thrust behind her! She had -thought that it could be slipped off, at a turn of the hand, like a -soiled skirt, when the insidious poison of it had crept into her very -bones, when it had corroded and withered and killed that holier -something which should have remained untouched and unsullied in her -inmost heart of hearts. He was her counterpart, her mate, this gross man -with the many-wrinkled, square-set jaw, with the stolid bull-neck, with -his bloated, vulpine face and his subdolous green eyes. This was what -she had fallen to, inch by inch, and day by day. And here he was talking -to her, wisely, as to one of his kind, bargaining for her bruised and -weary body, as though love and honor and womanly devotion were chattels -to be bought and sold in the open market. - -The ultimate, inexorable hopelessness, the foredoomed tragedy of her -dwarfed and perverted life came crushingly home to her, as she looked at -him, still confronting her there in his challenging comradeship of crime -and his kinship of old-time dishonor. - -“Mack,” she said quietly, but her voice was hard and dry and colorless, -“I could never marry you, now. But under one condition I would be -willing to go with you, wherever you say.” - -“And that condition is?” - -“It is that you return to Durkin every cent you owe him, and let him go -his way, while we go ours.” - -“You mean that, Frank?” - -“Yes, I mean it!” - -He looked at her colorless face closely. Something in it seemed to -satisfy him. - -“But how am I to know you’re going to stick to your bargain?” he still -hesitated. “How am I to be sure you won’t get your price and then give -me the slip?” - -“Would Durkin want me, _after that_? Would he take up with me when _you_ -had finished with me? Oh, he’s not that make of man!” she scoffed in her -hard, dry voice. There was a little silence; then, “Is that all?” she -asked in her dead voice. - -“That’s just as you say,” he answered. - -“Very well,” she said between her drawn lips. She stepped quickly to the -back of the room, and lifting the hidden telephone transmitter up on the -table she threw open the window to loop the wire that ran by the -overhanging eave. - -“Hold on, there!” cried MacNutt, in alarm. “What’s all this, anyway?” - -“I have got to tell Durkin, that’s all. He has got to know, of course, -what we have decided on.” - -“Oh, no, you don’t, my beauty! If there’s goin’ to be any telephonin’ -out o’ this house, I do it myself!” - -“It makes no difference,” she answered, apathetically. “You can tell him -as well as I could.” - -She could see some new look of suspicion and rage mounting into his -watchful eyes. “I do the talking this trip,” he cried. - -“Then cut in and loop that third wire—no, the fourth, counting the -lighting wire—on the eave there. It is the Van Schaick -house-wire—indeed, it would be much better to cut them off altogether, -after we cut in, or there might be some interference from them with -Central. Now throw open that switch behind the window-curtain there—so. -Now, if you will ring up Central and ask for the Chelsea, they will -connect you directly with Durkin. He is waiting in his room there for -me.” - -He looked at her, suspicious and puzzled, the momentary note of triumph -gone out of his voice. - -“See here, Frank, I may as well tell you one thing, straight out. -Although I square up with Durkin for what I got out of him, and pass -this money of his over to you, I tell you now, I’m going to smash that -man!” - -“Smash him?” she echoed, dismally. “Then you’ve been lying!” - -“Yes, smash him! You don’t imagine I’m goin’ to have that piker -shadowin’ and doggin’ me like a flatty all my days! I stand pat now with -Doogan and his men. And in ten days I can have Durkin up against ten -years!” - -“That’s a lie,” she contended. - -“Well, I can have him so he’ll be glad to get ten years, just to get out -o’ what’s comin’ to him!” - -“Then this was all a trap, a plot?” she gasped. - -“No, it’s not a trap—it’s only that I wanted to save you out o’ the -mess. I’m wise enough in most things, but about you I’ve always been a -good deal of a fool. It’s my loose screw, all right; sometimes it’s -driven me near crazy. I’m goin’ to have you, I don’t care what it costs -me—I don’t care if I have to pound this Durkin’s brains out with a -lead-pipe!” - -“Take me! Take me—but save him!” she pleaded. - -“Good God, it’s not just you I want—it’s—it’s your feelin’s, it’s your -love that I’ve got to have!” - -“Oh!” she moaned, covering her face with her hands. - -“It’s a queer way of makin’ love, eh?—but I mean it! And I want to know -if you’re goin’ to swing in with me and get taken care of, or not?” - -“Oh, you fool, you fool!” she cried suddenly, smiting the air with her -vehemently closed fists. “You poor, miserable fool! I loathe and hate -the very sound of your voice! I despise every inch of your brutish, -bloated body! I’d die—I’d kill myself ten times over before I’d so much -as touch you!” - -He looked at her gathering storm of rage, first in wonder, and then in a -slow and deadly anger that blanched his face and left only the two -claret-colored blotches on his withered cheeks. - -“I’ll give you one last chance,” he said, clenching his flaccid jaw. - -“Chance! I don’t want a chance! Now I know how things _must_ go! Now I -know how to act! And before we settle it between us, and if I have -to—to lose everything, I want you to know one thing. I want you to know -that I’m doing it for Durkin! I’m doing it all, everything, for _him_!” - -“For Durkin?” he choked, with an oath. “What are you fightin’ for that -washed-out welcher for?” - -“Because Durkin is my husband!” she said, in her ashen white -determination, as she stepped quickly to the door and double-locked it. -“And because I would _die_ for him”—she laughed shrilly, horribly, as -she said it—“before I’d see him hurt or unhappy!” - -She stood firmly with her back against the door, panting a little, her -jaw fallen loosely down, her eyes luminous with their animal-like fire. - -“Then, by God, you _will_!” said MacNutt in his raucous guttural, with -his limbs beginning to shake as he glared at her. - -She stood there motionless, trying to think out the first moves in that -grim game for which freedom and love and life itself were the stakes. - -“Then, by God, you will!” repeated MacNutt, with the sweat coming out in -beads on his twitching temples. - - - - - CHAPTER XXXI - - -Frances Durkin knew the man she had to face. She knew the pagan and -primordial malevolence of the being, the almost demoniacal passions that -could sweep through him. More than once she had seen his obsessions -tremble on the verge of utter madness. She had come to know the rat-like -pertinacity, the morbid, dementating narrowness of mind, that made him -what he was. In his artful and ruthless campaign against Penfield, in -his relentless crushing of old-time confederates, in each and all of his -earlier underground adventures, she had seen the sullen, bulldog, brutal -contumacy of the man. - -She expected nothing from him, neither mercy nor quarter. And yet, she -told herself, she was in no way afraid of him. As she had felt before, -time and time again, in moments of great danger, a vague sense of -duality of being took possession of her, as if mind stood detached from -body, to flutter and dodge through the darkness before her, freed from -its sheath of flesh. - -She felt that she might kill him now, if the chance came, quite easily -and calmly. Yet she still diffidently half-hoped that the chance would -be denied her. It was not that she would be cowardly about it, but it -seemed to her the darker and more dubious way out of it all. - -No; it was _he_ who must do the killing, she told herself, with a sudden -pang of half-delirious abnegation. - -That was the utter and ultimate solution of the tangled problem; it -would be over and done with in a minute. She had lived by the sword and -she could die by the sword; from that moment, too, would be counted the -days of MacNutt’s own doom, the release and the deliverance of Durkin! - -She seemed to hug this new self-illumination to her, and a smile of -scorn trembled on her lips as he stood over her, in his white and -shaking wrath. - -“Oh, I know you, you she-devil!” he suddenly cried out, with an -animal-like snarl from the depths of his flabby throat. “I know what -you’re after! You think you’ll do the cheap-heroine act; you think -you’ll end it by comin’ between him and me this way! You think you’ll -save his puny piker’s heart a last pang or two, don’t you! You think -you’ll cheat me out of that, do you? You think that it’s just between -you and me now, eh, and that you can do your martyr’s act here while -he’s off somewhere else moonin’ about your eyebrows and takin’ it easy!” - -And he laughed horribly, quietly. “No!” he cried, with a volley of the -foulest oaths; “no! If I’m goin’ to get the name I’m goin’ to have the -game! I mean to get my money’s worth out o’ this! I’m goin’ to kill you, -you cat, but I’m goin’ to do it in my own way!” - -The room, which rang with his hoarse voice, seemed to grow small and -dark and cell-like. The great, gorilla-like figure, in the gray light, -seemed to draw back and go a long way off, and then tower over her once -more. - -“You’re going to kill me?” she gasped, as though the thought of it had -come home to her for the first time. - -Her more ecstatic moment of recklessness had passed strangely away, and -had left her helpless and craven. - -Nothing but terror was written on her face as she cowered back from him -and sidled along the wall, with her fingers groping crazily over its -blind surface, as though some unlooked-for door of release might open to -their touch. - -“You cat! You damned cat!” he cried hoarsely, as he leaped toward her -and tried to catch her by the throat. She writhed away from him and -twisted and dodged and fought until she had gained the door between the -front and the back room. Through this, cat-like, she shot sidewise, and -swung to the door with all her strength. - -It had been her intention to bolt and lock it, if possible. But he had -been too quick for her. He thrust out a maddened hand to hold it back -from the jamb, and she could hear his little howl of pain as the meeting -timbers bit and locked on the fingers of the huge, fat hand. - -As she stood there, panting, with her full weight against the door, she -could see the discoloring finger-tips, and the blood beginning to drip -slowly from the bruised hand. Yet she knew she could not long withstand -the shock of the weight he was flinging against her. So she looked about -the darkening room quickly, desperately. Her first thought was of the -windows. She could fling herself from one of them, and it would all be -over with her in a minute. - -Then she caught sight of the nurse’s uniform of striped blue and white -linen flung across the bed, and in a sudden inspirational flash she -remembered the hypodermic. That, at least, would be painless—painless -and sure. - -She slipped away from the door, and at the next lunge of his great body -MacNutt fell sprawling into the room. By the time he was on his feet she -had the little hollow-needled instrument in her hand. - -But he fell on her, like a terrier on a rat, caught her up, shook and -crushed her in his great ape-like arms. - -“Oh, I’ll show you!” he panted and wheezed. “I’ll show you!” - -He dragged her writhing and twisting body through the door into the back -room. She fought and struggled and resisted as best she could, catching -at the door-posts and the furniture with her one free hand as she -passed. She would have used her hypodermic and ended it all then and -there, only his great grip pinned her right arm down to her side, and -the needle lay useless between her fingers. - -The room was almost in darkness by this time, and a chair was knocked -over in their struggles. But still MacNutt bore her, fighting and -panting, toward the little table between the two windows, where the -telephone transmitter stood. - -He pinned and held her down on the edge of the table with his knees and -his bleeding right hand, while with his left hand he caught up the -receiver of the telephone. - -“Central, give me the Chelsea, quick—the Chelsea, the Chelsea!” - -It was then and then only that the exhausted woman clearly understood -what he meant to do. She started up, with a great cry of horror in her -throat; but he muffled it with his shaking hand, and, biting out an -oath, squeezed the very breath out of her body. - -“I want to speak to Durkin,” panted MacNutt into the transmitter, a -moment later. “Durkin, James Durkin—a man with his arm in a sling. He -just took rooms with you today. Yes, Durkin.” - -There was another long wait, through which Frances lay there, neither -struggling nor moving, saving her strength for one last effort. - -“Yes, yes; Duggan; I guess that’s it!” MacNutt was saying over the wire -to the switchboard operator at the hotel. “Yes, Duggan, with a lame -arm!” - -Then he let the receiver swing at the end of its cord and with his freed -hand drew his revolver from his pocket. - -The gasping woman felt the crushing pressure released for a moment, and -fought to free her right hand. It came away from his hold with a jerk, -and as her finger slipped into the little metal piston-ring she flung -the freed arm up about his shoulder and clung to him. For a sudden last -thought had come to her, a rotten thread of hope, on which swayed and -hung her last chance of life. - -It was through the coat and clothing of the struggling MacNutt that the -little needle was forced, through the skin, and deep into the flesh of -the great, beefy shoulder. She held it there until the barrel was empty, -then it fell on the floor. - -“You’d try to stab me, would you!” he cried, madly, uncomprehendingly, -as he struggled in vain to throttle the writhing body, and then raised -his revolver, to beat her on the head. The signal-bell rang sharply, and -he caught up the receiver instead. - -“Now!” he gloated insanely, deep in his wheezing throat. “Now! Is that -Durkin speaking? Is that Durkin? Oh, it is! Well, this is MacNutt—I say -your old friend MacNutt!” and he laughed horribly, dementedly. - -“You’ve done a good deal of business over the wires, Durkin, in your -day, haven’t you? Well, you listen now, and you’ll hear something doin’! -I say listen now, and you’ll hear something doin’!” - -“Jim!” screamed the woman, pinned down on the edge of the table. “Jim!” -she screamed insanely. “_Oh, Jim, save me!_” - -She could hear the sharp phonographic burr of her husband’s voice -through the receiver. - -“Oh, Jim, he’s killing me!” she wailed. - -For MacNutt had taken up the revolver in his trembling left hand and was -forcing the head with all its wealth of tumbled hair closer and closer -up before the transmitter. - -It had been too late! She closed her eyes, and in one vivid, -kaleidoscopic picture all her discordant and huddled life stood out -before her. - -She felt a momentary shiver speed through the body that pinned her so -close to it, as she waited, and it seemed to her that the gripping knees -relaxed a little. He was speaking now, but brokenly and mumblingly. - -“Listen, you welcher, while I—” - -She felt the little steel barrel waver and then muzzle down through her -hair until it pressed on her skull. At the touch of it she straightened -her limp body, galvanically, desperately. He staggered back under the -sudden weight. - -Then she caught his hand in hers, and with all her strength twisted the -menacing barrel upward. The finger trembling on the trigger suddenly -compressed as she did so. The bullet plowed into the ceiling and brought -down a shower of loosened plaster. - -Then he fell, prone on his face, and she stood swaying drunkenly back -and forth, watching him through the drifting smoke. Twice he tried to -raise himself on his hands, and twice he fell back moaning, flat on his -face. - -“It’s a lie, Jim, it’s a lie!” she exulted insanely, turning and -springing to the transmitter, and catching up the still swaying -receiver. “Do you hear me, Jim? It’s a lie—I’m here, waiting for you! -_Jim, can’t you hear?_” - -But Durkin had fainted away at the other end of the wire, and no -response came to her cries. - -She flung herself down upon the collapsed MacNutt, and tore open his -coat and vest. As she did so the polished pig-skin wallet fell out on -the floor. - -His heart was still beating, but it would be murder, she felt, to leave -him there without attention. His life was his own. She wanted and would -take only what the written law would allow. She wanted only her own. - -She came to a sudden pause, as she looked from the paper wealth between -her fingers to the huge and huddled figure beside her. Some inner and -sentinel voice, from the calmer depths of her nature, was demanding of -her how much of what had thus come into her hand _was_ her own? After -all, how much of that terrible and tainted wealth could truly be called -their own?—was the untimely question this better part of her was crying -out. - -She knew that in the end most usurious toll would be exacted for what -she took. Her life had taught her that no lasting foundation of good, no -enduring walls of aspiration, could be built on the engulfing sloughs of -evil. And as she looked at her prostrate enemy once more, and breathed -out a fervent and grateful: “Oh, God, I thank Thee for this -deliverance!” a sudden chastening and abnegative passion prompted her to -thrust back every dollar she had drawn from that capacious wallet. - -Then she thought of the future, of the exigent needs of life, of the -necessities of her immediate flight; and her heart sank within her. To -begin life again with a clean slate—that had been her constant wish. -Yet much as she hungered to do so, she dare not leave it all. As with -many another aspiring soul in quieter walks of life, she found herself -grimly but sorrowfully compelled to leave the pure idea sacrificed on -the altar of compromise. All life, she told herself, was made up of -concessions. She could only choose the lesser evil, and through it still -strive to grope a little onward and upward. - -So she slowly detached one Treasury note—it was for one thousand -dollars—from the bulky roll, and the rest she restored to its wallet. -It was a contribution to conscience. As she replaced that wallet in the -inner pocket of the prostrate man, her feelings were akin to those of -some primordial worshipper before his primordial Baal or his exacting -Juggernaut. She felt that with that sacrifice she was appeasing her -gods. She consoled herself with the thought that the Master of Destiny -would know and understand—that she had given up the great thing that -she might not sorrow in the little. As yet, He would not expect too much -of her! That minute fraction of what she might have taken, she argued -with herself, appeasingly,—surely that little moiety of what they had -fought and worked for might be theirs. - - * * * * * - -It was fifteen minutes later that a frightened and pale-faced woman left -word at the corner drugstore that an old gentleman was ill of morphine -poisoning, and asked if the ambulance might be sent for. All that the -clerk could remember, when he was later questioned by the somewhat -bewildered police, was that she had seemed weak and sick, and had asked -for some aromatic spirits of ammonia, and that the side of her face was -swollen and bruised where she lifted her veil. He was of the opinion, -too, that she had been under the drug herself, or had been drinking -heavily, for she walked unsteadily, and he had had to call a taxi for -her and help her into it. What made him believe this, on second -thoughts, was the fact that she had flung herself back in her seat and -said, “Thank God, oh, thank God!” half a dozen times to herself. - - - - - CHAPTER XXXII - - -Neither Frances nor Durkin seemed to care to come on deck until the bell -by the forward gangway had rung for the last time, and the officer from -the bridge had given his last warning of: “All visitors ashore!” - -Then, as the last line was cast off, and the great vessel wore slowly -out from the crowded pier, a-flutter with hands and handkerchiefs, the -two happy travelers came up from their cabin. - -While the liner was swinging round in midstream, and the good-byes and -the cheering died down in the distance, the two stood side by side at -the rail, watching the City, as the mist-crowned, serrated line of the -lower town sky-scrapers drifted past them. The shrouded morning sun was -already high in the East, and through the lifting fog they could see the -River and the widening Bay, glistening and flashing in the muffled -light. - -Frances took it as a good omen, and pointed it out, with a flutter of -laughing wistfulness, to her husband. Behind them, she took pains to -show him, the churned water lay all yellow and turgid and draped in fog. - -“I hope it holds good,” he said, linking his arm in hers. - -“We shall _make_ it hold good,” she answered valiantly, though deep down -in her heart some indefinite premonition of failure still whispered and -stirred. Yet, she tried to tell herself, if they had sinned, surely they -had been purged in fire! Surely it was not too late to shake off the -memory of that old entangled and disordered life they were leaving -behind them! - -It was not so much for herself that she feared, as for her husband. He -was a man, and through his wayward manhood, she told herself, swept -tides and currents uncomprehended and uncontrolled by her weaker woman’s -heart. But she would shield him, and watch him, and, if need be, fight -for him and with him. - -She looked up at his face with her studious eyes, after a little -ineloquent gesture of final resignation; and he laughed down at her, and -crushed her arm happily against his side. Then he emitted a long and -contented sigh. - -“Do you know how I feel?” he said, at last, as they began to pace the -deck, side by side, and the smoke-plumed city, crowned with its halo of -purplish mist, died down behind them. - -“I feel as if we were two ghosts, being transported into another life! I -feel exactly as if you and I were disembodied spirits, travelling out -through lonely space, to find a new star!” - -“Yes, my beloved, I know!” she said, comprehendingly, with her habitual -little head-shake. Then she, too, gave vent to a sigh, yet a sigh not -touched with the same contentment as Durkin’s. - -“Oh, my own, I’m so tired!” she murmured. - -He looked down at her, knowingly, but said nothing. - -Then she stopped and leaned over the rail, breathing in the buoyant salt -air. He stood close beside her, and did the same. - -“It’s fresh and fine and good, isn’t it!” he cried, blinking back -through the strong sunlight where the drifting city smoke still hung -thinly on the skyline in their wake. - -She did not answer him, for her thoughts, at the moment, were far away. -He looked at her quietly, where the sea-wind stirred her hair. - -“Good-bye, Old World, good-bye!” she murmured at last, softly. - -“Why, you’re crying!” he said, as his hand sought hers on the rail. - -“Yes,” she answered, “just a little!” - -And then, for some unknown reason, with her habitual sense of -guardianship, she let her arm creep about her uncomprehending husband. -From what or against what that shielding gesture was meant to guard him -he could not understand, nor would Frances explain, as, with a little -shamefaced laugh, she wiped away her tears. - -“Good-bye, Old World!” he repeated, as he looked back at the widening -skyline, with a challenging finality which seemed to imply that what was -over and done with was for all time over and done with. . . . -“Good-bye!” - -“Good-bye!” said the woman. But it was not a challenge. It was a prayer. - - THE END - - * * * * * - -Transcriber’s Notes: - -Punctuation errors have been corrected without note. Other errors have -been corrected as noted below: - -Page 5. The touch of content ==> The touch of contempt - -Page 35. it drives about the open ==> its drives about the open - -Page 47. what it it, Mack ==> what is it, Mack - -Page 133. Your heard about the fire ==> You heard about the fire - -Page 266. strength was was equally slow ==> strength was equally slow - -Page 299. swept tides and and currents ==> swept tides and currents - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wire Tappers, by Arthur Stringer - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIRE TAPPERS *** - -***** This file should be named 50203-0.txt or 50203-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/0/2/0/50203/ - -Produced by David T. 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Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. - diff --git a/old/50203-0.zip b/old/50203-0.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 5966c15..0000000 --- a/old/50203-0.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/50203-h.zip b/old/50203-h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 3a6d9af..0000000 --- a/old/50203-h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/50203-h/50203-h.htm b/old/50203-h/50203-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index f5b6ea3..0000000 --- a/old/50203-h/50203-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8623 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> - <title>The Wire Tappers</title> - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg"/> - <meta name="cover" content="images/cover.jpg" /> - <meta name="DC.Title" content="The Wire Tappers"/> - <meta name="DC.Creator" content="Arthur Stringer"/> - <meta name="DC.Language" content="en"/> - <meta name="DC.Created" content="1906"/> - <meta name="Pubdate" content="1906"/> - <meta name="DC.Subject" content="fiction, adventure"/> - <meta name="Tags" content="fiction, adventure"/> - <meta name="generator" content="fpgen 4.42d"/> - <style type="text/css"> - body { margin-left:8%;margin-right:10%; } - .it { font-style:italic; } - .bold { font-weight:bold; } - .sc { font-variant:small-caps; } - p { text-indent:0; margin-top:0.5em; margin-bottom:0.5em; - text-align: justify; } - div.lgc { } - div.lgl { } - div.lgc p { text-align:center; text-indent:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; } - div.lgl p { text-indent: -17px; margin-left:17px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; } - h1 { text-align:center; font-weight:normal; - font-size:1.2em; margin:2em auto 1em auto} - hr.tbk100{ border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; width:30%; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; text-align:center; margin-left:35%; margin-right:35% } - hr.tbk101{ border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; width:90%; margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:2em; text-align:center; margin-left:5%; margin-right:5% } - hr.pbk { border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; width:100%; margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:2em } - .figcenter { text-align:center; margin:1em auto;} - p.caption { text-align:center; margin:0 auto; width:100%; } - p.line { text-indent:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; } - .pindent { margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; text-indent:1.5em; } - .noindent { margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; text-indent:0; } - .hang { padding-left:1.5em; text-indent:-1.5em; } - </style> - <style type="text/css"> - h1 { font-size: 1.3em; font-weight:bold;} - </style> - </head> - <body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wire Tappers, by Arthur Stringer - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: The Wire Tappers - -Author: Arthur Stringer - -Release Date: October 13, 2015 [EBook #50203] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIRE TAPPERS *** - - - - -Produced by David T. Jones, Paul Ereaut, Mardi Desjardins -& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team -(http://www.pgdpcanada.net) - - - - - - -</pre> - -<div class='figcenter'> -<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0000' style='width:375px;height:auto;'/> -</div> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;'><a href='#notes'>Transcriber’s Notes</a> can be found at the end of this eBook.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'>OTHER BOOKS BY MR. STRINGER</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='sc'>The Door of Dread</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='sc'>The Man Who Couldn’t Sleep</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='sc'>The House of Intrigue</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='sc'>Twin Tales</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='sc'>The Prairie Wife</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='sc'>The Prairie Mother</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='sc'>The Prairie Child</span></p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='figcenter'> -<img src='images/i003.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0001' style='width:400px;height:auto;'/> -<p class='caption'>Quite motionless, waiting over the sounder, bent the woman</p> -</div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='figcenter'> -<img src='images/title.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0002' style='width:375px;height:auto;'/> -</div> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line' style='font-size:2.5em;font-weight:bold;'>THE</p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:2.5em;font-weight:bold;'>WIRE TAPPERS</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='margin-top:2em;font-size:1.2em;'><span class='it'>By</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.5em;font-weight:bold;'>ARTHUR STRINGER</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>INDIANAPOLIS</p> -<p class='line'>THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY</p> -<p class='line'>PUBLISHERS</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='sc'>Copyright</span>, 1906, 1922</p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='sc'>By The Bobbs-Merrill Company</span></p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:2em;'><span class='it'>Printed in the United States of America</span></p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>PRESS OF</p> -<p class='line'>BRAUNWORTH & CO</p> -<p class='line'>BOOK MANUFACTURERS</p> -<p class='line'>BROOKLYN, N. Y.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:2em;font-size:2em;'><span class='bold'>THE WIRE TAPPERS</span></p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER I</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>The discharged prisoner hung back, blinking out at the strong sunlight -with preoccupied and unhappy eyes. When the way at last seemed clear he -thrust his hands deep in his pockets, and with an assumption of bravado -that seemed incongruous to the stern and thoughtful face, sauntered -toward Sixth Avenue.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the corner, a crowd of idlers watched two workmen on a scaffolding, -cleaning the stone of Jefferson Market with a sand-blast. It was not -until he had forced his way in on one side of this crowd, and edged -circuitously out on the other, that he felt at ease with the world. It -was like dipping into a stream: it seemed to wash away something scarlet -and flaming. A more resolute touch of self-respect came back to him. The -square shoulders took on some old-time line of natural dignity. He was -of the world again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He crossed Sixth Avenue with quicker steps, and then, smitten with the -pangs of sudden hunger, pushed his way into an oyster-bar on the next -street corner. With his reawakening to actualities came the question as -to what the next turn of the grim wheels of destiny would bring to him. -For, at heart, he was still sick and shaken and weak. It was his first -offense; and he felt the need of some obliterating stimulation. So, even -though the heavy odors of that transformed bar-room were as nauseating -as the mouldy gaol-smell he had left behind him, he calmly called for -coffee and a dozen raw. He ate the oysters as they were opened, between -gulps of the hot but rancid coffee. He next directed his attention to a -bowl of crackers, moistening them with catchup as he adroitly made away -with them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was not until then that he noticed the stranger beside him, looking -at him pointedly. This stranger was corpulent, and friendly enough of -face, but for the blocked squareness of the flaccid jaw and the -indefinite pale green glint of the deep-set, predatory eyes that shifted -from side to side under the fringe of grayish eyebrow, as though the -great neck were too vast a thing to be lightly troubled. He was floridly -dressed, the younger man noticed, with a heavy, chased-gold band on one -fat finger, and a claw-mounted diamond in the stud on his shirt-front. -There was, too, something beefily animal-like in the confident, massive -neck that refused readily to move, and in the square upthrust of the -great shoulder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The discharged prisoner returned the other’s half-quizzical gaze of -inspection. He did so with a look that was unmistakably belligerent. -For, although they stood side by side, they were of two worlds, and the -prisoner was no longer a prisoner.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The stranger, unabashed, merely smiled, and leaned amiably against the -stool-lined counter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’ll you have, Durkin?” he asked, easily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The other man still glared at him, in silence. Thereupon the stranger -with the diamond stud thrust his hands deep down in his pockets, and -rocking on his heels, laughed confidently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Climb down, my boy, climb down!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin buttoned up his coat: the gesture was as significant as the -slamming of a door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, smoke up, and have something with me!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who <span class='it'>are</span> you, anyway?” demanded Durkin, wheeling on him, jealous of -his momentary isolation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Me?—Oh, I was just keepin’ an eye on you, over yonder!” The stout man -jerked a thumb vaguely toward Jefferson Market, then turned to the -attendant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Slip us a nip o’ that London Dry o’ yours, Terry, with a plate o’ hot -beans and sandwiches. Yes, I was kind o’ lookin’ on, over there. You’re -up against it, aren’t you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What do you mean by that?” asked the other, hungrily watching a leg of -boiled ham, from which the attendant was shaving dolefully thin slices.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here, brace up on a swig o’ Terry’s watered bootleg; then we can talk -easier. Hold on, though—it won’t cost us any more to get comfortable, I -guess!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He ordered the luncheon over to a little round table in a corner of the -room. Durkin could already feel the illicit London Dry singing through -his veins; he was asking himself, wolfishly, if he could not snatch that -proffered meal before taking to flight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, this isn’t monkey-work with me, it’s business,” announced the -newcomer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Indeed?” said Durkin, hesitating, and then taking up a fork.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, first thing, I want to tell you something. That song and dance you -threw up to the Old Boy over on the bench, about your bein’ an electric -inventor in hard luck, caught my eye, first thing. Look here,—straight -off the bat, d’ you want to get a cinch on a good job?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do!” declared Durkin, through a mouthful of beans. “But doing what?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Same old thing!” answered the other, offhandedly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin put down his fork, indignantly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What same old thing?” he demanded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Operatin’, of course!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin, in a sudden tremor of alarm, felt that the break would come -before even that steaming plate of beans was eaten. So he fought back -his affronted dignity, and giving no sign of either surprise or wonder, -parried for time.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m tired of operating,” he said, washing a mouthful of his lunch down -with a second glass of Terry’s London Dry. “My arm has been giving -out.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I want a man, and I want him quick. You’re—er—not very well -fixed just now, are you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I haven’t a penny!” cried the other, passionately, surrendering to some -clutching tide of alcoholic recklessness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, <span class='it'>my</span> hours wouldn’t kill you!” began the older man, fraternally.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m sick of the sight of a key and sounder!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’d rather do the Edison act in a Third Avenue garret, I -s’pose—broodin’ round inventin’ electrical gimcrackery nobody wants and -nobody’s goin’ to buy!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I tell you somebody <span class='it'>will</span> want what I’m going to do—and somebody -is going to pay money for it, and a heap of money, too!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’ve you got?” inquired the older man, with the slightest curl of -the lip. The younger man seemed nettled by the touch of <a id='contempt'></a>contempt in the -other’s voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve got an amplifier and I’ve got a transmitting camera—you needn’t -laugh, for when I get a relay so sensitive that I can sit in a St. Louis -office and send a message to London or Paris, or when I can send a -drawing of a train wreck somewhere outside of San Francisco right -through to New York, or telegraph a photo or a map or a sketch—why, -I’ve got something that men are going to pay for, and pay well!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve heard of ’em all before—in the dope page o’ the Sunday papers!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I tell you I’ve got this transmitting camera! All I want is time -and money to work it out, on the business side. Wait a minute, now, and -let me explain. If you’ve operated a key you’ll understand it easily -enough. You know what we call the Tesla currents, and you know what -selenium is. Well, when I first tackled this thing, my problem was to -get some special apparatus for reproducing the shadows and high-lights -on, say, a photograph. I had to have a different flow of current for -light and dark, to carry the impression from the transmitter to the -receiver. Well, I found that selenium did the trick, for a peculiarity -of that mighty peculiar metal is that it offers less resistance to a -current when in the light than in the dark. My next problem was to -control the light in the receiving camera. That’s where the Tesla -currents came in, inducing the rays of vacuum pipes under the high -tension. Do you follow me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, go on!” said the other man, impatiently. But his tone was lost on -the young inventor, who, under the stress of his excitement, was leaning -forward across the little table, gesticulating now and then with long -and slender and strangely expressive fingers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, if I was telegraphing a photograph of you to Chicago, it would -have to be in the form of a film, wrapped about a glass cylinder in the -transmitter. Light would be thrown on it by means of a convex lens. Now, -I cover the glass pipe with vulcanized rubber, or, say, with sealing -wax, so that no rays get out, except through the one little window where -they’ll fall on the film or the paper moving in front of it. Inside my -cylinder is a lens containing selenium, where the rays fall after -passing through the glass. But, pshaw, what’s all this to you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Go ahead—I’m listenin’!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, as I was going to tell you, just so much light, or illumination, -I ought to say, is given to the selenium cell as you’d see in the light -and dark spots of the photograph. That, in turn, means a greater or less -resistance offered to the electric current. Its energy is controlled -automatically, of course, passing over the wire from the transmitter to -the receiver, so that while the transmitting film is passing in front of -the selenium at my end of the wire, the sealed tube of Tesla rays at the -Chicago office is being moved before a receptive film at the far end of -the wire. So the transmitted light escapes through the one little -window, and records its impression on the film—and there you are!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The other man put down his glass, unperturbed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, here we are—but if there’s so many millions in this apparatus for -you, what’s the use o’ hollerin’ it out to all Sixth Avenue? It’s fine! -It sounds big! It’s as good as perpetual motion! But coming down to -earth again, how’re you goin’ to get your funds to put all this -pipe-dream through?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll get them yet, some way, by hook or crook!” protested the younger -man, in the enthusiasm of his fourth glass of bootlegger’s gin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, my friend, I’ll tell you one thing, straight out. Stick to me -and you’ll wear diamonds! And until you’re gettin’ the diamonds, what’s -more, you’ll be gettin’ your three square a day!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was the lip of the indignant Durkin that curled a little, as he -looked at the glittering stud on the expansive shirt-front and the fat, -bejewelled hand toying with the gin glass. Then he remembered, and -became more humble.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve got to live!” he confessed, mirthlessly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course you have! And you’re a fool to go broke in the teeth of a -cinch like this. First thing, though, how’d you ever come to get pinched -by Doogan? Here, take another drink—hot stuff, eh! Now, how’d you ever -come to get you’self pulled that fool way?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had been living like a street cat, for a week. An Eighth Avenue -manufacturing electrician I went to for work, took me up and showed me a -wire on his back roof. He advanced me five dollars to short-circuit it -for him. Doogan’s men caught me at it, and Doogan tried to make me out -an ordinary overhead guerrilla.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Lightnin’-slinger, eh?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, a lightning-slinger.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I s’pose you notice that he didn’t appear against you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I saw that! And <span class='it'>that’s</span> a part of the business I can’t -understand,” he answered, puzzled by the stranger’s quiet smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Say, Durkin, you didn’t think it was your good looks and your Fifth -Avenue talkin’ got you off, did you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The younger man turned on him with half-angry eyes. But the stranger -only continued to chuckle contentedly down in his throat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You remind me of a hen who’s just laid an egg!” cried Durkin, in a -sudden flash of anger. The other brushed the insult carelessly aside, -with one deprecatory sweep of his fat hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, <span class='it'>I</span> had Doogan fixed for you, you lobster!” he went on, as easily -and as familiarly as before. “You’re the sort o’ man I wanted—I saw -that, first crack out o’ the box. And a friend o’ mine named Cottrell -happens to stand pat with Muschenheim. And Muschenheim is Doogan’s -right-hand man, so he put a bee in the Boss’s ear, and everything -was—well, kind o’ dropped!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The younger man gazed at him in dreamy wonder, trying to grope through -the veil of unreality that seemed falling and draping about him. He was -marvelling, inwardly, how jolting and unlooked for came the sudden ups -and downs of life, when once the traveller is caught up out of the -ordinary grooves of existence,—how sudden and moving the drama, when -once the feral process is under way.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he listened, with alert and quickly changing eyes, as the -stranger—to make sure of his man, the discharged prisoner -surmised—tapped with his knife on the edge of his chinaware plate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin read the Morse easily—“Don’t talk so loud!” it warned him. And -he nodded and wagged his now swimming head, almost childishly, over the -little message. Yet all the time he felt, vaguely, that he was under the -keen eyes of the stranger across the table from him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where’d you work, before you went to the Postal-Union?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Up in the woods,” laughed the other carelessly, yet still clear-headed -enough to feel inwardly ashamed of his laughter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What woods?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Up in Ontario. I was despatcher, and station-agent, and ticket-seller, -and snow-shoveller, and lamp-cleaner, and everything else, for the Grand -Trunk at Komoka, where the Tunnel trains cut off from the main line west -for Chicago,—and where they still keep their heel on the Union, and -work their men like dogs. They paid me forty-two dollars a month—which -was small enough!—but out of that salary they deducted any bad money -taken in through the ticket-window, when my returns were made up. I was -two weeks behind in my board bill when a Port Huron drummer bought a -ticket through to Hamilton with a twenty-dollar counterfeit. It came -back to me, with my next month’s twenty-two dollars, with ‘Counterfeit’ -stencilled out in big letters across the face of it. The loss of that -money kind of got on my nerves. I fumed and worried over it until I -spoilt my ‘send,’ and couldn’t sleep, and in some way or other threw an -Oddfellows’ excursion train into a string of gravel empties! My God, -what I went through that night! I knew it, I foresaw it, twenty minutes -before they touched. I pounded the brass between the Junction and Sarnia -until they thought I was crazy, but we had no way of getting at them, -any more than we could get at two comets rushing together. I wired in my -resign. I didn’t even wait to get my clothes. I struck out and walked -across country to St. Thomas, and boarded a Michigan Central for the -Bridge!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The older man watched the nervous hands go up to the moist forehead and -wipe away the sweat, but the gesture left him unmoved.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then how’d you come to leave the Postal-Union?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A look of momentary resentment leaped into Durkin’s eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They blacklisted me!” he confessed. “And just for playing their own -game!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The other held up a warning finger.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not so loud,” he interrupted. “But go on!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course, when I first came down to New York I went into the P. U. -‘carrying a fly.’ So I was treated fairly enough, in a way. But I had -telegrapher’s paralysis coming on, and I knew I was losing time on my -amplifier, and I <span class='it'>had</span> to have money for my new transmitter experiments. -I tried to make it up doing over-time, and used to shoot weird codes -along Continental Press Association’s leased wires until I got so -neurasthenic that the hay-tossers up state would break and ask me to -fill in, and then I used to lose my temper and wonder why I didn’t stab -myself with a flimsy-hook. I knew I had to give it up, but I <span class='it'>did</span> want -enough money to carry along my work with!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He hesitated for a moment, still gazing down at his plate, until his -companion looked at his watch with a brusque “Go on!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So I tried another way. When some of the Aqueduct races were going -through, on a repeater next to my key, up to Reedy’s pool-rooms, I just -reached over and held up one side of the repeater. Then, say third horse -won, I strolled to the window and took out my handkerchief three times. -My confederate ’phoned to our man, and when he’d had time to get his -money up I let the result go through. But they discovered the trick, and -called me up on the carpet. And all the rest, you know!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He shook his head lugubriously; then he laughed aloud with a shrug of -the insouciant shoulder; then he added, regretfully, “I’d have made a -clear five hundred, if they’d only given me another day’s chance!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I guess maybe you can even up, with us!” And the stranger shook -his own head, knowingly, and returned the gaze of the younger man, who -was peering at him narrowly, unsteady of eye, but still alertly -suspicious. Even in that shadowy substratum to which he had been -temporarily driven, good grafts, he knew, had to be sought for long and -arduously. And he had no love for that ever-furtive underworld and its -follies. It was a life that rested on cynicism, and no man could be a -cynic and live. That he knew. He nursed no illusions as to the eventual -triumph of evil, in the ever-shifting order of things earthly; and he -remembered, with a sting of apprehension, the joy with which he had -plunged into the thick of that street-corner group of untainted -fellow-men.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think I’d rather get at something decent again,” he grumbled, pushing -away his bean-plate, but still waiting, with a teasing sense of anxiety, -for the other to explain more fully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I guess we’d all like to shy around the dirty work,—but a dead sure -thing’s good enough now and then.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But where’s all the money, in this cinch?” demanded Durkin, a little -impatiently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t cackle about that here, but I tell you right now, I’m no piker! -Get into a taxi with me, and then I’ll lay everything out to you as we -drive up to the house. But here, have a smoke,” he added as he got up -and hurried to the door that opened on the side street. Durkin had never -dreamed that tobacco—even pure Havana tobacco—could be so suave and -mellow and fragrant as that cigar.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, you asked me about the money in this deal,” the older man began, -when he had slammed the taxi door and they went scurrying toward Fifth -Avenue. “Well, it’s right here, see!”—and as he spoke he drew a roll -of bills from his capacious trousers-pocket. From an inner coat-pocket -that buttoned with a flap he next took out a pig-skin wallet, and -flicked the ends of his paper wealth before Durkin’s widening eyes. The -latter could see that it was made up of one hundreds, and fifties, and -twenties, all neatly arranged according to denomination. He wondered, -dazedly, just how many thousands it held. It seemed, of a sudden, to put -a new and sobering complexion on things.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Money talks!” was the older man’s sententious remark, as he restored -the wallet to its pocket.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Undoubtedly!” said Durkin, leaning back in the cushioned seat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, if you want to swing in with us, here’s what you get a week.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The stranger took the smaller roll from his trousers-pocket again, and -drew out four crisp fifty dollar bills. These he placed on the palm of -the other man’s hand, and watched the hesitating fingers slowly close on -them. “And if our <span class='it'>coup</span> goes through, you get your ten per cent. -rake-off,—and that ought to run you up from five to seven thousand -dollars, easy!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin’s fingers closed more tightly on his bills, and he drew in his -gin-laden breath, sharply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who <span class='it'>are</span> you, anyway?” he asked, slowly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Me? Oh, I’m kind of an outside operator, same as yourself!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked at Durkin steadily, for a moment, and then, seemingly -satisfied, went on in a different tone.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did you ever hear of Penfield, the big pool-room man, the gay art -connoisseur, who hob-nobs with a bunch of our Wall Street magnates and -saunters over to Europe a couple o’ times a season? Well, I’ve been a -plunger at Penfield’s now for two months—just long enough to make sure -that he’s as crooked as they make ’em. I’m going to give him a dose of -his own medicine, and hit that gilt-edged gambler for a slice of his -genteel bank-roll—and an uncommon good, generous slice, too!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But what’s—er—your special line of business? How are you going to get -at this man Penfield, I mean?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ever hear of the Miami outfit?” asked the other.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That cut in and hit the Montreal pool-rooms for eighty thousand?—well, -I guess I have, a little!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin glanced at his companion, in wonder. Then the truth seemed to -dawn on him, in one illuminating, almost bewildering, flash.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You—you’re not MacNutt?” he cried, reading his answer even while he -asked the question. Half a year before, the Postal-Union offices had -been full of talk of the Miami outfit and MacNutt, buzzing with meagre -news of the cool insolence and audacity of Miami’s lightning-slingers, -who, when they saw they had worked their game to a finish, cut in with -their: “We’ve got your dough, now you can go to——” as they made for -cover and ultimate liberty ten minutes before their hillside cave was -raided, and nothing more than a packing-case, holding three dozen -Brumley dry batteries, a bunch of “KK,” and a couple of Crosby -long-distance telephones, was found.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin looked at the other man once more, almost admiringly, -indeterminately tempted, swayed against his will, in some way, by the -splendor of a vast and unknown hazard. He found a not altogether -miserable consolation, too, in the thought that this possible second dip -into illegitimate activities would be a movement not directed against -organized society, but against one already an enemy of that society. Yet -even this draught of sophistry left its after-taste of disgust.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re pretty confidential,” he said, slowly, looking the other up and -down. “What’s to stop me going to one of Doogan’s men and squealing on -the whole gang of you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>MacNutt smiled, gently and placidly, and stroked his short beard, -touched here and there with gray. “And what good would all that do you?” -he asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You <span class='it'>are</span> a cool specimen!” ejaculated the other.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I guess I know men; and I sized you up, first thing, in the -court-room. You’re the sort o’ man I want. You’re not a funker, and -you’ve got brains, and—well, if you don’t come out of this quite a few -thousand to the good, it’s all your own fault!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin whistled softly. Then he looked meditatively out at the flashing -motor-cars as they threaded their way up the crowded avenue.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I guess I’m game enough,” he said, hesitatingly, still trying to -sweep from his brain the clouding mental cobweb that it was all nothing -more than a vivid nightmare.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I guess I’m your man,” he repeated, as they turned off the Avenue, and -drew up in front of a house of staid and respectable brownstone facing, -like so many of the other private houses of New York’s upper Forties. In -fact, the long line of brownstone edifices before him seemed so alike -that one gigantic hand, he thought, might have carved the whole block -from a single slab of that dull and lifeless-looking brownstone rock.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then, following MacNutt, he jumped out and went quickly up the broad -stone steps.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So you’re with us, all right?” the older man asked, as his finger -played oddly on the electric button beside the door. Durkin looked at -the blank glass and panels that seemed to bar in so much mystery, and -his last quaver of indecision died away. Yet even then he had a sense of -standing upon some Vesuvian-like lava-crust, beneath which smouldered -unseen volcanic fires and uncounted volcanic dangers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I’m with you, anyway,” he asserted, stoutly. “I’m with you, to the -finish!”</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER II</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>It was a full minute before the door swung open; and the unlooked-for -wait in some way keyed the younger man’s curiosity up to the snapping -point. As it finally opened, slowly, he had the startled vision of a -young woman, dressed in sober black, looking half timidly out at them, -with her hand still on the knob. As he noticed the wealth of her waving -chestnut hair, and the poise of the head, and the quiet calmness of the -eyes, that appeared almost a violet-blue in contrast to the soft pallor -of her face, Durkin felt that they had made a mistake in the house -number. But, seeing MacNutt step quickly inside, he himself awkwardly -took off his hat. Under the spell of her quiet, almost pensive smile, he -decided that she could be little more than a mere girl, until he noticed -the womanly fullness of her breast and hips and what seemed a languid -weariness about the eyes themselves. He also noted, and in this he felt -a touch of sharp resentment, the sudden telepathic glance that passed -between MacNutt and the woman; a questioning flash on her part, an -answering flash on the other’s. Then she turned to Durkin, with her -quiet, carelessly winning smile, and held out her hand,—and his heart -thumped and pounded more drunkenly than it had done with all MacNutt’s -bootlegger’s gin. Then he heard MacNutt speaking, quietly and evenly, as -though talking of mere things of the moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This is Mr. Jim Durkin; Durkin, this is Miss Frances Candler. You -two’re going to have a lot o’ trouble together, so I guess you’d better -get acquainted right here—might as well make it Frank and Jim, you two, -for you’re going to see a mighty good deal of one another!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right, Jim,” said the woman, girlishly, in a mellow, English -contralto voice. Then she laughed a little, and Durkin noticed the -whiteness of her fine, strong incisors, and straightway forgot them -again, in the delicious possibility that he might hear that soft -laughter often, and under varied circumstances. Then he flushed hot and -cold, as he felt her shaking hands with him once more. Strangely -sobered, he stumbled over rugs and polished squares of parquetry, after -them, up two flights of stairs, listening, still dazed, to MacNutt’s -hurried questions and the woman’s low answers, which sounded muffled and -far away to him, as though some impalpable wall separated them from him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A man by the name of Mackenzie, Durkin gathered from what he could hear -of their talk, had been probing about the underground cable galleries -for half a day, and had just strung a wire on which much seemed to -depend. They stopped before a heavy oak-panelled door, on which MacNutt -played a six-stroked tattoo. A key turned, and the next moment a -middle-aged man, thin-lipped, and with blue veins showing about his -temples, thrust his head cautiously through the opening. The sweat was -running from his moist and dirt-smeared face; a look of relief came over -his features at the sight of the others. Durkin wondered just why he -should be dressed in the peaked cap and blue suit of a Consolidated Gas -Company inspector.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The room into which they stepped had, obviously, once been a -sewing-room. In one corner still stood the sewing-machine itself, in the -shadow, incongruously enough, of a large safe with combination lock. -Next to this stood a stout work-table, on which rested a box relay and a -Bunnell sounder. Around the latter were clustered a galvanometer, a 1-2 -duplex set, a condenser, and a Wheatstone bridge of the Post-Office -pattern, while about the floor lay coils of copper wire, a pair of -lineman’s pliers, and a number of scattered tools. Durkin’s trained eye -saw that the condenser had been in use, to reduce the current from a -tapped electric-light wire; while the next moment his glance fell on a -complete wire-tapping outfit, snugly packed away in an innocent enough -looking suit-case. Then he turned to the two men and the woman, as they -bent anxiously over the littered table, where Mackenzie was once more -struggling with his instrument, talking quickly and tensely as he tested -and worked and listened.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Great Scott, Mack, it’s easy enough for you to talk, but it was fool’s -luck, pure fool’s luck, I ever got this wire up! First, I had forty feet -of water-pipe, then eighty feet o’ brick wall, then over fifty feet of -cornice, and about twice as much eave-trough, hangin’ on all the time by -my eyelashes, and dog-sick waitin’ to be pinched with the goods on! Hold -on, there—what’s this?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The sounder had given out a tremulous little quaver; then a feeble click -or two; then was silent once more.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Lost it again!” said Mackenzie, under his breath.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let me look over that relay a minute!” broke in Durkin. It was the type -of box-relay usually used by linemen, with a Morse key attached to the -base-board; and he ran his eye over it quickly. Then, with a deft -movement or two he released the binding of the armature lever screws, -and the next moment the instrument felt the pulse of life, and spoke out -clearly and distinctly. Mackenzie looked up at the newcomer, for the -first time, with an actual and personal interest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s the trick, all right!” he said, with an admiring shake of the -head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Listen,” Durkin cried, gleefully, however, holding up a finger. “That’s -Corcoran, the old slob! He’s sending through the New Orleans returns!” -And he chuckled as he listened with inclined ear.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s Corcoran, same old slob as ever!” And still again he chuckled, a -little contemptuously, with the disdain of the expert for the slovenly -sender. He remembered, with a touch of pride, his own sending three -years before at the Kansas City Telegraphers’ Convention, and the little -cheer that broke from the audience in the great hall as he left the test -table. It was not at his mere speed they had cheered, for he could do -little more than forty-five words a minute, but because, as the chairman -had later said, it was so clean-cut and neat and incisive—“as pure as a -Rocky Mountain trout stream!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There they are!” said Mackenzie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The four silent figures leaned a little closer over the clicking -instrument of insensate brass—leaned intent and motionless, with -quickened breathing and dilated nostrils and strangely altering faces, -as though they were far from a quiet little back sewing-room, and were -indeed beholding vast issues and participating in great efforts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ve got ’em, at last!” said MacNutt, quietly, mopping his face and -pacing the little room with feverish steps.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, we’ve got ’em!” echoed Mackenzie, jubilantly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frances Candler, the woman, said nothing. But Durkin could feel her -breath playing on the back of his neck; and when he turned to her he -could see by her quick breathing and widened pupils that she, too, had -been reading the wire. And again he wondered, as he looked at her wide -forehead and those warm yet firm lips in which he could see -impulsiveness still waywardly lurking, how she ever came to such a -place. To Durkin—who had heard of woman bookies and sheet-writers and -touts in his day—she seemed so soft, so flower-like, in her pale -womanhood, that she still remained to him one of the mysteries of a -mysterious day.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The woman saw the play of the quicker thought on his face, and the -impetuous warmth in his eyes as he gazed up at her, still half-timidly. -And seeing it, she looked quickly away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No goo-gooin’ there, you folks,” broke in MacNutt, brusquely. As he was -turning hurriedly away he looked back for a hesitating moment, from -Durkin to the woman, and from the woman to Durkin again. If he was about -to say anything further on the point to them, he changed his mind before -speaking, and addressed himself once more to Mackenzie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, Mack, we’ve got to get a move on! Get some of that grime off, and -your clothes on, quick!” Then he turned back to the other two at the -operating table.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve certainly got a couple o’ good-lookers in you two, all right, all -right!” he said, Durkin thought half mockingly. “But I want you to get -groomed up, Durkin, so’s to do justice to that Fifth Avenue face o’ -yours! Better get rigged out complete, before trouble begins, for you’re -goin’ to move among some lot o’ swell people. And you two’ve got to put -on a lot o’ face, to carry this thing through.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin laughed contentedly, for his eyes had just been following the -line of the woman’s profile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Remember,” continued MacNutt, crisply, “I want you two to do the swell -restaurants—in reason, of course, in reason!—and drive round a good -deal, and haunt the Avenue a bit, and push through the Waldorf-Astoria -every day or two, and drop in at Penfield’s lower house whenever you get -word from me. You’d better do the theatres now and then, too—I want you -to be seen, remember,—but always <span class='it'>together</span>! It may be kind o’ hard, -not bein’ able to pick your friend, Durkin, but Frank knows the ropes, -and how much not to spend, and what to fight shy of, and who to steer -clear of—and I guess she can explain things as you go along.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned back once more, from the doorway.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, remember,—don’t answer that ’phone unless Mack or me gives the -three-four ring! If she rings all night, don’t answer! And ‘Battery -Park,’ mind, means trouble. When you’re tipped off with that, get the -stuff in the safe, if you can, before you break away. That’s all, I -guess, for now!” And he joined the man called Mack in the hall, and -together they hurried downstairs, and let themselves out, leaving Durkin -and his quiet-eyed colleague alone.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He sat and looked at her, dazed, bewildered, still teased by the veil of -unreality which seemed to sway between him and the world about him. It -seemed to him as though he were watching a hurrying, shifting drama -from a distance,—watching it as, in his early days in New York, he used -to watch the Broadway performances from his cramped little gallery seat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Am I awake?” he asked weakly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he laughed recklessly, and turned to her once more, abstractedly -rubbing his stubbled chin, and remembering to his sudden shame that he -had gone unshaved for half a week. Now that MacNutt was away he hoped to -see her in her true light. Some mere word or posture, he thought, would -brush the entire enigma away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Am</span> I awake?” he repeated, pushing his hand up through his hair. He -was still watching her for some betraying touch of brazenness. He could -be more at ease with her, he felt, when once she had reconciled herself -with her uncouth surroundings, through the accidental but inevitable -touch of vulgarity which was to establish what she really was.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; it is all very real!” she laughed quietly, but restrainedly. For -the second time he noticed her white, regular teeth, as she hurried -about, straightening up the belittered room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>During his narrow and busy life Durkin had known few women; never before -had he known a woman like this one, with whom destiny had so strangely -ordained that he should talk and drive and idle, work and watch and -plot. He looked once more at her thick, tumbled chestnut hair, at the -soft pallor of her oval cheek, and the well-gowned figure, as she -stooped over a condenser,—wondering within himself how it would all -end, and what was the meaning of it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, this certainly does beat me!” he said, at last, slowly, yet -contentedly enough.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The young woman looked at him; and he caught a second glimpse of her -wistfully pensive smile, while his heart began to thump, in spite of -himself. He reached out a hesitating hand, as though to touch her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is it?” she asked, in her mellow English contralto.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t exactly know,” he answered, with his hand before his eyes. “I -wish you’d tell me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She came and sat down in a chair before him, pushing back her tumbled -hair with one hand, seeming to be measuring him with her intent gaze. -She appeared in some way not altogether dissatisfied with him; it seemed -almost as if she had taken his face between her two hands, and read it, -feature by feature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hardly know where to begin,” she hesitated. “I mean, I don’t know how -much they’ve explained to you already. Indeed, there’s a great deal I -don’t understand myself. But, of course, you know that we have tapped -Penfield’s private wire.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He nodded an assenting head toward the little brass sounder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And, of course, you are able to judge why. He gets all the race returns -at the club house, and then sends them on by private ’phone to his other -two pool-rooms. He has to do it that way, now that New York is not so -open, and ever since the Postal-Union directors pretended to cut out -their sporting service.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin knew all this, but he waited for the sake of hearing her voice -and watching the play of her features.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Every track report, you know, comes into New York by way of the race -department of the Postal-Union on lower Broadway. There, messenger boys -hurry about with the reports to the different wire-operators, who wire -the returns to the company’s different subscribers. Penfield, of course, -is really one of them, though it’s not generally known.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And always most astutely denied,” scoffed Durkin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Many things are astutely denied, nowadays, when a great deal of money -comes out of them,” she said, wearily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But what have you and I to do with all this?” he broke in.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quite enough! You see, there’s a delay of fifteen minutes, naturally, -in getting a result to the pool-rooms. That gives us our chance; so, we -hold up the message here, ’phone it at once over to MacNutt’s rooms, -three doors from Penfield’s, and, when he has had time to drop in, as it -were, and place his money, we send through our intercepted message.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then Penfield has no idea who or what MacNutt is?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He knows him only as a real estate agent with a passion for plunging, -a great deal of money, and—and—” The girl shrugged a rounded shoulder, -flushed a little, and did not finish.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you know him as—?” suggested Durkin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That lies outside the area of essential information,” she answered, -with her first show of animation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you?” Durkin persisted. She met his eyes, but she refused to deal -with his cross-questioning. He was still waiting for that betraying sign -which was to conjure away the enigma. Yet he rejoiced, inwardly, at the -thought that it had not come.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Both you and I shall have to drop in, on certain days, and do what we -can at Penfield’s lower house, while Mackenzie is doing the Madison -Avenue place. We’ve been going there, on and off, for weeks now, getting -ready for—for this!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then MacNutt’s been working on this scheme for a long while?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, this house has been rented by the month, furnished, just as you -see it, simply because it stood in about the right place. We have even -lost a few hundred dollars, altogether, in Penfield’s different places. -But, in the end, the three of us are to hit Penfield together, on a -ragged field, when there’s a chance for heavy odds. But, of course, we -can do it only once!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And then what?” asked Durkin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again the girl shrugged a shoulder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Penfield’s patrons are all wealthy men,” she went on, in a sort of -pedagogic explicitness. “The betting, particularly at the upper house, -is always very heavy. A book of a hundred thousand dollars is common -enough; sometimes it goes up to two or three hundred thousand. So, you -see, it all depends on our odds. MacNutt himself hopes to make at least -a hundred thousand. But then he has worked and brooded over it all so -long, I don’t think he sees things quite clearly now!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was her first shadow of reflection on their chief, and Durkin caught -up the cue.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He seems sharp enough still, to leave you and me here, to take all the -risk in a raid,” he protested.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” she assented, with the touch of weariness that came into her -voice at times. “He is shrewd and sharp—shrewder and sharper than you -would dare believe.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And of course you understand your risk, now, here, from this moment -on?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I quite understand it,” she answered, with unbetraying evenness of -voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His fingers were toying nervously with a little magnetic “wire finder.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How in heavens did <span class='it'>you</span> ever get mixed up with—with—in this sort of -thing?” Durkin at last demanded, exasperated into the immediate -question. He turned on her quickly, as he asked it, and the eyes of the -two met, combatively, for a moment or two. It was the girl who at last -looked away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How did <span class='it'>you</span>?” she asked, quietly enough. She was strangely unlike any -woman bookie he had seen or heard of before.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, me,—I’m different!” he cried, deprecatively. For some subtle -reason she went pale, and then flushed hot again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re—you’re not MacNutt’s wife?” he asked her, almost hopelessly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She moved her head from side to side, slowly, in dissent, and got up and -went to the window, where she gazed out over the house-tops at the -paling afternoon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I’m not his wife,” she said, in her quiet contralto.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then why won’t you tell me how you got mixed up in this sort of thing?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s all so silly and so commonplace,” she said, without turning to -look at him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes?” he said, and waited.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She wheeled about and wrung out with a sudden passionate “Oh, what’s the -good of all this! I am here tapping wires, and you are here doing the -same. Neither of us belongs at this sort of work, but—but, we’re here!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Can’t you tell me?” he asked, more gently, yet inwardly more dogged.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I <span class='it'>shall</span> tell you,” she answered him, at last. “It began, really, -six years ago when my mother died, in London, and my father went to -pieces, went pitifully to pieces, and had to give up his profession as -a barrister. I felt sorry for him, and stayed with him, through his -months of drunkenness, and his gradual downfall. He started a little -office for genealogical research—as we called it—digging up -pretentious alliances, and suitable ancestors for idle and wealthy -nobodies. This was bad enough, but little by little it degenerated into -a sort of next-of-kin agency, and wrung its money from the poor, instead -of the rich!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She paused for a moment, before she went on, gazing at the man before -her in grim and terrible candor, steeled with the purpose to purge her -soul of all she had to say, and have it over and done with.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I stayed with father, through it all. I told myself I could live it -down, the squalor, and the meanness, and the deceits, and even the -drunkenness—I stayed with him because I pitied him. Even then he was a -brilliant man. And I would have worked and fought for him to the end, -only, at last, he wanted me to pose as a claimant for an estate then in -chancery. <span class='it'>That</span> I would not and could not do. I went to Reading, and -became an invalid’s companion. Then, after father’s death—after his -horrible death—his older brother, at Oxford, offered to give me a home. -He was an old man, a curate with five daughters, and I felt, then, that -it would be unjust. So I answered an advertisement in a London paper, -and came to America to be a governess in a New York family, in the house -of a diamond importer named Ottenheimer. At the end of my first week -there my mistress unjustly suspected me of—Oh, I can’t explain it all -to you here, but she was a vulgar and unscrupulous woman, and said I was -too good-looking to be a governess, and discharged me without even a -reference. I was penniless in two weeks, and would gladly have crept -back to my uncle in Oxford, if I had been able. Then, when I was almost -starving, I was glad enough to become the secretary of an investment -company, with an office in Wall Street. They had trouble with the -Post-Office department in Washington, and then the police raided the -office, for it turned out to be nothing more than a swindling scheme. . . . -And then, oh, I don’t know, I seemed to drift from one thing to -another, until I was the English heiress in a matrimonial bureau, and a -French baroness in some foreign litigation scheme. But all the time I -was only waiting to get enough money to creep back to Oxford. I kept -telling myself that in a few weeks more I should be able to escape. I -kept dreaming of it, until Oxford seemed to grow into a sort of -sanctuary. But things went on and on, and still I waited.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And then what?” demanded Durkin, startled at the rising note of -self-hate in her feverish declamation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then, at last, I thought I had escaped into honesty, even in America. -But it was the same as before. I met MacNutt!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And then what?” Durkin’s customarily careless shoulders were very -upright.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, first it was a woman’s get-rich-quick concern in Chicago; then a -turf-investment office in St. Louis; then a matrimonial bureau of our -own, until the police put a stop to it because of the post-office -people; then it was chasing the circuit for a season; and, finally, this -wire-tapping scheme!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked at him, weary-eyed, hiding nothing, smiling hopelessly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They write to me, from time to time,” she went on, more quietly, but -none the less tragically. “My uncle’s parish is just outside Oxford, a -quiet little high-walled place full of flowers and birds. But he is -getting very old, and there are six of them, five girls, and Albert, the -youngest. Some day I shall go back and live with them—only, in some -way, I grow more and more afraid to face them. So I search for excuses -to send them money and gifts. They think I’m still a governess here, and -I write lying letters to them, and tell them things out of my own head, -things quite false and untrue! So, you see, I’ve been nothing but -cowardly—and—and wicked, from the first!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And is that all?” demanded Durkin, not trusting himself to show one jot -of feeling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” she answered, drearily; “I think that is all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you’re—you’re too good for all this!” he cried impetuously, -indignantly. “Why don’t you break away from it, at once?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m going to,—some day! I’ve always waited, though, and everything -has dragged on and on and on, and I’ve been half afraid of MacNutt—he’s -the type of man, you know, who never forgives a person—and half-afraid -of myself. But, some day—”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I know what it’s like,” cried Durkin, drawn toward her, strangely -nearer to her, in some intangible way. She read the sudden look on his -face, and blushed under it, almost girlishly, once more.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want to rest, and be quiet, and live decently, away from the world, -somewhere,” she said dreamily, as though speaking only to herself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin walked to the window where she stood, checked himself, strode -back to the relay on the work-table, and looked at the huddled -instruments, absently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So do I,” he said, earnestly, with his heels well apart.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you?” she asked. He went over to where she stood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, and I mean to,” he declared, determinedly, turning with her to -look at the gathering twilight of the city, and then lapsing into -awkward silence once more.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER III</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>More than once, during the feverish, kaleidoscopic days that followed, -Durkin found himself drawing aside to ask if, after all, he were not -living some restless dream in which all things hung tenuous and -insubstantial. The fine linen and luxury of life were so new to him that -in itself it half intoxicated; yet, outside the mere ventral pleasures -of existence, with its good dinners in quiet <span class='it'>cafés</span> of gold and glass -and muffling carpets, its visits to rustling, dimly-lighted theatres, -<a id='its'></a>its drives about the open city, its ever-mingled odors of Havana and -cut flowers,—there was the keener and more penetrating happiness of -listening to the soft English voice of what seemed to him a -bewilderingly beautiful woman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was that, at least to him; and Durkin was content to let the world -think what it liked. He found work to be done, it is true,—rigorous and -exacting work while it lasted, when the appointed days for holding up -Penfield’s despatches came around. But the danger of it all, for some -reason, never entered his mind, as he sat over his instrument, reading -off the horses to the woman at his side, who, in turn, repeated them -over the telephones, in cipher, to MacNutt and Mackenzie; and then, -when the time allowance had elapsed, cutting in once more and sending on -the intercepted despatches, even imitating to a nicety the slip-shod -erratic volubility of Corcoran’s “blind send.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Once only did a disturbing incident tend to ruffle the quiet waters of -Durkin’s strange contentment. It was one afternoon when Mackenzie had -been sent in to make a report, and had noticed certain things to which -he did not take kindly, Durkin thought.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m not saying anything,” he blurted out, when they were alone, “but -don’t you let that woman make a fool of you!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You shut up about that woman!” retorted Durkin, hotly. Then, imagining -he saw some second and deeper meaning in the other’s words, he caught -him by the lapel of the vest, and held him against the wall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You <span class='it'>are</span> saying something, you hound! What do you mean by that, -anyway?” he cried, with a white face. The man against the wall could see -that a word would bring the onslaught, but he was used to trouble of -that sort, and many a keener menace. So he only laughed contemptuously, -with his shoulders up, as he pulled the other’s fingers from his throat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You damned lobster, you!” he said, going off on the safer tack of -amiable profanity. Then feeling himself free once more, his old bitter -audacity proclaimed itself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You fool, you, don’t you know that woman’s been—”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But here the entrance of the girl herself put a stop to his speech. Yet, -troubled in spirit as some currish and unspoken insinuation left him, -Durkin breathed no word to the girl herself of what had taken place, -imperiously as she demanded to know what Mackenzie had been saying.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>On the day following, as MacNutt had arranged, the two paid their first -visit to Penfield’s lower house, from which Durkin carried away confused -memories of a square-jawed door-keeper—who passed him readily enough, -at a word from the girl—of well-dressed men and over-dressed women -crowded about a smoke-wreathed, softly lighted room, one side of which -was taken up with a blackboard on which attendants were feverishly -chalking down entries, jockeys, weights and odds, while on the other -side of the room opened the receiving and paying-tellers’ little -windows, through which now and then he saw hurrying clerks; of bettors -excitedly filling in slips which disappeared with their money through -the mysterious pigeon-hole in the wall; of the excited comments as the -announcer called the different phases and facts of the races, crying -dramatically when the horses were at the post, when they were off, when -one horse led, and when another; when the winner passed under the wire; -of the long, wearing wait while the jockeys were weighing in, and of the -posting of the official returns, while the lucky ones—faded beauties -with cigarette-stained fingers, lean and cadaverous-looking “habituals,” -stout and flashy-looking professionals, girlish and innocent-looking -young women, heavy dowagers resplendent in their morning -diamonds,—gathered jubilantly at the window for their money. The vaster -army of the unlucky, on the other hand, dropped forlornly away, or -lingered for still another plunge.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin found it hard, during each of these brief visits, to get used to -the new order of things. Such light-fingered handling of what, to his -eyes, seemed great fortunes, unstrung and bewildered him. He had never -believed the newspaper story that when the District Attorney’s men had -broken open a gambling-house safe a few months before, they had found -deposited there a roll of greenbacks amounting to over three-quarters of -a million dollars. That story now seemed likely enough. Yet, with him, -the loss of even a hundred dollars on a horse, although not his own -money, in some way depressed him for the day. Frances Candler picked her -winners, however, with studious and deliberate skill, and, though they -bet freely, it was not often that their losses, in the end, were heavy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had no love for this part of the work; and in this Durkin heartily -agreed with her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The more I know of track-racing and its army of hangers-on,” he -declared to her, “the more I hate it, and everything about it! They say -there are over fifty thousand men in the business, altogether—and you -may have noticed how they all—the owners and the bigger men, I -mean—dilate on their purpose of ‘improving the breed of the -thoroughbred’—but to my mind, it’s to improve the breed of rascality!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He noted her habitual little head-shake as she started to speak.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I think more unhappiness, more wrecked lives and characters, more -thieves and criminals, really come from the race-track than from all the -other evils in your country. It’s not the racing itself, and the -spectacular way of your idle rich for wasting their money! No, it’s not -that. It’s the way what you call the smaller fry cluster about it, so -cruelly and mercilessly ‘on the make,’ as they put it, and infect the -rest of the more honest world with their diseased lust for gain without -toil. I have watched them and seen them. It is deadly; it stifles every -last shred of good out of them! And then the stewards and the jockey -clubs themselves try to hide the shameful conditions of things, and -drape and hang their veil of lies and hypocrisy and moral debauchery -over these buzzing clouds of parasites; and so it goes on! For, indeed, -I know them,” she ended, bitterly. “Oh, I know them well!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin thought of the four great Circuits, Eastern, Southern, Western, -and Pacific slope, of the huge and complicated and mysteriously -half-hidden gambling machinery close beside each great centre of -American population, New York and Washington, Chicago and St. Louis, -Memphis and New Orleans, where duplicity and greed daily congregate, -where horses go round and round in their killing and spectacular -short-speed bursts, and money flashes and passes back and forth, and -portly owners sit back and talk of the royal sport, as they did, Durkin -told himself, in the days of Tyre and Rome. But day by day, with the -waning afternoon, the machinery comes to a stop, the sacrificial -two-year-olds are blanketed and stabled, the grand-stands disgorge their -crowds, and from some lower channel of the dark machine drift the -rail-birds and the tipsters, the bookmakers and touts, the dissolute -lives and the debauched moral sensibilities, the pool-room feeders and -attendants in the thick of the city itself, the idlers and the -criminals.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The thought of it filled him with a sudden emotional craving for honesty -and clean-living and well-being. He rejoiced in the clear sunlight and -the obvious respectability of the Avenue up which they were walking so -briskly—for about Frances Candler, he had always found, there lurked -nothing of the subterranean and morbidly secretive. She joyed in her -wholesome exercise and open air; she always seemed to be pleading for -the simplicities and the sanities of existence. She still stood -tantalizingly unreconciled, in his mind, to the plane of life on which -he had found her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was one night after a lucky plunge on a 20 to 1 horse had brought him -in an unexpected fortune of eighteen hundred dollars, that Durkin, -driving past Madison Square through the chilly afternoon of the late -autumn, with a touch of winter already in the air, allowed his thoughts -to wander back to what seemed the thin and empty existence as a -train-despatcher and a Postal-Union operator. As he gazed out on the -closed cars and the women and the lights, and felt the warmth of the -silent girl at his side, he wondered how he had ever endured those old, -colorless days. He marvelled at the hold which the mere spectacular side -of life could get on one. He tried to tell himself that he hated the -ill-gotten wealth that lay so heavy and huge in his pocket at that -moment; and he smothered his last warmth of satisfaction with the phrase -which she had used a few days before: “Their diseased lust for gain -without toil.” Then he tried to think of the life he was leading, with -one figure eliminated; and the blankness of the prospect appalled him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With a sudden impetuous motion he caught up her hand, where it lay idly -in her lap, and held it close. She tried to draw it away, but could not.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Everything seems so different, Frank, since I’ve known you!” he said, a -little huskily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s different with me, too!” she all but whispered, looking away. Her -face, in the waning light, against the gloom of the dark-curtained -taxi-cab, looked pale, and, as he had so often felt, almost flower-like.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Frank!” he cried in a voice that started her breathing quickly. “Won’t -you—won’t you marry me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked at him out of what seemed frightened eyes, with an unnatural -and half-startled light on her pale face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I love you, Frank, more than I could ever tell you!” he went on, -impetuously. “You could walk over me, you could break me, and do what -you like with me, and I’d be happy!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, you don’t know me, you don’t know me!” she cried. “You don’t know -what I’ve been!” And some agony of mind seemed to wrench her whole body.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t care what you’ve been—I know what you <span class='it'>are</span>! You’re the woman -I’d give my life for—I’d lay it down, without a thought, for you! And, -good Lord, look at me! Don’t you think I’m bad enough myself—and a -hundred times more weak and vacillating than you! I love you, Frank; -isn’t that enough?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No!” she mourned, “it’s not enough!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you’ve got to be loved, you want to be loved, or you wouldn’t have -eyes and a mouth like that! It’s the only thing, now, that can make life -worth while!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She let him catch her up to his shoulder and hold her there, with her -wet cheek against his; she even said nothing when he bent and kissed her -on the lips, though her face grew colorless at his touch.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do love you,” she sighed weakly. “I do love you! I do!” and she clung -to him, childishly, shaken with a sob or two, happy, yet vaguely -troubled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then why can’t we get away from here, somewhere, and be happy?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Anywhere, where there’s daylight and honesty and fair play!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s MacNutt!” she cried, remembering, opening her drooping eyes to -grim life again. “He’d—he’d—” She did not finish.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s he to us?” Durkin demanded. “He hasn’t bought our <span class='it'>souls</span>!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, but we have to live—we have to work and pay as we go. And he could -stop everything!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let him interfere,” cried the other, fiercely. “I’ve never been afraid -of him! I’m as good a fighter as he is, by heaven! Just <span class='it'>let</span> him -interfere, and he’ll find his filthy money isn’t everything!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The woman at his side was silent. “I only wish I had a few of his -thousands,” added Durkin, more humbly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked up quickly, with the flash of some new thought shadowed on -her white face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why <span class='it'>shouldn’t</span> we?” she cried, half bitterly. “We have gone through -enough for him!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And it’s all rottenness, anyway,” assuaged Durkin. “The Postal-Union -directors themselves, who feed MacNutt and all his fry,—they make over -four million a year out of their pool-room service! And one of them is a -pillar of that church we passed, just above the Waldorf!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, it’s not that,” she hesitated. She had long since grown afraid of -that ancient sophistry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But why shouldn’t we?” he persisted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then we might go away somewhere,” she was saying dreamily, “away to -England, even! I wonder if you would like England? It always seems so -much of yesterday there, to me. It’s always tomorrow over here. But at -home everything doesn’t seem to live in the future, as we do now. I -wonder if you would like England?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’d like any place, where you were!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>He’s</span> always been a welcher with the people he uses. He will be a -welcher with you—yes, and with me, some day, I suppose.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She turned to Durkin with a sudden determination. “Would you risk it, -with me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’d risk anything for you!” he said, taking her hand once more.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We have a right to our happiness,” she argued, passionately. “We have -our life, all our life, almost—before us! And I’ve loved you, Jim,” she -confessed, her gloved fingers toying with a button on his sleeve, “from -the first day MacNutt brought you up!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then a silence fell over her, and he could see the reflection of some -strange conflict going on in her mind. Although he could perceive the -unhappiness it brought to her, he could in no wise surmise the source of -it, so that when she spoke again, the suddenness of her cry almost -startled him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, why didn’t I know you and love you when I was a young and -heart-free girl, singing and laughing about my quiet home? Why couldn’t -love have come to me then, when all my heart and life were as white as -the plain little cambric gown I wore—when I was worthy of it, and could -have received it openly, and been glad of it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He could not follow her, but, lover-like, he tried to kiss away her -vague fears and scruples. In this effort, though, he found her lips so -cold and lifeless, that he drew away from her, and looked at her in -wonder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Is</span> it too late?” he implored, persistently.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER IV</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>For all the calm precision with which Frances Candler had planned and -mapped out a line of prompt action with Durkin, she was shaken and -nervous and unstrung, as she leaned over the sounder, breathlessly -waiting for the rest of the day’s returns to come through on Penfield’s -wire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin, with two thousand dollars of his own and an additional eight -hundred from her, had already plunged his limit at Penfield’s lower -house, on the strength of her tip over the ’phone. There was still to be -one final hazard, with all he held; and at five o’clock they were to -meet at Hartley’s restaurant, and from there escape to a new world of -freedom and contentment. But the fear of MacNutt still hung over her, as -she waited—fear for certain other things besides their secret revolt on -the very eve of their chief’s gigantic coup. For she knew what MacNutt -could be when he was crossed. So she leaned and waited and watched, -listening with parted lips, wishing it was all over with, torn by a -thousand indefinite fears.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then, to her sudden terror, Mackenzie called her up sharply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is that you, Frank?” he cried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; what <a id='iiss'></a>is it, Mack?” she asked back, calmly enough, but with quaking -knees.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Doogan’s men are watching me here—they’ve got on to something or -other. Cut this wire loose from outside, and get your ’phone out of -sight. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t cut in on Penfield’s wire. I’ve -just tipped off MacNutt—he’s off his dip, about it all. Look out for -yourself, old girl!” he added, in a different tone of voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She rang off, feverishly, and vowed passionately that she <span class='it'>would</span> look -out for herself. Catching up a pair of pliers, she cut the telephone -wire from the open window, leaving two hundred feet of it to dangle -forlornly over the little back house-courts. Then she ran to the door -and locked and bolted it, listening all the while for the wire to speak -out to her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A minute later MacNutt himself rang up, and asked for Durkin. She made a -movement as though to drop the receiver, and leave her presence -unbetrayed; but the other had already heard her mellow “Hello?” of -inquiry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What are <span class='it'>you</span> doing there?” he demanded, with a startled unsavory -oath.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She tried to stammer out an adequate excuse, but he repeated his -challenge. There was a moment’s pregnant pause. Then he hissed one ugly -word over the wire to the listening woman. Mackenzie had been hinting to -him of certain things; now, he knew.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He did not wait even to replace the receiver. While she still stood -there, in the little sewing-room, white and dazed, he was in a swaying -taxi, rattling and pounding nearer her, block by block.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He let himself in with his own pass-key, and raced up the long stairs, -his face drawn, and a dull claret tinge. He found the door closed and -bolted; he could hear nothing from within but the muffled clicking of -the sounder as it ticked out the later New Orleans returns.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He paused for a moment, panting, but no answer came to his pound on the -panels. He could spell out, in the dead silence, the names of the horses -going over the wire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Open this door, by God, or I’ll kill you!” he cried, in a frenzy, -throwing the weight of his huge body against it in vain.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He seized an old-fashioned walnut arm-chair from the next room, and -forced it, battering-ram fashion, with all his strength, against the oak -panels. They splintered and broke, and under the second blow fell in, -leaving only the heavier cross-pieces intact.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Quite motionless, waiting over the sounder, bent the woman, as though -she had neither seen nor heard. “White Legs————Yukon -Girl————Lord Selwyn”————those alone were the words which the -clicking brass seemed to brand on her very brain. In three seconds she -stood before the telephone, at the other end of which she knew Durkin to -be waiting, alert for the first sound and movement. But she saw the -flash of something in the hand of the man who leaned in through the -broken panel, and she paused, motionless, with a little inarticulate -cry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Touch that ’phone, you welcher, and I’ll plug you!” the man was -screaming at her. His lip was hanging loose on one side, and his face, -now almost a bluish purple, was horrible to look at.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve got to do it, Mack!” she pleaded, raising one hand to her face. He -flung out a volley of foul names at her, and deliberately trained his -revolver on her breast. She pondered, in a flash of thought, just what -chance she would have at that distance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mack, you wouldn’t shoot <span class='it'>me</span>, after—after everything? Oh, Mack, I’ve -got to send this through! I’ve got to!” she wailed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Stop!” he gasped; and she knew there was no hope.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You wouldn’t shoot me, Mack?” she hurried on, wheedlingly, with the -cunning of the cornered animal; for, even as she spoke, the hand that -hovered about her face shot out and caught up the receiver. Her eyes -were on MacNutt; she saw the finger compress on the trigger, even as her -hand first went up.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Jim!” she called sharply, with an agony of despair in that one quick -cry. She repeated the call, with her head huddled down in her shoulders, -as though expecting to receive a blow from above. But a reverberation -that shook shreds of plaster from the ceiling drowned her voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The receiver fell, and swung at full length. The smoke lifted slowly, -curling softly toward the open window.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>MacNutt gazed, stupefied, at the huddled figure on the floor. How long -he looked he scarcely knew, but he was startled from his stupor by the -sound of blows on the street door. Flinging his revolver into the room, -he stumbled down the heavily carpeted stairs, slunk out of a back door, -and, sprawling over the court-fence, fell into a yard strewn with heavy -boxes. Seeing a nearby door, he opened it, audaciously, and found -himself in a noisy auction-room filled with bidders. Pushing hurriedly -through them, he stepped out into the street, unnoticed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When the wounded woman had made sure that she was alone—she had been -afraid to move where she lay, fearing a second shot—with a little groan -or two she tried to rise to her knees. She felt that there might still -be time, if she could only crawl to the ’phone. But this, she found was -beyond her strength. The left sleeve of her waist, she also saw, was wet -and sodden with blood. She looked at it languidly, wondering if the -wound would leave a scar. Already she could hear footsteps below, and -again and still again she struggled to shake off her languor, and told -herself that she must be ready when Durkin came, that he, at least, must -not be trapped. She, as a mere pool-room stenographer, had little to -fear from the law. But as she tried, with her teeth and her free arm, to -tear a strip from her skirt, the movement, for all her tight-lipped -determination, was too much for her. She had a faint memory of hearing -footsteps swarming about her, and then of ebbing and pulsing down -through endless depths of what seemed to her like eider-downed -emptiness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When she came to, one of Doogan’s men was leaning over her, with a glass -of water in his hand. She could feel some of it still wet on her chin -and waist-collar. She looked up at him, bewildered, and then from him to -the other four men who stood about her. Then the events of the afternoon -came back to her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She closed her eyes again, vaguely wondering if some teasing, -indeterminate mishap, which she could not quite remember, had yet come -about. At first, she could not grasp it, as she lay there moaning with -pain, the breeze from the open window blowing on her face. Then the -truth came to her in a flash.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was Durkin. He was coming back; and they were watching there, waiting -to trap him. Again she told herself that she must keep her head, and be -cool.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Without moving her head, she let her roving eyes take in the five men -about her in the room; three of them, she knew, were plain-clothes men -from the Central Office, the other two were Doogan’s agents. If Durkin -came while they were still there—and now he <span class='it'>could</span> not be long!—they -would let him in, and of course say nothing, and there they would have -him, like a rat in a trap.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She grew hysterical, and cried out to them that she was dying, yet -waiting all the time for the sound of Durkin’s step, trying to think how -she might save him. At last, to her sudden joy, she remembered that he -was to bring from her rooms her own handbag, filled with a few things -she had gathered up to take away with her. He would surely carry that -bag in with him when he came; that was her salvation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She fell to shrieking again that she was dying, demanding shrilly why -her doctor had not come. Through her cries, her alert ears heard the -sound of voices at the street-door. It was Durkin, at last; he had -spoken a word or two with the two plain-clothes men, who, she knew, -would readily enough let him pass.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Doctor!” she screamed, as she heard his steps on the stair. “Doctor! -I’m dying, doctor! Are you never coming!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She wondered, in her agony of mind and body, if he would be fool enough -not to understand. <span class='it'>Would</span> he be fool enough?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Doogan’s agents and the three plain-clothes men gathered about her -silently, as they saw the intruder hurry in and drop on his knee beside -the woman. “Is it you, doctor?” she wailed, with chattering teeth, -shaking with an on-coming chill.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin, in his dilemma, did not dare to look away from her face. He was -blindly trying to grope his way toward what it all meant. The others -stood above him, listening, waiting for the least word. One of them -moved to the open window, and closed it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He bent lower, trying to read the dumb agony in the woman’s face. Then -another of the men went to the door, to guard it. Durkin could see the -shoes and trousers-legs of the others, up to the knee. Each pair of -boots, he noticed inconsequently, had a character and outline of their -own. But still his frantic brain could not find the key to the enigma.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then, out of the chaos and the disorder of the chattering of her teeth, -seemed to come a hint, a whisper. She was sounding the double “i” of the -operator about to “send”—she was trying to catch his attention, to tell -him something, in Morse. He bent still closer, and fumbled artfully with -the sleeve, wet and sodden with her warm blood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He read the signal, as she lay there with chattering teeth: “All up—Get -away quick—these are police—meet you in London—hotel Cecil—in two -months—hurry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where—write?” he implored her, by word of mouth, covering the question -by shifting his busily exploring fingers from the wounded left shoulder -to the right.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She closed her eyes. “C-N,” she answered. She repeated it, in the -strange Morse, weakly, and then fainted dead away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin dropped the sleeve he was carefully turning up. He looked at the -men about him with a sudden towering, almost drunken madness of relief, -a madness which they took for sudden rage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You fools, you,” he called at them. “You fools, couldn’t you see -it—this woman’s dying! Here, you, quick—compress this artery with your -thumb—hard, so! You, you—oh, I don’t care <span class='it'>who</span> you are—telephone for -my instruments—Doctor Hodgson, No. 29 West Thirtieth!”—luckily he -remembered a throat doctor Frank had once consulted there—“and get me a -sheet off one of the beds, quick!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He tossed his hat into the hall, jerked up his cuffs, almost believing, -himself, in the part he was acting.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Water—where’ll I get a water-tap?” he demanded, feverishly, running to -the door. Outside the room, he suddenly kicked his hat to the foot of -the back-stairs. He caught it as it rebounded from the second step, and -bolted noiselessly up the stairway, never turning or looking back until -he had gained the roof. There he crept, cat-like, across half-a-dozen -houses, and slipped down the first fire-escape that offered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the third window, which was open, a stalwart Irish house-maid barred -his progress. He told her, hurriedly, he was a fire-escape inspector for -the City Department. Seeing that she doubted his word, he thrust a five -dollar bill in her hand. She looked at it, laughed cynically—and time, -he felt, was worth so much to him!—looked out at him again dubiously, -and then in silence led him through the passage and down to the -street-door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As he turned hurriedly into Madison Avenue, toward the Grand Central -station, he heard the clang of a bell, and saw an ambulance clatter down -the street. Then, to make sure of it, he repeated her message to -himself: “Hotel Cecil—two months—C-N.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For a moment or two the “C-N” puzzled him. Then he remembered that only -the day before he had been telling her the episode of the Charleston -earthquake, how every wire was “lost” after the final shock, and how -every operator for hundreds of miles about, during the next day of -line-repairing, kept calling “C-N” until an answer finally came from the -debris of the dead city.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Through some trick of memory, he then knew, she had recalled the Morse -signal for that southern city, in her emergency. There had been no time -for thought, no chance for even momentary deliberation. “Charleston!” -From that day the very name took on a newer and stranger meaning. He -knew that during weeks of loneliness and wandering it would be the one -city toward which his eyes and his heart would turn.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER V</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tomorrow for the States—for me England, and Yesterday,”—murmured -Frances Candler as she stood at her window looking down over the tangle -and tumult of the Strand. “For me, England and Yesterday!” she repeated, -and it was not until she had said the lines twice over that she -remembered how she had first copied them into her day-book, during her -early homesick weeks in New York.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was the lassitude of her week at sea, and the loneliness of her -second week in a London hotel, she told herself, that had brought about -the change. If there were deeper and more dormant reasons, she was -content to let sleeping dogs lie. But she did not deceive herself as to -the meaning of the move. It was more than flight; it was surrender. It -was, indeed, the bitter and desperate remedy for a bitter and desperate -condition. For, inappositely, on the very brink of what seemed the -waiting and widening vista of all her life, she had decided to go back -to Oxford and her uncle’s home.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The steps that led to this determination were no longer clear to her -questioning mind. She was also able, hour by brooding hour, to pile up -against it ever new objections. But she clung to it blindly, with a -forlorn tenacity of spirit that swept aside all momentary issues and all -dread of the future. For out of that seeming defeat, she contended, she -would wring her belated and her inner victory, even while her active -imagination, playing lambently ahead of dragging reality, showed her how -painful would be that return to old conditions and outgrown -surroundings.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For a woman who has known the world to go back to such a roof is always -a sign and a confession of defeat. Yet the sweep of her aggressive young -mind, once made up, flung blindly aside each half-accumulated bar of -indecision.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But was it fair to them?—she suddenly demanded of herself, as she -pictured the scenes and the faces that would confront her, the gentle -and mild-mannered women, the venerable and upright-hearted curate, so -jealous of equity and honor, with his unbending singleness and -narrowness of outlook. And as she asked this question each familiar -figure seemed to stalk grimly from its muffling childhood memories and -confront her, a challenging sentinel at the very threshold of that quiet -little home which she had dreamed as always open to her, as always a -harbor of ultimate refuge.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But now, could she face the unspoken deceit, the daily attrition of it, -month after month and year after year? For clearly she foresaw what her -life would be, from sunrise to sunset, from youth to old age, from the -moment the quiet parsonage gate closed between her and the outer world. -She foresaw it plainly, as distinctly and indelibly as though it had -been set down in black and white before her eyes—the long and narrow -and grimly defined path leading from a narrow and weather-beaten gate to -a still narrower open grave. In summer time, in the quiet grounds behind -the shielding gray walls, there would be the Provence roses to tend and -the border-flowers to cut and trim, the sedate visiting and receiving, -the frugal jam-making, the regular Bible-readings and the family -prayers, the careful mending and remaking, the hemming of the clerical -old-fashioned white cravats, the lonely cawing of the rooks through the -quiet mornings and the long afternoons. And in the winter there would be -the woollen jackets and cough mixtures to distribute throughout the -parish, the stockings to be knit for the workhouse children, the long, -silent games of chess in the mullion-windowed study, the lettering and -numbering of the new books for the parish lending library, the -pathetically threadbare suit of respectable broadcloth to press and -repair, the summer linens and serges to be made over, the discussions of -impending Disestablishment and the Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill, the -languid flow of life within doors and the gentle diversions of life -without, punctuated by long Sundays, in gloomy high-partitioned pews -with faded crimson cushions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, it is useless! It is too late, now!” she cried, hopelessly, as she -paced the floor, and the weight of her past life hung heavy upon her. -The roots of it lay too deep, she told herself, to be torn out. She was -already too tainted with the dust of that outer world, too febrile, too -passionately avid of movement and change. The contrast was too great. -They would make it too hard for her, too rigidly exacting. For what did -<span class='it'>they</span> know of the dark and complicated and compelling currents of the -real world, lapped in their gentle backwaters of old-world clerical -life, secluded and sheltered and untried! She would still have been one -of them, if her paths had been theirs, if she had only breathed the -quiet air they breathed!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is too hard!” she moaned, in her misery. The test of life itself was -so crucial—that was the thought that kept recurring to her—the ordeal -by fire was foredoomed to be so exacting! All their old lessons and -creeds, which she had once chimed so innocently and so cordially, now -seemed to fall empty and enigmatic on her older and wiser heart. They -seemed to solve none of her imminent problems. Their mysticism only -bewildered her. And she sat amid the roar of London, idle and sick at -heart, unhearing and unseeing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I will do it!” she at last said aloud. “It will be my punishment!” She -could no longer demand so much of life. She looked on existence, now, -with older and disillusioned eyes. For what she had taken she must stand -ready to pay. It would be her penance and penalty for past -transgressions. And it would have to be borne; it was obligatory. It -was not happiness or well-being that was at stake, she argued, in that -new mood of amendment; it was something vast and undying and eternal -within her, something that came before happiness itself, something she -had seen her defiant and broken and dying father ignore and surrender -and suffer for.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>While this new expiatory passion was still warm in her blood, she packed -her boxes, soberly, and then as soberly wrote to Durkin. It was not a -long letter, but she spent much time and thought in its composition. In -it, too, she seemed to cast off her last vestige of hesitation. For she -felt that the very note of impersonality in its unnatural stiffness of -phrasing was a new means of support. It was a support as clumsy and -retarding as a child’s walking-chair, but she was willing enough to -catch at it, whimsically, in those first tottering steps of -renunciation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My Dear Jim,” she began, after much hesitation, and with many long and -thoughtful pauses as she wrote, “it will surprise you, I know, but I -have decided to go back to Oxford—to the Oxford I have so often told -you about. Do not think it is only cruelty on my part, or cowardice, or -self-interest. I have thought over everything long and carefully. And it -has led, always led, to one end—that end is: neither you nor I must go -on leading the lives we have been leading! It will hurt me, and it will -hurt you, I believe, to break the ties that time has made. But there is, -today, all the width of the Atlantic between us—and it is there, I -think, that I am the coward. For it is only this that makes it possible -for me to do what I’m doing. With you, I would bend to your will; here -it will be easier. Now, above all things, both you and I must learn not -to look on ourselves as beings apart from the rest of the world. If we -have ever been enemies of society we must learn not to remember it—for -it is this feeling, I know, which holds the key of our undoing. I have -often wondered and looked to see in what ways I reproduced the atavistic -conditions of the primitive woman—for they say that we evil doers are -only echoes out of the past—but I’m going to do it no more. We are both -of us ill-fitted for the things and the deeds we have drifted into. They -make us suffer too much. It is work that should fall to souls dwarfed -and stunted and benumbed. We are not morbid and depraved and blind; we -have intelligence and feeling. We have only been unhappy and unlucky, -let’s say. So now we must fight along and wait for better luck, as you -used to put it. We are not what they call ‘recidivists.’ We are not -abnormal and branded; we must fight away the deadly feeling that we are -detached from the rest of the world, that mankind is organized and -fighting against us, that we are the hunted, and all men the hounds! -What we have done, we have done. But I know that we were both initiated -into wrong-doing so quietly and so insidiously that the current caught -us before we knew it. Yet I feel that I have none of the traits of the -Female Offender, though in my anxiety and crazy search for causes and -excuses I have even taken my cephalic index and tested my chromatic -perception and my tactile sensitiveness and made sure that I responded -normally to a Faraday current! Yes, we are both too normal to succeed -happily in the ways we began. . . . I shall miss you, but I shall always -love you. Oh, Jim, pray for me; as I, daily, shall pray for you! I can’t -write more now. Go back to your work, though it means being hungry and -lonely and unhappy, fight out the problem of your amplifier, and -struggle along with your transmitting camera, until you accomplish -something we can both take pride in and be happy over! Sometime, later, -when I write, I shall be able to explain everything more fully. . . . I -was eleven days in the hospital, and crossed on the <span class='it'>Nieuw Amsterdam</span>. -There will always be a scar—but a very small one—on my arm. That will -be the only reminder. Good-bye, dear Jim, and God bless and keep you, -always, in the right.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She read over the letter, slowly, dispassionately, and fought back the -temptation to write further, to fling more of her true feeling into it. -That, at best, would be only a cruel kindness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As she folded and sealed the letter she felt that she was sealing down -many years of her past youth. She already felt that she had passed over -some mysterious Great Divide, that some vast morainic loop already -walled her back from her former existence. And then, as a sudden, -rushing sense of her isolation swept over her, she broke down, in that -very hour of her ironic triumph, and wept miserably, passionately, -hopelessly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her misery clung to her all that day, until, late in the afternoon, she -caught the first glimpse of Oxford from her compartment window. At one -touch it carried her back to the six long years of her girlhood, for she -had been little more than a child when first taken from the dubious care -of her father—and the happiest stretch of her life had been lived -within sound of Oxford’s tranquil bells.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It had been her first plan, when she left the train, to take a carriage -and drive leisurely through the old university town. It would be her one -hour of freedom, before crossing that final Rubicon; it was only, she -protested, a human enough hesitation before the ultimate plunge. Vividly -and minutely she remembered the town, as she had seen it from the -familiar hills, wrapt in sunlight and purplish shadows by day, lying -cool and dark and tranquil under the summer moon by night, steeped in -the silences and the soft mistiness of the river valley, with here and -there a bell tinkling and a roof glimmering through the gloom. She even -used to say she found a strange comfort in the number of these bells and -in the thought of their wakefulness throughout the night. But now, -through some underground circuit of memory, they carried her thoughts -back to the clanging brilliance of Broadway at midnight, to the movement -and tumult and press of light-hearted humanity. And by contrast, they -now seemed to her to toll lugubriously. The quiet city about her seemed -tainted with antiquity, autumnal, overshadowed by the grayness of death. -It almost stifled her. She had forlornly hoped that the calm beauty of -that town of bells and towers would still fall as a welcome balm on her -torn feelings. But she had changed—oh, how she had changed! It was not, -she told herself, the mere fruit of physical exhaustion. Her one desire -on that day, indeed, was to reach that condition of bodily weariness -which would render her indifferent to all mental blows. It was only her -past, whimpering for its own.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She still felt the sheer need of fatigue to purge away that inner -weariness that had settled over her soul, so on second thoughts she -turned homeward, and went on foot, through the paling English afternoon. -Often, as a girl, she had walked in over the neighboring hills; and -there seemed something more in keeping with her return to go back alone, -and quietly. And as she walked she seemed to grow indifferent to even -her own destiny. She felt herself as one gazing down on her own tangled -existence with the cool detachment of a mere spectator. Yet this was the -landscape of her youth, she kept telling herself, where she had first -heard nightingales sing, where she had been happy and hopeful and looked -out toward the unknown world with wide and wondering eyes. But the very -landscape that once lay so large and alluring now seemed cramped and -small and trivial. It seemed like a play-world to her, painted and laid -out and overcrowded, like the too confining stage-scene of a theatre.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The afternoon was already late when the familiar square tower of the -church and the gray walls of the parsonage itself came into view. She -gazed at them, abstracted and exalted, and only once she murmured: “How -different, oh, how different!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she opened the gate of that quiet home, slowly and deliberately, -and stepped inside. The garden was empty.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>One great, annihilating sponge-sweep seemed to wipe five long years, and -all their mottled events, from her memory. Then as slowly and -deliberately she once more closed the gate. The act seemed to take on -that dignity attaching to the ceremonial, for with that movement, she -passionately protested to herself, she was closing the door on all her -past.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER VI</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>It was one week later that Frances Candler wrote her second letter to -Durkin. She wrote it feverishly, and without effort, impetuous page -after page, until she came to the end. Then she folded and sealed it, -hastily, as though in fear that some reactionary sweep of hesitation -might still come between her and her written purpose.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was wrong—I was terribly wrong,” was the way in which she began her -letter. “For as I told you in my cable, <span class='it'>I am coming back</span>. It is now -all useless, and hopeless, and too late. And I thought, when I was once -away from you, that it would be easy to learn to live without you. But -during these last few weeks, when I have been so absolutely and so -miserably alone, I have needed and cried for you—oh, Jim, how I have -needed you! I have learned, too, how even an inflexible purpose, how -even a relentless sense of duty, may become more sinister than the -blindest selfishness. It was cruel and cowardly in me—for as you once -said, we must now sink or swim together. I forgot that you, too, were -alone, that you, too, needed help and companionship, even more than I. -And I had thought that morality and its geography, that mere flight -from my misdoings meant that they were ended, that here in some quiet -spot I could be rid of all my past, that I could put on a new character -like a new bonnet, that life was a straight and never-ending lane, and -not a blind mole-run forever winding and crossing and turning on itself! -I thought that I could creep away, and forget you, and what I had been, -and what I had lived through, and what had been shown to me. But the -world is not that easy with us. It defeats us where we least expect it; -it turns against us when we most need it. I had always dreamed that my -uncle’s high-walled home at Oxford could be nothing but a place of quiet -and contentment. I had always thought of it as a cloister, into which I -could some day retire, and find unbroken rest and a solemn sort of -happiness. Then came the revelation, the blow that cut the very ground -from under my feet. <span class='it'>They</span> had their troubles and their sorrows, as well -as I. Life could hang as dark for them as it hung for me. My cousin -Albert, a mere boy, reading for the Bar in London, had a friend in the -City named Singford. I will try to tell you everything as clearly and as -briefly as possible. Young Singford is rather a black sheep, of an idle -and wealthy family. He involved Albert in a stock-gambling scheme—oh, -such a transparent and childish scheme, poor boy!—and Albert, in -despair, went to his father. He had to have money to cover his losses; -it would be paid back within the month. His father, the soul of -uprightness, borrowed the money from what was, I think, the Diocesan -Mission Fund, in the belief that it would be promptly repaid. Then came -the crash. I found them broken and dazed under it, helpless, hopeless, -bewildered. It was so new to them, so outside their every-day life and -experience! I went straight to London, and hunted up my cousin, who was -actually talking about shooting himself. I found that young Singford, -who had been sent down from Balliol, had blindly plunged with Albert on -some foolish Texas Oil enterprise. I needn’t tell you more, except that -the whole sum was not quite two hundred pounds. But it meant Albert’s -giving up his study, and my uncle’s disgrace. I straightened it out for -the poor boy—it all seemed so easy and natural and commonplace for <span class='it'>my</span> -practised hand!—and I believe I brought some little peace and comfort -back to that crushed and despairing household. But it all means, of -course, that now I’ll have to go back to America. Still, whatever I may -have to go through, or whatever happens to me, I shall always have the -consolation of knowing that I made that one small sacrifice and did that -one small kindness. But from the first I saw that my sanctuary was no -longer a sanctuary. And when I saw that I should really have to go back, -I was almost glad. The very thought of it seemed to give a new zest to -life. I had been trying to tell myself that my future there would not be -empty and lonely. But all along, in my secret heart of hearts, I knew -better. I could not close my eyes to anticipation; I could not shut -activity out of my life. It seemed suddenly to people all my lonely -future with possibilities, that first thought of going back. And then -there was <span class='it'>you</span>. Yes, I believe all along that it was you I wanted. I -tried to argue myself away from the feeling that I was deserting you, -but I knew it was true. It was this feeling that saved me, that made me -feel almost elated, when I saw that fate was once more flinging me into -the life from which I had been fighting to escape. You don’t know what -the very word ‘America’ now means to me—it’s like the shrill of a -call-bell, it’s like the double ‘i’ of our operating days, warning us to -be ready! I want to go home; and home, now, is where you are. I can’t -entomb myself yet—I am too young. I want to live, Jim, I want to live! -Those feverish years must have left some virus in my veins, some virus -of recklessness and revolt. And there is so much to do, so many things -are challenging us, waiting for us. I can not be satisfied with -memories, and Yesterday. I want Tomorrow, and You! It may be blind, and -wrong, and wicked—but, oh, Jim, the wires are all down between my head -and my heart!”</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER VII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin sat at the restaurant table, smoking, his watch in his hand. It -was already seven minutes to four. As the seventh minute slipped into -the sixth, and the sixth into the fifth, some first vague sense of -impending disaster stole over him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is this seat taken, sir?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was a waiter speaking, with a short, florid man at his heels.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” said Durkin, quietly, “I’m expecting a lady—in five minutes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The florid man bowed. The waiter said “Yes, sir,” tipped the chair -against the table edge, and went on in search of a seat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin smoked hard once more, relishing the touch of irony in it all. He -did not, naturally enough, explain that the lady he was expecting had -made the engagement three thousand miles away from the table at which he -sat and at which he was to meet her precisely on the stroke of four. -Such things were theatrical, and unnecessary; besides, one had to allow -for accidents. And once more, with a puzzled brow, he took up his paper -and looked through the <span class='it'>Majestic’s</span> passenger list, still involuntarily -cast down by a wayward sense of possible calamity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He imagined some dark coalition of forces against him, obscurely -depressed, for the moment, by the shadow of some immense, seemingly -impassive, and yet implacable animosity of eternal rule toward the -accidental revolter. The same vague feeling had possessed him that -infelicitously happy day when, after abandoning his operator’s key, he -had become an “overhead guerrilla.” Still later it had come to him, from -time to time, as, dazzled by the splendor of that vast hazard which had -ended in such disastrous triumph, he had revolted against MacNutt, and -preyed on the preyer himself. He had begun to feel, and he had felt, -from that time forward, that he was existing under a series of -conditions other than those of the men about him. He was no longer one -of them. He was out of the fold. He carried the taint of the pariah. He -was, henceforth, however he might try, as Frances Candler had warned -him, to muffle or forget it, a social anomaly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To the consciousness of this he applied his customary balm, which lay in -the thought that now the older creeds and ethics of life had crumbled -away. The spirit which dominated America today, he felt, was that of the -business man’s code of morals; it was the test, not of right, but of -might, as it flowered in intelligence and craftiness. And that first -dubious victory, of his own, he argued with himself, had been one of -intelligence—should not victory, then, always be with the alerter head -and the warier hand? And this vague and mysterious enemy whose -emissaries, even though relentless, were always so temptingly -dull—would they not always meet and clash, and the battle be to the -strong?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A woman, dressed in black, with a dark veil caught up around the rim of -her hat, pushed her way through the crowded restaurant toward the table -in the corner. She might have passed for a mere girl, but for the heavy -shadows about the weary-looking, violet eyes and the betraying fullness -of her soberly gowned figure. She glanced at the clock, and smiled a -little, with her calm, almost pensive lips, as she placed a pearl-gloved -hand on the back of the tilted chair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am on time, you see,” she said, quietly in her soft contralto, as she -sank into the chair with a contented sigh, and began drawing off her -gloves. “It is precisely four o’clock.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Outwardly she appeared at ease, well-poised and unruffled. Only the -quick rise and fall of her bosom and the tremulousness of her hands gave -any sign of her inner agitation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why—Frank!” cried Durkin, with eloquent enough inadequacy, his face -paling a little, for all his own assumption of easy fortitude. He -continued to look at her, a sudden lump in his throat choking back the -hundred stampeding words that seemed clamoring to escape. He noticed, as -he had so often noticed before, how rapid and easy were her movements, -and how, through all her softness, she impressed one with a sense of her -great muscular agility.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For one wavering moment she let her eyes lose their studied calmness, -and, inwardly surrendering, gazed at him recklessly, abandonedly, with -her very soul in her face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is it safe here?” she murmured, as she drew her chair up.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He nodded. “As safe as anywhere,” he was on the point of replying, but -did not speak the words.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dearest!” she whispered to him, with her eyes still on his face, and -her back to the crowded room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He tried to seize her ungloved hand in his, but she drew him up with a -sudden monitory “Hsssssh!” Then he, too, remembered, and they took up -their rôle of outward indifference once more.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had to come back, you see!” she confessed, with what seemed a shamed -and mournful shake of the head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Something told me you would, all along, even after your first letter. I -saw it, as surely as I see you now!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Jim, what I wrote you was true!—it showed me that we can’t bury -our past, in a day, or a week or a month! It’s made me afraid of myself -and taught me how weak I am!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And again she looked at him, across the quiet but abysmal gulf of her -reawakening despair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But there is just where we make ourselves so unhappy—we’re so afraid -about being afraid! Life without some fear—what is it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I am without defence!” she lamented, indeterminately and -inconsequently. She sighed again, and still again gazed into his face -with her shadowy and unhappy and seemingly hungry eyes. Then, with a -sudden abandoning uptoss of her reckless hands, that seemed to fling -both solemnity and memory from her, she laughingly declared that it was -already too late to cry over spilt milk. Yet the sound of her careless -laughter fell, in some way, more lugubriously on Durkin’s ear than had -all her earlier lamentation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But <span class='it'>why</span> did you ever write that first letter?” he persisted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She knew she could not explain, satisfactorily. “It was the result of -being lonesome, let’s say, and perhaps being morbid, after my illness!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin called the waiter and gave him an order, puffing his cigar with -assumed unconcern, while the woman murmured across the table to him: -“You look quite foreign, with that magnificent Vandyke! And, by the way, -how do you like my English bang?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, it’s dyed!” said Durkin, for the first time missing the sunny -glint in the familiar crown of chestnut.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Jim,” said the woman, in lower tones, sobering again, “there’s trouble -ahead, already!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She drew her chair a little closer, and leaned forward, with her elbows -on the table and her chin in her hands. Durkin lighted another cigar, -and lounged toward her with the same careless pose, his face alert with -new and different interest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“MacNutt?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, not him, thank heaven!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t mean Doogan’s men?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not so loud, dear! No, not Doogan’s men, either. It’s nothing like -that. But tell me, quickly, has anything gone wrong over here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not a thing—except that you were away!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But hasn’t <span class='it'>anything</span> happened since I saw you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nothing worth while—no. It’s been so dull, so deadly dull, I all but -jumped back into the old game and held up a Charleston pool-room or two! -Five whole weeks of—of just waiting for you!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She caught up her veil, where a part of it dropped down from her -hat-rim, and smiled her wistfully girlish smile at him. Then she glanced -carefully about her; no one seemed within earshot.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I know. It seemed just as long to me, dearest. Only, because of -several things, <span class='it'>I</span> had to jump into something. That’s what I must tell -you about—but we can’t talk here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then we’ll have William call a taxi?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She nodded her assent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We can talk there without having some one hanging over our shoulders.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you know,” she went on, as she watched the waiter push out through -the crowded, many-odored room, “I often think I must have lived through -the ordinary feelings of life. I mean that we have already taken such -chances together, you and I, that now only a big thing can stir me into -interest. I suppose we’ve exhausted all the every-day sensations.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I know the feeling,” said Durkin, through his cigar-smoke. “I -suppose it’s really a sort of drunkenness with us now. I couldn’t go -back to the other things, any more than I could go back to—to stogies. -All this last four weeks of hanging about I have felt like—oh, like a -sailor who has pounded round every strange sea in the world, and has -come home to be told not to go out of his own back yard.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s how I felt, towards the last, in London, with nothing to do, -nothing to think about, or plan, or live for. I got so I nearly screamed -every time I faced the four dull walls of that hotel room. But, you see -we have both fallen back on the wrong sort of stimulant. After all, what -I wrote you in that letter <span class='it'>was</span> true! Neither of us two should ever -have been evil-doers. I am too—too much like other women, I suppose. -And you’re too thin-skinned and introspective—too much of a twentieth -century Hamlet. You should never have tapped a wire; and I should never -have been a welcher and robbed MacNutt. You ought to have gone on being -a nice, respectable young train-despatcher, with a row of geraniums in -front of your station window; and I ought to be a prim little -branch-office telegrapher in one of those big Broadway hotel corridors, -in a little wire cage, between the news-stand and the cigar-counter. -Then we should both have a lot still to look for and to live for.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She broke off inconsequently, and gazed out through the -lightly-curtained window, to where a street piano was throbbing out the -waltz-tune of <span class='it'>Stumbling</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you remember our first days together?—the music and theatres and -drives! Oh, what a happy four weeks they were!” And she gazed at him -dreamily, as she hummed the tune of <span class='it'>Stumbling</span> in her throaty, -low-noted contralto, ending with a nonchalant little laugh, as she -looked up and said, “But here’s our taxi, at last!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the half-light of the taxi-cab, as they turned into Fifth Avenue, and -swung up toward Central Park, she let her tired body rest against his -shoulder, with her arm clinging to him forlornly. There was a minute or -two of silence, and then putting her face up to him, she said, with a -sudden passionate calmness:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Kiss me!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He felt the moist warmth of her capitulating lips, the clinging weight -of her inert body, and, deep down within his own consciousness he knew -that, if need be, he could die for her as the purest knight might have -died for some old-world lady of spotless soul and name.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet after all, he wondered, as he held her there, were they so -irretrievably bad? Was it not only their game, this life they had -drifted into?—their anodyne, their safeguard against exhausted desires -and the corroding idleness of life?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She must intuitively have felt what was running through his mind, as -she slipped away from him, and drew back into her own corner of the -taxi-cab, with a new look of brooding melancholy in her shadowy eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If I were ignorant and coarse, and debased, then I could understand it. -But I’m not! I have always wanted to be honest. From the first I have -longed to be decent.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You <span class='it'>are</span> honest, through and through,” he protested. “You are as -strong and true as steel.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She shook her head, but he caught her in his arms, and she lay there -half-happy again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Frank, for the twentieth time,” he pleaded, “won’t you marry me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, no, no; not till we’re honest!” she cried, in alarm. “I wouldn’t -dare to, I couldn’t, until then.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But we’re only what we have been. We can’t change it all in a day, can -we—especially when there is so much behind?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want to be decent,” she cried, in a sort of muffled wail. “No, no; I -can’t marry you, Jim, not yet. We may not be honest with other people, -but we <span class='it'>must</span> be honest with ourselves!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>One of the policemen directing the street-traffic at Forty-Second Street -glanced in at them, through the misty window, and smiled broadly. It -seemed to remind her of other worlds, for she at once sat up more -decorously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Time! Time! we are losing time—and I have so much to tell you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then give me your hand to hold, while you talk.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She hesitated for a half-laughing moment, and then surrendered it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, tell me everything, from the first!”</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER VIII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s the Blue Pear,” she said, hesitatingly, wondering how to -begin—“which, of course, means nothing to you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And just what <span class='it'>is</span> it, please?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The Blue Pear, Jim, is a diamond. It’s a diamond that you and I, in -some way or another, have got to get back!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To get back? Then when did we lose it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>I</span> lost it. That’s what I’ve got to tell you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, first tell me what it is,” he said, wondering at her seeming -gaiety, not comprehending her nervous rebound from depression to -exhilaration.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s a very odd diamond, and a very big diamond, only tinted with a -pale blue coloring the same as the Hope Diamond is tinged with yellow. -That’s how it came to get its name. But the odd thing about it is that, -when it was cut in Amsterdam, rather than grind away a fifteen-carat -irregularity, it was left in a sort of pear-shape. Even before it was -mounted by Lalique, it sold in Paris for well over six thousand pounds. -Later, in Rio de Janeiro, it brought something like seven thousand -pounds. There it was given to a French actress by a Spanish-American -coffee-king. It was an African stone, in the first place.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But what’s all this geography for?” asked Durkin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Wait, dear heart, and you’ll understand. The coffee-king quarrelled -with the Paris woman. This woman, though, smuggled the stone back to -France with her. It was sold there, a few months later, for about -one-fourth its market value. Still later it was bought for a little -under six thousand pounds, by the late Earl of Warton, who gave it to -his younger daughter, Lady Margaret Singford, when she married young -Cicely—Sir Charles Cicely, who was wounded the first year of the war, -you remember. Well, Sir Charles didn’t like the setting—it had been -made into a marquise ring of some sort—so he took it to Rene Lalique’s -work-shop in Paris, and had it mounted after his own ideas.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But who is Lalique?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A French <span class='it'>l’art nouveau</span> goldsmith—the Louis Tiffany of the Continent. -But I’ve a lot to tell you, Jim, and only a little time to do it in, so -we shall have to cut out these details. Lalique made a pendant out of -the Blue Pear, hung on a thin gold stem, between little leaves of beaten -gold, with diamond dew-drops on them. Well, four weeks ago the Blue Pear -was stolen from Lady Margaret’s jewel case. No, Jim, thank you, not by -me; but if you’ll wait, I’ll try to explain.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hardly know what made me do it—it was <span class='it'>ennui</span>, and being lonesome, I -suppose. Perhaps it was the money,—a little. But, you see, when Albert, -my innocently wayward young cousin, got mixed up with young Singford, I -found out a thing or two about <span class='it'>that</span> less innocent gentleman. It -started me thinking; and thinking, of course, started me acting.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He nodded, as a sign that he was following her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had detective-agency cards printed, and went straight to the Cicelys. -Lady Margaret wouldn’t see me; she sent down word that the reward of -three hundred pounds was still open, and that there was no new -information. But I saw her at last—I shan’t explain just how. Before -very long I found out something further, and rather remarkable—that -Lady Margaret wanted to drop the case altogether, and was trying to -blind Scotland Yard and the police. And that made me more determined.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Before the end of the week, I found out that young Singford, Lady -Margaret’s brother, had been mixed up in a row at Monaco, had made a -mess of things, later, at Oxford, and had decided to try ranching in the -Canadian North-West. I had already booked my passage on the <span class='it'>Celtic</span>, -but the whole thing then meant too much for me, and, when I found young -Singford was sailing that week on the <span class='it'>Majestic</span>, I succeeded in getting -a berth on that steamer. Jim, as soon as I saw that wretched boy on -deck, I knew that I had guessed right, or almost right. Oh, I know them, -I know them! I suppose it’s because, in the last year or two, I have -come in contact with so many of them. But there he was, as plain as day, -a criminal with stage-fright, a beginner without enough nerve to face -things out. I rather think he may have been a nice boy at one time. And -I know just how easy it is, once you make the first little wrong turn, -to keep on and on and on, until you daren’t turn back, even if you had -the chance to.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you took pity on him?” inquired Durkin, “or did you merely vivisect -him at a distance?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not altogether—but first I must tell you of the second dilemma. Before -we sailed, and the first day out, I thought it best to keep to my cabin. -You can understand why, of course. After all, this is such a little -world, when you know the Central Office might be after you!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Or some old business friend?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That was precisely what I thought, only a good deal harder, when I was -sat down to dinner, the second day out, and glanced across the table. -You remember my telling you about my first experiences in America, when -I was a shrinking and pink-cheeked young English governess, and never -knew a bold thought or a dishonest act? Do you remember my describing -the woman—it’s always a woman who is hard on another woman!—who -accused me of—of having designs on her husband? Her husband, a -miserable, oily little Hebrew diamond-merchant who twice insulted me on -the stairs of his own house, when I had to swallow it without a word! -Well, it was that woman who sat across the table from me. They had put -me at the Captain’s table—my London gown, you see, looks uncommonly -well. But there was that woman, a little more faded and wizened and -wrinkled, looking at me with those beady old hawk eyes of hers; and I -knew there was trouble ahead.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A war-correspondent, who had been nice to me, had brought up about -everybody at our table worth while, and introduced them to me, that -night before going down. So, when I saw that yellow face and those hawk -eyes, I knew I had to think hard and fast.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“‘Are you not the young woman,’ she said, in a sort of <span class='it'>frappé</span> of nasal -indignation, ‘are you not the young woman whom I once employed as a -governess and discharged for misconducting herself with—er—with the -other servants?’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was so busy trying to be cool that I didn’t bother thinking out an -answer. I did want to say, though, that it was not a servant, but her -own devoted and anointed husband. I kept on talking to the Captain, -deciding to ignore her icily. But that yellow hag deliberately repeated -her question, and I heard the war-correspondent gasp out an indignant -‘My God, madam!’ and saw the Captain’s face growing redder and redder. -So I went on and asked the Captain if intoxication was becoming commoner -on the high seas. Then she began to splutter and tremble. I kept looking -at her as languidly as ever, and a steward had to help her away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But she knew that she was right. And she knew that I knew she knew. -Though I had all the men on my side, and the Captain cheerfully saw to -it that she was moved down to the tail end of the Doctor’s table, among -the commercial travellers and the school-ma’ms, I knew well enough that -she was only waiting for her chance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It didn’t change the face of things, but it upset me, and made me more -cautious in the way I handled young Singford. In some way, I felt a bit -sorry for the poor chap, I thought a little sympathy might perhaps -soften him, and make him tell me something worth while. But he had too -much good old English backbone for that. And, although he told me I was -the best woman he ever knew, and a little more solemn nonsense like -that, I at last had to go for him very openly. It was a moonlight -night—the sea-air was as soft as summer. We were standing by the rail, -looking out over the water. Then I made the plunge, and very quietly -told him I knew two things, that he had stolen his sister’s diamond -pendant, and that for three days he had been thinking about committing -suicide.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I watched his hand go up to his breast-pocket—the moon was on his -terrified young face—and I came a little nearer to him, for I was -afraid of something—I tried to tell him there was no use jumping -overboard, and none whatever in throwing the Blue Pear into the -Atlantic. That would only make things past mending, forever. Besides, he -was young, and his life was still before him. I talked to him—well, I -believe I cried over him a little, and finally, without a word, he -reached in under his coat, and there, in the moonlight, handed me the -Blue Pear. I gave him my word of honor it would be taken back to his -sister, and even lent him twenty pounds—and you can imagine how little -I had left!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin looked up, as though to ask a question, but she silenced him with -her uplifted hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That was the night we came up the Bay. I slipped down to my cabin, and -turned on the electric light. Then I opened the little case, and looked -at my pendant. You know I never liked diamonds, they always seemed so -cold and hard and cruel—well, as though the tears of a million women -had frozen into one drop. But this Blue Pear—oh, Jim, it was -beautiful!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It <span class='it'>was</span>?—Good heavens, you don’t mean—?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Shhhh! Not so loud! Yes, that is just it. There I stood trying it in -the light, feasting on it, when a voice said behind me, a voice that -made my hair creep at the roots, ‘A very unsafe stone to smuggle, young -lady!’ And there, just inside my door, stood the yellow hag. She had -stolen down, I suppose, to nose among my luggage a bit. I could have -shaken her—I almost did try it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We stood staring at each other; it was the second battle of the kind -between us on board that ship. I realized she had rather the upper hand -in this one. I never saw such envy and greed and cruelty in a human -face, as she ogled that stone.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It seemed to intoxicate her—she was drunk to get her hands on it—and -she had enough of her own, too. So, once more, I had to think as fast as -I could, for I knew that this time she would be relentless.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“‘No, I shan’t smuggle it,’ I said, in answer to her look.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“‘<span class='it'>You</span> pay duty—a thousand, two thousand dollars!’ she gasped at me, -still keeping her eyes on the stone, flashing there in the light. ‘Given -to you,’ she almost hissed, ‘by some loving father whose child you -guided into the paths of wisdom? Oh, I know you, you lying huzzy! It’s -mine!’ she cried, like a baby crying for the moon, ‘it’s mine! You—you -stole it from me!’”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She paused, at the memory of the scene, and Durkin stirred uneasily on -the seat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What made the fool say that?” he demanded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, she meant that she could claim it, and intended to claim it, -insinuating that she would see that it was declared at the wharf, if I -kept it, and arguing that I might as well lose it quietly to <span class='it'>her</span>, as -to the Treasury officers. I knew in a flash, then, that she didn’t know -what the Blue Pear was. I closed the little gun-metal case with a snap. -Then I put it, Blue Pear and all, in her hand. She turned white, and -asked me what I meant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“‘I am going to give it to you—for a while, at least,’ I said, as -coolly as I could, making a virtue, of course, of what I knew was going -to be a necessity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She looked at me open-mouthed. Then she tore open the case, looked at -the stone, weighed it in her fingers, gasped a little, held it to the -light again, and turned and looked at me still once more.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“‘This pendant <span class='it'>was</span> stolen!’ she cried, with sudden conviction. She -looked at the stone again—she couldn’t resist it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“‘You might call it the Robin’s Egg, when you have it re-cut,’ I told -her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She gave a jump—that was what she was thinking of, the shrewd old -wretch. She shoved the case down in her lean old breast.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“‘Then you will smuggle it in for me?’ I asked her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“‘Yes, I’ll get it through, if I have to swallow it!’</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“‘And you will keep it?’ I asked; and I laughed, I don’t know why.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“‘You remember my house?’ she cried, with a start.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“‘Like a book!’ I told her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“‘But still I’ll keep it!’ she declared.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was a challenge, a silly challenge, but I felt at that moment that -this was indeed a plunge back into the old ways of life. But, to go on. -She didn’t seem to realize that keeping the Blue Pear was like trying to -conceal a white elephant, or attempting to hide away a Sierra Nevada -mountain. Then that cruel old avaricious, over-dressed, natural-born -criminal had her turn at laughing, a little hysterically, I think. And, -for a minute or two, I felt that all the world had gone mad, that we -were only two gray gibbering ghosts talking in the enigmas of insanity, -penned up in throbbing cages of white enamelled iron.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I followed her out of the cabin, and walked up and down alone in the -moonlight, wondering if I had done right. At the wharf, I fully intended -to risk everything and inform on her, then cable to the Cicelys. But she -must have suspected something like that—my stewardess had already told -me there were two Treasury Department detectives on board—and got her -innings first. For I found myself quietly taken in charge, and my -luggage gone over with a microscope—to say nothing of the gentle old -lady who massaged me so apologetically from head to foot, and seemed a -bit put out to find that I had nothing more dutiable than an extra pair -of French gloves.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Had you expected this beforehand?” interposed Durkin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, the stewardess had told me there was trouble impending—that’s -what made me afraid about the Blue Pear. Just as I got safely through -Customs, though, I caught sight of the yellow hag despatching her maid -and luggage home in a taxi-cab, while she herself sailed away in -another,—I felt so sure she was going straight to her husband’s store, -Isaac Ottenheimer & Company, the jeweller and diamond man on Fifth -Avenue, you know, that I scrambled into a taxi and told the driver to -follow my friend to Ottenheimer’s. When we pulled up there, I drew the -back curtains down and watched through a quarter-inch crack. The woman -came out again, looking very relieved and triumphant. And that’s the -whole story—only,—”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She did not finish the sentence, but looked at Durkin, who was slowly -and dubiously rubbing his hands together, with the old, weary, -half-careless look all gone from his studious face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He glanced back at the woman beside him admiringly, lost himself in -thought for a moment, and then laughed outright.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re a dare-devil, Frank, if there ever was one!” he cried; then he -suddenly grew serious once more.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, it’s not <span class='it'>daring</span>,” she answered him. “The true name of it is -<span class='it'>cowardice</span>!”</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER IX</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>Four hours later, in that shabby little oyster-house often spoken of as -“The Café of Failures,” lying less than a stone’s throw from the -shabbiest corner of Washington Square, Frances Candler met by -appointment a stooped and somewhat sickly-looking workman carrying a -small bag of tools. This strange couple sought out a little table in one -of the odorous alcoves of the oyster-house, and, over an unexpectedly -generous dinner, talked at great length and in low tones, screened from -the rest of the room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You say it’s a Brandon & Stark eight-ton vault; but can’t you give me -something more definite than that to work on?” the man was asking of the -girl.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Only what I’ve told you about its position; I had to watch out for -Ottenheimer every moment I was in that store.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I see. But while I think of it, providing we <span class='it'>do</span> find the stone there, -do we turn it over again or—?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I gave my word of honor, Jim!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The shadow of a smile on his face died away before her unyielding -solemnity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, of course! There’s three hundred pounds on it, anyway, isn’t -there?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She nodded her head in assent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I think we’ve got our trouble before us, and plenty of it, before -we see that three hundred pounds,” he said, with a shrug.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The time’s so short—that is the danger. As I was on the point of -telling you, Ottenheimer has an expert diamond-cutter in his shops.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And that means he’ll have the apex off our Pear at the first chance, -and, accordingly, it means hurry for us. But tell me the rest.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ottenheimer himself owns, I discovered, the double building his store -is in. He has his basement, of course, his ground floor show-room and -store; and work-rooms, and shipping department, and all that, on the -second story. Above them is a lace importer. On the top floor there is a -chemical fire-apparatus agency. In the south half of the building, with -the hall and stairway between, is an antique furniture store, and above -them a surgical supply company. The third and top floors are taken up by -two women photographers—their reception room on the third floor, their -operating-room, and that sort of thing, on the top floor, with no less -than two sky-lights and a transom opening directly on the roof. I -arranged for a sitting with them. That is the floor we ought to have, -but the building is full. Three doors below, though, there was a top, -back studio to let, and I’ve taken it for a month. There we have a -transom opening on the roof. I looked through, merely to see if I could -hang my washing out sometimes. But barring our roof off from -Ottenheimer’s is an ugly iron fencing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did you get a chance to notice their wiring?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The first thing. We can cut in and loop their telephone from our back -room, with thirty feet of number twelve wire.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then we’ve got to get in on that line, first thing!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He ruminated in silence for a minute or two.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course you didn’t get a glimpse of the basement, under -Ottenheimer’s?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hardly, Jim. We shall have to leave that to the gas-man!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And they both laughed a little over the memory of a certain gas-man who -short circuited a private line in the basement of the Stock Exchange -building and through doing so upset one of the heaviest cotton brokerage -businesses in Wall Street.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did you notice any of the other wires—power circuits, and that kind of -thing?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I did; but there were too many of them! I know, though, that -Ottenheimer’s wires go south along our roof.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then the sooner we give a quiet ear to that gentleman’s conversations, -the better for us. Have you had any furniture moved in?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It goes this evening. By the way, though, what <span class='it'>am</span> I just at present?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin thought for a moment, and then suddenly remembered her -incongruous love for needlework.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You had better be a hard-working maker of cotillion-favors, don’t you -think? You might have a little show-case put up outside.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She pondered the matter, drumming on the table with her impatient -fingers. “But how is all this going to put us inside that eight-ton -safe?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s the trouble we’ve got to face!” he laughed back at her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But haven’t you thought of anything, candidly?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I have. I’ve been cudgeling my brains until I feel light-headed. -Now, nitro-glycerine I object to, it’s so abominably crude, and so -disgustingly noisy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And so odiously criminal!” she interpolated.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Precisely. We’re not exactly yeggmen yet. And it’s brain we’ve got to -cudgel, and not safe-doors! I mean, now that we really are mixed up in -this sort of thing, it’s better to do it with as clean fingers as -possible. Now, once more, speaking as an expert, by lighting a small -piece of sulphur, and using it as a sort of match to start and maintain -combustion, I could turn on a stream of liquid oxygen and burn through -that safe-steel about the same as a carpenter bores through a pine -board. But the trouble is in getting the oxygen. Then, again, if it was -a mere campaign of armour against the intruder, I could win out in quite -a different way. I could take powdered aluminum, mixed with some -metallic superoxide, such as iron-rust, and get what you’d call thermit. -Then I could take this thermit, and ignite it by means of a magnesium -wire, so that it would burn down through three inches of steel like a -handful of live coals through three inches of ice. That is, if we wanted -to be scientific and up-to-date. Or, even a couple of gallons of liquid -air, say, poured on the top of the safe, ought to chill the steel so -that one good blow from a sledge would crack it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But that, again, is only what cracksmen do, in a slightly different -way!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, of course, by tapping an exceptionally strong power-circuit -somewhere in the neighborhood, I could fuse portions of the steel with -electricity, and then cut it away like putty. Yet all that, you see, is -not only mechanical and coarse, and full of drawbacks, but it’s doing -what we don’t want to do. It’s absolutely ruining a valuable -deposit-vault, and might very well be interpreted as and called a -criminal destruction of property. We have no moral and legal right to -smash this gentleman’s safe. But in that safe lies a stone to which he -has neither moral nor legal right, and it’s the stone, and only the -stone, that we want.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then what are we to do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Use these thick heads of ours, as we ought. We must <span class='it'>think</span>, and not -<span class='it'>pound</span> our way into that vault. I mean, Frank, that we have got to get -at that stone as Ottenheimer himself would!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They looked at each other for a minute of unbroken silence, the one -trying to follow the other’s wider line of thought.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, there is where our test comes in, I suppose,” said Frances, -valiantly, feeling for the first time a little qualm of doubt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin, who had been plunged in thought, turned to her with a sudden -change of manner.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re a bad lot, Frank!” he said, warmly, catching her frail-looking -hands in his own.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know it,” she answered, wistfully, leaning passively on her elbows. -“But some day I am going to change—we’re both going to change!” And she -stroked his studiously bent head with her hand, in a miserably -solicitous, maternal sort of way, and sighed heavily once or twice, -trying in vain to console herself with the question as to why a good -game should be spoilt by a doubtful philosophy.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER X</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>Entrenched in her little top-floor studio, behind a show-case of -cotillion-favors, Miss Cecelia Starr sat in her wicker rocker, very -quietly and very contentedly sewing. She felt that it had been an -exceptionably profitable day for her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Three hairpins and a linen handkerchief held a watch-case receiver close -over her ear, after the style of the metallic ear-bands of a -central-office operator. Leading from this improvised ear-band and -trailing across the floor out into her private room at the back, ran a -green cloth-covered wire. This wire connected again with an -innocent-looking and ordinary desk-battery transmitter, rigged up with a -lever switch, and standing on a little table next to the wall, up which -might be detected the two bimetallic wires which, since ten o’clock that -morning, tapped and bridged the general wire connecting the offices of -Ottenheimer & Company with the outside world.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From time to time the members of that firm went to their telephone, -little dreaming that a young lady, decorously sewing velvet -scissors-cases on a studio top-floor of another building, was quietly -listening to every message that passed in and out of their bustling -place of business. It was a strange medley of talk, some of it -incoherent, some of it dull, some of it amusing. Sometimes the busy -needle was held poised, and a more interested and startled expression -flitted over the shadowy violet eyes of Miss Cecelia Starr. At such -times she vaguely felt that she was a disembodied spirit, listening to -the hum of a far-away world, or, at other times, that she was an old -astrologer, gazing into some mystic and forbidden crystal. Still again, -as she listened, she felt like a veritable eagle, invisible, poised high -in ethereal emptiness, watching hungrily a dim and far-off sign of -earthly life and movement.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Suddenly, from the street door sounded the familiar two-three ring of -Durkin. This door remained open during the day, and she waited for him -to come up. She went to her own door, however, and laughed girlishly as -he stepped into the room, mopping his moist forehead. There was a very -alert, nervous, triumphant expression in his eyes, and once again the -feeling swept over her that it was now crime, and crime alone, that -could stimulate into interest and still satisfy their fagged vitalities. -It was their one and only intoxication, the one thing that could awaken -them from their mental sloth and stir them from life’s shadowy valley of -disillusionment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her quick eye had taken note of the fact that he wore a soiled blue -uniform, and the leather-peaked blue cap of a Consolidated Gas Company -employee, and that he carried with him a brass hand-pump. He laughed a -little to himself, put down his pump in one corner of the room, and -allowed his fingers to stray through his mutilated Vandyke, now a short -and straggly growth of sandy whiskers. Then he turned to her with an -unuttered query on his face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was right,” she said quietly, but hurriedly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I never really doubted it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ottenheimer has a private drawer in the vault. It’s in that. His wife -telephoned down very cautiously about it this morning. A little later, -too, Ottenheimer was called up from a Brooklyn drugstore, by a Mrs. Van -Gottschalk, or some such name, who said her husband was still in bed -with the grip, and couldn’t possibly get over until Monday. This man, -you see, is Ottenheimer’s diamond-cutter.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thank heaven, that gives us a little more time!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Three days, at least! But what have you done, Jim?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Been trying to persuade the janitor of the Ottenheimer Building that I -was sent to pump the water out of his gas-pipes,—but he was just as -sure that I wasn’t. I got down in his cellar, though, and had a good -look about, before I saw it wouldn’t do to push the thing too far. So I -insisted on going up and seeing the owner about that order. There was an -inside stairway, and a queer-looking steel door I wanted to get my -knuckles against. I started up there, but he hauled me back. I found -out, though, that this door is made of one-inch steel armor-plate. -There’s another door leading from the foot of the outer hallway into the -cellar itself. But that’s only covered with soft sheet-iron—more -against fire than anything else. Fifteen minutes will get through that -one, easily. It’s the inner door that is the problem. I tried it with a -knife-point, just one hard little jab. It took the end off my Roger’s -blade.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But is this door the only way in?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Absolutely; the rear is impossible, bricked-up; and the Avenue itself -is a little too conspicuous. The bolts of this door, as far as I can -make out, slide into heavy steel cups sunk in solid cement, and are -controlled, of course, from inside. Judging from the thickness of these, -and the sound of the door, it would take either a pound of soap and -nitro-glycerine on the one hand, or five hours of hard drilling with -diamond-point drills, on the other, to get through. We’ll say seven -hours, altogether, to get into the building. Then comes the safe, or, -rather, the vault itself. I had a casual glance at that safe this -morning, before I got these duds on—dropped in to purchase an -engagement ring, but was altogether too hard to suit. It’s a ten-tonner, -I believe, and about as burglar-proof as it can be made. Nothing but a -gallon of gun-cotton would make so much as a dent in it. But here again, -explosions are not in my line. We’ve got to use these wits of ours. -We’ve got to get in that safe, and we’ve got to get through that door! I -can’t risk six hours of machine-shop work down there; and I’m still too -respectable to drop into safe-cracking.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, the combinations of that sort of vault, you know, aren’t often -advertised on the ash-barrels.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What do you mean?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I mean we have got to get it by our own wits, as you say.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The janitor, old Campbell, leaves the building about ten-fifteen every -night. He’s also a sort of day-watchman, I find. He’s a pretty -intelligent and trusty old fellow, absolutely unapproachable from our -standpoint. Another thing, too, the place is webbed with Holmes’ -burglar-alarm apparatus. It would take another hour or so to get the -right wires cut off and bridged. I hate to feel squeamish at this stage -of the game—but that Ottenheimer safe does look uninviting!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frances walked up and down, with the little watch-case receiver and its -handkerchief still crowning her heavy mass of dark hair, like a coronet, -and the green wires trailing behind her, like the outline of a -bridal-veil. She was thinking quickly and desperately. Suddenly she -stopped in the midst of her pacing, and looked hard at Durkin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve found it,” she said, in a feverish half-whisper. “We’ve got to do -it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin looked at her gloomily, still struggling with his own line of -fruitless thought.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here, Jim, quick, take this and listen!” She placed the receiver close -to his ear as she spoke. “Now, that’s Ottenheimer himself at the -’phone. Can you catch his voice distinctly? Well, do you notice what -kind of voice it is—its timbre, I mean? A plaintive-toned, guttural, -suave, mean, cringing sort of voice! Listen hard. He may not be at the -’phone again today. Is he still talking?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, the old scoundrel. There, he’s finished!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What was it about?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just kicking to some one down in Maiden Lane, because Judge Hazel, of -the District Court, has overruled the board of appraisers and imposed a -ten per cent. <span class='it'>ad valorem</span> duty on natural pearls coming in.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But his voice—Jim, you have got to learn to imitate that voice.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And then what?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then cut in, presumably from Ottenheimer’s own house, and casually ask, -say, Phipps, the second salesman, and head of the shipping department, -just what your safe-combination happens to be. It has slipped your -memory, you see?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And Phipps, naturally, in such a case, will ring up Central and verify -the call.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not necessarily. At the first call from him we shall cut his wire!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Which cuts us off, and gives us away, as soon as a special messenger -can deliver a message and a lineman trace up the trouble.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then why cut him off at all? If that’s too risky, should the worst come -to the worst, we can tell Central it’s a case of crossed wires, -bewilder her a bit, and then shut ourselves off.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I believe you’ve almost got it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But can you get anywhere near that voice?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Listen, Frank; how’s this?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He drew in his chin, half-laughingly, and throwing his voice into a -whining yet businesslike guttural, spoke through an imaginary -transmitter to an imaginary Phipps.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That would never, never do!” cried the other, despairingly. “He’s a -German Jew, if you have noticed—he sounds his w’s like w’s, and not -like v’s, but he makes his <span class='it'>r</span>’s like w’s.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I have it,” broke in Durkin, from a silent contemplation of his -desk-’phone. “We’ll just release the binding-posts on our transmitter a -little, and, let’s say, keep the electrode-bearing a trifle slack—fix -things up, I mean, so that any voice will sound as tinny as a -phonograph—decompose it, so to speak. Then, if necessary, we can lay it -to the fact that the wires are out of order somewhere!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good, but when—when can we do it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin paced the room with his old-time, restless, animal-like stride, -while Frances readjusted her receiver and restlessly took her seat in -the wicker rocker once more.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This is Friday. That leaves Saturday night the only possible night for -the—er—invasion. Then, you see, we get a whole day for a margin. -First, we’ve got to find out exactly what time Ottenheimer himself -leaves the place, and whether it’s Phipps, or some one else, who closes -up, and just what time he does it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They close at half-past five on Saturdays. Ottenheimer has already made -an engagement for tomorrow, about five at the Astor, with an importer, -to doctor up some invoice or other.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We could make that do; though, of course, any one in his office would -be more likely to suspect a call from the Astor, being a public place. -You must find out, definitely, this afternoon, just who it is closes up -tomorrow. Then we must get hold of some little business detail or two, -to fling in at him in case he has any suspicions.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That shouldn’t be so very difficult. Though I do wish you could get -something nearer Ottenheimer’s voice!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll have a rehearsal or two alone—though, I guess, we can muffle up -that ’phone to suit our purpose. My last trouble now, is to find out how -I’m going to get through those two doors without powder.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again he fell to pacing the little room with his abstracted stride, -silently testing contingency after contingency, examining and rejecting -the full gamut of possibilities. Sometimes he stood before the woman -with the receiver, staring at her with vacant and unseeing eyes; at -other times he paced between her and the window. Then he paused before -the little green coils of wire that stretched across the room. He -studied them with involuntary and childish movements of the head and -hands. Then he suddenly stood erect, ran to the back window, and flung -it open.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My God, I’ve got it!” he cried, running back to where the woman still -sat, listening, “I’ve got it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How?” she asked, catching her breath.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve got to eat my way through what may be, for all I know, a full inch -of Harveyized steel. I’ve got to burrow and work through it in some way, -haven’t I? It has to be done quickly, too. I’ve got to have power, -strong power.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He stopped, suddenly, and seemed to be working out the unmastered -details in his own mind, his eyes bent on a little shelf in one corner -of the room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have you ever seen an electric fan? You see this shelf, up here in the -corner! Well, at one time, an electric fan stood there—see, here are -the remnants of the wires. It stood there whirling away at five or six -thousand revolutions to the minute, and with no more power than it takes -to keep an ordinary office-lamp alight. Right at the back of this house -is a wire, a power-circuit, alive with more than two hundred times that -voltage, with power in plenty—a little condensed Niagara of -power—asking to be taken off and made use of!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But what use?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can capture and tame and control that power, Frank. I can make it my -slave, and carry it along with me, almost in my pocket, on a mere -thread of copper. I can make it a living, iron-eating otter, with a -dozen fangs—in the shape of quarter-inch drills, gnawing and biting and -eating through that armor-plate door about the same as a rat would gnaw -through a wooden lath. Oh, we’ve got them, Frank! We’ve got them this -time!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not until we know that combination, though,” qualified the -colder-thoughted woman in the wicker rocker, still not quite -understanding how or in what the other had found so potent and so -unexpected an ally. And while he leaned out of the window, studying the -wire-distribution, she discreetly slipped her watch-case receiver over -her head, in case anything of importance should be going through over -the telephone.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XI</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>In the paling afternoon, with a pearl-mist of fine rain thinly shrouding -the city, Frances Candler waited for Durkin impatiently, with her watch -open before her. As the frail steel hand, implacable as fate, sank away -toward the half-hour mark, her own spirits sank with it. It was not -often Durkin was late. Another ten minutes would make him forever too -late. She debated within herself whether or not she should risk her own -voice over the wire to Ottenheimer’s office, while there was yet time, -or wait it out to the last. Then she remembered, to her sudden horror, -that the transmitter still stood in its perfectly-adjusted and normal -condition, that there could be no muffling, incompetent mechanism to -disguise the tones of her voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was still beating despairingly through a tangle of dubious -possibilities when the reassuring two-three ring of the door-bell -sounded out, through the quiet of the lonely twilight, with startling -clearness. A minute later Durkin came panting into the room. He was -clean-shaven, immaculate, and most painfully out-of-breath.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is there time?” he gasped, putting down a heavy suit-case and peeling -off his coat as he spoke.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s twenty-one minutes after five. If Phipps is punctual, that gives -you only four minutes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>By this time Durkin had the suit-case open. In another half-minute he -had the casing off the transmitter. Then a deft turn or two with his -screw-driver, a tentative touch or two on the electrode, and in another -half minute the casing was restored, and he was gently tapping on the -diaphragm of the transmitter, with the receiver at his ear, testing the -sound.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just a minute, now, till I cool down, and get my breath! I had endless -trouble getting my drill apparatus—at one time I thought I’d have to -take a dentist’s tooth-driller, or some such thing. But I got what I -wanted—that’s what kept me. Anything new?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned with the receiver still at his ear, and for the first time -looked at her closely. Her face seemed pale, and a little weary-looking, -against her black street-gown; the shadowy wistfulness about her eyes -seemed more marked than ever.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” she was laughing back at him, however, “something most prodigious -has happened. I have an order for one dozen cotillion-favors, to be done -in velvet and crimson satin, and delivered next Saturday afternoon!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin himself laughed shortly, and faced the telephone once more, -asking her how time was.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You haven’t a second to lose!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His own face was a little paler than usual as he stood before the -transmitter, while Frances, with her watch in her hand, went on saying -that, if Phipps was punctual, he would be out and away in one minute’s -time.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin took a last look around, said under his breath, “Well, here -goes!” and placed the receiver to his ear.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For a moment the woman, watching him, with half-parted lips, was haunted -by the sudden impression that she had lived through the scene before, -that each move and sound were in some way second-hand to her inner -consciousness, older than time itself, a blurred and dateless photograph -on the plates of memory.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hello! Hello! Is that you, Phipps?” she heard him say, and his voice -sounded thin and far-away. There was a pause—it seemed an endless -pause—and he repeated the query, louder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This is Ottenheimer. Yes, something wrong with the ’phone. Don’t cable -Teetzel—I say don’t cable Teetzel, about those canary diamonds, until -you see me. Yes, Teetzel. Did you get that? Well,—er—what the devil’s -our safe combination? Yes, yes, Ottenheimer!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Slower—slower, Jim!” groaned the girl, behind him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Combination’s slipped my mind, Phipps. Yes; after dinner; want to run -down and look over the books. Louder, please; I can’t hear. Yes, that’s -better. To the right three times, to seventy-four—back thirty—on -eighty-two—back one hundred and eight—and on seven. Yes. It’s the -second last figure slipped me. Better close up now. Better close up, I -say. All right,—good-bye!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The last minute vibration ebbed out of the transmitter’s tingling -diaphragm; but still neither the listening man nor woman moved. They -waited, tense, expectant, tossed between doubt and hope, knowing only -too well that the questioning tinkle of a little polished, nickel bell -would sound the signal of their absolute and irreparable defeat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Second by second, a minute dragged itself away. Then another, and -another, and still no call came from Ottenheimer’s office, for Central. -The woman moved a little restlessly. The man sighed deeply. Then he -slowly put down the receiver, and mopped his moist face and forehead.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think he’s safe,” half-whispered Durkin, with his eyes still on the -transmitter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He may suspect any moment though—when he’s had time to think it over, -especially.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I rather doubt it. Our voices were nothing but broken squeaks. But if -he does ring up Central, we’ll have to risk it and jump in and claim a -wire’s crossed somewhere.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he repeated the strange formula: “To the right three times, to -seventy-four—back thirty—on eighty-two—back one hundred and -eight—and on seven. Can you get it down, Frank?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She nodded, as she wrote it in pencil, on a slip of paper. This he -placed in his waistcoat pocket, and mopped his face once more, -laughing—perhaps a little hysterically, as he watched the ’phone and -felt the passing minutes drip relievingly, like the softest of balm, on -his strained nerves.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And now what?” asked Frances, sharing his relief, as he went to the -window, and breathed the fresh air that blew in through the -low-ceilinged little studio.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now,” said Durkin, jubilantly, “now we begin our real work!” He opened -his suit-case and handed her a heavy, cylindrical, steel implement. Into -one end of this odd-looking tool he slipped and clamped a slender, -polished little shaft of grooved steel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s what nearly lost me everything,” he continued, carefully -unpacking, as he spoke, a condenser, a tangent galvanometer, a pair of -lineman’s-gloves, a Warner pocket battery-gauge, a pair of electrician’s -scissors and pliers, two or three coils of wire, a half-a-dozen pony -glass insulators, and a handful or two of smaller tools.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here, you see, is what I set up business with,” he soliloquized, as he -studied the litter they made on the floor. He looked up quickly, as she -drew her little table out from the wall and lifted the transmitter up on -the empty electric-fan shelf. “Er—before I forget it,” he said, -absently, his eyes still on his widely strewn apparatus, “have you got -everything you want away from here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had; though she hated to leave her show-case, she said. Some day she -might like to take up fancy sewing again. “But before we do another -thing,” she insisted, “we ought to have dinner. Breakfast, this morning, -was our last meal, I know!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And to his utter astonishment, Durkin remembered that he was famished.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was a hurried and humble little meal they ate together in the failing -light,—a meal of sandwiches washed down with bottled milk. Their -thoughts as they ate, however, were on other things, grappling with -impending problems, wondering when and under what circumstances their -next meal would be eaten, almost glorying in the very uncertainty of -their future, tingling with the consciousness of the trial they were to -undergo, of the hazard they essayed. Then Durkin, as he smoked, laid out -his final plan of action, point by premeditated point.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>At twenty minutes to eleven, slipping off his shoes, Durkin climbed -cautiously through the transom opening out on the roof. Creeping as -carefully from chimney tier to chimney tier, he found himself face to -face with a roof-fence of sharpened iron rods. He counted down this -fence to the eighteenth rod, then carefully lifted on it. The lead that -sealed it in the lower cross-piece, and into the stone beneath that -again, had been strangely fused away, and the loosened rod slid up -through the top horizontal bar very much like a miniature portcullis. -Squeezing through this narrow opening, he carefully replaced the rod -behind him. With a flattened piece of steel, once used for a furnace -poker, and looking very much like a gigantic tack-drawer, he slowly and -gently forced the bolt that held shut the transom on the Ottenheimer -building. This he replaced, after passing through, paying out with him -as he went, two coils of rubber-coated wire, in appearance not unlike a -large size of incandescent lamp cord.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From the photographer’s studio in which he found himself, nothing but a -draw-bolt kept him from an outside hallway. Making sure that the -building was deserted, and everything safe, he worked his way slowly -down, like a diver, stair by stair, to the basement. Here he made a -careful study of the little tunnel of electric wires at the back of the -lower hall, probing, testing, measuring, and finally, with cool -deliberation, “bridging” the necessary portion of the burglar-alarm -connection, which he knew to be operated on a closed circuit. This -circuit he diverted as a miner diverts a troublesome stream. Then, -holding before him his little two-candle incandescent lamp, scarcely -bigger than his thumb nail, he groped toward the iron covered door that -divided one-half of the building from the other.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Here he directed his thin shaft of light into the crack between the -heavy door and its studding, and his squinting eyes made out the iron -lock-bar that held him out. From his vest pocket, where they stood in a -row like glimmering pencils, he took out one of the slim steel drills, -adjusted it noiselessly in the drill-flange, and snapped shut his -switch. There was the quick spit of a blue spark, and of a sudden, the -inanimate thing of steel throbbed and sang and quivered with mysterious -life. As he glanced down at it, in its fierce revolutions, he realized -that once more he had for an accomplice that old-time silent, and -ever-ready assistant which for years had been a well-tested and faithful -friend. The mere companionship with so familiar a force brought back to -him his waning confidence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He forced the whirling drill through the door-crack and in against the -bar. It ate through the soft iron as though it had been a bar of cheese. -Eight carefully placed perforations, side by side, had severed the end -of the lockshaft. He shut off the current, confidently, and swung open -the heavy door. The falling piece of iron made a little tinkle of sound -on the cement flooring, then all was silence again. He had at least, he -told himself, captured the enemy’s outposts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Cautiously he felt his way across the warm cellar, up the steps, and at -last faced his one definite barrier, the door of solid steel, abutted by -even more solid masonry. The builders of that door had done their best -to make it forbidding to men of his turn of mind, Durkin ruminated, as -he felt and sounded and tested despondently over its taciturn painted -surface.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He studied the hinges carefully, through his tiny lamp. They were -impregnable. As he had surmised, his only way was to cut out, inch by -inch, the three heavy steel shafts, or bolt-bars, which slipped and -fitted into steel casings also, apparently, embedded in solid masonry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Adjusting his drill, he closed the switch once more, and, bracing the -instrument’s head against his breast-bone, watched the slender, humming, -spinning shaft bite and grind and burrow its way into the slowly -yielding bar. From a little pocket-can, every minute or two, he squirted -kerosene in on the drill-tip. The pungent smell of the scorching oil, as -it spread on the heated steel, rose almost suffocatingly to his -nostrils in the furnace-heated warmth of the cellar and for weeks -afterwards remained an indistinct and odious memory to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When his first hole was bored, and his little drill raced wildly through -into space, like the screw of a liner on the crest of a wave, he started -a second, close beside the first; then a third, and a fourth, and a -fifth, slowly honeycombing the thick steel with his minute excavations. -Sometimes a drill would snap off short, and he would have to draw a -fresh one from his stock. Sometimes it did not bite sharply, and he -tried another. And still he stood drilling, directing the power of his -silent, insidious, untiring accomplice, whose spirit crooned and burned -and sighed itself out through the wire at his feet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As he worked, he lost all track of time; after he had started what he -knew to be the last hole, he stopped and looked at his watch, as -casually as he had done often enough after a night of operating the key -in a despatcher’s office. To his horror, he saw that it had stopped, -stunned with a natural enough electrolytic paralysis. It might not yet -be twelve, or it might be four in the morning; time, from the moment he -had taken off his shoes in Frances Candler’s little back room, had been -annihilated to him. He wondered, in sudden alarm, if she were still -maintaining her patrol outside, up and down the block. He wondered, too, -as he drove the little drill home for the last time, and cautiously -pried open the great, heavy door, if she had sent any signal in from the -street front, and he had missed it. He even wondered, quakingly, if -daylight would not overtake them at their work—when his startled eyes, -chancing to fall on a nearby clock-dial, saw that the hour was only -twenty-five minutes to twelve.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Step by step he crept back to the inner offices, followed by the -murmurous ticking of a dozen noisy clocks, declaiming his presence. From -the door in front of where the safe stood, gloomy, ominous, -impregnable-looking, he lifted a seemingly innocent rubber mat. As he -thought, it had been attached to a burglar-alarm apparatus. Dropping on -one knee, he repeated his formula, number by number, each time listening -for the telltale click of the falling ward. Then, turning the nickel -lock-knob, he heard the many-barred lock chuck back into place.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The next moment the ponderous doors were open, and Durkin’s little -thumb-nail electric lamp was exploring the tiers of inner compartments.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He still carried his drill with him; and, once he had found the private -drawer he wanted, the softer iron of the inner fittings offered little -resistance to a brutally impatient one-eighth bit. After two minutes of -feverish work, he was able to insert the point of his furnace poker into -the drawer, and firmly but gently pry it open.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The next moment his blackened and oily fingers were rummaging -carelessly through a fortune or two of unset stones—through little -trays of different tinted diamonds, through crowded little cases of -Ceylon pearls and Uralian emeralds. At last, in a smaller compartment, -marked “I. Ottenheimer,” he found a gun-metal case sealed up in an -envelope. The case itself, however, was securely locked. Durkin -hesitated for one half second; then he forced the lid open with his -steel screw-driver.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>One look was enough. It held the Blue Pear.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He stooped and carefully brushed up the steel cuttings under his -shoeless feet. As carefully he closed the inner drawers of the safe. His -hand was on the nickel lock-knob once more, to swing the ponderous outer -doors shut, when a sound fell on his ears, a sound that made his very -blood chill and tingle and chill again through all his tense body.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was Frank’s voice, outside the same building in which he stood, not a -hundred feet away from him, her voice shrilly screaming for help.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His first mad impulse was to rush out to her, blindly. A second -precautionary flash of thought kept him rooted to the spot, where he -stood listening. He could hear confused, sharp voices, and the scuffling -of feet. He heard the quick scream again; then guttural, angry protests. -Some subliminal prompting told Durkin that that scream was not one of -terror, but of warning.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Snapping out his incandescent lamp, he stole cautiously forward through -the row of partitioned, heavily-carpeted little offices, and, without -showing himself, peered toward the shop-front. As he did so, a second -involuntary thrill of apprehension sped up and down his backbone. The -street-door itself was open. Already half way in through that door was a -dark, stoutly-built man. He stood struggling in the arms of a determined -young woman. That woman, Durkin could see, was Frances Candler. And all -the while that she was clinging to him and holding him she was crying -lustily for help.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The next moment Durkin made out the man. It was Ottenheimer, himself. -For some unknown reason, he hastily surmised, the diamond merchant had -intended to drop into his own office. But why, he still asked, was Frank -taking such risks?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin did not try to work the thing out in its minute details. Like a -flash, he darted back to the open safe. He swung the big doors to, -locked them, caught up his drill, and the loose strands of wire, and -then backed quickly out through the steel door, securing it with a deft -twist or two of a piece of his number twelve. The outer cellar door he -as quickly closed after him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he flew upstairs, two steps at a time, rebolted the photographers’ -hall door, replaced the transom as he swung up through it, and as -hurriedly refitted the loose iron bar in the roof-fencing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Three minutes later, a well-dressed gentleman, wearing a black hat and -carrying a large leather suit-case, stopped, with a not unnatural -curiosity, on his way up Fifth Avenue, to inquire the meaning of an -excited little crowd that clustered about two policemen and a woman in -the doorway of Ottenheimer & Company.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He drew up, casually enough, and listened while a short, stout, and very -indignant man spluttered and gesticulated and angrily demanded how any -one should dare to stop him from going into his own store. He was the -owner of the place—there was his own watchman to identify him,—and -somebody would be “broke” for this tomfoolery, he declared, with a shake -of the fist toward the silent sergeant beside him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The young woman, who chanced to be veiled, explained in her -well-modulated, rich contralto voice that the hour had seemed so -unusual, the store had looked so dark inside, even the burglar-alarm, -she stubbornly insisted, had rung so loudly, that, naturally, it had -made her suspicious. She was sorry if it was a mistake. But now the -officers were there; they could attend to it—if some one would kindly -call a taxi for her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The sergeant between her and Ottenheimer agreed with her, and stepping -out and stopping an empty motor-cab on its way up the Avenue, turned -back to the still enraged owner of the store and solicitously advised -him to go home and cool down.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You hold that woman!” demanded Ottenheimer, husky with rage. “You hold -that woman, until I examine these premises!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The young woman, obviously, and also quite naturally, objected to being -held. There was a moment of puzzled silence, and then a murmur of -disapproval from the crowd, for about the carefully gloved girl in the -black street-gown and plumed hat clung that nameless touch of birth and -bearing which marked her as a person who would be more at home in a -limousine than in a wind-swept doorway.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The lady, of course, will wait!” quietly but deliberately suggested the -black-hatted man with the suit-case, looking casually in over the -circling crowd of heads.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The sergeant turned, sharply, glaring out his sudden irritability.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, who asked you to butt in on this?” he demanded, as he impatiently -elbowed the pressing crowd further out into a wider circle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I merely suggested that the lady wait,” repeated the man in the black -hat, as unperturbed as before.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course, officer, I shall wait, willingly,” said the girl, hurriedly, -in her equally confident, low-noted rich contralto. She drew her skirts -about her, femininely, merely asking that the shop-owner might make his -search as quickly as possible.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ottenheimer and the doubtful-minded sergeant disappeared into the gloom -of the midnight store. As the whole floor flowered into sudden electric -luminousness, Durkin thanked his stars that he had had sense enough to -leave the lighting wires intact.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Everything’s all right; you may go, miss,” said the sergeant, two -minutes later. “I guess old Isaac’s had an early nightmare!” And the -dispersing crowd laughed sympathetically.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The woman stepped into the motor-cab, and turned toward Broadway.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Safely round the corner, she picked up the waiting Durkin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That was a close one—but we win!” he murmured jubilantly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ve got it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve got it,” he exulted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The woman at his side, for some vague reason, could not share in his -joy. Intuitively, in that moment of exhaustion, she felt that their -triumph, at the most, was a mere conspiracy of indifference on the part -of a timeless and relentless destiny. And in the darkness of the -carriage she put her ineffectual arms about Durkin, passionately, as -though such momentary guardianship might shield him for all time to -come.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She shook her abstractedness from her, with a long and fluttering sigh.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Jim,” she asked him, unexpectedly, “how much money have you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He told her, as nearly as he could. “It’s hanged little, you see!” he -added, not understanding the new anxiety that was eating at her -heart,—“but I’ve been thinking of a plan!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, what now?” she asked miserably, out of her weariness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She knew, well enough, the necessity of keeping up, of maintaining both -activity and appearances. She knew that wrong-doing such as theirs, when -without even its mockery of respectability and its ironical touch of -dignity, was loathsome to both the eye and the soul. But she found that -there were moods and times, occurring now more and more frequently, when -she dreaded each return to that subterranean and fear-haunted world. She -dreaded it now, not so much for herself, as for Durkin; and as he -briefly told her of his plan, this feeling grew stronger within her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then if it must be done,” she cried, “let <span class='it'>me</span> do the worst part of -it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked at her, puzzled, not comprehending the source of her -passionate cry, blindly wondering if her over-adventurous life was not -getting a deeper and deeper hold on her. But her next question put him -to shame.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Jim, if I help you in this, if I do all that has to be done, will you -promise me that you will make it bring you closer to your work on your -amplifier, and your transmitting camera? Can’t you promise to get back -to that decent work once more?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll promise, if you’ll make me one promise in return,” said Durkin, -after a moment of silent thought.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is it?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Will you let me hold over this Singford stone, for a few weeks?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But why?” she asked, aghast.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To oil the curtain that has to go up on our next act!” he answered, -grimly. “I mean a few hundred, now, would make things so simple again.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No,” she protested fiercely, “it must not, it shall not, be done. The -Blue Pear must go back to London tomorrow!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It will mean some hard work for us both, then.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t help that, Jim. We’ll have to face it together. But this stone -is a thing we can’t trifle with, or equivocate over. I should hate -myself, I should even hate <span class='it'>you</span>, if I thought it wasn’t to go back to -London, by express, tomorrow morning!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then back it goes!” said the man at her side. He could see, even in the -dim light of the taxi, the rebellious and wounded look that had crept -into her face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Whatever it brought me, I couldn’t endure your hate!” he said, taking -her hand in his.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XIII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>As a result of her midnight conference with Durkin, Frances Candler -learned many things. One of these was the fact that the life into which -she had flung herself was proving a captor that already threatened to -extort a cruelly impossible ransom. Another was the discovery that -Durkin stood even deeper than she did in those conspiratorial quicksands -from which she tore one limb only to be engulfed by another. For all -along, she saw, he had been a quiet observant <span class='it'>intrigant</span>, conspiring -against a new field of activity toward which she had not even thought to -glance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For after that hurried midnight talk she knew that the Secretary of -Agriculture, at Washington, from time to time received sealed mail -reports from the South as to the condition of the cotton crop. She also -learned that there had been a series of startling and disastrous “leaks” -from these confidential government reports, and that a private wire now -connected the office of the Department with Savannah and New Orleans. -Durkin had already ascertained that over this wire, on the last day, or -the last “market” day, of each month, until the leakage had been -stopped, would pass those despatches and figures on which the -Department of Agriculture would verify and base its monthly report of -the cotton outlook.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That system is going to be kept up,” Durkin had explained to her, -“until the Secretary finds out who is stealing the figures and doing the -manipulating on them in the New York Cotton Exchange. At any rate, I -know he’s going to keep this wire in use until the decent brokers stop -bombarding him and the Census Bureau with their telegrams about -collusion and fraud. But here’s the point that interests us. If this -present wire report turns out to be favorable, the feverish way the -market stands now, it means, of course that there’s going to be a pretty -serious break in Cotton Exchange trading. But, on the other hand, if -this short-cut official report carries the news of a shortage, it’s as -plain as day that Curry and all the other New York bears will have a -lever to pry up the price of cotton with, high as it stands already.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what is it we want to know?” she had asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ve got to find out which way that report goes—whether it’s good or -bad. I’ll be here in New York, waiting to get your cipher message over a -Postal-Union wire. Whichever way it goes, I’ll govern myself -accordingly, jump into the market with every penny I have, and do -precisely what three hundred highly respectable brokers have been doing -for the last two months. The only thing that makes me hot is that I -haven’t a few thousand, instead of a paltry few hundred, to fling into -it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her instructions were brief, but explicit. While he waited in New York, -ready to act on word from her, she was to hurry to Washington, and from -Washington go on to the somnolent little Virginia town of Leeksville. -This town, Durkin had already made sure, lay on the route of the -Department of Agriculture’s New Orleans wire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>On the main street of the little town through which this wire ran stood -a ramshackle, three-storied wooden hotel. From the top floor of this -hotel every wire that went humming like a harp of haste through that -avenue of quietness was easily accessible. Any person enlightened and -audacious enough to pick it out from among its companions and attach to -it a few feet of “No. 12” and a properly graduated relay would find the -rest of his task astoundingly easy. As Durkin had pointed out, already -knowing what they did, the one great problem lay in getting unsuspected -into the third-floor room of that wooden Leeksville hotel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With a jointed split-bamboo fishing-pole, neatly done up in a parasol -cover, and with her complete wire-tapping outfit as neatly packed away -in a dress-suit case, Frances Candler ten hours later registered at that -ancient and unsavory-looking hostelry. A weary and bedraggled theatrical -company, which had just made the late “jump” from Fredericksburg, -preceded her, and she made it a point to approach the desk at the heels -of a half-a-dozen noisy chorus girls.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There she asked for a top-floor room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The over-gallant clerk insisted that she should go anywhere but on the -top floor. There would be no difference in the cost of the rooms, to -her. He would make that, indeed, a personal matter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I prefer the top floor,” she maintained, biting her lip and giving -no other sign of her indignation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The clerk insisted that the climb would be too much for her; and most of -the floor, he explained, was given over to the servants.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She began to despair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I sleep lightly—and I <span class='it'>must</span> have seclusion!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The perturbed clerk protested that in Leeksville noises were unknown by -day, much less by night. A circle of rotunda idlers now stood behind -her, taking in the scene. A flash of inspiration came to her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve <span class='it'>got</span> to go up to the top, I tell you!” she cried, impatiently. -“Can’t you see I’ve got asthma!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And the angry asthmatic woman in the heavy veil was finally surrendered -to the loneliness and discomfort of her southwest corner room on the -barren and carpetless third floor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There she quietly unpacked her suit-case, jointed her pole of split -bamboo, attached and graduated her relay, and fingered noiselessly -through the tangle of wires beneath her window for that one and -essential thread of metal along which was to flash the departmental -cotton reports, between New Orleans and Washington.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There, hour after hour, she sat and waited and watched; and it was late -in the next morning that, white and worn-out, she detached the -unobserved wire, hurried off her brief despatch in cipher, ordered -breakfast up to her room, and even before undressing fell into a long -and restless slumber.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That day, in her narrow little corn-husk bed, she dreamed that she and -Durkin had tunnelled under the Potomac River and had carried away the -last ounce of gold from the United States Treasury. How many millions -they had taken it was beyond them even to count. But she knew they were -escaping in submarines and were being breathlessly pursued by the entire -North Atlantic fleet. And her one great fear, during all that agonized -and endless pursuit, seemed not that she was destined either to final -capture, or to final suffocation, but that, in some way, she might -become separated from Durkin.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XIV</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin waited, with the receiver at his ear. Once more the signal-bell -shrilled and cluttered its curtly hurried warning. A vague yet nasal and -half-impatient voice murmured brokenly out of somewhere to some one: -“You’re connected now—go ahead.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then came a grating rasp and drone, a metallic click or two, and out of -the stillness there floated in to his waiting ear the space-filtered -music of an anxious “Hello”—flute-like, mellow, far-away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It seemed to him there, under the stress of his passing mood, that an -incorporeal presence had whispered the word to him. Suddenly, for the -first time in his life, the miracle of it all came home to him, the -mystery and magic of that tenuous instrument, which could guide, and -treasure, and carry in to him through the night the very tone and timbre -of that one familiar voice, flashing it so many miles through star-hung -forest and hill and valley, threading it on through sleeping towns and -turbulent cities, winging it through wind and water unerringly home to -his waiting ear.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hello!” the anxious contralto was asking again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hello?” cried Durkin, pent in the little bald speaking-closet, yet his -face illuminated with a wonderful new alertness. “Hello! Is that you, -Frank?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A ripple of relieved laughter ebbed out of the wire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Jim,” sounded the far-away voice in his ear, sighingly. “It seems -so good!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where are you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In Washington, at the Arlington office.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He chuckled a little, as though the accomplishment of the miracle, the -annihilation of so many miles of space, was a matter of his own personal -triumph.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here we’re talking together through three hundred miles of midnight!” -he boasted to her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I know; but I wish it wasn’t so far! Did you recognize my voice -there?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’d know that voice in—in Hell!” he answered, with a sudden grim but -inadequate earnestness. He had hoped to say something fitting and fine, -but, as always seemed to happen to him in such moments, his imagination -foundered in the turbulence of his emotions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You may have to some day, my poor Orpheus!” she was laughing back at -him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the allusion was lost on Durkin, and he cut in with a curt, “What’s -happened?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want to come home!” It must have been a good night for ’phoning, he -felt, as he heard those five cogent words, and an inconsequential little -glow suffused him. Not an ohm of their soft wistfulness, not a coulomb -of their quiet significance, had leaked away through all their hundreds -of miles of midnight travel. It almost seemed that he could feel the -intimate warmth of her arms across the million-peopled cities that -separated them; and he projected himself, in fancy, to the heart of the -far-off turbulence where she stood. There, it seemed to him, she -radiated warmth and color and meaning to the barren wastes of life, a -glowing and living ember in all the dead ashes of unconcern. And again -it flashed through him, as the wistful cadence of her voice died down on -the wire, that she was all that he had in life, and that with her, -thereafter, he must rise or sink.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want to come home,” she was repeating dolefully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ve <span class='it'>got</span> to come, and come quick!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What was that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I say, risk it and come,” he called back to her. “Something has -happened!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Something happened? Not bad news, is it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—but it will open your eyes, when you hear it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Everything at my end has been done, you know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You mean it came out all right?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not quite all right, but I think it will do. Is it safe for me to tell -you something?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, anything in reason, I guess.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Curry’s men in New Orleans are working against him!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let me add something to that. Green and his men are trying to break -Curry, and Curry all the time is laying a mine under every blessed one -of them!” and Durkin gave vent to a triumphant chuckle, deep down in his -throat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where did you find this out?” the unperturbed and far-away contralto -was demanding.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You could never guess.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Talk faster, or this telephoning will break us!” she warned him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I don’t care—it’s worth the money.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hello—Hello! Oh, all right. Go on!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You<a id='you'></a> heard about the fire in the Terminal Room of the Postal-Union? -No—well, some dago with a torch got a little too careless in a P. U. -conduit, and set fire to a cable-splicer’s pot of paraffin down on lower -Broadway, not much more than a hundred yards from Wall Street itself. -Then the flames caught on the burlap and the insulating grease and stuff -round the cables—can you hear me? There was the dickens to pay, and in -about ten minutes they looked more like a cart-load of old excelsior -than the business wires of a few thousand offices!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, go on!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, it stopped nine thousand telephones, and put over two hundred -stock-tickers out of business, and cut off nearly five hundred of the -Postal-Union wires, and left all lower New York without even fire-alarm -service. That’s saying nothing of the out-of-town wires, and the long -distance service,—did you get all that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perfectly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, there’s a lot more to tell, but it will keep—say till Thursday -night. You may be able to imagine just what it is, from what I’ve told -you; but listen: I think I can open your eyes, when you get here!” he -repeated, slowly and significantly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right—even a Great Western wire might have ears, you know!” she -warned him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quite so, but how about your Savannah information? There’s nothing -new?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nothing. But you saw the newspaper stories?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The Herald yesterday said the Secretary of Agriculture had demanded -from the Savannah Cotton Exchange the name of a wire-house that -bulletined a government crop report thirty minutes ahead of the official -release.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, that’s Dunlap & Company. They are frantic. They still declare -there was no leak, and are fighting it out with the department here at -Washington. In the meantime, luckily for us, they are, of course, -sending out press-statements saying it was all a coincidence between -their firm’s private crop-estimate and the actual government report. I -couldn’t give you much of a margin of time to work on.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That thirty minutes just gave me time to get in on the up-town -quotations. I missed the lower office, of course.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hadn’t we better hold this over?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; I rather forgot—it’ll wait until you get here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then Thursday night, at eight, say, at the Grenoble!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, no; make it nine forty-five—I don’t get away until then.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What would the Grenoble people say?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s so—you had better go to the Ralston. It’s free and easy. Yes, -the Ralston,” he repeated. “The Ralston, at nine forty-five, Thursday. -Good-bye!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A moment later he could hear the frantic signal-bell again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hello! Hello! What is it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hello, New York! Not through yet,” said the tired and nasal voice of -the operator.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You forgot something!” It was the contralto voice this time, -reproachful and wounded. Durkin laughed a little as he leaned closer to -the mouth-piece of his transmitter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good-bye, dearest!” he said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good-bye, my beloved own!” answered the wire, across its hundreds of -miles of star-strewn midnight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin hung up his receiver with a sigh, and stopped at the office to -pay his bill. All that was worth knowing and having, all that life held, -seemed withdrawn and engulfed in space. He felt grimly alone in a city -out of which all reality had ebbed. It seemed to him that somewhere a -half-heard lilt of music had suddenly come to a stop.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A spirit of restless loneliness took possession of him, as he stepped -out into the crowded solitudes of Broadway. His thoughts ran back to -the day that he had first met Frances Candler, when, half unwillingly -joining forces with MacNutt, he had followed that most adroit of -wire-tappers to his up-town house. He remembered his astonishment as the -door swung back to MacNutt’s secret ring, and Frank stood there in the -doorway, looking half timidly out at them, with her hand still on the -knob. How far away it seemed; and yet, as the world went, it could be -counted in months. He had thought her a mere girl at first, and he -recalled how he imagined there had been a mistake in the house number, -as he saw the well-groomed figure in black, with its wealth of waving -chestnut hair, and the brooding violet eyes with their wordless look of -childish weariness. It was only later that he had taken note of the ever -betraying fulness of throat and breast, and the touch of mature -womanhood in the shadows about the wistful eyes. He remembered, point by -point, the slow English voice, with its full-voweled softness of tone, -as she answered MacNutt’s quick questions, the warm mouth and its -suggestion of impulsiveness, the girlishly winning smile with which she -had welcomed him as her partner in that house of underground operating -and unlooked-for adventure, the quick and nervous movements of the -muscular body that always carried with it a sense of steely strength -half-sheathed in softness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bit by bit he recalled their tasks and their perils together.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What touched him most, as he paced the odorous, lamp-hung valley of the -Rialto, was the memory of this wistful woman’s sporadic yet passionate -efforts to lead him back to honesty. Each effort, he knew, had been -futile, though for her sake alone he had made not a few unthought of -struggles to be decent and open and aboveboard in at least the smaller -things of life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the inebriation of great hazards was in his veins. They had taken -great chances together; and thereafter, he felt, it could be only great -chances that would move and stir and hold them. Now he would never be -content, he knew, to lounge about the quiet little inns of life, with -the memory of those vast adventures of the open in his heart and the -thirst for those vast hazards in his veins.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As he turned, in Longacre Square, to look back at that turbulent valley -of lights below him, he remembered, incongruously enough, that the -midnight Tenderloin was the most thoroughly policed of all portions of -the city—the most guarded of all districts in the world. And what a -name for it, he thought—the Tenderloin, the tenderest and most -delectable, the juiciest and the most sustaining district in all New -York, for the lawless egotist, whether his self-seeking took the form of -pleasure or whether it took the form of profit!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A momentary feeling of repugnance at what was unlovely in life crept -over him, but he solaced himself with the thought that, after all, it -was the goodness in bad people and the badness in good people that held -the mottled fabric together in its tight-meshed union of contradictions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then his spirit of loneliness returned to him, and his thoughts went -back to Frances Candler once more. He wondered why it was that her -casual woman’s touch seemed even to dignify and concentrate open crime -itself. He felt that he was unable, now, to move and act without her. -And as he thought of what she had grown to mean to him, of the -sustaining sense of coolness and rest which she brought with her, he -remembered his first restless night in New York, when he had been unable -to sleep, because of the heat in his stifling little bedroom, and had -walked the breathless, unknown streets, until suddenly on his face he -had felt a cool touch of wind, and the old-time balm of grass and trees -and green things had struck into his startled nostrils. It was Central -Park that he had stumbled on, he learned later; and he crept into it and -fell placidly asleep on one of the shadowy benches.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His memory, as he turned to take a last look down the light-hung cañon -of the Rialto, was of the evening that he and his desk-mate, Eddie -Crawford, had first driven down that luminous highway, in a taxi, and -the lights and the movement and the stir of it had gone to his -bewildered young head. For he had leaned out over those titanic tides -and exclaimed, with vague and foolish fierceness: “My God, Eddie, some -day I’m going to get a grip on this town!”</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XV</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>It was not until night had settled down over the city that Durkin opened -the back window of his little top-floor room and peered cautiously out.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was, apparently, nothing amiss. A noise of pounding came to him -from the shipping-room of a lace importer below. A few scattered shafts -of light glimmered from the windows opposite. A hazy half-moon slanted -down over the house-tops.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When Durkin leaned out of the window for the second time he held in his -hand something that looked peculiarly like a fishing-rod. From it -dangled two thin green wires, and with the metal hook on the end of it -he tested and felt carefully up among the slovenly tangle of wires -running out past the overhanging eave.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was a silly and careless way of doing things, he inwardly -decided, this lazy stringing of wires from house-top to house-top, -instead of keeping them in the tunnels where they belonged. It was -not only violating regulations, but it was putting a premium on -“lightning-slinging.” And he remembered what Frances had once said -to him about criminals in a city like New York, how the careless -riot of wealth seemed to breed them, as any uncleanness breeds -bacteria; how, in a way, each was only a natural and inevitable -agent, taking advantage of organic waste, seizing on the unguarded -and the unorderly. She had even once argued that the criminal could -lay claim to a distinct economic value, enjoining, as he did, -continual alertness of attention and cleanliness of commercial -method.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet the devil himself, he had somewhere read, could quote Scripture for -his purpose; and his fishing-pole moved restlessly up and down, like a -long finger feeling through answering strings. For each time, almost, -that his hook rested on one of the wires the little Bunnell relay on the -table behind him spoke out feebly. To the trill and clatter of these -metallic pulsations Durkin listened intently, until, determining that he -had looped into the right wire, he made secure his switch and carefully -drew down the window to within an inch of the sill.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he gave his studious attention to the little Bunnell relay. Its -action was feeble and spasmodic. It was doing scant justice to what -Durkin easily saw was a master-hand toying with the rubber button at the -far-distant end of the wire. It was not unusually quick operating, but, -as the dots and dashes flew on and on, the interloper for a moment or -two forgot the meaning of the messages in the clear-cut, crisp, and -precise beauty of the sender’s Morse.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That man,” commented the admiring craftsman in Durkin, “is earning his -eight dollars an hour!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then, adjusting his rheostat, he slowly and cautiously graduated his -current, until new life seemed to throb and flow through the busy little -piece of clicking metal. A moment later it was speaking out its weighty -and secret messages, innocently, authoritatively, almost triumphantly, -it seemed to the eavesdropper, bending over the glimmering armature -lever.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A quietly predaceous smile broadened on Durkin’s intent face. He -suddenly smote the table with an impetuous little rap of the knuckles, -as he sat there listening.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“By heaven, this <span class='it'>will</span> open her eyes!” he cried, under his breath.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And he repeated the words more abstractedly, as he lifted his telephone -transmitter out on the table and threw open a switch on the wall, -well-concealed by the window curtain.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He then adjusted the watch-case receiver to his ear, and settled quietly -down in his chair. Striking a match, he held it poised six inches away -from the cigar between his teeth. For the sounder had suddenly broken -out into life once more, and strange and momentous things were flashing -in to him over that little thread of steel. The match burned away and -fell from his fingers. He shook himself together with an effort.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he snatched up a pencil, and with the watch-case receiver still at -his ear and the Bunnell sounder still busy before him, he hurriedly -wrote notes on the back of an envelope.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He felt like a lean and empty wharf-rat that had tunnelled into a -storehouse of unlimited provision. The very vastness of it amazed and -stupefied him. He had been grubbing about for a penny or two, and here -he had stumbled across a fabulous-figured banknote.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then, as item by item he was able to piece his scattered shreds of -information together, his mind became clearer and his nerves grew -steadier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked at his watch. It was twenty-six minutes past nine. As he had -expected, and as had happened every night since Curry had installed the -private wire in his Madison Avenue residence, the operator on the -up-town end of the line switched off. The sounder grew still, like a -clock that had run down. The telephone wire still carried its occasional -message in to him, but he knew that he could wait no longer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It took him but a minute or two to detach his looping wire from the -Curry private line. Then he threw back the switch of his telephone, -concealed his transmitter, and caught up his hat and coat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Five minutes later he was careering up Fifth Avenue in a taxi-cab. A new -interest, submerged in the sterner tides of life, drifted in on him as -he drew nearer the Ralston and Frances Candler. He began to meditate on -how much he had been missing out of existence of late, and even how -empty all triumph and conquest might be, if unshared by or with another. -Some vague and gently disturbing inkling of just how much a woman could -become to a man, however preoccupied, crept into the quieter backgrounds -of his consciousness. And with a man of his walk in life, uncompanioned, -isolated, migratory, this muffling and softening element was doubly -essential.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He sent his card up to Frances, with an unreasonably beating heart. Word -came down to him, in time, that she was engaged, but that she would see -him in twenty minutes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I must see her, and at once!” he told the impassive clerk.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It would be possible in twenty minutes, was the second message that came -down to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frances engaged—and not able to see him! The very idea of it startled -and enraged him. Who had the right to stand between them?—he demanded -of himself, with irrational fierceness. And out of the very midst of his -soft and consuming eagerness to see her sprang up a mad fire of jealousy -and uncertainty. Who was there, he again demanded of himself,—who was -there that could come in this way between Frances Candler and himself, -at such a time and under such circumstances? After all, her career was -one of open and continuous deception. There was MacNutt! And -Ottenheimer! And a dozen more! She made it her business to deceive and -dupe others, so artfully, so studiously, so laboriously—why would she -not use her tools on him as well? Was she, indeed, as open and candid as -he had taken her to be?—she, with all her soft little feline graces, -and with all that ambiguous and unknown past of hers!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And yet he remembered how she had held out against him, how he, with his -laxer code, had often hurt and wounded every feeling of her sensitive -nature. Even before this he had tried to argue that crime in one phase -of life implied moral weakness in all other phases of that same career. -Yet there she obdurately though pantingly stood, unyielding, stanch, -clean of mind and life, a woman of stern honor—and through it all an -adventuress and a robber! A black-leg with the conscience of a -schoolgirl!—and he laughed inwardly and bitterly at the cheap irony of -it all.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His icy and exacting scrutiny of her, as he stepped into her private -room, sapped all the warmth out of her greeting. She had thrown on a -loose-fitting dressing-gown of pale blue, which showed the white fulness -of her arms and throat and darkened the violet of her brooding and -seemingly unsatisfied eyes. She was more than beautiful, Durkin had told -himself, with a little gulp of anguish. But why had the corroding poison -of criminal inclination been poured into a glass so tinted and fragile -and lovely to the sight! For there, as he looked at her with still angry -and suspicious eyes, he realized, for the first time, just what she was -to him, just how completely and implacably she had subjugated him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is it?” she demanded, with a sudden little flutter of fear, -standing halfway across the room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who was in this room with you?” he demanded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She studied his face for a moment or two, slowly shaking her head from -side to side. He noticed the tumbled wealth of her glinting chestnut -hair, here and there almost a golden red, and again a gulp of anguish -swelled at his throat. It was no wonder that MacNutt had good use for -her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who has been up here with you?” he repeated miserably, but inexorably.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She seemed to sigh a little, and then her slow English laugh melted out -through the room. It was a quiet and sorrowful little laugh, but it -shattered the tragedy from the overstrained moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You foolish boy!” she said, half-sorrowfully, as she turned to put the -belittered room to rights. “It was the dressmaker I sent for, as soon as -I got here. I haven’t a rag! You know that! And you know how often you -have said that persons in our sort of business ought to dress well.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The mad wave of doubt that still tumbled him back and forth ebbed -suddenly away, as a woman of forty, short and stolid, stepped briskly -and quietly out of the inner bedroom. She bowed a businesslike good -night to them as she passed out into the hallway, carrying a handbag.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And this is the way you welcome me back!” reproved Frances, as she -drew away from him and fell to studying his face once more. “Well, we -can at least talk business,” she added bitterly, on the heels of his -awkward silence. “And that, I know, will appeal to you!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin bowed to the stroke, and even made belated and disjointed efforts -of appeasement. But the petals seemed to have fallen from the shaken -flower; a teasing sense of her aloofness from him oppressed his mind. In -fact, it had always been in the full hue and cry of their adventures -with the grim powers of the law that she had seemed nearest to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The thought came to him, with a quick sense of terror, of how he might -suffer at a time or in a situation not so ridiculously transparent as -the present. If, indeed, she ever did give him actual cause for -jealousy, how it would rend and tear those roots which had pierced so -much deeper than he had ever dreamed! And for a passing moment he felt -almost afraid of himself.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XVI</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then it wasn’t so difficult, after all?” commented Durkin, as Frances -ended a description of her three days in Leeksville.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, it wasn’t the trouble so much—only, for the first time in my life, -I felt so—so cruelly alone!” She found it hard to explain it to him -adequately. She wondered why it was she should always shrink from -undraping any inner corner of her soul to him, why, at times, she should -stand so reluctant to win any of the more intimate touches of -comradeship from him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s the drawback,” he remarked, wide of her mood and thought, -“that’s the drawback in doing this sort of thing by oneself!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We really ought to hunt in pairs, don’t you think, like timber wolves?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She turned and looked at him, with a still mocking and yet a warmer -light coming into her eyes. Some propulsion, not of mind, but of body, -seemed to drive her involuntarily toward him—like a ship on a lee -shore, she felt—as she sniffed delicately at his cigar-scented gloves, -so anomalously redolent of virility, of masculinity, of something -compelling and masterful, where they lay in her nervously toying -fingers. She tried to laugh at herself, with chastening scorn; but she -could not.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And out of it all,” he went on, “when brokerage fees and other things -are counted, we have made just three hundred and sixty-seven dollars!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Only that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had no more than the thirty minutes, you see, for a margin to work -on!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She pushed back her hair with a languid hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But why cry over spilt milk?” she asked, wearily. Firmer and firmer, -she felt, this mad fever of money-getting was taking hold on him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Especially when we seem about to wade knee-deep in cream!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She made a last effort to fall in with his mood of ruthless aggression.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; what’s this you were going to open my eyes with?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The final vestige of his clouded restraint slipped away from Durkin’s -mind.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had better start right at the beginning, hadn’t I?” he queried, cigar -in hand, while she nodded comfortably to the silent question as to -whether or not he might smoke.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I suppose you know that Curry was once a New Orleans cotton broker. It -was a little over two years ago that he first came to New York, with -about a million and a half of his own, and an available three or four -million belonging to a pool that was to back him through thick and -thin. This they did, when he became a member of the Cotton Exchange. -Then step by step he began to plan out his campaign, patiently and -laboriously plotting and scheming and manipulating and increasing his -power, until the newspaper-men dropped into the habit of speaking of him -as the Cotton King, and the old home pool itself got a little afraid of -him, and held a few secret meetings to talk things over.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But how did this campaign end?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It has not ended. Of just how it will end only two men, outside of -Curry and his confidential old head-broker down on the Exchange floor, -have any inkling.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who is the <span class='it'>other</span> man?” asked Frances quietly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin smiled covertly, with a half-mockingly bowed “Thanks!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The other man, of course, not counting myself, is the operator, or, -rather, the private secretary, he keeps at the home end of the wire he -has had put into his house, for carrying on his collateral -manipulations, as it were.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I understand,” said Frances.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And then comes myself,” he added confidently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The woman settled back in her leather-lined arm-chair, locking her -slender white fingers together above her head. The clustered lights of -the chandelier threw heavy shadows about her quiet eyes, and for the -first time Durkin noticed the tender little hollow just under her -cheek-bones, lending an indescribable touch of tragedy to the old-time -softer oval of her face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now this is what our friend Curry has been doing, in a nutshell. For -months and months he has been the acknowledged bull leader of the -Exchange. Point by point, week by week and day by day, he has managed to -send cotton up. Where it was at first 11 and 12 and perhaps 13 cents, he -has shouldered, say, August cotton up to 16.55, and July up to 17.30 and -May up to 17.20. Day before yesterday July cotton advanced to 17.65 in -New Orleans. Some time, and some time mighty soon—if not tomorrow, then -the next day, or perhaps even the next—every option is going to go -still higher. And this man Curry is the imperial dictator of it all. He -is known to have interests behind him that amount to millions now. And -this is the point I’m coming to: this present week is to see the rocket -go up and burst.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin was on his feet by this time pacing up and down the room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The first, but not the final, climax of all this plotting is -twenty-cent cotton.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Has it ever been that before?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Never! It has not been above seventeen cents, not since 1873!” declared -Durkin, excitedly. “But here is the important part of it all, the second -climax, as it were. When it strikes nineteen his old home pool are going -to abdicate. They are going to turn traitor on him, I mean, and suddenly -stand from under. Then here is the third and last climax: Curry knows -this fact; he knows they’re making ready to crush him. And when they get -ready he’s going to turn and smash ’em, smash ’em and sling ’em down, -even though he goes with them in the crash. Which he won’t, if he’s the -Curry I take him to be. In other words, Frank, at the right moment he is -going to abdicate from the bull movement absolutely, before it is -publicly realized.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It all seems vague and misty to me—but I suppose you know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Know? Why, I’ve been rioting through his holy of holies for two days -now. I’ve been cutting in and reading his own private wire. He firmly -intends to forsake this bull movement, which, apparently, he has spent -so much time and toil in building up. But in reality, out of the crash -that comes with a collapsing market—and it must collapse when he stands -from under!—he is to sit and see a million or two rain down into his -lap.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But can he, one solitary man, do all this—I mean do it unmistakably, -inevitably?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, he can. I firmly believe that nothing short of a miracle can now -upset his plan. Today he is not only the leader of the cotton pit; he is -both openly and tacitly the supreme dictator of the market—of the -world’s market. Why, last week, when he publicly announced that he was -going down to Lakewood for a couple of days, the market fell back to -12.85 for an hour or two, and he had to jump in and start buying, just -to give a little order to things. Somebody even said that when his wife -and an actress friend of hers visited the Exchange gallery he asked them -if they’d like to see a little panic on the floor. The actress said -she’d love to see cotton go up a few points if he wouldn’t mind. Curry -said all right, to watch out for some real acting. So he started down -into the pit and pulled the strings until his puppets danced to their -hearts’ content.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frances nodded her appreciation of the scene’s dramatic values, and -waited for Durkin to continue.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And one minor result of that was that one hour later a well-known -cotton merchant was found in his chair, with a slowly widening stain of -red on his shirt front, as the evening papers put it. He had shot -himself through the heart—utterly ruined by that last little capricious -rise in our Cotton King’s market.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who, after all, is not much better than a wire-tapper!” exclaimed the -woman, with her mirthless little laugh of scorn.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s a difference—he thinks in big figures and affairs; we, up till -now, have worked and worried and fretted over little things. This man -Curry, too, is a sort of Napoleon. ‘You have to smash the eggs to make -your omelet,’ was all he said when he heard that a big brokerage firm -had closed its one hundred and twenty-five offices because of his bull -operations. Why, this week he’s making his clerks eat and sleep right -in the offices—he’s turned one of the rooms into a sort of dormitory, -and has their meals sent up to them. And outside of all this he’s -manipulating his own underground movement, doing that over his home -wire, after his regular office hours.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And this is the wire you have tapped?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, that’s the wire that has been giving me my information—or, -rather, little scattered shreds of it. But here, mind, is where the -difficulty comes in. Curry has got to let his partner, Green, down in -New Orleans, in on the last movement of his campaign, so that the two -can strike together. But he is wise, and he isn’t trusting that tip to -any open wire. When the time comes it’s to be a cipher message. It will -read, ‘Helen sails’—then such and such a time on such and such a day. -That message Curry’s confidential operator will send out over the wire, -under the protection of a quadruplex, from his Wall Street office. And -that is the message I have to intercept.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was moving her head slowly up and down, gazing at him with unseeing -eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you have some plan for doing it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Precisely,” replied Durkin, wheeling nervously back and forth. “This is -where I’ve got to run the gauntlet of the whole Postal-Union system, cut -in on their double-guarded wires, and get away with my information -without being caught.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you can’t do it, Jim. It’s impossible.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, but it <span class='it'>is</span> possible, quite possible!” he said, halting for a -moment before her. “Here’s where the climax comes to my story—the one I -started to tell you over the ’phone. You see, just at the time of that -little conduit fire the Postal-Union Company was having trouble with the -Electrical Workers’ Union. I happened to be laying in the supplies for -that up-town loop of mine when I found they were offering two dollars an -hour for expert work. I jumped on a Broadway car, and took the plunge.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What plunge, Jim?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I mean that I applied for work, down there, as a cable-splicer.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Wasn’t it dangerous work—for <span class='it'>you</span>, I mean?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, a trifle so, I suppose. But none of the inside men were on the -force. No one knew me there, from Adam. And it was worth it, too!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You mean, of course—?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I mean that a certain cable-splicer has the entrée to that conduit, -that he has a hand-made chart as to its wire-disposition, and—well, -several other things!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He waited for some word of appreciative triumph from her. As she -remained silent, he went on again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I mustn’t forget to tell you that I’ve leased a little basement -place not far from Pine Street. I’m going to do commercial printing and -that sort of thing. I’ve got a sign out, and the power all ready, only -my presses are slow in coming!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And will be still further delayed, I suppose?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I’m afraid they will.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Some mysterious touch of his excitement at last communicated itself to -the listening woman, almost against her will. She was as fluctuant, she -told herself, as the aluminum needle of a quadrant electrometer. No, she -was more like the helpless little pith-ball of an electroscope, she -mentally amended, ever dangling back and forth in a melancholy conflict -of repulsion and attraction. Yet, as she comprehended Durkin’s plot, -point by point, she began to realize the vast possibilities that -confronted them, and, as ever before, to fall a victim to the zest of -action, the vital sting of responsibility. Nor did she allow herself to -lose sight of the care and minuteness of the continued artfulness and -finish, so teeming with its secondary æsthetic values, with which he had -reconnoitered his ever-menacing territory and laid his mine. And added -to this, she saw, was the zest of stalking the stalker: it carried with -it an ameliorating tang of dramatic irony, an uncouth touch of poetic -justice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As often happened with her in moments of excitement, the expanded pupils -of her violet eyes crept over and all but blotted out the iris, until -out of the heavy shadows that hung under her full brow, they glowed -faintly, in certain lights, with an animal-like luminousness. “Those -eyes—they look as though a halo had melted and run down into them!” -Durkin had once cried, half wonderingly, half playfully, as he turned -her face from shadow to light and back to shadow again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had looked for some word of disapproval from her, for he could -remember how often, with her continuous scruples, she had taken the -razor-edge off his enthusiasm, when he stood on the brink of adventuring -with something big and momentous. So he studied her face abstractedly, -his own alight with an eager and predaceously alert look which only his -half-whimsical, half-boyish smile held above the plane of sheer vulpine -craftiness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, this man Curry,” he went on, still standing in front of her, “has -got such a grip on the market that he can simply juggle with it. Before -this boom you or I could buy a bale of cotton on a dollar margin. Today, -most of the brokerage houses insist on a four dollar margin, some of -them demanding a five, and it’s said that a ten dollar margin can still -be looked for.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But still, I don’t see how one man can do this, and keep it up!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s mostly all the natural outcome of his own, individual, long-headed -plot. Beyond that, it’s a mere infection, a mania, an operation of -mob-law, the case of sheep following a sheep. Curry, all along, is -crying out that the demand has outgrown the supply, and that the -commercial world has got to get used to the idea of twenty-cent cotton. -In the old days it used to sell away down around six cents, and ever -since then mills have been increasing their spindles,—in ten years, -Curry’s papers claim, the mills have added more than seventeen million -spindles to swell this tremendous cry for cotton. That’s his argument, -to tide him along until he kicks the post out, and the drop comes. Then -of course, he and the rest of his bull pool have been buying, buying, -buying, always openly and magnificently, yet all the while, selling -quietly and secretly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And they call this legitimate business?” she demanded, with the -familiar tinge of scorn in her voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, they call it high finance. But it’s about as legitimate, on the -whole, as the pea and thimble game I used to watch up at the county -fairs in Canada. In other words, Frank, when we carry on our particular -line of business cleanly and decently, we are a hanged sight more honest -than these Exchange manipulators.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But not recognized!” she cut in, for she knew that with this unction of -comparison he was salving a still tender conscience.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s because we are such small fry,” he went on heatedly. “But, by -heavens, when we get this thing going, I guess we’ll rather count a -little!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what is to keep us from getting it going?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He wheeled on her suddenly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“One thing, and one hard thing!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Within twenty-four hours we have got to have ten thousand dollars!”</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XVII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ten thousand dollars is a great deal of money!” said Frank, easily, -with a languid shrug of her shoulders.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It <span class='it'>is</span> a great deal! But we’re up against a great deal! If we had -twice as much, it would be even better. I have a possible twelve hundred -now, altogether—just a scrawny, miserable twelve hundred! I got most of -it yesterday, through dabbling in this cotton of Curry’s. Tomorrow -morning every cent of it goes down to Robinson & Little, and if the -market is moderately steady, and he takes a two dollar margin, knowing -what I do, it means I double that amount before the day’s trading is -over.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Robinson & Little? Who are they? New friends of yours?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They are the big Wall Street people. I had to pay two hundred -dollars—in I. O. U. form,—for a letter to that firm. I still have a -suspicion it was forged, too. I’ve been getting acquainted with them, -however, and showing them that I’m all right. When the eleventh hour -comes, and when I have to cut in on Curry’s Postal-Union wire down-town, -we’ll have to tear around to Robinson & Little’s, flop over with the -market, and buy cotton short, on a stop-order. It all depends upon what -margin we may have to put up, whether we make forty thousand dollars, or -a hundred and forty thousand dollars. Curry, you may be sure, will try -to start the thing off as quietly as possible. So a normal market will -bring a more normal margin, and give us something worth while to play -on!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Something worth while?” she mused absently. Then she came and stood by -Durkin, and studied his face once more. Some sense of his isolation, of -his unhappy aloofness from his kind, touched and wrung her feeling. She -caught at his arm with a sudden companionable enthusiasm, and joined him -in pacing the room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“After all, there <span class='it'>would</span> be something big, and wide, and sweeping about -this sort of work, wouldn’t there?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes; it’s a blamed sight better than pool-room piking!” he cried. “It’s -living; it’s doing things!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I believe I could plunge in it, and glory in it!” she went on, -consolingly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s just one drawback—just one nasty little blot on the face of -the fun,” he ventured, catching at the sustaining arm of her enthusiasm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And that is—?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ve got to get this ten thousand dollars just for a day or two!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But have you any idea as to how, or where, or when?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I have,” he answered, looking at her steadily. There seemed to be -some covert challenge in his glance, but she faced him unwaveringly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Say it out, Jim; I’m not afraid!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I mean <span class='it'>you</span> must get it! You’ve got to borrow it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He began bravely enough, but he hesitated before the startled scorn on -her face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You mean I’ve—I’ve got to steal it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He held up a protesting hand. Then he went to the half-open door of her -inner room and closed it carefully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; as I said before, we can not and must not steal it. It may be -called theft, of course, but every cent of it will be returned. No, no; -listen to me—I have it all figured out. Only, it has to be done this -very night!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tonight?” she said, with a reproving little cry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, tonight! And that is why I’ve been desperate, of course, and have -been looping every telephone wire that runs near my up-town room, hoping -against hope for a chance to pick up something to work on. The only -thing that gave me that chance was Theodore Van Schaick’s house wire. -Now, listen. Two days ago his daughter Lydia came of age. I could tell -you most of the things she got, and how she has been ’phoning gratitude -and thanks and girlish messages out round the city. But among other -things Miss Lydia Van Schaick received from her father, was a small and -neat bundle not long out of the Sub-Treasury. It was made up of one -hundred equally neat little pieces of parchment, and each one of them is -a one-hundred dollar banknote.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I’m to crawl through one of her windows, and burglarize the house -of this amount!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, no, Frank—listen to me a moment. Yesterday, Miss Lydia telephoned -her Uncle Cedric about this money. Not being used to a small fortune in -ready cash, naturally, she feels nervous about having it around, and -wants to put it somewhere. Her level-headed old Uncle Cedric advised her -to take it down tomorrow to the Second National Bank, and open a deposit -account with it. And this Lydia intends to do. Tonight her ten thousand -dollars are laid carefully away in a glove-box, in one of her chiffonier -drawers, in her own private bedroom. So tonight is our only chance!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Couldn’t I sand-bag her in the morning, on her way down-town?” demanded -Frances, with mock seriousness. She had learned not to ask too much of -life, and she was struggling to school herself to the thought of this -new rôle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, my dear girl; it can be done so much easier than that. Her mother -and her younger sister are still at Driftwood, their summer place in -Mamaroneck. At four o’clock this afternoon they sent into the city a -certain Miss Annie Seabrooke. She is a St. Luke’s graduate, a -professional nurse who has been looking after old Mrs. Van Schaick. This -lady, apparently, is a good deal of a hypochondriac. The nurse, of -course, has to get things ready for her patient’s return. I have already -met Miss Seabrooke at the Grand Central Station. I have also, at Miss -Lydia’s urgent request, installed her at the Holland House, over night. -This, by the way, is the lady’s bag. I tried to explain to her that the -whole Van Schaick house wants to be given over to Miss Lydia’s -coming-of-age function.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frances, already carried down again by her tidal reaction of feeling, -watched him through narrowed and abstracted eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In this bag, among other things, you’ll find a nurse’s uniform,” Durkin -went on hurriedly, oblivious of her scrutiny. “It will fit a little -loose, I’m afraid—Miss Seabrooke is a big, wide-shouldered Canadian -girl. And in forty or fifty minutes from now you ought to be inside that -uniform and inside the Van Schaick house—if we ever want to carry this -thing through!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And then—?” she asked, in her dead and impersonal voice, as though her -thoughts were leagues away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then,” cried Durkin, “then you’ve got to get hold of a glove-box in -Miss Lydia Van Schaick’s chiffonier drawer. By some means or other we’ve -got to get hold of that box, and—”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stopped him, by holding up a sudden silencing hand. Her face was -white and set; he could see none of the iris of her eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s no use!” she said, evenly and quietly. “It’s no use. I can not and -will not do it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin fell back from her, aghast. Then he took her by the arm, and -turned her about so that the light fell on her face. He could see that -her lower lip was trembling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You back down—<span class='it'>now</span>?” he demanded, with a touch of incredulity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I back down!” she answered, letting her eyes meet his.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why—” he began, inadequately. “What is it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s simply this, Jim,” she answered him—and her voice, now, was high -and thin and unmodulated, constricted, by some inward tension, to a -gramophonic tumult of syllables. “There has got to be a limit, -somewhere. At some point we have got to draw the line. We have been -forgetting a great many things. But I can not and will not be a common -thief—for you—or for anything you can bring to me—or to my life!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You say <span class='it'>that</span>?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I do; and if you cared for me—if you thought of my feelings—if -you thought of my happiness, you would never ask me to do such -things—you would never make me suffer like this!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He threw up his hands with what was almost a gesture of exasperation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you will <span class='it'>not</span> be a common thief—it will not be stealing at all! -Can’t you see that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I can not. And you know as well as I know, that when we try to -justify it we do it only by a quibble!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I tell you every penny of that money will go back where it came -from!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then why can’t we go to Lydia Van Schaick and ask her to lend us the -money?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s ridiculous!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No more so than what you propose!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin, drawing back from her, closed his right fist and with it pounded -angrily on the palm of his left hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If you’re going to back down I <span class='it'>will</span> go to Lydia Van Schaick, and I’ll -get her money, too. I’ll go as a second-story man, as a porch-climber! -I’ll go after that money as a common burglar and house-breaker. But I’ll -get it, in the end, or know the reason why!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh!” she gasped, horrified. “You wouldn’t! You couldn’t!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I say I will!” he cried, in a passion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, you couldn’t!” she reiterated.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Couldn’t I?—I’ve got this machinery started, and it’s going to be kept -moving!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Something in the scene carried her years back, to the times when her -father, emerging from his prolonged orgies, sick and shaken, stormed and -wept for the brandy she struggled to keep away from him—and the -struggle would end only, when in fear of his collapse, she surrendered -the bottle to his quivering fingers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My God—I’ve <span class='it'>got</span> to have it!” Durkin was crying and storming.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There crept over her the same, slowly eviscerating pity for the defiant -man who now stood before her, so tragically weak in his very protests of -strength.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She turned and caught at his arm, with a sudden inward surrender that -left her dazed and tottering. She struggled in vain to keep down her -tears, once more torn by that old and costly and compromising hunger to -be loved and sustained by him. She could not live in the face of his -anger; she could not endure his hate. And the corroding bitterness, the -gnawing tragedy, of her life lay in the fact that the arm to which she -must turn for support was the very arm that would forever drag and hold -her down.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet she was inarticulate, in the face of it all. She could not plead; -she could not explain. She could only break out with a sudden -unreasoning and passionate cry of: “<span class='it'>You are not kind to me!</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin had already shaken her hand from his arm, and was on the point of -a second outburst. Then he stopped, and the gathering anger and revolt -ebbed out of his face, for at that tearful and passionate cry from her -he knew that the battle between them had come to an end. He knew, with -an exultation in which even pity and cruelty were strangely entangled, -that it was a sign of her inward capitulation, that he had won her over.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Frank!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He swung about, suddenly, and with one clasp of his arms let wide the -flood-gates of her strained emotions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good God!” he cried. “You know I hate it, as much as you do! But can’t -you see it’s too late now, to quibble and vacillate? Can’t you see that -I’m getting nothing more out of it than you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He pleaded with her, hotly, impetuously. He showed her how he needed -her, how he was helpless without her. He held her, and kissed the tears -from her unhappy eyes—he could see them droop, pitifully, as with a -narcotic, at his first intimate and tender touch. He would have to sway -her now, he felt, not through her judgment, not by open attack, but only -by those more circuitous and subterranean approaches of feminine -feeling. And still he expostulated and pleaded, unnerving and breaking -her will with his cruel kindnesses of word and caress.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I’ll do it!” she cried, at last, mopping her stained face. “I’ll do -it, Jim, if I have to!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But there’s nothing so terrible in it, Dear Heart,” he assuaged. “We’ve -been through worse things together. And it will be made right again, -every penny of it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Jim,” she said slowly, as she grew calmer once more; “Jim, I want you -to give me your word of honor that it <span class='it'>will</span> be made right! I’m—I’m too -cowardly, yet, to do a thing that’s wickedness, through and through. -I’ve got to see some glimmer of right in it, I’ve got to feel that it -will end right, even—”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But this <span class='it'>will</span> end right! It can’t help it. I give you my word of -honor, now, to save you from being what you might seem, that every cent -of this woman’s money goes back to her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was moving her head slowly up and down, as she studied his face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then you must remember, through it all, how much I’m trusting myself to -you,” she said, with a forlornness that brought a lump in his throat, as -she looked about the room with hopeless eyes. “Do you realize how hard -all this is going to be?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s not easy, I know—but it’s our only chance.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Is</span> it our only chance?” she suddenly asked. “Life is full of chances. -I saw one today, if I’d only known.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked at him again, with some new light sifting through all her -tangle of clouds. “Yes,” she went on, more hopefully, “there <span class='it'>might</span> be -still another way!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well?” he asked, almost impatiently, as he glanced at his watch.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was something that happened when I went into that little -Postal-Union office at Broadway and Thirty-seventh Street.” She was -speaking rapidly now, with a touch of his former fire. “The relays and -everything are in the same room, you know, behind the counter and a wire -screen. I wanted my dressmaker, and while I was sitting at a little -side-desk chewing my pen-handle and trying to boil seventeen words down -to ten, a man came in with a rush message. I could see him out of the -corner of my eye. It was Sunset Bryan, the race-track plunger, and it -occurred to me that it might be worth while to know what he was sending -out.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did he see you, or does he know you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I took good pains that he shouldn’t see me. So I scrawled away on -my blank, and just sat there and read the ticker as the operator -took the despatches off the file and sent them out. Here is the -wording of Sunset Bryan’s message, as well as I can remember it: -‘Duke—of—Kendall—runs—tomorrow—get—wise—and—wire—St. -Louis—and—South!’”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, what of it?” Durkin asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, this Bryan is the man who took one hundred and ten thousand -dollars out of the Aqueduct ring in one day. Since the Gravesend Meeting -began, people say he has made nearly half a million. He’s a sort of -race-track Curry. He keeps close figures on every race he plays. He has -one hundred men and more on his pay roll, and makes his calculations -after the most minute investigating and figuring. It stands to reason -that he manipulates a little, though the Pinkerton men, as I suppose you -know, have never been able to get him off the Eastern tracks. Now, Jim, -my firm belief is that there is something ‘cooked up,’ as they say, for -tomorrow afternoon, and if we could only find out what this Duke of -Kendall business is, we might act on it in time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She waited for Durkin to speak. He tapped the top of his head, -meditatively, with his right forefinger, pursing his lips as his mind -played over the problem.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, we might. But how are we to find out what the Duke of Kendall and -his mere running means?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I even took the trouble to look up the Duke of Kendall. He is a -MacIntosh horse, the stable companion to Mary J., and ridden by Shirley, -a new jockey.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She could see that he had little sympathy for her suggestion, and she -herself lost faith in the plan even as she unfolded it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My idea was, Jim, that this horse was going to run—is <span class='it'>sure</span> to run, -under heavy odds, for what they call ‘a long shot.’”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But still, how would we be able to make sure?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I could go and ask Sunset Bryan himself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin threw up his hand with a gesture of angry disapproval.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That beast! He’s—he’s unspeakable! He’s the worst living animal in -America!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I shouldn’t be afraid of him,” she answered, quietly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The whole thing comes too late in the game, anyway,” broke in Durkin, -with a second gesture of disgust. Then he added, more gently: “Good -heavens, Frank, I don’t want to see <span class='it'>you</span> mixed up with that kind of -cur! It wouldn’t be right and fair! It’s infinitely worse than the thing -I’m suggesting!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“After all, we are not so different, he and I,” she responded, with -acidulated mildness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin took her hand in his, with real pain written on his face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t talk that way,” he pleaded; “it hurts!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She smoothed his hair with her free hand, quietly, maternally.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then you had rather that I—I borrowed this money from the Van Schaick -house?” she asked him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s the choice of two evils,” he answered her, out of his unhappiness, -all his older enthusiasm now burnt down into the ashes of indifferency.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If only I was sure you could keep your promise,” she said, dreamily, as -she studied his face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It <span class='it'>will</span> go back!” he responded determinedly, shrugging off his -momentary diffidence. “Even though I have to make it, dollar by dollar, -and though it takes me twenty years! But I tell you, Frank, that it will -not be needed. Here we have the chance of a life time. If we only had -the money to start with, the whole business could be carried on openly -and decently—barring, of course,” he added, with his sudden shamefaced -smile, “the little bit of cutting-in I’ll have to do down-town on the -Curry wires!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“One minute—before we go any farther with this. Supposing we -successfully get this glove-box, and successfully watch Curry, and on -the strength of our knowledge invest this money, and get our returns, -and find ourselves with enough—well, with enough not to starve on—will -you promise me this: that it will be the last?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But why should it be the last?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You know as well as I do! You know that I want to be honest, to live -straight and aboveboard; but a hundred times more, that I want to see -you honest and aboveboard!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He studied the tense and passionate mood that flitted across her face, -that seemed to deepen the shadows about her brooding violet eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I would do anything for you, Frank!” he said, with an inadequate and -yet eloquent little outthrust of the arms.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then do this for me! Let us get back to the daylight world again!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But would it satisfy us? Would we—?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Would we—?” she echoed forlornly. Then she turned suddenly away, to -hide a trace of inconsequential tears.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We have got to!” she cried out passionately over her shoulder, as she -stooped to the suit-case and deftly opened it. A moment later she was -rummaging hurriedly through its neatly packed contents.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I am Mrs. Van Schaick’s trained nurse?” she asked, ruminatively.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, Miss Annie Seabrooke, remember!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But the others—the servants—won’t they know me?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You were engaged in Mamaroneck; not one of the city servants has seen -your face.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it will be eleven and after—was my train delayed?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, not delayed; but you took a later train.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was silent for a minute or two, as she probed deeper into the -suit-case.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You haven’t promised!” she murmured, her face still low over the -womanly white linen, and the little cap and apron and uniform which she -was gently shaking out before her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She rose to her feet and turned to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I promise you—anything!” he cried, in the teeth of all his inner -misgivings. He followed her to the open window.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then kiss me!” she said, with a little exhausted sigh of ultimate -surrender, as she sank into his arms and her lonely and hungry body felt -the solace of his strength about and above it. And in that minute they -lost all count of time and place, and for them, with the great -glimmering granite city stretching away at their feet, there was neither -past nor future.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XVIII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>Frances Candler waited until complete quiet reigned over the house. Then -she noiselessly opened her door and peered up and down the darkened -hallway.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A sudden thought came to her, as she stood there in the silence, and, -slipping back to her room, she took first a hot-water bottle out of her -nurse’s bag, and then a hypodermic syringe from its neat little morocco -case. Miss Annie Seabrooke, she decided, had been making melancholy use -of her knowledge of drugs. That enlightened young lady was, obviously, -addicted to the use of morphine, for beside the syringe-case Frances -found a little bottle bearing its telltale chemical formula: C<sub>17</sub> -H<sub>19</sub> NO<sub>3</sub>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She removed the screw-top from the graduated “barrel,” and in its place -adjusted the glistening little hollow needle. Then she carefully filled -the graduated tube with its innocent-looking liquid, and, wrapping the -syringe in her pocket-handkerchief, thrust it into the bosom of her -bodice. Many things lay ahead of her, and before the night was out even -this might be of use. She devoutly hoped not—yet the present moment, -she warned herself, was no time for hesitations and compunctious -half-measures.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The hot-water bottle she carried openly in her hand, as she once more -softly opened the door and crept out into the half-lighted hallway.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had given her a room on the third floor, a concession, she -imagined, to the established dignity of her profession. Most of the -servants slept on the fourth floor. It had, accordingly, been by way of -the front stairs that the bibulous English butler, with more than one -sidelong blink of admiration had brought her up to her quarters for the -night.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt that she would like to find the back stairway, the stairway by -which the household servants came and went.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She moved forward softly, listening a second at doorways as she passed. -It crept through her mind at that moment, incongruously enough, how like -her own future lay this silent and unknown house, with its dark -entanglement of possibilities, its network of unknown dangers and -surprises, its staid and unbetraying doors behind which so much or so -little might anywhere dwell.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she suddenly stood transfixed, panting a little. For the sound of -approaching footsteps fell on her startled ear.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To turn and run was out of the question, for she had no knowledge of -where or into what she might flee. To hesitate longer would be equally -fatal. Instant action only could save her. As quick as thought she -opened the door on her left, and stepped inside.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is it you, Adolph?” a whispered voice asked quietly, out of the gloom. -It was a woman’s voice—she must have been a young woman, Frances -commiseratively felt—a voice that was neither startled nor unhappy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stood, then, in one of the servants’ rooms. She pictured to herself -the different faces she had seen below stairs, though in none of them -could she remember any sign or hint of what she had now stumbled upon. -But the pregnancy of that muffled question gave her a flashing -consciousness of the wheels within even those inner wheels in the dark -and complicated mills of life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hsssssh!” said the intruder softly, as she quickly swung to the door, -padding it with her hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stood there, waiting until the steps passed by. They were brisk, -businesslike steps, those of a woman, mingled with the tinkling of a -chain of keys. She surmised that it was the housekeeper, on her last -rounds for the night.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She realized the peril of another minute in the room. The wiring of the -house, she had already noticed, with the quickness of an expert, was -both thorough and modern. Any moment the turning of a bedside button -might flood the room with brilliant light and leave her there, betrayed -beyond redemption.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sssssssh!” she said again sharply, as though in warning, and a moment -later dodged out through the door, going as noiselessly as she had come.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the ground was now dangerous, she felt; and she was glad to escape -to the comparative freedom of a wider hallway, running at right angles -to the one she had just left. This surely led to the back stairs, she -argued, as she groped her way steadily forward. She was even debating -whether it would not be better to risk the fully-lighted front stairs, -rather than lose time as she was doing, when her groping hands came in -contact with the cool wood of the polished balustrade.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her foot was on the carpeted second step, when she drew back, with a -terrified catch of the breath.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The familiar click of the light-button had thrown the entire hall and -stairway into dazzling light. A man stood at the foot of the stairs, in -his slippered feet, with his hand still on the button. He had not yet -seen her; but it was too late to escape.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was the bibulous English butler who had shown her to her room. In a -crook of his arm he carried a Sauterne bottle and a nearly empty -champagne magnum, carefully recorked. It was plain, Frances argued, that -he was pilfering a nightcap for himself. That gave her at least a shred -of courage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She hesitated only the fraction of a second. Then she coldly and briskly -descended the stairs, with her hot-water bottle in her hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The butler fell back a step or two at the sudden apparition, blinked at -her unsteadily in the strong light, and made a gigantic effort to draw -himself up.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her first intention had been to march disdainfully past him; but this, -she remembered, was out of the question. It was already midnight, or -more, and for all his unsteadiness of limb he was, she knew, a shrewd -and capable servant, well trained in his duties.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, miss, what is it?” She could see him putting on his official -attitude, just as he might draw on his serving-coat. The new nurse, -apparently, took cold easily, for she still wore her galoshes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Which way do I go to the kitchen?” she demanded curtly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The kitchen, miss, is closed.” He was looking at her with his pale and -beady little eyes. “What were you wanting?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I must have some hot water,” she answered, swaying her instruments of -deliverance before her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is a bathroom on your floor, miss, two doors to the right of your -own door.” He spoke thickly but peremptorily. Frances could plainly see -that he was not to be juggled with.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I said hot water, not warm,” she retorted, almost angrily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll find an electric heater in the bathroom, miss,” he added, more -respectfully. She tried to wither him with a look, but it was -unavailing. He even preceded her to her own door, turning the lights on -and off as they went.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A moment later, as she stood biting the end of her fingers in mingled -vexation and anxiety, she could hear the sound of running water. She -wondered, dreadingly, if she was never to get rid of the man. As she -waited she let down her hair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The butler appeared with a steaming pitcher. He entered unsteadily, to -her preoccupied “Come!” He looked at her over his shoulder as he put the -steaming pitcher down, on her dresser.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A damned fine girl!” he said to himself, as he looked at her for a -second time, and seemed loath to leave. In fact, months afterward, he -dilated to the second cook on the wonder of that chestnut hair, which -now fairly blanketed the girl’s head and shoulders.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you in pain, miss?” he asked anxiously, coming nearer to her. His -attitude was cogent, and yet non-committal.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No,” she said icily, and then she added, more discreetly, “No—not -much.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just—er—where does it seem to be?” he ventured, brazenly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was silent now, distraught with mingled revulsion and anxiety.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is it here, miss?” he persisted, with easy and masterful solicitude, -reaching out as though to touch her with his intrepid and insolent hand. -The woman drew back with a shudder, white to the very lips. This was the -penalty, she told herself, for the ways she had fallen into! This was -the possible degradation that even Durkin had been willing to lead her -into!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She fell back from him, and stood against the wall, struggling to calm -herself. For the feeling swept over her that she must scream aloud, to -rend and scatter what seemed the choking mists of a nightmare. Yet her -masterful tormentor, misjudging the source of her emotion, still stood -blinking at her soulfully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Isn’t there anything I can do for you?” he wheedled, meltingly, yet -militantly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It would have been laughable, under other circumstances, Frances tried -to make herself believe—this solicitous tenderness of an unmannerly -English butler, placidly extending to her the gallantries of the -servants’ quarters. Now, she saw only the perils of the situation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can leave this room,” she said, steadily, in answer to his -question. She saw the look of stolid revolt that swept over his face, -and she could have wrung her hands, in the extremity of her fear.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Won’t you want anything fetched, later?” he still persecuted her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, yes,” she cried, desperately; “but not now!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When?” he demanded, wagging his head, sagely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>The later the better!</span>” she answered, slowly, with a final and -desperate craftiness, pointing to the door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A sudden flame of audacious heat crept into the bloated face before her. -He would still have tarried an admiring moment or two, but she returned -his gaze, unfalteringly, for thirty resolute seconds. He wavered, -mumbled something in his throat, flung one final melting leer at her, -and then turned and crept from the room, nursing his two bottles in the -crook of his arm as he went.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, thank God, thank God!” she cried, with a throaty little sob.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then a second shudder, as momentarily benumbing as a chill, swept over -her from head to foot. A sudden passion to get out where she could -breathe and move took its place—at whatever ultimate loss—only to get -away from that house of engulfing horrors.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The mood passed, with the passing of her fright, and she shook her tired -nerves together with an effort. Then still once more she groped her way -out through the darkness. Now, however, there was neither trepidation -nor hesitancy in her silent movements, as she flitted through the -hallway and passed like a shadow down the dark stairs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She paused only once—at the door which she knew was Lydia Van Schaick’s -bedroom. In an oriel window, opposite this door, was a little alcove -fitted up with bookshelves, a highly polished writing-table, and two -low-seated rattan lounging-chairs. On one end of the writing-table stood -a flat silver vase holding a spray of roses; on the other end stood a -desk-telephone transmitter and an oblong folio of green morocco, with -“Telephone Addresses” stamped in gold on its richly tooled cover. All -this Frances noticed with one quick glance, as, nursing the knob in her -cautious fingers, she turned it slowly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The door was securely locked, from the inside.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>One chance remained to her—by way of the little white-tiled bathroom, -which she had caught a glimpse of on her first journey up through the -house. This bathroom, she knew, would open into the girl’s boudoir -itself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This door was unlocked. A moment later she was inside, and the door was -closed behind her. She groped carefully across the tiled flooring until -her finger-tips came in contact with the second door, which creaked a -little at her touch, for it stood a few inches ajar.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This door she opened, inch by inch, in terror of that tiny hinge-creak. -It was a sleeping-room, she knew, the moment she had crept inside; and -it held a sleeper, for the air seemed laden with its subtle yet quite -immaterial fragrance of warmth—vivified, as it were, with some -intangible exhalation of its sleeping life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She listened with strained attention, hoping to overhear the quiet and -regular breathing of the sleeper. But no sound reached her ears.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Through the muffled darkness she could dimly make out the open doorway -leading into what must be the girl’s sitting-room. In that room, Frances -felt, would stand the chiffonier.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt her way to the foot of the bed. There she stood, strained -second after second, still listening. No sound came from the sleeper. -But, awed, for reasons that lay beyond the reach of her restless -thought, she could feel the presence of the other life there, as -distinctly as though the room had been steeped in noon-day light; and -as she waited and listened there came to her a sense of the mystery of -sleep, a feeling that, after all, this briefest midnight slumber was -only a lighter and younger sister to that endless sleep of death itself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Step by step, then, she crawled and edged her way into the second vault -of black silence, feeling with outstretched fingers for each piece of -furniture. The mirror-laden chiffonier, some womanly intuition told her, -would stand between the two heavily curtained windows.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her feelings had not misled her. It was a well-made piece of furniture, -and the top drawer opened noiselessly. This was explored with light and -feverish fingers, as a blind woman might explore it. But it held nothing -but laces and scattered bits of jewelry, and filmy things she could not -name and place.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The second drawer opened less readily, and a key had been left in the -lock. She touched the little leather boxes, deciding that they must be -jewel-cases, and methodic little layers of silk and linen, and a package -or two of papers. Then her fingers fell on something cold, and hard, and -purposeful. It was a woman’s little revolver, obviously, with a jeweled -handle. She explored the trigger-guard and the safety-latch with -studious fingers, and decided that it was a 32-calibre hammerless.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then her startled hand went up to her lips, and she wheeled noiselessly -about where she stood. It could not have been a sound that she heard. It -was only a presence that had made itself felt, to some sixth sense in -her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>No; it was nothing that she had heard or seen, but she leaned forward -and studied the surrounding gloom intently, from side to side.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Acting under some quick subliminal impulse, she picked the little -hammerless weapon up out of the drawer, with one hand, while her other -hand explored its farther end. This exploring hand felt feverishly along -the edges of what seemed a mother-of-pearl writing-portfolio, and -rummaged quickly and deftly down among laces and silk, until her fingers -came in contact with the glazed surface of a little oblong box.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There could be no two thoughts as to what that box was. It was the -glove-box which held that particular package for which she had already -dared so much.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>An awakened and alert sixth sense still warned her of something ominous -and imminent; but there was neither fear nor hesitation in her actions -as she drew out the little oblong box and with quick fingers thrust it, -along with the toy-like hammerless, into the bosom of her dress.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she took three stealthy steps forward—and once again caught her -breath sharply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Somebody is in this room!</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The intruder and thief fell back, step by step, gropingly, until she -touched the chiffonier once more.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Somebody is in this room!</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was a woman’s voice that broke in on the black silence, a quiet but -sternly challenging voice, tremulous with agitation, yet strident with -the triumph of conviction, and with resolute courage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who is here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frances Candler did not move. She stood there, breathing a little -heavily, watching. For now that sudden challenge neither thrilled nor -agitated her. Consciousness, in some way, refused to react. Her tired -nerves had already been strained to their uttermost; nothing now could -stir her dormant senses.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she felt the sudden patter of bare feet on the floor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Still she waited, wondering what this movement could mean. And, as she -had felt at other times, in moments of dire peril, a sense of detached -and disembodied personality seized her—a feeling that the mind had -slipped its sheath of the body and was standing on watch beyond and -above her. She suddenly heard the sound of a key being withdrawn. It was -from the door leading into the hallway. Then, almost before she realized -what it meant, the bedroom door had been slammed shut, a second key had -rattled and clicked decisively in its lock—and she was a prisoner!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A moment later she caught the sound of the signal-bell in the alcove.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Central, quickly, give me the Sixty-Seventh Street police station!” It -was the same clear and determined young voice that had spoken from the -doorway.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a silence of only a few seconds. Then Frances heard the girl -give her name and house number. This she had to repeat twice, -apparently, to the sleepy sergeant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is a burglar in this house. Send an officer here, please, at -once!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A chill douche of apprehension seemed to restore Frances to her senses. -She ran across the room and groped feverishly along the wall for the -electric-light button. She could find none. But on the chiffonier was a -drop-globe, and with one quick turn of the wrist the room was flooded -with tinted light.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The prisoner first verified her fears; there was no possible avenue of -escape by way of the windows. These, she saw at once, were out of the -question.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So she stopped in front of the mirror, thinking quickly and lucidly; and -for the second time that night she decided to let down her hair. She -could twist the bank-notes up into a little rope, and pin her thick -braids closely over them, and no one might think to search for them -there. It was a slender thread, but on that thread still hung her only -hope.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She tore open her dress and flung the cover from the precious glove-box, -scattering the gloves about in her feverish search.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The box held nothing. The money was not there. It had been taken and -hidden elsewhere. And she might never have known, until it was too late!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then methodically and more coolly she made a second search throughout -the now lighted room. But nowhere could she find the package she -needed. And, after all it <span class='it'>was</span> too late! And in a sort of tidal wave of -deluging apprehension, she suddenly understood what life from that hour -forward was worth to her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She set to work to rearrange the chiffonier, inappositely and vacuously. -She even did what she could to put the room once more in order. This -accomplished, she took up her hot-water bottle, and still told herself -that she must not give up. Then she seated herself in a little -white-and-gold rocker, and waited, quietly blazing out through her -jungle of danger each different narrow avenue of expediency.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Poor Jim!” she murmured, under her breath, with one dry sob.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The hum of voices came to her from the hallway—the servants, obviously, -had been awakened. She could hear the footsteps come to a stop without, -and the shuffling of slippered feet on the hardwood floor. Then came the -drone of excited whisperings, the creak and jar of the doors opening and -closing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then, remote and muffled and far-away, sounded the sharp ringing of a -bell. Somebody out in the hallway gasped a relieved, “Thank heaven!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frances looked at herself in the mirror, adjusting her hair, and taking -note of the two little circles of scarlet that had deepened and spread -across her feverish cheeks.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she sat down once more, and swung the hot-water bottle from her -forefinger, and waited.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She heard the dull thud of the front door closing and a moment later the -sound of quick footsteps on the stairs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked about the comfortable, rose-tinted room, with its gilded -Louis clock, with its womanish signs and tokens, with its nest-like -warmth and softness; she looked about her slowly and comprehensively, as -though she had been taking her last view of life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she rose and went to the door, for the police had arrived.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XIX</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin was both puzzled and apprehensive. That a taxi should follow his -own at eleven o’clock at night, for some twenty-odd blocks, was a -singular enough coincidence. That it should stop when he stopped, that -it should wait, not a square away, for him to come out of his <span class='it'>café</span>, -and then shadow him home for another thirteen circuitous blocks, was -more than a coincidence. It was a signal for the utmost discretion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was not that Durkin, at this stage of the kaleidoscopic game, was -given to wasting tissue in unnecessary worry. But there had been that -mysterious cigar-light in the hallway. When he had glanced cautiously -down through the darkness, leaning well out over the bannister, he had -distinctly seen the little glow of light. Yet, with the exception of his -own top-floor rooms, the building was given over to business offices, -and by night he had invariably found the corridors empty and unused. No -Holmes watchman, no patrolman, not even a Central Office man, he knew, -indulged in fragrant Carolina Perfectos when covering his beat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But when he descended quietly to reconnoitre, he saw that no one went -down to the street door. And no one, he could see equally well, -remained on the stairs or in the halls, for he turned on the light, -floor by floor, as he went back to his rooms.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet nobody, again, intelligently trying to secrete himself, would thus -flaunt a lighted cigar in the darkness. From the suave and mellow odor -of that cigar, too, Durkin knew that the intruder was something more -than the ordinary house-thief and night-hawk.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As he thought the matter over, comfortably lounging back in a big -arm-chair up in his rooms, he tried to force himself to the pacifying -conclusion that the whole affair was fortuitous. He would keep a -weather-eye open for such casual occurrences, in the future; but he now -had no time to bother with the drifting shadows of uncertainty. He had -already that day faced more material dangers; there were more -substantial perils, he knew, rising up about him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He flung himself back, with a sigh, after looking at his watch, and -through the upward-threading drifts of his cigar smoke he wondered, -half-reprovingly, what was taking place in the house not two hundred -yards away from him, where Frances was so wakefully watching and -working, while he sat there, idly waiting—since waiting, for once, was -to be part of the game.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He afterward decided that in his sheer weariness of body and mind he -must have dozed off into a light sleep.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was past midnight when he awoke with a start, a vague sense of -impending evil heavy upon him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His first thought, on awakening, was that some one had knocked. He -glanced at his watch, as he sprang to open the door. It was on the point -of one.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frank should have been back an hour ago. Then he <span class='it'>had</span> fallen asleep, of -a certainty, he decided, with electric rapidity of thought.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But this was she, come at last, he conjectured. Yet, with that sense of -impending danger still over him, he stepped back and turned off the -lights. Then he quietly and cautiously opened the door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>No one was there. He peered quickly down through the gloom of the -hallways, but still neither sound nor movement greeted him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His now distraught mind quickly ran the gamut of possibilities. A -baffling, indeterminate impression seized him that somebody, somewhere, -was reaching out to him through the midnight silence, trying to come in -touch with him and speak to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked at the motionless clapper of his transmitter signal-bell, -where he had discreetly muffled the little gong with a linen -handkerchief. It could not have been the telephone.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet he caught up the receiver with a gesture of half-angered impatience.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“. . . in this house—send an officer at once!” were the words that sped -along the wire to his listening ear. An officer at once! Six quick -strokes of conjecture seemed to form the missing link to his chain of -thought.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My God!” he exclaimed in terror, “that means Frank!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There had been a hitch somewhere, and in some way. And that was the Van -Schaicks telephoning for the police—yes, decided Durkin, struggling to -keep his clearness of head, it would be first to the Sixty-Seventh -Street station that they would send for help.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had already learned, or striven to learn, at such work, not only to -think and to act, but to essay his second step of thinking while he -accomplished his first in action.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He rummaged through a suit-case filled with lineman’s tools, and -snatched up a nickel badge similar to that worn by inspectors of the -Consolidated Gas Company. It was taking odds, in one way, such as he had -never before in his career dared to take. But the case, he felt, was -desperate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Once off the Avenue he ran the greater part of the way round the block, -for he knew that in five minutes, at the outside, the police themselves -would be on the scene. And as he ran he let his alert imagination play -along the difficulties that walled him in, feeling, in ever-shifting -fancy, for the line of least resistance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He mounted the brownstone steps three at a time, and tore at the -old-fashioned bell. He pushed his way authoritatively up through a -cluster of servants, shivering and chattering and whispering along the -hall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At a young woman in a crimson quilted dressing-gown, faced with -baby-blue silk, he flashed his foolish little metal shield. She was a -resolute-browed, well-poised girl, looking strangely boyish with her -tumbled hair thrown loosely to one side.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m the plain-clothes man, the detective from the police station!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked at her abstractedly, and curtly shifted his revolver from his -hip-pocket to his side-pocket. This caused a stir among the servants.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Get those people out of here!” he ordered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The resolute-browed young woman in the dressing-gown scattered them with -a movement of the hand, and slipped a key into his fingers. Then she -pointed to a doorway.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This thing was half expected, ma’m, at Headquarters,” said Durkin -hurriedly, as he fitted the key. “It’s a woman, isn’t it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The girl with the resolute brow and the tumbled hair could not say.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I think I understand,” she went on hurriedly. “I had quite a large -sum of money, several thousand dollars, in my room here!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin, who had stooped to unlock the door, turned on her quickly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And it’s still in this room?” he demanded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No; it worried me too much. I was going to keep it, but I took it down -to the bank, this afternoon.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then the girl said “Sir!” wonderingly; for Durkin had emitted a quick -mutter of anger. They were doubly defeated. By this time the bedroom -door was open.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, I thought it would be a woman,” he went on coolly, as he glanced at -Frank’s staring and wide eyes. “And, if I mistake not, Miss Van Schaick, -this is Number 17358, at the Central Office.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frances knew his chortle was one of hysteria, but still she looked and -wondered. Once more Durkin flashed his badge as he took her firmly by -one shaking wrist.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come with me,” he said, with quiet authority, and step by step he led -her out into the hallway.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not a word!” he mumbled, under his breath, as he saw her parted lips -essay to speak.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s really too bad!” broke in the girl in the dressing-gown, -half-relentingly, with an effort to see the prisoner’s now discreetly -downcast face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You won’t say so, later,” retorted Durkin, toying to the full with the -ironic situation. “An old offender!” Even the bibulous butler, in the -doorway, shook his head knowingly at this, thereby intimating, as he -later explained, with certain reservations, to the second maid, that he -all along knew as much.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin pushed the gaping servants authoritatively aside.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have these people watch the back of the house—every window and door, -till the Inspector and his men come up. I’ll rap for the patrol from the -front.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin waited for neither reply nor questions, but hurried his charge -down the stairway, across the wide hall, and out through the heavy front -doors.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The audacity, the keen irony, the absurdity of it all, seemed to make -him light-headed, for he broke into a raucous laugh as he stood with her -in the cool and free night air.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But once down on the sidewalk he caught her shaking hand in his, and ran -with her, ran desperately and madly, until the rattle and clatter of a -bell broke on his ear. It was a patrol-wagon rumbling round from the -Avenue on the east. He would have turned back, but at the curb in front -of the Van Schaick mansion already a patrolman stood, rapping for -assistance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In his dilemma Durkin dropped breathlessly down an area stairs, feeling -the limp weight of the woman on his body as he fell. To Frances herself -it seemed like the effortless fall in a nightmare; she could remember -neither how nor when it ended, only she had the sensation of being -pulled sharply across cold flagstones. Durkin had dragged her in under -the shadow of the heavy brownstone steps, behind a galvanized iron -garbage can, hoping against hope that he had not been noticed, and -silently praying that if indeed the end was to come it might not come in -a setting so sordid and mean and small.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A street cat, lean and gaunt and hungry-looking, slunk like a shadow -down the area-steps. The eyes of the two fugitives watched it intently. -As it slunk and crept from shadow to shadow it suddenly became, to the -worn and depressed Durkin, a symbol of his own career, a homeless and -migratory Hunger, outlawed, pursued, unresting, a ravenous and -unappeased purloiner of a great city’s scraps and tatters.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The soft pressure of Frank’s arm on his own drove the passing thought -from his mind. And they sat together on the stone slabs, silently, hand -in hand, till the patrol-wagon rattled past once more, and the street -noises died down, and hastily opened windows were closed, and footsteps -no longer passed along the street above them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then they ventured cautiously out, and, waiting their chance, sauntered -decorously toward the corner. There they boarded a passing car, bound -southward and crowded to the doors with the members of a German musical -club, who sang loudly and boisterously as they went.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It seemed the most celestial of music to Durkin, as he hung on a strap -in their midst, with Frank’s warm body hemmed in close to him, and the -precious weight of it clinging and swaying there from his arm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Suddenly he looked down at her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where are you going tonight?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Their eyes met. The tide of abandonment that had threatened to engulf -him slowly subsided, as he read the quiet pain in her gaze.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am going back to the Ralston,” she said, with resolute simplicity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, good heaven, think of the risk!” he still half-heartedly pleaded. -“It’s dangerous, now!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My beloved own,” she said, with her habitual slow little head shake, -and with a quietness of tone that carried a tacit reproof with it, “life -has far worse dangers than the Ralston!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had felt unconditionally, completely drawn toward him a moment -before, while still warm with her unuttered gratitude. As she thought of -the indignity and the danger from which he had carried her she had -almost burned with the passion for some fit compensation, without any -consideration of self. Now, in her weariness of body and nerve, he had -unconsciously unmasked her own potential weakness to herself, and she -felt repelled from him, besieged and menaced by him, the kindest and yet -the most cruel of all her enemies.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XX</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>As she slowly wakened in response to the call that had been left at the -hotel office, Frances wondered, with the irrelevancy of the mental -machinery’s first slow movements, if Durkin, at that precise moment, was -still sleeping in his own bed and room in his own distant part of the -city. For his awakening, she felt, would be sure to be a gray and -disheartening one. It would be then, and then only, that the true -meaning of their defeat would come home to him. She wondered, too, if he -was looking to her, waiting for her to help him face the old-time, -dreaded monotony of inactive and purposeless life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, poor Jim!” she murmured again, under her breath.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She hoped, as she waked more fully to her world of realities, that he at -least was still sleeping, that he at any rate was securing his essential -rest of nerve and body,—for some heavy dregs of her own utter weariness -of the previous night still weighed down her spirits and ached in her -limbs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had always boasted that she could sleep like a child. “I make a -rampart of my two pillows, and no worries ever get over it!” Yet she -now felt, as she waited for a lingering last minute or two in her warm -bed, that, if fortune allowed it, she could lie there forever, and still -be unsatisfied, and cry for one hour more.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But she had already made her rigorous plans for the day, and time, she -knew, was precious. After her bath she at once ordered up an ample -breakfast of fruit and eggs and coffee and devilled mutton -chops—remembering, as she religiously devoured her meat, that Durkin -had always declared she was carnivorous, protesting that he could tell -it by those solid, white, English teeth of hers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she dressed herself simply, in a white shirt-waist and a black -broadcloth skirt, with a black-feathered turban-hat draped with a heavy -traveling veil. This simple toilet, however, she made with infinite -care, pausing only long enough to tell herself that today, as never -before, appearances were to count with her. Yet beyond this she brushed -every thought away from her. She kept determinedly preoccupied, moving -feverishly about the room, allowing space for no meditative interludes, -permitting herself never to think of the day and what it was to hold for -her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she hurried from her room, and down into the street, and into a -taxi, and through the clear, cool, wintry sunlight drove straight to the -Guilford, an apartment hotel, where Sunset Bryan, the race-track -plunger, made his home when in New York.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Guilford was one of those ultra-ornamented, over-upholstered, -gaudily-vulgar upper Broadway hotels, replete with marble and onyx, with -plate glass and gilt and outward imperturbability, where a veneer of -administrative ceremonial covered the decay and sogginess of affluent -license. It was here, Frances only too well knew, that Little Myers, the -jockey, held forth in state; it was here that an unsavory actress or two -made her home; that Upton Banaster, the turf-man, held rooms; that -Penfield himself had once lived; it was here that the “big-ring” -bookmakers, and the more sinister and successful rail-birds and -sheet-writers and touts foregathered; it was here that the initiated -sought and found the court of the most gentlemanly blacklegs in all New -York.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>All this she knew, and had known beforehand; but the full purport of it -came home to her only as she descended from her taxi-cab, and passed up -the wide step that led into the sickeningly resplendent lobby.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then, for the second time in her career, she did a remarkable and an -unexpected thing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For one moment she stood there, motionless, unconscious of the tides of -life that swept in and out on either side of her. She stood there, like -an Alpine traveller on his fragile little mountain bridge of pendulous -pine and rope, gazing down into the sudden and awful abysses beside her, -which seemed to open up out of the very stone and marble that hemmed her -in. For at one breath all the shrouded panoramic illusions of life -seemed to have melted before her eyes. It left her gaping and panting -into what seemed the mouth of Hell itself. It deluged her with one -implacable desire, with one unreasoning, childlike passion to escape, if -only for the moment, that path which some day, she knew, she must yet -traverse. But escape she must, until some newer strength could come to -her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She clenched and unclenched her two hands, slowly. Then she as slowly -turned, where she stood, re-entered her taxi-cab, and drove back to her -own rooms once more. There she locked and bolted her door, flung from -her hat and gloves and veil, and fell to pacing her room, staring-eyed -and rigid.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She could not do it! Her heart had failed her. Before that final test -she had succumbed, ignominiously and absolutely. For in one moment of -reverie, as she faced that hostelry of all modern life’s unloveliness, -her own future existence lay before her eyes, as in a painted picture, -from day to day and year to year. It had been branded on her -consciousness as vividly as had that picture of a far different life, -which had come to her behind the ivy-covered walls of her uncle’s -parsonage. It was a continuous today of evil, an endless tomorrow of -irresolution. Day by day she was becoming more firmly linked to that -ignoble and improvident class who fed on the very offal of social -activity. She was becoming more and more a mere drifting derelict upon -the muddy waters of the lower life, mindless and soulless and -purposeless. No; not altogether mindless, she corrected herself, for -with her deeper spiritual degradation, she felt, she was becoming more -and more an introspective and self-torturing dreamer, self-deceiving and -self-blighting—like a veritable starving rat, that has been forced to -turn and nibble ludicrously at its own tail.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet why had she faltered and hesitated, at such a moment, she demanded -of herself. This she could not fully answer. She was becoming enigmatic, -even to herself. And already it was too late to draw back—even the -tantalizing dream of withdrawal was now a mockery. For, once, she had -thought that life was a single straight thread; now she knew it to be a -mottled fabric in which the past is woven and bound up with the future, -in which tangled tomorrows and yesterdays make up the huddled cloth. She -writhed, in her agony of mind, at the thought that she had no one to -whom to open her soul. This she had always shrunk from doing before -Durkin (and that, she warned herself, was an ill omen) and there had -been no one else to whom she could go for comradeship and consolation. -Then she began making excuses for herself, feebly, at first, more -passionately as she continued her preoccupied pacing of the floor. She -was only one of many. Women, the most jealously guarded and the most -softly shrouded women had erred. And, after all, much lay in the point -of view. What was criminality from one aspect, was legitimate endeavor -from another. All life, she felt, was growing more feverish, more -competitive, more neuropathic, more potentially and dynamically -criminal. She was a leaf on the current of the time.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And her only redemption now, she told herself, was to continue along -that course in a manner which would lend dignity, perhaps even the -glorified dignity of tragedy itself, to what must otherwise be a squalid -and sordid life. Since she was in the stream, she must strike out for -the depths, not cringe and whimper among the shallows. By daring and -adventuring, audaciously, to the uttermost, that at least could still -lend a sinister radiance to her wrong-doing. That alone could make -excuse for those whimpering and snivelling sensibilities which would not -keep to the kennel of her heart.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet it was only the flesh that was weak and faltering, she argued—and -in an abstracted moment she remembered how even a greater evil-doer than -she herself had buoyed her will to endure great trial. “<span class='it'>That which hath -made them drunk hath made me bold</span>,” she repeated to herself, -inspirationally, as she remembered the small medicine-flask of cognac -which she carried in her toilet bag.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She hated the thought of it, and the taste of it,—but more than all she -hated the future into which she dare no longer look. As she medicined -her cowardice with the liquor she could not help marvelling at the -seeming miracle, for, minute by minute, with each scalding small -draught, her weak-heartedness ebbed away. She knew that later there -would be stern exaction for that strength, but she had her grim work to -do, and beggars can not always be choosers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she gathered up her veil and hat and gloves, and once more made -ready for her day’s enterprise. The pith-ball had passed from its period -of revulsion to its period of attraction.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XXI</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>Frances Candler’s fingers trembled a little at the Guilford office desk -as she took out her card and penciled beneath her name: “Representing -the Morning Journal.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She knew that Sunset Bryan’s success on the circuit, his midnight -prodigalities, his bewildering lavishness of life, and his projected -departure for New Orleans, had already brought the reporters buzzing -about his apartments. Even as she lifted the blotter to dry the line she -had written with such craven boldness, her eye fell on a well-thumbed -card before her, bearing the inscription:</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em;font-size:1.1em;'>ALBERT ERIC SPAULDING</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1em;font-size:1.1em;'>The Sunday Sun.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A moment later she had it in her white-gloved hand, with her own card -discreetly hidden away, and in the most matter-of-fact of voices she was -asking the busy clerk behind the desk if she could see Mr. Bryan.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mr. Bryan is a very late riser,” he explained.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know that,” she answered coolly, “but he’s expecting me, I think.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The clerk looked at her, as he stamped the card, and he continued to -look at her, studiously and yet quizzically, as a bell-boy led her back -to the elevator. Sunset Bryan and the type of men he stood for, the -puzzled clerk knew well enough; but this type of woman he did not know. -Sunset, obviously, was branching out.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You needn’t bother to wait!” she said to the youth who had touched the -electric button beside the great, high-paneled door of the apartment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stood there quietly until the boy had turned a corner in the -hallway; then she boldly opened the door and stepped inside.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The big, many-mirrored, crimson-carpeted room was empty, but from an -inner room came the clinking of chopped ice against glass and the hiss -of a seltzer siphon. The race-track king was evidently about to take his -morning pick-me-up. A heavy odor of stale cigar-smoke filled the place. -She wondered what the next step would be.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hello, there, Allie, old boy!” the gambler’s off-hand and surprisingly -genial bass voice called out, as he heard the door close sharply behind -Frances.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That must mean, thought the alert but frightened girl, that Albert Eric -Spaulding and the plunger were old friends. Once more the siphon hissed -and spat, and the ice clinked against the thin glass. Here was a -predicament.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hello!” answered the woman, at last, steeling herself into a careless -buoyancy of tone ill-suited to the fear-dilated pupils of her eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She heard a muffled but startled “Good God!” echo from the inner room. A -moment later the doorway was blocked by the shadow of a huge figure, and -she knew that she was being peered at by a pair of small, wolfish eyes, -as coldly challenging as they were audacious.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked nervously at her gloved hands, at the little handkerchief she -was torturing between her slightly shaking fingers. Her gloves, she -noticed, were stained here and there with perspiration.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If she had not already passed through her chastening ordeal with a -half-drunken English butler, and if the shock of that untoward -experience had not in some way benumbed and hardened her shrinking -womanhood, she felt that she would have screamed aloud and then -incontinently fled—in the very face of those grim and countless -resolutions with which she had bolstered up a drooping courage. It -flashed through her, with the lightning-like rapidity of thought at such -moments, that for all her dubiously honest career she had been strangely -sheltered from the coarser brutalities of life. She had always shrunk -from the unclean and the unlovely. If she had not always been honest, -she had at least always been honorable. Durkin, from the first, had -recognized and respected this inner and better side of her beating so -forlornly and so ineffectually against the bars of actuality; and it was -this half-hidden fineness of fibre in him, she had told herself, that -had always marked him, to her, as different from other men.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But here was a man from whom she could look for no such respect, a -corrupt and evil-liver whom she had already practically taunted and -challenged with her own show of apparent evilness. So she still tortured -her handkerchief and felt the necessity of explaining herself, for the -big gambler’s roving little eyes were still sizing her up, -cold-bloodedly, judicially, terrifyingly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re all right, little girl,” he said genially, as his six feet of -insolent rotundity came and towered over her. “You’re all right! And a -little dimple in your chin, too.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A new wave of courage seemed pumping through all of the shrinking girl’s -veins, of a sudden, and she looked up at her enemy unwaveringly, smiling -a little. Whereupon he smilingly and admiringly pinched her ear, and -insisted that she have a “John Collins” with him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again she felt the necessity of talking. Unless the stress of action -came to save her she felt that she would faint.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m a Morning Journal reporter,” she began hurriedly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The devil you are!” he said with a note of disappointment, his wagging -head still on one side, in undisguised admiration.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I’m from the Journal,” she began.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then how did you get this card?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s a mistake in the office—the clerk must have sent you the wrong -one,” she answered glibly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come off! Come off! You good-looking women are all after me!” and he -pinched her ear again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m a Morning Journal reporter,” she found herself rattling on, as she -stood there quaking in mysterious fear of him, “and we’re going to run a -story about you being the Monte Cristo of modern circuit-followers, and -all that sort of thing. Then we want to know if it was true that you -copped one hundred and sixty thousands dollars on Africander at -Saratoga, and if you would let our photographer get some nice pictures -of your rooms here, and a good one of yourself—oh, yes, you would take -a splendid picture. And then I wanted to know if it is true that your -system is to get two horses that figure up as if they each had a good -square chance and then play the longer of the two and put enough on the -other for a place to cover your losses if the first one should lose. And -our sporting editor has said that you make that a habit, and that often -enough you are able to cash on both, and that you—”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Say, look here, little girl, what in the devil are you driving at, -anyway?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m a reporter on the Morning Journal,” she reiterated, vacuously, -foolishly, passing her hand across her forehead with a weak little -gesture of bewilderment. She could feel her courage withering away. -Alcohol, she was learning, was an ally of untimely retreats.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, it’s a shame for a girl like you to get afraid of me this way! -Hold on, now, don’t butt in! It’s not square to use a mouth like that -for talking—I’d rather see it laughing, any day. So just cool down and -tell me, honest and out-and-out, what it is you’re after.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She flung herself forward and hung on him, in a quite unlooked for -paroxysm of hysteria, apparently reckless of the moment and the menace.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s this,” she sobbed in a sudden mental obsession, the tears of -actual anguish running down her face. “It’s this,” she went on shrilly, -hurriedly. “<span class='it'>I’ve put my money on the Duke of Kendall today—and if he -doesn’t come in, I’m going to kill myself!</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sunset Bryan let his arm drop from her shoulder in astonishment. Then he -stepped back a few paces, studying her face as she mopped it with her -moistened handkerchief. She would never drink brandy again, was the idle -and inconsequential thought that sped through her unstable mind. For it -was not she herself that was speaking and acting; it was, she felt, some -irresponsible and newly unleashed spirit within her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why’d you do it?” he demanded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Because—because Clara—that’s Clara Shirley, his rider’s sister—told -me the Duke of Kendall was fixed to win on a long shot this afternoon!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, look here—are you, or are you not, a newspaper woman?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I’m not,” she shrilled out. “I lied, just to get in to see you!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you’ve put your money on this Duke of Kendall?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Every cent I own—every cent! If I lose it—oh—It will kill me to lose -it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But what the devil did you come here for?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Because I am desperate! I’ve—I’ve—”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, don’t spoil those lovely eyes by crying this way, honey-girl! What -would I get if I told you something about that race this afternoon?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I’d give you anything!” she cried, almost drunkenly, snatching some -belated hope from the change in his tone.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you mean that?” he demanded suddenly, stepping back and looking at -her from under his shaggy brows.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No—no, not that,” she gasped quickly, in terror, for then, and then -only, did she catch an inkling of his meaning. She felt that she had -floundered into a quagmire of pollution, and that the more fiercely she -struggled and fought, the more stained with its tainted waters she was -destined to remain.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was afraid to look up at the crafty, sunburnt, animal-like face -before her, with its wrinkles about the heavy line of the mouth, and its -minutely intersecting crow’s-feet in the corners of the shrewd and -squinting eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt that the very air of life was being walled and held away from -her. Still another fierce longing for escape took hold of her, and she -shuddered a little as she fought and battled against it. She seemed -without the strength to speak, and could only shake her head and try not -to shrink away from him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Still afraid of me, eh?” he asked, as he lifted her drooping head -brazenly, with his forefinger under her chin. He studied her -tear-stained, colorless face for a minute or two, and then he went on:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I’m not so rotten as I might be! Here’s a tip for you, little -girl! The Duke of Kendall is goin’ to come in on a long shot and what’s -more, he’s goin’ to run on odds of fifty to one!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re certain of it?” she gasped.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dead sure of it, between you and me! There’s a gang down at the -Rossmore’d cover this floor with gold just to know that tip!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then we <span class='it'>can</span> win! It’s <span class='it'>not</span> too late!” she broke out fervently, -forgetting where she stood, forgetting the man before her. She was -already reaching up to draw down her veil, with a glance over her -shoulder at the door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Am I goin’ to see you again?” he still wheedled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again their eyes met. She had to struggle desperately to keep down the -inward horror of it all. And now above all things there must be no -missteps.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” she murmured.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When?” he demanded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll come back—tomorrow!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She already had her hand on the door-handle, when he called to her -sharply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here, wait one minute!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She paused, in some deadly new fear of him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Look here, little girl, I began to follow this business of mine when I -was nineteen years old. I’m forty-three now, and in those twenty-four -years I’ve hauled in a heap of money. Are you listening?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” she murmured.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And I’ve hauled in something besides money!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Still she waited.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What I haven’t made by plunging I’ve made by poker. And I’d never have -come out the long end if I didn’t know a thing or two about faces. I -know a bluff when I see it. Now I want to tell you something.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well?” she faltered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re not comin’ back tomorrow! You’re not comin’ back at all, my -pink-and-white beauty! I’m tellin’ you this for two reasons. One is that -I don’t want you to carry off the idea that you’ve been breakin’ me all -up, and the other is that I’m not so rotten bad as—well, as Bob -Pinkerton would try to make me out. That’s all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good-bye!” murmured the humbled woman from the doorway.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good-bye, and good luck!” answered Sunset Bryan in his genial bass.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XXII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>For all the rest of that day Frances Candler hated herself, hated Durkin -for the mean and despicable paths into which he and his plottings had -forced her, hated her sordid and humiliating conquest of the gambler -Bryan and his secret.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But most of all she hated what she saw was happening within herself, the -insidious and yet implacable hardening and narrowing of all her nature, -the accumulating of demeaning and corroding memories, the ripening of a -more and more morose self-contempt into a vague yet sullen malevolence -of thought and wish.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She told herself, forlornly, that she still would not let her better -nature die without a struggle, for all that she had done, and for all -that she had been through. What crushed and disheartened her was the -conviction that this struggle once more, in the end, would prove a -futile one. She was not bad, though, not all bad, like women she had -known! She had always aspired and turned toward what was right and -good—her spirit cried out desolately. It was not that she had gained -anything through all her wrong-doing. From the first, she felt, she had -been the tool in some stronger hand; she had been only the leaf on the -winds of some darker destiny. At first it had been to live, and nothing -more. Now it was to love—only some day to love as she had always hoped -to do; not at once to win the crown, but some day to hope to be able to -win that crown. For this she was surrendering her womanhood, her -integrity of soul, even the last shred of her tattered self-respect.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She would not die in a day, she told herself again, desperately. She -would not surrender everything without a struggle. What remained of her -scattered legions of honor, she passionately promised herself, would -still be gathered together and fostered and guarded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Above all things, she felt, she needed companionship. Durkin meant much -to her—meant far too much to her, for time and time again he had only -too easily shattered her card-house of good resolutions. She had blindly -submerged herself for him and his efforts. It was not that she stopped -to blame or reprove him; her feeling was more one of pity, of sorrow for -the unstable and unreconciled nature in the fell clutch of circumstance. -Yes, he meant more to her than she dare tell herself. But there were -moods and moments when he proved inadequate, and to allow that sad truth -to go unrecognized was more than blindness. If only she had, or could -have, the friendship of a woman,—that was her oft-recurring -thought,—the companionship of one warm nature quick to understand the -gropings and aspirations of another. With such a friend, she vaguely -felt, things might not yet be so ill with her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But she knew of none. There was no one, she realized, to whom she could -look for help. And she tried to console herself with the bitter unction -of the claim that with her the world had always been doggedly unkind and -cruel, that with an Æschylean pertinacity, morbidly interpreted as -peculiar to her case, fate, or destiny, or the vague forces for which -those words stood, had hounded and frustrated her at every turn.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This maddening feeling of self-hate and contempt stayed with her all -that day. It made stiflingly hideous and sinister, to her brooding eyes, -the over-furnished woman’s pool-room which had once been Penfield’s own, -where she counted out her money and placed her bet on the Duke of -Kendall. The broken-spirited and hard-faced women who waited about the -operator’s wicket, the barrenness and malignity of their lives, the -vainly muffled squalidness of that office of envenomed Chance, the -abortive lust for gold without labor, the empty and hungry eyes that -waited and watched the figure-covered blackboard, the wolf-like ears -that pricked up at the report of some belated prey in the distance—it -all filled Frances with a new and disheartening hatred of herself and -the life into which she had drifted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, God!” she prayed silently, yet passionately, while the little -sounder in the operator’s stall clicked and sang; “Oh, God, may it turn -out that this shall be the last!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Listlessly she read the messages, as the report for the fifth Aqueduct -event of the afternoon began to flash in and the announcer cried out, -“They’re off!” Dreamily she interpreted the snatches of information as -they came in over the wire: “Scotch Heather leads, with White-Legs -second!” “Scotch Heather still leading at the quarter, and Heart’s -Desire pressing White-Legs close.” “Heart’s Desire leads at the half, -with the Duke of Kendall second.” “White-Legs, the Duke of Kendall, and -Heart’s Desire bunched at the turn.” “Duke of Kendall holds the rail, -with Heart’s Desire and White-Legs locked for second place.” Then, for a -minute or two, silence took possession of the little brass sounder. Then -thrilled out the news: “<span class='it'>The Duke of Kendall wins!</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frances quietly waited, amid the hubbub and crowding and commotion, -until the wire report had been duly verified and the full returns -posted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then, when the little window of the paying clerk slid open for the -making of settlements, she deposited her ticket, and quietly asked to -have it in hundreds.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her slip read for two hundred dollars on the Duke of Kendall at odds of -fifty to one.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I guess this shop shuts up mighty soon, on this kind of runnin’,” said -the paying clerk sourly, after consulting with his chief, and flinging -her money through his little wicket at her. She counted it -methodically, amid the gasps and little envious murmurs of the women at -her elbow, and then hurried from the room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, you ought to be happier-looking!” snarled a painted woman with -solitaire diamond earrings, as Frances hurried down the half-lighted -stairway to the street.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There the woman who ought to be happy signaled moodily for a taxi-cab, -and drove straight to Durkin’s apartments.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She flung the pile of bills at him, in a heap before his astonished -eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There it is,” she said, with shaking hands and quivering lips, flashing -at him a look in which he could see hatred, contempt, self-disgust and -infinite unhappiness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There it is!” she called out to him, shrilly. “There it is—all you -wanted, at last, and I <span class='it'>hope it will make you happy</span>!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She tore the veil she had dragged from her head between her two -distraught hands and flung it from her, and then fell in the other’s -arms and wept on his shoulder like a tired child, convulsively, -bitterly, hopelessly.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XXIII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>“Helen can not possibly sail tomorrow.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This was the cipher message which flashed from Samuel Curry to his New -Orleans partner, giving him hurried warning that the final movement in -their cotton coup had been again postponed for at least another -twenty-four hours. Frances Candler, keeping watch on the up-town wires, -had caught the first inkling of this relieving news. After a passionate -hour of talk and pleading from Durkin, and after twelve long hours of -unbroken sleep, much of her spirit of rebelliousness had passed away, -and she had unwillingly and listlessly taken up the threads of what -seemed to her a sadly tangled duty once more.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But with the advent of Curry’s climactic message her old, more intimate -interest in the game gradually awoke. By daylight she had sent word down -to Durkin, who, about that time, was having quite trouble enough of his -own.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For his underground guerrilla work, as it was called, had its risks in -even the remoter parts of the city. But here, in the Wall Street -district, by day the most carefully guarded area of all New York, just -as by night the Tenderloin is the most watched—here, with hundreds -hourly passing to and fro and Central Office men buzzing back and forth, -Durkin knew there were unusual perils, and need for unusual care.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet early that morning, under the very eyes of a patrolman, he had -casually and hummingly entered the Postal-Union conduit, by way of the -manhole not sixty yards from Broadway itself. In his hands he carried -his instruments and a bag of tools, and he nodded with businesslike -geniality as the patrolman stepped over toward him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Got a guard to stand over this manhole?” demanded the officer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nope!” said Durkin. “Three minutes down here ought to do me!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You people are gettin’ too dam’ careless about these things,” rebuked -the officer. “It’s <span class='it'>me</span> gets the blame, o’ course, when a horse sticks -his foot in there!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, cover the hole, then!” retorted Durkin genially, as he let himself -down.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Once safely in the covered gloom of the conduit, he turned on his light -and studied a hurriedly made chart of the subway wire-disposition. The -leased Curry wires, he very well knew, were already in active service; -and the task before him was not unlike the difficult and dangerous -operation of a surgeon. Having located and cut open his cables, and in -so doing exposed the busy arteries of most of Wall Street’s brokerage -business, he carefully adjusted his rheostat, throwing the resistant -coils into circuit one by one as he turned the graduated pointer. It was -essential that he should remain on a higher resistance than the circuit -into which he was cutting; in other words, he must not bleed his patient -too much, for either a heavy leakage or an accidental short-circuiting, -he knew, would lead to suspicion and an examination, if not a prompt -“throwing it into the quad,” or the reversal to the protection of some -distant and indirect wire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When his current had been nicely adjusted and his sensitive little -polarized relay had broken into a fit of busy and animated chattering, -he turned his attention to the unused and rusted end of gas-pipe which -careless workmen, months, or even years, before, had hurriedly capped -and left protruding a good quarter-inch into the conduit. On this cap he -adjusted a pair of pocket pipe-tongs. It took all his weight to start -the rusted pipe-head, but once loosened, it was only a minute’s work to -unscrew the bit of metal and expose the waiting ends of the wires which -he had already worked through from the basement end of the pipe. He then -proceeded with great deliberation and caution to make his final -connections, taking infinite care to cover his footsteps as he went, -concealing his wire where possible, and leaving, wherever available, no -slightest trace of interference.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When everything was completed, it was nothing more than an incision made -by a skilled and artful surgeon, a surgeon who had as artfully dressed -the wound, and had left only a slender drainage tube to show how deep -the cutting had been.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin then repacked his tools in his spacious double-handled club bag -of black sea-lion, put out his light, emerged whistling and dirt-soiled -from his manhole, and having rounded the block, slipped into his -basement printing-office and changed his clothes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What most impressed and amazed Durkin, when once his quadruplex had been -adjusted and pressed into service, was the absolute precision and -thoroughness with which the Curry line of action had been prearranged. -It was as diffusedly spectacular as some great international campaign. -This Machiavellian operator’s private wires were humming with messages, -deputies throughout the country were standing at his beck and call, -emissaries and underlings were waiting to snatch up the crumbs which -fell from his overloaded board, his corps of clerks were toiling away as -feverishly as ever, Chicago and St. Louis and Memphis and New Orleans -were being thrown into a fever of excitement and foreboding, fortunes -were being wrested away in Liverpool, the Lancaster mills were shutting -down, and still cotton was going up, up, point by point; timid clerks -and messenger boys and widows, even, were pouring their pennies and -dollars into the narrowing trench which separated them from twenty cent -cotton and fortune.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet only two men knew and understood just how this Napoleon of commerce -was to abandon and leave to its own blind fate this great, -uncomprehending, maddened army of followers. Speculators who had made -their first money in following at his heels were putting not only their -winnings, but all their original capital, and often that of others, on -the “long” side of the great bull movement, waiting, always waiting, for -that ever alluring Fata Morgana of twenty cent cotton. Even warier -spirits, suburban toilers, sober-minded mechanics, humble store-traders, -who had long regarded ’Change as a very Golgotha of extortion and -disaster, had been tainted with the mysterious psychologic infection, -which had raced from city to town and from town to hamlet. Men bowed -before a new faith and a new creed, and that faith and creed lay -compactly in three pregnant words: Twenty Cent Cotton.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet this magnetic and spectacular bull leader, Durkin felt, was -infinitely wiser and craftier than any of those he led. Curry, at heart, -knew and saw the utter hopelessness of his cause; he realized that he -was only toying and trifling with a great current that in the end, when -its moment came, would sweep him and his followers away like so many -chips. He faced and foresaw this calamity, and out of the calamity which -no touch of romanticism in his nature veiled to his eyes, he quietly -prepared to reap his harvest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As these thoughts ran through Durkin’s busy mind, some vague idea of the -power which reposed in his own knowledge of how great the current was to -become, and just what turn it was to take, once more awakened in him. -He had none of that romantic taint, he prided himself, which somewhere -or at some time invariably confused the judgment of the gambler and the -habitual criminal—for they, after all, he often felt, were in one way -essentially poets in spirit, though dreamers grown sour through -stagnation. Yet he could see, in the present case, how gigantic his -opportunities were. Properly equipped, with a very meagre sum, millions -lay before him, inevitably. But the stain of illegitimacy clung to his -methods, and as it was, his returns at best could be only a paltry few -thousands—fifty or sixty or even a hundred thousand at most. With Curry -it would be millions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin remembered his frugal train-despatching days at the barren little -wooden station at Komoka Junction, where forty dollars a month had -seemed a fortune to him. He lighted a Carolina Perfecto, and inhaled it -slowly and deliberately, demanding to know why he ought not to be -satisfied with himself. In those earlier days he used to eat his dinner -out of a tin pail, carried each morning from his bald and squalid -boarding-house. Today, he remembered, he was to take luncheon with -Frances at the Casa Napoleon, with its exquisite Franco-Spanish cookery, -its tubbed palms, and its general air of exotic well-being.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His luncheon with Frances, however, was not what he had looked for. He -met her in front of the West Ninth Street restaurant as she was stepping -out of her taxi-cab. She seemed unusually pale and worried, though an -honestly happy smile flitted across her lightly veiled face as she -caught sight of him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In a moment again her manner changed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We are being watched,” she said, in a low voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Watched! By whom?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Their eyes met and he could see the alarm that had taken possession of -her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“By MacNutt!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin grew a little paler as he looked down at her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He has shadowed us for two days,” she went on in her tense, low, quick -tones. “He followed me out of our own building, and I got away from him -only by leaving my taxi and slipping through a department store.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did he speak to you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, not a word. I don’t even think he dreams I have seen him. But it is -hard to say how much he has found out. Oh, Jim, he’s slow and sly and -cunning, and he won’t strike until the last minute. But when he does, he -will try to—to smash us both!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll kill that man as sure as I’m standing on this curbstone, if he -ever butts in on this game of ours! This isn’t pool-room piking we’re at -now, Frank—this is big and dangerous business!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had remembered the cigar-light in the dark passageway, and the -mysterious disappearance, then later the taxi-cab that had strangely -followed his own.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, no, Jim; you mustn’t say that!” she was murmuring to him, with a -little shiver. “I’m afraid of him!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, <span class='it'>I’m</span> not,” said Durkin, and he swore softly and wickedly, as he -repeated his threat. “What does <span class='it'>he</span> want to come into our lives for, -now? He’s over and done with, long ago!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We are never over and done with anything we have been,” she almost -sobbed, half tragically.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin looked at her, a little impatient, and also a little puzzled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Frank, what is this man MacNutt to you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was silent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What has he ever been to you, then?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is a cruel and cunning and bitterly vindictive man,” she said, -evading the question. “And if he determined to crush a person, he would -do it, although it took him twenty years.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then I certainly <span class='it'>will</span> kill him!” declared Durkin, shaken with a -sudden unreasoning sweep of white passion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was not until he had half finished his luncheon that his steadiness -of nerve came back to him. Here he had been shadowing the shadower, step -by step and move by move, and all along, even in those moments when he -had taken such delight in covertly and unsuspectingly watching his -quarry, a second shadow had been secretly and cunningly stalking his own -steps!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It will be a fight to the finish, whatever happens!” he declared -belligerently, still harping on the string of his new unhappiness.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XXIV</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin, bending restlessly over his relay, and dreamily cogitating on -the newly discovered fact that Morse was a language as harmonious and -mysterious and subtly expressive as music itself, sat up with a sudden -galvanic jerk of the body.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Helen sails at one tomorrow!</span>” thrilled and warbled and sang the -little machine of dots and dashes; and the listening operator knew that -his time had come. He caught up the wires that ran through the gas-pipe -to the conduit, and bracing himself against the basement wall, pulled -with all his strength. They parted suddenly, somewhere near the cables, -and sent him sprawling noisily over the floor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He hurriedly picked himself up, flung every tool and instrument that -remained in the dingy basement into his capacious club bag, and -carefully coiled and wrapped every foot of telltale wire. As little -evidence as possible, he decided, should remain behind him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Five minutes later he stepped into Robinson & Little’s brokerage -offices. It was, in fact, just as the senior member of the firm was -slipping off his light covert-cloth overcoat and making ready for a -feverish day’s business.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ezra Robinson stared a little hard when Durkin told him that he had -thirteen thousand dollars to throw into “short” cotton that morning, and -asked on what margin he would be able to do business.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well,” answered the broker, with his curt laugh, “it’s only on the -buying side that we’re demanding five dollars a bale <span class='it'>this</span> morning!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked at Durkin sharply. “You’re on the wrong side of the market, -young man!” he warned him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Perhaps,” said Durkin easily. “But I’m superstitious!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The man of business eyed him almost impatiently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin laughed good-naturedly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I mean I had a sort of Joseph’s dream that cotton was going to break -down to sixteen today!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, you can’t afford to work on dreams. Cotton goes up to nineteen -today, and stays there. Candidly, I’d advise you to keep off the bear -side—for a month or two, anyway!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Durkin was not open to dissuasion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When May drops down to sixteen or so I’ll be ready to let the ‘shorts’ -start to cover!” he argued mildly, as he placed his money, gave his -instructions, and carried away his all-important little slip of paper.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he hurried out, and dodged and twisted and ran through those -crowded and sunless cañons of business where only a narrow strip of -earth’s high-arching sky showed overhead. As he turned from William -Street into Hanover Square, through the second tier of half-opened -plate glass windows he could already hear the dull roar of the Cotton -Pit. The grim day’s business, he knew, was already under way.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Four policemen guarded the elevators leading to the spectator’s gallery. -The place was crowded to the doors; no more were to be admitted. Durkin, -however, pushed resolutely through the staggering mass, and elbowed and -twisted his way slowly up the stairs. Here again another row of guards -confronted him. A man at his side was excitedly explaining that the -Weather Bureau had just issued flood warnings, for danger line stages in -the lower Black Warrior of Alabama and the Chattahoochee of Georgia. And -<span class='it'>that</span> ought to hold the “bears” back, the man declared, as Durkin -elbowed his way in to the guards.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No use, mister, we can’t let you in,” said a perspiring officer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He stood with his back to the closed door. At each entrance a -fellow-officer stood in the same position. The receipts at Bombay, for -the half-week, cried still another excited follower of the market, were -only thirty-eight thousands bales.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hey, stand back there! Let ’em out! Here’s a woman fainted!” came the -cry from within, and the doors were swung wide to allow the woman to be -carried through.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin wedged a five-dollar bill down between the guarding policeman’s -fingers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There’s your chance. For God’s sake, get me in!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The doors were already being closed, and the din within again shut off -from the listening crowd in the hallway.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here, stand back! Gentleman’s got a ticket!” and without further ado -the big officer cannonaded him into the midst of the gallery mob.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Once there, Durkin edged round by the wall, squeezed himself -unceremoniously out, until, at last, he came to the brass railing -guarding the edge of the spectator’s gallery. Then he took a deep -breath, and gazed down at the sea of commotion that boiled and eddied at -his feet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was one mad tumult of contending forces, a maelstrom of opposing -currents. Seldom was there a lull in that hundred-throated delirium, -where, on raised steps about a little circular brass railing, men -shouted and danced and flung up their hands and raced back and forth -through a swarming beehive of cotton-hunger. Some were hatless, some had -thrown coats and vests open, some white as paper, and some red and -perspiring; some were snowing handfuls of torn-up pad sheets over their -comrades, some were penciling madly in call-books, some were feverishly -handing slips to agile youths dodging in and out through the seething -mass. Every now and then a loud-noted signal-bell sounded from one end -of the hall, calling a messenger boy for despatches.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the momentary little lulls of that human tempest Durkin could catch -the familiar pithy staccato of telegraph keys cluttering and pulsating -with their hurried orders and news. He could see the operators, where -they sat, apathetically pounding the brass, as unmoved as the youth at -the light-crowned, red-lined blackboard, who caught up the different -slips handed to him and methodically chalked down the calls under the -various months.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then the tumult began afresh once more, and through it all Durkin could -hear the deep, bass, bull-like chest-notes of one trader rising loud -above all the others, answered from time to time by the clear, high, -penetratingly insistent and challenging soprano of another.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Curry once more had cotton on the upward move. It was rumored that the -ginners’ report was to be a sensational one. Despatches from Southern -points had shown advancing prices for spot cotton. A weak point had been -found in the Government report. All unpicked cotton on the flooding -Black Warrior bottoms would never reach a gin. The mills, it had been -whispered about, were still buying freely, eagerly; yet already -purchasers were having more difficulty in getting the commodity than -when, weeks before, it had stood two hundred points lower. And still the -sea of faces fought and howled and seethed, but still the price of -cotton went up.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin searched more carefully through that writhing mass of frenzied -speculators for a glimpse of Curry himself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He caught sight of him, at last, standing cool and collected and -rosy-faced, a few paces in front of the New Orleans blackboard, at the -edge of the little sea of frantic men that fought and surged and battled -at his side. Spot cotton had already soared to 17.55. The wires were -reporting it at eighteen cents in New Orleans. Hurry orders from -Liverpool were increasing the tension.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin took a second and closer look at the great bull leader. He made -note of the large emerald flashing in his purple cravat, of the gaily -dotted white waistcoat, in the armholes of which were jauntily caught -the careless thumbs, of the black derby hat tilted a trifle down over -the careless, rosy face. This was the man who was so lavishly giving -away houses and jewels and automobiles. This was the man on whom men and -women in all walks of life, in every state and territory of the Union, -were pinning their faith for established twenty cent cotton and the balm -of affluence that it would bring them! This was the man at whose whisper -a hundred thousand spindles had ceased to revolve, and at whose nod, in -cotton towns half a world away, a thousand families either labored or -were idle, had food or went hungry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A momentary lull came in the storm, a nervous spasm of uncertainty. It -seemed only a sheer caprice, but in sixty seconds the overstrained price -had fallen away again twenty points. Curry, stroking his small mustache, -stepped in closer to the circular brass railing of the Pit, and said a -quiet word or two to his head-broker. His rosy face was expressionless, -and he pulled languidly at his little mustache once more. But his motion -had started the upward tendency again. Both May and July cotton bounded -up, point by point, capriciously, unreasonably, inexorably, as though at -the wafting of a magician’s wand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When the excitement seemed at its highest, when the shrill-noted chorus -of sellers and buyers was shrieking its loudest, Samuel Curry went out -to eat his luncheon. This was at once noticed and commented on,—for -dozens of eyes, both eager and haggard, watched the leader’s every move -and expression.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The change that swept over the Pit was magical. The tumult subsided. The -shouting men about the brass railing stopped to take breath. The -sallow-faced young man who chalked prices up on the Pit-edge blackboard -rested his tired fingers. Brokers sat about on little camp-stools. For -the first time Durkin could catch the sound of the sustained note of the -telegraph keys clicking busily away. The sunlight fell across the -paper-littered floor. The crowd in the gallery grew less. The operators -were joking and chatting. A messenger boy had fallen asleep on his -bench. The army was waiting for the return of its leader.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Curry re-entered the Pit quietly, with a toothpick in one corner of his -mouth. He stood there for a moment or two, his thumbs in his waistcoat -armholes, rocking comfortably back and forth on his heels, -enigmatically and indolently watching the floor which his reappearance -had first reanimated and then thrown into sudden confusion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin, in turn, watched the leader closely, breathlessly, waiting for -the beginning of the end. He saw Curry suddenly throw away his toothpick -and signal to a bent and pale-haired floor broker, who shot over to his -leader’s side, exchanged a whispered word or two with him, and then shot -back to the brass railing. There he flung his hands up in the air, with -fingers outthrust, and yelled like a madman:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Buy July fifty-one! Buy July fifty-two! Buy July -fifty-three—four—five! Buy July fifty-six!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That single-throated challenge was like a match to waiting ordnance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With arms still extended and gaunt fingers outstretched he kept it up, -for one moment. Then the explosion came. Already, it seemed he had -imparted his madness to the men who screamed and fought and gesticulated -about him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Buy July sixty-three! Buy July sixty-four! Buy July -sixty-five—sixty-seven—sixty-eight!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The frenzy in the Pit increased. Up, up went July cotton to seventy, to -seventy-one, even to seventy-two. In thirty years and over no such price -had ever been known. Eighty-five million dollars’ worth of cotton bales, -on paper, were deliriously exchanging hands. But, all things must reach -their end. The bow had been bent to the uttermost. The tide had flooded -into its highest point.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A sudden change came over Curry. He flung up his two hands, and brought -them smartly together over his jauntily tilted black derby. This done, -he elbowed and pushed his way hurriedly to the ring-side. The market -hung on his next breath.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sell twenty thousand May at sixty!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A silence; like that which intervenes between the lightning flash and -the thunder-clap, fell in the Pit.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The leader was unloading. It was rumored that five thousand bales more -than the whole crop had been sold. The bubble had been overblown. There -was still time to be on the safe side. And like people fighting in a -fire-panic, they tore and trampled one another down, and blocked the way -to their own deliverance, through the very frenzy of their passion to -escape.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the downward trend had already begun.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Everybody attempted to unload. Outside orders to follow the movement -promptly poured in. What before had been unrest was soon panic, and then -pandemonium. Men and youths bending over office tickers, women at quiet -home telephones, plungers and “occasionals” watching bulletin-boards, -miles and miles away—all took up the startled cry.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Wire-houses promptly heard of the unloading movement, of the abdication -of the bull king, and a mad stream of selling orders added to the rout -of the day.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Curry had started the current; he let it take its course. Through its -own great volume, he knew, it could easily carry all opposition down -with it. He even ostentatiously drew on his tan-colored gloves, and -took up his overcoat, as he announced, laughingly, that he was out of -the market, and that he was off to Florida for a holiday.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then a second panic—frenzied, irrational, desperate, self-destroying -panic—took hold of that leaderless mob, trampling out their last hope -with their own feverish feet. Curry had liquidated his entire holdings! -He was going South for the winter! He was carrying out his old threat to -take the bears by the neck! He had caught the pool on the eve of -betraying him!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had warned him that he would find no mercy if he did not draw in -with his manipulations. He had found treachery used against him, and as -he had promised, he was giving them a dose of their own medicine.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>July, in the mad rush, dropped fifty points, then a ruinous one hundred -more, then wilted and withered down another fifty, until it stood 173 -points below its highest quotation mark. The rout was absolute and -complete.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Seeing, of a sudden, that the market might even go utterly to pieces, -without hope of redemption, the old-time bull leader, now with a pallor -on his plump face, leaped into the Pit, and tried to hold the runaway -forces within bounds.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But his voice was lost in the din and tumult. He was a mere cork on the -grim tide of disaster. Even his own frantic efforts were in vain. The -<span class='it'>coup</span> had been effected. The day had been won and lost!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin did not wait for the gong to sound. He hurried round to Robinson -& Little’s offices, racing past disheveled men as excited as himself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Neither member of the distraught firm of Robinson & Little was to be -seen. But a senior clerk, with a pale face and a wilted collar, quickly -and nonchalantly counted Durkin out his money, after verifying the slip, -and speaking a brief word or two with his master over the telephone.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When his brokerage commission had been deducted, Durkin was still able -to claim as his own some forty-eight thousand dollars.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It had been a game, for once, worth the candle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He walked out into the afternoon sunlight, pausing a moment at the -doorway to drink in the clear wintry air of the open street. After all, -it was worth while to be alive in such a world, with all its stir, with -all its—</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His line of thought was suddenly disrupted. A tingle of apprehension, -minute but immediate, was speeding up and down his backbone.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s your man,” a voice had said from the shadow of the doorway.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin took the two stones steps as one, and, without turning, hurried -on. His eyes were half-closed as he went, counting his own quick -footfalls and wondering how many of them might safely be taken to mean -escape.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He walked blindly, with no sense of direction, each moment demanding of -himself if it meant defeat or freedom.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the twentieth step he felt a hand catch at the slack in his coat -sleeve. He jerked a startled and indignant arm forward, but the clutch -was one of steel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I guess we want you, Jimmie Durkin,” said a grim but genial and -altogether commonplace voice to him over his averted shoulder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then Durkin turned. It was Doogan’s plain-clothes man, O’Reilly. Beside -him stood a second plain-clothes man showing a corner of his Detective -Bureau badge.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well?” said Durkin, vacuously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The men drew in closer, sandwiching him compactly between them. It was a -commonplace enough movement, but it made suddenly and keenly tangible to -his mind the fact that he had lost his freedom.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“For God’s sake, boys, whatever it is, don’t make a scene here!” cried -the prisoner, passionately. “I’ll go easy enough, but don’t make a show -of me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come on, then, quick!” said the Central Office plain-clothes man, -wheeling him about, and heading for the Old Slip Station.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Quick as you like,” laughed Durkin, very easily but very warily, as he -calculated the time and distance between him and the sergeant’s desk, -and told himself a second time admonitively that he was indeed under -arrest.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XXV</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin, with an officer at either elbow, tried to think far ahead and to -think fast. Yet try as he might, his desperate mind could find no -crevice in the blind wall of his predicament. Nothing, at any rate, was -to be lost by talking.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s this for, boys, anyhow?” he asked them, with sadly forced -amiability.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Different things,” said Doogan’s man O’Reilly, noncommittally.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But who made the charge—who laid the complaint, I mean?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“’Tis an old friend of yours!” chuckled O’Reilly, thinking of other -things.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin looked at the man studiously. “Not Robinson?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And who’s Robinson?—better try another guess!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nor the Postal-Union people?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what have you been doin’ to <span class='it'>them</span>?” retorted the officer, as he -gnawed at the corner of his tobacco plug and tucked it away in his vest -pocket again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They tried to soak me once, without cause,” lamented Durkin, -indignantly. But his hopes had risen. After all, he felt, it might be -only some old, unhappy far-off thing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who the devil was it, then?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Twas MacNutt!” said O’Reilly, watching him. “MacNutt’s turned nice and -good. He’s a stool-pigeon now!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“MacNutt!” echoed Durkin, and as before, a great rage burned through him -at the sound of the name.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hope withered out of him, but he gave no sign. He wondered what, or just -how much, MacNutt dare reveal, even though he did stand in with the -Central Office.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was dark a minute or two for him, as his mind still leaped and groped -at the old blind wall. Then suddenly into the depths of his despair -swayed and stretched a single slender thread of hope.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was Custom House Charley’s saloon so artfully disguised as a -soda-bar. There the second waiter was Eddie Crawford—the same Eddie -Crawford who had worked with him on the Aqueduct pool-room plot, and had -been discharged with him from the Postal-Union.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It seemed eons and eons ago, that poor little ill-fated plot with Eddie -Crawford!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Eddie had struggled forlornly on as an inspector of saloon -stock-tickers, had presided over a lunch counter, and had even polished -rails and wiped glasses. But now he mixed drinks and dispensed -bootlegger’s gin for Custom House Charley.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If Eddie was there—</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Look here, you two,” cried Durkin decisively, coming to a full stop to -gain time. “I’ve struck it heavy and honest this time, and, as you -people put it, I’ve got the goods on me. I can make it worth five -thousand in spot cash to each of you, just to let this thing drop while -you’ve still got the chance!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Central Office man looked at O’Reilly. Durkin saw the look, and -understood it. One of them, at any rate, if it came to a pinch, could be -bought off. But O’Reilly was different. “Look here, you two,” said -Durkin, showing the fringe of his neatly banded packet of notes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Central Office man whistled under his breath. But O’Reilly seemed -obdurate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Double that, young man, and then double it again, and maybe I’ll talk -to you,” Doogan’s detective said easily, as he started on again with his -prisoner.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And if I <span class='it'>did</span>?” demanded Durkin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Talk’s cheap, young fellow! You know what they’re doing to us boys, -nowadays, for neglect of duty? Well, I’ve got to get up against more -than talk before I run that risk!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“By heaven—I can do it, and I <span class='it'>will</span>!” said Durkin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>O’Reilly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The prisoner could -feel the two officers interrogating each other silently behind his back.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Step in here, then, before you’re spotted with me,” said Durkin. “Come -in, just as though we were three friends buying a soda, and shoot me, -straight off, if I make a move to break away!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, you’ll not break away!” said the man with the steel grip, -confidently, still keeping his great handful of loose coat-sleeve. But -he stepped inside, none the less.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin’s heart beat almost normally once more. There stood Eddie -Crawford, leisurely peeling a lemon, with his lips pursed up in a -whistle. One hungry curb-broker was taking a hurried and belated free -lunch from the cheese-and-cracker end of the counter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin stared at his old friend, with a blank and forbidding face. Then -he drooped one eyelid momentarily. It was only the insignificant little -twitch of a minor muscle, and yet the thought occurred to him how -marvellous it was, that one little quiver of an eyelid could retranslate -a situation, could waken strange fires in one’s blood, and countless -thoughts in one’s head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What will you have, gentlemen?” he asked, easily, briskly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Scotch highball!” said the officer on his right.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Give me a gin rickey,” said the officer on his left.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A silver fizz,” said Durkin, between them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That, he knew, would take a little longer to mix. Then there came a -moment of silence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin’s long, thin fingers were drumming anxiously and restlessly on -the polished wood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The busy waiter, with a nervous little up-jerk of the head, gave these -restlessly tapping fingers a passing glance. Something about them -carried him back many months, to his operating-desk at the Postal-Union. -He listened again. Then he bent down over his glass, for he was mixing -the silver fizz first.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was the telegrapher’s double “i” that he had heard repeated and -repeated by those carelessly tapping fingers, and then a further phrase -that he knew meant “attention!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet he worked away, impassive, unmoved, while with his slender little -sugar-spoon he signalled back his answer, on the rim of his -mixing-glass.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Get a move on, boss,” said O’Reilly, impatiently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sure,” said the waiter, abstractedly, quite unruffled, for his ear was -a little out of practice, and he wanted to make sure just what those -finger-nails tapping on the mahogany meant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And this is what he read:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Five—hundred—dollars—spot—cash—for—a—knock—out—to—each—of— -these—two!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Too—expensive!” answered the sugar-spoon on the tumbler, as it stirred -the mixture. “I—would—have—to—migrate.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then—make—it—a—thousand,” answered the mahogany. “I’m pinched.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Done,” said the spoon, as the silver fizz was put down on the bar. Then -came the gin rickey and the highball.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They’ll—get—it—strong!” drummed the idle bartender on a faucet of -his soda-fountain.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A moment later the three glasses that stood before Durkin and his -guardians were taken up in three waiting hands.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, here’s to you,” cried the prisoner, as he gulped down his -drink—for that melodramatic little silence had weighed on his nerves a -bit. Then he wiped his mouth, slowly and thoughtfully, and waited.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But here’s a table in the corner,” he said at last, meaningly. “Suppose -I count out that race money that’s coming to you two?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>O’Reilly nodded, the other said “Sure!” and the three men moved over to -the table, and sat down.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin had never seen chloral hydrate take effect, and Eddie Crawford -realized that his friend was foolishly preparing to kill time.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here, boss, don’t you go to sleep in here,” called out Eddie, for -already the Central Office man was showing signs of bodily distress.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Even the gaunt and threadbare-looking curb-broker was gazing with -wondering eyes at the two lolling figures. Then, having satisfied both -his hunger and his curiosity, the frugal luncher hurried away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The hand of steel dropped from Durkin’s coat-sleeve.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m—I’m queer!” murmured O’Reilly, brokenly, as he sagged back in his -chair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin was watching the whitening faces, the quivering eyelids, the -slowly stiffening limbs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My God, Eddie, you haven’t killed them?” he cried, as he turned to hand -over his fee.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Eddie laughed unconcernedly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They’ll be dead enough, till we get out of this, anyway!” he said, -already taking off his apron and drawing down a window-curtain in front -of the table in the corner.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s that for?” demanded Durkin, nervously, as the bartender dodged -round to the telephone booth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, I’ve got to ’phone over t’ the boss t’ get back here and ’tend t’ -his business. You don’t suppose <span class='it'>I</span> can afford t’ stay in this town now, -with a sucker like O’Reilly after me!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But what can they do?” demanded Durkin, as he looked down at the -collapsed figures. “Even when they come back?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, they daren’t do much bleating, and go and peach right out, seeing -they were in after graft and we could show ’em up for neglect o’ duty, -all right, all right! But they’d just hound me, on the side, and keep -after me, and make life kind o’ miserable. Besides that, I always wanted -to see St. Louis, anyway!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The swing doors opened as he spoke, and Custom House Charley himself -hurried in.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve got to climb out for a few minutes, Chink, with a friend o’ mine -here,” said his assistant, as he pulled on his coat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned back at the swing door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’d better put those two jags out before they get messin’ things up,” -he suggested easily, as he held the door for Durkin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A moment later the two men were out in the street, swallowed up in the -afternoon crowds swarming to ferries and Elevated stations, as free as -the stenographers and clerks at their elbows.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin wondered, as he hurried on with a glance at the passing faces, if -they, too, had their underground trials and triumphs. He wondered if -they, too, had explored some portion of that secret network of -excitement and daring which ran like turgid sewers under the asphalted -tranquillity of the open city.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was neither sign nor token, in the faces of the citied throng that -brushed past him, to show that any of life’s more tumultuous emotions -and movements had touched their lives. It was only as he passed a -newsboy with his armful of flaring headlines, and a uniformed officer, -suggestive of the motley harvest of a morning police court, that once -more he fully realized how life still held its tumult and romance, -though it was the order of modern existence that such things should be -hidden and subterranean. It was only now and then, Durkin told himself, -through some sudden little explosion in the press, or through the -steaming manhole of the city magistrate’s court, that these turgid and -often undreamed of sewers showed themselves. . . . After all, he -maintained to himself, life had not so greatly altered.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XXVI</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin’s first feeling, incongruously enough, once he was out in the -open air, was a ravenous sense of hunger. Through all that busy day his -only meal had been a hasty and half-eaten breakfast.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His second thought was at once both to submerge and sustain himself in -one of those Broadway basement restaurants where men perch on seats and -gulp down meals over a seat-fringed counter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he thought of Frances, of her anxiety, of her long waiting, and he -tried to tell himself, valiantly enough, that another hour would make -little difference, and that they would take their dinner in state and at -their ease, at the Beaux-Arts, or at the Ritz, or perhaps even at the -St. Regis.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The thought of her gave a sudden, warm glow to the gray flatness of -life, born of his hunger and weariness. He pictured her, framed in the -gloom of the open doorway, in answer to his knock, the slender oval of -her face touched with weariness, her shadowy, brooding, violet eyes -grown suddenly alert, even her two warm, woman’s arms open, like a very -nest, to receive and hold him, and her motherly young shoulder to shield -him. He laughed to himself as he remembered the time that he had -described her as the victim of an “ingrowing maternal instinct”—she had -always seemed so ready to nurture and guard and cherish. She was a -woman, he said to himself—with a sudden, strange foreboding of he knew -not what—who ought to have had children. She was one of those deeper -and richer natures, he knew, who would always love Love more than she -could love men.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is electricity?” he had asked her one quiet night, touched into -wonder for the familiar miracle, as they bent together over their relay, -while an operator five hundred miles away was talking through the -darkness. “We live and work and make life tenser with it, and do wonders -with it, but, after all, who knows what it is?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He remembered how the great, shadowy eyes had looked into his face. “And -what is love?” she had sighed. “We live and die for it, we see it work -its terrible wonders; but who can ever tell us what it is?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin had forgotten both his hunger and his weariness as he mounted the -stairs to his up-town apartment, where, he knew, Frances was waiting for -him. He decided, in his playful reaction of mood, to take her by -surprise. So he slipped his pass-key silently into the door-lock and was -about to fling the door wide when the unexpected sound of voices held -him motionless, with his hand still on the knob.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was Frank herself speaking.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Mack, don’t come between him and me now! It’s all I’ve got to live -for—his love! I need it—I need him!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The devil you do!” said a muttered growl.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I do! I always wanted the love of an honest man.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“An honest man!” again scoffed the deep bass of the other’s voice, with -a short little laugh. It was MacNutt who spoke. “An honest man! Then -what were you hanging round Sunset Bryan for?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, an honest man,” went on the woman’s voice impetuously; “he is -honest in his love for me, and that is all I care! Leave him to me, and -I’ll give you everything. If it’s money you want, I’ll get you -anything—anything in reason! I can still cheat and lie and steal for -you, if you like—it was you who <span class='it'>taught</span> me how to do that!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin felt that he could stand no more of it; but still he listened, -spellbound, incapable of action or thought.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve got to have money!” agreed MacNutt quietly. “That’s true enough!” -Then he added insolently, “But I almost feel I’d rather have you!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, no!” moaned the woman, seemingly in mingled horror and fear of him. -“Only wait and I’ll get you what money I have here—every cent of it! -It’s in my pocketbook, here, in the front room!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin could hear her short, hard breath, and the swish of her skirt as -she fluttered across the bare floor into the other room. He could hear -the other’s easy, half-deprecating, half-mocking laugh; and at the -sound of it all the long-banked, smoldering, self-consuming fires of -jealous rage that burned within him seemed to leap and burst into -relieving flame. An invisible cord seemed to snap before his eyes—it -might have been within his very brain, for all he knew.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And now I kill him!” This one idea spun through his mind, the one -living wheel in all the deadened machinery of consciousness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Darting back until he felt the plaster of the narrow hallway behind him, -he flung himself madly forward against the door again. He kicked with -the solid flat of his boot-sole as he came, against the light pine, -painted and grained to look like oak.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It crashed in like so much kindling, and a second later, white to the -very lips, he was in the room, facing MacNutt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In his hand he held his revolver. It was of blue metal, with the barrel -sawed off short. It had once been carried by a Chinaman, and had figured -in a Mock Duck Street feud, and had been many times in pawnshops, and -had passed through many hands.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As he faced the man he was going to kill it flitted vaguely through -Durkin’s mind that somebody—he could not remember who—had said always -to shoot for the stomach—it was the easiest, and the surest. He also -remembered that his weapon had a rifled barrel, and that the long, -twisting bullet would rend and tear and lacerate as it went.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Before I kill you,” he heard himself saying, and the quietness of his -voice surprised even his own ears, “before I kill you, I want to know, -once for all, just <span class='it'>what that woman is to you</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The other man looked vacantly down at the pistol barrel, within six -inches of his own gross stomach. Then he looked at his enemy’s face. A -twitching nerve trembled and fluttered on one side of his temple. Only -two claret-colored blotches of color remained on his otherwise ashen -face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“For the love of God, Durkin, don’t be a fool!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>MacNutt’s fingers were working spasmodically, and his breath began to -come wheezily and heavily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m going to kill you!” repeated Durkin, in the same level monotone. -“<span class='it'>But what is that woman to you?</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>MacNutt was desperately measuring chance and distance. There was not the -shadow of escape through struggle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s murder!” he gasped, certain that there was no hope.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He could see Durkin’s preparatory jaw-clench.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You—you wouldn’t get mixed up in cold murder like this!” MacNutt half -pleaded, hurriedly and huskily, with his eyes now on the other man’s. -“Why, you’d swing for it, Durkin! You’d go to the chair!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Durkin uttered a foul name, impatiently, and closed out the picture with -his shut eyelids as he thrust his right hand forward and down.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He wondered, with lightning-like rapidity of thought, if the blood would -stain his hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he felt a quick bark, and a sudden great spit of pain shot through -him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The gun had exploded, he told himself dreamily, as he staggered to the -wall and leaned there weakly, swaying back and forth. But why didn’t -MacNutt go down? he asked himself unconcernedly, as he watched with dull -eyes where a jet of red blood spurted and pumped regularly from -somewhere in his benumbed forearm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he had a thin and far-away vision of Frances, with a smoking -revolver in her hand, drifting out from the other room. He seemed to see -her floating out, like a bird on the wing almost, to where his own -weapon lay, and catch it up, as MacNutt or some vague shadow of him, -leaped to put a heavy foot on it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A hundred miles away, seemingly, he heard her voice in a thin and high -treble telling MacNutt to go, or she would shoot him there herself, like -a dog.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Succeeding this came a sense of falling, and he found something bound -tightly round his arm, and a new dull and throbbing pain as this -something twisted and twisted and grew still tighter on the benumbed -flesh. Then he felt the weight of a body leaning on his own, where he -lay there, and a hand trying to fondle his face and hair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Jim, Jim!” the thin and far-away voice seemed to be wailing, “oh, -Jim, I had to do it! I had to—to save you from yourself! You would -have killed him. . . . You would have shot him dead. . . . And that -would be the end of everything. . . . Don’t you understand, my beloved -own?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Some heavy gray veil seemed to lift away, and the wounded man opened his -eyes, and moved uneasily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s only the arm, poor boy . . . but I know it hurts!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is it?” he asked vacantly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s only the arm, and not a bone broken! See, I’ve stopped the -bleeding, and a week or two of quiet somewhere, and it’ll be all better! -Then—then you’ll sit up and thank God for it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He could hear her voice more distinctly now, and could feel her hands -feverishly caressing his face and hair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Speak to me, Jim,” she pleaded, passionately. “You’re all I’ve -got—you’re all that’s left to me in the whole wide world!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He opened his eyes again, and smiled at her; but it was such a wan and -broken smile that a tempest of weeping swept over the woman bending -above him. He could feel her hot tears scalding his face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she suddenly drew herself up, rigid and tense, for the sound of -heavy footsteps smote on her ear. Durkin heard them, too, in his languid -and uncomprehending way; he also heard the authoritative knock that came -from the hall door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He surmised that Frank had opened the splintered door, for in the dim -sidelight of the hall he could see the flash of metal buttons on the -dark blue uniform, and the outline of a patrolman’s cap.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Anything wrong up here, lady?” the officer was demanding, a little out -of breath.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dear me, no,” answered her voice in meek and plaintive alarm. Then she -laughed a little.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She is lying—lying—lying,” thought the wounded man, languidly, as he -lay there, bleeding in the darkened room, not twelve paces away from -her, where the room was stained and blotched and pooled with blood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“H’m! Folks downstairs said they heard a pistol-shot up here somewhere!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I know; that was the transom blew shut,” she answered glibly. “It -nearly frightened the wits out of me, too!” She opened the door wide. -“But won’t you come in, and make sure?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The officer looked up at the transom, wagged his head three times -sagely, glanced at the lines of the girl’s figure with open and -undisguised admiration, and said it wasn’t worth while. Then he tried to -pierce the veil that still hung from her hat and about her smiling face. -Then he turned and sauntered off down the stairs, tapping the baluster -with his night-stick as he went. Then Durkin tried to struggle to his -feet, was stung with a second fierce stab of pain, fell back drowsily, -and remembered no more.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frances waited, pantingly, against the doorpost. She listened there for -a second or two, and then crept inside and closed the door after her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Thank God!” she gasped fervently, as she tore off her hat and veil once -more. “Thank God!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then, being only a woman, and weak and hungry and tired, and tried -beyond her endurance, she took three evading, half-staggering steps -toward Durkin, and fell in a faint over his feet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The door opened and closed softly; and a figure with an ashen face, -blotched with claret-color, slunk into the silent room. Night had closed -in by this time, so having listened for a reassuring second or two, he -groped slowly across the bare floor. His trembling hand felt a woman’s -skirt. Exploring carefully upward, he felt her limp arm, and her face -and hair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he came to the figure he was in search of. He ripped open the wet -and soggy coat with a deft little pull at the buttons, and thrust a -great hungry hand down into the inside breast pocket. The exploring fat -fingers found what they were in search of, and held the carefully banded -packet up to the uncertain light of the window.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There he tested the edges of the crisp parchment of the bank-notes, and -apparently satisfied, hurriedly thrust them down into his own capacious -hip-pocket.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he crept to the broken door and listened for a minute or two. He -opened it cautiously, at last, tip-toed slowly over to the -stair-balustrade, and finally turned back and closed the door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As the latch of the shattered lock fell rattling on the floor a sigh -quavered through the room. It was a woman’s sigh, wavering and weak and -freighted with weariness, but one of returning consciousness. For, a -minute later, a voice was asking, plaintively and emptily, “Where am -I?”</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XXVII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>Often, in looking back on those terrible, phantasmal days that followed, -Frances Candler wondered how she had lived through them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Certain disjointed pictures of the first night and day remained vividly -in her memory; unimportant and inconsequential episodes haunted her -mind, as graphic and yet as vaguely unrelated as the midday recollection -of a night of broken sleep and dream.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>One of these memories was the doctor’s hurried question as to whether or -not she could stand the sight of a little blood. A second memory was -Durkin’s childlike cry of anguish, as she held the bared arm over the -sheet of white oilcloth, pungent-odored with its disinfectant. Still -another memory was that of the rattle of the little blackened bullet on -the floor as it dropped from the jaws of the surgical forceps. A more -vague and yet a more pleasing memory was the thought that had come to -her, when the wound had been washed and dressed and hidden away under -its white bandages, and Durkin himself had been made comfortable on the -narrow couch, that the worst was then over, that the damage had been -repaired, and that a week or two of quiet and careful nursing would -make everything right again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In this, however, she was sadly mistaken. She had even thought of shyly -slipping away and leaving him to sleep through the night alone, until, -standing over his bed, she beheld the figure that had always seemed so -well-knit and self-reliant and tireless, shaking and trembling in the -clutch of an approaching chill. It seemed to tear her very heartstrings, -as she gave him brandy, and even flung her own coat and skirt over him, -to see him lying there so impotent, so childishly afraid of solitude, so -miserably craven, before this unknown enemy of bodily weakness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As the night advanced the fever that followed on Durkin’s chill -increased, his thirst became unappeasable, and from the second leather -couch in the back room, where she had flung herself down in utter -weariness of nerve and limb, she could hear him mumbling. Toward morning -she awakened suddenly, from an hour of sound sleep, and found Durkin out -of bed, fighting at his bedroom mantelpiece, protesting, babblingly, -that he had seen a blood-red mouse run under the grate and that at all -hazard it must be got out.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She led him back to bed, and during the five days that his fever burned -through him she never once gave herself up to the luxury of actual -sleep. Often, during the day and night, she would fling herself down on -her couch, in a condition of half-torpor, but at the least word or sound -from him she was astir again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then, as his mind grew clearer, and he came to recognize her once more, -her earlier sense of loneliness and half-helpless isolation crept away -from her. She even grew to take a secret pleasure in giving him his -medicine and milk and tablets, in dressing his wound, day by day, in -making his pillow more comfortable, in sending the colored hall-boy out -after fruit and flowers for him, and in all those duties which broke -down the last paling of reserve between them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And it was a new and unlooked for phase of Frances Candler that Durkin -slowly grew to comprehend. The constraint and the quietness of -everything seemed to have something akin to a spiritualizing effect on -each of them, and it was not long before he waited for her coming and -going with a sort of childish wistfulness. Her tenderness of speech and -touch and look, her brooding thoughtfulness as she sat beside him, -seemed to draw them together more closely than even their old-time most -perilous moments had done.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’re going to be decent now, aren’t we, Frank?” he said, quietly and -joyously one morning.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But there were times when his weakness and stagnation of life and -thought gave rise to acute suffering in both of them, times when his -imprisonment and his feebleness chafed and galled him. It was agony for -her to see him in passionate outbursts, to be forced to stand helplessly -by and behold him unmanned and weeping, sometimes when his nervous -irritability was at its worst, wantonly and recklessly blaspheming at -his fate.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This sinfulness of the flesh she set down to the pain which his arm -might be giving him and the unrest which came of many days in bed. As he -grew stronger, she told herself, he would be his old, generous-minded -and manly self once more.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Durkin gained strength very slowly. A rent-day came around, and -rather than remind him of it Frances slipped out, on a rainy afternoon, -and pawned her rings to get money for the payment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was as she was creeping shamefaced out of the pawnshop that she -looked up and caught sight of a passing automobile. It was a flashing -sports-model with a lemon-colored body, and in it, beside a woman with -lemon-colored hair, sat MacNutt, gloved, silk-hatted and happy-looking.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At first she beheld the two with an indeterminate feeling of relief. -Then a hot wave of resentment swept over her, as she watched them drive -away through the fine mist. A consuming sense of the injustice of it all -took possession of her, as her thoughts went back to the day of the -theft, and she remembered what a little and passing thing Durkin’s money -would be to MacNutt, the spender, the prodigal liver, while to her and -to Durkin it had meant so much! She knew, too, that he would soon be -asking about it; and this brought a new misery into her life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was, indeed, only a day or two later that he said to her:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you know, I’m glad we didn’t take that girl’s money—the Van -Schaick girl, I mean. It was all our own from the first!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frances did not answer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She was a decent sort of girl, really, wasn’t she?” he asked again, -once more looking up at her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wish I had a woman like that for a friend,” Frances said, at last. -“Do you know, Jim, it is years and years since I have had a woman -friend. Yes, yes, my beloved own, I know I have you, but that is so -different.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He nodded his head sorrowfully, and stretched out his hand for hers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re better than all of ’em!” he said fondly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were both silent for several minutes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’re going to be decent now, aren’t we, Frank?” he went on at last, -quietly, joyously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, Jim, from now on.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was just thinking, this town has got to know us a little too well by -this time. When we start over we’ll have to migrate, I suppose.” Then he -smiled a little. “We ought to be thankful, Frank, they haven’t got us -both pinned up by the Bertillon system, down at Headquarters!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’d defy Bertillon himself to find you,” she laughed, “underneath that -two weeks’ beard.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He rubbed his hand over his stubbled chin, absent-mindedly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where shall we go, when we migrate?” he asked, not unhappily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gazed with unseeing eyes through the window, out over the house-top.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know a little south of England village,” she said, in her soft, -flute-like contralto, “I know a little village, nestling down among -green hills, a little town of gardens and ivy and walls and thatches, in -a country of brooks and hawthorn hedges—a little village where the -nightingales sing at night, and the skylarks sing by day, and the old -men and women have rosy faces, and the girls are shy and soft-spoken—”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But we’d die of loneliness in that sort of place, wouldn’t we?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, Jim, we should get more out of life than you dream. Then, in the -winter, we could slip over to Paris and the Riviera, or down to Rome—it -can be done cheaply, if one knows how—and before you realized it you -would be used to the quiet and the change, and even learn to like it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” he said wearily. “I’ve had too much of this wear-and-tear -life—even though it has its thrill now and then. It’s intoxicating -enough, but we’ve both had too much of this drinking wine out of a -skull. Even at the best it’s feasting on a coffin-lid, isn’t it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was still gazing out of the window with unseeing eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And there is so much to read, and study, and learn,” Durkin himself -went on, more eagerly. “I might get a chance to work out my amplifier -then, as I used to think I would, some day. If I could once get that -sort of relay sensitive enough, and worked out the way I feel it can be -worked out, you would be able to sit in Chicago and talk right through -to London!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But how?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I always wanted to get a link between the cable and the ordinary Morse -recorder, and I know it can be done. Then—who knows—I might in time go -Lee De Forest one better, and have my amplifier knock his old-fashioned -electrolytic out of business, for good.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he fell to talking about wireless and transmitters and conductors, -and suddenly broke into a quiet chuckle of laughter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t think I ever told you about the fun we had down in that -Broadway conduit. It was after the fire in the Subway and the -Postal-Union terminal rooms. A part of the conduit roof had been cleared -away by the firemen. Well, while we were working down there a big Irish -watering-cart driver thought he’d have some fun with us, and every time -he passed up and down with his cart he’d give us a shower. It got -monotonous, after the fourth time or so, and the boys began to cuss. I -saw that his wagon was strung with metal from one end to the other. I -also knew that water was a good enough conductor. So I just exposed a -live wire of interesting voltage and waited for the water-wagon. The -driver came along as bland and innocent-looking as a baby. Then he -veered over and doused us, the same as ever. Then the water and the wire -got together. That Irishman gave one jump—he went five feet up in the -air, and yelled—oh, how he yelled!—and ran like mad up Broadway, with -a policeman after him, thinking he’d suddenly gone mad, trying to soothe -him and quiet him down!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Durkin chuckled again, at the memory of it all. The sparrows -twittered cheerily about the sunlit window-sill. The woman did not know -what line of thought he was following, but she saw him look down at his -bandaged arm and then turn suddenly and say:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a scarred and battered-up pair we’d be, if we had to keep at this -sort of business all our lives!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he lay back among the pillows, and closed his eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I say, Frank,” he spoke up unexpectedly, “where are you taking care of -that—er—of that money?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her hands fell into her lap, and she looked at him steadily. Even before -she spoke she could see the apprehension that leaped into his colorless -face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, no; we mustn’t talk more about that today!” she tried to temporize.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t mean,” he cried, rising on his elbow, “that anything has -happened to it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He demanded an answer, and there was no gain-saying him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There is no money, Jim!” she said slowly and quietly. And in as few -words as she could she told him of the theft.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was pitiable, to her, to see him, already weak and broken as he was, -under the crushing weight of this new defeat. She had hoped to save him -from it, for a few more days at least. But now he knew; and he reviled -MacNutt passionately and profanely, and declared that he would yet get -even, and moaned that it was the end of everything, and that all their -fine talk and all their plans had been knocked in the head forever, and -that now they would have to crawl and slink through life living by their -wits again, cheating and gambling and stealing when and where they -could.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>All this Frances feared and dreaded and expected; but desperately and -forlornly she tried to buoy up his shattered spirits and bring back to -him some hope for the future.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She told him that he could work, that they could live more humbly, as -they had once done years before, when she had taught little children -music and French, and he was a telegraph agent up at the lonely little -Canadian junction-station of Komoka, with a boarding-house on one side -of him and a mile of gravel-pit on the other.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And if I have you, Jim, what more do I want in life?” she cried out, as -she turned and left him, that he might not see the misery and the -hopelessness on her own face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, why didn’t you let me kill him!” he called out passionately after -her. But she did not turn back, for she hated to see him unmanned and -weeping like a woman.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XXVIII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>“Surely this is Indian Summer—strayed or stolen!” said Frank one -morning a few days later, as she wheeled Durkin and his big arm-chair -into the sunlight by the open window.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His arm was healing slowly, and his strength <a id='was'></a>was equally slow in -coming back to him. Yet she was not altogether unhappy during those -fleeting days of work and anxiety.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her darkest moments were those when she saw that Durkin was fretting -over the loss of his ill-gained fortune, burning with his subterranean -fires of hatred for MacNutt, and inwardly vowing that he would yet live -to have his day.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was still hoping that time, the healer, would in some way attend to -each of his wounds, though that of the spirit, she knew, was the deeper -of the two. Yet from day to day she saw that his resentment lay sourly -embedded in him, like a bullet; her only hope was that what nature could -neither reject nor absorb it would in due time encyst with indifference. -So if she herself became a little infected with his spirit of -depression, she struggled fiercely against it and showed him only the -cheeriest inglenooks of her many-chambered emotions.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“See, it’s almost like spring again!” she cried joyously, as she leaned -over his chair and watched the morning sunlight, misty and golden on the -city house-tops.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The window-curtains swayed and flapped in the humid breeze; the clatter -of feet on the asphalt, the rumble of wheels and the puff and whir of -passing automobiles came up to them from the street below.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It seems good to be alive!” she murmured pensively, as she slipped down -on the floor and sat in the muffled sunlight, leaning against his knees. -There was neither timidity nor self-consciousness in her attitude, as -she sat there companionably, comfortably, with her thoughts far away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For a long time Durkin looked down at her great tumbled crown of -chestnut hair, glinting here and there with its touch of reddish gold. -He could see the quiet pulse beating in the curved ivory of her throat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She grew conscious of his eyes resting on her, in time, and turned her -face solemnly up to him. He held it there, with the oval of her chin -caught in the hollow of his hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Frank, there’s something I’m going to ask you, for the twentieth time!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She knew what it was even before he spoke. But she did not stop him, for -this new note of quiet tenderness in his voice had taken her by -surprise.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Frank, can’t you—won’t you marry me, now?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She shook her head mournfully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Isn’t it enough that I’m near you and can help you, and that we can -both still go and come as we want to?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I get only the little fragments of your life, and I want all of it. -If you can’t do it willingly, of course, it’s as silly for me to demand -it as to try to nail that sunbeam down to the floor there! But tell me, -has there ever been another?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, never, Jim!” she cried. “There was never any one who could make me -so happy—and so miserable,—who could make me so unsatisfied with -myself and with my life!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He studied her upturned face. In it he imagined he could see all the old -opposition of the dual and strangely contending nature. About the -shadowy eyes seemed to lurk the weariness and the rebelliousness of the -inwardly pure woman who had been driven to face life in its more dubious -phases, the woman who had broken laws and essayed great hazards with -him. Yet about the fresh young mouth remained all the pride and virginal -purity of the woman whose inward life was till virginal and pure. In -this, he felt, lay the bitterest thing of all. She was still a good -woman, but the memory of how, through the dark and devious ways of the -career that seemed to have engulfed her, she had fought and struggled -for that almost incongruous purity of mind and body, remained to him a -tragic and autumnal emblem of what her unknown earlier, April-like -goodness of girlish soul must have been. He sighed as he thought of it, -before he began to speak again, for it gave him the haunting impression -that he had been cheated out of something; that the beauty and rapture -of that Aprilian girlhood should have been his, and yet had eluded him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Even though there had been another,” he went on quietly, “I don’t -believe it would count. Isn’t it strange how we all beat and flutter and -break our wings around a beautiful face! One face, just a little softer, -one woman’s eyes, just a little deeper, and one voice, a little -mellower; and dear me, dear me—how this wayward mortal passion of ours -throbs and beats and surges about it! One beautiful face, and it sends -world-history all awry, and brings out armies and changes maps, and -makes men happy or miserable, as it likes!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s the first time I ever knew you were a poet!” she cried in almost -a coo of pride.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His hand lay heavily on her crown of tumbled gold hair. “Won’t you marry -me?” he asked again, as quietly as before.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Jim,” she cried, “I’m afraid of it! I’m afraid of myself, and of -you!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But see what we’ve been through together—the heights and the depths. -And we never hated each other, there!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But there were times, I know there were times when you might have, if -you were tied to me! We were each free to go and come. But it’s not -that, Jim, I’m so afraid of. It’s the keeping on at what we have been -doing, the danger of not keeping decent, of getting our thoughts and -feelings deadened, of getting our hearts macadamized. That’s why I could -never marry you until we are both honest once more!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But if I do try to get decent—I can’t promise to turn angel all at -once, you know!—if I <span class='it'>do</span> try to be decent, then will you marry me, and -help me along?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t look for miracles,—neither of us can be all good, anyway; it’s -the trying to be good!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But we <span class='it'>have</span> tried—so often!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who was it said that the Saints were only the sinners who kept on -trying?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Wasn’t there a bishop in your family?” he asked, with a quizzical -little upthrust of his mouth corners.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A bishop?” she asked, all gravity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There must have been a bishop, somewhere—you take to preaching so -easily!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s only to make it easier for you,” she reproved him. Then she added -drearily, “Heaven knows, I’m not self-righteous!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then take me as I am, and you will be making it easier for me!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I could, Jim, if I thought you would begin by doing one thing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And that is?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not try to get even with MacNutt.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She could feel the galvanic movement of uncontrol that sped down his -knees.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When that damned welcher gives me back what is mine, fair and square -and honest, then he can go his way and I’ll go mine—but not before!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, <span class='it'>was</span> it fair and square and honest?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“About as much so as most of the money people get—and I’m going to have -it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And that means going back to all the old mean, humiliating ways, to the -old, degrading dodges, and the old, incessant dangers!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it’s ours, that money—every cent of it—it’s what we’ve got to -have to start over again with!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then you will scheme and plot and fight for it? And keep on and on and -on, struggling in this big quicksand of wrong-doing, until we are deeper -than ever?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do <span class='it'>you</span> forgive MacNutt?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I do not! I can’t, for your sake. But I would rather lie and scheme -and plot myself than see you do it. A woman is different—I don’t know -how or why it is, but in some way she has a fiercer furnace of -sacrifice. If her wickedness is for another, her very love burns away -all the dross of deceit and selfishness!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hate to hear you talk that way, when you know you’re good and true as -gold, through and through. And I want you to be my wife, Frank, no -matter what it costs or what it means.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But will you make this promise?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s—it’s too hard on <span class='it'>you</span>! Think of the grind and the monotony and -the skimping! And besides, supposing you saw a chance to get the upper -hand of MacNutt in some way, would you fold your hands and sigh meekly -and let it slip past?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t promise that <span class='it'>I</span> would! But it’s you I’m afraid of, and that -I’m trying to guard and protect and save from yourself!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She caught up his free hand and held it closely in her own.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Listen,” he broke in irrelevantly, “there’s a hurdy-gurdy somewhere -down in the street! Hear it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The curtains swayed in the breeze; the street sounds crept to them, -muffled and far away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Can’t you promise?” she pleaded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I could promise you anything, Frank,” he said after a long pause. -“Yes,” he repeated, “I promise.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She crept closer to him, and with a little half-stifled, half-hungry cry -held his face down to her own. He could feel the abandon of complete -surrender in the most intimate warmth of her mouth, as it sought and -clung to his own.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When her uplifted arms that had locked about his neck once more fell -away, and the heavy head of dull gold sank capitulatingly down on his -knee, the hurdy-gurdy had passed out of hearing, and the lintel-shadow -had crept down to where they sat.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XXIX</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>On the following afternoon Frances Candler and Durkin were quietly -married.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was a whim of Durkin’s that the ceremony should take place on -Broadway, “on the old alley,” as he put it, “where I’ve had so many ups -and downs.” So, his arm in a black silk sling, and she in a gown of -sober black velvet, with only a bunch of violets bought from an Italian -boy on a street corner, they rode together in a taxi-cab to the rectory -of Grace Church.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To the silent disappointment of each of them the rector was not at home. -They were told, indeed, that it would be impossible for a marriage -service to be held at the church that afternoon. A little depressed, -inwardly, at this first accidental cross-thread of fate, they at once -made their way up Fifth Avenue to the Church of the Transfiguration.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The way we ought to do it,” said Frances, as they rode up the -undulating line of the Avenue, “would be to have it all carried on over -a long-distance telephone. We should have had some justice of the peace -in Jersey City ring us up at a certain time, and send the words of the -service over the wire. That would have been more in the picture. Then -you should have twisted up an emergency wedding ring of KK wire, and -slipped it on my finger, and then cut in on a Postal-Union or an -Associated Press wire and announced the happy event to the world!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She rattled bravely on in this key, for she had noticed, in the strong -sidelight of the taxi-window, that he looked pale and worn and old, -seeming, as he sat there at her side, only a shadow of the buoyant, -resilient, old-time Durkin that she had once known.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The service was read in the chapel, by a hurried and deep-voiced English -curate, who shook hands with them crisply but genially, before -unceremoniously slipping off his surplice. He wished them much -happiness. Then he told them that the full names would have to be signed -in the register, as a report of the service must be sent to the Board of -Health, and that it was customary to give the sexton and his assistant -two dollars each for acting as witnesses.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frances noticed Durkin’s little wince at the obtrusion of this -unlooked-for sordidness, though he glanced up and smiled at her -reassuringly as he wrote in the register, “James Altman Durkin,” and -waited for her to sign “Frances Edith Candler.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The service, in some way, had utterly failed to impress Durkin as it -ought. The empty seats of the chapel, with only one pew crowded with a -little line of tittering, whispering schoolgirls, who had wandered in -out of idle curiosity, the hurriedly mumbled words of the curate—he -afterward confessed to them that this was his third service since -luncheon—the unexpected briefness of the ceremony itself, the absence -of those emblems and rituals which from time immemorial had been -associated with marriage in his mind—these had combined to attach to -the scene a teasing sense of unreality.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was only when the words, “With all my worldly goods I thee endow,” -were repeated that he smiled and looked down at the woman beside him. -She caught his eye and laughed a little, as she turned hurriedly away, -though he could see the tear-drops glistening on her eyelashes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She held his hand fiercely in her own, as they rode from the little -ivy-covered church, each wondering at the mood of ineloquence weighing -down the other.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you know,” she said, musingly, “I feel as though I had been bought -and sold, that I had been tied up and given to you, that—oh, that I had -been nailed on to you with horseshoe nails! Do you feel any difference?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I feel as though I had been cheated out of something—it’s so hard to -express!—that I ought to have found another You when I turned away from -the railing; that I ought to be carrying off a different You -altogether—and yet—yet here you are, the same old adorable You, with -not a particle of change!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“After all, what is it? Why, Jim dear, we were married, in reality, that -afternoon I opened the door to MacNutt’s ring and saw you standing there -looking in at me as though you had seen a ghost!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, my own, we were joined together and made one a million years ago, -you and I, in some unknown star a million million miles away from this -old earth; and through all those years we have only wandered and drifted -about, looking for each other!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Silly!” she said happily, with her slow, English smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the gloom of the taxi-cab, with a sudden impulsive little movement of -the body, she leaned over and kissed him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You forgot that,” she said joyously, from the pillow of his shoulder. -“You forgot about that in the chapel!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They drifted down through what seemed a shadowy and far-away city, -threading their course past phantasmal carriages and spectral crowds -engrossed in their foolish little ghost-like businesses of buying and -selling, of coming and going.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re all I’ve got now,” she murmured again, with irrelevant -dolefulness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her head still rested on the hollow of his shoulder. His only answer was -to draw the warmth and clinging weight of her body closer to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you’ll have to die some day!” she wailed in sudden misery. And -though he laughingly protested that she was screwing him down a little -too early in the game, she reached up with her ineffectual arms and -flung them passionately about him, much as she had done before, as -though such momentary guardianship might shield him from both life and -death itself, for all time to come.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XXX</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>Frances sent Durkin on alone to the Chelsea, where, he had finally -agreed, they were to take rooms for a week at least. There, she argued, -they could live frugally, and there they could escape from the old -atmosphere, from the old memories and associations that hour by hour had -seemed to grow more unlovely in her eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>On wisely reckless second thought, she ran into a florist’s and bought -an armful of roses. These she thrust up into the taxi-seat beside him, -explaining that he was to scatter them about their rooms, so that he -could be in the midst of them when she came. Then she stood at the curb, -watching him drive off, demanding of herself whether, after all, some -Indian Summer of happiness were not due to her, wondering whether she -were still asking too much of life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she climbed the stairs to the little top-floor apartment, saying to -herself, compensatingly, that it would be for the last time. She felt -glad to think that she had taken from Durkin’s hands the burden of -packing and shutting up the desolate and dark-memoried little place.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet it had taken her longer than she imagined, and she was still -stooping, with oddly mixed emotions, over the crumpled nurse’s dress and -the little hypodermic that she carried away from the Van Schaick house, -when she heard a hurried footfall on the stairs and the click of a -pass-key in the lock. She realized, with a start, that it was Durkin -come back for her, even after she had begged him not to.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She ran over toward the door, and then, either petulantly or for some -stronger intuitive reason—she could never decide which—stopped short, -and waited.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The door opened slowly. As it swung back she saw standing before her the -huge figure of MacNutt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>You!</span>” she gasped, with staring eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sure it’s me!” he answered curtly, as he closed the door and locked it -behind him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, how dare you?” and she gasped once more. “What right have you to -break in here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was trembling from head to foot now, recoiling, step by step, as she -saw some grim purpose written on the familiar blocked squareness of his -flaccid jaw and the old glint of anger in the deep-set, predatory eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I didn’t need to break in, my lady! I’ve been here before, more -than once. So don’t start doin’ the heavy emotional and makin’ scenes!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But—but Durkin <span class='it'>will</span> kill you this time, when he sees you!” she -cried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>MacNutt tapped his pocket confidently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’ll never catch me that way twice, I guess!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How dare you come here?” she still gasped, bewildered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I dare go anywhere, after you, Frank! And I may as well tell you, -that’s what I came for!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She still shivered from head to foot. It was not that she was afraid of -him. It was only that, in this new beginning of life, she was afraid of -some unforeseen disaster. And she knew that she would kill herself, -gladly, rather than go with him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, cool down, little woman,” MacNutt was saying to her in his placid -guttural. “We’ve been through enough scrapes together to know each -other, so there’s no use you gettin’ high-strung and nervous. And I -guess you know I’m no piker, when it comes to anybody I care about. I -never went back on you, Frank, even though you <span class='it'>did</span> treat me like a dog -and swing in with that damned welcher Durkin, and try to bleed me for my -last five hundred. I tell you, Frank, I can’t get used to the thought of -not havin’ you ’round!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gave forth a little inarticulate cry of hate and abhorrence for him. -She could see that he had been drinking, and that he was shattered, both -in body and nerve.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, you’ll get over that! I’ve knocked around with women—I’ve been -makin’ and spendin’ money fast enough for anybody this season; but no -one’s just the same as you! You thought I was good enough to work with -once, and I guess I ought to be good enough to travel with now!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s enough!” she broke in, wrathfully. She had grown calmer by this -time, and her thoughts were returning to her mind now, buzzing and -rapid, like bees in a fallen hive.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, it’s not,” he retorted, with an ominous shake of the square jaw and -beefy neck. “And you just wait until I finish. You’ve been playin’ -pretty fast and loose with me, Frank Candler, and I’ve been takin’ it -meek and quiet, for I knew you’d soon get tired of this two-cent piker -you’ve been workin’ the wires with!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She opened her lips to speak, but no sound came from them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I tell you, Frank, you’re not the sort of woman that can go half fed -and half dressed, driftin’ ’round dowdy and hungry and homeless, most of -the time! You’re too fine for all that kind o’ thing. A woman like you -has got to have money, and be looked after, and showed around, and let -take things easy—or what’s the use o’ bein’ a beauty, anyway! You know -all that, ’s well as I do!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I know all that!” she said vacantly, wearily, for her racing -thoughts were far away. She was inwardly confessing to herself that they -who live by the sword must die by the sword.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then what’s the use o’ crucifyin’ yourself?” cried MacNutt, seeming to -catch hope from her change of tone. “You know as well as I do that I can -hound this Durkin off the face o’ the globe. I can make it so hot for -him here in New York that he daren’t stick his nose within a foot o’ the -Hudson. And I’m goin’ to do it, too! I’m goin’ to do it, unless you want -to come and stop me from doin’ it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why?” she asked emptily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Didn’t you save my life once, Frank, right in this room? Damn it all, -you must have thought a little about me, to do a thing like that!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And what did you do for it?” she demanded, with a sudden change of -front. Once again she was all animal, artful and cunning and crafty. -“You played the sneak-thief. You slunk back here and stole his money. -No, no; there’s no good your denying it—you came and stole his honestly -earned money!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Honestly earned?” he scoffed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, not honestly earned, perhaps, but made as clean as it could be -made, in this low and mean and underhand business you taught us and -dragged us into! And you came and stole it, when it meant so much to me, -and to him!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I said I’d knock him, and I did knock him! But, good heavens, -what’s his money to a high-roller like me! If that’s all you’re swingin’ -your clapper about, you may as well get wise. If it’s the money you’re -achin’ after, you can have it—providin’ you take it the way I’m willin’ -to give it to you!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t believe you—you know that!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You think I’m talkin’ big? Well, look here. Here’s my wad! Yes, look at -it good and hard—there’s enough there to smother you in diamonds, and -let you lord it ’round this town for the rest of your life!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re drunk,” she cried, once more consumed by a sudden fear of him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I’m not; but I’m crazy, if you want to put it that way, and you’re -the cause of it! I’m tired o’ plottin’ and schemin’ and gettin’ mixed up -in all kinds o’ dirty work, and I want to take it easy now, and enjoy -life a little!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She gasped at his words. Were <span class='it'>his</span> aspirations, then, quite as high as -hers? Were all the vague ideals she mouthed to Durkin and herself only -the thoughts of any mottled-souled evil-doer?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she watched him slowly close the great polished pig-skin wallet, -replace it in his inside breast-pocket, and secure it there with its -safety-button.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frances gazed at him blankly, with detached and impersonal attention. He -stood to her there the embodiment of what all her old life had been. In -him she saw incarnate all its hideousness, all its degrading coarseness, -all its hopeless vileness and wickedness. And this was what she had -dreamed that at a moment’s notice she could thrust behind her! She had -thought that it could be slipped off, at a turn of the hand, like a -soiled skirt, when the insidious poison of it had crept into her very -bones, when it had corroded and withered and killed that holier -something which should have remained untouched and unsullied in her -inmost heart of hearts. He was her counterpart, her mate, this gross -man with the many-wrinkled, square-set jaw, with the stolid bull-neck, -with his bloated, vulpine face and his subdolous green eyes. This was -what she had fallen to, inch by inch, and day by day. And here he was -talking to her, wisely, as to one of his kind, bargaining for her -bruised and weary body, as though love and honor and womanly devotion -were chattels to be bought and sold in the open market.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The ultimate, inexorable hopelessness, the foredoomed tragedy of her -dwarfed and perverted life came crushingly home to her, as she looked at -him, still confronting her there in his challenging comradeship of crime -and his kinship of old-time dishonor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mack,” she said quietly, but her voice was hard and dry and colorless, -“I could never marry you, now. But under one condition I would be -willing to go with you, wherever you say.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And that condition is?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is that you return to Durkin every cent you owe him, and let him go -his way, while we go ours.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You mean that, Frank?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, I mean it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked at her colorless face closely. Something in it seemed to -satisfy him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But how am I to know you’re going to stick to your bargain?” he still -hesitated. “How am I to be sure you won’t get your price and then give -me the slip?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Would Durkin want me, <span class='it'>after that</span>? Would he take up with me when -<span class='it'>you</span> had finished with me? Oh, he’s not that make of man!” she scoffed -in her hard, dry voice. There was a little silence; then, “Is that all?” -she asked in her dead voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s just as you say,” he answered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Very well,” she said between her drawn lips. She stepped quickly to the -back of the room, and lifting the hidden telephone transmitter up on the -table she threw open the window to loop the wire that ran by the -overhanging eave.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hold on, there!” cried MacNutt, in alarm. “What’s all this, anyway?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I have got to tell Durkin, that’s all. He has got to know, of course, -what we have decided on.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, no, you don’t, my beauty! If there’s goin’ to be any telephonin’ -out o’ this house, I do it myself!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It makes no difference,” she answered, apathetically. “You can tell him -as well as I could.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She could see some new look of suspicion and rage mounting into his -watchful eyes. “I do the talking this trip,” he cried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then cut in and loop that third wire—no, the fourth, counting the -lighting wire—on the eave there. It is the Van Schaick -house-wire—indeed, it would be much better to cut them off altogether, -after we cut in, or there might be some interference from them with -Central. Now throw open that switch behind the window-curtain there—so. -Now, if you will ring up Central and ask for the Chelsea, they will -connect you directly with Durkin. He is waiting in his room there for -me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked at her, suspicious and puzzled, the momentary note of triumph -gone out of his voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“See here, Frank, I may as well tell you one thing, straight out. -Although I square up with Durkin for what I got out of him, and pass -this money of his over to you, I tell you now, I’m going to smash that -man!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Smash him?” she echoed, dismally. “Then you’ve been lying!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, smash him! You don’t imagine I’m goin’ to have that piker -shadowin’ and doggin’ me like a flatty all my days! I stand pat now with -Doogan and his men. And in ten days I can have Durkin up against ten -years!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s a lie,” she contended.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I can have him so he’ll be glad to get ten years, just to get out -o’ what’s comin’ to him!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then this was all a trap, a plot?” she gasped.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, it’s not a trap—it’s only that I wanted to save you out o’ the -mess. I’m wise enough in most things, but about you I’ve always been a -good deal of a fool. It’s my loose screw, all right; sometimes it’s -driven me near crazy. I’m goin’ to have you, I don’t care what it costs -me—I don’t care if I have to pound this Durkin’s brains out with a -lead-pipe!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Take me! Take me—but save him!” she pleaded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good God, it’s not just you I want—it’s—it’s your feelin’s, it’s your -love that I’ve got to have!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh!” she moaned, covering her face with her hands.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s a queer way of makin’ love, eh?—but I mean it! And I want to know -if you’re goin’ to swing in with me and get taken care of, or not?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, you fool, you fool!” she cried suddenly, smiting the air with her -vehemently closed fists. “You poor, miserable fool! I loathe and hate -the very sound of your voice! I despise every inch of your brutish, -bloated body! I’d die—I’d kill myself ten times over before I’d so much -as touch you!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked at her gathering storm of rage, first in wonder, and then in a -slow and deadly anger that blanched his face and left only the two -claret-colored blotches on his withered cheeks.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll give you one last chance,” he said, clenching his flaccid jaw.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Chance! I don’t want a chance! Now I know how things <span class='it'>must</span> go! Now I -know how to act! And before we settle it between us, and if I have -to—to lose everything, I want you to know one thing. I want you to know -that I’m doing it for Durkin! I’m doing it all, everything, for <span class='it'>him</span>!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“For Durkin?” he choked, with an oath. “What are you fightin’ for that -washed-out welcher for?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Because Durkin is my husband!” she said, in her ashen white -determination, as she stepped quickly to the door and double-locked it. -“And because I would <span class='it'>die</span> for him”—she laughed shrilly, horribly, as -she said it—“before I’d see him hurt or unhappy!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stood firmly with her back against the door, panting a little, her -jaw fallen loosely down, her eyes luminous with their animal-like fire.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then, by God, you <span class='it'>will</span>!” said MacNutt in his raucous guttural, with -his limbs beginning to shake as he glared at her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stood there motionless, trying to think out the first moves in that -grim game for which freedom and love and life itself were the stakes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then, by God, you will!” repeated MacNutt, with the sweat coming out in -beads on his twitching temples.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XXXI</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>Frances Durkin knew the man she had to face. She knew the pagan and -primordial malevolence of the being, the almost demoniacal passions that -could sweep through him. More than once she had seen his obsessions -tremble on the verge of utter madness. She had come to know the rat-like -pertinacity, the morbid, dementating narrowness of mind, that made him -what he was. In his artful and ruthless campaign against Penfield, in -his relentless crushing of old-time confederates, in each and all of his -earlier underground adventures, she had seen the sullen, bulldog, brutal -contumacy of the man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She expected nothing from him, neither mercy nor quarter. And yet, she -told herself, she was in no way afraid of him. As she had felt before, -time and time again, in moments of great danger, a vague sense of -duality of being took possession of her, as if mind stood detached from -body, to flutter and dodge through the darkness before her, freed from -its sheath of flesh.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt that she might kill him now, if the chance came, quite easily -and calmly. Yet she still diffidently half-hoped that the chance would -be denied her. It was not that she would be cowardly about it, but it -seemed to her the darker and more dubious way out of it all.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>No; it was <span class='it'>he</span> who must do the killing, she told herself, with a sudden -pang of half-delirious abnegation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That was the utter and ultimate solution of the tangled problem; it -would be over and done with in a minute. She had lived by the sword and -she could die by the sword; from that moment, too, would be counted the -days of MacNutt’s own doom, the release and the deliverance of Durkin!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She seemed to hug this new self-illumination to her, and a smile of -scorn trembled on her lips as he stood over her, in his white and -shaking wrath.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I know you, you she-devil!” he suddenly cried out, with an -animal-like snarl from the depths of his flabby throat. “I know what -you’re after! You think you’ll do the cheap-heroine act; you think -you’ll end it by comin’ between him and me this way! You think you’ll -save his puny piker’s heart a last pang or two, don’t you! You think -you’ll cheat me out of that, do you? You think that it’s just between -you and me now, eh, and that you can do your martyr’s act here while -he’s off somewhere else moonin’ about your eyebrows and takin’ it easy!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And he laughed horribly, quietly. “No!” he cried, with a volley of the -foulest oaths; “no! If I’m goin’ to get the name I’m goin’ to have the -game! I mean to get my money’s worth out o’ this! I’m goin’ to kill you, -you cat, but I’m goin’ to do it in my own way!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The room, which rang with his hoarse voice, seemed to grow small and -dark and cell-like. The great, gorilla-like figure, in the gray light, -seemed to draw back and go a long way off, and then tower over her once -more.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re going to kill me?” she gasped, as though the thought of it had -come home to her for the first time.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her more ecstatic moment of recklessness had passed strangely away, and -had left her helpless and craven.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Nothing but terror was written on her face as she cowered back from him -and sidled along the wall, with her fingers groping crazily over its -blind surface, as though some unlooked-for door of release might open to -their touch.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You cat! You damned cat!” he cried hoarsely, as he leaped toward her -and tried to catch her by the throat. She writhed away from him and -twisted and dodged and fought until she had gained the door between the -front and the back room. Through this, cat-like, she shot sidewise, and -swung to the door with all her strength.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It had been her intention to bolt and lock it, if possible. But he had -been too quick for her. He thrust out a maddened hand to hold it back -from the jamb, and she could hear his little howl of pain as the meeting -timbers bit and locked on the fingers of the huge, fat hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As she stood there, panting, with her full weight against the door, she -could see the discoloring finger-tips, and the blood beginning to drip -slowly from the bruised hand. Yet she knew she could not long withstand -the shock of the weight he was flinging against her. So she looked about -the darkening room quickly, desperately. Her first thought was of the -windows. She could fling herself from one of them, and it would all be -over with her in a minute.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she caught sight of the nurse’s uniform of striped blue and white -linen flung across the bed, and in a sudden inspirational flash she -remembered the hypodermic. That, at least, would be painless—painless -and sure.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She slipped away from the door, and at the next lunge of his great body -MacNutt fell sprawling into the room. By the time he was on his feet she -had the little hollow-needled instrument in her hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But he fell on her, like a terrier on a rat, caught her up, shook and -crushed her in his great ape-like arms.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I’ll show you!” he panted and wheezed. “I’ll show you!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He dragged her writhing and twisting body through the door into the back -room. She fought and struggled and resisted as best she could, catching -at the door-posts and the furniture with her one free hand as she -passed. She would have used her hypodermic and ended it all then and -there, only his great grip pinned her right arm down to her side, and -the needle lay useless between her fingers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The room was almost in darkness by this time, and a chair was knocked -over in their struggles. But still MacNutt bore her, fighting and -panting, toward the little table between the two windows, where the -telephone transmitter stood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He pinned and held her down on the edge of the table with his knees and -his bleeding right hand, while with his left hand he caught up the -receiver of the telephone.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Central, give me the Chelsea, quick—the Chelsea, the Chelsea!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was then and then only that the exhausted woman clearly understood -what he meant to do. She started up, with a great cry of horror in her -throat; but he muffled it with his shaking hand, and, biting out an -oath, squeezed the very breath out of her body.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want to speak to Durkin,” panted MacNutt into the transmitter, a -moment later. “Durkin, James Durkin—a man with his arm in a sling. He -just took rooms with you today. Yes, Durkin.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was another long wait, through which Frances lay there, neither -struggling nor moving, saving her strength for one last effort.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, yes; Duggan; I guess that’s it!” MacNutt was saying over the wire -to the switchboard operator at the hotel. “Yes, Duggan, with a lame -arm!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he let the receiver swing at the end of its cord and with his freed -hand drew his revolver from his pocket.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The gasping woman felt the crushing pressure released for a moment, and -fought to free her right hand. It came away from his hold with a jerk, -and as her finger slipped into the little metal piston-ring she flung -the freed arm up about his shoulder and clung to him. For a sudden last -thought had come to her, a rotten thread of hope, on which swayed and -hung her last chance of life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was through the coat and clothing of the struggling MacNutt that the -little needle was forced, through the skin, and deep into the flesh of -the great, beefy shoulder. She held it there until the barrel was empty, -then it fell on the floor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’d try to stab me, would you!” he cried, madly, uncomprehendingly, -as he struggled in vain to throttle the writhing body, and then raised -his revolver, to beat her on the head. The signal-bell rang sharply, and -he caught up the receiver instead.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now!” he gloated insanely, deep in his wheezing throat. “Now! Is that -Durkin speaking? Is that Durkin? Oh, it is! Well, this is MacNutt—I say -your old friend MacNutt!” and he laughed horribly, dementedly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ve done a good deal of business over the wires, Durkin, in your -day, haven’t you? Well, you listen now, and you’ll hear something doin’! -I say listen now, and you’ll hear something doin’!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Jim!” screamed the woman, pinned down on the edge of the table. “Jim!” -she screamed insanely. “<span class='it'>Oh, Jim, save me!</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She could hear the sharp phonographic burr of her husband’s voice -through the receiver.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Jim, he’s killing me!” she wailed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For MacNutt had taken up the revolver in his trembling left hand and was -forcing the head with all its wealth of tumbled hair closer and closer -up before the transmitter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It had been too late! She closed her eyes, and in one vivid, -kaleidoscopic picture all her discordant and huddled life stood out -before her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt a momentary shiver speed through the body that pinned her so -close to it, as she waited, and it seemed to her that the gripping knees -relaxed a little. He was speaking now, but brokenly and mumblingly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Listen, you welcher, while I—”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt the little steel barrel waver and then muzzle down through her -hair until it pressed on her skull. At the touch of it she straightened -her limp body, galvanically, desperately. He staggered back under the -sudden weight.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she caught his hand in hers, and with all her strength twisted the -menacing barrel upward. The finger trembling on the trigger suddenly -compressed as she did so. The bullet plowed into the ceiling and brought -down a shower of loosened plaster.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then he fell, prone on his face, and she stood swaying drunkenly back -and forth, watching him through the drifting smoke. Twice he tried to -raise himself on his hands, and twice he fell back moaning, flat on his -face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s a lie, Jim, it’s a lie!” she exulted insanely, turning and -springing to the transmitter, and catching up the still swaying -receiver. “Do you hear me, Jim? It’s a lie—I’m here, waiting for you! -<span class='it'>Jim, can’t you hear?</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Durkin had fainted away at the other end of the wire, and no -response came to her cries.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She flung herself down upon the collapsed MacNutt, and tore open his -coat and vest. As she did so the polished pig-skin wallet fell out on -the floor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His heart was still beating, but it would be murder, she felt, to leave -him there without attention. His life was his own. She wanted and would -take only what the written law would allow. She wanted only her own.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She came to a sudden pause, as she looked from the paper wealth between -her fingers to the huge and huddled figure beside her. Some inner and -sentinel voice, from the calmer depths of her nature, was demanding of -her how much of what had thus come into her hand <span class='it'>was</span> her own? After -all, how much of that terrible and tainted wealth could truly be called -their own?—was the untimely question this better part of her was crying -out.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She knew that in the end most usurious toll would be exacted for what -she took. Her life had taught her that no lasting foundation of good, no -enduring walls of aspiration, could be built on the engulfing sloughs -of evil. And as she looked at her prostrate enemy once more, and -breathed out a fervent and grateful: “Oh, God, I thank Thee for this -deliverance!” a sudden chastening and abnegative passion prompted her to -thrust back every dollar she had drawn from that capacious wallet.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she thought of the future, of the exigent needs of life, of the -necessities of her immediate flight; and her heart sank within her. To -begin life again with a clean slate—that had been her constant wish. -Yet much as she hungered to do so, she dare not leave it all. As with -many another aspiring soul in quieter walks of life, she found herself -grimly but sorrowfully compelled to leave the pure idea sacrificed on -the altar of compromise. All life, she told herself, was made up of -concessions. She could only choose the lesser evil, and through it still -strive to grope a little onward and upward.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So she slowly detached one Treasury note—it was for one thousand -dollars—from the bulky roll, and the rest she restored to its wallet. -It was a contribution to conscience. As she replaced that wallet in the -inner pocket of the prostrate man, her feelings were akin to those of -some primordial worshipper before his primordial Baal or his exacting -Juggernaut. She felt that with that sacrifice she was appeasing her -gods. She consoled herself with the thought that the Master of Destiny -would know and understand—that she had given up the great thing that -she might not sorrow in the little. As yet, He would not expect too much -of her! That minute fraction of what she might have taken, she argued -with herself, appeasingly,—surely that little moiety of what they had -fought and worked for might be theirs.</p> - -<hr class='tbk100'/> - -<p class='pindent'>It was fifteen minutes later that a frightened and pale-faced woman left -word at the corner drugstore that an old gentleman was ill of morphine -poisoning, and asked if the ambulance might be sent for. All that the -clerk could remember, when he was later questioned by the somewhat -bewildered police, was that she had seemed weak and sick, and had asked -for some aromatic spirits of ammonia, and that the side of her face was -swollen and bruised where she lifted her veil. He was of the opinion, -too, that she had been under the drug herself, or had been drinking -heavily, for she walked unsteadily, and he had had to call a taxi for -her and help her into it. What made him believe this, on second -thoughts, was the fact that she had flung herself back in her seat and -said, “Thank God, oh, thank God!” half a dozen times to herself.</p> - -<div><h1>CHAPTER XXXII</h1></div> - -<p class='pindent'>Neither Frances nor Durkin seemed to care to come on deck until the bell -by the forward gangway had rung for the last time, and the officer from -the bridge had given his last warning of: “All visitors ashore!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then, as the last line was cast off, and the great vessel wore slowly -out from the crowded pier, a-flutter with hands and handkerchiefs, the -two happy travelers came up from their cabin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>While the liner was swinging round in midstream, and the good-byes and -the cheering died down in the distance, the two stood side by side at -the rail, watching the City, as the mist-crowned, serrated line of the -lower town sky-scrapers drifted past them. The shrouded morning sun was -already high in the East, and through the lifting fog they could see the -River and the widening Bay, glistening and flashing in the muffled -light.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frances took it as a good omen, and pointed it out, with a flutter of -laughing wistfulness, to her husband. Behind them, she took pains to -show him, the churned water lay all yellow and turgid and draped in fog.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I hope it holds good,” he said, linking his arm in hers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We shall <span class='it'>make</span> it hold good,” she answered valiantly, though deep down -in her heart some indefinite premonition of failure still whispered and -stirred. Yet, she tried to tell herself, if they had sinned, surely they -had been purged in fire! Surely it was not too late to shake off the -memory of that old entangled and disordered life they were leaving -behind them!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was not so much for herself that she feared, as for her husband. He -was a man, and through his wayward manhood, she told herself, swept -tides <a id='and'></a>and currents uncomprehended and uncontrolled by her weaker -woman’s heart. But she would shield him, and watch him, and, if need be, -fight for him and with him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked up at his face with her studious eyes, after a little -ineloquent gesture of final resignation; and he laughed down at her, and -crushed her arm happily against his side. Then he emitted a long and -contented sigh.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you know how I feel?” he said, at last, as they began to pace the -deck, side by side, and the smoke-plumed city, crowned with its halo of -purplish mist, died down behind them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I feel as if we were two ghosts, being transported into another life! I -feel exactly as if you and I were disembodied spirits, travelling out -through lonely space, to find a new star!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, my beloved, I know!” she said, comprehendingly, with her habitual -little head-shake. Then she, too, gave vent to a sigh, yet a sigh not -touched with the same contentment as Durkin’s.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, my own, I’m so tired!” she murmured.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked down at her, knowingly, but said nothing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then she stopped and leaned over the rail, breathing in the buoyant salt -air. He stood close beside her, and did the same.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s fresh and fine and good, isn’t it!” he cried, blinking back -through the strong sunlight where the drifting city smoke still hung -thinly on the skyline in their wake.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She did not answer him, for her thoughts, at the moment, were far away. -He looked at her quietly, where the sea-wind stirred her hair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good-bye, Old World, good-bye!” she murmured at last, softly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, you’re crying!” he said, as his hand sought hers on the rail.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” she answered, “just a little!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then, for some unknown reason, with her habitual sense of -guardianship, she let her arm creep about her uncomprehending husband. -From what or against what that shielding gesture was meant to guard him -he could not understand, nor would Frances explain, as, with a little -shamefaced laugh, she wiped away her tears.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good-bye, Old World!” he repeated, as he looked back at the widening -skyline, with a challenging finality which seemed to imply that what -was over and done with was for all time over and done with. . . . -“Good-bye!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good-bye!” said the woman. But it was not a challenge. It was a prayer.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em;'>THE END</p> - -<hr class='tbk101'/> - -<p class='line' style='margin-top:2em;font-size:1.1em;'><span class='bold'><a id='notes'></a>Transcriber’s Notes:</span></p> - -<p class='noindent'> Punctuation errors have been corrected without note. Other errors have -been corrected as noted below:</p> - -<div class='lgl' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>Page 5. The touch of content ==> The touch of <a href='#contempt'>contempt</a></p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>Page 35. it drives about the open ==>  <a href='#its'>its</a> drives about the open</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>Page 47. what it it, Mack ==> what <a href='#iiss'>is</a> it, Mack</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>Page 133. Your heard about the fire ==> <a href='#you'>You</a> heard about the fire</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>Page 266. strength was was equally slow ==> strength <a href='#was'>was</a> equally slow</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>Page 299. swept tides and and currents ==> swept tides <a href='#and'>and</a> currents</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wire Tappers, by Arthur Stringer - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIRE TAPPERS *** - -***** This file should be named 50203-h.htm or 50203-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/0/2/0/50203/ - -Produced by David T. 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