Mr. Trumble’s offices were heralded
by a neat blazon upon the principal door, “Wade
J. Trumble, Mortgages and Loans”; and the gentleman
thus comfortably, proclaimed, emerging from that door
upon a September noontide, burlesqued a start of surprise
at sight of a figure unlocking an opposite door which
exhibited the name, “Ray Vilas,” and below
it, the cryptic phrase, “Probate Law.”
“Water!” murmured Mr.
Trumble, affecting to faint. “You ain’t
going in there, are you, Ray?” He followed
the other into the office, and stood leaning against
a bookcase, with his hands in his pockets, while Vilas
raised the two windows, which were obscured by a film
of smoke-deposit: there was a thin coat of fine
sifted dust over everything. “Better not
sit down, Ray,” continued Trumble, warningly.
“You’ll spoil your clothes and you might
get a client. That word `Probate’ on the
door ain’t going to keep ’em out forever.
You recognize the old place, I s’pose? You
must have been here at least twice since you moved
in. What’s the matter? Dick Lindley
hasn’t missionaried you into any idea of working,
has he? Oh, no, I see: the Richfield
Hotel bar has closed you’ve managed
to drink it all at last!”
“Have you heard how old man
Madison is to-day?” asked Ray, dusting his fingers
with a handkerchief.
“Somebody told me yesterday
he was about the same. He’s not going to
get well.”
“How do you know?” Ray spoke quickly.
“Stroke too severe. People never recover ”
“Oh, yes, they do, too.”
Trumble began hotly: “I
beg to dif ” but checked himself,
manifesting a slight confusion. “That is,
I know they don’t. Old Madison may live
a while, if you call that getting well; but he’ll
never be the same man he was. Doctor Sloane says
it was a bad stroke. Says it was `induced by
heat prostration and excitement.’ `Excitement!’”
he repeated with a sour laugh. “Yep, I expect
a man could get all the excitement he wanted in that
house, especially if he was her daddy. Poor old
man, I don’t believe he’s got five thousand
dollars in the world, and look how she dresses!”
Ray opened a compartment beneath one
of the bookcases, and found a bottle and some glasses.
“Aha,” he muttered, “our janitor
doesn’t drink, I perceive. Join me?”
Mr. Trumble accepted, and Ray explained, cheerfully:
“Richard Lindley’s got me so cowed I’m
afraid to go near any of my old joints. You see,
he trails me; the scoundrel has kept me sober for
whole days at a time, and I’ve been mortified,
having old friends see me in that condition; so I
have to sneak up here to my own office to drink to
Cora, now and then. You mustn’t tell him.
What’s she been doing to you, lately?”
The little man addressed grew red
with the sharp, resentful memory. “Oh,
nothing! Just struck me in the face with her parasol
on the public street, that’s all!” He gave
an account of his walk to church with Cora. “I’m
through with that girl!” he exclaimed vindictively,
in conclusion. “It was the damnedest thing
you ever saw in your life: right in broad daylight,
in front of the church. And she laughed when
she did it; you’d have thought she was knocking
a puppy out of her way. She can’t do that
to me twice, I tell you. What the devil do you
see to laugh at?”
“You’ll be around,”
returned his companion, refilling the glasses, “asking
for more, the first chance she gives you. Here’s
her health!”
“I don’t drink it!” cried Mr. Trumble
angrily.
“And I’m through with
her for good, I tell you! I’m not your kind:
I don’t let a girl like that upset me till I
can’t think of anything else, and go making
such an ass of myself that the whole town gabbles
about it. Cora Madison’s seen the last of
me, I’ll thank you to notice. She’s
never been half-decent to me; cut dances with me all
last winter; kept me hanging round the outskirts of
every crowd she was in; stuck me with Laura and her
mother every time she had a chance; then has the nerve
to try to use me, so’s she can make a bigger
hit with a new man! You can bet your head I’m
through! She’ll get paid though! Oh,
she’ll get paid for it!”
“How?” laughed Ray.
It was a difficult question.
“You wait and see,” responded the threatener,
feebly. “Just wait and see. She’s
wild about this Corliss, I tell you,” he continued,
with renewed vehemence. “She’s crazy
about him; she’s lost her head at last ”
“You mean he’s going to avenge you?”
“No, I don’t, though he might, if she
decided to marry him.”
“Do you know,” said Ray
slowly, glancing over his glass at his nervous companion,
“it doesn’t strike me that Mr. Valentine
Corliss has much the air of a marrying man.”
“He has the air to me,”
observed Mr. Trumble, “of a darned bad lot!
But I have to hand it to him: he’s a wizard.
He’s got something besides his good looks a
man that could get Cora Madison interested in `business’!
In oil! Cora Madison! How do you
suppose ”
His companion began to laugh again.
“You don’t really suppose he talked his
oil business to her, do you, Trumble?”
“He must have. Else how could she ”
“Oh, no, Cora herself never
talks upon any subject but one; she never listens
to any other either.”
“Then how in thunder did he ”
“If Cora asks you if you think
it will rain,” interrupted Vilas, “doesn’t
she really seem to be asking: `Do you love me?
How much?’ Suppose Mr. Corliss is an expert
in the same line. Of course he can talk about
oil!”
“He strikes me,” said
Trumble, “as just about the slickest customer
that ever hit this town. I like Richard Lindley,
and I hope he’ll see his fifty thousand dollars
again. I wouldn’t have given Corliss
thirty cents.”
“Why do you think he’s a crook?”
“I don’t say that,”
returned Trumble. “All I know about
him is that he’s done some of the finest work
to get fifty thousand dollars put in his hands that
I ever heard of. And all anybody knows about
him is that he lived here seventeen years ago, and
comes back claiming to know where there’s oil
in Italy. He shows some maps and papers and gets
cablegrams signed `Moliterno.’ Then he
talks about selling the old Corliss house here, where
the Madisons live, and putting the money into his
oil company: he does that to sound plausible,
but I have good reason to know that house was mortgaged
to its full value within a month after his aunt left
it to him. He’ll not get a cent if it’s
sold. That’s all. And he’s got
Cora Madison so crazy over him that she makes life
a hell for poor old Lindley until he puts all he’s
saved into the bubble. The scheme may be all
right. How do I know? There’s
no way to tell, without going over there, and Corliss
won’t let anybody do that oh, he’s
got a plausible excuse for it! But I’m sorry
for Lindley: he’s so crazy about Cora,
he’s soft. And she’s so crazy about
Corliss she’s soft! Well, I used
to be crazy about her myself, but I’m not soft I’m
not the Lindley kind of loon, thank heaven!”
“What kind are you, Trumble?” asked Ray,
mildly.
“Not your kind either,”
retorted the other going to the door. “She
cut me on the street the other day; she’s quit
speaking to me. If you’ve got any money,
why don’t you take it over to the hotel and
give it to Corliss? She might start speaking to
you again. I’m going to lunch!”
He slammed the door behind him.
Ray Vilas, left alone, elevated his
heels to the sill, and stared out of the window a
long time at a gravelled roof which presented little
of interest. He replenished his glass and his
imagination frequently, the latter being so stirred
that when, about three o’clock, he noticed the
inroads he had made upon the bottle, tears of self-pity
came to his eyes. “Poor little drunkard!”
he said aloud. “Go ahead and do it.
Isn’t anything you won’t do!”
And, having washed his face at a basin in a corner,
he set his hat slightly upon one side, picked up a
walking stick and departed jauntily, and, to the outward
eye, presentably sober.
Mr. Valentine Corliss would be glad
to see him, the clerk at the Richfield Hotel reported,
after sending up a card, and upon Ray’s following
the card, Mr. Valentine Corliss in person confirmed
the message with considerable amusement and a cordiality
in which there was some mixture of the quizzical.
He was the taller; and the robust manliness of his
appearance, his splendid health and boxer’s
figure offered a sharp contrast to the superlatively
lean tippler. Corliss was humorously aware of
his advantage: his greeting seemed really to
say, “Hello, my funny bug, here you are again!”
though the words of his salutation were entirely courteous;
and he followed it with a hospitable offer.
“No,” said Vilas; “I
won’t drink with you.” He spoke so
gently that the form of his refusal, usually interpreted
as truculent, escaped the other’s notice.
He also declined a cigar, apologetically asking permission
to light one of his own cigarettes; then, as he sank
into a velour-covered chair, apologized again for
the particular attention he was bestowing upon the
apartment, which he recognized as one of the suites
de luxe of the hotel.
“`Parlour, bedroom, and bath,’”
he continued, with a melancholy smile; “and
`Lachrymae,’ and `A Reading from Homer.’
Sometimes they have `The Music Lesson,’ or `Winter
Scene’ or `A Neapolitan Fisher Lad’ instead
of `Lachrymae,’ but they always have `A Reading
from Homer.’ When you opened the door, a
moment ago, I had a very strong impression that something
extraordinary would some time happen to me in this
room.”
“Well,” suggested Corliss,
“you refused a drink in it.”
“Even more wonderful than that,”
said Ray, glancing about the place curiously.
“It may be a sense of something painful that
already has happened here perhaps long ago,
before your occupancy. It has a pathos.”
“Most hotel rooms have had something
happen in them,” said Corliss lightly.
“I believe the managers usually change the door
numbers if what happens is especially unpleasant.
Probably they change some of the rugs, also.”
“I feel ”
Ray paused, frowning. “I feel as if some
one had killed himself here.”
“Then no doubt some of the rugs have
been changed.”
“No doubt.” The caller
laughed and waved his hand in dismissal of the topic.
“Well, Mr. Corliss,” he went on, shifting
to a brisker tone, “I have come to make my fortune,
too. You are Midas. Am I of sufficient importance
to be touched?”
Valentine Corliss gave him sidelong
an almost imperceptibly brief glance of sharpest scrutiny it
was like the wink of a camera shutter but
laughed in the same instant. “Which way
do you mean that?”
“You have been quick,”
returned the visitor, repaying that glance with equal
swiftness, “to seize upon the American idiom.
I mean: How small a contribution would you be
willing to receive toward your support!”
Corliss did not glance again at Ray;
instead, he looked interested in the smoke of his
cigar. “`Contribution,’” he repeated,
with no inflection whatever. “`Toward my support.’”
“I mean, of course, how small
an investment in your oil company.”
“Oh, anything, anything,”
returned the promoter, with quick amiability.
“We need to sell all the stock we can.”
“All the money you can get?”
“Precisely. It’s
really a colossal proposition, Mr. Vilas.”
Corliss spoke with brisk enthusiasm. “It’s
a perfectly certain enormous profit upon everything
that goes in. Prince Moliterno cables me later
investigations show that the oil-field is more than
twice as large as we thought when I left Naples.
He’s on the ground now, buying up what he can,
secretly.”
“I had an impression from Richard
Lindley that the secret had been discovered.”
“Oh, yes; but only by a few,
and those are trying to keep it quiet from the others,
of course.”
“I see. Does your partner
know of your success in raising a large investment?”
“You mean Lindley’s?
Certainly.” Corliss waved his hand in light
deprecation. “Of course that’s something,
but Moliterno would hardly be apt to think of it as
very large! You see he’s putting in about
five times that much, himself, and I’ve already
turned over to him double it for myself. Still,
it counts certainly; and of course it will
be a great thing for Lindley.”
“I fear,” Ray said hesitatingly,
“you won’t be much interested in my drop
for your bucket. I have twelve hundred dollars
in the world; and it is in the bank I stopped
there on my way here. To be exact, I have twelve
hundred and forty-seven dollars and fifty-one cents.
My dear sir, will you allow me to purchase one thousand
dollars’ worth of stock? I will keep the
two hundred and forty-seven dollars and fifty-one
cents to live on I may need an egg while
waiting for you to make me rich. Will you accept
so small an investment?”
“Certainly,” said Corliss,
laughing. “Why not? You may as well
profit by the chance as any one. I’ll send
you the stock certificates we put them
at par. I’m attending to that myself, as
our secretary, Mr. Madison, is unable to take up his
duties.”
Vilas took a cheque-book and a fountain-pen
from his pocket.
“Oh, any time, any time,”
said Corliss cheerfully, observing the new investor’s
movement.
“Now, I think,” returned
Vilas quietly. “How shall I make it out?”
“Oh, to me, I suppose,”
answered Corliss indifferently. “That will
save a little trouble, and I can turn it over to Moliterno,
by cable, as I did Lindley’s. I’ll
give you a receipt ”
“You need not mind that,”
said Ray. “Really it is of no importance.”
“Of course the cheque itself
is a receipt,” remarked Corliss, tossing it
carelessly upon a desk. “You’ll have
some handsome returns for that slip of paper, Mr.
Vilas.”
“In that blithe hope I came,” said Ray
airily.
“I am confident of it.
I have my own ways of divination, Mr. Corliss.
I have gleams.” He rose as if to go, but
stood looking thoughtfully about the apartment again.
“Singular impression,” he murmured.
“Not exactly as if I’d seen it in a dream;
and yet and yet ”
“You have symptoms of clairvoyance
at times, I take it.” The conscious, smooth
superiority of the dexterous man playing with an inconsequent
opponent resounded in this speech, clear as the humming
of a struck bell; and Vilas shot him a single open
glance of fire from hectic eyes. For that instant,
the frailer buck trumpeted challenge. Corliss broad-shouldered,
supple of waist, graceful and strong smiled
down negligently; yet the very air between the two
men seemed charged with an invisible explosive.
Ray laughed quickly, as in undisturbed good nature;
then, flourishing his stick, turned toward the door.
“Oh, no, it isn’t clairvoyance no
more than when I told you that your only real interest
is women.” He paused, his hand upon the
door-knob. “I’m a quaint mixture,
however: perhaps I should be handled with care.”
“Very good of you,” laughed
Corliss “this warning. The afternoon
I had the pleasure of meeting you I think I remember
your implying that you were a mere marionette.”
“A haggard harlequin!”
snapped Vilas, waving his hand to a mirror across
the room. “Don’t I look it?”
And the phrase fitted him with tragic accuracy.
“You see? What a merry wedding-guest I’ll
be! I invite you to join me on the nuptial eve.”
“Thanks. Who’s getting
married: when the nuptial eve?”
Ray opened the door, and, turning,
rolled his eyes fantastically. “Haven’t
you heard?” he cried. “When Hecate
marries John Barleycorn!” He bowed low.
“Mr. Midas, adieu.”
Corliss stood in the doorway and watched
him walk down the long hall to the elevator.
There, Ray turned and waved his hand, the other responding
with gayety which was not assumed: Vilas might
be insane, or drunk, or both, but the signature upon
his cheque was unassailable.
Corliss closed the door and began
to pace his apartment thoughtfully. His expression
manifested a peculiar phenomenon. In company,
or upon the street, or when he talked with men, the
open look and frank eyes of this stalwart young man
were disarming and his most winning assets. But
now, as he paced alone in his apartment, now that
he was not upon exhibition, now when there was no
eye to behold him, and there was no reason to dissimulate
or veil a single thought or feeling, his look was
anything but open; the last trace of frankness disappeared;
the muscles at mouth and eyes shifted; lines and planes
intermingled and altered subtly; there was a moment
of misty transformation and the face of
another man emerged. It was the face of a man
uninstructed in mercy; it was a shrewd and planning
face: alert, resourceful, elaborately perceptive,
and flawlessly hard. But, beyond all, it was
the face of a man perpetually on guard.
He had the air of debating a question,
his hands in his pockets, his handsome forehead lined
with a temporary indecision. His sentry-go extended
the length of his two rooms, and each time he came
back into his bedroom his glance fell consideringly
upon a steamer-trunk of the largest size, at the foot
of his bed. The trunk was partially packed as
if for departure. And, indeed, it was the question
of departure which he was debating.
He was a man of varied dexterities,
and he had one faculty of high value, which had often
saved him, had never betrayed him; it was intuitive
and equal to a sixth sense: he always knew when
it was time to go. An inner voice warned him;
he trusted to it and obeyed it. And it had spoken
now, and there was his trunk half-packed in answer.
But he had stopped midway in his packing, because he
had never yet failed to make a clean sweep where there
was the slightest chance for one; he hated to leave
a big job before it was completely finished and
Mr. Wade Trumble had refused to invest in the oil-fields
of Basilicata.
Corliss paused beside the trunk, stood
a moment immersed in thought; then nodded once, decisively,
and, turning to a dressing-table, began to place some
silver-mounted brushes and bottles in a leather travelling-case.
There was a knock at the outer door.
He frowned, set down what he had in his hands, went
to the door and opened it to find Mr. Pryor, that
plain citizen, awaiting entrance.
Corliss remained motionless in an
arrested attitude, his hand upon the knob of the opened
door. His position did not alter; he became almost
unnaturally still, a rigidity which seemed to increase.
Then he looked quickly behind him, over his shoulder,
and back again, with a swift movement of the head.
“No,” said Pryor, at that.
“I don’t want you. I just thought
I’d have two minutes’ talk with you.
All right?”
“All right,” said Corliss
quietly. “Come in.” He turned
carelessly, and walked away from the door keeping between
his guest and the desk. When he reached the desk,
he turned again and leaned against it, his back to
it, but in the action of turning his hand had swept
a sheet of note-paper over Ray Vilas’s cheque a
too conspicuous oblong of pale blue. Pryor had
come in and closed the door.
“I don’t know,”
he began, regarding the other through his glasses,
with steady eyes, “that I’m going to interfere
with you at all, Corliss. I just happened to
strike you I wasn’t looking for you.
I’m on vacation, visiting my married daughter
that lives here, and I don’t want to mix in
if I can help it.”
Corliss laughed, easily. “There’s
nothing for you to mix in. You couldn’t
if you wanted to.”
“Well, I hope that’s true,”
said Pryor, with an air of indulgence, curiously like
that of a teacher for a pupil who promises improvement.
“I do indeed. There isn’t anybody
I’d like to see turn straight more than you.
You’re educated and cultured, and refined, and
smarter than all hell. It would be a big thing.
That’s one reason I’m taking the trouble
to talk to you.”
“I told you I wasn’t doing
anything,” said Corliss with a petulance as
oddly like that of a pupil as the other’s indulgence
was like that of a tutor. “This is my own
town; I own property here, and I came here to sell
it. I can prove it in half-a-minute’s telephoning.
Where do you come in?”
“Easy, easy,” said Pryor,
soothingly. “I’ve just told you I
don’t want to come in at all.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I came to tell you just one
thing: to go easy up there at Mr. Madison’s
house.”
Corliss laughed contemptuously.
“It’s my house. I own it.
That’s the property I came here to sell.”
“Oh, I know,” responded
Pryor. “That part of it’s all right.
But I’ve seen you several times with that young
lady, and you looked pretty thick, to me. You
know you haven’t got any business doing such
things, Corliss. I know your record from Buda
Pesth to Copenhagen and ”
“See here, my friend,”
said the younger man, angrily, “you may be a
tiptop spotter for the government when it comes to
running down some poor old lady that’s bought
a string of pearls in the Rue de la Paix ”
“I’ve been in the service
twenty-eight years,” remarked Pryor, mildly.
“All right,” said the
other with a gesture of impatience; “and you
got me once, all right. Well, that’s over,
isn’t it? Have I tried anything since?”
“Not in that line,” said Pryor.
“Well, what business have you
with any other line?” demanded Corliss angrily.
“Who made you general supervisor of public morals?
I want to know ”
“Now, what’s the use your
getting excited? I’m just here to tell
you that I’m going to keep an eye on you.
I don’t know many people here, and I haven’t
taken any particular pains to look you up. For
all I know, you’re only here to sell your house,
as you say. But I know old man Madison a little,
and I kind of took a fancy to him; he’s a mighty
nice old man, and he’s got a nice family.
He’s sick and it won’t do to trouble him;
but honest, Corliss if you don’t
slack off in that neighbourhood a little, I’ll
have to have a talk with the young lady herself.”
A derisory light showed faintly in
the younger man’s eyes as he inquired, softly:
“That all, Mr. Pryor?”
“No. Don’t try anything
on out here. Not in any of your lines.”
“I don’t mean to.”
“That’s right. Sell
your house and clear out. You’ll find it
healthy.” He went to the door. “So
far as I can see,” he observed, ruminatively,
“you haven’t brought any of that Moliterno
crowd you used to work with over to this side with
you.”
“I haven’t seen Moliterno
for two years,” said Corliss, sharply.
“Well, I’ve said my say.”
Pryor gave him a last word as he went out. “You
keep away from that little girl.”
“Ass!” exclaimed Corliss,
as the door closed. He exhaled a deep breath
sharply, and broke into a laugh. Then he went
quickly into his bedroom and began to throw the things
out of his trunk.