CHAPTER XII
WOE IN NUMBER SEVEN
Inside, before the office fire, Miss Thornhill read a magazine in theindolent fashion so much affected at Baldpate Inn during the heatedterm; while the mayor of Reuton chatted amiably with the ponderously coyMrs. Norton. Into this circle burst the envoys to the hermitage,flushed, energetic, snowflaked.
"Hail to the chef who in triumph advances!" cried Mr. Magee.
He pointed to the door, through which Mr. Max was leading the capturedMr. Peters.
"You got him, didyu?" rasped Mrs. Norton.
"Without the use of anesthetics," answered Magee. "Everybody ready forone of Mr. Peters' inimitable lunches?"
"Put me down at the head of the list," contributed the mayor.
Myra Thornhill laid down her magazine, and fixed her great black eyesupon the radiant girl in corduroy.
"And was the walk in the morning air," she asked, "all you expected?"
"All, and much more," laughed Miss Norton, mischievously regarding theman who had babbled to her of love on the mountain. "By the way, enjoyMr. Peters while you can. He's back for just one day."
"Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow the cook leaves, as the fellowsays," supplemented Mr. Max, removing his overcoat.
"How about a quick lunch, Peters?" inquired Magee.
"Out of what, I'd like to know," put in Mrs. Norton. "Not a thing in thehouse to eat. Just like a man."
"You didn't look in the right place, ma'am," replied Mr. Peters withrelish. "I got supplies for a couple of days in the kitchen."
"Well, what's the sense in hiding 'em?" the large lady inquired.
"It ain't hiding--it's system," explained Mr. Peters. "Something womendon't understand." He came close to Mr. Magee, and whispered low: "Youdidn't warn me there was another of 'em."
"The last, on my word of honor," Magee told him.
"The last," sneered Mr. Peters. "There isn't any last up here." And witha sidelong glance at the new Eve in his mountain Eden, he turned away tothe kitchen.
"Now," whispered Magee to Miss Norton, "I'll get you that package. I'llprove that it was for you I fought and bled the mayor of Reuton. Watchfor our chance--when I see you again I'll have it in my pocket."
"You mustn't fail me," she replied. "It means so much."
Mr. Magee started for the stairs. Between him and them loomed suddenlythe great bulk of Mr. Cargan. His hard menacing eyes looked full intoMagee's.
"I want to speak to you, young fellow," he remarked.
"I'm flattered," said Magee, "that you find my company so enchanting. Inten minutes I'll be ready for another interview."
"You're ready now," answered the mayor, "even if you don't know it." Histone was that of one correcting a child. He took Mr. Magee's arm in agrip which recalled to that gentleman a fact the muckraking storiesalways dwelt on--how this Cargan had, in the old days, "put away hisman" in many shady corners of a great city.
"Come over here," said Cargan. He led the way to a window. Over hisshoulder Magee noted the troubled eyes of Miss Norton following. "Sitdown. I've been trying to dope you out, and I think I've got you. I'veseen your kind before. Every few months one of 'em breezes into Reuton,spends a whole day talking to a few rats I've had to exterminate frompolitics, and then flies back to New York with a ten-page story of myvicious career all ready for the linotypers. Yes, sir--I got you. Youwrite sweet things for the magazines."
"Think so?" inquired Magee.
"Know it," returned the mayor heartily. "So you're out after old JimCargan's scalp again, are you? I thought that now, seeing stories on thecorruption of the courts is so plentiful, you'd let the shame of thecity halls alone for a while. But--well, I guess I'm what you guys callgood copy. Big, brutal, uneducated, picturesque--you see I read themstories myself. How long will the American public stand being ruled by aman like this, when it might be authorizing pretty boys with kid glovesto get next to the good things? That's the dope, ain't it--the old dopeof the reform gang--the ballyhoo of the bunch that can't let theexisting order stand? Don't worry, I ain't going to get started on thatagain. But I want to talk to you serious--like a father. There was ayoung fellow like you once--"
"Like me?"
"Exactly. He was out working on long hours and short pay for the reformgang, and he happened to get hold of something that a man I knew--a manhigh up in public office--wanted, and wanted bad. The young fellow wasgoing to get two hundred dollars for the article he was writing. Myfriend offered him twenty thousand to call it off. What'd the youngfellow do?"
"Wrote the article, of course," said Magee.
"Now--now," reproved Cargan. "That remark don't fit in with the estimateI've made of you. I think you're a smart boy. Don't disappoint me. Thisyoung fellow I speak of--he was smart, all right. He thought the matterover. He knew the reform bunch, through and through. All glory and nopay, serving them. He knew how they chased bubbles, and made a lot ofnoise, and never got anywhere in the end. He thought it over, Magee, thesame as you're going to do. 'You're on,' says this lad, and added fivefigures to his roll as easy as we'd add a nickel. He had brains, thatguy."
"And no conscience," commented Magee.
"Conscience," said Mr. Cargan, "ain't worth much except as an excuse fora man that hasn't made good to give his wife. How much did you say youwas going to get for this article?"
Mr. Magee looked him coolly in the eye.
"If it's ever written," he said, "it will be atwo-hundred-thousand-dollar story."
"There ain't anything like that in it for you," replied the mayor."Think over what I've told you."
"I'm afraid," smiled Magee, "I'm too busy to think."
He again crossed the office floor to the stairway. Before the fire satthe girl of the station, her big eyes upon him, pleadingly. With areassuring smile in her direction, he darted up the stairs.
"And now," he thought, as he closed and locked the door of number sevenbehind him, "for the swag. So Cargan would give twenty thousand for thatlittle package. I don't blame him."
He opened a window and glanced out along the balcony. It was deserted ineither direction; its snowy floor was innocent of footprints.Re-entering number seven, he knelt by the fireplace and dug up the brickunder which lay the package so dear to many hearts on Baldpate Mountain.
"I might have known," he muttered.
For the money was gone. He dug up several of the bricks, and rummagedabout beneath them. No use. The fat little bundle of bills had flown.Only an ugly hole gaped up at him.
He sat down. Of course! What a fool he had been to suppose that suchtreasure as this would stay long in a hiding-place so obvious. He whohad made a luxurious living writing tales of the chase of gems and plateand gold had bungled the thing from the first. He could hammer out on atypewriter wild plots and counter-plots--with a boarding-school girl'scupid busy all over the place. But he could not live them.
A boarding-school cupid! Good lord! He remembered the eyes of the girlin blue corduroy as they had met his when he turned to the stairs. Whatwould she say now? On this he had gaily staked her faith in him. Thiswas to be the test of his sincerity, the proof of his devotion. And nowhe must go to her, looking like a fool once more--go to her and confessthat again he had failed her.
His rage blazed forth. So they had "got to him", after all. Who? Hethought of the smooth crafty mountain of a man who had detained him amoment ago. Who but Cargan and Max, of course? They had found hischildish hiding-place, and the money had come home to their eager hands.No doubt they were laughing slyly at him now.
Well, he would show them yet. He got up and walked the floor. Once hehad held them up in the snow and spoiled their little game--he would doit again. How? When? He did not know. His soul cried for action of somesort, but he was up against a blind alley, and he knew it.
He unlocked the door of number seven. To go down-stairs, to meet thesweet eagerness of the girl who depended on him, to confess himselftricked--it took all the courage he had. Why had it all happened,a
nyhow? Confound it, hadn't he come up here to be alone with histhoughts? But, brighter side, it had given him her--or it would give himher before the last card was played. He shut his teeth tightly, and wentdown the stairs.
Mr. Bland had added himself to the group about the fire. Quickly theeyes of Miss Norton met Magee's. She was trembling with excitement.Cargan, huge, red, cheery, got in Magee's path once more.
"I'll annihilate this man," thought Magee.
"I've been figuring," said the mayor, "that was one thing he didn't haveto contend with. No, sir, there wasn't any bright young men hunting upold Napoleon and knocking him in the monthly magazines. They didn't godown to Sardinia and pump it out of the neighbors that he startedbusiness on borrowed money, and that his father drank more than was goodfor him. They didn't run illustrated articles about the diamonds hewore, and moving pictures of him eating soup."
"No, I guess not," replied Magee abstractedly.
"I reckon there was a lot in _his_ record wasn't meant for thenewspapers," continued Cargan reflectively. "And it didn't get there.Nap was lucky. He had it on the reformers there. They couldn't squashhim with the power of the press."
Mr. Magee broke away from the mayor's rehashed history, and hurried toMiss Norton.
"You promised yesterday," he reminded her, "to show me the pictures ofthe admiral."
"So I did," she replied, rising quickly. "To think you have spent allthis time in Baldpate Inn and not paid homage to its own particular cockof the walk."
She led him to a portrait hanging beside the desk.
"Behold," she said, "the admiral on a sunny day in July. Note thestarchy grandeur of him, even with the thermometer up in the clouds.That's one of the things the rocking-chair fleet adores in him. Can youimagine the flurry at the approach of all that superiority? TheodoreRoosevelt, William Faversham, and Richard Harding Davis all arrivingtogether couldn't overshadow the admiral for a minute."
Mr. Magee gazed at the picture of a pompous little man, whose fiercemustache seemed anxious to make up for the lack of hair on his head.
"A bald hero at a summer resort," he commented, "it seems incredible."
"Oh, they think he lost his hair fighting for the flag," she laughed."It's winter, and snowing, or I shouldn't dare _lese-majeste_. And--overhere--is the admiral on the veranda, playing it's a quarter deck. Andhere the great portrait--Andrew Rutter with a profaning arm over theadmiral's shoulder. The old ladies make their complaints to Mr. Rutterin softer tones after seeing that picture."
"And this?" asked Magee, moving farther from the group by the fire.
"A precious one--I wonder they leave it here in winter. This is theadmiral as a young man--clipped from a magazine article. Even withoutthe mustache, you see, he had a certain martial bearing."
"And now he's the ruler of the queen's navee," smiled Magee. He lookedabout. "Is it possible to see the room where the admiral plays hisfamous game?"
"Step softly," she answered. "In here. There stands the very table."
They went into the small card-room at the right of the entrance to theoffice, and Mr. Magee quietly closed the door behind them. The time hadcome. He felt his heart sink.
"Well?" said the girl, with an eagerness she could not conceal.
Mr. Magee groped for words. And found--his old friends of the mountain.
"I love you," he cried desperately. "You must believe I want to helpyou. It looks rather the other way now, I'll admit. I want you to havethat money. I don't know who you are, nor what this all means, but Iwant you to have it. I went up-stairs determined to give it to you--"
"Really." The word was at least fifty degrees below the temperature ofthe card-room.
"Yes, really. I won't ask you to believe--but I'm telling the truth. Iwent to the place where I had fatuously hid the money--under a brick ofmy fireplace. It was gone."
"How terribly unfortunate."
"Yes, isn't it?" Mr. Magee rejoiced that she took so calm a view of it."They searched the room, of course. And they found the money. They're ontop now. But I'm going--"
He stopped. For he had seen her face. She--taking a calm view of it? No,indeed. Billy Magee saw that she was furiously, wildly angry. Heremembered always having written it down that beautiful women were evenmore beautiful in anger. How, he wondered, had he fallen into thaterror?
"Please do not bore me," she said through her teeth, "with any furtherrecital of what you 'are going' to do. You seem to have a fatal facilityin that line. Your record of accomplishment is pathetically weak.And--oh, what a fool I've been! I believed. Even after last night, Ibelieved."
No, she was not going to cry. Hers was no mood for tears. What said thelibrettist? "There is beauty in the roaring of the gale, and the tigerwhen a-lashing of his tail." Such was the beauty of a woman in anger.And nothing to get enthusiastic about, thought Mr. Magee.
"I know," he said helplessly, "you're terribly disappointed. And I don'tblame you. But you will find out that you've done me an injustice. I'mgoing--"
"One thing," said she, smiling a smile that could have cut glass, "youare going to do. I know that you won't fail this time, because I shallpersonally see you through with it. You're going to stop making a foolof me."
"Tell me," pleaded Billy Magee. "Tell me who you are--what this is allabout. Can't you see I'm working in the dark? You must--"
She threw open the card-room door.
"An English officer," she remarked loudly, stepping out into the otherroom, "taught the admiral the game. At least, so he said. It added somuch romance to it in the eyes of the rocking-chair fleet. Can't yousee--India--the hot sun--the Kipling local color--a silent, tanned,handsome man eternally playing solitaire on the porch of the barracks?Has the barracks a porch?"
Roused, humiliated, baffled, Mr. Magee felt his cheeks burn.
"We shall see what we shall see," he muttered.
"Why coin the inevitable into a bromide," she asked.
Mr. Magee joined the group by the fire. Never before in his life had hebeen so determined on anything as he was now that the package of moneyshould return to his keeping. But how? How trace through this maze ofhumans the present holder of that precious bundle of collateral? Helooked at Mr. Max, sneering his lemon-colored sneer at the mayor's side;at the mayor himself, nonchalant as the admiral being photographed; atBland, author of the Arabella fiction, sprawling at ease before thefire; at the tawdry Mrs. Norton, and at Myra Thornhill, who had by herpleading the night before made him ridiculous. Who of these had themoney now? Who but Cargan and Max, their faces serene, their eyeseagerly on the preparations for lunch, their plans for leaving BaldpateInn no doubt already made?
And then Mr. Magee saw coming down the stairs another figure--one he hadforgot--Professor Thaddeus Bolton, he of the mysterious dialogue by theannex door. On the professor's forehead was a surprising red scratch,and his eyes, no longer hidden by the double convex lenses, stoodrevealed a washed-out gray in the light of noon.
"A most unfortunate accident," explained the old man. "Most distressing.I have broken my glasses. I am almost blind without them."
"How'd it happen, Doc?" asked Mr. Cargan easily.
"I came into unexpected juxtaposition with an open door," returnedProfessor Bolton. "Stupid of me, but I'm always doing it. Really, theagility displayed by doors in getting in my path is surprising."
"You and Mr. Max can sympathize with each other," said Magee, "I thoughtfor a moment your injuries might have been received in the same cause."
"Don't worry, Doc," Mr. Bland soothed him, "we'll all keep a weather eyeout for reporters that want to connect you up with the peroxideblondes."
The professor turned his ineffectual gaze on the haberdasher, and therewas a startlingly ironic smile on his face.
"I know, Mr. Bland," he said, "that my safety is your dearest wish."
The Hermit of Baldpate announced that lunch was ready, and with theothers Mr. Magee took his place at the table. Food for thought was alsohis. The spectacles of Professor Thad
deus Bolton were broken. Somewherein the scheme of things those smashed lenses must fit. But where?