CHAPTER XVLOVEMAN SHOWS HIS CLAWS
Butthe next morning came, and as yet there had been no signs of Clifford.
At half-past ten Mary rang at the door of Maisie Jones. Her plan for beginning their acquaintance was very simple, merely the adaptation of an ancient device belonging to her past with her father and her Uncle Joe Russell—the preparation of two letters addressed to Miss Maisie Jones, which were in fact nothing more than modistes’ engraved invitations to inspect new spring styles.
Miss Jones herself answered Mary’s ring. “My name’s Mrs. Gardner—these letters somehow got mixed in my mail,” Mary began, smiling with the engaging frankness she knew how to assume. “I could have returned them to you by the maid; but the maid—it seems you and I have the same maid—told me that your aunt was ill, and I thought I’d bring them myself and make it an excuse to do such an un-New-Yorkish thing as to ask how a sick neighbor is.”
“Aunt’s not seriously ill,” said Maisie Jones.
“But I suppose her illness means that you must stay pretty close to your rooms?”
“Yes.”
“I can sympathize with you. I’m convalescing from pneumonia, and am supposed to rest the whole time. To confess the truth to you”—with a smile of guiltily humorous candor—“my real reason for bringing the letters myself was that I saw in it a few minutes’ relief from this awful boredom of getting well.”
Miss Jones hesitated. “Won’t you please come in?”
Mary entered. The rest was natural development, a development which with her skill she made rapid. She was humorously frank about herself, and from personal bits which she adroitly dropped here and there, she let Miss Jones gather that she was the daughter of a New York family who moved among the city’s smarter set, that her husband was in the far West, on business, and that the other members of the family—they were an irrational and self-centered lot—were at Florida and California resorts gratifying their various individual predilections.
Frankness begot frankness. Maisie Jones, a shut-in, was most willing to talk; but Mary, though making a show of lively interest in what was said, was shrewdly studying the girl. Maisie was strikingly handsome—a specimen of the American girl who has been through a fashionable school and then had a successful year or two in society. Mary catalogued the qualities her plans must take account of: she was spoiled, willful, proud, jealous—possibly vindictive.
This first study of Maisie completed, and the openingmade for future meetings, Mary started back to her suite, thrilling with confidence. Her plan was under way! And she was going to succeed, even though she was going it alone!
But when she entered her sitting-room, she stopped short. For from a chair had risen the smiling person of Peter Loveman.
“Good-morning, my dear,” said the little lawyer.
“How did you get here?” she demanded sharply.
“I told the people at the desk—I know ’em all here—that you’d telephoned for me, and had asked me to come right up. Your door was not locked. That’s all.”
“But how did you know I was staying here?”
“I’m afraid you were followed from the Mordona last night,” he answered placidly.
“How many know this?”
“Two or three—not many more,” answered the little lawyer.
So then she was not to have her few unmolested days in which to mature and execute her present designs. Her dangers were in point of time closer to her than she had thought. Well, she must work all the more quickly, all the more skillfully.
She seated herself, and he resumed his chair. “Of course you’ve come here for a reason, Mr. Loveman. What is it?”
“That was a fine little idea, Mary, we originally worked out for this affair,” he began amiably—“for you to marry Jack Morton, keep the matterquiet until you were fixed solid with Jack, and until conditions developed so that you could win over his father. Yes, a fine little idea. It would have landed you at the top, where nothing ever could have touched you.”
“What are you thinking of now?” she asked sharply.
“Nothing, my dear,—only we both know that fine little idea has had a great fall, and all the king’s horses and all of God’s angels can’t ever put that idea together again.”
“What are you thinking of?” she repeated.
He did not reply at once, but smiled affably and softly rubbed his hairless crown. The shrewdest brain of its kind in New York had done a lot of thinking in the last sixteen hours. Certainly the first stages of the plan, the plan as he had planned it for himself, had fallen down calamitously. And he had seen the further stages of the plan (as the plan, unknown to Mary, concerned him) menaced with sudden danger—and had seen even himself, personally, on the brink of uncalculated misfortune.
“Isn’t it plain what I’m thinking of, Mary?” he said after a moment. “After what happened yesterday, it doesn’t count for much that for the time you made Mr. Morton believe you were only Jack’s mistress. He’s certain to learn the facts very shortly; your whole plan is the same as exploded. You may stave off the end for a day, two days—but hardly longer.”
She refrained from speaking of her present enterprise. “What do you think we ought to do?”
“This has always been a business proposition for you,” he replied in his amiable, reasoning manner, “and the way things have turned, it naturally is going to be a business proposition for me—Mr. Morton being my client, you know. So let’s consider how we can make the most out of it. Now, first item, Mr. Morton is bound to find out the truth in a few days. If he finds it out for himself, nobody’s going to profit. We simply lose, say, ten thousand dollars. My first proposition—this is small money, of course—is that we arrange to beat Mr. Morton to this discovery. You know, for some time I have been under directions from Mr. Morton to follow up Jack’s doings. Now, let’s say that to-morrow I turn in a report that the detectives I’ve employed have just discovered that Jack is married—which will mean a bill for detective service of at least ten thousand. Right there is ten thousand saved out of the ruin. Of course I’ll split it with you.”
Mary managed to control her expression; she saw a few things regarding Loveman she had not suspected. “And after that?”
“Of course Mr. Morton will want to institute proceedings for a divorce, and naturally I’ll be retained as his attorney. You’ll make him pay big for the separation; and I being on the inside can tell you the limit that you can make him pay over.”
He smiled at her genially as though it were a settled matter which Mary’s good sense would applaud. Now that the time had come to do business, and since he considered that Mary was in this with him, he had not hesitated to reveal a fragment of his method as a specialist in domestic affairs—which was to play both ends and every point between. Smiling, he expectantly awaited Mary’s approval.
“And after that’s done, then what becomes of me?” she asked.
“Why, my dear, it will be handled so that you’ll come out of the proceedings with a pretty fair reputation and holding tight to the name of Mrs. Jack Morton. With such a handsome woman as you are, and such a start, there’s nothing I couldn’t do with you if you privately put yourself under my direction! Nothing!”
He rubbed his soft, finely manicured hands in excited anticipation, and let his speech run free. “Honest, Mary, this is the big thing I’ve seen in this business from the beginning. I never thought anything really big or permanent would develop from that marriage. Compared to other prospects, that was only pin-money—only the starter—only the prologue. The curtain really goes up when we’re through with this. Mary, my dear, if I were to tell you what I’ve done for some women in this town—you’d certainly sit up! I don’t know now just what I’ll do with you; I’m an opportunist—I always play for the biggest chance that comes alongat a given time, or for the biggest chance that I can develop. But what I’ll do for you will be strictly within the law—it may even be most thoroughly respectable. I tell you, Mary,” he enthused, “with me handling you, with my knowledge of New York life and of the strings to pull, there is nothing I can’t do for you!— I tell you nothing!”
His large eyes were shining on her brilliantly. Rarely had this master of domestic intrigue, this marvelously keen student of human nature and subtle manipulator of human weakness and ambitions, been stirred by his own excited imagination to such a frank, if incomplete, statement of the methods of his art. For a moment, despite herself, Mary felt half carried away by the power of the little man; saw herself for a moment as perhaps at some future time being fitted into one of his amazing plans.
“And for all this what would you expect?” she asked.
“Naturally a manager would expect a manager’s share.” And as she did not respond, he prompted her briskly: “Well, now, let’s get back to the first proposition—though that’s mighty small peanuts. I suppose to-morrow will suit you all right for me to give Mr. Morton my detectives’ report that his son is married?”
“No.”
“No! Why not? It won’t be safe to put it off any longer.”
“Mr. Loveman,” she said quietly, looking at him very steadily, “I’m going straight ahead with the original plan.”
He sprang from his chair, fairly sputtering surprise. “Why, you’re crazy! You can’t do it!”
“I’m going to try.”
“But you’ll fall down flat! You can’t possibly keep this thing going for more than a day or two!”
“I’m going to try,” she repeated.
“If you do, you’ll not only ruin yourself, but you’ll ruin some more of us, too,” he said in consternation. “Why, yesterday, when Mr. Morton found me in your apartment at the Mordona, I had the closest sort of shave. And now, if you try to keep on with your plan, and the certain explosion comes, don’t you see that Morton will learn that while retained by him I’ve also been sitting in the game with you? Don’t you see you’ll ruin me?”
“So that’s why you’ve come to me with these new propositions?” she said keenly—“to save your own skin?”
“Yes,” he said defiantly, “though those new propositions, the last one at least, were always part of the plan I’d had for you.”
They were now standing face to face, she almost half a head the taller. “Peter Loveman,” she said slowly, distinctly, “despite your skin, and my skin, I’m going straight ahead.”
“What!” he exclaimed, astounded; and then: “You can’t! There’s that explosion, due in a day orso—and after that you’ll be nothing but smoke and dam’ thin smoke!”
“I have my own idea of how to do it, and I believe I can succeed. Anyhow, I’m going straight ahead.”
“No, you’re not!” he said sharply. In a moment the usually amiable face had become grim with menace—and few faces could be more truly menacing. “If you won’t play this game with me, Mary Regan, then this minute I cut you out of it and play the game alone.”
“Just what does that mean?”
“It means that I’ll not get as much out of it as if we worked together—but I’llget it, and get it certain. It means that in half an hour Mr. Morton will have my detectives’ report telling of the discovery of his son’s secret marriage and telling all about who the wife is. And it means that I’ll handle the suit for separation—and that I’ll collect for both services. And it also means that I’ll deny, and deny successfully, any statement that you may make as to any relations between us. I guess that fixes you!”
“So, you’d do that!” she breathed, staring at him. Then, without another word, she crossed to her desk and took up the telephone. “Central, please give me Broad 9000.”
In a moment Loveman was across the room and had seized her arm. “That’s Mr. Morton’s office!” he exclaimed. “What’re you up to?”
Giving him no heed, she spoke into the instrument. “Is this Broad 9000?... Please tell Mr.Morton, Senior, that Mrs. Grayson wishes to speak to him.”
One of Loveman’s hands closed with a swift, spasmodic grip over the telephone’s mouthpiece, the other hand fiercely gripped Mary’s arm.
“What’s this you’re up to?” he demanded huskily.
She gave him a calm, defiant look. For a moment they stood so, silent, the telephone clutched by both of them.
“I’m going to beat you to it—that’s all, Peter Loveman. I’m going to telephone Mr. Morton about Jack’s secret marriage and about who his wife is—and there’ll be no big bill for detective services for you. And I’m going to tell Mr. Morton that I shall not oppose any kind of divorce or separation or annulment proceedings, and that I shall not ask for or accept one dollar in the way of settlement—and that means there will be no big fee for you for handling a difficult case. Out of this you’ll get exactly nothing. Now, I guess that fixes you!”
His large eyes gazed at her with an almost super-penetration. But there was no doubting that she would do as she had said. His usually ruddy face, gone pale the moment before, now took on a yellowish tinge. Then he laughed with forced joviality, and removed his hands from the telephone and her arm.
“That certainly was once that one of my jokes was taken seriously.” He laughed again. “Why, youpoor child—of course I wasn’t going to double-cross you!”
She was not deceived by this swift change of front. She knew that she had shown the higher card.
“Is what you say to be interpreted as meaning that you will not interfere with my plans?”
“Go right on!” he said heartily.
“All right.” She hung the receiver on its hook and set down the telephone. “But if ever there is any interference which seems to come from you, I’ll do exactly what I said.”
“Oh, come, Mary, forget my bit of gun-play. You ought to know that I was only fooling.” He was now thoroughly amiable again, as far as smile and manner went. “Just how are you going to do it, Mary?”
“I’m going to do it—that’s all I can definitely say as yet. And now, I have a lot to think about—”
“And you’d like to have me go. All right, I’ll go. But say, Mary,—you sure have nerve!” he exclaimed, with a sincerity that was sincere. “Nerve, and a lot of other things. And remember this: I’m counting on putting you across, a little later, in the way I just told you about. You’re just the woman I could do it with—big! Big—you understand! Good-bye.”
As the little lawyer went out, Mary took a deep breath. That was one danger, and an unexpected danger, that she had narrowly averted.... Her quick, eager mind flashed ahead to a picture whichhis words had suggested: “Put you across—big!” Perhaps later, if her present plans went awry, she might want to be put across in some magnificent way—who knew?—and Loveman was the one man to do it.
But for the present, Peter Loveman was to be trusted just so far as he could be trusted.