CHAPTER XXIIMARY MAKES AN OFFER
Mary, gazing at that little door, was, for all her composed exterior, sick of soul: contrary emotions and impulses clashed within her. A fury suddenly possessed her. She had lost—been defeated in her great plan by the invertebrateness of one man. Well, Jack could go his champagne-bottled way to the inevitable end of such as he! She was through!... And then she remembered Maisie Jones, admiring tears in her proud eyes, and she recalled her trembling words of belief: “You can do what I can never do—you’ve proved that you can make a real man of Jack.”
She rose quickly. “I’m going to get him,” she breathed huskily.
“Wait—you mustn’t!” cried Loveman in alarm, starting up and clutching at her wrist.
But she eluded him, and made for the little door of the cabinet particulier, he at her skirt—and Clifford just behind them. What they all saw was a tricksy, ornate room, lighted with imitation electric candles; Jack now toppled forward limp and unconscious among the dishes; and about the table Nina Cordova, Hilton, that polished adventurer of the smart hotels, and Nan Burdette, high-colored, bold-eyed café favorite.
Mary moved inside, Loveman at her heels. But Clifford remained without, waiting. The situation was Mary’s—for her to face, for her to reveal herself by.
Mary stepped quickly forward and shook Jack’s shoulder. “Jack—wake up! Come on out of this!”
Jack, a limp weight, showed no life, but the other three did. Nan Burdette sprang up.
“Stop that! What d’you think you’re doing?”
Mary flamed at her—and at Nina Cordova—and at Hilton. “I’m going to take him away from you blood-suckers,” she said with cold fury.
“You call me that—” the café beauty was beginning angrily, when Nina Cordova, the petite, rose and checked her. “Shut up, Nan!” She leaned toward Mary, and spoke cuttingly, “Why, if it isn’t the little dame that Jack lived with, and got tired of, and then gave the grand shake. Well, little one, what are you going to do with your darling sweetheart who loves you so much that he’s run away to avoid the sight of you?”
Mary’s voice was chokingly composed. She returned the other’s ironical gaze with a glare of contempt.
“I’m going to take him away from you people—to where he can sober up—have a chance to think about it all—become himself. That’s what I’m going to do.”
“And what good’ll that do you?” pursued Nina cuttingly—“since he’s all through with you?”
“What he thinks of me has nothing to do with the case,” Mary returned.
“Mary, it’s no use—keep out of this!” cried little Loveman. He took her arm to draw her away, but she shook him off.
“I’m going to do exactly what I said I’d do. Come on, Jack.”
“No, you’re not!” Nina cried, suddenly sharp and venomous, leaning farther across the table. “You just try to start anything like that and I’ll tell the Mortons who you really are—Miss Mary Regan!”
Hilton, finished gentleman of hotel, café, and ballroom, had moved around the table to her side. “And start anything, andI’lltell what I know,” he said in a hard voice, his hands twitching. “And it’ll be something besides what Miss Cordova will tell. I believe you get me, Mrs. Mary Regan Grayson!”
“And we won’t put off telling till to-morrow!” cried Nina Cordova. She moved quickly to a little wall telephone, tinted in gray-and-gold to match the room, and took down the receiver.
“Give me the Biltmore.... The Biltmore? Connect me with Mr. Morton.... Mr. Morton, this is Miss Cordova. Will you please hold the wire a moment.”
She muffled the mouthpiece with a palm and turned upon Mary. “Get out of this—or your finish will come in just one second!”
Clifford’s eyes, taking in all, were centered on Mary, who was gazing at all these faces bent uponher in menace. He saw that her impulses had come to a sudden halt; that she realized that these persons could, and would, do exactly what they threatened; that their telling would mean an immediate end to the ambitious plans for which she had schemed and worked and waited so hard.
There was silence in the little cabinet particulier; all the figures, save Jack’s, stood in tense tableau—waiting. Clifford, looking through the aperture of the door, recognized that this was a climax in Mary Regan’s life. Events, with some guidance from him had arranged a supreme test. The next instant would prove something—what? He was as taut as those within.
Mary, with slow calm, drew a deep breath; her figure stiffened. “Mr. Hilton, Miss Cordova,” she said steadily, slowly, her eyes not leaving them, “you may tell everything you like. I am going to take Jack away from here.”
At her words an exultant thrill leaped through Clifford. She had had her choice—and had chosen the way of her own destruction!
Mary put an arm under Jack’s shoulders. “Stop that!” cried Nina, in sudden fury, dropping the telephone receiver and clutching the unconscious Jack, so that he was torn away from Mary’s arm. With energetic fury she turned on Loveman. “Peter Loveman, make her stop! You promised me, if I’d come into this, you’d fix up a marriage between Jack and me!”
“Shut up, Nina!” Loveman cut in sharply, in half panic. “Mary,” he cried, seizing her arm, “come on—let’s leave her—quick!”
But the lithe Hilton did not depend upon the influence of mere words. From somewhere out of his elegant person he drew a small pistol, and this he thrust against Mary’s side.
“Get out of this,” he snapped, “or this gun goes off! And we’ll all swear it was suicide. The gun’s a lady’s size, and suicides are common in joints like this. Get out!”
Mary did not quiver—she looked Hilton squarely in his handsome, evil face. At that instant Clifford stepped swiftly into the room and closed the light door behind him. The next instant he had wrenched the pistol from Hilton’s hand, and pocketed it, and had seized both Hilton and Loveman by their collars.
“Cut out that rough stuff, Hilton, or I finish you off here!” he said. “And so, Loveman, I’ve got you at it again?”
The little lawyer twisted about—gave Clifford a startled stare—and then forced a smile intended to be tolerant, but which was sickly. “Why, Bob, I don’t know a thing about this—”
“Shut up!” snapped Clifford.
He turned to Mary, who was still bewildered by his sudden appearance, and again the leaping thrill went through him. “Mary, you’ve gone through this great! Great, I tell you. And these people—don’tworry about them another minute. You’ve won out!”
Mary stared at him, now breathing quickly. “I don’t quite—understand.”
“You were not supposed to understand. There has been a big, careful, subtle plan,—a plot devised by Peter Loveman,—and you, without knowing it, were to have been the goat!”
“Oh, I say now, Bob!” protested Loveman; “you’re talking like a melodrama. Why should I plot against Mary?”
“Why? Listen to your own words—you know whom you said them to.” And Clifford quoted, driving his words savagely at Loveman: “‘Say, but this is one hell of a situation! Here I went into a game to clean up in three or four directions, relying chiefly on the criminal instincts of a clever girl to see the game through—and, damn it, if the girl hasn’t turned straight on me! Or, if she is playing a crooked game, she’s trying to play it straight. And the original game is no good now—is sure to fail. I want her to quit it, and come in on some other big proposition; but she won’t quit it—she still dreams she can put it over. And if I openly block her, she’ll blow on herself and me, and break with me, and that’ll end everything. How’s that for a hell of a fix!’ Remember saying that, Loveman?”
Loveman had paled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“And remember saying this, Loveman?” Clifforddrove at him: “‘I’ve got to have Mary Regan with us. But the only way out of this mess is to handle affairs so as to make her believe, from her own experience, that she can’t succeed in her respectable game—then she’ll come around to our way of thinking, and she’ll try to clean up with us. And there’s only one way to reach her—and that’s through Jack Morton.’”
Clifford turned sharply upon Mary. “Isn’t it clear to you now?—Jack’s disappearance and all the rest? Loveman was determined your plan with Jack Morton should not go ahead. Since he didn’t dare openly oppose you, he concluded that the best scheme to defeat you would be to get hold of Jack and handle him so that he would give himself over completely to dissipation—that would show you how hopeless your plan was, and you’d drop it. You’ve been framed, and Jack’s been framed; and this wine party in here was part of the frame-up; and Loveman’s letting you have a glimpse, as if by chance, of Jack in here, a hopelessdébauché, was to have been the clinching argument that would make you give up and join in with him.”
“Clifford,” blustered Loveman, “everything you have just said is a lie!—and Mary knows it.”
“Loveman,” returned Clifford in grim wrath, “even though you are a small man, I’d hit you in the face if I didn’t think it might improve your features.” He turned again to Mary. “Hilton and Nan Burdette have been Loveman’s chief tools forkeeping Jack drunk and out of sight; they’re both experts at such business. Miss Cordova has been in it to help out in some of the finer points; she’s an old-time friend of Jack, and you’ve just learned of an ambition of her own. That’s the case, Miss Regan. I don’t feel like praising Jack, but it’s only fair to him to emphasize that he’s not here because he tired of you, as they’ve tried to make you think. I want you to understand clearly that Jack is the victim of this smooth bunch; that whatever he felt toward you two weeks ago, he doubtless still feels; that whatever he then was, he probably still is.”
“A lot of good that’ll do her, when I tell what I know!” burst out the infuriated Miss Cordova.
“And I can tell a little that will help,” grimly added Nan Burdette.
There was a glitter in Hilton’s dark eyes, and he bared his white teeth. “And what I’ve got to tell will jam up her game even worse! You and she are not going to get away with this!”
“The three of you are going to say exactly nothing! Nan Burdette,”—with sudden incisiveness,—“I know your part in that Gordon affair. Miss Cordova, I’ve got more than a hunch about that pearl necklace Mrs. Sinclair gave her husband to have repaired and which strangely disappeared. And, Hilton, I’ve got a lead about a certain lady who fainted—she really drank drugged tea—at an afternoon dance at the Grantham and whose diamond brooch was not afterwards found. I’d runevery one of you in this minute—only I’d rather keep things quiet and give Miss Regan her chance to do just as she pleases concerning Jack Morton. But if there is one word—and I’ll know it, if there is—if there’s one word from any of you that touches on Miss Regan, I’ll get every one of you!”
He turned sharply on Loveman. “These are your people, Peter Loveman; working under your orders. You tell them to keep their mouths closed about Miss Regan; if there’s a peep, something very unexpected is also going to happen to you.”
“See here, Clifford,” protested Loveman, “I’ve no control over them!”
“Believe it or not, Loveman, but I’ve got you, too,” Clifford retorted sharply, “only I’d rather not close in on you just yet unless you make me. You’ll give them that order and see that they obey it, or you’ll get what you’ll get!”
Loveman gazed for a moment longer into Clifford’s set face. Then with a feeble attempt at a pleasant smile he turned to the others:—
“I guess you all understand that I’d like to have you do as Mr. Clifford says.”
“That’s all,” said Clifford sharply. “Now, get out of here—all of you. You can settle your bills outside. I give you just one minute.”
Within the minute they were gone. Mary and Clifford, alone in the little room, Jack still pitched unconsciously forward upon the table, looked at each other for a long space. Despite the fake Hawaiianmusic and the laughter of the mixed world of Le Minuit, which sounded through the thin partitions, there was in reality a deep silence between them.
“I want to thank you—I want to thank you very much,” breathed Mary, at length.
He seemed not to hear her halting words. “Do you know what is the really big thing about all this?”
“What?”
He spoke very quickly. “By your action a few minutes ago, you proved that you are not wholly the worldly person you thought you were. The risks you then took were not to save your ambitious plan; you took them to save Jack. You forgot yourself. Through your own scheming Life placed a responsibility on you—and you accepted it. That is the big thing!”
She stared at him, bewildered questioning in her pale, dark face. He saw that she still did not understand herself—the impulses which had moved her—and which might still be moving her. For a moment she did not speak. Then she asked, looking down at Jack:—
“But what am I to do now?”
“That is for you to decide. When you have decided, I’ll help you.”
“If I take Jack from here—” She broke off; and stood gazing thoughtfully at the stupefied boy. “It would do no good unless—unless—”
Again she left her sentence uncompleted. Theinsistent ringing of the little telephone, whose receiver was still dangling, caught her attention. She walked with a manner of decision to the telephone.
“Central, please get me the Biltmore,” she requested steadily. “This the Biltmore? Please connect me with Mr. Morton.... Is this Mr. Morton? Mr. Morton, this is Mrs. Grayson—Miss Gilmore, you know. I am now at Le Minuit. I wonder if you would care to meet me here.... Very well, in ten minutes, then. I’ll be waiting in a taxi-cab down in front.... My answer to your invitation? Yes—if you want my answer, I’ll have it ready.”
She hung up.
“He was referring to that cruise with him?” asked Clifford.
“Yes.”
Clifford regarded her curiously: What was her purpose in summoning Mr. Morton into this situation?
“I want to get Jack down into a taxi-cab,” Mary went on. “How can I do it?—and without attracting attention?”
“That’s easy. Nothing of that sort attracts attention at Le Minuit.”
He pressed a button, and from the waiter who appeared he demanded the immediate presence of Monsieur Le Bain. Two minutes later the proprietor entered.
“Joe,” Clifford ordered briefly, “get Mr. Morton’s things, whatever they are, and have two ofyour waiters help him down into a taxi, and have the taxi wait till we come down. Everything quiet, mind you.”
“Sure,” said the Frenchman from somewhere below Fourteenth Street.
Presently two waiters supported the still stupefied Jack out of the room; a little later Clifford and Mary passed unheeded through the hilarious patrons of Le Minuit, down the stairway, and across the light-flooded sidewalk out into the waiting taxi-cab, in one corner of which Jack huddled limply. Here they sat silent, waiting. Clifford had a sense that it was not the old Mary Regan beside whom he sat—but that new Mary Regan who did not know herself: and he had a sense that, with her at least, big issues were still at stake.
Presently another taxi rapidly turned the corner and came to a pause just behind them. Out of this the elder Morton stepped.
“Wait here for a moment, please,” Mary said to Clifford. She stepped out upon the brilliant sidewalk—and Clifford looked on, wondering.
“Oh, Miss Gilmore!” cried Morton, swiftly coming to her with an eager, expectant smile. “You were an angel to call me up—after not letting me see you for so long! Though,” he quickly added in soft complaint, “it wasn’t very kind of you to run away from me as you did.”
“You advised me to leave the Grantham,” she reminded him.
“Yes, but I didn’t advise you to go leaving me in ignorance of your whereabouts,” he returned in an amiably hurt tone. “And that—ah—little present: was it kind to return it, without a word, the way you did?”
“You mean that ten thousand dollars? I did not need the money.”
“No?” He smiled. “I thought a woman always needed money.—Well, my dear, now that I’ve found you again I hope there’ll never be another such dreary hiatus in our friendship. You’re looking—but I’m no poet! And at last I’m to have my answer?”
“Yes,” she said quietly.
“Good! I’ve had that yacht put in commission. Everything is waiting. When’ll you be ready to go?”
“I’m not going,” said Mary.
“Not going! The devil you say!”
He stared at her white, set face. Dominated by his own pleasant conception of this situation, he had not till then really noted her bearing. He was completely taken aback.
“Well—you have your nerve! Then why did you ask me to come over here, and at such an hour?”
“I thought you might like to see your son.”
“Jack!” he exclaimed.
She nodded. “He’s in here”—and moving back a pace she pointed into the car.
“My God—Jack!” breathed his father, as hesighted the limp, exhausted figure. Then he saw Clifford. “You, Clifford!” he exclaimed sharply. “Where’d you find him?”
Clifford stepped from the car. “I didn’t find him. Miss Gilmore found him.”
Morton turned swiftly upon Mary. “So you’ve broken your promise and had him all this time!” he cried harshly. “You brought him to this!”
“Hold on, Mr. Morton,” Clifford shot in. “Miss Gilmore had not seen him till to-night. To-night she found him in the drunken company he’s been in for ten days. She got him away from them and sent for you. The least a gentleman—particularly a gentleman who has taken such poor care of his son—can do under the conditions is to try to apologize.”
Morton glowered at Clifford. “If that’s the case, of course, I apologize. But the question is, where’s he been all this time?”
“It seems to me,” put in Mary in the same quiet voice, “that the most important question is, what are you going to do with him?”
“Do with him?” demanded Morton, staring at her. “What’s in your mind?”
Clifford had been, and still was, asking himself those same questions.
Mary, standing between the two men, gazed very calmly at Mr. Morton. “You’ve had Jack in charge for twenty-five years—and in there you see your work. He was with me awhile; during that shorttime he tried to be, and was, a man. It’s up to you to choose.”
Morton stared—blinked his eyes—drew a deep breath. “Am I getting you right? Are you suggesting that Jack come back to you?”
Clifford now began to understand; though he had no idea—nor perhaps did she, for that matter,—of the degree to which she was moved by the tearful figure of Maisie Jones, breathing, “You are big—wonderful!”
“I think I might make a man of him,” she said.
“You mean to resume on the old basis—the discreet Riverside Drive affair—and all that?”
“Just that. I’ll do my best for him—provided he comes with your knowledge and consent.”
He gazed at her intently. “You’re a new kind to me!” Then, dryly: “No, thank you.”
“I shall never ask you for a single thing,” she urged.
He gazed at her, hesitating. It was not given to any of the trio to see then what a moment of great crisis this was. It was like the apex of so many of Life’s crises—very quiet, very composed.
“No, thank you,” Mr. Morton said with decision. “I have other plans for him. I shall now handle him myself.”
“Just as you say. But remember, I made you an offer.” Her calm expression did not change by a flicker. “Under the circumstances, the simplest arrangement would be for us merely to exchangetaxis. I suggest that you take my taxi with your son. With your permission I’ll take your cab. Good-night.”
She turned about, with her composed air of finality. “Will you please help me in, Mr. Clifford?”
Clifford did so. Over his shoulder he had a glimpse of the handsome, elderly man standing, loose-jawed, staring after her.
As Clifford settled beside her and the car sprang away, there was a sharp, breaking choke from her, and she dropped her face into her hands. After that she gripped herself and sat silent, rigid, as the car spun on. Clifford, gazing on her, wondered thrillingly what was happening within that taut figure ... wondered what might happen in the days to come....