The newcomer stood rigidly. In the dimness of the office he had the look of a musty portrait where the artist has allowed the body from the shoulders to sink into obscurity, the better to emphasize the chalkiness of the face.
"I am Mr. Bofinger," the lawyer said. "What can I do for you?"
The client, without answer, remained blinking at the lawyer. The clothes were shabby, of a style unfamiliar. The trousers bulged and wrinkled like sails in the wind. In the coat the elbows were polished and the cuffs eaten away. The narrow, ill-revealed eyes had all the cunning of the valet, spying the details that escape another, but with the insolence of the man who is accustomed to give command. The cast of countenance was Eastern, dominated about thethick lips by a set scowl of mistrust, which struck the lawyer at once, as well as the almost fanatic intensity of his gaze. The feet, the knuckles, and the nostrils, as in abnormal or extreme natures, were pronounced.
He remained at the doorway with undisguised interest, examining the unfamiliar surroundings with the defiance of one prejudiced against the profession.
Bofinger, who divided humanity into those who could pay and those who could not, satisfied on this score despite the poverty of the habiliment, rose and said:
"Come in, take a seat."
The visitor with a start removed his hat, discovering a fleeing forehead matted with coarse dark hair, and sliding forward ten feet fell into a chair. Standing his hands had obtruded, seated he sought to conceal his feet. Then suddenly, speaking from the corner of his mouth, he said:
"You're rather young."
"I have been fortunate," Bofinger saidmodestly, concealing his astonishment at this opening, by pretending to discover a tribute.
"Close-mouthed?"
"As an undertaker."
"Honest?"
"What, sir!"
"And honest?" the little man repeated, seizing a knee in either hand and looking him stubbornly in countenance.
With unfeigned astonishment, Bofinger shot to his feet, glared down a moment at the cynical, unrelenting scrutiny; then, with a bob of his head, wheeled, returned to his desk and said softly as he took up his paper:
"Kindly close the door—after you!"
There was a moment's interval, while each watched the other, the lawyer fearing the success of his manoeuver, the client weighing its sincerity as he balanced on his chair and blinked in indecision. All at once he jerked upright, flung aside his shock of hair and blurted:
"Mr. Bofinger—"
"No, sir, I beg you," the lawyer cut in, elevating two fingers. "Such questions cannot be addressed to reputable members of my profession—"
"I want to say—"
"No sir, it is useless. If I don't produce in you the necessary impression of confidence, then there ain't no use in prolonging—there ain't no use, I say—"
"Say, I take that back," the other interrupted decisively.
Convinced that the question had been designed to test him, Bofinger allowed a requisite interval to salve his dignity, before replying:
"You are, I see, unfamiliar with the etiquette of attorney and client. For that reason and because I see your business is of a kind to alarm you I'll pass over what you have just said. But I insist that without further delay" (here he consulted his watch) "you come to the matter in point, Mr. ——"
The little man shook his head nervously.
"You don't wish to give your name?"
"I don't."
"That ain't unusual," Bofinger said graciously. "Well, how can I help you?"
Thus faced, the client said carefully:
"It is a delicate matter."
At this trite introduction, Bofinger could not restrain a certain disappointed loosening of his body. He crossed his legs, caged his fingers and, meditating on the ceiling, volunteered:
"A woman?"
"Yes."
The visitor shifted in his seat, pulling at the knees of his trousers. Bofinger repressed a smile and a yawn.
"You couldn't have gotten into better hands," he said in sing-song. "Are there any letters? Does she hold documentary evidence?"
"No—no!"
"Good. Divorce or breach of promise?"
"What are you talking about?" his client said angrily. "I want information."
"I see," Bofinger said, resuming the scent,"and very stupid of me. Information preparatory to marriage, ain't it?"
"Certainly not!"
Bofinger, nettled at his insuccess, said grandly:
"If you will elucidate."
"It is an adoption."
The manner and the answer revived all the lawyer's curiosity.
"You said—"
"Adoption!" snapped the little man with evident ill humor.
"Very good. The case now is clear. With a view to adoption, I am to investigate the past life and present surroundings of the child."
"Yes."
"It is a girl?"
"A woman—a young woman."
At this answer the lawyer experienced an extraordinary quickening of interest that finally dispelled any fear of a commonplace case. This time he did not force a repetition of the essential statement, but adopting a matter-of-fact tone, poised a pencil and asked:
"What is the name?"
"Vaughn—Sheila Vaughn."
"And the address?"
"I don't know."
Bofinger raised his head in astonishment.
"But you know her—have met her."
His client, with a nod, suddenly abandoned his reticence and as though now he had come head high into the matter, there was nothing for it but to strike out boldly, began imperiously:
"I'm to meet her at four o'clock in Washington Square, northeast corner. You be there, follow her after I go, and get her address. Find out everything about her, where she comes from, where she lives, what she does."
"One moment," Bofinger said suddenly. "How long have you known her?"
The little man frowned, looked at him in disapproval of the question, and finally replied:
"Four months."
"Good."
"Look here, Mr. Bofinger, I want to know everything, complete. You know what that means?"
"Certainly."
The chair grated, the little man snapped to his feet, clapping down his hat.
"And see here. I forbid—that is, I want you to see that she don't suspect what's going on, not for a second. You hear—she's not to know I'm looking her up."
"That goes without saying. Now can I have a few days? Say—three from now. Where do you want me to report, Mr. ——"
"Mr. Bofinger," he cried angrily, "you ain't going to catch me with your lawyer's tricks. You thought you'd worm out of me where I lived, didn't you?" He stopped, glared at Bofinger and then cried: "Do you know what I think? I think you're nothing but a pettifogging lawyer—that there ain't no partner, and I'm no better'n a fool to talk to you. What do you say to that?"
"That I'm dealing with a lunatic!" Bofingersaid brusquely. "I've had enough of you. Take your case somewhere else!"
"No, no," he answered chuckling. He remained shifting from foot to foot, swinging his big hands and blinking at the lawyer, who, from long contact with rascals, presented an offended innocence on the most honest countenance imaginable. At the end of a moment, reassured or not, the little man ground on his heel, squared his shoulders, and without so much as a word shuffled away.
Bofinger, with a few rapid steps, flung out the back passage into a sort of blind alley, choked with a damp display of mounting wash, hailed Toby the office boy from a knot of young gamblers, and returning showed him through the window the retreating figure of his late client.
"Name and address. Be quick and be damned careful." He spun a half dollar in the air, adding, "Waiting for you, Toby, if you're back within an hour."
"I'm on," Toby answered. He drew in awhistle, blinked one eye affectionately at the silver and disappeared like a shadow, calling back, "Put it on the ice, boss!"
Bofinger stood a moment, rubbing his chin. Then with a grin he dropped into his chair, saying contemptuously:
"An adoption!"
Bofinger, with his instinct for blackmail, already saw clearly into the case. A misanthrope in love, who, to conceal his purpose, hid his identity and feigned to be considering an adoption; and a woman who, on her side, refused to reveal her address presented to him the familiar conjunction of senility and the adventuress. When he had asked his client how long he had known Sheila Vaughn he had had a motive. To him, the vital issue was to learn whether this shabby, odd client had means. Confident that the woman must have already secured that information, when he learned that the intimacy had already existed four months he felt certain that if she had played so carefully it was for no mean stake.
To his keen sense of his own opportunitiesthe eccentric character of his client, all suspicion and mistrustful cunning, provoked a professional eagerness to meet and dupe so unusual an antagonist. He did not formulate a plan yet, but he had that strange, excited premonition of success, which, though it deceive a hundred times, gains always with the temperament of the gambler an easy credence.
He went to the court-room, where he transacted some business, and towards four o'clock hastened back to the office. To his great irritation Toby was nowhere to be seen, but on going to his desk he discovered a note on which was scrawled:
Max Fargus
The Oyster House Man.
Bofinger pounced upon it with a cry of exultation. Max Fargus, proprietor of half a dozen oyster houses, was a character known to the city by a score of anecdotes of eccentricity and greed. He crushed the paper in his hand and swung out triumphantly.
"Fargus is worth half a million, if a cent," he said joyfully. "What luck, eh! The woman is playing for marriage of course. Bo, I begin to see where you come in!"
As he hastened towards the Square, dodging amid the filth of Sixth Avenue, he amused himself by sketching the portrait of the woman as he imagined her.
"Yes, sure, its a question of marriage," he thought. "It must be if she has played as close as that for four months. She's a clever one, I bet, an old hand. I wonder if I know her."
The Square suddenly discovered itself, that smiling barrier which interposes between the horrors of Third Street, a locality so foul that a conflagration alone could cleanse it, and the thoughtless royal avenue which digs its roots here and stretches upward to flower like a royal palm in the luxuriance of Central Park.
At this period Washington Square had not fallen before the vandal march of business, though already the invaders showed theirmenacing front above the roofs. To-day nothing remains of that glory save the north side, which, in its red and white uniforms, makes face with solid front to the enemy from whom it expects nothing but obliteration.
"Now for it," thought Bofinger as he entered the grateful shades which the foliage, nowhere more generous, lavished there. On a bench at the foot of a sycamore he had perceived the somber note of his odd client and the green flush of a dress. Slackening he came towards them, his eyes eagerly on the woman. He had expected a young girl, he found a woman in the thirties, but fresh and defying an exact estimate. A simple bonnet, with border of lace, which drooped like petals, effectually concealed her face. The dress of a peculiar shade of May-green silk showed a neck as modest as that of a young girl, and draped itself demurely and indefinitely.
She was busy over some embroidery, but at the moment of his passing the needle was idle, and with her eyes on the ground she waspondering on some remark of her companion. Everything spoke of the natural—the innocence and prudery of her pose, the gradual motion of her body, the artless quiet of her attention; of the coquette or the actress—not a sign.
Bofinger caught this rapid impression as one seizes the flight of a star. He passed, his hopes sank. His anger rose and he cried with an oath:
"Hell, what luck—she's honest!"
It was the one obstacle that never failed to upset his temper. To be defeated by rascality, by a clever turn of chicanery, never disturbed him—that was legitimate. But honesty, in his philosophy, was such a colossal absurdity that before it he never could control his impatience. So it was with a sense of having been defrauded that he repeated:
"Damn the luck, sheseemshonest."
He sat down at some distance, yet near enough to wait anxiously a better look. In a moment the woman lifted her head and he saw her face as she nodded deferentially to her companion.The black hair was divided in the middle and fell over the temples in the fashion of a thousand madonnas. He thought that she had even a look of stupidity. She put the embroidery into a bag and the movements of her arm was stiff, lacking grace, the gestures of a woman without coquetry.
"Sold again!" Bofinger murmured, overcome by such evidence. "Perhaps after all I jumped too soon. The old boy is crazy enough to adopt her."
With an abrupt leave-taking, Fargus arose and departed eastward. The woman without lightness or geniality had accepted his bow, bobbing her head and, betraying her inexperience by a slight diffident start, reseated herself with embarrassment.
Presently she stood up, smoothed her skirt, tucked her bag under her arm and moved off, clutching her parasol by the waist.
"Oh, a woman who walks like that," Bofinger said to himself as he followed her up Fifth Avenue, "must be virtuous. She's thehonest working girl supporting an invalid mother and all that. It's true, such things do happen. Ah, we turn east now."
She had disappeared around the corner of Twelfth Street. Without distrust, Bofinger followed so negligently that on rounding the corner he ran full upon her waiting in ambush. The surprise made him lose his self-possession; he passed hurriedly, without daring to meet her glance. But to his immense relief he saw she had not even noticed him and divined that it was for Fargus alone that she took such precautions.
"Eh, eh! What does that mean?" he said joyfully to himself. But this new hope gradually flickered out, as he considered logically: "After all, she has a right to hide where she lives. Besides, if she were an adventuress, she would have suspected me. That's true, that proves nothing."
He continued eastward and turned north up Irving Place, perceiving to his satisfaction that she would do the same. At Fourteenth Streethe covered himself in the crowd, while the woman taking the other side went west to Seventh Avenue, again starting north.
Seeing that she no longer feared pursuit Bofinger approached nearer. At one crossing, to avoid a puddle she caught up her skirts in either hand, the parasol projecting awkwardly.
"She walks like a country school ma'am, going to school in rubber boots!" he thought savagely, finding relief, as his irritation grew, in ridiculing the woman. "How long is she going to keep me trotting after her, I wonder?"
As though in answer to his question she turned west and suddenly mounted the steps of a brown stone front close to the southern corner.
"Respectable, of course!" Bofinger ejaculated, passing and marking the number. He went to Eighth Avenue, descended a block and returned eastward. The respectability of the house completed his dejection, which showed itself in the listless drag of his feet.
All at once as he neared Seventh Avenueagain his indifferent glance, wandering along the street, was stopped by the peculiar actions of a woman in a light duster, who was holding the door across her and spying the street with caution. The veil which fell from a saucy toque of light blue straw was thick enough to hide her features. With only a languid amusement Bofinger was watching her when, in stepping from the vestibule, the woman caught her duster on the door. The next moment she snatched it around her, but in the second's interval Bofinger beheld a flash of green, of that peculiar May-green silk which a half an hour before had first attracted his eye to the companion of Max Fargus.
Her alarm, the dress so carefully concealed, the position of the house back to back with the one she had entered, revealed the whole stratagem. A great thankfulness welled up in him, and like all men whom a flip of fortune redeems, he received the turn exultingly, as an evidence that he might count on illimitable favors.
He laughed with an easy heart at thesimplicity of the trick which had deceived him, and as he followed her he laughed anew at the transformation of the woman. Everything was changed. The skirts hidden under the duster were yet gathered about her in a way to suggest the slender lines of the body. She walked daintily, placing her feet with care. Even to the alert poise of the head and the rapid grace of her movement, everything breathed an air of coquetry and art.
Bofinger, lost in this analysis, continued to laugh, sharing emotion between railing at his stupidity and admiration for the actress who had not neglected a single detail. He thought of the awkward start she had made when Fargus had left, and of the way she had reminded him of the country woman stalking in rubber boots, and recalling such details he followed joyously, scenting success with such an ally.
After a few blocks she went west and entered a house, letting herself in with a key.
"Hello, I know that place," Bofinger saidto himself, recognizing the boarding-house as a haven of improvident actors. "So Miss Vaughn is of the stage. I can believe it." Then he added with decision: "What a treasure, eh! She's clever enough to hoodwink a dozen Farguses!"
The exact meaning of this sentiment was, no doubt, that a woman who could deceive him must be capable of great things.
At the end of half an hour, which he gave to a careful consideration of his plans, Bofinger returned to the boarding-house. A plot of burned and scrawny grass served as a front lawn. A cast-iron nymph, relic of prosperity, stained and chipped, its head-dress holding the straws of an old nest, gave the note to the place and prophesied the interior. At his pull, the loose knob, as though unaccustomed to use, came forth so far that he feared he had wrenched it bodily out, before a faint twinkle from within persisted to his ears. Three times he repeated this operation, before a shadow on the glass announced a slow relief.
A frail old woman, moving tediously, ushered him into the hall, shading her weak eyes while she awaited his errand.
Bofinger, drawing forth his pocketbook, selected a business card, discarded that for one that bore his name alone, and finally, after a moment's consideration, replaced the pocketbook and said:
"Just tell the lady who came in a half an hour ago that a gentleman wants to speak to her."
"Ain't ye goin' to send no name?" the woman asked in dull astonishment.
"It is not necessary."
"And ye don't know her well?"
"I don't."
"I guess, then, I've got to climb up," she answered wearily. "I was hopin' you might go up. What did ye say her name was?"
"The lady who came in a while ago; she wore a light duster."
"Oh, Miss Morissey—ye want to see her, do ye?"
"That's it, Miss Morissey—please."
"She wouldn't hear if I called. She's on the third," she answered, with a sigh and alook of reproach. "Ye can sit down there—" She took a step but turned with a sudden solicitude. "Don't bear too hard."
Mindful of the caution Bofinger balanced gingerly on the shaky chair, watching the landlady laboring up the stairs, a step at a time, childish fashion.
An air of dinginess and neglect pervaded the hall and the distant dining-room. In the carpets were frayed shallows, on the banisters two spindles diverged from the line. The blistered plaster was dropping from the ceiling, while on the wall the grimy, green paper had regions of musky yellow. Curtains and shutters rigidly excluded the daylight, while everywhere the carpeted silence spread the feeling of a cemetery of abandoned hopes.
From the second floor the thin complaint of the landlady came down.
"Miss Morissey! oh, Miss Morissey!"
So persuaded was Bofinger by the all prevailing famine that he rose and cautiously regained his hat from the loose rack. The landlady,climbing on, kept calling from time to time, fruitlessly, "Miss Morissey! Miss Morissey!"
A door whined, and in the dusk of the landing above a vague head came to peer down at the lawyer. The landlady returned, descending with the same efforts, and announced:
"Ye can go up, top floor back, feel to the right as far as ye can go, and knock."
Seized with the general decadence he toiled upward with slow, lifeless steps. An odor of stale tobacco hung in the air. At the first floor a door left purposely open showed a man in shirt sleeves, shaving, while a woman in a wrapper arrived in time to study his passing. Through the darkness into which he now ascended came an atmosphere of musk and the scraping of a violin. Groping down the blind passage with outstretched fingers, his hands finally struck against the wall. He felt to the right, found a door, and knocked. A voice replied, uncertainly:
"Yes—come in."
He stepped out of the blackness, blinking a moment at the sudden light. The woman he saw was indeed Sheila Vaughn.
"Miss Morissey?" he asked, shutting the door carefully.
"Yes."
He bowed and, indifferent to her questioning, remained sweeping the room with precise scrutiny. In the walls the same decrepitude was manifest, in the furniture the same infirmity. A patch of brown paper replaced a pane in the window, the globe on the gas-jet was bitten and smoked. On the rakish bed was laid out the green silk dress, a clothes brush on top. In its place she wore a soiled muslin, raveled at the cuffs and the neck, while the neat boots had given way to frayed red slippers. A wrapper, a musty dress or two, in impoverished contrast to the elegance on the bed, hung from a row of pegs.
The eye of the lawyer, after noting each evidence of unusual poverty, rested on the table where a few photographs were displayed.He advanced and picking up each in turn said pleasantly:
"Ah, Miss Morissey, you have had a career?"
The woman, who had followed him with amazement and alarm, said stiffly:
"What do you want with me?"
"Miss Morissey," Bofinger said, replacing the photographs with a nod, "I want to see you on business—particular business. Can I sit down?"
"Sit down."
Reassured by the matter-of-fact method of his address, she motioned him to a chair, drawing one for herself.
"If you please, I'll sit here," he said, placing himself so that the light would fall on her face. He drew his glasses, peered at her earnestly, and began:
"My dear Miss Morissey, you are certainly a most interesting person—pardon me if I am too curious."
"What's your name?" she said quickly.
"Mr. Bofinger—Mr. Alonzo Bofinger."
"You are a lawyer?" she asked slowly.
"Yes, MissVaughn, I am."
"Ah!"
The interjection escaped her. Immediately she rallied, rose and shifted her chair, that the light might be equally shared. Her eyes showed anxiety but more interest, as she asked with false calm:
"Then what do you want with—Miss Vaughn?"
"Sheila Vaughn," Bofinger said loudly, thinking the time right to overwhelm her, "I represent Mr. Max Fargus."
He paused for evidence of disconcertion, but whatever her emotions she replied evenly:
"Yes, I know him."
"Mr. Fargus has commissioned me to make the most exact inquiries about you."
"Why?" she asked, studying his face intently.
"My client is thinking of an adoption."
"Indeed!" she said, really astonished; butthe smile that succeeded showed him she was not the dupe of the subterfuge.
"That was the reason he gave me. I suspect, though, that it is rather a question of marriage."
"Very probably," she said, nodding. In measure, as she studied the sly countenance, her assurance had returned. "And what'll you do?"
"Madam," Bofinger said impressively, "I must report what I have discovered."
"And that's what?"
"That I followed Miss Vaughn to a house where she disappeared and Miss Morissey emerged—by a back passage. That Miss Morissey is quite a different character from Miss Vaughn, especially in style," he added, smiling reminiscently. "That Miss Morissey is evidently of the stage, living in a boarding-house, which I happen to know is a resort of actors on their uppers. I shall be forced to describe the contrast in your dress and the destitution of your wardrobe; pardon me, if Iam forced to use the word,—deception. This, I say it frankly, is but the beginning of my investigation."
"It's already a good deal, isn't it?" she said thoughtfully.
"You must judge of that, Miss Vaughn."
"Are you sure" she asked with a smile, "quite sure that you'll tell all that?"
He turned in astonishment and saw that she had taken his measure. Realizing that he could no longer count on the advantage of terrifying her, he acknowledged the turn by abandoning his magisterial attitude, and discarding his glasses.
"Sheila," he said genially, "I don't intend to do anything of the kind."
She frowned, laughed, rose, rearranged her skirts and, with a return of coquetry, asked maliciously:
"Will you please tell me how my extraordinary friend came to employ you?"
He did not like it that she should have read him so easily, but this pique yieldingto the humor of the question, he said with a grin:
"I guess Fargus thinks all lawyers a set of scoundrels. Anyhow he picked me at random, thinking he would stand as good a chance that way as any other. To which I'll add, since perfect confidence is necessary between us, he was wrong in his theory and unlucky in its application. However, his misfortune is our gain."
At the word "our," calmly spoken, Sheila turned anxiously.
"You have some plan then?" she said abruptly. "And what do you expect out of it?"
"One moment," Bofinger said with a deprecating smile; "before we discuss such vulgar details there must be, I repeat, absolute confidence. Miss Vaughn, you have sized up quickly the fact that your future lies solely in my hands. I ain't going to deceive you—my interests depend on you. Let's begin at the start. What's your side of the affair?"
He threw himself back into a listeningattitude and looked at her encouragingly. The daylight had begun to weaken. Across the sordid back lots an occasional gas-jet flared upon a room too miserable to be hidden. Before the direct avowal Sheila hesitated, incapable of his brutal frankness, woman-like considering some justifying motive. The lawyer with a cynical smile comprehended the dumb play and waited until she broke out lamely:
"My side—you know it already. He wants to marry me—and I—I am willing. That's all. How could it be anything else?" She put out her hand as though calling on her surroundings to explain.
"What have you told him?" Bofinger asked, seeing that he must prompt the recital.
"I am living with an aunt, whom I support by needlework," she admitted reluctantly.
"Come, my dear," Bofinger said encouragingly. "If you don't want to tell me how you managed it—you're clever enough, you fooled me for a moment—tell me where you are."
"I don't know," she said frankly. "He's half crazy, you know. I'm never sure of him."
"Well, has he spoken?"
"Of marriage? No—that is, not outright."
"Well, where are you?"
"Why, I am waiting," she said with a shrug. "He makes love to me all the time."
"And I suppose, my clever dear," Bofinger said, taking the opportunity to promote familiarity. "You've made him think you're pining away?"
"I'm no such fool," she answered with an indefinable smile. "Indeed I tell him that I don't care the least bit for him. That if he wants to win my affection he's going to have a hard time, but—" she added with a laugh, "I let him believe that's not entirely impossible."
"You're right," Bofinger said appreciatively. "Of course you're right."
A weak knock sounded on the door. Bofinger,who did not wish to be seen, rose, looking anxiously at Sheila.
"It's only dinner," she explained, going to the door.
"Nevertheless," he said hurriedly, showing his back and going to the window, "don't let any one in."
Obedient to his request, she received the meal from the child who brought it, paying out the pennies and barring the door.
"Let's see," he said, returning to the table, "what you call a dinner."
On the table were arranged half a sausage, half a loaf of bread, and a pint of milk. He looked at them a moment and then with a contemptuous motion tossed the loaf and the sausage out of the window.
Sheila, with a cry, sprang forward.
"No more of that stuff," he said with a sneer. He drew his pocketbook and laid on the table a fifty-dollar note. "There's ready money, pay your debts and be ready for me at half-past seven."
"Why, what do you mean?" she blurted out, fastening greedily on the money. "Is that for me? Why?"
Bofinger, who watched anxiously the effect, was exultant at the hunger in her eyes.
"I hold her there," he thought. Then aloud he said cheerily, "I'm going to take you to your aunt's, my dear, and respectable quarters where you need not be afraid of being found. And we'll do that right away, for old Fargus is suspicious enough to have me watched as well as you. We'll take no risks. Now if you'll light the gas."
As she complied, he pulled his note-book and, tearing out a page, was proceeding to write, when he stopped and considered the woman as though to measure her cunning. Suddenly he asked:
"Sheila, are you educated?"
"Yes."
"You can write—like a lady?"
"Of course."
"Let's see," he insisted, passing her thepaper and pencil. She wrote her name and his in a free, regular hand.
"Very good," he nodded, scanning her signature. "Now just a moment."
He wrote with pains, while she waited in perplexity, until at length, with a glance of satisfaction, he returned the page to his pocket, stiffened in his chair and said drily:
"Now, if you please, we'll talk business!"
Sheila looked at him in astonishment. A world intervened between the two attitudes. The man she had fathomed and did not fear had given place to something hard, impassive, and mechanical. She saw she had marched into a trap and the perspiration rose cold between her shoulders as she moved uneasily, seeking with a smile to regain the man from the lawyer.
"Come, it isn't so bad as that!" she said with a moue. "You see how I am fixed. What do you ask?"
"Half!"
She looked at him open-mouthed. A moment intervened before she asked in perplexity:
"What? Half of what?"
"Half!" he answered, raising his voice. "Share and share alike!"
"Do you think I'm a fool?" she cried angrily, springing up. "A fool?"
"Half!" he insisted, pressing the point of his pencil obstinately into the table. "Of all he gives you—one half to me!"
"Oh, that's too absurd!" she cried with a clap of laughter.
"My dear Miss Morissey, sit down, sit down and listen," he said acridly. "We are to be partners, share alike or the game's off. Whatever you get, whatever money passes from his hands to yours, for whatever reason, for expenses or for pleasure, for carfare even, one half comes to me—to my account. Accept and I take all expenses. You leave here to-night and marry Fargus in two months. Otherwise I break you with a word, as easily as this."
He took a glass from the table, placed it without anger under his foot, and crushed it.
She came suddenly to him, tears of fear inher eyes, and placing her hand on his shoulder said:
"You're not going to be as hard as that—I am starving, in rags—have a little pity on me. Or is it the way of you lawyers," she said, forcing an anxious smile, "to ask for more than you expect? If so, you are wrong. I will be generous. Help me to marry Fargus and I'll give you one thousand dollars."
"One thousand dollars!" he cried uproariously. "You fool, do you know what the old miser is worth? A quarter of a million! Half, half I say!"
She still sought the man in the lawyer and, throwing herself on her knees, cried:
"But that would make me a slave! You can't mean that—you are too young to be so merciless. Make your own terms, say anything reasonable, and it's yours."
"Miss Morissey," he said pompously, "you are mistaken in the person you're addressing. Mr. Bofinger has left the room. You're dealing now with the lawyer. Let me tell you rightnow, as a lawyer, I don't set one price to get another. I always get what I ask. When I have once made up my mind what's coming to me, I never relent. I am not twenty-one," he added with a smile. "I do not throw away thousands, either for caresses or tears. Get up!"
She regained her feet, affrighted, perceiving that this obsession of the lawyer was the more implacable that it was set in vanity and pride.
"Don't drive me to despair!" she said with an ugly flash of anger.
He began to laugh.
"You are wrong," she said sullenly, "to squeeze such a bargain. I will refuse."
"Come," he said, rising, and with a brutal movement laying his hand over the bank-note. "Is it for you to make conditions? I know your kind, a fine dress outside, rags to your skin—rags, that's the story, rags and crumbs, beggary and starvation. And you bargain with me! Come, that's too good. Suppose I offeryoua thousand and take the rest? Icould do it. I hold the whip hand. I make the terms. Enough of this. Come, choose."
He held the bill loosely in his fingers, withdrawing it gradually. She followed its retreat with haggard looks, until, when he was on the point of replacing it in his pocket, she shot forth her hand, and said sullenly:
"Give me it—I am starving!"
"There, my dear, that's sensible," he said with a burst of good humor. "You can have the best dinner to-night New York can give! What! Are you hankering after cold bread and sausage? Is poverty so lovely that you regret it? And, Sheila, do you think that boiled ham is any more satisfying than a crust? Look at me. I swear I suffer as much on a pittance as you do on nothing. I also, my dear, am hungry for a little bit of the cream. No, you are not one bit more miserable, here in this room, than I; I, who if I had had ten thousand dollars to start with would be worth a million to-day. Do you think a man like me—with my talents, don't suffer too? Come,we're more than partners—comrades! We each want the same thing, don't we? So lets play the game together and square now! There's no limit to what we can do!"
She felt the wolfish sincerity in his avowal and perceived that it was useless to struggle, but, disliking his new mood, she said coldly:
"I'd rather talk to the lawyer."
"Which reminds me," he said, driving into his pocket. "Kindly sign this paper. It is an acknowledgment of a common-law marriage between us."
"Betweenus!" she exclaimed, utterly bewildered.
"Purely technical, my dear," he said with a reassuring smile. "My affections ain't enlisted. The document is simply for my protection and is, as you will see, the only one that can guarantee me you'll live up to your agreement."
"So that means I am to be absolutely in your power?" she said slowly.
"Absolutely."
"And if I don't do as I agree—"
"I'd produce the contract and prove your marriage to Fargus void. You see how it protects me?"
"And suppose Fargus dies?" she persisted. "You see I want to know all."
"In that case," he said cheerily, "We should probably—after a decent period—get married ourselves."
"That's what I wanted to know!" she cried, hurling the contract angrily away. "Very well. I will never, never sign such a paper, never!"
She began to whip up and down the room like a panther, her lips moving, repeating incessantly, "Never, never!"
Bofinger, without shifting, allowed her passion to run its limit. Then when, from its very violence, exhaustion compelled her at last to fall into a chair, he said softly:
"So, so. Then, my dear, you had no idea of holding to the agreement, had you? Come now, why are you so furious? Because youfind that I am not to be tricked? Take the pen and sign."
She shook her head weakly and put it away with her hand, as a child refusing medicine.
"I shan't give you time to repent," he said, pursuing his advantage. "If you refuse, I take a cab from here to Max Fargus. I don't propose that you shall see him first. It's hard luck, of course it is, that you can't get it all, but luck has given me a chance to divide the pie—and what are you going to do about it? Come, come," he said, again advancing the contract to the yielding woman. "Sign and get through with this wretchedness. What holds you? Do you love squalor? Do you prefer this to luxury and riding in your own carriage—for play your cards well and that's what you can get. There, sign this and learn what it is to live."
The devil could not have persuaded her more eloquently. She allowed him to slip the paper under her unresisting fingers.
"Sign, my dear," he repeated softly, moderating his impatience. "There now, we are sensible. Don't try to disguise your handwriting. I have your signature, you know."
She dropped the paper and pen with a cry of fear and recoiling exclaimed:
"No, no, I won't sign. I am afraid of you—afraid of what you may make me do. You would stop at nothing!"