CHAPTER V
ASJudge Healey, gray-haired, but erect, walked up the avenue his keen glance fell on Gerry Lansing standing across the street before an art dealer’s window. Gerry’s eyes were fastened on a picture that he had long had in mind for a certain nook in the library of the town house.
It was the second anniversary of his wedding, and though it was already late in the afternoon, Gerry had not yet chosen his gift for Alix. He turned from the picture with a last long look and a shrug, and passed on to a palatial jeweler’s farther up the street.
For many years Judge Healey had been foster-father to Red Hill in general and to Gerry in particular. With almost womanly intuition he read what was in Gerry’s mind before the picture, and acting on impulse, the judge crossed the street and bought it.
While the judge was still in the picture shop, Gerry came out of the jeweler’s and started briskly for home. He had purchased a pendant of brilliants, extravagant for his purse, but yet saved to good taste by a simple originality in design.
He waited until the dinner-hour, and then slipped his gift into Alix’s hand as they walked down the stairs together. She stopped beneath the hall light.
“I can’t wait, dear; I simply can’t,” she said, and snapped open the case.
“Oh!” she gasped. “How dear! How perfectly dear! You old sweetheart!”
She threw her arms about his neck and kissed him twice; then she flew away to the drawing-room in search of Mrs. Lansing and the judge, the sole guests at the little anniversary dinner. Gerry straightened his tie and followed.
Alix’s tongue was rippling, her whole body was rippling, with excitement and pleasure. She dangled her treasure before their eyes. She laid it against her warm neck and ran to a mirror. The light in her eyes matched the light in the stones. The judge took the jewel and laid it in the palm of his strong hand. It looked in danger of being crushed.
“A beautiful thing, Gerry,” he said, “and well chosen. Some poet jeweler dreamed that twining design, and set the stones while the dew was still on the grass.”
After dinner the four gathered in the library, but they were hardly seated when Alix sprang up. Her glance had followed Gerry’s startled gaze. He was staring at the coveted picture he had been looking at in the gallery that afternoon. It hung in the niche in which his thoughts had placed it. Alix took her stand before it. She glanced inquiringly at the others. Mrs. Lansing nodded at the judge. Alix turned back to the picture, and gravity stole into her face. Then she faced the judge with a smile.
“We live,” she said, “in a Philistine age, don’t we? But I’ve never let my Philistinism drive pictures from their right place in the heart. Pictures in art galleries—” she shrugged her pretty shoulders—“I have not been trained up to them. To me they are mounted butterflies in a museum, cut flowers crowded at the florist’s. But this picture and that nook—they have waited for each other. You see the picture nestling down for a long rest, and it seems a small thing, and then it catches your eye and holds it, and you see that it is a little door that opens on a wide world. It has slipped into the room and become a part of life.”
A strange stillness followed Alix’s words. To the judge and to Gerry it was as though the picture had opened a window to her mind. Then she closed the window.
“Come, Gerry,” she said, turning, “make your bow to the judge and bark.”
Gerry was excited, though he did not show it.
“You have dressed my thoughts in words I can’t equal,” he said, and strolled out to the little veranda at the back of the house. He wanted to be alone for a moment and think over this flash of light that had followed a dark day. For the first time in a long while Alix had revealed herself. He did not begrudge the judge his triumph. He knew instinctively that coming from him instead of from the judge the picture would not have struck that intimate spark.
The next day Gerry gave his consent to Alix’s plan for a flying trip abroad, but with a reservation. The reservation was that she should leave him behind.
Judge Healey heard of this arrangement only when it was on the point of being put into effect. In fact, he was only justin time at the steamer to wave good-by to Alix. Leaning over the rail, with her high color, moist red lips, and excited big eyes making play under a golden crown of hair and over a huge armful of roses, Alix presented a picture not easily forgotten.
The judge turned to Gerry.
“She ought not to be going without you, my boy.”
“Oh, it’s all right,” said Gerry, lightly. “She’s well chaperoned. It’s a big party, you know.”
But during the weeks that followed the judge saw it was not all right. Gerry had less and less time for golf and more and more for whisky and soda. The judge was troubled, and felt a sort of relief when from far away Alan Wayne cropped into his affairs and gave him something else to think about.
When Angus McDale of McDale & McDale called without appointment, the judge knew at once that he was going to hear something about Alan.
“Lucky to find you in,” puffed McDale. “It isn’t business exactly or I’d have ’phoned. I was just passing by.”
“Well, what is it?” asked the judge, offering his visitor a fresh cigar.
“It’s this. That boy, Alan Wayne—sort of protégé of yours, isn’t he?”
“Yes, in a way—yes,” said the judge, slowly, frowning. “What has Alan done now?”
“It’s like this,” said McDale. “Six months ago we sent Mr. Wayne out on contract as assistant to Walton. Walton no sooner got on the ground than he fell sick. He put Wayne in charge, and then he died. Now, this is the point. Mr. Wayne seems to have promoted himself to Walton’s pay. He had the cheek to draw his own as well. He won’t be here for weeks, but his accounts came in to-day. I want to know if you see any reason why we shouldn’t have that money back, to say the least.”
The judge’s face cleared.
“Didn’t he tell you why he drew Walton’s pay?”
“Not a word. Said he’d explain accounts when he got here, but that sort of thing takes a lot of explaining.”
“Well,” said the judge, “I can tell you. Walton’s pay went to his widow, through me. I’ve been doing some puzzling on this case already. Now will you tell me how Alan got the money without drawing on you?”
“Oh, there was plenty of money lying around. The job cost ten per cent. less than Walton’s estimate. If he’d come back, we’d have hauled him over the coals for that blunder. There was the usual reserve for work in inaccessible regions, and then the people we did the job for paid ten days’ bonus for finishing that much ahead of contract time.”
The judge mused.
“Was the job satisfactory to the people out there?” he asked.
“Yes, it was,” said McDale, bluntly; “most satisfactory. But there was a funny thing there, too. They wrote that while they did not approve of Mr. Wayne’s time-saving methods, the finished work had their absolute acceptance.”
The judge was silent for a moment.
“You want my advice?” he asked.
“Yes; not for our own sake, but for Wayne’s.”
“Well,” said the judge, “I’m going to give it to you for your sake. When you stumble across a boy that can cut ten per cent. off the working and time estimates of an old hand like Walton, you bind him to you with a long contract at any salary he wants. And just one thing more: when Alan Wayne steals a cent from you, or fifty thousand dollars, you come to me, and I’ll pay it.”
McDale’s eyes narrowed, and he puffed nervously at his cigar. He got up to take his leave.
“Judge,” he said, “your head is on right, and your heart’s in the right place, as well. I begin to see that widow business. Wayne sized us up for a hard-headed firm when it comes to paying out what we don’t have to, and we are. It wasn’t law, but he was right. Walton’s work was done just as if he’d been alive. Even a Scotchman can see that. You needn’t worry. A man that you’ll back for fifty thousand is good enough for McDale & McDale.”