Something in the dull sadness of his face, as he sat there, checked the first elaborately careless question her lips were already framing. Leaning a little nearer in the dim light she looked at him inquiringly and he returned her gaze in silence.
“What is it, Mr. Plank,” she said; “is anything wrong?”
He knew that she did not mean to ask if anything was amiss with him. She did not care. Nobody cared. So, recognising his cue, he answered: “No, nothing is wrong that I have heard of.”
“You wear a very solemn countenance.”
“Gaiety affects me solemnly, sometimes. It is a reaction from frivolity. I suppose that I am over-enjoying life; that is all.”
She laughed, using her fan, although the place was cool enough and they had not danced long. To and fro flitted the silken vanes of her fan, now closing impatiently, now opening again like the wings of a nervous moth in the moonlight.
He wished she would come to her point, but he dared not lead her to it too brusquely, because her purpose and her point were supposed to be absolutely hidden from his thick and credulous understanding. It had taken him some time to make this clear to himself; passing from suspicion, through chagrin and overwounded feeling, to dull certainty that she, too, was using him, harmlessly enough from her standpoint, but how bitterly from his, he alone could know.
The quickened flutter of her fan meant impatience to learn from him what she had come to him to learn, and then, satisfied, to leave him alone again amid the peopled solitude of clustered lights.
He wished she would speak; he was tired of the sadness of it all. Whenever in his isolation, in his utter destitution of friendship, he turned guilelessly to meet a new advance, always, sooner or later, the friendly mask was lifted enough for him to divine the cool, fixed gaze of self-interest inspecting him through the damask slits.
Sylvia was speaking now, and the plumy fan was under savant control, waving graceful accompaniment to her soft voice, punctuating her sentences at times, at times making an emphasis or outlining a gesture.
It was the familiar sequence; topics that led to themes which adroitly skirted the salient point; returned capriciously, just avoiding it—a subtly charming pattern of words which required so little in reply that his smile and nod were almost enough to keep her aria and his accompaniment afloat.
It began to fascinate him to watch the delicacy of her strategy, the coquetting with her purpose; her naive advance to the very edges of it, the airy retreat, the innocent detour, the elaborate and circuitous return. And at last she drifted into it so naturally that it seemed impossible that fatuous man could have the most primitive suspicion of her premeditation.
And Plank, now recognising his cue, answered her: “No, I have not heard that he is in town. I stopped to see him the other day, but nobody there knew how soon he intended to return from the country.”
“I didn't know he had gone to the country,” she said without apparent interest.
And Plank was either too kind to terminate the subject, or too anxious to serve his turn and release her; for he went on: “I thought I told you at Mrs. Ferrall's that Mr. Siward had gone to the country.”
“Perhaps you did. No doubt I've forgotten.”
“I'm quite sure I did, because I remember saying that he looked very ill, and you said, rather sharply, that he had no business to be ill. Do you remember?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “Is he better?”
“I hope so.”
“You hope so?”—with the controlled emphasis of impatience.
“Yes. Don't you, Miss Landis? When I saw him at his home, he was lame—on crutches—and he looked rather ghastly; and all he said was that he expected to leave for the country. I asked him to shoot next year at Black Fells, and he seemed bothered about business, and said it might keep him from taking any vacation.”
“He spoke about his business?”
“Yes, he—”
“What is the trouble with his business? Is it anything about Amalgamated and Inter-County?”
“I think so.”
“Is he worried?”
Plank said deliberately: “I should be, if my interests were locked up in Amalgamated Electric.”
“Could you tell me why that would worry you?” she asked, smiling persuasively across at him.
“No,” he said, “I can't tell you.”
“Because I wouldn't understand?”
“Because I myself don't understand.”
She thought awhile, brushing the rose velvet of her mouth with the fan's edge, then, looking up confidently:
“Mr. Siward is such a boy. I'm so glad he has you to advise him in such matters.”
“What matters?” asked Plank bluntly.
“Why, in—in financial matters.”
“But I don't advise him.”
“Why not?”
“Because he hasn't asked me to, Miss Landis.”
“He ought to ask you.... He must ask you.... Don't wait for him, Mr. Plank. He is only a boy in such things.”
And, as Plank was silent:
“You will, won't you?”
“Do what—make his business my business, without an invitation?” asked Plank, so quietly that she flushed with annoyance.
“If you pretend to be his friend is it not your duty to advise him?” she asked impatiently.
“No; that is for his business associates to do. Friendship comes to grief when it crosses the frontiers of business.”
“That is a narrow view to take, Mr. Plank.”
“Yes, straight and narrow. The boundaries of friendship are straight and narrow. It is best to keep to the trodden path; best not to walk on the grass or trample the flowers.”
“I think you are sacrificing friendship for an epigram,” she said, careless of the undertone of contempt in her voice.
“I have never sacrificed friendship.” He turned, and looked at her pleasantly. “I never made an epigram consciously, and I have never required of a friend more than I had to offer in return. Have you?”
The flush of hot displeasure stained her cheeks.
“Are you really questioning me, Mr. Plank?”
“Yes. You have been questioning me rather seriously—have you not?”
“I did not comprehend your definition of friendship. I did not agree with it. I questioned it, not you! That is all.”
Plank rested his head on one big hand and stared at the clusters of dim blossoms behind her; and after a while he said, as though thinking aloud:
“Many have taken my friendship for granted, and have never offered their own in return. I do not know about Mr. Siward. There is nothing I can do for him, nothing he can do for me. If there is to be friendship between us it will be disinterested; and I would rather have that than anything in the world, I think.”
There was a pause; but when Sylvia would have broken it his gesture committed her to silence with the dignity one might use in checking a persistent child.
“You question my definition of friendship, Miss Landis. I should have let your question pass, however keenly it touched me, had it not also touched him. Now I am going to say some things which lie within the straight and narrow bounds I spoke of. I never knew a man I cared for as much as I care for Mr. Siward. I know why, too. He is disinterested. I do not believe he wastes very many thoughts on me. Perhaps he will. I want him to like me, if it's possible. But one thing you and I may be sure of: if he does not care to return the friendship I offer him he will never accept anything else from me, though he might give at my request; and that is the sort of a man he is; and that is why he is every inch a man; and so I like him, Miss Landis. Do you wonder?”
She did not reply.
“Do you wonder?” he repeated sharply.
“No,” she said.
“Then—” He straightened up, and the silent significance of his waiting attitude was plain enough to her.
But she shook her head impatiently, saying: “I don't know whose dance it is, and I don't care. Please go on. It is—is pleasant. I like Mr. Siward; I like to hear men speak of him as you do. I like you for doing it. If you should ever come to care for my friendship that is the best passport to it—your loyalty to Mr. Siward.”
“No man can truthfully speak otherwise than I have spoken,” he said gravely.
“No, not of these things. But—you know w-what is—is usually said when his name comes up among men.”
“Do you mean about his habits?” he asked simply.
“Yes. Is it not an outrage to drag in that sort of thing? It angers me intensely, Mr. Plank. Why do they do it? Is there a single one among them qualified to criticise Mr. Siward? And besides, it is not true any more!... is it?—what was once said of him with—with some truth? Is it?”
The dull red blood mantled Plank's heavy visage. The silence grew grim as he did his slow, laborious thinking, the while his eyes, expressionless and almost opaque in the dim light, never left her's, until, under the unchanging, merciless inspection, the mask dropped for an instant from her anxious face, and he saw what he saw.
He was no fool. What he had come to believe she at last had only confirmed; and now the question became simple: was she worth enlightening? And by what title did she demand his confidence?
“You ask me if it is true any more. You mean about his habits. If I answer you it is because I cannot be indifferent to what concerns him. But before I answer I ask you this: Would your interest in his fortunes matter to him?”
She waited, head bent; then:
“I don't know, Mr. Plank,” very low.
“Did your interest in his fortunes ever concern him?”
“Yes, once.”
He looked at her sternly, his jaw squaring until his heavy under lip projected. “Within my definition of friendship, is he your friend?”
“You mean he—”
“No, I mean you! I can answer for him. How is it with you? Do you return what he gives—if there is really friendship between you? Or do you take what he offers, offering nothing in return?”
She had turned rather white under the direct impact of the questions. The jarring repetition of his voice itself was like the dull echo of distant blows. Yet it never occurred to her to resent it, nor his attitude, nor his self-assumed privilege. She did not care; she no longer cared what he said to her or thought about her; nor did she care that her mask had fallen at last. It was not what he was saying, but what her own heart repeated so heavily that drove the colour from her face. Not he, but she herself had become the pitiless attorney for the prosecution; not his voice, but the clamouring conscience within her demanded by what right she used the name of friendship to characterise the late relations between her and the man to whom she had denied herself.
Then a bitter impatience swept her, and a dawning fear, too; for she had set her foot on the fallen mask, and the impulse rendered her reckless.
“Why don't you speak?” she said. “Yes, I have a right to know. I care for him as much as you do. Why don't you answer me? I tell you I care for him!”
“Do you?” he said in a dull voice. “Then help me out, if you can, for I don't know what to do; and if I did, I haven't the authority of friendship as my warrant. He is in New York. He did go to the country; and, at his home, the servants suppose he is still away. But he isn't; he is here, alone, and sick—sick of his old sickness. I saw him, and”—Plank rested his head on his hand, dropping his eyes—“and he didn't know me. I—I do not think he will remember that he met me, or that I spoke. And—I could do nothing, absolutely nothing. And I don't know where he is. He will go home after a while. I call—every day—to see—see what can be done. But if he were there I would not know what to do. When he does go home I won't know what to say—what to try to do.... And that is an answer to your question, Miss Landis. I give it, because you say you care for him as I do. Will you advise me what to do?—you, who are more entitled than I am to know the truth, because he has given you the friendship which he has as yet not accorded to me.”
But Sylvia, dry-eyed, dry-lipped, could find no voice to answer; and after a little while they rose and moved through the fragrant gloom toward the sparkling lights beyond.
Her voice came back as they entered the brilliant rooms: “I should like to find Grace Ferrall,” she said very distinctly. “Please keep the others off, Mr. Plank.”
Her small hand on his arm lay with a weight out of all proportion to its size. Fair head averted, she no longer guided him with that impalpable control; it was he who had become the pilot now, and he steered his own way through the billowy ocean of silk and lace, master of the course he had set, heavily bland to the interrupter and the importunate from whom she turned a deaf ear and dumb lips, and lowered eyes that saw nothing.
Fleetwood had missed his dance with her, but she scarcely heard his eager complaints. Quarrier, coldly inquiring, confronted them; was passed almost without recognition, and left behind, motionless, looking after them out of his narrowing, black-fringed eyes of a woman.
Then Ferrall came, and hearing his voice, she raised her colourless face.
“Will you take me home with you, Kemp, when you take Grace?” she asked.
“Of course. I don't know where Grace is. Are you in a hurry to go? It's only four o'clock.”
They were at the entrance to the supper-room. Plank drew up a chair for her, and she sank down, dropping her elbows on the small table, and resting her face between her fingers.
“Pegged out, Sylvia?” exclaimed Ferrall incredulously. “You? What's the younger set coming to?” and he motioned a servant to fill her glass. But she pushed it aside with a shiver, and gave Plank a strange look which he scarcely understood at the moment.
“More caprices; all sorts of 'em on the programme,” muttered Ferrall, looking down at her from where he stood beside Plank. “O tempora! O Sylvia!... Plank, would you mind hunting up my wife? I'll stay and see that this infant doesn't fall asleep.”
But Sylvia shook her head, saying: “Please go, Kemp. I'm a little tired, that's all. When Grace is ready, I'll leave with her.” And at her gesture Plank seated himself, while Ferrall, shrugging his square shoulders, sauntered off in quest of his wife, stopping a moment at a neighbouring table to speak to Agatha Caithness, who sat there with Captain Voucher, the gemmed collar on her slender throat a pale blaze of splendour.
Plank was hungry, and he said so in his direct fashion. Sylvia nodded, and exchanged a smile with Agatha, who turned at the sound of Plank's voice. For a while, as he ate and drank largely, she made the effort to keep up a desultory conversation, particularly when anybody to whom she owed an explanation hove darkly in sight on the horizon. But Plank's appetite was in proportion to the generous lines on which nature had fashioned him, and she paid less and less attention to convention and a trifle more to the beauty of Agatha's jewels, until the silence at the small table in the corner remained unbroken except by the faint tinkle of silver and crystal and the bubbling hiss of a glass refilled.
Major Belwether, his white, fluffy, chop-whiskers brushed rabbit fashion, peeped in at the door, started to tiptoe out again, caught sight of them, and came trotting back, beaming rosy effusion. He leaned roguishly over the table, his moist eyes a-twinkle with suppressed mirth; then, bestowing a sprightly glance on Plank, which said very plainly, “I'm up to one of my irrepressible jokes again!” he held up a smooth, white, and over-manicured forefinger:
“I was in Tiffany's yesterday,” he said, “and I saw a young man in there who didn't see me, and I peeped over his shoulder, and what do you think he was doing?”
She lifted her eyes a little wearily:
“I don't know,” she said.
“I do,” he chuckled. “He was choosing a collar of blue diamonds and aqua marines!—Te-he!—probably to wear himself!—Te-he! Or perhaps he was going to be married!—He-he-he!—next winter—ahem!—next November—Ha-ha! I don't know, I'm sure, what he meant to do with that collar. I only—”
Something in Sylvia's eyes stopped him, and, following their direction, he turned around to find Quarrier standing at his elbow, icy and expressionless.
“Oh,” said the aged jester, a little disconcerted, “I'm caught talking out in church, I see! It was only a harmless little fun, Howard.”
“Do you mean you saw me?” asked Quarrier, pale as a sheet. “You are in error. I have not been in Tiffany's in months.”
Belwether, crestfallen under the white menace of Quarrier's face, nodded, and essayed a chuckle without success.
Sylvia, at first listless and uninterested, looked inquiringly from the major to Quarrier, surprised at the suppressed feeling exhibited over so trivial a gaucherie. If Quarrier had chosen a collar like Agatha's for her, what of it? But as he had not, on his own statement, what did it matter? Why should he look that way at the foolish major, to whose garrulous gossip he was accustomed, and whose inability to refrain from prying was notorious enough.
Turning disdainfully, she caught a glimpse of Plank's shocked and altered face. It relapsed instantly into the usual inert expression; and a queer, uncomfortable perplexity began to invade her. What had happened to stir up these three men? Of what importance was an indiscretion of an old gentleman whose fatuous vanity and consequent blunders everybody was familiar with? And, after all, Howard had not bought anything at Tiffany's; he said so himself.... But it was evident that Agatha had chanced on the collar that Belwether thought he saw somebody else examining.
She turned, and looked at the dead-white neck of the girl. The collar was wonderful—a miracle of pale fire. And Sylvia, musing, let her thoughts run on, dreamy eyes brooding. She was glad that Agatha's means permitted her now to have such things. It had been understood, for some years, that the Caithness fortune was in rather an alarming condition. Howard had been able recently to do a favour or two for old Peter Caithness. She had heard the major bragging about it. Evidently Mr. Caithness must have improved the chance, if he was able to present such gems to his daughter. And now somebody would marry her; perhaps Captain Voucher; perhaps even Alderdene; perhaps, as rumour had it now and then, Plank might venture into the arena.... Poor Plank! More of a man than people understood. She understood. She—
And her thoughts swung back like the returning tide to Siward, and her heart began heavily again, and the slightly faint sensation returned. She passed her ungloved, unsteady fingers across her eyelids and forehead, looking up and around. The major and Howard had disappeared; Plank, beside her, sat staring stupidly into his empty wine-glass.
“Isn't Mrs. Ferrall coming?” she said wearily.
Plank gathered his cumbersome bulk and stood up, trying to see through the entrance into the ball-room. After a moment he said: “They're in there, talking to Marion. It's a good chance to make our adieux.”
As they passed out of the supper-room Sylvia paused behind Agatha's chair and bent over her. “The collar is beautiful,” she said, “and so are you, Agatha”; and with a little impulsive caress for the jewels she passed on, unconscious of the delicate flush that spread from Agatha's shoulders to her hair. And Agatha, turning, encountered only the stupid gaze of Plank, moving ponderously past on Sylvia's heels.
“If you'll find Leila, I'm ready at any time,” she said carelessly, and resumed her tête-à -tête with Voucher, who had plainly been annoyed at the interruption.
Plank went on, a new trouble dawning on his thickening mental horizon. He had completely forgotten Leila. Even with all the demands made upon him; even with all the time he had given to those whose use of him he understood, how could he have forgotten Leila and the recent scene between them, and the new attitude and new relations with her that he must so carefully consider and ponder over before he presented himself at the house of Mortimer again!
Ferrall and his wife and Sylvia were making their adieux to Marion and her mother when he came up; and he, too, took that opportunity.
Later, on his quest for Leila, Sylvia, passing through the great hall, shrouded in silk and ermine, turned to offer him her hand, saying in a low voice: “I am at home to you; do you understand? Always,” she added nervously.
He looked after her with an unconscious sigh, unaware that anything in himself had claimed her respect. And after a moment he swung on his broad heels to continue his search for Mrs. Mortimer.
About four o'clock on the following afternoon Mrs. Mortimer's maid, who had almost finished drying and dressing her mistress' hair, was called to the door by a persistent knocking, which at first she had been bidden to disregard.
It was Mortimer's man, desiring to know whether Mrs. Mortimer could receive Mr. Mortimer at once on matters of importance.
“No,” said Leila petulantly. “Tell Mullins to say that I can not see anybody,” and catching a glimpse of the shadowy Mullins dodging about the dusky corridor: “What is the matter? Is Mr. Mortimer ill?”
But Mullins could not say what the matter might be, and he went away, only to return in a few moments bearing a scratchy note from his master, badly blotted and still wet; and Leila, with a shrug of resignation, took the blotched scrawl daintily between thumb and forefinger and unfolded it. Behind her, the maid, twisting up the masses of dark, fragrant hair, read the note very easily over her mistress' shoulder. It ran, without preliminaries:
“I'm going to talk to you, whether you like it or not. Do you understand that? If you want to know what's the matter with me you'll find out fast enough. Fire that French girl out before I arrive.”
She closed the note thoughtfully, folding and double-folding it into a thick wad. The ink had come off, discolouring her finger-tips; she dropped the soiled paper on the floor, and held out her hands, plump fingers spread. And when the maid had finished removing the stains and had repolished the pretty hands, her mistress sipped her chocolate thoughtfully, nibbled a bit of dry toast, then motioned the maid to take the tray and her departure, leaving her the cup.
A few minutes later Mortimer came in, stood a moment blinking around the room, then dropped into a seat, sullen, inert, the folds of his chin crowded out on his collar, his heavy abdomen cradled on his short, thick legs. He had been freshly shaved; linen and clothing were spotless, yet the man looked unclean.
Save for the network of purple veins in his face, there was no colour there, none in his lips; even his flabby hands were the hue of clay.
“Are you ill?” asked his wife coolly.
“No, not very. I've got the jumps. What's that? Tea? Ugh! it's chocolate. Push it out of sight, will you? I can smell it.”
Leila set the delicate cup on a table behind her.
“What time did you return this morning?” she asked, stifling a yawn.
“I don't know; about five or six. How the devil should I know what time I came in?”
Sitting there before the mirror of her dresser she stole a second glance at his marred features in the glass. The loose mouth, the smeared eyes, the palsy-like tremors that twitched the hands where they tightened on the arms of his chair, became repulsive to the verge of fascination. She tried to look away, but could not.
“You had better see Dr. Grisby,” she managed to say.
“I'd better see you; that's what I'd better do,” he retorted thickly. “You'll do all the doctoring I want. And I want it, all right.”
“Very well. What is it?”
He passed his swollen hand across his forehead.
“What is it?” he repeated. “It's the limit, this time, if you want to know. I'm all in.”
“Roulette?” raising her eyebrows without interest
“Yes, roulette, too. Everything! They got me upstairs at Burbank's. The game's crooked! Every box, every case, every wheel, every pack is crooked! crooked! crooked, by God!” he burst out in a fever, struggling to sit upright, his hands always tightening on the arms of the chair. “It's nothing but a creeping joint, run by a bunch of hand-shakers! I—I'll—”
Stuttering, choking, stammering imprecations, his hoarse clamour died away after a while. She sat there, head bent, silent, impassive, acquiescent under the physical and mental strain to which she had never become thoroughly hardened. How many such scenes had she witnessed! She could not count them. They differed very little in detail, and not at all in their ultimate object, which was to get what money she had. This was his method of reimbursing himself for his losses.
He made an end to his outburst after a while. Only his dreadful fat breathing now filled the silence; and supposing he had finished, she found her voice with an effort:
“I am sorry. It comes at a bad time, as you know—”
“A bad time!” he broke out violently. “How can it come at any other sort of time? With us, all times are bad. If this is worse than the average it can't be helped. We are in it for keeps this time!”
“We?”
“Yes, we!” he repeated; but his face had grown ghastly, and his uncertain eyes were fastened on her's in the mirror.
“What do you mean—exactly?” she asked, turning from the dresser to confront him.
He made no effort to answer; an expression of dull fright was growing on his visage, as though for the first time he had begun to realise what had happened.
She saw it, and her heart quickened, but she spoke disdainfully: “Well, I am ready to listen—as usual. How much do you want?”
He made no sign; his lower lip hung loose; his eyes blinked at her.
“What is it?” she repeated. “What have you been doing? How much have you lost? You can't have lost very much; we hadn't much to lose. If you have given your note to any of those gamblers, it is a shame—a shame! Leroy, look at me! You promised me, on your honour, never to do that again. Have you lied, after all the times I have helped you out, stripped myself, denied myself, put off tradesmen, faced down creditors? After all I have done, do you dare come here and ask for more—ask for what I have not got—with not one bill settled, not one servant paid since December—”
“Leila, I—I've got—to tell you—”
“What?” she demanded, appalled by the change in his face. If he was overdoing it, he was overdoing it realistically enough.
“I—I've used Plank's cheque!” he mumbled, and moistened his lips with his tongue.
She stared back at him, striving to comprehend. “Plank's!” she repeated slowly, “Plank's cheque? What cheque? What do you mean?”
“The one he gave you last night. I've used that. Now you know!”
“The one he—But you couldn't! How could you? It was not filled in.”
“I filled it.”
Her dawning horror was reacting on him, as it always did, like a fierce tonic; and his own courage came back in a sort of sullen desperation.
“You... You are trying to frighten me, Leroy,” she stammered. “You are trying to make me do something—give you what you want—force me to give you what you want! You can't frighten me. The cheque was made out to me—to my order. How could you have used it, if I had not indorsed it?”
“I indorsed it. Do you understand that!” he said savagely.
“No, I don't; because, if you did, it's forgery.”
“I don't give a damn what you think it is!” he broke in fiercely. “All I'm worried over is what Plank will think. I didn't mean to do it; I didn't dream of doing it; but when Burbank cleaned me up I fished about, and that cursed cheque came tumbling out!”
In the rising excitement of self-defence the colour was coming back into his battered face; he sat up straighter in his chair, and, grasping the upholstered arms, leaned forward, speaking more distinctly and with increasing vigour and anger:
“When I saw that cheque in my hands I thought I'd use it temporarily—merely as moral collateral to flash at Burbank—something to back my I. O. U.'s. So I filled it in.”
“For how much?” she asked, not daring to believe him; but he ignored the question and went on: “I filled it and indorsed it, and—”
“How could you indorse it?” she interrupted coolly, now unconvinced again and suspicious.
“I'll tell you if you'll stop that fool tongue a moment. The cheque was made to 'L. Mortimer,' wasn't it? So I wrote 'L. Mortimer' on the back. Now do you know? If you are L. Mortimer, so am I. Leila begins with L; so does Leroy, doesn't it? I didn't imitate your two-words-to-a-page autograph. I put my own fist to a cheque made out to one L. Mortimer; and I don't care what you think about it as long as Plank can stand it. Now put up your nose and howl, if you like.”
But under her sudden pallor he was taking fright again, and he began to bolster up his courage with bluster and noise, as usual:
“Howl all you like!” he jeered. “It won't alter matters or square accounts with Plank. What are you staring at? Do you suppose I'm not sorry? Do you fancy I don't know what a fool I've been? What are you turning white for? What in hell—”
“How much have you—” She choked, then, resolutely: “How much have you—taken?”
“Taken!” he broke out, with an oath. “What do you mean? I've borrowed about twenty thousand dollars. Now yelp! Eh? What?—no yelps? Probably some weeps, then. Turn 'em on and run dry; I'll wait.” And he managed to cross one bulky leg over the other and lean back, affecting resignation, while Leila, bolt upright in her low chair, every curved outline rigid under the flowing, silken wrap, stared at him as though stunned.
“Well, we're good for it, aren't we?” he said threateningly. “If he's going to turn ugly about it, here's the house.”
“My—house?”
“Yes, your house! I suppose you'd rather raise something on the house than have the thing come out in the papers.”
“Do you think so?” she asked, staring into his bloodshot eyes.
“Yes, I do. I'm damn sure of it!”
“You are wrong.”
“You mean that you are not inclined to stand by me?” he demanded.
“Yes, I mean that.”
“You don't intend to help me out?”
“I do not intend to—not this time.”
He began to show his big teeth, and that nervous snickering “tick” twitched his upper lip.
“How about the courts?” he sneered. “Do you want to figure in them with Plank?”
“I don't want to,” she said steadily, “but you can not frighten me any more by that threat.”
“Oh! Can't frighten you! Perhaps you think you'll marry Plank when I get a decree? Do you? Well, you won't for several reasons; first, because I'll name other corespondents and that will make Plank sick; second, because Plank wants to marry somebody else and I'm able to assist him. So where do you come out in the shuffle?”
“I don't know,” she said, under her breath, and rested her head against the back of the chair, as though suddenly tired.
“Well, I know. You'll come out smirched, and you know it,” said Mortimer, gazing intently at her. “Look here, Leila: I didn't come here to threaten you. I'm no black-mailer; I'm no criminal. I'm simply a decent sort of a man, who is pretty badly scared over what he's done in a moment of temptation. You know I had no thought of anything except to borrow enough on my I. O. U.'s to make a killing at Burbank's. I had to show them something big, so I filled in that cheque, not meaning to use it; and before I knew it I'd indorsed it, and was plunging against it. Then they stacked everything on me—by God, they did! and if I had not been in the condition I was in I'd have stopped payment. But it was too late when I realised what I was against. Leila, you know I'm not a bad man at heart. Can't you help a fellow?”
His manner, completely changed, had become the resentful and fretful appeal of the victim of plot and circumstance. All the savage brutality had been eliminated; the sneer, the truculent attempts to browbeat, the pitiful swagger, the cynical justification, all were gone. It was really the man himself now, normally scared and repentant; the frightened, overfed pensioner on his wife's bounty; not the human beast maddened by fear and dissipation, half stunned, half panic-stricken, driven by sheer terror into a rôle which even he shrank from—had shrunk from all these years. For, leech and parasite that he was, Mortimer, however much the dirty acquisition of money might tempt him in theory, had not yet brought himself to the point of attempting the practice, even when in sorest straits and bitterest need. He didn't want to do it; he wished to get along without it, partly because of native inertia and an aversion to the mental nimbleness that he would be required to show as a law-breaker, partly because the word “black-mail” stood for what he did not dare suggest that he had come to, even to himself. His distaste was genuine; there were certain things which he didn't want to commit, and extortion was one of them. He could, at a pinch, lie to his wife, or try to scare her into giving him money; he could, when necessary, “borrow” from such men as Plank; but he had never cheated at cards, and he had never attempted to black-mail anybody except his wife—which, of course, was purely a family matter, and concerned nobody else.
Now he was attempting it again, with more sincerity, energy, and determination than he ever before had been forced to display. Even in his most profane violence the rage and panic were only partly real. He was, it is true, genuinely scared, and horribly shaken physically, but he had counted on violence, and he stimulated his own emotions and made them serve him, knowing all the while that in the reaction his ends would be accomplished, as usual. This policy of alternately frightening, dragooning, and supplicating Leila had carried him so far; and though it was true that this was a more serious situation than he had ever yet faced, he was convinced that his wife would pull him out somehow; and how that was to be accomplished he did not very much care, as long as he was pulled out safely.
“What this household requires,” he said, “is economy.” He spread his legs, denting the Aubusson carpet with his boot-heels, and glanced askance at his wife. “Economy,” he repeated, furtively wetting his lips with a heavily coated tongue; “that's the true solution; economical administration in domestic matters. Retrenchment, Leila! retrenchment! Fewer folderols. I've a notion to give up that farm, and stop trying to breed those damfool sheep. They cost a thousand apiece, and do you know what I got for those six I sent to Westbury? Just twelve hundred dollars from Fleetwood—the bargaining shopkeeper! Twelve hundred! Think of that! And along comes Granby and sells a single ram for six thousand plunks!”
Leila's head was lowered. He could not see her expression, but he had always been confident of his ability to talk himself out of trouble, so he rambled on in pretence of camaraderie, currying favour, as he believed, ingratiating himself with the coarse bluntness that served him among some men, even among some women.
“We'll fix it somehow,” he said reassuringly; “don't you worry, Leila. I've confidence in you, little girl! You've got me out of sticky messes before, eh? Well, we've weathered a few, haven't we?”
Even the horrible parody on wedded loyalty left her silent, unmoved, dark eyes brooding; and he began to grow a little restless and anxious as his jocularity increased without a movement in either response or aversion from his wife.
“You needn't be scared, if I'm not,” he said reproachfully. “The house is worth two hundred and fifty thousand, and there's only fifty on it now. If that fat, Dutch skinflint, Plank, shows his tusks, we can clap on another fifty.” And as she made no sound or movement in reply: “As far as Plank goes, haven't I done enough for him to square it? What have we ever got out of him, except a thousand or two now and then when the cards went against me? If I took it, it was practically what he owes me. And if he thinks it's too much—look here, Leila! I've a trick up my sleeve. I can make good any time I wish to. I'm in a position to marry that man to the girl he's mad about—stark, raving mad.”
Mrs. Mortimer slowly raised her head and looked at her husband.
“Leroy, are you mad?”
“I! Not much!” he exclaimed gleefully. “I can make him the husband of the most-run-after girl in New York—if I want to. And at the same time I can puncture the most arrogant, the most cold-blooded, selfish, purse-proud, inflated nincompoop that ever sat at the head of a director's table. O-ho! Now you're staring, Leila. I can do it; I can make good. What are you worrying about? Why, I've got a hundred ways to square that cheque, and each separate way is a winner.”
He rose, shook out the creases in his trousers, and adjusted the squat, gold fob which ornamented his protruding waistcoat.
“So you'll fix it, won't you, Leila?” he said, apparently oblivious that he had expressed himself as able to adjust the matter in one hundred equally edifying and satisfactory manners.
She did not answer. He lingered a moment at the door, looking back with an ingratiating leer; but she paid him no attention, and he took himself off, confident that her sulkiness could not result in anything unpleasant to anybody except herself.
Nor did it, as far as he could see. The days brought no noticeable change in his wife's demeanour toward him. Plank, when he met him, was civil enough, though it did occur to Mortimer that he saw very little of Plank in these days.
“Ungrateful beggar!” he thought bitterly; “he's toadying to Belwether now. I can't do anything more for him, so I don't interest him.”
And for a while he wore either a truculent, aggrieved air in Plank's presence, or the meeker demeanour of a martyr, sentimentally misunderstood, but patient under the affliction.
Then there came a time when he needed money. During the few days he spent circling tentatively and apprehensively around his wife he learned enough to know that there was nothing to be had from her at present. No doubt the money she raised to placate Plank—if she had placated him in that fashion—was a strain on her resources, whatever those resources were.
One thing was certain: Plank had not remained very long in ignorance of the cheque drawn against his balance, if indeed, as Mortimer feared, the bank itself had not communicated with Plank as soon as the cheque was presented for payment. Therefore Plank must have been placated by Leila; how, Mortimer was satisfied not to know.
“Some of these days,” he said to himself, “I'll catch her tripping, and then there'll be a decent division of property, or—there'll be a divorce.” But, as usual, Mortimer found such practices more attractive in theory than in execution, and he was really quite contented to go on as things were going, if somebody would see that he had some money occasionally.
One of these occasions when he needed it was approaching. He had made a “killing” at Desmond's, and had used the money to stop up the more threatening gaps in the tottering financial fabric known as his “personal accounts.” The fabric would hold for a while, but meantime he needed money to go on with. And Leila evidently had none. He tried everybody except Plank. He had scarcely the impudence to go to Plank just yet; but when, completing the vicious circle, he found his borrowing capacity exhausted, and himself once more face to face with the only hope, Plank, he sat down to consider seriously the possibility of the matter.
Of course Plank owed him more than he could ever pay—the ungrateful parvenu!—but what Plank had thought of that cheque transaction he had never been able to discover.
Somehow or other he must put Plank under fresh obligations; and that might have been possible had not Leila invaded the ground, leaving nothing, now that Plank was secure in club life.
Of course the first thing that presented itself to Mortimer's consideration was the engineering of Plank's matrimonial ambitions. Clearly the man had not changed. He was always at Sylvia's heels; he was seen with her in public; he went to the Belwether house a great deal. No possible doubt but that he was as infatuated as ever. And Quarrier was going to marry her next November—that is, if he, Mortimer, chose to keep silent about a certain midnight episode at Shotover.
It was his inclination, except in theory, to keep silent, partly because of his native inertia and unwillingness to go to the physical and intellectual exertion of being a rascal, partly because he didn't really want to be a rascal of that sort.
Like a man with premonitions of toothache, who walks down to the dentist's just to see what the number of the house looks like, and then walks around the block to think it over, so Mortimer, suffering from lack of money, walked round and round the central idea, unable to bring himself to the point.
Several times he called up Quarrier on the 'phone and made appointments to lunch with him; but these meetings never resulted in anything except luncheons which Mortimer paid for, and matters were becoming desperate.
So one day, after having lunched too freely, he sat down and wrote Plank the following note:
My Dear Beverly: You will remember that I once promised you my aid in securing what, to you, is the dearest object of your existence. I have thought, I have pondered, I have given the matter deep and, I may add without irreverence, prayerful consideration, knowing that the life's happiness of my closest friend depended on my judgment and wisdom and intelligence to secure for him the opportunity to crown his life's work by the acquisition of the brightest jewel in the diadem of old Manhattan.
“By George! that's wickedly good, though!” chuckled Mortimer, refreshing himself with his old stand-by, an apple, quartered, and soaked in very old port. So he sopped his apple and swallowed it, and picked up his pen again, chary of overdoing it.
All I say to you is, be ready! The time is close at hand when you may boldly make your avowal. But be ready! All depends upon the psychological moment. An instant too soon, an instant too late, and you are lost. And she is lost forever. Remember! Be faithful; trust in me, and wait. And the instant I say, “Speak!” pour out your soul, my dear friend, and be certain you are not pouring it out in vain. L. M.
Writing about “pouring out” made him thirsty, so he fortified himself several times, and then, sealing the letter, went out to a letter-box and stood looking at it.
“If I mail it I'm in for it,” he muttered. After a while he put the letter in his pocket and walked on.
“It really doesn't commit me to anything,” he reflected at last, halting before another letter-box. And as he stood there, hesitating, he glanced up and saw Quarrier entering the Lenox Club. The next moment he flung up the metal box lid, dropped in his letter, and followed Quarrier into the club.
Then events tumbled forward almost without a push from him. Quarrier was alone in a window corner, drinking vichy and milk and glancing over the afternoon papers. He saw Mortimer, and invited him to join him; and Mortimer, being thirsty, took champagne.
“I've been trying a new coach,” said Quarrier, in his colourless and rather agreeable voice; and he went on leisurely explaining the points of the new mail-coach which had been built in Paris after plans of his own, while Mortimer gulped glass after glass of chilled wine, which seemed only to make him thirstier. Meantime he listened, really interested, except that his fleshy head was too full of alcohol and his own project to contain additional statistics concerning coaching. Besides, Quarrier, who had never been over-cordial to him, was more so now—enough for Mortimer to venture on a few tentative suggestions of a financial nature; and though, as usual, Quarrier was not responsive, he did not, as usual, get up and go away.
A vague hope stirred Mortimer that it might not be beyond his persuasive tongue to make this chilly, reticent young man into a friend some day—a helpful friend. For Mortimer all his life had trusted to his tongue; and though poorly enough repaid, the few lingual victories remained in his memory, along with an inexhaustible vanity and hope; while his countless defeats and the many occasions on which his tongue had played him false were all forgotten. Besides, he had been drinking more heavily all day than was his custom.
So Quarrier talked, sparingly, about his new coach, about Billy Fleetwood's renowned string of hunters, about Ashley Spencer's new stable and his chances at Saratoga with Roy-a-neh, for which he had paid a fabulous sum—the sum and the story probably equally fabulous.
Mortimer's head was swimming with ideas; he was also talking a great deal, much more than he had intended; he was saying things he had not exactly intended to say, either, in just that way. He realised it, but he went on, unable to stop his own tongue, the noise of which intoxicated him.
Once or twice he thought Quarrier looked at him rather strangely; but he would show Quarrier that he was nobody's fool; he'd show Quarrier that he was a friend, a good, staunch friend; and that Quarrier had long, long undervalued him. Waves of sentiment spread through and through him; his affection for Quarrier dampened his eyes; and still he blabbed on and on, gazing with brimming eyes upon Quarrier, who sat back silent and attentive as Mortimer circled and blundered nearer and nearer to the crucial point of his destination.
Midway in one of his linguistic ellipses Quarrier leaned forward and caught his arm in a grip of steel. Another man had entered the room. Mortimer, made partly conscious by the pain of Quarrier's vise-like grip, was sober enough to recognise the impropriety of his continuing aloud the veiled story he had been constructing with what he supposed to be a cunning as matchless as it was impenetrable.
Later he found himself upstairs in a private card-room, facing Quarrier across a table, and still talking and quenching his increasing thirst. He knew now what he was telling Quarrier; he was unveiling the parable; he was stripping metaphor from a carefully precise story. He used Siward's name presently; presently he used Sylvia's name. A moment later—or was it an hour?—Quarrier stopped him, coldly, without a trace of passion, demanding corroborative detail. And Mortimer gave it, wagging his head and one fat forefinger as emphasis.
“You saw that?” repeated Quarrier, deadly white of a sudden.
“Yes; an' I—”
“At three in the morning?”
“Yes; an' I want—”
“You saw him enter her room?”
“Yes; an' I wan' tersay thish to you, because I'm your fr'en'. Don' wan' anny fr'en's mine get fooled on women! See? Thash how I feel. I respec' the sect! See! Women, lovely women! See? Respec' sect! Gimme y'han', buzzer—er—brother Quar'er! Your m' fr'en'; I'm your fr'en'. I know how it is. Gotter wife m'own. Rotten one. Stingy! Takes money outter m' pockets. Dam 'stravagant. Ruin me!... Say, old boy, what about dividend due 'morrow on Orange County Eclectic—mean Erlextic—no!—mean 'Letric! Damn!—Wasser masser tongue?”
Opening his fond and foggy eyes, and finding himself alone in the card-room, he began to cry; and a little later, attempting to push the electric button, he fell over a lounge and lay there, his shirt-front soiled with wine, one fat leg trailing to the floor; not the ideal position for slumber, perhaps, but what difference do attitudes and postures and poses make when a gentleman, in the sacred seclusion of his own club, is wooing the drowsy goddess with blasts of votive music through his empurpled nose?
In the meantime, however, he was due to dine at the Belwether house; and when eight o'clock approached, and he had not returned to dress, Leila called up Sylvia Landis on the telephone:
“My dear, Leroy hasn't returned, and I suppose he's forgotten about the Bridge. I can bring Mr. Plank, if you like.”
“Very well,” said Sylvia, adding, “if Mr. Plank is there, may I speak to him a moment?”
So Leila rose, setting the receiver on the desk, and Plank came in from the library and settled himself heavily in the chair:
“Did you wish to speak to me, Miss Landis?”
“Is that you, Mr. Plank? Yes; will you dine with us at eight? Bridge afterward, if you don't mind.”
“Thank you.”
“And, Mr. Plank, you had a note from me this morning?”
“Yes.”
“Please disregard it.”
“If you wish.”
“I do. It is not worth while.” And as Plank made no comment, “I have no further interest in the matter. Do you understand?”
“No,” said Plank doggedly.
“I have nothing more to say. I am sorry. We dine at eight,” concluded Sylvia hurriedly.
Plank hung up the receiver and sat eyeing it for a while in silence. Then his jaw began to harden and his under lip protruded, and he folded his great hands, resting them in front of him on the edge of the desk, brooding there, with eyes narrowing like a sleepy giant at prayer.
When Leila entered, in her evening wraps, she found him there, so immersed in reverie that he failed to hear her; and she stood a moment at the doorway, smiling to herself, thinking how pleasant it was to come down ready for the evening and find him there, as though he belonged where he sat, and was part of the familiar environment.
Recently she had grown younger in a smooth-skinned, full-lipped way—so much younger that it was spoken of. Something girlish in figure, in spontaneity, in the hesitation of her smile, in the lack of that hard, brilliant confidence which once characterised her, had developed; as though she were beginning her début again, reverting to a softness and charm prematurely checked. Truly, her youth's discoloured blossom, forced by the pale phantom of false spring, was refolding to a bud once more; and the harsher tints of the inclement years were fading.
“Beverly,” she said, “I am ready.”
Plank stood up, dazed from his reverie, and walked toward her. His white tie had become disarranged; she raised her hands, halting him, and pulled it into shape for him, consciously innocent of the intimacy.
“Thank you,” he said. “Do you know how pretty you are this evening?”
“Yes; I was very happy at my mirror. Do you know, the withered years seem to be dropping from me like leaves from an autumn sapling. And I feel young enough to say so poetically.... Did Sylvia try to flirt with you over the wire?”
“Yes, as usual,” he said drily, descending the stairs beside her.
“And really you don't love her any more?” she queried.
“Scarcely.” His voice was low and rather disagreeable, and she looked up.
“I wish I knew what you and Sylvia find to talk about so frequently, if you're not in love.”
But he made no answer; and they drove away to the Belwether house, a rather wide, old-style mansion of brown stone, with a stoop dividing its ugly façade, and a series of unnecessary glass doors blockading the vestibule.
A drawing-room and a reception-room flanked the marble-tiled hall; behind these the dining-room ran the width of the rear. It was a typical gentlefolk's house of the worst period of Manhattan, and Major Belwether belonged in it as fittingly as a melodeon belongs in a west-side flat. The hall-way was made for such a man as he to patter through; the velvet-covered stairs were as peculiarly fitted for him as a runway is for a rabbit; the suave pink-and-white drawing-room, the discreet, gray reception-room, the soft, fat rugs, the intricacies of banisters and alcoves and curtained cubby-holes—all reflected his personality, all corroborated the ensemble. It was his habitat, his distinctly, from the pronounced but meaningless intricacy of the architecture to the studied but unconvincing tints, like a man who suddenly starts to speak, but checks himself, realising he has nothing in particular to say.
There were half a dozen people there lounging informally between the living-room on the second floor and Sylvia's apartments in the rear—the residue from a luncheon and Bridge party given that afternoon by Sylvia to a score or so of card-mad women. A few of these she had asked to remain for an informal dinner, and a desperate game later—the sort of people she knew well enough to lose to heavily or win from without remorse—Grace Ferrall, Marion Page, Agatha Caithness. Trusting to the telephone that morning, she had secured the Mortimers and Quarrier, failing three men; and now the party, with Plank as Mortimer's substitute, was complete, all thorough gamesters—sex mattering nothing in the preparation for such a séance.
In Sylvia's boudoir Grace Ferrall and Agatha Caithness sat before the fire; Sylvia, at the mirror of her dresser, was correcting the pallor incident to the unbroken dissipation of a brilliant season; Marion, with her inevitable cigarette, wandered between Sylvia's quarters and the library, where Quarrier and Major Belwether were sitting in low-voiced confab.
Leila, greeted gaily from the boudoir, went in. Plank entered the library, was mauled effusively by the major, returned Quarrier's firm hand shake, and sat down with an inquiring smile.
“Oh, yes, we're out for blood to-night,” tittered Major Belwether, grasping Quarrier's arm humourously and shaking it to emphasise his words—a habit that Quarrier thoroughly disliked. “Sylvia had a lot of women here playing for the season score, so I suggested she keep the pick of them for dinner, and call in a few choice ones to make a night of it.”
“It's agreeable to me,” said Plank, still looking at Quarrier with the same inquiring expression, which that gentleman presently chose to understand.
“I haven't had a chance to look into that matter,” he said carelessly. “Some day, when you have time to go over it—”
“I have time now,” said Plank; “there's nothing to go over; there's no reason for any secrecy. All I wrote you was that I proposed to control the stock of Amalgamated Electric and that I wished your advice in the matter.”
“I could not give you any advice off-hand on such an extraordinary suggestion,” returned Quarrier coldly. “If you know where the stock is, you'll understand.”
“Do you mean what it is quoted at, or who owns it?” interrupted Plank.
“Who owns it. Everybody knows where it has dropped to, I suppose. Most people know, too, where it is held.”
“Yes; I do.”
“And who is manipulating it,” added Quarrier indifferently.
“Do you mean Harrington's people?”
“I don't mean anybody in particular, Mr. Plank.”
“Oh!” said Plank, staring, “I was sure you couldn't have meant Harrington; because,” he went on deliberately, “there are other theories floating about that mysterious pool, one of which I've proved.”
Quarrier looked at him out of his velvety-lidded eyes:
“What have you proved?”
“I'll tell you, if you'll appoint an interview.”
“I'll come too,” began Belwether, who had been listening, loose-mouthed and intent; “we're all in it—Howard, Kemp Ferrall, and I—”
“And Stephen Siward,” observed Plank, so quietly that Quarrier never even raised his eyes to read the stolid face opposite.
Presently he said: “Do you know anybody who can deliver you any considerable block of Amalgamated Electric at the market figures?”
“I could deliver you several blocks, if you care to bid,” said Plank bluntly.
Belwether grew red, then pale. Quarrier stiffened in his chair, but his eyes were only sceptical. Plank's under lip had begun to protrude again; he swung his massive head, looking from Belwether back to Quarrier:
“Pool or no pool,” he continued, “you Amalgamated people will want to see the stock climb back into the branches from which somebody shook it out; and I propose to put it there. That is all I had meant to say to you, Mr. Quarrier. I'm not averse to saying it here to you, and I do. There's no secrecy about it. Figure out for yourself how much stock I control, and who let it go. Settle your family questions and put your house in order; then invite me to call, and I'll do it. And I have an idea that we are going to stand on our own legs again, and recover our self-respect and our fighting capacity; and I rather think we'll stop this hold-up business, and that our Inter-County friend will let go the sand-bag and pocket the jimmy, and talk business across the line-fence.”
Quarrier's characteristic pallor was no index to his feelings, nor was his icy reticence. All hell might be boiling below.
When anybody gave Quarrier a letter to read he took a long time reading it; but if he was slow he was also minute; he went over every word again and again, studying, absorbing each letter, each period, the conformation of every word. And when he ended he had in his brain a photograph of the letter which he would never forget.
And now, slowly, minutely, methodically, he was going over and over Plank's words, and his manner of saying them, and their surface import, and the hidden one, if any.
If Plank had spoken the truth—and there was no reason to doubt it—Plank had quietly acquired a controlling interest in Amalgamated Electric. That meant treachery in somebody. Who? Probably Siward, perhaps Belwether. He would not look at the latter just yet; not for a minute or two. There was time enough to see through that withered, pink-and-white old fraud. But why had Plank done this? And why did Plank suspect him of any desire to wreck his own property? He did suspect him, that was certain.
After a silence, he spoke quietly and without emotion:
“Everybody concerned will be glad to see Amalgamated Electric declaring dividends. This is a shock to us,” he glanced impassively at the shrunken major, “but a pleasant shock. I think it well to arrange a meeting as soon as possible.”
“To-morrow,” said Plank, with a manner of closing discussion. And in his brusque ending of the matter Quarrier detected the ringing undertone of an authority he never had and never would endure; and though his pale, composed features betrayed not the subtlest shade of emotion, he was aware that a new element had come into his life—a new force was growing out of nothing to confront him, an unfamiliar shape loomed vaguely ahead, throwing its huge distorted shadow across his path. He sensed it with the instinct of kind for kind, not because Plank's millions meant anything to him as a force; not because this lumbering, red-faced meddler had blundered into a family affair where confidence consisted in joining hands lest a pocket be inadvertently picked; not because Plank had knocked at the door, expecting treachery to open, and had found it, but because of the awful simplicity of the man and his methods.
If Plank suspected him, he must also suspect him of complicity in the Inter-County grab; he must suspect him of the ruthless crushing power that corrupts or annihilates opposition, making a mockery of legislation, a jest of the courts, and an epigram of a people's indignation.
And yet, in the face of all this, careless, fearless, frank to the outer verge of stupidity—which sometimes means the inability to be afraid—this man Plank was casually telling him things which men regard as secrets and as weapons of defence—was actually averting him of his peril, and telling him almost contemptuously to pull up the drawbridge and prepare for siege, instead of rushing the castle and giving it to the sack.
As Quarrier sat there meditating, his long, white fingers caressing his soft, pointed beard, Sylvia came in, greeting the men collectively with a nod, and offering her hand to Plank.
“Dinner is announced,” she said; “please go in farm fashion. Wait!” as Plank, following the major and Quarrier, stood aside for her to pass. “No, you go ahead, Howard; and you,” to the major.
Left for a moment in the room with Plank, she stood listening to the others descending the stairs; then:
“Have you seen Mr. Siward?”
“Yes,” said Plank.
“Oh! Is he well?”
“Not very.”
“Is he well enough to read a letter, and to answer one?”
“Oh, yes; he's well enough in that way.”
“I supposed so. That is why I said to you, over the wire, not to trouble him with my request.”