IVThe day after landing, Robert paid Messrs. Simons and Hunt a visit, with the result that, on leaving their offices in lower Broadway, he was a little less haunted by the suspicion that the reality was a dream. A most reassuring item was tucked away in his pocket in the shape of an advance of cold cash amounting to two thousand dollars, a sum far larger than any he had ever been in possession of before.On the theory that excess of joy, like excess of sorrow, had better be skimmed off by a long, brisk walk, Robert trusted to his two legs to get him back to Kips Bay. He had planned no change in his habits as yet; hence he still shared part of a model flat with the sporting editor of one of the evening newspapers.He had just turned from the open court of the Lorillard tenement block into the rather dark entrance, when what appeared to be a shadow on the wall assumed solidity and life, stepped alertly forward, and tapped him on the shoulder."The one man in New York I particularly want to see," cried Mark Pryor, in his cool, staccato tones."The one man in New York I particularly want to avoid," retorted Robert, not ill-naturedly, but with a lively remembrance of Pryor as the engineer of his Parisian misadventures. "How in thunder did you know I was back?""I didn't. Luck simply drifted my way."His cordial handshake accelerated Robert's returning sense of the reality of earthly affairs. Pryor might be slim and wiry enough to slip in or out of the most impossible places. He might be as elusive as a ghost. But there was nothing weak or spirituelle about his grasp of one's hand or his grip on life. As for his voice, which had a ring of decency and good intent always attractive to Robert, it dispelled fanciful grudges and installed common sense.They went to lunch together in a favorite restaurant of Pryor's, a little Austrian place in one of the side streets east of the Pershing Square district."A fine scrape you got me into with your tip about Paris!" began Robert, as soon as they were served."I've never seen you in better spirits," returned Pryor, cool as a cucumber. "Are you engaged to marry Janet?"Robert stared at him."No," he said emphatically."Then you're not the man I took you for.""I'm not," said Robert, chuckling.So Pryor knew nothing of the inheritance! And if Pryor knew nothing, who would know? He had rather supposed that the news would create something of a stir. The Lorillard tenements and Kips Bay generally should, in all conscience, have been agog with it. But so far not a word had been said by anybody he had met.Clearly, it took a good deal to ripple the pachydermatous surface of this monster city of New York!Well, he would volunteer nothing. It was just as well to keep one or two cards up your sleeve, especially when you matched your wits against a clever man like Pryor.Meanwhile Pryor did the talking. Did Robert mean to sit there and tell him that he had missed the opportunity of a lifetime? He'd be blessed if he ever threw him a chance like that again."A chance!" interrupted Robert. "Are you sure it wasn't a noose?""Don't talk through your hat, Lloyd," said Pryor, affecting indignation. "Janet's a girl in a million. Whoever marries her is a made man.""You are a cool hand," said Robert, lost in admiration. "I don't know what in thunder your game is. Let me say this, though. As a man of mystery you may be as superb a demon as Mark Twain'sMysterious Stranger. But as a matchmaker you're a hopeless old blunderbuss."He briefly outlined his recent experiences in Paris, including the tableau of himself in the act of stumbling upon Janet and M. St. Hilaire; he also sketched the sequel to this climax.Pryor's restless eyes remained singularly still during this recital. At its close, he offered one enigmatic remark:"If Janet's coming to New York, we may yet be able to pull the chestnuts out of the fire."In response to further questions, Robert gave a few intimate word pictures of unpublishable incidents at the Geneva Labor Congress. He also touched rather pepperily on his recall by the Confederated Press."Serve you right," said Pryor. "To a plain man like me reformers who try to change moral standards, whether for better or for worse, are a nuisance. Too many obstacles cannot be put in their path.""All I did was to tell the truth about my own side," said Robert indignantly."What! Peach on your own side? Why, even the yeggmen consider that bad form."Robert smiled in spite of himself."Nonsense," he said. "Facts are facts. The truth is, Americans habitually act like feeble-minded weaklings in the way they receive criticism. And we radicals share the national infirmity. Let the least suggestion of disapproval be levelled atColumbia, the gem of the ocean, and all America foams at the mouth. This is a joke to foreigners; it's a tragedy to us. I tell you, Pryor, unless Americans learn to stand up to criticism like men and to tolerate dissent as the English, the Germans, and even the French do, they'll stand where they are—at the tail end of the procession of nations. Don't you agree with me?""Lord, yes! Have it your own way. Pull your fellow radicals to pieces if necessary. Treat 'em rough. But don't slaughter 'em. Remember they're the only leaven in the slimy dough.""For an avowed conservative, Pryor, that's going pretty far.""Oh, I'll go farther than that. I'll say that if the Confederated Press were to come to grief—which Heaven forbid!—I should have no means of getting at the real news of the world. None whatever. Unless I could sneak into some private whispering gallery in Washington, D.C., or in Wall Street, N.Y.""You perverse standpatter, what do you mean by sticking up formyside? It looks fishy to me. What's your little game now, I wonder?""Lloyd, the time has come to give you a straight answer to that question. I'm an agent of the Secret Service; at present, I'm detailed to help the Department of Justice.""The deuce you are!""My game has been to watch the most dangerous radicals in New York—some five hundred of them—whose names are listed in the department's books. You are one of the five hundred.""Really! I hope I've been a source of ample diversion? As a friend, I'm always glad to oblige.""Dienst ist dienst, as the Germans say. While on duty, I had no friends; I merely had five hundred suspects to keep track of. In point of fact, my men have been through your effects several times. We found nothing treasonable, nothing seditious, nothing compromising, except a copy of the Declaration of Independence with the first eight lines underscored. I tried to have your name removed from the black list. But the damaging evidence aforesaid was the ground on which my recommendation was ignored.""Is this a joke?""No, it's the gospel truth. But you needn't feel as though you had been singled out for persecution. Not at all. I'm a marked man as much as you. If the Intelligence Service of the Government detects an atom of intelligence in one of its agents, it makes it a special point always to ignore that agent's recommendations. Never mind. I wrote out my resignation this morning. Here it is. It goes to Washington at once.""Surely, Pryor, you have other reasons for resigning the job?""Ah, now you're coming to it. For weeks past, I've been saturating my mind with radical literature. Tons of it. From professional motives solely, of course. After a studious and impartial consideration of facts and principles, I've come to a very curious pass.""You don't mean to say that you've been converted!" said Robert, rising excitedly from his chair."Yes, I've been converted. Not to radicalism, mind. Personally, I'm a firm believer in the aristocratic state as championed by Plato, Ruskin, and Carlyle, the state in which the Government is carried on by those whose equipment best fits them to govern. We'll reach this state—in about a thousand years. Meanwhile, I've been converted not to radicalism, but to the view that the radicals are right in theory and the Government wrong in practice; the former right in demanding a complete restoration of civil liberty and an enormous grant of industrial liberty, the latter wrong in thwarting these demands."After a few moments spent in digesting Pryor's astonishing admissions, Robert said:"One good surprise deserves another.""Fire away.""I've just inherited two million dollars!"Pryor was stupefied."Where the blue blazes did you get it from?" he cried, his long neck rising telescopically out of his stand-up collar."That's one piece of information that hasn't drifted your way, at all events," said Robert, taking a malicious pleasure in Pryor's stupefaction.A marked pause followed. Then Pryor, having congratulated Robert, said abruptly:"As far as I can see, nothing now stands in the way of your marriage to Charlotte Beecher.""What do you mean?"Searching glances were exchanged. Each recognized in the other a man of rare talent and unusual probity, and trusted him accordingly. Pryor took the plunge.He remarked quietly that, during Robert's absence abroad, he and Charlotte had become very good friends. He was well aware of her intense attachment to Robert. She had, in fact, talked about it freely and frankly to him. Thus he knew that she had taken the initiative in proposing marriage to Robert, a very natural step, inasmuch as she was in the vastly superior position. He knew, however that Robert had refused on the ground of the extreme inequality of their circumstances.With the best will in the world, Robert found it difficult to reply. Habit and custom were strong against a ventilation of his refusal and of the real reasons underlying it."The truth is," he said, after a second's hesitation, "Charlotte and I would be very poor partners on a long dull grind, and this is what modern marriage has become. We're excellent friends. We put a fine edge on each other's faculties. When we meet, the blue sparks fly. In fact, they fly too much.""Say what you like, she could at least take you to art galleries and concerts, and count on you as a sympathetic companion. That's where I failed her. I'm such a duffer in matters of art. And as for music! Lord, I hardly know the difference between Beethoven and a beet.""Don't let that worry you. For all that Charlotte and I pull so well together, our points of agreement are mostly on the surface. True, we both get recreation from looking at pictures or sculpture and listening to music. But not from the same pictures or sculpture, nor from the same music. She's all for chastity and restraint in art—Hellenism or aristocracy, you'd call it. She resents Strauss's volcanic turbulence; Epstein's rough-hewn symbolism merely disgusts her; the brutal abandon of Augustus John drives her mad. Yet I swear by these artists as she swears by the Donatellos, Brahmses, and Raphaels whose exhibitions of technical mastery bore me to extinction. We really have nothing in common except our recognition of honest craftsmanship and our joy in the clash of temperaments, instincts and opinions.""These differences that you speak of: how do you know that they matter?""Because they go so deep. Her hopes are not my hopes, her dreams are not my dreams, her gods are not my gods. These things are of the essence of comradeship, and comradeship is the soul of love.""Well, I'm as much in love with Charlotte as any normally sane man can be in love," said Pryor, quizzically. "But on the points you mention,Idon't hit it off with her, either. Her Brahms and your Strauss are equally Greek to me, and I'd give up their collective compositions in a jiffy for half an hour of the "Mikado" or the "Gondoliers."He supposed he'd have to work backwards and find out what the essence of comradeship consisted in. He sincerely trusted that it was not bound up, in his case, with Charlotte's money. As it was, she was terribly suspicious on that score. She was quite unshakable in the conviction that Robert was the only man she had ever known who was not a fortune hunter."You see the devilish harm you've done," said Pryor, in conclusion, "with your reputation for disinterestedness.""Quite an undeserved one, too," replied Robert, smiling. "Like most reputations it was founded on my deficiencies and not on my accomplishments. If I had known as much about money two years ago as I do now, Charlotte might have a very different opinion of my disinterested motives, as well as of me."He assured Pryor that he would do his level best to free Charlotte from her delusion. In return, Pryor was to keep secret the fact of Robert's accession to a fortune."I'd like to enjoy the luxury of being a poor man with plenty of money in my pocket," he said.Nobody was to be told and, in particular, the news was to be kept from Janet. He didn't expect to indulge this rather childish whim for more than a few days. All New York would be talking about his good luck by that time, no doubt."My dear fellow! A paltry two millions?" said Pryor with a short laugh. "A mere pebble on the beach. Why, the reigning plutocrats here hand out millions to charity as I'd give pennies to a beggar."They settled their bill.On their way out, Robert said:"Now tell me how you caught that blackguard Burley smuggling diamonds for the Fontaines.""Who told you I caught them? In the strict etiquette of the Secret Service, the names of the agents in specific cases are never made public.""Oh, the information just drifted my way," said Robert, bantering him. "Even without it, though, I should have put two and two together. Nobody admires the richness and variety of your knowledge more than I do, Pryor. Yet I'm bound to say that your disguises seem puerile to me. Among the Outlaws, although we didn't guess the Secret Service, we spotted you as a Pinkerton, or something of that sort, almost from the first.""Precisely what I wanted you to do, my friend. My game was to spread the truth broadcast. People simply will not believe the truth. Ask any detective worth his salt and he'll tell you that being himself is the best of all possible disguises, one that saves no end of trouble in 'make-up' and character acting. It causes every suspect to feel that he and the sleuth are in each other's confidence, as it were. And this puts people so much at their ease that they positively can't help giving themselves away.""So that's how you double crossed Hutchins Burley?""It's a long, amusing story, Lloyd. I'll keep the details for another day. The poor wretch is doing five years in a Federal prison. Mr. Rene Fontaine, for whom he was a mere tool, paid a fine of three million dollars (not your beggarly two million!) without turning a hair, and then decamped to England, where he lives in a regal villa somewhere in Essex.—Lord, it's nearly three! I must make a move. Where are you bound for?""Home, now. California, the day after tomorrow.""California!"Robert explained that all his uncle's realty holdings were on the Pacific Coast. His mother, too, was there. What with one thing and another, his presence out West was imperative."I shall return in two months for a quest of quite another sort," he added, significantly."Walk a few blocks towards the Subway with me," said Pryor, "and I'll show you one of the high lights of our low life."As they drew near the Grand Central Palace, the streets grew thick with people. Traffic along Lexington Avenue was suspended and a cordon of New York's "finest" was drawn up in front of the Palace, with night sticks polished to a turn.Robert and Mark Pryor had just reached the outskirts of the crowd, when several imposing motor cars drew up in front of the exhibition building."What on earth's the matter now?" said Robert. "Has our Anglo-American Prince of Wales returned?"A very handsome young man with two richly dressed young ladies alighted from the first car, whilst the moving picture brigade went into immediate action and the crowds thundered out cheers."It's the first day of the great Allied Armies' Bazaar," said Pryor. "The Duchess of Keswick and Mr. and Mrs. Claude Fontaine are to open the affair at three o'clock. There they go now.""What a match for him!" murmured Robert, setting eyes for the first time on Marjorie Armstrong's proud beauty."More than a match," said Pryor, softly.CHAPTER THIRTYI"You don't love me, Robert!""It's false," he said, retreating. "I do love you. I've loved you madly ever since you fled to Paris.""Then why do you run away? I don't want you to marry me. You're too poor! But you might at least kiss me. Come back, Robert, please come back!"Following him, she put her arms around his neck and clasped him tight."Let me go, Janet. I won't marry you. I won't! I'll never,never, NEVERmarry a woman who has had a free lover!"Still he receded, and ever so gently tried to unclasp her hands."You needn't marry me, Robert. Only treat me just as you'd treat a man. Don't you remember that you promised you would? You promised on the pier in Kips Bay, when your heart was a free and a fetterless thing."She concentrated all her magic upon him, upon his pale thoughtful face and discerning hazel-brown eyes. But look! The eyes were not hazel-brown—they were a flashing blue! And these were not the mobile sensitive features of Robert, but the bold virile features (somewhat distorted by angry passion) of Claude."What!" he cried. "Marry you here—here in Brussels—after all I've suffered on your account? Serpent! Shall I never escape your sting?"Hovering somewhere in the background, a thin-edged female with horn-rimmed spectacles took a malignant joy in fanning the flames of his rage.Claude wrenched both her hands loose and flung them off, the violence of the action sending her prone to the floor.IIJanet sat up in bed and shook back the tangles of her nut-brown hair.What a horrible nightmare!All on account of the rumpus started last night by the thin-edged female with the horn-rimmed spectacles.Not in Brussels, but in New York. Not in the Grand Hotel, Boulevard Anspach, but in the Susan B. Anthony House, Park Avenue, Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome's new apartment house for self-supporting professional women with children.Well, this particular rumpus had been settled, and the attack of officious Pharisaism upon Janet's reputation had received a black eye. Janet wondered whether the blow was to be recorded as a knockout or merely as the end of the first round.Time would show. Meanwhile, she dressed and breakfasted; then, with all the gravity of her twenty-seven years, she began to discharge the responsible duties of manager of the House.But the memory of the nightmare would not down. Not even the excitement she still felt in making the rounds of her three departments sufficed to dispel it. In the children's section, she applauded the new floor games which the kindergartner had invented for her wards; she became a ready listener to the woes of the matron in charge of the household division; on her way through the cuisine, she devoted her faculties to the task of adjudicating the claims of the cook against the dietitian in command. And she sought distraction in the stupendous thought that these three great departments of the Susan B. Anthony House were coordinated in the person of Miss J. Barr, the business manager and personal representative of Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome.Yet, although these occupations drove away the haunting nightmare for minutes at a time, they were impotent to banish it permanently.The chief trouble was, of course, that her nerves were still shaken by the emotional explosion in which the whole House had been involved the day before. The explosion was the cause of the nightmare. And the nightmare itself, its several metamorphoses and all, had marched in such a logical, well arranged order, that she was greatly tempted to tell it to Lydia Dyson, the novelist, who was a crank on the subject of Freud and dreams.Lydia, to be sure, would pronounce it a contemptible dream, lamentably short of knives, pitchforks, corks, bottles and other shining symbolic materials. Contemptible or not, she would none the less insist that it must be submitted to a psychoanalyst.Yes, Lydia Dyson would torment her to be psychoanalyzed. With a smile she recalled the novelist's visit to the Susan B. Anthony House a week ago. Lydia, in search of material for her new novel,The Soul Pirates(expression derived from Cornelia Covert), had set the members of the house to narrating their worst dreams. Then she had beguiled more than half of them into having themselves psychoanalyzed by Aristide Cambeau, an amazingly brilliant speaker whose lectures (at the Ritz—five dollars a ticket!) were the latest social rage, and whose clinic was daily besieged by a long queue of fashionable ladies impatient to have their souls laid bare.Janet believed she could interpret her dream fully as well as the fascinating Mr. Cambeau.Her attempt to do so led her to a review of her own recent history.Seven weeks ago she had returned with Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome to the United States. Mrs. Jerome had resumed training her as soon as the Statue of Liberty was sighted. Thus, the good lady reminded her that they had come from England (where plenty of explosive insurrectionary material was lying around) to their own land with its "tendency to normalcy" as a noted politician expressed it. That is, they had come back to the America of the women's vote, the high cost of living, the housing shortage, the unemployment menace, the deportation of radicals and Japanese, the reception of hoards of unhealthy South-European immigrants, the ouija board, the stock market slump and jazz. The same old America! It was reading "Main Street" just then; and Mrs. Jerome opined that all America was reading the book,notbecause it gave a memorable picture of the soul of a nation in all its drab, desolating mediocrity, but because it gratified the furious national craving to be paid attention to and talked about, it mattered nothing whether in terms of praise, disparagement or abuse.Mrs. Jerome's gloomy view rolled off Janet like water off a duck's back. She had youth, enthusiasm, vigor; there was a great civilizing work to be done. And though, as Mark Pryor took pains to assure her, it might take a thousand years to do it, she threw herself into it heart and soul, just as if the goal were attainable next year.Two weeks after their arrival in New York, the Susan B. Anthony House had been opened, undemonstratively but successfully. Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome, an omnipresent deity at first, relinquished the reins of government gradually; all the reins save one, for it was well understood that she was to be the power behind the scenes. Within a week, every suite in the house was occupied and hundreds of applicants were turned away. The rents, though far from low, were not unreasonable; and, as special provision had been made for the care of children, and competent experts placed in control of each department ("quality not quantity" was the specific motto throughout), the house was a godsend for precisely the ones it was designed to serve, that is, for self-supporting professional women with one or two children.For a time, things had gone swimmingly. Almost too swimmingly. As the news spread, social workers and social science students began to pay the place a visit. Before long the unofficial busybodies followed and, with the kindliest intentions in the world, did their level best to disorganize the machinery of the house and subvert the discipline.And the reporters took up the scent! All the magazine sections of the Sunday newspapers had articles describing Mrs. Jerome's "latest hobby." Interviews with Mrs. Jerome—some real, some alleged—appeared in increasing numbers and with increasingly pungent specimens of this lady's sprightly wit. Writers of special features in the evening sheets praised or deplored the "communal upbringing" of the children. The photogravure supplements took up the sport and favored their readers with pictures of every conceivable corner of the house, and also with tableaux in which the children, looking remarkably happy and well dressed, were grouped about three adults (from left to right): the Duchess of Keswick, Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome and Miss J. Barr.Finally, the Infamous Players-Smartcraft Company offered a fabulous sum for the use of the Susan B. Anthony House as the scene of an "action" (with adagio "close-ups"), which it insisted on calling (doubtless in irony) a "moving" picture.But the marvel of marvels was that, throughout this period of unbought, unsought advertising, nobody breathed the suspicion that Miss J. Barr, the calm, collected young manageress in the neat blouse and trim skirt, might be the notorious Janet Barr who had eloped two years before with Claude Fontaine!Then, one fine day, as she was leaving the Broadway side of Wanamaker's, a man had leapt out of a magnificent limousine drawn up at the curb, and had seized her hands.It was Claude himself! Handsome and imposing as ever, with perhaps a dash less of self-confidence.He had implored her for a meeting later in the day. No, no, he wouldn't make love to her, he solemnly swore he wouldn't! He wanted to get a load off his conscience. His wife? Oh, he got along well enough with Marjorie, only— Well, surely Janet knewwhyhe had married her? There had simply been no alternative! If Colonel Armstrong hadn't stood back of Fontaine and Company at the time of the smuggling exposure, the firm would have gone to smash. And so on—Janet peremptorily refused to meet him. There was no sense in a meeting, she urged. He was importunate. "What about my House?" said she. "What about my state of mind?" said he. She had tried hard to be firm."Come not between the lion and his wrath or the tigress and her work," she said, torn this way and that between the comedy and the tragedy of the situation.To get rid of him, she had at length made an appointment for the afternoon.The appointment was never kept!The sequel proved that her encounter with Claude had been observed. That night the bloodhounds of scandal were unleashed in the Susan Anthony House. The ring-leader was the thin-edged woman with the horn-rimmed spectacles.This precious female was the mother of a whining little boy whose father was authenticated by due process of law. The law had not sufficed, however, to keep the gentleman faithful for long to the nuptial vows. After his disappearance from New York, his wife was left to support herself and to wreak vengeance where vengeance was not due.The first that Janet knew about the coming storm was when the dietitian took her aside and told her that the house had been divided into two camps: for and against Janet; or, as the anti-Janet crowd put it: for and against Morality.Two days before the nightmare, things had come to a head. In the absence of the manager, the anti-Janet faction had assembled under the chairmanship of the thin-edged agitator.This lady had opened the meeting with the bitter announcement that those present were liberal and fairminded, but that they had their children to think of. Their darling children! Mothers,marriedmothers, mind you (and she, for her part, had consented to join the Susan B. Anthony Houseonlyon the confident assumption thatallthe mothers were asregularlymarried as herself)—mothers, as such, could afford to take no chances! Unhappily, she was persuaded that in the other camp there were ladies who had more thanone good reasonfor standing by the manager. She surmised that some of these ladies wereunmarried mothers! Scarcely mothers at all (if morals counted for anything), and certainly no better than they should be.After much nursing of self-righteousness, suitable resolutions were moved, and a deputation was appointed to present the facts to Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome; also to demand the discharge of Janet and the vindication of American morality.The great impeachment had occurred last night. Mrs. Jerome had motored into town, and both factions had turned out for the occasion in the large reception room on the ground floor. Mrs. Jerome had refused to start the proceedings until Janet was seated at her right hand. This settled, the thin-edged spokesman had made the formal charges.Then the fun had begun—At this point, a telephone bell jangled across Janet's reflections."Who is it?" she asked the switchboard girl."Mr. Pryor.""Let him come up," said Janet eagerly.IIIAs usual, Mark Pryor's spare form was dressed from head to foot in materials of one color. But even Janet noticed that, for once, the inevitable stand-up collar, with its two prongs tilting its wearer's chin upwards, had been replaced by a low-lying collar of creamiest silk."Circles under the eyes!" he began severely. "What's wrong?""Nightmares, witches, broomsticks," she replied laughing."Out with it!" he commanded.In her calm, clear tones she gave him a graphic account of the unpleasantness of the last few days, from its inception in her chance encounter with Claude Fontaine down to the demand made upon Mrs. Jerome for her dismissal."And how did little Apple Dumpling meet this demand?" inquired Pryor."Like a trump! Said she'd stand by me to the limit—also that the Susan B. Anthony House, being designed for busy people and not for busy*bodies*, Mrs. Farrar (the one with the horn-rimmed spectacles) would have to vacate at the end of the week. Further that, in the future, it is to be a fixed rule of the house that any mother, married or unmarried, may become a tenant, and no questions asked other than those needed to satisfy Mrs. Jerome or her representative that the applicant is both self-supporting and self-respecting—""Bravo!""And, furthermore, she then and there dictated a letter to be sent to the liberal weeklies in New York, informing their readers of the adoption of this new rule.""Hurrah!" cried Pryor. "The next time anybody queries, in the words of the immortal William:"'What king so strongCan tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?'I'll answer: No king; but let me tip you the name of aqueen—Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome, the magnificent.Shecan turn the trick.""Yes, she's a perfect darling. Do you know, I didn't mind the backbiting of those silly women a bit. But Mrs. Jerome's unhesitating support made me want to cry."She added that in a private conversation with the dear lady she had urged her own resignation as a matter of practical wisdom. Wasn't the cause greater than the individual?—"Rubbish!" Mrs. Jerome had replied with a considerable show of heat. No cause was worth the cowardly abandonment of a comrade! For two thousand years men had prated of the holy duties of friend to friend, and had committed one crime against friendship after another. And when these crimes were committed, what did they do? They folded their hands, raised pious eyes to heaven, and sang (through their noses), "Alas for the rarity of Christian charity!" etc. Well, women would show them that the time to be loyal was not when the pack curried favor with your friend but when it turned to rend him."What do you mean to do now?" asked Pryor."I shall stick it out. After all, I'm not looking for social or official favors. All I ask is to be allowed to do the best work of which I'm capable. Surely, I have that right.""So you think," said Pryor drily. "But bear in mind that for everybona fideworker in New York, there are nine idlers or time wasters, nine breeders of noise, disorder and disease. And don't forget that the chief objection to the idler is not that he neglects his own work, but that he insists on interrupting or damaging yours. The doer is the waster's sworn enemy to all eternity. And the waster knows it! Therefore, he spies out your vulnerable spot: social, economic, psychic, whatever it be; and the first moment he catches you off guard, he sends his poisoned arrow straight to your Achilles' heel.""I suppose I must take my chance of that. What else can I do?""You might imitate me.""Imitate you! What do you mean?""Why, get married! I'm going to marry Charlotte Beecher.""But I thought that Charlotte—""Yes, she's very fond of Robert Lloyd. And I'm only her second string. But bless your wayward curls, we're all second strings on somebody's violin! What's the odds—especially after the first string has snapped? I've been madly in love myself, twice before. Once, down south in Colon, with a dusky Isthmian beauty. The second time, with you.""Don't be silly, Mark, or I shall stop envying Charlotte her extraordinary good luck.""Hersandmine! Charlotte was looking for a husband with enough brains to manage a fortune, and yet with heart enough not to love her for her fortune alone. I was looking for a wife with heart enough to lay her fortune at my feet, and yet with enough brains to permit me to enjoy her society. Are we well matched or not?""'Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment,'" quoted Janet, laughing."Now you're talking sense as well as poetry, dear girl.""I didn't say I'd follow your example, though.""All in good time! It's human nature for young blood to rebel against wedlock—and to come around to it in the long run. Marriage, as Lydia Dyson says, is the easiest way!""Yes, for Lydia, who changes her lover once a season, while her husband stays at home and keeps the household in smooth running order. But my needs don't run in Lydia's line."Pryor admitted this. But he pointed out that marriage was a human institution. There it was, for every one of us to reckon with. Either you made use of it, or it made use of you. Sensible people adopted the former alternative."Why, look at me!" he said, waxing strangely eloquent. "I've knocked about the world a good bit in the last twenty years. A born adventurer if ever there was one. Do you see me settling down to matrimony like any spirit-broken married man in the pinchbeck salaried class? No, by Jupiter! I've waited for the right conditions to come to pass so that I could take up marriage as one more great adventure.""Your last one, Mark!" said Janet, bantering him.More seriously, she asked him whether all his other adventures had been in the Secret Service."Lord no! I've taken a shot at all sorts of jobs and been all sorts of things from a West Point cadet to a buccaneer in the South Seas."This quiet, self-contained man, spare of frame but tough as a hickory stick, had he really been a gorgeous sea-rover? Looking into his humorously inquisitive gray eyes, Janet could not doubt his words. And, like Desdemona entranced by Othello, she listened whilst he dipped into a store of reminiscences and, in his own inimitably laconic style, gave her an outline of his picturesque career.Pryor as a West Point cadet, as a lieutenant in the Engineer Corps, in service against the Moros in the Philippines, on the sanitary staff in the thick of the Panama Canal construction, again as a civilian on a dare-devil voyage to Tahiti—these pictures took the romantic side of Janet by storm. She made him tell the Tahitian story most minutely, and hung on his lips with bated breath as he recounted the capture of his tiny steamer by real pirates who gave him a Hobson's choice of joining them in their marauding trips near the Society Islands, or of walking the plank."But I never gave full satisfaction anywhere," he concluded ruefully. "Secrets that I had better not have known were incessantly coming my way and causing me no end of trouble. Once, when we unexpectedly sighted a Dutch merchantman laden with coffee and spices, I ran up the red flag instead of the black! My shipmates swore that I did it on purpose and assured me that, as a pirate, I was a failure. It was true. Iwasa failure! Almost a dead failure, in fact, for they left me on what they thought was a desert island."When he got back to the United States, the Great War had begun, but the officials in Washington were extremely slow to utilize his services. His record was against him. He was one of those men with whom two and two didn't inevitably make four, but sometimes footed up to a sum that included human as well as mathematical factors. For an army man, this was a fatal defect.Impatient to be of use, he eventually joined the Secret Service."Why?" asked Janet."Nothing else was open to me," he replied, with a twinkle in his roving eyes. "When a man is a pronounced failure, there are only three professions that will take him into their ranks: those of detective, writer and teacher. I chose the first as the least degrading of the three. Also because it gave me a chance to use my gift as a telepath, an elemental telepath.""You can't pretend that you haven't made good atthat!""Oh, I've done so-so.""So-so!" cried Janet indignantly. "Look how you caught Hutchins Burley red-handed!""True enough. I'm bound to confess, however, that I went to the pier to arrest him for treason. When his boxes of Oriental books were opened, it was the smuggled diamonds that we found and not (as I had predicted) the evidence of his sale of United States military secrets to the Japanese. Later on, we got that evidence too; but that was Smilo's doing more than mine. Ah, wait till you hear Robert's opinion of my sleuthing skill.""Oh, Robert!" she said, with the faintest quiver of her lip. "He hasn't been near me. I'm not even sure that he's in America.""Well, he is! And I happen to know that urgent business is keeping him out of New York.""What can it be?""It's a peculiar business. In a sense, it's the reverse of what I was engaged upon. I was in pursuit of rogues; but rogues are in pursuit of him.""I must say, you're as enigmatic as ever.""Only till tomorrow, Janet. I pledge my word to have everything explained to your satisfaction if you'll come tomorrow to Charlotte's studio in Washington Mews. The party begins at four.""The party!""Precisely. An engagement party for Charlotte; a surprise party for you."Saying which, and protesting that he had talked her deaf, dumb and blind, and affirming that he had never felt so horribly out of character in his life, Mark Pryor gravely took his leave.
IV
The day after landing, Robert paid Messrs. Simons and Hunt a visit, with the result that, on leaving their offices in lower Broadway, he was a little less haunted by the suspicion that the reality was a dream. A most reassuring item was tucked away in his pocket in the shape of an advance of cold cash amounting to two thousand dollars, a sum far larger than any he had ever been in possession of before.
On the theory that excess of joy, like excess of sorrow, had better be skimmed off by a long, brisk walk, Robert trusted to his two legs to get him back to Kips Bay. He had planned no change in his habits as yet; hence he still shared part of a model flat with the sporting editor of one of the evening newspapers.
He had just turned from the open court of the Lorillard tenement block into the rather dark entrance, when what appeared to be a shadow on the wall assumed solidity and life, stepped alertly forward, and tapped him on the shoulder.
"The one man in New York I particularly want to see," cried Mark Pryor, in his cool, staccato tones.
"The one man in New York I particularly want to avoid," retorted Robert, not ill-naturedly, but with a lively remembrance of Pryor as the engineer of his Parisian misadventures. "How in thunder did you know I was back?"
"I didn't. Luck simply drifted my way."
His cordial handshake accelerated Robert's returning sense of the reality of earthly affairs. Pryor might be slim and wiry enough to slip in or out of the most impossible places. He might be as elusive as a ghost. But there was nothing weak or spirituelle about his grasp of one's hand or his grip on life. As for his voice, which had a ring of decency and good intent always attractive to Robert, it dispelled fanciful grudges and installed common sense.
They went to lunch together in a favorite restaurant of Pryor's, a little Austrian place in one of the side streets east of the Pershing Square district.
"A fine scrape you got me into with your tip about Paris!" began Robert, as soon as they were served.
"I've never seen you in better spirits," returned Pryor, cool as a cucumber. "Are you engaged to marry Janet?"
Robert stared at him.
"No," he said emphatically.
"Then you're not the man I took you for."
"I'm not," said Robert, chuckling.
So Pryor knew nothing of the inheritance! And if Pryor knew nothing, who would know? He had rather supposed that the news would create something of a stir. The Lorillard tenements and Kips Bay generally should, in all conscience, have been agog with it. But so far not a word had been said by anybody he had met.
Clearly, it took a good deal to ripple the pachydermatous surface of this monster city of New York!
Well, he would volunteer nothing. It was just as well to keep one or two cards up your sleeve, especially when you matched your wits against a clever man like Pryor.
Meanwhile Pryor did the talking. Did Robert mean to sit there and tell him that he had missed the opportunity of a lifetime? He'd be blessed if he ever threw him a chance like that again.
"A chance!" interrupted Robert. "Are you sure it wasn't a noose?"
"Don't talk through your hat, Lloyd," said Pryor, affecting indignation. "Janet's a girl in a million. Whoever marries her is a made man."
"You are a cool hand," said Robert, lost in admiration. "I don't know what in thunder your game is. Let me say this, though. As a man of mystery you may be as superb a demon as Mark Twain'sMysterious Stranger. But as a matchmaker you're a hopeless old blunderbuss."
He briefly outlined his recent experiences in Paris, including the tableau of himself in the act of stumbling upon Janet and M. St. Hilaire; he also sketched the sequel to this climax.
Pryor's restless eyes remained singularly still during this recital. At its close, he offered one enigmatic remark:
"If Janet's coming to New York, we may yet be able to pull the chestnuts out of the fire."
In response to further questions, Robert gave a few intimate word pictures of unpublishable incidents at the Geneva Labor Congress. He also touched rather pepperily on his recall by the Confederated Press.
"Serve you right," said Pryor. "To a plain man like me reformers who try to change moral standards, whether for better or for worse, are a nuisance. Too many obstacles cannot be put in their path."
"All I did was to tell the truth about my own side," said Robert indignantly.
"What! Peach on your own side? Why, even the yeggmen consider that bad form."
Robert smiled in spite of himself.
"Nonsense," he said. "Facts are facts. The truth is, Americans habitually act like feeble-minded weaklings in the way they receive criticism. And we radicals share the national infirmity. Let the least suggestion of disapproval be levelled atColumbia, the gem of the ocean, and all America foams at the mouth. This is a joke to foreigners; it's a tragedy to us. I tell you, Pryor, unless Americans learn to stand up to criticism like men and to tolerate dissent as the English, the Germans, and even the French do, they'll stand where they are—at the tail end of the procession of nations. Don't you agree with me?"
"Lord, yes! Have it your own way. Pull your fellow radicals to pieces if necessary. Treat 'em rough. But don't slaughter 'em. Remember they're the only leaven in the slimy dough."
"For an avowed conservative, Pryor, that's going pretty far."
"Oh, I'll go farther than that. I'll say that if the Confederated Press were to come to grief—which Heaven forbid!—I should have no means of getting at the real news of the world. None whatever. Unless I could sneak into some private whispering gallery in Washington, D.C., or in Wall Street, N.Y."
"You perverse standpatter, what do you mean by sticking up formyside? It looks fishy to me. What's your little game now, I wonder?"
"Lloyd, the time has come to give you a straight answer to that question. I'm an agent of the Secret Service; at present, I'm detailed to help the Department of Justice."
"The deuce you are!"
"My game has been to watch the most dangerous radicals in New York—some five hundred of them—whose names are listed in the department's books. You are one of the five hundred."
"Really! I hope I've been a source of ample diversion? As a friend, I'm always glad to oblige."
"Dienst ist dienst, as the Germans say. While on duty, I had no friends; I merely had five hundred suspects to keep track of. In point of fact, my men have been through your effects several times. We found nothing treasonable, nothing seditious, nothing compromising, except a copy of the Declaration of Independence with the first eight lines underscored. I tried to have your name removed from the black list. But the damaging evidence aforesaid was the ground on which my recommendation was ignored."
"Is this a joke?"
"No, it's the gospel truth. But you needn't feel as though you had been singled out for persecution. Not at all. I'm a marked man as much as you. If the Intelligence Service of the Government detects an atom of intelligence in one of its agents, it makes it a special point always to ignore that agent's recommendations. Never mind. I wrote out my resignation this morning. Here it is. It goes to Washington at once."
"Surely, Pryor, you have other reasons for resigning the job?"
"Ah, now you're coming to it. For weeks past, I've been saturating my mind with radical literature. Tons of it. From professional motives solely, of course. After a studious and impartial consideration of facts and principles, I've come to a very curious pass."
"You don't mean to say that you've been converted!" said Robert, rising excitedly from his chair.
"Yes, I've been converted. Not to radicalism, mind. Personally, I'm a firm believer in the aristocratic state as championed by Plato, Ruskin, and Carlyle, the state in which the Government is carried on by those whose equipment best fits them to govern. We'll reach this state—in about a thousand years. Meanwhile, I've been converted not to radicalism, but to the view that the radicals are right in theory and the Government wrong in practice; the former right in demanding a complete restoration of civil liberty and an enormous grant of industrial liberty, the latter wrong in thwarting these demands."
After a few moments spent in digesting Pryor's astonishing admissions, Robert said:
"One good surprise deserves another."
"Fire away."
"I've just inherited two million dollars!"
Pryor was stupefied.
"Where the blue blazes did you get it from?" he cried, his long neck rising telescopically out of his stand-up collar.
"That's one piece of information that hasn't drifted your way, at all events," said Robert, taking a malicious pleasure in Pryor's stupefaction.
A marked pause followed. Then Pryor, having congratulated Robert, said abruptly:
"As far as I can see, nothing now stands in the way of your marriage to Charlotte Beecher."
"What do you mean?"
Searching glances were exchanged. Each recognized in the other a man of rare talent and unusual probity, and trusted him accordingly. Pryor took the plunge.
He remarked quietly that, during Robert's absence abroad, he and Charlotte had become very good friends. He was well aware of her intense attachment to Robert. She had, in fact, talked about it freely and frankly to him. Thus he knew that she had taken the initiative in proposing marriage to Robert, a very natural step, inasmuch as she was in the vastly superior position. He knew, however that Robert had refused on the ground of the extreme inequality of their circumstances.
With the best will in the world, Robert found it difficult to reply. Habit and custom were strong against a ventilation of his refusal and of the real reasons underlying it.
"The truth is," he said, after a second's hesitation, "Charlotte and I would be very poor partners on a long dull grind, and this is what modern marriage has become. We're excellent friends. We put a fine edge on each other's faculties. When we meet, the blue sparks fly. In fact, they fly too much."
"Say what you like, she could at least take you to art galleries and concerts, and count on you as a sympathetic companion. That's where I failed her. I'm such a duffer in matters of art. And as for music! Lord, I hardly know the difference between Beethoven and a beet."
"Don't let that worry you. For all that Charlotte and I pull so well together, our points of agreement are mostly on the surface. True, we both get recreation from looking at pictures or sculpture and listening to music. But not from the same pictures or sculpture, nor from the same music. She's all for chastity and restraint in art—Hellenism or aristocracy, you'd call it. She resents Strauss's volcanic turbulence; Epstein's rough-hewn symbolism merely disgusts her; the brutal abandon of Augustus John drives her mad. Yet I swear by these artists as she swears by the Donatellos, Brahmses, and Raphaels whose exhibitions of technical mastery bore me to extinction. We really have nothing in common except our recognition of honest craftsmanship and our joy in the clash of temperaments, instincts and opinions."
"These differences that you speak of: how do you know that they matter?"
"Because they go so deep. Her hopes are not my hopes, her dreams are not my dreams, her gods are not my gods. These things are of the essence of comradeship, and comradeship is the soul of love."
"Well, I'm as much in love with Charlotte as any normally sane man can be in love," said Pryor, quizzically. "But on the points you mention,Idon't hit it off with her, either. Her Brahms and your Strauss are equally Greek to me, and I'd give up their collective compositions in a jiffy for half an hour of the "Mikado" or the "Gondoliers."
He supposed he'd have to work backwards and find out what the essence of comradeship consisted in. He sincerely trusted that it was not bound up, in his case, with Charlotte's money. As it was, she was terribly suspicious on that score. She was quite unshakable in the conviction that Robert was the only man she had ever known who was not a fortune hunter.
"You see the devilish harm you've done," said Pryor, in conclusion, "with your reputation for disinterestedness."
"Quite an undeserved one, too," replied Robert, smiling. "Like most reputations it was founded on my deficiencies and not on my accomplishments. If I had known as much about money two years ago as I do now, Charlotte might have a very different opinion of my disinterested motives, as well as of me."
He assured Pryor that he would do his level best to free Charlotte from her delusion. In return, Pryor was to keep secret the fact of Robert's accession to a fortune.
"I'd like to enjoy the luxury of being a poor man with plenty of money in my pocket," he said.
Nobody was to be told and, in particular, the news was to be kept from Janet. He didn't expect to indulge this rather childish whim for more than a few days. All New York would be talking about his good luck by that time, no doubt.
"My dear fellow! A paltry two millions?" said Pryor with a short laugh. "A mere pebble on the beach. Why, the reigning plutocrats here hand out millions to charity as I'd give pennies to a beggar."
They settled their bill.
On their way out, Robert said:
"Now tell me how you caught that blackguard Burley smuggling diamonds for the Fontaines."
"Who told you I caught them? In the strict etiquette of the Secret Service, the names of the agents in specific cases are never made public."
"Oh, the information just drifted my way," said Robert, bantering him. "Even without it, though, I should have put two and two together. Nobody admires the richness and variety of your knowledge more than I do, Pryor. Yet I'm bound to say that your disguises seem puerile to me. Among the Outlaws, although we didn't guess the Secret Service, we spotted you as a Pinkerton, or something of that sort, almost from the first."
"Precisely what I wanted you to do, my friend. My game was to spread the truth broadcast. People simply will not believe the truth. Ask any detective worth his salt and he'll tell you that being himself is the best of all possible disguises, one that saves no end of trouble in 'make-up' and character acting. It causes every suspect to feel that he and the sleuth are in each other's confidence, as it were. And this puts people so much at their ease that they positively can't help giving themselves away."
"So that's how you double crossed Hutchins Burley?"
"It's a long, amusing story, Lloyd. I'll keep the details for another day. The poor wretch is doing five years in a Federal prison. Mr. Rene Fontaine, for whom he was a mere tool, paid a fine of three million dollars (not your beggarly two million!) without turning a hair, and then decamped to England, where he lives in a regal villa somewhere in Essex.—Lord, it's nearly three! I must make a move. Where are you bound for?"
"Home, now. California, the day after tomorrow."
"California!"
Robert explained that all his uncle's realty holdings were on the Pacific Coast. His mother, too, was there. What with one thing and another, his presence out West was imperative.
"I shall return in two months for a quest of quite another sort," he added, significantly.
"Walk a few blocks towards the Subway with me," said Pryor, "and I'll show you one of the high lights of our low life."
As they drew near the Grand Central Palace, the streets grew thick with people. Traffic along Lexington Avenue was suspended and a cordon of New York's "finest" was drawn up in front of the Palace, with night sticks polished to a turn.
Robert and Mark Pryor had just reached the outskirts of the crowd, when several imposing motor cars drew up in front of the exhibition building.
"What on earth's the matter now?" said Robert. "Has our Anglo-American Prince of Wales returned?"
A very handsome young man with two richly dressed young ladies alighted from the first car, whilst the moving picture brigade went into immediate action and the crowds thundered out cheers.
"It's the first day of the great Allied Armies' Bazaar," said Pryor. "The Duchess of Keswick and Mr. and Mrs. Claude Fontaine are to open the affair at three o'clock. There they go now."
"What a match for him!" murmured Robert, setting eyes for the first time on Marjorie Armstrong's proud beauty.
"More than a match," said Pryor, softly.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I
"You don't love me, Robert!"
"It's false," he said, retreating. "I do love you. I've loved you madly ever since you fled to Paris."
"Then why do you run away? I don't want you to marry me. You're too poor! But you might at least kiss me. Come back, Robert, please come back!"
Following him, she put her arms around his neck and clasped him tight.
"Let me go, Janet. I won't marry you. I won't! I'll never,never, NEVERmarry a woman who has had a free lover!"
Still he receded, and ever so gently tried to unclasp her hands.
"You needn't marry me, Robert. Only treat me just as you'd treat a man. Don't you remember that you promised you would? You promised on the pier in Kips Bay, when your heart was a free and a fetterless thing."
She concentrated all her magic upon him, upon his pale thoughtful face and discerning hazel-brown eyes. But look! The eyes were not hazel-brown—they were a flashing blue! And these were not the mobile sensitive features of Robert, but the bold virile features (somewhat distorted by angry passion) of Claude.
"What!" he cried. "Marry you here—here in Brussels—after all I've suffered on your account? Serpent! Shall I never escape your sting?"
Hovering somewhere in the background, a thin-edged female with horn-rimmed spectacles took a malignant joy in fanning the flames of his rage.
Claude wrenched both her hands loose and flung them off, the violence of the action sending her prone to the floor.
II
Janet sat up in bed and shook back the tangles of her nut-brown hair.
What a horrible nightmare!
All on account of the rumpus started last night by the thin-edged female with the horn-rimmed spectacles.
Not in Brussels, but in New York. Not in the Grand Hotel, Boulevard Anspach, but in the Susan B. Anthony House, Park Avenue, Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome's new apartment house for self-supporting professional women with children.
Well, this particular rumpus had been settled, and the attack of officious Pharisaism upon Janet's reputation had received a black eye. Janet wondered whether the blow was to be recorded as a knockout or merely as the end of the first round.
Time would show. Meanwhile, she dressed and breakfasted; then, with all the gravity of her twenty-seven years, she began to discharge the responsible duties of manager of the House.
But the memory of the nightmare would not down. Not even the excitement she still felt in making the rounds of her three departments sufficed to dispel it. In the children's section, she applauded the new floor games which the kindergartner had invented for her wards; she became a ready listener to the woes of the matron in charge of the household division; on her way through the cuisine, she devoted her faculties to the task of adjudicating the claims of the cook against the dietitian in command. And she sought distraction in the stupendous thought that these three great departments of the Susan B. Anthony House were coordinated in the person of Miss J. Barr, the business manager and personal representative of Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome.
Yet, although these occupations drove away the haunting nightmare for minutes at a time, they were impotent to banish it permanently.
The chief trouble was, of course, that her nerves were still shaken by the emotional explosion in which the whole House had been involved the day before. The explosion was the cause of the nightmare. And the nightmare itself, its several metamorphoses and all, had marched in such a logical, well arranged order, that she was greatly tempted to tell it to Lydia Dyson, the novelist, who was a crank on the subject of Freud and dreams.
Lydia, to be sure, would pronounce it a contemptible dream, lamentably short of knives, pitchforks, corks, bottles and other shining symbolic materials. Contemptible or not, she would none the less insist that it must be submitted to a psychoanalyst.
Yes, Lydia Dyson would torment her to be psychoanalyzed. With a smile she recalled the novelist's visit to the Susan B. Anthony House a week ago. Lydia, in search of material for her new novel,The Soul Pirates(expression derived from Cornelia Covert), had set the members of the house to narrating their worst dreams. Then she had beguiled more than half of them into having themselves psychoanalyzed by Aristide Cambeau, an amazingly brilliant speaker whose lectures (at the Ritz—five dollars a ticket!) were the latest social rage, and whose clinic was daily besieged by a long queue of fashionable ladies impatient to have their souls laid bare.
Janet believed she could interpret her dream fully as well as the fascinating Mr. Cambeau.
Her attempt to do so led her to a review of her own recent history.
Seven weeks ago she had returned with Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome to the United States. Mrs. Jerome had resumed training her as soon as the Statue of Liberty was sighted. Thus, the good lady reminded her that they had come from England (where plenty of explosive insurrectionary material was lying around) to their own land with its "tendency to normalcy" as a noted politician expressed it. That is, they had come back to the America of the women's vote, the high cost of living, the housing shortage, the unemployment menace, the deportation of radicals and Japanese, the reception of hoards of unhealthy South-European immigrants, the ouija board, the stock market slump and jazz. The same old America! It was reading "Main Street" just then; and Mrs. Jerome opined that all America was reading the book,notbecause it gave a memorable picture of the soul of a nation in all its drab, desolating mediocrity, but because it gratified the furious national craving to be paid attention to and talked about, it mattered nothing whether in terms of praise, disparagement or abuse.
Mrs. Jerome's gloomy view rolled off Janet like water off a duck's back. She had youth, enthusiasm, vigor; there was a great civilizing work to be done. And though, as Mark Pryor took pains to assure her, it might take a thousand years to do it, she threw herself into it heart and soul, just as if the goal were attainable next year.
Two weeks after their arrival in New York, the Susan B. Anthony House had been opened, undemonstratively but successfully. Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome, an omnipresent deity at first, relinquished the reins of government gradually; all the reins save one, for it was well understood that she was to be the power behind the scenes. Within a week, every suite in the house was occupied and hundreds of applicants were turned away. The rents, though far from low, were not unreasonable; and, as special provision had been made for the care of children, and competent experts placed in control of each department ("quality not quantity" was the specific motto throughout), the house was a godsend for precisely the ones it was designed to serve, that is, for self-supporting professional women with one or two children.
For a time, things had gone swimmingly. Almost too swimmingly. As the news spread, social workers and social science students began to pay the place a visit. Before long the unofficial busybodies followed and, with the kindliest intentions in the world, did their level best to disorganize the machinery of the house and subvert the discipline.
And the reporters took up the scent! All the magazine sections of the Sunday newspapers had articles describing Mrs. Jerome's "latest hobby." Interviews with Mrs. Jerome—some real, some alleged—appeared in increasing numbers and with increasingly pungent specimens of this lady's sprightly wit. Writers of special features in the evening sheets praised or deplored the "communal upbringing" of the children. The photogravure supplements took up the sport and favored their readers with pictures of every conceivable corner of the house, and also with tableaux in which the children, looking remarkably happy and well dressed, were grouped about three adults (from left to right): the Duchess of Keswick, Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome and Miss J. Barr.
Finally, the Infamous Players-Smartcraft Company offered a fabulous sum for the use of the Susan B. Anthony House as the scene of an "action" (with adagio "close-ups"), which it insisted on calling (doubtless in irony) a "moving" picture.
But the marvel of marvels was that, throughout this period of unbought, unsought advertising, nobody breathed the suspicion that Miss J. Barr, the calm, collected young manageress in the neat blouse and trim skirt, might be the notorious Janet Barr who had eloped two years before with Claude Fontaine!
Then, one fine day, as she was leaving the Broadway side of Wanamaker's, a man had leapt out of a magnificent limousine drawn up at the curb, and had seized her hands.
It was Claude himself! Handsome and imposing as ever, with perhaps a dash less of self-confidence.
He had implored her for a meeting later in the day. No, no, he wouldn't make love to her, he solemnly swore he wouldn't! He wanted to get a load off his conscience. His wife? Oh, he got along well enough with Marjorie, only— Well, surely Janet knewwhyhe had married her? There had simply been no alternative! If Colonel Armstrong hadn't stood back of Fontaine and Company at the time of the smuggling exposure, the firm would have gone to smash. And so on—
Janet peremptorily refused to meet him. There was no sense in a meeting, she urged. He was importunate. "What about my House?" said she. "What about my state of mind?" said he. She had tried hard to be firm.
"Come not between the lion and his wrath or the tigress and her work," she said, torn this way and that between the comedy and the tragedy of the situation.
To get rid of him, she had at length made an appointment for the afternoon.
The appointment was never kept!
The sequel proved that her encounter with Claude had been observed. That night the bloodhounds of scandal were unleashed in the Susan Anthony House. The ring-leader was the thin-edged woman with the horn-rimmed spectacles.
This precious female was the mother of a whining little boy whose father was authenticated by due process of law. The law had not sufficed, however, to keep the gentleman faithful for long to the nuptial vows. After his disappearance from New York, his wife was left to support herself and to wreak vengeance where vengeance was not due.
The first that Janet knew about the coming storm was when the dietitian took her aside and told her that the house had been divided into two camps: for and against Janet; or, as the anti-Janet crowd put it: for and against Morality.
Two days before the nightmare, things had come to a head. In the absence of the manager, the anti-Janet faction had assembled under the chairmanship of the thin-edged agitator.
This lady had opened the meeting with the bitter announcement that those present were liberal and fairminded, but that they had their children to think of. Their darling children! Mothers,marriedmothers, mind you (and she, for her part, had consented to join the Susan B. Anthony Houseonlyon the confident assumption thatallthe mothers were asregularlymarried as herself)—mothers, as such, could afford to take no chances! Unhappily, she was persuaded that in the other camp there were ladies who had more thanone good reasonfor standing by the manager. She surmised that some of these ladies wereunmarried mothers! Scarcely mothers at all (if morals counted for anything), and certainly no better than they should be.
After much nursing of self-righteousness, suitable resolutions were moved, and a deputation was appointed to present the facts to Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome; also to demand the discharge of Janet and the vindication of American morality.
The great impeachment had occurred last night. Mrs. Jerome had motored into town, and both factions had turned out for the occasion in the large reception room on the ground floor. Mrs. Jerome had refused to start the proceedings until Janet was seated at her right hand. This settled, the thin-edged spokesman had made the formal charges.
Then the fun had begun—
At this point, a telephone bell jangled across Janet's reflections.
"Who is it?" she asked the switchboard girl.
"Mr. Pryor."
"Let him come up," said Janet eagerly.
III
As usual, Mark Pryor's spare form was dressed from head to foot in materials of one color. But even Janet noticed that, for once, the inevitable stand-up collar, with its two prongs tilting its wearer's chin upwards, had been replaced by a low-lying collar of creamiest silk.
"Circles under the eyes!" he began severely. "What's wrong?"
"Nightmares, witches, broomsticks," she replied laughing.
"Out with it!" he commanded.
In her calm, clear tones she gave him a graphic account of the unpleasantness of the last few days, from its inception in her chance encounter with Claude Fontaine down to the demand made upon Mrs. Jerome for her dismissal.
"And how did little Apple Dumpling meet this demand?" inquired Pryor.
"Like a trump! Said she'd stand by me to the limit—also that the Susan B. Anthony House, being designed for busy people and not for busy*bodies*, Mrs. Farrar (the one with the horn-rimmed spectacles) would have to vacate at the end of the week. Further that, in the future, it is to be a fixed rule of the house that any mother, married or unmarried, may become a tenant, and no questions asked other than those needed to satisfy Mrs. Jerome or her representative that the applicant is both self-supporting and self-respecting—"
"Bravo!"
"And, furthermore, she then and there dictated a letter to be sent to the liberal weeklies in New York, informing their readers of the adoption of this new rule."
"Hurrah!" cried Pryor. "The next time anybody queries, in the words of the immortal William:
"'What king so strongCan tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?'
"'What king so strongCan tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?'
"'What king so strong
"'What king so strong
Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?'
I'll answer: No king; but let me tip you the name of aqueen—Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome, the magnificent.Shecan turn the trick."
"Yes, she's a perfect darling. Do you know, I didn't mind the backbiting of those silly women a bit. But Mrs. Jerome's unhesitating support made me want to cry."
She added that in a private conversation with the dear lady she had urged her own resignation as a matter of practical wisdom. Wasn't the cause greater than the individual?—"Rubbish!" Mrs. Jerome had replied with a considerable show of heat. No cause was worth the cowardly abandonment of a comrade! For two thousand years men had prated of the holy duties of friend to friend, and had committed one crime against friendship after another. And when these crimes were committed, what did they do? They folded their hands, raised pious eyes to heaven, and sang (through their noses), "Alas for the rarity of Christian charity!" etc. Well, women would show them that the time to be loyal was not when the pack curried favor with your friend but when it turned to rend him.
"What do you mean to do now?" asked Pryor.
"I shall stick it out. After all, I'm not looking for social or official favors. All I ask is to be allowed to do the best work of which I'm capable. Surely, I have that right."
"So you think," said Pryor drily. "But bear in mind that for everybona fideworker in New York, there are nine idlers or time wasters, nine breeders of noise, disorder and disease. And don't forget that the chief objection to the idler is not that he neglects his own work, but that he insists on interrupting or damaging yours. The doer is the waster's sworn enemy to all eternity. And the waster knows it! Therefore, he spies out your vulnerable spot: social, economic, psychic, whatever it be; and the first moment he catches you off guard, he sends his poisoned arrow straight to your Achilles' heel."
"I suppose I must take my chance of that. What else can I do?"
"You might imitate me."
"Imitate you! What do you mean?"
"Why, get married! I'm going to marry Charlotte Beecher."
"But I thought that Charlotte—"
"Yes, she's very fond of Robert Lloyd. And I'm only her second string. But bless your wayward curls, we're all second strings on somebody's violin! What's the odds—especially after the first string has snapped? I've been madly in love myself, twice before. Once, down south in Colon, with a dusky Isthmian beauty. The second time, with you."
"Don't be silly, Mark, or I shall stop envying Charlotte her extraordinary good luck."
"Hersandmine! Charlotte was looking for a husband with enough brains to manage a fortune, and yet with heart enough not to love her for her fortune alone. I was looking for a wife with heart enough to lay her fortune at my feet, and yet with enough brains to permit me to enjoy her society. Are we well matched or not?"
"'Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment,'" quoted Janet, laughing.
"Now you're talking sense as well as poetry, dear girl."
"I didn't say I'd follow your example, though."
"All in good time! It's human nature for young blood to rebel against wedlock—and to come around to it in the long run. Marriage, as Lydia Dyson says, is the easiest way!"
"Yes, for Lydia, who changes her lover once a season, while her husband stays at home and keeps the household in smooth running order. But my needs don't run in Lydia's line."
Pryor admitted this. But he pointed out that marriage was a human institution. There it was, for every one of us to reckon with. Either you made use of it, or it made use of you. Sensible people adopted the former alternative.
"Why, look at me!" he said, waxing strangely eloquent. "I've knocked about the world a good bit in the last twenty years. A born adventurer if ever there was one. Do you see me settling down to matrimony like any spirit-broken married man in the pinchbeck salaried class? No, by Jupiter! I've waited for the right conditions to come to pass so that I could take up marriage as one more great adventure."
"Your last one, Mark!" said Janet, bantering him.
More seriously, she asked him whether all his other adventures had been in the Secret Service.
"Lord no! I've taken a shot at all sorts of jobs and been all sorts of things from a West Point cadet to a buccaneer in the South Seas."
This quiet, self-contained man, spare of frame but tough as a hickory stick, had he really been a gorgeous sea-rover? Looking into his humorously inquisitive gray eyes, Janet could not doubt his words. And, like Desdemona entranced by Othello, she listened whilst he dipped into a store of reminiscences and, in his own inimitably laconic style, gave her an outline of his picturesque career.
Pryor as a West Point cadet, as a lieutenant in the Engineer Corps, in service against the Moros in the Philippines, on the sanitary staff in the thick of the Panama Canal construction, again as a civilian on a dare-devil voyage to Tahiti—these pictures took the romantic side of Janet by storm. She made him tell the Tahitian story most minutely, and hung on his lips with bated breath as he recounted the capture of his tiny steamer by real pirates who gave him a Hobson's choice of joining them in their marauding trips near the Society Islands, or of walking the plank.
"But I never gave full satisfaction anywhere," he concluded ruefully. "Secrets that I had better not have known were incessantly coming my way and causing me no end of trouble. Once, when we unexpectedly sighted a Dutch merchantman laden with coffee and spices, I ran up the red flag instead of the black! My shipmates swore that I did it on purpose and assured me that, as a pirate, I was a failure. It was true. Iwasa failure! Almost a dead failure, in fact, for they left me on what they thought was a desert island."
When he got back to the United States, the Great War had begun, but the officials in Washington were extremely slow to utilize his services. His record was against him. He was one of those men with whom two and two didn't inevitably make four, but sometimes footed up to a sum that included human as well as mathematical factors. For an army man, this was a fatal defect.
Impatient to be of use, he eventually joined the Secret Service.
"Why?" asked Janet.
"Nothing else was open to me," he replied, with a twinkle in his roving eyes. "When a man is a pronounced failure, there are only three professions that will take him into their ranks: those of detective, writer and teacher. I chose the first as the least degrading of the three. Also because it gave me a chance to use my gift as a telepath, an elemental telepath."
"You can't pretend that you haven't made good atthat!"
"Oh, I've done so-so."
"So-so!" cried Janet indignantly. "Look how you caught Hutchins Burley red-handed!"
"True enough. I'm bound to confess, however, that I went to the pier to arrest him for treason. When his boxes of Oriental books were opened, it was the smuggled diamonds that we found and not (as I had predicted) the evidence of his sale of United States military secrets to the Japanese. Later on, we got that evidence too; but that was Smilo's doing more than mine. Ah, wait till you hear Robert's opinion of my sleuthing skill."
"Oh, Robert!" she said, with the faintest quiver of her lip. "He hasn't been near me. I'm not even sure that he's in America."
"Well, he is! And I happen to know that urgent business is keeping him out of New York."
"What can it be?"
"It's a peculiar business. In a sense, it's the reverse of what I was engaged upon. I was in pursuit of rogues; but rogues are in pursuit of him."
"I must say, you're as enigmatic as ever."
"Only till tomorrow, Janet. I pledge my word to have everything explained to your satisfaction if you'll come tomorrow to Charlotte's studio in Washington Mews. The party begins at four."
"The party!"
"Precisely. An engagement party for Charlotte; a surprise party for you."
Saying which, and protesting that he had talked her deaf, dumb and blind, and affirming that he had never felt so horribly out of character in his life, Mark Pryor gravely took his leave.