“And the reporters!” mocked the man. “Pshaw! We know what we are doing. Why, we have rehearsed your kidnapping and even your death. Our ablest members have in turn impersonated you—put themselves in your place and fought us. I will not bore you with more details, and I admit that the human mind cannot foresee accidents; but we have studied how your mind would work. Suppose you assume that you are kidnapped and beyond the possibility of help from your friends. Shall I tell you what we have done to make Tom marry one of our eight desirable candidates?”
“If you still wish that million.”
“Having decided to attack through Tom, we studied him and his ancestry on both sides. We easily learned that he had never had a serious love-affair, and that he was imaginative and adventurous, like yourself. There were many young women who would have liked to become your daughter-in-law—too many. That was Tom's trouble. But our problem was really made easier by that. We simply had to turn his thoughts to love and to one girl. We therefore did.”
“How?”
“We got him here. I piqued his curiosity and made the affair an extraordinary one by saying all we wished him to do was to answer one question. As we had rather expected, he would not come; but, of course, we had foreseen that, and so we got him here in one of our own taxicabs.”
“How?”
“We telephoned him that the doctor said he should come instantly, and that you were not really in danger. We don't believe in lies; but we took pains that no other cab should be in front of the club when we telephoned him from the corner drug-store. Attention to details, my dear sir, always brings home the bacon. Having roused the spirit of adventure in a remarkable way, I then asked him the great question. What do you think it was?”
Tom's father shook his head.
“It was this: Where did you spend your summer at the end of your freshman year? He told me. Then I gave him a box made to order for me by a French expert, which would deceive other experts so long as we did not try to sell it. Anybody can imitate the goldwork of any period. In all the museums of the world you will find fakes. Attention to details! I was prepared to have him show that box to local experts. I assumed he would do so, being a Merriwether and, therefore, intelligently curious.”
“Box with what?” asked Mr. Merriwether, also intelligently curious.
“Wait! When your son told me where he spent his summer at the end of his freshman year I knew he was then about nineteen—too young to think of marriage, but old enough to think of love. He had for the first time in his life been free from home influences and direct parental supervision. He was bound to regard himself as a man of the world and think of innocent flirtations as a manly art. Being in that frame of mind, and at the same time being a nice, rich, good-looking chap, all the girls would naturally make a dead set for him. Their numbers would keep him from having one love-affair. All love-affairs at twenty are much the same. A boy always begins by being in love with love. Indeed, I believe twenty-year love to be exclusively a literary passion—that, is, boys get it from reading about it. Of course I studied time, period, locality, and manifold probabilities; and, therefore, I sent him on a mission that suggested love—love for the one girl that Fate intended him to love and to marry. In order to fix, accentuate, and accelerate his love-thinking I used the perfume of sweet peas.”
“How does that work?”
“I picked out sweet peas because they are found everywhere. Their odor is strong and characteristic. He must have inhaled that odor thousands of times when he was flirting with pretty girls the summer he spent at Oleander Point with Dr. Bonner.”
“Yes; but about suggesting—”
“I advise you to read up on the psychology of odor associations. You will learn that there is a very close relation between the olfactory sense and the desire to love. Oliver Wendell Holmes declared that memory, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than by almost any other channel; and, also, that 'olfactory impressions tend to be associated with a sum-total of feeling-tone.' This has been known for thousands of years. A very interesting paper was written by Mackenzie, of Johns Hopkins. If you read it you will know more than I can now take the time to tell you. The Orient understands the value of perfumes in lovemaking, and I could tell you amazing things; but I will refer you to Cabanis, Dadisett, Hobbes, Jaworski, Jwanicki, Schiff, Wolff, and Zwaardemaker. If you wish, my secretary will prepare an exhaustive bibliography of the subject for you.”
“No, thanks,” said Mr. Merriwether. “But I still don't understand—”
The man sighed. Then he said, “I'll tell you, of course.” He then told Tom's father about the message in the dark that Tom had carried.
“But he couldn't believe it!” exclaimed Mr. Merriwether.
“No; he couldn't—but he did. Of course I have taken you behind the scenes—-that is, I have opened your eyes and turned your head in the proper direction and held it firmly there and shouted, 'Look!' And of course you see the machinery standing still and you can't imagine it in motion. You are not as imaginative as I thought you were.”
“Huh!” said E. H. Merriwether, thoughtfully. Then after a pause he said: “I see the wheels revolving. Ingenious!”
“More than that, practical! My object in having Tom fall in love with love, suggesting that there was one girl born to be his bride, accentuated by my use of the sweet-peas odor as aleit-motif, was to have something to offer you which would be cheap at a million. The next step was to make Tom do foolish things—for effect on you. First, to make you fear Tom was crazy. I had a girl who knew young Waters talk to him about Tom's new and alarming queerness and suggest that he telephone to Mr. E. H. Merriwether. Of course Waters wouldn't telephone—and of course I did. And, of course, if you had disbelieved or suspected you would have sent for young Mr. Waters and he would have denied the telephone, but admitted the queer actions of Tom and the fact that people were talking about them. That would have allayed any suspicion you might have entertained. So I stage-managed the opera scene and the Boston trip to make you fear the worst. In that frame of mind you could be induced to come here voluntarily. I sent Tully to you. You had to come!”
“Very clever!” said Mr. Merriwether, with a thoughtful absence of enthusiasm.
“Therefore,” continued the man as if he had not heard the other's interpolation, “your son, being full of the thought of love and, even worse, of marrying the mate that Fate selected for him five million years ago, is now ready to marry any girl that smells of sweet peas. We thought that, instead of vulgarly extracting the million from you by torture or threats, we would place you in our debt by perpetuating the Merriwether dynasty. Hence the preparation of eight very nice girls—three of them in your own set, three others children of people you know, and the remaining two equally desirable but less historical, as it were.”
“Who are they?” If Mr. Merriwether was to pay a million he might as well see the label.
“Cynthia, Agnes, and Isabel, daughters respectively of Gordon Hammersly, William Murray, and Vanderpoel Woodford. Any objections?”
“No; but you can't—”
“Yes, I can. Also, Louise Emlen, daughter of Marbury Emlen, the lawyer—”
“He's a crook!” interrupted Mr. Merriwether.
“He doubtless interfered with one of your deals; I see you respect him. He's a crank, but she is a brick. And a Miss Lythgoe, daughter of Professor Lythgoe, of Columbia, the most beautiful girl in New York. Ramona Ogden; her father is Dr. Ogden, the lung specialist; her mother was a Jewess. The remaining two are of humble birth. But all of them are healthy and beautiful, plenty of honesty, brains, and, above all, imagination. Any one of them will not only make Tom happy, but will make him a worthy successor of a great man. And such grandchildren as they will give you! I envy you!” The man spoke with such fervent sincerity that E. H. Merriwether merely said:
“It is a risky business, even though the chances appear to be—”
“That's why we ask one million dollars—because we have eliminated the risk. Very cheap. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Merriwether, grimly.
“Then, will you kindly—”
“Yes; I will kindly tell you that you are a damned fool! You've wasted my time. I'm going to my office, and if I don't have you put in jail it will be because I don't want the publicity. But don't push me too far or I'll do it anyhow!” And Mr. E. H. Merriwether rose.
“Sit down!” said the man, with a pleasant smile.
“Go to hell!” snarled the czar of the Pacific & Southwestern, and looked at the man with the eyes that Sam Sharpe once said reminded him of a mink's when it kills for the sheer love of killing.
For all reply the man clapped his hands sharply twice. Four men—the over-intelligent-looking footmen—came from behind the heavy plush portières. Also, the ascetic-looking man who had held the glass of acid in the taxicab and had brought Tom into the house the first time. The ascetic-looking man held a cornet to his lips, and his lungs were filled with still unblown blasts.
“Three weeks ago, Mr. Merriwether,” explained the mysterious master of the house, “this worthy artist began to practise on his beautiful instrument at exactly this time every morning. This was in anticipation of the morning when you should be here—the idea being to drown your cries. The neighbors have complained and I have promised to play pianissimo; but a few loud blasts, which will do the trick, will be forgiven. Attention to details, Mr. Merriwether! Ready!”
The cometist inflated his lungs and held the comet to his lips in readiness. The footmen seized Mr. Merriwether by the arms and legs, one man to each limb.
“Doctor!” called the master.
A sixth man came from behind the portières. He had some tin cans in his hand—plainly labeled ether—and also a cylinder of compressed laughing-gas and an inhaler.
“Expert! Anesthetics!” said the man, curtly, to Mr. Merriwether. “We propose to take you out of this house if we kidnap you. If we decide to kill you we have arranged to do it right here at home. I think we'll kidnap you. A week or two will make you amenable to reason. We realize, of course, that every day you spend under our hospitable roof will make it a little bit more difficult to get the million into our clutches. Would you like to know how we propose to kidnap you and get away with it?”
“Yes,” replied Mr. E. H. Merriwether, with a pleasant smile.
“Tell our Mr. E. H. Merriwether to come in,” said the man to the cometist, who thereupon disappeared and presently returned, followed by a man made up to resemble the great financier.
The task was rendered easy by the famous flat-brimmed hat, with the crown like a truncated cone, so familiar to newspaper-readers through the cartoonists' efforts. The resemblance was not striking enough to deceive at close range, but it probably would work at a distance.
“Walk like him!” commanded the master.
The fake Mr. Merriwether walked up and down the room with the curious swaggering, jockey-like jauntiness of the little railroad man. From time to time he snapped his fingers impatiently in the same characteristic way Mr. E. H. Merriwether almost always used when giving an order to subordinates.
“That will do!” said the man, with a broad grin at the impersonator of the little financial giant. The double left the room—still walkingà laE. H. M.
“I have had that man—an actor of about your build with a gift of mimicry—coached for weeks to imitate you. We told him it was a joke and guaranteed him an appearance before the most select audience in New York at one of Mrs. Garrettson's world-famous functions. We pledged him to a secrecy so natural, under the circumstances, as to rouse no suspicions. A few minutes ago we sent a footman to tell your chauffeur to go away and return at one. He wouldn't do it. The footman said the boss said so. Your man retorted that he took orders from only the boss himself—especially when countermanding previous orders.
“So our Mr. Merriwether went out to the front door, yelled 'One!' in your voice, and snapped his finger at the intelligent chauffeur, who thereupon beat it. But the sleuth remains. It makes us laugh! But, after all, since we have provided for him, it would be a pity not to go through the entire program. Does this bore you?”
“Must I tell the truth?” asked Mr. Merriwether, anxiously.
“Yes.”
“I can stand more.” In point of fact, Mr. Merriwether was sure the situation was serious for him. That is why he joked about it.
“Over six months ago we opened an antique-shop on Fourth Avenue. We had the usual truck. Also we have had this antique-dealer—who is your humble servant—go from house to house on the Avenue offering to buy or exchange those antiques of which people have grown tired. We even asked you. We have offered such good prices and such excellent swaps that we have taken antiques from some of the wealthiest houses on the Avenue. Also we have made a practice of importing antiques from Europe, which we auction off every two weeks. The money we get we deposit in various banks, and then we buy bills on Paris. The banks now know us. Remember that—it is important. Well, we also have an exact copy of your motor, even to the initials in the door panels. Pretty soon we send for our Merriwether motor and our E. H. Merriwether emerges from this house and gets into his car and off he goes—and the watching sleuth with him.”
“But if there should be two, and one stay?”
“Then number two will see not long afterward an elaborately carved Gothic chest taken from here into the antique-dealer's wagon—a wagon now known to the traffic squad. We carry you away and lock you in a small sound-proof room, to get to which people would have to move out of the way a lot of heavy pieces of furniture. There is no question of our ability to kidnap you and to keep you a prisoner. I tell you we have paid attention to details persistently and intelligently. Meantime what does Sam Sharpe do to the stock-market? And Northrup Ashe? How much will a month's absence from your office cost you?”
“Not half as much as it will cost you when I get out.”
“And if you don't get out?”
For reply Mr. E. H. Merriwether grinned broadly.
“My dear Mr. Merriwether”—the man spoke very seriously now—“we had not really expected such unintelligent skepticism from you; but, as we prepared for everything, we, of course, prepared for even crass stupidity on your part. In demonstrating our power to do what I say some painful moments will be your portion. This I regret more than I can say. Just now our problem is to prove our complete physical control of you and also our utter indifference to your feelings. I am going to do what will make you hate me to the murder point. In deliberately making a violent enemy of a man like you we pay ourselves the compliment of thinking ourselves absolutely fearless. I propose to have you spanked—to whip you as if you were a bad little boy. We shall at first use a shingle on you—undraped. You may begin when ready, James.”
“Sir,” said one of the footmen, very respectfully, to Mr. E. H. Merriwether, “will you kindly take off your coat and waistcoat, preliminary to the removal of your trousers?”
Mr. E. H. Merriwether tried to smile, but desisted when he saw that the men's faces had taken on a grim look—as if they knew that after the whipping it would be a fight to the death. They somehow conveyed an impression that, though they would not stop at murder, they nevertheless appreciated the gravity of the offense.
“We know,” said the master, solemnly, “that for every blister we raise you will gladly spend a million to clap us into jail. Do you really wish to be spanked and to hate us for it for the rest of your life?”
“No.”
“The alternative is the million—or death.”
“You can't kill me and get away with it.”
“Oh yes—even easier than kidnapping. I'll show you how we'll do it.” He rose and took from one of the drawers of the table a small, morocco-covered medicine-case, opened it, and showed Mr. Merri-wether a lot of small tubes tightly stoppered. “Cultures!” explained the man—“typhoid; bubonic plague; anthrax;Bacillus mallei—that's glanders—meningitis; Asiatic cholera; and others. This, for instance—number thirteen—is the virus of tetanus. Inoculation with an ordinary culture would take days; but with this virus it will take hours. What a wonderful thing science is! You know what tetanus is?”
“Yes,” answered Mr. Merriwether, calmly, “lockjaw.”
“Exactly! Well, this will lock your jaws, and all your millions won't be able to pry them open for you, and all the antitoxin injections won't help you. You will have your consciousness almost to the last—and you will not make yourself understood. Therisus sardonicus, which is a most unpleasant sort of grin resulting from your inability to smile naturally, will linger in the memory of Tom to his death. You really ought to have a moving-picture film of your last hours taken as a warning to those stupid millionaires whose plunder we would recover. And, of course, I have here seven poisons, of which prussic acid is the mildest and slowest. Will you please assume the fact of your death?”
“I'll do that much to please you,” said Mr. Mer-riwether. He still believed that murder would not be profitable to these men and hence did not believe they would go that far.
“Would you like to know how we propose to dispose of the body?”
“I might as well see everything,” he answered, in a resigned tone of voice. The man looked at him admiringly, and said:
“Come on!”
They led the great E. H. Merriwether to the cellar. There he saw that the furnace coal had been taken out of its bin and put in the adjoining compartment. The plank floor had been taken up, and what looked like a short trench—or a grave—had been dug. Outside stood a pile of crushed stone, some bags of cement, some bundles of steel rods, a section of five-inch iron soilpipe with a mushroom-head trap at one end, and concrete-workers' tools.
“After we make absolutely sure that you are dead we throw a lot of soft mortar into the grave, deposit the corpse, and then pour in more cement—so that you will be completely surrounded by it. It will make it very difficult indeed to recognize you when they try to chip away the hard cement—if they ever try! Then we fill the grave up to the top with concrete, using plenty of steel rods—not to re-enforce the concrete at all, but to make it very hard digging with a pick.
“We also stick the soilpipe into the—er—cavity in order to account for the disturbed pavement. Intelligent searchers—your son and his detectives—will assume it is plumbing—and seek no further. We replace the plank flooring in the bin and fill it up with coal, thereby further obliterating all traces of your grave.
“We have provided for that part, you see. Why, my dear Mr. Merriwether, what we really do to you is confer immortality on you. We elevate you to the rank of one of the mysteries. Charlie Ross and E. H. Merriwether! Just assume that we'll do what I say. Very well! Now, visualize the search made for you. Endow your people with superhuman ingenuity. Useless!”
The man waved a hand toward Mr. Merriwether; but Mr. Merriwether said:
“You assume that the search will be exclusively for me—but they will also search for you!”
“My dear sir, that is unkind of you!” The man spoke reproachfully. “We know that when we go into the plunder-recovery business we must guard against the chief contributory cause of the vast majority of all business' failures, according to the statistics of Dun and Bradstreet—to wit, insufficient capital. Murderers are caught when their faces and habits and families are known. Usually their lack of means forces them to betray themselves. But nobody knows how the men who will kill E. H. Merriwether look, simply because we have enough money to go anywhere. We will become tourists—like thousands of others. Some of us will stay in New York; others will go on round-the-world tours. See this?”
The man pulled from his pocket some packages of well-worn bills, with the bank-wrappers round them, though a finger hid the bank name. Also the man showed to Mr. Merriwether several books of travelers' checks of the fifty-dollar denomination—the specimen signature also being covered by the man's finger.
“Enough for all,” said the man. “Kindly oblige me by thinking of what you would do in my place; and, in all frankness, acknowledge that nothing would be easier than to get away. Ordinary crime is so largely accidental that the average criminal is at the mercy of even the unintelligent police. Professionals do the same thing over and over and acquire telltale mannerisms. Also, they lack culture, and find the class attraction too strong to resist—besides always being hard up and therefore defenseless. Whenever you find a crook who is thrifty, you will find him always out of jail—like any other business man of equal thrift. We have gone about this case systematically. We wanted your million—but, more, we wanted the sport of taking it from a man who had no moral right to the particular million we desired. If you had been a really conscienceless financier we'd have made it five millions; in fact, it is because we are not sure that even this million is tainted that we ask you to pay it to us for giving you a fine daughter-in-law. Shall we go up-stairs?”
The master of the house led the way up-stairs and Mr. E. H. Merriwether, escorted by the stalwart footmen with the intelligent faces, followed, his own intelligent face impassive. That he was thinking meant only that he was doing what he always did.
The man sat down in his chair, with his back to the stained-glass window. He asked, pleasantly:
“What do you say now, Mr. Merriwether?”
“I say,” the little czar answered, with a frown of impatience, or anger, or both, “that when you are tired of playing the damned fool I'd like to return to my business.”
The man rose to his feet quickly, his face pale with anger. He took a step toward the financier, his fists clenched—and then suddenly controlled himself.
“You jackass!” he said. “You idiot! Have you no brains whatever? Must I lash common sense into you? Take 'em off!” It was a command to the footmen.
“Will you disrobe, sir?” very politely asked the oldest of them.
Mr. Merriwether, six inches shorter than the speaker, and a hundred pounds lighter, drew back his fist, but the four men seized him and began to take his clothes off. Mr. Merriwether, recognizing the uselessness of resistance and the folly of having garments torn so far from home, helped by unbuttoning here and there. Presently he stoodin puris naturctlibus.
His face was pale and his jaw set tight.
“Tie him!” commanded the master.
They tied him to the library table, face down.
“Music!” cried the man; whereupon the cometist began to play the Meditation from “Thaïs” softly, but obviously ready to play fortissimo at a signal from the chief.
“I am going to lick you with a whip; and, for every lash I give you, you will have to pay me one hundred thousand dollars in addition to the original million. Theatrical, is it?” And his voice was hoarse with anger. “Yes? Well, look at this melodramatic whip. Your tragedy will be my comedy, you————jackass!”
He showed to Mr. E. H. Merriwether a quirt—a veritable miniature blacksnake of plaited leather.
“You can stand twenty; that will make three million in all. I'll draw blood after the fifth. I'll stop when you've got enough. Remember the price!”
He snapped the whip viciously and walked round the table until he stood behind Mr. Merriwether. He lifted his arm and then the great Merriwether, autocrat of fifteen thousand miles of railroad, iron-nerved, fearless, imaginative, and intelligent, yelled: “Wait!”
“The million?”
“Yes!”
“Help him!” said the man; and the intelligent-looking footmen respectfully served as valets.
“I don't believe you would kill me—but I never liked spankings.” Mr. Merriwether spoke jocularly—almost!
The man confronted Mr. Merriwether and said, very seriously:
“Mr. Merriwether, we should certainly have killed you if you had persisted in your stubbornness to the end. We knew we had to convince you.”
The man looked inquiringly at the financier to see whether any doubt remained; but Mr. Merriwether asked, quizzically:
“Honest, now, would you—”
“We would!” interrupted the man, looking straight into Mr. Merriwether's eyes. And what Mr. Merriwether saw there made him ask:
“How will you have the million?”
“In cash. I'm glad you will make the payment. But really, sir, I wish to impress on you that Tom is ripe to be taken for better—or for worse.”
Mr. E. H. Merriwether looked long and earnestly into the eyes of the mysterious man who was despoiling him of a million dollars. It began to seep into his understanding that if Tom could be married to a nice girl the resulting peace of mind would indeed be cheap at a million.
“Now, if you please,” pursued the man, pleasantly, “telephone to McWayne that you wish him to come here with certified checks on your different banks, aggregating one million dollars, made payable to Michael P. Mahaffy.”
Mr. Merriwether started. The name was that of the world-famous political Boss of New York City. Explanations as to the million might be embarrassing to any political boss; but for a million dollars in cash any political boss would be glad to explain—or even not to explain.
“From this house Mr. McWayne will go to the banks, accompanied by the studious gentleman who had the honor of holding your left leg. You will indorse each check by writing 'indorsement correct' and signing your name. McWayne will go with our Mr. Michael P. Mahaffy and get the money in fives, tens, and twenties, in handy wads—old bills preferred and so requested from the paying tellers, who will intelligently understand that Mr. Mahaffy is not signing his name in person, so he can swear in any court of justice that he never saw the checks. Asking for old bills is to make them impossible to trace. This will also allay the banks' suspicions. The worst that can happen will be that a few tellers will wonder what Mr. Merriwether has to do with city politics that he needs Mahaffy's aid.”
“I see!” said Mr. Merriwether, thoughtfully. Then, after a pause: “Where is the telephone?”
“There!”
In plain sight and hearing of the master of the house the master of the Pacific & Southwestern called up his own office. He spoke to McWayne: “Make out checks on all banks according to my balances in them, so that the checks will aggregate one million dollars, payable to Michael P. Mahaffy.... What? Yes?... Have the checks certified.... Of course, if there isn't enough!... We shall want bills that have been used—fives, tens, and twenties.... Yes, all cash. Come up to 777 Fifth Avenue. You will go to the banks with a man—”
“With Mr. Mahaffy,” prompted the man.
“With Mr. Mahaffy,” repeated Mr. Merriwether. “And tell Tom to have luncheon and wait for me,” again prompted the man.
“And tell Tom I can't go to luncheon with him, but to wait for me.”
Mr. Merriwether hung up the receiver and turned to the man, saying:
“The idea of using Mahaffy's name—”
“Rather good, isn't it?” smiled the man. “Of course you wondered how we were going to cash the checks, didn't you? Well, that's the way. The bank officials will be surprised to see the checks and they will watch McWayne and my man to the last. They will thus be able to hear my man say loudly to the chauffeur, 'Tammany Hall, Charlie!' Attention to details, my dear sir!”
“I still am not quite convinced that—”
“My dear Mr. Merriwether, there are so many ways of safely getting money from you Wall Street magnates that the only thing that really protects you is the sad fact that the professional crooks are even more stupid than you. Men like you are compelled to bet your entire fortune, your very life, on averages. The average man is both stupid and honest; so you and your like are fairly safe for fairly long periods of time. Of course if we had been obliged to kill you we should have done so and buried you, and we should have been wise enough to utilize your death in as many ways as possible in the stock-market—and out of it. For instance, I should have instantly telephoned to all the men in your class and told them we had eliminated you—as an example—and to remember that in case we ever had occasion to ask anything from them. We should also give them a countersign, so that they would be able to recognize us when the proper time came. I can kidnap or permanently suppress any millionaire in New York, with neatness, despatch, and safety.”
“But killing a well-known man—” began Mr. Merriwether.
“If Big Tim Sullivan could be killed and lie in the Morgue for days unrecognized, what chance do relatively unknown people like you great millionaires stand to be found, once dead? A dead capitalist, remember, is no more impressive than a dead streetcar conductor. If I got you into this house on the strength of Tom, as I got Tom to come in on the strength of you, what millionaire would refuse, for example, to go, in answer to a telephone message that his child had been run over and was now, let us say, at 128 East Seventy-ninth Street? Or that his wife, acting more or less as if she were intoxicated, was scattering money at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Twenty-ninth Street? And suppose the millionaire is bound and chloroformed, and taken to the top floor of a tenement hired by a humpback with red beard and one leg shorter than the other—same humpback not being really a humpback or red-bearded or a cripple, but a fake, to furnish false clues in advance—and this humpback has previously given fire-extinguishing hand-grenades to all the other tenants, as advertisements! Then we have a charge of dynamite inserted in the thoroughly prepared corpse of the millionaire—his face burned off in advance—and he is also soaked in inflammable material and set on fire. And the deed is done at 11 a.m.; so that all the children will be in school and all the adults awake and able to get out. Find you? Bits of flesh and sympathy for the poor humpback is all the police would find in that tenement. Oh! sir, you were wise to pay—very wise indeed!”
Mr. Merriwether looked at the man a long time. He could not deny that to really desperate men such deeds offered no particular difficulty. The average crook is not dangerous to a millionaire; but a man like this is more than dangerous. He thought quickly and formed his conclusions accurately.
“How are you going to make Tom marry one of the girls whose names you mentioned?” he asked, in the tone of voice one uses toward physicians.
The man smiled slightly and said: “Oh, I am not going to do it. I don't care whether he marries or not. You must do that. But I'll tell you how, if you wish,—after McWayne gets here. Just think over the affair. It will put you in a more intelligently receptive frame of mind.” And with a pleasant smile the man took a little book bound in green leather and began to read.
Mr. E. H. Merriwether, as was his wont when thinking, began at the beginning and reviewed the entire affair quickly but carefully. He did this again—it did not take him long—and then he began to co-ordinate his ideas and study the case. Within ten minutes he had forgotten his animosity. In fifteen he felt respect for this man. In twenty he was thinking how helpless any one man is against his ten billion trillion natural foes—microbes, seismic disturbances, floods, and the chemical reaction of hostile brains. This man, whose very name was unknown to him, had vanquished the victor—had looted the tent of the victorious general!
This was incredible when spoken in a conversational tone of voice. Perhaps this same remarkable man might tell how to make Tom choose a desirable wife. It was worth while making the experiment. It was in the nature of a gamble in which E. H. Merriwether stood to win a happiness worth all the money in the world and stood to lose nothing!
A knock at the door roused him from his reverie. One of the footmen arrived from the threshold.
“Mr. McWayne!”
Mr. Merriwether's private secretary entered. E. H. Merriwether held out his right hand.
Mr. McWayne took four slips of paper and gave them to his chief, who quickly looked at them and passed them over to the master of the house. The man looked at them, indorsed them, and handed a pen to Mr. Merriwether. The czar of the Pacific & Southwestern wrote on each of the checks:
Indorsement correct.
E. H. Merriwether.
He returned the checks to the man, who thereupon pushed a button a number of times.
One of the footmen with the non-menial faces appeared dressed for the street. He looked Irish. He wore a big solitaire scarf-pin. His hat inclined to one side noticeably. He carried a square valise in each hand. They looked as if they had seen service. On each was printed, “Treasurer Tammany Hall.”
“Go with Mr. McWayne to the banks and cash the checks. Mr. McWayne will identify you,” said the master of the house.
“Yis, sor!” said the footman.
The brogue was unnecessary, but E. H. Merri-wether smiled slightly. McWayne and the footman in mufti left together.
“Think some more!” said the man to E. H. Merri-wether, and resumed his reading of the little green-leather book.
Mr. Merriwether leaned back and thought some more. To him the million-dollar loss was already ancient history. The only virtue that the Wall Street life gives to a professional is the ability to take a loss of money with more or less philosophy. That philosophy is also met on the race-track, and among experts in faro as well as among real Christians.
McWayne and the man were gone an hour and eighteen minutes. Mr. Merriwether had time to think of Tom and of himself and of the relation that had existed between himself and his son, and of the relations that would exist between them in the future—God willing.
“Mr. McWayne!” announced the servant.
The private secretary entered; also the Irishman with the two valises.
“Tell the others! At five o'clock!” said the master of the house, and the footman left the room—with the valises!
“Mr. McWayne, will you kindly wait in the other room?” The man rose and parted the portières for the secretary to pass through.
“Certainly,” said McWayne, frowning politely. “Now, Mr. Merriwether,” said the man, “as I told you, Tom's mind and soul are prepared for love. The romantic vein in him has been worked to the limit. He can be laughed out of it very easily, for he is not entirely convinced; but it is too valuable a frame of mind for a really intelligent father to destroy. The young ladies, also, are ripe for the coming of the one man in all the world. They will respond readily—and, I may add, respond with relief if they see he is a man like your son, against whom nothing can be said. It will clinch the affair. My advice is for you to call on the young ladies I have mentioned and judge for yourself, and then you be your own stage-manager!”
“Have you any choice yourself?”
“You know Woodford?”
“Very well.”
“And his daughter Isabel?”
“No.”
“Well, she has the complementary qualities. She will, as it were, complete Tom. She is bright, healthy, very handsome, utterly unspoiled by the knowledge of her good looks—that is, she is highly intelligent. Her mind functionates quickly and is regulated and made to work safely by her keen sense of humor. You will love her for herself, as well as for Tom's sake and for Tom's children's sake. Arrange two things and you can do it. One is prepare her to meet Tom. Tell her you don't know why you want her to know him, but you do. Tell her you wanted this before you ever saw her. And tell her you know she must think you must be going crazy—but will she meet Tom in her father's home?—in some room with the lights turned out? She will ask you why you ask such things. And you will rub your hand across your eyes and say, dazed-like: T don't know! I don't know! Will—will you do it?' And when you take Tom to her, take advantage of the dark, and open this little bottle and touch Tom's lapel with this. It is essence of sweet peas. He will associate Isabel with the mysterious girl to whom he took a message in the dark, and by the same token she will know he is the man who destiny decrees shall be her husband. Then leave the rest to nature. They won't struggle. They couldn't if they wished; but they won't wish to fight. My parting words to you are: the man who was smart enough to get a million dollars out of you finds it even easier to make a young man who wants to love fall in love in the springtime with a handsome, healthy girl who wants to be loved. You and McWayne will now use one of my prisoner-carrying motors. This way, sir!”
He led the way into the next room, picked up McWayne, and escorted the financier and his private secretary to the curb. A neat little motor stood there.
Mr. Merriwether climbed in. McWayne followed. And then the man said:
“You will find that the doors cannot be opened from the inside. The chauffeur was told this queer feature was due to the fact that his master expects to use this car for his two very active and very mischievous children. He will drive you anywhere. You can arrest him if you wish; but it will be useless. We have spent a good many thousands of dollars in accessories that will be thrown away to-day.” And the man sighed.
“Who do you mean by we?” asked E. H. Merriwether, politely.
“The Plunder Recovery Syndicate, which, having completed its operations, will now dissolve. Good day, sir.”
In the issue of theWorldof June 9th two advertisements appeared. One, under “Marriages,” read:
Merriwether-Woodford.—On June 8th, at the Church of St. Lawrence, by the Rev. Stephen Vincent Rood, Isabel Woodford to Thomas Thome Merriwether.
The other, under “Personals,” read:
P. R. Syndicate,—It was cheap at a million!
On June 10th the great railroad financier received a typewritten letter. It read:
In the course of our operations, having for an object the recovery of plunder taken from unidentified individuals by malefactors of great wealth, it has happened that we have grown fond of some of our contributors. We thus are able most sincerely to extend to you our hearty congratulations. It was indeed cheap at a million, and we shall remember your good fortune if ever we need advice or additional funds. What we took from you and from some of your fellow New-Yorkers we propose to return to the public at large. Mr. Amos F. Kidder will tell you his suspicions, if you ask him. In return you might tell him that we propose to capitalize time. We shall make a present of fifty years to the world by transmuting the recovered plunder into unspent time. Don't forget that we who were the Plunder Recoverers are now,
The Time Givers.