THE bell of the telephone on the desk of the alert city editor of the New YorkPlanetrang twice. The alert city editor did not instantly answer it. He was reading a love-letter not meant for his eyes. It had been sent in with his mail by mistake. The bell rang again.
“Yes?” he said, angrily. “Who? Oh, hello, Bill!” There was a pause. Then: “Shall we? Why, friend, he's already started. Thanks awfully! Sure thing!”
He swung round and cast a roaming glance about the big room. It was Sunday, the sacred day when nothing happened.
“Parkhurst!” he called.
Parkhurst, one of thePlanet'sstar men, sauntered over to the desk. He had planned to do other things with his time this nice Sunday afternoon. Monday-morning stories are not apt to be exciting. Therefore he limped pathetically in anticipation of the excuse he proposed to make to get off. He was Williams's chum.
“Jimmy,” said the city editor, with his habitual air of giving assignments as though they were decorations awarded for distinguished services, “I just had Bill Stewart, of the Hotel Brabant, on the telephone. He says there is a man there who has seven million dollars in gold-dust in the engine-room of the hotel. Klondike mine-owner. Does not believe in banks, I guess. Takes mighty big stocking to hold the cash—”
“Do you wantmeto write the story?” interrupted Parkhurst, coldly. It was his way of showing his city editor his place.
“Coal-Oil Johnny up to date! Don't fall for any press agent—”
Parkhurst forgot the excuse he was going to make. His limp vanished. The story promised well. He hastened to the Brabant and saw the room clerk, Stewart, who had tipped off the city editor.
“Yes; he is in,” said Stewart. “But if you think it is another case of Coal-Oil Johnny you've got another guess coming. Not that he is a tightwad; he is liberal enough with his nuggets, the bell-hops say. But he is no fool. And yet—think of it!—he takes into Seattle with him from Nome eight or ten millions of gold-dust! There he hires a special train to bring him and his gold-dust to New York. He arrives at the Grand Central in the early morning. They hustle round and find seven trucks to carry the boxes of gold-dust for him. He follows in a taxicab. He comes straight to this hotel—”
Stewart here swelled up his chest. It made the reporter say, amiably:
“It was considered a good hotel once; but news travels slowly in the frozen North.”
“He comes up here, registers, and then expects me to let him take the whole fifteen tons of gold up to his room. What do you know about that? Well, then he wanted to hire a whole floor so as to distribute the weight. But you know it is a highly concentrated weight. No floor would stand it. Gold is the heaviest thing there is.”
“It is,” agreed Parkhurst, hastily. “It is, dear friend. That's why I never carry more than a couple of tooth-fillings with me, and—”
“Let me tell you,” cut in Stewart, full of his story. “So, being Sunday and no banks open, we arranged for him to keep the gold-dust down-stairs in the engine-room. And it is there now, a hundred and fifty boxes, worth, he says, about eight million—”
“Lead me to it before you hand in your bill,” entreated the reporter.
“There are eight Old Sleuths, with sixteen automatic pistols, on the job of keeping hungry newspaper men from the nice little paper-weights, Jimmy,” said Stewart. “I am so kind to Mr. Jerningham myself that I think he will remember me in one of those wills you fellows are always writing about—don't you know? How a fabulous fortune is left to the polite hotel clerk who was so nice to the stranger in the spring of eighteen seventy-four?”
“What's the full name?” asked the reporter. “There it is!” and Stewart pointed to the autograph in the hotel register.
“Alfred Jerningham. Nome and New York. Suite G.”
There followed the names of the eight bullion guards and his two personal servants.
“Looks like a school-boy's writing.”
“He is about forty,” said the clerk.
“Then it means he probably stopped writing for publication when he was about fourteen. That is the immature chirography of a man who is more at home with a pick than with a pen. And, furthermore—”
“Here he comes,” interjected Stewart. “I'll introduce you.”
J. Willoughby Parkhurst, the reporter, was startled by the change in Stewart's face. It had taken on the ingratiating soul-sweetness of one who enjoys your story with all his faculties—the complete surrender of self, soul, and hopes of heaven. The clerk exuded gratitude from every pore.
“Gosh!” exclaimed J. Willoughby Parkhurst in amazement, and turned quickly to see who it was that had made Stewart's greed-stricken face turn itself into a moving-picture film of all the delights.
A man was approaching—a man of about the reporter's height, square-shouldered, smooth-shaved, strong-chinned, with an outdoor complexion, and the clear, clean, steady eyes of a man without a liver. There was a metallic glint to the gray-blue of the iris that made the eyes a trifle hard. The lips were not only compressed, but you guessed that the compression was habitual. Even a private detective could have told that this man had made up his mind to do one thing, and therefore he would do it. There was no doubt of it.
“Oh, Mr. Jerningham!” The name issued like a stream of saccharin out of the eddying smiles on Stewart's face.
“The expectation of twenty millions of gold, at least, on that face!” thought Parkhurst, more impressed by the smile than by the cause thereof.
“Here is that nugget I promised you.” And Mr. Jerningham dropped four-and-three-quarter pounds troy of gold into the clerk's coy hand. “It is the largest I ever found in six years' mining on the Klondike.”
The reporter later told the city editor—he did not print this—that Stewart, as he got the nugget, showed plainly on his face his disappointment that Jerningham had not come from the South-African diamond-fields. A carbon crystal weighing four pounds and three-quarters—that would have been worth a real smile! But the clerk said, gratefully: “It's very good of you. Thank you ever so much! I'd like to introduce to you my friend, Mr. Park-hurst.”
“Glad to make your acquaintance, sir. Parker, did you say?”
The Klondiker spoke coldly. It made the reporter say, subtly antagonistic:
“Parkhurst!”
“Any relation to—”
“Haven't a relation in the world.”
“Shake again, friend,” said Jerningham, warmly. “I am in the same boat myself!”
They shook hands again.
“Do you want to be very nice?” asked Jerningham, almost eagerly, of the reporter.
“It is my invariable custom to be that,” Parkhurst assured him, gravely.
“Dine with me to-night.” Jerningham looked expectant.
“I have an engagement with my friend the bishop,” said the reporter, who hated clergymen for obvious reasons. “But—let me see!” Parkhurst closed his eyes the better to see how he could break his engagement. “I'll send regrets to the bishop and dine with you with pleasure.”
“Mr. Parkhurst is on thePlanet” put in Stewart. It was the way he said it!
“Ah, yes,” said Jemingham, vaguely.
“In fact, Mr. Jemingham,” said Parkhurst, “I was sent to interview you.”
“Huh?” ejaculated the Klondiker, blankly. It was plain he was virgin soil.
“All to myself!” thought J. Willoughby, with a mental smack of the lips. Then he began, in that congratulatory tone of voice with which practised interviewers corkscrew admissions out of their victims: “We heard about your trip from Seattle, and about your—er—baggage. Would you mind telling me a little more about it? We could”—with a honeyed grin at Stewart—“sit down in a nice little corner of the café and have a nice little chat.”
“I don't mind—if you don't,” said Jemingham, with one of those diffidently eager smiles of people who are doing you a favor and do not know it.
The reporter led the way to the café, selected a small table in the farthest corner, beckoned to a waiter, pointed to a chair, and nodded toward the Alaskan Monte Cristo.
“Thank you!” said Jemingham, with real gratitude, and sat down. Then he looked at his watch, saw that it was only four o'clock, and said to the waiter, “A cup of tea, please.”
“Huh?” It was all J. Willoughby could rise to. A miner and tea? What about the free champagne for the hundreds? A tea-drinker would not scatter walnut-sized diamonds along the Great White Way.
“I got used to it. My pal was English. We found it preferable to whisky in the Klondike.” Mr. Jerningham made no effort to disguise the apologetic tone.
“I'll have the same,” cleverly said J. Willoughby. Then, to clinch it, “Of course you know that in the exclusive clubs to-day men drink more tea than liquor!”
“It's the proper thing—eh?” said Jerningham, with a sort of head-waiter deference that made the reporter stare in surprise. “I am glad you told me that.”
“Oh yes. It is no longer good form to get load—er—intoxicated. It's one of the few good things we've got from England—tea-drinking,” the reporter said. “And, Mr. Jerningham, to get back to our subject, just how did you happen to go to the Klondike?”
“It began in New York,” said Jerningham, and drew his lips together. It was clearly not a pleasant memory.
“It did?” You could tell that J. Willoughby was grateful. “Well, well! And—” He frowned as though a date had escaped him. He really suggested time to the miner, for Jerningham volunteered: “When I was twelve years old.”
“That's about twenty years ago,” ventured the reporter in the affirmative tone of voice that inevitably elicits contradiction and the exact figures from the victim.
“Thirty-two years ago, sir.”
“Well, well! And—How did you say it began?” The reporter put his hand to his ear to show that his hardness of hearing had prevented him from getting Jerningham's previous answer to the same question.
“My father!” Mr. Jemingham nodded twice, to show that those two words told the whole story.
“Ah, yes! And then?” The reporter looked as if instant death Would follow the non-receipt of information; and Jerningham, as though against a lifelong determination to be silent, spoke—and frowned as he spoke:
“My father! He was a coachman in the employ of old David Soulett, who was the son of Walter and the father of Richard and David the third, and of Madge, who married the Duke of Peterborough. Old David Soulett—the second, he was—was my father's employer. My father was English. He came to New York when he was eighteen. He went straight into the Souletts' stable, became head coachman, and lived with the family for fifty years. They pensioned him off. I grew up with the boys—called one another by our first names. Do you get that?—by our first names!”
Jemingham compressed his lips tightly and nodded. His eyes filled with reminiscence—sweet, yet sad.
“You did, eh?” said the reporter.
If J. Willoughby had been addicted to slang he would have used the same wondering tone of voice and would have exclaimed, “What do you know about that!”
“And that is why I went to the Klondike!”
There are times when a man's voice and attitude show that he is speaking in italics. This was one of the times. Having said all there was to be said, he turned to the tea with a gesture of such determination that Parkhurst leaned over, half expecting to see a dozen starving grizzly-bears jump out of the cup. Then the thought came to the watchful reporter that the grim-shut lips merely expressed that some memory was bitter. He asked, very sympathetically, “Did they send you away?”
“They did not send me away. They did nothing! They were! That's all. It was enough.”
“Yes, of course!” The reporter agreed with Jerningham absolutely. “But I don't quite see the exact reason, as you might say.”
“They were!” explained Jerningham as one might talk to a child. “They were Souletts, rich by inheritance, in the best society. They had everything I did not have. So I went to the Klondike.”
“Yes?”
“Is it not clear?”
“No!” said the reporter, grateful for the chance to use the plain negative.
“They were in the Four Hundred. They were gentlemen. They were good-looking, pleasant-mannered, kindly-hearted fellow-Christians. But if they had not been the sons of David Soulett, and if David had not been the son of Walter, and Walter the son of the first David, they wouldn't have been in the Four Hundred, or in the Four Thousand even. Policemen at the corners used to touch their hats to them as they drove by and seemed really glad to get a pleasant smile in return. You felt the cops would never have dreamt of taking a Soulett to the station-house—always to the Soulett mansion. New-Yorkers used to point to it—the Soulett mansion—with an air of pride, as though they owned it! Clerks in shops would send for the proprietor if one of the Souletts walked in, and later they would brag how they said to David Soulett, they said; and he said, said he—and so on. And why? Why, I ask you?”
“Why?” repeated the reporter, hypnotically.
“Because an ignorant old cuss couldn't read or write and had to go to digging graves in Trinity churchyard for a living. It was old David's proud boast that he put away one thousand six hundred and thirty-two people, including the very best there were in literature, art, science, theology, commerce, and finance, besides nineteen murderers, thirty-eight pet slaves, and one dog of his own. A very snob among grave-diggers, laying the foundation for the nonsnobbishness of his great-grandchildren! Digging graves, you see, turned his mind to soil. The only thing that didn't burn up or evaporate or shrink was soil. Genius for real estate they call his madness to-day. But it was an obsession. He bought a farm in what is now the swell shopping district; and another where the Hotel Regina is; and another beginning where the Vandeventer houses are. The old lunatic's mad purchases are now worth one hundred and fifty million dollars; and he himself is an ancestor, with fake portraits showing an intellectual-looking country squire. Grave-digger—that's what! But the money really began with him and the near-gentleman with Walter, who knew the best families because his father buried them one after another. By the time the real-estate market got to going in earnest David was born—of course a gentleman! What did it? Unearned money!”
“Yes. But what's digging graves got to do with your going to the Klondike?”
“Everything. It gave me the secret of it—the unearned part. Don't you see?”
“No.”
“My dear sir, I loved the company of the Soulett boys and I enjoyed the society of their equals. So I naturally desired to become their equal. To become a gentleman I had to become rich. But the money must not be earned; so I couldn't make it in trade—which, moreover, was too slow. The careers of butcher, plumber, and liquor-dealer, that might have made me rich quickly, were closed to me by the social disqualifications they carry. And the careers of Jim Sands and Bill Train in Wall Street were too malodorous; besides which, you can't make very much money on the Stock Exchange without treading on influential social toes. Hence the Klondike. Do you see now?”
“I'm beginning to.”
“Well?”
“Do you mean,” said the reporter, to get it straight, “that you went to the Klondike to make money so as to climb—I mean, so as to go into society?”
“Exactly so! Yes, sir! And I tell you, Mr. Parker—”
“Park-hurst!” said J. Willoughby, with a frown of injured vanity.
“Mr. Parkhurst, a man has to have some strong motive to enable him to conquer success. In all my wanderings for twenty-five years, prospecting in Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, the Southwest, Nevada, California, Oregon, and Washington, and finally all over Alaska, I had but one object in mind, one purpose. It sustained me. It gave me courage when others despaired; it kept me marching onward when others fell by the wayside and died or became sheep-ranchers. I had no thought for amusement, none for pleasure, none for love. I simply kept up my search. It was the search for happiness that the old knights used to go out on. It was a search, Mr. Parker-hurst, for the yellow admission ticket to the Four Hundred!”
“Have you found it?” J. Willoughby could not help it.
“Let me tell you,” pursued Jerningham, ignoring the question. “I used to read the society columns of the New York papers whenever I felt myself growing discouraged; and that always revived me. Up in the Klondike I had saved fifteen hundred dollars and I paid one thousand dollars in gold-dust for a six-months-old copy of a society paper which had an account of Mrs. Masters's ball. To me, 'among those present' meant more than a list of gilt-edge bonds. I've got it yet.”
He paused to take from his pocket-book a tattered clipping and showed it to the newspaper man with a mixture of pride and tenderness and solicitude lest it be harmed, as a father shows the only extant photograph of the most wonderful baby in captivity.
“I thought my name would fit in very nicely between the Janeways and the Jesups. It was a good investment, that one thousand dollars, for I felt I had to get a gait on, and that very same day I went on that prospecting trip to the Endicott Mountains which changed my luck for me. Everything came my way then—I mean, in mining. I am getting six hundred thousand dollars a year out of my claims; and that is because I believe fifty thousand dollars a month enough for a bachelor. More would be—er—sort of ostentatious. Don't you think so?”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed J. Willoughby Parkhurst, with a shudder.
“When I marry I'll make it one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars a month.”
“I agree with you,” said Parkhurst—“because, really, two cannot live as cheaply as one.” He thrilled when he thought how he would play up that promised income in his story.
“That's what I say,” Jerningham said, gratefully. “Of course there's the seven millions and a half of gold-dust I have brought with me. It's downstairs.” His grim mouth became more determinedly grim than ever. This man was the kind that gets what he wants, with or without money. He will not climb, thought Parkhurst; he will vault into society. He asked Jerningham:
“Have you really got that much down-stairs? I mean,” he hastily corrected himself, “have you no fear of the danger of going about with that much loose change?”
“No. It's guarded by men who are getting big pay for being honest. You can buy honesty—if you treat it as a luxury and pay for it as such. Each box weighs one hundred and fifty pounds, for convenience in handling. Would you like to see the stuff?” He could not hide a boyish eagerness—not at all offensive—to impress his new friend. J. Willoughby Parkhurst forgave him in advance, and to prove it said, heartily:
“Very much indeed!”
“Very well. Please come with me.” And he led the way to the engine-room. They went down two flights. At the door of the engine-room they met the engineer, who bowed with an obsequiousness that indicated sincere gratitude and renewed hope—as of a man who has received a handsome gratuity and is expecting another.
In the middle of the concrete floor, of the engine-room, piled up in an amazingly small mound of boxes, was the gold.
“Each box has about fifty thousand dollars in dust,” explained Jerningham, with what one might have called a matter-of-fact pride. “Would you like to open one?”
“I don't want to put you to any trouble—not for worlds; but I do want to see the inside of one like anything.”
“No trouble. I say, Mr. Wilkinson,” to the hotel engineer, who had followed them, a deferential smile fastened to his face, “could you get me a hammer and chisel and a screw-driver?”
“Certainly, Mr. Jerningham,” said the engineer, with obvious pride at being part of an extraordinary adventure. He reappeared presently with the tools and a burly assistant. They pried off the steel hoop and cracked off the sealing-wax from over the heads of the screws that held the lid in place. They then unscrewed the cover—and there before their wide-gaping eyes was a boxful of yellow Yukon gold.
Jerningham smilingly looked at J. Willoughby Parkhurst and waved his hand toward the treasure—a gesture that said Help yourself!—only it said it humorously. And so the reporter smiled indulgently and plunged his hand in it.
“How heavy!” he exclaimed, involuntarily. He had meant to be witty, as penniless people always are in the presence of great wealth to show that they are not impressed.
“It will be light enough to blow away here,” said Jerningham so seriously that nobody smiled—indeed, everybody hoped for a blast in the direction of his own pocket. Put Jerningham merely said: “Thank you. Will you screw it on again?” And the engineer did. Jerningham did not stay to see the rescrewing finished. He took Parkhurst's arm and walked out. The reporter told him:
“I can't help thinking it was imprudent. The detectives now know they can open the boxes and—”
“It isn't likely that all eight will be dishonest at the same minute. That's why I got eight instead of four. But, even if they all wanted to, how much could they get away with? With the contents of one of the boxes, fifty thousand dollars? Well, that isn't much. I can't afford to let that gold be a bother to me. I brought it along so that it could be my servant—not for me to be its slave.”
“I've heard others make that selfsame remark,” said J. Willoughby, cheerfully, “but they never struck off the aureate shackles!”
“My friend, it's not in striking off shackles; that is always difficult. The secret is in not letting them become shackles!” said Jerningham, grimly. “A man does not confidently expect during twenty-five years to strike it rich some day without very carefully thinking of what he is going to do with the gold after he gets it.”
The story, as James Willoughby Parkhurst wrote it, and even as thePlanetprinted it, was a masterpiece. It was far more interesting than a fake. The truth often may be stranger than fiction, but it is seldom so exciting. With the generous desire to repay Jerningham's hospitality with kindness, to say nothing of an eye for the picturesque, the reporter made his victim an Admirable Crichton. Parkhurst's Jerningham was very distinguished-looking, which every woman knows is better for a man than being handsome. He not only was “probably the richest man in the world,” but a fine linguist—indeed, a philologist. You saw Jerningham digging in his gravel-bank by day—-spadeful after spadeful of clear gold-dust—and at nights reading Aristophanes in the original by the flickering and malodorous light of seal-fat lamps.
On the same day that Jerningham learned that his own wealth was practically inexhaustible, and decided to limit his income in order that gold might not be demonetized, he—the philologist in him—discovered also amazing analogies between certain Eskimo and Aleutian words and their equivalents in Tibetan. This and a monograph on “Totemism in the Light of Its Undoubted Babylonian Origin,” he would read in London before the Royal Society. Of Jerningham's ancestry the article said that the erudite Croesus was “of the Long Island Jerninghams.”
At three separate and distinct places in the article, each time differently worded, but the intention and purpose thereof being the same, the writer said that for generosity, lavish extravagance, capacity for spending, and deep-rooted belief that there was no difference between gold coins and stage money, the learned Klondiker was a combination of Monte Cristo, Boni de Castellane, Coal-Oil Johnny, and Alcibiades—only more so. But his feverish efforts were all in vain—he only grew richer! If he decided to give a million to a newsboy who was polite, that same moment he would be sure to get a cablegram from one of his superintendents that the vein had widened to three miles and the assays jumped to three hundred thousand dollars a ton.
Parkhurst finished by saying that Jerningham had no use for women. In divers countries world-famous sirens had sung to him—in vain. He was the kind that registered zero, even though plunged to the chin in Vesuvian lava. So the dear things might as well save time, breath, and muscular exertion; he would have none of them, no matter what their age, color of hair, temperament, accomplishments, or even faces might be. He was arrow-proof and Cupid had given up trying. Still, there must be One—somewhere!
When J. Willoughby Parkhurst went to the Hotel Brabant on Monday morning in the hope of a second-day story, he was not sure how Jerningham would take his masterpiece. He was going so early in the hope of shunting off the head-line artists of the afternoon papers, for all that he had begged Stewart to fix it so that nobody got to Jerningham before thePlanetman turned up.
As he entered the lobby he saw in a corner lounge five reporters from the yellows, three photographers from same, a professor from the Afternoon Three-Center, and a “psychological portraitist,” feminine and fat, but dressed with unusual care and even piquancy, from a magazine. He saw Jemingham's finish—not!
The competitors were too busy talking to see J. Willoughby Parkhurst, author of the day's sensation, walk up to the desk and greet Stewart affectionately. They did not see J. W. P. turn sharply, approach a well-built, square-shouldered man, with an outdoor complexion, who had just emerged from the elevator, and shake hands warmly.
After one and a half seconds of dialogue, consisting of “Good morning!” and “Good morning!” J. Willoughby cleverly realized that Mr. Alfred Jemingham could not possibly have read the article. On general principles he took the Klondiker to one end of the corridor, out of sight of the other reporters.
“I am very anxious to make arrangements to store my gold in some bank's vaults. I don't know any bank—that is, I have no account in any; and I wondered if I needed to be introduced.”
Jemingham looked anxiously at Parkhurst.
“Of course!” said J. Willoughby, and immediately looked alarmed. “Of course! They are very particular—very! The good ones, you know. A man's bank is like a man's club—it can give him a social standing or it can prove he hasn't any.” He looked at his Klondike friend with a frown of anxiety.
“I never thought of that side of it. But I can see there is much in what you say. I should like to put the gold in the VanTwiller Trust Company.”
“Fine! I think I can help you. I'll call up our Wall Street man and he will make the trust company take it—unless he thinks there is another still better. Let's go to your room and telephone from there; and we'll tell Stewart to tell the telephone operator not to bother us—what?”
J. Willoughby intended that Jemingham should be the sole and exclusive property of thePlanet. From Jerningham's sumptuous room he called up the office, ordered a corps of photographers to the battlefield to take pictures of sundry loads of gold on trucks on their way to the great vaults, escorted by thePlanet'sspecial commissioner in one of the armored automobiles which thePlanetsupplied to its bright young men.
Then he called up Amos F. Kidder, thePlanet'sfinancial editor; and Kidder, who, of course, knew the president of the VanTwiller Trust Company, Mr. Ashton Welles, hustled thitherward and made all arrangements, including the securing of the trucks owned by Tommy O'Loughlin, who did all the gold-trucking for W. H. Garrettson & Company, Wolff, Herzog & Company, and other gold-shipping banking firms. Photographers were duly stationed at the various points by which the aureate procession would pass.
Mr. J. Willoughby Parkhurst had the boxes of gold-dust taken out by the ash-and-cinder exit, caused his fellow-reporters to be “tipped off” by hall-boys that the gold would be taken away at twelve-thirty sharp to the Metropolitan National Bank vaults, and then took Jerningham in thePlanet'sautomobile and followed the trucks.
In Wall Street Parkhurst introduced Jerningham to the waiting Kidder, and Kidder introduced Jerningham to the waiting Mr. Welles. The gold was carried down to the vaults. Jerningham separated twenty boxes from the heap.
“I'd like to have these cashed,” he said, with that delightful humor of all very rich men. And everybody within hearing laughed, as everybody always laughs at the so-delightful humor of all very rich men. There was not a clerk in the trust company who did not repeat the historic remark at home that night.
Word of what was happening went about, and soon the great little narrow street was blocked by people who wished to see six or eight millions go into a place where there were one hundred and fifty. But there was this difference—the one hundred and fifty already there would stay there; but a handful or two of the six or eight might be distributed among those present by the latest Coal-Oil Johnny from the Klondike. The hope of a stray nugget or two kept two thousand busy people about the doors of the VanTwiller Trust Company nearly two hours.
As for Jerningham, the trust company was to send the twenty boxes of gold-dust to the Assay Office and credit Mr. Jerninghan's account with the proceeds of the sale thereof. Two days later Mr. Alfred Jerningham had to his credit in the VanTwiller Trust Company $1,115,675.28; and in the vaults boxes containing, as per his most conservative estimates, gold-dust valued at six millions and a half. And everybody knew it—the Planet saw to that. Great potentialities in that golden fame of Jerningham's—what?
ThePlanet'sofficial version of the Jerningham affair, and the flood of sensational literature turned loose on the community by the other papers, made the Klondiker's name as familiar to New-Yorkers as a certain breakfast-food advertisement.
His daily mail was enormous, especially after the newspapers said that he was looking for a house in which to entertain. “The richest bachelor in the world,” he was called, and the real-estate agents acted accordingly. So did no end of unattached females of dubious age, but of not at all dubious intentions. Also it became known that he needed a social secretary to guide him in two things—the two things being whom to invite and how to spend six hundred thousand dollars a year in entertaining those who were invited by the social adviser.
The applications came by the dozen—in the strictest confidence. If somebody had said this aloud in the hearing of society, society would have laughed scornfully. A gentleman was always a gentleman, and could never, never be secretary to a parvenu! But, for all that, there were scores of well-born men who appeared willing enough—don't you know?—to help spend the six hundred thousand a year. Or else some historic names were forged by dastards. ThePlanet'ssociety editor, who would never allow herself to be called editress, proved invaluable as a living Who's Who, and demonstrated her worth to her paper by making connections that would further her work; for she was much sought by people who wished introductions to Mr. Jerningham.
They would trade with her—items for letters.
It helped all concerned that not only Parkhurst, but the rest of the kind-hearted space-grabbers, informed the world that the possessor of the income of six hundred thousand a year was a fount of erudition, and withal a man of the world, with exquisite manners—invulnerable to the optical artillery of the fairest sirens on earth. And always the six hundred thousand dollars a year to spend, so that the beastly stuff would not accumulate and choke up the passages of the palace he proposed to build! That was how Francis Wolfe came to be introduced to Mr. Jerningham by J. Willoughby Parkhurst, and how the position was delicately offered to him, and how F. Wolfe delicately accepted.
A fine-looking, well-built young fellow, this Frank—dark-eyed, black-haired, with a wonderfully clean pink but virile complexion that made him physically very attractive. In those Broadway restaurants that have become institutions Francis Wolfe was himself an institution. His debts were discussed as freely as the cost of gasoline. And yet the chorus contingent and their lady friends, consisting of the most beautiful women in all the world, not only preferred, but publicly and on the slightest provocation proclaimed their preference for, Frank Wolfe penniless to almost any one else—short of millions. But if Frank Wolfe was the chorus-girls' pet, Mr. Francis Wolfe was the only brother of Mrs. John Burt and Mrs. Sydney Walsingham, and favorite nephew of old Mrs. Stimson. And everybody knew what that meant!
J. Willoughby Parkhurst left them alone, even if he was a reporter.
“If you do not mind talking business,” said Jerningham, with a deprecatory smile.
“Not at all,” eagerly said young Wolfe, who was consumed by curiosity to listen to the golden statistics. “In fact,” he added, with a burst of boyish candor, “I'd be glad to have you.”
“You are a nice boy!” said Jemingham, so gratefully and non-familiarly that Frank could not find fault with him.
“I need a friend,” continued Jerningham. “I know friendship cannot be bought. It grows—but there must be a seed. It may be that after you know me better you will give me your friendship. That is for the future. I also need a man! A man whom I can trust! A man, young Mr. Francis Wolfe,” he said, with a sternness that impressed young Mr. Francis Wolfe, “who will not laugh at me!”
Frank was not an intellectual giant, but neither was he an utter ass. He said, very seriously, “Go on!”
“I am willing to pay such a man twenty-five thousand a year—” He paused and almost frowned.
“Go on!” again said young Mr. Wolfe, looking the Klondiker straight in the eyes.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars—to begin with!”
“Yes?” said young Mr. Wolfe, quite calmly.
“The duties of such a man—and keep in mind I mean a man when I say a man!—entail nothing whatever of a menial or dishonorable character; nothing to which a gentleman could possibly object. But it would necessitate a certain spirit of good-will toward me. I am not only willing, but even anxious, to pay twenty-five thousand dollars a year, and all traveling expenses, to a clean-minded young man who, for all his wild-oat sowing, is a gentleman and will learn to like me enough not to laugh at me when I intrust him with the secret desire of my heart.”
Before Frank's thoughts could crystallize into the definite suspicion that Jerningham wanted to be helped to climb socially, Jemingham went on so coldly that again young Wolfe was impressed:
“You will admit, Mr. Wolfe, that a man who has prospected all over North America from the Rio Grande to the Arctic Circle, and who has, unfortunately, been compelled”—he rose, went to his bureau, brought out two revolvers of a rather old-fashioned kind—“compelled against his will to draw first”—he showed the young man about a dozen notches in the handle of one of them—“one who fears no man and no government and no blackmailer; who owns the richest placer mines in the world—is not apt to be an emotional ass!” There was a pause. But Jemingham continued before young Wolfe could speak: “Neither is he a damned fool—what?”
Mr. Francis Wolfe felt he had to say something, so he said, “I shouldn't think so.”
He felt that Jemingham was not a man to trifle with—a tough customer in a rough-and-tumble fight; a man who had taken life in preserving his own; altogether a man, a character, who would make an admirable topic of conversation with both men and women—therefore a man to be interested in.
“Do you know Mr. Ashton Welles?” asked Jer-ningham, almost sharply.
“Not intimately.”
“Do you know Mrs. Ashton Welles?”
“Same answer.”
“Ever dine at their house?”
Frank thought a moment. He had dined at so many people's houses. “No,” he answered, finally. “Could you?”
“How do you mean?”
“Are your relations with Welles such, or could they be cultivated so, as to make him invite you—not me—you!—to dine at his house?”
“Look here, Mr. Jerningham,” and young Mr. Wolfe's face flushed, “a fellow doesn't do some things for money; and this is one—”
“I know it! Not for money. For friendship, yes! That's why—you understand now, don't you?” He looked so earnestly at young Wolfe that Frank absolved him of wrong-doing.
“No, I don't!” said the young man.
“Did you ever know Randolph Deering, who used to be president of the VanTwiller Trust Company?”
“Do you mean Mrs. Welles's father?”
“Yes.”
“I don't recall speaking to him more than to say 'How do you do?' I don't remember when or how I met him.”
“Do you know Mrs. Deering, Mrs. Welles's mother?”
“No.”
“Do you know anybody who does?”
“I suppose I do.”
“Anybody who would give you a letter of introduction?”
“I don't know. If my aunt or my sisters know her it would be easy. But, of course, I should have to know first why I should want to meet her.”
“Of course. Did you ever hear anything about Mrs. Welles's sister, Naida Deering?”
“Didn't know she had a sister.”
“Then, of course, you never saw her.”
Francis Wolfe thought a long time. His mind did not work very quickly at any time. At length he said: “I don't think there could have been a sister, for I never heard of her having any; indeed, I distinctly remember hearing that she was an only child. Maybe she was a cousin or—er—something of the sort.”
“No; Naida was a sister; a good deal older and—But we are drifting away from business. Will you accept my proposition to be my—er—adviser in certain matters on which I think you are qualified to give advice, and accept twenty-five thousand dollars a year?”
“Do you mind if I speak frankly?”
“Certainly not. Speak ahead.”
“Are you offering me this—er—salary when, of course, I know I am not worth a da—a cent in business; I mean, isn't it really in exchange for what I may be able to do for you in a—a social way? You know what I mean.”
“No, sir!” said Jerningham, decisively. “Not for an instant! I do not, dear Mr. Wolfe, give an infinitesimal damn for what is called society.”
“But I thought Jimmy Parkhurst told me—”
“I cannot help what Jimmy Parkhurst told you; but I tell you that I like interesting people, and I don't care who or what they are socially. I hate bores—whether they are hod-carriers or dukes. If I can meet people who will instruct me when I want to learn, or amuse me when I want to laugh, I'm satisfied. And I can always meet that kind without anybody's help. You know how it is.” Then he spoke perhaps thirty words in a foreign language that Frank thought must be Hungarian. “You remember your Latin, of course. That's from Petronius.”
“I thought so!” said Frank Wolfe, the pet of the chorus-girls, laughing to himself. Remember his Latin! He? Haw!
“It is from his 'Cena Trimalchionis.' Thearbiter elegantiarumknew what social climbers might be expected to do, though I neither boast of my money nor do I eat with my knife. The Latin of the 'Cena' is difficult—too slangy, full of thesermo plebeius.”
“Yes, it is,” agreed Frank, so gravely that it was all he could do to keep from laughing at himself. This Klondiker was not only a gun-fighter and richer than Croesus, but also a highbrow! Could you beat it?
“Will you accept my offer? Will you try to be my friend?”
“Suppose I find I can't?”
“I'll be sorry. The money is nothing. The inability to make a friend will be my real loss.”
“Well, we might try six months.” He looked inquiringly at Jerningham. “I don't exactly know what you wish me to do.”
“Become my friend! You yourself said some things cannot be done for money by a gentleman; but there is nothing—so long as it is not dishonorable—that a gentleman may not do for a friend. Shall I explain a little more?” He looked anxiously at young Mr. Wolfe.
“Yes—do,” said Frank. It occurred to him that this singular man was in reality proceeding with a curious delicacy.
“Just as soon as you feel you know me I will ask you to help me. Mrs. Deering is now abroad. Mrs. Welles may be of help to us. Mr. Wolfe, now that I am not so poor as I was, I want to find Naida Deering, the only woman I ever loved—and, God help me, the only woman I still love!”
Jerningham rose hastily and walked up and down the room, his face persistently turned away from Wolfe. He walked to a window and stared at the sky a long time. Finally he turned to the young man, who was watching him, and said, with profound conviction:
“Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur!”
Young Mr. Wolfe at first felt like saying, “Yes, indeed!” which would, as a matter of fact, have been a very pat retort. But he weakened and said, “What is that quotation from?”
“Publilius Syrus. Mr. Wolfe, I must find her. And of course I can't employ a private detective. You understand?”
“Yes. That is true,” said Frank.
“In her youth something happened.” Young Mr. Wolfe sat up straight. Here at last was something really vital! Jerningham proceeded: “She was a high-strung girl—pure as gold. Her very innocence made her indiscreet. There was no scandal—no, indeed! But she disappeared. And now, when I have more than enough money for the two of us, I wish to find her. If I don't—of what possible good are my millions? Tell me that!”
Jerningham glared so angrily at young Mr. Wolfe that young Mr. Wolfe felt a slight spasm of concern. The Klondiker had a metallic gray eye that at times menaced like cold steel.
“Excuse me!” said Jerningham, contritely. “My dear boy, do you know what it is to go chasing over the landscape for years and years in the hope of striking it some day so as to be able to go back to your native city and marry the one woman in all the world—particularly when she was one whom her parents, not understanding her nature, practically disowned? In all my prospecting what I wanted was to find Naida's mine—gold by the ton—so I could buy back her place in society!”
There was such determination in Jerningham's voice and look that young Wolfe felt a thrill of admiration and, with it, a distinct masculine liking.
“That's a great story!” he said. “I never heard of your—er—Miss Naida. She never married, I suppose?”
“I don't know! I don't know! She promised to wait for me. The Deerings used to live in Jersey; and living in Jersey when I was a kid wasn't what it is to-day. They were not prominent in society. Of course the Deerings kept it quiet. I think Mrs. Welles may know where her sister is—the sister who is never mentioned by her own flesh and blood! Mrs. Deering, of course, does; but she is abroad somewhere. I must find Naida, I tell you—and—” Jerningham was silent, but Wolfe saw that he was breathing quickly, as though he had been running. Frank never read anything except the afternoon papers, love-letters, and the more romantic of the best-sellers. He now very laboriously constructed a romance of Jemingham's life that became so thrilling it took away his own breath. It made him feel very kindly toward the new Jerningham—everybody feels kindly toward his own creations; and so he said, in a burst of enthusiasm:
“By George! I'll help you!”
And thus was begun the pact between the two men.
On the very, next morning Mr. Jerningham, instead of going to Wall Street as was his custom, went instead to Mrs. Charlton Morris's Agency for Trained Nurses.
An empress—no less—sat at a desk. She was not, however, one of those empresses who change the destiny of nations by their beauty. She had merely an arrogance more than royal.
“I should like to see Mrs. Charlton Morris,” said Jerningham, briskly.
“I am Mrs. Morris,” she said.
You at once perceived that she was even more than imperial. She was a woman of forty, dark, slender, with shell-rimmed, round lenses that gave her that look between a Chinese philosopher and an ancient owl, which those tortoise-shell goggles always do. You also obtained the impression that a completely successful operation had removed Mrs. Morris's sense of humor.
“I should like, if you please—” began Jerningham; but Mrs. Morris interrupted with an effect as of thrusting an icicle into the interior mechanism of a clock.
“I beg your pardon, but we must know with whom we are dealing. What is the name, please?”
“I prefer not to give you mine yet.”
“Oh no, sir; I must know.”
“Suppose I had given you a false one, how would you have been the wiser?”
“Oh, but also you must give me the name of your doctor.”
“He sent me here.”
“And who is he, sir?”
From her voice and her look you gathered that she was in charge of a hospital and was obtaining indispensable clinical data.
“Madam,” said Jemingham, very coldly indeed, “you talk like the census man. Would you also like to know my age, sex, and color?”
“We never,” retorted Mrs. Morris, imperturbably, “do business with strangers.”
“Do you want me to get a letter from the President of the United States? I know him pretty well. Or from my bankers? They are known even in Brooklyn.”
“We are here to supply trained nurses to people whose physicians we know.”
A trained nurse must have unfailing good humor—it is part of her professional requirements. But a purveyor of trained nurses may permit herself much dignity, as though her mission in life consisted, of fitting nurses to cases—the best nurse for the worst case.
“My doctor,” said Jerningham, “is Dr. Jewett.” It was the name of a very great surgeon.
“Ah, yes. Surgical case! Yes! I have Miss Sennett and Miss Audrey. Dr. Jewett knows them very well.”
“Kindly wait a second! I must see them myself. And it is not a surgical case. It is no case at all—yet. Show me the girls!”
“Sir, this is not an intelligence-office; but—”
“I know there is no intelligence in this office. This is merely the anteroom of a hospital and you are the superintendent. By rights you ought to be on the faculty. I am perfectly willing to pay for any loss of time or trouble to which you and the young ladies may be put.”
“Must she be young?” asked Mrs. Morris.
Her voice was at least thirty degrees below zero, for all that there was no devilishness about Mr. Jerningham. He said:
“Yes; and good-looking—not a girl in her teens, but a young woman. I should say, without meaning to be personal, about your age, Mrs. Morris.”
It was plain that Mrs. Morris had almost superhuman control over her facial muscles—she did not beam on him!
“I understand,” she said, in a quite human voice. This man was, after all, neither rude nor blind. “A woman—”
“About thirty—or a little less,” said Jerningham. He looked at Mrs. Morris's face and nodded confirmatively.
“Exactly,” said Mrs. Morris, genially. First impressions are so apt to be unfair!
“I'll be more than satisfied with one of your age and good loo—and—er—appearance “—here the Morris smile irrepressibly made its début—“and also tactful. It is an unusual case. It will necessitate going to Europe.”
“With the patient?”
“For the patient,” said Jerningham, and waited.
“If you will tell me a little bit more about the case—” said Mrs. Morris, encouragingly. She had just taken a good look at the pearl in the scarf of this delightful judge of ages—at the lowest estimation, five thousand dollars!
“My—I—We have reason to believe that a—friend is ill in London. Kidneys. We wish her to take care of herself. She is a woman of fifty-odd. We want a nurse, refined, well-bred, good-looking, and competent—like yourself; so that she could be a companion and at home among wealthy people. You know what I mean.” He paused.
“Perfectly, sir!” said Mrs. Morris, veraciously. Did she not know Mrs. Morris?
“It would be nice to find such a nurse—and, if possible, also one to whom the fact that she is going to visit England, and possibly other countries, may be a sort of compensation for her sudden departure from New York. Of course she will be paid all her traveling and living expenses—first-class all through—and her regular honorarium. I believe it is thirty-five dollars a week. As I am leaving New York myself soon, I'll pay in advance, and will leave instructions with my bankers to honor any of your drafts, Mrs. Morris. It will be a good opportunity for the young lady to know London—and you know how attractive it is—and Paris!”
“Yes, indeed,” acquiesced Mrs. Morris, suddenly looking like Baedeker.
“The young lady—I am sorry you could not go in her place! Yes, I am!—will live at the same hotel with the patient and become acquainted with her—and advise her to see a physician regularly—a specialist in kidney diseases. We think her only daughter ought to be with her. But you can't say anything to either of them, because if the mother doesn't think she is ill the daughter cannot know it, either. We only suspect it is Bright's. You can't afford to wait until you have to go to bed with Bright's—can you?”
“No, indeed!” gravely agreed Mrs. Morris, specialist.
“So now you know what sort of a girl I wish—one who will be there if the trouble should take a sudden turn for the worse; one who will induce the old lady to consult a physician. Do I have to give a preliminary fee?”
“Not at all. Call this afternoon at four and I'll try to have one of my best nurses here. She is—well, quite young; in fact”—with what might be called a desiccated archness—“she is a little younger than I and quite pretty. I call her handsome!”
Some women are so sure of their own position that they do not fear competition.
“Thank you! I'll be here at four, sharp.” And Mr. Jemingham went away without having given his name to Mrs. Morris.
At four o'clock Mr. Jemingham called at Mrs. Charlton Morris's agency and had an interview with Miss Kathryn Keogh. Mrs. Morris gave them the use of her own little private office; Jemingham very impressively waited for Miss Keogh to sit down and then did so himself.
He threw at Miss Keogh one of those inventorying looks that women find so difficult to appear unconscious of, probably because they know their own weak points.
Miss Keogh was beautiful—and when an Irish girl is beautiful she is beautiful in so many ways! She had the wonderful complexion of her race and a mouth carved out of heaven's prize strawberry. Her eyes were an incredibly deep blue when they were not an incredibly deep pansy-purple, and they were abysses of velvet. In the darkness, without seeing them—just by remembering them—you loved those eyes. In the light, when you could see them, you simply worshiped! Her throat was one of those paradoxical affairs, soft and hard, which made you think at one and the same time of marble and rose-leaves—Solomon's tower of ivory, crowned by the glory of golden-brown hair, so fine that you thought of clouds of it!
If you looked at her eyes you suspected, and if you looked at her throat you were certain that you, a respectable married man, had in you the makings of a criminal—the crime being bigamy. Also you would have sworn to her only too cheerfully that she was the only girl you had ever loved. With one look, remember!
Jemingham looked at her with a cold, impersonally appreciative eye, as he might have scrutinized a clock that was both beautiful and costly.
Miss Keogh understood it perfectly. It piqued her, accustomed as she was to instant adoration. Yet it was not entirely displeasing. This man knew as a connoisseur knows—with his head. That he had not permitted the silly heart to disturb the critical faculties was less flattering, of course. It deferred the inevitable triumph and thus would make it sweeter.
“Has Mrs. Morris told you what I should like you to do?” Jemingham's voice was coldly emotionless, and his gray eyes showed frosty lights.
“She has told me what you doubtless told her. But I must confess I am not very clear in my own mind,” answered Miss Keogh.
Her voice was what you would have expected an artistic Providence to give her. It complemented the lips. If you closed your eyes and heard the voice you saw her eyes and felt the heavenly strawberries on your own lips!
Jemingham had not taken his cold eyes off her. He asked as if she were anybody—a woman of forty, for example, “Will you listen to me carefully?”
“Oh yes!”
“I provide transportation, first-class, to London. I pay you thirty-five dollars a week for your services and allow ten dollars a day for hotel expenses, and so on. At the end of the case your contingent fee will depend upon your success. We don't want to skimp—but we are not throwing away money. It may be one hundred or five hundred dollars. But forget all about it.”
“I have—in advance,” said the marvel, calmly.
Jemingham looked at her steadily. She looked back unflinchingly and yet not at all defiantly as a lesser person would.
“If you accept my offer you will go when in London to Thornton's Hotel—an old-fashioned but very select hotel—where you will find a nice room reserved for you; I will cable for it. It will cost you a guinea a day—for the room and table board. You will thus have five dollars a day for cabs and incidentals. In that hotel lives Mrs. Margaret Deering, an elderly American widow, who looks healthy enough. We fear she is not so strong as she looks, and don't want her to be alone. But she will not take hints. I wish you to make friends with her, so that if she should become ill enough to need attention you may see that she gets proper care and induce her to cable to her only daughter.” He stopped and looked at Miss Keogh inquiringly, as if to convince himself that Miss Keogh had understood.
“What,” said Miss Keogh, calmly, “is the rest of it?” Her eyes were very dark. They always seemed to deepen in color when she frowned. She always frowned when she concentrated—all women do, notwithstanding their dread of wrinkles.
Jerningham stared at her. Then he said, “The lady is not insane.”
“Nervous?”
“Not yet!”
“Ah!” Miss Keogh nodded her head. Her color had risen somewhat.
“Is there anything in what I have said so far that makes you unwilling to take this case?” asked Jerningham.
“Nothing—so far,” she said, looking steadily into his cold, gray eyes. She was, of course, Irish.
“Very well. You can save her family much worriment by suggesting to Mrs. Deering that she ought to have a trained nurse in constant attendance.”
“By the name of Keogh?” interjected the most wonderful.
“No. You are supposed to be a young lady with an income of your own. You might explain that you took up trained nursing to help your only brother, a physician.”
“Very well. And—”
“After you meet Mrs. Deering you might make judicious remarks about her health.”
“For example—”
“Well, at breakfast you say: 'You didn't sleep well last night, did you?' If she says no, you can immediately suggest a physician. If she says she did, you say: 'Well, there is something wrong with you! Did you ever have your kidneys examined?' A simple remark in the proper tone of voice sometimes does it—like, 'Whatever in the world is the matter with you, dear Mrs. Deering?' You understand?”
“If you mean that I must suggest to her that she is ailing—”
“Precisely. The idea is not to frighten her to death, my dear young woman with the beautiful but suspicious eyes, but simply to induce her to send for her only daughter, so that afterward the two will not be separated. And the old lady, I may say for the benefit of your still suspicious eyes, is not very rich, though the daughter is. So your imagination need not invent any devilish plot. I think you can accomplish your work in six weeks. For every day under the six weeks you will receive five pounds. That's twenty-five dollars a day. That is intended, Miss Keogh, to make you hurry. But you must be tactful.”
“Make it a fixed sum. You look like a clever man.”
She looked at him challengingly. He stared back, and gradually a look of admiration came into his eyes. He said, with a smile of appreciation:
“You win! You are certainly the most wonderful girl in the world! I'll make it one thousand dollars, win, lose, or draw. But the quicker the cablegram—”
“—grams,” she corrected—“plural. For greater effect at this end!”
“—grams!” he echoed. “And now you must come with me to the bank to get your letter of credit and some English money. I'll pay in advance.”
He rose. Miss Keogh motioned to him to sit down again. He did so, and looked at her alertly. It might have disconcerted some girls—but not the only absolutely perfect one. Not at all!
“There remains something,” she said.
“What?” he queried, sharply.
“You forgot it!” she told him, with one of those utterly maddening smiles of forgiveness with which beautiful women rivet the fetters and make one grateful.
“What? What?” he asked, impatiently.
“Why?” she answered. “That is what! Why?”
Her beautiful head nodded twice with a birdlike gracefulness. Her eyes were very blight—and very dark! Her cheeks were flushed. Her ripe lips, slightly parted, were overpoweringly tempting.
Jerningham stood up again and stared fixedly at her as though he would read miles and miles beyond her wonderful eyes—into the very depths of her soul! He approached her and held out both his hands. After a scarcely perceptible hesitation she placed hers in his. He shook them with profound gravity; then bowed and raised her right to his lips—and kissed it twice. Still holding her hands in his, he said to her, earnestly:
“My dear child, you are the most wonderful woman in all the world. You are simply the last word in utter perfection. I am a millionaire, but not a crook. I am forty, but still strong. I have never been in love with a woman; but I now know I could be. If you ever wish to marry for the ease and comfort that great wealth gives, or if you ever feel like using your wonderful gifts to make a man who has both money and brains become an important personage in the world—just say the word. There is nothing—nothing, do you hear?—that we could not do together, you and I. My name is—” He paused and looked at her as if to make sure again.
“Yes?” she said, in her most heavenly voice. She released her hands, but her eyes never left his. “Jerningham.”
“The Klondike millionaire who—”
“The same!”
“Ah!” said Miss Keogh, calmly, but her flowerlike cheeks were azalea-pink, and her eyes were full of light. She had read thePlanet'sarticles. She did not remember how many million dollars Jerningham was supposed to have; but she did remember how the fairest of the fair had tried—and failed!
“Remember—any time, with or without notice. My offer is open until you accept it or definitely refuse it. Perhaps I never could make you love me; but I know I could love you if I let myself go.”
“You have not answered me,” said Miss Keogh. “Ask again,” he smiled.
“Why?” There was no smile in her eyes.
It made him serious. He answered: