CHAPTER III.
The next morning Tom Cooper came whistling into the bank. His future looked so bright, and did he not have his uncle’s permission to find the little lost girl? He went behind the glass window and found a notice upon his desk to call upon the president in his room, and without delay the lad ran into the rear of the building and tapped lightly upon a door marked, “T. D. Dalton.”
“You wished to see me, sir,” and then he stopped, for the grave face before him gave his heart a chill.
“Yes, lad; sit down.”
Tom Cooper slid into the chair, a strange feeling coming over him.
“Have you done anything to offend Mr. Benson?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Perfectly.”
“Something has happened then, for I have this in the morning mail.”
Tom took the paper mechanically in his fingers, and there before him was an order to take his position from him, and only yesterday his benefactor had been so pleasant. While he held the letter in his hand he could not help but think that George Benson had been instrumental in his downfall.
He went from the bank to the mansion, only to find that he was barred from there, and Mr. Benson refused to see him, and as he left the steps for the last time in his life a face watched him from an upper window.
“So you are going to throw over my scheme, are you, Tom Cooper? Well, I don’t think so. Now go and starve with my pretty cousin, and do not forget that when you hold a good position it might slip from your fingers before you are aware of it.”
From that day on Tom Cooper could find nothing to do, and he haunted the places of his friends until at last one day he met an old chum upon the street.
“Nothing yet, Cooper?” asked the stranger.
“No, and I am thinking of going to sea for a while. I can take a position and go around the world, and be gone three months, and maybe by that time something will open for me.”
“Sorry,” sympathized the other, “for you had the best prospects of any of the fellows graduating in your class.”
“Well, I haven’t now,” bitterly answered Cooper, “and good-bye, old fellow. When I return I’ll let you know my success.”
After this it was smooth sailing for George Benson. Tom out of the way, and his cousin not to be found, and his uncle sick in bed afflicted with paralysis.
What more could a man want than a fortune at his fingers’ end, and nothing in the way but an old man, with one foot in the grave, and the doctor gave but little hope of his living long.
One morning George Benson had gone out when the doctor arrived, and the good man ran up the stairs and looked into the old man’s chamber without being announced.
There were tears upon the wrinkled face.
“Why, Mr. Benson, are you in such pain?” said the doctor in great sympathy.
“No.”
“Then what are you weeping for? Tell me; maybe I can help you.”
“No one can do that, Johnson,” replied the millionaire; “I am weeping for my daughter.”
“Your daughter? I did not know that you had one.”
“Oh, yes I have, but I do not know where. She was a good little girl, but married against my will, and for a time I returned all of her letters, and she has since then refused to forgive me.”
“Well, well; this is interesting. Tell me all about it.”
It eased the poor, throbbing heart to tell the painful story.
“And your child has refused to answer you in any way?”
“Yes.”
“You are sure that she got the message?”
The old man looked into his physician’s eyes, and remembered that Tom Cooper had asked that same question.
“As sure as a man can be who has to confide his affairs to a third party.”
“And that party your nephew?”
“Yes.”
“Would you think me impertinent, my dear Mr. Benson, if I should say that I believe your daughter has never received your letters, and another thing I would ask you: How have you made your will?”
“In my nephew’s favor.”
“And do you think that right to your daughter? What if she never received your letters, or if she had died and left a child?”
“She had a little baby, I know,” sadly replied the old man.
“Then it seems a shame that while you have anown child that you should not at least have her provided for. Think of it, she may be in distress and not know that you have wanted her.”
The old man started up in bed and held out his feeble hand and said:
“Doctor, will you help me? Oh, I beg of you to make it possible for my child to again look into my face, and I shall bless you forever.”
“Then, one thing,” gravely replied the physician, “is that you should make another will immediately, and you should keep the fact from your nephew until after it is over.”
“Will you send for my lawyer now?” tremblingly asked the rich man.
“I want you to witness my will, and swear that I am in my right mind.”
So the telephone was brought into use, and the family lawyer was hurried into the mansion, and for some hours the three men were closeted together, and a servant was brought into the room to witness the will.
They were still there when George Benson came home. He heard that the doctor was stillwith his uncle, but no one said anything about a lawyer.
“I’ll wait down here until he comes down,” muttered the young man to himself. “I hate to hear uncle complain of his aches and pains, and he is such a bore. I shall be glad when he is dead.”
But he knew not that in that upper chamber a deed was being enacted which would place him upon the pauper list as far as money was concerned.
“I wish you would stay here with me,” said the rich man to the lawyer, “until my nephew returns, and tell him of the change in my will, and I do not think he will mind it much, for he always pretended to care a great deal for his cousin.”
The lawyer smiled sarcastically and answered.
“I shall not leave you, Mr. Benson, and what shall I do with this old will?”
“Give it to me,” responded the rich man, and he took the document in his fingers, and having split it in two asked that it should be burned before his eyes.
After accomplishing this the lawyer sat down and waited, and in the meantime the doctor met the nephew in the hall, and, shaking hands, replied that the invalid was somewhat better.
“He wants to be kept quiet, that is all,” replied the doctor.
“He can have all the quiet he wants, for all of me,” responded the young man with a shrug of his shoulders; “I am not in love with the air of a sick chamber.”
“I have observed that,” dryly replied the doctor.
“Well—well—would you mind if I were to ask a plain question, doctor?” and as the medical man inclined his head, he proceeded with little show of embarrassment:
“You see, my uncle will always be an invalid, will he not?”
“Yes.”
“And can you tell approximately how long this lingering disease will last?”
“Then I understand that you want to know how soon your uncle is going to die?”
George blushed at the plain words.
“Well, not exactly that, but when I come to think, yes, doctor, that is it. Will he live long?”
“He may live for some years, but not likely. Certainly not if he is worried in any way.”
“Then he will live forever if all he needs is quiet and lack of worry, as I have taken every burden from him.”
The doctor wondered what this suave young fellow would say when he heard that the will had been changed and he had been forgotten.
“He will probably live as long as you want him to, Mr. Benson,” said the doctor, and then he went down the steps and could but think of the little daughter married to a soldier, and pondered upon the fact that she would be worth a fortune when her father should close his eyes in death.
George Benson ran up the stairs to his uncle’s room, but he did not know that the family lawyer was there.
“Good afternoon,” said he, holding out his hand, the truth never once coming across his mind.
“How are you, uncle?” said he, walking up to the bed.
“Oh, so, so, boy,” replied the sick man. “I have done something which I hope you will think is just. I have made a new will leaving Annie my fortune.”
“What?”
The cry in the one word was enough to startle each man. The aged invalid raised on his elbow, and looked into the contorted face. The lawyer was thankful that he had stayed, for he believed and told the doctor afterward that he thought George Benson would have killed his uncle if he had not been there.
Without noticing the attorney, he broke out:
“How dare you tell me that? Do you think that I am going to allow you to do anything like that? What did I get rid of that young rascal, Tom Cooper, for, and many others who havestood in my way? You need not think that I am going to let you cut me off without a penny.”
“You’ll let me do what I wish with my money, my own money,” muttered the sick man. “What business is it of yours what I do? You would have had none of it if I had had my child with me.”
George Benson’s face took upon it a terrible expression.
“Oh, you think you are going to see Annie, do you? Well, know the truth, and if it kills you it serves you right, for Annie was here only the other day, begging to see you, and I sent her away starving with her child. She will not see you again, for a thinner girl never applied for alms to any one before.”
“Shame, shame,” cried the lawyer, as the old man toppled back in his bed and covered his face with his hands. “Shame on a man who would torment a dying father. You are a brute, Benson, and I am glad you have been foiled.”
The younger man’s passion had spent itself, and George realized that he had made a badbreak; that he had lost his temper and forgotten that he might undo the deed done that day. He turned upon his heel and ran out of the room.
“I do not want to be left alone,” moaned Mr. Benson. “There is no telling what he might do to me in that temper, and to think that my little girl has been here, maybe time and time again, and I did not know it. Oh, my good friend, you must help me find her.”
The lawyer, promising and saying that he would leave instructions with Mr. Benson’s valet and that he would take the new will with him, for fear it would be tampered with, went away.
After that everything known to science and law was done to bring the old man and his daughter together. The doctor gave tonics, and the lawyer advertised for the girl.
George Benson bitterly regretted his rash speech, for he had opened avenues whereby the chance of his regaining his old position was gone.
One day he stole into the library and looked hastily about.
“I’ve got to have money, and I might as welltake these diamonds,” he said to himself. “There is no telling how soon I shall be ordered from the mansion. What tommy rot all this bustle is, for they won’t find the girl—or, at least, I hope they won’t.”
Saying this, he slipped his fingers into a private panel in the wall and pulled out a small box and looked greedily at the contents.
“Abe Nathans will give me at least a thousand on these, and let me out of some of the worry he has given me before.”
Out of the room he went slyly, and hid the box in his pocket.
“I am not going to be without money,” said he as he was again in his room safely with the trinkets. “If the old man doesn’t realize that I am to have a certain amount, then I will take it myself.”
Three months had elapsed since Tom Cooper had left the big bank, and nothing had been heard of him, save that he had gone to sea. There were many times the old man felt that he had wrongedthe boy in sending him away without a word of explanation, but his heart was so full of finding Annie that he had no place for even Tom, and the doctor and lawyer had it so arranged that George could not see his uncle at all. If the old man had only known the truth about his young ward he would have inserted an advertisement for him in the paper.
But not knowing, Tom Cooper was allowed to come into the city without a friend to meet him, and his boat landed one evening just at dusk, and he had not yet received his month’s pay.
So, thinking that he needed a little money, he rolled up a suit of clothes and walked toward the nearest pawn shop.
Before he had done this another young man had gone in the same direction.
He opened the door, the bell sounding through the place.
“Are you here, Abe?” shouted he.
“Comin’, comin’,” was the grunted answer. “Oh, so it is you, Mr. Benson. I hope you don’t want more money.”
“That’s just what I do want,” went on George Benson, “and I brought you the family jewels, though I had a darned hard job to get them. If I had never spied upon the old man I would not have known where they were. Lucky for me.”
“Yes, very lucky, my dear Mr. Benson,” answered the Jew, rubbing his white hands together, “for if you had not had them I should have given you no more.”
“Oh, don’t ring those old changes on me,” stuttered George, “for you know you would give me money if I demanded it.”
“No, sir, no more; no more.”
“Well, well, you’ve got the jewels, so don’t grumble; don’t grumble.”
He held out the box, and the old man took the jewel box greedily in his hands.
“Ah, they are beauties. I well remember them. I was the one who got them for your uncle, and he gave them to his wife Helen, and she was a beauty. Then his daughter got them in her turn, and I suppose you do not hear anything of the girl?”
“No, and I hope to heaven that she is dead. You see in that case I will get the money anyhow.”
“Of course you will,” replied the Jew. “Ain’t your uncle given you all of it before now? You told me he had made a will remembering you and you only.”
“That’s true,” bitterly replied the other; “that’s true, but he did not become paralyzed in his hands, did he? He could change it any time he wanted to.”
“So he could,” responded the Jew, thoughtfully; “but the question is, did he?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Then how am I going to get my money?” asked the other.
“Oh, Abe, for the love of heaven, don’t be so selfish. If I don’t get it then you won’t, but by putting our heads together, I am sure we can circumvent this lawyer and doctor who have seen fit to put their noses in other people’s business, and I’ll show them that it is not safe to meddle with fire if they don’t want to get burned.”