"Won't that be a windfall though if he takes those houses!" he cried. "Your commission will be at least two thousand dollars!"
There was no tinge of enthusiasm in Rogers's pale cheeks. He did not speak at once, and when he did he ignored David's exclamations.
"Did you notice, Aldrich," he said in a strained voice, "that I avoided taking his hand when he offered it at first and again when we parted?"
"No. Why?"
"I was afraid."
"Afraid?" repeated David, puzzled. "What of?"
"I shook hands with Bill Halpin—and you know what he found out."
David stepped nearer to Rogers, and saw in his eyes the look of hunted fear.
"I don't understand," he said slowly.
"Mr. Harris may be abona-fidedealer in real estate—but fifteen years ago he was one of the cleverest detectives on the New York police force. I recognised him the instant I saw him. He helped arrest me once."
David sank slowly to a chair. "You don't say so!" he ejaculated. He stared for several moments at Rogers's thin face, on which he could now see the exhaustion of the straining interview. "Do you think he can possibly be on your trail?—and if so, what for?"
"What for, I don't know. But didn't you notice how he was constantly studying me?—how he slipped in a question about what I used to do?—how he tried to learn the names of some of my friends, whom he might quiz about me? He's clever."
"But do you think he found out anything?"
"I don't think he did. I was watching him closer than he was watching me, for any least sign of recognition. I didn't see any. But you know I can't help fearing, Aldrich! I can't help fearing!"
David tried to drive the strained, hunted look from Rogers's face by saying that there was hardly any possibility of his identity being discovered, and no apparent motive for it being used against him even if found out. David succeeded in bringing back his own confidence, and at length drew from Rogers the admission, "Well, maybe you're right."
The next morning when David glanced at the envelopes the postman had handed him he saw that one letter was from Mr. Jordon. He was ripping it open eagerly when he noticed the envelope beneath it bore the handwriting of Helen Chambers. He dropped Jordon's letter and excitedly opened the other. Its cordiality set him afire. She was just back in town for the winter, she wrote, and the following afternoon she would be at St. Christopher's. Would he care to come to meet her at about four for an hour's walk?
Would he! He had not seen her since the early summer—and how he had hungered to see her, speak with her, feel her near presence! He walked across the office, in which he was alone, half a dozen times before he took up the letter of Mr. Jordon. Mr. Jordon asked that Mr. Rogers and his associates be at the office of Mr. Chambers at three o'clock that afternoon. He hoped that they would be able to reach an agreement on terms and close the matter up.
David, the letter in his hand, was rushing into the living room to read the news to Rogers, when he saw, through the open hall-door, the ample form of the Mayor passing out. He captured the Mayor and led him in to the side of the couch on which Rogers was lying.
"Listen to this, will you!" David cried, and excitedly read the letter. "Did you take in that sentence at the last?—'I hope that we will at length be able to agree on terms.' Now what do you think that means?"
"It means," said the Mayor, explosively, "that they've woke up and see that you ain't never goin' to come down to them, they've got to come up to you! It means that you've won!"
Rogers's sunken eyes flamed, and he stood up. "It seems so!" he breathed.
They all seized hands. "This don't mean much to me personally, for I've only got a little in it," said the Mayor, "but I certainly have the glad feeling on your account, Rogers. You can clear right out to a land where the air was made for breathin' purposes. Here in New York the air ain't good for much except fillin' in lots. Yes sir, Rogers, I'm certainly glad!"
They talked on excitedly, as men do who are but a step from success. David was glad, too, on Rogers's account, for he saw afresh how thinly disease had sculptured his cheeks and nose, and how deeply it had chiselled about the eyeballs, and to what a slender shaft it had carved the neck. Also he was ablaze with gladness on his own account. Success, but a few hours off, meant the partial clearing of his name. His mind exulted over the details of the scene to-morrow afternoon when he would tell Helen Chambers he had the means to pay his debt to St. Christopher's.
In the course of the morning Mr. Harris dropped in. He asked for Rogers, but David said that Rogers was out. For half an hour the detective talked about the houses in which he was interested, now and then slipping in a guileless question about Rogers. But David was on his guard; he matched his wits against Mr. Harris's, and when at length the detective went away David was certain he was no wiser than when he came.
At half past two the Mayor thrust his head into the office and, seeing Kate was there, beckoned David into the hall. The Mayor had never before been at elbows with a real money king, so for him the meeting was a new experience; and despite his ire toward Mr. Chambers he was prompted to make his appearance before royalty in fitting court costume.
"D'you think I look all right?" he asked, anxiously.
David surveyed the Mayor's bulky figure. There was a silk hat with not a single hair in disarray, a long light overcoat, a pair of fresh gloves that were staringly tan, and the most gorgeous vest in the Mayor's closet. David could have wished that the whole scheme of dress had been pitched in a lower key, but he criticised nothing but the vest.
"If that's all you kick about, then I'm O. K.," the Mayor said complacently, smoothing a yellow glove over the silken pinks. "You've give me some good points, but when it comes to vests, friend—well, you ain't got no real taste for vests."
He walked to the door and looked out. "There comes our carriage," he called. "Get Rogers and we'll be movin'."
"Carriage!" cried David.
"Sure. D'you think we're goin' to let Chambers and his bunch think we're a lot o' cheapskates? Not much. We're goin' to do this thing proper."
"But Mr. Chambers himself uses the street cars."
"Well, he can afford to," the Mayor returned with equanimity. "We can't."
When David walked with Rogers to the carriage he would not have been surprised had the Mayor handed them for their lapels a bunch of roses knotted with ribbon. They settled back against the cushions and suspense silenced them—and with hardly a word they rumbled over to Broadway, down into Wall Street and up before Mr. Chambers's office.
As they stepped from the carriage, Rogers's thin fingers gripped David's hand like taut cords. Clasp, face, and the feverish fire in his eyes told David how great was the strain Rogers bore. This was the climax of his life.
David returned the pressure of his hand. "It'll be all right," he whispered reassuringly.
They went up the broad steps into a tiled hallway, and turned to their right to the entrance of the private banking house of Alexander Chambers & Co. An erect, liveried negro, whose stiffly formal manners suggested a spring within him, admitted them into a great light room, in which, behind a partition of glass and bronze grating that half reached the ceiling, sat scores of men working swiftly without appearance of speed. A word and a lifted finger from the black automaton directed them to the far end of the room. Here a man with the bearing of a statesman, Mr. Chambers's doorkeeper, bowed them into three leather-seated chairs, and carried their names into Mr. Chambers's private secretary.
They did not speak; the nearness of the climax awed even the Mayor. And to add to the suspense throbbing within him, David began to wonder how he would be greeted by Mr. Chambers, whom he had not seen since his ante-prison days.
Almost at once the doorkeeper reappeared, and with the subdued air that characterised the place, led them into a large office. The keen-faced secretary rose from a desk, ushered them through a door and into another office. At the great desk in the center of the room were Mr. Chambers and Mr. Jordon.
The two men rose, and David's wonder as to how Mr. Chambers would receive him was at once relieved. An inclination of the head and a quiet, "Glad to see you, Mr. Aldrich"—that was all; nothing in his impassive face and manner to suggest that he remembered the prison-gap in David's life.
The Mayor had announced during the carriage drive that if "Chambers holds out his hand to me to be shook, I won't see nothin' but the ceilin'." But there was no opportunity thus to humiliate Mr. Chambers, for his response to the introduction was but a brief nod. So the Mayor could only declare his independence by opening the front of his overcoat, like a pair of doors, upon his brilliant waistcoat, and by gazing into Mr. Chambers's face with aggressive hauteur.
Mr. Jordon shook hands all around. "Well, I hope we'll settle things up to-day," he said. As to how things were going to be settled, he had not the slightest doubt. He was certain the afternoon would force Mr. Chambers to his way of thinking. A few minutes before Mr. Chambers had asked his opinion as to the result of the conference, and he had said, "They'll not give in; we've got to pay what they ask." Mr. Chambers had said nothing—which had not surprised him, for he knew it was instinctive with Mr. Chambers, even in such small matters as this, to let the completed act announce his purpose.
They all sat down, David, Rogers, and the Mayor in three leather-bottomed chairs which stood in front and to the right of Mr. Chambers's desk. To the left, in a row, were half a dozen other chairs. Mr. Chambers leaned slightly forward and folded his hands on his desk's plate-glass top.
"Let us go straight to the point of this matter," he began, addressing Rogers, who sat between David and the Mayor. "Mr. Jordon tells me you refuse to consider any sum less than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the land you control. Is that correct?"
"It is."
David's shoulder against Rogers told him that Rogers's lean frame was as rigid as the chair that held it.
"This then is your ultimatum?"
"It is."
"Just as I told you," nodded Mr. Jordon, who was at Mr. Chambers's elbow.
Mr. Chambers pressed a button beneath the desk and the door opened before his secretary.
"Please show in the others," he requested quietly.
The secretary bowed and the door closed.
"The others?" breathed Rogers; and he and David and the Mayor looked at each other.
"The others!" exclaimed Mr. Jordon. "What others?"
Mr. Chambers sat silent, with unchanged face. The next instant the door, opening, answered the question. Into the room hesitantly filed the five owners of the land Rogers controlled. Rogers, David, and the Mayor, and also Mr. Jordon, rose in astonishment. The five stopped and stared at Rogers's party; plainly the surprise was mutual.
Mr. Chambers, remaining in his seat, motioned the new-comers to the chairs at the left of his desk. "Be seated, gentlemen."
"What's this mean?" David asked, catching Rogers's arm.
Rogers turned toward him, and for an instant David felt he was gazing into the abyss of fear. Then the arm he held tightened and Rogers looked toward his five clients and nodded.
"Good afternoon. I'm glad to see you," he said in an even tone.
They sat down again, and Rogers's eyes fastened on the finely wrinkled face of Mr. Chambers—as did every other pair of eyes in the room. They vainly strove to read the purpose behind that inscrutable countenance. The purpose was simple enough. By bringing together the two elements of Rogers's crowd, each ignorant that the other was to be present, unprepared with common replies, he had thought he might possibly play them against each other in a way to bring them to his price; and if not, he would at least have them all together, and so be able to make an immediate settlement upon their terms. He had had a faint hope that Mr. Hawkins might discover something significant, but a note from the detective during the morning had contained no single new fact.
Mr. Chambers did not give the surprised group time to readjust itself. "I have called together all parties interested in this transaction in order that we may more effectively reach an agreement, and in the hope that we may obviate the necessity for future meetings."
He fastened his gray eyes upon the five owners, who were looking very much at a loss, and spoke coldly, calmly, as though his decision were unchangeable and his words immutable facts. "First I desire to say that you gentlemen and your agent have a very inflated idea of the value of your property. The price is one we cannot, and will not, pay. If you want to take what we offer, very well. If not, I assure you that we shall run no streets, water-mains, sewers or gas pipes near your tract. We shall leave the neighbourhood of your property entirely unimproved. You will recall that our land lies between yours and the car line; we shall forbid anybody living on your land crossing our land. Nobody else is going to buy your land under these conditions. You can sell it only to us."
The owners, struck while off guard, were dazed; and David, Rogers, and the Mayor, who had expected the exact opposite of this talk, were completely taken back.
The cold, dominant voice went on. "Such being the situation, does it not seem better to accept our price, which is a fair price, than to have your land made unsaleable, to have your investment tied up for years to come?"
He centered his personality upon the weakest of the five. "I'm sure you think so, do you not?"
The man blinked—then nodded his head.
"But—" began Rogers.
"And you, I'm sure you think so," Mr. Chambers demanded of another owner.
"Ye-e-s," said the man.
This was child's play to Mr. Chambers, who had browbeaten and overpowered even the directors of great corporations. He tried to rush his plan through, before the men could recover.
"It is plain you are all agreed. You see how your clients stand, Mr. Rogers. It certainly seems the only course to settle this matter at once upon the basis of our offer, which seems to them fair and just."
Rogers saw that awe of the great financier and his intimidating statments had fairly stampeded his clients. Fighting down the momentary sense of defeat, and not heeding Mr. Chambers's words to him, he fixed his great burning eyes on the five men.
"Gentlemen!" he said desperately. They shifted their gaze from Mr. Chambers to him. "Gentlemen, I want to assure you that if we hold out we will get our own price. I happen to know they've just bought a piece of ground beyond ours; without ours it will be worthless to them. They've got to have our land! You understand? Simply got to have it!"
The Mayor lifted an emphatic yellow hand toward the owners. "Of course they have! And don't you listen to no bluffin'."
Rogers continued to talk for several minutes; and gradually confidence and determination came into the manner of the five. At the end Rogers turned to Mr. Chambers.
"We shall stand out for our price," he said firmly.
Mr. Chambers had wrecked railroads in order to buy them in at a lower rate, but the similar procedure which he had threatened did not seem worth while here. He had tried his plan, which he had known had only a chance of success, and it had failed. There was but only one thing to do—to yield.
He was thoughtful for several moments. "If we should refuse your terms, we of course in the end would buy your land at our own price. But it occurs to me that the bother and extra cost of improving the land and opening it up at a later date, might be as much as the difference between your price and ours. What do you think, Mr. Jordon?"
"There's much in what you say," returned the general manager, guardedly.
Rogers, David, and the Mayor exchanged quick, triumphant glances. They had won.
Mr. Chambers again relapsed into his appearance of thoughtfulness, and they all sat waiting for him to speak. David laid his hand on Rogers's and pressed it exultantly.
While Mr. Chambers still sat thus, the office door opened and his secretary apologetically tiptoed across the room with a letter in his hand.
"I told Mr. Hawkins you were engaged, but he insisted that this was important," the secretary said to Mr. Chambers, and withdrew.
Mr. Chambers read the note, thought a moment, slowly folded the sheet, then raised his eyes.
"Before going further, there is one point—of no importance, I dare say it will prove to be—that it might be well for us to touch upon." He centered his calm gaze upon the five owners. "Since you have intrusted Mr. Rogers with the management of your property I take it that he has your fullest confidence?"
"Ye-es," said one hesitatingly, and the others followed with the same word.
"Your confidence, of course, is founded on thorough acquaintance?"
David glanced from the impassive Mr. Chambers to Rogers. The mask of control had fallen from his face. He was leaning forward, his whole being at pause, his face a climax of fear and suspense.
A succession of slow "Yes-es" came from the owners.
"Then of course," Mr. Chambers went on in his composed voice, "you are perfectly aware that Mr. Rogers is a man with a long criminal career."
A shiver ran through Rogers; he stiffened, grew yet whiter. There was a moment of blankest silence. Then the Mayor sprang up, his face purpling.
"It's an infernal lie!" he shouted.
Consternation struggled on the faces of the five; they looked from the rigid, white figure of Rogers to the calm face of Mr. Chambers.
"It isn't so," declared one tremulously.
"We will leave the question to Mr. Rogers," said Mr. Chambers's unexcitable voice, and he pivoted in his chair so that his steady eyes pointed upon Rogers. "If Mr. Rogers is not 'Red Thorpe,' the one time notorious safe-blower, with scores of burglaries and three terms in the penitentiary against him, let him say so. However, before he denies it, I shall tell him that I have all the police data necessary for his identification. Now, Mr. Rogers."
Their gaze on Rogers's face, all waited for him to speak—Jordon, astounded, the five pale with the fear of loss, the Mayor glowering, David with a sense that supreme ruin was crushing upon them.
At length Rogers's lips moved. "It is true," he whispered.
"What if it is?" roared the Mayor at Mr. Chambers. "There's nothin' agin him now!"
"I'm making no charges against him," returned Mr. Chambers. "This is merely some information it seemed his clients might be interested in having."
All eyes again turned upon Rogers. He came slowly to his feet, walked to Mr. Chambers's desk, leaned his hands upon it and directed his large burning eyes down into Mr. Chambers's face.
"I have done many bad things, yes," he said in a voice, low, flame-hot, "but nothing as bad as you have just done. You have stolen more this minute than I have stolen in my lifetime."
He held his eyes, blazing with accusation, upon Mr. Chambers's imperturbable face for several moments, then looked about on the five owners. There was a chance, a bare chance, they might not turn against him.
"Yes, I am Red Thorpe," he said in a vibrant voice that became more and more appealing with every word. "I knew it would be found out—some day. There are some things I always told myself I'd say to the world when this day came. But to you I want to say only this: For ten years I've been honesty itself. I've been honest with you—you know it. If you stand by me, I'll do everything I've promised."
He stood rigid, awaiting their verdict. There was a strained silence. The five looked dazedly at Rogers, at one another, completely at a loss.
"If the gentlemen desire to entrust their affairs to a most dangerous criminal, one who might defraud them of everything, that is their privilege," put in Mr. Chambers quietly.
Their bewilderment was gone; Mr. Chambers's words had roused their property instinct. A murmuring rose among them.
David and the Mayor sprang up, but Rogers raised a hand and they remained beside their chairs. A flame began to burn in his white cheeks, in his deep eyes.
"I knew this day was coming," he said in a low voice, that had a wild bitter ring of challenge. "Instead of you, you weaklings"—he looked at the five—"and you, you mere soulless Acquisition"—his eyes blazed at Mr. Chambers—"I wish I had the world before me. I'd like to tell it what a vast fool it is in its treatment of such as me—how eyeless and brainless and soulless! Oh, what a fool!... But the world's not here."
He was silent for a moment. "And why am I at an end?—why?" His answer rang through the room with a passionate resentment, with an agony of loss. "Because the world did not care to step in and point the right way to me. To have saved me would have been so easy! I was worth saving! I had brains—there was a man in me. Whose fault is it that I am now at the end?—a miserable remnant of a man! The world's. I was robbed of my chance in life—robbed, yes sir, robbed!—and I could have made it a splendid life! Ah, how I've wanted to make it a splendid life. And the world—the world that robbed me!—that world calls me criminal. And I must pay the penalty, and the penalty is—what you see! Oh, my God!"
For ten years Rogers had cherished the purpose of accusing the world on the day of his exposure—but now his loss was so overwhelming, speech to these people was so utterly useless, strength was so little, that he could say no more—could only, leaning against the desk, gaze in hatred and despair at Mr. Chambers and the owners. The faces of the five were pale and blank. There was a trace of sympathy in Mr. Jordon's face, and a momentary change in Mr. Chambers's that indicated—who knows what?
David sprang to Mr. Chambers's desk, his soul on fire.
"This, sir, is a damned inhuman outrage!" he flung down into the older man's face.
"It might also have been of interest to Mr. Rogers's clients," Mr. Chambers returned calmly, "to have known the record of Mr. Rogers's associate."
David's wrath had no time to fashion a retort, for the Mayor, at his side, hammered the desk with a great yellow-gloved fist. "That's what it is!" he shouted. "It's a low, dirty, murdering trick!"
"I merely acquainted his clients with his record—which they have a right to know."
A huge sarcastic laugh burst from the Mayor, and he pushed his face down into Mr. Chambers's.
"You," he roared, "you, when you're in a deal, you always show your clientsyour record, don't you!"
Rogers, out of whose cheeks the fire had gone, leaving them an ashen gray, tugged at their sleeves.
"It's no use!—let's go!" he begged, chokingly. "Quick!"
David's eyes blazed down upon Mr. Chambers. "Yes, let's leave the infernal thief!"
He took one of Rogers's arms, the Mayor, shaking a huge fist in Mr. Chambers's face, took the other, and they made for the door. Mr. Chambers, still seated, watched Rogers's thin figure, head pitched forward and sunken between his shoulders, pass out of the office. Brushing people out of his way had become the order of his life, and he did it impersonally, without malice, as a machine might have done it. And Rogers was one of the most insignificant he had ever brushed aside.
"Mr. Rogers, as of course you are aware, has not the rights of a citizen," Mr. Chambers said to the five. "Consequently his agreement with you is invalid; he can not hold you to it. If you will kindly wait in the next room a moment, Mr. Jordon will speak with you."
After they had filed out he remarked to Jordon: "They are stampeded. They will come to your terms. I leave them in your hands."
He touched the button on his desk and his secretary appeared. "If Senator Speed has come," he said, "ask him to step in."
When David and Rogers were home again, and the Mayor and his profanity had gone, there was a long silence during which both sat motionless. David searched his mind for some word of hope for Rogers, who was a collapsed bundle in a Morris chair, gazing through the window into the dusky air-shaft.
At length he bent before Rogers and took his hand. "We'll go to some new place together, and start all over again," he said.
Rogers turned his face—the only part of him that the deepening twilight had not blotted out. It seemed a bodyless face—the mask of hopelessness.
"It's no use—I'm all in," he whispered. "Even if I had the courage to make another fight, there's no strength."
He was silent for several moments. Then a low moan broke from him. "Ten years!" he whispered. "And this is the end!"
The morning light that sunk down the deep air-shaft and directed its dimmed gaze through the window, saw Rogers lying dressed on the couch and David sitting with sunken head at the window, a sleepless night on both their faces. There had been little talk during the crawling hours, save when the Mayor had dropped in near midnight and set walls and furniture trembling with his deep chest-notes of profanity. Even Tom, awed by the overwhelming disaster, moved noiselessly about and spoke only a few whispered monosyllables. The blow was too heavy to be talked of—too heavy for them to think of what should next be done.
Once, however, David, whose personal loss was almost forgotten in his sympathy for Rogers, had spoken of the future. "There is no future," Rogers had said. "In a few days the owners of my buildings will hear about me. They will take the agency from me. I have a few hundred dollars. That will soon go. And then—?"
The dinginess in the light began to settle like the sediment of a clearing liquid, and the sense that the sun must be breakfast-high worked slowly to the seat of David's will. He rose, quietly set a few things in order, Rogers's eyes following him about, then put on his hat with the purpose of going to the Pan-American for his breakfast and to bring Rogers's.
As he started for the door Rogers reached forth his hand. "I'm glad you found out about me, Aldrich," he said. "I can never tell you how much you've meant to me during the last eight months, and how much you mean to me now."
David grasped the hand and looked down into the despairing eyes. "I'm glad," he said, simply.
After a moment Rogers's weak grip relaxed and he turned away his face with a sigh. David went softly out.
While David was at breakfast—his appetite shrunk from it—the Mayor sat down at his table, which had the privacy of an empty corner. "By the way," the Mayor whispered, "d'you have any idea yet how Chambers found out?"
"No more than yesterday. We told you of the call of that detective. He must have been from Chambers, and he must have made the discovery. But how, we don't know."
"Poor Rogers!" The Mayor shook his head sadly, thoughtfully. His face began slowly to redden and his eyes to flash. He thrust out a big fist. "Friend, I don't believe in fightin'—but say, I'd give five years to flatten the face that belongs to Mr. Chambers!"
David had to smile at the idea of the Mayor and Mr. Chambers engaged in fisticuffs. "It's sad, but men like Mr. Chambers are beyond the reach of justice."
The Mayor dropped his belligerent attitude. "Oh, I don't know. Mebbe they can't be reached with fists, or law—but there's other ways. And I'd like to jab him any old way. I've been thinkin' about that daughter o' his. Wouldn't I like to tell her a few things about her dad!"
The Mayor swayed away in response to a summons from the kitchen, and a few minutes later David entered his room bearing in a basket Rogers's prescribed milk and soft-boiled eggs. Rogers drank down the eggs, which David had stirred to a yellow liquid, and after them the milk, and then with a gasp of relief sank back upon the couch. As David was clearing up after the breakfast he heard some one—Kate he guessed—enter the office, and presently there was a rap on the door between the two rooms. David opened the door and found, as he had expected, Kate Morgan. She wore her coat and hat, just as she had come from the street. On her face was a strange, compressed look, and her eyes were red-lidded.
"Can I come in?" she asked with tremulous abruptness.
"Please do," said David.
She entered and moved to the foot of the couch where she could look down on Rogers. "I've come to say something—and to say good-bye," she announced.
"Say good-bye?" Rogers sat up. "Good-bye? Why? Oh, you have a new position?"
"No. I've no right to be here. You won't want me when you know. So I'm going."
Her face tightened with the effort of holding down sobs. The two men looked at her in wonderment, waiting.
"You know how broke up I was when you told me about yesterday afternoon," she went on, "and how mad I was at Mr. Chambers. And then to find out what I have!... Here's what I've come to tell you. Yesterday afternoon and last night my father was drinking a great deal. I wondered where he got the money. This morning I went through his clothes while he was asleep; there were several dollars. I asked him about it. He lied to me, of course. But I got the truth out of him in the end.
"You remember that detective you told me about last night. When he left here yesterday about noon he happened to see my father sweeping off the sidewalk. He began to talk to my father, got my father to drinking, gave him some money. And after a while my father—he'd learned it somehow—he told the detective—he told him you were Red Thorpe."
The two men were silent a moment, looking at the strained face down which tears were now running.
"So that's how it happened!" Rogers breathed.
"Yes—my father told!" The tremor in her voice had grown to sharp sobs—of shame, agony, and wrath. "My father brought all this on you. And it's all because of me. If you both hadn't tried to be good to me, my father would not have been here and everything would have turned out right. It's all because of me!—all my fault!—don't you see? I know you'll both hate me now. I know you'll want me to go away. Well—I'm going. But I want to tell you how sorry I am—how sorry!... Good-bye."
David wanted to speak to her, but this was Rogers's affair rather than his.
She swept them both with her brimming eyes. "Good-bye," she said again, and turned to the door.
"Miss Morgan!" called Rogers.
She paused and looked at him.
"Don't go yet."
He rose and came to her with outstretched hand. "It wasn't your fault."
She stared dazedly at him. "You're ruined—you told me so last night, and I did it. Yes, I did it."
"No. You couldn't help it. You mustn't go at all."
She took his hand slowly, in astonishment. "Oughtn't I to go?" she quavered.
"You must stay and help bear it," he said.
She looked steadfastly into his eyes. "You're mighty good to me," she breathed in a dry whisper. And then a sob broke from her, and turning abruptly she went into the office.
In the afternoon David walked over to St. Christopher's to meet Helen Chambers. Besides his bitterness, and his suspense over seeing her, David felt as he entered the door of the Mission (what he had felt on his three or four previous visits) a fear of meeting some wrathful, upbraiding body who would recognise him. But he met no one except a group of children coming with books from the library, and unescorted he followed the familiar way to the reception room, where Helen had written she would meet him. This, like the rest of the Mission's interior he had seen, was practically unchanged; and in this maintenance of old arrangements he read reverence for Morton. He wandered about the room, looking at the friendly, brown-framed prints that summoned back the far, ante-prison days. The past, flooding into him, and his sense of the nearness of Helen, crowded out for the time all his bitterness over Rogers's destruction.
When Helen appeared at the door, he was for an instant powerless to move, so thrilled was he with his love for her. She came across the room with a happy smile, her hand held out. He strode toward her, and as he caught her hand his blood swept through him in a warm wave.
"I'm so glad to see you again!" she cried, and a little laugh told him how sincere her joy was.
A sudden desire struggled to tell her, truly, how great was his gladness, and its kind, at seeing her again; and fighting the desire back made him dizzy. "And I to see you!" he said.
"It's been—let's see—five months since I've seen you, and—"
"Five months and four days," the desire within David corrected.
"And four days," she accepted, with a laugh. "And there've been so many things during that time I've wanted to talk with you about. But how are you?"
She moved near a window. She was full of spirits this day. The out-door life from which she had just come, the wind, the sun, the water, were blowing and shining and rippling within her. David, in analysing his love for her, had told himself he loved her because of her able mind, her nobility of soul, her feeling of responsibility toward life. Had he analysed further he would have found that her lighter qualities were equally responsible for his love—her sense of humour, the freshness of her spirits, her joy in the pleasures of life. She had never shown him this lighter side with more freedom than now—not even during the summer seven years before when for two weeks they had been comrades;—and David, yesterday forgotten, yielded to her mood.
He frankly looked her over. She wore a tailor-made suit of a rich brown, that had captured some of the warm glow of sun-lit autumn, and a little brown hat to match on which bloomed a single red rose. Her face had the clear fresh brown of six months' sun, and the sun's sparkle, stored in her deep eyes, beamed joyously from them. She was a long vacation epitomised, idealised.
"May I say," he remarked at length, with the daring of her own free spirit, "that you are looking very well?"
For her part, she had been making a like survey of him. His tall figure, which had regained its old erectness, was enveloped in clothes that fit and set it off; and his clean-lined face, whose wanness had been driven away by the life in hers, looked distinguished against the background of the dark-green window hangings.
"You may," she returned, "if you will permit me to say the same of you."
"Of me? Oh, no. I'm an old man," he said exultantly. "Do you know how old I am?" He touched his head. "See! The gray hairs!"
"Yes—at least a dozen," she said gravely. "Such an old man!"
"Thirty-one! Isn't it awful?"
"Twenty-eight—that's worse for a woman!"
They looked at each other solemnly for a moment. Then she broke into a laugh that had the music of summer, and he joined her.
Her face became more serious, but all the sparkle remained in it. "There are so many things I want to talk over with you. One is a check my father has just given me. Every autumn he gives me a sum to spend on philanthropic purposes just as I see fit—he never asks me about it. The check's for twenty thousand dollars. I thought you might have some suggestions as to what to do with it—something in line with what we have often talked about. But we'll speak of that and some other things later. First of all, have you heard anything from your book?"
"Not a word."
"You will—and favourably, I am sure. I want to say again what I've written—I think it's splendid as a piece of literary work and splendid as a work of serious significance. And Uncle Henry is just as enthusiastic as I am."
David reddened with pleasure, and his enthusiasm, dead for over a month now, began to warm with new life. Her eyes were looking straight into his own, and the love that had several times urged him beyond the limits of discretion, now pressed him again—and again all his strength was required to hold it silent.
"But come!—we were to walk, you know," she said, smiling lightly. "I'll prove that I'm the better walker."
During their silent passage through the halls to the Mission door, it returned to him that she was the daughter of the man who, by an even-toned word, had destroyed one of his hopes and utterly destroyed all of Rogers's. His high spirit, which had been but a weaker reflection of her own, faded from his face, leaving it tired and drawn; and she, looking up at him, saw the striking change.
"Why, have you been ill?" she exclaimed.
A grim little smile raised the corners of his mouth. "No."
"Then you've been working too hard. What have you been doing since you finished your book?"
He briefly told of his discharge and his acceptance of a position with Rogers—and while he spoke his refluent bitterness tempted him to go on and tell her father's act of yesterday.
"But this was over a month ago," she said when he had ended. "Have the expected developments in Mr. Rogers's business taken place?"
"Tell her all," Temptation ordered. He resisted this command, and then Temptation approached him more guilefully. "Tell her all, only give no names but yours and Rogers, and no clues that would enable her to identify her father." This appealed to David's bitterness, and instantly he began.
He told her Rogers's true story, which of course he had as yet not done—of Rogers's fight, so like his own—of Rogers's deception of the world for ten years that he might live honestly—of his loneliness during that time, his fears, his secret kindnesses—of the first stages of the real estate deal—of the vast meaning of success to Rogers, and of its meaning to himself—and finally of the happenings of the day before. "So you see," he ended, "this Mr. A. has utterly destroyed Mr. Rogers, in cold blood, merely that he might increase the profits of his company."
She had followed him with tensest interest, and indignation's flame in cheek and eye had grown higher and higher.
"Do you mean to say," she demanded, slowly, "that any man would do such a thing as that?"
"Yes—and a most respected citizen."
"It was heartless!" she burst out hotly. "That man would do anything!"
It filled David with grim joy to hear her pass such judgment upon her own father. At that moment he was untroubled by a single thought as to whether he had acted honourably to betray her into pronouncing judgment.
"That man should be exposed!" she went on. "Honourable business men should ostracise him. Won't you tell me his name? Perhaps my father can do something."
An ironic laugh leaped into David's throat. He checked it. "No, I cannot tell his name."
Her indignation against the destroyer gave way to sympathy for the destroyed. She saw Rogers defeated, despairing, utterly without chance. They came to David's street and her sympathy drew her into it.
"I'm so sorry for him!" she burst out. "So sorry! I wish I could do something. I'd like to go in and tell him what I feel—if you think he wouldn't mind that from a stranger."
"I'm afraid he would," said David, grimly.
They fell silent. As they drew to within a block of the house, David saw the Mayor of Avenue A, whom he had left with Rogers, come down the steps and start toward them, which was also toward the café. The Mayor recognised them instantly, and a smile began to shine on his pink face. He had long been wanting to meet Helen, and now the chance was his. He came up, his overcoat spread wide at the demand of his vest, and, pausing, took off his hat with his best ball-room flourish.
"I've heard a great deal about you through Mr. Aldrich," Helen said, when David had introduced them. "I'm very happy to meet you."
"And I'm happy to meet you, miss," he returned, bowing, making a graceful sweep with his hat, and vigorously shaking the hand she had given him. "And me, I've heard about you a lot—and that long before I saw Mr. Aldrich.
"From St. Christopher's, I suppose."
"Yes, there—and elsewhere," said the Mayor, smiling gallantly. "On the society pages. I've seen lots o' pieces about you, and seen your picture there among the beauties of society."
The Mayor expected to see her blush with gratification and ask for more—as women always did. But she quickly shifted to another subject.
"Mr. Aldrich has just been telling me of a business affair you, he and Mr. Rogers have been engaged in."
"Oh, has he!"
The Mayor, in the agreeable experience of meeting Helen, had forgotten there was such a person as her father. But he was the gallant no longer. His feet spread apart, his face grew stern, and he looked Helen squarely in the eyes.
"Well," he demanded, "—and what do you think o' your father now?"
"My father?" she said blankly.
David caught his arm. "Keep still, Hoffman!" he cried roughly.
The Mayor looked from one to the other in astonishment. "What," he cried, "d'you mean you hadn't told her it was her father?"
The colour of summer faded slowly from Helen's face, and a hand reached out and caught a stoop railing. Her eyes turned piercingly, appealingly, to David. After a moment she whispered, "My father—was that man?"
He nodded.
Her head sank slowly upon her breast, and for moment after moment she stood motionless, silent.
The Mayor when he had thought of her as an instrument to strike her father, had not thought the instrument itself might be pained. Filled with contrition, he stammered: "Please, Miss, I'm sorry—I didn't mean to hurt you."
She did not answer; she seemed not to have heard. A moment later she lifted a gray, drawn face to David.
"Mr. Aldrich," she said tremulously, "will you please put me in a cab?"
In the cab she sat with the same stricken look upon her face. She had, as David had once said to the Mayor, always regarded her father as a man of highest honour. She had never felt concern in his business affairs, or any business affairs, despite the fact that her interests overreached in so many directions the usual interests of women, and despite the fact that her heart was in various material conditions which business had created and which business could relieve.
Seen from the intimate view-point of the home, her father was generous and kind. She had heard of the reports that circulated in the distant land of business, and she had glanced at some of the articles that had appeared in years past in magazines and newspapers, and she knew that stories were at this time current. Her conception of her father had given the silent lie to all these reports. She believed they sprang from jealousy, or false information, or a distorted view. They had troubled her little, save to make her indignant that her father was so maligned; and even this indignation had been tempered with philosophic mildness, for she had remembered that it had ever been a common fate of men of superior purpose, or superior parts, or superior fortune, to be misunderstood and to be hated.
But, all of a sudden, her conception of her father was shattered. This thing he had indubitably done was certainly not without the legal law, and perhaps not wholly without the cold lines of the moral—but it was hard-hearted, brutal. "The man who would do that would do anything," she had said to David; and all the way home in the cab this thought kept ringing through her consciousness, and kept ringing for days afterwards. It led logically and immediately to the dread question: "After all, may not these other stories be true?"
Helen did not belong to that easy-conscienced class who can eliminate unpleasantness by closing their eyes against it. She had to face her question with open vision—learn what truth was in it. She secured all she could find in print about her father and read it behind the locked door of her room. There was case after case in which her father, by skilful breaking of the law, or skilful compliance with it, or complete disregard of moral rights, had moved relentlessly, irresistibly, to his ends over all who had opposed him. The picture these cases drew was of a man it sickened her daughter-love to look upon—a man who was truly, as the articles frequently called him, an "industrial brigand," and whose vast fortune was the "loot of a master bandit."
The articles seemed woven of fact, but she could not accept them unsubstantiated. She must know the truth—beyond a single doubt. At the same time, she, her father's daughter, could not go to the men he had wronged, demanding proof. At length she thought of her Uncle Henry, whom she loved and trusted, and whom she knew to be intimately acquainted with her father's career.
To him she went one night and opened her fears. "Are these things true?" she asked.
And he said: "They are true."
She went away, grief-burdened, feeling that the whole structure of her life was tottering. And two questions that before had been vaguely rising, became big, sharp, insistent: What should be her attitude toward her father, whom she loved? And what should be her attitude toward his fortune, which she shared?
When David had handed Helen into the cab, she had not spoken to him, had not even said, "Thank you," and had rolled away without giving him so much as a backward glance. He now felt it had been brutal, dishonourable, to trap her into denouncing her father and then to strike her with her father's guilt. He was certain she was deeply offended, and this conviction grew as day after day passed without a word from her.
But there were other things to be thought of during these days. There was his future—upon which, uncertain as it was, he saw that Lillian Drew was to be a parasite; for she had made another call (while Kate was out of the office; he was thankful for that) and had carried away the larger fraction of his small store of money. He was again workless—again at the base of that high, smooth wall which before he had been able to surmount only with, as it were, his last gasping effort.
What he should do, he had no idea. But his own future he thrust aside as being a less pressing problem than Rogers's future and Rogers's present. As Rogers had predicted, the fact that he was Red Thorpe quickly reached the ears of his clients, and they all lost no time in withdrawing their property from his charge. The owner who had forced David's dismissal as janitor demanded with the same delicacy that Rogers should vacate the rooms he occupied; but Rogers had a lease and, moreover, had paid a month's rent in advance, so they and their belongings were not tumbled into the street.
These days were for Rogers solid blackness. David had promised to share with him, but he saw that there was doubt of David's having anything to share. Even if David did, his bitter mood now looked upon that portion as charity, and little more agreeable to his pride than public charity—which he saw as a near-looming, shame-laden spectre, feared more than death. That he who had had the brains to achieve independence, who had been on the verge of fortune, should have been crushed to his present extremity—this filled him with wild revolt. Kate, with a subdued gentleness that begged to serve; Tom, with his alert willingness; David, with his constant presence and consideration; the Mayor, with his ever-ready vituperation and bluff words of hope that rang hollow;—they all tried to lift the draping blackness from about him—and failed, because they had nothing but blackness to hang in its place.
But some definite plan for the future had to be made, and Rogers himself made it. Since Colorado was not for him, he would, as soon as his month here was ended, secure as cheap a room as he could find and try to stretch his small funds to reach that final day when he would have no need of more.
Kate's father fell with the rest of the Rogers regime, and from the basement they moved into a couple of cheap rooms a few blocks away. David had often considered the relation between Kate and her father: aside from keeping him alive Kate was of no service to him—he was a terrible drag on her; if they could be separated, with his maintenance secured, he would be no worse off and she would be far better. David now talked the matter over with Rogers; together they talked it over with Kate, who finally yielded; and David enlisted the interest of Dr. Franklin in behalf of getting old Jimmie into an institution for inebriates.
There was little for Kate to do in Rogers's office, but she insisted on remaining and remaining without salary. "It's because of me all this happened—you may need me—I'm going to stay," she said to Rogers. "I've still got most of my last month's wages—two or three weeks will be soon enough to get a job." And nothing Rogers urged could move her.
Tom begged to be allowed to go to work, but David prevailed on him to continue in school. "Something good will surely turn up," David said to the boy. But days went and nothing arose. David was on the point of yielding to Tom, when into the general gloom there shot, for him, a bright shaft of hope. Ten days after he had put Helen into the cab a letter came to him addressed in her handwriting. He hardly dared open it, for he expected reproof—delicately conveyed, of course, but still reproof. When he drew the letter from its envelope an enclosure fell unheeded to the floor. Instead of censure he found this:
"It seems your address was not on your manuscript, so Mr. Osborne has sent the enclosed letter to you in care of me. I can hardly refrain from opening it. I feel certain there is good news in it. I congratulate you in advance!"You know how interested I am, so I know you'll come and tell me all about it just as soon as you learn the book's fate. You'll find me in almost any time."
"It seems your address was not on your manuscript, so Mr. Osborne has sent the enclosed letter to you in care of me. I can hardly refrain from opening it. I feel certain there is good news in it. I congratulate you in advance!
"You know how interested I am, so I know you'll come and tell me all about it just as soon as you learn the book's fate. You'll find me in almost any time."
David picked up the envelope—stamped in one corner with "William Osborne & Co," a name he had once worshipped from afar off—ripped it open and read the following, signed by Mr. Osborne himself:
"We have been greatly interested in your story. If you will call at your convenience I shall be glad to talk with you about it."
"We have been greatly interested in your story. If you will call at your convenience I shall be glad to talk with you about it."
David stared at the three type-written lines. The letter was not an acceptance—but then neither was it a rejection. A wild hope leaped up within him. Could it be here was a ladder up the unseizable wall? Could it be the success he had failed of five years before was at last about to be won? He dared not let himself be swept to these dizzy heights; he knew how far it was to the ground. So he told himself it could not be possible. Still, was there not a chance?
He slipped away without hinting of his hope to Rogers—there would be time for telling later, if anything was to tell—and at ten o'clock reached a little five-story brick building off Union Square that was the home of William Osborne & Co. At first he had not the courage to enter. He remembered, as he walked on, a manuscript novel he had left here in the long ago—and it came back to him that this was the very manuscript he had been working over on that day, now more than five years gone, when Morton's death had summoned him to St. Christopher's.
When he reached the door again he drove himself in and was swung to the top floor in a little creaking elevator, and before his courage had time to recede he was within a railed-off square in a large room and had given his name to a boy to be carried to Mr. Osborne. In a moment the boy returned and led him across the room, filled with sub-editors, manuscript readers and stenographers, and ushered him into a small private office. Here at a desk sat a white-haired man chatting with two visitors.
The white-haired man rose as David entered and smiled a kindly, spectacled smile. "I'm very glad to see you, Mr. Aldrich. If you'll excuse me for a minute, I'll be right with you."
David sat down in the chair Mr. Osborne indicated and waited with pulsing suspense for the two men to go. There, on one corner of Mr. Osborne's desk, which was littered with letters, manuscripts and magazine page-proofs, he saw his book. He felt, as he waited, almost as he had felt five years before during the suffocating minutes between the return of the jury with its verdict and the verdict's reading. The verdict on the book was ready. What was it to be?
At length the two men went away. Mr. Osborne turned from the door and came toward David, smiling cordially, his hand outstretched.
"Let me congratulate you, Mr. Aldrich!" he said heartily.
David rose and put a nerveless hand into Mr. Osborne's. "You mean—you like it?"
"Indeed I do! If you and I can come to an agreement, we shall be proud to publish it."
David gazed swimmingly at him. There was a whirling, a bubbling, within him—but he managed to say with fair control: "It's hardly necessary to tell an old publisher how happy a new author is to hear that."
Mr. Osborne sat down and David automatically did likewise.
"You, Mr. Aldrich, have particular reason to feel happy. We print a great many well-written, dramatic stories—stories which are just that, and no more. That, of course, is a great deal. But when a book, without impairment to its dramatic and artistic quality, leaves a profound impression regarding some aspect of life—that book has an element of bigness that the other stories lack. Mr. Aldrich, yours is such a story."
David felt he was reeling off his chair. "Yes?" he said.
Mr. Osborne went on to praise the book in detail. After a time he proposed terms. David took in hardly a word of the offer; his mind was over-running with his success, his praise. But he accepted the terms instantly.
This settled, Mr. Osborne picked up several yellowed type-written sheets from his disordered desk. "By the way, are you the David Aldrich that submitted us a novel five or six years ago called 'The Master Knot?'"
"Yes," said David.
"I thought you might be interested in the readers' opinions on that story, so I had them brought in."
He handed the sheets to David, and when he saw David had glanced them through, he remarked: "You see they all amount to the same. 'The author knows how to write, but he does not know life.'" He gazed steadily at David through the kindly spectacles. "Since then, Mr. Aldrich, you have come to know life."
"I think I have." David strained to keep his voice natural.
"Yes, you have come to know life—to feel it." He paused, and considered within himself. For all his warmth, there had been in his tone and manner, caution, reserve. Suddenly these fell away, and he radiated enthusiasm.
"I try never to raise false hopes in a young author," he cried, "but I've got to say more than I've said. Really, I think I've made what a publisher is always looking for, hoping for—a great find, a real writer! You're going to do big things!"
David dared not respond; he knew his voice would not be steady.
"Yes—big things," Mr. Osborne repeated. "But here's another point I wanted to speak of. We can use several short stories from you in our magazine. If you have any, or will write some, that are anywhere near as good as the book, I can guarantee acceptance."
It was a moment before David could trust himself to speak. "I have none, but I should like to write some." Then he suddenly remembered he had not the money to carry him through the period that must elapse before the stories could be written and paid for. "But I fear I'm not in a position to write them just now," he added.
Mr. Osborne had had thirty years' experience with the impecuniosity of authors. "Money?" he queried.
There was no taking offence at the friendly way he asked this. "Yes," David confessed.
"I think we can solve that difficulty. I don't know how the book there is going to sell. I was a publisher before you were born, but after all my experience I have to regard the commercial side of publishing as pretty much of a gambling game. Critically, your book is certain of great success. Financially—I don't know. It may win in a large way; I hope so. But you are sure of at least a moderate sale. Suppose, then, I make you a small advance on your royalty. Say—let's see—well, three hundred. Will that do?"
David felt, as he had felt since he had heard his verdict, that to venture beyond a monosyllable would be to explode. He swallowed. "Yes," he said.
"Very well, then. Do you prefer check or cash?"
"Cash."
Ten minutes later David entered the street, three hundred dollars in his pocket, his heart wild with joy, hope. He wanted to run, to shout, to fly. His glowing face was the visage of triumph.
At last the success he had prayed for—striven for—given up—had come!
He turned northward, to carry the news to Helen. A suggestion of hers flashed into his mind: the book might help pay his debt to the Mission. Obeying impulse he walked into a bank he was at the instant passing, and when he came out there was in an inner coat pocket a draft for two hundred dollars made out to the Reverend Joseph Franklin.
All the way to Helen's door there was no pavement beneath his feet. When he had called here the last time—the time he had read her part of the story; he was a shabby creature then—he had borne himself very humbly toward the footman. Now he asked for Helen with a buoyant ring in his voice and fairly flung his coat and hat upon the astonished servant; and he bowed with a new dignity to Helen's aunt, Mrs. Bosworth, whom he met on the stairway.
Helen met him at the drawing-room door. "I can read the news in your face!" she cried. "I'm so glad!"
He laughed joyously as he caught her hand. "Yes, Mr. Osborne took it!"
"I knew he would! And he likes it? Tell me—how does he like it?"
"You must ask him. But—he likes it!"
"Immensely—I'm certain! Come, you must tell me all!"
They sat down and David told her of his half-hour with Mr. Osborne. Since receiving her note that morning he had not once thought of the end of their last meeting. If he had, and had been aware of the pain that meeting had brought her, he would have marvelled at the ease with which she threw her misery aside for the sake of a mere friend, a dishonoured friend. But he did not wonder; he just drank recklessly of this glorious draught, compounded of her praise and her joy in his joy.
At the end he told her of the three hundred dollars—never thinking that it was barely more than the price of the simple-looking gown she wore, that it was but a penny to the rich furnishings of the drawing-room, that it was her father's income for perhaps less than a quarter of a business hour. And completely abandoned to the boyish happiness that forced him to share everything, he told her of the draft for two hundred dollars.
Her face shadowed; this man, who was paying back, had suddenly brought to mind her father, who was not paying back. But quickly a deep glow came into her eyes.
"You should be as proud of this as of any of the rest," she said.
She gazed at him thoughtfully, her head slightly nodding. "Yes—you are going to win all you started out to win," she went on, her low voice vibrating with belief. "You are going to clear your name; you are going to achieve a personal success; you are going to carry out your dream to help save the human waste. Yes, you are going to do it all."
His success, her words, the glowing sincerity in her brown eyes, swept him to the heights of exaltation. Suddenly his love made another of its trials to burst from him.
He leaned toward her. "And there's something else to tell you."
"Yes?"
But he did not go on. Instantly his love was being fought back. Exalted though he was, the old compelling reasons for silence had rushed into him.
"Yes? What is it?" she asked.
He swallowed hard. "Some other time," he said.
"When the time comes, I shall be glad to hear it."
He looked into her steady eyes, and saw she had no guess of what the thing might be.
"When the time comes—I shall tell," he said. But in his heart was no belief that time would ever come.