Complete weird tales of.., p.1304
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1304
“What the deuce—” stammered Hildreth, tearing open the yellow envelope; and he read:
ADRINTHA LODGE.
JOHN HILDRETH: I’m watching you in my crystal. If you want the Society for Psychical Research to become my heirs, do exactly what you’re doing with that girl.
PETER HILDRETH.
“Is — is it anything alarming?” asked the pretty stenographer as he crumpled the paper.
“Alarming? I don’t know — no! What the mischief has got into that uncle of mine?”
“Is it from him?” she asked, turning pale.
“Yes — it is. But if he thinks he can make me believe that he sees me in his dinky little crystal—”
“Oh, don’t talk that way,” she pleaded; “there may be things that we don’t understand happening all the while—”
“There can’t be!”
For a while she was dumb, mutely refusing to be reassured, and presently, rising from the table, they passed into the gay little room where her desk stood.
The fire was glowing very brightly in the carved fireplace of golden and pearl-tinted onyx. He drew up his uncle’s great chair for her; she shook her head and looked meaningly at her pad and pencil, but after a silent struggle with indecision and inclination she seated herself by the gilt fender, pretty hands folded in acquiescence.
“Now,” he said, “let us speak of those things that have come true.”
“What has come true, Mr. Hildreth?”
“You.”
The slightest of rose tints touched her cheeks.
“Did you believe me unreal?” she asked.
He was leaning forward, looking up into her face, which reflected the pink light of the fire.
And what he started to say Heaven alone knows, for his voice was dreadfully unsteady. However, it ceased quickly enough when the maid knocked rather loudly and presented a third telegram to her disconcerted master; and this was what he read:
ADRINTHA LODGE.
JOHN HILDRETH: If you kiss that girl you’re talking to I’ll disinherit you. — PETER HILDRETH.
Stunned, the young man sat for a moment, vacant eyes fixed on the writing that alternately blurred and sprang into dreadful distinctness under his gaze. Presently he heard a voice not much like his own saying: “It’s nonsense; things like this don’t happen in 1907 in the borough of Manhattan. Why, that’s Fifth Avenue out there, and there’s Thirtieth Street, too; besides, the town’s full of police; and they pinch star-readers and astrologers these days. Anyway, we have the swastika, and it will put any Sixth Avenue astrologer out of business—”
“I — I don’t think I quite understand you,” faltered the girl.
He looked at her; the scared expression died out.
“I’ll get my uncle on the long-distance ‘phone in a moment,” he said irritably. “Then we’ll clear up this business. Meanwhile—” He twisted up the telegram as though to cast it on the coals.
“Let me see it,” she said calmly.
“I — it is — no — I can’t—”
“Then it concerns me?”
He was silent.
“Very well,” she said. “Don’t burn it; leave it for a moment.”
He laid the telegram on the arm of his chair. “It’s more crystal-gazing,” he said, trying to laugh easily, and failing. “It is rather extraordinary, too. But — see here, Miss Grey, it’s utter nonsense to believe that my uncle can actually see us here in this room!
“I concede that it is rather odd, even, perhaps, exceedingly remarkable,” he added slowly; “but I cannot believe that my uncle, two hundred miles north of us, can see you and me in his confounded crystal. My explanation of his telegrams is this: he has merely taken the precaution, at intervals, to try to frighten me, assuming that I am in mischief. It’s coincidence—”
“Mr. Hildreth!”
“Not that I admit for one moment that you and I are in mischief!” he explained hastily.
“But I admit it. It is all wrong, and we both know it. If I am not here officially I ought not to be here at all.”
“Can’t I talk to you except on business?”
“Why should you?”
“Because I want to — because it is pleasant — because it’s the pleasantest thing that has ever come into my life!”
“That cannot be,” she said, paling. “You know many people, you go everywhere — everywhere that I do not—”
“If I were not an advertising poet at thirty dollars a week,” he said, “I’d not care where my uncle left his millions. I’d do what I pleased — what I ought to do — what any man with a grain of sense would do.”
“What would you do, Mr. Hildreth?”
“Make love to the girl I love, and not be scared away like a rabbit!”
She was still paler when she said: “Are you — in love, then?”
“Yes; but I can’t tell her.”
She was silent, staring into the fire.
“I can’t tell her, can I? I have nothing to offer — nothing except a prospect of losing my expectations. A man can’t tell a girl that he loves her under such circumstances, can he?”
“I — don’t know.”
“Do you suppose a — a girl like that would wait for him — until he got into the firm?”
“If she loved him,” said Miss Grey in a low voice, “there is absolutely no telling what that girl might do.”
“Suppose,” he said carelessly, “for the sake of illustration, that I was, at this moment, with that girl. For example” — he waved his hand airily—” for example, suppose you were that girl. Now, suppose that I told her I loved her; do you imagine that uncle of mine could see what I was about — if I worked the swastika on him vigorously?”
“I don’t know,” she said, staring at the fire, “how to work the swastika.”
“If you — if you would consent to aid me — just a little,” he ventured, “I could soon prove whether it was safe to speak to the — the other girl.”
“How, Mr. Hildreth?”
“By just — just pretending that you were that other girl.”
“You mean that you might practice a declaration — test it — on me? Just to see how it might affect your uncle?”
“Yes,” he said eagerly, “and if my uncle doesn’t telegraph again that he disowns me, why, I’ll know that his other telegrams were merely coincidences!”
“And if he does telegraph that he has seen — everything — in his crystal?”
“Why — we’ll have to wait—”
“The other girl and you? I see. You and I can truthfully deny our apparent guilt, can’t we?... I will do what I can, Mr. Hildreth.”
She stood up, one little hand on the back of the chair. He hesitated, then picked up the last telegram, opened it, and handed it to her, reading it again over her shoulder:
“If you kiss that girl you’re talking to I’ll disinherit you.”
A bright blush stained her skin.
“It is only — only to test his power,” he managed to say, but the thumping of his heart jarred his speech and scared him into silence.
“You — is it necessary to kiss me?”
“Yes — absolutely.
She met his gaze, standing erect, one hand on the chair: Then she drew a long breath as he lifted her hand; her eyes closed. He said: “I love you — I loved you the moment I saw you — a month ago!” This was no doubt a mistake; he was mixing the two girls. “What do I care for a crystal-squinting uncle, or for those accursed Honey Wafer verses? If he’s looking at us now let us convince him; shall we — sweetheart?”
She unclosed her eyes. “Am I to play my part when you speak to me like that? I don’t know how—”
“Do what I do,” he stammered; and he encircled her slender waist and kissed her until, cheeks aflame, she swayed a moment in his arms, freed herself, and sank breathless into the chair, covering her face. And he knelt beside her by the gilt fender, his lips to her fingers, stammering words that almost stunned her and left her faint with their passion and sweetness:
“You must have known that it was you I loved — that you were that other girl. You must have seen it a thousand times!”
She was crying silently; she could not speak, but one arm tightened around his neck in tremulous assent.
The telephone bell had been ringing for some time in their ears, deaf to all sounds except each other’s whispers; but at length he stumbled to his feet, cleared his eyes of enchantment, and made his way across the room to the receiver.
“What the deuce is the matter?”
* * * *
“Who?”
* * * *
“Oh, is that you, Uncle Peter?”
* * * *
“Yes, I did get your telegrams, but I thought — :—”
* * * *
“You mean to say you can see us now?”
* * * *
“No, I don’t deny it; I did kiss her.”
* * * *
“Because I love her!”
* * * *
“I can’t help it; you can do as you please. And I may as well tell you that I’m not afraid of your professors, or clairvoyants, or your crystals, because I’ve got a swastika—”
* * * *
“Yes, a swastika!”
* * * *
“You don’t know what a swastika is? Well, let me tell you it’s about five thousand times more powerful than a rabbit’s foot.... What?... Yes, I’ll hold the wire till you look it up in the dictionary.”
A throbbing silence. Then:
“Yes, Uncle Peter, I’m here.”
* * * *
“Very well; I’m sorry you’re angry, and I regret that you’re not afraid of the swastika. I am quite willing to trust to it; the swastika gave me the girl I love. And, by the way, Uncle Peter, didn’t you write me that my advertising poems made a fortune for you out of your wafers?... All right; I only wanted to confess that she, not I, wrote them.”
* * * *
“Don’t believe it? Why, I could no more write those charming verses than you could!”
* * * *
“You may imagine that with her talent and mine, and the swastika working away for us, we are not going to starve—”
* * * *
“That’s just what we intend to do. Bunsen’s Baby Biscuit Company will appreciate our talents. Besides, she can draw—”
* * * *
“You can call it blackmail if you choose. But what do you offer us to refuse advances from Bunsen?”
* * * *
“No, I won’t consider it. My price is full partnership in the Hildreth’s Honey Wafer Company, a cordial blessing from you, use of your apartments for a year, and the same old cozy place in your testament.”
* * * *
“Yes, in return we will write your poetry and draw your pictures for you. And, besides, we’ll name after you our first—”
“Jack!” she exclaimed, aghast.
“Dearest, for Heaven’s sake let me deal with him!” whispered Hildreth; then he shouted through the transmitter:
“Is it all right, Uncle Peter?”
* * * *
“I promise you — we promise you that we will name him Peter! If you don’t, by Heaven, I’ll name him Bunsen—”
* * * *
“That’s all right, but we’re desperate. Peter or Bunsen; take your choice!”
* * * *
“Yes; and I’ll have his photograph taken for Bunsen, and under it I’ll print: ‘A Bunsen’s Baby Biscuit Boy!’”
* * * *
“Don’t use such language; they’ll cut us off!”
* * * *
“What?”
* * * *
“Good! All right, Uncle Peter, you’re a brick. But — just one thing more; please put that crystal away for an hour or two—”
* * * *
“Because we’d like a little privacy!”
* * * *
“Of course I shall. Long engagements are foolish—”
“Jack!”
“Dearest, you know they are,” he said, turning toward her. “Shall I tell him in a week?”
Her blue eyes filled; again the little tremor of acquiescence set her red mouth quivering.
“In a week, Uncle Peter!” he shouted.
* * * *
“What? I’ll ask her. Hold the wire.”
And to her he said: “Sweetheart, our kind Uncle Peter desires to say something civil to you. I — I think it may be something about a check. Will you speak to him?”
She rose and came toward him; he handed her the receiver; she raised her head, and he bent his. They kissed — while his uncle waited.
Then she raised the receiver to her pretty ear, and said, very softly:
“Hello! Hello, Uncle Peter!”
CHAPTER X
THE GHOST OF CHANCE
AS YOUNG LEEDS entered the imposing bronze and marble portico of the Algonquin Trust Building, where he had a studio on the top floor, the elevator boy handed him a telegram and he opened it with instinctive foreboding of trouble. Meanwhile, the Ghost of Chance, which had followed him into the building, looked over his shoulder at the telegram.
There was evidently trouble enough in it; he had turned rather white as he stood there, eyes riveted on the yellow paper. Minute after minute sped; the elevators whizzed up and down in their gilded cages; people passed and repassed; the ornamental marble pavement of the rotunda echoed the clatter of footsteps. Several people he knew nodded to him as they entered or left the elevators: an architect domiciled on the top floor in the east wing, McManus, of the Belden Building and Construction Company; young Farren, private Secretary to De Peyster Thorne, president of the great Algonquin Trust Company, and director of about everything worth directing in the five boroughs.
“Mr. Farren!” called out Leeds; and, as that suave man checked his speed, wheeled, and came back, “Mr. Farren, could I see Mr. Thorne for half a second?”
Farren’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “If it’s a favor you want to ask, don’t ask it now—”
“It is, and I’ve got to—”
“Better not; he’s in a devilish humor; he’d foreclose on his own grandmother to-day.”
“But I can’t wait! I’ll use your telephone while you’re taking my card.”
Farren shrugged, turned, and led the way across the rotunda, ushered Leeds into the outer office, and took his card. Leeds went to a desk and used the telephone vigorously until Farren reappeared, nodding; and Leeds walked into the president’s private room. De Peyster Thorne, handsome, rather too elaborately groomed, and ruddier of face and neck than usual, looked up to return the young man’s greeting with an expressionless word and nod. He did not see the Ghost of Chance standing at Leeds’s elbow.
“I’m awfully sorry,” said Leeds, “but I don’t see how I can finish the key panel on time, Mr. Thorne.”
“Why not?” said Thorne, a darker flush mounting his heavy face and neck.
“I’ve a telegram this moment from my model; she’s ill. I telephoned for another, but there’s scarcely a chance I can get one I want. Something went wrong with the colors yesterday and I scraped out all I had done, expecting to finish to-day with a drier, dry to-morrow, and have Mr. McManus set the key panel in the ballroom Thursday morning. Now, I’ve probably got to spend to-day chasing up a red-haired model; and if I do, I cannot finish by Thursday. Couldn’t you give me one day more?”
“Mr. Leeds,” said Thorne, biting off his words unpleasantly, “a contract is a contract. Can you fulfill yours?”
“I’ve told you,” began Leeds, astonished — for never before had Thorne looked or spoken in that way—” I told you that my model—”
“Can you keep your contract?” repeated Thorne sharply.
“There’s a ghost of a chance if I can get a proper model,” replied Leeds, keeping his temper.
“Then you’d better take that ghost of a chance, Mr. Leeds. On reflection it will occur to you that my housewarming can scarcely be postponed to suit your rather erratic convenience. If the key panel is not in place, the room will be as attractive as a man in evening clothes without a collar. I’d rather tear out the entire frieze, and call the contract void! — and I’ll do it, too, if the contract is not fulfilled.”
“Is that the language you employ in all your commercial transactions?” asked Leeds without a trace of the passion that clutched at him.
“It is. An artist is as amenable to the commercial code of responsibility as any man I deal with — I don’t care a damn who he is or how he likes it.... Is there anything more I can do for you, Mr. Leeds?”
“No,” said Leeds thoughtfully, “unless you choose to take a kindergarten course in the elements of decency.”
Leaving the door ajar as he went out, and far too amazed and furious to notice Mr. Farren, the amused secretary, he crossed the corridor, followed by the Ghost of Chance, entered an elevator, and shot up to the top floor. Black rage and astonishment still possessed him when he met McManus in the hall, and he would have passed on with a nod and a scowl had that genial Irishman permitted.
“Phwat the divil’s up now, Misther Leeds?” inquired the big contractor and builder. “I’ll lay twinty to wan ye’ve joost come from Thorne.” Leeds laid his hand on the door knob of his studio.
“I have; I — I’m not in very good humor, Mr. McManus—” He jerked open the door and started to enter.
“Hould on! — don’t be runnin’ away. Sure haven’t I come from him meself — an’ kept me temper, too, Irish that I am! Phwat’s wrong betchune you an’ Misther Thorne an’ the hydrant?”
“Nothing much; my model is ill and I can’t promise to give you that key panel to set. Thome said — one or two things — oh, I can’t talk about it; he said one or two things—”
“Bedad, thin, he said a dozen things to me; an’ me as cool as a Waldorf julep, an’ he dammin’ the gildin’ whin I asked f’r the sivinth installment due this day. ‘It’s an expert I’ll have f’r to examine it,’ sez he. ‘Projooce the wad,’ sez I, ‘an’ afther that I’ll talk talks to anny expert ye name.’ An’ he had to.”
Leeds’s heart turned heavy. “I don’t know what Thorne means to do,” he said. “I’m not much on contracts; I’ve done my best. I suppose he will rip it out if he wants to. If he does, and if he cancels the contract, it will about ruin me. I never had but four other commissions; it cost me more to execute them than I was paid.”
ADRINTHA LODGE.
JOHN HILDRETH: I’m watching you in my crystal. If you want the Society for Psychical Research to become my heirs, do exactly what you’re doing with that girl.
PETER HILDRETH.
“Is — is it anything alarming?” asked the pretty stenographer as he crumpled the paper.
“Alarming? I don’t know — no! What the mischief has got into that uncle of mine?”
“Is it from him?” she asked, turning pale.
“Yes — it is. But if he thinks he can make me believe that he sees me in his dinky little crystal—”
“Oh, don’t talk that way,” she pleaded; “there may be things that we don’t understand happening all the while—”
“There can’t be!”
For a while she was dumb, mutely refusing to be reassured, and presently, rising from the table, they passed into the gay little room where her desk stood.
The fire was glowing very brightly in the carved fireplace of golden and pearl-tinted onyx. He drew up his uncle’s great chair for her; she shook her head and looked meaningly at her pad and pencil, but after a silent struggle with indecision and inclination she seated herself by the gilt fender, pretty hands folded in acquiescence.
“Now,” he said, “let us speak of those things that have come true.”
“What has come true, Mr. Hildreth?”
“You.”
The slightest of rose tints touched her cheeks.
“Did you believe me unreal?” she asked.
He was leaning forward, looking up into her face, which reflected the pink light of the fire.
And what he started to say Heaven alone knows, for his voice was dreadfully unsteady. However, it ceased quickly enough when the maid knocked rather loudly and presented a third telegram to her disconcerted master; and this was what he read:
ADRINTHA LODGE.
JOHN HILDRETH: If you kiss that girl you’re talking to I’ll disinherit you. — PETER HILDRETH.
Stunned, the young man sat for a moment, vacant eyes fixed on the writing that alternately blurred and sprang into dreadful distinctness under his gaze. Presently he heard a voice not much like his own saying: “It’s nonsense; things like this don’t happen in 1907 in the borough of Manhattan. Why, that’s Fifth Avenue out there, and there’s Thirtieth Street, too; besides, the town’s full of police; and they pinch star-readers and astrologers these days. Anyway, we have the swastika, and it will put any Sixth Avenue astrologer out of business—”
“I — I don’t think I quite understand you,” faltered the girl.
He looked at her; the scared expression died out.
“I’ll get my uncle on the long-distance ‘phone in a moment,” he said irritably. “Then we’ll clear up this business. Meanwhile—” He twisted up the telegram as though to cast it on the coals.
“Let me see it,” she said calmly.
“I — it is — no — I can’t—”
“Then it concerns me?”
He was silent.
“Very well,” she said. “Don’t burn it; leave it for a moment.”
He laid the telegram on the arm of his chair. “It’s more crystal-gazing,” he said, trying to laugh easily, and failing. “It is rather extraordinary, too. But — see here, Miss Grey, it’s utter nonsense to believe that my uncle can actually see us here in this room!
“I concede that it is rather odd, even, perhaps, exceedingly remarkable,” he added slowly; “but I cannot believe that my uncle, two hundred miles north of us, can see you and me in his confounded crystal. My explanation of his telegrams is this: he has merely taken the precaution, at intervals, to try to frighten me, assuming that I am in mischief. It’s coincidence—”
“Mr. Hildreth!”
“Not that I admit for one moment that you and I are in mischief!” he explained hastily.
“But I admit it. It is all wrong, and we both know it. If I am not here officially I ought not to be here at all.”
“Can’t I talk to you except on business?”
“Why should you?”
“Because I want to — because it is pleasant — because it’s the pleasantest thing that has ever come into my life!”
“That cannot be,” she said, paling. “You know many people, you go everywhere — everywhere that I do not—”
“If I were not an advertising poet at thirty dollars a week,” he said, “I’d not care where my uncle left his millions. I’d do what I pleased — what I ought to do — what any man with a grain of sense would do.”
“What would you do, Mr. Hildreth?”
“Make love to the girl I love, and not be scared away like a rabbit!”
She was still paler when she said: “Are you — in love, then?”
“Yes; but I can’t tell her.”
She was silent, staring into the fire.
“I can’t tell her, can I? I have nothing to offer — nothing except a prospect of losing my expectations. A man can’t tell a girl that he loves her under such circumstances, can he?”
“I — don’t know.”
“Do you suppose a — a girl like that would wait for him — until he got into the firm?”
“If she loved him,” said Miss Grey in a low voice, “there is absolutely no telling what that girl might do.”
“Suppose,” he said carelessly, “for the sake of illustration, that I was, at this moment, with that girl. For example” — he waved his hand airily—” for example, suppose you were that girl. Now, suppose that I told her I loved her; do you imagine that uncle of mine could see what I was about — if I worked the swastika on him vigorously?”
“I don’t know,” she said, staring at the fire, “how to work the swastika.”
“If you — if you would consent to aid me — just a little,” he ventured, “I could soon prove whether it was safe to speak to the — the other girl.”
“How, Mr. Hildreth?”
“By just — just pretending that you were that other girl.”
“You mean that you might practice a declaration — test it — on me? Just to see how it might affect your uncle?”
“Yes,” he said eagerly, “and if my uncle doesn’t telegraph again that he disowns me, why, I’ll know that his other telegrams were merely coincidences!”
“And if he does telegraph that he has seen — everything — in his crystal?”
“Why — we’ll have to wait—”
“The other girl and you? I see. You and I can truthfully deny our apparent guilt, can’t we?... I will do what I can, Mr. Hildreth.”
She stood up, one little hand on the back of the chair. He hesitated, then picked up the last telegram, opened it, and handed it to her, reading it again over her shoulder:
“If you kiss that girl you’re talking to I’ll disinherit you.”
A bright blush stained her skin.
“It is only — only to test his power,” he managed to say, but the thumping of his heart jarred his speech and scared him into silence.
“You — is it necessary to kiss me?”
“Yes — absolutely.
She met his gaze, standing erect, one hand on the chair: Then she drew a long breath as he lifted her hand; her eyes closed. He said: “I love you — I loved you the moment I saw you — a month ago!” This was no doubt a mistake; he was mixing the two girls. “What do I care for a crystal-squinting uncle, or for those accursed Honey Wafer verses? If he’s looking at us now let us convince him; shall we — sweetheart?”
She unclosed her eyes. “Am I to play my part when you speak to me like that? I don’t know how—”
“Do what I do,” he stammered; and he encircled her slender waist and kissed her until, cheeks aflame, she swayed a moment in his arms, freed herself, and sank breathless into the chair, covering her face. And he knelt beside her by the gilt fender, his lips to her fingers, stammering words that almost stunned her and left her faint with their passion and sweetness:
“You must have known that it was you I loved — that you were that other girl. You must have seen it a thousand times!”
She was crying silently; she could not speak, but one arm tightened around his neck in tremulous assent.
The telephone bell had been ringing for some time in their ears, deaf to all sounds except each other’s whispers; but at length he stumbled to his feet, cleared his eyes of enchantment, and made his way across the room to the receiver.
“What the deuce is the matter?”
* * * *
“Who?”
* * * *
“Oh, is that you, Uncle Peter?”
* * * *
“Yes, I did get your telegrams, but I thought — :—”
* * * *
“You mean to say you can see us now?”
* * * *
“No, I don’t deny it; I did kiss her.”
* * * *
“Because I love her!”
* * * *
“I can’t help it; you can do as you please. And I may as well tell you that I’m not afraid of your professors, or clairvoyants, or your crystals, because I’ve got a swastika—”
* * * *
“Yes, a swastika!”
* * * *
“You don’t know what a swastika is? Well, let me tell you it’s about five thousand times more powerful than a rabbit’s foot.... What?... Yes, I’ll hold the wire till you look it up in the dictionary.”
A throbbing silence. Then:
“Yes, Uncle Peter, I’m here.”
* * * *
“Very well; I’m sorry you’re angry, and I regret that you’re not afraid of the swastika. I am quite willing to trust to it; the swastika gave me the girl I love. And, by the way, Uncle Peter, didn’t you write me that my advertising poems made a fortune for you out of your wafers?... All right; I only wanted to confess that she, not I, wrote them.”
* * * *
“Don’t believe it? Why, I could no more write those charming verses than you could!”
* * * *
“You may imagine that with her talent and mine, and the swastika working away for us, we are not going to starve—”
* * * *
“That’s just what we intend to do. Bunsen’s Baby Biscuit Company will appreciate our talents. Besides, she can draw—”
* * * *
“You can call it blackmail if you choose. But what do you offer us to refuse advances from Bunsen?”
* * * *
“No, I won’t consider it. My price is full partnership in the Hildreth’s Honey Wafer Company, a cordial blessing from you, use of your apartments for a year, and the same old cozy place in your testament.”
* * * *
“Yes, in return we will write your poetry and draw your pictures for you. And, besides, we’ll name after you our first—”
“Jack!” she exclaimed, aghast.
“Dearest, for Heaven’s sake let me deal with him!” whispered Hildreth; then he shouted through the transmitter:
“Is it all right, Uncle Peter?”
* * * *
“I promise you — we promise you that we will name him Peter! If you don’t, by Heaven, I’ll name him Bunsen—”
* * * *
“That’s all right, but we’re desperate. Peter or Bunsen; take your choice!”
* * * *
“Yes; and I’ll have his photograph taken for Bunsen, and under it I’ll print: ‘A Bunsen’s Baby Biscuit Boy!’”
* * * *
“Don’t use such language; they’ll cut us off!”
* * * *
“What?”
* * * *
“Good! All right, Uncle Peter, you’re a brick. But — just one thing more; please put that crystal away for an hour or two—”
* * * *
“Because we’d like a little privacy!”
* * * *
“Of course I shall. Long engagements are foolish—”
“Jack!”
“Dearest, you know they are,” he said, turning toward her. “Shall I tell him in a week?”
Her blue eyes filled; again the little tremor of acquiescence set her red mouth quivering.
“In a week, Uncle Peter!” he shouted.
* * * *
“What? I’ll ask her. Hold the wire.”
And to her he said: “Sweetheart, our kind Uncle Peter desires to say something civil to you. I — I think it may be something about a check. Will you speak to him?”
She rose and came toward him; he handed her the receiver; she raised her head, and he bent his. They kissed — while his uncle waited.
Then she raised the receiver to her pretty ear, and said, very softly:
“Hello! Hello, Uncle Peter!”
CHAPTER X
THE GHOST OF CHANCE
AS YOUNG LEEDS entered the imposing bronze and marble portico of the Algonquin Trust Building, where he had a studio on the top floor, the elevator boy handed him a telegram and he opened it with instinctive foreboding of trouble. Meanwhile, the Ghost of Chance, which had followed him into the building, looked over his shoulder at the telegram.
There was evidently trouble enough in it; he had turned rather white as he stood there, eyes riveted on the yellow paper. Minute after minute sped; the elevators whizzed up and down in their gilded cages; people passed and repassed; the ornamental marble pavement of the rotunda echoed the clatter of footsteps. Several people he knew nodded to him as they entered or left the elevators: an architect domiciled on the top floor in the east wing, McManus, of the Belden Building and Construction Company; young Farren, private Secretary to De Peyster Thorne, president of the great Algonquin Trust Company, and director of about everything worth directing in the five boroughs.
“Mr. Farren!” called out Leeds; and, as that suave man checked his speed, wheeled, and came back, “Mr. Farren, could I see Mr. Thorne for half a second?”
Farren’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “If it’s a favor you want to ask, don’t ask it now—”
“It is, and I’ve got to—”
“Better not; he’s in a devilish humor; he’d foreclose on his own grandmother to-day.”
“But I can’t wait! I’ll use your telephone while you’re taking my card.”
Farren shrugged, turned, and led the way across the rotunda, ushered Leeds into the outer office, and took his card. Leeds went to a desk and used the telephone vigorously until Farren reappeared, nodding; and Leeds walked into the president’s private room. De Peyster Thorne, handsome, rather too elaborately groomed, and ruddier of face and neck than usual, looked up to return the young man’s greeting with an expressionless word and nod. He did not see the Ghost of Chance standing at Leeds’s elbow.
“I’m awfully sorry,” said Leeds, “but I don’t see how I can finish the key panel on time, Mr. Thorne.”
“Why not?” said Thorne, a darker flush mounting his heavy face and neck.
“I’ve a telegram this moment from my model; she’s ill. I telephoned for another, but there’s scarcely a chance I can get one I want. Something went wrong with the colors yesterday and I scraped out all I had done, expecting to finish to-day with a drier, dry to-morrow, and have Mr. McManus set the key panel in the ballroom Thursday morning. Now, I’ve probably got to spend to-day chasing up a red-haired model; and if I do, I cannot finish by Thursday. Couldn’t you give me one day more?”
“Mr. Leeds,” said Thorne, biting off his words unpleasantly, “a contract is a contract. Can you fulfill yours?”
“I’ve told you,” began Leeds, astonished — for never before had Thorne looked or spoken in that way—” I told you that my model—”
“Can you keep your contract?” repeated Thorne sharply.
“There’s a ghost of a chance if I can get a proper model,” replied Leeds, keeping his temper.
“Then you’d better take that ghost of a chance, Mr. Leeds. On reflection it will occur to you that my housewarming can scarcely be postponed to suit your rather erratic convenience. If the key panel is not in place, the room will be as attractive as a man in evening clothes without a collar. I’d rather tear out the entire frieze, and call the contract void! — and I’ll do it, too, if the contract is not fulfilled.”
“Is that the language you employ in all your commercial transactions?” asked Leeds without a trace of the passion that clutched at him.
“It is. An artist is as amenable to the commercial code of responsibility as any man I deal with — I don’t care a damn who he is or how he likes it.... Is there anything more I can do for you, Mr. Leeds?”
“No,” said Leeds thoughtfully, “unless you choose to take a kindergarten course in the elements of decency.”
Leaving the door ajar as he went out, and far too amazed and furious to notice Mr. Farren, the amused secretary, he crossed the corridor, followed by the Ghost of Chance, entered an elevator, and shot up to the top floor. Black rage and astonishment still possessed him when he met McManus in the hall, and he would have passed on with a nod and a scowl had that genial Irishman permitted.
“Phwat the divil’s up now, Misther Leeds?” inquired the big contractor and builder. “I’ll lay twinty to wan ye’ve joost come from Thorne.” Leeds laid his hand on the door knob of his studio.
“I have; I — I’m not in very good humor, Mr. McManus—” He jerked open the door and started to enter.
“Hould on! — don’t be runnin’ away. Sure haven’t I come from him meself — an’ kept me temper, too, Irish that I am! Phwat’s wrong betchune you an’ Misther Thorne an’ the hydrant?”
“Nothing much; my model is ill and I can’t promise to give you that key panel to set. Thome said — one or two things — oh, I can’t talk about it; he said one or two things—”
“Bedad, thin, he said a dozen things to me; an’ me as cool as a Waldorf julep, an’ he dammin’ the gildin’ whin I asked f’r the sivinth installment due this day. ‘It’s an expert I’ll have f’r to examine it,’ sez he. ‘Projooce the wad,’ sez I, ‘an’ afther that I’ll talk talks to anny expert ye name.’ An’ he had to.”
Leeds’s heart turned heavy. “I don’t know what Thorne means to do,” he said. “I’m not much on contracts; I’ve done my best. I suppose he will rip it out if he wants to. If he does, and if he cancels the contract, it will about ruin me. I never had but four other commissions; it cost me more to execute them than I was paid.”
