Chapter 12

Bobo was of a very elastic temperament. The pot of coffee quickly completed his restoration. "Say," he said, "I feel all right now. I've got a clean shirt. It's not too late to go to Mrs. Cleaver's."

"Well!" said Jack. "I was thinking you'd had enough company for to-night."

"She'll be sore if we don't come," said Bobo.

"Well, I don't mind. Put on your things, and I'll telephone for the car to be sent back."

Mrs. Cleaver had a modest little house in the Murray Hill district. When Jack learned more about such things he appreciated her astuteness in thus setting up her banner in the stronghold of yesterday's aristocracy. The great people of day before yesterday still linger north of Washington Square, but they hardly count nowadays. A house on Murray Hill though still gives its owner a cachet of exclusiveness that the grandest mansion uptown may lack.

The modest aspect of Mrs. Cleaver's house was limited to the Park avenue fa?ade. "My little house," she always called it. But once inside one was astonished by the great sweep of salon, hall, music room. Below there was a billiard room; above, a library and a little salon. Strangers wondered where the inmates lived.

Jack and Bobo were not too late, for other cars were still rolling up to the door.

"None sweller than this outfit," Bobo remarked with satisfaction.

They trod a red carpet under a peppermint striped awning.

"Lord! What'll we do when we get inside?" whispered Bobo in a sudden panic.

"Just drift on the current," said Jack. "I expect things will be made easy for us."

And they were. On the entrance floor there were cloak rooms as efficiently run as those in a hotel—indeed, the house was in all ways like a hotel. They presently found themselves mounting the main stairway without having made a break. The whole floor above was thrown into one room, and as they mounted a roar of polite conversation met them like an advancing wave.

A superb major-domo at the head of the stairs threw terror into Bobo's soul by demanding his name. Bobo stared at him dumbly, but Jack caught on and answered for both. Their names were bellowed to the roof.

"Mr. Norman!"

"Mr. Robinson!"

Mrs. Cleaver having allowed it to become known that the amazing young millionaire of a day, New York's latest sensation, might be expected, the sound of his name had an electrical effect. The conversational surf was stilled as if by magic, and every face was turned towards the two young men.

Bobo suddenly discovering that "society" people, of whom he had stood secretly in awe, were no harder to impress than those of the hotel, soared like a balloon. He advanced with languid eyebrows, lacking only the monocle to give a perfect imitation of his hero, the imported actor. Jack followed at his heels, smiling.

Mrs. Cleaver, leaving the greatest persons there, came swimming to meet them. Figuratively they rubbed their eyes at the sight of her. She was one who went in frankly for hothouse effects. Her hair was the color of cherrywood stain, her cheeks tinted to match. Her dress was one of those outlandish creations one occasionally sees in the shop-windows, just for an advertisement, one supposes.

"A beaded bib and a torn piano cover!" Jack described it to himself.

Jack naturally had to content himself with the briefest of nods from their hostess. Her heavy ammunition was reserved for Bobo.

"How good of you to come! I hardly dared hope—on such short notice! I hope I am the first to present you to the great world. Everybody is here to-night. But I'm not going to introduce you to a soul until I've had you to myself for awhile!" etc., etc.

Pausing only long enough to unload Jack on a neglected female sitting in the corner, she carried Bobo off. She was still gushing like the great geyser, and Bobo had nothing to do but fiddle in his waistcoat pockets, and incline a languid, attentive head, a part he played to perfection. Jack had no anxiety on his account. Whatever breaks he made, they would simply call him an "original." Was he not a hundred times a millionaire?

Jack discovered that his companion like many a neglected female was not without spice.

"A queer gang, isn't it?" was her opening remark.

"I don't know," said Jack, "haven't had a chance to give 'em the once over yet."

"You don't look as if you belonged," she said with a sharp look. "You look almost human."

"Oh, you're too discerning. How did you get here yourself?"

"I'm not human. A girl of my attractions can't afford it. I'm Sonia Kharkov."

"I wouldn't have thought it of you."

"Everything's Russian nowadays. I write poems about surgical operations. My last was entitled 'Appendectomy.'"

"How thrilling! Sorry I never read any."

"Oh, I don't publish. I only talk about them. It gets me many a good meal."

"Well, you're a good sport," said Jack.

More than an hour passed before Jack caught sight of Bobo again. In the meantime he was parted from the poetess, and the deafening clamor began to weary him.

"There's enough hot air let out here to fill one of the Consolidated gas-tanks," he had said to the poetess.

"Yes, but it's not illuminating gas," she had retorted.

He reflected that he would most likely run across Bobo in the vicinity of the refreshments, and conducting an investigation, he discovered an excellent buffet supper set forth in one of the rooms below. Sure enough, Bobo presently drifted in here.

"Where have you been?" asked Jack.

"Oh, Mrs. Cleaver took me up to the library where she receives a few of the principal guests," he drawled.

"My word!" said Jack, fixing him with an imaginary monocle.

The sarcasm was lost on Bobo. He exhibited a new preoccupation. He had a faraway gaze, and ever and anon he heaved a sigh. Even his appetite was affected. He ate nothing at all; not a thing except a couple of vol au vents of chicken livers, a helping of lobster Newburgh, a handful of sandwiches, a cup of punch or two, and a plate of petits fours.

"Come away," he said with his mouth full. "I want to talk to you."

They found an unoccupied corner under the stairs, and lit cigarettes.

"I'm in love!" announced Bobo.

"No!" said Jack.

"'S a fact! The real thing! Bowled me right over! Floored me! I feel—I feel all gone here!" He laid a plump hand on the pit of his stomach.

"You need nourishment," said Jack. "Come on back!"

"Don't josh me! This is serious. I'm completely changed. I feel as if I never wanted to eat again. Her name is Miriam Culbreth."

"Um-yummie," said Jack.

"She's the most beautiful girl in the whole world. The moment I laid eyes on her I knew it was all up with me. No other girl ever made me feel like that. And the wonderful part of it is she took to me right off the bat."

"Hm!" said Jack cynically.

Bobo never heeded. "We started right in talking as if we had known each other for years. We found out that we both like the same things. I never met a girl that understood me so well. She said she admired me."

"Discriminating," murmured Jack.

"Such eyes!" sighed Bobo. "When she looks at you like this, through her lashes, you feel—you feel as if you were going up in an airplane. And she has the nature of a child!"

"What are your intentions towards this sweet child?"

"Intentions! No man could have any but the most honorable intentions towards her!"

"Sure! Then how are you going to support her in the style to which she has been accustomed?"

"Oh, she's well fixed. You should see the way she dresses!"

"Be careful! The best dressers are poor girls. It's a life and death matter with them. This girl is displaying her goods on the basis of a hundred million. You can't honestly accept it for less."

"There isn't a mercenary thought in her head. If she ever marries it will be for love alone. She told me so herself. You don't understand her. She's as simple and natural as—as a wild-flower!"

"I haven't noticed many wild-flowers around here."

"She isn't like these people. She's different from other girls."

"Did she tell you that, too?"

"Why, yes, how did you know?"

"They generally do."

"You must come and meet her. I told her about you."

"What!" asked Jack sharply.

"I mean, I told her I had had the luck to secure a secretary, who was a very clever fellow, and could do everything for me."

"Now that was nice of you!"

"Come on up to the library and I'll introduce you."

"But I'm not one of the distinguished guests."

"That's all right. Mrs. Cleaver said I was to treat the house as if it was my own!"

Bobo paused only long enough to snatch another mouthful or two, and they made their way up two flights of the broad stairs. On the main floor the racket was undiminished, though it was long past midnight. Somewhere in the distance one seemed to be frantically sawing on a violin, but it was impossible to be sure. On the floor above the groups were smaller, and one had a pleasant sense of rising above pandemonium.

Bobo led the way into the front room. In the corner a lovely lady reclined in a low basket chair filled with cushions. Three cavaliers were in attendance. Quick to spot the approach of newcomers, she dismissed the three with charming insolence.

"Run along, boys. I'm tired of you now."

The departing ones greeted the arrivals with no friendly glances.

Jack could not but commend Bobo's taste in beauty. The girl was indeed lovely to look at. She had great brown eyes, capable of working havoc in the most indurated male heart, an exquisite naturally pale complexion, and a glorious crown of chestnut hair. She was enveloped in slinky draperies of black silk, and her ankles were truly poetic.

But when she began to talk, Jack did not feel obliged to alter the opinion he had formed of her in advance. There was nothing simple about her—or rather, her simplicity was the effect of well-nigh perfect art. Jack was not much more experienced in these matters than Bobo, but he had a healthy instinct of incredulity.

Her method with Jack was much more subtle than with Bobo, and she had no objection whatever to letting Jack see that it was. It was part of her system of delicate flattery to allow him to understand that she recognized him at once as of a superior intelligence to Bobo. Jack was flattered of course, but she made a mistake with him at the start that spoilt all her work with him. It never occurred to her that Jack might be honest at heart.

No man, however safeguarded, could escape the effect of her beauty. For Jack there was but one woman in the world, but even his breast was shaken by a sudden lift of the brown eyes. They had a mysterious, haunting beauty, which even this bigness and softness was not sufficient to explain. Jack, when he had an opportunity to look closer, saw that they were not brown at all, but hazel; that is to say gray, with a rim of brown around the iris. It was the effect of these strangely-colored eyes looking through curved black lashes that moved men to reckless deeds.

Her conversation was not clever. It had no need to be. If she had recited the Thirty-Nine Articles Bobo would have hung on her lips entranced. Jack was too busy trying to explore the mystery of her real self to pay much attention to what she chose to give out.

"Hazel eyes!" he was thinking. "Where have I heard of another girl with hazel eyes? Oh, yes, it was the pretty stenographer who tried to spy on Silas Gyde. She had chestnut hair, too, and a mole inside her right forefinger. I don't suppose these tapering fingers ever jarred the keys."

"What are you thinking of, Mr. Robinson?" Miss Culbreth asked in silvery tones. "I declare you are one of those dreadful men that bore you through and through with their eyes and never say a word."

"I'd rather bore you with my eyes than with my conversation."

"Mercy! Clever, too! I'm frightened to death of you!"

"Didn't I tell you he was clever?" put in poor Bobo, without at all appreciating what was going on.

"The worst of it is," said Miss Culbreth, "that the men who won't talk are those who really have something to say."

This was accompanied by the shadow of a disdainful glance in Bobo's direction, and a warm flash towards Jack, the suggestion being: "One has to humor the stupid rich, but one enjoys oneself with the witty poor!"

Jack was flattered through and through, but at the same time he was thinking: "She's a regular man-eater. I'll have to watch out for poor Bobo."

"You don't approve of me," she said, casting down the lovely eyes.

"Indeed I do," Jack protested. "What you mistake for disapproval is quite another feeling."

"And what is that?"

"Instinct of self-preservation!"

"Are women so dangerous?"

"Not all women."

Her bold, pleased glance at Jack said: "We can have fun right under his stupid nose, can't we?"

But Bobo was growing restless, and she turned to him promptly, as befitted a prudent, marriageable girl. "You were gone an awfully long time," she complained.

Bobo grinned like the Cheshire cat. "Did you miss me?"

She answered him with a long glance that visibly made his head reel. This was followed by a flash of intelligence in Jack's direction, signifying: "This is the sort of thing I'm obliged to hand out to them."

"Lord! But she's a conscienceless lovely devil!" thought Jack grimly. "I'd like to teach her a lesson. Anyhow, I'm hanged if I'm going to let her make me a party to her game with Bobo."

So he made a careless excuse and left them. Bobo did not mind, of course, but an ugly shadow flitted over Miss Culbreth's fair countenance.

Jack returned to the lower floor, where he could smoke and watch the crowd undisturbed. He had not been there long before Bobo came downstairs considerably agitated.

"Have you seen her?" he asked.

"Who?"

"Miriam—Miss Culbreth," he said, blushing. "We started downstairs to the refreshment room together, but I lost her somehow in the crowd. Can't find her anywhere."

"She will find herself when she wishes to, I expect," said Jack calmly.

"Maybe she's gone on in," said Bobo hopefully. He disappeared into the refreshment room.

As soon as he had gone a footman who had been standing near approached Jack. "Mr. Robinson?" he asked.

Jack nodded.

"Miss Culbreth sent me for you, sir. Will you please come with me."

It was a point of pride with Jack never to be surprised at anything. With a nod, he followed the man. They avoided the stairs, and were raised to the upper regions in a tiny elevator concealed behind the wainscoting. The young lady was found in still another part of the house, a dainty silk-paneled room at the back, and she was alone there with a tempting supper—spread for two. The footman evaporated.

"I was so hungry," she said, waving him to the seat opposite, "and I couldn't face the crowd downstairs. They paw one so! So I had it brought up here, and sent for you to keep me company."

"You make pretty free in the house," thought Jack.

"I live here," she said, as if she had read his thought. "Mrs. Cleaver is my cousin. Do you mind my sending for you?" she said meltingly.

"Mind!" said Jack. "I most certainly do! I shall return at once." And he sat down.

She laughed. "I like you, you're so unexpected. A little while ago you piqued my curiosity so, I couldn't rest without seeing you again." This was said with the wide-eyed seeming simplicity that was her trump suit. "You so plainly did not like me! And most people do!" This with an adorable, deprecating shrug.

"I did like you!" Jack protested with an inscrutable face. "I liked you so much, I felt I had to be very, very careful!"

"Don't be careful!" she murmured, turning on the full fire of those terrible eyes. "I despise careful men!"

Jack kept a prudent hold on himself. "I have no choice," he said calmly. "How long would I hold my job if I was not—well, careful?"

"You're afraid!" she said with provoking scorn.

He shrugged.

"Is it true he has a hundred million?" she asked idly.

"You can't prove it by me. I'm only his secretary."

"But you do everything for him. He depends on you absolutely. Anybody can see that."

Jack declined to be drawn into a discussion of Bobo.

"How long have you known him?" she asked.

"Oh, quite a while," he said vaguely. He could not tell what mythical details of their past Bobo might have given her.

"What a responsibility it will be on you! Looking after all that money and everything."

"Oh, the executor and the lawyer will take care of all that."

"Who is his lawyer?"

"What does she want to know that for?" thought Jack. She had overdone the carelessness with which she asked it. He gave her a fictitious name, and looked at her with a new interest. At the moment her profile was turned towards him, and the way the light fell on it certain lines of weariness were shown up. She looked older than she had seemed at first.

Jack thought: "Mr. Gyde said that, too, of the stenographer who worked for him. This is more than a coincidence. Wouldn't it be amazing if——!"

"What do you think of me?" she asked with a direct challenge. "I can see that you're revolving me in your head all the time."

"Well, you do make a man dizzy," he parried.

"No, I'm serious. How would you describe me if you had to?"

"Honest, I don't know."

"Come now, you're a great reader of character. You're always studying people, and trying to figure them out to yourself."

"Am I?" said Jack. He had a sudden idea. "They say there's more character in people's hands than in anything else," he said carelessly.

"Read mine," she said, extending a white and tapering member. It was the left hand she offered.

"It must always be the right hand."

She gave it him.

"I'll read character until the cows come home if you'll let me hold it."

"Go on. And no nonsense."

"Have you ever operated a typewriter?" he asked slyly.

"No. Why do you ask?" she asked sharply.

"Oh, nothing. This hand looks to be capable of anything."

"But my character?"

"Ambitious, luxury-loving and cruel," he began mockingly.

She snatched the hand away. "Horrible! You're no character-reader!"

But he had had time to see what he was looking for: on the inside of the index finger was a large pale mole, as big as the button on a woman's glove.