CHAPTER II TWO LOVELY LADIES

I am trying to give you this story as it opened up step by step before me and around me, not merely as I came to see it afterwards, looking backward. But of course I shall have to select my scenes. The story ran sometimes, like a cryptogram, through other events that seemed at the time to mean something entirely different, and I also did some living and working and thinking along other lines through those days. But these matters I eliminate in telling the tale. They were equally important to me at the time but now they are forgotten, and the links of the story are the only things that stand out in my memory.

Mrs. Whyte's dinner was an important link, but before that there came another incident most significant, as I saw afterwards,--or, rather, two related incidents.

There was an old beggar on the street-corner right across from my office for whom I had an especial affection. Of course he made a show of being a merchant rather than a beggar, by having a tray of cut flowers in summer and hot peanuts in winter and newspapers at all seasons, on a tripod arrangement beside him; and the police knew better than to see if he sometimes held up a wayfarer for more than the price of his wares. I was fond of him because he was so imperturbably cheerful, rain or shine, and so picturesque and resourceful in flattery. He was an old soldier; and one leg that had danced in days agone, and that had most heedlessly carried him to the firing line in half a dozen battles of our own Civil War was buried at Gettysburg. Barney seemed to regard this as a peculiarly fortunate circumstance, since it had made it possible for him to use a crutch. That crutch was a rare and wonderful possession, according to Barney. Hearing him dilate on its convenience and comfortableness, you might almost come to believe that he meant it all.

Well, you'll understand from this that I not only liked but respected Barney, and I usually stopped to get a flower when I passed his stand on leaving my office. On that Monday,--that eventful and ever-to-be-remembered Monday,--I saw as I approached that Barney was holding forth in the spell-binding manner I knew, to another listener,--a young fellow, I thought at first. But as I came up, his listener emptied a chatelaine purse upon Barney's tray, and my surprised glance from the jingling shower of silver to the face of the impetuous donor showed me that it was a young girl,--a gallant, boyish-faced girl, whose eyes were shining into Barney's with the enthusiasm of a hero-worshipper.

"I'll never forget that,--never!" she cried, in a voice thrilled with emotion. "It was great." And on the instant she turned on her heel like a boy and marched off down the street.

I looked at Barney with suspended disapproval, and for once, to do him credit, he looked abashed.

"Faith, and who'd think the chit would have all that money about her and her that reckless in shcattering it about!" he exclaimed. Then, recovering himself, he thrust the coins carelessly in his pocket (perhaps to get them out of my accusing sight) and ran on, confidentially,--

"It's the Lord's own providince that she turned it over to me, instead of carrying it about to the shops where temptation besets a young girl on all sides. It's too full their pretty heads are of follolls and such, for it's light-headed they are at that age, and that's the Lord's truth."

"You worked on her sympathies," I said sternly. "You saw she was a warm-hearted young girl, and you played up to her. You made yourself out a hero, you rascal."

"You're the keen gentleman," said Barney admiringly. "Sure and you'd make a good priest, saving your good looks, for you'd see the confession in the heart before a poor lying penitent had time to think of a saving twist to give it that might look like the truth and save him a penance."

"Never mind me and my remarkable qualities," I said severely. "What were you telling that girl?"

Barney bent over his flowers to shift the shades which protected them from the sun, but after a moment's hesitation he answered, without looking up.

"She has the way with her, that bit! When she looked me in the eye and says 'Tell me what I ask,' I knew my commanding officer, and it's not Barney that risks a court-martial for disobedience! No, sir! If she didn't keep at me to tell her how I lost my leg, now! Your honor couldn't have held out agin her, not to be the man you are."

I knew the story of that lost leg, and how shy Barney was of retailing that heroic bit of his history, and I wondered less at the girl's emotion than at her success in drawing the hidden tale from him. He didn't tell it to many. While I marvelled he looked up with the twinkle I couldn't help liking.

"She didn't give me time to tell her that that bit story wasn't the kind you pay to hear, but it would maybe have chilled the warm heart of her to have me push her silver back, and I wouldn't do that even if I had to keep the money to save her feelin's, the darlin'."

"Awfully hard on you, I know," I said, letting us both down with the help of a little irony. "Where's my rosebud, you rascal?"

He lifted a slender vase from the covered box beneath his table and brought out the flower he had reserved for me. It was a creamy white bud, deepening into a richer shade that hinted at stores of gold at the sealed-up heart. As he held it out silently, something in his whimsical face told me his thought.

"Yes, you are right," I said casually, as I took the flower. "It does look like her."

Barney's eyes wrinkled appreciatively. "There was a mistake somewhere, sir, when you were born outside of Eire. But you got it straight this time."

I went home to dress for Mrs. Whyte's dinner, and when I was ready I slipped into my pocket, to show my hostess, a little locket which held a miniature of my mother. Mrs. Whyte and my mother had been schoolmates,--that was why she was so much kinder to me than I could ever have deserved on my own account,--and I knew she would like to see the picture. I opened the case to look at it myself (my mother is still living, thank Heaven, and unchangeably young) and I was struck with the youthful modernity of it. Perhaps it was because the old style of dressing the hair had come back that it looked so of the present generation rather than of the past. It had been painted for my father in the days of their courtship, and on his death I had begged for the portrait, though my mother had refused to let me have the old case he carried. I had therefore spent some time and care in selecting a new case and had decided finally on one embellished with emeralds set in the form of a heart. I thought it symbolical of my dear mother's young-heartedness, but I found out afterwards that she especially objected to emeralds! Such are the hazards run by a mere man when he tries to deal with the Greater Mysteries. I have dwelt on this locket because it played an important part in after affairs,--and a very different part from what I designed for it when I slipped it into my pocket to show it to Mrs. Whyte.

It is a good two miles from my lodgings to Mrs. Whyte's, but I was early and I wanted exercise, so I walked. It was within a few minutes of seven when I came to her highly respectable street. As I turned the corner of her block my attention was caught by the sight of a young girl in excited colloquy with the driver of a cab, which stood before the house adjoining Mrs. Whyte's. I think I should have looked for a chance to be of service in any case, but when I saw, as I did at once, that the girl with so gallant a bearing was the same girl who had impulsively emptied her purse among Barney's flowers, and that the driver seemed to be bullying her, I felt that it was very distinctly my affair.

"But I tell you that I have no money," she was saying with dramatic emphasis, "and there is nobody at home, and I can't get in, and if you will come to-morrow--"

"Gammon," the man interrupted roughly. (She had not chosen her jehu with discrimination.) "You can't work that game on me--"

"I can give you my watch as a pledge," she said eagerly.

By that time I was near enough to interfere. (I always was lucky. Here I was ready if necessary to go through fire and water--a certain amount of each, at any rate--to get a better knowledge of the frank-hearted girl whose enthusiasm had so touched me in the afternoon, and all that Fate asked was a cabman's fare and a few stern words delivered with an air! Fate is no bargainer worthy the name.)

"It was most awfully good of you to come to the rescue," said the girl, in the direct and gallant manner that I felt was a part of herself. "I was just beginning to wonder what under the sun I should do. You see, I--I spent all my money down town, and I took a cab up, thinking I'd get the money here to pay the man, and now I find the house locked up and not a soul at home,--and me on the doorstep like a charity child without a penny!"

"That, was unlucky, certainly," I said. "I am more than glad that I could be of service. But now that the cabman is disposed of, how are you going to get into the house?"

She turned and looked at the house dubiously.

"I--don't--know. Unless I find an open window,--just a teeny one would be big enough. But Gene is very particular about my not being undignified. I think," she added, with a delightfully confidential smile, "that Gene would rather have me be dignified and hungry than undignified and comfortable. Under those circumstances would you advise me to hunt for an open window?"

"It's a delicate point to decide. Who is Gene? That might have some bearing on the question."

She looked surprised at my ignorance.

"Oh, he's my brother,--my twin. He lives in that house. So does Mr. Ellison. He's my guardian. But it surely looks as though nobody were at home!"

"Don't you live there, too?" I demanded in surprise.

"Oh, no. I'm at Miss Elwood's school at Dunstan. I don't mean I am there this minute, because of course I am here; but I'm supposed to be there. I just came down to surprise Gene because it is our birthday--you see we have only one between us--and now I can't get in!" And she threw out her hands dramatically.

(The worst part of trying to reproduce Miss Benbow's language accurately is that it sounds silly in type, but it never sounded silly when she was looking at you with her big, ambiguous eyes, and you were waiting, always in affectionate amusement, for the next absurdity. I sometimes wondered whether that frank air of hers was nature's disguise for a maid's subtlety, or whether her subtle witchery lay really in the fact that she was so transparent that you could see her thoughts breathe.)

"I have always heard that it was wise," I said, with a grandfatherly air, "to save out at least a street-car fare before flinging all one's broad gold pieces to the beggar in the street."

She looked a little startled, then swiftly comprehending. I knew she must have bit her inner lip to keep from smiling, but she spoke sedately.

"A street-car fare wouldn't help me to get into the house, would it? And that's the trouble now. Though of course if I had had a street-car fare I shouldn't have had any trouble with the cabman and you wouldn't have had to come to the rescue, so another time I'll be careful and remember--"

"Heavens, and they say a woman isn't logical!" I cried. "I hadn't thought out the sequence. I'm mighty glad that you were not wise when you flung away your purse since I was going to so profit by it. But now the question is, what are you going to do? I can't go off and leave you, like a charity child on the doorstep without a penny, not to mention a dinner. Haven't you any friends in the neighborhood?"

"Not what you would call friends, exactly, though I suppose they wouldn't let me starve if they knew. There's a Mrs. Whyte,--"

"Of course! In that red brick house next door. What luck! I'm going there for dinner."

She glanced at my evening garb and drew down the corners of her lips comically. "She won't like having a charity child thrust upon her when she is having a dinner party."

"Oh, that won't make the slightest difference in the world," I protested eagerly. "Mrs. Whyte is the kindest woman,--and besides, it's your birthday,--"

She looked at me under her lashes. "You're just a man. You don't understand," she said, with large tolerance. "See how I am dressed,--shirt-waist and linen collar! I didn't prepare for a party. Oh, I believe Gene is having a birthday party somewhere,--that's why everybody is away! And me supperless! Isn't it a shame?" She looked at me with tragedy on her face,--and a delicious consciousness of its effectiveness in the corner of her eye.

"Why didn't you come home earlier?" I asked, wondering (though it really wasn't my business) what she had been doing since I saw her leave Barney.

"You mean after I left that perfectly beautiful old soldier? How did you know about him and me, by the way?"

"Oh, I'm a friend of his, too. I happened to be quite near. My name, by the way, is Robert Hilton. I'll be much obliged if you'll remember it."

"Why, of course I'll remember. My name is Jean Benbow, and it is so nearly the same as Gene's because we are twins, but really his name is Eugene, and when he does something to make himself famous I suppose they will call him that. Well, after the soldier, and I wish I had had fifty times as much to give him, though that makes a sum that I simply can't do in my head,--not that it matters, because he didn't get it,--I remembered that I was going to get a birthday present for Gene, but I didn't remember, you see, that I hadn't any money. I don't think money is a nice thing to have on your mind, anyway. So I went to a bookstore and looked at some books and the first thing I knew they were closing up, and I hadn't yet decided. Have you ever noticed how time just flies when you are doing something you are interested in, and then if it is lessons or the day before a holiday or anything like that, how it literally drags?"

"I have noticed that phenomenon,--and Time is giving an example of flying this very minute. Really, I think you'd better come over to Mrs. Whyte's--"

"Oh, there's Minnie coming back now! She'll let me in," Miss Benbow interrupted me. A bareheaded young woman, from her dress evidently a housemaid, was hurriedly crossing the service court toward the Ellison back door, and without further words Miss Benbow started toward her across the lawn.

"Wave your hand if it is all right. I'll wait," I called after her.

The maid halted when she saw that fleet figure crossing the grass, they conferred a moment, then Miss Benbow waved a decisive hand to me, and they disappeared together in the rear of the house. Something ran through my brain about the ceasing of exquisite music,--I wished I could remember the exact words, because they seemed so to fit the occasion. Miss Benbow certainly had a way of keeping your attention on the qui vive.

Even after I had made my bow before Mrs. Whyte and had been presented to the beautiful Miss Thurston, I had intervals of absent-mindedness during which I wondered what Miss Benbow could be doing all alone in that big house. This was all the more complimentary to her memory, because Miss Thurston was a young woman to occupy the whole of any man's attention under ordinary or even moderately extraordinary circumstances. I had to admit that this time Mrs. Whyte had played a masterstroke. And that does not spell overweening conceit on my part, either! It required no special astuteness to read the concealed cryptogram in Mrs. Whyte's plans. I had had experience! So, unless I made a wild guess, had Miss Thurston. There could be no other explanation, consistent with my self-respect, of the cold dignity, the pointed iciness, that marked her manner toward me. She was a stately young woman by nature, but mere stateliness does not lead a young woman to fling out signs of "Keep off the grass" when a young man is introduced. I guessed at once that she had experienced Mrs. Whyte's friendly interest in the same (occasionally embarrassing) way that I had, and that she wished me to understand from the beginning that she was not to be regarded as particeps criminis in any schemes which Mrs. Whyte might be entertaining regarding my life, liberty, and happiness. Her intent was so clear that it amused as well as piqued me, and I set myself to being as good company as my limited gifts made possible. I knew that it was good policy, in such a case, to give Mrs. Whyte no reason for shaking her lovely locks at me afterwards; but partly I exerted myself to do my prettiest because Miss Thurston attracted me to an extraordinary degree. That does not indicate any special susceptibility on my part, either. She was (and is, I am happy to say,) one of the most charming women I have ever met. No, that is not the word. She made no effort to charm. She merely was. She wrapped herself in a veil of aloofness, sweet and cool, and looked out at you with a wistful, absent air that made you long to go into that chill chamber where she dwelt and kiss some warmth and tenderness upon her lips and a flash into her dreamy eye. I'm afraid that, in spite of my disclaimer, you will think me susceptible. Well, you may, then. I admit that I determined, within five minutes after my first bow, that I was not going to lose the advantage of knowing Miss Thurston, or permit her to forget me. (I cemented this determination before the evening was over with an act which had consequences I could never have anticipated.)

I am not going to dwell in detail upon the incidents of that dinner, because I want to get to the extraordinary events that followed it; but there were one or two matters that I must mention, because of the bearing they had on after events.

"I hear," said Mr. Whyte at a pause in the chatter, "that they are talking of nominating Clyde for mayor."

I happened to be looking at Miss Thurston when he spoke, and I saw a sort of breathless look come over her, as though every nerve were listening.

"Do you think he would take it?" Mrs. Whyte asked.

"That's the rub, confound the man. I don't understand Clyde. If ever there was a man fitted for public life, it is he. His father was governor, his grandfather was a United States senator, and he has all the qualities and faculties that made them distinguished. Yet here he buries himself in a private office and barricades himself against all public honors and preferment. I don't understand it."

(I did. I had wondered myself, but now I understood.)

"Perhaps he doesn't care for the sort of thing that other men value," said Miss Thurston. I fancied a trace of bitterness under her sweet indifference.

"It isn't that," said Mr. Whyte, frowningly. "He is thoroughly alive. And he doesn't keep out of public matters so long as he can work behind a committee. Everybody knows what he has done for the city without letting his name get into the papers. I think it's a crank notion he's got."

"It probably goes back to some disappointing love affair," said Mrs. Whyte, impressively. "That sort of thing will take the ambition out of a man like--like poison."

"But wouldn't we have heard of it?" asked Miss Thurston, lifting her penciled eyebrows. "We have known Kenneth Clyde all his life, you and I, and there never has been anything talked of--"

"There wouldn't be," interrupted Mrs. Whyte. "He wouldn't talk. But what else, I ask you, could change the reckless, ambitious, arrogant boy that he was,--you know he was, Katherine,--into the abnormally modest man he has become,--"

"I don't think he is abnormally modest," Miss Thurston interrupted in her turn. "He merely doesn't care for newspaper fame,--and who does? He has grown into a finer man than his early promise. If Saintsbury can get him for mayor,--"

"He won't take it," Mr. Whyte said pessimistically. "You'd have to hypnotize him to make him accept."

"Do you believe in hypnotism, Mr. Hilton?" Mrs. Whyte turned to me, evidently fearing that I would feel "out" of this intimate conversation.

"Believe that it can be exercised? Why, yes, I suppose there is no doubt of that. But I don't believe I should care to let anyone experiment on me.

"Fake. That's what it is," said Mr. Whyte. "Superstition."

"Now, Carroll, I know you're terribly wise, but you don't know everything," said Mrs. Whyte. "I'm sure I sometimes know what you are thinking--"

"That's telepathy, my angel, not hypnotism. Only you don't. You think you do, but I'll bet I could fool you nine times out of--nineteen!"

"I once saw a girl who was hypnotized, and it was horrible," said Miss Thurston. "She was lying in a show window of a shop, home in Blankville. She had been put to sleep, I learned, by some hypnotist who was exhibiting on the vaudeville stage, and who invited people to come up from the audience. I could just imagine how the pretty, silly, ignorant girl had been dared to go up. Then he was to awaken her publicly on the stage after forty-eight hours, and in the meantime she was exhibited on a cot in the window of a shop as an advertisement. I can't make you understand how unspeakably horrible it seemed to me."

"Where do you suppose her soul was?" asked Mrs. Whyte curiously.

"I don't know. But I know that there is something wicked about separating the soul and body. It is a partial murder."

"Bet you she was shamming," said Mr. Whyte, cynically.

"Oh, no, it was real,--terribly real," she cried. I had no opinions on the subject, but I thought Miss Thurston's earnestness very becoming, it brought such a spark into her dark eyes and broke up her rather severe tranquillity by a touch of undeniable feeling. But Mr. Whyte was unmoved.

"My dear Katherine, if there were any secret means by which one person could control the will of another and make him do what the controlling will commanded, the trusts would have bought it up long ago. A knowledge of how to do that would be worth millions,--and the millions would be ready for the man who could teach the trick."

"There are some things that money cannot buy," said Miss Thurston quietly.

"I never happened to run across them," said the cynical Whyte.

"I have happened to run across things enough that money wouldn't buy," said Mrs. Whyte, significantly.

But Miss Thurston took up his challenge (which I guessed was flung out for that purpose) with a fervor that transformed her.

"Money cannot buy knowledge," she cried. "To know how to control another's soul may be wicked knowledge,--I believe it is,--but it is knowledge nevertheless, and it is not at the command of your millionaires. Money cannot buy any of the best things in the world. It cannot buy love or loyalty or faith--or knowledge."

"You talk like Ellison," said Whyte, with good-humored contempt. "He goes on about knowledge of hidden forces, and I believe he is ready to believe in every charlatan that comes along and claims to know about the mysteries of nature or how to extract gold from sea-water, or to use the sun's rays to run his automobile."

"I'm glad he cares about something," said Mrs. Whyte, impatiently. "Certainly he doesn't care about anything human. He is a cold-blooded machine."

"Well," said Whyte, judicially, "he has done pretty well by the Benbow children."

"How has he done well by them? Eugene has grown up in his house, to be sure, but he has grown up without much help from his uncle, I can tell you that. And Jean has been poked off at school when she ought to have been coming out in society."

"Miss Benbow is at home this evening," I contributed. "I happened to meet her on my way here. She said she had come down from school to celebrate her birthday with her brother."

"Oh, is that so? Well, I'll warrant her uncle didn't know she was coming, nor will he know that she has been here when she is gone."

"She strikes me as a young lady who would make her presence noticed," I suggested.

"She is a dear child," said Miss Thurston, warmly. "I must look her up to-morrow. I haven't seen much of her, but I know Gene, and I am devoted to him."

Now do you wonder that I liked Miss Thurston? I liked her so much that I renewed my vow that she should not slip off into the outer circle of bowing acquaintanceship; and if she was afraid to be nice to me because she regarded me as in sympathy with Mrs. Whyte's matchmaking schemes, I would clear her mind of that apprehension without delay. I seized the opportunity immediately we were alone together.

"It is more than kind of Mrs. Whyte to give me such a chance to know her friends," I said. We were supposed to be looking at Mr. Whyte's books,--which were worth seeing. "Just because a man is engaged is no sign that he doesn't enjoy pleasant society."

"Oh!" she breathed.

"Mrs. Whyte doesn't know," I said, looking at her steadily.

She laughed softly, and a color and kindness came into her face that made her deliciously human.

"I see! But there is someone--?"

"There certainly is," I said, and drew the little miniature of my mother from my pocket. "Don't let Mrs. Whyte see it." (She would have recognized it!)

"How sweet she is!" she exclaimed. "I don't wonder!"

"The sweetest woman I ever knew," I said, and took the locket back jealously. My jest somewhat irked me now, with those candid eyes looking surprise at me from the picture. "And now will you be friends with me, instead of treating me as though I probably needed a snubbing to keep me on my good behavior?"

"The very best of friends," she cried, and laughed so merrily that Mr. Whyte, from the other side of the room, called out with interest,--

"You young people seem to be having a very good time. What's the joke?"

"Carroll!" Mrs. Whyte checked him in a warning undertone,--at which Miss Thurston and I looked at each other and laughed silently. I have no doubt the poor dear lady thought her plot was brewing beautifully. It was a shame to plot against her, but then it made her happy for the time. And it did most completely break down the icy barrier thrown out by Miss Thurston, so I tried to stifle the protests of my conscience. My judgment came later,--judgment, sentence, and execution. But I had a very good time that evening.

I had ordered a taxicab at a quarter before ten, so that I might waste no time getting down to the Ph?nix building for the appointment with Alfred Barker. As I went down the walk to the street, I glanced at the silent house in the next lot. There was no light in any window. I indulged in a moment's conjecture as to where Miss Benbow could be, but even as the thought went through my mind, I saw a light flare up in the corner room downstairs. Miss Benbow was exploring, then. Or the rest of the family had come home. Certainly I must manage somehow to see her again.

But I confess I completely forgot both Miss Benbow and Miss Thurston as my cab whirled me down to the business part of town. I concentrated my mind on the question of how to deal with the blackmailer, and tried to prepare myself beforehand for his probable lines of attack or defense. At the same time I told myself judicially that the situation might develop in some unexpected way.

It did. Most completely unexpected. I shall have to tell it in detail.