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by Howard Chandler Christy


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Title: The Last Woman


Author: Ross Beeckman



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Language: English

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[Illustration: Cover]

THE LAST WOMAN

by

ROSS BEECKMAN

Author of "Princess Zara"

Frontispiece by Howard Chandler Christy







[Illustration: Frontispiece]



New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers

Copyright, 1909--by
W. J. Watt & Company

Published August




                    _THE THEME_

     _If I could have my dearest wish fulfilled,
           And take my choice of all earth's treasures, too,
     And ask of Heaven whatsoe'er I willed--
               I'd ask for you._

     _There is more joy to my true, loving heart,
           In everything you think, or say, or do,
     Than all the joys of Heaven could e'er impart,
               Because--it's YOU._




CONTENTS

         CHAPTER                                   PAGE

         I.  THE PRICE                              11

        II.  ONE WOMAN WHO DARED                    36

       III.  A STRANGE BETROTHAL                    56

        IV.  THE BOX AT THE OPERA                   79

         V.  BEATRICE BRUNSWICK'S PLOT              96

        VI.  A REMARKABLE MEETING                  115

       VII.  THE BITTERNESS OF JEALOUSY            126

      VIII.  BETWEEN DARKNESS AND DAYLIGHT         142

        IX.  PATRICIA'S COWBOY LOVER               147

         X.  MONDAY, THE 13TH                      164

        XI.  MORTON'S ULTIMATUM                    176

       XII.  THE QUARREL                           185

      XIII.  SALLY GARDNER'S PLAN                  192

       XIV.  PATRICIA'S WILD RIDE                  201

        XV.  ALMOST A TRAGEDY                      216

       XVI.  THE AUTOMOBILE WRECK                  232

      XVII.  CROSS PURPOSES AT CEDARCREST          243

     XVIII.  MYSTERIES BORN IN THE NIGHT           258

       XIX.  RODERICK DUNCAN SEES LIGHT            272

        XX.  THE LAST WOMAN                        285

       XXI.  THE REASON WHY                        294

      XXII.  THE MYSTERY                           307





THE LAST WOMAN




CHAPTER I

THE PRICE


The old man, grim of visage, hard of feature and keen of eye, was
seated at one side of the table that occupied the middle of the floor
in his private office. He held the tips of his fingers together, and
leaned back in his chair, with an unlighted cigar gripped firmly in
his jaws. He seemed perturbed and troubled, if one could get behind
that stoical mask which a life in Wall street inevitably produces; but
anyone who knew the man and was aware of the great wealth he possessed
would never have supposed that any perturbation on the part of Stephen
Langdon could arise from financial difficulties. And could his most
severe critics have looked in upon the scene, and have seen it as it
existed at that moment, they would unhesitatingly have said that the
source of his discomfiture, if discomfiture there were, was the
queenly young woman who stood at the opposite side of the table,
facing him.

She was Patricia Langdon, sometimes, though rarely, addressed as Pat
by her father; but he alone dared make use of the cognomen, since she
invariably frowned upon such familiarities, even from him.

In private, among the women with whom she associated, she was
frequently referred to as Juno; and when she was discussed by the
gossips at the clubs, as she frequently was (for there are no greater
nests of gossip in the world than the men's clubs of New York City),
she was always Juno. There was a double and subtle purpose in both
cases; one felt it rather a dangerous proceeding to speak
criticizingly of Patricia Langdon, lest somehow what was said should
get to her ears. She was one who knew how to retaliate, and to do so
quickly. She was like a man in that she feared nothing, and hesitated
at nothing, so long as she knew it to be right. A precedent had no
force with her; if she desired to act, and there was no precedent for
what she wished to do, she established one.

All her life, Patricia had been her father's chum; ever since she
could remember, they had talked together of stocks and bonds, and puts
and calls, and opening and closing quotations, and she knew every
slang word that is uttered in "the street," that is used on the floor
of the stock-exchange, or that appears in the financial columns of the
newspapers.

And these two, father and daughter, were as much alike in outward
bearing, in demeanor and in appearance, in gesture and in motion, as a
man and a woman can be when the man is approaching seventy and the
woman is only just past twenty.

These two had been discussing an unprecedented circumstance. The
daughter was plainly annoyed, as her glowing cheeks and flashing eyes
evidenced. The man, if one could have read his innermost soul, was
afraid; for he knew his daughter as no other person did, and he feared
that he had gone, or was about to go, a step too far with her.

The room was the typical private office of a present-day financial
king, who is banker as well as broker, and who speaks of millions, by
fifties and hundreds, as a farmer talks of potatoes by the bushel. It
was a large, square room, solidly but not luxuriantly furnished. The
oblong table at which Stephen Langdon was seated, and upon which his
daughter lightly rested the tips of the fingers of one hand, was one
around which directors of various great corporations gathered, almost
daily, to be told by "old Steve" what to do. Over in a far corner was
a roll-top desk with a swivel chair, at which Langdon usually seated
himself when he was attending to his correspondence, or looking over
private papers; beside it was a huge safe, and beyond that another,
smaller one. Then, there were several easy chairs upholstered in
leather, a couch and two other desks. There were three doors: one of
these communicated with the main office of Stephen Langdon & Company,
Bankers and Brokers; another was a private entrance from the street
that ran along the side of the building, which Langdon owned; the
third communicated with a smaller room, really the _sanctum sanctorum_
of Stephen Langdon, into which it was his habit to take any person
with whom he wished to have an absolutely confidential chat.

This room was supposed never to be entered save by himself and those
whom he took with him--and by the cleaners who once a week attended to
it. These three doors were now closed.

"Old Steve" moved nervously in his chair, shifted his feet uneasily,
and rolled the unlighted cigar from one corner of his mouth to the
other, biting savagely upon it as he did so.

"Well, Pat," he said, with as much impatience as he ever showed, "have
you nothing to say?"

"There seems to be nothing for me to say, dad," replied his daughter,
and the intonation of her voice was different from the one she was
accustomed to use in addressing her father, whom she adored. He
attributed it, doubtless, to his abbreviation of her name, for he
smiled grimly.

"Haven't you heard what I said?" he demanded.

"Certainly."

"Well, then, you know the situation, don't you?"

"I am not quite sure as to that," she replied, meditatively. "You have
been somewhat ambiguous, and certainly quite enigmatical in your
statement. Am I to gather from what you have told me that you are
really facing failure?"

"God knows I have made it plain enough," was the quick response and
Langdon pushed his chair away from the table, stretched his legs out
straight in front of him, and thrust his hands deep into his
trousers-pockets.

"I had not supposed it possible for you to face failure," said
Patricia, with her eyes fixed upon her father's mask-like face; "but
if it is so, won't you tell me more about it?"

"It all came about through those infernal bonds that I have just
described to you. The men who were to go into the deal with me
withdrew at the last moment; I have already explained that fully to
you, and now, this Saturday afternoon, I find myself in a position
such as I have never faced before--where there are demands upon me
which I cannot meet; and those demands, Patricia, must be met,
somehow, at ten o'clock on Monday morning, or Stephen Langdon must go
to the wall."

"It amazes me," she said, speaking more to herself than to him; and
she tapped lightly with her gloved fingers upon the table before her.
"It amazes me more than I can say. I thought myself closely familiar
with all the ins and outs of your business, dad, and I find now that I
knew nothing about it at all."

"You have never known very much about it," he replied, with a
half-laugh, but with a kindly smile, which changed his iron face
wondrously, and which was reflected by a softened expression in his
daughter's eyes.

"Is there no one to come to your aid?" she asked him.

"No, Patricia, there is no one to whom I could apply without betraying
my condition and situation, and that would be fatal. Such a course
would be equivalent to going broke; for when once a man loses his
credit, even for an instant, in Wall Street, it is lost forever,
never to be regained. People will tell you that there are exceptions
to this, but I have been fifty years among the bulls and bears, and
wolves, too, and I know better. When a man who occupies the position
that I have held, and hold now, goes to the wall, it is the end."

During this statement, she had walked to one of the windows and stood
silently looking out, for she wished to ask a question which her own
intuition had already answered. She knew what the answer would be, but
she did not quite know what form it would take. She felt that sort of
misgiving which belongs only to women, and she feared that there was
something beyond and behind, and perhaps beneath, all this present
circumstance, which was being kept from her. For Patricia Langdon did
know of one man who would go to her father's assistance, and she could
not understand why he had not already applied to that person.

Presently, she returned to the table.

"Patricia," said her father, with some impatience, "I wish to the Lord
you'd sit down. You make me nervous keeping on your feet all the
while, and with those big eyes of yours fixed on your old dad's face
as if they had discovered something new and strange in the lines of
it."

She paid no heed to this remark--one would have supposed she did not
hear it; but she asked:

"Will you tell me why you sent for me? and why you wished to consult
with me?"

Again, the cigar was whipped sharply to the opposite corner of the old
banker's mouth; and he replied quickly, almost savagely:

"Because I have thought of a way by which you can help me out."

His daughter caught her breath; it was a little gasp, barely audible;
but she uttered only one word in reply. It was:

"How?"

For an instant, the banker hesitated at this abrupt question; then,
with a suggestion of doggedness in his manner, he thrust forward his
aggressive chin and shut his teeth so tightly together that the cigar,
bitten squarely off, dropped unheeded upon the rug where he stood. By
way of reply, he spoke a man's name.

"Roderick Duncan," he said, sharply.

Patricia did not seem to heed the strangeness of her father's reply,
nor did she alter the expression of her eyes or features. She seemed
to have anticipated what he would say. After a moment, she remarked
quietly:

"I should think it very likely that Roderick would assist you in your
extremity. I see no reason why he should not do so. His father was
your partner in business. Indeed, I should regard it as his duty to
come to your aid, in an extremity like this. But why, if I may venture
to ask, was it necessary to consult me in regard to any application
you might make to him?"

The old man did not reply; he remained silent, and continued doggedly
to stare at his daughter. Presently, she asked him: "Have you already
made such a request of Mr. Duncan?"

A smile took the place of the old man's frown; his face softened.

"No; that is to say, not exactly so," he replied.

"You have, perhaps, suggested the idea to him?"

Old Steve shrugged his shoulders, and dropped back into the chair,
kicking away the half of the cigar in front of him as he did so.

"Yes," he said, "I have suggested the idea to him, and he met the
suggestion more than half way, too. The reply he made to me is what
brings your name into the question. If it were not for the fact that I
know you to be fond of him, and that you are already half-promised--"

"Is that why you have sent for me?" She interrupted him with quiet
dignity, although the expression of her eyes was suddenly stormy.

"Yes; it is."

"Would you please be more explicit? I am afraid that I do not clearly
understand."

"Well, Pat, to put it in plain words, Roderick's answer implied that he
would be only too delighted to advance the sum I require--twenty-million
dollars--to his prospective father-in-law!"

Patricia stiffened where she stood. Her eyes fairly blazed with the
sparks of anger they emitted. The hand that rested upon the table was
clenched tightly, until the glove upon it burst. Otherwise, she showed
no emotion.

"So, that is it," she said, presently. "Roderick Duncan has made a bid
for me in the open market, has he? I am to be the collateral for a
loan which you are to secure from him. Is that the idea? He has made
use of your financial predicament to hasten matters with me. I
understand--now!"

"Humph! Roderick would be very much astonished if he heard your
description of the situation. He thought, and I thought, also--"

"But that is what it amounts to, isn't it?"

"Why, no, child; no, that is not what it amounts to, at all. You ought
to know that. Roderick has loved you ever since you were boy and girl
together, and you were always fond of him. His father and I both
believed that some day you would marry. I know that Duncan has asked
you time and time again, and I know, too, that you have never refused
him. You have just put him off, again and again, that is all. You have
played fast and loose with him until he is--"

"Wait, dad. There is one thing that you never knew; or, if you did
know it once, you have forgotten what little you knew about it then. I
refer to a woman's heart. You ignored that part of me when you made
your bargain. You forgot my pride, too. It is quite true that I have
been fond of Roderick Duncan, all my life. It is equally true that he
has asked me to be his wife, and that I have seriously considered his
proposals. It is even true that I have thought of myself as his wife,
that I have tried to believe that I loved him. All that is true, quite
true--too true, indeed. But now--How dared you two discuss _me_, in
the manner you have?" She blazed forth at her father suddenly,
forgetting her studied calm. "Oh, I read you correctly when I first
entered this room. I could see, even then, that some plot was afoot.
But I never guessed--good heaven! who could have guessed?--that it
was anything like this. Do you realize what you have done? Your words,
thus far, have only implied it, but I know! Shall I tell you?"

"My dear--!"

"You have found yourself in this financial muddle--if, indeed, it is
true that you are in one--and--"

"It is quite true."

"So much the worse for making me the victim of it. You have applied to
Roderick Duncan for some of his millions; and you two, together, have
discovered in the incident a means of coercing me. Oh, it is plain
enough. You are a poor dissembler in a matter of this kind, however
excellent you may be in others. I see it all, now, as clearly as if
you had expressed it in words. You have asked Roderick, by intimation,
if not in actual words, to go to your assistance to the amount of so
many millions; and he, the man who professes to love me, whom I have
thought I loved--he has, as bluntly, replied--oh, it is too terrible
to contemplate!--he has told you that if I will hasten my decision, if
I will give my consent at once to the wedding he proposes, he will
supply the cash you need. You offer your daughter, as security for the
loan; he accepts the collateral! That is the exact situation, isn't
it?"

"I suppose it is about that, although you put it rather brutally," he
replied.

"Brutally!" she laughed. "Why, dad, is not that the way to put it?
Horses and cattle are bought and sold at auction, knocked down to the
highest bidder, or purchased at a private sale. The stocks and bonds
and securities in which you deal are handled in precisely the same
way. And now, when you are in an extremity, when your back is to the
wall, a man whom I had always supposed to be at least a gentleman
calmly makes a bid for your daughter, and you, my father, are willing
to sell! Is not brutality the fitting word for you both? It seems so
to me."

"Look here, Pat--"

"Stop, father; let me finish."

The old man shrugged his shoulders, and the daughter continued:

"It is a habit with people to say, 'If I were in your place I should'
do so-and-so. I tell you, had I been in your place when such a
suggestion as that one was made I should have struck the man in the
face; but you see in me a value which I did not know I possessed. My
father, who has been my chum since I was a child, is willing to
dispose of his daughter for dollars and cents. And a man whom I have
infinitely respected, calmly offers to make the purchase." Patricia
clenched her hands and glared stormily at her father. Then, when he
made no reply, she turned and walked to the window, staring out of it
for a moment, while the old man remained silently in his chair,
knowing that it were better for him not to speak, until the first
violence of the storm had passed. He knew this daughter of his, or
thought he did; but he was presently to discover that he was less wise
than he had supposed. After a little, she returned and stood beside
him, leaning against the table with her hands behind her, clenching
it; but her words came calmly enough, when she spoke.

The old man raised his eyes to hers, as she approached him, and his
own widened with amazement when he studied his daughter's face with
that quick and penetrating glance which could read so unerringly the
operators of Wall street. He could not comprehend precisely what it
was that he saw in Patricia's face at this moment--only, he realized
it to be the expression of some kind of settled purpose. He had never
seen her thus before. Her strangely beautiful eyes had never blazed
into his in just this way. He had seen her tempers and had contended
against them, more or less, since she was left to his sole care, at
her birth; but this attitude assumed now was new to him. Stephen
Langdon knew, by his knowledge of himself, that Patricia was like him;
but here was something new, strange, almost unreal. He wondered at it,
shrank from it, not knowing what it was. Settled purpose was all that
he was enabled to recognize. But what sort of settled purpose? What
was it that his daughter had decided upon?

He was not long in doubt. Her words were sufficiently direct, if the
hidden purpose behind their outward meaning was not.

"Father," she said, with distinct calmness, "I will use a phrase that
is familiar to you. It seems to fit the occasion. You may tell
Roderick Duncan that you will deliver the goods! Tell him to have the
twenty millions ready for you to deposit in your bank at ten o'clock
Monday morning, and that you will be ready with the collateral he
demands."

"But, Patricia, my daughter, you take an unjust view of--"

"Stop, father! He must be told still more: he must be told that the
collateral, having certain rights and values of its own, will insist
upon a few stated conditions; and when the bargain is concluded, at
ten o'clock Monday morning, Mr. Duncan must first have accepted those
conditions."

She walked around to the other side of the table again and faced her
father across it; then she added, slowly and coolly:

"There must be a legal form of document drawn, in this transaction,
and it must be signed, sealed and delivered exactly as would be done
if the collateral offered, and the thing ultimately to be sold in this
instance, were the stocks and bonds in which you usually deal. He must
agree, in this document, that on the wedding day the woman he buys
must receive an additional sum in her own name, of ten million
dollars. One as rich as he is known to be will not object to a
pittance like that. You can make your own arrangements with him
concerning the loan of the twenty millions to you, the interest it
draws, and when the sum will be due; but the consideration paid for
me, to me, must be absolute, and in cash, before the marriage-ceremony."

She turned quickly and strode to the end of the room. There, she threw
open that door which has been described as communicating with the
inner sanctum of the banker, and standing at the threshold, she said,
in the cold, even tone in which she had pronounced the ultimatum to
her father:

"I have surmised that you are in this room, Roderick Duncan. If I am
correct, you may come out, now, and conclude the terms of your
purchase. Do not speak to me here, and now. It would not be wise to do
so. You have heard, doubtless, all that has been said in this room."

She turned again, and before Stephen Langdon could intervene, had
passed him, going into the main office of the suite, and thence to the
street.

Outside the Langdon building was a waiting automobile which had taken
Patricia to the office of her father for that interview, the purport
of which she had not then even vaguely guessed. Under the
steering-wheel of the waiting car was seated a young man,
smoothed-faced, keen of eye, strong-limbed, and muscular in every
motion that he made. A pair of expressive hazel eyes that seemed to
take in everything at a glance, looked out from his handsome,
clean-cut face, the attractiveness of which was augmented rather than
marred by the strong, almost square chin, and the firm but perfectly
formed lips, just thin enough to show determination of character, yet
sufficiently mobile to suggest that the man himself, though young in
years, had met with wide experiences. His personality was that of a
man prepared to face any emergency or danger that might arise, and to
meet it with a smile of entire self-confidence in his ability to
overcome it. The rear seats of the waiting car were occupied by two
young ladies, friends of Patricia; and the three were laughing and
talking together when Stephen Langdon's daughter approached them. She
did not wait to be assisted, but sprang lightly into the seat beside
the young man who has just been described; and she said rather
shortly, for she was still angry:

"Please, take me home, now, Mr. Morton."

He turned to face her, meeting her stormy eyes laughingly; and
exclaimed:

"Gee! Miss Langdon, you sure do look as if you'd been having a run-in
with the governor. I'd hate mightily to meet up with you, if I were
alone and unprotected, and you were as plumb sore at me, as you are
now at somebody you have just left inside that building. I sure would.
Yes, indeed!"

He chuckled audibly as the car started forward toward Broadway. For a
time, he gave his entire attention to the management of the car,
purposely ignoring the young woman who was seated beside him, for
notwithstanding the fact that he had chaffed her about the anger in
her eyes, he was fully aware that she had met with an unpleasant
experience of some sort, while he and the others were waiting outside
the building.

The hiatus offered sufficient time for Miss Langdon entirely to
recover her equanimity, and when at last Richard Morton's glance again
sought her, he met the same cold, calm, unflinching gaze from her
beautiful eyes that he had discovered there less than two weeks
before, and, since, had never been able to forget for a single moment.

"Miss Langdon," he said, with his characteristic smile, "if you had
been raised out west, in the country where I come from, you sure would
have been bad medicine for anybody who tried your temper a little bit
too far."

"What do you mean by that?" she asked him, quickly, but without
offense. She was smiling now, and Morton's colloquialisms always
interested her.

"Well, I mean a lot--and then some. If you'd been raised with a gun on
your hip, and had been born a man instead of a woman, I reckon you'd
have been an unsafe proposition to r'il. You certainly did look mad
when you came out of that office-building; and the only regret I feel
about it, is that I didn't stand within comfortable easy reach of the
gazabo that made you feel like that. One of us would--have gone out
through the window."

"It was my father," she said, simply, but smilingly.

"Oh! was it? Well, even so, I'm afraid I wouldn't be much of a
respecter of persons, if you happened to be on the other side of the
scales. I reckon your dad wouldn't look bigger than any other man.
Have you forgotten what I said to you the second time I ever saw you?"

"No," she replied, gently, "I haven't forgotten it, and I never will
forget it; but I must remind you of your promise to me, at that same
meeting."

"Won't you call it off for just five minutes, Miss Langdon?" he asked
in a low tone which had begun to vibrate with emotion. "Just call it
off for one minute, if you won't let it go for five. It sure is hard
to sit here, alongside of you, and not only to keep my hands and eyes
away from you, but to keep my tongue cinched with a diamond hitch. I
suppose I am hasty, and a mighty sight too previous for your customs
here in the East, but I can't see why you won't take up with a chap
like me; and, besides--"

"Mr. Morton!" She turned to him unsmilingly, her eyes cold and
serious, and she spoke in a tone so low that even the sound of it
could not extend to the young ladies who occupied the rear seats in
the tonneau. "It is my duty to tell you that I have just become a
willing party--a willing party, please understand--to a business
transaction, by the terms of which I am now the affianced wife of--"
Patricia paused abruptly. Morton, still guiding the machine delicately
in and out through the traffic of the street, turned a shade paler
under his sun-burned skin, and Patricia could see that his hand
gripped almost fiercely upon the steering-wheel. She realized that he
had understood the important part of what she had said, and she did
not complete the unfinished sentence. There was a considerable silence
before either of them spoke again, and then Morton asked calmly, but
in a voice that was so changed as to be scarcely recognizable:

"Of whom, Patricia?" He made use of her given name unconsciously, and
if she noticed the slip, she did not heed it.

"I need not mention the gentleman's name," she told him. "It is
unnecessary."

"What do you mean by referring to it as a business transaction?" he
demanded, turning his face toward hers for an instant, and showing an
angry glitter in his eyes. "If it is something that was forced upon
you--"

"I meant--it doesn't matter what I meant, Mr. Morton."

For just one instant, he flashed his eyes upon her again, and she saw
the lines of determination harden upon his face.

"It sounded mighty strange to me," he said, quietly, but with studied
persistence. "I don't mind confessing that I can't quite savvy its
meaning. I didn't know that 'business transaction,' was a stock
expression here, in the East, in connection with an engagement party.
But I suppose I'm plumb ignorant. I feel so, anyhow."

"You have forgotten one thing, Mr. Morton; you have forgotten that I
used the words, 'a willing party.'" She spoke calmly, half-smiling;
but he was still insistent.

"Did you mean by their use that I am to understand that the
circumstance meets with your entire approval?" he asked, slowly and
with distinctness. A heavy frown was gathering on his brows.

"Yes; quite so."

"Do you love the man who is the other party to the--er--business
transaction?" This time, he turned his head and looked squarely at
her, gazed with his serious hazel eyes, deep into her darker
ones--gazed searchingly and longingly.

"You have no right to ask me such a question as that," she told him.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Langdon." He turned his eyes to the front
again; "but I think I have a distinct right to do so, and I don't
believe it is your privilege to deny it. I have loved you from the
first moment I saw you. Please, don't interrupt me now, for I must say
the few words I have in mind. I'll not look at you. The others won't
hear me. By reason of my great love for you, even though there is no
response in your heart for me, I certainly have the right to ask that
question; and, also, I believe I have the right to demand an answer.
If you love that other man, and if you will tell me that you do, I
shall have nothing more to say; but if you do not love him, you shall
not be his wife so long as I have my two hands and can remember how to
hold a gun." It sounded theatrical, but he did not mean it so; and a
"gun" and its use, was the strongest form of expression he could think
of, at that moment. It had formed the court of last resort throughout
his youth in the great West, and just now he felt that the expression
fitted the present case admirably. What reply Patricia might have made
to this characteristic statement by the young Montana ranchman will
never be known, for at that instant they were interrupted by the other
passengers of the car, who sought to draw Patricia into conversation
with them.

She accepted the interruption gratefully as well as gracefully; it
offered an easy escape from a trying situation, and it was not until
the car was drawn up in front of the door of her own home and she was
about to leave it that she spoke again with Morton, save in a general
way. Now, he leaned quickly nearer to her and said, in a tone so low
that the others could not hear:

"I shall call upon you to-morrow evening--Sunday--if I may." Then he
laughed and, with narrowed eyelids, added: "I'll come to the house
whether I may or not. But you will receive me, won't you? Say that you
will!" And Patricia nodded brightly, in reply, as she crossed the
pavement toward the front steps of her father's princely mansion. At
the door, she paused and looked after the car as it rolled up the
avenue; and, with a half-smile of troubled perplexity, she murmured:

"I wish, now, that I had not given my word to that 'business
transaction.' Richard Morton might have offered a better solution of
my problem. Only, it would have been unfair--and cruel; and I have
never been either the one, or the other; never, yet!" Then, she passed
into the house.

       *       *       *       *       *

Downtown in the private office of Stephen Langdon, Roderick Duncan
stepped from the inner sanctum into the presence of the banker just as
the latter started to his feet after the sudden and unexpected
departure of his daughter. For an interval, the young man and the old
faced each other in silence, the latter with a cynical and satirical
smile on his strong face, the former with an unmistakable frown of
anger.

"You're a darned old fool, Langdon!" Duncan exclaimed hotly, after
that pause; and he clenched his hands until his knuckles turned white
under the strain, half-raising the right one, until it seemed as if he
intended to strike a blow with it. But Patricia's father gave no heed
to the gesture. Instead, he dropped back upon his chair, and laughed
aloud, ere he replied:

"I suspect, my boy, that there is a pair of us."




CHAPTER II

ONE WOMAN WHO DARED


These two men, the banker who had weathered so many financial storms
of "the street" and had inevitably issued from the wreckage unscathed
and buoyant, and the young multi-millionaire who faced him with
uplifted hand even after the former returned to his chair, were exact
opposites in everything save wealth alone. Roderick Duncan, son and
heir of Stephen Langdon's former partner, was the possessor, by
inheritance, of one of those colossal fortunes which are expressed in
so many figures that the average man ceases to contemplate their
meaning. Nevertheless, Duncan had kept himself clean and straight. In
person, he was tall, handsome, distinguished in appearance, and
genuinely a fine specimen of young American manhood. The older man
regarded him with undoubted approval, and affection, too, while Duncan
lowered the partly uplifted arm, and permitted the anger to die out of
his face slowly. But there remained a decidedly troubled expression in
his gray eyes, and there were two straight lines between his
brows--lines of anxiety which would not disappear, wholly. He was
plainly perplexed and, also, as plainly frightened by the almost
tragic climax that had just occurred.

The elder man, whose face was always a mask save when he was alone
with his daughter, or with this young man who now stood before him,
had been at first angered by the words and conduct of Patricia. But
the exclamation uttered by the young Croesus impressed him
ludicrously, notwithstanding the financial straits he was supposed to
be in, and he grinned broadly into the anxious face that glowered upon
him. Langdon's heart was not at stake; he had no woman's love to lose,
or even to risk losing; and so far as the financial character of his
troubles was concerned, he knew that Roderick Duncan would provide the
millions he needed, in any case. That fact was not dependant upon any
whim of Patricia's. Langdon could afford to laugh, believing that the
rupture in the relations of these young people would be healed
quickly. The old man did desire that the two should marry; he wished
it more than anything else, save possibly the winning of his "street"
contests.

It was the younger man who broke the silence. He did it first by
striking a match on the sole of his shoe and lighting a cigar; then by
crossing to one of the chairs at the oblong table, into which he
literally threw himself; and as he did this, he exclaimed, with an
expression of petulance that might have belonged to a boy better than
to a man:

"Well, you've made a mess of it, haven't you? You have got us both
into a very devil of a fix. I ought to have shot you, or myself,
before I consented to such a fool plan as that one was. Oh, yes; we're
in a fix all right!"

"How so?" asked the old man, rising and selecting a chair at the
opposite side of the table, and calmly lighting a fresh cigar, while
he swung one leg across the corner of the solid piece of furniture.

"Patricia won't stand for that little scheme of yours, not for a
minute; and you know it, Uncle Steve." This was an affectionate term
of familiarity which Duncan sometimes used in addressing Patricia's
father. "I was afraid of it when you proposed it, but I allowed
myself, like an idiot, to be influenced by you. I tell you, Langdon,
she won't stand for it; not for a minute. I have made her angry, many
times before now, but I have never known her to be quite so
contemptuously angered."

"No," said Langdon, and he chuckled audibly. "I agree with you. I
think my little girl is going to make it hot for you before we are
through with this deal. In fact, I shouldn't wonder if she made it
warm for both of us. She is like her old dad about one thing--she
won't be driven."

The younger man said something under his breath which, because it was
not audible to his companion, need not be repeated here; but it was
probably not an expression that he would have used in polite society.
He drummed on the table with his fingertips, and smoked savagely.

"You're mighty cheerful about it, aren't you?" he demanded, with
sarcastic emphasis. "What I want to know is, how are we going to fix
it up?"

"Fix what up?"

"Why, this business about collateral, and all that rot, with Patricia.
How are we going to square ourselves? That's what I'd like to know!
Maybe you can see a way out of it, but I'm darned if I can."

The banker took the cigar from his mouth, flicked the ashes into the
cuspidor, removed his leg from the table, and replied calmly, with a
half-smile:

"It looks to me as if it were all fixed up, now. Patricia has agreed
to marry you all right; she told me in plain English that I could
deliver the goods. You heard her, didn't you? As far as I can see,
she has only raised the ante just a little--a small matter of ten
millions, which you won't mind at all. What's the matter with you,
anyhow? You get what you wanted--Patricia's consent to an early
marriage." The old man grinned maddeningly at his companion.

"Confound you!" shouted Duncan, starting to his feet, and he smashed
one hand down upon the top of the table, in the intensity of the
resentment he felt at this remark.

"Do you suppose--damn you!--that I want her like that? Can't you see
how the whole thing outraged her? She hates me now, with every fibre
of her being. She hates me, and you, too, for this day's work!"

Langdon shrugged his shoulders.

"You want her, don't you?" he asked, placidly, as if he were inquiring
about a quotation on 'change.

"Of course, I want her. God only knows how greatly I want her."

"Well, you get her, don't you, by this transaction? She'll keep the
terms of the agreement. She's enough like me for that. She said I
could deliver the goods. She meant it, too. You get her, don't you?"

"Yes--but how?" was the sulky reply. "How do I get her? What will she
do to me, after I do get her? Tell me that, confound you!"

The old man chuckled again. "I am not a mind-reader," he said.

"What will she do to me, Uncle Steve? What did she threaten? What am I
to expect from her, now?"

"Oh, I don't know. I confess that I don't. Sometimes, Patricia is a
little too much for the old man, Roderick," he added, wistfully. Then,
with another change of manner, he exclaimed: "But you get her! And I
get the twenty-millions credit. What more can either of us ask? Eh?"

"The twenty millions have nothing to do with it, and you know it. They
never did have anything to do with it, and you know that, also. It was
only your cursed suggestion, that we should make her promise to marry
me the condition of keeping you from failure. You know as well as I do
that there is nothing belonging to me which you cannot have at any
time, for the asking; and that you do not stand, and have not stood,
in any more danger of failure than I do."

"I would have failed if I had not known where to get the credit for
the twenty millions," the banker remarked, quietly.

"Yes; but--confound it--you did know. You only had to ask me. But
instead of doing it in a straight, business-like way, you set that
horrible fly to buzzing in my ears, that we could make use of the
circumstance to compel Patricia to an immediate consent. And I, like a
fool, listened to you. Patricia never meant not to marry me; but
now--!"

He strode across the floor, then back again to his chair and flung
himself into it. The old man watched him warily, keen-eyed, observant,
and with a certain expression of fondness that no one but his daughter
and this young man had ever compelled from him. But, presently, he
emitted another chuckling laugh; and said:

"That was a sharp stroke of hers to have the ten millions paid over to
her. It was worthy of her old dad; eh? She is a bright one, all right.
She's a chip off the old block, my boy. I couldn't have done it
better, myself."

"Damn you!" Duncan exclaimed, and he sprang to his feet, grasped his
hat, and rushed from the office to the street with much more apparent
excitement than Patricia herself had shown. He had the feeling that he
had allowed himself to be tricked into the commission of an unmanly
act, and he was thoroughly ashamed of it.

Stephen Langdon, left alone, chuckled again, although his face quickly
fell into that reposeful, mask-like expression which was habitual to
it--an expression not to be changed by the loss or gain of millions.
He remained for a time quietly in the chair he had been occupying, but
soon he rose and crossed to his desk, throwing back the top of it. He
pulled a bundle of papers from one of the pigeonholes and calmly
examined certain portions of them. He glanced over three letters left
there by his stenographer for him to sign and post. These he signed,
and after enclosing them in their respective envelopes, dropped them
lightly into a side-pocket of his coat. Then, he pulled toward him the
bracket that held the telephone, and placed the receiver against his
ear. Having presently secured the desired number, he said:

"I wish to speak with Mr. Melvin, personally."

"Mr. Melvin is not in his office at the present moment," came the
reply over the telephone. "Who is it, please?"

"This is Stephen Langdon, and I wanted to speak--"

He was interrupted by the person at the other end of the wire, who
uttered an exclamation of surprise, followed by these words:

"Why, Mr. Langdon, Mr. Melvin has gone to your house to see you, as we
supposed. A telephone call came from your residence, and he departed
at once, saying that he would not return to the office to-day."

"The devil he did!" exclaimed the banker, as he hung up the receiver.
Then, he leaned back in his chair and smoked hard for a moment, with
the nearest approach to a frown that had appeared on his face during
all that exciting afternoon; and he did another thing unusual with
him: he spoke aloud his thoughts, with no one but himself for
listener.

"I'll be blowed if I thought Patricia would go as far as that!" was
what he said. "If she hasn't sent for Malcolm Melvin to draw those
papers she hinted at, I'm a Dutchman! By Jove, I begin to think that
Duncan was right after all, and that he is up against it in this
little play we have had this afternoon. But I hadn't an idea that my
girl would go quite so far. H'm! It looks as if it is up to me to
spoil her interview with Melvin, if I can get there in time."

Five minutes later, he left the banking-house, paused at a letter-box
long enough to drop in the correspondence he had signed, and then went
swiftly onward to the subway, by which he was conveyed rapidly to the
vicinity of his home. Somewhat later, when he entered the sumptuously
appointed library, he discovered precisely what he had expected to
find: his lawyer, Malcolm Melvin, and his daughter Patricia were
facing each other across the table, the former having before him
several sheets of paper, which were already covered with the penciled
notes and memoranda he had evidently been engaged in making.

Langdon stopped in the middle of the floor and looked at them. For the
first time since the beginning of the interview with his daughter at
the office, he realized that she had been in deadly earnest at its
close. He understood, suddenly, how deeply her pride had been wounded,
and he knew that she was enough like himself to resent it with all the
power she could command.

"Since when, Melvin, have you ceased to be my attorney!" he inquired
sharply, determined to put an end to the scene, at once.

The elderly lawyer and the young woman had raised their heads from
earnest conversation when Stephen Langdon entered the room. The
lawyer, with a startled, although amused, expression on his
professional face; the daughter with a cold smile and an almost
imperceptible nod of her shapely, Junoesque head. But her black eyes
snapped with something very nearly approaching defiance, and she
replied, before Melvin could do so:

"Do not misunderstand the situation, please," she said, quickly. And
her father noticed with deep misgiving that she omitted the customary
term of endearment between them. "Mr. Melvin is here at my request,
and because he is your attorney. I have been instructing him how to
draw the papers that are to accompany the collateral offered for your
loan, and the bonus that goes with it; and just how those papers are
to be used, in accordance with the discussion between you and me, at
the bank, this afternoon. I told you, then, to inform Mr. Duncan that
you would meet his requirements. Later, when I realized that he had
overheard us--"

"What's the matter with you, Pat?" demanded the father, interrupting
her with a touch of anger. "Have you lost your head, entirely?"

"No," she replied, with utter calmness; "I have only lost my Dad. I
went down to his office this afternoon to see him, and I left him
there. Just now, I have been instructing Mr. Melvin concerning the
particulars of the agreement I want drawn and signed in the
transaction that is to take place between you and Roderick Duncan, in
which I am, personally, so deeply concerned, in which I am to figure
as the collateral security."

The old man stared at his daughter, with an expression that had made
many a Wall-street financier turn pale with apprehension. It was a
grim visage that she saw then--hard and set, stern and unrelenting,
and many a strong man had surrendered to Stephen Langdon, frightened
by the aspect of it. Not so this daughter of his. She met his gaze
unflinchingly and calmly, without a change in her outward demeanor.
After a moment, Langdon turned with a shrug toward the lawyer.

"Melvin," he said, "how many years have you been my attorney?"

"Fourteen, I think, Mr. Langdon," was the smiling reply. One would
have thought that the man of law found something highly amusing in
this incident.

"About that--yes. Well, do you see that door?" He half-turned and
indicated the entrance he had just used. "Melvin, I want you to pick
up those papers and tell John, outside, to give you your hat; then I
want you to get out of here as quick as God'll let you. If you don't,
our relations are severed from this moment. And if you complete the
draft of those papers, without my permission, or submit them to any
person whatever, without my having seen them first, I will have
another attorney to replace you, Monday morning. Go right along now.
You needn't answer me. If you don't want my business, all you've got
to do is to say so. If you do want it, you'll come mighty near doing
what I have told you to do, just now."

The lawyer, quietly, but with dignity, rose from his chair, folded the
papers, placed them in an inner pocket of his coat, bowed to Patricia
and then to her father, and without a word passed from the room,
closing the door quietly behind him; but before he quite accomplished
this last act, the clear even tones of the girl called after him:

"I am sure, Mr. Melvin, that we had quite concluded our conference. I
will ask you please to draw those papers as I have directed. You may
submit copies to Mr. Langdon at the time you bring the originals to
me."

He did not answer, for there was no occasion to do so, and a second
later Stephen Langdon and his daughter were alone together for the
second time that afternoon.

"Now, Patricia," he said, turning toward her, with his feet wide
apart and his hands thrust deep into his trousers-pockets, "what in
blazes is this all about?"

His daughter replied coldly and precisely:

"I have merely been dictating to your lawyer the substance of the
conditions I wish to have embodied in the papers that are to complete
the transaction we have discussed at your office. I selected Mr.
Melvin because I knew him to be in your confidence, and I surmised
that you would prefer that the condition of affairs under which you
are now struggling, which forces you to borrow twenty-million dollars,
should not be made known to an outsider."

"Well, I'll tell you that I won't hear of it! It's got to stop right
now. I won't have those papers drawn at all. I won't have it. The
whole thing is preposterous, and you seem to be determined to make a
fool of yourself. I won't have it!"

"But you must have it," she said, quietly.

"Must have it? Patricia, there isn't a man in the city of New York who
dares to say that to me."

"Possibly not, sir; but there is a woman in New York who dares to say
it to you, and who does say it, here and now. That woman is,
unfortunately, your daughter."

"Patricia! Are you crazy?"

"No; but I am more hurt and angry, more outraged and incensed, than I
believed it possible ever to be. I shall insist upon the drawing of
those papers, and the fulfillment of the stipulations I have directed.
If you are determined that Mr. Melvin shall not finish what he has
begun for me, I shall select another lawyer, and shall have the papers
drawn just the same."

"But, my child, it is all foolishness. The papers are not necessary.
Roderick will supply what cash I need without anything of that sort,
and you know it!"

"Am I to understand, sir, that you have lied to me?"

Langdon dropped upon a chair, breathing an oath which his daughter did
not hear, and she continued, without awaiting a reply from him:

"You have taught me, since I was a child, that in a business
transaction in the Street, where there is no time for the drawing of
papers, a man must live up to his word, absolutely. I took you
seriously in what occurred at your office this afternoon. I surmised,
when we were near the end of our interview,--nay, I assumed it--that
Roderick Duncan was inside the inner office. My surmise proved to be
true, and now I have only this to say: We shall carry out the
transaction precisely as it was stipulated between us, and according
to the papers I have dictated to Mr. Melvin, or I shall go to another
lawyer and have those same papers drawn and offered to you and to Mr.
Duncan, for your signatures. He overheard our conversation, and thus
became a party to it. I was forced into the situation without my
consent, and I shall now insist upon a certain recognition of my
rights in the matter. If you choose to deny me those rights, the fact
will not deter me from proceeding in my own way--a way which Mr.
Melvin, your attorney, thoroughly understands. I have explained it
fully to him."

The old man leaned back in his chair, glaring at his daughter, and yet
in that burning gaze of his there was undoubted admiration. He liked
her pluck, and deep down in his heart he gloried in her ability to
maintain the position she had assumed, where she literally held him
helpless. For it would never do that she should be permitted to go to
another lawyer; such a proceeding would betray to other parties the
financial embarrassment into which he had been drawn. The news would
get out. There would be a whisper here, a murmur there, and before
noon on Monday, all New York would know it. His daughter understood
her momentary power over him, and she was determined to make the most
of it.

Patricia returned her father's gaze for a moment, then turned
negligently away and moved toward the door.

"Wait," he called to her.

"Well?" She stopped, and half-turned.

"Don't you know, girl, that the whole business was tomfoolery?"

"No; and I would not believe you, or Mr. Duncan--now."

"Wait just a minute longer, Patricia; let me explain this thing to
you, fully. Let me make you understand just how it came about," her
father exclaimed. "It was all a mistake, you know, and I must confess
that the mistake was mostly mine. Of course, Roderick was ready to let
me have the twenty millions, or fifty if I had asked for them. There
was never any doubt about that, and could have been none. He has the
money, and there never has been a time, since he inherited it, when I
could not use it as if it were my own. You knew that. I have never
hesitated to go to him, either. That is why I went to him to-day.
Before I had an opportunity to explain the purpose of my call, he
asked about you, and the question suggested to my mind the idea of
utilizing the desperate situation I was in to hasten your marriage to
him. You know how I have looked forward to that. I have known, or at
least I have supposed I knew, for years, that you thought more of him
than of anyone else. You are twenty years old now; it is high time
that you were married, and it would break my old heart to see you take
up with any of those society-beaux who hover around you at every
function where you appear. On the other hand, I shall be very glad
when you are Roderick Duncan's wife. He is the son of the best friend
I ever had, the only man I ever trusted. And he is every bit as good a
man as his father was. He is square and on the level. He has wealth,
and he doesn't go bumming around town, giving champagne parties, and
monkey dinners. He knows how to be a good fellow without making a fool
of himself, and that is more than you can say of most young men who
have money to burn. You have grown up together, and why in the world
you have kept putting him off is more than I can guess. Besides all
that, he is easily worth a hundred millions. But this has nothing to
do with the present question. I want you to have him, and I want him
to have you; and if he didn't have a dollar in the world, I should
feel just the same about it. All that happened to-day was at my
instigation; not at his. And now, daughter, you must find it in your
heart to forgive him--and me."

She listened to him to the end, quietly and outwardly unmoved. When he
concluded, she replied in the same even tone she had used ever since
her father entered the library:

"I don't know, and I don't care to know, any of the particulars
regarding how the arrangement came about between you and Mr. Duncan.
What I do know is this: the arrangement was made between you, and was
agreed upon between you. I was called in, to be consulted, at your
private office, with the third interested party concealed like a spy
in an inner room. I agreed to the transaction as I understood it. I
will carry it out as I agreed to do, while at your office, and in no
other way. If Roderick Duncan wishes to make me his wife, he must do
it according to the stipulations I have dictated to Mr. Melvin, this
afternoon, or he can never do it at all. That, sir, is all I have to
say."

She turned and went from the room, closing the door behind her as
softly as the lawyer had done.

The old man slipped down more deeply into his chair, covered his eyes
with one hand, and murmured, audibly:

"I have had to live almost seventy years to find out that, after all,
I am nothing but an old fool."




CHAPTER III

A STRANGE BETROTHAL


When dinner was served at seven that Saturday evening, the banker and
his daughter faced each other in silence across the table. There was
no wife and mother in this money-king's family, for she had passed out
of life when Patricia came into the world. This, perhaps, may account
for the close intimacy that had always existed in the relations of
father and daughter, between whom there had never been any break or
shadow, until this particular Saturday afternoon.

"Old Steve," iron-faced, heavy jawed, and steady of eye, wore his
Wall-street mask at this particular dinner; and he wore it as grimly
as ever he did when encountering a financial storm or a threatened
panic. He felt that he had more to conceal, just now, than any
financial problem could ever compel him to face. He was no longer
"dad." Patricia had practically omitted the use of even the less
endearing term of father; but whether intentionally or not, even the
shrewd old banker could not determine. For years, he had forgotten
that he had a heart, save when he and his daughter were alone
together. The money whirlpool of the financial section of the city had
made him colder of aspect, harder in nature, and less considerate of
the feelings of others. It had never even remotely occurred to him
that there could be any rupture between himself and Patricia, or that
a yawning gulf, like this one was, could separate them.

But now there was one, and he recognized its breadth and its depth. He
knew that he could not cross it to her, and that it would never be
bridged, save by Patricia herself. He had offended her beyond
forgiveness, almost. He had not entirely realized that Patricia's
nature and characteristics were so like his own, save only where they
were feminine instead of masculine, that she would now adopt the
course he would have pursued under circumstances which might, by a
stretch of the imagination, be called parallel.

Patricia's face was almost as mask-like as her father's, save that her
great, dark eyes were stormy in their depths, and would have suggested
to one who had sailed the Southern seas the brooding and far away
approach of a monsoon. Her olive-tinted skin had in it a suggestion of
pallor; but only a suggestion. When she spoke at all it was to John,
the butler who served them; and then it was always in her accustomed
low, evenly modulated tone. Not perceptibly different to the butler
were her tone and manner, and yet even the servant, wise in his
generation, sensed the unsettled condition of things, and moved about
like a phantom; perhaps also he was a trifle more assiduous than usual
in his efforts at perfect service.

Patricia ate sparingly, but bravely. There was nothing of the
shrinking or pouting, or even of the petulant, in her character. Her
father ate nothing at all. He dawdled with his soup, turned his fish
over and sent it away, and sniffed contemptuously at everything else
that was placed before him. He made his dinner of coffee and cognac,
and seemed to be greatly interested while he burned the latter over
three dominoes of sugar.

When the moment came to leave the table, there had been no word
exchanged between them; but then, with an effort, the banker assumed
his brightest and most kindly tone; and he asked, cheerily:

"Well, what have you on for to-night, my dear?"

"Nothing at all," she replied, indifferently, as if the question held
no interest for her--as, indeed, it did not, for the moment; but she
followed him from the dining-room into the library, as was their
usual custom whenever they had dined alone. Now, as they entered it,
the banker, with an assumption of high spirits he did not feel,
remarked:

"If you don't object to a Saturday-night opera, Garden is singing
'Salome' at the Manhattan to-night, and I should like to hear it. Will
you go, with your old dad?"

"No, thank you," she replied, indifferently. "I shall remain at home."

She was standing at the table, turning the leaves of a magazine, and
her father glanced keenly at her across the intervening space, while
he lighted a cigar. Then, with a shrug of his shoulders, and a sigh
which could not have been seen or heard, and which only he himself
knew to have existed, he crossed the floor. As he was passing from the
room, he said, as indifferently as she had spoken:

"Then, I suppose, I will have to take it in, alone."

"You might ask Roderick to go with you," she threw at him, as he
passed into the hallway; but Langdon pretended not to hear, for he
called back at her:

"I'll get Beatrice, I think, and ask her to play daughter for me; eh?"

Patricia made no comment upon this suggestion; but having awaited,
where she was, the sound of the closing outer door, she slowly crossed
the room.

The drop-light at her favorite chair was adjusted, and she began the
reading of a new book which someone had placed on the table beside it.
She read on and on, apparently with interest, but really without
knowing at all what she did read, until more than an hour had passed;
and then a card was brought to her.

She glanced at it, although she believed she knew perfectly well what
name it bore, before she did so. Her lips tightened for an instant,
and she frowned ever so little. But she said to the footman:

"You may bring Mr. Duncan here, James."

Patricia did not rise from her chair when her caller entered the
library. Duncan moved toward her eagerly, but meeting her eyes, which
she raised quite calmly to his as he crossed the floor, he paused, and
remained at about midway of the distance.

"Good evening, Patricia," he said. "I'm awfully glad to have found you
at home. I was afraid you might go out before I could get here."

"I expected you," she told him, without returning his salute. "I have
been expecting you for an hour. In fact, I have been waiting for you."

"That is very pleasant news, indeed, Patricia." Duncan was startled
by it, however. He had not expected it, and he did not quite like the
tone in which Patricia uttered it.

"I am glad you take it so," she returned. "It was not pleasant for me
to wait for you, and it is not distinctly agreeable to me to receive
you. But I believed that you would think it necessary to call, in
order to make some effort at explaining the occurrences of this
afternoon. Let me tell you, before you begin, that there exists no
necessity for any sort of explanation. My father has fulfilled that
duty quite fully, and I listened to him, throughout. He has exonerated
you--"

Duncan took a hasty step toward her, but stopped again, even more
abruptly than before, repelled by the cold barrier that the expression
of her dark eyes built up between them. Whatever it was that he had in
mind to say remained unspoken. He turned away and sought a chair
opposite her, ten feet away, utterly repelled, for although these two
had grown to manhood and womanhood together, she had always had the
power to lift a sudden barrier between them. Though he believed he
knew every mood and characteristic of this proud young woman, just
now, for the first time within his recollection, there was a
strangeness about her that he could not fathom. Long habit had made
him almost as much at home in this house, as in his own. He had been,
ever since he could remember, considered and treated like a member of
the family. And so, now, before seating himself, he sought to put
himself more at ease by indulging in a liberty which had always been
accorded to him. He selected a cigar from Stephen Langdon's box, and
lighted it. Then, remembering that conditions were changed, he threw
it down with an angry gesture, upon a receptacle for ashes that was on
the table. Patricia watched all these proceedings, unmoved.

"Patsy!" he exclaimed, abruptly, making use of an expression of their
childhood; and he would have continued with rapid speech, had she not
made a quick gesture of aversion that interrupted him. Then, she said,
quietly:

"I would prefer, if you don't mind, that you should henceforth use my
full name in addressing me."

"Patricia, you have just told me that your father has exonerated me;
and if that is so, why do you receive me in just this manner? I need
exoneration, all right; and I deserve it, too, for honestly, dear, I
never thought of offending you. I thought, until the last moment, that
you would take it all as a huge joke. It never occurred to me that
you would be so deeply wounded. I should never have agreed to the
crazy compact that your father and I made together, if I had realized
the seriousness of it."

"No," she replied, quietly. "You should not have agreed to it. It was
the mistake of your life, and, perhaps, of mine."

"You know how I love you, dear," he began, half-starting from his
chair. But the expression of her eyes, without the slightest motion
otherwise, made him pause again, without completing what he had
started to say.

"It is best that we should be quite frank with each other," she said,
calmly. "That is why I waited so patiently for you, to-night. Please
do not interrupt me; let me say what I have in mind to say to you."

"I would like it much better if you would hit me over the head with
one of those bronze ornaments, as you would have done ten or twelve
years ago; or if you would fly into one of your tempers just as you
used to do, Patricia. I would like anything better than this cold
calmness. It makes me shudder; it freezes me; it fills me with
apprehension. I love you so, dear! and I have loved you all my life.
You know it; I don't need to tell you! And if I have made a mistake,
surely you can find it in your heart to forgive, because of my great
love? No, I will not stop," he ejaculated, when she made a gesture of
impatience. "I will finish what I have to say, even braving your anger
to do so. I would like to make you angry just now, Patricia. I would
delight to see you in one of those tantrums of fury that you used to
have when you and I were children together. Do you remember that I
bear a scar now, inflicted by a tennis-racket in your hand, when you
were ten years old? I think more of that scar than of any other
possession I have, for even you cannot take it away from me. I love
you with all the manhood there is in me, and I can't remember a time
when I did not; and I have thought that I knew, all these years, that
you loved me; I believe it now, even though the scorn in your eyes
denies it. You may have convinced yourself that you do not, but you
are working from a wrong hypothesis. I know why you have put me off,
time and again, when I have besought you to name our wedding-day. It
has been because you were not quite ready. Isn't that true, dear? You
have not denied me because you did not love me; you have put me off
only because you were not ready to become a wife. But you have loved
me; I am sure of that. You have never said that you would not be my
wife; and in fact you have often shown me that some day you would be;
you have only declined to say when. I have come to you to-night,
Patricia, to tell you that I will wait, on and on, counting only your
own pleasure in the matter, until you are willing to appoint the time,
if only you will say that you forgive me for the apparently despicable
part I have played in the tragedy of this afternoon."

"That is a very pretty speech you have just made. It sounds well, and
is quite characteristic," she replied to him, calmly. "I shall be as
frank with you in my reply."

"Well?" he said, and waited. Her tone and manner startled him. There
was a suggestion of finality in her attitude that was alarming. She
continued, speaking almost gently:

"I have believed in your love for me, as sincerely as I have believed
in my father's love for me; and I think now that you were more to me
than I realized. But, Roderick, have you ever watched a woodman in the
forest chopping down a tree? And have you ever seen that tree fall,
when its natural prop was stolen away by the sharp edge of the axe? It
may have taken that tree a hundred, or a thousand years to grow; but
when it crashes down, it is gone forever. A little, puny man has gone
into the forest with an axe upon his shoulder, and has ruthlessly
attacked one of God's greatest creations, a gorgeously abundant tree.
He had no thought of what he was doing, of what he was destroying. His
only thought was of a purpose he had in view; and it was somehow
necessary to destroy that tree in order to accomplish the purpose. The
thing that nature created, which had required years to bring to
perfection; the thing that God made beautiful was, in a few minutes,
shorn of its splendor by this little, ruthless creature, who went into
the forest with the axe on his shoulder. That is what you have done to
whatever love I may have felt for you, Roderick Duncan. It lies
prostrate now, and it has borne down with it, all the lesser verdure,
all the little trees and bushes and vines that grew about it, and has
left only a bare spot--and the wounded stump. You were the woodman
with the axe."

"My God, Patricia!" he cried out, appalled by the agony of his loss.
He understood, suddenly, that this proud young woman would have
forgiven downright disloyalty more readily than such hurt to her
pride.

She continued as if he had not spoken:

"My father informed me, this afternoon, as you are aware, of certain
financial straits in which he has suddenly become involved. I know
enough about the methods and habits of 'the street,' to realize how
impossible it was for him to betray his condition to certain forces
and powers that are exerted there, lest, despite what he could do, he
should lose the great influence he now has over all the immense wealth
of this country. While he was telling me about his condition, I
naturally thought of you; and I wondered why he had not gone to you
instantly; or, if you knew of the circumstance, I wondered the more,
why you had not as instantly gone to him, and offered the assistance
he needed. Then, little by little by little, the plot which you two
had concocted together, was unveiled to me."

"But, Patricia, dear, won't you--?"

"Let me finish, please. I have not quite done so, as yet."

"Well, dear?"

"I have agreed to the terms that were adjusted between you and my
father, respecting the loan of a certain sum of money by you to him.
Of course, you may repudiate those terms if you please, and it is a
matter of indifference to me whether you do so, or not. You may loan
the money to my father without accepting me as the collateral for it;
that also is a matter of indifference to me. But I wish to tell you,
and I wish you thoroughly to understand, that, unless you carry out
the terms of this compact precisely as it was agreed upon between you
and my father, with the added stipulations which I have requested Mr.
Melvin to draw for me, I will never under any circumstances be your
wife, or receive you again. That, I think, concludes this interview. I
shall be ready Monday morning, at ten o'clock, to fulfill my part of
the agreement. You and Stephen Langdon may do as you please. And now,
please, bid me good-night--I prefer to be alone."

Duncan started from his chair and took two steps toward her, where he
paused. His face was pale, but his finely chiseled features were set
in firm lines; and his tall, athletic figure, was drawn to its full
height, as he replied, with slow emphasis:

"In that case, Patricia, we shall carry out the compact as agreed
upon, and I shall conform to whatever stipulations you have made," he
said. "Good-night."

He turned and went swiftly from the room. He seized his coat and hat
before James, the footman, could assist him, and he went out at the
front door, with more bitterness and more anger in his soul than he
remembered ever to have felt before against any man or woman. But
just now the bitterness and the anger were directed chiefly against
himself.

For a moment, he stood on the bottom step at the entrance to the
mansion, undecided as to which way he should go or what he should do.
Then, he turned about and again rang the bell at Stephen Langdon's
door; and the instant it was opened, he brushed savagely past the
astonished James, and made his way to the library, unannounced. He
pushed the door ajar noiselessly, without intending to do so, and
halted on the threshold, amazed by what he saw there. He had not meant
to intrude in that silent fashion upon the privacy and grief of the
woman he loved, and as soon as he could master his emotions, he
stepped quickly backward into the hall, re-closing the door as softly
as he had opened it. Patricia had given way at last. She had thrown
herself upon the couch, and with her face buried among the pillows,
she was sobbing as if her heart would break. His first impulse, when
he discovered her so, was to rush to her side, to take her in his
arms, and to tell her over and over again of his love. But he knew
instinctively that Patricia would bitterly resent such an effort on
his part, that he would again offend her sense of pride if she should
know that he had found her in tears.

Outside the door, when he had closed it, he hesitated for a time;
finally he wrote rapidly on the back of one of his cards, as follows:

"There will be little time on Monday morning to inspect the papers you
mentioned. I shall be glad if you will direct Mr. Melvin to submit them
to me at my rooms, between five and six o'clock to-morrow afternoon.

                                        R. D."

He gave this written message to James, instructing him not to
deliver it until Miss Langdon summoned him to her, or she should
leave the library. Then, he asked the footman:

"Do you happen to know where Mr. Langdon has gone, to-night, James?"

"To the opera, sir," replied the footman.

"Alone?"

"Quite so, sir, I believe."

Duncan walked the distance, which was considerable, from the Langdon
mansion to the Opera House, where he went directly to Stephen
Langdon's box, believing that he would find the banker to be it's
solitary occupant, and there were reasons why he greatly desired a
private conference with Patricia's father. He entered the box without
announcement and came to a sudden pause when he discovered that the
banker was not alone. Beside him, with her white arm resting upon the
rail at the front of the box, was seated a young woman whom Duncan
knew well; and she happened to be the one person in New York who came
nearest to being on terms of intimacy with Patricia. For Miss Langdon
was one who had never permitted herself to be intimate with anybody.
Others might be intimate with her, as Beatrice Brunswick had been, but
that close and personal relation which so often exists between two
young women, and which is so beautiful in its character, was something
Patricia Langdon had never permitted herself to know. She was not even
aware that this was so. The condition arose from no lack of sympathy
for others, and from no want of affection for her friends; it was a
characteristic reserve of manner and method, inherited from her
father, which had been cultivated by and through her association with
him, all her life long.

While Roderick Duncan halted for an instant, to consider whether, or
not, he should proceed with his original design, and while he still
stood there, holding the curtains apart and appearing much as if he
were a stealthy observer of the scene before him, the young woman
turned her head and discovered him. She smiled brightly and uttered an
exclamation of pleasure as she started to her feet and approached him
with out-stretched hand. One could have seen that the pleasure she
manifested, was very real. It was at once evident that she liked
Duncan.

"How good of you to come, and how fortunate!" she said, when he took
her hand and raised it to his lips, just as the banker turned about in
his chair, and with a grim smile also made Duncan welcome.

"Hello," he said. "Glad you came! I have been wondering all the
evening where you were. Had an idea you would show up somewhere. Sit
down and keep still until this act is finished, for I don't want to
lose it. After that, we'll chat a little. There are things I wish to
discuss with you, Roderick."

Roderick Duncan was in a mood that was strange to him. It affected him
to recklessness, though he could not have told why it was so, or in
what form of recklessness he might indulge. The discovery he had made
when he returned to the library and found Patricia in tears, was still
having its effects upon him, for he did not understand the cause for
those tears. He knew only that he had made her cry, that her
abandonment of grief was due to his acts, and her father's. By a
strange paradox, he pitied himself as deeply as he did the woman he
loved. He felt that he had been forced into a second false position
by so readily accepting the terms Patricia had insisted upon for their
betrothal. She had told him plainly that if she ever became his wife
at all, the fact could be accomplished only in the manner she
dictated; that if he repudiated it, he would not even be received at
her home. Impulsively, he had accepted her dictum, and now, at the end
of his long and solitary walk to the opera-house, he realized that the
change from frying-pan to fire was a simile true as to his present
condition. Practically, the end so long sought had been attained. In
effect, he and Patricia were betrothed--but such a betrothal! For the
moment, he regretted his ready acquiescence to Patricia's terms. He
believed that it would be better to lose her entirely than to take her
under such conditions.

The meeting with Beatrice Brunswick and her sincere welcome warmed
him, and he found a ready sympathy in her eyes and manner for his
condition of mind. He wanted company and he wanted sympathy; chiefly,
he had wished to discuss the present situation of affairs with old
Steve; but now, since his arrival at the box, he decided that it would
be a splendid opportunity to talk the matter over with Beatrice
Brunswick. She had always shown him great consideration. He had
regarded her as Patricia's dearest friend, and had ultimately placed
her in that relationship to himself, for she was one of those rare
young women whom men class as "good fellows." And Beatrice was as good
as she was beautiful. Her merry laugh and quick wit always acted upon
Duncan like a tonic. Just now, he was especially glad to find her
there, and he showed it.

Beatrice Brunswick was unmistakably red-headed. Referring to her hair
in cold-blooded terms, no other hue could have described it. It was
like that old-fashioned kind of red copper, after it has been hammered
into sheets, in the manner in which it was treated before less arduous
methods were invented. It was remarkable hair, too--there was such a
wealth of it! It had always impressed Duncan with the idea that each
individual hair was in business for itself, refusing utterly to stay
where it was put. A young woman's crowning glory, always, this
happened to be particularly true in the case of Miss Brunswick, for,
although her features and her figure and her graceful motions left
nothing to be desired, it was her wonderful hair, emphasized by the
saucy poise of her head, that became her crowning glory, indeed.
Duncan took a seat near to her, so that she was between him and the
banker; and presently Beatrice inclined her head toward him, and
whispered:

"What's the matter, Roderick? You look like a banquet of the Skull and
Bones, which my brother described to me once, when he was at Yale."

"I'll tell you about it later," was the response; and Duncan shut his
jaws, and bent his attention grimly upon the stage.

"Why not now?" She asked.

"There isn't time; and besides--"

"Have you been quarreling with our Juno? Have you two been scrapping?"
She whispered, smiling bewitchingly, and bending still nearer to him.
Miss Brunswick was sometimes given to the milder uses of slang.

Duncan nodded, without replying in words. He kept his eyes directly
toward the stage. But Miss Brunswick was insistent.

"Is Patricia on her high horse to-night?" she asked, with a light
laugh.

Duncan replied to her with another nod, and a wry smile.

"She wants to look out about that high horse of hers, Roderick, or
sometime it will hit the top rail and give her a fall that she won't
get over for a while. What our beautiful Juno needs most is what I
used to get oftenest when I was about three years old. Perhaps you can
guess what it was; if you can't, I won't tell you."

"I expect you were a regular little devil then, weren't you?" he
asked, endeavoring to assume a cheerfulness he was far from
experiencing at that moment.

"I expect I was; and the strange part of it is that there are lots and
lots of people who insist that I have never got over it. But I can
read you like a book. You and Mr. Langdon and Patricia have been
having no end of a row. He might just as well have told me that much
when he came after me and insisted that I should accompany him to the
opera to-night. He said that Patricia wouldn't, and he wanted me to
take her place. I wish you would tell me all about it." Then, with a
slight toss of her head, Beatrice added: "I suppose Patricia has
refused you again?"

"No. She has accepted me, this time," was the blunt reply.

Beatrice stared straight in front of her for a moment, and there was a
suggestion of gathering pallor in her face. Then, she drew backward,
away from her companion, and her blue eyes widened. If there was a
shock to her in the knowledge she had just received, she accepted it
with a very clever little laugh which she always had ready at hand.

"So," she said, "that is what makes you so glum, is it? Really, you
are a most amazing person. I had supposed that when Patricia accepted
you, finally, and set the day--"

"The day hasn't been set. It may be a week, a month, or a year hence,
for all I know." This was said harshly, and while Duncan's eyes were
fixed steadily upon Mary Garden, on the stage.

"How intensely interesting!" Beatrice exclaimed, under her breath. "I
shall insist upon your taking us to supper after the opera, and
telling me all about it."

The loud bars of music which announce the finale of an act and the
entrance of the chorus precluded the possibility of further
conversation just then; and as soon as the curtain was down and the
applause had ceased, Stephen Langdon left his chair and reached for
his coat and hat. Then, he addressed the two young people who were his
companions in the box.

"If you two youngsters care to see this out, I'll leave you here,
together," he said. "I have just remembered something I should have
attended to, to-night. I must see Melvin, my lawyer. You won't mind,
Beatrice, will you, if I leave you in Roderick's care? Possibly, I'll
return before the show is out."

Before either of them could answer, Langdon had passed out into the
aisle, and hurried away, leaving Duncan and Miss Brunswick alone
together in the box. If Roderick Duncan had really desired an
opportunity to confide his troubles to Beatrice, it was afforded him
then; but now that it was at hand, he felt suddenly uncertain about
the wisdom of such a proceeding.




CHAPTER IV

THE BOX AT THE OPERA


Duncan stared helplessly at the spot where the curtains had fallen
together behind the departing figure of Stephen Langdon; then he
turned his eyes toward Beatrice, to discover that she was convulsed
with laughter. But whether her demeanor and her quick surrender to
expressions of levity had been excited by the departure of the banker,
or by Duncan's attitude of dismay, the young man could not have told.
He laughed with her, for there was a distinctly ludicrous side to the
situation, following, as it did, so closely upon the announcement of
his engagement to Patricia.

By mutual consent, they withdrew to the rear of the box, and then
Beatrice, with a touch of teasing witchery in her voice and with
laughter still in her eyes, asked him:

"Don't you think that this is rather a compromising situation,
particularly in view of the fact that you have only just become
engaged to Patricia? Really, you know, it is dreadful; isn't it?"

"I hadn't thought of that," he replied, quite truthfully. "I was
thinking of what Langdon said, when he left us. It recalled
something--"

"About leaving us two 'youngsters' alone together?" she asked him,
with a pretense of frightened expression in her eyes.

"No, that wasn't the last thing he said."

"What was it? I didn't hear it."

"He said he was going to see Melvin. I suppose you know who Melvin is,
don't you?"

"Oh, yes, indeed. Mr. Melvin and I are great friends. I think he is
about the nicest old gentleman of my acquaintance; don't you? He is
what I should call the _arbiter elegantiarum_ of the Langdon court, if
one could imagine Old Steve as a Cæsar, and Patricia as--" Beatrice
paused, and flushed hotly. She had not considered to what length her
words were reaching. She had almost cast a reflection upon her friend,
which would have been as unkind as it was unmerited. She added,
quickly: "But why, if I may ask, did the mention of Mr. Melvin's name
interest you?"

Duncan gazed at his companion rather stupidly, for a moment, for his
mind had suddenly become intent upon the complications of the day, and
he had forgotten for the time being, where he was, and with whom he
was talking. But Beatrice's smile and the mockery in her eyes brought
him back to the present.

"I remembered that I should have gone, myself, to see Melvin,
to-night," he told her, quietly. "It really was quite important. I
should have sought him, instead of coming here."

"Indeed?" Beatrice laughed, brightly. "Mr. Melvin seems to be in great
demand. Are you and Patricia to follow the French fashion of drawing
the marriage-contract? and is Mr. Melvin to act the part of a French
notary?" There was a touch of irony in her question, a little shaft of
sarcasm that brought a quick flush to Duncan's face. He was reminded
instantly of the tentative betrothal with Patricia, and his misgivings
concerning it. Beside him was seated the one person who might aid them
both; and with sudden resolution, acted upon as quickly as it was
formed, he reached out and took one of Miss Brunswick's hands, holding
it between both his own.

"Beatrice," he said, with quiet emphasis, "you have always been a good
fellow, if ever there was a girl born in the world who was one. I
wonder if you could be persuaded to give me the benefit of your
advice, and, possibly, your active assistance?"

She flushed a little under the praise and the intimately personal
request that came with it, but he did not notice this as he went on:
"I've somehow got things into the biggest kind of a muddle to-day, and
I have a notion to tell you all about it; I have the impulse to take
you into my confidence and to ask you to help me out. I know you can
do it. By Jove, Beatrice, I think you are the only person in the world
who can do it! Will you?"

She shrugged her shoulders ever so little, and the flush left her
cheeks, rendering them paler than was their wont. It suddenly came
home to her that he was asking a favor that might prove extremely
difficult to grant.

"I cannot say as to that until I hear what you wish me to do," she
replied.

"I want you to help me square myself," he said, quickly.

"To square yourself?" She raised her brows in assumed surprise. "With
whom?"

"Why, with Patricia, of course."

"Help you to square yourself with Patricia?" She laughed outright, but
without mirth. "I am afraid I don't at all understand you, Roderick. I
supposed you had already accomplished that much, for you told me--did
you not?--that Patricia has just accepted you?"

"Yes, and that's the devil of it!" was the unexpected astounding
reply. Beatrice moved farther away from him, and took her hand from
his grasp, in well-simulated horror of what he had said.

"Let us, at least, confine ourselves to the usages and language of
polite society;" she said, with mock severity. "We will leave the
devil out of it, if you please. Besides, you amaze me! Patricia has
just accepted you, and that is 'the devil of it.' Really, I can't
guess what you mean by such a paradoxical statement as that."

"Forgive me. I am so wrought up that I scarcely know what I am talking
about, or what I am doing. As I said before, I have managed to get
things into a terrible mess, and I believe that you, Beatrice, are the
only person alive who can unravel the tangle for me. Will you help me
out? Will you?"

"You must tell me what it is, before I commit myself. You are so very
aggravating, in words and manner, that I cannot even attempt to
understand you."

For just a few moments, he hesitated. There was within him the
feeling that he would outrage Patricia's ideas of the fitness of
things, if he should take Beatrice Brunswick into his confidence and
relate to her all that had occurred this afternoon and evening. But,
on the other hand, he saw in this beautiful girl a personification of
the straw at which a drowning man grasps. He knew that she was,
personally, closer to Patricia than any other friend had been, and
that she understood Patricia better than did anyone else, save Stephen
Langdon, perhaps. He knew, also, that he could trust her, and that he
could rely, implicitly, upon her loyalty. He knew that she would never
betray the secrets he would be obliged to tell concerning Stephen
Langdon's affairs. He had tried her often, and he had never found her
wanting. Therefore, he felt that the greatest secret of all,
concerning the financial extremity in which Stephen Langdon had become
involved, would be safe with Beatrice Brunswick. Manlike, he began
very stupidly and very strangely.

"By Jove, Beatrice!" he exclaimed. "I wish I might have fallen in love
with you, instead of with Patricia! You would never have seen things
in the light she does!"

Beatrice's eyes widened and deepened; then, they narrowed so that she
almost frowned. She bit her lips with vexation, and for an instant
was angry. At last, she laughed. She did not wish him to know how
deeply he had wounded her by that careless statement, so she uttered a
care-free ripple of laughter.

"I don't quite know whether I should take that as a compliment or
not," she replied. "It is more than likely that I would have conducted
myself very much worse than Patricia has done in this affair which you
have not as yet explained to me. Perhaps, it is a fortunate thing for
both of us that you did not fall in love with me, instead of her. I'm
sure I don't know what I should have done with you, in such a case.
But I will help you if I can; only, understand in the beginning that
if you tell me the story at all, you must tell me all of it. I don't
want any half-confidences, Roderick."

Duncan did tell her all of it then, leaving nothing to be added, when
he had finished; and she listened to the end of his tale in utter
silence, with her head half-turned away and her chin supported by the
palm of one of her jeweled hands. They did not move to the front of
the box again, nor give any heed to the rise of the curtain or to what
was taking place on the stage, during the ensuing act. Duncan talked
straight on, through it all; and Beatrice listened with close
attention. One might have supposed that the music and the singing did
not reach the ears of either of them, and one would not have been very
wrong in that surmise. The tragic fate of John, the Baptist; the
unholy, unnatural passion of a depraved soul for the dead lips of a
man who had spurned her while he lived; the exquisite music of
Strauss; the superb scenery and stage-setting; the rich and gorgeous
costumes--all remained unseen and unheard by these two, one intent
upon reëstablishing himself in the esteem of Patricia Langdon, the
other disturbed by emotions she could not have named, which she would
have declined to recognize, even had they presented themselves frankly
to her. She had known, of course, of Duncan's love for her friend, but
until this hour there had always existed an unformed, unrecognized
doubt in the mind of Beatrice that it would ever be requited.

When he had finished, she was still silent, and for so long a time
that at last, with some impatience, he bent nearer to her, and
exclaimed:

"Well, Beatrice? What do you think of it all?"

She shuddered a little. There was still another interval before she
spoke, and then, with calm directness, she replied:

"I think you are both exceedingly brave to be willing to face the
situation that exists."

"Eh?" he asked her, not comprehending.

"Why, if you carry out this compact that you have made, if Patricia
Langdon becomes your wife according to the terms she has dictated to
Melvin--for I can guess, now, what they are--you will both be casting
yourselves straight down into hell. I speak metaphorically, of
course," she added, with a whimsical smile. "I have been told that
there isn't any hell, really. But I mean it, Roderick. If there isn't
a hell, you two seem to be bent upon the arrangement of a correct
imitation of one."

"How is that?" he demanded, frowning. "I don't know what you mean."

"Our friend has not been named 'Juno' for nothing. She is a strange
girl; but I love her, almost as much as you do," Beatrice continued,
as if she had not heard his question. "She possesses characteristics,
the depth of which I have never been able to sound, and I am her best
and closest friend. If you two live up to this agreement, in the
spirit in which it was made, and conclude it in the spirit in which
she has dictated her conditions to Melvin, I tremble for the
consequences that will ensue, for I can almost foresee them. Patricia
is not one who forgives easily, and she will resent a hurt to her
pride with all the force there is in her."

Beatrice rose to her feet, standing before him, and he, also, stood
up, facing her. She reached out both her hands toward him, and he took
them; and there were tears in her big blue eyes, when she added, with
a depth of feeling that he did not understand:

"Roderick Duncan, it would be better for you, and for Patricia as
well, if you never saw each other again. You might far better, and
with much greater hope of happiness, cast your future lot with some
other woman whom you have never thought of as a wife, than marry
Patricia Langdon upon such terms as you have outlined. Have you known
her so intimately all your life without understanding her at all? She
might have forgiven disloyalty, or unfaithfulness, or at least have
condoned such--but an offense against her pride? Never! You would be
undergoing much less risk if you should select an utterly unknown
woman from one of these boxes, and should take her out of this theatre
now, and marry her instead!"

Having delivered this remarkable statement, Beatrice burst into
laughter. Duncan, suddenly alive to her beauty and her nearness,
deeply impressed by what she had said, and fully alive to the truth of
her utterances, retained the grasp he had upon her hands, and drew her
toward him, quickly.

"Why not?" he demanded, hotly. "I'll do it if you say the word! But
not a strange woman. You, Beatrice--you!! I'll dare you!!! We'll go to
the 'Little Church Around the Corner.' I dare you! I dare you,
Beatrice! They always have a wedding ceremony on tap, there; if you've
got the sand, come on. It offers a solution of everything. Come on,
Bee--marry me!"

She raised her eyes to his, and he understood, instantly, how he had
wounded her; he saw that her laughter had not been real, and that she
was very near to tears. But the fact that she shrank away from his
impetuous words and manner, only spurred him on anew. He caught her
hands again.

"Let's do it, Beatrice," he said rapidly, bending forward with sudden
eagerness. "I hate all this mess and muddle of affairs. I hate it! Say
yes, Bee."

He stood with his back toward the curtains at the rear of the box; she
was facing them. He saw her eyes dilate suddenly, and he had the
sensation that she had discovered another person near them, or in the
act of entering the box; and then, with more astonishment than he
would have believed himself capable of feeling, he realized that
Beatrice Brunswick had thrown herself forward and that her white arms
were wound clingingly about his neck; at the same time, with evident
design, she turned him still more, so that he could not see the
curtains which screened the entrance to the box.

The last and final shock of that eventful day, came to him then, for
he did turn, in spite of Beatrice's restraining arms--he turned to
find that the curtains were drawn apart, and in the opening thus
created stood Patricia Langdon. Duncan knew that she had both seen and
heard.

He could not have moved, had he attempted to do so, although somewhere
deep down inside of him he felt that it was his duty to untwine those
clinging arms and somehow to account for the appalling situation.
Beyond where Patricia stood, he saw and recognized two other figures
that were moving steadily forward toward them, but he had the
subconscious assurance in his soul that neither Stephen Langdon nor
his lawyer, Melvin, had noticed the scene which Patricia had
discovered. He could not guess that it had been the consequence of
sudden inspiration on the part of Beatrice, who had thrown her arms
around his neck at the very instant when she had intended to
administer a rebuff.

He did not imagine that she had discovered the approach of Patricia
before she made this outward demonstration in acceptance of his mad
proposal. Duncan felt very guilty indeed, in that trying moment;
nevertheless, he was not one to attempt an ignominious escape from a
predicament in which he believed himself to be wholly at fault. But
Beatrice was not yet through with acting a part. She drew away from
Duncan quickly, with an exclamation of mingled disappointment,
pleasure and alarm. She cried out the single ejaculation, "Oh!" and
dropped backward upon the chair she had recently occupied. But there
was a gleam of mischief in her eyes, which belied the confusion
otherwise expressed upon her face.

"So sorry to have interrupted you at such a critical moment," said
Patricia coolly, at once master of herself and of the situation.
"Good-evening, Beatrice. I hope you have enjoyed the opera. I decided
to come at the last moment, and met my father at the door of the
theatre, as I was entering. He insisted on seeing Mr. Melvin to-night,
so we drove to his house together and brought him here. I thought I
would enjoy the last act."

One might have thought that Roderick Duncan did not exist. Patricia
did not so much as glance in his direction, but she moved forward to
the front of the box and took her accustomed seat, just as Stephen
Langdon and the lawyer, Melvin, entered it.

All this had passed so quickly that the interval it occupied could be
reckoned only by seconds. Beatrice Brunswick's face was flushed, and
her eyes were alight with mischief, or with something deeper, as she
greeted the two gentlemen. Duncan's countenance was like marble; he
realized that the mess was bigger now, by far, than it had been
before.

Langdon and his lawyer perceived nothing unusual in the attitude of
any person in the box; both were preoccupied with the discussion upon
which they had just been engaged. Patricia's eyes were already fixed
on the stage, and evidently her entire attention was devoted to it.
She appeared to have forgotten the propinquity of other persons.

There was a vacant chair beside her which Duncan should have taken,
and, doubtless, he would have done so, had not the lawyer stupidly
preëmpted it for his own use. The banker occupied the middle chair,
and the consequence was that Duncan was given no choice, but was
literally forced into the one next to Beatrice. Not that he would
have preferred it otherwise, at the moment. Not he. He was angered by
Patricia's conduct toward him; he resented the whole circumstance--and
possibly, too, he still felt something of the thrill induced by the
clinging arms of Beatrice Brunswick. He stared silently toward the
stage, seeing nothing upon it. He was endeavoring to arrange, in some
comprehensive form, the combination of circumstances and scenes which
it had been his misfortune to encounter, and in part enact, since noon
that day. But the more he tried, the more difficult became the task.
The whole thing was as exasperating as an attempt to put together,
within an alloted time, a puzzle-picture which has been cut into all
sorts of sizes and shapes. It was not a panorama of events, as he
recounted them in his own mind; it was a kaleidoscope, a jumble of
colors and figures, of angles and spaces--or to put it in his own
words, it was literally a mess.

He turned toward Beatrice, whose right hand was negligently waving a
fan. He reached out and claimed it, and she did not resent the act. He
drew it toward him, and she looked up and smiled into his eyes with an
expression he did not understand. She made no effort to withdraw her
hand, nor any attempt to resist his advances. He bent nearer.

"Will you do it?" he asked her, whispering. "Will you do it,
Beatrice?"

She made no reply, and he bent still nearer, seizing her hand in both
his own, now.

"Will you do it, dear?" he repeated, a third time. "I'm game, if you
are. It is a solution of the whole beastly muddle. Come on. I'll stump
you! That is what we used to say, when we were kids. By Jove, girl,
you're in as deep as I am, now; and, besides, you gave me your word
that you'd help me, didn't you? Turn your eyes toward me. Tell me
you'll do it. Say yes. Come on, Bee. I'll dare you. We can slip away
from here while their backs are turned. What do you say? Will you
marry me?"

"Yes," she replied, without moving or withdrawing her gaze from the
stage, and she repeated: "yes, if you wish it." He could not see her
face.

"Will you do it now?" Duncan demanded, half-startled by her ready
acquiescence.

"Yes."

"Good! I knew you were game!"

He left his chair quickly and secured her wraps and his own coat and
hat. Then, he stepped to the opening between the curtains and turned
expectantly toward her.

She had not moved; but now, as if she had seen his every act without
looking toward him, she turned her head slowly, observing him coolly,
and she gave a little nod of comprehension and assent. He returned the
nod, touched his fingers to his lips to enjoin silence, and passed
outside. In another moment, she had glided softly but swiftly from her
seat, and, unnoticed by the other occupants of the box, followed him,
dropping the curtains silently after her.

He put her opera-cloak about her shoulders, and swiftly donned his own
coat and hat, and so without as much as "by your leave," they left the
theatre together and waited in the foyer while the special officer in
gray called a taxicab for their use.

Duncan led her across the pavement to the cab, and assisted her
inside.

"Do you know where the Church of the Transfiguration is located?" he
asked the chauffeur.

"I do, sir," was the reply.

"Drive us there, and be quick about it," said Duncan, and he sprang
inside and banged the door shut after him.




CHAPTER V

BEATRICE BRUNSWICK'S PLOT


The chauffeur to whom the order was given that the taxicab be driven
to the Church of the Transfiguration, proved to be an adept and
skillful driver; one of those who can exceed the speed limit and then
slow down his machine so quickly and quietly at the sight of a
bluecoat that he inevitably escapes arrest for his transgression. As
a consequence, there was very little time for conversation between
these two apparently mad young persons during the journey between the
opera-house and the church.

Little as there was, the greater part of it was passed in silence. But
when they were quite near to their destination, Beatrice spoke up
quickly and rather sharply to her companion.

"Roderick, have you for a moment supposed that I have taken you
seriously in this mad proposition you have made to me, to-night?" she
demanded. "Surely, you don't think that, do you?"

Duncan stared at her, speechless. Then, with a vehemence that can
better be imagined than described he exclaimed, half-angrily,
half-resentfully:

"Then, in God's name, Beatrice, why are we here? and why should we go
to the church at all?"

"Were you serious about it?" she asked.

"I certainly was--and am, now!"

"Foolish boy!" she exclaimed, laughing with nervous apprehension. What
more she might have said on this point was interrupted by the skidding
of the taxicab as they were whirled around the corner of Twenty-ninth
street.

"Why, in heaven's name, are we here, then?" he demanded, just as they
were drawn swiftly to the curb, and the cab came to a stop in front of
the church.

"You requested my help, did you not?" she replied.

"I certainly did."

The chauffeur, in the meantime, had leaped to the pavement and thrown
open the door of the cab.

"You may close the door again, chauffeur, and wait where you are for
further orders," Beatrice told him, calmly. And when that was done,
she again addressed her companion. "You have called me a 'good fellow'
to-night," she said slowly, with quiet distinctness, "and I mean to
be one. I have always meant to be one, and to a great extent I think I
have succeeded. But I would have to be a much better fellow than I am
to go to the extent of marrying a man who does not love me, and who
does love another, simply to help him out of a mess in which his own
stupidity has involved him. Wouldn't I? Ask yourself the question!"

Duncan shrugged his shoulders and parted his lips to reply, but she
went on rapidly:

"That is asking me to go rather farther than I would care to venture,
my friend; or you, either, if you should stop to think about it. Your
proposition is utterly a selfish one. You must know that. You have
thought only of yourself and the mess you are in. You do not consider
me at all. You would cheerfully use me as a means of venting your
spite--or shall I call it, temper?--against Patricia. For the moment,
you are intensely angry at her. Not only that, you feel that you have
been out-done, at every point. That she has acted unreasonably, I will
not deny. But what a silly thing it would be for you and me to stand
together at the altar, and pledge ourselves to each other for life, or
until such time as the divorce-courts might intervene, just because of
the events of to-day!" She was smiling upon him now, as if he were,
indeed, a foolish boy who needed chiding.

Duncan pulled himself together. For the first time since their exit
from the opera-house, and for perhaps the first time since the moment
when Patricia discovered him in the private office of her father, he
was capable of acting and thinking quite naturally.

"Beatrice," he said, "if the sentiments you have just expressed are
the same as those you felt before you left the box at the opera-house,
would you mind telling me why in the world you have acted as you have
done? Why, in the name of all that's phenomenal and strange, are we
here?"

She turned her head away from him, and peered through the glass door
at the chauffeur, who was striding slowly up and down the pavement
outside, and who had taken the opportunity to indulge himself in a
smoke.

"I did it," she said, "because I thought I saw a way to help you and
Patricia out of your difficulties. I saw that we could leave the box
without her knowledge, and believed that neither she nor her
companions would discover our departure for some time afterward. I
remembered just then that Patricia had witnessed the tender and
somewhat touching scene in the box between you and me. My goodness,
Roderick! I hope you didn't think that I meant _that_! It was all done
for Patricia's benefit, you goose! Didn't you know that? Did you
suppose that I had suddenly fallen head over heels in love with you?
You're not very complimentary, are you? Or is it that you were
throwing bouquets at yourself?"

"Will you tell me why you did it?" he asked, flushing hotly under the
jibe.

"Because I wished Patricia to see it."

"Why?"

"I thought it might bring her to her senses."

"How, Beatrice?"

"Jealousy, you dunce!"

"But why the rest of your superb play-acting?"

"It all works out toward the same end. Don't you suppose that Patricia
is in hot water, by this time? When she realized that we had sneaked
away, to put it plainly, don't you think she would put two and two
together, and make four out of it?"

"It strikes me," he interrupted her, with a light laugh, "that this is
a case where two are supposed to make one."

"We won't joke about it, if you please. Still, that isn't a bad idea.
But, at all events, I wish Patricia to believe that we left the
opera-house because, for the moment at least, you preferred my society
to hers. If we can convince her that we ran away to be married, so
much the better!"

"You are deeper than I am, Bee. I confess that you've got me up a
tree. I haven't the least idea what you are driving at, but I am quite
willing to be taught. What is to be the next play in this little game
of yours?"

"You need not be nasty about it, when I'm trying to help you," she
retorted.

"What's the next move, Bee? I couldn't induce you to give me another
hug, could I? There, now--don't get angry. I liked it, whether you
did, or not. You put a lot of ginger into it, too. Oh, yes, I liked
it!"

For a moment, it seemed as if she would resent his bantering tone;
then she shrugged her shoulders, and smiled.

"I did it to help you--to make Patricia jealous." She laughed lightly,
still keeping her face turned away from him. "I saw the curtains part,
and recognized Patricia. With the recognition, there came also a
revelation as to how I could best help you both. If I had dreamed that
you would suppose for a moment I was in earnest, do you think I would
have done it? And when I told you that I would come here, to this
church, and would marry you like this--good heavens!--did you flatter
yourself I meant _that_?"

"Of course, I did."

"Are you in earnest, Roderick Duncan? If I thought your selfishness,
your egotism, was as great as that, I--I don't know what I'd do! Have
you so little regard for me that you think I would become your wife,
in this manner, knowing as I do that you love another--and when that
other is my best friend--when I know that Patricia Langdon loves you?
For I do know it. Do you--did you think that of me--did you think that
of me?" She was a-tremble with indignation, now.

"By Jove, Bee, I acted like a brute, didn't I? I didn't consider you;
I was selfish enough to think of no one but myself. But, all the same,
my girl, I was in dead earnest. If you've got the pluck and the spirit
to go through with it, now, we'll see the thing out, side by side,
just as we started, and I will make you, perhaps, a better husband
than if the circumstances were different. You say that Patricia loves
me: I doubt it. I thought so once, but I don't now. It doesn't matter,
anyhow. I shall ask you again calmly, with all humility and respect;
with all seriousness, too: will you be my wife, and will you marry me,
now?"

"I will reply with equal seriousness, Roderick," she retorted,
mockingly. "No."

He uttered a sigh, and there was so much satisfied relief in it that
she laughed aloud, but without bitterness.

"Then, what shall we do? Sit here in this cab, in front of the Church
of the Transfiguration, for the balance of the night? Or shall we go
around to Delmonico's and have some supper?" he asked her.

"I think that last suggestion of yours is a very excellent one," she
replied, naïvely. "But we will wait yet a few moments before we start.
We haven't been at the Church of the Transfiguration quite long enough
to have been married, and to have come out of it again."

Duncan stared at her. Then, slowly, a smile lighted up his eyes and
relaxed the lines of his face, so that after a moment he chuckled.
Presently, he laughed.

"By Jove, Bee, you're a corker!" he said. "You can give me cards and
spades, and beat me hands down, when it comes to a matter of finesse.
Is it your idea to play out the other part of the game? What will it
avail, if we do?"

"Never mind that," she replied. "In order to carry out the scheme, and
to make it work itself out, as it should, one thing more is necessary.
It will be great fun, too--if we don't carry it too far."

"What is that?" he asked her. "What more is necessary?"

"I want you to tell the chauffeur to stop for a moment at the
side-entrance to the Hotel Breslin; there I wish you to leave me alone
in the cab, while you go inside, and telephone to the opera-house, to
have Jack Gardner and his wife meet us as soon as they can, at
Delmonico's for supper. You may not have noticed, but they occupied
their box, which is directly opposite the Langdon's. One of the ushers
will carry the message to him, and Jack will come, if he has no
previous engagement."

"But what in the name of--what in the world do you want of Jack
Gardner and his wife? what have they to do with it?"

"I want them to take supper with us, that is all; and then I want a
few moments' conversation with Jack, while you talk with Sally."

They were driven to the Breslin, and the telephone-message was sent.
Duncan waited for a reply, and received one, to the effect that Mr.
and Mrs. Gardner would come at once. And so, not long afterward, the
four occupied a conspicuous table of Beatrice's selection, at the
famous restaurant.

Recalling the injunction put upon him to occupy himself with Sally
Gardner, Duncan began to get a glimmer of understanding regarding the
plot that Beatrice had concocted. He, therefore, gave all of his
attention to the spirited and charming wife of the young copper-king.
Jack Gardner was everybody's friend. He loved a joke better than
anyone else in the world, and a practical joke better than any other
kind. He was especially fond of Roderick Duncan, and both he and his
wife were intimate friends of Beatrice. Duncan noticed, while talking
with Sally, that Jack and Beatrice had drawn their chairs more closely
together, toward a corner of the table, and were now whispering
together with low-toned eagerness. He could hear no word of what
Beatrice said, but an occasional exclamation of Gardner's came to him.
He saw that Beatrice was talking rapidly, with intense earnestness,
and that Gardner seemed to be highly amused, even elated, by what she
was saying. Such expressions as, "By Jove, that's the best, ever!"
"Sure, I can do it!" and, "You just leave it to me!" came to his
ears, from Gardner; and presently the latter excused himself and left
the table.

If they had followed him, they would have seen that he went to the
telephone, where he called up several numbers before he obtained the
person he sought; but he presently returned, apparently in the best of
spirits, and with intense satisfaction written upon every line of his
smiling features.

As he seated himself at the table, other guests were just assuming
places at another one, quite near to them, and he bent forward toward
Beatrice, saying in a tone which their companion could not hear:

"I say, Beatrice, it's all working out to the queen's taste! When you
get a chance, look over your left shoulder. Gee! but this is funny!
All the same, though, I expect I'll get myself into a very devil of a
stew. When that reporter discovers that I've given him an out-and-out
fake, he'll go gunning for me as sure as you are alive."

"Is he coming here to see you?" she asked him.

"Sure. He will be here in about twenty minutes."

"Now, tell me who it is at the table behind me. I don't care to look
around, to discover for myself."

"Why, Old Steve and his Juno; and they've got Malcolm Melvin with
them." He leaned back in his chair, and laughed; then, he emptied the
champagne-glass he had been playing with. Presently, he chuckled
again.

"Tell you what, Beatrice," he said, in an undertone, "I almost wish
that you had taken Duncan at his word, and married him. You should
have called that bluff. Sure thing! Think of the millions he's got,
and--"

"Hush!"

"Oh, all right. All the same--"

"Hush, I tell you! Don't you see that Sally is trying to talk to you?"

After that, the conversation became general among the four. During it,
Jack Gardner sought and found an opportunity to wave a greeting to the
late arrivals, whose names he had just mentioned to Beatrice. Duncan,
observing him, glanced also in that direction, and, meeting Patricia's
eyes fixed directly upon him, flushed hotly as he, also, bowed to her.
Then, Sally and Beatrice turned their heads and nodded, as another
course of the service was placed upon the table before them.

It was not yet finished when the head-waiter brought a card to Jack
Gardner, who instantly left his seat for the second time that evening,
and, with a curt, "I'll be back in a moment," departed, without
further excuse. The person whose card he had received, was awaiting
him in one of the reception-rooms; and the two shook hands cordially,
for they were old acquaintances and on excellent terms with each
other. It was not the first time they had got their heads together
concerning matters for publication, although, in this instance, the
newspaper man was to be made a wholly innocent party in the affair.

Burke Radnor was a newspaper man of prominence in New York. He was one
of the few men of his profession who have succeeded in attaining
sufficient distinction to establish themselves independently, and his
"stories" were eagerly sought by all of the great dailies.

The two seated themselves in a corner of the room, and talked together
earnestly, although in whispers, for a considerable time. It was
Gardner who did most of the talking; Radnor only occasionally
interjected a questioning remark. When they parted, it was with a
hearty hand-clasp, and this remark from Radnor:

"I'll fix it up all right, old man; don't you worry. Nobody shall know
that I got the story from you. But it is a jim dandy, and no mistake!"

"Which of the papers will you use it in, do you think?" asked
Gardner.

"I am not sure as to that. To the one that will pay the best price for
a first-class 'beat,' for that's what it is. Anyhow, that part of it
is none of your business. Now that I've got the story, I shall handle
it as I think best, and you can bet your sweet life it will be used
for all it's worth!"

Gardner returned to the dining-room, with vague misgivings concerning
what he had done; his smile was a bit less self-satisfied. Radnor,
apparently, left the building. But the shrewd news-gatherer went no
farther than the entrance, where he wheeled about and returned; and
this time he sent his card to Roderick Duncan. Having "nailed the
story," the proper thing now was to obtain an interview with one of
the principals concerned in it; with both, if possible.

Duncan received the card, wonderingly. He knew Radnor, and liked him;
but he could not imagine what the newspaper man could want with him at
that particular time. The truth about it, did not even vaguely occur
to him.

Excusing himself, he left the table and presently found Radnor in the
same room where the recent interview with Jack Gardner had taken
place.

"Hello, Radnor," said Duncan, cordially, extending his hand. "There
must be something doing when you call me away from a supper table, at
Del's. Make it as brief as possible--won't you?--because I am dining,
and--"

"Oh, I won't keep you but a moment, Mr. Duncan," was the quick reply.
"I just want to ask you a question or two about the interesting
ceremony that took place this evening--that is all."

"Eh? What's that? Ceremony? What the devil are you talking about?"

"Look here, Mr. Duncan, you know perfectly well that I am your friend,
and that I'll use you as handsomely as possible in the columns of any
paper that gets this story. But I've got the straight tip, and I know
what I am talking about. I thought, possibly, you might wish to say a
few words in explanation--just to tone the thing down, to give it the
mark of authenticity, you know. I thought you'd like to be quoted, and
to know, from me, that the story'll be all right. On the level, now,
isn't that better?"

Duncan laughed. He did not in the least understand. He had the idea
that Radnor had been drinking.

"Burke," he said; "upon my life, this is the first time I ever saw you
when you had taken too much to drink."

"Is that the way you are going to reply to me?" asked Radnor, with all
the insistence of a thoroughly trained newspaper man. "You'd best use
me right, you know. It's a great 'beat,' and I want all of it. I'd
like to talk with the bride, too, if you can fix--"

"But I don't know what the blazes you are talking about, man."

"I am talking about the little ceremony that took place this evening
at the Little Church Around the Corner, and was indulged in between
you and the former Miss Brunswick; as a sort of _entr'acte_ to the
opera of Salome," said Radnor, with slow distinctness.

Duncan stiffened where he stood. The smile left his face, and his eyes
narrowed, while his clean-cut features seemed to harden in every line
of them.

"Radnor," he said with a slow drawl, which to those who knew him best
betrayed intense anger, "you will be good enough to explain to me,
here and now, in plain English and in as few words as possible,
exactly what you mean."

"I mean," was the ready retort, "that you and Miss Beatrice Brunswick
were married to-night at the Little Church Around the Corner, between
two of the acts of Salome. I mean that I've got the straight tip, and
I know it to be true. I wish to quote you, if possible, in what I
shall write about it for the morning papers. I'd like to get a
statement from the bride, too."

"Are you crazy, Radnor?" asked Duncan, bending forward, his face white
and set, and his eyes hard and cold; for Roderick Duncan, with all his
apparent quietude, was a man whom it was not safe to try too far.

"No, I'm not crazy. I'm just telling you what's what. I'll get the
whole story, and what's more, I'll print it in the morning papers! If
you wish to say anything in explanation of the incident, I shall be
glad to quote you; but, otherwise, I shall take the liberty of drawing
my own inferences, and assuming my own conclusions, from the story I
have heard. I tell you, Mr. Duncan, I've got it straight, and I know
it to be true."

"It is not true," said Duncan, quietly. "The person who told you such
a story as that lied."

Radnor shrugged his shoulders, and laughed, ironically.

"I don't know that I blame you for denying it," he said, "but I happen
to know differently. If you choose to deny it, I'll send my card
inside to Mrs. Duncan, and we'll see, then, what we shall see. You
can't bluff me, Mr. Duncan. I'm not that sort. If you won't talk,
perhaps the former Miss Brunswick, will, and--"

Radnor got no further than that. Duncan's rage, the moment he
understood the situation and fully realized the possible consequences
of it in the hands of this ubiquitous newspaper man, overcame him,
utterly. His right arm shot out with terrific force, his clenched fist
caught Radnor squarely on the point of the chin, and the latter was
knocked half-senseless to the floor. Waiters, and attendants about the
place rushed toward them; but Duncan slowly drew a handkerchief from
one of his pockets, and, calmly wiping his hands upon it, said to the
manager:

"Kick the dog into the street; that is what he deserves. He probably
followed me when I came away from the opera-house, and now he is
trying to make capital out of a meaningless incident. Put him out, and
don't permit him to pass the door again to-night; otherwise, he will
seek to annoy a lady who is here."

Then, he turned calmly about, and, although his features were still
pale, reëntered the dining-room as if nothing had happened. Duncan
confidently believed that he had correctly estimated the cause of
Radnor's quest for news. It never occurred to him that Beatrice
Brunswick was herself, through the agency of Jack Gardner, the cause
of it.




CHAPTER VI

A REMARKABLE MEETING


When Jack Gardner returned to the dining-room after his interview with
Radnor, he was vaguely troubled, notwithstanding the fact that he was
also highly amused. There were elements associated with the thing he
had just done that might stir up unpleasant consequences. His
inordinate love for a practical joke had led him into it willingly,
and he had thought he saw in this affair the best and greatest joke he
had ever attempted to perpetrate. But he began to understand that
there was a tragic element to it which he could not deny to himself;
and, when he was in the act of resuming his chair beside Beatrice, he
was more than half-inclined, even then, to rush from the building in
the pursuit of Burke Radnor, and to withdraw the whole story that he
had given to the newspaper man.

When, a few moments later, Radnor's card was brought to Duncan, the
sense of impending disaster was stronger than ever upon Gardner, and
he watched the departure of the young millionaire with many
misgivings, not one of which he could have defined in words. But he
watched the doorway through which Duncan passed, and, during the
interval that ensued, he was very palpably disturbed and uneasy. He
had recognized the card, although he had been unable to see the name
that was engraved upon it. He had not supposed that Radnor would so
quickly pursue his investigation of the story, and it had not even
remotely occurred to the young copper-king, that the newspaper man
would dare to go so far as to seek an immediate interview with Duncan.
Even had the man selected Beatrice, it would not have been quite so
bad.

Nobody knew Duncan better than did Jack Gardner, and he realized what
a strong and stirring effect this fake-story, as made up between
himself and Beatrice, might have upon one who was such a stickler for
certain forms as he knew Duncan to be. His impulse was to follow his
friend from the room, but he resisted it, although he did keep his
gaze spasmodically fixed upon the door by which Roderick must reënter
the dining-room.

Gardner was the first of the party to discover him, when he did
return, and was quick to see that something unusual had happened
during the interval outside, which had been all too short to have
been fruitful of any other result than violence of some sort. He saw,
by the set expression of his friend's face and by the pallor upon it,
that something had gone wrong, and he started to his feet and moved
rapidly forward, so that he met Duncan half-way between the entrance
and the table where Beatrice and Sally Gardner were now left alone
together. He grasped his friend by the arm, and drew him aside, saying
rapidly, as he did so:

"For God's sake, Dun, what has happened? Tell me quickly."

Roderick Duncan looked down calmly, and without change of expression
upon Gardner, for he was considerably taller than his friend; and he
said, slowly, in reply:

"Without answering your question, Jack, I wish to ask you one. Was it
Burke Radnor whom you were called out to meet, a little while ago, in
the reception-room?"

Not thinking of the possible consequences of his response, Gardner
admitted, hastily, that it had been Radnor, and Duncan asked another
question.

"Did Radnor question you about a marriage-ceremony that is supposed to
have taken place between Beatrice Brunswick and myself, to-night?"

"Well, you see--"

"Answer me yes, or no, Jack, if you please."

"Well, then, he did."

"Have you any idea, Jack, where he obtained the nucleus for such a
story?"

Gardner hesitated, and Duncan from his greater height, bent forward
quickly, and with a strong grip, seized the young copper-king by the
shoulder.

"Jack Gardner," he demanded, "did you, at the instigation of Beatrice,
concoct that story? Have I you to thank for it? You need not answer,
Jack. I can read the reply in the expression of your face." He
withdrew his hand from its detaining grasp upon his friend, and took a
half-step backward; then, he added: "Jack, if we were anywhere else
than in a public dining-room, I should resent what you have done
bitterly--and by actions, not words. As it is, I demand that you
instantly seek, and find, Burke Radnor, and retract whatever you have
said, or inferred, during your conversation with him. I warn you,
Gardner, that if one single line appears in any of the papers
to-morrow morning on this subject I'll find a way to resent it, which
will make you regret, all your life, your nameless conduct of
to-night."

Gardner turned decidedly pale, not because of any physical fear he
felt of Duncan, but in dread of the possible consequences of what he
had permitted himself to do.

"Where is Radnor, now?" he exclaimed, quickly.

"I left him half-conscious, on the floor of the reception-room,"
replied Duncan, calmly. "I knocked him down."

"Good God!" exclaimed Gardner; and he turned and rushed away with
precipitate haste.

Duncan went on toward the table at which Beatrice and Sally were
seated, but as he approached it, a desire to hear the sound of
Patricia's voice