Chapter M: A. T (6)

"Well, well, we all have to go. Sixty-one, I think. Has any one sent for Webb? I think Webb should be sent for."

Weldon glanced curiously at the mild, unimportant brother-in-law. He was always thought of and mentioned in his capacity of brother-in-law. Why should he think of Webb? Common-sense answered, why not? Webb was immeasurably the head of them all. Opening the door to discover if there were yet any disturbance in the bank, he confronted Potter, a fat, red-faced, many-millioned man, who puffed excitedly by him.

"Terrible thing, isn't it, Dupont? Great shock to you. Naturally. Has--has Webb been informed? Quite right, quite right."

He dropped into a chair and wiped his pink, fat forehead, looked once sharply at the body on the floor, then obstinately at his knees. He appeared very excited to Weldon; more so than the death of his associate could properly explain, perhaps? No, no: what folly! Probably it made them all feel rather shaky--overfed, weak-hearted old fellows, all of them. They saw their end.

A soft tap on the door followed, and as the two older men looked with one accord at Weldon, he pushed aside the portieres and admitted Mr. Fayles, a thin, aristocratic, iron-grey man, who made himself one of them without a word. Stepping to the body he looked a moment, then sank into the chair Weldon had occupied during his interview, fitted his gloves into his top hat, dropped it beside him, and with an extraordinary convulsion of countenance buried his face in his hands. After a moment's annoyed contemplation of his motionless figure, Weldon met Dupont's eyes inquiringly. The brother-in-law shook his head, no wiser, evidently. Weldon gestured imperiously toward the fat man, and Dupont tiptoed over to him, whispering hoarsely, "I didn't know he was so attached to Edward, did you, Potter?"

Potter pressed his puffy hands together till they streaked red and white.

"Good heavens! Good heavens!" he burst out, "this is awful! Where can Webb be?"

Dupont stared, then shrugged his shoulders vaguely and returned to his seat. "I really didn't know he was so attached to Edward," he murmured to Weldon confidentially.

They sat in silence. The president's great bulk stretched among them like some sleeping, foreign animal in a zoological garden. It was like a funeral; the funeral of some associate, attended with perfunctory punctiliousness. The blow was financial, not human: it was the death of so much bank stock.

Another knock. Again Weldon, recognised master of ceremonies now, opened the door, this time for the doctor. It was the president's own doctor; Weldon wondered why it was that important men's doctors were always to be got so quickly. Did they have a secret call in the event of a bank president's death? What would happen in case one were called from the birth, say, of another bank president's son? Imagine the doctor's state of mind ... he shook himself to dissipate such idiotic thoughts: his mind worked as the mind of one in a worried, hurried dream.

"Good-day, gentlemen, a sad errand for me," said the doctor gravely. "Ah, yes, a little more light, please? Ah, yes. Instantaneous, of course. Half an hour, forty minutes, I should say? Ah, yes. I supposed so. Any one present ... any shock or excitement?"

Weldon spoke briefly. He had been discussing bank matters with Mr. Deeping. He had mentioned a few of the matters in discussion when Mr. Deeping had put his hand into his pocket, appeared to sustain some stroke, slipped back in his chair, and fallen dead-weight on the bent arm. Just as they saw him. It was impossible to move him, except to free him from the chair. He appeared to have died instantly. It had been made known immediately.

"Ah, yes," said the doctor. "Just as I expected. I warned him of it. Not a month ago. A great loss to the community, gentlemen. All the arrangements, now ... Mr. Dupont, I suppose you ... or if you had rather that I...."

"If you would, please," said the brother-in-law gratefully, "I am bad at that sort of thing--I--my head----"

"Ah, yes. Perfectly natural. I will have the body removed, then, as soon as possible----"

"Not till Webb gets here!" Potter broke out, twisting his hands convulsively, "wait for Webb. I insist on Webb!"

The doctor stared.

"Mr. Potter, I believe?" he inquired courteously. Then turning to the others generally, "Do I understand that there is any reason----"

"No reason at all," Dupont interrupted irritably, "not the least. Webb will be informed, fast enough. If you are kind enough, doctor----"

It was obvious that he dreaded the chance of any personal responsibility. What a rabbit of a man he was! Weldon remembered suddenly that a night watchman had been dismissed for saying that Mrs. Dupont blew her husband's nose for him! One could almost believe it. Hear him, now.

"Mr. Fayles will, I am sure, agree with me----"

"With you? With _you_?"

Mr. Fayles's voice was hollow, tortured. His face was wet. He turned his red-rimmed eyes on the man before him.

"What in God's name are you?" he said ferociously. "Wait for Webb, of course."

His head went back in his hands and they stared at one another. Fayles, the cold aristocrat. Fayles, the unruffled! The doctor's glance settled finally on Weldon, as a possible clew to the situation.

"This is--this is--we make every allowance, of course," he began, "for such an unsettling occurrence. Of course. Mr. Webb, of course, would naturally ... and yet I hardly like the idea ... it seems..."

There was a strange sense of tension in the room, not to be accounted for by that dead creature on the floor. No, there was something else. Weldon with difficulty repressed a smile. That fool of a brother-in-law knew nothing, clearly. Potter was merely irritable and at sea generally, he was sure. He could swear that whatever alarmed Potter alarmed him only through Fayles, whose collapse was unprecedented. Did Fayles know? Impossible. Fayles stood for old-fashioned, delicate scruples, finical standards. "As straight as Joseph Fayles," they said. And yet, why.... He remembered that he had not yet answered the doctor. How his thoughts ran away with him!

"Mr. Webb's connection, of course," he murmured, "principal director, you might say, made it natural to lean on him ... to depend ... undoubtedly he would have been notified. Probably if the doctor were to send for the body, Mr. Webb would have got there before, and his colleagues be satisfied. They depended on his judgment to such an extent..."

The air of the room seemed to tighten round them. That doctor was no fool. He must feel something--what, how much? He pursed his lips.

"Just as you like, of course," he said briefly. "It would seem that there can be very little difference in judgment as to the expediency of burying a dead man, however. If that is what you mean. I will do as this young man suggests. These matters, of course, have a certain formality. There are precedents.... Ah, yes. Good-day, gentlemen."

He looked toward the door, which Weldon, in his capacity of master of ceremonies, opened for him, and passed out, drawing a deep breath as he crossed the threshold and hurrying, it seemed to Weldon, down the corridor. Did he want to be rid of them? It seemed so.

There they were. All the directors but Webb. All that counted, that is. One would imagine it a meeting of the board. Then why was he here? Suddenly he lost himself in a great yawn, and realized that he was dying of sleepiness. Neither last night nor the night before had he closed his eyes.

"As there seems nothing more for me to do, gentlemen," he said abruptly, "I think I will go now. There is no more assistance----"

"Wait for Webb," cried Potter nervously, "wait, won't you? I--I insist on it!"

One felt really sorry for this rich, fat man. How ludicrously he resembled his caricatures!

"I really wish you would wait for Mr. Webb, Mr. Weldon," Dupont assured him, "it would be a great convenience. You could tell him just how it happened, you know. Just. You see, your being there, you know...."

"Of course I will stay, if you desire it," Weldon answered gravely, wondering if he could keep awake. His eyeballs fairly dragged down. The tall clock's tick confused itself with his thoughts: _one, two! one, two! one, two!_ Suppose he were to run now, with the "memoranda, etc.," and take whatever Mr. Deeping had been going to take? That was folly, if the rest didn't know. Then he would be a common criminal. If they did know, then he could leave his memoranda slip and they would understand and make up the sum amongst them. Let Webb and Potter fork out, for once. Let them bleed the depositors. _One, two! one, two! one, two!_ Why not? why not? why not? His eyes fairly closed for a second.

But a soft click of the door opened them. There was no knocking here. The curtain moved and Mr. Webb was in the room. Involuntarily they rose to meet him, and Fayles for the first time took his hands down. Tall and unnaturally thin, his sallow cheeks framed in lank, sandy hair, his eyes turned down, it was hard to realise that this almost slouching fellow held the attention of the shrewd in these matters as the certain head of them all, when the present great leader should have dropped his sceptre. But this was the Webb in whose labyrinthine meshes the cartoonists delighted to picture the unhappy flies of their country's financial system; this was the weaver whose warp was of railroads and his woof the unhappy populace, in yet other pictorial fancies. This was that Webb before which many patient Penelopes had sat through many Sunday editions, dressed in stars and stripes, a sorrowing, perplexed America, and gaped to find it unwoven by day, though thick patterned with rich promises in the evening.

"All over, is it?" he said in his dry, sceptical voice, "too bad, too bad."

His eye shot out from its heavy lid and took them all in. It lingered on Weldon.

"This the young man with him at the time? Sudden shock, eh?"

Weldon told his story again. They had talked of business. The president had put his hand in his pocket. Handkerchief, probably. Had experienced some shock and fallen, dead-weight, on his bent arm. As you see him now. Unable to lift him. Notified Mr. Dupont immediately. Nothing more.

"Dear, dear!" said Mr. Webb. "As quickly as that! Hard on you. Nothing handy, I suppose; only window up and water and such things?"

For the life of him Weldon could not help the slow red in his face. He glanced at the window: it was locked. For Heaven's sake, why lie? He was no murderer. And yet--any one, _any one_ would have opened that window.

"I did what I could," he said in a low voice, "but it was plain that Mr. Deeping was dead. He never drew another breath."

"No brandy about, I suppose?" pursued Webb.

But Potter interrupted.

"For Heaven's sake, Webb," he implored, "let all that go! He's gone. You know he never touched a drop of anything. Of course there was no brandy."

"Of course," Weldon interrupted, relieved. Every one knew the president's views on that subject; he had forgotten them.

"Of course," repeated Mr. Webb softly and glanced again at the window. An intense irritation flared up in Weldon: this man flicked him on the raw with every syllable.

"If you have no further use for me, gentlemen," he began, but Webb waved his thin, small-boned hand negligently.

"One moment, Mr.--Mr. Weldon, I think? What business did you say you were discussing with my poor friend?"

Mr. Fayles took a quick step and grasped his colleague's arm.

"For God's sake, Webb," he muttered huskily, "look at us! Where are we? What's to be done? They've sent for the body by now."

Potter seized the other arm.

"Will you tell me what all this means, Webb?" he blustered, "what's the matter with Joe Fayles? Is it possible that--is anything----"

Webb's lids lifted and the snake-like swiftness of his glance at Fayles was not lost on the others.

"If Mr. Fayles," he began slowly, "has occupied himself in spreading the disquiet he has endured since he discovered (and imparted to me) the fact that my poor friend here carried a revolver about with him, he has done a mighty foolish job. That's all I have to say."

Even Dupont was alarmed now. It was with a grim amusement that Weldon watched them all. Dupont suspected Potter, was staring malevolently at him and chewing his slight moustache nervously. Potter never took his eyes from Fayles, whose clutch on Webb was the anguished clutch of the drowning man that has caught at sea-weeds. They seemed to Weldon like actors in a play, and he was the spectator. He observed them from his red plush seat, almost despising them for the entertainment they gave him. How absurd they were, with their dead president and their suspicions. They were mad to get at the pockets--he knew! But they hadn't the nerve. And Webb, crafty old Webb, was holding them in like dogs on a leash.

"Did he really carry a pistol?" he said gently, "let's see."

He leaned over the body.

"I wonder why he wanted the pistol pocket?" he went on casually, "any idea, Mr. Weldon?"

A tiny, fine chill tingled at Weldon's heels and flew up to his hair. He had a sudden flashing sense of being in a net that was softly tightening. In an agony of regret he wished that he had not that sheaf of "memoranda, etc." It was suddenly clear to him that he had stolen them.

"I have no idea, sir," his tongue answered stolidly.

"No, ... of course not," said Mr. Webb thoughtfully. "Well, gentlemen, I can't see the need for any more discussion. This is very deplorable--a great shock. He was very methodical and no doubt everything is in easy shape...."

They drew close to him and Weldon, though he caught the murmur of voices, distinguished nothing but the steady notes of the clock: _one, two! one, two!_ His head nodded a trifle and for one blissful second his eyelids fell. The clock began to strike eleven. _One!_ he struggled, but it was too sweet. _Two!_ He became dimly conscious of a rustling and movement by him. _Three!_ there was a light touch on his arm and Webb stood near the chair he had dropped into. The others must have gone.

"You seem exhausted, Mr. Weldon," he said quietly.

"I--I have missed my sleep lately," Weldon stammered, trying to control the motions of his mouth, his voice striking his own ear as mechanical, far away, laboured.

"Exactly," said Webb suavely. "And now, Mr. Weldon, _how much do you expect for those papers_?"

* * * * *

Weldon drew his chair across the broad verandah in an aimless, leisurely way, anchored it in the shadow of a wicker table laden with cool glass pitchers and iced fruits, and sank into it, sighing restlessly. The pillars of coral that supported the verandah roof framed, each pair of them, an oblong of sapphire bay; vivid masses of pink oleanders hedged the foreground; the tremulous sapphire crawled softly over a creamy crescent beach. In the pleasant noon stillness the mild whine of a patient puppy, broken by the chuckles of some young human thing, rose on the air. Jars of sweet flowers sent out their almost tropical odours with each tiny, invisible wind current: they seemed to puff it into his face.

A great green and flame-coloured parrot, hung head downward in his yellow cage, began suddenly a mechanical, dry litany:

"_Manana! manana! manana!_" It was like a clock--passionless, regular, meditative. Weldon shrugged his shoulders distastefully; he had never been able to conquer his dislike of steady, measured sounds. It was an unreasonable weakness, but incurable. He twisted uneasily in his white flannels as the bird droned on,

"_Manana! manana! manana!_"

"Be still, Chico, be still, sir!"

A fair, finely grown boy took the coral steps two at a bound and threatened the parrot.

"Daddy, keep him quiet, won't you? He frightens my white mice awfully. Why do mice hate parrots? Do you know, daddy?"

Weldon's face cleared and he threw his arm over the slender shoulders.

"I don't know, Pippo, I can't guess," he said. "Where's your mother?"

"Just beyond you," and the boy slipped away to his pets, grudging the time for her kiss in passing.

She stood softly behind the wicker chair and laid her hand on his forehead. Her lips were only a little smoother.

"Still troubled, dearest?" she asked him in her pleasant voice. "Still dreaming?"

She was very dark, with reddish lights in her thick, low-growing hair, and brown, broad eyebrows. Under them her eyes shone, a frank, dark brown; she bore a curious likeness to that nurse he had seen in the doctor's office, so many years ago. How strange that a passing fate should have set his ideal of dear and loving women forever! She had even the same small dimple at the left of her mouth.

She slipped to the floor beside him and laid her head in her wifely way against his knee.

"I'm so sorry it bothers you, Phil," she murmured, her cheek against his hand. "One would think you were a superstitious boy, you silly! Hear baby--he's playing so dearly with those puppies! He pats them and then pinches their tails so slyly! Oh, Ted! Oh, baby! Call to mummy!"

From the balcony above a shrill crow drowned the complaint of the puppies.

"Doesn't he say it plainly!" she cried, flushing a beautiful mother-rose. "And he is so strong, Phil!"

He caressed her absently. Ten years gone, and a dream had swept those years to one side as one would draw a bronze curtain, had opened the past as one would open a heavy mahogany door! All night a tall, carved clock had ticked, ticked through his dreams, _one, two! one, two! one, two!_ A sinister, sandy face had mocked and probed him, a fat, animal face had irritated him, a pale, haunted face had pleaded with him. He had tossed himself awake, had listened thankfully to the soft breathing beside him, had kissed the fragrant braid across his face, and sunk again into heavy, sultry nightmare, doomed to live that shameful day through every clock-tick. And now his brain was cloudy with it. His hand lay listless on her shoulder.

A five-year-old girl, lovely as a tea rose, stood doubtfully in the cedar-wood door, poised for flight either way, sucking in the dimple at the left of her mouth. Running at his call she flew into his arms and dropped her buttercup head on his shoulder. For the first time he smiled, and the wise wife slipped quietly away and watched them from the door, guessing at their murmurs, counting their kisses. Later she disturbed them reluctantly.

"I want to say you are not at home," she said, "but I daren't quite do that, for he is from the States, dear, and it is important business. His name," dropping her eyes to the white rectangle in her hand, "is Webb. Shall I send him out here?"

Weldon put the child down from his knees and half rose.

"Yes," he said, clearing his throat, "send him out here. And keep the children away."

So this was it. It had not been for nothing, that dream.

The tall, lank figure was before him, the ironical smile drooped on the tight lips. Ten years had left him as they found him, but for a thought of grey in the sandy hair.

"Sit down," said Weldon briefly, "what is it?"

"You've put on a little weight, I see," said Webb, nodding at the proffered chair, "but that's only proper in the president of a bank, I suppose. You've done well, Mr. Weldon."

Weldon bowed.

"You did not come to Bermuda to tell me this, Mr. Webb, I think?"

"No," said Webb, "I didn't. Ten years ago, Mr. Weldon, you called me a mind-reader when I had put two and two together once or twice, put myself in your place for ten minutes, complimented you by assuming that your course had been what mine would have been, and spoken to you accordingly. Can't you do a little mind-reading on your own account, now?"

"I confess myself unequal to it," Weldon said coldly.

Webb nodded indulgently.

"All right," he returned, "we'll take it that way, if you want to. Mr. Weldon, I don't know if you read our papers down here at all?"

"I have never opened an American newspaper since I left the country," said Weldon briefly.

"I see. I suppose you know that Blickenstern's dying, though?"

"Yes," Weldon answered indifferently, "we all know that, of course."

"Yes. Well, Mr. Weldon, I'm supposed to inherit his shoes. It's not much to you, of course, but a lot to me--and to a lot of other people, too. Now for something you don't know. In just about five days, Mr. Weldon, we're going to break through the crust and drop into the biggest panic since '93. That and Blickenstern's death--he must go soon, now--and this fearful railroad business--I won't bore you--will put me into a bad hole. A worse hole, I don't mind telling you, Mr. Weldon, than Blick's successor can afford to get into. It's all a matter of balance now; pretty fine balancing, too, for the next week. In six weeks there'll be enough for most of us, but just now--well, there'll be dozens of us in the Street who'll be grateful for ten thousand in cash around the corner. Think of it--ten thousand! Now I'll be short. I need some money--not stage money, Mr. Weldon, real money! I wouldn't take Blick's name on paper for what I want this week--and getting it or not getting it means the top of the heap for me, or three years' fight for it. I can't afford three years. I wasn't a bank president at forty, you know."

"You mean you want the ten thousand pounds you gave me?"

"Just so. I want fifty thousand dollars, Mr. Weldon--for six weeks. I hate to do it, honestly. Nothing but this infernal panic could have driven me to this. But I'm helpless. And it's worth millions to me to have no one suspect it. I can't touch a penny elsewhere--it's all tied up. I must be able to produce it without any fuss, or disturbing the jack-straws a particle. There's no use in going into the details."

"No use at all," said Weldon stiffly, "for it will be impossible for me to lend you such a sum, Mr. Webb, impossible. I have paid well for my position here."

"And a good move, too," said the other heartily. "You stand well, Weldon; none better."

"I have never been what you would call ambitious," Weldon went on, more passionately, now. "When you yourself asked me why I demanded no more than the ten--the fifty thousand, you remember my answer. I knew that it would buy me a good, respectable interest out here, assure me of a position I had every capacity to sustain honourably and efficiently, and give me the leisure and climate that I wanted. I shall never be a rich man--by your standards. I don't care. I thought my brains and initiative were worth what I asked, and you agreed with me. I promised utter silence and have kept my word. You promised the same and have broken yours. I can do nothing for you, even if I wished to. I'd rather not discuss it further."

"_Manana! manana! manana!_" the parrot shrilled. It still hung head down in the shining cage. Weldon could have wrung its neck. It was worse than a clock. Webb sighed regretfully and raised his heavy lids. As the old snakish glance reached him Weldon felt the old net-like sensation, the old baffled rage.

"I'm sorry, Weldon, but I can't let it go. It's no use--you can't afford it. It's all like a house you build out of cards, you see, and you can't slip out one without the whole thing caving in. Whatever I pull out I have to explain. How do you suppose I got you your fifty thousand, back there? You know I've never had much money--to call money. It's brains--what you call mind-reading, you other fellows--that I've matched against the rest of them. And I've got them where they're afraid of me. I can't drop back. Listen to me, Weldon!"

He drew his chair close and talked low and steadily for five minutes. The air seemed to grow dense; the rustling hiss of the foam on the creamy beach was the hiss and flicker of a sea-coal fire; the grotesque shadow of the wicker chair, black on the white verandah floor, was the spread, silent bulk of a dead man.

The low voice ceased.

"How about it, Weldon?" it added abruptly, "can you afford that?"

Weldon pushed away his chair roughly. "Come down to my room at the bank," he said.

Hours afterward he dragged himself into his bedroom, an older man by ten years than when he had quitted it. His body seemed heavier, his face hollower, with pinched lips and sunken eyes. The man who waited on him stared openly and mentioned the doctor, only to receive a curse for his pains--the first he had ever heard from his master.

In the late dusk his wife found him asleep in a long chair with an empty decanter beside him and heavy rugs dragged up to his chin. They tried, both of them, to make that nervous chill account for the change in him, but she watched him narrowly and he felt her eyes day and night.

Something tolled like a bell in him and never stopped for a moment: _six weeks! six weeks! six weeks!_ all his waking movements went to that intolerable rhythm; he was like a man under a gallows, with a reprieve coming to him, at the mercy of all the elements. It was observed at the bank that he worked harder and longer and much alone: they said the American blood was coming out at last, and smiled at each other.

"Only mind you don't engage us in speculations, old man," said one of his colleagues jocosely, "'safe and sound,' you know! Look at the States--a pretty mess that!"

Weldon turned on him in a fury of anger.

"Speculation! speculation!" he cried harshly, "you know that I hate it like hell!"

They were genuinely anxious about him.

One morning he found his wife in his dressing-room, white-faced over something in her hand.

"Philip! Philip!" she whispered and clung to him.

He put the shining little steel-eyed thing behind him.

"My dear, don't be foolish," he said quietly, "if I have my reasons for wishing a certain sort of protection for a few days, will you make me regret my sparing you?"

"You--you mean the bank?" she gasped.

"What else could I mean?" he said steadily, and in some quaint woman's reasoning she was appeased.

At the end of three weeks the strain eased a little. He read a letter from Webb with a grim smile, bought an American newspaper, and passed an entire day away from the bank. His wife held her breath as she watched him, but affected not to notice the change, and he blessed her for it: his nerves were raw. Two days, three days went by. He sent out for another newspaper and later in the day raised the tiny salary of the page who had brought it to him. In the cool of the afternoon he rode with his wife, the boy on a shaggy pony beside them, and kissed her as she turned in the saddle in the shadow of the dusk.

"You are the best wife a man ever had," he said, looking deep into her honest brown eyes, and she galloped away from him to hide her happy tears.

The next day he told the servant to bring the parrot cage back to the verandah, where the little daughter liked to have it, and grimaced tolerantly at its strident cry:

"_Manana! manana!_"

Life is as it is, he thought, and can we hope to change it because we change? Surely not. Everything had its price, and he had really never paid the price of that ten-years-old bargain till now--he acknowledged it. Out of that blue-stained air the messenger of fate had dropped and taken his toll of youth and candour and elasticity, and departed again, and now the weight was slackening from his chest and there were but fourteen days to wait. The next day he found a second letter from Webb on his desk. To relieve him from needless anxiety, said the great financier, he wrote to inform Mr. Weldon that six weeks had proved too wide a margin and he promised himself the pleasure of a complete settlement six days from the date of writing. Weldon stared at the letter head: it had been three days on the way--that meant in three days--by the next boat! The letter was grave, but subtly jubilant. The railroads were subdued. Blickenstern was dead, the country hailed his successor. A foundation of millions lay firm beneath his feet.

The president left his bank early and went home on horseback to luncheon. His wife saw the husband of many days ago and asked no more of life, but sang among her flower jars.

"Will you come up to Government House this afternoon, dear? It's weeks since you've been," she said, and he smiled and promised. "I've a new frock," she confided shyly, like a girl, "and I think you'll like to see it--now."

"I'll be back before four," he told her, "a little late, but I promised one of our young fellows an appointment."

She pouted as she had done in her courtship days.

"A young man!"

"I can't disappoint him, sweetheart. Youngsters feel those things. He wants more money, and I really believe he's worth it."

As he entered his private room something struck him disagreeably. He glanced about--a sea-coal fire burned in the tiny English grate. He scowled and touched a bell. Asked to explain, the page confessed that he had promised Mrs. Weldon to put a fire there whenever any dampness should threaten, and that to-day being noticeably damp he had kept his word. The president nodded and the lad made his escape.

In another moment a slender young man entered, with a discreet knock, and faced him. He seemed unaccountably excited--even blustering, for a young man in his position.

The president took out his watch and counted the ticks to quiet his irritation. We must be kind to the young ones--promotion means so much to them.

"Let us look at all this a little quietly," he said, softened already, "believe me, I want to satisfy every reasonable claim. It is to my interest----"

He caught his breath. Something in the young man's attitude as he faced him, level eyed, hands between his knees, a contemptuous smile on his hard young face, smote him to the very marrow.

"What is he thinking of me?" flashed through him. The answer came like the shot from a cannon.

"Is it to your interest to satisfy every reasonable claim on the ten thousand pounds you borrowed from the bank last month, Mr. Weldon?"

The soft lines faded from his face and two grey streaks grew around his mouth. The ticking of the watch in his hand rose and swelled and filled the room--_one, two! one, two! one, two!_

So this was the end. Never a night of honest sleep again. Never a free swell of the chest. To go down in sight of land, to drop just outside the fort! _All over! All over! All over!_

The young man was still talking, quickly, definitely enough, but it grew blurred as it reached his brain. He found his tongue, dry and stiff in his mouth, asking questions mechanically?

Did any one know of this?

No, only the young man. He was not inclined to be rapacious. He had an interest in a bank in Gibraltar, and two thousand pounds would establish him there. He had thought it might be worth the president's while to put him in the way of two thousand pounds--considering everything. Promotion was slow in Bermuda ... dead men's shoes....

The tongue in Weldon's mouth asked, calmly enough, how he was to be protected against further demands. The young man explained very clearly. The president had managed thoroughly well: in a few days the recent transaction would be a ripple under water. But during those few days ... he smiled disagreeably.

The fire whistled in the grate; the bank was utterly still. They were alone in it. In one second of time, years and the future itself wheeled before Philip Weldon's sunken eyes. So the black drop _had_ lasted, after all, and would tint his life as long as that life lasted on earth ... and longer? Anything was possible. Must the sordid drama play itself eternally, through the years and countries, till the final ripple hit the southern-most port of refuge? Would this young man sit before a sea-coal fire in Gibraltar, one day, frozen, his life and honour nipped at the root by the triumphant hound who had tracked down his one fault? Before God, it was _his_ only one! He was white beside some others who lived and died respected. Prove the contrary, any one!

_One, two! one, two! one, two!_ That watch. Either he was going mad or it could be heard in the street outside, it shouted so. Who was he, anyway--Deeping or himself? Who was that young man?

Suddenly his head cleared. He moistened his lips and leaned forward, the watch crystal shivered in his grasp.

"And you are going----"

"To Gibraltar," said the young man briskly. "I am glad that you----"

"No," said Weldon thoughtfully, "I am afraid you are not going to Gibraltar. You are going to die."

He pushed his hand back into his pocket and felt the precious hard little object there. His finger clasped it, when a heavy blow sent him reeling in his chair. A pain like a knife cut through his heart and he fell heavily backward on his bent arm.

* * * * *

His eyes opened. He drew a deep breath. A tall, carved clock in the corner struck, and a man, a lank, sandy man beside him, seemed to have said something, for his voice was in the air.

"He must have had some papers--if there is anything wrong--good God, Webb, what shall we do?"

This was a slender, foppish man, iron-grey. Weldon sprang to his feet, pulling his right arm from behind him, wide, wide awake now. He was free! He was free!

The clock struck again.

Thrusting his hand in his coat he drew out a sheaf of papers and pressed them upon Webb.

"Here, gentlemen," he cried breathlessly, "are the papers you want! And here," he threw a small folded slip on the floor, "is an explanation that may help you with them. I wish you good-day."

To get out! To get out! He burst through the portieres and the door, as four men, uniformed, with a black stretcher between them, entered it from without. In the moment of his withdrawal from them he saw, as one sees a stage group from his red plush seat, Potter, panting and terrified, Fayles, anguished, Dupont dazed and suspicious, their eyes fixed on Webb, who, calm as in his own office, ran over the sheaf with his snake-like eye. Even as he nodded shrewdly, the stretcher was in the room and the group dissolved.

Weldon found his hat in his hand; he polished it furiously as he strode down the corridor. He threw himself on the outside door and as he opened it, he heard through the unclosed door of the private room the great clock strike eleven. With a shudder he plunged across the threshold, out, out into the clean, free air.

THE LEGACY

Of course, it doesn't make any difference to me whether anybody believes this or not. It's only because Dr. Stanchon asked me to, that I'm writing it, anyway. And nobody needs to get the idea that I think I'm a writer, either: I'm not such a fool as all that. But there's not a nurse in the place who wouldn't lie down and let the doctor walk over her, if he wanted to--and he knows it, too. Not that he's cocky about it, though.

"You know I'm no magazine muck-rake, doctor," I said as I got out of the motor (he had taken me up through the Park to Morningside and back, while I was telling him), "and I'll probably be a little shy on style."

"Style be damned," he said. "You're long on facts, and that's all I want, my dear. And don't for heaven's sake work in any of that C----r's rot on me!"

I had to laugh, really, at that, because he was so funny about it. I took care of Mr. C----r, the novelist, when he had his appendix removed, and he used to dictate a lot to me, and Dr. Stanchon always insisted that my charts were made out in his style, after that. But of course they weren't.

"Just tell it as it happened, you know," he said, "and in your own language. I'd like to keep it."

And of course anybody can do that. Although Mr. C----r told me once that that was the hardest job he ever tackled. He said he could write like his heroes easy enough, but not like himself. But he was always joshing, that man.

"Why, Miss Jessop," he used to say to me, "if I could write like myself, I'd have won the Nobel prize any time this last ten years!"

But he wrote awfully well, I always thought. Hardly a patient I had that year, but if I offered to read, they'd say:

"Oh, well, what's the last C----r's?" and when I got to the parts I'd taken for him (I learned stenography before I took up nursing) it used to give me a queer sort of feeling, really!

It was Dr. Stanchon that got me the case. He 'phoned me to drop in at the office, and a patient of mine took me around in her car: I'd been shopping with her all the morning. She had just invited me to go out to her country place for a few days, and I was quite pleased with the idea, for I was a little tired: I was just off a hard pneumonia case that had been pretty sad in lots of ways, and I felt a little blue. It's an awfully funny thing, but nurses aren't supposed to have any feelings: when that poor girl died, I felt as bad as if it had been my own sister, almost. She was lovely.

But when the doctor asked if I was free, of course I had to say yes, though my suit-case was all packed for the country.

"That's good," he said, "for I specially want you. It's nothing to do, really, and you'll enjoy it, you're such a motor-fiend. There's a family I'm looking after wants a nurse to go along on a tour through the country--New England, I believe. They've got a big, dressy car, and they expect to be gone anywhere from two weeks to a month, if the weather's reasonably good."

"What do they want of a nurse?" I said.

"Oh, they just want one along, in case of anything happening," he said. "They can afford it, so why shouldn't they have it?"

Well, that sounded all right, and yet I got the idea that it wasn't the real reason, somehow. I don't know why. Those things are queer.

Of course, there was no reason why it shouldn't be so: I spent a month on a private yacht, one summer, just to be there in case of sickness, and nobody wanted me all the time we were gone, for a minute. As a matter of fact, the lady's maid took care of me the first three days out!

But I never happened to be asked on a motor-trip in that way, and it seemed a little different. For of course you could pick up a nurse almost anywhere, if you wanted one, on that sort of a tour, and every place in the tonneau counts.

"Isn't there anything the matter with any of them?" I asked.

"What a suspicious lot you nurses are!" he said, with his queer little chuckle (all the young doctors try to imitate it in the hospital). "The daughter's a little nervous, that's all. It's for her they're taking the trip, to give her a change."

"Now look here, Dr. Stanchon," I said, "I'm here to tell you that I don't want any of your old dope cases, and I might just as well say so first as last. That last young man of yours was about all I wanted. He was a sweet creature, wasn't he?"

This probably sounds very fresh to you, but everybody knows me: I speak right out, and if you want me, you have to stand it! And the way I slaved over that boy, and he getting morphine from his valet right along--it was simply disgusting.

"It's nothing like that--nothing at all," said he; "don't get so excited!"

"Oh, very well," I said, "then I suppose it's melancholia. Not for mine, if you please. Perhaps you remember that charming woman that jumped out of the window? I'm no clairvoyant, and that was enough for me, thank you."

"You're getting saucy, Jessop," he said, "but it's not melancholia. But you certainly had a hard time with that one."

And I should say I did. The foxy thing was as good as gold for three weeks, minded everything I said, fairly ate out of my hand, and got us so that we all believed she did better for me alone than when I had help handy. Of course I kept my eye on her, but nevertheless, the other nurse just above gave up the job, and used to be off learning French from the governess they had, most of the time. So when madam got us where she wanted us, she tied me to the door knob and jumped out of the window before my eyes! And I can tell you, the thirty dollars a week that would get me on a case like that again, never left the Treasury!

"I assure you it's not that at all," he said. "It's a case of nerves, that's all."

"Nerves! nerves!" I repeated (I _was_ pretty snippy, I suppose). "That's all right for the family, doctor, but what's the matter with her? I've got to know, haven't I, some time?"

"Well, I must say you nurses are getting to be the limit," he said. "The truth is, I spoil you. But there's something in what you say, of course. Now here's the whole business. This girl, and she's a sweet, lovely girl, too, had a maid, that was a sort of nurse, I believe, when she was a child, and had seen her grow up, and was very much attached to her, and all that. Like all those old servants she was pretty well spoilt, I imagine, and seems to have had the girl under her thumb. She always slept in the room with her. Now; the maid had bad headaches and used to take all sorts of proprietary remedies for them--coal-tar, of course, and probably had weakened her heart with them. Anyway, she waked the girl up one night with her troubles and the girl gets up and gives her an overdose in the dark, and the maid's dead in her bed in the morning."

"Oh, I see," I said, trying to make up for my nasty attitude about that suicidal woman. "So she's blue about it, and thinks she's to blame. An automobile trip will certainly do her a lot of good."

"Well, there's a little more to it than that," he said. "As a matter of fact, she's a very sensible sort of girl and she knows she's not to blame, really. Of course it was pretty rough, but then, the maid had no business to expect her to wait on her, and she ought to have given careful directions about the dose, anyhow. She might have gone off any time, and the girl knows it. But the night of the funeral, after the girl was in bed, what does she see but the maid sitting on the foot of the bed, looking at her! Of course she was overwrought nervously. Only the trouble is, this was three months ago, and she swears the woman comes every night. She knows it's hallucination, optical delusion, anything you like, and she tries to treat it as such, but she's beginning to break down under it, and I don't know what to do. They've travelled, they've had her in a sanitarium, they've tried auto-suggestion--no use. She's all right through the day, but at night, in any bedroom, under any circumstances, this thing appears and she just has to go through with it till morning."

"Why doesn't she have some one sleep with her?" I asked.

"It doesn't make the slightest difference," he said. "One week she had a bed between her father's and mother's, but it was just the same, and of course they got pretty bad, out of sympathy. They'd spend two or three ordinary fortunes to cure her--but it's one of the cases where money doesn't talk, unfortunately. So there we are. It came over me last night that I'd like to have you try what you can do with her."

"But, heavens and earth, what good will I be?" I said. "Am I a ghost-catcher? I never knew it."

"No," says he, "but I'm sorry for the ghost that would run up against you, Jessop--honestly, I am!"

"Much obliged, I'm sure," I said, "but why doesn't she take her sleep in the daytime? That would fool the ghost from her point of view--wouldn't it?"

I'll never forget the look he gave me. "Listen to me, my girl," he said, running out his jaw in the way he does when he's in dead earnest and means you to know it, "listen to me, now. If that young woman ever takes to living by night and sleeping by day, on that account, _she's a gone goose_!"

"What do you mean?" said I.

"I mean it's all up with her, and she might as well engage a permanent suite in Jarvyse's little hotel up the river," he says, very sharp and gruff. "I've staved that off for a month now, but they can't see it and they're bound to try it: Jarvyse himself half advises it. And I'll risk my entire reputation on the result. If she can't fight it out--she's gone."

He waited a moment and put out his jaw.

"_She's gone,_" he said again, and I felt creepy when he said it, and I tell you I believed him.

"Well, I'll try my best," I said, and I went on the case the next morning.

As soon as I saw her I got the idea of her I've always had since: that's me, all over. I went to a palmist's once with a lot of the other nurses and that's the first thing he said to me.

"It's first impressions with you, young woman," he said. "Take care to trust 'em and act on 'em, and you'll never need to count on the old ladies' home!"

Well, as soon as I saw Miss Elton she put me in mind of one of Mr. C----r's heroines, looks and clothes and ways, and all, and I've never changed my mind. Her things were all plain, but they had the loveliest lines, and she always looked as if she'd been born in them, they suited her so! Her hair was that heavy, smooth blond kind that makes a Marcel wave look too vulgar to think about, and her eyes and complexion went with it. And with all her education she was as simple as a child: there were any number of things she didn't seem to know. She took to me directly, her mother said, and I could see she liked me, though she hardly spoke. She had big rings under her eyes and seemed very tired.

She got a nap after lunch--only two hours, by the doctor's orders--and it did seem a shame to wake her, she was off so sound, but of course I did, and then we walked for an hour in the park. I didn't talk much at first, but I saw that she liked it, and so gradually we got on to different subjects, and I think she was entertained. She seemed interested to hear about the nurses at the hospital and some of the funny things that happen there, and I could see that she was trying to keep her end up--oh, she was all right, Anne Elton was, and no mistake! There was nothing morbid about her: she was trying to help all she could.

When I came down for dinner there was a young man with them, a handsome, dark fellow, and he talked a great deal with me--I could see he was trying to size me up, and it was easy to see that he was pretty far gone as far as Miss Elton was concerned, and didn't care who knew it. We must have seemed a strange party to any one who didn't know the ins and outs of the thing--only the five of us in that big dining-room with the conservatory opening into it; the mother, one of those stringy, grey New York women, that always wear diamond dog-collars, worried to death and nervous as a witch; Mr. Elton--he was Commodore of the New York Yacht Club at that time--fat and healthy and reddish-purple in the face; young Mr. Ferrau (he was from an old French family and looked it, though a born New Yorker) and me in my white uniform and cap next to Miss Elton, all in white with a big rope of pearls and pearls on her fingers. She could wear a lower cut gown and look more decent in it than any woman I ever saw. All her evening dresses were like that, perfectly plain, just draped around her, with long trains and no trimmings: her skin was like cream-coloured marble, not a mark or line or vein on it, but just one brown mole on the right shoulder blade, and that, as her mother said, was really an addition.

Nobody talked much but Mr. Ferrau and the old gentleman--there's no doubt he had been a gay old boy in his day!--for I never do talk when I dine with the family, and the mother was too nervous for anything but complaining of the food. The Lord knows why, for it beat any French restaurant I ever ate in, or Delmonico's either, and Mr. Ferrau and I got quite jolly over how they put soft-boiled eggs into those round, _soufflee_ sort of things with tomato sauce over them, without spilling the yolks. Then they asked if I'd play bridge a bit, and though I don't care for games much, I learned to play pretty well with my morphine-fiend and his mother, so of course I did, and the old gentleman and I played the young couple, and Madam Elton crocheted, sitting up straight as a poker on a gold sofa.

It always makes me laugh when I read what some persons' ideas are of how rich people amuse themselves. The nurses are always jollying me about my rich friends and playing the races and champagne suppers and high-flying generally, and I often wish they could have seen us those evenings at the Eltons, playing bridge--no money, mind you, and Apollinaris at ten! The Commodore had to have ginger-ale, the ladies hardly ever drank, and I never take anything but water when I'm on a case, so Mr. Ferrau had all the champagne there was at that dinner. At ten the masseuse came and rubbed Miss Elton to sleep, and I got into my bed next hers before she went off, not to risk disturbing her. There was a night lamp in her bath and I could just make out her long braid on the pillow--the pillow cases had real lace insertions and the monograms on the sheets were the most beautiful I ever saw.

I went off myself about eleven, for I was determined to act perfectly natural: I knew I'd wake if anything was wrong. And sure enough: all of a sudden I began to dream, a thing I seldom if ever do, and I dreamed that my suicidal case was clambering over me to jump out of the window, and woke with a start.

Miss Elton was sitting up in bed staring at me, breathing short.

"Can I do anything for you?" I asked quietly and she gave a sort of gasp and said,

"No--I think not, thank you. I'm sorry to bother you, but the doctor told me to."

"Why, of course," said I, "that's what I'm here for. Do you see anybody?"