The young man laughed outright. Confidently he went on:

"Pick 'em up? It's so easy that I can't understand why no one ever thought of it before. Did you ever see the way the fast expresses pick up mail bags? Near the track there is an upright post, from which extends an arm. On this arm is suspended the mail bag. The onrushing train, which is travelling perhaps at a speed of a mile a minute, is fitted on the outside with a sort of hook which catches the mail bag and jerks it into the car. Well, that same idea can just as well be applied to waiting pa.s.sengers as to waiting mail bags. The pa.s.sengers would all be gathered together in a car which would wait on a siding for the arrival of the express. By some mechanical contrivance--exactly what it would be I haven't yet figured out--this waiting car would be instantly switched on to the rapidly-moving express--would become, so to speak, the rear car. The pa.s.sengers would go forward through the vestibule to take their seats in the train proper and the emptied waiting car would then be unswitched and go back to the station to begin the performance all over again--all this while the train was going at top speed. Isn't that some idea? Isn't it a dandy?"

f.a.n.n.y was silent. Virginia, hardly able to control her merriment, took up her book again. Jim was about to enter into further details when suddenly there was a noise behind them. f.a.n.n.y started up with a cry.

"Virginia! Look!" she exclaimed.

Mrs. Blaine had half fallen out of her chair. In her sleep she had lost her balance and slipped down sideways. With the clerk's a.s.sistance the two girls sat her up again. Apparently she was not hurt, but her eyes were closed. She was strangely silent, and her hands were very cold. When they laid her head gently back on the back of the armchair they noticed that she was very white.

"She's fainted!" cried f.a.n.n.y excitedly.

Virginia, greatly alarmed, exclaimed anxiously:

"Mother, dear, what's the matter? Speak to me."

Still no answer. The girls, now thoroughly frightened, ran for restoratives. Virginia poured out some brandy. Even Jimmie was frightened out of his usual levity and self-possession. Quickly taking her hand, which hung over the chair limp and lifeless, he put his finger on her pulse.

"Please telephone for the doctor, Jim!" cried Virginia, distracted, almost in tears.

The young man looked at both girls, his face serious and white. For once he controlled the situation. Soberly he said:

"It's too late."

CHAPTER IV

In a luxuriously furnished suite on an upper floor of one of New York's biggest and most expensive hotels two men sat carelessly scanning the morning newspapers before a table still covered with breakfast dishes. It was nearly ten o'clock, long past the hour when most people begin the day's work, and there was nothing, either in the men's dress or manner, to suggest that they belonged to the effete and useless idle cla.s.s. On the contrary, in appearance they were typical business men--energy, prosperity, masterfulness, showing in their every word and gesture, in every line of their clean-cut, strong-featured faces. On this particular morning they were not looking their best, and the reason, as well as the explanation of their late rising might possibly be found in the disorder which a cursory glance around the room revealed. Dress coats, white ties, patent leather pumps and other paraphernalia of evening wear were scattered here and there, just as each article had been thrown down when they had returned home the night before, while on a side table were a couple of champagne bottles--empty.

They were both comparatively young men. The elder of the two, a big, athletic fellow with smooth face and strong jaw, did not appear to be much over thirty-five. His companion was about the same age. Both had the _blase_ air of men who had lived and lived hard. All of life's fiercer joys they had known to excess, which explained, perhaps, why they were tired and disillusionized long before they had attained their prime. With a gesture of disgust, the elder man threw down his paper, and, s.n.a.t.c.hing up a gla.s.s of ice-water, swallowed the refreshing contents at a gulp.

"It's no use, Fred!" he exclaimed. "I'm no good for that late b.u.mming.

I guess I'm getting old. Those midnight orgies never did agree with me. Hot birds and cold wine are a barbaric mixture, anyhow. I'm going to cut it out--do you understand?--cut it out. So don't ask me again--it's no use. I've got a fearful headache this morning--and I'm so sleepy that I'd like to go to bed for a week. It's idiotic for a man to make such an infernal a.s.s of himself. It knocks one out and renders one unfit for business. How can I go down town and understand what I'm doing when I've got such a head on as this? There's a directors' meeting to-day, too--very important. What time was it when we got home?"

"About three o'clock, I should say," rejoined his _vis-a-vis_ laconically, without looking up from his newspaper.

In the fifteen years that they had been intimate friends Fred Hadley had grown so accustomed to these periodical outbursts from his old chum Bob Stafford that he seldom paid the slightest heed to his protests. Both self-made men, each had started practically in the gutter and by sheer dint of grit and energy forged his way to the front, the one as a captain of industry, the other as a promoter in railroading and finance. Men of exceptional capacity, success had come easily to them, and with success had come money and power. Hadley was now vice-president of one of the biggest steel concerns in the country, and Stafford had been even more successful. Attracted to railroading he had found employment with a western road, and soon displayed such a positive genius for organization that he quickly excited the attention of eastern railroad men. Quick promotion followed, until, at the end of ten years, he became himself a power in the railroad world. Shrewd deals in Wall Street had already brought him wealth, and the age of thirty-eight found him in control of half a dozen systems, his fortune already estimated at several millions, and his name in the railroad world one to conjure with, not only in Wall Street, but from New York to Frisco.

Irritated at his companion's silence, Stafford repeated more loudly:

"Do you hear? I'm going to cut it out!"

At last Hadley, his ire roused, looked up.

"Look here, Bob," he exclaimed impatiently, "you make me tired. You're a game sport, I don't think. It wasn't Maude's little party that knocked you out." Pointing significantly to the empty bottles of champagne on the side tables, he went on: "That's what did you up. Why did you soak yourself with champagne when you got home? Do you know you got away with two quarts of the stuff?"

Stafford pa.s.sed a hand over his burning brow.

"The deuce I did! I don't remember. I must have been drunk when I got home. I took the 'fizz' to sober up on. Why did you let me?"

"Let you?" echoed Hadley scornfully. "Is there any man alive capable of keeping you from the bottle when you've got a thirst on?"

"Yes," admitted Stafford contritely, "I recall that I was d--d thirsty."

"And instead of drinking ice water, you rang for champagne. You're a nice kind of fellow to moralize--you are!"

Rising from the table, Hadley yawned, stretched himself, and, sauntering over to a window, stood looking out upon the busy city below. From that elevation the bird's-eye view was wonderful. The broad avenues below, teeming with life, the surging, confused ma.s.s of pedestrians and vehicles, the close network of side-streets filled with busy traffic, the silvery Hudson with sailing vessels and steamships departing for every port in the world--all this was a scene of which the eye never tired. The young man gazed at it for a moment, and then, retracing his steps, threw himself into an arm-chair.

Lighting a cigar, he said:

"These are bully rooms, all right. The view is splendid. But I don't see why you need to come to a hotel when you have your apartment on Riverside--and such an apartment!--a veritable palace, filled with everything one's artistic taste cares for and furnished and decorated to suit yourself."

"That's just why," answered his companion dryly.

The railroad man had left the breakfast table, and, seated at a desk on the other side of the room, was busy glancing over a huge batch of letters which had come with the morning's mail.

"What do you mean by 'that's just why'?" demanded Hadley, puzzled.

Stafford looked up and smiled.

"Why--it's just as you said. My own place is so attractive that I can't do any work there. The paintings, statuary, bric-a-brac and what-not, distract my attention too much. If I have an important letter to draft, I can't think of what I want to say because my eyes are fascinated by the Peachblow vases on top of the bookcase. You haven't seen the vases, have you, Fred? They're 'peaches,' all right.

I gave $3,000 for the pair. That's going some for a bit of breakable bric-a-brac. Come up to dinner some night and see them. I'll tell Oku you're coming, and he'll get up something good--one of his swell j.a.panese dishes."

"Not on your life," interrupted the other with a grimace. "j.a.ps and c.h.i.n.ks eat all kinds of freak things--nightingale tongues and such stuff. No--thanks. Your Oku's a decent little sort, as j.a.p butlers go, but when it comes to cooking, give me Christian food and a French _chef_ every time."

Stafford laughed heartily.

"Fred--my boy--you're shockingly provincial and bourgeois. I'm afraid I'll never make a cosmopolite out of you. Well, as I said, there is too much art about the place. It seems sacrilege to even think business there, so when I'm putting through any big deal, I just slip away and come to this hotel for a few days. At home I'm an art lover, revelling in the treasures I have succeeded in collecting; here I am a vulgar business person, occupied in the undignified task of making money. Only last week, when I was home, I got thinking out a plan one night in the library for a merger with a road which is cutting pretty badly into our business. I had thought out a plan, the details were working out nicely in my mind, when suddenly my gaze fell on the Corot hung just above my desk. You know the picture. Did you ever see more exquisite coloring, a more wonderful composition? Is it surprising that the plan for the merger quite slipped out of my head?"

"Talking of exquisite coloring," interrupted Hadley irrelevantly, "did you notice how well Maude looked last night? If she's a day, that woman is forty, yet no one would take her for more than five and twenty. She's a marvel. No wonder Stanton is crazy about her."

Stafford shrugged his shoulders.

"Cosmetics and a clever hairdresser can work miracles," he said dryly.

"She's a wonder, just the same--especially when you consider the life she's led. You know her history--a morphine fiend with the face of an angel. She knocked about for years before Stanton fell into her clutches. He's dippy about her--pays for that apartment and gives her a handsome allowance, bought her an automobile, pays her chauffeur, and all the rest of it. Did you notice that string of pearls she was wearing? It cost him a cool $10,000 in Paris last summer."

"Why doesn't he marry her, if he's got it as bad as all that?"

Hadley looked at his friend in amazement.

"You're not in earnest, are you?" he demanded. "Marry a woman of that kind?"

"Why not?" answered Stafford doggedly. "If the man thinks enough of her to waste so much time and money upon her let him try and reform her by throwing around her a cloak of respectability. Why is the woman what she is? Because pleasure-loving blackguards of Stanton's type have degraded her and made it impossible for her to hold up her head again among decent people."

Hadley laughed outright.