Mrs. De Peyster started.

"Yes."

"And perhaps you have heard that authorities now agree that said Thomas Jefferson was dead almost a hundred years when said letters were penned; and that he must have been favored with the a.s.sistance of an amanuensis of, so to say, the present generation?"

"Yes."

"That being the case you may have heard of one Thomas Preston, alleged to be said amanuensis?"

"Yes."

He put his hand across his clerical vest, and bowed first to Mrs. De Peyster, then to Matilda.

"It gives Mr. Preston very great pleasure to meet you, ladies. Only for the present he humbly pet.i.tions to be known as Mr. Pyecroft."

Mrs. De Peyster was quite unable to speak. So this was the man Judge Harvey was trying to hunt down! Her meeting him like this, it seemed an impossible coincidence--utterly impossible! She little dreamed that the laws of chance were not at all concerned in this adventure; that this meeting was but the natural outcome of Matilda's trifling act in picking up from the library rug a boarding-house card and slipping it into her slit-pocket.

The young man, for he now obviously was a young man, plainly delighted in the surprise he had created.

"I like to hand it to these pompous old stiffs," he went on gleefully--"these old boys who will come across with sky-high prices for old first editions and original ma.n.u.scripts, and who don't care one little wheeze of a d.a.m.n for what the author actually wrote. I'm sorry, though,"--in a tone of genuine contrition,--"that Judge Harvey was the man finally to be stung; they say he's the real thing."

Suddenly his mood changed; his eye dropped in its unreverend wink.

"There's a Raphael that the Metropolitan is solemnly proud of. It cost Morgan a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It cost me an even five hundred to have it made."

He laughed again: that gay, whimsical, irresponsible laugh. Mrs. De Peyster was recovering somewhat from her first surprise.

Mr. Pyecroft leaned forward. "But this isn't getting down to our business. I've got a plan that's more fun than the Jefferson letters, and that will make us a lot of money, Miss Thompson. And it's easy and it's sure fire. It depends, as I said, upon the remarkable coincidence of your likeness to Mrs. De Peyster."

"Yes?" Mrs. De Peyster managed to say.

"You've read of her, of course; stiffest swell of the lot," went on the young gentleman rapidly, in clipped phrases oddly unlike the sonorous sentences of the Reverend Mr. Pyecroft. "Looks down on most of the Four Hundred as _hoi polloi_. She's in Europe now, and the papers say she won't be back until the very end of summer. We can't do a thing till then; have to lie low and wait. You need money, I heard you say; I suppose you're afraid to hock this twinkler"--touching the pearl pendant. "Police probably watching the p.a.w.nshops and would nab you. Well, I'll stake you till Mrs. De Peyster comes back."

"Stake me?" breathed Mrs. De Peyster.

"Yes. Give you, both of you, what money you need."

"And--and when--Mrs. De Peyster comes back?"

Young Mr. Pyecroft chortled with delight.

"Say, this scheme's the best ever! The day we learn Mrs. De Peyster has landed, we dress you up as a top-notcher--gad, but we can make you look the part!--we put you in a swell carriage, with her coat of arms painted on it--and you go around to Tiffany's and all the other swell shops where in the mean time I'll have learned Mrs. De Peyster has charge accounts. You select the most valuable articles in the shop, and then in the most casual, dignified manner,--I can coach you on how to put on the dignity,--you remark, 'Charge to my account, and I'll just take it along with me.' And off you go, with a diamond necklace under your arm. And same thing at all the shops. Then we duck before the thing breaks, and divide the fruits of our industry and superior intelligence, as the economists say. Isn't that one great little game!"

Mrs. De Peyster stared at his face, grinning like an elated gargoyle; herself utterly limp, her every nerve a filament of icy horror.

"Well, what do you say, girls?" prompted Mr. Pyecroft.

Mrs. De Peyster at first could say nothing at all. Whereupon the young man, gleeful over his invention, prompted her again.

"I--can't--can't do it," she gulped out.

"Can't do it!" He stared at her, amazed. "Say, do you realize what you're pa.s.sing up?"

"I can't do it," repeated Mrs. De Peyster.

"Why?" he demanded.

She did not reply.

He stood up, smiling again. "I won't argue with you; it's bigger than anything you ever pulled off--so big, I guess it stuns you; I'll just let the matter soak in, and put up its own argument. You'll come in, all right," he continued confidently, "for you need money, and I'm the party that can supply you. And to make certain that you don't get the money elsewhere, I'll just take along this vault of the First National Bank as security"--with which he slipped Mrs. De Peyster's pearl pendant into his pocket. "Now, think the matter over, girls. I'll be back in half an hour. So-long for the present."

The door closed behind him.

Mrs. De Peyster gazed wildly after him. The plan "soaked in," as he had said it would; and as it soaked in, her horror grew. She saw herself becoming involved, helpless to prevent it, in the plan Mr.

Pyecroft considered so delectable; she saw herself later publicly exposed as engaged in this scheme to defraud herself; she could hear all New York laughing. Her whole being shivered and gasped. Of all the plans ever proposed to a woman--!

And all the weeks and months this Mr. Pyecroft would be hovering about her!...

Despairingly she sat upright.

"Matilda, we can't stay in the same house with that man."

"Oh, ma'am," breathed the appalled Matilda, "of course not!"

"We've got to leave! And leave before he comes back!"

"Of course, ma'am," cried Matilda. And then: "But--but where?"

"Anywhere to get away from him!"

"But, ma'am, the money?" said Matilda who had handled Mrs. De Peyster's petty cash account for twenty years, and whose business it had been to think of petty practicalities. "We've only got twenty-three cents left, and we can't possibly get any more soon, and no one will take us in without money or baggage. Don't you see? We can't stay here, and we can't go any place else."

This certainly was a dilemma. The two gazed at each other, their faces momently growing more ghastly with helplessness. Then suddenly Mrs. De Peyster leaned forward, with desperate decision.

"Matilda, we shall go back home!"

"Go home, ma'am?" cried Matilda.

"There's nothing else we can do. I'll slip into my sitting-room, lock the door, and live there quietly--and Jack will never know I'm in the house."

"But, ma'am, won't that be dangerous?"

"Danger is comparative. Anything is better than this!"

"Just as you say; I suppose you're right, ma'am." And then with an hysterical snuffle: "But oh, ma'am, I wish I knew how this thing was ever going to turn out!"

Five minutes later the two twin figures of somberness, their veils down, stole stealthily down the stairs and out into the night.