Her reckless, little laugh rang sweetly in the old-fashioned, deserted hall; her lovely, daring eyes met his undaunted.

"You won't make love to me, will you, Stephen?"

"Will you promise me the same?"

"I don't know, silly! How do I know what I might say to you, you big, blundering boy, who can't take care of himself? I don't know at all; I won't promise. I'm likely to do anything to-night--even before Leila and Mr. Plank--when you are with me. Shame on you for the shameless girl you've educated!" Her voice fell, tremulously, and for an instant standing there she remembered her education and his part in it.

The slow colour in his face reflected the pink confusion in hers.

"O tongue! tongue!" she stammered, "I can't hold you in! I can't curb you, and I can't make you say what you ought to be saying to that boy.

There's trouble coming for somebody; there's trouble here already! Call me a cab, Stephen, or I'll be dragging you into that big, old-fashioned parlour and planting you on a chair and placing myself opposite, to moon over you until somebody puts us out! There! Now will you call me a hansom?

And I will be all ready at seven.

And don't dare to keep me waiting one second!

Come before seven. You don't want to frighten me, do you? Very well then, at a quarter to seven--so I shall not be frightened. And, Stephen, Stephen, we're doing exactly what we ought not to do. You know it, don't you? So do I. Nothing can stop us, can it?

Good-bye!"

CHAPTER XIV THE BARGAIN

If a man's grief does not awaken his dignity, then he has none. In that event, grief is not even respectable. And so it was with Leroy Mortimer when Lydia at last turned on him. If you caress an Angora too long and too persistently it runs away. And before it goes it scratches.

Under all the physical degeneration of mind and flesh there had still remained in Mortimer the capacity for animal affection; and that does not mean sensuality alone, but generosity and a sort of routine devotion as characteristic components of a character which had now disintegrated into the simplest and most primitive elements.

Lydia Vyse left Saratoga when the financial stringency began to make it unpleasant for her to remain. She told Mortimer without the slightest compunction that she was going.

He did not believe her and he gave her the new car--the big yellow-and-black Serin-Chanteur. She sold it the same day to a bookmaker--an old friend of hers; withdrew several jewels from limbo--gems which Mortimer had given her--and gathered together everything for which, if he turned ugly, she might not be criminally liable.

She had never liked him--she had long disliked him. Such women have an instinct for their own kind, and no matter how low in the scale a man of the other kind sinks he can never entirely supply the type of running mate that such women require, understand, and usually conceive a pa.s.sion for.

Not liking him she had no hesitation in the matter; disliking him, whatever unpleasant had occurred during their companionship remained as an irritant to poison memory. She resented a thousand little incidents that he scarcely knew had ever existed, but which she treasured without wasting emotion until the sum total and the time coincided to retaliate.

Not that she would have cared to harm him seriously; she was willing enough to disoblige him, however--decorate him, before she left him, with one extra scratch for the sake of auld lang syne. So she wrote a note to the governors of the Patroons Club, saying that both Quarrier and Mortimer were aware that the guilt of her escapade could not be attached to Siward; that she knew nothing of Siward, had accepted his wager without meaning to attempt to win it, had never again seen him, and had, on the impulse of the moment, made her entry in the wake of several men. She added that when Quarrier, as governor, had concurred in Siward's expulsion he knew perfectly well that Siward was not guilty, because she herself had so informed Quarrier. Since then she had also told Mortimer, but he had taken no steps to do justice to Siward, although he, Mortimer, was still a governor of the Patroons Club.

This being about all she could think of to make mischief for two men whose recent companionship had nourished and irritated her, she shipped her trunks by express, packed her jewel-case and valise, and met Desmond at the station.

Desmond had business in Europe; Lydia had as much business there as anywhere; and, although she had been faithless to Mortimer for a comparatively short time, within that time Desmond already had sworn at her and struck her. So she was quite ready to follow Desmond anywhere in this world or the next. And that, too, had not made her the more considerate toward Mortimer.

When the latter returned from the races to find her gone the last riddled props to what pa.s.sed for his manhood gave way and the rotten fabric came crashing into the mud.

He had loved her as far as he had been capable of imitating that pa.s.sion on the transposed plane to which he had fallen; he was stupefied at first, then grew violent with the furniture, then hysterically profane, then pitiable in the abandoned degradation of his grief. And, suspecting Desmond, he started to find him. They put him out of Desmond's club-house when he became noisy; they refused him admittance to several similar resorts where his noise threatened to continue; his landlord lost no time in interviewing him upon the subject of damage to furniture from kicks and to the walls and carpets from the contents of smashed bottles.

Creditors with sharp noses scented the whirlwind afar off and hemmed him in with unsettled accounts, mostly hers. Somebody placed a lien on his horses; a deputy sheriff began to follow him about; all credit ceased as by magic, and men crossed the street to avoid meeting with an old companion in direst need.

Still, alternately stupefied by his own grief and maddened into the necessity for action, he packed a suitcase, crawled out of the rear door, toiled across country and found a farmer to drive him twenty miles over a sandy road to a local railroad crossing, where he managed to board a train for Albany.

At Albany, as he stood panting and sweating on the long, concrete platform which paralleled track No. 1, he saw a private car, switched from a Boston and Albany train, shunted to the rear of the Merchants'

Express.

The private car was lettered in gold on the central panel, "Algonquin."

He boarded the Pullman coupled to it forward, pushed through the vestibule, shoved aside the j.a.panese steward and darky cook, forcing his way straight into the private car. Quarrier, reading a magazine, looked up at him in astonishment. For a full moment neither spoke.

Then Mortimer dropped his suit-case, sat down in an armchair opposite Quarrier, and leisurely mopped his reeking face and neck.

"Scotch and lithia!" he said hoa.r.s.ely; the j.a.panese steward looked at Quarrier; then, at that gentleman's almost imperceptible nod, went away to execute the commission.

He executed a great many similar commissions during the trip to New York. When they arrived there at five o'clock, Quarrier offered Mortimer his hand, and held the trembling, puffy fingers as he leaned closer, saying with cold precision and emotionless emphasis something that appeared to require the full concentration of Mortimer's half-drugged faculties.

And when at length Mortimer drove away in a hansom, Quarrier's j.a.panese steward went with him--perhaps to carry his suit case--a courtesy that did credit to Quarrier's innate thoughtfulness and consideration for others. He was very considerate; he even called Agatha up on the telephone and talked with her for ten minutes. Then he telephoned to Plank's office, learned that Harrington was already there, telephoned the garage for a Mercedes which he always kept ready in town, and presently went bowling away to a conference on which the last few hours had put an entirely new aspect.

It had taken Plank only a few minutes to perceive that something had occurred to change a point of view which he had believed it impossible for Quarrier to change. Something had gone wrong in his own careful calculations; some cog had slipped, some rivet given way, some bed-plate cracked. And Harrington evidently had not been aware of it; but Quarrier knew it. There was something wrong.

It was too late now to go tinkering in the dark for trouble. Plank understood that. Coolly, as though utterly unaware that the machinery might not stand the strain, he started it full speed. And when he stopped it at last Harrington's grist had been ground to atoms, and Quarrier had looked on without comment. There seemed to be little more for them to do except to pay the miller.

"To-morrow," said Quarrier, rising to go. It was on the edge of Plank's lips to say, "to-day!"--but he was silent, knowing that Harrington would speak for him. And the old man did, without words, turning his iron visage on Quarrier with the silent dignity of despair. But Quarrier coldly demanded a day before they reckoned with Plank. And Plank, profoundly disturbed, shrugged his ma.s.sive shoulders in contemptuous a.s.sent.

So Quarrier and Harrington went away--the younger partner taking leave of the older with a sneer for an outworn prop which no man could ever again have use for. Old and beaten--that was all Harrington now stood for in Quarrier's eyes. Never a thought of the past undaunted courage, never a memory of the old victories which had made the Quarrier fortune possible--only contempt for age, a sneer for the mind and body that had failed at last. The old robber was done for, his armour rotten, his buckler broken, his sword blade rusted to the core. The least of his victims might now finish him with a club where he swayed in his loosened saddle, or leave him to that horseman on the pale horse watching him yonder on the horizon.

For now, whether Harrington lived or died, he must be counted as nothing in this new struggle darkly outlining its initial strategy in Quarrier's brain. What was coming was coming between himself and Plank alone; and whatever the result--whether an armed truce leaving affairs indefinitely in statu quo, or the other alternative, an alliance with Plank, leaving Harrington like a king in his mail, propped upon his throne, dead eyes doubly darkened under the closed helmet--the result must be attained swiftly, with secrecy, and with the aid of no man. For he did not count Mortimer a man.

So Quarrier's thin lips twitched and the glimmer of teeth showed under the silky beard as he listened without comment to the old man's hesitating words--a tremulous suggestion for a conference that evening--and he said again, "to-morrow," and left him there alone, groping with uncertain hands toward the door of the hired coupe which had brought him to the place of his earthly downfall; the place where he had met his own weird face to face--the wraith that bore the mask of Plank.

Quarrier, brooding sullenly in his Mercedes, was already far up town on his way to Major Belwether's house.

At the door, Sylvia's maid received him smilingly, saying that her mistress was not at home but that Mrs. Mortimer was--which saved Quarrier the necessity of asking for the private conference with Leila which was exactly what he had come for. But her first unguarded words on receiving him as he rose at her entrance into the darkened drawing-room changed that plan, too--changed it all so utterly, and so much for the better, that he almost smiled to think of the crudity of human combinations and inventions as compared to the masterly machinations of Fate. No need for him to complicate matters when here were p.a.w.ns enough to play the game for him. No need for him to do anything except give them their initial velocity and let them tumble into one another and totter or fall. Leila said, laughingly: "Oh, you are too late, Howard.

We are dining with Mr. Plank at Riverside Inn. What in the world are you doing in town so suddenly?"

"A business telegram. I might have come down with you and Sylvia if I had known.

Is Plank dining with you alone?"

"I haven't seen him," smiled Leila evasively. "He will tell us his plans of course when he comes."

"Oh," said Quarrier, dropping his eyes and glancing furtively toward the curtained windows through which he could see the street and his Mercedes waiting at the curb. At the same instant a hansom drove up; Sylvia sprang out, ran lightly up the low steps, and the silent, shrouded house rang with the clamour of the bell.

Leila looked curiously at Quarrier, who sat motionless, head partly averted, as though listening to something heard by him alone. He believed perhaps that he was listening to the voice of Fate again, and it may have been so, for already, for the third time, all his plans were changing to suit this new ally of his--this miraculous Fate which was shaping matters for him as he waited. Sylvia had started up-stairs like a fragrant whirlwind, but her flying feet halted at Leila's constrained voice from the drawing-room, and she spun around and came into the darkened room like an April breeze.

"Leila! They'll be here at a quarter to seven--"

Her breath seemed to leave her body as a shadowy figure rose in the uncertain light and confronted her.

"You!"

He said: "Didn't you recognise the Mercedes outside?"

She had not even seen it, so excited, so deeply engaged had she been with the riotous tumult of her own thoughts. And still her hurt, unbelieving gaze widened to dismay as she stood there halted on the threshold; and still his eyes, narrowing, held her under their expressionless inspection.

"When did you come? Why?" she asked in an altered voice.

"I came on business. Naturally, being here, I came to see you. I understand you are dining out?"

"Yes, we are dining out."