Leaving the main street, he walked east for several blocks, and turning again parallel to his original course, found himself in one of the poorer residential districts of the city. As he had divined, here there was incident to be encountered, but of too sordid a nature to bear the remotest resemblance to genuine adventure. Old men, ragged, unkempt, muttered requests for a night's lodging, for food, or more openly for the price of a drink. Younger men, of sinister exterior, eyed him as he pa.s.sed and noting his bulk, allowed him to go on his way unmolested. Women of the street, in gaudy finery, their white faces daubed with scarlet in ghastly mockery of health and beauty, ogled him leeringly, and Mills, sophisticated city dweller though he was, felt his heart sicken at the thought of their venal trade. "If there was some attraction," he thought, "some seduction, that would be one thing. But these wrecks--these walking corpses--it's horrible."

By this time, he had traversed several blocks, and the chances of adventure seemed each moment to be growing slimmer. "I'll go home," he reflected, "and go to bed. And in the morning I'll make a round of the brokers' offices; perhaps I'll be able to pick up news of something really good." And having thus allowed his mind to return to the subject of the market, he began to dream, like all defeated gamblers, of some wonderful way of "getting square with the game." "Cotton," he mused. "A man could make money in cotton. I got in too deep; that was all. If a fellow would only stick to small lots, and regular rules--"

A touch upon his arm aroused him, and he wheeled to confront a girl of a very different type from those whose demeanor had so disgusted him.

She was evidently of the working cla.s.s, but she had the instinctive good taste to dress according to her station, leaving to others the garish footgear, the semi-nudities of costume, and the overpowering stench of cheap perfume. And thus, in comparison with her companions upon the street, she looked so refreshingly youthful and ingenuous, and her big eyes were so appealingly pathetic that Mills, for the first time, began to feel that an adventure, even in this locality, might be both possible and enjoyable.

"I ask your pardon," she said, "for speaking to you, but I am in great trouble, and I thought that perhaps you would be willing to help me."

Mills, still only half aroused from his meditations, stared at her uncomprehendingly, and as he did so was struck afresh by the girl's air of innocence. Her eyes still gazed trustfully into his, her hold upon his arm was not relaxed, and as a result Mills presently found himself replying guardedly, "Why, I might. What's wrong?"

She gave a sigh of relief. "Oh, you are so good," she cried. "I was sure of it when I saw you. And I need someone to help me so badly.

Only--" she added shyly, "let's not stand here. It's so conspicuous, and this is a horrid neighborhood; people are always talking. Just come with me; it's only a step--"

Mills hesitated. Perhaps, if he had taken a little less wine, he might have been more suspicious; possibly, if she had not slipped her arm confidingly through his, he might have been less avid of adventure; but as it was, he yielded, and as they walked along she lost no time in acquainting him with the story. It was not she herself, it appeared, who was in trouble, but a friend of hers named Rose, who was only eighteen years old and as beautiful as a picture. Rose, it appeared, had been sought by a policeman on the beat, but being as virtuous as she was pretty, she had indignantly rejected the overtures of this immoral man. Whereupon he had threatened to "get" her, and promptly made good his threat by employing a skillful shoplifter to "plant" some articles of jewelry upon the person of the persecuted Rose. She had been arrested; her case was coming up for trial to-morrow; and alone in the world, she did not know, in her predicament, where to turn for aid. Thus her friend had been prompted to go forth and look for help, and had been attracted by the prepossessing exterior of Mills. "I knew you looked good, the moment I saw you," she repeated, and as she uttered the words, her voice was tremulous either with grief or with some other emotion. Mills was frankly puzzled. The tale struck him as extremely wild and improbable, but on the other hand he was enjoying the society of his guide, and the opportunity of seeing the lovely Rose strongly appealed to him.

Just how this meeting was to benefit the Order of Gentlemen Adventurers was perhaps not quite clear, but Mills' mind was not, by this time, working along the lines of strict logic; emotion, rather than pure reason, was in the ascendant. And in any event, he would have had little time to ponder the matter, for the walk, as his guide had promised, was a short one, and he presently found himself following her into a tenement of rather dubious exterior, and up countless flights of stairs whose atmosphere wholly failed to appeal to Mills' somewhat fastidious nostrils. More than once, during the climb, strong suspicion a.s.sailed him, and his better judgment counselled flight, but the fear of being a "quitter" restrained him, and he continued his ascent until presently he surmounted the final flight, and found himself in a room somewhat barely furnished, but with an air of comfort and refinement which renewed his confidence in his guide.

She laid aside her hat and coat, and as she turned toward him, he observed with pleasure that she was really exceedingly pretty. "Rose will be here right away," she observed; then, listening for a moment, she added, "There she is now," and Mills, listening in his turn, could hear a light footfall ascending the stair. But in another instant his companion's face turned white. "My G.o.d!" she cried, "it's my husband.

I thought he was out of town. What on earth shall I do? He mustn't find you here."

Mills gave her one searching glance, muttered grimly to himself, "Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned," and making no effort to escape, sat motionless in his chair, his eyes fixed upon the door, which opened the next moment to admit a small, sinister looking man, who gazed at the couple before him in a manner forbidding and malevolent. Nor were his first words rea.s.suring. "What the h.e.l.l is this?" he cried, and advancing toward Mills, he demanded truculently, "What the devil are you doing here?"

The girl sprang forward. "Don't hurt him!" she cried. "It's my fault.

I oughtn't to have listened to him. But he wanted to come. He said he'd pay me well--"

Her words acted as an infuriant upon this slender but dangerous looking man. "I'll teach you swells--" he hissed, and like a flash he whipped a pistol from his pocket and levelled it at the head of the unfortunate Mills.

For an instant the victim gazed stolidly at the menacing circle of steel; then, with an air of complete detachment from his surroundings, he made an equivocal and wholly unlooked-for rejoinder. "Got a cigarette?" he asked.

The outraged husband glared. From past experience on many such occasions he was quite prepared for men who grovelled and begged for mercy, and once in a great while he had learned to look for a man who showed fight, but a retort like this was distinctly a novelty. And since the question scarcely admitted of a direct reply, he responded with a snarl, "Now don't get gay, young feller, don't get gay."

Mills turned to the girl. "I call that tough," he observed conversationally. "Here I want to register courage, and the only real way to do it is to light a cigarette. I love to see 'em do it on the stage, and now when I have a chance myself, all I can do is just say I'm not scared. But it's not the same thing; it ruins the effect."

The girl eyed him keenly, her face noncommittal, expressionless. The man continued to glare. Mills did not look like a lunatic, and the girl, as a rule, managed to "pick them" to perfection. Yet this time it appeared as though she had made a mistake, and while he hesitated, uncertain as to his next move, Mills obligingly relieved his embarra.s.sment by continuing, "What you want, of course, is to get money out of me or else to damage my reputation. But unfortunately for you, I have neither reputation nor money. As far as reputation goes, I'm a small town guy, unknown in New York, and as for money, I've been playing the wheat market, and if you're looking for my coin, why, as the funny man says, 'I'll help you look.' I'm sorry to be such a disappointment--" he turned once more to the girl--"but this is the time you got the wrong pig by the ear."

The pseudo husband stared fixedly at Mills as if trying to make up his mind as to the truth of his story; then evidenced his belief by abruptly returning his pistol to his pocket, and to relieve his feelings began to vent his indignation upon the girl. "By Gad, you're clever," he exclaimed, and since he did not possess a large vocabulary and depended princ.i.p.ally upon repet.i.tion for his effects, he added, after a momentary pause, "You're clever, by Gad."

The girl's brow darkened. Evidently she did not take kindly to criticism, and casting about for some means of defence, she jerked her head in Tubby's direction. "Well," she countered, "look at him."

Her four words worked wonders, for Mills, quick to perceive their point, first grinned, then laughed, and finally, partly as a relief for overstrained nerves, partly because the true humor of the whole affair now suddenly dawned upon him, fairly shook with merriment, while the girl, watching him, forgot her resentment and relaxed, until finally she too joined in his mirth, and even her saturnine companion permitted himself the luxury of a grin.

"But see here," cried Mills at last, "I'm not stuck on my looks, or my shape, but the old badger game--why that's positively an insult. Why didn't you sell me a gold brick and be done with it? You must have thought I was a cinch."

"I did," she retorted, "but don't you care, Fatty, you're all right.

The joke's on me; I'm sorry I tackled you."

"Well, it's on me, too," he admitted. "You did a good job. Let's call it square, all around."

The man with the pistol had come forward as they talked, and now stood directly in front of Mills, regarding him with a fixed and searching gaze. "Just one minute, now," he cautioned. "A square answer to a square question. There's no double cross to this? You're not going to leak to the bulls?"

"Not much," Mills answered. "Live and let live. I've no kick coming."

Apparently the man was content. "Then see here," he continued, "if you're busted, I can find you a job. My name is Stoat. This old badger stuff isn't my regular line; in my day I was called the best second-story man in New York, and I could turn a good trick now if I needed to. But there's safer games than that; I've had a fake promoting scheme under my hat for a long time, and with your front we could make a killing. With a few little changes you'd be the honest miner to the life you and I and the kid here could work the thing to a frazzle. What do you say?"

Mills hesitated. The change from full pockets to empty ones had wrought a distinct alteration in his moral code. Yet partnership with Stoat was not an attractive prospect. "I don't believe," he temporized, "I'm the man you want. I never mixed up in anything like that."

Stoat yawned audibly. "Well, it's late," he said, "and I'm most cursedly sleepy. I was sitting into a game all last night, and I've got to get to bed. Think this thing over, and if you want to give it a go, drop around to-morrow sometime. You'll be making no mistake; it's safe as can be, and there's big money in it, too."

Mills got up and started for the door. "All right," he agreed, "I'll think it over. Much obliged for the offer." And to the girl he added, "Good night. When you see Rose, remember me to her."

She laughed. "Say," she answered, "you fell for that easy, like all the rest of 'em. It's a shame to do it. But you're a pretty good guy.

You come around to-morrow and we'll talk business."

Once more upon the street, Mills gazed around him with fresh appreciation. How near he had been to death he could not guess; his knees felt as they used to at the finish of a three-mile run. To the lights, the noises, the people on the street, he warmed with a new affection. "I'm mighty glad," he muttered, "that I'm still in the picture." And more pensively than was his wont, he turned his steps toward home.

CHAPTER IX

A Message from the Past

Bellingham for the twentieth time consulted his watch, and finding that it still lacked ten minutes of midnight, he rose, walked over to the window, and stood looking out into the night. In the distance he could see the bulk of the stables looming through the darkness, and near at hand the huge lone pine tree towered in silhouette against the sky; yet his mind was not fixed upon what was before him, but was reviewing once again the events of the day, events which had occurred scarcely twelve hours ago, but which seemed, in retrospect, to have taken place ages since, in the shadow of some dim and distant past.

He could see himself, a distinct and separate ent.i.ty, leaving the car and hurrying toward the garage, alert, expectant, eager to find Nolan and hear what he had to say. From the same man whom he had seen before he had sought to discover if Nolan was in, and the man had nodded with a curt "Yep," but when Bellingham was half way to the elevator his informant had called him back to explain, "Say, hold on a minute; I forgot; Nolan's quit his job."

The secretary could feel again the sinking of the heart, the shock of disappointment the words had caused. "Quit?" he had repeated, and the man had replied, "Yep. He's quit. New man on the car; a Swede. He's up there if you want to see him." But Bellingham had muttered something about its being a personal matter, and still in a daze, had made his way out of the garage, perplexed and disheartened, and vainly wondering what could possibly have happened to the chauffeur.

It was not an easy problem to solve. Certainly the money he had advanced could have been no temptation to Nolan; twenty dollars was nothing compared with the keeping of a good position. And if the chauffeur's abandonment of his job had not been voluntary, of necessity it must have been involuntary; it appeared as though he must have been detected in his pursuit of his employer, and met with a summary dismissal. Yet if this were so, why could he not still have kept his appointment with the secretary. There seemed to be no satisfactory solution, yet as a practical matter none was necessary; of what importance were theories when he knew that the actual result was a complete failure of his plans to gain information through the instrumentality of Nolan. And as a result he would now be forced to act himself; no choice was left to him; whether he liked it or not, he must a.s.sume the risk.

Thus, throughout the remainder of the day, he had laid his plans, and now was decided as to his course. But the hour for action had not yet arrived; two o'clock in the morning was the time he had chosen; and thus he lighted his spirit lamp, made and drank two cups of coffee, and then, setting and m.u.f.fling his alarm clock, he lay down, fully clothed, upon the bed, to gain a little rest before setting out upon his tour of exploration. But before many moments pa.s.sed, he realized that the setting of the clock was a needless precaution; the strain he was under added to the stimulant he had taken made sleep an impossibility. And curiously enough his brain, which should have been intent upon the adventure before him, now cast back through the years, and as he lay there he could see, projected against the curtain of the dark, pictures long since forgotten, detached and yet connected, leading with merciless precision to the miserable predicament of his latter days.

Behind the house lay a broad expanse of meadow, gay with flowers and traversed by a brook which had its source in the hills adjoining the farm. Hither, in his boyhood, he made an almost daily pilgrimage, but not to gather the violets and the b.u.t.tercups which lined its banks, or to hunt for blackbirds' nests in the swamp below. The attraction for him had been altogether different. With his jack-knife he would fashion boats from shingles, imagine them in his mind to be racing yachts, under clouds of sail, and starting them, with scrupulous fairness, amid the ripples of the stream, he would run headlong down the field, just able to keep pace with the current, and watching with breathless interest the outcome of the contest, as the tiny craft swept around promontories, skirted the shallows, and finally crossed the finish line, to be rescued with a forked stick, and carried back up the meadow to race and race again. How had he come to play this game? No one, as far as he could remember, had taught it to him; he had been only six or seven at the time, but the memory persisted, the thrill of the struggle, the eager brook and the no less eager boy--

The scene shifted. Some one had given him a game of "steeplechase,"

and a new world was born. As clearly as if it had lain on the bed beside him, he could see the oval of the board, the horses, bay, black, white and gray, and he himself, cheeks flushed, heart throbbing, sitting entranced hour after hour, casting the dice, and watching and recording the result of every race. Later had come his college days, with the thrill of real racing; the Futurity, the Suburban, the scramble of dainty thoroughbreds with the bright silks of their jockeys gleaming in the sun. But before this he could dimly recall his first knowledge of the stock market, when his father, forbidden for a time to use his eyes, had asked his son to read to him the quotations in the evening paper. Bellingham could remember that he had made sorry work of it, so that his father, usually the kindest of men, had lost his temper and had soundly berated him for his stupidity. Other days, too, he could remember, of alternate exaltation and depression until the afternoon when he had come home to find his mother in tears, and his father had taken him by the shoulder and said gravely, "Hugh, you must promise me one thing. Never, so long as you live, must you have anything to do with the stock market. It has been the curse and ruin of my life. It must not ruin yours, too." Boylike, he had promised, but a dozen years later, when the lure of the Street had bewitched him, he had not regarded his promise, and with the few thousands at his command, had started to make his fortune. How he had despised the men who traded in ten-share lots; "pikers," he had called them; for it had seemed to him that to deal in hundred and two hundred share lots, on a slender margin, was evidence of true gameness and grit. But this period had not lasted long; soon the ten-share lots became a necessity, and finally an impossibility, until the fatal day when he had borrowed money on a story that was two-thirds a lie, and a week later had seen a quiet, lagging market suddenly declined with incredible rapidity, leaving him hopelessly in debt, and now at the mercy of his long-suffering creditors.

So pa.s.sed the pictures before his eyes, from the boy running beside the brook to the desperate, harried man. Inheritance or not, here had been the keynote of his life--the love of a contest, a race, a struggle, the thrill of the unknown gamble, the possible chance. And in other ways he had been sane and normal; as men go, a decent sort of man. A sense of injustice surged within him. Was it fair? If a good G.o.d ruled the world, why did he implant these fierce desires in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of his children? Why did he change a world of joy and beauty into a h.e.l.l of discontent? Why did he--

With a start, he came to himself. How long, he wondered, had he been dreaming? The flashlight showed ten minutes of two, and silencing the alarm, he rose, and in his stocking feet crept cautiously to the door of his room and out into the hall. For good or ill, his hour had come.

The 'house was absolutely still. And suddenly, oppressed with the strain of the day, unnerved by the strangeness of his errand, he seemed to himself to be moving in some fantastic nightmare, and he was seized with a panic of fear, so that he could scarcely control his impulse to return as he had come and to abandon his reckless quest.

But after an instant, he managed to conquer his quivering nerves, and concentrating all his energies upon his task, he stole down the hallway like a shadow, entered the gallery, and found himself standing before the portrait through which the banker had made his unexpected exit three days before. Copying, as well as he could recall it, the posture of his employer, he pressed with his forefinger here and there upon the canvas, but without result until he reached the hilt of the pictured sword, when almost before he realized what was taking place, the portrait, as before, swung back, and the gateway of adventure lay open before him.

A hundred times, during the day, the secretary had made his plans, and thus, without losing an instant, he entered the orifice, drew his knife from his pocket, and wedging the narrow s.p.a.ce between the portrait and the wall so that his retreat would not be closed to him, turned to examine the staircase that lay at his feet.

It was a slender spiral of steel, apparently extending downward for an indefinite distance, and so narrow that there was scarcely an inch of superfluous s.p.a.ce on either hand. Without hesitation, Bellingham started to descend, listening from time to time and hearing nothing, until at length he reached the bottom and found himself in a low pa.s.sageway, with a door at the end. The secretary's heart sank.

"Locked," he thought to himself, but equally to his surprise and his delight, the k.n.o.b turned in his hand, and he entered a small chamber, with a second door at the further end. This additional exit, however, was securely barred, and finding his progress cut off in that direction, Bellingham turned his attention to the room itself.