She brought herself back with a start. "I was only thinking," she murmured.
"Then there is doubt in your mind what you would do?"
"N--no," she hesitated.
He bent over nearer across the table. "You would at least recall the old adage, "Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you"?"
he urged.
It was uncanny, the way this man read her thoughts.
"You know whom they say quotes scripture," she avoided.
"And am I a--a devil?"
"I did not say so."
"You hinted it."
She had. But she said, "No, nor hinted it."
"Then you did not MEAN to hint it?"
She looked away a moment at the gay throng. "Graeme Mackenzie," she said, slowly, "what"s the use of all this beating about? Why cannot we be frank with one another?"
She paused, then resumed, meditatively, "A long time ago I became involved with a man in a scheme to forge checks. I would have done anything for him, anything."
A cloud pa.s.sed over his face. She saw it, had been watching for it, but appeared not to do so. His was a nature to brook no rivalry.
"My husband had become involved in extravagances for which I was to blame," she went on.
The cloud settled, and in its place came a look of intense relief. He was like most men. Whatever his own morals, he demanded a high standard in her.
"We formed an amateur partnership in crime," she hurried on. "He lost his life, was unable to stand up against the odds, while he was alone, away from me. Since then I have been helping those who have become involved, on the wrong side, with the law. There," she concluded simply, "I have put myself in your power. I have admitted my part in something that, try as they would, they could never connect me with. I have done it because--because I want to help you. Be as frank with me."
He eyed her keenly again. The appeal was irresistible.
"I can tell you Graeme Mackenzie"s story," he began carefully. "Six months ago there was a young man in Omaha who had worked faithfully for a safe deposit company for years. He was getting eighty-five dollars a month. That is more than it seems to you here in New York. But it was very little for what he did. Why, as superintendent of the safe deposit vaults he had helped to build up that part of the trust company"s business to such an extent that he knew he deserved more.
"Now, a superintendent of a safe deposit vault has lots of chances.
Sometimes depositors give him their keys to unlock their boxes for them. It is a simple thing to make an impression in wax or chewing gum palmed in the hand. Or he has access to a number of keys of unrented boxes; he can, as opportunity offers, make duplicates, and then when the boxes are rented, he has a key. Even if the locks of unrented boxes are blanks, set by the first insertion of the key chosen at random, he can still do the same thing. And even if it takes two to get at the idle keys, himself and another trusted employe, he can get at them, if he is clever, without the other officer knowing it, though it may be done almost before his eyes. You see, it all comes down to the honesty of the man."
He paused. Constance was fascinated at the coolness with which this man had gone to work, and with which he told of it.
"This superintendent earned more than he received. He deserved it. But when he asked for a raise, they told him he was lucky to keep the job,--they reduced him, instead, to seventy-five dollars. He was angry at the stinging rebuke. He determined to make them smart, to show them what he could do.
"One noon he went out to lunch and--they have been looking for him ever since. He had taken half a million in cash, stocks, and bonds, unregistered and hence easily hypothecated and traded on."
"And his motive?" she asked.
He looked at her long and earnestly as if making up his mind to something. "I think," he replied, "I wanted revenge quite as much as the money."
He said it slowly, measured, as if realizing that there was now nothing to be gained by concealment from her, as if only he wanted to put himself in the best light with the woman who had won from him his secret. It was his confession!
Acquaintances with Constance ripened fast into friendships. She had known Macey, as he called himself, only a fortnight. He had been introduced to her at a sort of Bohemian gathering, had talked to her, direct, as she liked a man to talk. He had seen her home that night, had asked to call, and on the other nights had taken her to the theater and to supper.
Delicately unconsciously, a bond of friendship had grown up between them. She felt that he was a man vibrating with physical and mental power, long latent, which nothing but a strong will held in check, a man by whom she could be fascinated, yet of whom she was just a little bit afraid.
With Macey, it would have been difficult to a.n.a.lyze his feelings. He had found in Constance a woman who had seen the world in all its phases, yet had come through unstained by what would have drowned some in the depths of the under-world, or thrust others into the degradation of the demi-monde, at least. He admired and respected her. He, the dreamer, saw in her the practical. She, an adventurer in amateur lawlessness saw in him something kindred at heart.
And so when a newspaper came to her in which she recognized with her keen insight Lawrence Macey"s face under Graeme Mackenzie"s name, and a story of embezzlement of trust company and other funds from the Omaha Central Western Trust of half a million, she had not been wholly surprised. Instead, she felt almost a sense of elation. The man was neither better nor worse than herself. And he needed help.
Her mind wandered back to a time, months before, when she had learned the bitter lesson of what it was to be a legal outcast, and had determined always to keep within the law, no matter how close to the edge of things she went.
Mackenzie continued looking at her, as if waiting for the answer to his first question.
"No," she said slowly, "I am not going to hand you over. I never had any such intention. We are in each other"s power. But you cannot go about openly, even in New York, now. Some one besides myself must have seen that article."
Graeme listened blankly. It was true. His fancied security in the city was over. He had fled to New York because there, in the ma.s.s of people, he could best sink his old ident.i.ty and take on a new.
She leaned her head on her hand and her elbow on the table and looked deeply into his eyes. "Let me take those securities," she said. "I will be able to do safely what you cannot do."
Graeme did not seem now to consider the fortune for which he had risked so much. The woman before him was enough.
"Will you?" he asked eagerly.
"I will do with them as I would for myself, better, because--because it is a trust," she accepted.
"More than a trust," he added, as he leaned over in turn and in spite of other diners in the restaurant took her hand.
There are times when the rest of the critical world and its frigid opinions are valueless. Constance did not withdraw her hand. Rather she watched in his eyes the subtle physical change in the man that her very touch produced, watched and felt a response in herself.
Quickly she withdrew her hand. "I must go," she said rather hurriedly, "it is getting late."
"Constance," he whispered, as he helped her on with her wraps, brushing the waiter aside that he might himself perform any duty that involved even touching her, "Constance, I am in your hands--absolutely."
It had been pleasant to dine with him. It was more pleasant now to feel her influence and power over him. She knew it, though she only half admitted it. They seemed for the moment to walk on air, as they strolled, chatting, out to a taxicab.
But as the cab drew up before her own apartment, the familiar a.s.sociations of even the entrance brought her back to reality suddenly.
He handed her out, and the excitement of the evening was over. She saw the thing in its true light. This was the beginning, not the end.
"Graeme," she said, as she lingered for a moment at the door.
"To-morrow we must find a place where you can hide."
"I may see you, though?" he asked anxiously.
"Of course. Ring me up in the morning, Graeme. Good-night," and she was whisked up in the elevator, leaving Mackenzie with a sense of loss and loneliness.
"By the Lord," he muttered, as he swung down the street in preference to taking a cab, "what a woman that is!"