He looked tremendously relieved, and a little puzzled, too. I thought I was reading him like an illuminated sign. "He"s eager to keep friends with me,"
thought I, "until he"s absolutely sure there"s nothing more in it for him and his people." And that guess was a pretty good one. It is not to the discredit of my shrewdness that I didn"t see it was not hope, but fear, that made him try to placate me. I could not have possibly known then what the Langdons had done. But--Sammy was saying, in his friendliest tone:
"What"s the matter, old man? You"re sour to-night."
"Never in a better humor," I a.s.sured him, and as I spoke the words they came true. What I had been saying about the Travelers and all it represented--all the sn.o.bbery, and smirking, and rotten pretense--my final and absolute renunciation of it all--acted on me as I"ve seen religion act on the fellows that used to go up to the mourners" bench at the revivals. I felt as if I had suddenly emerged from the parlor of a dive and its stench of sickening perfumes, into the pure air of G.o.d"s Heaven.
I signed the bill, and we went afoot up the avenue. Sam, as I saw with a good deal of amus.e.m.e.nt, was trying to devise some subtle, tactful way of attaching his poor, clumsy little suction-pump to the well of my secret thoughts.
"What is it, Sammy?" said I at last. "What do you want to know that you"re afraid to ask me?"
"Nothing," he said hastily. "I"m only a bit worried about--about you and Textile. Matt,"--this in the tone of deep emotion we reserve for the attempt to lure our friends into confiding that about themselves which will give us the opportunity to pity them, and, if necessary, to sheer off from them--"Matt, I do hope you haven"t been hard hit?"
"Not yet," said I easily. "Dry your tears and put away your black clothes.
Your friend, Tom Langdon, was a little premature."
"I"m afraid I"ve given you a false impression," Sam continued, with an overeagerness to convince me that did not attract my attention at the time. "Tom merely said, "I hear Blacklock is loaded up with Textile shorts,"--that was all. A careless remark. I really didn"t think of it again until I saw you looking so black and glum."
That seemed natural enough, so I changed the subject. As we entered his house, I said:
"I"ll not go up to the drawing-room. Make my excuses to your mother, will you? I"ll turn into the little smoking-room here. Tell your sister--and say I"m going to stop only a moment."
Sam had just left me when the butler came.
"Mr. Ball--I think that was the name, sir--wishes to speak to you on the telephone."
I had given Ellerslys" as one of the places at which I might be found, should it be necessary to consult me. I followed the butler to the telephone closet under the main stairway. As soon as Ball made sure it was I, he began:
"I"ll use the code words. I"ve just seen Fearless, as you told me to."
Fearless--that was Mitch.e.l.l, my spy in the employ of Tavistock, who was my princ.i.p.al rival in the business of confidential brokerage for the high financiers. "Yes," said I. "What does he say?"
"There has been a great deal of heavy buying for a month past."
Then my dread was well-founded--Textiles were to be deliberately rocketed.
"Who"s been doing it?" I asked.
"He found out only this afternoon. It"s been kept unusually dark. It--"
"Who? Who?" I demanded.
"Intrepid," he answered.
Intrepid--that is, Langdon--Mowbray Langdon!
"The whole thing--was planned carefully," continued Ball, "and is coming off according to schedule. Fearless overheard a final message Intrepid"s brother brought from him to-day."
So it was no mischance--it was an a.s.sa.s.sination. Mowbray Langdon had stabbed me in the back and fled.
"Did you hear what I said?" asked Ball. "Is that you?"
"Yes," I replied.
"Oh," came in a relieved tone from the other end of the wire. "You were so long in answering that I thought I"d been cut off. Any instructions?"
"No," said I. "Good-by."
I heard him ring off, but I sat there for several minutes, the receiver still to my ear. I was muttering: "Langdon, Langdon--why--why--why?" again and again. Why had he turned against me? Why had he plotted to destroy me--one of those plots so frequent in Wall Street--where the a.s.sa.s.sin steals up, delivers the mortal blow, and steals away without ever being detected or even suspected? I saw the whole plot now--I understood Tom Langdon"s activities, I recalled Mowbray Langdon"s curious phrases and looks and tones. But--why--why--why? How was I in his way?
It was all dark to me--pitch-dark. I returned to the smoking-room, lighted a cigar, sat fumbling at the new situation. I was in no worse plight than before--what did it matter who was attacking me? In the circ.u.mstances, a novice could now destroy me as easily as a Langdon. Still, Ball"s news seemed to take away my courage. I reminded myself that I was used to treachery of this sort, that I deserved what I was getting because I had, like a fool, dropped my guard in the fight that is always an every-man-for-himself. But I reminded myself in vain. Langdon"s smiling treachery made me heart-sick.
Soon Anita appeared--preceded and heralded by a faint rustling from soft and clinging skirts, that swept my nerves like a love-tune. I suppose for all men there is a charm, a spell, beyond expression, in the sight of a delicate beautiful young woman, especially if she be dressed in those fine fabrics that look as if only a fairy loom could have woven them; and when a man loves the woman who bursts upon his vision, that spell must overwhelm him, especially if he be such a man as was I--a product of life"s roughest factories, hard and harsh, an elbower and a trampler, a hustler and a bluffer. Then, you must also consider the exact circ.u.mstances--I standing there, with destruction hanging over me, with the sense that within a few hours I should be a pariah to her, a masquerader stripped of his disguise and cast out from the ball where he had been making so merry and so free.
Only a few hours more! Perhaps now was the last time I should ever stand so near to her! The full realization of all this swallowed me up as in a great, thick, black mist. And my arms strained to escape from my tightly-locked hands, strained to seize her, to s.n.a.t.c.h from her, reluctant though she might be, at least some part of the happiness that was to be denied me.
I think my torment must have somehow penetrated to her. For she was sweet and friendly--and she could not have hurt me worse! If I had followed my impulse I should have fallen at her feet and buried my face, scorching, in the folds of that pale blue, faintly-shimmering robe of hers.
"Do throw away that huge, hideous cigar," she said, laughing. And she took two cigarettes from the box, put both between her lips, lit them, held one toward me. I looked at her face, and along her smooth, bare, outstretched arm, and at the pink, slender fingers holding the cigarette. I took it as if I were afraid the spell would be broken, should my fingers touch hers.
Afraid--that"s it! That"s why I didn"t pour out all that was in my heart. I deserved to lose her.
"I"m taking you away from the others," I said. We could hear the murmur of many voices and of music. In fancy I could see them a.s.sembled round the little card-tables--the well-fed bodies, the well-cared-for skins, the elaborate toilets, the useless jeweled hands--comfortable, secure, self-satisfied, idle, always idle, always playing at the imitation games--like their own pampered children, to be sheltered in the nurseries of wealth their whole lives through. And not at all in bitterness, but wholly in sadness, a sense of the injustice, the unfairness of it all--a sense that had been strong in me in my youth but blunted during the years of my busy prosperity--returned for a moment. For a moment only; my mind was soon back to realities--to her and me--to "us." How soon it would never be "us" again!
"They"re mama"s friends," Anita was answering. "Oldish and tiresome. When you leave I shall go straight on up to bed."
"I"d like to--to see your room--where you live," said I, more to myself than to her.
"I sleep in a bare little box," she replied with a laugh. "It"s like a cell. A friend of ours who has the anti-germ fad insisted on it. But my sitting-room isn"t so bad."
"Langdon has the anti-germ fad," said I. She answered "Yes" after a pause, and in such a strained voice that I looked at her. A flush was just dying out of her face. "He was the friend I spoke of," she went on.
"You know him very well?" I asked.
"We"ve known him--always," said she. "I think he"s one of my earliest recollections. His father"s summer place and ours adjoin. And once--I guess it"s the first time I remember seeing him--he was a freshman at Harvard, and he came along on a horse past the pony cart in which a groom was driving me. And I--I was very little then--I begged him to take me up, and he did. I thought he was the greatest, most wonderful man that ever lived."
She laughed queerly. "When I said my prayers, I used to imagine a G.o.d that looked like him to say them to."
I echoed her laugh heartily. The idea of Mowbray Langdon as a G.o.d struck me as peculiarly funny, though natural enough, too.
"Absurd, wasn"t it?" said she. But her face was grave, and she let her cigarette die out.
"I guess you know him better than that now?"
"Yes--better," she answered, slowly and absently. "He"s--anything but a G.o.d!"
"And the more fascinating on that account," said I. "I wonder why women like best the really bad, dangerous sort of man, who hasn"t any respect for them, or for anything."
I said this that she might protest, at least for herself. But her answer was a vague, musing, "I wonder--I wonder."
"I"m sure _you_ wouldn"t," I protested earnestly, for her.
She looked at me queerly.