# Partners Of The Night/Chapter 5

I
Clifford, from his screen of palms at the intersection of the two great corridors, intently watched the door of the ladies' dressing-room. When at length Mary Regan emerged, minus her long evening coat of rose velvet, his eyes went first to her hands. Instead of having left her gold mounted, rose-velvet bag with her coat, she carried it under a bare rounded elbow. There was to be no chance for him, as he had hoped, to abstract that bag from the dressing-room and make a swift examination of its contents.
His gaze then took in the whole of her as she moved down the corridor toward him. When she had entered the hotel with the three gentlemen of her party the coat had hidden all but her face. He now saw that her evening gown, with its shoulder-straps of twined rosebuds, was girlish in its modesty; was suggestive of a siheftered unsophisticated nineteen. And her oval face seemed as naïvely girlish as her dress. But not quite--as Clifford noted as she drew nearer; there was angered purpose in her dark eyes.
When she came even with him, she paused and looked directly at the palms behind which he stood.
"Mr. Clifford!" she said imperatively.
For a moment Clifford wavered in confusion. iUntil then she had given no sign that she had known of his presence.
"Mr. Clifford!" she repeated.
He stepped out. Her gaze met his squarely. There was nothing now of naïve nineteen in her manner.
"You have been following me!" she accused.
Caution, the desire for success, urged Clifford to answer with assumed surprise at seeing her and with denial; for when, a few hours before, he had learned that Mary Regan and Joe Russell were back from Florida--where she had gone with her uncle immediately after Slant-Face's acquittal--he and Commissioner Thorne had agreed that if Russell should again attempt to do business it would mean that this prince of swindlers had made his peace with Bradley, and that there might be a chance of catching the shrewd Chief of Detectives in whatever deal might be afoot. But again the impulse to save this girl from herself rose superior to Clifford's official purpose.
"Yes, I have been following you," he said quietly. "I had hoped that you had decided it wasn't worth while, what you've been doing."
"I have at least decided that I do not need you as a hired conscience!" she flung back at him. "And I shall be grateful to you if you do not try to accompany me in that capacity."
The sting in her words brought the blood to his face. He perceived that this straight, flame-eyed young creature had rebounded from those softer, almost gracious moods and half-intentions which their previous encounters had twice or thrice brought upon her; and he guessed that, in her wilful pride, she had been resentful at herself for having even momentarily been near yielding to the strange new impulses which he had adroitly stirred within her. For the present, at least, her creed of immature cynicism was as dominant as when he had first met her.
"You helped my brother," she went on coldly--"you saved me from being Hawkins' dupe in that bank robbery--and I thank you. I don't know your exact reasons--but it is clear you acted as you did because the course you took would best serve you."
"I desired to be your friend," said Clifford.
"No one else, as far as my knowledge goes, shares that desire!"
With which, not once looking back at him, she swept on and into the restaurant. For a moment Clifford stood abashed; then grimly he mounted a little stairway and stepped out upon a narrow balcony, set with tables, which ringed the great dining-room. He slipped to a table which had beside it the usual tub of palms, and peered cautiously down.
Mary Regan was now seated at a table with her uncle, Joe Russell, and the two other men. The latter were known to him by sight and reputation. One was big of frame and heavy of flesh, with florid, flaccid, autocratic, predatory face--Henry Gordon, Western coal operator, object of legislative investigations, and chief target at present of that public-spirited organization, The National Social Research Society, and also just now defiant fugitive from public opinion. The other was small, sharp-eyed, of an energetic pulpiness: Jenkins by name, a few years before the amazingly successful press-agent of that amazingly successful musical comedy, "Look Who's Here!" (those present were mostly girls in clothes that were mostly absent), now risen in the world by aggressive climbing to be confidential secretary to Gordon.
The change of Mary Regan to an ingenue of nineteen did not puzzle Clifford more than the change in Joe Russell. That master sharper, who usually dressed in a quiet version of the very latest mode, was in an evening coat of forgotten cut, though its fit was excellent, with white tie that was almost a stock, and wore black-ribboned glasses with a blinking short-sighted air. He looked an absent-minded, unworldly, rather negligible old-fashioned gentleman of high breeding.
What was this pair, whom till that evening he had not seen for more than a month, up to now? Clifford asked himself. Certainly Joe Russell was playing his role well--and so was Mary Regan!
Clifford slipped from the balcony and down into a little office where patient Billy Dempsey sat waiting him.
"Find the house detective, Billy, and have the waiter on Joe Russell's table changed; have Fishhook Morton assigned the table. And have Morton sent to me here." Five minutes later a lean shifty-eyed man, in a waiter's evening clothes, entered the little office. An ex-pickpocket, he was now a "stool" for the Police Department--one of the hundreds of such that the Department has planted in all sorts of public places. Clifford's instructions were brief.
"Bring the young woman's aug lying on the table. And find out who the people are."
Clifford followed Morton out and resumed his place in the balcony. He could see that Morton, while deftly serving the dinner, was getting every word of the conversation of the four, and presently he saw Morton, while removing a course, drop a napkin over the rose-velvet bag. Clifford waited for no more, but hurried back to the office; he knew that Morton, somehow, would get the bag out of the room with the dishes.
The door of the office silently opened, and Morton silently entered and handed him Mary Regan's bag. Clifford opened it. "Good!" he exclaimed, as he drew out a bunch of keys. In a moment he took an impression in wax of each key, and had the keys back in the bag. This he returned to Morton. "Get the bag back on the table so they'll not suspect," he ordered. "And now, what did you learn?"
Morton reported that the elderly gentleman in the glasses was a New Yorker named Bingham; that the girl was his daughter; that Bingham,, while at a Palm Beach hotel, had met Gordon and Jenkins; that later he had been joined by Miss Bingham who was taking a holiday from her finishing school; that Mr. Bingham and his daughter, driven northward by the approach of May, had just returned to New York, and that Gordon had changed his plans and accompanied them.
Morton glided out.
"Here, Billy, get these keys made--quick!" ordered Clifford, handing Dempsey the wax impressions.
He slipped again up to his balcony table, and saw Morton seemingly hick up the bag from the floor and be thanked for the service. He continued watching the quartette. Yes, they were playing their parts well, Russell and Mary Regan--particularly Mary Regan. She was doing the young girl altogether too well to suit Clifford; he stiffened with anger every time the gross, indulgence-seamed face of Gordon smiled upon her. But what was their game? It was big!--he guessed that. And from the self-effacement of that vital figure, Job Russell, and the way Gordon looked at Mary Regan, he knew that, whatever tie game might be, Mary Regan had been and was its central character.
II
An hour later Clifford paused outside the house into which that unworldly gentleman of middle age, Joseph Russell, had just admitted himself, Mary Regan, Mr. Gordon and Mr. Jenkins. The house was just off lower Fifth Avenue near Washington Square: a neighborhood where a diminishing fragment of an eclipsed but solid and still honored aristocracy seeks vainly to withstand the uptown migration of society--some families so inactive socially, and so distinctly of a previous generation, that to-day's public which so loves its society news never even hears of their existence.
For a moment Clifford was astounded to see the house entered by this quartette. Clifford knew the place; often he had been summoned there to give private and fuller information on some case to its owner, Judge Emerson. Then he recalled one of those trifles of information which it was his business to file away in his memory: Judge Emerson, recently and very unexpectedly appointed to the Supreme Bench of the state, had with his family taken quarters in a hotel in Albany and had sublet the house furnished. For Russell to have secured it through a broker, must have been a simple business for that astute and plausible gentleman.
Clifford perceived that this much of the plan--whatever the plan might be!--had been executed with Russell's usual consummate skill. The very house conferred upon the occupant such a standing that no stranger in New York would ever dream of doubting its validity; and at the same time, the house and its neighborhood so definitely implied a forgotten aristocracy, that no stranger would ever be stirred to wonderment (and thence to inquiry) that he had never heard the name of this old family.
Clifford had to know what was going on with that staid old mansion. He mounted the stoop and inserted the latch-key which Dempsey had furnished him from the wax plates and slipped inside. He found himself in a lighted lower hall, whose wood-work was all old mahogany and whose walls were covered with a rich dark tapestry. No servant was in sight, so he started cautiously up the broad stairway.
Half way up he heard dim voices. He halted and stood listening and looking about. On the floor just above him, to the right of the stairway, were the front and rear drawing-rooms, and to the left was the great dining-room. Jutting from the rear drawing-room out into the magnificent well of the stairway was a little balcony, an idiosyncrasy of some long-dead architect, and over the railing of this hung a Kirmanshah prayer-rug. Giving upon the balcony was a French door hung with rich heavy draperies.
The voices were issuing from the rear drawing-room. The next moment Clifford was crouched low within that swallow's nest of a balcony. He could now plainly hear the conversation; just at present it followed the track of routine pleasantries between host and guests. He peeped through the slit between the hangings. There sat Joe Russell, his manner of the unworldly courtly gentleman giving distinction to and taking distinction from this old drawing-room. In like degree, Mary Regan seemed indubitably to "belong" in this setting; to be a part of all the solid aristocracy that this stage implied. Neither of the pair over-acted; they let the setting and situation work their effects. And Clifford could see that Gordon, who had crushed his way upwards from nothing, was impressed by this unassuming grandeur which seemed always to have been in this family; and he could see that the cunning, pop-eyed climber of a secretary was accepting with suppressed enthusiasm this elaborate play as one of the most notable realities of his career.
There was a grand piano in the room, and it was the secretary who put the request that Mary play or sing. She refused, and Clifford now noted in her manner coldness and hostility toward the two--and he sensed that her hostility was real. Gordon, then Russell, pressed her, and with elegant indifference she yielded.
As she seated herself on the piano bench, Clifford wondered what was going to happen, whether she would fumble through some composition, or whether she would display a few meretricious and easily-acquired tricks of a school-girl. She began--and she did neither. For the moment Clifford forgot his purpose there in this revelation of a new phase of Mary Regan; for however phony her pretensions might be, there was nothing phony about her playing. She played Chopin--two nocturnes and the Ballade in G Minor; then coldly refusing demands for more, she left the piano.
"I say," exclaimed the secretary, who whenever excited slipped into his native inelegancies, "Miss Bingham, you're a winner at the piano! You've got a lot of professionals I've heard beat a mile!"
"Thank you," Mary Regan said shortly.
Joe Russell was too alert to permit the manner of Mary Regan beget an awkward situation.
"Yes, my daughter worked for a year with Herr Bloempot in Vienna"--Clifford did not now doubt the essential truth of this statement--"and he said she could become one of the best. But a public career--neither my daughter nor I wished it." Russell arose--the fine-mannered old aristocrat--and smiled apologetically. "You will remember that I made it a condition of my acceptance of your invitation to that midnight theater, that I should have a chance to rest up a bit. I can't stand what you younger people can. So you'll excuse me for a little while."
He went out, passed within arm's reach of Clifford and walked back into the dining-room. Clifford wondered what Russell was doing there, and was wondering whether he should not try to learn--when, to his surprise, Russell returned and re-entered the drawing-room.
"Pardon me," he heard Russell say--"but, Mary, some one wants to speak to you on the telephone."
The two excused themselves, and Russell led Mary Regan back and through the curtained entrance of the dining-room--in which, Clifford was certain, there was no phone. What passed between these two might prove the key to this whole affair. Clifford stepped across the three-foot chasm between the balcony and the flooring of the hallway, and silently followed. The curtains of the doorway were too insecure a screen for his enterprise; but at his left he saw another door. An entrance to the butler's pantry, he surmised; and as no dinner had been served in the house that night, the pantry would doubtless be empty of servants.
He stepped in and noiselessly closed the door behind him. The little room was black, save where thin slices of light from the dining-room outlined the service door. He moved across to this. He could see almost nothing; but, as he had hoped, he could hear distinctly. Russell was speaking; and his voice was not the pleasant voice of the unworldly gentleman of the old school; though low, it was sharp and vibrant with rebuke.
"See here, Mary, it'll not do, the cool way you're treating Gordon! You'll queer everything!"
And Mary's voice was not that of the ingenue who had just left the drawing-room.
"I hate that man--with his gross, calculating face! I simply can't stand him!"
"All the more reason that you should trim him," urged Joe Russell. "All the more reason for seeing this thing through--and doing it quickly, by not making any mistakes. we've got him where we can clean up in a few more days."
"A few more days!" she cried. "I tell you I can't stand him one more day! Don't forget what he suggested to me--that ugly, oily beast! An apartment of my own choice--or travel with him wherever it pleased me--"
"But, Mary," Russell said appeasingly, "Gordon has suggested the same thing to God knows how many women, and most of them have accepted, and he's got the habit of thinking that every woman--"
"That doesn't make any sweeter the fact that the fat beast suggested it to me!" she stormed at him.
"But later he apologized--"
"Yes--after he discovered that I was the aristocratic Mary Bingham! It's no use, Uncle Joe. I'm through!"
There was a brief pause. Then Russell spoke abruptly.
"Mary--is this because of anything Bob Clifford has done or said?"
"Mr. Clifford counts for nothing with me!"
"I'm not so sure of that." Another pause. "Mary--Bob Clifford is nice enough for a detective; he's square, and I respect him for that. But a cop that's honest, where does he ever get to? Exactly nowhere! Please remember that."
"And you please remember," she retorted stiffly, "that I have said that Mr. Clifford has nothing to. do with it!"
"Then listen to some plain common sense," he urged persuasively. "Up to now, you've done this whole thing. I could never have roped Gordon in and strung him along if it hadn't been fob you: pretty women, that's what Gordon falls for. you've stuck the thing through for a month; you've got him to the point where he's all ready to fall for our game--and only you can put the game across. A few more days and we make our clean-up--then good-by to Mr. Gordon."
She made no answer.
"After having stood him so long, Mary," he went on, "after having the job practically finished--doesn't it seem to you as the limit of foolishness to chuck the affair, and chuck a fortune? At least, Mary, you might consider my end of it."
Again she remained silent. Clifford, at the service door, waited breathless for her reply. It came in a mechanical, bored voice.
"All right, Uncle Joe."
"Good for you, Mary! Now go on back to him. you've got him worked up until he's ripe--tonight's your big chance to put the thing across. And, Mary--talk right, and those two clever birds will do all the suggesting, all the leading. Mark my word--they'll fall for it the very minute you mention pictures!"
Clifford heard Mary Regan's footsteps pass out and die along the hallway. A moment later the aroma of a most excellent cigar drifted in to him from the dining-room; and he knew that that fine, unworldly old aristocrat, Joe Russell, would not move until the next scene in his carefully planned drama had been concluded in the drawing-room.
Clifford's nerves twanged triumphantly. Pictures--that was Russell's game!--for that he had been patiently playing this part, and had set this elaborate stage. Pictures had been one of Clifford's many guesses; for no man in America had done more to aid dead masters to increase their output of paintings, or given more aid to uncritical millionaires in their search for purchasable insignia of culture.
Softly, swiftly, Clifford slipped back toward the little balcony.
III
The trio within the drawing-room, seated with Mary Regan as their center, had been talking for a minute or more when Clifford regained his balcony. The first words he heard were from Gordon, and were heavily solicitous.
"Miss Bingham, you have--er--seemed depressed all evening. Won't you tell me what it is?--please?"
"I am quite myself, Mr. Gordon."
But behind these reassuring words, as though the girl could not quite suppress it, was discernible an agitated note of trouble. The omniscient secretary gave his patron a glance clearly intended to spur that gentleman on to some advised procedure. Mr. Gordon responded to the prod, and spoke with a flush, stammeringly.
"I hope the thing that troubles you is not my--my--er--awful blunder."
"No. I've--I've tried to forget that, Mr. Gordon."
"Then what is it, Miss Bingham?" demanded Jenkins.
"Nothing you could change--or Mr. Gordon."
"Don't be too sure," urged Mr. Gordon. "I'm willing to do anything. And I can do a lot. Please tell us!"
Mary's face sank forward into her left hand; her white shoulders quivered--and quivered, Clifford observed, with a most admirable art.
"We, father and I, are really frauds," she cried through her handkerchief, flinging her right arm out in a hopeless, girlish gesture. "We, the life we lead here--it's really nothing but pretense!"
"Pretense?" the men cried together--and for an instant Clifford wondered if she were going to tell the truth.
"That telephone call awhile ago," she went on--"it was from one of father's friends. I had asked him to help get me work."
"Get you work?" ejaculated the two men.
"He said that thus far he'd found nothing I could do." She looked up; her young girl's manner was a blend of despair, pride and faltering courage--a most touching, alluring pose, Clifford noted. "Oh, we have position, yes--and family, yes! But in reality we are almost paupers. And I don't know what we are going to do!"
"Paupers!" cried the dazed Gordon. "Why--why--how did you ever get into such a state?"
"We never were rich--that is, not in the way you are rich, Mr. Gordon. My father was not brought up to business; he's always been just a gentleman--and he's a bit old-fashioned, as you know. But we had plenty, and would have been all right, if father had only kept out of business. But he speculated in Wall Street--and--and--"
"And he lost," Gordon helped her along.
"Yes. And then while he had money, during years and years, he spent an awful lot on pictures. Just look at those walls--"
She broke off and crossed to a switch near the door. A click, and high up on the walls a row of shaded lights had sprung into soft bloom.
"Just look at them," she exclaimed--stepping back into the middle of the room, and sweeping her arm toward the pictures--"Corots, Diazes, Rousseaus, Duprés, Troyons, Daubignys--picked up one at a time here and there in Europe--all the big Barbizon men except Millet. it's been father's greatest sorrow that he has never been able to get a good Millet. It's the best collection of the Barbizon School in America."
Jenkins gave a start. The press-agent in him seized and echoed the words: "The best collection of the Barbizon School in America!"
"Yes. I can tell you all about them; I ought to be able to, having heard father talk about nothing else!" As she went on her voice gave a sense that she was ironically repeating an eulogistic catalogue of which she was wearied near unto death. "That Corot there--look at it. Painted in the same year, and in the same spirit, as the master's famous 'Orpheus and Eurydice.' The few persons who have seen it declare that is a finer piece of work than 'Orpheus,' and destined to a higher fame--and you will remember that his 'Orpheus' sold in New York a few years ago for exactly $75,200."
"What's that!" cried Mr. Gordon. "I didn't know painters were ever paid such prices!"
"They're not. For that Daubigny there, the artist would have been glad to have had a hundred dollars. But it is as good as his 'Willows' which brought the last dealer who sold it $30,000. And that landscape by Rousseau--But you've had enough of the catalogue."
"No, no! Go on!" cried the secretary. "It's wonderful!"
"Wonderful? Yes, but what good do they do?" cried Mary Regan, losing control of herself in a wave of rebellious bitterness at her fate. "No one ever sees them here! Not half a dozen persons in America even know of their existence! With pictures, father is like a miser with gold: he hoards them for their own sake, just for the pleasure they give him. I hate them! I hate them! Oh, not because of themselves, but because of the misery they have brought on father and on me!" And then with a final girlish outburst: "I wish he'd sell them!"
"Why--er--Miss Bingham," said Mr. Gordon, "if you'd only let me advance you a little money--"
"Sir!" Mary interrupted haughtily.
"Upon the pictures as security," he hastily explained. "There could be no objection to that."
The little secretary had risen eagerly and caught his patron's arm.
"Wait, Mr. Gordon. Miss Bingham, you are sure that this is the best collection in America of the Barbizon School?"
"Certainly."
"It can be proved?"
"Father has the receipts of foreign dealers and galleries where he picked them up--and receipts of import duties--and full histories of the pictures--if that is what you are thinking of. But I don't see the meaning of your--"
"Pardon me--I hope you will later. Would I seem rude, Miss Bingham, if I asked permission to see Mr. Gordon alone for a few minutes?"
"Certainly not; you may speak here." She rose "If we are going to that Follies theater, it is time that I called father."
She went out and again passed within an arm's length of Clifford, going back to where Russell sat in the dining-room. But Clifford's business was where he then was.
"What's the matter with you now?" demanded Gordon of his excited secretary.
"I've got an idea--the idea! Listen, Mr. Gordon--I don't like to speak about unpleasant things at the very jump-off, but we've got to remember how the newspapers have been shelling you."
"No chance of my forgetting that!" growled Gordon.
"And how that National Social Research Society is after you because of conditions in your mines."
This time Gordon swore.
"Part of my business is to counteract such attacks--to set you right with the public--to see that you get the helpful sort of publicity." The rotund little ex-press-agent swelled with the cleverness and importance of his plan. "What I'm going to suggest may be an old stunt, but a lot of rich men have found it a good one, and it's always sure fire: Make some big public benefaction!"
"Yes, you're always wanting me to spend money" grunted Mr. Gordon. "What are you driving at?"
"Here it is, and it's a peach: Mr. Henry Gordon presents to the Chicago Art Institute the World's Greatest Collection of Paintings of the Barbizon School."
"Eh--what's that?"
The secretary caught the lapels of his amazed employer's evening coat, and in his excitement his language slipped back to the swift choppy lingo of his theatrical press-agent days.
"The Gordon Masterpieces! Get that? can't you see the headlines? World's greatest collection of Barbizon masters!"
Mr. Gordon stared. "Say, who were these Barbizon masters, anyhow?"
"Don't block traffic by asking such questions now!" cried the impatient Jenkins.
"They're headliners--play big time; I'll buy you a book about 'em, and then you can talk wise. Say--here's a stunt that's big, solid, and inspiring of respect! Gimme something I can put my teeth, into, and I'll show you how I can put you across!"
"But that old simp of a Bingham won't sell."
"You loosen up, and he will. he's gotta sell. He may love these damned chromos, but he's too proud to let his girl go to work. Besides, if you buy this junk, it puts you solid with the girl--see?"
"But what'll Bingham want for this truck?"
"Oh, it means a life separation for you from a large bunch of change," grimly responded the secretary. "But you've gotta stand the pain. There are fifteen pictures here. A hundred and fifty thousand, maybe--"
"A hundred and fifty thousand!" groaned Mr. Gordon.
"Get 'em for less if you can--but get 'em! they'll be worth twice that to you!"
"Well--I'll think about it."
"It'll be great stuff!" That fever which is peculiar to press-agents--a fever which craves for columns of unpaid-for space, and finds an artist's triumph in so handling a puff that editors must print it--blazed in Jenkins' little eyes. "Get 'em, and put the rest of it up to me ! Say, if I don't pull some stunts--presentations, receptions, formal opening of the Gordon Gallery--man alive, your bill to your clipping bureau will jump to a thousand a week and there won't be a clip that won't be a boost! . . . S-sh, she's coming back."
Mary Regan reentered in the rose-velvet cloak, alone. Jenkins signaled his employer to seize this opportunity.
"Miss Bingham," said Gordon, "we have just been discussing the possibility of my purchasing your father's pictures."
"I don't think father will ever sell," said the ingenue, in a discouraged voice.
"I've often begged him to."
"What did he say?"
"You can guess the chief thing he said, since you know how he worships them. But there's another reason. It would n't help us a bit for him to sell. I've told you how involved he is; his creditors would learn of the sale, and swoop down and seize, or legally tie up, the proceeds."
Mr. Gordon smiled condescendingly at her business naiveté.
"My dear Miss Bingham, you can easily evade that situation."
She gazed at him with wide, innocent eyes.
"How?"
"We can--if we, ah, should agree on terms--make the sale a strictly private transaction. By the time anything is learned about it, you and your father can be safely in, say, South America--with the money."
"But would that be honest?"
"Now don't you worry your head about business ethics," indulgently smiled Gordon.
"You just leave that to me."
"But I don't think father will ever sell," she repeated despondently.
"You can help change his mind," urged Gordon. He held out his hand. "Come, promise you'll help."
She hesitated, then laid her hand in his.
"I'll do what I can," she said.
IV
A few minutes later the closing of the outside door mounted to Clifford; the four had gone. Deep silence possessed the great house; whatever servants the financially stricken Mr. Bingham was able to keep, were now three flights up in bed.
Now for the further business which had kept him here--to learn something about these masterpieces. Clifford slipped from the balcony through the curtains into the dark drawing-room, switched on the lights, and gazed with excited curiosity at this little gallery of Corots, Daubignys, Diazes, Duprés, Troyons, Rousseaus. He was no recondite connoisseur, but he had had to know a bit about picures. Russell had probably paid some unscrupulous wastrel of a genius as much as $100 each to do the lot; and they were aged to their proper half century by heat and smoke. But for what they really were, most excellent!
And another point Clifford's swift eyes noted--and his grudging admiration for the cleverness of Russell went up one more notch. The paintings were imitations, not copies. Unlike some other gentlemen who have engaged in the lucrative traffic of selling illegitimate works of art to credulous millionaires, Russell was too wise to offer for sale as the original a copy of a famous picture--for there was the risk that even the man of most recent millions might know that the original was actually hanging in London, Paris, Florence, Munich, These paintings were all done in the manner of their alleged creators; they purported to be discoveries--works hitherto unknown to critics and collectors.
They were clever, yes; but not so clever that a buyer who was also a connoisseur would not instantly have detected the fraud. Here it was that Russell had shown his greatest skill: in his knowledge of men and the patience with which he had selected a "sucker" who did not know pictures, perhaps passing up a hundred other prospects. One by one, very softly, Clifford began to slip the pictures from their frames, examine most critically the back of the canvas, then replace them; until he came to that Corot which had been done in the spirit of his "Orpheus and Eurydice" which had sold for $75,200--the poetic haze of twilight, dim nymphs in flowing drapery dancing in an open space among old twisted trees. With his knife he loosed a few tacks which held the canvas to its stretcher, and turned back the canvas's edge. A quick glance, and he carefully pressed the tacks into place, and returned the picture to its frame.
At last he had found what he wanted.
Clifford switched out the lights, and sank into the very chair which ten minutes before had held the unsophisticated Miss Regan. He had to do some thinking, and for the present there was no safer place than this great silent house. To be involved (unknown to the other parties) in a great audacious art fraud, to watch its operation, to have the purpose of somehow at the moment of the climax making himself master of the affair--here was suspense, achievement, honor. To have the chance of catching Bradley in the matter, for he knew that Bradley was concerned--here was something even more.
And Mary Regan--she was most of all. His attitude toward Mary Began was strangely mixed, and the balance of power shifted almost every moment, as now his official duty, now his resentment, now his desire as a man, asserted a brief supremacy. Should he, if he succeeded in his unformed plan, place her under arrest? The idea hurt the man part of him; for though all his worldly sense had rebuked him and had tried to restrain him from thinking of the matter, he knew that his feeling toward her had passed unrecalledly beyond that of friendship.
And then Clifford had an inspiration. Perhaps after he had caught her and her uncle--if he did!--and after she felt prison doors inevitably closing about her--she would, to save her uncle and herself, give aid that would help him trap Chief of Detectives Bradley, whom he knew she loved almost as little as did he himself. In return, he would secure her immunity. So narrow an escape should make her see the dangers and final harbor of her present course, should rouse to regnancy those fine qualities which he knew existed in her.
Yes, here was the right way with Mary Regan! . . .
But what should he do next, and how should he do it? Obviously he must not be seen again by Russell or Mary Regan, for the pair might take alarm and abandon the scheme. He had it--the Gordon end of the affair was the end from which he must keep in touch with developments.
To watch, and wait, and maneuver until the very moment of the transfer, and then catch Russell and Mary Regan red-handed, that must be his plan--with Billy Dempsey to help in the details.
Thus much decided, Clifford slipped from the gallery painted vicariously and posthumously by Corot, Diaz, et al., and out of the fine old mansion.
V
Mr. Cameron Nicholls, world-weary, exclusive clubman--known better to his intimates as Robert Clifford--sat in his apartment adjoining that of his neighbor and casual acquaintance, Mr. Henry Gordon, with the annunciator of a dictograph at his ear. It was six days later, and during this time he had been Mr. Nicholls. These six days had been a period of careful watching, of patiently, unobtrusively seeking fragments of fact--the kind of wearing routine that is behind every big case of which the public sees only the spectacular features.
The little disk at his ear was silent; and while he waited, Clifford read a two-column story which in substance appeared in all the papers which lay discarded about him. As he read he smiled. He knew that the sale of the Barbizon masterpieces had not yet been formally executed; but that impatient, zealous little Jenkins, so Clifford interpreted this action, had been unable to restrain his press-agent's soul--or rather, he had acted upon a rule which experience in his craft had taught him, to announce a thing before it happens, and then announce it again after it has happened. So here was flamboyant proclamation of Gordon's great gift to the Chicago Art Institute: Finest collection of Barbizon painters in America--Hitherto little known pictures excel most famous work of masters--Said to have cost a million--Mr. Gordon, interviewed, stated that he would announce later where and how he had acquired the pictures, and would announce his plans for a New York exhibition which was to precede the removal of the masterpieces to Chicago for the formal presentation there.
Jenkins had said that, with something he could get his teeth into, he could put Gordon across. He certainly had done so! This same story, Clifford knew, with more or less of detail was in every paper of any importance in America. And it had been so adroitly fed to the papers, just enough of it withheld, just enough of mystery injected into it, to keep it "live" and make it good for many a big "follow-up" story in days to come.
While Clifford was wondering how Russell would take this premature announcement, the disk at his ears became vocal. It told of doors opening and closing in Gordon's apartment. Then a voice came over the wires--Jenkins' voice; it ordered most carefully for that night an elaborate dinner for four covers.
There was silence; patient waiting; then Clifford's telephone began to ring. Quickly he exchanged the annunciator for the telephone receiver. The voice was Billy Dempsey's--faithful old Billy Dempsey, who never understood more than he was expected to understand--to whom Clifford had assigned the detail of watching the aristocratic mansion off lower Fifth Avenue from the window of a boarding-house which had brazenly intruded itself into that once exclusive neighborhood.
"An express wagon has just left the house with fifteen boxes," reported Dempsey.
"Did you learn where they were going?"
"I had my field glasses on them. they're billed Mr. Gordon, at his hotel."
"Good work, Billy. Anything else?"
"Looks like the people inside were packing trunks."
Dempsey had nothing else to report. As Clifford hung up he instinctively added together that elaborated dinner, the movement of the pictures, the packing, and he thrilled at the total. His patient watchfulness had brought him this much: the money transfer, the final scene, was to take place in Gordon's apartment that evening! Excitedly he sat trying to understand this situation. Why was the transfer going to take place in Gordon's rooms?--if it was? And what was behind Russell's willingness to have it here? Clifford reasoned that Gordon saw a chance to make a big stage effect upon the impressionable Miss Bingham--to make her feel that he was giving the dinner in her honor--that he was doing this whole business for her sake. And Clifford surmised that Russell had not liked this part of the plan, but that Gordon had been insistent, and that Russell had yielded the comparatively unimportant point in order not to delay the plan's conclusion.
At half past nine that night Clifford, now in evening clothes, was still listening at the dictograph. Presently he heard Gordon dismiss the servants, and heard the latter leave the apartment. He listened a moment longer, then slipped off the head-piece and turned to Dempsey whom he had summoned here.
"Follow me in five minutes, Billy, and wait outside the door," he ordered. "you're not to come in, unless I signal."
"All right, Bob."
There was a look in honest Dempsey's face which Clifford read as a desire to accompany him and learn what this business was all about, but Clifford, the better to carry out his plan which included possible bargaining, wished no extra witness to the proceedings just before him. He closed his own door, moved to his neighbors', thrust in the pass-key which he had duplicated from the chambermaid's and noiselessly entered. He was in a tiny reception room. Three paces forward was a doorway curtained with drawn tapestries. Through them, not a dozen feet away, around a white table from which all had been removed except sweets, tobacco, and wine, Clifford could see the four: Gordon, beefily magnificent as a host; Jenkins, excited and very important; Russell, in his evening dress suggestive of a generation ago; and Mary Regan, that beautiful product of a sheltered life, in a costume of gold-brocaded chiffon.
Yes, and leaning against the walls, the covers of their wooden cases removed, were the Barbizon masterpieces.
The talk was still dinner commonplaces and dinner clevernesses. As Clifford waited, a sentiment which previously had risen in him began to gather strength. Though by profession an enemy of crime, his sympathy was becoming more definitely with that wilful spirit, Mary Regan, and the calculating Joe Russell. It was the sight of Gordon, his knowledge of that gross Lothario, and his knowledge of that man's present motives which were responsible for this changing attitude: Gordon, scheming and biding his time to make conquest of this supposedly naïve girl--and scheming to set himself right with bribe to the public he had wronged and defied. Contrasting the two pair, Clifford began to hate himself for siding with Gordon--but then, there was his duty!
A remark of Joe Russell brought Clifford's mind sharply back from its wandering to its immediate business.
"It's rather late for us, Mr. Gordon," said that unworldly gentleman. " We had better finish our little affair and go home."
"Yes, yes--but sorry you must observe such early hours." Mr. Gordon rose heavily to his feet, cleared his throat, and smiled a fat ingratiating smile. "Miss Bingham, I must compliment you on the manner in which you have handled this business. For so young a woman--one who has had no experience with the world--you have run the price up on me in a manner that should make me feel very bitter--but I don't."
"The pictures were all father had, you know," apologized Mary Regan.
"It's all right. You've a wonderful daughter, Mr. Bingham." A note of patronage came into the big man's voice. "I don't mean to hurt your feelings--I realize that you don't bother yourself with the affairs of the world--but I think your daughter is your superior in business matters--and the point where you've shown the most business sense has been in regard to the plan for evading your creditors."
"Yes, but it was really you who worked that plan out," mildly protested Mr. Bingham.
"Perhaps. And it's not such a bad plan, is it? you're all ready to sail to-morrow?"
"Yes," said Russell.
"Cuba, Jamaica, Rio de Janeiro--it's almost as good as Paris when Paris was at her best. You'll have a pleasant time, and your creditors can whistle for their money. Excellent!. don'tbe surprised if you meet me down there shortly; a tropical climate is more suited to me."
He smiled with heavy gallantry; Clifford saw how he was straining every art of his crude nature to impress Mary Regan. "And now, Miss Bingham, since you are the best business man in your family, I am going to make the payment to you. Here it is; take good care of it"--and he held out a packet to her.
Mary Regan did not at once accept the packet. "Is it in the form we agreed on?"
"Yes. I have followed your suggestion."
"Your suggestion," she corrected.
"All right--my suggestion then. Ten drafts, for twenty thousand apiece, each on a different bank--all payable 'to order.' No indorsement required--no single huge sum--no possible chance of your father's creditors learning of his acquiring so large an amount. Really, a capital plan! A ride of an hour in a taxi in the morning and you'll have it all in cash--and I tell you, it will be one pile of money!"
Mary took the drafts.
"Thank you. You have been most thoughtful."
"It's worth it to have you say that"--with a flourish of self-approval.
"And here is a receipted bill of sale for the pictures," put in Joe Russell.
Gordon took the paper and carelessly laid it on the table. With a large gesture he decanted champagne into four glasses.
"Now that at last it's all settled, here's a toast," he smiled genially-- "May you enjoy the palm trees--and the money--and may we all soon meet again!"
"Let me add a phrase to that," put in Mr. Bingham--"May Mr. Gordon enjoy his masterpieces!"
Mr. Gordon laughed: " Oh, I'll enjoy them--"
It was at this moment that Clifford stepped into the room.
VI
Mr. Gordon saw Clifford first, and his glass stopped abruptly on its course to his wide loose mouth.
"What are you doing here, Mr. Nicholls?" Gordon demanded.
All wheeled upon Clifford.
"I'm here to arrest Mr. and Miss Bingham," he answered.
That great actor, Joe Russell, showed only the bewildered surprise of an unworldly recluse.
"Arrest us?"
"What for?" exploded Mr. Gordon.
"For selling you fifteen fake masterpieces."
"Fake masterpieces! Say--who are you, Mr. Nicholls? "
"Mr. and Miss Bingham, who know me well, can tell you that I am from the police department."
"Police department!" cried Gordon, staring stupidly at his casual acquaintance from next door.
"Mr. Bingham, do you know him?"
"I never saw the gentleman before," replied Russell in the unworldly Bingham manner.
Mr. Gordon's amazement changed into the haughty wrath of the autocrat.
"What do you mean, sir, by such an intrusion?"
"I think I understand," put in Mary Regan, and there was venom in the gaze she gave Clifford. "I have read about the daring methods of blackmailers in New York. Mr. Gordon, I suggest that you excuse us and call a house detective."
"Yes, I think that explains this affair, Mr. Gordon," said Russell.
"You and Miss Regan are doing it mighty well, Joe," said Clifford. "But you might as well drop it, for the game's up."
He turned again to Gordon. "I repeat, Mr. Gordon, that the pictures are fakes."
"Fakes!" This time Clifford's announcement was taken more seriously; the big autocratic Gordon and the rotund secretary were staring at him in stupefied incredulity. "But I have documentary proof!" Gordon declared.
"Forged," commented Clifford.
"But experts have declared the pictures genuine!"
"Those experts were secretly in Russell's pay."
"Yes, that sounds exactly like the talk of a blackmailer," Mary Regan put in evenly.
Gordon glared at Clifford, and burst out, with blustering resurgent confidence: "I don't believe you!"
"If I am wrong, then call the house detective as Miss Regan suggested. In the meantime, pardon me."
Clifford stepped to one of the pictures standing on the floor, and deftly removed it from its frame and held it out.
"Here's a Corot," he said with dry irony directed at Mary Regan--" done in that master's best manner--equal if not superior to his 'Orpheus and Eurydice,' which recently sold here in New York for $75,200! " The next moment_ Clifford had drawn out several tacks, and had turned back a corner of the canvas. "Mr. Gordon, will you kindly look at this little spot,"
Mr. Gordon did not move.
"What is it?"
"Only the canvas dealer's stamp. Did you ever hear that Corot was accustomed to buying his canvas at Simpson's in West Fifty-seventh Street?"
Mr. Gordon moved over, gazed at the dealer's stamp, and his florid face went pasty white.
"All the other fourteen masterpieces in the great Gordon collection of the Barbizon School are of the same authenticity and the same value." Clifford turned to Russell.
"Joe," he said chidingly, "that drunken genius of an Anstruther must have been even a bit drunker than usual when he painted these. And you, Joe--I didn't think you'd ever be guilty of such an awful slip as this--you with the reputation of being the smoothest worker in America!"
That instant the unworldly Mr. Bingham ceased to be, and in his place stood the alert, resourceful Joseph Russell; and from out of the old-fashioned evening clothes had come an exceedingly modern automatic pistol, and it was pointing at Clifford.
"Beat it, Mary," he ordered sharply.
Clutching the drafts, Mary Regan crossed swiftly to the curtained hallway, snatching from the table on her way the receipted bill for the pictures.
"Stop, Miss Regan!" Clifford cried warningly. She halted between the parted curtains.
"There's an officer outside the apartment door, with orders to arrest any one who tries to leave."
"See!" snapped out Russell.
Mary disappeared. The following moment she returned and nodded affirmatively. Russell's eyes still glinted savagely along the automatic.
"Put up the gun, Joe," Clifford said quietly. "You know I know you well enough to know you wouldn't really use it even if Dempsey wasn't outside. That rough stuff isn't in your line."
For an instant more the pistol held its aim. Then a careless, indifferent hand returned it into the ancient evening clothes, and Russell sank into a chair and crossed his legs--the imperturbable, poiseful, cynical man of the world, who never fought when a fight was useless. He smiled pleasantly.
"Well, it does look a bit as though you had us, Bob."
Gordon stood flabbily amazed, his loose mouth working, at this swift transformation in his guests. Mary Regan, no longer the ingenue, crossed stiffly to the fireplace, in which a wood fire blazed more for decoration than for warmth.
"Good God!" ejaculated Gordon; and a weaker "Good God!" breathed the little Jenkins. Then, "what's this mean, Mr. Bingham?" Gordon huskily demanded.
"For one thing," said Russell, "it means that you're a pair of the easiest, most tiresome boobs--"
"What's that!" Gordon fell back, glowering with sudden anger. He wheeled on Mary Regan, now hard-eyed, contemptuous. "Miss Bingham--"
"Don't talk to me!" she cut in. "I detest you!" She turned a bright defiant gaze on Clifford. "Well--what do you think you are going to do?"
As he gazed at the straight imperious young figure, Clifford strove to keep himself tightly under control. But beneath his calm surface there was thrilling exultation--he was master of the situation--master of this girl--his hour was at hand! Now for the task of bringing her to her senses--and capturing Bradley.
"Your life may have seemed easy, exciting, Miss Regan," he drove hard at her, "but this affair will mean about twenty years to you. And it will amount to life for your uncle. When you come out, you'll be a middle-aged woman."
She went slowly pale. Even Gordon and Jenkins were held silent by the vision Clifford had summoned up--of that vital, rounded young woman, standing there by the fireplace with the drafts in one hand and in the other the receipted bill for the pictures, doomed to become seamed and bent and ugly. Russell, too, however stoical he may have been in regard to himself, was moved by what confronted Mary Regan. Clifford saw that he had made his effect.
"Prison for twenty years, Miss Regan," he repeated--paused to let that sink in--then went to his next point--"unless you will consent to help me in a certain matter."
"What, for instance?" Russell asked in her behalf.
"I know Chief of Detectives Bradley is mixed with you in this affair. I'll arrange to have you both let down easy, if you'll go through with this deal in such a way as will help me get the goods on Bradley."
"If I get you right," said Russell, "you care more for Bradley than for us."
"You get me right."
"That's mighty interesting, Bob. Only--we can't do it."
"Oh, yes, you can!" Clifford retorted grimly. "For I know you are splitting with Bradley!"
"Your idea may be fine, my boy. But your grammar is rotten."
"Grammar? "
"Your tenses must have been in a railroad wreck. It is not present, are splitting; but past perfect, and mighty damned perfect, have split."
"Have split?" ejaculated Clifford.
"Exactly." Russell smiled with wry mirthlessness. "I haven't a charge account with Bradley any more, so two days ago he made me pay cash in advance before he'd let me operate. Now, there's no possible tracing the money."
For the moment Clifford could only gaze with stupefaction at the lean face of the old adventurer. The whole foundation had suddenly dropped from beneath his plan!
"And money which Bradley swallows, Bradley never coughs up again," Russell continued pleasantly. "Through your mixing in this little affair I'm out just twenty-five thousand."
"Out twenty-five thousand!" repeated Clifford.
"That and two months." He nodded with the stoic ease of the gambler with life whom long experience has drilled to accept without surprise any unexpected card fate may turn up against him. "Well--since we can't do you that trifling service, Bob, I suppose you'll be arresting us."
"I'll have to," said Clifford.
"You bet he'll arrest you!" exploded Gordon, advancing menacingly, and glaring from Russell to Mary Regan. His wrath was now beyond his control--and Clifford found himself loathing yet more this porcine superman whom it was his duty to protect.
"You'll get not twenty years, but a hundred! Both of you! Jenkins, call in that officer outside to help arrest this pair."
The little secretary started across the room.
"One moment, Mr. Jenkins," Mary Regan sharply commanded. Jenkins halted. "Wait until you understand why I induced you to make the announcement in all the papers about the Gordon Masterpieces before the sale was actually completed."
"You induce me!" gasped the little man. "It was my own idea!"
"You thought it was your own idea," she mocked, him. "But like all your own ideas, some one else put it into your head."
She turned to the millionaire.
"Mr. Gordon, you have told Miss Bingham that one of the fundamental secrets of success in big business is always to have one card up your sleeve to play in case something goes wrong. Well, the announcement of this sale was the card up our sleeve."
"A trick up your sleeve?--how?" Gordon ejaculated.
"Mr. Gordon, who is very thin-skinned about the, bad things the papers say about him," she explained, with a smile of contempt, " has boasted in every paper of the country about his priceless masterpieces. If we are arrested, then it will become known that the great business genius, Mr. Gordon, was fooled by a mere girl--and that the fifteen priceless masterpieces of the great art patron of the same name are fifteen worthless smears. can't you hear them laughing--every newspaper of the country!"
"Say--what are you driving at?" demanded Mr. Gordon, and wet his thick loose lips.
"Exactly what I've been driving at from the beginning: to put you into such a situation that, in case something went wrong, you'd never consent to our arrest or never appear against us." She waited; Gordon did not speak. "Well--how about it? Are you going to have us arrested?"
"She's right--you don't dare do a thing," choked out Jenkins.
Gordon clutched his big hands wrathfully--glared at the two--but still the big man could not find his voice.
Clifford drew a deep breath. So that was the reason for the premature announcement! He had to admire the perverted cleverness of Mary Regan; but his duty as an official lay in another direction.
"Mr. Gordon, you have obligations as a citizen. You are not going to let such talk influence you."
"I'm not going to have a thing to do with it," snarled Gordon--"except to get my money back."
"You damned skunk!--you deserve to be trimmed!" Clifford shot into his face.
Gordon, ignoring this explosion of wrathful contempt, started toward Mary Regan with a fat clutching hand outstretched.
"Give me my money back, Miss Bingham, and I'll not prosecute!"
"No, you don't!" cried Clifford, seizing his arm. "That money belongs to the state of New York as evidence. We can make out a case without you," he added grimly. "Miss Regan, give me that money!"
Mary Regan thrust the handful of drafts above the flaming grate.
"Stop--both of you--or they go into the fire!"
"But, girl--that's real money!" cried the millionaire, aghast at such threatened sacrilege.
"Yes--and another step, and it will be lost to you as money, and to Mr. Clifford as evidence!"
Clifford and Gordon abruptly halted. Mary Regan stood there, back to the fire, pale and taut, but with the composed air of one who feels herself mistress of the situation. She crumpled the receipted bill of sale in her left hand and dropped it upon the coals; a yellow flare and it was no more.
"Mr. Clifford, neither Mr. Gordon nor Mr. Jenkins will testify--the existence of the pictures alone proves nothing--and if you try to take these drafts I burn them--so you have no case. Mr. Gordon, they burn--"
"My God, woman, they're money!" writhed Mr. Gordon. "You would n't destroy money in that way!"
"I shall if you try to take it! But I'll offer to compromise with you both."
"What sort of compromise?"
A daring, inspired look had come into Mary Regan's face; for a moment a faint smile of malice flashed there, then was gone.
"I'll agree that none of us shall have the money," she said. "We shall give it to charity--to a charity of my own choosing, but subject to Mr. Clifford's approval. Well?"
The two men, bewildered by this turn, did not answer.
"That, or I burn it!" she warned.
"Anything except waste it!" choked Gordon; and Clifford likewise could only agree.
"Very well. Mr. Jenkins, you are the safest person to have near me; for if you should try violence, I think I could handle you. Will you please bring me a sheet of plain paper, a plain envelope, stamps, pen and ink."
As Jenkins obeyed her, Clifford wondered what end was this that was coming to the case of the Barbizon masterpieces. All eyes silently upon her, Mary Regan stood at one end of the mantelpiece where she could toss the drafts into the fire at any suspicious movement, and using the mantel as a desk she slowly wrote a note in what Clifford could perceive to be backhand. Then she addressed an envelope, put the drafts into it, and sealed and stamped it.
"Fortunately this money is in the form of drafts payable to order and does not have to be endorsed--so it cannot be traced." There was a thread of irony in her voice as she repeated Gordon's phrases.
"Mr. Clifford "--handing him the sealed packet--"does this philanthropy meet with your approval?"
Clifford glanced at the address, then looked in amazement at Mary Regan.
"Why--why--" he stammered; then with grim exultation out came an emphatic "Yes!"
"See here--I want to know where it's going!" demanded Gordon, reaching for the letter.
Mary Regan firmly blocked the eager hand.
"That was not a part of our agrement. Mr. Clifford, will you kindly give this letter to your man outside and ask him to get it into a mail-box instantly?"
Dazed, Clifford went to the apartment door, and delivered the letter with her instructions to Dempsey. As he reentered, he saw the little secretary clutching Gordon's arm.
"Mr. Gordon," gasped Jenkins in dismayed excitement, "we've forgotten something! The Chicago Institute--the newspapers!"
"What the hell is it now?" exploded the provoked millionaire.
"Don't you see"--the little man's voice had become a rasping shriek--"we don't dare give those fakes to the Institute! And we've told the papers we were going to give them--and if we don't, how the newspapers will throw the harpoon into you!"
The bulky figure of Gordon collapsed loosely into a chair, and his florid face faded to ashes. Suddenly he sprang up wildly.
"You damned little cockroach, you," he roared at Jenkins--"whatta I pay you for? Can't you think of something?"
The little man, limp, stared at his furious master with helpless, horrified eyes. None could measure so well as he the disastrous magnitude of this suddenly imminent scandal.
"Do something!" shouted the childishly frantic Gordon. "Stop looking at me like a sick codfish! Think! Damn you, think!"
Intelligence had already begun to glimmer in the dazed round face of little Jenkins.
"Wait--I'm thinking!"
The next moment the ex-press agent of "Look who's Here!" was himself again. Excitedly he seized the telephone which stood on a side table. "Central, gimme Cortlandt five-two-one-O. ... I've got it, Mr. Gordon--I've got it! . . . Hello, this the City News Association? . . . This is Mr. Jenkins, secretary of Mr. Henry Gordon--you know. Called you up to announce to you that Mr. Gordon has taken such a strong liking, such a very strong liking, to those Barbizon Masterpieces that he has decided to retain them for his private gallery. In their place he will present to the Chicago Art Institute another collection for which he is now negotiating."
A few more sentences, and Jenkins hung up and looked about with the exultant pride of one who has performed an unparalleled coup.
"That fixes everything, Mr. Gordon! Your private gallery--eh, what!--where no one'll ever see 'em. The City News feeds all the New York papers, also the Associated Press, and the A. P.'ll wire the story all over the counry. No one will ever find out!"
"You're all right, Jenkins!" exclaimed his employer, with vast relief. And then, with resurgent savage triumph, to Mary Regan: "you're clever --but you've not got me in so bad as you thought you had!"
"Mr. Clifford," said Mary Regan evenly, "do you suppose that by this time my letter is in the care of the United States Mail?"
"Yes," said Clifford.
She crossed to the telephone and leisurely picked it up.
"Central, give me Cortlandt five-two-one-O. . . . Is this the City News Association? . . . This is the secretary of the National Social Research Society. I wish to announce an anonymous gift of two hundred thousand dollars--"
"What's that?" Gordon broke in, starting toward her.
"Given," continued Mary Regan, "with the express stipulation that it is to be devoted to investigation of conditions in the Gordon mines. The Society will make a fuller statement to-morrow. Good-by."
The glassy eyes of Mr. Gordon looked as though they were about to roll from out their fat-terraced lids.
"Is that where you gave my money?--to that damned society that's muck-raking me?"
"Exactly," said Mary Regan in her cold even voice.
Wordlessly Mr. Gordon sank into a chair, a boneless, shaking object whose breath came in irregular gasps. The little secretary's round face was glazed with a stare of stupefaction.
Mary Regan looked neither at them nor at Clifford.
"Come on, Uncle; let's go--" and she started out.
"One moment, Mary."
Joe Russell had sighted the glasses, brimming with the wine that Gordon had poured out just as Clifford had entered. He picked one up; his smile and tone were dulcetly amiable.
"Mr. Gordon, during this interruption we have forgotten our little toast."
"Go to hell!" breathed that gentleman.
"Then you and I'll drink the toast, Bob. Take Gordon's glass; the one to the right. Here's the toast: May Mr. Gordon find unbounded pleasure. in the new additions to his private gallery."
The next moment Clifford was touching Gordon's glass of flat champagne to the glass of Joseph Russell-- with Mary Regan gazing coldly at them from the doorway.