“Have you heard how old man Madison is to-day?” asked Ray, dusting his fingers with a handkerchief.
“Somebody told me yesterday he was about the same. He’s not going to get well.”
“How do you know?” Ray spoke quickly.
“Stroke too severe. People never recover — —”
“Oh, yes, they do, too.”
Trumble began hotly: “I beg to dif — —” but checked himself, manifesting a slight confusion. “That is, I know they don’t. Old Madison may live a while, if you call that getting well; but he’ll never be the same man he was. Doctor Sloane says it was a bad stroke. Says it was `induced by heat prostration and excitement.’ `Excitement!’” he repeated with a sour laugh. “Yep, I expect a man could get all the excitement he wanted in that house, especially if he was her daddy. Poor old man, I don’t believe he’s got five thousand dollars in the world, and look how she dresses!”
Ray opened a compartment beneath one of the bookcases, and found a bottle and some glasses. “Aha,” he muttered, “our janitor doesn’t drink, I perceive. Join me?” Mr. Trumble accepted, and Ray explained, cheerfully: “Richard Lindley’s got me so cowed I’m afraid to go near any of my old joints. You see, he trails me; the scoundrel has kept me sober for whole days at a time, and I’ve been mortified, having old friends see me in that condition; so I have to sneak up here to my own office to drink to Cora, now and then. You mustn’t tell him. What’s she been doing to you, lately?”
The little man addressed grew red with the sharp, resentful memory. “Oh, nothing! Just struck me in the face with her parasol on the public street, that’s all!” He gave an account of his walk to church with Cora. “I’m through with that girl!” he exclaimed vindictively, in conclusion. “It was the damnedest thing you ever saw in your life: right in broad daylight, in front of the church. And she laughed when she did it; you’d have thought she was knocking a puppy out of her way. She can’t do that to me twice, I tell you. What the devil do you see to laugh at?”
“You’ll be around,” returned his companion, refilling the glasses, “asking for more, the first chance she gives you. Here’s her health!”
“I don’t drink it!” cried Mr. Trumble angrily.
“And I’m through with her for good, I tell you! I’m not your kind: I don’t let a girl like that upset me till I can’t think of anything else, and go making such an ass of myself that the whole town gabbles about it. Cora Madison’s seen the last of me, I’ll thank you to notice. She’s never been half-decent to me; cut dances with me all last winter; kept me hanging round the outskirts of every crowd she was in; stuck me with Laura and her mother every time she had a chance; then has the nerve to try to use me, so’s she can make a bigger hit with a new man! You can bet your head I’m through! She’ll get paid though! Oh, she’ll get paid for it!”
“How?” laughed Ray.
It was a difficult question. “You wait and see,” responded the threatener, feebly. “Just wait and see. She’s wild about this Corliss, I tell you,” he continued, with renewed vehemence. “She’s crazy about him; she’s lost her head at last — —”
“You mean he’s going to avenge you?”
“No, I don’t, though he might, if she decided to marry him.”
“Do you know,” said Ray slowly, glancing over his glass at his nervous companion, “it doesn’t strike me that Mr. Valentine Corliss has much the air of a marrying man.”
“He has the air to me,” observed Mr. Trumble, “of a darned bad lot! But I have to hand it to him: he’s a wizard. He’s got something besides his good looks — a man that could get Cora Madison interested in `business’! In oil! Cora Madison! How do you suppose — —”
His companion began to laugh again. “You don’t really suppose he talked his oil business to her, do you, Trumble?”
“He must have. Else how could she — —”
“Oh, no, Cora herself never talks upon any subject but one; she never listens to any other either.”
“Then how in thunder did he — —”
“If Cora asks you if you think it will rain,” interrupted Vilas, “doesn’t she really seem to be asking: `Do you love me? How much?’ Suppose Mr. Corliss is an expert in the same line. Of course he can talk about oil!”
“He strikes me,” said Trumble, “as just about the slickest customer that ever hit this town. I like Richard Lindley, and I hope he’ll see his fifty thousand dollars again. I wouldn’t have given Corliss thirty cents.”
“Why do you think he’s a crook?”
“I don’t say that,” returned Trumble. “All I know about him is that he’s done some of the finest work to get fifty thousand dollars put in his hands that I ever heard of. And all anybody knows about him is that he lived here seventeen years ago, and comes back claiming to know where there’s oil in Italy. He shows some maps and papers and gets cablegrams signed `Moliterno.’ Then he talks about selling the old Corliss house here, where the Madisons live, and putting the money into his oil company: he does that to sound plausible, but I have good reason to know that house was mortgaged to its full value within a month after his aunt left it to him. He’ll not get a cent if it’s sold. That’s all. And he’s got Cora Madison so crazy over him that she makes life a hell for poor old Lindley until he puts all he’s saved into the bubble. The scheme may be all right. How do I know? There’s no way to tell, without going over there, and Corliss won’t let anybody do that — oh, he’s got a plausible excuse for it! But I’m sorry for Lindley: he’s so crazy about Cora, he’s soft. And she’s so crazy about Corliss she’s soft! Well, I used to be crazy about her myself, but I’m not soft — I’m not the Lindley kind of loon, thank heaven!”
“What kind are you, Trumble?” asked Ray, mildly.
“Not your kind either,” retorted the other going to the door. “She cut me on the street the other day; she’s quit speaking to me. If you’ve got any money, why don’t you take it over to the hotel and give it to Corliss? She might start speaking to you again. I’m going to lunch!” He slammed the door behind him.
Ray Vilas, left alone, elevated his heels to the sill, and stared out of the window a long time at a gravelled roof which presented little of interest. He replenished his glass and his imagination frequently, the latter being so stirred that when, about three o’clock, he noticed the inroads he had made upon the bottle, tears of self-pity came to his eyes. “Poor little drunkard!” he said aloud. “Go ahead and do it. Isn’t anything you won’t do!” And, having washed his face at a basin in a corner, he set his hat slightly upon one side, picked up a walking stick and departed jauntily, and, to the outward eye, presentably sober.
Mr. Valentine Corliss would be glad to see him, the clerk at the Richfield Hotel reported, after sending up a card, and upon Ray’s following the card, Mr. Valentine Corliss in person confirmed the message with considerable amusement and a cordiality in which there was some mixture of the quizzical. He was the taller; and the robust manliness of his appearance, his splendid health and boxer’s figure offered a sharp contrast to the superlatively lean tippler. Corliss was humorously aware of his advantage: his greeting seemed really to say, “Hello, my funny bug, here you are again!” though the words of his salutation were entirely courteous; and he followed it with a hospitable offer.
“No,” said Vilas; “I won’t drink with you.” He spoke so gently that the form of his refusal, usually interpreted as truculent, escaped the other’s notice. He also declined a cigar, apologetically asking permission to light one of his own cigarettes; then, as he sank into a velour-covered chair, apologized again for the particular attention he was bestowing upon the apartment, which he recognized as one of the suites de luxe of the hotel.
“`Parlour, bedroom, and bath,’” he continued, with a melancholy smile; “and `Lachrymae,’ and `A Reading from Homer.’ Sometimes they have `The Music Lesson,’ or `Winter Scene’ or `A Neapolitan Fisher Lad’ instead of `Lachrymae,’ but they always have `A Reading from Homer.�
�� When you opened the door, a moment ago, I had a very strong impression that something extraordinary would some time happen to me in this room.”
“Well,” suggested Corliss, “you refused a drink in it.”
“Even more wonderful than that,” said Ray, glancing about the place curiously. “It may be a sense of something painful that already has happened here — perhaps long ago, before your occupancy. It has a pathos.”
“Most hotel rooms have had something happen in them,” said Corliss lightly. “I believe the managers usually change the door numbers if what happens is especially unpleasant. Probably they change some of the rugs, also.”
“I feel — —” Ray paused, frowning. “I feel as if some one had killed himself here.”
“Then no doubt some of the rugs have been changed.”
“No doubt.” The caller laughed and waved his hand in dismissal of the topic. “Well, Mr. Corliss,” he went on, shifting to a brisker tone, “I have come to make my fortune, too. You are Midas. Am I of sufficient importance to be touched?”
Valentine Corliss gave him sidelong an almost imperceptibly brief glance of sharpest scrutiny — it was like the wink of a camera shutter — but laughed in the same instant. “Which way do you mean that?”
“You have been quick,” returned the visitor, repaying that glance with equal swiftness, “to seize upon the American idiom. I mean: How small a contribution would you be willing to receive toward your support!”
Corliss did not glance again at Ray; instead, he looked interested in the smoke of his cigar. “`Contribution,’” he repeated, with no inflection whatever. “`Toward my support.’”
“I mean, of course, how small an investment in your oil company.”
“Oh, anything, anything,” returned the promoter, with quick amiability. “We need to sell all the stock we can.”
“All the money you can get?”
“Precisely. It’s really a colossal proposition, Mr. Vilas.” Corliss spoke with brisk enthusiasm. “It’s a perfectly certain enormous profit upon everything that goes in. Prince Moliterno cables me later investigations show that the oil-field is more than twice as large as we thought when I left Naples. He’s on the ground now, buying up what he can, secretly.”
“I had an impression from Richard Lindley that the secret had been discovered.”
“Oh, yes; but only by a few, and those are trying to keep it quiet from the others, of course.”
“I see. Does your partner know of your success in raising a large investment?”
“You mean Lindley’s? Certainly.” Corliss waved his hand in light deprecation. “Of course that’s something, but Moliterno would hardly be apt to think of it as very large! You see he’s putting in about five times that much, himself, and I’ve already turned over to him double it for myself. Still, it counts — certainly; and of course it will be a great thing for Lindley.”
“I fear,” Ray said hesitatingly, “you won’t be much interested in my drop for your bucket. I have twelve hundred dollars in the world; and it is in the bank — I stopped there on my way here. To be exact, I have twelve hundred and forty-seven dollars and fifty-one cents. My dear sir, will you allow me to purchase one thousand dollars’ worth of stock? I will keep the two hundred and forty-seven dollars and fifty-one cents to live on — I may need an egg while waiting for you to make me rich. Will you accept so small an investment?”
“Certainly,” said Corliss, laughing. “Why not? You may as well profit by the chance as any one. I’ll send you the stock certificates — we put them at par. I’m attending to that myself, as our secretary, Mr. Madison, is unable to take up his duties.”
Vilas took a cheque-book and a fountain-pen from his pocket.
“Oh, any time, any time,” said Corliss cheerfully, observing the new investor’s movement.
“Now, I think,” returned Vilas quietly. “How shall I make it out?”
“Oh, to me, I suppose,” answered Corliss indifferently. “That will save a little trouble, and I can turn it over to Moliterno, by cable, as I did Lindley’s. I’ll give you a receipt — —”
“You need not mind that,” said Ray. “Really it is of no importance.”
“Of course the cheque itself is a receipt,” remarked Corliss, tossing it carelessly upon a desk. “You’ll have some handsome returns for that slip of paper, Mr. Vilas.”
“In that blithe hope I came,” said Ray airily.
“I am confident of it. I have my own ways of divination, Mr. Corliss. I have gleams.” He rose as if to go, but stood looking thoughtfully about the apartment again. “Singular impression,” he murmured. “Not exactly as if I’d seen it in a dream; and yet — and yet — —”
“You have symptoms of clairvoyance at times, I take it.” The conscious, smooth superiority of the dexterous man playing with an inconsequent opponent resounded in this speech, clear as the humming of a struck bell; and Vilas shot him a single open glance of fire from hectic eyes. For that instant, the frailer buck trumpeted challenge. Corliss — broad-shouldered, supple of waist, graceful and strong — smiled down negligently; yet the very air between the two men seemed charged with an invisible explosive. Ray laughed quickly, as in undisturbed good nature; then, flourishing his stick, turned toward the door.
“Oh, no, it isn’t clairvoyance — no more than when I told you that your only real interest is women.” He paused, his hand upon the door-knob. “I’m a quaint mixture, however: perhaps I should be handled with care.”
“Very good of you,” laughed Corliss— “this warning. The afternoon I had the pleasure of meeting you I think I remember your implying that you were a mere marionette.”
“A haggard harlequin!” snapped Vilas, waving his hand to a mirror across the room. “Don’t I look it?” And the phrase fitted him with tragic accuracy. “You see? What a merry wedding-guest I’ll be! I invite you to join me on the nuptial eve.”
“Thanks. Who’s getting married: when the nuptial eve?”
Ray opened the door, and, turning, rolled his eyes fantastically. “Haven’t you heard?” he cried. “When Hecate marries John Barleycorn!” He bowed low. “Mr. Midas, adieu.”
Corliss stood in the doorway and watched him walk down the long hall to the elevator. There, Ray turned and waved his hand, the other responding with gayety which was not assumed: Vilas might be insane, or drunk, or both, but the signature upon his cheque was unassailable.
Corliss closed the door and began to pace his apartment thoughtfully. His expression manifested a peculiar phenomenon. In company, or upon the street, or when he talked with men, the open look and frank eyes of this stalwart young man were disarming and his most winning assets. But now, as he paced alone in his apartment, now that he was not upon exhibition, now when there was no eye to behold him, and there was no reason to dissimulate or veil a single thought or feeling, his look was anything but open; the last trace of frankness disappeared; the muscles at mouth and eyes shifted; lines and planes intermingled and altered subtly; there was a moment of misty transformation — and the face of another man emerged. It was the face of a man uninstructed in mercy; it was a shrewd and planning face: alert, resourceful, elaborately perceptive, and flawlessly hard. But, beyond all, it was the face of a man perpetually on guard.
He had the air of debating a question, his hands in his pockets, his handsome forehead lined with a temporary indecision. His sentry-go extended the length of his two rooms, and each time he came back into his bedroom his glance fell consideringly upon a steamer-trunk of the largest size, at the foot of his bed. The trunk was partially packed as if for departure. And, indeed, it was the question of departure which he was debating.
He was a man of varied dexterities, and he had one faculty of high value, which had often saved him, had never betrayed him; it was intuitive and equal to a sixth sense: he always knew when it was time to go. An inner voice warned him; he trusted to it and obeyed it. And it had spoken now, and there was his trunk half-packed in answer. But he
had stopped midway in his packing, because he had never yet failed to make a clean sweep where there was the slightest chance for one; he hated to leave a big job before it was completely finished — and Mr. Wade Trumble had refused to invest in the oil-fields of Basilicata.
Corliss paused beside the trunk, stood a moment immersed in thought; then nodded once, decisively, and, turning to a dressing-table, began to place some silver-mounted brushes and bottles in a leather travelling-case.
There was a knock at the outer door. He frowned, set down what he had in his hands, went to the door and opened it to find Mr. Pryor, that plain citizen, awaiting entrance.
Corliss remained motionless in an arrested attitude, his hand upon the knob of the opened door. His position did not alter; he became almost unnaturally still, a rigidity which seemed to increase. Then he looked quickly behind him, over his shoulder, and back again, with a swift movement of the head.
“No,” said Pryor, at that. “I don’t want you. I just thought I’d have two minutes’ talk with you. All right?”
“All right,” said Corliss quietly. “Come in.” He turned carelessly, and walked away from the door keeping between his guest and the desk. When he reached the desk, he turned again and leaned against it, his back to it, but in the action of turning his hand had swept a sheet of note-paper over Ray Vilas’s cheque — a too conspicuous oblong of pale blue. Pryor had come in and closed the door.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 129