Chapter XIX: A Reckoning and a Hold-Up

I imagine it is only in fiction that a man is able to live a double life successfully to the grand climax. I failed because the mounting fortunes of the Little Clean-Up, my share of which was as yet merely giving me money to squander on the extravagant whims and caprices of Agatha Geddis, were making all three of us, Gifford, Barrett and myself, marked men.

One incident of the marking timed itself in one of my trips to Denver. I had breakfasted at the Brown and was leaving my room-key with the clerk when I ran up against the plain-clothes man who had arrested me on the day of my arrival as a runaway. I should have passed him without recognition, as a matter of course, but he stopped and accosted me.

"Carson's my name," he said, offering me his hand and showing his concealed badge in one and the same motion. Then: "You'll excuse me for butting in, Mr. Bertrand, but there is something you ought to know. You've got a double kicking around here somewhere; a fellow who has swiped your name and looks just a little like you. He's a crook, all right, and we've got his thumb-print and his 'mug' in the headquarters records. I ran across his dope the other day in the blotter, and thought the next time I saw you I'd give you a tip. You never can tell what these slick 'aliases' 'll do. He might be following you up to get a graft out of you. That's done, every day, you know."

Naturally, there was nothing to do but to thank the purblind city detective, to press a bank-note into his hand, and to beg him to be on the lookout for this dangerous "double" of mine. But the incident served to show what the bonanza-fed publicity campaign was doing for us.

Gifford, grubbing in the various levels of the mine, had the most immunity; the newspaper reporters let him measurably alone. But neither Barrett nor I could dodge the spotlight. Every move we made was blazoned in type, and I lived in daily fear of the moment when some enterprising newspaper man would begin to make copy of the theater parties and road-house rides and midnight champagne suppers.

I knew that the blow had fallen one morning when Phineas Everton came unannounced into my private office and asked me to send the stenographer away. The _debacle_ had arrived, and I was no more ready to meet it than any other spendthrift of good repute caught red-handed would have been.

"I think you can guess pretty well what I have come to say, Bertrand," Everton said, after the door had closed behind the outgoing shorthand man. "I have been putting it off in the hope that your own sense of the fitness of things would come to the rescue. I may be old-fashioned and out of touch with the times and the manners of the new generation, but I can't forget that I am a father, or that common decency still has its demands."

Out of the depths of my humiliation there emerged, full-grown, a huge respect for this quiet-eyed ex-schoolmaster who, for the few of us who knew him, lived the life of a studious recluse among his technical mechanisms in the laboratory. He was a salaried man, and I was one of his three employers. That he was able to ignore completely the business relation was a mark of the man.

He waited for his reply but I had none to make. After a time he went on, without heat, but equally without regard for anything but the despicable fact.

"For quite a long time, if I am informed correctly, you have been associating in Denver with a set of people who, whatever else may be said about them, are not people with whom my daughter would care to associate. More than this, you have allowed your name to become coupled with that of a woman whose reputation, past and present, is not altogether of the best. Tell me if I am accusing you wrongfully."

"You are not," I admitted.

"I have been waiting and postponing this talk in the hope that you would realize that you are not doing Polly fair justice. Like most American fathers, I am not supposed to know how matters stand between you, and I deal only with the facts as they appear to an onlooker. The home has been open to you, and you have made such use of your welcome as to lead others to believe that you are Polly's lover."

"I am," I asserted.

"Ah," he said; "that clears the ground admirably. I like you, Bertrand, and I shall be glad to hear your defense, if you have any."

What could I say? Driven thus into a corner, I could only protest, rather incoherently, that I loved Polly, and that, in other circumstances, I should long since have asked her to be my wife.

"The 'circumstances' are connected with Miss Geddis?" he asked pointedly.

"Only incidentally. Considered for herself, Miss Geddis is a woman for whom any self-respecting man could have little regard."

For the first time in the interview the ex-schoolmaster's mild eyes grew hard.

"Then I am to infer that she has a hold of some sort upon you?"

"She has," I rejoined shortly.

"That simplifies matters still more," he averred, with as near an approach to severity as one of his characteristics could compass. "I don't wish to make or meddle to the extent of telling Polly what I have heard and what you have admitted. But in justice to her and to me, you should be man enough to stay away from the house and let Polly alone. Am I unreasonable?"

"Not in the least. You might go much farther and still be blameless. I have no valid excuse to offer, but if I should say that there are extenuating circumstances----"

He raised a thin hand in protest.

"Let us leave it at the point at which there will be the least ill-feeling," he cut in; and from that he switched without preface to a discussion of the varying ore values in a newly opened adit of the mine.

When he was gone I went into Barrett's room. As I have intimated, one of the troubles of mine-owning--if the mine be a producer--is to hold the smelter people in line. Like other Cripple Creek property owners, we had been up against the high costs of reduction almost from the first, and we were constantly sending test consignments of our ore to various smelters throughout the country, and even to Europe, in order to obtain checking data.

"About that car-load of Number Three ore we are sending to Falkenheim in California," I said to Barrett. "I'm going to break away and go with it if you have no objections."

Barrett looked up quickly.

"I think that is a wise move, Jimmie; a very wise move," he said gravely; and this meant that he, too, had been reading the Denver newspapers. Then he added: "We can get along all right without you, for awhile, and you may stay as long as you like. When will you go?"

"To-day; on the afternoon train."

"Straight west?--or by way of Denver?"

"Straight west, over the Midland, I guess."

This is what I said, and it is what I meant to do when I went back to my own office to set things in order for the long absence--for I fully meant it to be long. My office duties were not complicated, and the few things to be attended to were soon out of the way. One of the letters to be written was one that I did not dictate to the stenographer. It was to the Reverend John Whitley, enclosing a draft to be forwarded to my sister in Glendale. Ever since he had served me in the matter of returning Horace Barton's pocketbook, I had used him as an intermediary for communicating, money-wise, with my people. He had kept my secret, and was still keeping it.

The business affairs despatched, I crossed to the hotel to pack a couple of suit-cases. All these preliminary preparations included no word or line to Polly. I promised myself that I should write her when it was all over. The thing to be done now and first was to drop out as unostentatiously as possible. So ran the well-considered intention. But when I went down to an early luncheon there was a telegram awaiting me. It was from Agatha Geddis, and its wording was a curt mandate. "Expect you on afternoon train. Don't fail."

During the half-hour which remained before train-time I fought the wretched battle all over again, back and forth and up and down until my brain reeled. At the end there was a shifty compromise. I was still fully determined to drop out and go to California; at one stroke to break with Polly Everton, and to put myself beyond the reach of the woman with claws; but I weakly decided to go by way of Denver, taking the night train west from the capital city over the Union Pacific. It was a cowardly expedient, prompted wholly by the old, sharp-toothed fear of consequences if I should fall to obey the wire summons, and I knew it. I offer nothing in extenuation.

Agatha met me at the Denver Union Station, and at her suggestion we went together to dinner at the Brown Palace. I did not know until later why she had sent for me, or why she chose a particular table in the dining-room, or why she went to pieces--figuratively speaking--when, at the serving of the dessert, a note was handed her.

After that, I should have said that she had been drinking too much champagne, if I had not known better.

"I want you to go with me up to my suite, Bertie; I've moved to the hotel," she said hurriedly as we were leaving the dining-room.

If I went reluctantly it was not owing to any new-born squeamishness. Heaven knows, I had been compromised with her too many times to care greatly for anything that could be added now. In the sitting-room of her private suite she punched the light switch and came to sit on the arm of my chair. If she had put an arm around my neck, as she did now and then when the wine was in and what few scruples she had were pushed aside, I think I should have strangled her.

"You are going to be awfully sweet to me to-night, Bertie," she began, with honey on her tongue. "You are going to be my good angel. I need a lot of money, and I want you to be nice and get it for me."

"No," I refused briefly. "You've bled me enough."

"Just this one more time, Boy," she coaxed. "I've simply _got_ to have it, you know."

"Why don't you get it from your father?"

"He has quit," she said, with a toss of the shapely head. "Besides, you are so much easier."

"How much do you want, this time?"

She named a sum which was a fair measure of my entire checking account in the Cripple Creek bank; no small amount, this, though by agreement Gifford, Barrett and I had set aside a liberal portion of the mine earnings as undivided profits. When I hesitated, fairly staggered by the enormity of her demand, she added: "Don't tell me you haven't got it; I know you have. You don't spend anything except the little you dole out for me."

"If I have that much, I am not carrying it around with me."

"I didn't suppose you carried it in your pocket. But you are well known here in Denver, and you can get your checks cashed at any hour of the day or night, if you go to the right places. You've done it before."

I was desperate enough to be half crazed. Not content with making me lose the love of the one woman in the world, she was preparing to rob me like a merciless highwayman.

"Nothing for nothing, the world over," I said, between set teeth. "I mean to have the worth of my money, this time."

With a quick twist on the arm of the chair she leaned over and put her cheek against mine. "There are others," she laughed softly, "but there has never been a day or an hour when you couldn't make them wait, Bertie, dear." And then: "No; I haven't been drinking."

"You will give me what I want, if I will pay the price?" I demanded.

"You heard what I said," she whispered.

I made her sit up and tried to face her.

"This is what I want. Four years ago you and your father sent me to prison for a crime that I didn't commit. Go over to that table and write and sign me my clearance--tell the bald truth and sign your name to it--and you shall have your money."

In a flash she slipped from her place on the arm of the chair and stood before me transformed into a flaming incarnation of vindictive rage. In spite of the pace she had been keeping she was still very beautiful, and her anger served to heighten that physical charm which was the keynote of her power over men.

"_Oh_!" she panted; "so _that_ was what you were willing to pay for! You want a bill of health so you can go back to that little hussy in Cripple Creek! Listen to me, Bert Weyburn: you've broken the last thread. I could kill you if you couldn't serve my turn better alive than dead! _I want that money_. If you don't bring it here to me by ten o'clock, the Denver police are going to find out that you, the wealthy third partner in the Little Clean-Up, are the man they photographed nearly a year ago, the man whose thumb-print they took, the man who is wanted as an escaped convict who has broken his parole--No, don't speak; let me finish. For the money you are going to bring me, I'll keep still--to the police. But for the slap you've just given me. . . . Did you ever read that line of Congreve's about a woman scorned? You've had your last little love-scene with Polly Everton!"

I'll tell it all. This time the murder demon proved too strong for me. It was a sheer madman who sprang at her out of the depths of the arm-chair and bent her back over the little oak writing-table with his hands at her throat. She was not womanly enough to scream; instead, she fought silently and with the strength and cunning of mortal fear. Even as my fingers clutched at her for the strangling hold she twisted herself free and put the breadth of the table between us; then I found myself looking into the muzzle of a small silver-mounted revolver.

"You fool!" she gasped. "Do you think I would take any chances with you? If you should kill me, the axe would fall and find your neck, just the same! I put it in a letter to the chief of police. Get me that money before ten o'clock if you want me to stop the letter!"

I was beaten, this time not by fear of her or what she could do, but by the crushing loss I had suffered in those few mad moments. I had done the thing that no man may do and still claim that he has a single drop of gentle blood in his veins; I had laid my hands in violence upon a woman, and with murder in my heart.

Convinced now that there was no deeper depth of degradation to which I could sink, I set about the task she had given me, laboring through it like a man in a dream. To gather up such a huge sum of money after banking hours was well nigh impossible; but I compassed the end by chartering a cab and going to anybody and everybody who could by any possibility cash my checks, leaving a disgraceful trail of the bank paper in dives and gambling dens and night resorts without number--driven to this because all respectable sources were closed at that time in the evening.

Returning to the hotel only a few minutes before the critical hour, I went directly to her rooms, carrying the money in a small hand-bag that I had bought for the purpose. I found her waiting for me, gowned and hatted as if for a journey. She was standing before a mirror, dabbing her neck with a powder-puff--histronic to the last; she was showing me how she had to resort to this to cover up the marks of my assault. I have failed in my picture of her if I have not portrayed her as a woman of moods and lightning changes. There was no trace of the late volcanic outburst in her manner when she greeted me and handed me a sealed and stamped envelope addressed to the Denver chief of police.

"You got the money?" she said quietly. "I knew you would." And then with a sudden passion: "Oh, Bertie! if you weren't such a cold-blooded fish of a man!--but never mind; it's too late now."

I placed the small hand-bag on the table, pocketed the fateful letter, and backed toward the door. "If there is nothing else," I said.

"Oh, but there is!" she put in quickly. "I want you to get a cab and take me to the station. I'm leaving for California. Don't you want to go with me?"

"God forbid!" I exclaimed, and it came out of a full heart. Then I went down to order the cab.

She was curiously silent on the short drive down Seventeenth Street to the Union Station, sitting with the little hand-bag on her knees and breathing as they say the Australian pearl fishers breathe before taking the deep-sea dive. In the station she stood at a window in the women's room and waited while I purchased her ticket for San Francisco and paid for the sleeper section which had evidently been reserved some time in advance.

It is perhaps needless to say that I did not buy my own California ticket at the same time, though the train she was taking was the one I had planned to take. My journey could be postponed; and in the light of what had happened, and what was now happening, I was beginning to understand that my runaway trip to the Pacific Coast was no longer necessary, on one account, at least. But in any event, wild horses couldn't have dragged me aboard of the same train with Agatha Geddis.

She seemed strangely perturbed when I went to her with the tickets, and she made no move to leave the window.

"Your train is ready," I told her, as she thrust the ticket envelope into the bosom of her gown.

"Wait!" she commanded; then she turned back to the window which looked out upon the cab rank.

There were cabs coming and going constantly, and I didn't know until afterward what she saw that made her eyes light up and the blood surge into her cheeks.

"Now I'm ready," she announced quickly. "Put me on the sleeper."

I took her through the gates and at the gate-man's halting of us I saw that we were followed.

Our shadow was an alert, dapper young man who wore glasses, and I remembered having seen him, both at the ticket window and in the women's room. Outside of the gates he confirmed my suspicion by trailing us to the steps of the sleeping-car.

Even then I didn't suspect what was going on. While the sleeping-car conductor was examining the tickets and taking the section number I saw the young man with the spectacles making a hurried reconnaissance of the car by walking back and forth beside it and peering curiously in through the lighted windows. Then I missed him for a minute or two until he came running from the gates with a railroad ticket in his hand.

"I'm going to Cheyenne, and I want a berth in this car," he told the Pullman conductor, "They said they couldn't sell me one at the office--that you had the diagram."

The conductor looked over his list. "Nothing doing," he returned. "All sold out."

"That's all right," snapped the young man; "I'll take my chance sitting up." With that, he climbed aboard and disappeared in the car.

All this time we had been waiting for the conductor to return my companion's tickets. When he did so, I helped her up the steps. The air-brakes were sighing the starting signal, and she turned in the lighted vestibule and blew me a kiss.

"Good-by, Bertie, dear," I heard her say. "Be a good boy, and give my love to Little Brown-Eyes." Then, as if to prove the immortal saying that there is no such thing as ultimate total depravity in the human atom, she leaned over to whisper the parting word: "Make good with her if you can, and want to, Bertie: I didn't mean it when I said I'd spoil your chances. Good-night and good-by." And with that the train moved off and she was gone.

I slept late in my room at the hotel the next morning, waking with a vague sense of inexpressible relief, which was quickly followed by the emotions which may come to a man regaining consciousness after he has been sandbagged and robbed. At table in the breakfast-room the boy brought me a morning paper. On the first page, in screaming headlines, I saw the complete explanation of the mysteries of the previous evening. Agatha Geddis had eloped with a married man notably prominent in social and business circles. The newspaper had two reliable sources of information. The deserted wife had been interviewed, and the guilty pair had been followed on the train by a reporter.

I laid the paper aside and stared out of the breakfast-room window like a man awakening from a horrid dream. Once again the submerging wave of realization and relief rushed over me. Truly, I had been held up and robbed; had in fact innocently financed this city-shaking elopement. But, so far as Agatha Geddis's banishment from Denver and Colorado could accomplish it, I was once more a free man.