Chapter VIII: Part V (2)

It was late one afternoon when Haworth was finally able to say to himself that the mechanism was complete and its operation satisfactory. As early the next morning as he thought likely people would have arrived in their offices or places of business, he started out to find some one who would purchase the rights for the handling and exploitation of his novel mechanical conception; and before evening of that same day he had come home stunned and stricken with the realization that all his work had been of no avail. For it had never occurred to the young inventor that the absolute secrecy upon which the value of his device depended, could at the same time prove an insurmountable obstacle in the way of disposing of it. Not until he went out and tried to make a sale did this unfortunate situation reveal itself. Then, and at once, he made the terrifying discovery that he couldn’t possibly describe his mechanism and its tremendous monetary possibilities until he was perfectly certain that he was doing so to the man who would buy it; for there could be no possibility of anyone taking hold of it and agreeing to pay the large sum of money that he (Haworth) must have, as well as assuming the heavy expense of manufacture and general promoting, unless given a full description of the invention and its operation, together with his plans connected with its exploitation. If ever there was a vicious circle on earth, this was one—and not much distance to go in circumnavigating it.

The truth came to him with a shock; indeed, he got the shock before his conscious mind was aware of the truth. He had gone to a man he used occasionally to meet at the mansion while old Mr. Cripps was alive. This gentleman and Mr. Cripps seemed quite friendly, and the latter once mentioned that Mr. Hollister (the gentleman’s name) had just made a big pile of money on some patent he owned. Haworth hadn’t seen him since those days. His office was in a large building on Beacon Street a little way up from Tremont, and Haworth was there before ten in the morning. It was his first attempt to sell.

Mr. Hollister received him graciously—an elderly gentleman with a sharp Yankee face, though kindly at that. While he was quite disturbed by Haworth’s appearance—his extreme emaciation and ghastly pale face with the feverish fire burning in his eyes—he showed no sign of it, and after making him sit down by his desk and remarking on the number of years since they’d met, asked if there was anything he could do for him.

Haworth began at once to explain that he’d just perfected a mechanical novelty regarding which he would like to interest him. He had built, in the basement of the house, a full-sized working model—in fact, the machine itself—for in the exploitation, or you might say output, of the thing, lay the large money-making possibilities. He was going on glibly enough with this sort of talk—for he was feverishly excited and spoke rapidly—when he suddenly and unexpectedly came up against the insurmountable obstacle. At the time he did not know what it was;—he was only aware that something had stopped him dead. There was a silence for a full minute. Then, his mind a sickening blank, he began to stammer out a few disconnected words, after which he was silent again and sat staring.

Mr. Hollister, who’d been more than eager to hear what Haworth had in the way of an invention, supposed the young man had been taken suddenly ill (he certainly looked it) and hastened to get him a drink. But it was all over. The young fellow couldn’t go on. And finally, in a blind sort of way, he got up from his chair and walked dizzily out of the office.

The elder man followed to the elevator, quite solicitous; asking if there wasn’t something he could do, and making efforts to learn what the trouble was. But Haworth shook his head weakly, the elevator door clanged, and he dropped silently out of sight.

As he came out at the street entrance of the building he moved along the wall a short distance and stood there, his eyes strained wide open. The blow was so sudden and smashing that he was dazed, not realizing what had struck him. He’d been there for hardly more than a minute when the traffic policeman from the Tremont corner came hurrying along. A lady had reported that something was the matter with a man leaning against a building a little way up Beacon. The moment he saw Haworth he ran across the street to him and asked what was wrong.

The young man shook his head a little, but was unable to speak.

“Live here in Boston?” the officer inquired.

“Out—Roxbury.”

“What’s the street?”

“Torrington.”

“Some ways. I’ll send a taxi.”

“No, please don’t!” Haworth was suddenly emphatic. “I can get home all right!” Saying which, he turned and walked unsteadily up the street.

* * * * *

He found himself awhile later, without knowing how he got there, seated on the bench in the Public Garden where he and Edith had been—ages ago—ages ago. He was trying to remember what he’d said to Mr. Hollister, with the vague idea of finding out what it was that had stopped him in the midst of the interview.

It’s an odd thing, isn’t it, what the human mind’ll do to you! While he was talking in the office there, running as smooth as you like, the brakes suddenly went on, the wheels creaked, and he came to a dead stop, and all without the slightest volition on his part. Now, as he sat there near the pond and the shouting children, he slowly came to a realization of the reason why a certain safety device installed somewhere in his mental machinery, had automatically brought him to a standstill. It would be impossible to explain the device and its operation to anyone without ruining every chance it had. That is, _unless the people he explained it to took it_—and how could he be sure they would?

Suddenly, after a length of time of which he had no idea, he got to his feet. There was hope yet! A ray of hope!

He would think up some sort of _similar_ affair—a proposition involving the same sort of risks yet in reality nothing like it. This he would describe to a man he was trying to interest in the thing, speaking of it casually, not as anything of his own, but as an odd thing he’d heard of—a man he knew had gone into it, and so on. From the remarks and behavior of a person to whom he described this similar proposition, it was Haworth’s idea that he could gain a pretty clear indication as to whether the man would go into such a thing himself if he got the opportunity; and when he found one who would, he could safely let him know exactly what it was.

There was no time to waste. He walked rapidly away, trying mightily to conceive of some scheme that would give hazards corresponding to his own, yet bearing no dangerous similarity to it.

Among the few men with whom he had had business dealings, he selected the manager of a machine shop—one Mat Williams—as being the most likely to be attracted. By the time he got to Williams’s place he had something roughly thought out to test him with, and as soon as he could get him aside he began telling about a friend of his who had gone into a most unusual enterprise—which enterprise he described at length. Williams was naturally astonished that Haworth should come there to tell him an absurd and apparently pointless anecdote, and when the young man began demanding avidly what he thought of it, Williams decided that the fellow had gone completely off his nut. He was sorry, but the only course seemed to be to get rid of him as soon as possible, which he did, smoothing things over with pleasant talk and a hurried handshake.

Haworth was cut up a bit, though he had no idea how bad it really was. But as he tried one after another with his singular method of diagnosing their speculative propensities, and found that every one of them, instead of talking business, tried to get away from him as soon as he possibly could, his hope began to ebb.

From one to another he went, despairingly yet without thought of surrender, coming to expect their glances of surprise, followed sometimes by alarm, and again by something akin to pity. He accepted these various expressions as they came, entirely unable to account for them, realizing only that one after another of those he approached on the subject appeared to have a strange antipathy to hearing anything about the hypothetical cases he hit on to try them with, and hurried away from him at the first available opportunity.

* * * * *

It was impossible that the night, when it came, should be anything but a distressing one for Haworth. Though approaching people about his machine had come, in this short space of time, to be about as enjoyable as so many executions for murder, the poor fellow would rather have gone on with it than lie helpless while his mind grappled with his monstrous predicament.

After a time, when the torture of the thing passed the point of endurance, he would stagger blindly to his feet and stride about at a tremendous pace, having no realization of where he was. This happened several times during the night.

The morning saw him out again with his white, emaciated face and threadbare clothing, going mechanically from one place to another in his vain search for some one he could rely on as a purchaser—a most doubtful enterprise at the best, but put in the perfectly hopeless class by his eccentric management of it, together with his disturbing appearance and behavior.

He hunted up several speculators who had once been friendly with old Mr. Cripps, and quite frequently, in those days, guests at the house; he went to Mr. Trescott and even to the manager of the bank with which he had had some modest dealings in time gone by. But there wasn’t one of those he approached with his misguided efforts to test them out, who was not quite convinced, after listening to him a moment, that the poor fellow was mildly insane. Mr. Trescott was quite saddened by it, yet hardly surprised.

The day following was Sunday, and after a hideous night of despair he had fallen into a sort of stupor that lasted until the middle of the afternoon. When he finally roused himself from it (he had been sitting in a chair since the night before) the realization of his dreadful dilemma came upon him with appalling intensity, and he went to pacing about the house in a manner that filled Mrs. Temple with a new alarm. There was a frantic desperation about it that terrified the old woman, and it was some time before she got her courage up to speak to him. She finally succeeded in waylaying him in the narrow back hall, but he strode past without appearing to see her, crowding her against the side wall as he did so, but of course without any idea of what he was doing.

She recovered herself as soon as she could and made another effort to get his attention, this time calling out to him that he mustn’t go on that way—he’d kill himself! But it seemed impossible to make him hear.

For more than an hour she listened to his tramping about, sometimes on the floor above, sometimes in the large entrance hall or other rooms on the ground floor, but never in the basement.

Suddenly, when it was getting on toward four o’clock, there was a dull, muffled noise apparently coming from one of the rooms above, as of something falling heavily on the floor, and with it the sound of tramping ceased. Though she felt her legs weakening under her, she toiled up the main stairway. Looking down the upper hall, she could see from the light striking through it into the corridor that the door of the room Mrs. Findlay had occupied was open—something unusual, for he’d always kept it closed and locked.

She hurried, limping, down the hall and went to the door.

Haworth was lying face down on the floor, his head resting on his arms.

Mrs. Temple hastened to him, possessed only of the terrifying thought that he was dead, and sank down on the floor at his side.... No! He was breathing! Gently shaking him by the shoulder, she called his name.

At first there was no response, but after a little he spoke in a voice that was half a whisper, and without raising his head asked her please to go away—he didn’t want to be disturbed. Would she please go?

The old woman struggled to her feet and brought a pillow from another room, feeling he wouldn’t like her to disturb the pillows in this one. Kneeling on the floor beside him, she gently raised his head and put the pillow under it. Then, with all the haste she was able to make, she set out for a drug store, half a mile away on Center Street.

On reaching the place she had to wait a moment before she could recover breath enough to ask the clerk if he could tell her where she could find a good doctor for Mr. Haworth.... Yes, over at the Cripps mansion.... Yes indeed, it was very serious and some one ought to see him.

The clerk had, that very morning, been reading a full-page write-up in one of the Sunday supplements, in which the house on Torrington Road and its singular occupant had been fully described and illustrated. For this reason he was instantly interested, and volunteered himself to telephone to Doctor Crimmin’s office. If the doctor wasn’t in he’d leave word for him to go out there as soon as he came.

Mrs. Temple thanked him and hurried away. When she got to her lodgings she carefully closed the door, pulled out the old trunk, reached down under the clothing in it, and brought up the cigar box, from which she took three silver quarters, muttering to herself as she seized them: “Rainy day! I should think so! It’s one o’ them cloudbursts!”

With these coins gripped in her withered hands, she went to the nearest grocery store and bought four eggs, a loaf of bread, ten cents’ worth of tea, and a small glass jar of milk, and then made all possible haste back to the mansion.

* * * * *

I never could find out—for certainly Haworth had no idea, and what other witnesses were there?—how long it was after Mrs. Temple left him face down on the floor of his room, that he became aware of the sounding of the front-door “buzzer.” Few in his distracted state of mind would have noticed it, nor would he had not his years of mechanical training made him ultrasensitive to such sounds. Sensitive also to the condition of such mechanisms and instruments, as shown by his never failing to keep the electric bell system of the house in perfect working order, no matter what dilapidations befell elsewhere.

Again the buzzer sounded on the floor below, echoing through the bare half-furnished rooms. Haworth found himself vaguely realizing that Mrs. Temple wasn’t in the house or she’d have answered the first ring.

Slowly he got to his feet, descended the stairs, and crossing the great hall to the front door, opened it.

* * * * *

Mr. Pentecost,—who had that morning read a Sunday supplement write-up with headings about the “Hermit Inventor of West Roxbury,” and had come out there (instead of taking an afternoon express for New York as he had planned) to see if possibly some one of the devices the “Hermit Inventor” had on hand might not come in nicely for his partner’s (Mr. Harker’s) activities,—had hardly a doubt that it was the inventor himself standing before him in the doorway. And although, owing to the overshadowing elms and the roof and pillars of the portico above and behind him, he found it difficult to see with any distinctness, he got an instant impression, from a certain paleness of face that was almost luminous and a peculiarity in the young fellow’s attitude or manner, that something was wrong with him.

The two stood silent a moment, for something made the commonplace salutation Pentecost had in mind seem quite inappropriate, and it was the young man who finally spoke.

“What is it?” he asked in a hollow voice, slightly tremulous.

“I beg your pardon,” Pentecost hastened to say. “I called to see Mr. Haworth.”

“What about?” still with a quivering note of near-tragedy.

“Are you Mr. Haworth?”

“Yes——but I don’t want to see anybody. Please go away.” And he was turning back into the house.

“One moment! It’s business—entirely business—I’m sure you’ll be interested.”

“I don’t think so,” came the hollow voice out of the gloomy half light, and it was evident the young man was about to close the door.

“Mr. Haworth!” Pentecost spoke sharply. “Can’t you listen half a minute? It concerns us both—and I can’t very well talk about it here.”

Haworth stared at him an instant and then, opening the door a little wider, made a slight motion of invitation.

Pentecost stepped in with a muttered, “You’re very kind,” and glanced quickly about the vast entrance hall in which he found himself—an enormous place two stories in height and with a great stairway at the further end rising to a landing and from that branching to each side. The place was seemingly quite destitute of furniture or floor covering, and he found himself wondering how the young man had managed to make no sound when he crossed it to open the door. He would look at his feet later, when there was more light; it was very dim in the hall.

Closing the massive front door, Haworth moved to the large double doorway on the left—on the left as you enter the house, I mean—and stood waiting for his caller to enter before him. Pentecost did so and found himself in a large and lofty room with high paneled wainscoting of some dark wood, and a white marble mantel on the side opposite as he came in. There were two large windows in that wall—one on either side of the fireplace, though not near it; and another in the wall at his left which faced off toward Torrington Road. At the further end of the room—which was quite a distance, as it was an exceedingly long one—were two doors, one of which (a swing door held partly open by a chair shoved against it) revealed a butler’s pantry beyond. This large apartment was evidently the dining room—or once had been. The wainscoting, heavily built and with deeply set panels, was fully six feet high and extended entirely around it.

Though somewhat shadowed, this room was lighter than the great hall, and he saw mechanical blueprints and drawings laid out on a cheap kitchen table near the middle of it, with small tools and implements scattered about. Books and papers were piled and balanced here and there. The floor was covered with what had once been a handsome carpet—now worn and threadbare. The windows, he noticed, had cheap roller shades to them—but judging from the cornices and rich but faded lambrequins above—had once evidently had the heavy draperies of an earlier fashion.

Pentecost was an instantaneous observer, requiring no time exposure, so that there had hardly been a pause when he turned to speak to Haworth. But Haworth wasn’t there. He had followed into the room after Pentecost, but had slipped to one side and was now wandering back and forth along the wall toward the further end. He appeared to have forgotten the other’s presence, and his eyes shifted about, giving him the look of one tortured by some harrowing thought or memory. In a few moments his restless glance accidentally fell on Pentecost and he came to a sudden stop and stood staring at him.

“Oh—you!” he muttered, half to himself.

“Quite right,” said Pentecost.

“Well, what is it?” the young man asked, moving toward him.

“Perhaps I ought not to have intruded like this.”

“As you have,” came back the hollow voice out of the gloom, “why don’t you tell me what you want?”

“It’s a matter of some importance to us and I thought it might be to you. I represent a firm——Great God! what’s the matter?”

For as Haworth approached him out of the shadows at the far end of the room and the light from the front window fell on his face, Pentecost saw it distinctly for the first time, and the eyes that looked out at him from the drawn and almost distorted features might have been those of a drowning man.

“Matter?” the young man repeated.

“Why—yes. Are you—are you feeling all right Mr. Haworth?”

“You said you came about something important.”

“Yes—I did—but perhaps you——”

“If it’s money I owe you take anything you want and go away—that’s all—go away!” Saying which, Haworth turned and started walking restlessly about the room as he was doing before.

“Not at all—not at all! There’s nothing like that! It’s just the other way—I’m going to put a few dollars in _your_ pocket if you’ve got anything I can use.”

Haworth, halfway down the room, swung round with a look of such fearful and desperate avidity that Pentecost saw at once it was a case of money. The young fellow was in some dire extremity—some feverish need that mere destitution, even to the point of starvation, wouldn’t explain. Couldn’t be a more favorable situation for business. Easy to drive him to the wall and get one of his inventions for a block of stock—in other words, for nothing.

“I represent a firm of promoters—New York—Harker & Pentecost.” He took a card from his pocketbook. “We’re always looking for novelty—something different from anything that’s been on the market before.”

Mr. Pentecost paused, but the young man said nothing, and he went on: “It came to us a short time ago that you had some extraordinary inventions here and if——”

“There’s nothing you’d want,” Haworth interrupted.

“But perhaps—if you’d allow me to see what——”

“There’s no use in that! They come—hundreds of them—just want me to let them see. Then they’re sorry, but there’s nothing of practical use. That’s it—always nothing practical—always—always!” He moved away.

“It’s nothing to me whether the thing’s practical or not!”

Haworth stopped and stood looking at him.

“I’m not looking for carpet sweepers,” Pentecost went on, “or fireless cookers or any of those things that people are tired of reading advertisements about. The thing I’m after is novelty—something absolutely new and unheard of—something impressive in its operation so we can exploit it and give it a chance. Now it struck me from what I heard, that your work would perhaps be just the kind——”

He was halted in the midst of his talk by the way Haworth was staring at him. It wouldn’t have surprised him to get an indication on the fellow’s face that he’d just thought of one of his devices that would be what was wanted. But that wasn’t it. For soon he saw that the young inventor was studying _him_—figuring out what sort of a character he really was. Those strange and troubled eyes were fixed on him with an intense scrutiny that penetrated below the surface.

To divert this rather too close attention to himself, Pentecost spoke with more emphasis than before.

“I see you’ve thought of something, Mr. Haworth.”

There was no verbal response to this, but a barely perceptible motion of his head while still gazing intently at Pentecost, might be taken to mean that he had.

“Anything near what we’re looking for, do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“I hope it’s something unusual,” Pentecost said, cheerfully; “some novelty that’ll make ’em talk.”

“It will do that.”

“What made you say just now that you hadn’t anything I’d want?”

“This is something else.”

Pentecost was inclined to think the fellow had illusions. Anyone could see there was something wrong with him.

“Well, bring it along,” he suggested. “Let’s have a look at it.”

The answer was a slight negative head-shake.

“Too heavy?”

“It’s built in.”

“Where?”

“Under here—in the basement.”

“I see. Something to operate in a home. What does it do?”

“I want you to come down.”

“Certainly, Mr. Haworth. Lead the way.”

Notwithstanding that Pentecost felt convinced that the young man had signals set for some sort of brain storm and that he himself knew a thing or two about basements in relation to crime, the notion of not going down there when the distracted inventor suggested the idea, didn’t come within miles of occurring to him. He had a hunch there was something here for him—something extraordinary, too—and he was going after it.

Haworth moved nearer. “Mr.——What did you say your——”

“Pentecost.”

“Mr. Pentecost, I’ve decided to tell you everything.”

“The best thing you could do Mr. Haworth.”

“I find you’re the person I’ve been looking for.”

“You’re very kind to say so. Shall we go down and have a look at it?”

From Haworth’s last remark, Pentecost feared that after all he was hopeless.

“I’ll get the key.”

“Secret, eh?”

“Yes.”

“No patent?”

Haworth shook his head.

“What about the people you’ve shown it to?”

“There are none.”

“And you haven’t told anybody?”

“No.”

That sounded better. The chap had some sort of sense, anyway. But not the sense to patent it. That was too bad.

“The key’s upstairs.” And he started toward the entrance hall.

“Could we switch on a light here, Mr. Haworth? It’s a trifle overcast.”

“I’ll tell Mrs. Temple to light a lamp,” the young man answered from the door, and he hurried out.

So they’d cut off his current, Pentecost reflected—for he’d noticed electric fixtures about. Although hardly late enough for twilight, there was much the same thing in this vast and gloomy room with its dark walls and tree-shaded and vine-overgrown windows. Pentecost wanted to see what—if anything—was going on here. Something made him feel that whatever it was might be turned to his advantage.

Soon after Haworth left the room, Pentecost saw in the dimness the frail figure of a woman coming toward the table from the further end. Mrs. Temple, probably—the one he’d spoken of. He saw from her unsteady gait and bent figure that she was old and somewhat decrepit, and the momentary clicking of the lamp chimney against the glass shade as she took it off told of her trembling hands.

The old woman had reached home with her modest packages of food only a few moments before, and was greatly relieved as she passed down the flagged footpath to the kitchen, to catch a glimpse of Mr. Haworth through a side window of the living room; for it was evidence that he had recovered sufficiently to come downstairs. An instant later she saw that he wasn’t alone. A strange man—at least a stranger to her—was standing near the table and appeared to be watching the young fellow intently as he moved about. Then it came to her that he must be the doctor. Who else could it be? He certainly had the look of one with his close trimmed beard—and watching Mr. Haworth like that.

After getting the lamp shade and chimney off, Mrs. Temple groped about and found a match somewhere; but instead of striking it she straightened up—so far as she could—and after a glance at the door spoke in a low voice.

“You’re the doctor, ain’t ye?”

“No, madam,” Pentecost answered.

Mrs. Temple stared blankly at him, seeming for some reason to be astonished. “You ain’t?” she finally said.

“Certainly not. Are you feeling ill, madam?”

“Me?” looking at him in a surprised sort of way. “No!”

After an instant she again bent over the lamp and lighted it, regulating the flame by the little brass disk at the side. Pentecost saw her thin, withered old hands trembling under the light.

“Perhaps it’s Mr. Haworth who isn’t well?” he ventured.

The old woman looked at him. “You ain’t blind, be ye?” she asked.

“Not exactly, madam,” with a trace of a smile. “I saw he wasn’t looking quite right——”

“It’s a great sight more’n not lookin’ _right_!” Then she turned to him suddenly. “What’re you doin’ here?” she demanded sharply, yet keeping her voice subdued.

“I came on business.”

“Well ef it’s money you’re after you can talk to me. He ain’t in no condition to be pestered; you ain’t got much jedgment about ye ef ye can’t see that.”

“But my dear madam, I assure you——”

“Sh!” She was fussing with the lamp as Haworth came in.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, seeing her bending over it. “Won’t it work?”

“Yes,” she said, stooping and looking under the shade.

“I guess it’s liable to go now.”

“I want to take it downstairs, Mrs. Temple——This way, Mr. Pentecost.” The latter followed him across the great bare hall, to a door under the branching stairway on the left, and through this to a back hall at the further end of which the basement stairway descended.

Mrs. Temple stood motionless at the table where they’d left her. Strange as it may seem when you realize the briefness of the time, this decrepit old woman, bent and knotted with rheumatism, her hands tremulous with the palsy of age, had conceived a deep and implacable distrust of the man she had just heard addressed as Mr. Pentecost. She didn’t reason about it or ask herself why—that wasn’t her method. She simply accepted it and was determined to do what she could.

Ever since Haworth had built the small room in the basement some weeks before, he’d been working feverishly day and night on what she supposed to be one of his inventions, seeming so desperately bent on completing the thing, and for the last day or two plunged in such dreadful despair, that the poor woman was beside herself with anxiety. She’d often seen him through times of such absorption in his work that he would have starved if she hadn’t kept after him with food, but there’d never been anything so terrible as this and she couldn’t find out what was the matter.

And now had come this sinister-looking creature (though to save her life she couldn’t have said what was sinister about him) enveloped, it seemed to her, in an atmosphere of cunning and intrigue so dense that she could feel it, and Mr. Haworth had taken him down into the basement—most likely to that secret room he’d been working in so desperately—where the fellow was undoubtedly arranging some infamous plan or deviltry involving him.

Haworth, as soon as the door of the roughly planked room was closed on them, had stripped away the sheet that covered his mechanism from view and had begun to describe to Pentecost what it was intended to do. He was in the midst of this when Pentecost suddenly stopped him with a quick motion of his hand.

The lamp with its green shade stood on the top board of a stepladder, throwing a weird light on the two men facing each other in silence.

Haworth, recovering from his surprise (for he hadn’t heard anything) started to speak, but Pentecost shook his head emphatically, and after a moment’s pause whispered: “I hear someone!”

There was another pause. “You think somebody’s listening?” Haworth asked in a subdued voice.

“What I _think_ cuts no figure. This is where we take no chances!” And Pentecost suddenly threw open the door.

The light struck on old Mrs. Temple as she was going in through the door of Haworth’s workshop nearly opposite. She’d caught a word or two about some one listening and noted the sudden lowering of their voices just in time to turn back and get into the shop.

“Oh, Mrs. Temple!” Pentecost called in the most ordinary tone. “I’m on the hunt for a drink of water. Maybe you’d get me some, if it isn’t too much trouble?”

The old woman reappeared at the door with a bunch of chips and shavings in her hands. “It ain’t no trouble,” she mumbled without the faintest trace of embarrassment, and limped along to the stairway. Pentecost watched her labor up the stairs, then turned to Haworth standing in the door of the planked-up room.

“That old dame of yours is right on the mark,” he said in an undertone. “Came out of there with a bunch of shavings.”

“Yes—my shop. She gets them for the stove.”

“So I inferred,” said Pentecost. His admiration was because she’d managed it so deftly and said nothing about it. An amateur would have mentioned the stove. Just as well to keep an eye on that old lady.

She soon came back with the water. Pentecost took it from her. “Awful sorry to trouble you,” he said, “—and all those stairs to climb.” He took a sip of water. “You won’t need anything more down here perhaps?”

“Anything more?” she repeated in a puzzled way.

“Kindlings, for instance?”

“Not if the fire goes, I won’t.”

“I’m trusting, then, that it’ll do that.”

They stood looking at each other for an instant. Then the old woman turned and went hobbling off into the shadows of the basement and could be dimly seen toiling up the stairs.

A moment before she disappeared Pentecost said to Haworth, speaking distinctly but not raising his voice, “It’s a remarkable invention, Mr. Haworth—one that, handled properly, would make money; and I’d like to talk business with you.” Then, setting down the glass of water, he asked if he could have something out of his workshop.

“Of course,” Haworth said, hardly understanding. “What is it?”

“A piece of board five or six feet long—a light one about the size of a lath.”

They found a piece of narrow half-inch stuff, and Pentecost stood it against the wall, slanting across the path of anyone walking through the passageway in the darkness. He balanced it so that a touch would send it clattering down.

“Mrs. Temple wouldn’t listen, if that’s what you think,” Haworth said as they went back to the room.

“Of course not,” agreed Pentecost as he carefully closed the door. “Go ahead with it,” he whispered, “but keep the soft pedal on. Basement’s safe enough, but there’s a room above.”

“Yes, but Mrs. Temple would never——”

“I know—I know. She’s all right. Hell of a pity you don’t know what talent you’ve got in the house! Go on now. What the devil _is_ all this?”

And thereafter had anyone been at the rear end of the room on the left (which was the one above) or even in the basement itself, only the faint droning tones of conversation could have been heard, with occasional clanking and grinding sounds suggesting the revolution of geared wheels. No words could have been distinguished and the fact that toward the end of the interview, after Pentecost’s voice had been going on in a subdued but earnest murmur for quite a time, it was suddenly stopped, as though something had shut him off in the midst of a sentence, and that then, for several minutes following, there was absolute silence, could only have mystified without in the least enlightening anyone in a position to overhear.

In reality there was no mystery whatever, and the whole discussion between the two in that basement room was simple and straightforward. It was only that while Mr. Pentecost was in the very act of telling Mr. Haworth that there were various reasons why it was impossible for his firm to take on this remarkable idea of his for exploitation, there suddenly came to him—flashing through his mind in the characteristic way he hit on such things—a most ingenious scheme or operation that could be worked in connection with this device of Haworth’s—and in fact with nothing else; a scheme that appealed to him by reason of its extraordinary possibilities for shrewd maneuvering and complicated trickery and strategy, and because it was dangerous, cold-blooded, and terrible.

It came crashing in on him in the very midst of his declining to have anything to do with the Haworth invention—even while he was advising Haworth himself to let it alone—and naturally brought him to a stop that was near to being a jolt. The rest of his sentence remained unspoken. He sat motionless, his mind flooded with his new idea, a blank to everything else. And when Haworth, who had taken his refusal as final, at last muttered something about going upstairs, he rose from the wooden box on which he was sitting and followed.

Haworth, in the room above, set the lamp down and stood staring into vacancy.

Pentecost hunched himself up in a chair where he sat with his dark half-closed eyes fastened on the young inventor. He was figuring on what the chap would be likely to do under certain circumstances—the most effective method of taking care of him should he prove an obstacle—the safeguards he could use.

He was as certain that he’d purchase the rights for handling and exploiting the Haworth machine—but doing so in his own way—as he was that he saw the young fellow there before him. It was a chance he’d been looking for ever since he left Chicago. He’d pay anything necessary. But of course he knew how to manage so that the said “necessary” would be an insignificant figure.

Haworth began to walk up and down the room. Pentecost watched him for a while.

“What seems to be the matter?” he finally asked.

The young man stopped in his tracks and looked at him.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t take it.”

“I’m not the only man on earth.”

“It’s the time—the time!”

Pentecost regarded him from under his drooping eyelids.

“You’re looking for a bunch of money?” he asked.

“Yes—oh yes!” And Haworth turned and began to move about.

“Look here,” Pentecost called out to him after a while. “Just to satisfy my curiosity, put an index to it!”

“Index?” Haworth stopped and faced him.

“What amount?”

“I don’t know. A lot—thousands—I must have thousands.”

“How many?”

“All I can get—twenty. No, wait! More! Thirty—forty——”

“The fool that would give you that isn’t born yet.”

“How do you know? Wait! I’ve thought of something! I’ll go to the moving-picture men. They’ll take an interest—they’re bound to—the pictures are part of it—and they pay great prices—they pay thousands!”

Moving-picture men! And the distracted young fellow was capable of doing it. Might get something out of them, too, if he happened to strike a crooked concern.

“I don’t suppose you could wait a few days,” Pentecost mumbled in an uninterested sort of way. “There’s a bare chance I’ve thought of—though I doubt if it’s as good as the pictures at that.” (Of course he couldn’t appear to block the picture game. The price would go up on him—or would if the chap knew anything.)

“For yourself?” Haworth asked, eagerly; for he’d got it firmly fixed in his mind that this man was the one choice on earth for the carrying out of his idea.

Pentecost shook his head. “No,” he said, “but I’ve got a partner. I’ve known him to take a fling at something on his own account—if he took a fancy to it.”

“Where is he?”

“Pittsburgh—on business. He might be able to get here by Friday.”

“Five days!”

“Good man for you, too. Just his line. Done this sort of thing before.”

“But you don’t know he’d take it! I can’t wait five days and then have him say no! I’ll try the pictures. There was a man here last week—wanted to take me working at the lathe—said he’d read about me in a paper. I know where he is. I’ll find him to-night!”

There could be no doubt that the fellow would do as he said. He hadn’t the faintest idea in his system of what a “bluff” was. And the fear of losing this rare chance for ingenious chicanery drove Pentecost into the execution of what is popularly referred to as a “climb down.” Although able to camouflage this performance so that it did not appear in that unpleasant light, he had, before leaving the old Cripps mansion that evening, virtually guaranteed that his firm would take over the entire exploiting rights in the Haworth mechanism, and had agreed to pay for the same in cash, upon the signing of the contract, an amount which should be “satisfactory” to the young inventor. As to this payment he asked for a delay of fourteen days so that he could sound the market, the idea of the thing being so utterly unique that it was impossible at this time to estimate the exact figure they could pay. And as he needed every moment of the fourteen days option—as you might call it, and this being Sunday and so late anyway that nothing could be accomplished, he asked that the time allowed begin on the following day—Monday—at noon, bringing its expiration on Monday the 30th of August at the same hour.

With talk like this—which, as you see, bound him to nothing—in combination with the young man’s earnest desire that he should be the one to undertake the exploitation, Haworth was persuaded into this fourteen days delay, being made confident of receiving a large amount of money at the end of that time. Pentecost said he would bring Harker there to draw up the contract, on his return from Pittsburgh, and then this promoter of hazardous and extraordinary villainies rose to take his leave, slipping a bunch of bills on the table as he did so, with the explanation that what he’d got—though not in legal form—was really a fourteen-day option, and as option money he was leaving a couple of hundred. There was nothing of kindliness or rescue work involved in this; Pentecost had sized up Haworth well enough to know that acceptance of money would make him feel in honor bound to wait the fourteen days—bound firmer, indeed, than if he’d signed documents. A wary move, certain to prevent the young fellow, in a possible fit of desperation, from taking his astonishing idea to a motion picture concern.

The delay he’d asked for was absolutely necessary to Pentecost for the carrying through of the complicated campaign mapped out in his mind. Advance planting of a most unusual character and covering a great extent of territory was required. In addition there was the matter of Haworth himself—the chances—the safeguards—for he was a risk beyond computation. He had insisted on the payment being made to him in cash at the expiration of the fourteen days—if the firm decided to purchase the rights. It looked like a big bunch of money dropped in his lap and no anchor to it—an impossible situation. Of course the fellow would have to be taken care of. The way to do it was the problem. But Pentecost very well knew he’d have a solution—and an adroit one—before morning.

He boarded the midnight train for New York fifteen minutes before leaving time, and at once went to work on his intricate scheme.