Chapter II: Part 2

The room was hideously cheerless. Rubbish was piled everywhere. There was an old flat-topped desk with its back to the windows, and a sort of path had been cleared from the desk to the closet door with a branch to the bed midway. Elsewhere the litter had swamped everything. It was principally newspapers. Jack had never seen so many old newspapers in his life. One corner of the room was filled by a small mountain of scrap books containing faded clippings. When Jack came to examine them he found that all the items related to Silas Gyde, and most of them were abusive.

Yet from the walls of this unlovely room looked down a few rarely beautiful old pictures, and, as Jack was to learn later, they were of almost priceless value. Evidently at some period of his career the old miser had had generous stirrings. One of these pictures caused Jack a great start. It occupied the space next to the closet door, hence he did not see it until he had come into the room and had turned around.

It was his mother. An enlargement by a talented hand of the wistful girlhood picture Delamare had given him that morning. She looked down on the fusty disarray with pitying eyes: she was startlingly young and alive in that dark place. The tears welled up in Jack's eyes again.

"Think of her presiding over a den like this! I'll give her a sunnier prospect. But he must have loved her well! I'll credit him with that."

A tour of the rest of the house from cellar to garret revealed only emptiness, darkness and a smell of must.

Returning to Silas Gyde's room, Jack went to his desk. This spot alone of all the room was in good order. On it lay a book open and face down at the page where the dead man had left off reading. It was the _Ordeal of Richard Feveril_, and it was open at the page describing the first meeting of Richard and Lucy. Jack read a few lines and wondered that Silas Gyde could have cared for that sort of thing. It didn't seem to go with the rest of him. Jack slipped the book in his pocket, against an opportunity to make its better acquaintance.

There was also a fat red leather note book, a sort of journal, in which Silas Gyde had entered the details of his financial transactions. Jack saved that for his lawyer. Finally there was a manuscript which Death had interrupted in the middle of a sheet. Turning back to the first page Jack was not a little astonished to find that it was a sort of letter addressed to himself. From the dates upon it, it had been started five years before and added to from time to time.

Jack sat down to read it. The little dog, making it clear that he had adopted a new master, lay at his feet.

"To John Farrow Norman:

"Dear Jack:

"Everybody knows old Silas Gyde--or thinks he does. Miser, usurer, skinflint, champion tightwad--I quote from the collection of clippings I have made. What everybody says must be true, I suppose, but it is not the whole truth. There is another Silas Gyde--or there was once, and it is he who writes to you.

"Little did you guess that I have been keeping track of you since you were quite a small boy. I have always from that time intended to make you my heir. I suppose you wonder why I never made myself known to you. There were several reasons. For one thing I have noticed that the relations between a rich man and his heir are seldom happy. I didn't care to read in your eyes that you wished the old fool would hurry up and die and be done with it.

"Another thing, and this is the real reason: as the years pass it becomes more and more difficult for me to make overtures to anybody. It sounds silly for an old fellow of near sixty to confess that he is shy, but such is the fact. And shyness in the old is a torturing thing. They call me queer, cranky, crazy, and the truth is simply that I am shy. I never could run with the herd.

"It is true what they say, that I have not a friend in the world, and now I would not know how to set about making one. Especially a young one. I am afraid of you, my boy; afraid of your terrible, pitiless youthfulness. And so I just imagine you are my friend. I have long talks with you, and give you quantities of good advice, to which you give dutiful heed.

"At the same time I have always kept a sort of watch over you. And if actual misfortune had overtaken you I would have found a way to come to your assistance. A little poverty and hard work will enable you to appreciate riches later.

"By this time you have learned that I was once your mother's suitor. She refused me for the first Jack Norman, your father. I wonder if your mother ever talked to you about me. Probably not. She was never a talker. Well, I hope you will never have such a blow as that was to me. I don't think you will. You have a certain grace (I have seen you), Phoebe's grace, that will endear you to your chosen maiden. As for me, even as a youth I was a dry stick.

"What made it harder for me was that I despised your father as a weaker man than myself. When I let this out to your mother in my anger and bitterness, she retorted that if he was less strong he was certainly more lovable.

"I left Cartonsville in my bitterness. My one idea, like so many galled young men before me, was to do something that would force Phoebe Farrow to acknowledge to herself that she had chosen the wrong man. I resolved to make myself a rich man, the richest in America. To gain this end I was prepared to deny myself everything above the barest necessities of life. Every cent was to be set to work to earn five.

"I succeeded, as every man must, who is bent on a thing so determinedly as I was. I did not return to Cartonsville for fifteen years. Fifteen years of slavery they were. Those were the years that formed me for life--deformed me I should say. I was already a rich man when I went back.

"I found the situation much as I had imagined it. Your mother was the hard-working wife of a poor man--a man destined to die poor. She lived in a small inconvenient house without any servant, and her pretty hands were red and rough. And I was a millionaire. You were five years old at that time and your parents' only child. Both your elder brothers had died in an epidemic.

"But my triumph did not come off as I had pictured. Phoebe pitied me.

"'No wife nor chick?' she said, with her rare soft smile. 'Poor Silas! How useless your wealth must seem to you!'

"Then I saw as in a great white light that I had only been a fool for my pains. I returned to New York and automatically resumed the business of making money. I could not stop. It was all I knew. It filled my days and kept me from thinking.

"I often wished to change my way of life, but it was too late then. I was already known as Silas Gyde the usurer, and men had hardened their hearts against me. My diffident attempts to make friends were rebuffed. I was forced back into the rut I had worn for myself. There was nothing for me to do but earn the reputation the world had given me.

"I have told you that in fancy I often gave you advice. But it is not as a good example that I desire to hold myself up to you. I urge you to avoid my example. Never let money get the upper hand of you. Old Silas Gyde the miser tells you money is no good except to spend. I have succeeded in creating the incubus of wealth, and in so doing lost my soul. I leave you the harder task of ridding yourself of it, without losing yours.

"Your well-wisher,
"Silas Gyde."

Under a date two years later the letter was resumed:

"I have opened this to add a warning. When you inherit my money, you are bound to inherit my cares also. Ever since I became rich enough to be notorious, I have been a target for men's envy and hate. I expected it. Indeed, I enjoyed it in a way. I gloated over my books of clippings. Their hatred gave me a sense of being somebody in the world.

"In my daily mail I received, and still receive, hundreds of letters, appealing, threatening, abusive; letters from every kind of crank. I ignore them. But lately a real danger has begun to threaten me in the spread of anarchistic doctrines among the people. And there are not lacking those to turn the justifiable discontent of the people to their own blackguardly advantage. My threatening missives now have an organized hatred behind them.

"The culmination was reached a month ago in the shocking death of Ames Benton, the first tragedy of the kind that has occurred in America--but not the last I fear. I knew the man; I did business with him; I had talked to him the day before his death. What brought it closer home to me was the fact that Benton was what you'd call a popular man; openhanded, affable, of a kindly nature. If they did this to him, what will my fate be!

"The affair may be forgotten by the time you read this, so I will say Benton was a prominent and wealthy man--though not so rich as I--president and director in many corporations. He was blown to pieces in his bed at night by an anarchist's bomb. The man that threw it likewise lost his life in the explosion. How he succeeded in reaching Mr. Benton's bedroom will always remain a mystery. Among Mr. Benton's effects were found threatening letters similar to those I have received. The assassin's accomplices--it is believed that he must have had accomplices--have never been found.

"This affair has not helped me to sleep better of nights. My courage is of the daylight variety. So long as I can have my eyes open and my wits about me, I am willing to take my chances, but at the thought of being attacked in my bed I confess my heart turns to water. So I have taken my measures.

"The Madagascar Hotel which I was building was all but complete. To secure light and air on the West I had already bought the adjoining dwelling on Forty ----th street. I got it cheap because it had been a private insane asylum and was in bad odor in the neighborhood. The transaction had been effected through agents, and it was not known that I was the owner.

"I had an opening cut between the hotel and this dwelling. By distributing the work among many hands I was able to conceal my eventual purpose from all. The people who put in the steel doors thought that the rear door was to give on a shallow cupboard in the wall. When the doors were in I knocked out this cupboard myself and had a clear way through. Nobody who knew thought it at all out of the way that Silas Gyde should put in a steel vault in connection with his suite in the hotel.

"I have installed myself in a rear room of the old dwelling. The front of the house which has been boarded up for years I was careful not to disturb. Here I can sleep in peace. If the ghosts of the poor insane patients stalk through the halls, they do not trouble me.

"But they may get me yet, of course, and I am writing to put you in possession of all the particulars. I am sure now, that there is a devilishly able brain using the anarchistic agitation to further a blackmailing scheme on a gigantic scale.

"For instance, immediately after poor Benton's death I received a letter threatening me with the same fate, and I have reason to believe that many other rich men received similar letters. I promptly put mine in the hands of the police, as did others, with what result? None, except that I instantly received another letter apprising me that my act was known, and that if I did not immediately cease all dealings with the police I would be shot down in the street.

"I ignored this letter, and three days later I got a bullet through my hat in City Hall Square. The newspapers seemed to take the attitude that it was no more than my due. But the other rich men appreciated the significance of the act, and I have no doubt the blackmailing business was much stimulated thereby. Still the police did nothing, and I resolved to have no more to do with those gentry, but to protect myself.

"Now observe. A week after the attack on me I was called upon in my office by a polite young man who handed me the card of the 'Eureka Protective Association.' His proposition in brief was, that for a stated sum paid every month (four hundred dollars was the amount named) his organization would guarantee to protect me against all threats from Anarchists, and would warn me in advance of any plans that were laid to attempt my life. Since the police had failed to suppress the Reds, he said, his people had succeeded in placing their agents in every circle of anarchists, to take note of and report on all their activities.

"Ingenious, was it not? I could well imagine that many of my timorous wealthy acquaintances would fall for it eagerly after all the agitations of the past few weeks. But to me it smelled rank of blackmail. It seemed to me that if I once submitted, the impost would promptly be doubled, trebled, quadrupled, and instead of securing peace I would be letting myself in for a life of continuous alarms. I might as well die at once. Anyhow, I thought, it wasn't possible that every rich man would submit, and they couldn't very well assassinate us all. My chance was as good as another's.

"So I turned the polite young man down, and took my own measures. I closed my office down-town, and carried my business under my hat, as they say. I traded impartially through every broker in town. I have moved into my retreat in the old house, and venture out only by daylight, keeping to the crowded streets. The secret of my sleeping-place is still a secret I am sure. I have had no more threatening letters, and I hope they have crossed me off their lists as a hopeless prospect. But if they do get me, you will know all the circumstances."

The next entry had been made nine months later.

"My dear boy:

"The long evenings are hard to get through. My eyes tire with reading, and my thoughts are not cheering. I have tried playing solitaire, but it seems like the last resource of the feeble-minded. I have got me a little dog for company, picked him up half-starved, but he's a great sleepyhead.

"I think of you more and more. I wish I dared go to you and make myself known. But I have put it off too long. I know now that I shall never go. This is the only medium I can use to communicate with you. You will know me after I am gone. Who knows, perhaps I shall have left a friend here after all."

Several pages of good advice followed here; cynical, humorous, friendly, out of the old millionaire's store of experience. A very different Silas Gyde was revealed from him the world knew. But for the moment Jack skimmed over this part hastily in his anxiety to learn more of the facts bearing on his benefactor's end.

The last entry was only three days old.

"Three years have now elapsed since I told you of the first threats against my life. The threats have been renewed from time to time. That I am still above ground is due to no lack of effort on the part of my enemy, I am sure. More and more I feel that one man is behind it all. One attempt has been made on my life that I know of, and no doubt others. My supposed room in the Madagascar has been entered. But my real abiding-place is still my secret, I believe.

"Now I want to tell you of a new direction their activities have taken.

"About three weeks ago in the flock of begging letters that assail me every day there was one which caught my attention. It purported to be from a young girl struggling to make her way in New York as a visiting stenographer, and asked me if I could give her occasional work. An affecting note of simplicity seemed to distinguish it from the usual type of such letters. 'Why shouldn't even Silas Gyde do a good act?' I asked myself, and sent for her to come to the public writing room of the hotel.

"Previous to that I had been dictating to public stenographers wherever I happened to drop in. They didn't know me of course, and thus my business secrets were safeguarded. So you see it was at somewhat of a sacrifice that I engaged my pretty petitioner.

"She was extremely pretty, and seemingly well-bred. Her modest manner carried out the promise of her letter. Perhaps I am not sufficiently experienced with the sex. No man ever fooled me for long. For two weeks she came every day that I needed her. She was not a very expert stenographer but filled my simple demands. I noticed on her part a willingness to enter into more personal relations with her employer, but I didn't blame her for that, poor girl. A hundred millions I supposed was enough to sugar even such an old pill as Silas Gyde.

"But a week ago in amongst the bundle of completed letters she left with me, had been slipped by chance the page of a letter she had been writing on her own account. The beginning was missing, but the piece I had was sufficiently significant. I will paste it below."

The inserted typewritten page read as follows:

"_--where the old man sleeps. You say you are sure he doesn't occupy his bed in the Madagascar, but I haven't been able to find out anything to the contrary. Apparently he comes down from his room to give me dictation. He never has me up there, though I have complained about the noise down-stairs, etc. I got in touch with the chambermaid that does up his room, as you suggested. She doesn't suspect that the bed is not slept in every night. I understood that she has to make it up in the mornings, like all the other beds. So I think you are mistaken in saying that suite is a blind. Give me a little more time and I will make sure through one of the clerks (with whom I am friendly) if S.G. has another suite somewhere in the hotel._

_M.C._

Silas Gyde's ms. resumed:

"When my young lady came the following day I observed a certain anxiety in her glance. Evidently she was not sure where she had lost that tell-tale paper. She sounded me discreetly. I was careful to show her an unchanged front, and she finally made up her mind that I had not seen it. I continued to give her work just as before, and after several days quietly dropped her. That was yesterday.

"This incident has made me thoughtful of course, showing how close they had come to my secret. They may get me at any time. If they do, they will most assuredly transfer their attentions to you as soon as it is published that you are my heir. Therefore I wish you to be armed with all the information possible.

"The name this precious young lady gave me was Beatrice Blackstone. That means nothing of course. But her good looks were really notable, even to my dim old eyes, and I will try to give you a description that will put you on your guard, should she ever bring her fascinations to bear on you.

"She said she was twenty-three, but seemed in unguarded moments to be a good five or six years older. She was a brunette with lustrous, wavy chestnut hair and hazel eyes of extraordinary size and brilliancy. By hazel I mean gray eyes with a rim of brown around the iris. With me she played a demure part, but there were moments when I saw that she could do the haughty and imperious too. She was tall for a woman, about five feet seven I should say, and of a very elegant figure which seemed slimmer than it was. Weight about a hundred and thirty-five. She walked with a peculiar undulating motion, bobbing her head slightly with each step. When she was taking dictation I noticed on the index finger of her right hand a large pale mole, round in shape and of the bigness of a button on a woman's glove. So much for Beatrice Blackstone.

"I find that the pleasure of writing to you is growing on me and I mean to make a regular thing of it hereafter."

Those were the last words.

6

Jack sat staring at the letter he had just read, deeply stirred by feelings new to him. Youth generally is profoundly unaware of the hearts of the aged. The feeling is that the old have had their day, have cooled off and hardened, and practically ceased to exist. It came with a shock of surprise to Jack to learn that an old man might be misunderstood, bitter, hungry for affection--just the same as a young one.

"Poor old fellow!" he murmured. "He thought of me a lot! He was good to me. And I never knew. If I had known him I might have made his last days easier. I might have prevented what happened."

Hard on these softer feelings rose a slow tide of anger. "Oh, the devils! To think up such a fiend's game! And then to get away with it! It's too much for an honest man to stand! I wish I could pay them off! ... I _will_ pay them off. I have power now. That shall be my job. If I live I'll square this account!"

He registered his vow with an involuntary glance upward at his mother's portrait. It seemed to him that the wistful face softened on him in approval.

The impulse to action brought Jack to his feet. Peeping through the curtains he saw that darkness had fallen outside.

"Good Lord!" he thought astonished. "How long have I been here!"

His watch informed him that it was eight o'clock. He picked up the lamp, and with a last look around the strange room turned to leave. He had a feeling that that place marked a turning point in his life. He would never again be quite the light-hearted boy that had entered it.

He had forgotten the dog. The little beast seeing his purpose, and terrified of being left alone again, threw himself against Jack's legs in a desperate appeal to be taken along.

Jack stooped to caress him. "Poor old fellow!" he said. "I wonder how long it is since you saw the light of the sun. I can't take you now, honest I can't. But you be patient. I'll be back to-morrow."

But the tiny animal thrust himself into Jack's embrace and would not be denied. Jack finally picked him up and thrust him in his coat pocket. He settled down quite contentedly, only his nozzle and his bright eyes showing.

"Well I guess you must be accustomed to this mode of travel," said Jack. "I'm going to call you Jumbo because that's not your name."

Carefully locking all the doors behind him, he left the lamp in the hotel sitting-room, and made his way out by the private entrance. His impulse was to seek his own hall bedroom, the nearest thing to home that he knew, and there alone, amidst familiar surroundings, to try to bring some order out of his whirling thoughts.

Jack's boarding house was in the West Forties near Eighth avenue, in the center of that vast colony of boarders. His way from the Madagascar lay up Broadway for three short blocks, then westward for a long one. He passed through the throng hurrying theaterward without seeing anybody; he forgot that he had had no dinner; he forgot that his pocket was full of money and was tempted by none of the alluring show-windows.

The burden of his thoughts was: "It's a big job! A big job! I can't afford to make any mistake at the start!"

In front of a corner newsstand he was brought up all standing by a glimpse of the staring headlines of the night editions.

HEIR TO THE GYDE MILLIONS
FOUND IN A HALL BEDROOM

A POOR BOY IS ENRICHED BEYOND THE DREAMS OF
AVARICE

_Old Romance in the Dead Millionaire's Life Revealed_

Jack bought several papers, and standing in a doorway out of the press of the crowd, experienced the first wonderful thrill of finding himself famous. There is nothing else quite like it. How you became famous is a secondary matter. To find yourself on the first page is enough: to see the shape of your name in print. Many a good head has been turned for life by it.

All the papers offered sensational versions of Jack's story, more or less accurate. It had apparently been given out at Delamare's office in the first place, and so far they had it pretty straight. But they went on to embroider it. The more reckless sheets even printed interviews which caused Jack to grind his teeth, they made him out such a fool. One paper printed an alleged photograph, but it was a safely fuzzy photograph that might have been taken for almost anybody. They had discovered the address of his boarding-house, but in his absence his landlady, Mrs. Regan, had refused to be drawn out.

"Good old girl!" thought Jack.

The soberer sheets promised an interview in later editions.

"They're looking for me now!" thought Jack.

Being human, Jack could not but feel a pleasurable thrill, but his head was not quite turned. He glanced at the hurrying passers-by whimsically.

"They wouldn't rush by so fast if they knew this was he," he thought. But he had no intention of calling their attention to the fact. Silas Gyde's reference to the danger of too much publicity was present in his mind.

He turned into his own street keeping a wary eye ahead. Mrs. Regan's boarding house was three-quarters of the way down the block, one of a long row of dwellings with little grass plots in front and iron railings. Sure enough by the light of a street lamp Jack made out the figures of a group of men at her gate. As he came closer he saw that several of them carried cameras with flash light attachments.

His first impulse was to flee, but recollecting that they could not possibly know yet what he looked like, he walked boldly up to the group, and asked the New Yorker's stock question of a street crowd:

"Somepin the matter here?"

One replied: "This where Jack Norman lives. We're waitin' for him to come home."

He was already so famous no further explanation was deemed necessary.

"Gee!" said Jack with a glance at the shabby façade. "I guess he'll soon be moving."

A laugh greeted this witty sally.

"Oh boy!" groaned one youth. "Think of having a hundred millions handed you, just like that. It's too much!"

A photographer said: "Well, I'm gonna ast him for one million. He'd never miss it."

"What like fellow is he?" asked Jack.

"Same aged guy as us."

"Worked for twelve per until this morning. Say his old boss was sore as a pup when he heard what he come in for."

"They say he's a bad actor all right."

"Sure, a whale! They say he's already burned up Broadway from Herald Square to the Circle."

"You're wrong, fellow! I heard his roll's as adhesive as rubber tape. Same as the old man's before him. Wouldn't even pry off a nickel to give the poor boy who told him the news."

"Say, when a guy once gets in the papers, scandal begins!" said Jack disgustedly. Seeing Mrs. Regan at her parlor window, and fearful that she might give him away, he walked on.

From a drug-store on Eighth avenue he telephoned back to Mrs. Regan, asking her to come to him there. "Don't let anything on to those guys at the gate," he warned her. "I want to keep out of sight for a few days."

She came into the store in a breathless state of fluster. She was a good-hearted Irishwoman of considerable energy of character and a racy style of speech. But at present she was considerably overcome.

"Oh, Mr. Norman! Oh, Mr. Norman!" she gasped.

"Easy with my name!" warned Jack. "I'm going to be Mr. Robinson for awhile now."

"Is it true what they say in the papers?"

"More or less."

"Oh law! To think of anything like this happening in my house! And the third floor rear hall at that! But that's always the way ain't it, like a story like? The telephone's been going like a Big Ben ever since twelve o'clock, asking for you. And you such a pleasant ordinary young fellow--not to say ordinary-like, but not stuck up at all, just like one of us!" She paused for breath.

"Easy, Mrs. Regan," whispered Jack. "That clerk's got ears like a water pitcher."

"I'll be careful. What did you want of me, Mr. Nor--Robinson?"

"First, I want you to know my friend Jumbo," said Jack, handing him over. "Let him have my eats while I'm away."

"Laws! Ain't he cute!"

"I'll telephone in every little while for news. Please pack up my things for me. I'll tell you later where to send them."

"You're going to leave!" cried Mrs. Regan. "But of course it's natural," she added quickly.

"Don't you make any mistake," said Jack. "I'm not going to forget any of the friends who knew me when I was poor."

"I done my best for you! But with prices the way they is----!"

"I know. Now I want you to promise not to give out a thing about me, no descriptions of me, no information of any kind. I know it will be hard to resist those taking young reporters, but I ask it as a favor."

"Oh, Mr. N--Robinson! Go on! At my age!-- It's little they'll get out of me, I can tell you!"

"I knew I could bank on you. I'll tell you all about it some day. I've got to beat it now."

"Good-by. Oh--wait! I almost forgot. I'm that excited! A messenger boy left a note for you at the door this evening. I brought it along."

Jack took the note and left. Mrs. Regan, a little disappointed at not being taken further into his confidence, turned in the other direction. When she was out of sight, Jack stopped under a street lamp and examined what she had given him.

It was a cheap, flimsy envelope much soiled. The address was scrawled in an illiterate hand. He opened it, and this was what he read:

"_Jack Norman_:

"_We don't call you dear sir, because this ain't no friendly letter. We know all about you. We're the gang what croaked old Silas Gyde, and we're going to get you next, see? You needn't think you're going to be let to blow in his tainted money. You millionaires are a dirty disgrace, and we're going to rid the country of you. You can't hide away from us. We are everywhere. Gun, knife, bomb or dope: it's all the same to us. And if you show this to the police you'll only get yours quicker._

"_The Red Gang._"

Jack's young face turned grim. "So it's begun!" he thought. "Well, I'm just as glad they didn't keep me in suspense. I'm ready to start. We'll see who's got the best set of wits!"

7

Jack, forbidden the refuge of his own little room, continued to walk the streets, while he debated how best to meet the complicated situation that faced him. Stumbling at last on Bryant Park in his wanderings, he dropped on a bench. His eyes moved sightlessly over the scene before him.

"Once the newspaper guys get hold of me, and print my picture on the front page, I'm a marked man," he was thinking, "I couldn't walk down the street then, without a crowd following. It would be a cinch for this gang to keep tab on me, and a fat chance I'd have of getting anything on them. So I've got to keep out of the papers if I can. That's decided.

"But it's not going to be so easy. For the more of a mystery I make of myself the hotter they'll get on my trail. A paper like the _Sphere_, I suppose, would spend a hundred thousand to run me down. What I ought to do is to get some harmless young fellow to take the part of Jack Norman, while I lie low and do my work."

"Who could I get in our gang? There's Bill Endicott; good fellow, but too much of a talker, specially with a girl. He'd never do. There's Joe Welland, he's close enough--but too thick. He couldn't take a part any more than a bronze statue. They say Stan Larkin and I look alike. He might do. No! He's too hard-headed. He wouldn't do what I wanted. It's too risky anyhow to let one of the gang in on this. The others would have to know. I'd better keep away from them for the present."

Jack's reflections were interrupted by an appeal from alongside: "Say, fella, can you help a fella to a meal?"

He became aware for the first that he shared the bench with another. It was a fat youth of about his own age with an expression at once piteous and absurd. There is bound to be something ludicrous in the spectacle of a fat beggar. Chubby cheeks were designed to wear a good-natured smile. The shame-faced look that accompanied the appeal did not suggest the professional beggar in this case.

Jack had reached the point where he was glad of a diversion. His thoughts had begun to chase themselves in circles. "What's the trouble, 'Bo?" he asked in friendly fashion.

"Down on my luck, that's all. I'm an actor. Got a job to walk on in a big show called 'Ulysses.' Rehearsed three weeks and then they flivved. I had borrowed every cent I could on the job, and now I dassent be seen where my friends are. I'm done! Ain't eaten since yesterday. Say, it's Hell for a fat man to be hungry!"

Jack laughed. Moreover the word "hunger" started something insistent in his own internals. He dropped a further consideration of his problems until that should be satisfied.

"By Gad! That reminds me I haven't had any dinner myself! Come on, let's see what we can find."

"You mean it!"

"Where'll we go."

"There's Little's over here on Sixth."

"To Hell with Little's! I'm fed up on beaneries. It would take a hundred of Little's little portions to fill me. No, I got money 'Bo! Us for the big eats. Let's try that swell French café on the south side of the square. The French know how to eat."

"Ahh! They wouldn't serve a guy like me in there!"

"Well, the clothing stores over on Broadway are open yet. Let's go and get you an outfit. An actor's got to show his Tuppenheimers they say, before he can pull down a salary."

"Ahh! You're stringin' me!"

"Come along! I got a wad that's burning a hole in my jeans! I might as well blow it on you!"

The fat youth made up his mind that Jack had been drinking. He had an open countenance, and upon it was clearly visible his thankfulness to Heaven for sending such a one his way. As Jack started off he took his arm, either with the idea of guiding his footsteps, or in fear that he might escape. His anxious glance, prepared for any sudden, unfavorable change in the weather, never left Jack's face. He even pretended for the sake of camaraderie to be a little spiffed himself.

Jack was vastly tickled by the whole incident. It gave him a new luxurious sensation of opulence. Besides, he had reached the point where he felt he had to blow off a little steam.

"What a fool I was to worry myself to a standstill! Too much thinking is worse than none at all. If you mull over a thing too long, your thoughts begin to go round like a squirrel in a revolving cage. Here's the whole town open to us! We'll have us a time and forget our troubles!"

The fat youth who had no idea of the nature of these troubles made haste to agree. "You're dead right, fellow! Eat, drink and be merry, as the poet says, for to-morrow the rent falls due!"

"What's your name?" asked Jack.

"Private or professional?"

"Oh, anything you like."

"Well, I'm generally known as Guy Harmsworth."

"Some name, 'Bo!"

However, the really significant names seem to come out of the air. Jack started calling his friend 'Bo. From that it was but a little step to Bobo. In the sound of Bobo there was something subtly descriptive. It stuck. He is Bobo still.

As they entered the big clothing store Jack said: "Get the best. I'll stand for it."

Bobo thus encouraged, proved to have a very nice taste in wearing apparel. They bought hurriedly, for the pangs of hunger were pressing. But when the main articles, suit, hat, shoes, were out of the way both young men plunged in the smaller and more luxurious articles; shirts of heavy silk that crinkled richly between thumb and finger; wonderful cravats that would almost stand alone. Few youngsters attain their desires in this direction, and Bobo and Jack, long denied, fairly wallowed. They each bought a valise to carry away their surplus purchases.

In half an hour Bobo was transformed. To call Bobo fat was merely to indicate his type. He was not all over the place, but a well set-up youngster of a rather melting style of beauty, which promised obesity later perhaps, but in youth was not unpleasing. At least not in his new clothes.

When finally Jack produced the roll of yellow backs to pay for what they had bought, Bobo's look of anxiety disappeared and was not seen again. A little sigh escaped him. It was as if he had said:

"It is not a dream."

Bobo leaving the outfitters was metamorphosed in more than his apparel. He stuck his chest out now, and looked passers-by in the eye. A stage-English accent crept into his unadorned Manhattanese. Jack seeing him cast sheep's-eyes at a stand of walking-sticks, purchased him a yellow malacca, such as his own soul had hankered after earlier in the day. It was the finishing touch. Bobo swung it with a delightful arrogance. He even adopted a certain condescension of tone towards Jack who had no stick.

"I say, old chap, these togs are really not half bad for ready-made, what! Not what a London tailor would turn out of course. But they fit, because I happen to have a normal figure."

"Perfect forty-six," murmured Jack.

They returned for their dinner to the famous café on Bryant Square. It was the first eating-place in New York that dared to veil its interior from the vulgar gaze. Those alluring, closely-drawn pink curtains cause the envious poor to suspect the delightful worst. It is not so well known in the provinces as flashier resorts, but it is certainly the place where most New Yorkers go first when they get money.

When they finally penetrated the mystery the plainness of the interior was rather disappointing, and the place was almost empty for it was half way between the dinner and the supper hours. But the food when it came justified the café's great reputation.

Jack had ordered blindly from the French _carte-de-jour_, choosing the most expensive dish from each subdivision; _Petite Marmite; Cotelotte des Ecrivisses au diable; Filet Mignon au Moelle: pommes de terre Florizel; Choux-fleur hollandaise; plombière_, etc. The result was eminently satisfactory. Bobo groaned with delight. It appeared that Bobo had a special and particular talent for eating.

"Don't wake me! Don't wake me!" he prayed. "Many's the time I've dreamed of this, but it was always snatched away just as I sat down. Say, are we going to have coffee and cigars?"

"Sure thing. Fifty centers."

"O Lord, let me sleep till then and afterwards. You can do what you like to me!"

"You seem to have a nice taste in fancy eats," said Jack.

"A nice taste! I was born with the tongue of an epicure, a delicate tongue, a high-toned tongue! For me to be obliged to eat in lunch wagons and beaneries was a crime against nature!"

"Well, how would you like to keep this up for a while?" said Jack with an offhand air.

"Hey?" said Bobo opening his eyes.

Jack studied him. "He's something of a fool," he thought. "But maybe that's what I need. I couldn't control a hard-headed guy. And he's an actor. He ought to be able to play a part. And he'd be grateful for his meals, I could do what I wanted with him. Anyhow I have to take a chance, and I might do worse."

"What d'ye mean, keep it up?" demanded Bobo.

"This is only a sample," said Jack. "How would you like the real thing for a while; a suite of rooms at the Madagascar; a yacht, a motor car---- Oh, half a dozen motors; all the clothes you wanted from the best tailor in America; as for the eats--all you'd have to do would be press a button and give your order."

Bobo turned a little pale. "What are you getting at?"

"Supposing a man offered you this, would you be willing to put yourself in his hands?"

"Say, if it was on the level, he could do what he wanted with me!" said Bobo fervently.

"All right!" said Jack. "It's a go!"

Bobo stared. "Say, fellow, what kind of a pipe are you giving me? Do you mean you are offering me---- Are you crazy?"

"Did you read the afternoon papers?" asked Jack.

Bobo nodded. "Fellow left his on a bench beside me."

"You've never asked me my name."

"What is it?"

"Jack Norman."

Bobo stared speechless. "On the level?" he gasped.

Jack took a couple of letters from his pocket and showed him the superscriptions.

"Jack Norman!" said Bobo. "Then what were you loafing in the park by yourself for?"

"Trying to get accustomed to the idea."

Bobo had no more to say. He had lost the condescending air.

"Here's the situation," said Jack. "For certain reasons which I will explain to you, I want to keep under cover for a while. I want to keep my picture out of the papers. I don't want to be pointed out and followed wherever I go. Well, the easiest way to escape notice is for me to get some fellow to take my place, see?"

"But everybody who knows you will know I'm not the real guy."

"That's all right. We won't be moving in the same circles as I used to. Want to do it?"

"Do I want to do it----!"

"Wait a minute. It's only fair to warn you that old Silas Gyde was croaked by a gang of blackmailers, and they're after me now."

Bobo paled and hesitated.

"But I mean to meet all their demands until we nail them, so there's not much danger."

Bobo's face cleared. "Will I do it----" he began again.

"Hold on! There are two conditions. You must promise to do everything I tell you. And second, you are not to marry any woman under false pretences."

"I promise," said Bobo.

"Good! It's a bargain. From this moment you are John Farrow Norman, the newly-made millionaire, and I am plain Jack Robinson, your secretary."

They shook hands across the table.

8

As the two young men left the café Bobo said: "Where are we going now?"

"First we must find quarters," said Jack. "We don't want to carry these valises around all night."

To the chauffeur who opened the taxi door for them Jack said: "Hotel Madagascar."

"My God!" murmured the still dazed Bobo.

As they entered the gorgeous lobby of the famous hotel Bobo was overcome with self-consciousness. Bobo had always thought of the Madagascar as the abiding place of remote and exalted aristocrats. He slunk at Jack's heels with the yellow stick trailing limply.

"Buck up! Buck up!" whispered Jack. "Remember you are the cheese, and I'm only the mite that lives off it."

"Sure! Sure!" murmured Bobo, moistening his lips.

He made an effort, but quailed again before the sharp-eyed bell-boys. Jack reflected that since he was only supposed to be the millionaire of a day, this would appear natural enough.

"Sign the register," he whispered. "Remember you are John Farrow Norman, and I am John Robinson."

Bobo accomplished this all right. As the clerk nonchalantly spun the card around and read the name, he caught his breath slightly, and a wonderful silkiness crept into his voice.

"Very pleased to have you with us, sir. In a way I hope it's like coming home."

The other men behind the desk, arrested by the note of exceeding deference, made excuses to sidle past and glance at the register. Instantly a kind of electric current charged the office, and was presently communicated to the bell-boys' bench, whence it spread throughout the lobby. "It's Jack Norman," the busy whisper went around.

"I hope you're going to remain with us permanently, Mr. Norman," added the clerk. "What accommodations will you require?"

Bobo, child of nature, rebounded like a rubber ball, feeling the immense respect conveyed by the whole surrounding atmosphere. Once more the chest went out, and the yellow stick was elevated to the ceiling.

"--Er--my secretary will arrange the details with you," he drawled, turning away languidly. One could see his fingers absently feeling for the monocle which ought to have been dangling against his waistcoat button.

Jack stepped forward, modest and business-like. "Mr. Norman wishes to know if the suite occupied by the late Mr. Gyde is available."

"It's empty, I suppose," was the deprecating reply, "but that is outside my province. I assure you the rooms are very undesirable. Mr. Gyde, you know, was most eccentric."

"But Mr. Norman has been told there was a steel vault in connection, which he thought might be useful."

"Naturally. Naturally. Yes, Mr. Gyde had it installed when the hotel was built. But there are only two rooms in the suite, and it does not communicate directly with any other. Moreover the bedroom is quite dark. It wouldn't do at all."

"Hm!" said Jack. "I suppose not."

"But on the same floor, practically adjoining you might say, there is a magnificent corner-suite of six rooms--the finest in the house. People call it the State suite. Prince Boris occupied it on his recent visit, and the President of Managuay always reserves it."

The apparently indifferent Bobo's ears stretched at this.

"The famous Louis Quinze salon with ceilings by Guglielmetti is included in this suite, and the Dutch dining-room decorated by Troward Handler Misty. Each of the bedrooms is done in a different period. I assure you there is nothing like it in New York. It extends all the way down the south side of the building, and it is only a matter of cutting diagonally across the corridor to reach the late Mr. Gyde's suite, which occupies the back corner of that floor. Those rooms belong to Mr. Norman anyway since they were exempted from our lease. Together with the state suite they would make--but let me have the pleasure of showing them to you."

"What do you think, Mr. Norman?" asked Jack respectfully.

"Oh, take them," said Bobo. "We can change later, if we're not suited." He gave the yellow stick a twirl.

"Certainly, sir."

Having been shown up to their magnificent quarters, Jack firmly dismissed the train of admiring clerks, bell boys and maids who overwhelmed them with attentions. Bobo was bearing himself with admirable nonchalance, but Jack thought he saw signs of a coming crack under the strain. There was something comically disproportionate in the relation of their two little selves and their two little valises to that endless suite.

"Our baggage will come to-morrow," Jack casually remarked.

When they were left alone in the Louis Quinze salon panelled in blue brocade, they looked around, and they looked at each other.

"Some li'l sittin'-room," said Jack.

"My God!" cried Bobo. "An hour ago I was sitting on a bench in Bryant Square with my stomach deflated like a punctured tube!"

"Some rapid rise."

Bobo gravely butted his head against the blue satin brocade. "Sure if I was asleep, that would wake me up."

"Oh, cheer up! We couldn't both be having the same dream together."

"That's true!" said Bobo, looking wonderfully relieved.

"Let's go into the next room," said Jack. "Louis Quinze isn't homelike."

Entering the Dutch room, he said: "This is rather classy. We can have some nice little parties in here."

"I wish it was time to eat again," said Bobo with sudden recollection. "What a lot of time we waste digesting!"

They were presently informed over the telephone that Mr. Pope of the _Sphere_ and Mr. Wallis of the _Constellation_ requested a word or two with Mr. Norman.

"The news of our arrival wasted no time in leaking out," remarked Jack.

Looking Bobo over thoughtfully, he decided that further coaching was necessary before the pseudo-millionaire could safely be thrown to the reporters. So he sent down word that Mr. Norman was out, and to avoid possible encounters in the lobby, he and Bobo made their way out by the rear door of the state suite and thence by Silas Gyde's private stair to the entrance on the side street.

At the Broadway corner they paused. The sight of the double procession of automobiles started a new train of desires.

"They ought to keep the automobile show-rooms open all night," said Jack. "A fellow wants to buy a car most after dinner. I shan't really believe I am a millionaire--I mean that you are, until we have a snaky red roadster with twelve cylinders and a searchlight."

"I'd rather have a limousine with blue upholstery and a chauffeur in blue livery to take the responsibility," said Bobo.

"Oh, go as far as you like! Where will we go now?"

"How about the Alpine Heights?"

"Lead me to it!"

This place of entertainment was on the roof of one of the theaters. A discreet privacy shrouded the street entrance. They were whirled aloft in an elevator, and a small army of silver-buttoned boys and lace-capped maids relieved them of their outer wear. The restaurant opened before them like a dream, warm with perfume and color and softened light. It was arranged like a shallow bowl. The bottom of it was a velvety dancing-floor, and all around were low terraces of tables. Overhead was a balcony, and one end of the place was closed by a great curtain. When this was lifted a sheet of glittering ice was revealed. The whole place exhaled luxury like the palace of a satrap.

"What a background for the lovely girls!" said Jack. "But the black coats and pants are out of place here."

"Oh, I don't know!" said Bobo, strutting a little.

Jack's sharp eyes perceived that the first and lowest row of tables was by a process of judicious selection on the part of the head-waiter, filled with the elite of the "Broadway crowd," the women exquisite with their bare shoulders and jewels, the men looking bored and superior as is expected of super-men. These people, as the cunning management of the restaurant well knew, formed the real attraction to the soberer folk from out of town, who sat further back drinking it all in with innocent big eyes. They thought these fine folk must be Astorbilts or Vandergelds, whereas they were more likely Follies of the Circus and Handsome Harries in funds.