V. Lady Mount Rhyswicke
The four friends of Madame de Vaurigard were borne to her apartment from the Magnifique in Cooley's big car. They sailed triumphantly down and up the hills in a cool and bracing air, under a moon that shone as brightly for them as it had for Caesar, and Mellin's soul was buoyant within him. He thought of Cranston and laughed aloud. What would Cranston say if it could see him in a sixty-horse touring-car, with two millionaires and an English diplomat, brother of an earl, and all on the way to dine with a countess? If Mary Kramer could see him!... Poor Mary Kramer! Poor little Mary Kramer!
A man-servant took their coats in Madame de Vaurigard's hall, where they could hear through the curtains the sound of one or two voices in cheerful conversation.
Sneyd held up his hand.
“Listen,” he said. “Shawly, that isn't Lady Mount-Rhyswicke's voice! She couldn't be in Reom—always a Rhyswicke Caws'l for Decembah. By Jev, it is!”
“Nothin' of the kind,” said Pedlow. “I know Lady Mount-Rhyswicke as well as I know you. I started her father in business when he was clerkin' behind a counter in Liverpool. I give him the money to begin on. 'Make good,' says I, 'that's all. Make good!' And he done it, too. Educated his daughter fit fer a princess, married her to Mount-Rhyswicke, and when he died left her ten million dollars if he left her a cent! I know Madge Mount-Rhyswicke and that ain't her voice.”
A peal of silvery laughter rang from the other side of the curtain.
“They've heard you,” said Cooley.
“An' who could help it?” Madame de Vaurigard herself threw back the curtains. “Who could help hear our great, dear, ole lion? How he roar'!”
She wore a white velvet “princesse” gown of a fashion which was a shade less than what is called “daring,” with a rope of pearls falling from her neck and a diamond star in her dark hair. Standing with one arm uplifted to the curtains, and with the mellow glow of candles and firelight behind her, she was so lovely that both Mellin and Cooley stood breathlessly still until she changed her attitude. This she did only to move toward them, extending a hand to each, letting Cooley seize the right and Mellin the left.
Each of them was pleased with what he got, particularly Mellin. “The left is nearer the heart,” he thought.
She led them through the curtains, not withdrawing her hands until they entered the salon. She might have led them out of her fifth-story window in that fashion, had she chosen.
“My two wicked boys!” she laughed tenderly. This also pleased both of them, though each would have preferred to be her only wicked boy—a preference which, perhaps, had something to do with the later events of the evening.
“Aha! I know you both; before twenty minute' you will be makin' love to Lady Mount-Rhyswicke. Behol' those two already! An' they are only ole frien's.”
She pointed to Pedlow and Sneyd. The fat man was shouting at a woman in pink satin, who lounged, half-reclining, among a pile of cushions upon a divan near the fire; Sneyd gallantly bending over her to kiss her hand.
“It is a very little dinner, you see,” continued the hostess, “only seven, but we shall be seven time' happier.”
The seventh person proved to be the Italian, Corni, who had surrendered his seat in Madame de Vaurigard's victoria to Mellin on the Pincio. He presently made his appearance followed by a waiter bearing a tray of glasses filled with a pink liquid, while the Countess led her two wicked boys across the room to present them to Lady Mount-Rhyswicke. Already Mellin was forming sentences for his next letter to the Cranston Telegraph: “Lady Mount-Rhyswicke said to me the other evening, while discussing the foreign policy of Great Britain, in Comtesse de Vaurigard's salon...” “An English peeress of pronounced literary acumen has been giving me rather confidentially her opinion of our American poets...”
The inspiration of these promising fragments was a large, weary-looking person, with no lack of powdered shoulder above her pink bodice and a profusion of “undulated” hair of so decided a blond that it might have been suspected that the decision had lain with the lady herself.
“Howjdo,” she said languidly, when Mellin's name was pronounced to her. “There's a man behind you tryin' to give you something to drink.”
“Who was it said these were Martinis?” snorted Pedlow. “They've got perfumery in 'em.”
“Ah, what a bad lion it is!” Madame de Vaurigard lifted both hands in mock horror. “Roar, lion, roar!” she cried. “An' think of the emotion of our good Cavaliere Corni, who have come an hour early jus' to make them for us! I ask Monsieur Mellin if it is not good.”
“And I'll leave it to Cooley,” said Pedlow. “If he can drink all of his I'll eat crow!”
Thus challenged, the two young men smilingly accepted glasses from the waiter, and lifted them on high.
“Same toast,” said Cooley. “Queen!”
“A la belle Marquise!”
Gallantly they drained the glasses at a gulp, and Madame de Vaurigard clapped her hands.
“Bravo!” she cried. “You see? Corni and I, we win.”
“Look at their faces!” said Mr. Pedlow, tactlessly drawing attention to what was, for the moment, an undeniably painful sight. “Don't tell me an Italian knows how to make a good Martini!”
Mellin profoundly agreed, but, as he joined the small procession to the Countess' dinner-table, he was certain that an Italian at least knew how to make a strong one.
The light in the dining-room was provided by six heavily-shaded candles on the table; the latter decorated with delicate lines of orchids. The chairs were large and comfortable, covered with tapestry; the glass was old Venetian, and the servants, moving like useful ghosts in the shadow outside the circle of mellow light, were particularly efficient in the matter of keeping the wine-glasses full. Madame de Vaurigard had put Pedlow on her right, Cooley on her left, with Mellin directly opposite her, next to Lady Mount-Rhyswicke. Mellin was pleased, because he thought he would have the Countess's face toward him. Anything would have pleased him just then.
“This is the kind of table everybody ought to have,” he observed to the party in general, as he finished his first glass of champagne. “I'm going to have it like this at my place in the States—if I ever decide to go back. I'll have six separate candlesticks like this, not a candelabrum, and that will be the only light in the room. And I'll never have anything but orchids on my table—”
“For my part,” Lady Mount-Rhyswicke interrupted in the loud, tired monotone which seemed to be her only manner of speaking, “I like more light. I like all the light that's goin'.”
“If Lady Mount-Rhyswicke sat at my table,” returned Mellin dashingly, “I should wish all the light in the world to shine upon so happy an event.”
“Hear the man!” she drawled. “He's proposing to me. Thinks I'm a widow.”
There was a chorus of laughter, over which rose the bellow of Mr. Pedlow.
“'He's game!' she says—and ain't he?”
Across the table Madame de Vaurigard's eyes met Mellin's with a mocking intelligence so complete that he caught her message without need of the words she noiselessly formed with her lips: “I tol' you you would be making love to her!”
He laughed joyously in answer. Why shouldn't he flirt with Lady Mount-Rhyswicke? He was thoroughly happy; his Helene, his belle Marquise, sat across the table from him sending messages to him with her eyes. He adored her, but he liked Lady Mount-Rhyswicke—he liked everybody and everything in the world. He liked Pedlow particularly, and it no longer troubled him that the fat man should be a friend of Madame de Vaurigard. Pedlow was a “character” and a wit as well. Mellin laughed heartily at everything the Honorable Chandler Pedlow said.
“This is life,” remarked the young man to his fair neighbor.
“What is? Sittin' round a table, eatin' and drinkin'?”
“Ah, lovely skeptic!” She looked at him strangely, but he continued with growing enthusiasm: “I mean to sit at such a table as this, with such a chef, with such wines—to know one crowded hour like this is to live! Not a thing is missing; all this swagger furniture, the rich atmosphere of smartness about the whole place; best of all, the company. It's a great thing to have the real people around you, the right sort, you know, socially; people you'd ask to your own table at home. There are only seven, but every one distingue, every one—”
She leaned both elbows on the table with her hands palm to palm, and, resting her cheek against the back of her left hand, looked at him steadily.
“And you—are you distinguished, too?”
“Oh, I wouldn't be much known over here,” he said modestly.
“Do you write poetry?”
“Oh, not professionally, though it is published. I suppose”—he sipped his champagne with his head a little to one side as though judging its quality—“I suppose I 've been more or less a dilettante. I've knocked about the world a good bit.”
“Helene says you're one of these leisure American billionaires like Mr. Cooley there,” she said in her tired voice.
“Oh, none of us are really quite billionaires.” He laughed deprecatingly.
“No, I suppose not—not really. Go on and tell me some more about life and this distinguished company.”
“Hey, folks!” Mr. Pedlow's roar broke in upon this dialogue. “You two are gittin' mighty thick over there. We're drinking a toast, and you'll have to break away long enough to join in.”
“Queen! That's what she is!” shouted Cooley.
Mellin lifted his glass with the others and drank to Madame de Vaurigard, but the woman at his side did not change her attitude and continued to sit with her elbows on the table, her cheek on the back of her hand, watching him thoughtfully.
VI. Rake's Progress
Many toasts were uproariously honored, the health of each member of the party in turn, then the country of each: France and England first, out of courtesy to the ladies, Italy next, since this beautiful and extraordinary meeting of distinguished people (as Mellin remarked in a short speech he felt called upon to make) took place in that wonderful land, then the United States. This last toast the gentlemen felt it necessary to honor by standing in their chairs.
[Song: The Star-Spangled Banner—without words—by Mr. Cooley and chorus.]
When the cigars were brought, the ladies graciously remained, adding tiny spirals of smoke from their cigarettes to the layers of blue haze which soon overhung the table. Through this haze, in the gentle light (which seemed to grow softer and softer) Mellin saw the face of Helene de Vaurigard, luminous as an angel's. She was an angel—and the others were gods. What could be more appropriate in Rome? Lady Mount-Rhyswicke was Juno, but more beautiful. For himself, he felt like a god too, Olympic in serenity.
He longed for mysterious dangers. How debonair he would stroll among them! He wished to explore the unknown; felt the need of a splendid adventure, and had a happy premonition that one was coming nearer and nearer. He favored himself with a hopeful vision of the apartment on fire, Robert Russ Mellin smiling negligently among the flames and Madame de Vaurigard kneeling before him in adoration. Immersed in delight, he puffed his cigar and let his eyes rest dreamily upon the face of Helene. He was quite undisturbed by an argument, more a commotion than a debate, between Mr. Pedlow and young Cooley. It ended by their rising, the latter overturning a chair in his haste.
“I don't know the rudiments, don't I!” cried the boy. “You wait! Ole Sneydie and I'll trim you down! Corni says he'll play, too. Come on, Mellin.”
“I won't go unless Helene goes,” said Mellin. “What are you going to do when you get there?”
“Alas, my frien'!” exclaimed Madame de Vaurigard, rising, “is it not what I tol' you? Always you are never content wizout your play. You come to dinner an' when it is finish' you play, play, play!”
“Play?” He sprang to his feet. “Bravo! That's the very thing I've been wanting to do. I knew there was something I wanted to do, but I couldn't think what it was.”
Lady Mount-Rhyswicke followed the others into the salon, but Madame de Vaurigard waited just inside the doorway for Mellin.
“High play!” he cried. “We must play high! I won't play any other way.—I want to play high!”
“Ah, wicked one! What did I tell you?”
He caught her hand. “And you must play too, Helene.”
“No, no,” she laughed breathlessly.
“Then you'll watch. Promise you'll watch me. I won't let you go till you promise to watch me.”
“I shall adore it, my frien'!”
“Mellin,” called Cooley from the other room. “You comin' or not?”
“Can't you see me?” answered Mellin hilariously, entering with Madame de Vaurigard, who was rosy with laughter. “Peculiar thing to look at a man and not see him.”
Candles were lit in many sconces on the walls, and the card-table had been pushed to the centre of the room, little towers of blue, white and scarlet counters arranged upon it in orderly rows like miniature castles.
“Now, then,” demanded Cooley, “are the ladies goin' to play?”
“Never!” cried Madame de Vaurigard.
“All right,” said the youth cheerfully; “you can look on. Come and sit by me for a mascot.”
“You'll need a mascot, my boy!” shouted Pedlow. “That's right, though; take her.”
He pushed a chair close to that in which Cooley had already seated himself, and Madame de Vaurigard dropped into it, laughing. “Mellin, you set there,” he continued, pushing the young man into a seat opposite Cooley. “We'll give both you young fellers a mascot.” He turned to Lady Mount-Rhyswicke, who had gone to the settee by the fire. “Madge, you come and set by Mellin,” he commanded jovially. “Maybe he'll forget you ain't a widow again.”
“I don't believe I care much about bein' anybody's mascot to-night,” she answered. There was a hint of anger in her tired monotone.
“What?” He turned from the table and walked over to the fireplace. “I reckon I didn't understand you,” he said quietly, almost gently. “You better come, hadn't you?”
She met his inscrutable little eyes steadily. A faint redness slowly revealed itself on her powdered cheeks; then she followed him back to the table and took the place he had assigned to her at Mellin's elbow.
“I'll bank,” said Pedlow, taking a chair between Cooley and the Italian, “unless somebody wants to take it off my hands. Now, what are we playing?”
“Pokah,” responded Sneyd with mild sarcasm.
“Bravo!” cried Mellin. “That's my game. Ber-ravo!”
This was so far true: it was the only game upon which he had ever ventured money; he had played several times when the wagers were allowed to reach a limit of twenty-five cents.
“You know what I mean, I reckon,” said Pedlow. “I mean what we are playin' fer?”
“Twenty-five franc limit,” responded Cooley authoritatively. “Double for jacks. Play two hours and settle when we quit.”
Mellin leaned back in his chair. “You call that high?” he asked, with a sniff of contempt. “Why not double it?”
The fat man hammered the table with his fist delightedly. “'He's game,' she says. 'He's the gamest little Indian ever come down the big road!' she says. Was she right? What? Maybe she wasn't! We'll double it before very long, my boy; this'll do to start on. There.” He distributed some of the small towers of ivory counters and made a memorandum in a notebook. “There's four hundred apiece.”
“That all?” inquired Mellin, whereupon Mr. Pedlow uproariously repeated Madame de Vaurigard's alleged tribute.
As the game began, the intelligent-looking maid appeared from the dining-room, bearing bottles of whisky and soda, and these she deposited upon small tables at the convenience of the players, so that at the conclusion of the first encounter in the gentle tournament there was material for a toast to the gallant who had won it.
“Here's to the gamest Indian of us all,” proposed the fat man. “Did you notice him call me with a pair of tens? And me queen-high!”
Mellin drained a deep glass in honor of himself. “On my soul, Chan' Pedlow, I think you're the bes' fellow in the whole world,” he said gratefully. “Only trouble with you—you don't want to play high enough.”
He won again and again, adding other towers of counters to his original allotment, so that he had the semblance of a tiny castle. When the cards had been dealt for the fifth time he felt the light contact of a slipper touching his foot under the table.
That slipper, he decided (from the nature of things) could belong to none other than his Helene, and even as he came to this conclusion the slight pressure against his foot was gently but distinctly increased thrice. He pressed the slipper in return with his shoe, at the same time giving Madame de Vaurigard a look of grateful surprise and tenderness, which threw her into a confusion so evidently genuine that for an unworthy moment he had a jealous suspicion she had meant the little caress for some other.
It was a disagreeable thought, and, in the hope of banishing it, he refilled his glass; but his mood had begun to change. It seemed to him that Helene was watching Cooley a great deal too devotedly. Why had she consented to sit by Cooley, when she had promised to watch Robert Russ Mellin? He observed the pair stealthily.
Cooley consulted her in laughing whispers upon every discard, upon every bet. Now and then, in their whisperings, Cooley's hair touched hers; sometimes she laid her hand on his the more conveniently to look at his cards. Mellin began to be enraged. Did she think that puling milksop had as much as a shadow of the daring, the devilry, the carelessness of consequences which lay within Robert Russ Mellin? “Consequences?” What were they? There were no such things! She would not look at him—well, he would make her! Thenceforward he raised every bet by another to the extent of the limit agreed upon.
Mr. Cooley was thoroughly happy. He did not resemble Ulysses; he would never have had himself bound to the mast; and there were already sounds of unearthly sweetness in his ears. His conferences with his lovely hostess easily consoled him for his losses. In addition, he was triumphing over the boaster, for Mr. Pedlow, with a very ill grace and swearing (not under his breath), was losing too. The Countess, reiterating for the hundredth time that Cooley was a “wicked one,” sweetly constituted herself his cup-bearer; kept his glass full and brought him fresh cigars.
Mellin dealt her furious glances, and filled his own glass, for Lady Mount-Rhyswicke plainly had no conception of herself in the role of a Hebe. The hospitable Pedlow, observing this neglect, was moved to chide her.
“Look at them two cooing doves over there,” he said reproachfully, a jerk of his bulbous thumb indicating Madame de Vaurigard and her young protege. “Madge, can't you do nothin' fer our friend the Indian? Can't you even help him to sody?”
“Oh, perhaps,” she answered with the slightest flash from her tired eyes. Then she nonchalantly lifted Mellin's replenished glass from the table and drained it. This amused Cooley.
“I like that!” he chuckled. “That's one way of helpin' a feller! Helene, can you do any better than that?”
“Ah, this dear, droll Cooley!”
The tantalizing witch lifted the youth's glass to his lips and let him drink, as a mother helps a thirsty child. “Bebe!” she laughed endearingly.
As the lovely Helene pronounced that word, Lady Mount-Rhyswicke was leaning forward to replace Mellin's empty glass upon the table.
“I don't care whether you're a widow or not!” he shouted furiously. And he resoundingly kissed her massive shoulder.
There was a wild shout of laughter; even the imperturbable Sneyd (who had continued to win steadily) wiped tears from his eyes, and Madame de Vaurigard gave way to intermittent hysteria throughout the ensuing half-hour.
For a time Mellin sat grimly observing this inexplicable merriment with a cold smile.
“Laugh on!” he commanded with bitter satire, some ten minutes after play had been resumed—and was instantly obeyed.
Whereupon his mood underwent another change, and he became convinced that the world was a warm and kindly place, where it was good to live. He forgot that he was jealous of Cooley and angry with the Countess; he liked everybody again, especially Lady Mount-Rhyswicke. “Won't you sit farther forward?” he begged her earnestly; “so that I can see your beautiful golden hair?”
He heard but dimly the spasmodic uproar that followed. “Laugh on!” he repeated with a swoop of his arm. “I don't care! Don't you care either, Mrs. Mount-Rhyswicke. Please sit where I can see your beautiful golden hair. Don't be afraid I'll kiss you again. I wouldn't do it for the whole world. You're one of the noblest women I ever knew. I feel that's true. I don't know how I know it, but I know it. Let 'em laugh!”
After this everything grew more and more hazy to him. For a time there was, in the centre of the haze, a nimbus of light which revealed his cards to him and the towers of chips which he constantly called for and which as constantly disappeared—like the towers of a castle in Spain. Then the haze thickened, and the one thing clear to him was a phrase from an old-time novel he had read long ago:
“Debt of honor.”
The three words appeared to be written in flames against a background of dense fog. A debt of honor was as promissory note which had to be paid on Monday, and the appeal to the obdurate grandfather—a peer of England, the Earl of Mount-Rhyswicke, in fact—was made at midnight, Sunday. The fog grew still denser, lifted for a moment while he wrote his name many times on slips of blue paper; closed down once more, and again lifted—out-of-doors this time—to show him a lunatic ballet of moons dancing streakily upon the horizon.
He heard himself say quite clearly, “All right, old man, thank you; but don't bother about me,” to a pallid but humorous Cooley in evening clothes; the fog thickened; oblivion closed upon him for a seeming second....
VII. The Next Morning
Suddenly he sat up in bed in his room at the Magnifique, gazing upon a disconsolate Cooley in gray tweeds who sat heaped in a chair at the foot of the bed with his head in his hands.
Mellin's first sensation was of utter mystification; his second was more corporeal: the consciousness of physical misery, of consuming fever, of aches that ran over his whole body, converging to a dreadful climax in his head, of a throat so immoderately partched it seemed to crackle, and a thirst so avid it was a passion. His eye fell upon a carafe of water on a chair at his bedside; he seized upon it with a shaking hand and drank half its contents before he set it down. The action attracted his companion's attention and he looked up, showing a pale and haggard countenance.
“How do you feel?” inquired Cooley with a wan smile.
Mellin's head dropped back upon the pillow and he made one or two painful efforts to speak before he succeeded in finding a ghastly semblance of his voice.
“I thought I was at Madame de Vaurigard's.”
“You were,” said the other, adding grimly: “We both were.”
“But that was only a minute ago.”
“It was six hours ago. It's goin' on ten o'clock in the morning.”
“I don't understand how that can be. How did I get here?”
“I brought you. I was pretty bad, but you—I never saw anything like you! From the time you kissed Lady Mount-Rhyswicke—”
Mellin sat bolt upright in bed, staring wildly. He began to tremble violently.
“Don't you remember that?” asked Cooley.
Suddenly he did. The memory of it came with inexorable clarity, he crossed forearms over his horror-stricken face and fell back upon his pillow.
“Oh,” he gasped. “Un-speakable! Un-speakable!”
“Lord! Don't worry about that! I don't think she minded.”
“It's the thought of Madame de Vaurigard—it kills me! The horror of it—that I should do such a thing in her house! She'll never speak to me again, she oughtn't to; she ought to send her groom to beat me! You can't think what I've lost—”
“Can't I!” Mr. Cooley rose from his chair and began to pace up and down the chamber. “I can guess to within a thousand francs of what I've lost! I had to get the hotel to cash a check on New York for me this morning. I've a habit of carrying all my money in bills, and a fool trick, too. Well, I'm cured of it!”
“Oh, if it were only a little money and nothing else that I'd lost! The money means nothing.” Mellin choked.
“I suppose you're pretty well fixed. Well, so am I,” Cooley shook his head, “but money certainly means something to me!”
“It wouldn't if you'd thrown away the most precious friendship of your life.”
“See here,” said Cooley, halting at the foot of the bed and looking at his stricken companion from beneath frowning brows, “I guess I can see how it is with you, and I'll tell you frankly it's been the same with me. I never met such a fascinating woman in my life: she throws a reg'ler ole-fashioned spell over you! Now I hate to say it, but I can't help it, because it plain hits me in the face every time I think of it; the truth is—well, sir, I'm afraid you and me have had little red soldier-coats and caps put on us and strings tied to our belts while we turned somersets for the children.”
“I don't understand. I don't know what you're talking about.”
“No? It seems to get more and more simple to me. I've been thinking it all over and over again. I can't help it! See here: I met Sneyd on the steamer, without any introduction. He sort of warmed into the game in the smoking-room, and he won straight along the trip. He called on me in London and took me to meet the Countess at her hotel. We three went to the theatre and lunch and so forth a few times; and when I left for Paris she turned up on the way: that's when you met her. Couple of days later, Sneyd came over, and he and the Countess introduced me to dear ole friend Pedlow. So you see, I don't rightly even know who any of 'em really are: just took 'em for granted, as it were. We had lots of fun, I admit that, honkin' about in my car. We only played cards once, and that was in her apartment the last night before I left Paris, but that one time Pedlow won fifteen thousand francs from me. When I told them my plans, how I was goin' to motor down to Rome, she said she would be in Rome—and, I tell you, I was happy as a poodle-pup about it. Sneyd said he might be in Rome along about then, and open-hearted ole Pedlow said not to be surprised if he turned up, too. Well, he did, almost to the minute, and in the meantime she'd got you hooked on, fine and tight.”
“I don't understand you,” Mellin lifted himself painfully on an elbow. “I don't know what you're getting at, but it seems to me that you're speaking disrespectfully of an angel that I've insulted, and I—”
“Now see here, Mellin, I'll tell you something.” The boy's white face showed sudden color and there was a catch in his voice. “I was—I've been mighty near in love with that woman! But I've had a kind of a shock; I've got my common-sense back, and I'm not, any more. I don't know exactly how much money I had, but it was between thirty-five and thirty-eight thousand francs, and Sneyd won it all after we took off the limit—over seven thousand dollars—at her table last night. Putting two and two together, honestly it looks bad. It looks mighty bad! Now, I'm pretty well fixed, and yesterday I didn't care whether school kept or not, but seven thousand dollars is real money to anybody! My old man worked pretty hard for his first seven thousand, I guess, and”—he gulped—“he'd think a lot of me for lettin' go of it the way I did last night, wouldn't he? You never see things like this till the next morning! And you remember that other woman sat where she could see every hand you drew, and the Countess—”
“Stop!” Mellin flung one arm up violently, striking the headboard with his knuckles. “I won't hear a syllable against Madame de Vaurigard!” Young Cooley regarded him steadily for a moment. “Have you remembered yet,” he said slowly, “how much you lost last night?”
“I only remember that I behaved like an unspeakable boor in the presence of the divinest creature that ever—”
Cooley disregarded the outburst, and said:
“When we settled, you had a pad of express company checks worth six hundred dollars. You signed all of 'em and turned 'em over to Sneyd with three one-hundred-lire bills, which was all the cash you had with you. Then you gave him your note for twelve thousand francs to be paid within three days. You made a great deal of fuss about its being a 'debt of honor.'” He paused. “You hadn't remembered that, had you?”
Mellin had closed his eyes. He lay quite still and made no answer.
“No, I'll bet you hadn't,” said Cooley, correctly deducing the fact. “You're well off, or you wouldn't be at this hotel, and, for all I know, you may be fixed so you won't mind your loss as much as I do mine; but it ought to make you kind of charitable toward my suspicions of Madame de Vaurigard's friends.”
The six hundred dollars in express company checks and the three hundred-lire bills were all the money the unhappy Mellin had in the world, and until he could return to Cranston and go back to work in the real-estate office again, he had no prospect of any more. He had not even his steamer ticket. In the shock of horror and despair he whispered brokenly:
“I don't care if they 're the worst people in the world, they're better than I am!”
The other's gloom cleared a little at this. “Well, you have got it!” he exclaimed briskly. “You don't know how different you'll feel after a long walk in the open air.” He looked at his watch. “I've got to go and see what that newspaper-man, Cornish, wants; it's ten o'clock. I'll be back after a while; I want to reason this out with you. I don't deny but it's possible I'm wrong; anyway, you think it over while I'm gone. You take a good hard think, will you?”
As he closed the door, Mellin slowly drew the coverlet over his head. It was as if he covered the face of some one who had just died.
VIII. What Cornish Knew
Two hours passed before young Cooley returned. He knocked twice without a reply; then he came in.
The coverlet was still over Mellin's head.
“Asleep?” asked Cooley.
“No.”
The coverlet was removed by a shaking hand.
“Murder!” exclaimed Cooley sympathetically, at sight of the other's face. “A night off certainly does things to you! Better let me get you some—”
“No. I'll be all right—after while.”
“Then I'll go right ahead with our little troubles. I've decided to leave for Paris by the one-thirty and haven't got a whole lot of time. Cornish is here with me in the hall: he's got something to say that's important for you to hear, and I'm goin' to bring him right in.” He waved his hand toward the door, which he had left open. “Come along, Cornish. Poor ole Mellin'll play Du Barry with us and give us a morning leevy while he listens in a bed with a palanquin to it. Now let's draw up chairs and be sociable.”
The journalist came in, smoking a long cigar, and took the chair the youth pushed toward him; but, after a twinkling glance through his big spectacles at the face on the pillow, he rose and threw the cigar out of the window.
“Go ahead,” said Cooley. “I want you to tell him just what you told me, and when you're through I want to see if he doesn't think I'm Sherlock Holmes' little brother.”
“If Mr. Mellin does not feel too ill,” said Cornish dryly; “I know how painful such cases sometimes—”
“No.” Mellin moistened his parched lips and made a pitiful effort to smile. “I'll be all right very soon.”
“I am very sorry,” began the journalist, “that I wasn't able to get a few words with Mr. Cooley yesterday evening. Perhaps you noticed that I tried as hard as I could, without using actual force”—he laughed—“to detain him.”
“You did your best,” agreed Cooley ruefully, “and I did my worst. Nobody ever listens till the next day!”
“Well, I'm glad no vital damage was done, anyway,” said Cornish. “It would have been pretty hard lines if you two young fellows had been poor men, but as it is you're probably none the worse for a lesson like this.”
“You seem to think seven thousand dollars is a joke,” remarked Cooley.
Cornish laughed again. “You see, it flatters me to think my time was so valuable that a ten minutes' talk with me would have saved so much money.”
“I doubt it,” said Cooley. “Ten to one we'd neither of us have believed you—last night!”
“I doubt it, too.” Cornish turned to Mellin. “I hear that you, Mr. Mellin, are still of the opinion that you were dealing with straight people?”
Mellin managed to whisper “Yes.”
“Then,” said Cornish, “I'd better tell you just what I know about it, and you can form your own opinion as to whether I do know or not. I have been in the newspaper business on this side for fifteen years, and my headquarters are in Paris, where these people are very well known. The man who calls himself 'Chandler Pedlow' was a faro-dealer for Tom Stout in Chicago when Stout's place was broken up, a good many years ago. There was a real Chandler Pedlow in Congress from a California district in the early nineties, but he is dead. This man's name is Ben Welch: he's a professional swindler; and the Englishman, Sneyd, is another; a quiet man, not so well known as Welch, and not nearly so clever, but a good 'feeder' for him. The very attractive Frenchwoman who calls herself 'Comtesse de Vaurigard' is generally believed to be Sneyd's wife, though I could not take the stand on that myself. Welch is the brains of the organization: you mightn't think it, but he's a very brilliant man—he might have made a great reputation in business if he'd been straight—and, with this woman's help, he's carried out some really astonishing schemes. His manner is clumsy; he knows that, bless you, but it's the only manner he can manage, and she is so adroit she can sugar-coat even such a pill as that and coax people to swallow it. I don't know anything about the Italian who is working with them down here. But a gang of the Welch-Vaurigard-Sneyd type has tentacles all over the Continent; such people are in touch with sharpers everywhere, you see.”
“Yes,” Cooley interpolated, “and with woolly little lambkins, too.”
“Well,” chuckled Cornish, “that's the way they make their living, you know.”
“Go on and tell him the rest of it,” urged Cooley.
“About Lady Mount-Rhyswicke,” said Cornish, “it seems strange enough, but she has a perfect right to her name. She is a good deal older than she looks, and I've heard she used to be remarkably beautiful. Her third husband was Lord George Mount-Rhyswicke, a man who'd been dropped from his clubs, and he deserted her in 1903, but she has not divorced him. It is said that he is somewhere in South America; however, as to that I do not know.”
Mr. Cornish put the very slightest possible emphasis on the word “know,” and proceeded:
“I've heard that she is sincerely attached to him and sends him money from time to time, when she has it—though that, too, is third-hand information. She has been declasse ever since her first divorce. That was a 'celebrated case,' and she's dropped down pretty far in the world, though I judge she's a good deal the best of this crowd. Exactly what her relations to the others are I don't know, but I imagine that she's pretty thick with 'em.”
“Just a little!” exclaimed Cooley. “She sits behind one of the lambkins and Helene behind the other while they get their woolly wool clipped. I suppose the two of 'em signaled what was in every hand we held, though I'm sure they needn't have gone to the trouble! Fact is, I don't see why they bothered about goin' through the form of playin' cards with us at all. They could have taken it away without that! Whee!” Mr. Cooley whistled loud and long. “And there's loads of wise young men on the ocean now, hurryin' over to take our places in the pens. Well, they can have mine! Funny, Mellin: nobody would come up to you or me in the Grand Central in New York and try to sell us greenbacks just as good as real. But we come over to Europe with our pockets full o' money and start in to see the Big City with Jesse James in a false mustache on one arm, and Lucresha Borgy, under an assumed name, on the other!”
“I am afraid I agree with you,” said Cornish; “though I must say that, from all I hear, Madame de Vaurigard might put an atmosphere about a thing which would deceive almost any one who wasn't on his guard. When a Parisienne of her sort is clever at all she's irresistible.”
“I believe you,” Cooley sighed deeply.
“Yesterday evening, Mr. Mellin,” continued the journalist, “when I saw the son of my old friend in company with Welch and Sneyd, of course I tried to warn him. I've often seen them in Paris, though I believe they have no knowledge of me. As I've said, they are notorious, especially Welch, yet they have managed, so far, to avoid any difficulty with the Paris police, and, I'm sorry to say, it might be hard to actually prove anything against them. You couldn't prove that anything was crooked last night, for instance. For that matter, I don't suppose you want to. Mr. Cooley wishes to accept his loss and bear it, and I take it that that will be your attitude, too. In regard to the note you gave Sneyd, I hope you will refuse to pay; I don't think that they would dare press the matter.”
“Neither do I,” Mr. Cooley agreed. “I left a silver cigarette-case at the apartment last night, and after talkin' to Cornish a while ago, I sent my man for it with a note to her that'll make 'em all sit up and take some notice. The gang's all there together, you can be sure. I asked for Sneyd and Pedlow in the office and found they'd gone out early this morning leavin' word they wouldn't be back till midnight. And, see here; I know I'm easy, but somehow I believe you're even a softer piece o' meat than I am. I want you to promise me that whatever happens you won't pay that I O U.”
Mellin moistened his lips in vain. He could not answer.
“I want you to promise me not to pay it,” repeated Cooley earnestly.
“I promise,” gasped Mellin.
“You won't pay it no matter what they do?”
“No.”
This seemed to reassure Mr. Cooley.
“Well,” he said, “I've got to hustle to get my car shipped and make the train. Cornish has finished his job down here and he's goin' with me. I want to get out. The whole thing's left a mighty bad taste in my mouth, and I'd go crazy if I didn't get away from it. Why don't you jump into your clothes and come along, too?”
“I can't.”
“Well,” said the young man with a sympathetic shake of the head, “you certainly look sick. It may be better if you stay in bed till evening: a train's a mighty mean place for the day after. But I wouldn't hang around here too long. If you want money, all you have to do is to ask the hotel to cash a check on your home bank; they're always glad to do that for Americans.” He turned to the door. “Mr. Cornish, if you're goin' to help me about shipping the car, I'm ready.”
“So am I. Good-by, Mr. Mellin.”
“Good-by,” Mellin said feebly—“and thank you.”
Young Cooley came back to the bedside and shook the other's feverish hand. “Good-by, ole man. I'm awful sorry it's all happened, but I'm glad it didn't cost you quite as much money as it did me. Otherwise I expect it's hit us about equally hard. I wish—I wish I could find a nice one”—the youth gulped over something not unlike a sob—“as fascinatin' as her!”
Most people have had dreams of approaching dangers in the path of which their bodies remained inert; when, in spite of the frantic wish to fly, it was impossible to move, while all the time the horror crept closer and closer. This was Mellin's state as he saw the young man going. It was absolutely necessary to ask Cooley for help, to beg him for a loan. But he could not.
He saw Cooley's hand on the doorknob; saw the door swing open.
“Good-by, again,” Cooley said; “and good luck to you!”
Mellin's will strove desperately with the shame that held him silent.
The door was closing.
“Oh, Cooley,” called Mellin hoarsely.
“Yes. What?”
“J-j-just good-by,” said Mellin.
And with that young Cooley was gone.