CHAPTER XIV.
“GIVE ME UNTIL TO-MORROW.”
As Richard was early, he stopped for a moment to see Dido Morgan, and finding her ready to start home, asked her to walk a little way with him down Fifth Avenue.
She was looking quite wan when he went in, but she brightened up and flushed with pleasure at the prospect of seeing him for a little time.
“I had an offer from a manager to-day to go on the stage,” she said, quietly.
“I hope you did not accept it,” Dick replied, quickly, looking at the girl’s downcast face, which seemed strangely altered since last night.
“Not yet.”
“And you won’t, Dido?” he said, pleadingly.
“I don’t see why not, Mr. Treadwell.”
Dick started unpleasantly. He had not before noticed that she never called him by any name when addressing him, and now it seemed to suggest that there was a difference between them, and he vainly wondered what it was.
“I should be very sorry, Dido, to see you go on the stage. In the first place you don’t know anything about acting, and it would take you years before you could hope to attain any position.”
“I FEEL that I can act,” she said deeply. “My nerves seem so tight that I long to get up and act some life. I want to act love, and then hate, and then murder.”
“Why, Dido?” Dick asked, coolly and curiously, although he felt the deep emotion underlying her words. He recalled what an old club-man said to him once, that every woman disappointed in love wanted to act, and he half wondered if Dido had been falling in love with some of the handsome men who frequented photograph galleries to have reproduced the being they love most of any on earth, but he put away the thought as a wrong to Dido.
“I feel it, I tell you I feel it. I can’t endure a monotonous life any more. I must have some excitement,” she said, passionately.
“I tell you what you want—exercise! You want to walk and you want to swing clubs and you’ll soon be all right. You are so confined that you have a superfluous energy which your work does not exhaust. If you spend it on exercise, it will make you a happier and stronger girl.”
Dido showed a little resentment. It always disgusts a woman to have her romantic feelings dissected in a matter-of-fact manner. Having reached Washington Square, she bade Richard good-bye and went on her way to her humble home.
Richard walked along North Washington Square until he came to the house where he expected to find the man who had taken Lucille Williams from her home. He went up one flight of stairs to Tolman Bike’s apartments, and knocked on the door on which was tacked Mr. Bike’s visiting card.
In a moment the door was opened, and the man he knew as Mr. Clarke stood before him.
“Mr. Bike,” said Richard, with emphasis on the name, “I must speak with you alone.”
Richard spoke imperatively and at the same moment stepped inside.
Mr. Bike looked as ill as the day he fell against the Hoffman House bar. He silently motioned Dick to enter the first room leading off the private hall in which they stood. Closing and locking the door he followed.
Richard seated himself in an easy chair, unasked. Mr. Bike sat down before a richly-carved desk, littered with packages of letters and photographs, which apparently he had been engaged in assorting and destroying, for bundles of them were slowly smouldering in the open grate.
The room was very handsome, and Richard viewed it with appreciation. There was a large open grate and above the low, wide mantle was a cabinet containing, in the centre, a French plate mirror, and on the brackets fine bits of bric-a-brac. The floor was richly carpeted, the walls were hung with fine paintings, while near the portieres, draped just far enough back to give a picturesque perspective view of a suite of rooms as cosy in the rear, was an alabaster statue of The Diver and another of Paul and Virginia.
A Mexican serape, quaintly colored, was thrown over a low lounge, before which lay a white fur rug. At one side was a little, square breakfast table, with curiously turned legs, and near it a half side-board, half cabinet, attractively filled with exquisite dishes, a few solid silver pieces and crystal glasses, backed up by long-necked bottles of liquids to fill them.
Mr. Bike had removed his coat and waistcoat and had on a little embroidered jacket. He did indeed have an unhealthy pallor, and Dick noticed that the hand with which he toyed with a carved paper-cutter shook violently.
“How this man loves life and its good things,” Dick thought, sympathetically, as his gaze wandered from one article of luxury to another, and on to another room, where, just through the portire, he could see a brass cage, in which a yellow canary was jumping restlessly about, and a small aquarium, up through which came a spraying fountain. He could even see goldfish swimming about and a little dark turtle run its head out of the water and then dive down again to the bottom of the basin.
“I suppose you know why I came to see you?” Dick said at last, when he saw Mr. Bike would not introduce any subject.
“No, I can’t say that I do,” Mr. Bike responded, with affected indifference.
“Well, I want to know all about Lucille Williams,” he said abruptly.
“What right have you to come to me for such information?” Mr. Bike asked coldly.
“Because you induced the girl to leave her home,” Dick replied positively, “and I want to know all you have to tell about the rest of it.”
“I have nothing to tell,” Mr. Bike said, with a slight, sarcastic smile.
“Well, sir, if you won’t tell, I’ll find a way to make you,” Richard said, angrily.
“Ah! Indeed!” Mr. Bike ejaculated, still cool and unconcerned.
“Yes, sir; if you don’t tell me what I want to know before I leave here, I will go to Miss Chamberlain, your fiancée”—Mr. Bike started uneasily—“I’ll tell her a story you would not like her to know.”
“And you flatter yourself that she would believe you?” sarcastically.
“I know it. I can prove what I have to say,” Dick replied in a manner that was unmistakable.
“All right, go to her. See what you can do.”
“By Jove, I will. I will go to the newspapers too, and I’ll tell them—”
“What?” Mr. Bike asked, rather uneasily.
“You know what! Disabuse your mind of any idea that I don’t know some chapters in your life, that, if made public, will end your devilish career.” Richard hinted darkly, the suspicions which had come to him before that day sweeping over him with full force.
Tolman Bike was thinking intently. Richard saw that his last bluff had gone home and he determined to follow it up with more of the same kind.
“Be as unconcerned as you please, Mr. Bike. To-morrow, when your marriage is postponed, and you are called on to answer to the serious charge I shall bring against you, you will be sorry that you didn’t take the easier course, and give me the information I asked for.” Dick said this as if his patience had run out.
“I have no information to give,” Mr. Bike said, in a tone which showed he was beginning to weaken.
“Say, it’s wasting time to pretend to me. Either you will, or you will not, do as I have asked you. If you don’t, the consequences be on your own head.”
“And would you—do you mean—” hesitated Tolman Bike, losing confidence at sight of Dick’s undiminished determination.
“Yes, sir; I mean every word of it.” Dick had risen and he looked very angry and capable of doing all the bad things he threatened. “I have given you a chance, and you refuse to accept, so—” and he shrugged his shoulders as if his responsibility ended there.
“And if you get the information, what use will you make of it?” asked Bike, as if longing for some hope to be held out to him.
“You know what I want. It is not to bring any credit to myself, but to relieve the suspense of a heart-broken sister.”
“And would you, if I tell you all, be man enough to show some mercy?” he asked, in a hopeless way.
“I hold out no promises. I am determined to have a confession from you before your marriage. If you don’t give it, you don’t marry, and you can put that down for a certainty,” Dick said doggedly.
“And if I tell you,” in sudden hope, “will you let my marriage go on without telling Clara? Promise to let us get away on our wedding tour and then you can do as you wish. Only give me that much,” almost pleaded the now trembling man.
“And let you wreck the life of the innocent, unsuspecting woman who becomes your bride? What sort of a man do you think I am?” Richard asked in scorn.
“My God, man! Have some feeling. Haven’t I suffered enough already? You are a man, you can understand how a man will sell his soul to hell for the sake of a woman,” he said bitterly. “Have some feeling!”
“Can’t you understand it?” he continued, desperately, in vain effort to wake compassion in Richard’s breast. “She was pretty, she had no friends to make any trouble about it, and I lost my head. I have suffered for it. I have regretted it.” And Tolman Bike put his hands over his face, and Richard heard a broken, husky sob.
This was more than he could endure. His sternness fled at that sound, and he could hardly refrain from attempting to console the wretched man. Only thoughts of the poverty-stricken little sister helped him maintain an air of unrelenting sternness.
“Well, what do you ask of me?” Richard asked with a roughness that covered his real feeling. Now that he had conquered the man his suspicions fled. He felt sorry for Bike’s suffering and had a guilty feeling that he was the cause of it.
“Only give me until to-morrow and I’ll swear to you that you shall know what you want to before ten o’clock. Give me until then. If I fail, you have yet time to stop my marriage in the evening. You are a man, but if you won’t spare me for a man’s follies, spare me for the sake of the woman I am to marry. I’m sick! I can’t talk! Only give me until to-morrow.”
“—— it, Bike,” Richard said, feelingly, “if it wasn’t for the girl’s sister, I’d fling the whole thing over.” He little knew what it meant to him. “I believe your promise. I’m a man, reckless, indolent, careless as the worst of them, and, confound it, I’m sorry for you. There’s my hand.”
“Thank you, thank you,” Bike said, his deep emotions showing in the painful twitching of his pale face. He clasped Dick’s firm hand in his own dry, feverish one, and gave it a grateful pressure.
“Until to-morrow, then?”
“Until to-morrow,” echoed the unhappy man, looking into Dick’s face with an appealing look of agony that Richard never forgot.