Читать книгу Frank Merriwell's Trust; Or, Never Say Die - Burt L. Standish - Страница 3

Table of Contents

“Jack Diamond—am I dreaming?”

Frank Merriwell uttered the exclamation. He was in front of the Hoffman House, in New York. Three young men in evening dress had just left the hotel, and were about to enter a cab that had drawn up to the curb for them. Frank stared in astonishment at one of them. He was a slender, clean-cut, handsome fellow.

“Jack Diamond!” he repeated; “can it be? Why, I supposed he was in London!”

One of the men, his silk hat thrust recklessly back on his curly yellow hair, was speaking to the driver. The other, with a mustache black as midnight, was holding the door open for the third to enter the cab. Frank sprang forward.

“Diamond!” he called, “is that you?”

The youth who was already half-way into the cab drew back and turned round.

“Who is it?” he asked, his voice sounding a trifle thick and unnatural.

Frank was before him. It was eleven o’clock at night, but the bright lights of Broadway made it almost like day.

“Merriwell!” exclaimed the young fellow in the evening suit and opera-coat. “Is that you?”

“Sure as you live!” cried Frank, with outstretched hand. “But I thought I was dreaming. I wasn’t sure it was you.”

Their hands met, while Diamond’s two companions looked on in silence, as if not quite pleased.

“Man alive!” came from Frank, “I thought you on the other side of the pond. What does this mean?”

“It means that I’m back here,” said Jack. “But I supposed you in New Haven. How do you happen to be here?”

“Various things have combined to keep me here since I came down from college. The story is too long for me to tell now, but I’ve had some rather interesting adventures.”

“Well, old man, I’m right glad to see you again. Let me introduce my friends. Mr. Herrick, Mr. Merriwell; Mr. Madison, Mr. Merriwell.”

Herrick was the older of the two, and the possessor of the black mustache. Madison had a smooth, almost boyish face, with a head of curly yellow hair. Frank took an instant dislike to Herrick, who had the air of a rounder. Madison seemed more like a rather gay young fellow, although there was a dissipated look on his face and his eyes met Frank’s with an effort.

Frank could see that these men had been drinking, although Herrick gave little evidence of it. The latter shook hands politely, simply repeating Frank’s name; but Madison grasped Merry’s hand, crying:

“Glad to know you, Mr. Merriwell. Glad to know anybody who is Jack Diamond’s friend. Let’s have a drink.”

“Steady, Billy,” warned Herrick, in a low tone. “Don’t slop over, my boy.”

“Oh, to blazes with that!” returned Madison, laughing. “What do we care? We’re out for a time, and we don’t give a rap who knows it. Let’s all go in and take a drink.”

“We haven’t time,” asserted the man with the black mustache, looking at his watch.

“Time! Great Scott! we’ve got all the time there is! Don’t anybody own any of my time till ten o’clock to-morrow.”

“And I’ve got time to burn,” asserted Diamond, his voice again sounding thick. “I think I need another drink. Fact is, I know I need it. Let’s have it.”

“All right, if you will have it,” said Herrick, as if giving in with great reluctance. “But I think you’ve taken enough for the present.”

Frank thought Jack had taken altogether too much. He was surprised and distressed to find his college comrade in such a condition.

“See here, Jack,” he said, taking Diamond’s arm, “you had better drop this. You’re on a spree, and you must stop drinking at once.”

“My dear boy,” said Diamond, with a reckless laugh, “I’ve been on it for a week now, and I’ve just begun.”

To Merry’s surprise, the Virginian did not show the least sign of shame. This was all the more astonishing, as Jack was ever proud and sensitive, and had never seemed to be a drinker.

“Something has happened to start him off this way,” Merriwell instantly decided. “He is in a reckless mood.”

“I have to return to college in the morning, old man,” he said persuasively. “We haven’t seen each other for a long time. Come round to my room in the Fifth Avenue and let’s have a talk.”

“Excuse me,” Herrick spoke up. “Mr. Diamond has an important engagement.”

“That’s right, Merry,” agreed Jack, at once. “Just come along with me. I’ll show you the town to-night.”

“Yes, we can take Mr. Merriwell along,” said Herrick.

“Of course we can,” cried Madison. “The more the merrier. But it won’t be our fault if he gets scratched with the tiger’s claws.”

“No danger of that,” asserted Diamond. “He never fools with the tiger.”

Herrick seemed disappointed. “Is that so? Then I’m afraid he won’t find it very interesting to come along.”

“Yes, he will,” declared Jack. “Besides, he has always been a mascot to me, and I need one just now.”

Frank’s ears were wide open, and he fancied he understood the meaning of this talk, in which case he was more than ever alarmed for Diamond.

“If I could get him away and have a talk with him,” thought Frank, “I’d soon be able to learn the truth.”

But the Southerner was “out for a racket,” and Frank soon saw it would be useless to try to induce him to go quietly to a room in the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

“We’re fooling away lots of time here,” said Herrick impatiently. “We’ve hired this cab, too.”

“Well, I can pay!” cried Diamond sharply. “Don’t let that worry you, Charley.”

“That’s the stuff!” declared Madison. “Now will you be good? Come on, I want that drink. Bring Mr. Merriwell along, Jack. We’ll fill him to the chin.”

“You’ll have a hard time to do that,” asserted Diamond, as he permitted Madison to pull him across the sidewalk, at the same time clinging fast to Frank’s arm.

“Why?” asked the yellow-haired chap. “Is he a tank?”

“No; he’s a total abstainer.”

Herrick was heard to mutter something beneath his breath.

“Total fiddlesticks!” gurgled Madison. “Then he’d better get out of New York right away. If he doesn’t, they’ll have him on exhibition.”

“Of course he will take one drink with us,” said Herrick persuasively. “One never hurt anybody, and he’ll consent to take a drink with an old friend like you, Jack.”

“Tell me if he does!” said Diamond. “It will be soft stuff.”

“Soft stuff is good only for soft persons,” declared the man with the black mustache, as they entered the hotel and approached the bar. “I hope he isn’t in that class.”

Merriwell’s dislike for the man was growing, and he had noted with surprise and dismay that both of these men spoke to the Virginian in a most familiar manner, addressing him as Jack.

“He’s in bad company,” Merry decided.

They lined up at the polished bar.

“Oh, gimme a highball!” chirped Madison, his silk hat on the back of his head. “What are you absorbing, gentlemen?”

“I’ll take a little whisky,” said Herrick.

Frank was watching Diamond, and now Jack said to the barkeeper:

“I want a mint julep, Ned; you know how to put ’em together.”

“And our friend Mr. Merriwell,” spoke Herrick, placing a hand on Frank’s shoulder, “will he have a mixed drink, or will he take his straight, with me?”

“I told you he didn’t drink!” Diamond somewhat petulantly cried. “What’s the use to keep asking him, Charley?”

“But I have decided to take a drink this time,” said Frank, causing the Virginian to nearly collapse. “Barkeeper, I’ll take a gin.”

Frank had decided that Jack Diamond was in danger. He could not understand how the Virginian happened to be in New York, and in such a condition. No more could he understand the familiar friendship of Diamond and his two companions. Jack was not a fellow to pick up friends anywhere, and get on “first-name terms” with them in short order.

Ordinarily, Merriwell’s influence over Diamond was complete, but now he had failed in his attempt to take the Southerner from these companions and carry him away to a place where he could be brought round to reason. Having failed thus, Merry quickly decided to stay with Jack and see what was going on. He knew he would be an object of suspicion to Herrick and Madison unless they fancied he was drinking with them, and in order to divert their attention he agreed to take a drink.

But Frank had no intention of swallowing a drop of liquor. He had chosen gin because, in past experiences, he had discovered that, being the color of water, it was easy to make companions believe the gin had been taken when, in fact, the water “chaser” was the only thing swallowed.

“Hoo—yee!” whooped Madison, in delight, slapping Diamond on the shoulder. “There goes your total abstainer, Jack! He’s going to take his medicine like a little man.”

The Southerner looked at Frank in half-intoxicated reproach.

“Don’t do it, Merry!” he exclaimed huskily. “You’re too good a man to meddle with booze. Don’t do it!”

“Well, you’re a dandy to be giving advice!” shouted Madison. “Oh, quit your kidding and corral your mint julep!”

“Please be good enough to quit that, sah!” said Diamond, with a touch of his original Southern accent. “I am talking to my particular friend, and I’ll thank you not to interfere, sah.”

“Oh, thunder!” gasped Madison. “All right; didn’t suppose you were so touchy to-night, Jack, old sport. It’s all right; talk to him all you want to. I won’t come into the game.”

The Virginian bowed gravely, and again turned to Frank, who had poured some gin in a glass and received a chaser of water from the barkeeper.

“We are old friends, Merriwell,” said Diamond, still with the same air of polite intoxication, “and I’d do anything for you. You know it. You’re the best all-round man in Yale—the best man that ever entered the college. You have no vices. You are clean from your toes to the tip-ends of your hair. You’ve never poisoned yourself with tobacco or drink or high living of any sort. You’ve always taken the very best of care of your body and your mind. Now, don’t tell me you are going to spoil it all by making a fool of yourself and drinking gin!”

“That’s right,” muttered Madison, with a chuckle, unable to keep still longer. “For the love of goodness, drink something besides gin! Have a highball with me.”

“Please, sah—please!” frowned Jack, with a gentle gesture of his right hand, turning his eyes toward the irrepressible chap with the yellow hair.

“Shut up, Billy!” advised Herrick. “Let Jack talk to his friend. Of course, the man will take a drink just the same after Jack has wasted his breath, but that’s none of your business.”

Frank felt like hitting the sneering fellow. He was tempted to shove back the stuff onto the bar, and inform Herrick that he had made a mistake. Then he told himself that by so doing he might throw away his chance of learning the real meaning of Diamond’s actions and condition, and he simply pretended that he did not hear the man’s words.

“You’re a nice fellow to talk to me, Jack!” laughed Frank.

“That’s all right, Merry,” asserted Diamond unsteadily, his fine face flushed and his eyes gleaming redly. “It’s different with me.”

“I fail to see it. You are a gentleman, and the son of a gentleman.”

“Thank you, Merriwell; I hope, sah, that I am. But my father could take his medicine, and he always remained a gentleman. It doesn’t make so much difference about me. The fact is, it doesn’t make any difference what becomes of me now. I am up against it, and I’m going to play this streak through to the end.”

More than ever was Frank alarmed, for now he saw that Diamond was in a desperate mood, and, being in such a condition, the hot-blooded Virginian would not easily listen to reason.

Merry knew it would do little good to argue with Jack just then, for argument with a man under the influence of drink is generally a waste of words and the height of folly.

“I’d like to know why it doesn’t make any difference what happens to you,” Frank smiled. “It makes a difference to me. You are my friend.”

“True, true!” said Jack, with deep feeling. “And you are mine. That’s why I do not want to see you take that drink. If you ever get started fooling with the cursed stuff, Merriwell, you can’t tell where you’ll stop. I know you’ve got a stiff backbone, but drink has drowned many a fine man. It would be the first thing to overthrow you, so you hadn’t better fool with it. Come, now, old chum, make it something soft, and let it go at that.”

Herrick laughed harshly.

“We’re a long time getting round to that little drink, Jack,” he put in. “I’m getting awfully dry.”

“Dry!” croaked Madison. “Why, my throat is parched. Come on, Jack, break away and let’s irrigate.”

“Go ahead, gentlemen, and drink,” said the Southerner. “You annoy me.”

“Drink!” squawked Madison. “Without you? Not if I crack open with thirst! I’ll never be guilty of it!”

Frank had a hope that he could shame Diamond so that he would stop then and there.

“Come on!” he cried, taking up a glass in each hand. “We’re with them, Jack, and I’m with you till morning! Just you go ahead, and see if I don’t chase you.”

“One last appeal,” insisted Diamond earnestly. “You don’t know where you’ll stop if you begin it, Merry.”

“No more did you.”

“Well, you see the shape I’m in. Been this way for a week. Just take me as a horrible example, old man.”

“You seem to be having a good time.”

“All on the surface, my boy.”

“What makes you keep it up?”

“Have to.”

“Why?”

“So I won’t stop to think. I don’t want to think, Merriwell, and I won’t do anything else the minute I get sober.”

“What has happened? Tell me, Jack.”

“Not now. Good Lord! it drives me to drink! I’ve got to take this stuff, Merry! I’m afraid I’m getting sober.”

“Here we go!” chirped Madison. “Everybody drink. Here’s happy days.”

Diamond’s hand shook as he lifted his glass. His flushed face showed lines of care and dissipation. Merriwell’s heart was filled with pity and sorrow at the spectacle.

“I’ll save him from his own folly!” Frank vowed. “But I must seem to play into the hands of these fellows, in order to find out just what they are doing with him.”

Then he dashed off the contents of one of the glasses, which contained nothing but water, pretended to drink as a “chaser” from the other, but did not swallow a drop, and so deceived them all.

“Too bad!” Diamond almost sobbed, thinking Frank had taken the gin. “Suppose it’s all my fault. Been better for you, Merry, if you’d never known me.”

“Oh, say! don’t talk that stuff! It’s all right! Why, a fellow’s got to have a time once in his life!”

“That’s the talk!” nodded Herrick, evidently well pleased.

But Diamond shook his head sadly, at the same time pulling from his pocket a huge roll of bills, stripping off a twenty and flinging it on the bar.

“This is on me, Jack,” said Madison mildly.

“I’m paying the bills to-night, gentlemen,” asserted the Virginian, with dignity. “I insist.”

Merry decided that they were perfectly willing that Jack should pay. He could not help wondering at the amount of money in Diamond’s possession, but the sight of it gave him a conviction.

“They have seen his roll, and they are looking to bleed him. Now I stick by him for sure.”

“Come, gentlemen,” urged Herrick; “that cab is still waiting outside.”

“Let it wait, sah,” returned Diamond. “We’re going to have another drink.”

And have another they did.