Читать книгу The Substitute Millionaire - Footner Hulbert - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Having left Kate at the office to which she most unreasonably insisted on returning, Jack bethought himself of the charge laid upon him to visit Silas Gyde's rooms alone. Kate's last words had not been too discouraging, and there was a pleasant suggestion of mystery in this new errand. Jack's spirits were good.

Another taxi-cab whirled him up-town to the Madagascar. Even now, occasionally the feeling came over him that he was living in a dream. He fingered the roll of bills in his pocket for reassurance.

"This is certainly me, Jack Norman," he thought. "And this is my money! The roll's not much smaller either. It must be real money because I have eaten it, drunk it, smoked it and am wearing it!"

He entered the hotel, one of Manhattan's greatest, with an odd little thrill in his breast. "This is mine," he told himself, "all this marble and onyx and plate glass; these tapestries, these Oriental rugs, these tropical plants, all mine! These good-looking bell-hops work for me; the Duke himself yonder at the desk will have to bend his haughty head when he finds out who I am!"

Jack was a little shy of asking to be shown to the late Mr. Gyde's rooms. Having no credentials, he suspected that his story might very well be laughed at, and he himself be shown the door. Anyway, he felt an instinctive repugnance to telling his story to all and sundry. If he could only find out where the rooms were he needn't apply at the desk, since he had the keys.

An attractive young woman at the news counter caught his attention. He bought a magazine from her, and while she made change sought to engage her in conversation.

"They say Mr. Silas Gyde used to live here."

"Yes, he owned this hotel."

"He must have been a queer Dick if you can believe what you read."

"Oh, the half of his queerness hasn't been printed."

"Was he a customer of yours?"

"No indeed. He never bought anything in the hotel. Said he could get it cheaper outside. Got his meals over on Eighth avenue and around."

"I wonder he lived here at all. Did he have a fine suite?"

"No, the cheapest rooms in the house."

"Where were they?"

"On the second floor at the back on the Forty——th street side."

"He must have been a funny sight here in the lobby with his old hand-me-downs."

"He seldom showed himself here. He went in and out by his private entrance on Forty——th street."

"So he had a private entrance, eh?"

"Yes, it was a regular thing to see him going in and out carrying his little oil-can."

"Oil-can!"

"Well, you see, when he rented the hotel to the management, he saved out his rooms rent free, but there wasn't anything said about steam heat or electric current, and when the management sent him a bill for heat and light, he made them take out the radiators and the fixtures, and he burned an oil lamp and a little oil heater."

"Here, in the Madagascar! Well, that beats all!"

"It sure does!"

In this little colloquy Jack had learned all that he desired. It was a simple matter to leave the hotel, turn the corner into Forty——th street and proceed to the private entrance. It was at the extreme end of the hotel building, a modest door with the street numeral painted on it. Adjoining the hotel on this side was a deserted dwelling with boarded up windows below, and blinds pulled down above, the whole bearing the signs of long neglect.

One of Jack's keys fitted the door. Inside he found a single flight of stairs ending on a dark landing with another door. This door was not locked. Opening it he found himself in the sitting-room of the suite, a small room with two windows looking out on the street he had just left.

It was a typical hotel room, furnished by contract expensively but without taste. An amusingly incongruous note was furnished by the oil heater in the center of the rug, and the cheap lamp on the table. The naked ugliness of the latter object was not even mitigated by a shade. There was nothing to suggest that the room had been a man's home for several years, no personal belongings of any description.

Yet it was neat enough, and Jack guessed that Silas Gyde's arrangement with the hotel must have included maid service. From the bedroom there was a door to the hotel corridor, through which servants might have entered. This bedroom and a bathroom, both almost entirely without light or air, completed the suite. Jack had no difficulty in believing that it was one of the least desirable apartments in the hotel.

Jack's first glance around revealed nothing out of the common. The only signs of human occupancy were a few cheap toilet articles on the bureau. But there were several closets. That in the bedroom was locked. Opening it with one of his keys, Jack was faced by his first surprise—a modern and highly efficient steel vault door.

An alluring picture of heaped coin, greenbacks, securities, stored inside, arose before him, but the door was locked of course, and he had no instructions as to the combination. He wondered, not without chagrin, if Silas Gyde had been a practical joker. Why had he been instructed to proceed there alone merely for the pleasure of looking at a locked vault.

He went through the rooms more carefully. In the sitting-room there was a little fancy desk. He had a key to this, and upon its being opened, one of the pigeon-holes yielded up a packet of dusty, faded papers. He went over them one by one; advertisements, unimportant business letters, receipts for small amounts; not until he reached the last envelope of all was he rewarded.

This was sealed, and on it was written in an old man's cramped and tremulous hand:

"For my heir."

It was like a voice from beyond the grave.

But the contents were matter-of-fact enough: no more than this:

"You are to go to James Renfrew, 120 Broadway, who will hand you a communication from me."

This simple sentence revived the lure of mystery, and another taxi-cab was soon bearing Jack downtown. Since the old man's note had been written, the famous office building at 120 Broadway had burned down, and had risen again to five times its former height. The firm of Renfrew, Bates and Meldrum, the eminent lawyers, still had their offices there, and Jack succeeded in seeing the senior member without too much delay.

This testy old gentleman with a snort of scorn for what he termed "Gyde's foolishness" put Jack through a cross-examination similar to that he had undergone from Delamare earlier in the day. Jack's answers being satisfactory, he received another note in Silas Gyde's cramped hand.

This contained a row of cabalistic figures, and further instructions for him to go to Nathan Harris, the well-known banker. At this office the performance was exactly repeated, with the exception that Mr. Harris evinced a good deal of curiosity on his own account. But since it was no part of Jack's instructions to take him into his confidence, he confined himself to polite and non-committal answers.

The note he received here, besides giving him more figures, sent him to the office of Sanford Gair, another eminent lawyer. At this stage Jack was brought to a stand by the information that Mr. Gair had been dead for a year. But Jack's blood was up now: persistent questioning finally elicited the fact that Mr. Gair's son and executor did indeed have a note for him.

This contained another line of figures followed by the word: "Complete." Underneath was written: "You are to enter alone."

"Complete?" thought Jack with knitted brows. "What is complete? What am I to enter alone?"

Then a light broke upon him. "The Vault of course! This is the combination!"

He lost no time in returning to the Madagascar.

It may be remarked here, that when Jack afterwards told Mr. Delamare about these visits the banker laughed heartily. "Isn't that like old Gyde! Renfrew, Nathan Harris and Gair, bitter enemies! He wasn't going to take any chances of their getting together!"

It was about five o'clock when Jack entered Silas Gyde's rooms the second time. He double-locked the door leading to the hotel corridor, and set to work on the combination with a burglarious feeling, which all his assurances to himself that it was his own property could not quite dissipate.

Jack had had no experience with such elaborate locks as this, but after all the principle was the same as that of Fisher's safe where he had been accustomed to keeping his books at night. After a number of false starts and misses, the steel bolts finally rang back, and the great door swung noiselessly outward.

Alas for Jack's expectations! The vault inside was as bare as Mother Hubbard's cupboard. There was not so much as a scrap of paper to be seen, let alone the dazzling stores he had pictured. The wall down each side were lined with shelves on which lay a thick, undisturbed coating of dust. Apparently there never had been anything kept there; at least not for a long time.

Jack was thoroughly disgusted. All that chasing around town for nothing! Was his benefactor's only purpose in taking those elaborate precautions to make a fool of his heir? Perhaps the old man had been really insane.

But having taken all that trouble Jack did not mean to give up until he had made very sure there was nothing to be gained from it. He examined the vault anew, and presently made a curious discovery in the steel door. Differing from any safe he had ever seen, the handle which operated the bolt ran right through to the inside of the door, also the dial and knob of the combination were reproduced inside.

"What did he want that for?" thought Jack, with perplexed brow. "Almost looks as if he wanted to lock himself up inside."

It was dark within the vault, and Jack lit the oil lamp and carried it in. He had not paid much attention to the back of the vault, for his eye had told him it was flush with the outer wall of the building, but he was now struck by the fact that whereas the sides of the vault were of concrete the back wall was of steel, and there were no shelves covering it.

In short, the lamp revealed the outline of a door in the back wall, a steel door so beautifully fitted that only the tiniest of lines marked its boundaries. In it was a tiny slit that Jack's fourth and last key exactly fitted. When it was pressed home, the door swung towards him on a spring.

Here he received another surprise. Instead of the shallow wall cupboard he expected, for he knew he was against the outer wall of the hotel, the beams of the lamp illuminated a large cupboard heaped with rubbish in the corners. At the same moment he was greatly startled to hear an electric bell start ringing somewhere further within.

He realized of course that he had stumbled on a secret way into the house adjoining the hotel. He remembered the aspect of that house from the street, shuttered, neglected, dirty. What would the inside reveal? The feeble, fretful alarm of the electric bell perturbed him. He closed the steel door and it stopped: he let it swing open and the sound recommenced. For whom was it a warning? Inside the closet on his right there was an ordinary wooden door. It did not help to compose his nerves to hear a soft urgent whining and scratching on the other side of it. The lamp trembled a little in his hand.

However there was nothing for it but to advance. Jack was boy enough to refuse to take a dare. He had been instructed to enter alone, and he was not sufficiently frightened to disobey. There was a kind of fascination in entering upon this voyage of discovery alone. Moreover he had no reason to suppose that a trap had been prepared for him.

Before venturing in, he took a careful survey of the closet. The litter in the corners consisted of old clothes, old boots, newspapers. A musty smell arose from it. His attention was caught by a broad black belt painted on the floor at his feet. Stooping, he touched it, and the black came off on his finger.

"Soot," he thought. He took care to step over it when he entered.

The scratching still continued on the other side of the inner door, but Jack was reassured by the sound of an anxious little bark. "That's not a very formidable animal," he thought, smiling, and opening the door.

His first impression was of a little black and tan terrier, who waited just inside the door with an expression of anxiety, human in its intensity. At the sight of Jack the dog snarled and attempted to retreat, but weakness overcame it and it fell.

"Poor beastie!" murmured Jack.

The little animal, whether reassured by Jack's voice or prompted by his own great need, attempted to make friends. He approached wagging a feeble tail. He dragged himself towards the fireplace, and with piteous, speaking glances, directed Jack's attention to a tin box upon the mantel. A human voice could scarcely have been plainer.

"Is that where they keep it, old man?" said Jack.

In the box were some crusts. He made haste to toss them to the little dog, and filled his dish with water.

Jack found himself in a good-sized room to which no ray of daylight penetrated. His sense of direction told him it must be the second floor rear of the dwelling house. There was no lack of character here. The place was both sordid and piteous, and very eloquent of Silas Gyde's strange life.

"This was his real home," thought Jack, looking around. "The hotel apartment was simply a blind. … Poor old fellow!"