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BREWSTER’S MILLIONS (Part 1)

CHAPTER I

A BIRTHDAY DINNER

“The Little Sons of the Rich” were gathered about the long table in Pettingill’s studio. There were nine of them present, besides Brewster. They were all young, more or less enterprising, hopeful, and reasonably sure of better things to come. Most of them bore names that meant something in the story of New York. Indeed, one of them had remarked, “A man is known by the street that’s named after him,” and as he was a new member, they called him “Subway.”

The most popular man in the company was young “Monty” Brewster. He was tall and straight and smooth-shaven. People called him “clean-looking.” Older women were interested in him because his father and mother had made a romantic runaway match, which was the talk of the town in the seventies, and had never been forgiven. Worldly women were interested in him because he was the only grandson of Edwin Peter Brewster, who was many times a millionaire, and Monty was fairly certain to be his heir—barring an absent-minded gift to charity. Younger women were interested for a much more obvious and simple reason: they liked him. Men also took to Monty because he was a good sportsman, a man among men, because he had a decent respect for himself and no great aversion to work.

His father and mother had both died while he was still a child, and, as if to make up for his long relentlessness, the grandfather had taken the boy to his own house and had cared for him with what he called affection. After college and some months on the continent, however, Monty had preferred to be independent. Old Mr. Brewster had found him a place in the bank, but beyond this and occasional dinners, Monty asked for and received no favors. It was a question of work, and hard work, and small pay. He lived on his salary because he had to, but he did not resent his grandfather’s attitude. He was better satisfied to spend his “weakly salary,” as he called it, in his own way than to earn more by dining seven nights a week with an old man who had forgotten he was ever young. It was less wearing, he said.

Among the “Little Sons of the Rich,” birthdays were always occasions for feasting. The table was covered with dishes sent up from the French restaurant in the basement. The chairs were pushed back, cigarettes were lighted, men had their knees crossed. Then Pettingill got up.

“Gentlemen,” he began, “we are here to celebrate the twenty-fifth birthday of Mr. Montgomery Brewster. I ask you all to join me in drinking to his long life and happiness.”

“No heel taps!” some one shouted. “Brewster! Brewster!” all called at once.

“For he’s a jolly good fellow,

For he’s a jolly good fellow!”

The sudden ringing of an electric bell cut off this flow of sentiment, and so unusual was the interruption that the ten members straightened up as if jerked into position by a string.

“The police!” some one suggested. All faces were turned toward the door. A waiter stood there, uncertain whether to turn the knob or push the bolt.

“Damned nuisance!” said Richard Van Winkle. “I want to hear Brewster’s speech.”

“Speech! Speech!” echoed everywhere. Men settled into their places.

“Mr. Montgomery Brewster,” Pettingill introduced.

Again the bell rang—long and loud.

“Reinforcements. I’ll bet there’s a patrol in the street,” remarked Oliver Harrison.

“If it’s only the police, let them in,” said Pettingill. “I thought it was a creditor.”

The waiter opened the door.

“Some one to see Mr. Brewster, sir,” he announced.

“Is she pretty, waiter?” called McCloud.

“He says he is Ellis, from your grandfather’s, sir!”

“My compliments to Ellis, and ask him to inform my grandfather that it’s after banking hours. I’ll see him in the morning,” said Mr. Brewster, who had reddened under the jests of his companions.

“Grandpa doesn’t want his Monty to stay out after dark,” chuckled Subway Smith.

“It was most thoughtful of the old gentleman to have the man call for you with the perambulator,” shouted Pettingill above the laughter. “Tell him you’ve already had your bottle,” added McCloud.

“Waiter, tell Ellis I’m too busy to be seen,” commanded Brewster, and as Ellis went down in the elevator a roar followed him.

“Now, for Brewster’s speech!—Brewster!”

Monty rose.

“Gentlemen, you seem to have forgotten for the moment that I am twenty-five years old this day, and that your remarks have been childish and wholly unbecoming the dignity of my age. That I have arrived at a period of discretion is evident from my choice of friends; that I am entitled to your respect is evident from my grandfather’s notorious wealth. You have done me the honor to drink my health and to reassure me as to the inoffensiveness of approaching senility. Now I ask you all to rise and drink to ‘The Little Sons of the Rich.’ May the Lord love us!”

An hour later “Rip” Van Winkle and Subway Smith were singing “Tell Me, Pretty Maiden,” to the uncertain accompaniment of Pettingill’s violin, when the electric bell again disturbed the company.

“For Heaven’s sake!” shouted Harrison, who had been singing “With All Thy Faults I Love Thee Still,” to Pettingill’s lay figure.

“Come home with me, grandson, come home with me now,” suggested Subway Smith.

“Tell Ellis to go to Halifax,” commanded Montgomery, and again Ellis took the elevator downward. His usually impassive face now wore a look of anxiety, and twice he started to return to the top floor, shaking his head dubiously. At last he climbed into a hansom and reluctantly left the revelers behind. He knew it was a birthday celebration, and it was only half-past twelve in the morning.

At three o’clock the elevator made another trip to the top floor and Ellis rushed over to the unfriendly doorbell. This time there was stubborn determination in his face. The singing ceased and a roar of laughter followed the hush of a moment or two.

“Come in!” called a hearty voice, and Ellis strode firmly into the studio.

“You are just in time for a ‘night-cap,’ Ellis,” cried Harrison, rushing to the footman’s side. Ellis, stolidly facing the young man, lifted his hand.

“No, thank you, sir,” he said, respectfully. “Mr. Montgomery, if you’ll excuse me for breaking in, I’d like to give you three messages I’ve brought here tonight.”

“You’re a faithful old chap,” said Subway Smith, thickly. “Hanged if I’d do A.D.T. work till three A.M. for anybody.”

“I came at ten, Mr. Montgomery, with a message from Mr. Brewster, wishing you many happy returns of the day, and with a check from him for one thousand dollars. Here’s the check, sir. I’ll give my messages in the order I received them, sir, if you please. At twelve-thirty o’clock, I came with a message from Dr. Gower, sir, who had been called in—”

“Called in?” gasped Montgomery, turning white.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Brewster had a sudden heart attack at half-past eleven, sir. The doctor sent word by me, sir, that he was at the point of death. My last message—”

“Good Lord!”

“This time I bring a message from Rawles, the butler, asking you to come to Mr. Brewster’s house at once—if you can, sir—I mean, if you will, sir,” Ellis interjected apologetically. Then, with his gaze directed steadily over the heads of the subdued “Sons,” he added, impressively, “Mr. Brewster is dead, sir.”

CHAPTER II

SHADES OF ALADDIN

Montgomery Brewster no longer had “prospects.” People could not now point him out with the remark that some day he would come into a million or two. He had “realized,” as Oliver Harrison would have put it. Two days after his grandfather’s funeral a final will and testament was read, and, as was expected, the old banker atoned for the hardships Robert Brewster and his wife had endured by bequeathing one million dollars to their son Montgomery. It was his without a restriction, without an admonition, without an incumbrance. There was not a suggestion as to how it should be handled by the heir. The business training the old man had given him was synonymous with conditions not expressed in the will. The dead man believed that he had drilled into the youth an unmistakable conception of what was expected of him in life; if he failed in these expectations the misfortune would be his alone to bear; a road had been carved out for him and behind him stretched a long line of guide-posts whose laconic instructions might be ignored but never forgotten. Edwin Peter Brewster evidently made his will with the sensible conviction that it was necessary for him to die before anybody else could possess his money, and that, once dead, it would be folly for him to worry over the way in which beneficiaries might choose to manage their own affairs.

The house in Fifth Avenue went to a sister, together with a million or two, and the residue of the estate found kindly disposed relatives who were willing to keep it from going to the Home for Friendless Fortunes. Old Mr. Brewster left his affairs in order. The will nominated Jerome Buskirk as executor, and he was instructed, in conclusion, to turn over to Montgomery Brewster, the day after the will was probated, securities to the amount of one million dollars, provided for in clause four of the instrument. And so it was that on the 26th of September young Mr. Brewster had an unconditional fortune thrust upon him, weighted only with the suggestion of crepe that clung to it.

Since his grandfather’s death he had been staying at the gloomy old Brewster house in Fifth Avenue, paying but two or three hurried visits to the rooms at Mrs. Gray’s, where he had made his home. The gloom of death still darkened the Fifth Avenue place, and there was a stillness, a gentle stealthiness about the house that made him long for more cheerful companionship. He wondered dimly if a fortune always carried the suggestion of tube-roses. The richness and strangeness of it all hung about him unpleasantly. He had had no extravagant affection for the grim old dictator who was dead, yet his grandfather was a man and had commanded his respect. It seemed brutal to leave him out of the reckoning—to dance on the grave of the mentor who had treated him well. The attitude of the friends who clapped him on the back, of the newspapers which congratulated him, of the crowd that expected him to rejoice, repelled him. It seemed a tragic comedy, haunted by a severe dead face. He was haunted, too, by memories, and by a sharp regret for his own foolish thoughtlessness. Even the fortune itself weighed upon him at moments with a half-defined melancholy.

Yet the situation was not without its compensations. For several days when Ellis called him at seven, he would answer him and thank fortune that he was not required at the bank that morning. The luxury of another hour of sleep seemed the greatest perquisite of wealth. His morning mail amused him at first, for since the newspapers had published his prosperity to the world he was deluged with letters. Requests for public or private charity were abundant, but most of his correspondents were generous and thought only of his own good. For three days he was in a hopeless state of bewilderment. He was visited by reporters, photographers, and ingenious strangers who benevolently offered to invest his money in enterprises with certified futures. When he was not engaged in declining a gold mine in Colorado, worth five million dollars, marked down to four hundred and fifty, he was avoiding a guileless inventor who offered to sacrifice the secrets of a marvelous device for three hundred dollars, or denying the report that he had been tendered the presidency of the First National Bank.

Oliver Harrison stirred him out early one morning and, while the sleepy millionaire was rubbing his eyes and still dodging the bombshell that a dream anarchist had hurled from the pinnacle of a bedpost, urged him in excited, confidential tones to take time by the forelock and prepare for possible breach of promise suits. Brewster sat on the edge of the bed and listened to diabolical stories of how conscienceless females had fleeced innocent and even godly men of wealth. From the bathroom, between splashes, he retained Harrison by the year, month, day and hour, to stand between him and blackmail.

The directors of the bank met and adopted resolutions lamenting the death of their late president, passed the leadership on to the first vice-president and speedily adjourned. The question of admitting Monty to the directory was brought up and discussed, but it was left for Time to settle.

One of the directors was Col. Prentiss Drew, “the railroad magnate” of the newspapers. He had shown a fondness for young Mr. Brewster, and Monty had been a frequent visitor at his house. Colonel Drew called him “my dear boy,” and Monty called him “a bully old chap,” though not in his presence. But the existence of Miss Barbara Drew may have had something to do with the feeling between the two men.

As he left the directors’ room, on the afternoon of the meeting, Colonel Drew came up to Monty, who had notified the officers of the bank that he was leaving.

“Ah, my dear boy,” said the Colonel, shaking the young man’s hand warmly, “now you have a chance to show what you can do. You have a fortune and, with judgment, you ought to be able to triple it. If I can help you in any way, come and see me.”

Monty thanked him.

“You’ll be bored to death by the raft of people who have ways to spend your money,” continued the Colonel. “Don’t listen to any of them. Take your time. You’ll have a new chance to make money every day of your life, so go slowly. I’d have been rich years and years ago if I’d had sense enough to run away from promoters. They’ll all try to get a whack at your money. Keep your eye open, Monty. The rich young man is always a tempting morsel.” After a moment’s reflection, he added, “Won’t you come out and dine with us tomorrow night?”

CHAPTER III

MRS. AND MISS GRAY

Mrs. Gray lived in Fortieth Street. For years Montgomery Brewster had regarded her quiet, old-fashioned home as his own. The house had once been her grandfather’s, and it was one of the pioneers in that part of the town. It was there she was born; in its quaint old parlor she was married; and all her girlhood, her brief wedded life, and her widowhood were connected with it. Mrs. Gray and Montgomery’s mother had been schoolmates and playmates, and their friendship endured. When old Edwin Peter Brewster looked about for a place to house his orphaned grandson, Mrs. Gray begged him to let her care for the little fellow. He was three years older than her Margaret, and the children grew up as brother and sister. Mr. Brewster was generous in providing for the boy. While he was away at college, spending money in a manner that caused the old gentleman to marvel at his own liberality, Mrs. Gray was well paid for the unused but well-kept apartments, and there never was a murmur of complaint from Edwin Peter Brewster. He was hard, but he was not niggardly.

It had been something of a struggle for Mrs. Gray to make both ends meet. The property in Fortieth Street was her only possession. But little money had come to her at her husband’s death, and an unfortunate speculation of his had swept away all that had fallen to her from her father, the late Judge Merriweather. For years she kept the old home unencumbered, teaching French and English until Margaret was well in her teens. The girl was sent to one of the good old boarding-schools on the Hudson and came out well prepared to help her mother in the battle to keep the wolf down and appearances up. Margaret was rich in friendships; and pride alone stood between her and the advantages they offered. Good-looking, bright, and cheerful, she knew no natural privations. With a heart as light and joyous as a May morning, she faced adversity as though it was a pleasure, and no one would have suspected that even for a moment her courage wavered.

Now that Brewster had come into his splendid fortune he could conceive no greater delight than to share it with them. To walk into the little drawing-room and serenely lay large sums before them as their own seemed such a natural proceeding that he refused to see an obstacle. But he knew it was there; the proffer of such a gift to Mrs. Gray would mean a wound to the pride inherited from haughty generations of men sufficient unto themselves. There was a small but troublesome mortgage on the house, a matter of two or three thousand dollars, and Brewster tried to evolve a plan by which he could assume the burden without giving deep and lasting offense. A hundred wild designs had come to him, but they were quickly relegated to the growing heap of subterfuges and pretexts condemned by his tenderness for the pride of these two women who meant so much to him.

Leaving the bank, he hastened, by electric car, to Fortieth Street and Broadway, and then walked eagerly off into the street of the numeral. He had not yet come to the point where he felt like scorning the cars, even though a roll of banknotes was tucked snugly away in a pocket that seemed to swell with sudden affluence. Old Hendrick, faithful servitor through two generations, was sweeping the autumn leaves from the sidewalk when Montgomery came up to the house.

“Hello, Hendrick,” was the young man’s cheery greeting. “Nice lot of leaves you have there.”

“So?” ebbed from Hendrick, who did not even so much as look up from his work. Hendrick was a human clam.

“Mrs. Gray in?”

A grunt that signified yes.

“You’re as loquacious as ever, Hendrick.”

A mere nod.

Brewster let himself in with his own latch key, threw his hat on a chair and unceremoniously bolted into the library. Margaret was seated near a window, a book in her lap. The first evidence of unbiased friendship he had seen in days shone in her smile. She took his hand and said simply, “We are glad to welcome the prodigal to his home again.”

“I remind myself more of the fatted calf.”

His first self-consciousness had gone.

“I thought of that, but I didn’t dare say it,” she laughed. “One must be respectful to rich relatives.”

“Hang your rich relatives, Peggy; if I thought that this money would make any difference I would give it up this minute.”

“Nonsense, Monty,” she said. “How could it make a difference? But you must admit it is rather startling. The friend of our youth leaves his humble dwelling Saturday night with his salary drawn for two weeks ahead. He returns the following Thursday a dazzling millionaire.”

“I’m glad I’ve begun to dazzle, anyway. I thought it might be hard to look the part.”

“Well, I can’t see that you are much changed.” There was a suggestion of a quaver in her voice, and the shadows did not prevent him from seeing the quick mist that flitted across her deep eyes.

“After all, it’s easy work being a millionaire,” he explained, “when you’ve always had million-dollar inclinations.”

“And fifty-cent possibilities,” she added.

“Really, though, I’ll never get as much joy out of my abundant riches as I did out of financial embarrassments.”

“But think how fine it is, Monty, not ever to wonder where your winter’s overcoat is to come from and how long the coal will last, and all that.”

“Oh, I never wondered about my overcoats; the tailor did the wondering. But I wish I could go on living here just as before. I’d a heap rather live here than at that gloomy place on the avenue.” “That sounded like the things you used to say when we played in the garret. You’d a heap sooner do this than that—don’t you remember?”

“That’s just why I’d rather live here, Peggy. Last night I fell to thinking of that old garret, and hanged if something didn’t come up and stick in my throat so tight that I wanted to cry. How long has it been since we played up there? Yes, and how long has it been since I read ‘Oliver Optic’ to you, lying there in the garret window while you sat with your back against the wall, your blue eyes as big as dollars?”

“Oh, dear me, Monty, it was ages ago—twelve or thirteen years at least,” she cried, a soft light in her eyes.

“I’m going up there this afternoon to see what the place is like,” he said eagerly. “And, Peggy, you must come too. Maybe I can find one of those Optic books, and we’ll be young again.”

“Just for old time’s sake,” she said impulsively. “You’ll stay for luncheon, too.”

“I’ll have to be at the—no, I won’t, either. Do you know, I was thinking I had to be at the bank at twelve-thirty to let Mr. Perkins go out for something to eat? The millionaire habit isn’t so firmly fixed as I supposed.” After a moment’s pause, in which his growing seriousness changed the atmosphere, he went on, haltingly, uncertain of his position: “The nicest thing about having all this money is that—that—we won’t have to deny ourselves anything after this.” It did not sound very tactful, now that it was out, and he was compelled to scrutinize rather intently a familiar portrait in order to maintain an air of careless assurance. She did not respond to this venture, but he felt that she was looking directly into his sorely-tried brain. “We’ll do any amount of decorating about the house and—and you know that furnace has been giving us a lot of trouble for two or three years—” he was pouring out ruthlessly, when her hand fell gently on his own and she stood straight and tall before him, an odd look in her eyes.

“Don’t—please don’t go on, Monty,” she said very gently but without wavering. “I know what you mean. You are good and very thoughtful, Monty, but you really must not.”

“Why, what’s mine is yours—” he began.

“I know you are generous, Monty, and I know you have a heart. You want us to—to take some of your money,”—it was not easy to say it, and as for Monty, he could only look at the floor. “We cannot, Monty, dear,—you must never speak of it again. Mamma and I had a feeling that you would do it. But don’t you see,—even from you it is an offer of help, and it hurts.”

“Don’t talk like that, Peggy,” he implored.

“It would break her heart if you offered to give her money in that way. She’d hate it, Monty. It is foolish, perhaps, but you know we can’t take your money.”

“I thought you—that you—oh, this knocks all the joy out of it,” he burst out desperately.

“Dear Monty!”

“Let’s talk it over, Peggy; you don’t understand—” he began, dashing at what he thought would be a break in her resolve.

“Don’t!” she commanded, and in her blue eyes was the hot flash he had felt once or twice before.

He rose and walked across the floor, back and forth again, and then stood before her, a smile on his lips—a rather pitiful smile, but still a smile. There were tears in her eyes as she looked at him.

“It’s a confounded puritanical prejudice, Peggy,” he said in futile protest, “and you know it.”

“You have not seen the letters that came for you this morning. They’re on the table over there,” she replied, ignoring him.

He found the letters and resumed his seat in the window, glancing half-heartedly over the contents of the envelopes. The last was from Grant & Ripley, attorneys, and even from his abstraction it brought a surprised “By Jove!” He read it aloud to Margaret.

September 30.

MONTGOMERY BREWSTER, ESQ.,

New York.

Dear Sir:—

We are in receipt of a communication from Mr. Swearengen Jones of Montana, conveying the sad intelligence that your uncle, James T. Sedgwick, died on the 24th inst. at M— Hospital in Portland, after a brief illness. Mr. Jones by this time has qualified in Montana as the executor of your uncle’s will and has retained us as his eastern representatives. He incloses a copy of the will, in which you are named as sole heir, with conditions attending. Will you call at our office this afternoon, if it is convenient? It is important that you know the contents of the instrument at once.

Respectfully yours,

GRANT & RIPLEY.

For a moment there was only amazement in the air. Then a faint, bewildered smile appeared in Monty’s face, and reflected itself in the girl’s.

“Who is your Uncle James?” she asked.

“I’ve never heard of him.”

“You must go to Grant & Ripley’s at once, of course.”

“Have you forgotten, Peggy,” he replied, with a hint of vexation in his voice, “that we are to read ‘Oliver Optic’ this afternoon?”

CHAPTER IV

A SECOND

“You are both fortunate and unfortunate, Mr. Brewster,” said Mr. Grant, after the young man had dropped into a chair in the office of Grant & Ripley the next day. Montgomery wore a slightly bored expression, and it was evident that he took little interest in the will of James T. Sedgwick. From far back in the recesses of memory he now recalled this long-lost brother of his mother. As a very small child he had seen his Uncle James upon the few occasions which brought him to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Brewster. But the young man had dined at the Drews the night before and Barbara had had more charm for him than usual. It was of her that he was thinking when he walked into the office of Swearengen Jones’s lawyers.

“The truth is, Mr. Grant, I’d completely forgotten the existence of an uncle,” he responded.

“It is not surprising,” said Mr. Grant, genially. “Every one who knew him in New York nineteen or twenty years ago believed him to be dead. He left the city when you were a very small lad, going to Australia, I think. He was off to seek his fortune, and he needed it pretty badly when he started out. This letter from Mr. Jones comes like a message from the dead. Were it not that we have known Mr. Jones for a long time, handling affairs of considerable importance for him, I should feel inclined to doubt the whole story. It seems that your uncle turned up in Montana about fifteen years ago and there formed a stanch friendship with old Swearengen Jones, one of the richest men in the far West. Sedgwick’s will was signed on the day of his death, September 24th, and it was quite natural that Mr. Jones should be named as his executor. That is how we became interested in the matter, Mr. Brewster.”

“I see,” said Montgomery, somewhat puzzled. “But why do you say that I am both fortunate and unfortunate?”

“The situation is so remarkable that you’ll consider that a mild way of putting it when you’ve heard everything. I think you were told, in our note of yesterday, that you are the sole heir. Well, it may surprise you to learn that James Sedgwick died possessed of an estate valued at almost seven million dollars.”

Montgomery Brewster sat like one petrified, staring blankly at the old lawyer, who could say startling things in a level voice.

“He owned gold mines and ranches in the Northwest and there is no question as to their value. Mr. Jones, in his letter to us, briefly outlines the history of James Sedgwick from the time he landed in Montana. He reached there in 1885 from Australia, and he was worth thirty or forty thousand dollars at the time. Within five years he was the owner of a huge ranch, and scarcely had another five years passed before he was part owner of three rich gold mines. Possessions accumulated rapidly; everything he touched turned to gold. He was shrewd, careful, and thrifty, and his money was handled with all the skill of a Wall Street financier. At the time of his death, in Portland, he did not owe a dollar in the world. His property is absolutely unencumbered—safe and sound as a government bond. It’s rather overwhelming, isn’t it?” the lawyer concluded, taking note of Brewster’s expression.

“And he—he left everything to me?”

“With a proviso.”

“Ah!”

“I have a copy of the will. Mr. Ripley and I are the only persons in New York who at present know its contents. You, I am sure, after hearing it, will not divulge them without the most careful deliberation.”

Mr. Grant drew the document from a pigeon-hole in his desk, adjusted his glasses and prepared to read. Then, as though struck by a sudden thought, he laid the paper down and turned once more to Brewster.

“It seems that Sedgwick never married. Your mother was his sister and his only known relative of close connection. He was a man of most peculiar temperament, but in full possession of all mental faculties. You may find this will to be a strange document, but I think Mr. Jones, the executor, explains any mystery that may be suggested by its terms. While Sedgwick’s whereabouts were unknown to his old friends in New York, it seems that he was fully posted on all that was going on here. He knew that you were the only child of your mother and therefore his only nephew. He sets forth the dates of your mother’s marriage, of your birth, of the death of Robert Brewster and of Mrs. Brewster. He also was aware of the fact that old Edwin Peter Brewster intended to bequeath a large fortune to you—and thereby hangs a tale. Sedgwick was proud. When he lived in New York, he was regarded as the kind of man who never forgave the person who touched roughly upon his pride. You know, of course, that your father married Miss Sedgwick in the face of the most bitter opposition on the part of Edwin Brewster. The latter refused to recognize her as his daughter, practically disowned his son, and heaped the harshest kind of calumny upon the Sedgwicks. It was commonly believed about town that Jim Sedgwick left the country three or four years after this marriage for the sole reason that he and Edwin Brewster could not live in the same place. So deep was his hatred of the old man that he fled to escape killing him. It was known that upon one occasion he visited the office of his sister’s enemy for the purpose of slaying him, but something prevented. He carried that hatred to the grave, as you will see.”

Montgomery Brewster was trying to gather himself together from within the fog which made himself and the world unreal.

“I believe I’d like to have you read this extraor—the will, Mr. Grant,” he said, with an effort to hold his nerves in leash.

Mr. Grant cleared his throat and began in his still voice. Once he looked up to find his listener eager, and again to find him grown indifferent. He wondered dimly if this were a pose.

In brief, the last will of James T. Sedgwick bequeathed everything, real and personal, of which he died possessed, to his only nephew, Montgomery Brewster of New York, son of Robert and Louise Sedgwick Brewster. Supplementing this all-important clause there was a set of conditions governing the final disposition of the estate. The most extraordinary of these conditions was the one which required the heir to be absolutely penniless upon the twenty-sixth anniversary of his birth, September 23d.

The instrument went into detail in respect to this supreme condition. It set forth that Montgomery Brewster was to have no other worldly possession than the clothes which covered him on the September day named. He was to begin that day without a penny to his name, without a single article of jewelry, furniture or finance that he could call his own or could thereafter reclaim. At nine o’clock, New York time, on the morning of September 23d, the executor, under the provisions of the will, was to make over and transfer to Montgomery Brewster all of the moneys, lands, bonds, and interests mentioned in the inventory which accompanied the will. In the event that Montgomery Brewster had not, in every particular, complied with the requirements of the will, to the full satisfaction of the said executor, Swearengen Jones, the estate was to be distributed among certain institutions of charity designated in the instrument. Underlying this imperative injunction of James Sedgwick was plainly discernible the motive that prompted it. In almost so many words he declared that his heir should not receive the fortune if he possessed a single penny that had come to him, in any shape or form, from the man he hated, Edwin Peter Brewster. While Sedgwick could not have known at the time of his death that the banker had bequeathed one million dollars to his grandson, it was more than apparent that he expected the young man to be enriched liberally by his enemy. It was to preclude any possible chance of the mingling of his fortune with the smallest portion of Edwin P. Brewster’s that James Sedgwick, on his deathbed, put his hand to this astonishing instrument.

There was also a clause in which he undertook to dictate the conduct of Montgomery Brewster during the year leading up to his twenty-sixth anniversary. He required that the young man should give satisfactory evidence to the executor that he was capable of managing his affairs shrewdly and wisely,—that he possessed the ability to add to the fortune through his own enterprise; that he should come to his twenty-sixth anniversary with a fair name and a record free from anything worse than mild forms of dissipation; that his habits be temperate; that he possess nothing at the end of the year which might be regarded as a “visible or invisible asset”; that he make no endowments; that he give sparingly to charity; that he neither loan nor give away money, for fear that it might be restored to him later; that he live on the principle which inspires a man to “get his money’s worth,” be the expenditure great or small. As these conditions were prescribed for but a single year in the life of the heir, it was evident that Mr. Sedgwick did not intend to impose any restrictions after the property had gone into his hands.

“How do you like it?” asked Mr. Grant, as he passed the will to Brewster.

The latter took the paper and glanced over it with the air of one who had heard but had not fully grasped its meaning.

“It must be a joke, Mr. Grant,” he said, still groping with difficulty through the fog.

“No, Mr. Brewster, it is absolutely genuine. Here is a telegram from the Probate Court in Sedgwick’s home county, received in response to a query from us. It says that the will is to be filed for probate and that Mr. Sedgwick was many times a millionaire. This statement, which he calls an inventory, enumerates his holdings and their value, and the footing shows $6,345,000 in round numbers. The investments, you see, are gilt-edged. There is not a bad penny in all those millions.”

“Well, it is rather staggering, isn’t it?” said Montgomery, passing his hand over his forehead. He was beginning to comprehend.

“In more ways than one. What are you going to do about it?”

“Do about it?” in surprise. “Why, it’s mine, isn’t it?”

“It is not yours until next September,” the lawyer quietly said.

“Well, I fancy I can wait,” said Brewster with a smile that cleared the air.

“But, my dear fellow, you are already the possessor of a million. Do you forget that you are expected to be penniless a year from now?”

“Wouldn’t you exchange a million for seven millions, Mr. Grant?”

“But let me inquire how you purpose doing it?” asked Mr. Grant, mildly.

“Why, by the simple process of destruction. Don’t you suppose I can get rid of a million in a year? Great Scott, who wouldn’t do it! All I have to do is to cut a few purse strings and there is but one natural conclusion. I don’t mind being a pauper for a few hours on the 23d of next September.”

“That is your plan, then?”

“Of course. First I shall substantiate all that this will sets forth. When I am assured that there can be no possibility of mistake in the extent of this fortune and my undisputed claim, I’ll take steps to get rid of my grandfather’s million in short order.” Brewster’s voice rang true now. The zest of life was coming back.

Mr. Grant leaned forward slowly and his intent, penetrating gaze served as a check to the young fellow’s enthusiasm.

“I admire and approve the sagacity which urges you to exchange a paltry million for a fortune, but it seems to me that you are forgetting the conditions,” he said, slowly. “Has it occurred to you that it will be no easy task to spend a million dollars without in some way violating the restrictions in your uncle’s will, thereby losing both fortunes?”

CHAPTER V

THE MESSAGE FROM JONES

A new point of view gradually came to Brewster. All his life had been spent in wondering how to get enough money to pay his bills, and it had not occurred to him that it might be as difficult to spend as to acquire wealth. The thought staggered him for a moment. Then he cried triumphantly, “I can decline to accept grandfather’s million.”

“You cannot decline to accept what is already yours. I understand that the money has been paid to you by Mr. Buskirk. You have a million dollars, Mr. Brewster, and it cannot be denied.”

“You are right,” agreed Montgomery, dejectedly. “Really, Mr. Grant, this proposition is too much for me. If you aren’t required to give an immediate answer, I want to think it over. It sounds like a dream.”

“It is no dream, Mr. Brewster,” smiled the lawyer. “You are face to face with an amazing reality. Come in tomorrow morning and see me again. Think it over, study it out. Remember the conditions of the will and the conditions that confront you. In the meantime, I shall write to Mr. Jones, the executor, and learn from him just what he expects you to do in order to carry out his own conception of the terms of your uncle’s will.”

“Don’t write, Mr. Grant; telegraph. And ask him to wire his reply. A year is not very long in an affair of this kind.” A moment later he added, “Damn these family feuds! Why couldn’t Uncle James have relented a bit? He brings endless trouble on my innocent head, just because of a row before I was born.”

“He was a strange man. As a rule, one does not carry grudges quite so far. But that is neither here nor there. His will is law in this case.”

“Suppose I succeed in spending all but a thousand dollars before the 23d of next September! I’d lose the seven millions and be the next thing to a pauper. That wouldn’t be quite like getting my money’s worth.”

“It is a problem, my boy. Think it over very seriously before you come to a decision, one way or the other. In the meantime, we can establish beyond a doubt the accuracy of this inventory.”

“By all means, go ahead, and please urge Mr. Jones not to be too hard on me. I believe I’ll risk it if the restrictions are not too severe. But if Jones has puritanical instincts, I might as well give up hope and be satisfied with what I have.”

“Mr. Jones is very far from what you’d call puritanical, but he is intensely practical and clear-headed. He will undoubtedly require you to keep an expense account and to show some sort of receipt for every dollar you disburse.”

“Good Lord! Itemize?”

“In a general way, I presume.”

“I’ll have to employ an army of spendthrifts to devise ways and means for profligacy.”

“You forget the item which restrains you from taking anybody into your confidence concerning this matter. Think it over. It may not be so difficult after a night’s sleep.”

“If it isn’t too difficult to get the night’s sleep.”

All the rest of the day Brewster wandered about as one in a dream. He was pre-occupied and puzzled, and more than one of his old associates, receiving a distant nod in passing, resentfully concluded that his wealth was beginning to change him. His brain was so full of statistics, figures, and computations that it whirled dizzily, and once he narrowly escaped being run down by a cable car. He dined alone at a small French restaurant in one of the side streets. The waiter marveled at the amount of black coffee the young man consumed and looked hurt when he did not touch the quail and lettuce.

That night the little table in his room at Mrs. Gray’s was littered with scraps of pad paper, each covered with an incomprehensible maze of figures. After dinner he had gone to his own rooms, forgetting that he lived on Fifth Avenue. Until long after midnight he smoked and calculated and dreamed. For the first time the immensity of that million thrust itself upon him. If on that very day, October the first, he were to begin the task of spending it he would have but three hundred and fifty-seven days in which to accomplish the end. Taking the round sum of one million dollars as a basis, it was an easy matter to calculate his average daily disbursement. The situation did not look so utterly impossible until he held up the little sheet of paper and ruefully contemplated the result of that simple problem in mathematics.

It meant an average daily expenditure of $2,801.12 for nearly a year, and even then there would be sixteen cents left over, for, in proving the result of his rough sum in division, he could account for but $999,999.84. Then it occurred to him that his money would be drawing interest at the bank.

“But for each day’s $2,801.12, I am getting seven times as much,” he soliloquized, as he finally got into bed. “That means $19,607.84 a day, a clear profit of $16,806.72. That’s pretty good—yes, too good. I wonder if the bank couldn’t oblige me by not charging interest.”

The figures kept adding and subtracting themselves as he dozed off, and once during the night he dreamed that Swearengen Jones had sentenced him to eat a million dollars’ worth of game and salad at the French restaurant. He awoke with the consciousness that he had cried aloud, “I can do it, but a year is not very long in an affair of this kind.”

It was nine o’clock when Brewster finally rose, and after his tub he felt ready to cope with any problem, even a substantial breakfast. A message had come to him from Mr. Grant of Grant & Ripley, announcing the receipt of important dispatches from Montana, and asking him to luncheon at one. He had time to spare, and as Margaret and Mrs. Gray had gone out, he telephoned Ellis to take his horse to the entrance to the park at once. The crisp autumn air was perfect for his ride, and Brewster found a number of smart people already riding and driving in the park. His horse was keen for a canter and he had reached the obelisk before he drew rein. As he was about to cross the carriage road he was nearly run down by Miss Drew in her new French automobile.

“I beg your pardon,” she cried. “You’re the third person I’ve run into, so you see I’m not discriminating against you.”

“I should be flattered even to be run down by you.”

“Very well, then, look out.” And she started the machine as if to charge him. She stopped in time, and said with a laugh, “Your gallantry deserves a reward. Wouldn’t you rather send your horse home and come for a ride with me?”

“My man is waiting at Fifty-ninth Street. If you’ll come that far, I’ll go with pleasure.”

Monty had merely a society acquaintance with Miss Drew. He had met her at dinners and dances as he had a host of other girls, but she had impressed him more than the others. Something indescribable took place every time their eyes met. Monty had often wondered just what that something meant, but he had always realized that it had in it nothing of platonic affection.

“If I didn’t have to meet her eyes,” he had said to himself, “I could go on discussing even politics with her, but the moment she looks at me I know she can see what I’m thinking about.” From the first they considered themselves very good friends, and after their third meeting it seemed perfectly natural that they should call one another by their first names. Monty knew he was treading on dangerous ground. It never occurred to him to wonder what Barbara might think of him. He took it as a matter of course that she must feel more than friendly toward him. As they rode through the maze of carriages, they bowed frequently to friends as they passed. They were conscious that some of the women, noticeably old Miss Dexter, actually turned around and gazed at them.

“Aren’t you afraid people will talk about us?” asked Monty with a laugh.

“Talk about our riding together in the park? It’s just as safe here as it would be in Fifth Avenue. Besides, who cares? I fancy we can stand it.”

“You’re a thoroughbred, Barbara. I simply didn’t want you talked about. When I go too far, say the word and drop me.”

“I have a luncheon at two, but until then we have our ride.”

Monty gasped and looked at his watch. “Five minutes to one,” he cried. The matter of his engagement with the attorney had quite escaped him. In the exhilaration of Miss Drew’s companionship he had forgotten even Uncle James’s millions.

“I’ve got a date at one that means life and death to me. Would you mind taking me down to the nearest Elevated—or—here, let me run it.”

Almost before Barbara was aware of what was happening they had changed places and the machine, under Monty’s guidance, was tearing over the ground.

“Of all the casual people,” said the girl, by no means unequal to the excitement, “I believe you’re kidnapping me.”

But when she saw the grim look on Monty’s face and one policeman after another warned him she became seriously alarmed. “Monty Brewster, this pace is positively dangerous.”

“Perhaps it is,” he responded, “but if they haven’t sense enough to keep out of the way they shouldn’t kick if they get run over.”

“I don’t mean the people or the automobiles or traps or trees or monuments, Monty; I mean you and me. I know we’ll either be killed or arrested.”

“This isn’t anything to the gait I’ll be going if everything turns out as I expect. Don’t be worried, Babs. Besides it’s one now. Lord, I didn’t dream it was so late.”

“Is your appointment so important?” she asked, hanging on.

“Well, I should say it is, and—look out—you blooming idiot! Do you want to get killed?” The last remark was hurled back at an indignant pedestrian who had escaped destruction by the merest chance.

“Here we are,” he said, as they drew up beside the entrance to the Elevated. “Thanks awfully,—you’re a corker,—sorry to leave you this way. I’ll tell you all about it later. You’re a dear to help me keep my appointment.”

“Seems to me you helped yourself,” she cried after him as he darted up the steps. “Come up for tea some day and tell me who the lady is.”

After he had gone Miss Drew turned to her chauffeur, who was in the tonneau. Then she laughed unrestrainedly, and the faintest shadow of a grin stole over the man’s face.

“Beg pardon, Miss,” he said, “but I’d back Mr. Brewster against Fournier any day.”

Only half an hour late, Brewster entered the office of Messrs. Grant & Ripley, flushed, eager, and unconscious of the big splotch of mud that decorated his cheek.

“Awfully sorry to have kept you waiting,” he apologized.

“Sherlock Holmes would say that you had been driving, Mr. Brewster,” said Mr. Ripley, shaking the young man’s hand.

“He would miss it, Mr. Ripley. I’ve been flying. What have you heard from Montana?” He could no longer check the impatient question, which came out so suddenly that the attorneys laughed irresistibly, Brewster Joining them an instant later. They laid before him a half dozen telegrams, responses from bankers, lawyers, and mine-operators in Montana. These messages established beyond doubt the extent of James T. Sedgwick’s wealth; it was reported to be even greater than shown by the actual figures.

“And what does Mr. Jones say?” demanded Montgomery.

“His reply resembles a press dispatch. He has tried to make himself thoroughly clear, and if there is anything left unsaid it is past our comprehension. I am sorry to inform you, though, that he has paid the telegraph charges,” said Mr. Grant, smiling broadly.

“Is he rational about it?” asked Montgomery, nervously.

Mr. Grant gave his partner a quick, significant glance, and then drew from his desk the voluminous telegram from Swearengen Jones. It was as follows:

October 2.

GRANT & RIPLEY,

Yucatan Building, New York.

I am to be sole referee in this matter. You are retained as my agents, heir to report to me through you weekly. One desire of uncle was to forestall grandfather’s bequest. I shall respect that desire. Enforce terms rigidly. He was my best friend and trusted me with disposition of all this money. Shall attend to it sacredly. Heir must get rid of money left to him in given time. Out of respect to memory of uncle he must take no one into his confidence. Don’t want world to think S. was damned fool. He wasn’t. Here are rules I want him to work under: 1. No reckless gambling. 2. No idiotic Board of Trade speculation. 3. No endowments to institutions of any character, because their memory would be an invisible asset. 4. No indiscriminate giving away of funds. By that I don’t mean him to be stingy. I hate a stingy man and so did J.T.S. 5. No more than ordinary dissipation. I hate a saint. So did J.T.S. And both of us sowed an oat or two. 6. No excessive donations to charity. If he gives as other millionaires do I’ll let it go at that. Don’t believe charity should be spoiled by indulgence. It is not easy to spend a million, and I won’t be unreasonable with him. Let him spend it freely, but not foolishly, and get his money’s worth out of it. If he does that I’ll consider him a good business man. I regard it foolish to tip waiter more than a dollar and car porter does not deserve over five. He does not earn more than one. If heir wants to try for the big stake he’d better begin quick, because he might slip up if he waits until day of judgment. It’s less than year off. Luck to him. Will write you more fully.

S. JONES.

“Write more fully!” echoed Montgomery. “What can there be left to write about?”

“He is explicit,” said the attorney, “but it is best to know all the conditions before you decide. Have you made up your mind?”

Brewster sat for a long time, staring hard at the floor. A great struggle was going on in his mind.

“It’s a gamble, and a big one,” he said at last, squaring his shoulders, “but I’ll take it. I don’t want to appear disloyal to my grandfather, but I think that even he would advise me to accept. Yes, you may write Mr. Jones that I accept the chance.”

The attorneys complimented him on his nerve, and wished him success. Brewster turned with a smile.

“I’ll begin by asking what you think a reasonable fee for an attorney in a case of this kind. I hope you will act for me.”

“You don’t want to spend it all in a lump, do you?” asked Mr. Grant, smiling. “We can hardly act as counsel for both you and Mr. Jones.”

“But I must have a lawyer, and the will limits the number of my confidants. What am I to do?”

“We will consult Mr. Jones in regard to the question. It is not regular, you see, but I apprehend no legal difficulties. We cannot accept fees from both sides, however,” said Mr. Grant.

“But I want attorneys who are willing to help me. It won’t be a help if you decline to accept my money.”

“We’ll resort to arbitration,” laughed Ripley.

Before night Montgomery Brewster began a career that would have startled the world had the facts been known. With true loyalty to the “Little Sons of the Rich,” he asked his friends to dinner and opened their eyes.

“Champagne!” cried Harrison, as they were seated at table. “I can’t remember the last time I had champagne.”

“Naturally,” laughed “Subway” Smith. “You couldn’t remember anything after that.”

As the dinner progressed Brewster explained that he intended to double his fortune within a year. “I’m going to have some fun, too,” he said, “and you boys are to help me.”

“Nopper” Harrison was employed as “superintendent of affairs”; Elon Gardner as financial secretary; Joe Bragdon as private secretary; “Subway” Smith as counsel, and there were places in view for the other members.

“I want the smartest apartment you can find, Nopper,” he commanded. “Don’t stop at expense. Have Pettingill redecorate it from top to bottom, Get the best servants you can find. I’m going to live, Nopper, and hang the consequences.”

CHAPTER VI

MONTY CRISTO

A fortnight later Montgomery Brewster had a new home. In strict obedience to his chief’s command, “Nopper” Harrison had leased until the September following one of the most expensive apartments to be found in New York City. The rental was $23,000, and the shrewd financial representative had saved $1,000 for his employer by paying the sum in advance. But when he reported this bit of economy to Mr. Brewster he was surprised that it brought forth a frown. “I never saw a man who had less sense about money,” muttered “Nopper” to himself. “Why, he spends it like a Chicago millionaire trying to get into New York society. If it were not for the rest of us he’d be a pauper in six months.”

Paul Pettingill, to his own intense surprise and, it must be said, consternation, was engaged to redecorate certain rooms according to a plan suggested by the tenant. The rising young artist, in a great flurry of excitement, agreed to do the work for $500, and then blushed like a schoolgirl when he was informed by the practical Brewster that the paints and material for one room alone would cost twice as much.

“Petty, you have no more idea of business than a goat,” criticised Montgomery, and Paul lowered his head in humble confession. “That man who calcimines your studio could figure on a piece of work with more intelligence than you reveal. I’ll pay $2,500. It’s only a fair price, and I can’t afford anything cheap in this place.”

“At this rate you won’t be able to afford anything,” said Pettingill to himself.

And so it was that Pettingill and a corps of decorators soon turned the rooms into a confusion of scaffoldings and paint buckets, out of which in the end emerged something very distinguished. No one had ever thought Pettingill deficient in ideas, and this was his opportunity. The only drawback was the time limit which Brewster so remorselessly fixed. Without that he felt that he could have done something splendid in the way of decorative panels—something that would make even the glory of Puvis de Chavannes turn pallid. With it he was obliged to curb his turbulent ideas, and he decided that a rich simplicity was the proper note. The result was gorgeous, but not too gorgeous,—it had depth and distinction.

Elated and eager, he assisted Brewster in selecting furniture and hangings for each room, but he did not know that his employer was making conditional purchases of everything. Mr. Brewster had agreements with all the dealers to the effect that they were to buy everything back at a fair price, if he desired to give up his establishment within a year. He adhered to this rule in all cases that called for the purchase outright of substantial necessities. The bump of calculativeness in Monty Brewster’s head was growing to abnormal proportions.

In retaining his rooms at Mrs. Gray’s, he gave the flimsy but pathetic excuse that he wanted a place in which he might find occasional seasons of peace and quiet. When Mrs. Gray protested against this useless bit of extravagance, his grief was so obviously genuine that her heart was touched, and there was a deep, fervent joy in her soul. She loved this fair-faced boy, and tears of happiness came to her eyes when she was given this new proof of his loyalty and devotion. His rooms were kept for him just as if he had expected to occupy them every day and every night, notwithstanding the luxurious apartments he was to maintain elsewhere. The Oliver Optic books still lay in the attic, all tattered and torn, but to Margaret the embodiment of prospective riches, promises of sweet hours to come. She knew Monty well enough to feel that he would not forget the dark little attic of old for all the splendors that might come with the new dispensation.

There was no little surprise when he sent out invitations for a large dinner. His grandfather had been dead less than a month, and society was somewhat scandalized by the plain symptoms of disrespect he was showing. No one had expected him to observe a prolonged season of mourning, but that he should disregard the formalities completely was rather shocking. Some of the older people, who had not long to live and who had heirs-apparent, openly denounced his heartlessness. It was not very gratifying to think of what might be in store for them if all memories were as short as Brewster’s. Old Mrs. Ketchell changed her will, and two nephews were cut off entirely; a very modest and impecunious grandson of Joseph Garrity also was to sustain a severe change of fortune in the near future, if the cards spoke correctly. Judge Van Woort, who was not expected to live through the night, got better immediately after hearing some one in the sick-room whisper that Montgomery Brewster was to give a big dinner. Naturally, the heirs-to-be condemned young Brewster in no uncertain terms.

Nevertheless, the dinner to be given by the grandson of old Edwin Peter Brewster was the talk of the town, and not one of the sixty invited guests could have been persuaded to miss it. Reports as to its magnificence were abroad long before the night set for the dinner. One of them had it that it was to cost $3,000 a plate. From that figure the legendary price receded to a mark as low as $500. Montgomery would have been only too glad to pay $3,000 or more, but some mysterious force conveyed to his mind a perfect portrait of Swearengen Jones in the act of putting down a large black mark against him, and he forbore.

“I wish I knew whether I had to abide by the New York or the Montana standard of extravagance,” Brewster said to himself. “I wonder if he ever sees the New York papers.”

Late each night the last of the grand old Brewster family went to his bedroom where, after dismissing his man, he settled down at his desk, with a pencil and a pad of paper. Lighting the candles, which were more easily managed, he found, than lamps, and much more costly, he thoughtfully and religiously calculated the expenses for the day. “Nopper” Harrison and Elon Gardner had the receipts for all moneys spent, and Joe Bragdon was keeping an official report, but the “chief,” as they called him, could not go to sleep until he was satisfied in his own mind that he was keeping up the average. For the first two weeks it had been easy—in fact, he seemed to have quite a comfortable lead in the race. He had spent almost $100,000 in the fortnight, but he realized that the greater part of it had gone into the yearly and not the daily expense-account. He kept a “profit and loss” entry in his little private ledger, but it was not like any other account of the kind in the world. What the ordinary merchant would have charged to “loss” he jotted down on the “profit” side, and he was continually looking for opportunities to swell the total.

Rawles, who had been his grandfather’s butler since the day after he landed in New York, came over to the grandson’s establishment, greatly to the wrath and confusion of the latter’s Aunt Emmeline. The chef came from Paris and his name was Detuit. Ellis, the footman, also found a much better berth with Monty than he had had in the house on the avenue. Aunt Emmeline never forgave her nephew for these base and disturbing acts of treachery, as she called them.

One of Monty’s most extraordinary financial feats grew out of the purchase of a $14,000 automobile. He blandly admitted to “Nopper” Harrison and the two secretaries that he intended to use it to practice with only, and that as soon as he learned how to run an “auto” as it should be run he expected to buy a good, sensible, durable machine for $7,000.

His staff officers frequently put their heads together to devise ways and means of curbing Monty’s reckless extravagance. They were worried.

“He’s like a sailor in port,” protested Harrison. “Money is no object if he wants a thing, and—damn it—he seems to want everything he sees.”

“It won’t last long,” Gardner said, reassuringly. “Like his namesake, Monte Cristo, the world is his just now and he wants to enjoy it.”

“He wants to get rid of it, it seems to me.”

Whenever they reproached Brewster about the matter he disarmed them by saying, “Now that I’ve got money I mean to give my friends a good time. Just what you’d do if you were in my place. What’s money for, anyway?”

“But this $3,000-a-plate dinner—”

“I’m going to give a dozen of them, and even then I can’t pay my just debts. For years I’ve been entertained at people’s houses and have been taken cruising on their yachts. They have always been bully to me, and what have I ever done for them? Nothing. Now that I can afford it, I am going to return some of those favors and square myself. Doesn’t it sound reasonable?”

And so preparations for Monty’s dinner went on. In addition to what he called his “efficient corps of gentlemanly aids” he had secured the services of Mrs. Dan DeMille as “social mentor and utility chaperon.” Mrs. DeMille was known in the papers as the leader of the fast younger married set. She was one of the cleverest and best-looking young women in town, and her husband was of those who did not have to be “invited too.” Mr. DeMille lived at the club and visited his home. Some one said that he was so slow and his wife so fast that when she invited him to dinner he usually was two or three days late. Altogether Mrs. DeMille was a decided acquisition to Brewster’s campaign committee. It required just her touch to make his parties fun instead of funny.

It was on October 18th that the dinner was given. With the skill of a general Mrs. Dan had seated the guests in such a way that from the beginning things went off with zest. Colonel Drew took in Mrs. Valentine and his content was assured; Mr. Van Winkle and the beautiful Miss Valentine were side by side, and no one could say he looked unhappy; Mr. Cromwell went in with Mrs. Savage; and the same delicate tact—in some cases it was almost indelicate—was displayed in the disposition of other guests.

Somehow they had come with the expectation of being bored. Curiosity prompted them to accept, but it did not prevent the subsequent inevitable lassitude. Socially Monty Brewster had yet to make himself felt. He and his dinners were something to talk: about, but they were accepted hesitatingly, haltingly. People wondered how he had secured the cooperation of Mrs. Dan, but then Mrs. Dan always did go in for a new toy. To her was inevitably attributed whatever success the dinner achieved. And it was no small measure. Yet there was nothing startling about the affair. Monty had decided to begin conservatively. He did the conventional thing, but he did it well. He added a touch or two of luxury, the faintest aroma of splendor. Pettingill had designed the curiously wayward table, with its comfortable atmosphere of companionship, and arranged its decoration of great lavender orchids and lacy butterfly festoons of white ones touched with yellow. He had wanted to use dahlias in their many rich shades from pale yellow to orange and deep red, but Monty held out for orchids. It was the artist, too, who had found in a rare and happy moment the massive gold candelabra—ancient things of a more luxurious age—and their opalescent shades. Against his advice the service, too, was of gold,—”rank vulgarity,” he called it, with its rich meaningless ornamentation. But here Monty was obdurate. He insisted that he liked the color and that porcelain had no character. Mrs. Dan only prevented a quarrel by suggesting that several courses should be served upon Sevres.

Pettingill’s scheme for lighting the room was particularly happy. For the benefit of his walls and the four lovely Monets which Monty had purchased at his instigation, he had designed a ceiling screen of heavy rich glass in tones of white that grew into yellow and dull green. It served to conceal the lights in the daytime, and at night the glare of electricity was immensely softened and made harmonious by passing through it. It gave a note of quiet to the picture, which caused even these men and women, who had been here and there and seen many things, to draw in their breath sharply. Altogether the effect manifestly made an impression.

Such an environment had its influence upon the company. It went far toward making the dinner a success. From far in the distance came the softened strains of Hungarian music, and never had the little band played the “Valse Amoureuse” and the “Valse Bleue” with the spirit it put into them that night. Yet the soft clamor in the dining-room insistently ignored the emotion of the music. Monty, bored as he was between the two most important dowagers at the feast, wondered dimly what invisible part it played in making things go. He had a vagrant fancy that without it there would have been no zest for talk, no noisy competition to overcome, no hurdles to leap. As it was, the talk certainly went well, and Mrs. Dan inspected the result of her work from time to time with smiling satisfaction. From across the table she heard Colonel Drew’s voice,—”Brewster evidently objects to a long siege. He is planning to carry us by assault.”

Mrs. Dan turned to “Subway” Smith, who was at her right—the latest addition to her menagerie. “What is this friend of yours?” she asked. “I have never seen such complex simplicity. This new plaything has no real charm for him. He is breaking it to find out what it is made of. And something will happen when he discovers the sawdust.”

“Oh, don’t worry about him,” said “Subway,” easily; “Monty’s at least a good sportsman. He won’t complain, whatever happens. He’ll accept the reckoning and pay the piper.”

It was only toward the end of the evening that Monty found his reward in a moment with Barbara Drew. He stood before her, squaring his shoulders belligerently to keep away intruders, and she smiled up at him in that bewildering fashion of hers. But it was only for an instant, and then came a terrifying din from the dining-room, followed by the clamor of crashing glass. The guests tried for a moment to be courteously oblivious, but the noise was so startling that such politeness became farcical. The host, with a little laugh, went down the hall. It was the beautiful screen near the ceiling that had fallen. A thousand pieces of shattered glass covered the place. The table was a sickening heap of crushed orchids and sputtering candles. Frightened servants rushed into the room from one side just as Brewster entered from the other. Stupefaction halted them. After the first pulseless moment of horror, exclamations of dismay went up on all sides. For Monty Brewster the first sensation of regret was followed by a diabolical sense of joy.

“Thank the Lord!” he said softly in the hush.

The look of surprise he encountered in the faces of his guests brought him up with a jerk.

“That it didn’t happen while we were dining,” he added with serene thankfulness. And his nonchalance scored for him in the idle game he was playing.

CHAPTER VII

A LESSON IN TACT

Mr. Brewster’s butler was surprised and annoyed. For the first time in his official career he had unbent so far as to manifest a personal interest in the welfare of his master. He was on the verge of assuming a responsibility which makes any servant intolerable. But after his interview he resolved that he would never again overstep his position. He made sure that it should be the last offense. The day following the dinner Rawles appeared before young Mr. Brewster and indicated by his manner that the call was an important one. Brewster was seated at his writing-table, deep in thought. The exclamation that followed Rawles’s cough of announcement was so sharp and so unmistakably fierce that all other evidence paled into insignificance. The butler’s interruption came at a moment when Monty’s mental arithmetic was pulling itself out of a very bad rut, and the cough drove it back into chaos.

“What is it,” he demanded, irritably. Rawles had upset his calculations to the extent of seven or eight hundred dollars.

“I came to report h’an unfortunate condition h’among the servants, sir,” said Rawies, stiffening as his responsibility became more and more weighty. He had relaxed temporarily upon entering the room.

“What’s the trouble?”

“The trouble’s h’ended, sir.”

“Then why bother me about it?”

“I thought it would be well for you to know, sir. The servants was going to ask for ’igher wiges today, sir.”

“You say they were going to ask. Aren’t they?” And Monty’s eyes lighted up at the thought of new possibilities.

“I convinced them, sir, as how they were getting good pay as it is, sir, and that they ought to be satisfied. They’d be a long time finding a better place and as good wiges. They ’aven’t been with you a week, and here they are strikin’ for more pay. Really, sir, these American servants—”

“Rawles, that’ll do!” exploded Monty. The butler’s chin went up and his cheeks grew redder than ever.

“I beg pardon, sir,” he gasped, with a respectful but injured air.

“Rawles, you will kindly not interfere in such matters again. It is not only the privilege, but the duty of every American to strike for higher pay whenever he feels like it, and I want it distinctly understood that I am heartily in favor of their attitude. You will kindly go back and tell them that after a reasonable length of service their wiges—I mean wages—shall be increased. AND DON’T MEDDLE AGAIN, Rawles.”

Late that afternoon Brewster dropped in at Mrs. DeMille’s to talk over plans for the next dinner. He realized that in no other way could he squander his money with a better chance of getting its worth than by throwing himself bodily into society. It went easily, and there could be only one asset arising from it in the end—his own sense of disgust.

“So glad to see you, Monty,” greeted Mrs. Dan, glowingly, coming in with a rush. “Come upstairs and I’ll give you some tea and a cigarette. I’m not at home to anybody.”

“That’s very good of you, Mrs. Dan,” said he, as they mounted the stairs. “I don’t know what I’d do without your help.” He was thinking how pretty she was.

“You’d be richer, at any rate,” turning to smile upon him from the upper landing. “I was in tears half the night, Monty, over that glass screen,” she said, after finding a comfortable place among the cushions of a divan. Brewster dropped into a roomy, lazy chair in front of her and handed her a cigarette, as he responded carelessly:

“It amounted to nothing. Of course, it was very annoying that it should happen while the guests were still there.” Then he added, gravely: “In strict confidence, I had planned to have it fall just as we were pushing back our chairs, but the confounded thing disappointed me. That’s the trouble with these automatic climaxes; they usually hang fire. It was to have been a sort of Fall of Babylon effect, you know.”

“Splendid! But like Babylon, it fell at the wrong time.”

For a lively quarter of an hour they discussed people about town, liberally approving the slandered and denouncing the slanderers. A still busier quarter of an hour ensued when together they made up the list of dinner guests. He moved a little writing-table up to the divan, and she looked on eagerly while he wrote down the names she suggested after many puckerings of her fair, aristocratic brow, and then drew lines through them when she changed her mind. Mrs. DeMille handled her people without gloves in making up Monty’s lists. The dinners were not hers, and she could afford to do as she pleased with his; he was broad and tall and she was not slow to see that he was indifferent. He did not care who the guests were, or how they came; he merely wished to make sure of their presence. His only blunder was the rather diffident recommendation that Barbara Drew be asked again. If he observed that Mrs. Dan’s head sank a little closer to the paper, he attached no importance to the movement; he could not see that her eyes grew narrow, and he paid no attention to the little catch in her breath.

“Wouldn’t that be a little—just a little pronounced?” she asked, lightly enough.

“You mean—that people might talk?”

“She might feel conspicuously present.”

“Do you think so? We are such good friends, you know.”

“Of course, if you’d like to have her,” slowly and doubtfully, “why, put her name down. But you evidently haven’t seen that.” Mrs. Dan pointed to a copy of the Trumpet which lay on the table.

When he had handed her the paper she said, “‘The Censor’ is growing facetious at your expense.”

“I am getting on in society with a vengeance if that ass starts in to write about me. Listen to this”—she had pointed out to him the obnoxious paragraph—”If Brewster Drew a diamond flush, do you suppose he’d catch the queen? And if he caught her, how long do you think she’d remain Drew? Or, if she Drew Brewster, would she be willing to learn such a game as Monte?”

The next morning a writer who signed himself “The Censor” got a thrashing and one Montgomery Brewster had his name in the papers, surrounded by fulsome words of praise.

CHAPTER VIII

THE FORELOCK OF TIME

One morning not long after the incidents just related, Brewster lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, deep in thought. There was a worried pucker on his forehead, half-hidden by the rumpled hair, and his eyes were wide and sleepless. He had dined at the Drews’ the evening before and had had an awakening. As he thought of the matter he could recall no special occurrence that he could really use as evidence. Colonel and Mrs. Drew had been as kind as ever and Barbara could not have been more charming. But something had gone wrong and he had endured a wretched evening.

“That little English Johnnie was to blame,” he argued. “Of course, Barbara had a right to put any one she liked next to her, but why she should have chosen that silly ass is more than I know. By Jove, if I had been on the other side I’ll warrant his grace would have been lost in the dust.”

His brain was whirling, and for the first time he was beginning to feel the unpleasant pangs of jealousy. The Duke of Beauchamp he especially disliked, although the poor man had hardly spoken during the dinner. But Monty could not be reconciled. He knew, of course, that Barbara had suitors by the dozen, but it had never occurred to him that they were even seriously considered. Notwithstanding the fact that his encounter with “The Censor” had brought her into undesirable notice, she forgave him everything after a moment’s consideration. The first few wrenches of resentment were overbalanced by her American appreciation of chivalry, however inspired. “The Censor” had gone for years unpunished; his coarse wit being aimed at every one who had come into social prominence. So pungent and vindictive was his pen that other men feared him, and there were many who lived in glass houses in terror of a fusilade. Brewster’s prompt and sufficient action had checked the pernicious attacks, and he became a hero among men and women. After that night there was no point to “The Censor’s” pen. Monty’s first qualms of apprehension were swept away when Colonel Drew himself hailed him the morning after the encounter and, in no unmeasured terms, congratulated him upon his achievement, assuring him that Barbara and Mrs. Drew approved, although they might lecture him as a matter of form.

But on this morning, as he lay in his bed, Monty was thinking deeply and painfully. He was confronted by a most embarrassing condition and he was discussing it soberly with himself. “I’ve never told her,” he said to himself, “but if she doesn’t know my feeling she is not as clever as I think. Besides, I haven’t time to make love to her now. If it were any other girl I suppose I’d have to, but Babs, why, she must understand. And yet—damn that Duke!”

In order to woo her properly he would be compelled to neglect financial duties that needed every particle of brain-energy at his command. He found himself opposed at the outset by a startling embarrassment, made absolutely clear by the computations of the night before. The last four days of indifference to finance on one side, and pampering the heart on the other, had proved very costly. To use his own expression, he had been “set back” almost eight thousand dollars. An average like that would be ruinous.

“Why, think of it,” he continued. “For each day sacrificed to Barbara I must deduct something like twenty-five hundred dollars. A long campaign would put me irretrievably in the hole; I’d get so far behind that a holocaust couldn’t put me even. She can’t expect that of me, yet girls are such idiots about devotion, and of course she doesn’t know what a heavy task I’m facing. And there are the others—what will they do while I am out of the running? I cannot go to her and say, ‘Please, may I have a year’s vacation? I’ll come back next September.’ On the other hand, I shall surely neglect my business if she expects me to compete. What pleasure shall I get out of the seven millions if I lose her? I can’t afford to take chances. That Duke won’t have seven millions next September, it’s true, but he’ll have a prodigious argument against me, about the twenty-first or second.”

Then a brilliant thought occurred to him which caused him to ring for a messenger-boy with such a show of impatience that Rawles stood aghast. The telegram which Monty wrote was as follows:

SWEARENGEN JONES,

Butte, Montana

May I marry and turn all property over to wife, providing she will have me?

MONTGOMERY BREWSTER.

“Why isn’t that reasonable?” he asked himself after the boy had gone. “Making property over to one’s wife is neither a loan nor is it charity. Old Jones might call it needless extravagance, since he’s a bachelor, but it’s generally done because it’s good business.” Monty was hopeful.

Following his habit in trouble, he sought Margaret Gray, to whom he could always appeal for advice and consolation. She was to come to his next dinner-party, and it was easy to lead up to the subject in hand by mentioning the other guests.

“And Barbara Drew,” he concluded, after naming all the others. They were alone in the library, and she was drinking in the details of the dinner as he related them.

“Wasn’t she at your first dinner?” she asked, quickly.

He successfully affected mild embarrassment.

“Yes.”

“She must be very attractive.” There was no venom in Peggy’s heart.

“She is attractive. In fact, she’s one of the best, Peggy,” he said, paving the way.

“It’s too bad she seems to care for that little Duke.”

“He’s a bounder,” he argued.

“Well, don’t take it to heart. You don’t have to marry him,” and Peggy laughed.

“But I do take it to heart, Peggy,” said Monty, seriously. “I’m pretty hard hit, and I want your help. A sister’s advice is always the best in a matter of this sort.”

She looked into his eyes dully for an instant, not realizing the full importance of his confession.

“You, Monty?” she said, incredulously.

“I’ve got it bad, Peggy,” he replied, staring hard at the floor. She could not understand the cold, gray tone that suddenly enveloped the room. The strange sense of loneliness that came over her was inexplicable. The little something that rose in her throat would not be dislodged, nor could she throw off the weight that seemed pressing down upon her. He saw the odd look in her eyes and the drawn, uncertain smile on her lips, but he attributed them to wonder and incredulity. Somehow, after all these years, he was transformed before her very eyes; she was looking upon a new personality. He was no longer Montgomery, the brother, but she could not explain how and when the change crept over her. What did it all mean? “I am very glad if it will make you happy, Monty,” she said slowly, the gray in her lips giving way to red once more. “Does she know?”

“I haven’t told her in so many words, Peggy, but—but I’m going to this evening,” he announced, lamely.

“This evening?”

“I can’t wait,” Monty said as he rose to go. “I’m glad you’re pleased, Peggy; I need your good wishes. And, Peggy,” he continued, with a touch of boyish wistfulness, “do you think there’s a chance for a fellow? I’ve had the very deuce of a time over that Englishman.”

It was not quite easy for her to say, “Monty, you are the best in the world. Go in and win.”

From the window she watched him swing off down the street, wondering if he would turn to wave his hand to her, his custom for years. But the broad back was straight and uncompromising. His long strides carried him swiftly out of sight, but it was many minutes before she turned her eyes, which were smarting a little, from the point where he was lost in the crowd. The room looked ashen to her as she brought her mind back to it, and somehow things had grown difficult.

When Montgomery reached home he found this telegram from Mr. Jones:

MONTGOMERY BREWSTER,

New York City.

Stick to your knitting, you damned fool.

S. JONES.

CHAPTER IX

LOVE AND A PRIZE-FIGHT

It is best not to repeat the expressions Brewster used regarding one S. Jones, after reading his telegram. But he felt considerably relieved after he had uttered them. He fell to reading accounts of the big prize-fight which was to take place in San Francisco that evening. He revelled in the descriptions of “upper cuts” and “left hooks,” and learned incidentally that the affair was to be quite one-sided. A local amateur was to box a champion. Quick to see an opportunity, and cajoling himself into the belief that Swearengen Jones could not object to such a display of sportsmanship, Brewster made Harrison book several good wagers on the result. He intimated that he had reason to believe that the favorite would lose. Harrison soon placed three thousand dollars on his man. The young financier felt so sure of the result that he entered the bets on the profit side of his ledger the moment he received Harrison’s report.

This done, he telephoned Miss Drew. She was not insensible to the significance of his inquiry if she would be in that afternoon. She had observed in him of late a condition of uneasiness, supplemented by moroseness and occasional periods of irascibility. Every girl whose occupation in life is the study of men recognizes these symptoms and knows how to treat them. Barbara had dealt with many men afflicted in this manner, and the flutter of anticipation that came with his urgent plea to see her was tempered by experience. It had something of joy in it, for she cared enough for Montgomery Brewster to have made her anxiously uncertain of his state of mind. She cared, indeed, much more than she intended to confess at the outset.

It was nearly half-past five when he came, and for once the philosophical Miss Drew felt a little irritation. So certain was she of his object in coming that his tardiness was a trifle ruffling. He apologized for being late, and succeeded in banishing the pique that possessed her. It was naturally impossible for him to share all his secrets with her, that is why he did not tell her that Grant & Ripley had called him up to report the receipt of a telegram from Swearengen Jones, in which the gentleman laconically said he could feed the whole State of Montana for less than six thousand dollars. Beyond that there was no comment. Brewster, in dire trepidation, hastened to the office of the attorneys. They smiled when he burst in upon them.

“Good heavens!” he exclaimed, “does the miserly old hayseed expect me to spend a million for newspapers, cigarettes and Boston terriers? I thought he would be reasonable!”

“He evidently has seen the newspaper accounts of your dinner, and this is merely his comment,” said Mr. Ripley.

“It’s either a warning, or else he’s ambiguous in his compliments,” growled Brewster, disgustedly.

“I don’t believe he disapproved, Mr. Brewster. In the west the old gentleman is widely known as a wit.”

“A wit, eh? Then he’ll appreciate an answer from me. Have you a telegraph blank, Mr. Grant?”

Two minutes later the following telegram to Swearengen Jones was awaiting the arrival of a messenger-boy, and Brewster was blandly assuring Messrs. Grant & Ripley that he did not “care a rap for the consequences”:

NEW YORK, October 23, 1—

SWEARENGEN JONES,

Butte, Mont.

No doubt you could do it for less than six thousand. Montana is regarded as the best grazing country in the world, but we don’t eat that sort of stuff in New York. That’s why it costs more to live here.

MONTGOMERY BREWSTER.

Just before leaving his apartments for Miss Drew’s home he received this response from faraway Montana:

BUTTE, MONTANA, Oct. 23, 1—

MONTGOMERY BREWSTER, New York.

We are eight thousand feet above the level of the sea. I suppose that’s why it costs us less to live high.

S. JONES.

“I was beginning to despair, Monty,” said Miss Drew, reproachfully, when he had come down from the height of his exasperation and remembered that there were things of more importance.

The light in his eyes brought the faintest tinge of red to her cheeks, and where a moment before there had been annoyance there was now a feeling of serenity. For a moment the silence was fraught with purpose. Monty glanced around the room, uncertain how to begin. It was not so easy as he had imagined.

“You are very good to see me,” he said at last. “It was absolutely necessary for me to talk to you this evening; I could not have endured the suspense any longer. Barbara, I’ve spent three or four sleepless nights on your account. Will it spoil your evening if I tell you in plain words what you already know? It won’t bother you, will it?” he floundered.

“What do you mean, Monty?” she begged, purposely dense, and with wonderful control of her eyes.

“I love you, Babs,” he cried. “I thought you knew about it all along or I should have told you before. That’s why I haven’t slept. The fear that you may not care for me has driven me nearly to distraction. It couldn’t go on any longer. I must know today.”

There was a gleam in his eyes that made her pose of indifference difficult; the fervor of his half-whispered words took possession of her. She had expected sentiment of such a different character that his frank confession disarmed her completely. Beneath his ardent, abrupt plea there was assurance, the confidence of one who is not to be denied. It was not what he said, but the way he said it. A wave of exultation swept over her, tingling through every nerve. Under the spell her resolution to dally lightly with his emotion suffered a check that almost brought ignominious surrender. Both of her hands were clasped in his when he exultingly resumed the charge against her heart, but she was rapidly regaining control of her emotions and he did not know that he was losing ground with each step he took forward. Barbara Drew loved Brewster, but she was going to make him pay dearly for the brief lapse her composure had experienced. When next she spoke she was again the Miss Drew who had been trained in the ways of the world, and not the young girl in love.

“I care for you a great deal, Monty,” she said, “but I’m wondering whether I care enough to—to marry you.”

“We haven’t known each other very long, Babs,” he said, tenderly, “but I think we know each other well enough to be beyond wondering.”

“It is like you to manage the whole thing,” she said, chidingly. “Can’t you give me time to convince myself that I love you as you would like, and as I must love if I expect to be happy with the man I marry?”

“I forgot myself,” he said, humbly.

“You forgot me,” she protested, gently, touched by this sign of contrition. “I do care for you, Monty, but don’t you see it’s no little thing you ask of me? I must be sure—very sure—before I—before—”

“Don’t be so distressed,” he pleaded. “You will love me, I know, because you love me now. This means much to me, but it means more to you. You are the woman and you are the one whose happiness should be considered. I can live only in the hope that when I come to you again with this same story and this same question you’ll not be afraid to trust yourself to me.”

“You deserve to be happy for that, Monty,” she said, earnestly, and it was with difficulty that she kept her eyes from wavering as they looked into his.

“You will let me try to make you love me?” he asked, eagerly.

“I may not be worth the struggle.”

“I’ll take that chance,” he replied.

She was conscious of disappointment after he was gone. He had not pleaded as ardently as she had expected and desired, and, try as she would, she could not banish the touch of irritation that had come to haunt her for the night.

Brewster walked to the club, elated that he had at least made a beginning. His position was now clear. Besides losing a fortune he must win Barbara in open competition.

At the theater that evening he met Harrison, who was in a state of jubilation.

“Where did you get that tip?” asked he.

“Tip? What tip?” from Brewster.

“On the prize-fight?”

Brewster’s face fell and something cold crept over him.

“How did—what was the result?” he asked, sure of the answer.

“Haven’t you heard? Your man knocked him out in the fifth round—surprised everybody.”

CHAPTER X

NAPOLEON OF FINANCE

The next two months were busy ones for Brewster. Miss Drew saw him quite as often as before the important interview, but he was always a puzzle to her.

“His attitude is changed somehow,” she thought to herself, and then she remembered that “a man who wins a girl after an ardent suit is often like one who runs after a street car and then sits down to read his paper.”

In truth after the first few days Monty seemed to have forgotten his competitors, and was resting in the consciousness of his assured position. Each day he sent her flowers and considered that he had more than done his duty. He used no small part of his income on the flowers, but in this case his mission was almost forgotten in his love for Barbara.

Monty’s attitude was not due to any wanting of his affection, but to the very unromantic business in which he was engaged. It seemed to him that, plan as he might, he could not devise fresh ways and means to earn $16,000 a day. He was still comfortably ahead in the race, but a famine in opportunities was not far remote. Ten big dinner parties and a string of elaborate after-the-play suppers maintained a fair but insufficient average, and he could see that the time was ripe for radical measures. He could not go on forever with his dinners. People were already beginning to refer to the fact that he was warming his toes on the Social Register, and he had no desire to become the laughing stock of the town. The few slighting, sarcastic remarks about his business ability, chiefly by women and therefore reflected from the men, hurt him. Miss Drew’s apparently harmless taunt and Mrs. Dan’s open criticism told plainly enough how the wind was blowing, but it was Peggy’s gentle questions that cut the deepest. There was such honest concern in her voice that he could see how his profligacy was troubling her and Mrs. Gray. In their eyes, more than in the others, he felt ashamed and humiliated. Finally, goaded by the remark of a bank director which he overheard, “Edwin P. Brewster is turning handsprings in his grave over the way he is going it,” Monty resolved to redeem himself in the eyes of his critics. He would show them that his brain was not wholly given over to frivolity.

With this project in mind he decided to cause a little excitement in Wall Street. For some days he stealthily watched the stock market and plied his friends with questions about values. Constant reading and observation finally convinced him that Lumber and Fuel Common was the one stock in which he could safely plunge. Casting aside all apprehension, so far as Swearengen Jones was concerned, he prepared for what was to be his one and only venture on the Stock Exchange before the 23d of the following September. With all the cunning and craftiness of a general he laid his plans for the attack. Gardner’s face was the picture of despair when Brewster asked him to buy heavily in Lumber and Fuel.

“Good heavens, Monty,” cried the broker, “you’re joking. Lumber is away up now. It can’t possibly go a fraction of a point higher. Take my advice and don’t touch it. It opened today at 111 3/4 and closed at 109. Why, man, you’re crazy to think about it for an instant.”

“I know my business, Gardner,” said Brewster, quietly, and his conscience smote him when he saw the flush of mortification creep into the face of his friend. The rebuke had cut Gardner to the quick.

“But, Monty, I know what I’m talking about. At least let me tell you something about this stock,” pleaded Elon, loyally, despite the wound.

“Gardy, I’ve gone into this thing carefully, and if ever a man felt sure about anything I do about this,” said Monty, decidedly, but affectionately.

“Take my word for it Lumber can’t go any higher. Think of the situation; the lumber men in the north and west are overstocked, and there is a strike ready to go into effect. When that comes the stock will go for a song. The slump is liable to begin any day.”

“My mind is made up,” said the other firmly, and Gardner was in despair. “Will you or will you not execute an order for me at the opening tomorrow? I’ll start with ten thousand shares. What will it cost me to margin it for ten points?”

“At least a hundred thousand, exclusive of commission, which would be twelve and a half a hundred shares.” Despite the most strenuous opposition from Gardner, Brewster adhered to his design, and the broker executed the order the next morning. He knew that Brewster had but one chance to win, and that was to buy the stock in a lump instead of distributing it among several brokers and throughout the session. This was a point that Monty had overlooked.

There had been little to excite the Stock Exchange for some weeks: nothing was active and the slightest flurry was hailed as an event. Every one knew that the calm would be disturbed at some near day, but nobody looked for a sensation in Lumber and Fuel. It was a foregone conclusion that a slump was coming, and there was scarcely any trading in the stock. When Elon Gardner, acting for Montgomery Brewster; took ten thousand shares at 108 3/4 there was a mighty gasp on the Exchange, then a rubbing of eyes, then commotion. Astonishment was followed by nervousness, and then came the struggle.

Brewster, confident that the stock could go no higher, and that sooner or later it must drop, calmly ordered his horse for a ride in the snow-covered park. Even though he knew the venture was to be a failure in the ordinary sense he found joy in the knowledge that he was doing something. He might be a fool, he was at least no longer inactive. The feel of the air was good to him. He was exhilarated by the glitter of the snow, the answering excitement of his horse, the gaiety and sparkle of life about him.

Somewhere far back in his inner self there seemed to be the sound of cheering and the clapping of hands. Shortly before noon he reached his club, where he was to lunch with Colonel Drew. In the reading-room he observed that men were looking at him in a manner less casual than was customary. Some of them went so far as to smile encouragingly, and others waved their hands in the most cordial fashion. Three or four very young members looked upon him with admiration and envy, and even the porters seemed more obsequious. There was something strangely oppressive in all this show of deference.

Colonel Drew’s dignity relaxed amazingly when he caught sight of the young man. He came forward to meet him and his greeting almost carried Monty off his feet.

“How did you do it, my boy?” cried the Colonel. “She’s off a point or two now, I believe, but half an hour ago she was booming. Gad, I never heard of anything more spectacular!”

Monty’s heart was in his mouth as he rushed over to the ticker. It did not take him long to grasp the immensity of the disaster. Gardner had bought in at 108 3/4, and that very action seemed to put new life into the stock. Just as it was on the point of breaking for lack of support along came this sensational order for ten thousand shares; and there could be but one result. At one time in the morning Lumber and Fuel, traded in by excited holders, touched 113 1/2 and seemed in a fair way to hold firm around that figure.

Other men came up and listened eagerly. Brewster realized that his dash in Lumber and Fuel had been a master-stroke of cleverness when considered from the point of view of these men, but a catastrophe from his own.

“I hope you sold it when it was at the top,” said the Colonel anxiously.

“I instructed Gardner to sell only when I gave the word,” said Monty, lamely. Several of the men looked at him in surprise and disgust.

“Well, if I were you I’d tell him to sell,” remarked the Colonel, coldly.

“The effect of your plunge has worn off, Brewster, and the other side will drive prices down. They won’t be caught napping again, either,” said one of the bystanders earnestly.

“Do you think so?” And there was a note of relief in Monty’s voice.

From all sides came the advice to sell at once, but Brewster was not to be pushed. He calmly lighted a cigarette, and with an assured air of wisdom told them to wait a little while and see.

“She’s already falling off,” said some one at the ticker.

When Brewster’s bewildered eyes raced over the figures the stock was quoted at 112. His sigh of relief was heard but misunderstood. He might be saved after all. The stock had started to go down and there seemed no reason why it should stop. As he intended to purchase no more it was fair to assume that the backbone was at the breaking point. The crash was bound to come. He could hardly restrain a cry of joy. Even while he stood at the ticker the little instrument began to tell of a further decline. As the price went down his hopes went up.

The bystanders were beginning to be disgusted. “It was only a fluke after all,” they said to each other. Colonel Drew was appealed to urge Monty to save himself, and he was on the point of remonstrance when the message came that the threatened strike was off, and that the men were willing to arbitrate. Almost before one could draw breath this startling news began to make itself felt. The certainty of a great strike was one of the things that had made Brewster sure that the price could not hold. With this danger removed there was nothing to jeopardize the earning power of the stock. The next quotation was a point higher.

“You sly dog,” said the Colonel, digging Monty in the side. “I had confidence in you all the time.”

In ten minutes’ time Lumber and Fuel was up to 113 and soaring. Brewster, panic-stricken, rushed to the telephone and called up Gardner.

The broker, hoarse with excitement, was delighted when he recognized Brewster’s voice.

“You’re a wonder, Monty! I’ll see you after the close. How the devil did you do it?” shouted Gardner.

“What’s the price now?” asked Brewster.

“One thirteen and three-fourths, and going up all the time. Hooray!”

“Do you think she’ll go down again?” demanded Brewster.

“Not if I can help it.”

“Very well, then, go and sell out,” roared Brewster.

“But she’s going up like—”

“Sell, damn you! Didn’t you hear?”

Gardner, dazed and weak, began selling, and finally liquidated the full line at prices ranging from 114 to 112 1/2, but Montgomery Brewster had cleared $58,550, and all because it was he and not the market that got excited.

CHAPTER XI

COALS OF FIRE

It was not that he had realized heavily in his investments which caused his friends and his enemies to regard him in a new light; his profit had been quite small, as things go on the Exchange in these days. The mere fact that he had shown such foresight proved sufficient cause for the reversal of opinion. Men looked at him with new interest in their eyes, with fresh confidence. His unfortunate operations in the stock market had restored him to favor in all circles. The man, young or old, who could do what he had done with Lumber and Fuel well deserved the new promises that were being made for him.

Brewster bobbed uncertainly between two emotions—elation and distress. He had achieved two kinds of success—the desired and the undesired. It was but natural that he should feel proud of the distinction the venture had brought to him on one hand, but there was reason for despair over the acquisition of $50,000. It made it necessary for him to undertake an almost superhuman feat—increase the number of his January bills. The plans for the ensuing spring and summer were dimly getting into shape and they covered many startling projects. Since confiding some of them to “Nopper” Harrison, that gentleman had worn a never-decreasing look of worry and anxiety in his eyes.

Rawles added to his despair a day or two after the Stock Exchange misfortune. He brought up the information that six splendid little puppies had come to bless his Boston terrier family, and Joe Bragdon, who was present, enthusiastically predicted that he could get $100 apiece for them. Brewster loved dogs, yet for one single horrible moment he longed to massacre the helpless little creatures. But the old affection came back to him, and he hurried out with Bragdon to inspect the brood.

“And I’ve either got to sell them or kill them,” he groaned. Later on he instructed Bragdon to sell the pups for $25 apiece, and went away, ashamed to look their proud mother in the face.

Fortune smiled on him before the day was over, however. He took “Subway” Smith for a ride in the “Green Juggernaut,” bad weather and bad roads notwithstanding. Monty lost control of the machine and headed for a subway excavation. He and Smith saved themselves by leaping to the pavement, sustaining slight bruises, but the great machine crashed through the barricade and dropped to the bottom of the trench far below. To Smith’s grief and Brewster’s delight the automobile was hopelessly ruined, a clear loss of many thousands. Monty’s joy was short-lived, for it was soon learned that three luckless workmen down in the depths had been badly injured by the green meteor from above. The mere fact that Brewster could and did pay liberally for the relief of the poor fellows afforded him little consolation. His carelessness, and possibly his indifference, had brought suffering to these men and their families which was not pleasant to look back upon. Lawsuits were avoided by compromises. Each of the injured men received $4,000.

At this time every one was interested in the charity bazaar at the Astoria. Society was on exhibition, and the public paid for the privilege of gazing at the men and women whose names filled the society columns. Brewster frequented the booth presided over by Miss Drew, and there seemed to be no end to his philanthropy. The bazaar lasted two days and nights, and after that period his account-book showed an even “profit” of nearly $3,000. Monty’s serenity, however, was considerably ruffled by the appearance of a new and aggressive claimant for the smiles of the fair Barbara. He was a Californian of immense wealth and unbounded confidence in himself, and letters to people in New York had given him a certain entree. The triumphs in love and finance that had come with his two score years and ten had demolished every vestige of timidity that may have been born with him. He was successful enough in the world of finance to have become four or five times a millionaire, and he had fared so well in love that twice he had been a widower. Rodney Grimes was starting out to win Barbara with the same dash and impulsiveness that overcame Mary Farrell, the cook in the mining-camp, and Jane Boothroyd, the school-teacher, who came to California ready to marry the first man who asked her. He was a penniless prospector when he married Mary, and when he led Jane to the altar she rejoiced in having captured a husband worth at least $50,000.

He vied with Brewster in patronizing Barbara’s booth, and he rushed into the conflict with an impetuosity that seemed destined to carry everything before it. Monty was brushed aside, Barbara was preempted as if she were a mining claim and ten days after his arrival in New York, Grimes was the most talked-of man in town. Brewster was not the sort to be dispatched without a struggle, however. Recognizing Grimes as an obstacle, but not as a rival, he once more donned his armor and beset Barbara with all the zest of a champion who seeks to protect and not to conquer. He regarded the Californian as an impostor and summary action was necessary. “I know all about him, Babs,” he said one day after he felt sure of his position. “Why, his father was honored by the V. C, on the coast in ’49.”

“The Victoria Cross?” asked Barbara, innocently.

“No, the vigilance committee.”

In this way Monty routed the enemy and cleared the field before the end of another week. Grimes transferred his objectionable affection and Barbara was not even asked to be wife number three. Brewster’s campaign was so ardent that he neglected other duties deplorably, falling far behind his improvident average. With Grimes disposed of, he once more forsook the battlefield of love and gave his harassed and undivided attention to his own peculiar business.

The fast-and-loose game displeased Miss Barbara greatly. She was at first surprised, then piqued, then resentful. Monty gradually awoke to the distressing fact that she was going to be intractable, as he put it, and forthwith undertook to smooth the troubled sea. To his amazement and concern she was not to be appeased.

“Does it occur to you, Monty,” she said, with a gentle coldness that was infinitely worse than heat, “that you have been carrying things with a pretty high hand? Where did you acquire the right to interfere with my privileges? You seem to think that I am not to speak to any man but you.”

“O, come now, Babs,” retorted Monty, “I’ve not been quite as unreasonable as that. And you know yourself that Grimes is the worst kind of a bounder.”

“I know nothing of the sort,” replied the lady, with growing irritation. “You say that about every man who gives me a smile or a flower. Does it indicate such atrocious taste?”

“Don’t be silly, Barbara. You know perfectly well that you have talked to Gardner and that idiot Valentine by the hour, and I’ve not said a word. But there are some things I can’t stand, and the impertinence of Grimes is one of them. Jove! he looked at you, out of those fishy eyes, sometimes as though he owned you. If you knew how many times I’ve fairly ached to knock him down!”

Inwardly Barbara was weakening a little before his masterfulness. But she gave no sign.

“And it never occurred to you,” she said, with that exasperating coldness of the voice, “that I was equal to the situation. I suppose you thought Mr. Grimes had only to beckon and I would joyfully answer. I’ll have you know, Monty Brewster, right now, that I am quite able to choose my friends, and to handle them. Mr. Grimes has character and I like him. He has seen more of life in a year of his strenuous career than you ever dreamed of in all your pampered existence. His life has been real, Monty Brewster, and yours is only an imitation.”

It struck him hard, but it left him gentle.

“Babs,” he said, softly, “I can’t take that from you. You don’t really mean it, do you? Am I as bad as that?”

It was a moment for dominance, and he missed it. His gentleness left her cold.

“Monty,” she exclaimed irritably, “you are terribly exasperating. Do make up your mind that you and your million are not the only things in the world.”

His blood was up now, but it flung him away from her.

“Some day, perhaps, you’ll find out that there is not much besides. I am just a little too big, for one thing, to be played with and thrown aside. I won’t stand it.”

He left the house with his head high in the air, angry red in his cheeks, and a feeling in his heart that she was the most unreasonable of women. Barbara, in the meantime, cried herself to sleep, vowing she would never love Monty Brewster again as long as she lived.

A sharp cutting wind was blowing in Monty’s face as he left the house. He was thoroughly wretched.

“Throw up your hands!” came hoarsely from somewhere, and there was no tenderness in the tones. For an instant Monty was dazed and bewildered, but in the next he saw two shadowy figures walking beside him. “Stop where you are, young fellow,” was the next command, and he stopped short. He was in a mood to fight, but the sight of a revolver made him think again. Monty was not a coward, neither was he a fool. He was quick to see that a struggle would be madness.

“What do you want?” he demanded as coolly as his nerves would permit.

“Put up your hands quick!” and he hastily obeyed the injunction.

“Not a sound out of you or you get it good and proper. You know what we want. Get to work, Bill; I’ll watch his hands.”

“Help yourselves, boys. I’m not fool enough to scrap about it. Don’t hit me or shoot, that’s all. Be quick about it, because I’ll take cold if my overcoat is open long. How’s business been tonight?” Brewster was to all intents and purposes the calmest man in New York.

“Fierce!” said the one who was doing the searching. “You’re the first guy we’ve seen in a week that looks good.”

“I hope you won’t be disappointed,” said Monty, genially. “If I’d expected this I might have brought more money.”

“I guess we’ll be satisfied,” chuckled the man with the revolver. “You’re awful nice and kind, mister, and maybe you wouldn’t object to tellin’ us when you’ll be up dis way ag’in.”

“It’s a pleasure to do business with you, pardner,” said the other, dropping Monty’s $300 watch in his pocket. “We’ll leave car-fare for you for your honesty.” His hands were running through Brewster’s pockets with the quickness of a machine. “You don’t go much on jewelry, I guess. Are dese shoit buttons de real t’ing?”

“They’re pearls,” said Monty, cheerfully.

“My favorite jool,” said the man with the revolver. “Clip ’em out, Bill.”

“Don’t cut the shirt,” urged Monty. “I’m going to a little supper and I don’t like the idea of a punctured shirt-front.”

“I’ll be as careful as I kin, mister. There, I guess dat’s all. Shall I call a cab for you, sir?”

“No, thank you, I think I’ll walk.”

“Well, just walk south a hundred steps without lookin’ ’round er yellin’ and you kin save your skin. I guess you know what I mean, pardner.”

“I’m sure I do. Good-night.”

“Good-night,” came in chuckles from the two hold-up men. But Brewster hesitated, a sharp thought penetrating his mind.

“By gad!” he exclaimed, “you chaps are very careless. Do you know you’ve missed a roll of three hundred dollars in this overcoat pocket?” The men gasped and the spasmodic oaths that came from them were born of incredulity. It was plain that they doubted their ears.

“Say it ag’in,” muttered Bill, in bewildered tones.

“He’s stringin’ us, Bill,” said the other.

“Sure,” growled Bill. “It’s a nice way to treat us, mister. Move along now and don’t turn ’round.”

“Well, you’re a couple of nice highwaymen,” cried Monty in disgust.

“Sh—not so loud.”

“That is no way to attend to business. Do you expect me to go down in my pocket and hand you the goods on a silver tray?”

“Keep your hands up! You don’t woik dat game on me. You got a gun there.”

“No, I haven’t. This is on the level. You over-looked a roll of bills in your haste and I’m not the sort of fellow to see an earnest endeavorer get the worst of it. My hands are up. See for yourself if I’m not telling you the truth.”

“What kind of game is dis?” growled Bill, dazed and bewildered. “I’m blowed if I know w’at to t’ink o’ you,” cried he in honest amazement. “You don’t act drunk, and you ain’t crazy, but there’s somethin’ wrong wid you. Are you givin’ it to us straight about de wad?”

“You can find out easily.”

“Well, I hate to do it, boss, but I guess we’ll just take de overcoat and all. It looks like a trick and we takes no chances. Off wid de coat.”

Monty’s coat came off in a jiffy and he stood shivering before the dumfounded robbers.

“We’ll leave de coat at de next corner, pardner. It’s cold and you need it more’n we do. You’re de limit, you are. So long. Walk right straight ahead and don’t yell.”

Brewster found his coat a few minutes later, and went whistling away into the night. The roll of bills was gone.

CHAPTER XII

CHRISTMAS DESPAIR

Brewster made a good story of the “hold-up” at the club, but he did not relate all the details. One of the listeners was a new public commissioner who was aggressive in his efforts at reform. Accordingly Brewster was summoned to headquarters the next morning for the purpose of looking over the “suspects” that had been brought in. Almost the first man that he espied was a rough-looking fellow whose identity could not be mistaken. It was Bill.

“Hello, Bill,” called Monty, gaily. Bill ground his teeth for a second, but his eyes had such an appeal in them that Monty relented.

“You know this fellow, Mr. Brewster?” demanded the captain, quickly. Bill looked utterly helpless.

“Know Bill?” questioned Monty in surprise. “Of course I do, Captain.”

“He was picked up late last night and detained, because he would give no account of his actions.”

“Was it as bad as that, Bill?” asked Brewster, with a smile. Bill mumbled something and assumed a look of defiance. Monty’s attitude puzzled him sorely. He hardly breathed for an instant, and gulped perceptibly.

“Pass Bill, Captain. He was with me last night just before my money was taken, and he couldn’t possibly have robbed me without my knowledge. Wait for me outside, Bill. I want to talk to you. I’m quite sure neither of the thieves is here, Captain,” concluded Brewster, after Bill had obeyed the order to step out of the line.

Outside the door the puzzled crook met Brewster, who shook him warmly by the hand.

“You’re a peach,” whispered Bill, gratefully “What did you do it for, mister?”

“Because you were kind enough not to cut my shirt.”

“Say, you’re all right, that’s what. Would you mind havin’ a drink with me? It’s your money, but the drink won’t be any the worse for that. We blowed most of it already, but here’s what’s left.” Bill handed Monty a roll of bills.

“I’d a kept it if you’d made a fight,” he continued, “but it ain’t square to keep it now.”

Brewster refused the money, but took back his watch.

“Keep it, Bill,” he said, “you need it more than I do. It’s enough to set you up in some other trade. Why not try it?”

“I will try, boss,” and Bill was so profuse in his thanks that Monty had difficulty in getting away; As he climbed into a cab he heard Bill say, “I will try, boss, and say, if ever I can do anything for you jes’ put me nex’. I’m nex’ you all de time.”

He gave the driver the name of his club, but as he was passing the Waldorf he remembered that he had several things to say to Mrs. Dan. The order was changed, and a few moments later he was received in Mrs. Dan’s very special den. She wore something soft and graceful in lavender, something that was light and wavy and evanescent, and made you watch its changing shadows. Monty looked down at her with the feeling that she made a very effective picture.

“You are looking pretty fit this morning, my lady,” he said by way of preamble. “How well everything plays up to you.”

“And you are unusually courtly, Monty,” she smiled. “Has the world treated you so generously of late?”

“It is treating me generously enough just now to make up for anything,” and he looked at her. “Do you know, Mrs. Dan, that it is borne in upon me now and then that there are things that are quite worth while?”

“Oh, if you come to that,” she answered, lightly, “everything is worth while. For you, Monty, life is certainly not slow. You can dominate; you can make things go your way. Aren’t they going your way now, Monty”—this more seriously—”What’s wrong? Is the pace too fast?”

His mood increased upon him with her sympathy. “Oh, no,” he said, “it isn’t that. You are good—and I’m a selfish beast. Things are perverse and people are desperately obstinate sometimes. And here I am taking it out on you. You are not perverse. You are not obstinate. You are a ripper, Mrs. Dan, and you are going to help me out in more ways than one.”

“Well, to pay for all these gallantries, Monty, I ought to do much. I’m your friend through thick and thin. You have only to command me.”

“It was precisely to get your help that I came in. I’m tired of those confounded dinners. You know yourself that they are all alike—the same people, the same flowers, the same things to eat, and the same inane twaddle in the shape of talk. Who cares about them anyway?”

“Well, I like that,” she interrupted. “After all the thought I put into those dinners, after all the variety I so carefully secured! My dear boy, you are frightfully ungrateful.”

“Oh, you know what I mean. And you know quite as well as I do that it is perfectly true. The dinners were a beastly bore, which proves that they were a loud success. Your work was not done in vain. But now I want something else. We must push along the ball we’ve been talking of. And the yachting cruise—that can’t wait very much longer.”

“The ball first,” she decreed. “I’ll see to the cards at once, and in a day or two I’ll have a list ready for your gracious approval. And what have you done?”

“Pettingill has some great ideas for doing over Sherry’s. Harrison is in communication with the manager of that Hungarian orchestra you spoke of, and he finds the men quite ready for a little jaunt across the water. We have that military band—I’ve forgotten the number of its regiment—for the promenade music, and the new Paris sensation, the contralto, is coming over with her primo tenore for some special numbers.”

“You were certainly cut out for an executive, Monty,” said Mrs. Dan. “But with the music and the decorations arranged, you’ve only begun. The favors are the real thing, and if you say the word, we’ll surprise them a little. Don’t worry about it, Monty. It’s a go already. We’ll pull it off together.”

“You are a thoroughbred, Mrs. Dan,” he exclaimed. “You do help a fellow at a pinch.”

“That’s all right, Monty,” she answered; “give me until after Christmas and I’ll have the finest favors ever seen. Other people may have their paper hats and pink ribbons, but you can show them how the thing ought to be done.”

Her reference to Christmas haunted Brewster, as he drove down Fifth Avenue, with the dread of a new disaster. Never before had he looked upon presents as a calamity; but this year it was different. Immediately he began to plan a bombardment of his friends with costly trinkets, when he grew suddenly doubtful of the opinion of his uncle’s executor upon this move. But in response to a telegram, Swearengen Jones, with pleasing irascibility, informed him that “anyone with a drop of human kindness in his body would consider it his duty to give Christmas presents to those who deserved them.” Monty’s way was now clear. If his friends meant to handicap him with gifts, he knew a way to get even. For two weeks his mornings were spent at Tiffany’s, and the afternoons brought joy to the heart of every dealer in antiquities in Fourth and Fifth Avenues. He gave much thought to the matter in the effort to secure many small articles which elaborately concealed their value. And he had taste. The result of his endeavor was that many friends who would not have thought of remembering Monty with even a card were pleasantly surprised on Christmas Eve.

As it turned out, he fared very well in the matter of gifts, and for some days much of his time was spent in reading notes of profuse thanks, which were yet vaguely apologetic. The Grays and Mrs. Dan had remembered him with an agreeable lack of ostentation, and some of the “Little Sons of the Rich,” who had kept one evening a fortnight open for the purpose of “using up their meal-tickets” at Monty’s, were only too generously grateful. Miss Drew had forgotten him, and when they met after the holiday her recognition was of the coldest. He had thought that, under the circumstances, he could send her a gift of value, but the beautiful pearls with which he asked for a reconciliation were returned with “Miss Drew’s thanks.” He loved Barbara sincerely, and it cut. Peggy Gray was taken into his confidence and he was comforted by her encouragement. It was a bit difficult for her to advise him to try again, but his happiness was a thing she had at heart.

“It’s beastly unfair, Peggy,” he said. “I’ve really been white to her. I believe I’ll chuck the whole business and leave New York.”

“You’re going away?” and there was just a suggestion of a catch in her breath.

“I’m going to charter a yacht and sail away from this place for three or four months.” Peggy fairly gasped. “What do you think of the scheme?” he added, noticing the alarm and incredulity in her eyes.

“I think you’ll end in the poor-house, Montgomery Brewster,” she said, with a laugh.

CHAPTER XIII

A FRIEND IN NEED

It was while Brewster was in the depths of despair that his financial affairs had a windfall. One of the banks in which his money was deposited failed and his balance of over $100,000 was wiped out. Mismanagement was the cause and the collapse came on Friday, the thirteenth day of the month. Needless to say, it destroyed every vestige of the superstition he may have had regarding Friday and the number thirteen.

Brewster had money deposited in five banks, a transaction inspired by the wild hope that one of them might some day suspend operations and thereby prove a legitimate benefit to him. There seemed no prospect that the bank could resume operations, and if the depositors in the end realized twenty cents on the dollar they would be fortunate. Notwithstanding the fact that everybody had considered the institution substantial there were not a few wiseacres who called Brewster a fool and were so unreasonable as to say that he did not know how to handle money. He heard that Miss Drew, in particular, was bitterly sarcastic in referring to his stupidity.

This failure caused a tremendous flurry in banking circles. It was but natural that questions concerning the stability of other banks should be asked, and it was not long before many wild, disquieting reports were afloat. Anxious depositors rushed into the big banking institutions and then rushed out again, partially assured that there was no danger. The newspapers sought to allay the fears of the people, but there were many to whom fear became panic. There were short, wild runs on some of the smaller banks, but all were in a fair way to restore confidence when out came the rumor that the Bank of Manhattan Island was in trouble. Colonel Prentiss Drew, railroad magnate, was the president of this bank.

When the bank opened for business on the Tuesday following the failure, there was a stampede of frightened depositors. Before eleven o’clock the run had assumed ugly proportions and no amount of argument could stay the onslaught. Colonel Drew and the directors, at first mildly distressed, and then seeing that the affair had become serious, grew more alarmed than they could afford to let the public see. The loans of all the banks were unusually large. Incipient runs on some had put all of them in an attitude of caution, and there was a natural reluctance to expose their own interests to jeopardy by coming to the relief of the Bank of Manhattan Island.

Monty Brewster had something like $200,000 in Colonel Drew’s bank. He would not have regretted on his own account the collapse of this institution, but he realized what it meant to the hundreds of other depositors, and for the first time he appreciated what his money could accomplish. Thinking that his presence might give confidence to the other depositors and stop the run he went over to the bank with Harrison and Bragdon. The tellers were handing out thousands of dollars to the eager depositors. His friends advised him strongly to withdraw before it was too late, but Monty was obdurate. They set it down to his desire to help Barbara’s father and admired his nerve.

“I understand, Monty,” said Bragdon, and both he and Harrison went among the people carelessly asking one another if Brewster had come to withdraw his money. “No, he has over $200,000, and he’s going to leave it,” the other would say.

Each excited group was visited in turn by the two men, but their assurance seemed to accomplish but little. These men and women were there to save their fortunes; the situation was desperate.

Colonel Drew, outwardly calm and serene, but inwardly perturbed, finally saw Brewster and his companions. He sent a messenger over with the request that Monty come to the president’s private office at once.

“He wants to help you to save your money,” cried Bragdon in low tones. “That shows it’s all up.”

“Get out every dollar of it, Monty, and don’t waste a minute. It’s a smash as sure as fate,” urged Harrison, a feverish expression in his eyes.

Brewster was admitted to the Colonel’s private office. Drew was alone and was pacing the floor like a caged animal.

“Sit down, Brewster, and don’t mind if I seem nervous. Of course we can hold out, but it is terrible—terrible. They think we are trying to rob them. They’re mad—utterly mad.”

“I never saw anything like it, Colonel. Are you sure you can meet all the demands?” asked Brewster, thoroughly excited. The Colonel’s face was white and he chewed his cigar nervously.

“We can hold out unless some of our heaviest depositors get the fever and swoop down upon us. I appreciate your feelings in an affair of this kind, coming so swiftly upon the heels of the other, but I want to give you my personal assurance that the money you have here is safe. I called you in to impress you with the security of the bank. You ought to know the truth, however, and I will tell you in confidence that another check like Austin’s, which we paid a few minutes ago, would cause us serious, though temporary, embarrassment.”

“I came to assure you that I have not thought of withdrawing my deposits from this bank, Colonel. You need have no uneasiness—”

The door opened suddenly and one of the officials of the bank bolted inside, his face as white as death. He started to speak before he saw Brewster, and then closed his lips despairingly.

“What is it, Mr. Moore?” asked Drew, as calmly as possible. “Don’t mind Mr. Brewster.”

“Oglethorp wants to draw two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” said Moore in strained tones.

“Well, he can have it, can’t he?” asked the Colonel quietly. Moore looked helplessly at the president of the bank, and his silence spoke more plainly than words.

“Brewster, it looks bad,” said the Colonel, turning abruptly to the young man. “The other banks are afraid of a run and we can’t count on much help from them. Some of them have helped us and others have refused. Now, I not only ask you to refrain from drawing out your deposit, but I want you to help us in this crucial moment.” The Colonel looked twenty years older and his voice shook perceptibly. Brewster’s pity went out to him in a flash.

“What can I do, Colonel Drew?” he cried. “I’ll not take my money out, but I don’t know how I can be of further assistance to you. Command me, sir.”

“You can restore absolute confidence, Monty, my dear boy, by increasing your deposits in our bank,” said the Colonel slowly, and as if dreading the fate of the suggestion.

“You mean, sir, that I can save the bank by drawing my money from other banks and putting it here?” asked Monty, slowly. He was thinking harder and faster than he had ever thought in his life. Could he afford to risk the loss of his entire fortune on the fate of this bank? What would Swearengen Jones say if he deliberately deposited a vast amount of money in a tottering institution like the Bank of Manhattan Island? It would be the maddest folly on his part if the bank went down. There could be no mitigating circumstances in the eyes of either Jones or the world, if he swamped all of his money in this crisis.

“I beg of you, Monty, help us.” The Colonel’s pride was gone. “It means disgrace if we close our doors even for an hour; it means a stain that only years can remove. You can restore confidence by a dozen strokes of your pen, and you can save us.”

He was Barbara’s father. The proud old man was before him as a suppliant, no longer the cold man of the world. Back to Brewster’s mind came the thought of his quarrel with Barbara and of her heartlessness. A scratch of the pen, one way or the other, could change the life of Barbara Drew. The two bankers stood by scarcely breathing. From the outside came the shuffle of many feet and the muffled roll of voices. Again the door to the private office opened and a clerk excitedly motioned for Mr. Moore to hurry to the front of the bank. Moore paused irresolutely, his eyes on Brewster’s face. The young man knew the time had come when he must help or deny them.

Like a flash the situation was made clear to him and his duty was plain. He remembered that the Bank of Manhattan Island held every dollar that Mrs. Gray and Peggy possessed; their meager fortune had been entrusted to the care of Prentiss Drew and his associates, and it was in danger.

“I will do all I can, Colonel,” said Monty, “but upon one condition.”

“That is?”

“Barbara must never know of this.” The Colonel’s gasp of astonishment was cut short as Monty continued. “Promise that she shall never know.”

“I don’t understand, but if it is your wish I promise.”

Inside of half an hour’s time several hundred thousand came to the relief of the struggling bank, and the man who had come to watch the run with curious eyes turned out to be its savior. His money won the day for the Bank of Manhattan Island. When the happy president and directors offered to pay him an astonishingly high rate of interest for the use of the money he proudly declined.

The next day Miss Drew issued invitations for a cotillon. Mr. Montgomery Brewster was not asked to attend.

CHAPTER XIV

MRS. DE MILLE ENTERTAINS

Miss Drew’s cotillon was not graced by the presence of Montgomery Brewster. It is true he received an eleventh-hour invitation and a very cold and difficult little note of apology, but he maintained heroically the air of disdain that had succeeded the first sharp pangs of disappointment. Colonel Drew, in whose good graces Monty had firmly established himself, was not quite guiltless of usurping the role of dictator in the effort to patch up a truce. A few nights before the cotillon, when Barbara told him that Herbert Ailing was to lead, he explosively expressed surprise. “Why not Monty Brewster, Babs?” he demanded.

“Mr. Brewster is not coming,” she responded, calmly.

“Going to be out of town?”

“I’m sure I do not know,” stiffly.

“What’s this?”

“He has not been asked, father.” Miss Drew was not in good humor.

“Not asked?” said the Colonel in amazement. “It’s ridiculous, Babs, send him an invitation at once.”

“This is my dance, father, and I don’t want to ask Mr. Brewster.”

The Colonel sank back in his chair and struggled to overcome his anger. He knew that Barbara had inherited his willfulness, and had long since discovered that it was best to treat her with tact.

“I thought you and he were—” but the Colonel’s supply of tact was exhausted.

“We were”—in a moment of absent mindedness. “But it’s all over,” said Barbara.

“Why, child, there wouldn’t have been a cotillon if it hadn’t been for—” but the Colonel remembered his promise to Monty and checked himself just in time. “I—I mean there will not be any party, if Montgomery Brewster is not asked. That is all I care to say on the subject,” and he stamped out of the room.

Barbara wept copiously after her father had gone, but she realized that his will was law and that Monty must be invited. “I will send an invitation,” she said to herself, “but if Mr. Brewster comes after he has read it, I shall be surprised.”

Montgomery, however, did not receive the note in the spirit in which it had been sent. He only saw in it a ray of hope that Barbara was relenting and was jubilant at the prospect of a reconciliation. The next Sunday he sought an interview with Miss Drew, but she received him with icy reserve. If he had thought to punish her by staying away, it was evident that she felt equally responsible for a great deal of misery on his part. Both had been more or less unhappy, and both were resentfully obstinate. Brewster felt hurt and insulted, while she felt that he had imposed upon her disgracefully. He was now ready to cry quits and it surprised him to find her obdurate. If he had expected to dictate the terms of peace he was woefully disappointed when she treated his advances with cool contempt.

“Barbara, you know I care very much for you,” he was pleading, fairly on the road to submission. “I am sure you are not quite indifferent to me. This foolish misunderstanding must really be as disagreeable to you as it is to me.”

“Indeed,” she replied, lifting her brows disdainfully. “You are assuming a good deal, Mr. Brewster.”

“I am merely recalling the fact that you once told me you cared. You would not promise anything, I know, but it meant much that you cared. A little difference could not have changed your feeling completely.”

“When you are ready to treat me with respect I may listen to your petition,” she said, rising haughtily.

“My petition?” He did not like the word and his tact quite deserted him. “It’s as much yours as mine. Don’t throw the burden of responsibility on me, Miss Drew.”

“Have I suggested going back to the old relations? You will pardon me if I remind you of the fact that you came today on your own initiative and certainly without my solicitation.”

“Now, look here, Barbara—” he began, dimly realizing that it was going to be hard, very hard, to reason.

“I am very sorry, Mr. Brewster, but you will have to excuse me. I am going out.”

“I regret exceedingly that I should have disturbed you today, Miss Drew,” he said, swallowing his pride. “Perhaps I may have the pleasure of seeing you again.”

As he was leaving the house, deep anger in his soul, he encountered the Colonel. There was something about Monty’s greeting, cordial as it was, that gave the older man a hint as to the situation.

“Won’t you stop for dinner, Monty?” he asked, in the hope that his suspicion was groundless.

“Thank you, Colonel, not tonight,” and he was off before the Colonel could hold him.

Barbara was tearfully angry when her father came into the room, but as he began to remonstrate with her the tears disappeared and left her at white heat.

“Frankly, father, you don’t understand matters,” she said with slow emphasis; “I wish you to know now that if Montgomery Brewster calls again, I shall not see him.”

“If that is your point of view, Barbara, I wish you to know mine.” The Colonel rose and stood over her, everything forgotten but the rage that went so deep that it left the surface calm. Throwing aside his promise to Brewster, he told Barbara with dramatic simplicity the story of the rescue of the bank. “You see,” he added, “if it had not been for that open-hearted boy we would now be ruined. Instead of giving cotillons, you might be giving music lessons. Montgomery Brewster will always be welcome in this house and you will see that my wishes are respected. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly,” Barbara answered in a still voice. “As your friend I shall try to be civil to him.”

The Colonel was not satisfied with so cold-blooded an acquiescence, but he wisely retired from the field. He left the girl silent and crushed, but with a gleam in her eyes that was not altogether to be concealed. The story had touched her more deeply than she would willingly confess. It was something to know that Monty Brewster could do a thing like that, and would do it for her. The exultant smile which it brought to her lips could only be made to disappear by reminding herself sharply of his recent arrogance. Her anger, she found, was a plant which needed careful cultivation.

It was in a somewhat chastened mood that she started a few days later for a dinner at the DeMille’s. As she entered in her sweeping golden gown the sight of Monty Brewster at the other end of the room gave her a flutter at the heart. But it was an agitation that was very carefully concealed. Brewster was certainly unconscious of it. To him the position of guest was like a disguise and he was pleased at the prospect of letting himself go under the mask without responsibility. But it took on a different color when the butler handed him a card which signified that he was to take Miss Drew in to dinner. Hastily seeking out the hostess he endeavored to convey to her the impossibility of the situation.

“I hope you won’t misunderstand me,” he said. “But is it too late to change my place at the table?”

“It isn’t conventional, I know, Monty. Society’s chief aim is to separate engaged couples at dinner,” said Mrs. Dan with a laugh. “It would be positively compromising if a man and his wife sat together.”

Dinner was announced before Monty could utter another word, and as she led him over to Barbara she said, “Behold a generous hostess who gives up the best man in the crowd so that he and some one else may have a happy time. I leave it to you, Barbara, if that isn’t the test of friendship.”

For a moment the two riveted their eyes on the floor. Then the humor of the situation came to Monty.

“I did not know that we were supposed to do Gibson tableaux tonight,” he said drily as he proffered his arm.

“I don’t understand,” and Barbara’s curiosity overcame her determination not to speak.

“Don’t you remember the picture of the man who was called upon to take his late fiancee out to dinner?”

The awful silence with which this remark was received put an end to further efforts at humor.

The dinner was probably the most painful experience in their lives. Barbara had come to it softened and ready to meet him half way. The right kind of humility in Monty would have found her plastic. But she had very definite and rigid ideas of his duty in the premises. And Monty was too simple minded to seem to suffer, and much too flippant to understand. It was plain to each that the other did not expect to talk, but they both realized that they owed a duty to appearances and to their hostess. Through two courses, at least, there was dead silence between them. It seemed as though every eye in the room were on them and every mind were speculating. At last, in sheer desperation, Barbara turned to him with the first smile he had seen on her face in days. There was no smile in her eyes, however, and Monty understood.

“We might at least give out the impression that we are friends,” she said quietly.

“More easily said than done,” he responded gloomily.

“They are all looking at us and wondering.”

“I don’t blame them.”

“We owe something to Mrs. Dan, I think.”

“I know.”

Barbara uttered some inanity whenever she caught any one looking in their direction, but Brewster seemed not to hear. At length he cut short some remark of hers about the weather.

“What nonsense this is, Barbara,” he said. “With any one else I would chuck the whole game, but with you it is different. I don’t know what I have done, but I am sorry. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“Your assurance is amusing, to say the least.”

“But I am sure. I know this quarrel is something we’ll laugh over. You keep forgetting that we are going to be married some day.”

A new light came into Barbara’s eyes. “You forget that my consent may be necessary,” she said.

“You will be perfectly willing when the time comes. I am still in the fight and eventually you will come to my way of thinking.”

“Oh! I see it now,” said Barbara, and her blood was up. “You mean to force me to it. What you did for father—”

Brewster glowered at her, thinking that he had misunderstood. “What do you mean?” he said.

“He has told me all about that wretched bank business. But poor father thought you quite disinterested. He did not see the little game behind your melodrama. He would have torn up your check on the instant if he had suspected you were trying to buy his daughter.”

“Does your father believe that?” asked Brewster.

“No, but I see it all now. His persistence and yours—you were not slow to grasp the opportunity offered.”

“Stop, Miss Drew,” Monty commanded. His voice had changed and she had never before seen that look in his eyes. “You need have no fear that I will trouble you again.”

CHAPTER XV

THE CUT DIRECT

A typographical error in one of the papers caused no end of amusement to every one except Monty and Miss Drew. The headlines had announced “Magnificent ball to be given Miss Drew by her Finance,” and the “Little Sons of the Rich” wondered why Monty did not see the humor of it.

“He has too bad an attack to see anything but the lady,” said Harrison one evening when the “Sons” were gathered for an old-time supper party.

“It’s always the way,” commented the philosophical Bragdon, “When you lose your heart your sense of humor goes too. Engaged couples couldn’t do such ridiculous stunts if they had the least particle of it left.”

“Well, if Monty Brewster is still in love with Miss Drew he takes a mighty poor way of showing it.” “Subway” Smith’s remark fell like a bombshell. The thought had come to every one, but no one had been given the courage to utter it. For them Brewster’s silence on the subject since the DeMille dinner seemed to have something ominous behind it.

“It’s probably only a lovers’ quarrel,” said Bragdon. But further comment was cut short by the entrance of Monty himself, and they took their places at the table.

Before the evening came to an end they were in possession of many astonishing details in connection with the coming ball. Monty did not say that it was to be given for Miss Drew and her name was conspicuously absent from his descriptions. As he unfolded his plans even the “Little Sons,” who were imaginative by instinct and reckless on principle, could not be quite acquiescent.

“Nopper” Harrison solemnly expressed the opinion that the ball would cost Brewster at least $125,000. The “Little Sons” looked at one another in consternation, while Brewster’s indifference expressed itself in an unflattering comment upon his friend’s vulgarity. “Good Lord, Nopper,” he added, “you would speculate about the price of gloves for your wedding.”

Harrison resented the taunt. “It would be much less vulgar to do that, Monty, saving your presence, than to force your millions down every one’s throat.”

“Well, they swallow them, I’ve noticed,” retorted Brewster, “as though they were chocolates.”

Pettingill interrupted grandiloquently. “My friends and gentlemen!”

“Which is which?” asked Van Winkle, casually.

But the artist was in the saddle. “Permit me to present to you the boy Croesus—the only one extant. His marbles are plunks and his kites are made of fifty-dollar notes. He feeds upon coupons a la Newburgh, and his champagne is liquid golden eagles. Look at him, gentlemen, while you can, and watch him while he spends thirteen thousand dollars for flowers!”

“With a Viennese orchestra for twenty-nine thousand!” added Bragdon. “And yet they maintain that silence is golden.”

“And three singers to divide twelve thousand among themselves! That’s absolutely criminal,” cried Van Winkle. “Over in Germany they’d sing a month for half that amount.”

“Six hundred guests to feed—total cost of not less than forty thousand dollars,” groaned “Nopper,” dolefully.

“And there aren’t six hundred in town,” lamented “Subway” Smith. “All that glory wasted on two hundred rank outsiders.”

“You men are borrowing a lot of trouble,” yawned Brewster, with a gallant effort to seem bored. “All I ask of you is to come to the party and put up a good imitation of having the time of your life. Between you and me I’d rather be caught at Huyler’s drinking ice cream soda than giving this thing. But—”

“That’s what we want to know, but what?” and “Subway” leaned forward eagerly.

“But,” continued Monty, “I’m in for it now, and it is going to be a ball that is a ball.”

Nevertheless the optimistic Brewster could not find the courage to tell Peggy of these picturesque extravagances. To satisfy her curiosity he blandly informed her that he was getting off much more cheaply than he had expected. He laughingly denounced as untrue the stories that had come to her from outside sources. And before his convincing assertions that reports were ridiculously exaggerated, the troubled expression in the girl’s eyes disappeared.

“I must seem a fool,” groaned Monty, as he left the house after one of these explanatory trials, “but what will she think of me toward the end of the year when I am really in harness?” He found it hard to control the desire to be straight with Peggy and tell her the story of his mad race in pursuit of poverty.

Preparations for the ball went on steadily, and in a dull winter it had its color value for society. It was to be a Spanish costume-ball, and at many tea-tables the talk of it was a god-send. Sarcastic as it frequently was on the question of Monty’s extravagance, there was a splendor about the Aladdin-like entertainment which had a charm. Beneath the outward disapproval there was a secret admiration of the superb nerve of the man. And there was little reluctance to help him in the wild career he had chosen. It was so easy to go with him to the edge of the precipice and let him take the plunge alone. Only the echo of the criticism reached Brewster, for he had silenced Harrison with work and Pettingill with opportunities. It troubled him little, as he was engaged in jotting down items that swelled the profit side of his ledger account enormously. The ball was bound to give him a good lead in the race once more, despite the heavy handicap the Stock Exchange had imposed. The “Little Sons” took off their coats and helped Pettingill in the work of preparation. He found them quite superfluous, for their ideas never agreed and each man had a way of preferring his own suggestion. To Brewster’s chagrin they were united in the effort to curb his extravagance.

“He’ll be giving automobiles and ropes of pearls for favors if we don’t stop him,” said “Subway” Smith, after Monty had ordered a vintage champagne to be served during the entire evening. “Give them two glasses first, if you like, and then they won’t mind if they have cider the rest of the night.”

“Monty is plain dotty,” chimed Bragdon, “and the pace is beginning to tell on him.”

As a matter of fact the pace was beginning to tell on Brewster. Work and worry were plainly having an effect on his health. His color was bad, his eyes were losing their lustre, and there was a listlessness in his actions that even determined effort could not conceal from his friends. Little fits of fever annoyed him occasionally and he admitted that he did not feel quite right.

“Something is wrong somewhere,” he said, ruefully, “and my whole system seems ready to stop work through sympathy.”

Suddenly there was a mighty check to the preparations. Two days before the date set for the ball everything came to a standstill and the managers sank back in perplexity and consternation. Monty Brewster was critically ill.

Appendicitis, the doctors called it, and an operation was imperative.

“Thank heaven it’s fashionable,” laughed Monty, who showed no fear of the prospect. “How ridiculous if it had been the mumps, or if the newspapers had said, ‘On account of the whooping-cough, Mr. Brewster did not attend his ball.’”

“You don’t mean to say—the ball is off, of course,” and Harrison was really alarmed.

“Not a bit of it, Nopper,” said Monty. “It’s what I’ve been wanting all along. You chaps do the handshaking and I stay at home.”

There was an immediate council of war when this piece of news was announced, and the “Little Sons” were unanimous in favor of recalling the invitations and declaring the party off. At first Monty was obdurate, but when some one suggested that he could give the ball later on, after he was well, he relented. The opportunity to double the cost by giving two parties was not to be ignored.

“Call it off, then, but say it is only postponed.”

A great rushing to and fro resulted in the cancelling of contracts, the recalling of invitations, the settling of accounts, with the most loyal effort to save as much as possible from the wreckage. Harrison and his associates, almost frantic with fear for Brewster’s life, managed to perform wonders in the few hours of grace. Gardner, with rare foresight, saw that the Viennese orchestra would prove a dead loss. He suggested the possibility of a concert tour through the country, covering several weeks, and Monty, too ill to care one way or the other, authorized him to carry out the plan if it seemed feasible.

To Monty, fearless and less disturbed than any other member of his circle, appendicitis seemed as inevitable as vaccination.

“The appendix is becoming an important feature in the Book of Life,” he once told Peggy Gray.

He refused to go to a hospital, but pathetically begged to be taken to his old rooms at Mrs. Gray’s.

With all the unhappy loneliness of a sick boy, he craved the care and companionship of those who seemed a part of his own. Dr. Lotless had them transform a small bedchamber into a model operating room and Monty took no small satisfaction in the thought that if he was to be denied the privilege of spending money for several weeks, he would at least make his illness as expensive as possible. A consultation of eminent surgeons was called, but true to his colors, Brewster installed Dr. Lotless, a “Little Son,” as his house surgeon. Monty grimly bore the pain and suffering and submitted to the operation which alone could save his life. Then came the struggle, then the promise of victory and then the quiet days of convalescence. In the little room where he had dreamed his boyish dreams and suffered his boyish sorrows, he struggled against death and gradually emerged from the mists of lassitude. He found it harder than he had thought to come back to life. The burden of it all seemed heavy. The trained nurses found that some more powerful stimulant than the medicine was needed to awaken his ambition, and they discovered it at last in Peggy.

“Child,” he said to her the first time she was permitted to see him, and his eyes had lights in them: “do you know, this isn’t such a bad old world after all. Sometimes as I’ve lain here, it has looked twisted and queer. But there are things that straighten it out. Today I feel as though I had a place in it—as though I could fight things and win out. What do you think, Peggy? Do you suppose there is something that I could do? You know what I mean—something that some one else would not do a thousand times better.”

But Peggy, to whom this chastened mood in Monty was infinitely pathetic, would not let him talk. She soothed him and cheered him and touched his hair with her cool hands. And then she left him to think and brood and dream.

It was many days before his turbulent mind drifted to the subject of money, but suddenly he found himself hoping that the surgeons would be generous with their charges. He almost suffered a relapse when Lotless, visibly distressed, informed him that the total amount would reach three thousand dollars.

“And what is the additional charge for the operation?” asked Monty, unwilling to accept such unwarranted favors.

“It’s included in the three thousand,” said Lotless. “They knew you were my friend and it was professional etiquette to help keep down expenses.”

For days Brewster remained at Mrs. Gray’s, happy in its restfulness, serene under the charm of Peggy’s presence, and satisfied to be hopelessly behind in his daily expense account. The interest shown by the inquiries at the house and the anxiety of his friends were soothing to the profligate. It gave him back a little of his lost self-respect. The doctors finally decided that he would best recuperate in Florida, and advised a month at least in the warmth. He leaped at the proposition, but took the law into his own hands by ordering General Manager Harrison to rent a place, and insisting that he needed the companionship of Peggy and Mrs. Gray.

“How soon can I get back to work, Doctor?” demanded Monty, the day before the special train was to carry him south. He was beginning to see the dark side of this enforced idleness. His blood again was tingling with the desire to be back in the harness of a spendthrift.

“To work?” laughed the physician. “And what is your occupation, pray?”

“Making other people rich,” responded Brewster, soberly.

“Well, aren’t you satisfied with what you have done for me? If you are as charitable as that you must be still pretty sick. Be careful, and you may be on your feet again in five or six weeks.”

Harrison came in as Lotless left. Peggy smiled at him from the window. She had been reading aloud from a novel so garrulous that it fairly cried aloud for interruptions.

“Now, Nopper, what became of the ball I was going to give?” demanded Monty, a troubled look in his eyes.

“Why, we called it off,” said “Nopper,” in surprise.

“Don’t you remember, Monty?” asked Peggy, looking up quickly, and wondering if his mind had gone trailing off.

“I know we didn’t give it, of course; but what date did you hit upon?”

“We didn’t postpone it at all,” said “Nopper.” “How could we? We didn’t know whether—I mean it wouldn’t have been quite right to do that sort of thing.”

“I understand. Well, what has become of the orchestra, and the flowers, and all that?”

“The orchestra is gallivanting around the country, quarreling with itself and everybody else, and driving poor Gardner to the insane asylum. The flowers have lost their bloom long ago.”

“Well, we’ll get together, Nopper, and try to have the ball at mid-Lent. I think I’ll be well by that time.”

Peggy looked appealingly at Harrison for guidance, but to him silence seemed the better part of valor, and he went off wondering if the illness had completely carried away Monty’s reason.

CHAPTER XVI

IN THE SUNNY SOUTH

It was the cottage of a New York millionaire which had fallen to Brewster. The owner had, for the time, preferred Italy to St. Augustine, and left his estate, which was well located and lavishly equipped, in the hands of his friends. Brewster’s lease covered three months, at a fabulous rate per month. With Joe Bragdon installed as manager-in-chief, his establishment was transferred bodily from New York, and the rooms were soon as comfortable as their grandeur would permit. Brewster was not allowed to take advantage of his horses and the new automobile which preceded him from New York, but to his guests they offered unlimited opportunities. “Nopper” Harrison had remained in the north to renew arrangements for the now hated ball and to look after the advance details of the yacht cruise. Dr. Lotless and his sister, with “Subway” Smith and the Grays, made up Brewster’s party. Lotless dampened Monty’s spirits by relentlessly putting him on rigid diet, with most discouraging restrictions upon his conduct. The period of convalescence was to be an exceedingly trying one for the invalid. At first he was kept in-doors, and the hours were whiled away by playing cards. But Monty considered “bridge” the “pons asinorum,” and preferred to play piquet with Peggy. It was one of these games that the girl interrupted with a question that had troubled her for many days. “Monty,” she said, and she found it much more difficult than when she had rehearsed the scene in the silence of her walks; “I’ve heard a rumor that Miss Drew and her mother have taken rooms at the hotel. Wouldn’t it be pleasanter to have them here?”

A heavy gloom settled upon Brewster’s face, and the girl’s heart dropped like lead. She had puzzled over the estrangement, and wondered if by any effort of her own things could be set right. At times she had had flashing hopes that it did not mean as much to Monty as she had thought. But down underneath, the fear that he was unhappy seemed the only certain thing in life. She felt that she must make sure. And together with the very human desire to know the worst, was the puritanical impulse to bring it about.

“You forget that this is the last place they would care to invade.” And in Brewster’s face Peggy seemed to read that for her martyrdom was the only wear. Bravely she put it on.

“Monty, I forget nothing that I really know. But this is a case in which you are quite wrong. Where is your sporting blood? You have never fought a losing fight before, and you can’t do it now. You have lost your nerve, Monty. Don’t you see that this is the time for an aggressive campaign?” Somehow she was not saying things at all as she had planned to say them. And his gloom weighed heavily upon her. “You don’t mind, do you, Monty,” she added, more softly, “this sort of thing from me? I know I ought not to interfere, but I’ve known you so long. And I hate to see things twisted by a very little mistake.”

But Monty did mind enormously. He had no desire to talk about the thing anyway, and Peggy’s anxiety to marry him off seemed a bit unnecessary. Manifestly her own interest in him was of the coldest. From out of the gloom he looked at her somewhat sullenly. For the moment she was thinking only of his pain, and her face said nothing.

“Peggy,” he exclaimed, finally, resenting the necessity of answering her, “you don’t in the least know what you are talking about. It is not a fit of anger on Barbara Drew’s part. It is a serious conviction.”

“A conviction which can be changed,” the girl broke in.

“Not at all.” Brewster took it up. “She has no faith in me. She thinks I’m an ass.”

“Perhaps she’s right,” she exclaimed, a little hot. “Perhaps you have never discovered that girls say many things to hide their emotions. Perhaps you don’t realize what feverish, exclamatory, foolish things girls are. They don’t know how to be honest with the men they love, and they wouldn’t if they did. You are little short of an idiot, Monty Brewster, if you believed the things she said rather than the things she looked.”

And Peggy, fiery and determined and defiantly unhappy, threw down her cards and escaped so that she might not prove herself tearfully feminine. She left Brewster still heavily enveloped in melancholy; but she left him puzzled. He began to wonder if Barbara Drew did have something in the back of her mind. Then he found his thoughts wandering off toward Peggy and her defiance. He had only twice before seen her in that mood, and he liked it. He remembered how she had lost her temper once when she was fifteen, and hated a girl he admired. Suddenly he laughed aloud at the thought of the fierce little picture she had made, and the gloom, which had been so sedulously cultivated, was dissipated in a moment. The laugh surprised the man who brought in some letters. One of them was from “Nopper” Harrison, and gave him all the private news. The ball was to be given at mid-Lent, which arrived toward the end of March, and negotiations were well under way for the chartering of the “Flitter,” the steam-yacht belonging to Reginald Brown, late of Brown & Brown.

The letter made Brewster chafe under the bonds of inaction. His affairs were getting into a discouraging state. The illness was certain to entail a loss of more than $50,000 to his business. His only consolation came through Harrison’s synopsis of the reports from Gardner, who was managing the brief American tour of the Viennese orchestra. Quarrels and dissensions were becoming every-day embarrassments, and the venture was an utter failure from a financial point of view. Broken contracts and lawsuits were turning the tour into one continuous round of losses, and poor Gardner was on the point of despair. From the beginning, apparently, the concerts had been marked for disaster. Public indifference had aroused the scorn of the irascible members of the orchestra, and there was imminent danger of a collapse in the organization. Gardner lived in constant fear that his troop of quarrelsome Hungarians would finish their tour suddenly in a pitched battle with daggers and steins. Brewster smiled at the thought of practical Gardner trying to smooth down the electric emotions of these musicians.

A few days later Mrs. Prentiss Drew and Miss Drew registered at the Ponce de Leon, and there was much speculation upon the chances for a reconciliation. Monty, however, maintained a strict silence on the subject, and refused to satisfy the curiosity of his friends. Mrs. Drew had brought down a small crowd, including two pretty Kentucky girls and a young Chicago millionaire. She lived well and sensibly, with none of the extravagance that characterized the cottage. Yet it was inevitable that Brewster’s guests should see hers and join some of their riding parties. Monty pleaded that he was not well enough to be in these excursions, but neither he nor Barbara cared to over-emphasize their estrangement.

Peggy Gray was in despair over Monty’s attitude. She had become convinced that behind his pride he was cherishing a secret longing for Barbara. Yet she could not see how the walls were to be broken down if he maintained this icy reserve. She was sure that the masterful tone was the one to win with a girl like that, but evidently Monty would not accept advice. That he was mistaken about Barbara’s feeling she did not doubt for a moment, and she saw things going hopelessly wrong for want of a word. There were times when she let herself dream of possibilities, but they always ended by seeming too impossible. She cared too much to make the attainment of her vision seem simple. She cared too much to be sure of anything.

At moments she fancied that she might say a word to Miss Drew which would straighten things out. But there was something about her which held her off. Even now that they were thrown together more or less she could not get beyond a certain barrier. It was not until a sunny day when she had accepted Barbara’s invitation to drive that things seemed to go more easily. For the first time she felt the charm of the girl, and for the first time Barbara seemed unreservedly friendly. It was a quiet drive they were taking through the woods and out along the beach, and somehow in the open air things simplified themselves. Finally, in the softness and the idle warmth, even an allusion to Monty, whose name usually meant an embarrassing change of subject, began to seem possible. It was inevitable that Peggy should bring it in; for with her a question of tact was never allowed to dominate when things of moment were at stake. She cowered before the plunge, but she took it unafraid.

“The doctor says Monty may go out driving tomorrow,” she began. “Isn’t that fine?”

Barbara’s only response was to touch her pony a little too sharply with the whip. Peggy went on as if unconscious of the challenge.

“He has been bored to death, poor fellow, in the house all this time, and—”

“Miss Gray, please do not mention Mr. Brewster’s name to me again,” interrupted Barbara, with a contraction of the eyebrows. But Peggy was seized with a spirit of defiance and plunged recklessly on.

“What is the use, Miss Drew, of taking an attitude like that? I know the situation pretty well, and I can’t believe that either Monty or you has lost in a week a feeling that was so deep-seated. I know Monty much too well to think that he would change so easily.” Peggy still lived largely in her ideals. “And you are too fine a thing not to have suffered under this misunderstanding. It seems as if a very small word would set you both straight.”

Barbara drew herself up and kept her eyes on the road which lay white and gleaming in the sun. “I have not the least desire to be set straight.” And she was never more serious.

“But it was only a few weeks ago that you were engaged.”

“I am sorry,” answered Barbara, “that it should have been talked about so much. Mr. Brewster did ask me to marry him, but I never accepted. In fact, it was only his persistence that made me consider the matter at all. I did think about it. I confess that I rather liked him. But it was not long before I found him out.”

“What do you mean?” And there was a flash in Peggy’s eyes. “What has he done?”

“To my certain knowledge he has spent more than four hundred thousand dollars since last September. That is something, is it not?” Miss Drew said, in her slow, cool voice, and even Peggy’s loyalty admitted some justification in the criticism.

“Generosity has ceased to be a virtue, then?” she asked coldly.

“Generosity!” exclaimed Barbara, sharply. “It’s sheer idiocy. Haven’t you heard the things people are saying? They are calling him a fool, and in the clubs they are betting that he will be a pauper within a year.”

“Yet they charitably help him to spend his money. And I have noticed that even worldly mammas find him eligible.” The comment was not without its caustic side.

“That was months ago, my dear,” protested Barbara, calmly. “When he spoke to me—he told me it would be impossible for him to marry within a year. And don’t you see that a year may make him an abject beggar?”

“Naturally anything is preferable to a beggar,” came in Peggy’s clear, soft voice.

Barbara hesitated only a moment.

“Well, you must admit, Miss Gray, that it shows a shameful lack of character. How could any girl be happy with a man like that? And, after all, one must look out for one’s own fate.”

“Undoubtedly,” replied Peggy, but many thoughts were dashing through her brain.

“Shall we turn back to the cottage?” she said, after an awkward silence.

“You certainly don’t approve of Mr. Brewster’s conduct?” Barbara did not like to be placed in the wrong, and felt that she must endeavor to justify herself. “He is the most reckless of spend-thrifts, we know, and he probably indulges in even less respectable excitement.”

Peggy was not tall, but she carried her head at this moment as though she were in the habit of looking down on the world.

“Aren’t you going a little too far, Miss Drew?” she asked placidly.

“It is not only New York that laughs at his Quixotic transactions,” Barbara persisted. “Mr. Hampton, our guest from Chicago, says the stories are worse out there than they are in the east.”

“It is a pity that Monty’s illness should have made him so weak,” said Peggy quietly, as they turned in through the great iron gates, and Barbara was not slow to see the point.