Читать книгу The Riddle and the Ring; or, Won by Nerve - Gordon MacLaren - Страница 9

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Clear of the last passer-by, the little man paused, and thrust one hand into the pocket of his inner coat. "There is one other condition," he said, drawing out a thick leather wallet. "Under no circumstances must you explain to any one where you obtained this money. You must be silent regarding every particular of our meeting here, and the terms of our bargain. I have your promise?"

Lawrence, his eyes fixed incredulously on the bulging wallet, felt something grip his throat. It could not be true—it simply could not! And yet——

"I promise," he said, in a queer, hoarse voice.

The stranger opened the leather flap, and showed the wallet crammed with crisp bank notes.

"I have your word to carry out faithfully every condition I have mentioned?" he questioned briskly, fixing Barry with a keen glance.

The latter tore his eyes from the bills, and returned the look.

"I give you—my word—of honor," he stammered.

His brain was whirling. He could not believe his senses. It was all a mad illusion—a dream from which he must soon awake. His heart, thudding loudly and unevenly, drove the blood into his face, a crimson flood. He was trembling, but not with cold. The stranger's voice seemed to come from far, far away; it had fallen to a mere whisper, which Lawrence could barely catch.

"There is a matter of another thousand dollars here for expenses," he was saying. He held out the wallet, and Barry's fingers closed around it instinctively. "That is all, I think. You know what you are to do, and I can trust to your word of honor."

Without another word, he turned and walked away.

Lawrence sprang after him. "I haven't thanked you!" he exclaimed incoherently. "You don't know—what you have done for me. I—I——"

"I want no thanks," the stranger returned impatiently, his eyes fixed on the great clock. "You can best show your gratitude by carrying out my conditions to the letter. I am pressed for time. I can wait no longer. Good-by!"

As he hurried away, Lawrence stood staring after him, as if in a dream. He saw the slim, somberly clad figure bustle past the waiting rooms and through the doors into the train shed. A moment later the announcer bellowed out the last call for a certain train, and his raucous voice aroused Barry from the trance.

He had thrust the wallet into his pocket, but now he took it out, and opened it with trembling fingers. The bills were still there—new, crisp, and yellow. His fingers touched them, and they did not crumble into dust, as he almost expected them to do. Scraps of long-forgotten fairy stories, read as a child, danced through his dazed brain, in which benefactors in strange guises gave unexpected largess to starving, freezing people. Nothing could be stranger than the appearance of the little man in black.

He laughed aloud. Then a thought came to him which swept the smile from his lips and the color from his cheeks in the twinkling of an eye: The bills were counterfeit!

With blanched face and trembling fingers, he thrust the wallet back into his pocket like a flash. What a fool he had been—what a bonehead! The bills were counterfeit, and the stranger, followed closely, no doubt, by detectives, had taken this way of getting them off his person. This accounted for the stealth, the secrecy, of the transaction. This explained everything which had been inexplicable.

With a swift-drawn breath, Lawrence looked nervously around, to meet the glance of a thin, wiry man standing in the center of the rotunda. Cold chills began to course up and down Barry's spine. What should he do if he were caught with the stuff in his pocket? If he could only escape from the station there might be a chance of throwing it away unobserved. If only he had not dropped his paper, he might, even here, tuck the incriminating wallet in its folds, and fling both carelessly into the rubbish can. What a fool he had been!

Presently the man who had been watching him turned slowly away, and walked toward one of the ticket windows. That was only a pretense, of course. Lawrence realized that perfectly, and yet, relieved of the stranger's scrutiny, he ventured to move toward the broad flight of steps leading up to that long corridor, and thence to the street.

The man did not turn, and Barry's speed increased. If he could only get out of the station it would be all right. As his foot struck the bottom step, his eyes, glancing backward, told him that the man was buying a ticket. He could scarcely see through the back of his head. Perhaps there was a slim chance, after all.

Less than a minute later he flung himself out into the icy street, with a gasp of thanksgiving. Hurrying past the long front of the building, it seemed to him that every one must be staring after him. Through his thin coat the wallet bulged horribly. How could any one fail to guess what was in it?

Under normal conditions he was not a fellow to act in this fashion, but conditions were far from normal. He was half starved, and half frozen. He had lost his job four months before, under circumstances which made it almost impossible to get another, and he was desperate. On top of this, the extraordinary situation in which he found himself was enough to make any man lose his head.

But Lawrence did not quite do that.

He was flustered, nervous, almost terrified; but through it all he clung to one idea—to get back to his miserable room he had thought never to see again. There, at least, he would have security for the moment, and a chance to pull himself together.

So he sped on, dodging through cross streets and down wide avenues, the wind whistling in his ears unheeded, the cold penetrating anew his flimsy garments. As block after block was set behind him without the expected happening, a shaky sort of confidence began to take possession of him. And when at last he ran up the steps of the dilapidated rooming house on Twenty-fourth Street, he gave a long sigh of relief.

"I'm glad I didn't throw it away, after all," he muttered, feeling for his key with fingers blue with cold. "There's just a chance it may be good."

But in his heart he felt that the chance was slim indeed.

The Riddle and the Ring; or, Won by Nerve

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