Читать книгу The Mystery Lady - Robert William Chambers - Страница 8

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When the boy, to his stupefaction, discovered that his shares in Orizava Oil were neither regarded as attractive collateral by any financial institution, nor as salable at any except ruinous figures, he went in terror to Mr. Welper, and was calmed and reassured at a “confidential” interview in the private office of that pious financier.

In about six months, it transpired, the “inner interests” would be ready to start Orizava Oil sky-high. Until then, mum!—not a word, not the wink of an eyelash!

The boy, tremulous but comforted, resigned himself to await the millions which, within six months, were certain to be his.

Yet, meanwhile there was Tiger Island. The state owned it, but offered it for sale. A few hogs pastured in the reeds and the gloomy pines of Tiger Island. There was no habitation on the snake-ridden place; for centuries it had been ownerless and common property for any who cared to pasture hogs or cut logs and float them to the mainland. Which latter enterprise was more of an effort than anybody ever had undertaken; and the pine woods were still primeval.

Finally the state took title to Tiger Island; set, arbitrarily, a ridiculously high figure on it, and offered it for sale, claiming that the purchaser could cut a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of timber from the untouched woods.

The boy now suffered deadly fears that either some lumber interests would buy Tiger Island, or that somebody’s anchor might accidentally foul the wreck of the Red Moon and drag up golden relics which would start a gold craze and set the entire region wild.

Somehow or other the boy had to raise enough money to secure Tiger Island and the adjacent waters, worthless as far as wild fowl were concerned.

The boy’s sister was still in Europe. He cabled her that he needed a hundred thousand dollars—without any other result than worrying his sister and starting a flight of sisterly and admonitory letters.

Then he wrote her and explained the matter in full; and his sister, thoroughly alarmed at what he had done in Orizava Oil, made preparations to terminate her delightful sojourn on the Riviera and return to New York where, it was very evident, her younger brother was attempting to make ducks and drakes of his inheritance.

And now the boy was becoming nervous and desperate, and he tried to borrow the money from Mr. Welper personally, without explaining why he wanted it, and was severely and piously chastened by that austere gentleman, who pointed out the enormity of anybody in the secret being treacherous enough to move a finger or stir an eyelash until the time set for starting an eruption of Orizava Oil as high as the volcano after which the corporation had been named.

The next week the boy’s apartment was broken into and ransacked by burglars who, oddly enough, burgled only the documents which the boy had bought at auction in Charleston.

The packet containing the parchment, however, was in the boy’s safe-deposit box,—or rather in two separate boxes in different banks. For the boy, supposing that the Spanish inscription was a translation of the hieroglyphics, had torn the parchment in two, thinking it safer to separate the duplicate inscriptions in case of any accident to either.

Nevertheless, the affair alarmed the youngster fearfully, though he never dreamed of connecting Mr. Welper with such a thing—a gentleman he so frankly admired, revered, feared.

But the stupidity of burglars who made off with antique documents exasperated him. Such papers loose in the world might start clever minds in the direction of Tiger Island.

One day, almost beside himself with anxiety, the boy took from one of the safe-deposit boxes the cherished papers and went to the offices of Orizava Oil, determined to show Mr. Welper everything and offer him a partnership for money enough to start the enterprise.

Mr. Welper was not in his own private lair, but the boy walked in, all white and desperate. And saw the private safe of Mr. Welper wide open, yawning in his very face.

Like a little bird hypnotised by the wide jaws of a deadly snake, the boy moved irresistibly toward the open safe.

Good God!—here was plenty, and to spare,—packets of Treasury notes, securities instantly marketable, bonds better than bars of gold—

His half-swooning mind was trying to co-ordinate robbery with the fact that, in six months, he would be worth millions who to-day hadn’t a thousand dollars in the bank.

He took a hundred thousand dollars in Treasury notes and securities.

He placed the packets in his overcoat breast-pocket, turned, walked out, went very steadily to the corridor, out into the hall to the elevator.

The cars flashed up and down. He had not rung. He waited. But when at length a car stopped at the landing where he stood he let it go on without him. And, after a long while, the boy turned as though dazed and started unsteadily back toward the offices of Orizava Oil. And met Mr. Welper coming out.

The latter looked at him with sly, keen eyes veiled by heavy lashes.

“I’m just leaving—if you’ve come to see me. A very, m—m, very important matter.”

The boy now realised the private safe of Mr. Welper was closed. He turned deathly pale.

“Is anybody there?” he managed to ask.

“Nobody now—except Mrs. Wyvern. Why?”

A last straw!—the only woman who ever had understood him!

“I’ll come back if—m—m—if I can be of any service,” purred Welper.... “Are you sick?”

“N-no.”

“You look like a ghost, my son. Probably—ah—undoubtedly you are up late. M—m, yes; but youth!—ah, youth! Well, I must hasten. So—m—m, ah, good-day to you, my son.”

The boy went slowly back to the offices of Orizava Oil and straight into Mr. Welper’s lair. The safe was closed.

Now, more slowly still, he walked through the pretentious suite, noticing nobody until he came to the private retreat of the only woman who ever had understood him.

She was busy at her desk, looked up at him, annoyed, but smoothed her features instinctively. For even a fool of a boy might make mischief within the next few months if treated with too open contempt.

“Sit down, Jimmy,” she said sweetly. “What is the trouble?”

“Trouble—trouble—” he stammered, “I can’t tell you.... And I’ve got to—.” His face had become scarlet and there were tears in his eyes.

“Helen,” he whispered, “you won’t understand—you who are so chaste, so pure, so untempted—” he choked. And she looked at him tenderly, considering him a fool and an unmitigated nuisance.

“What is the trouble, Jim; a—” she smiled archly, “a love affair?—”

“Oh, my God!—when I am in love with the very ground you walk on!”

His voice had a little of the bleat about it—which perhaps was natural in a case of calf love—and it unutterably annoyed Mrs. Wyvern, who had no desire to be made ridiculous within hearing of the stenographers in the next office.

It was hard for her to play her part, but she was a thrifty and cautious woman, so she suppressed her temper and, rising, led the human calf to a sofa, where she retained his feverish hand.

For a while he sobbed on her shoulder. She set her even teeth and endured it.

“Helen,” he managed to say at last, “I’m disgraced. ... I can’t tell you—looking into your pure eyes. ... I—I’ll write it and you c-can read wh-what the man who loves you really is—”

He seized a scratch-pad and fountain pen, and, hunched up beside her on the sofa, began the hysterical scribble which was destined to put a quietus upon him and his asininity for a while. The screed was an explanation. He told her about the discovery of the parchment, of his dire necessity for money with which to buy Tiger Island, of his attempts to raise it.

He fished out the corroborative documents and laid them on her lap. Half of the parchment was missing—the Spanish part—because he had been in too much of a hurry to go to both banks.

Mrs. Wyvern’s brown eyes had now become magnificently brilliant. She examined the documents; read the statement he showed her.

“But,” she inquired, mystified, “where is the disgrace in all this, Jim?”

“Wait,” he said in a choking voice. Then, as she watched his clumsy boy’s fingers under her very and ornamental nose, this embryo ass wrote his valedictory:

“—Helen, try to be merciful and find it in your heart to forgive the man who loves you and who confesses his degradation at your feet.

“I have been weak enough to take from Mr. Welper’s safe notes and securities valued at a hundred thousand dollars.

“I am a common thief.”

And then he signed his full name, pulled the stolen securities and money from his pocket, and laid them in her lap.

Mrs. Wyvern really was dumb with amazement. This little whipper-snapper!—this sentimental little ass had had the courage to do that!

She looked at the packet, at the parchment covered with hieroglyphics, at the letter, at the boy’s confession, signed with his full name and the ink still wet—

In a flash she knew exactly what was to be done and how to do it. She drew the boy to her and gently kissed his forehead; sat patiently while the storm burst and swept his miserable young soul cleaner of vanity than it had been for many a month.

“You—you have the co-combination of Mr. Wel-el-per’s safe. Put them back and he will never know how low I sank. I—I thought I could be a thief, but it wasn’t in me—and I couldn’t do it—I couldn’t do it—”

Mrs. Wyvern could cheerfully have pushed a knife in him. She wore one in a satin sheath attached to her right garter.

“There, there,” she said soothingly, “there, there. Now go home and forget it. It’s all over, Jimmy—”

“B-but—”

“No, it hasn’t made any difference with me. Your behaviour was noble. There is no other word. You remember—there is more rejoicing in Heaven—you recollect?—something about the ninety and nine—”

“Oh, Helen!”

“Go home and leave it all to me.”

He went, at last, having bleated his fill.

Meanwhile Mr. Welper had returned. After the boy had left he came into Mrs. Wyvern’s office.

“What was the matter with that fool boy, Nell?” he inquired.

She told him exactly. She went over every incident with precision. She handed him the stolen securities; she showed him the documents concerning Tiger Island, letters, parchment, everything. Then she gave him the boy’s confession to read.

After a little while: “I think,” said Mr. Welper softly, “that this is going to be easy—very easy, and, m—m, remunerative. Yes, I think so.”

“I think so too,” smiled Mrs. Wyvern, delighted to be rid of the boy forever.

Then both of them, still smiling, put their heads together to sketch out the last act of the farce in which the boy had played the clown too long.

“Why not finish at once?” said Mrs. Wyvern. She rose, opened the safe, tossed in Mr. Welper’s securities, the boy’s documents and written confession. Then she closed and locked the safe.

“Very well, call him on the telephone. He’s home by this time, I suppose,” the man agreed.

Mrs. Wyvern called; the boy answered tearfully, and promised to return at once.

“I’ll have to go to the Forty Club and try to decipher these hieroglyphics,” said Mr. Welper.

“Do you think you can?”

“We are supposed to have every facility in our library for solving any cipher ever known,” remarked Mr. Welper. ... “I ought to do it in a week.”

“Why not take it to the Museum of Inscriptions?”

“Why call in anybody unless I’m obliged to?” inquired Welper, slyly.

“Meanwhile you had better take a flyer and buy Tiger Island,” suggested pretty Mrs. Wyvern. “Fifty-fifty, you know. I might have kept it for myself, Barney.”

Welper hesitated, ventured a cautious glance, understood that he was at her mercy.

“Certainly, my dear,” he purred, “fifty-fifty was what I meant to offer.”

Both smiled again. But their expressions altered immediately as the boy entered and stood stock still at sight of Welper.

“Where are the Treasury notes and securities you stole from my safe?” asked Mr. Welper coldly.

The boy stared at him, horrified, then went white as death and turned to Mrs. Wyvern.

“I gave them to you,” he said in a ghastly voice.

“You did not,” she said calmly.

After a terrible silence: “God!” he gasped, “am I going crazy!”

“No,” said the woman, “you’ve always been a fool, and now you’re a thief.” And to Welper: “You tell him where he gets off, Barney. And if he pulls any gum about making restitution to me, tell him to get his witnesses or we’ll get his signed confession and turn it—and him—over to the police.”

Mrs. Wyvern rose leisurely, turned and left the office by another door, leaving the boy half fainting, leaning against the wall, and Mr. Welper slyly watching him.

The latter broke the frightful silence, harshly:

“Where’s that hundred thousand, you dirty thief!”

At the word the boy suddenly understood the entire and horrible duplicity. He made a movement toward his left arm, and Mr. Welper’s pistol muzzle dented his stomach.

Then the older man relieved the boy of his weapon.

“Now,” he said, “you listen. You go to prison. Understand? I’ve got it on you, and your fist at the bottom; and I’ve got my witness, and your finger prints on my safe and on the packets. And I’m going to see that they railroad you, my young buck, and you’ll do your stretch and disgrace your family forever.

“Now get out. You’re just one jump ahead of the cops. And if ever you show that boob mug anywhere you can kiss yourself good-bye—one way or another.... Beat it!”