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In the Bishop's Carriage

by Miriam Michelson · English · Gutenberg #481 · 308,436 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: In the Bishop's Carriage

Author: Miriam Michelson


        
Release date: April 1, 1996 [eBook #481]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/481

Credits: Produced by Charles Keller.  HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE BISHOP'S CARRIAGE ***




Produced by Charles Keller.  HTML version by Al Haines.









IN THE BISHOP'S CARRIAGE


By

MIRIAM MICHELSON





I.

When the thing was at its hottest, I bolted.  Tom, like the darling he
is--(Yes, you are, old fellow, you're as precious to me as--as you are
to the police--if they could only get their hands on you)--well, Tom
drew off the crowd, having passed the old gentleman's watch to me, and
I made for the women's rooms.

The station was crowded, as it always is in the afternoon, and in a
minute I was strolling into the big, square room, saying slowly to
myself to keep me steady:

"Nancy, you're a college girl--just in from Bryn Mawr to meet your
papa.  Just see if your hat's on straight."

I did, going up to the big glass and looking beyond my excited face to
the room behind me.  There sat the woman who can never nurse her baby
except where everybody can see her, in a railroad station.  There was
the woman who's always hungry, nibbling chocolates out of a box; and
the woman fallen asleep, with her hat on the side, and hairpins
dropping out of her hair; and the woman who's beside herself with fear
that she'll miss her train; and the woman who is taking notes about the
other women's rigs. And--

And I didn't like the look of that man with the cap who opened the
swinging door a bit and peeped in.  The women's waiting-room is no
place for a man--nor for a girl who's got somebody else's watch inside
her waist.  Luckily, my back was toward him, but just as the door swung
back he might have caught the reflection of my face in a mirror hanging
opposite to the big one.

I retreated, going to an inner room where the ladies were having the
maid brush their gowns, soiled from suburban travel and the dirty
station.

The deuce is in it the way women stare.  I took off my hat and jacket
for a reason to stay there, and hung them up as leisurely as I could.

"Nance," I said under my breath, to the alert-eyed, pug-nosed girl in
the mirror, who gave a quick glance about the room as I bent to wash my
hands, "women stare 'cause they're women. There's no meaning in their
look.  If they were men, now, you might twitter."

I smoothed my hair and reached out my hand to get my hat and jacket
when--when--

Oh, it was long; long enough to cover you from your chin to your heels!
It was a dark, warm red, and it had a high collar of chinchilla that
was fairly scrumptious.  And just above it the hat hung, a red-cloth
toque caught up on the side with some of the same fur.

The black maid misunderstood my involuntary gesture.  I had all my best
duds on, and when a lot of women stare it makes the woman they stare at
peacock naturally, and--and--well, ask Tom what he thinks of my style
when I'm on parade.  At any rate, it was the maid's fault.  She took
down the coat and hat and held them for me as though they were mine.
What could I do, 'cept just slip into the silk-lined beauty and set the
toque on my head?  The fool girl that owned them was having another
maid mend a tear in her skirt, over in the corner; the little place was
crowded.  Anyway, I had both the coat and hat on and was out into the
big anteroom in a jiffy.

What nearly wrecked me was the cut of that coat.  It positively made me
shiver with pleasure when I passed and saw myself in that long mirror.
My, but I was great!  The hang of that coat, the long, incurving sweep
in the back, and the high fur collar up to one's nose--even if it is a
turned-up nose--oh!

I stayed and looked a second too long, for just as I was pulling the
flaring hat a bit over my face, the doors swung, as an old lady came
in, and there behind her was that same curious man's face with the cap
above it.

Trapped?  Me?  Not much!  I didn't wait a minute, but threw the doors
open with a gesture that might have belonged to the Queen of Spain.  I
almost ran into his arms.  He gave an exclamation. I looked him
straight in the eyes, as I hooked the collar close to my throat, and
swept past him.

He weakened.  That coat was too jolly much for him.  It was for me,
too.  As I ran down the stairs, its influence so worked on me that I
didn't know just which Vanderbilt I was.

I got out on the sidewalk all right, and was just about to take a car
when the turnstile swung round, and there was that same man with the
cap.  His face was a funny mixture of doubt and determination.  But it
meant the Correction for me.

"Nance Olden, it's over," I said to myself.

But it wasn't.  For it was then that I caught sight of the carriage.
It was a fat, low, comfortable, elegant, sober carriage, wide and
well-kept, with rubber-tired wheels.  And the two heavy horses were fat
and elegant and sober, too, and wide and well-kept.  I didn't know it
was the Bishop's then--I didn't care whose it was.  It was empty, and
it was mine.  I'd rather go to the Correction--being too young to get
to the place you're bound for, Tom Dorgan--in it than in the patrol
wagon.  At any rate, it was all the chance I had.

I slipped in, closing the door sharply behind me.  The man on the
box--he was wide and well-kept, too--was tired waiting, I suppose, for
he continued to doze gently, his high coachman's collar up over his
ears.  I cursed that collar, which had prevented his hearing the door
close, for then he might have driven off.

But it was great inside: soft and warm, the cushions of dark plum, the
seat wide and roomy, a church paper, some notes for the Bishop's next
sermon and a copy of Quo Vadis.  I just snuggled down, trust me.  I
leaned far back and lay low.  When I did peek out the window, I saw the
man with the brass buttons and the cap turning to go inside again.

Victory!  He had lost the scent.  Who would look for Nancy Olden in the
Bishop's carriage?

Now, you know how early I got up yesterday to catch the train so's Tom
and I could come in with the people and be naturally mingling with
them?  And you remember the dance the night before? I hadn't had more
than three hours' sleep, and the snug warmth of that coach was just
nuts to me, after the freezing ride into town.  I didn't dare get out
for fear of some other man in a cap and buttons somewhere on the
lookout.  I knew they couldn't be on to my hiding-place or they'd have
nabbed me before this.  After a bit I didn't want to get out, I was so
warm and comfortable--and elegant.  O Tom, you should have seen your
Nance in that coat and in the Bishop's carriage!

First thing I knew, I was dreaming you and I were being married, and
you had brass buttons all over you, and I had the cloak all right, but
it was a wedding-dress, and the chinchilla was a wormy sort of orange
blossoms, and--and I waked when the handle of the door turned and the
Bishop got in.

Asleep?  That's what!  I'd actually been asleep.

And what did I do now?

That's easy--fell asleep again.  There wasn't anything else to do. Not
really asleep this time, you know; just, just asleep enough to be wide
awake to any chance there was in it.

The horses had started, and the carriage was half-way across the street
before the Bishop noticed me.

He was a little Bishop, not big and fat and well-kept like the rig, but
short and lean, with a little white beard and the softest eye--and the
softest heart--and the softest head.  Just listen.

"Lord bless me!" he exclaimed, hurriedly putting on his spectacles, and
looking about bewildered.

I was slumbering sweetly in the corner, but I could see between my
lashes that he thought he'd jumped into somebody else's carriage.

The sight of his book and his papers comforted him, though, and before
he could make a resolution, I let the jolting of the carriage, as it
crossed the car-track, throw me gently against him.

"Daddy," I murmured sleepily, letting my head rest on his little, prim
shoulder.

That comforted him, too.  Hush your laughing, Tom Dorgan; I mean
calling him "daddy" seemed to kind of take the cuss off the situation.

"My child," he began very gently.

"Oh, daddy," I exclaimed, snuggling down close to him, "you kept me
waiting so long I went to sleep.  I thought you'd never come."

He put his arm about my shoulders in a fatherly way.  You know, I found
out later the Bishop never had had a daughter.  I guess he thought he
had one now.  Such a simple, dear old soul!  Just the same, Tom Dorgan,
if he had been my father, I'd never be doing stunts with tipsy men's
watches for you; nor if I'd had any father.  Now, don't get mad.  Think
of the Bishop with his gentle, thin old arm about my shoulders, holding
me for just a second as though I was his daughter!  My, think of it!
And me, Nance Olden, with that fat man's watch in my waist and some
girl's beautiful long coat and hat on, all covered with chinchilla!

"There's some mistake, my little girl," he said, shaking me gently to
wake me up, for I was going to sleep again, he feared.

"Oh, I knew you were kept at the office," I interrupted quickly.  I
preferred to be farther from the station with that girl's red coat
before I got out.  "We've missed our train, anyway, haven't we?  After
this, daddy dear, let's not take this route.  If we'd go straight
through on the one road, we wouldn't have this drive across town every
time.  I was wondering, before I fell asleep, what in the world I'd do
in this big city if you didn't come."

He forgot to withdraw his arm, so occupied was he by my predicament.

"What would you do, my child, if you had--had missed your--your father?"

Wasn't it clumsy of him?  He wanted to break it to me gently, and this
was the best he could do.

"What would I do?" I gasped indignantly.  "Why, daddy, imagine me
alone, and--and without money!  Why--why, how can you--"

"There!  there!" he said, patting me soothingly on the shoulder.

That baby of a Bishop!  The very thought of Nancy Olden out alone in
the streets was too much for him.

He had put his free hand into his pocket and had just taken out a bill
and was trying to plan a way to offer it to me and reveal the fact to
poor, modest little Nance Olden that he was not her own daddy, when an
awful thing happened.

We had got up street as far as the opera-house, when we were caught in
the jam of carriages in front; the last afternoon opera of the season
was just over.  I was so busy thinking what would be my next move that
I didn't notice much outside--and I didn't want to move, Tom, not a
bit.  Playing the Bishop's daughter in a trailing coat of red, trimmed
with chinchilla, is just your Nancy's graft.  But the dear little
Bishop gave a jump that almost knocked the roof off the carriage,
pulled his arm from behind me and dropped the ten-dollar bill he held
as though it burned him. It fell in my lap.  I jammed it into my coat
pocket.  Where is it now?  Just you wait, Tom Dorgan, and you'll find
out.

I followed the Bishop's eyes.  His face was scarlet now.  Right next to
our carriage--mine and the Bishop's--there was another; not quite so
fat and heavy and big, but smart, I tell you, with the silver harness
jangling and the horses arching their backs under their blue-cloth
jackets monogrammed in leather.  All the same, I couldn't see anything
to cause a loving father to let go his onliest daughter in such a
hurry, till the old lady inside bent forward again and gave us another
look.

Her face told it then.  It was a big, smooth face, with
accordion-plaited chins.  Her hair was white and her nose was curved,
and the pearls in her big ears brought out every ugly spot on her face.
Her lips were thin, and her neck, hung with diamonds, looked like a bed
with bolsters and pillows piled high, and her eyes--oh, Tom, her eyes!
They were little and very gray, and they bored their way straight
through the windows--hers and ours--and hit the Bishop plumb in the
face.

My, if I could only have laughed!  The Bishop, the dear, prim little
Bishop in his own carriage, with his arm about a young woman in red and
chinchilla, offering her a bank-note, and Mrs. Dowager Diamonds, her
eyes popping out of her head at the sight, and she one of the lady
pillars of his church--oh, Tom!  it took all of this to make that poor
innocent next to me realize how he looked in her eyes.

But you see it was over in a minute.  The carriage wheels were
unlocked, and the blue coupe went whirling away, and we in the
plum-cushioned carriage followed slowly.

I decided that I'd had enough.  Now and here in the middle of all these
carriages was a bully good time and place for me to get away.  I turned
to the Bishop.  He was blushing like a boy. I blushed, too.  Yes, I
did, Tom Dorgan, but it was because I was bursting with laughter.

"Oh, dear!" I exclaimed in sudden dismay.  "You're not my father."

"No--no, my dear, I--I'm not," he stammered, his face purple now with
embarrassment.  "I was just trying to tell you, you poor little girl,
of your mistake and planning a way to help you, when--"

He made a gesture of despair toward the side where the coupe had been.

I covered my face with my hands, and shrinking over into the corner, I
cried:

"Let me out!  let me out!  You're not my father.  Oh, let me out!"

"Why, certainly, child.  But I'm old enough, surely, to be, and I
wish--I wish I were."

"You do!"

The dignity and tenderness and courtesy in his voice sort of sobered
me.  But all at once I remembered the face of Mrs. Dowager Diamonds,
and I understood.

"Oh, because of her," I said, smiling and pointing to the side where
the coupe had been.

My, but it was a rotten bad move!  I ought to have been strapped for
it.  Oh, Tom, Tom, it takes more'n a red coat with chinchilla to make a
black-hearted thing like me into the girl he thought I was.

He stiffened and sat up like a prim little school-boy, his soft eyes
hurt like a dog's that's been wounded.

I won't tell you what I did then.  No, I won't.  And you won't
understand, but just that minute I cared more for what he thought of me
than whether I got to the Correction or anywhere else.

It made us friends in a minute, and when he stopped the carriage to let
me out, my hand was still in his.  But I wouldn't go.  I'd made up my
mind to see him out of his part of the scrape, and first thing you know
we were driving up toward the Square, if you please, to Mrs. Dowager
Diamonds' house.

He thought it was his scheme, the poor lamb, to put me in her charge
till my lost daddy could send for me.  He'd no more idea that I was
steering him toward her, that he was doing the only thing possible, the
only square thing by his reputation, than he had that Nance Olden had
been raised by the Cruelty, and then flung herself away on the first
handsome Irish boy she met.

That'll do, Tom.

Girls, if you could have seen Mrs. Dowager Diamonds' face when she came
down the stairs, the Bishop's card in her hand, and into the gorgeous
parlor, it'd have been as good as a front seat at the show.

She was mad, and she was curious, and she was amazed, and she was
disarmed; for the very nerve of his bringing me to her staggered her so
that she could hardly believe she'd seen what she had.

"My dear Mrs. Ramsay," he began, confused a bit by his remembrance of
how her face had looked fifteen minutes before, "I bring to you an
unfortunate child, who mistook my carriage for her father's this
afternoon at the station.  She is a college girl, a stranger in town,
and till her father claims her--"

Oh, the baby!  the baby!  She was stiffening like a rod before his very
eyes.  How did his words explain his having his arm round the
unfortunate child?  His conscience was so clean that the dear little
man actually overlooked the fact that it wasn't my presence in the
carriage, but his conduct there that had excited Mrs. Dowager Diamonds.

And didn't the story sound thin?  I tell you, Tom, when it comes to
lying to a woman you've got to think up something stronger than it
takes to make a man believe in you--if you happen to be female yourself.

I didn't wait for him to finish, but waltzed right in.  I danced
straight up to that side of beef with the diamonds still on it, and
flinging my arms about her, turned a coy eye on the Bishop.

"You said your wife was out of town, daddy," I cried gaily. "Have you
got another wife besides mummy?"

The poor Bishop!  Do you think he tumbled?  Not a bit--not a bit. He
sat there gasping like a fish, and Mrs. Dowager Diamonds, surprised by
my sudden attack, stood bolt upright, about as pleasant to hug as--as
you are, Tom, when you're jealous.

The trouble with the Bishop's set is that it's deadly slow.  Now, if I
had really been the Bishop's daughter--all right, I'll go on.

"Oh, mummy," I went on quickly.  You know how I said it, Tom--the way I
told you after that last row that Dan Christensen wasn't near so
good-looking as you--remember?  "Oh, mummy, you don't know how good it
feels to get home.  Out there at that awful college, studying and
studying and studying, sometimes I thought I'd lose my senses.  There's
a girl out there now suffering from nervous prostration.  She worked so
hard preparing for the mid-years.  What's her name?  I can't think--I
can't think, my head's so tired.  But it sounds like mine, a lot like
mine. Once--I think it was yesterday--I thought it was mine, and I made
up my mind suddenly to come right home and bring it with me.  But it
can't be mine, can it?  It can't be my name she's got.  It can't be,
mummy, say it can't, say it can't!"

Tom, I ought to have gone on the stage.  I'll go yet, when you're sent
up some day.  Yes, I will.  You'll be where you can't stop me.

I couldn't see the Bishop, but the Dowager--oh, I'd got her.  Not so
bad an old body, either, if you only take her the right way. First, she
was suspicious, and then she was scared.  And then, bit by bit, the
stiffness melted out of her, her arms came up about me, and there I
was, lying all comfy, with the diamonds on her neck boring rosettes in
my cheeks, and she a-sniffling over me and patting me and telling me
not to get excited, that it was all right, and now I was home mummy
would take care of me, she would, that she would.

She did.  She got me on to a lounge, soft as--as marshmallows, and she
piled one silk pillow after another behind my back.

"Come, dear, let me help you off with your coat," she cooed, bending
over me.

"Oh, mummy, it's so cold!  Can't I please keep it on?"

To let that coat off me was to give the whole thing away.  My rig
underneath, though good enough for your girl, Tom, on a holiday, wasn't
just what they wear in the Square.  And, d'ye know, you'll say it's
silly, but I had a conviction that with that coat I should say good-by
to the nerve I'd had since I got into the Bishop's carriage,--and from
there into society.  I let her take the hat, though, and I could see by
the way she handled it that it was all right--the thing; her kind, you
know.  Oh, the girl I got it from had good taste, all right.

I closed my eyes for a moment as I lay there and she stood stroking my
hair.  She must have thought I'd fallen asleep, for she turned to the
Bishop, and holding out her hand, she said softly:

"My dear, dear Bishop, you are the best-hearted, the saintliest man on
earth.  Because you are so beautifully clean-souled yourself, you must
pardon me.  I am ashamed to say it, but I shall have no rest till I do.
When I saw you in the carriage downtown, with that poor, demented
child, I thought, for just a moment--oh, can you forgive me?  It shows
what an evil mind I have.  But you, who know so well what Edward is,
what my life has been with him, will see how much reason I have to be
suspicious of all men!"

I shook, I laughed so hard.  What a corker her Edward must be! See,
Tom, poor old Mrs. Dowager up in the Square having the same devil's
luck with her man as Molly Elliott down in the Alley has with hers.  I
wonder if you're all alike.  No, for there's the Bishop.  He had taken
her hand sympathizingly, forgivingly, but his silence made me curious.
I knew he wouldn't let the old lady believe for a moment I was luny, if
once he could be sure himself that I wasn't.  You lie, Tom Dorgan, he
wouldn't!  Well--But the poor baby, how could he expect to see through
a game that had caught the Dowager herself?  Still, I could hear him
walking softly toward me, and I felt him looking keenly down at me long
before I opened my eyes.

When I did, you should have seen him jump.  Guilty he felt. I could see
the blood rush up under his clear, thin old skin, soft as a baby's, to
find himself caught trying to spy out my secret.

I just looked, big-eyed, up at him.  You know; the way Molly's kid
does, when he wakes.  I looked a long, long time, as though I was
puzzled.

"Daddy," I said slowly, sitting up.  "You--you are my daddy, ain't you?"

"Yes--yes, of course."  It was the Dowager who got between him and me,
hinting heavily at him with nods and frowns.  But the dear old fellow
only got pinker in the effort to look a lie and not say it.  Still, he
looked relieved.  Evidently he thought I was luny all right, but that I
had lucid intervals.  I heard him whisper something like this to the
Dowager just before the maid came in with tea for me.

Yes, Tom Dorgan, tea for Nancy Olden off a silver salver, out of a cup
like a painted eggshell.  My, but that almost floored me! I was afraid
I'd give myself dead away with all those little jars and jugs.  So I
said I wasn't hungry, though, Lord knows, I hadn't had anything to eat
since early morning.  But the Dowager sent the maid away and took the
tray herself, operating all the jugs and pots for me, and then tried to
feed me the tea.  She was about as handy as Molly's little sister is
with the baby--but I allowed myself to be coaxed, and drank it down.

Tea, Tom Dorgan.  Ever taste tea?  If you knew how to behave yourself
in polite society, I'd give you a card to my friend, the Dowager, up in
the Square.

How to get away!  That was the thing that worried me.  I'd just made up
my mind to have a lucid interval, when cr-creak, the front door opened,
and in walked--

Tom, you're mighty cute--so cute you'll land us both behind bars some
day--but you can't guess who came in on our little family party.
Yes--oh, yes, you've met him.

Well, the old duffer whose watch was ticking inside my waist that very
minute!  Yes, sir, the same red-faced, big-necked fellow we'd spied
getting full at the little station in the country. Only, he was a bit
mellower than when you grabbed his chain. Well, he was Edward.

I almost dropped the cup when I saw him.  The Dowager took it from me,
saying:

"There, dear, don't be nervous.  It's only--only--"

She got lost.  It couldn't be my daddy--the Bishop was that.  But it
was her husband, so who could it be?

"Evening, Bishop.  Hello, Henrietta, back so soon from the opera?"
roared Edward, in a big, husky voice.  He'd had more since we saw him,
but he walked straight as the Bishop himself, and he's a dear little
ramrod.  "Ah!"--his eyes lit up at sight of me--"ah, Miss--Miss--of
course, I've met the young lady, Henrietta, but hang me if I haven't
forgotten her name."

"Miss--Miss Murieson," lied the old lady, glibly.  "A--a relative."

"Why, mummy!" I said reproachfully.

"There--there.  It's only a joke.  Isn't it a joke, Edward?" she
demanded, laughing uneasily.

"Joke?" he repeated with a hearty bellow of laughter.  "Best kind of a
joke, I call it, to find so pretty a girl right in your own house, eh,
Bishop?"

"Why does he call my father 'Bishop', mummy?"

I couldn't help it.  The fun of hearing the Dowager lie and knowing the
Bishop beside himself with the pain of deception was too much for me.
I could see she didn't dare trust her Edward with my sad story.

"Ho!  ho!  The Bishop--that's good.  No, my dear Miss Murieson, if this
lady's your mother, why, I must be--at least, I ought to be, your
father.  As such, I'm going to have all the privileges of a
parent--bless me, if I'm not."

I don't suppose he'd have done it if he'd been sober, but there's no
telling, when you remember the reputation the Dowager had given him.
But he'd got no further than to put his arm around me when both the
Bishop and the Dowager flew to the rescue.  My, but they were shocked!
I couldn't help wondering what they'd have done if Edward had happened
to see the Bishop in the same sort of tableau earlier in the afternoon.

But I got a lucid interval just then, and distracted their attention.
I stood for a moment, my head bent as though I was thinking deeply.

"I think I'll go now," I said at length.  "I--I don't understand
exactly how I got here," I went on, looking from the Bishop to the
Dowager and back again, "or how I happened to miss my father.  I'm
ever--so much obliged to you, and if you will give me my hat, I'll take
the next train back to college."

"You'll do nothing of the sort," said the Dowager, promptly. "My dear,
you're a sweet girl that's been studying too hard.  You must go to my
room and rest--"

"And stay for dinner.  Don't you care.  Sometimes I don't know how I
get here myself."  Edward winked jovially.

Well, I did.  While the Dowager's back was turned, I gave him the
littlest one, in return for his.  It made him drunker than ever.

"I think," said the Bishop, grimly, with a significant glance at the
Dowager, as he turned just then and saw the old cock ogling me, "the
young lady is wiser than we.  I'll take her to the station--"

The station!  Ugh!  Not Nance Olden, with the red coat still on.

"Impossible, my dear Bishop," interrupted the Dowager.  "She can't be
permitted to go back on the train alone."

"Why, Miss--Miss Murieson, I'll see you back all the way to the college
door.  Not at all, not at all.  Charmed.  First, we'll have dinner--or,
first I'll telephone out there and tell 'em you're with us, so that if
there's any rule or anything of that sort--"

The telephone!  This wretched Edward with half his wits gave me more
trouble than the Bishop and the Dowager put together.  She jumped at
the idea, and left the room, only to come back again to whisper to me:

"What name, my dear?"

"What name? what name?" I repeated blankly.  What name, indeed. I
wonder how "Nance Olden" would have done.

"Don't hurry, dear, don't perplex yourself," she whispered anxiously,
noting my bewilderment.  "There's plenty of time, and it makes no
difference--not a particle, really."

I put my hand to my head.

"I can't think--I can't think.  There's one girl has nervous
prostration, and her name's got mixed with mine, and I can't--"

"Hush, hush!  Never mind.  You shall come and lie down in my room.
You'll stay with us to-night, anyway, and we'll have a doctor in,
Bishop."

"That's right," assented the Bishop.  "I'll go get him myself."

"You--you're not going!" I cried in dismay.  It was real. I hated to
see him go.

"Nonsense--'phone."  It was Edward who went himself to telephone for
the doctor, and I saw my time getting short.

But the Bishop had to go, anyway.  He looked out at his horses
shivering in front of the house, and the sight hurried him.

"My child," he said, taking my hand, "just let Mrs. Ramsay take care of
you to-night.  Don't bother about anything, but just rest.  I'll see
you in the morning," he went on, noticing that I kind of clung to him.
Well, I did.  "Can't you remember what I said to you in the
carriage--that I wished you were my daughter. I wish you were, indeed I
do, and that I could take you home with me and keep you, child."

"Then--to-night--if--when you pray--will you pray for me as if I
was--your own daughter?"

Tom Dorgan, you think no prayers but a priest's are any good, you
bigoted, snickering Catholic!  I tell you if some day I cut loose from
you and start in over again, it'll be the Bishop's prayers that'll do
it.

The Dowager and I passed Edward in the ball.  He gave me a look behind
her back, and I gave him one to match it.  Just practice, you know,
Tom.  A girl can never know when she'll want to be expert in these
things.

She made me lie down on a couch while she turned the lamp low, and then
left me alone in a big palace of a bedroom filled with things.  And I
wanted everything I saw.  If I could, I'd have lifted everything in
sight.

But every minute brought that doctor nearer.  Soon as I could be really
sure she was gone, I got up, and, hurrying to the long French windows
that opened on the great stone piazza, I unfastened them quietly, and
inch by inch I pushed them open.

There within ten feet of me stood Edward.  No escape that way.  He saw
me, and was tiptoeing heavily toward me, when I heard the door click
behind me, and in walked the Dowager back again.

I flew to her.

"I thought I heard some one out there," I said.

"It frightened me so that I got up to look.  Nobody could be out there,
could they?"

She walked to the window and put her head out.  Her lips tightened
grimly.

"No, nobody could be out there," she said, breathing hard, "but you
might get nervous just thinking there might be.  We'll go to a room
upstairs."

And go we did, in spite of all I could plead about feeling well enough
now to go alone and all the rest of it.  How was I to get out of a
second or third-story window?

I began to think about the Correction again as I followed her upstairs,
and after she'd left me I just sat waiting for the doctor to come and
send me there.  I didn't much care, till I remembered the Bishop.  I
could almost see his face as it would look when he'd be called to
testify against me, and I'd be standing in that railed-in prisoner's
pen, in the middle of the court-room, where Dan Christensen stood when
they tried him.

No, I couldn't bear that; not without a fight, anyway.  It was for the
Bishop I'd got into this part of the scrape.  I'd get out of it so's he
shouldn't know how bad a thing a girl can be.

While I lay thinking it over, the same maid that had brought me the tea
came in.  She was an ugly, thin little thing.  If she's a sample of the
maids in that house, the lot of them would take the kink out of your
pretty hair, Thomas J.  Dorgan, Esquire, late of the House of Refuge
and soon of Moyamensing.  Don't throw things. People in my set, mine
and the Dowager's, don't.

She had been sent to help me undress, she said, and make me
comfortable.  The doctor lived just around the corner and would be in
in a minute.

Phew!  She wasn't very promising, but she was my only chance. I took
her.

"I really don't need any help, thank you, Nora," I said, chipper as a
sparrow, and remembering the name the Dowager had called her by.  "Aunt
Henrietta is too fussy, don't you think? Oh, of course, you won't say a
word against her.  She told me the other day that she'd never had a
maid so sensible and quick-witted, too, as her Nora.  Do you know, I've
a mind to play a joke on the doctor when he comes.  You'll help me,
won't you? Oh, I know you will!"  Suddenly I remembered the Bishop's
bill. I took it out of my pocket.  Yep, Tom, that's where it went.  I
had to choose between giving that skinny maid the biggest tip she ever
got in her life--or Nance Olden to the Correction.

You needn't swear, Tom Dorgan.  I fancy if I'd got there, you'd got
worse.  No, you bully, you know I wouldn't tell; but the police sort of
know how to pair our kind.

In her cap and apron, I let the doctor in and myself out.  And I don't
regret a thing up there in the Square except that lovely red coat with
the high collar and the hat with the fur on it.  I'd give--Tom, get me
a coat like that and I'll marry you for life.

No, there's one thing I could do better if it was to be done over
again.  I could make that dear little old Bishop wish harder I'd been
his daughter.

What am I mooning about?  Oh--nothing.  There's the watch--Edward's
watch.  Take it.



II.

Yes, empty-handed, Tom Dorgan.  And I can't honestly say I didn't have
the chance, but--if my hands are empty my head is full.

Listen.

There's a girl I know with short brown hair, a turned-up nose and gray
eyes, rather far apart.  You know her, too?  Well, she can't help that.

But this girl--oh, she makes such a pretty boy!  And the ladies at the
hotel over in Brooklyn, they just dote on her when she's not only a boy
but a bell-boy.  Her name may be Nancy when she's in petticoats, but in
trousers she's Nathaniel--in short, Nat.

Now, Nat, in blue and buttons, with his nails kept better than most
boys', with his curly hair parted in the middle, and with a gentle tang
to his voice that makes him almost girlish--who would suspect Nat of
having a stolen pass-key in his pocket and a pretty fair knowledge of
the contents of almost every top bureau-drawer in the hotel?

Not Mrs. Sarah Kingdon, a widow just arrived from Philadelphia, and
desperately gone on young Mr. George Moriway, also fresh from
Philadelphia, and desperately gone on Mrs. Kingdon's money.

The tips that lady gave the bad boy Nat!  I knew I couldn't make you
believe it any other way; that's why I passed 'em on to you, Tommy-boy.

The hotel woman, you know, girls, is a hotel woman because she isn't
fit to be anything else.  She's lazy and selfish and little, and she's
shifted all her legitimate cares on to the proprietor's shoulders.  She
actually--you can understand and share my indignation, can't you, Tom,
as you've shared other things?--she even gives over her black tin box
full of valuables to the hotel clerk to put in the safe; the coward!
But her vanity--ah, there's where we get her, such speculators as you
and myself.  She's got to outshine the woman who sits at the next
table, and so she borrows her diamonds from the clerk, wears 'em like
the peacock she is, and trembles till they're back in the safe again.

In the meantime she locks them up in the tin box which she puts in her
top bureau-drawer,  hides the key, forgets where she hid it, and--O
Tom!  after searching for it for hours and making herself sick with
anxiety, she ties up her head in a wet handkerchief with vinegar on it
and--rings the bell for the bell-boy!

He comes.

As I said, he's a prompt, gentle little bell-boy, slight, looks rather
young for his job, but that very youth and innocence of his make him
such a fellow to trust!

"Nat," says Mrs. Kingdon, tearfully pressing half a dollar into the
nice lad's hand, "I--I've lost something and I want you to--to help me
find it."

"Yes'm," says Nat.  He's the soul of politeness.

"It must be here--it must be in this room," says the lady, getting wild
with the terror of losing.  "I'm sure--positive--that I went straight
to the shoe-bag and slipped it in there.  And now I can't find it, and
I must have it before I go out this afternoon for--for a very special
reason.  My daughter Evelyn will be home to-morrow and--why don't you
look for it?"

"What is it, ma'am?"

"I told you once.  My key--a little flat key that locks--a box I've
got," she finishes distrustfully.

"Have you looked in the shoe-bag, ma'am?"

"Why, of course I have, you little stupid.  I want you to hunt other
places where I can't easily get.  There are other places I might have
put it, but I'm positive it was in the shoe-bag."

Well, I looked for that key.  Where?  Where not?  I looked under the
rubbish in the waste-paper basket; Mrs. Kingdon often fooled thieves by
dropping it there.  I pulled up the corner of the carpet and looked
there--it was loose; it had often been used for a hiding-place.  I
looked in Miss Evelyn's boot and in her ribbon box.  I emptied Mrs.
Kingdon's full powder box.  I climbed ladders and felt along cornices.
I looked through the pockets of Mrs. Kingdon's gowns--a clever bell-boy
it takes to find a woman's pocket, but even the real masculine ones
among 'em are half feminine; they've had so much to do with women.

I rummaged through her writing-desk, and, in searching a gold-cornered
pad, found a note from Moriway hidden under the corner.  I hid it again
carefully--in my coat pocket.  A love-letter from Moriway, to a woman
twenty years older than himself--'tain't a bad lay, Tom Dorgan, but you
needn't try it.

At first she watched every move I made, but later, as her headache grew
worse, she got desperate.  So then I put my hand down into the shoe-bag
and found the key, where it had slipped under a fold of cloth.

Do you suppose that woman was grateful?  She snatched it from me.

"I knew it was there.  I told you it was there.  If you'd had any sense
you'd have looked there first.  The boys in this hotel are so stupid."

"That's all, ma'am?"

She nodded.  She was fitting the key into the black box she'd taken
from the top drawer.  Nat had got to the outside door when he heard her
come shrieking after him.

"Nat--Nat--come back!  My diamonds--they're not here.  I know I put
them back last night--I'm positive.  I could swear to it. I can see
myself putting them in the chamois bag, and--O my God, where can they
be!  This time they're gone!"

Nat could have told her--but what's the use?  He felt she'd only lose
'em again if she had 'em.  So he let them lie snug in his trousers
pocket--where he had put the chamois bag, when his eyes lit on it,
under the corner of the carpet.  He might have passed it over to her
then, but you see, Tom, she hadn't told him to look for a bag; it was a
key she wanted.  Bell-boys are so stupid.

This time she followed his every step.  He could not put his hand on
the smallest thing without rousing her suspicion.  If he hesitated, she
scolded.  If he hurried, she fumed.  Most unjust, I call it, because he
had no thought of stealing--just then.

"Come," she said at last, "we'll go down and report it at the desk."

"Hadn't I better wait here, ma'am, and look again?"

She looked sharply at him.

"No; you'd better do just as I tell you."

So down we went.  And we met Mr. Moriway there.  She'd telephoned him.
The chambermaid was called, the housekeeper, the electrical engineer
who'd been fixing bells that morning, and, as I said, a bell-boy named
Nat, who told how he'd just come on duty when Mrs. Kingdon's bell rang,
found her key and returned it to her, and was out of the room when she
unlocked the box.  That was all he knew.

"Is he telling the truth?" Moriway asked Mrs Kingdon.

"Ye--es, I guess he is; but where are the diamonds?  We must have
them--you know--to-day, George," she whispered.  And then she turned
and went upstairs, leaving Moriway to do the rest.

"There's only one thing to do, Major," he said to the proprietor.
"Search 'em all and then--"

"Search me?  It's an outrage!" cried the housekeeper.

"Search me if ye loike," growled McCarthy, resentfully.  "Oi wasn't
there but a minute; the lady herself can tell ye that."

Katie, the chambermaid, flushed painfully, and there were indignant
tears in her eyes, which, I'll tell you in confidence, made a girl
named Nancy uncomfortable.

But the boy Nat; knowing that bell-boys have no rights, said nothing.
But he thought.  He thought, Tom Dorgan, a lot of things and a long way
ahead.

The peppery old Major marched us all off to his private office.

Not much, girls, it hadn't come.  For suddenly the annunciator rang out.

Out of the corner of his eye, Nat looked at the bell-boy's bench. It
was empty.  There was to be a ball that night, and the bells were going
it over all the place.

"Number Twenty-one!" shouted the clerk at the desk.

But Number Twenty-one didn't budge.  His heart was beating like a
hammer, and the ting--ng--ng of that bell calling him rang in his head
like a song.

"Number Twenty-one!" yelled the clerk.

Oh, he's got a devil of a temper, has that clerk.  Some day, Tom, when
you love me very much, go up to the hotel and break his face for me.

"You.--boy--confound you, can't you hear?" he shouted.

That time he caught the Major's ear--the one that wasn't deaf.  He
looked from Powers' black face to the bench and then to me.  And all
the time the bell kept ringing like mad.

"Git!" he said to the boy.  "And come back in a hurry."

Number Twenty-one got--but leisurely.  It wouldn't do for a bell-boy to
hurry, particularly when he had such good cause.

Oh, girls, those stone stairs, the servants' stairs at the St. James!
They're fierce.  I tell you, Mag, scrubbing the floors at the Cruelty
ain't so bad.  But this time I was jolly glad bell-boys weren't allowed
in the elevator.  For there were those diamonds in my pants pocket, and
I must get rid of 'em before I got down to the office again.  So I
climbed those stairs, and every step I took my eye was searching for a
hiding-place. I could have pitched the little bag out of a window, but
Nancy Olden wasn't throwing diamonds to the birds, any more than Mag
here is likely to cut off the braids of red hair we used to play horse
with when we drove her about the Cruelty yard.

One flight.

No chance.

Another.

Everything bare as stone and soap could keep it.

The third flight--my knees began to tremble, and not with climbing.
The call came from this floor.  But I ran up a fourth just on the
chance, and there in a corner was a fire hatchet strapped to the wall.
Behind that hatchet Mrs. Kingdon's diamonds might lie snug till
evening.  I put the ends of my fingers first in the little crack to
make sure the little bag wouldn't drop to the floor, and then dived
into my pocket and--

And there behind me, stealthily coming up the last turn of the stairs
was Mr. George Moriway!

Don't you hate a soft-walking man, Mag?  That cute fellow was cuter
than the old Major himself, and had followed me every inch of the way.

"There's something loose with this hatchet, sir," I said, innocently
looking down at him.

"Oh, there is?  What an observing little fellow you are!  Never mind
the hatchet; just tell me what number you were sent to answer."

"Number?" I repeated, as though I couldn't see why he wanted to know.
"Why--431."

"Not much, my boy--331."

"'Scuse me, sir, ain't you mistaken?"

He looked at me for full a minute.  I stared him straight in the eye.
A nasty eye he's got--black and bloodshot and cold and full of
suspicion.  But it wavered a bit at the end.

"I may be," he said slowly, "but not about the number.  Just you turn
around and get down to 331."

"All right, sir.  Thank you very much.  It might have got me in
trouble.  The ladies are so particular about having the bells answered
quick--"

"I guess you'll get in trouble all right," he said and stood
watching--from where he stood he could watch me every inch of the
way--till I got to 331, at the end of the hall, Mrs. Kingdon's door.

And the goods still on me, Tom, mind that.

My, but Mrs. Kingdon was wrathy when she saw me!

"Why did they send you?" she cried.  "Why did you keep me waiting so
long?  I want a chambermaid.  I've rung a dozen times. The whole place
is crazy about that old ball to-night, and no one can get decent
attention."

"Can't I do what you want, ma'am?"  I just yearned to get inside that
door.

"No," she snapped.  "I don't want a boy to fasten my dress in the
back--"

"We often do, ma'am," I said softly.

"You do?  Well--"

"Yes'm."  I breathed again.

"Well--it's indecent.  Go down and send me a maid."

She was just closing the door in my face--and Moriway waiting for me to
watch me down again.

"Mrs. Kingdon--"

"Well, what do you want?"

"I want to tell you that when I get down to the office they'll search
me."

She looked at me amazed.

"And--and there's something in my pocket I--you wouldn't like them to
find."

"What in the world--my diamonds!  You did take them, you little wretch?"

She caught hold of my coat.  But Lordy!  I didn't want to get away a
little bit.  I let her pull me in, and then I backed up against the
door and shut it.

"Diamonds!  Oh, no, ma'am.  I hope I'm not a thief.  But--but it was
something you dropped--this."

I fished Moriway's letter out of my pocket and handed it to her.

The poor old lady!  Being a bell-boy you know just how old ladies
really are.  This one at evening, after her face had been massaged for
an hour, and the manicure girl and the hair-dresser had gone, wasn't so
bad.  But to-day, with the marks of the morning's tears on her agitated
face, with the blood pounding up to her temples where the hair was thin
and gray--Tom Dorgan, if I'm a vain old fool like that when I'm three
times as old as I am, just tie a stone around my neck and take me down
and drop me into the nearest water, won't you?

"You abominable little wretch!" she sobbed.  "I suppose you've told
everybody in the office."

"How could I, ma'am?"

"How could you?"  She looked up, the tears on her flabby, flushed cheek.

"I didn't know myself.  I can't read writing--"

It was thin, but she wanted to believe it.

She could have taken me in her arms, she was so happy.

"There! there!" she patted my shoulder and gave me a dollar bill.  "I
was a bit hasty, Nat.  It's only a--a little business matter that Mr.
Moriway's attending to for me.  We--we'll finish it up this afternoon.
I shouldn't like Miss Kingdon to know of it, because--because I--never
like to worry her about business, you know.  So don't mention it when
she comes to-morrow."

"No'm.  Shall I fasten your dress?"  I simply had to stay in that room
till I could get rid of those diamonds.

With a faded old blush--the nicest thing about her I'd ever seen--she
turned her back.

"It's dark to-day, ma'am," I coaxed.  "Would you mind coming nearer the
window?"

No, she wouldn't mind.  She backed up to the corner like a gentle
little lamb.  While I hooked with one hand, I dropped the little bag
where the carpet was still turned up, and with the toe of my shoe
spread it flat again.

"You're real handy for a boy," she said, pleased.

"Thank you, ma'am," I answered, pleased myself.

Moriway was still watching me, of course, when I came out, but I ran
downstairs, he following close, and when the Major got hold of me, I
pulled my pockets inside out like a little man.

Moriway was there at the time.  I knew he wasn't convinced.  But he
couldn't watch a bell-boy all day long, and the moment I was sure his
eyes were off me I was ready to get those diamonds back again.

But not a call came all that afternoon from the west side of the house,
except the call of those pretty, precious things snug under the carpet
calling, calling to me to come and get them and drop bell-boying for
good.

At last I couldn't stand it any longer.  There's only one thing to do
when your chance won't come to you; that is, to go to it.  At about
four o'clock I lit out, climbed to the second story and there--Mag, I
always was the luckiest girl at the Cruelty, wasn't I?  Well, there was
suite 231 all torn up, plumbers and painters in there, and nothing in
the world to prevent a boy's skinning through when no one was watching,
out of the window and up the fire-escape.

Just outside of Mrs. Kingdon's window I lay still a minute.  I had seen
her and Moriway go out together--she all gay with finery, he carrying
her bag.  The lace curtains in 331 were blowing in the breeze.
Cautiously I parted them and looked in.  Everything was lovely.  From
where I lay I reached down and turned back the flap of the carpet.  It
was too easy.  Those darling diamonds seemed just to leap up into my
hand.  In a moment I had them tucked away in my pants pocket.  Then
down the fire-escape and out through 231, where I told the painter I'd
been to get a toy the boy in 441 had dropped out of the window.

But he paid no attention to me.  No one did, though I felt those
diamonds shining like an X-ray through my very body.  I got downstairs
and was actually outside the door, almost in the street and off to you,
when a girl called me.

"Here, boy, carry this case," she said.

Do you know who it was?  Oh, yes, you do, a dear old friend of mine
from Philadelphia, a young lady whose taste--well, all right, I'll tell
you: it was the girl with the red coat, and the hat with the chinchilla
fur.

How did they look?  Oh, fairly well on a blonde!  But to my taste the
last girl I'd seen in the coat and hat was handsomer.

Well, I carried her suit-case and followed her back into the hotel.  I
didn't want to a bit, though that coat still--wonder how she got it
back!

She sailed up the hall and into the elevator, and I had to follow.  We
got of at the third story, and she brought me right to the door of 331.
And then I knew this must be Evelyn.

"Mrs. Kingdon's out, Miss.  She didn't expect you till to-morrow."

"Did she tell you that?  Too bad she isn't at home!  She said she'd be
kept busy all day to-day with a business matter, and that I'd better
not get here till to-morrow.  But I--"

"Wanted to get here in time for the wedding?" I suggested softly.

You should have seen her jump.

"Wedding!  Not--"

"Mrs. Kingdon and Mr. Moriway."

She turned white.

"Has that man followed her here?  Quick, tell me.  Has she actually
married him?"

"No--not yet.  It's for five o'clock at the church on the corner."

"How do you know?"  She turned on me, suddenly suspicious.

"Well--I do know.  And I'm the only person in the house that does."

"I don't believe you."

She took out her key and opened the door, and I followed her in with
the suit-case.  But before I could get it set down on the floor, she
had swooped on a letter that was lying in the middle of the table, had
torn it open, and then with a cry had come whirling toward me.

"Where is this church?  Come, help me to get to it before five and
I'll--oh, you shall have anything in the world you want!"

She flew out into the hall, I after her.  And first thing you know we
were down in the street, around the corner, and there in front of the
church was a carriage with Moriway just helping Mrs. Kingdon out.

"Mother!"

At that cry the old lady's knees seemed to crumble under her.  Her poor
old painted face looked out ghastly and ashamed from her wedding
finery.  But Evelyn in her red coat flew to her and took her in her
arms as though she was a child.  And like a child, Mrs. Kingdon sobbed
and made excuses and begged to be forgiven.

I looked at Moriway.  It was all the pay I wanted--particularly as I
had those little diamonds.

"You're just in time, Miss Kingdon," he said uneasily, "to make your
mother happy by your presence at her wedding."

"I'm just in time, Mr. Moriway, to see that my mother's not made
unhappy by your presence."

"Evelyn!" Mrs. Kingdon remonstrated.

"Come, Sarah."  Moriway offered his arm.

The bride shook her head.

"To-morrow," she said feebly.

Moriway breathed a swear.

Miss Kingdon laughed.

"I've come to take care of you, you silly little mother, dear.... It
won't be to-morrow, Mr. Moriway."

"No--not to-morrow--next week," sighed Mrs. Kingdon.

"In fact, mother's changed her mind, Mr. Moriway.  She thinks it
ungenerous to accept such a sacrifice from a man who might be her
son--don't you, mother?"

"Well, perhaps, George--" She looked up from her daughter's
shoulder--she was crying all over that precious red coat of mine--and
her eyes lit on me.  "Oh--you wicked boy, you told a lie!" she gasped.
"You did read my letter."

I laughed; laughed out loud, it was such a bully thing to watch
Moriway's face.

But that was an unlucky laugh of mine; it turned his wrath on me. He
made a dive toward me.  I ducked and ran.  Oh, how I ran!  But if he
hadn't slipped on the curb he'd have had me.  As he fell, though, he
let out a yell.

"Stop thief!  stop thief!  Thief!  Thief!  Thief!"

May you never hear it, Mag, behind you when you've somebody else's
diamonds in your pocket.  It sounds--it sounds the way the bay of the
hounds must sound to the hare.  It seems to fly along with the air; at
the same time to be behind you, at your side, even in front of you.

I heard it bellowed in a dozen different voices, and every now and then
I could hear Moriway as I pelted on--that brassy, cruel bellow of his
that made my heart sick.

And then all at once I heard a policeman's whistle.

That whistle was like a signal--I saw the gates of the Correction open
before me.  I saw your Nance, Tom, in a neat striped dress, and she was
behind bars--bars--bars!  There were bars everywhere before me.  In
fact, I felt them against my very hands, for in my mad race I had shot
up a blind alley--a street that ended in a garden behind an iron fence.

I grabbed the diamonds to throw them from me, but I couldn't--I just
couldn't!  I jumped the fence where the gate was low, and with that
whistle flying shrill and shriller after me I ran to the house.

I might have jumped from the frying-pan?  Of course, I might.  But it
was all fire to me.  To be caught at the end is at least no worse than
to be caught at the beginning.  Anyhow, it was my one chance, and I
took it as unhesitatingly as a rat takes a leap into a trap to escape a
terrier.  Only--only, it was my luck that the trap wasn't set!  The
room was empty.  I pushed open a glass door, and fell over an open
trunk that stood beside it.

It bruised my knee and tore my hand, but oh!--it was nuts to me. For it
was a woman's trunk filled with women's things.

A skirt!  A blessed skirt!  And not a striped one.  I threw off the
bell-boy's jacket and I got into that dear dress so quick it made my
head swim.

The jacket was a bit tight but I didn't button it, and I'd just got a
stiff little hat perched on my head when I heard the tramp of men on
the sidewalk, and in the dusk saw the cop's buttons at the gate.

Caught?  Not much.  Not yet.  I threw open the glass doors and walked
out into the garden.

"Miss--Omar--I wonder if it would be Miss Omar?"

You bet I didn't take time to see who it was talking before I answered.
Of course I was Miss Omar.  I was Miss Anybody that had a right to wear
skirts and be inside those blessed gates.

"Ah--h!  I fancied you might be.  I've been expecting you."

It was a lazy, low voice with a laugh in it, and it came from a wheeled
chair, where a young man lay.  Sallow he was and slim and long, and
helpless--you could see that by his white hanging hands.  But his
voice--it was what a woman's voice would be if she were a man.  It made
you perk up and pretend to be somewhere near its level.  It fitted his
soft, black clothes and his fine, clean face.  It meant silks and
velvets and--

Oh, all right, Tommy Dorgan, if you're going to get jealous of a voice!

"Excuse me, Mr. Latimer."  The cop came in as he spoke, Moriway
following; the rest of the hounds hung about.  "There's a thieving
bell-boy from the hotel that's somewhere in your grounds.  Can I come
in and get him?"

"In here, Sergeant?  Aren't you mistaken?"

"No; Mr. Moriway here saw him jump the gate not five minutes since."

"Strange, and I here all the time!  I may have dozed of, though.
Certainly--certainly.  Look for the little rascal.  What's he stolen?
Diamonds!  Tut!  tut!  Enterprising, isn't he?  ...  Miss Omar, won't
you kindly reach the bell yonder--no, on the table; that's it--and ring
for some one to take the officer about?"

I rang.

Do you know what happened?  An electric light strung on the tree above
the table shone out, and there I stood under it with Moriway's eyes
full upon me.

"Great--!" he began.

"Just ring again--" Mr. Latimer's voice came soft as silk.

My fingers trembled so, the bell clattered out of them and fell
jangling to the ground.  But it rang.  And the light above me went out
like magic.  I fell back into a garden chair.

"I beg your pardon, Mr.--was Moriway the name?--I must have interrupted
you, but my eyes are troubling me this evening, and I can't bear the
light.  Miss Omar, I thought the housekeeper had instructed you: one
ring means lights, two mean I want Burnett. Here he comes...  Burnett,
take Sergeant Mulhill through the place.  He's looking for a thief.
You will accompany the Sergeant, Mr.--Moriway?"

"Thank you--no.  If you don't mind, I'll wait out here."

That meant me.  I moved toward the gate.

"Not at all.  Have a seat.  Miss Omar, sit down, won't you?" I sat down.

"Miss Omar reads to me, Mr. Moriway.  I'm an invalid, as you see,
dependent on the good offices of my man.  I find a woman's voice a
soothing change."

"It must be.  Particularly if the voice is pleasing.  Miss Omar--I
didn't quite catch the name--"

He waited.  But Miss Omar had nothing to say that minute.

"Yes, that's the name.  You've got it all right," said Latimer. "An
uncommon name, isn't it?"

"I don't think I ever heard it before.  Do you know, Miss Omar, as I
heard your voice just before we got to the gate, it sounded singularly
boyish to me."

"Mr. Latimer does not find it so--do you?" I said as sweet--as sweet as
I could coax.  How sweet's that, Tom Dorgan?

"Not at all."  A little laugh came from Latimer as though he was
enjoying a joke all by himself.  But Moriway jumped with satisfaction.
He knew the voice all right.

"Have you a brother, may I ask?"  He leaned over and looked keenly at
me.

"I am an orphan," I said sadly, "with no relatives."

"A pitiful position," sneered Moriway.  "You look so much like a boy I
know that--"

"Do you really think so?"  So awfully polite was Latimer to such a rat
as Moriway.  Why?  Well, wait.  "I can't agree with you.  Do you know,
I find Miss Omar very feminine.  Of course, short hair--"

"Her hair is short, then!"

"Typhoid," I murmured.

"Too bad!" Moriway sneered.

"Yes," I snapped.  "I thought it was at the time.  My hair was very
heavy and long, and I had a chance to sit in a window at Troyon's where
they were advertising a hair tonic and--"

Rotten?  Of course it was.  I'd no business to gabble, and just because
you and your new job, Mag, came to my mind at that minute, there I went
putting my foot in it.

Moriway laughed.  I didn't like the sound of his laugh.

"Your reader is versatile, Mr. Latimer," he said.

"Yes."  Latimer smoothed the soft silk rug that lay over him. "Poverty
and that sort of versatility are often bedfellows, eh?... Tell me, Mr.
Moriway, these lost diamonds are yours?"

"No.  They belong to a--a friend of mine, Mrs. Kingdon."

"Oh!  the old lady who was married this afternoon to a young
fortune-hunter!"  I couldn't resist it.

Moriway jumped out of his seat.

"She was not married," he stuttered.  "She--"

"Changed her mind?  How sensible of her!  Did she find out what a crook
the fellow was?  What was his name--Morrison? No--Middleway--I have
heard it."

"May I ask, Miss Omar"--I didn't have to see his face; his voice told
how mad with rage he was--"how you come to be acquainted with a matter
that only the contracting parties could possibly know of?"

"Why, they can't have kept it very secret, the old lady and the young
rascal who was after her money, for you see we both knew of it; and I
wasn't the bride and you certainly weren't the groom, were you?"

An exclamation burst from him.

"Mr. Latimer," he stormed, "may I see you a moment alone?"

Phew!  That meant me.  But I got up just the same.

"Just keep your seat, Miss Omar."  Oh, that silken voice of Latimer's!
"Mr. Moriway, I have absolutely no acquaintance with you.  I never saw
you till to-night.  I can't imagine what you may have to say to me,
that my secretary--Miss Omar acts in that capacity--may not hear."

"I want to say," burst from Moriway, "that she looks the image of the
boy Nat, who stole Mrs. Kingdon's diamonds, that the voice is exactly
the same, that--"

"But you have said it, Mr. Moriway--quite successfully intimated it, I
assure you."

"She knows of my--of Mrs. Kingdon's marriage, that that boy Nat found
out about."

"And you yourself also, as Miss Omar mentioned."

"Myself?  Damn it, I'm Moriway, the man she was going to marry. Why
shouldn't I--"

"Ah--h!"  Latimer's shoulders shook with a gentle laugh.  "Well, Mr.
Moriway, gentlemen don't swear in my garden.  Particularly when ladies
are present.  Shall we say good evening?  Here comes Mulhill now....
Nothing, Sergeant?  Too bad the rogue escaped, but you'll catch him.
They may get away from you, but they never stay long, do they?  Good
evening--good evening, Mr. Moriway."

They tramped on and out, Moriway's very back showing his rage.  He
whispered something to the Sergeant, who turned to look at me but shook
his head, and the gate clanged after them.

A long sigh escaped me.

"Warm, isn't it?"  Latimer leaned forward.  "Now, would you mind
ringing again, Miss Omar?"

I bent and groped for the bell and rang it twice.

"How quick you are to learn!" he said.  "But I really wanted the light
this time....  Just light up, Burnett," he called to the man, who had
come out on the porch.

The electric bulb flashed out again just over my head.  Latimer turned
and looked at me.  When I couldn't bear it any longer, I looked
defiantly up at him.

"Pardon," he said, smiling; nice teeth he has and clear eyes. "I was
just looking for that boyish resemblance Mr. Moriway spoke of.  I hold
to my first opinion--you're very feminine, Miss Omar.  Will you read to
me now, if you please?"  He pointed to a big open book on the table
beside his couch.

"I think--if you don't mind, Mr. Latimer, I'll begin the reading
to-morrow."  I got up to go.  I was through with that garden now.

"But I do mind!"

Silken voice?  Not a bit of it!  I turned on him so furious I thought I
didn't care what came of it--when over by the great gate-post I saw a
man crouching--Moriway.

I sat down again and pulled the book farther toward the light.

We didn't learn much poetry at the Cruelty, did we, Mag?  But I know
some now, just the same.  When I began to read I heard only one
word--Moriway--Moriway--Moriway.  But I must have--forgotten him after
a time, and the dark garden with the light on only one spot, and the
roses smelling, and Latimer lying perfectly still, his face turned
toward me, for I was reading--listen, I bet I can remember that part of
it if I say it slow--

  Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
  And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake:
       For all the sin wherewith the Face of Man
  Is blacken'd--Man's forgiveness give--and take!

--when all at once Mr. Latimer put his hand on the book.  I looked up
with a start.  The shadow by the gate was gone.


  Yon rising Moon that looks for us again--
  How oft hereafter will she wax and wane;
      How oft hereafter rising look for us
  Through this same Garden--and for ONE in vain!


Latimer was saying it without the book and with a queer smile that made
me feel I hadn't quite caught on.

"Thank you, that will do," he went on.  "That is enough, Miss--" He
stopped.

I waited.

He did not say "Omar."

I looked him square in the eye--and then I had enough.

"But what in the devil did you make believe for?" I asked.

He smiled.

"If ever you come to lie on your back day and night, year in and year
out, and know that never in your life will it be any different, you may
take pleasure in a bit of excitement and--and learn to pity the under
dog, who, in this case, happened to be a boy that leaped over the gate
as though his heart was in his mouth.  Just as you would admire the
nerve of the young lady that came out of the house a few minutes after
in your housekeeper's Sunday gown."

Yes, grin, Torn Dorgan.  You won't grin long.

I put down the book and got up to go.

"Good night, then, and thank you, Mr. Latimer."

"Good night....  Oh, Miss--" He didn't say "Omar"--"there is a favor
you might do me."

"Sure!"  I wondered what it could be.

"Those diamonds.  I've got to have them, you know, to send them back to
their owner.  I don't mind helping a--a person who helps himself to
other people's things, but I can't let him get away with his plunder
without being that kind of person myself.  So--"

Why didn't I lie?  Because there are some people you don't lie to, Tom
Dorgan.  Don't talk to me, you bully, I'm savage enough.  To have rings
and pins and ear-rings, a whole bagful of diamonds, and to haul 'em out
of your pocket and lay 'em on the table there before him!

"I wonder," he said slowly, as he put them away in his own pocket,
"what a man like me could do for a girl like you?"

"Reform her!" I snarled.  "Show her how to get diamonds honestly."

Say, Tom, let's go in for bigger game.



III.

Oh, Mag, Mag, for heaven's sake, let me talk to you!  No, don't say
anything.  You must let me tell you.  No--don't call the other girls.
I can't bear to tell this to anybody but you.

You know how I kicked when Tom hit on Latimer's as the place we were to
scuttle.  And the harder I kicked the stubborner he got, till he swore
he'd do the job without me if I wouldn't come along.  Well--this is the
rest of it.

The house, you know, stands at the end of the street.  If you could
walk through the garden with the iron fence you'd come right down the
bluff on to the docks and out into East River.  Tom and I came up to it
from the docks last night.  It was dark and wet, you remember.  The mud
was thick on my trousers--Nance Olden's a boy every time when it comes
to doing business.

"We'll blow it all in, Tom," I said, as we climbed.  "We'll spend a
week at the Waldorf, and then, Tom Dorgan, we'll go to Paris.  I want a
red coat and hat with chinchilla, like that dear one I lost, and a
low-neck satin gown, and a silk petticoat with lace, and a chain with
rhinestones, and--"

"Just wait, Sis, till you get out of this.  And keep still."

"I can't.  I'm so fidgety I must talk or I'll shriek."

"Well, you'll shut up just the same.  Do you hear me?"

I shut up, but my teeth chattered so that Tom stopped at the gate.

"Look here, Nance, are you going to flunk?  Say it now--yes or no."

That made me mad.

"Tom Dorgan," I said, "I'll bet your own teeth chattered the first time
you went in for a thing like this.  I'm all right. You'll squeal before
I do."

"That's more like.  Here's the gate.  It's locked.  Come, Nance."

With a good, strong swing he boosted me over, handed me the bag of
tools and sprang over himself....  He looked kind o' handsome and fine,
my Tom, as he lit square and light on his feet beside me.  And because
he did, I put my arm in his and gave it a squeeze.

Oh, Mag, it was so funny, going through Latimer's garden!  There was
the garden table where I had sat reading and thinking he took me for
Miss Omar.  There was the bench where that beast Moriway sat sneering
at me.  The wheeled chair was gone.  And it was so late everything
looked asleep.  But something was left behind that made me think I
heard Latimer's slow, silken voice, and made me feel cheap--turned
inside out like an empty pocket--a dirty, ragged pocket with a seam in
it.

"You'll stay here, Nancy, and watch," Tom whispered.  "You'll whistle
once if a cop comes inside the gate, but not before he's inside the
gate.  Don't whistle too soon--mind that--nor too loud. I'll hear ye
all right.  And I'll whistle just once if--anything happens.  Then you
run--hear me?  Run like the devil--"

"Tommy--"

"Well, what?"

"Nothing--all right."  I wanted to say good-by--but you know Tom.

Mag, were you ever where you oughtn't to be at midnight--alone? No, I
know you weren't.  'Twas your ugly little face and your hair that saved
you--the red hair we used to guy so at the Cruelty. I can see you
now--a freckle-faced, thin little devil, with the tangled hair to the
very edge of your ragged skirt, yanked in that first day to the Cruelty
when the neighbors complained your crying wouldn't let 'em sleep
nights.  The old woman had just locked you in there, hadn't she, to
starve when she lit out. Mothers are queer, ain't they, when they are
queer.  I never remember mine.

Yes, I'll go on.

I stood it all right for a time, out there alone in the night. But I
never was one to wait patiently.  I can't wait--it isn't in me.  But
there I had to stand and just--God!--just wait.

If I hadn't waited so hard at the very first I wouldn't 'a' given out
so soon.  But I stood so still and listened so terribly hard that the
trees began to whisper and the bushes to crack and creep.  I heard
things in my head and ears that weren't sounding anywhere else.  And
all of a sudden--tramp, tramp, tramp--I heard the cop's footsteps.

He stopped over there by the swinging electric light above the gate.  I
crouched down behind the iron bench.

And my coat caught a twig on a bush and its crack--ck was like a yell.

I thought I'd die.  I thought I'd scream.  I thought I'd run. I thought
I'd faint.  But I didn't--for there, asleep on a rug that some one had
forgotten to take in, was the house cat.  I gave her a quick slap, and
she flew out and across the path like a flash.

The cop watched her, his hand on the gate, and passed on.

Mag Monahan, if Tom had come out that minute without a bean and gone
home with me, I'd been so relieved I'd never have tried again.  But he
didn't come.  Nothing happened.  Nights and nights and nights went by,
and the stillness began to sound again.  My throat went choking mad.  I
began to shiver, and I reached for the rug the cat had lain on.

Funny, how some things strike you!  This was Latimer's rug.  I had
noticed it that evening--a warm, soft, mottled green that looked like
silk and fur mixed.  I could see the way his long, white hands looked
on it, and as I touched it I could hear his voice--

  Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
  And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake:
  For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
  Is blacken'd--Man's forgiveness give--and take!


Ever hear a man like that say a thing like that?  No?  Well, it's--it's
different.  It's as if the river had spoken--or a tree--it's so--it's
so different.

That saved me--that verse that I remembered.  I said it over and over
and over again to myself.  I fitted it to the ferry whistles on the
bay--to the cop's steps as they passed again--to the roar of the
L-train and the jangling of the surface cars.

And right in the middle of it--every drop of blood in my body seemed to
leak out of me, and then come rushing back to my head--I heard Tom's
whistle.

Oh, it's easy to say "run," and I really meant it when I promised Tom.
But you see I hadn't heard that whistle then.  When it came, it changed
everything.  It set the devil in me loose. I felt as if the world was
tearing something of mine away from me. Stand for it?  Not Nance Olden.

I did run--but it was toward the house.  That whistle may have meant
"Go!"  To me it yelled "Come!"

I got in through the window Tom had left open.  The place was still
quiet.  Nobody inside had heard that whistle so far as I could tell.

I crept along--the carpets were thick and soft and silky as the rug I'd
had my hands buried in to keep 'em warm.

Along a long hall and through a great room, whose walls were thick with
books, I was making for a light I could see at the back of the house.
That's where Tom Dorgan must be and where I must be to find out--to
know.

With my hands out in front of me I hurried, but softly, and just as I
had reached the portieres below which the light streamed, my arms
closed about a thing--cold as marble, naked--I thought it was a dead
body upright there, and with a cry, I pitched forward through the
curtains into the lighted room.

"Nance!--you devil!"

You recognize it?  Yep, it was Tom.  Big Tom Dorgan, at the foot of
Latimer's bed, his hands above his head, and Latimer's gun aimed right
at his heart.

Think of the pluck of that cripple, will you?

His eyes turned on me for just a second, and then fixed themselves
again on Tom.  But his voice went straight at me, all right.

"You are something of a thankless devil, I must admit, Miss--Omar," he
said.

I didn't say anything.  You don't say things in answer to things like
that.  You feel 'em.

Ashamed?  What do I care for a man with a voice like that! ... But you
should have heard how Tom's growl sounded after it.

"Why the hell didn't you light out?"

"I couldn't, Tom.  I just--couldn't," I sobbed.

"There seems invariably to be a misunderstanding of signals where Miss
Omar is concerned.  Also a disposition to use strong language in the
lady's presence.  Don't you, young man!"

"Don't you call me Miss Omar!" I blazed, stamping my foot.

He laughed a contemptuous laugh.

I could have killed him then, I hated him so.  At least, I thought I
could; but just then Tom sent a spark out of the corner of his eye to
me that meant--it meant--

You know, Mag, what it would have meant to Latimer if I had done what
Tom's eye said.

I thought at first I had done it--it passed through my mind so quick;
the sweet words I'd say--the move I'd make--the quick knocking-up of
the pistol, and then--

It was that--that sight of Tom, big Tom Dorgan, with rage in his heart
and death in his hand, leaping on that cripple's body--it made me sick!

I stood there gasping--stood a moment too long.  For the curtains were
pushed aside, and Burnett, Latimer's servant, and the cop came in.

Tom didn't fight; he's no fool to waste himself.

But I--well, never mind about me.  I caught a glimpse of a crazy white
face on a boy's body in the great glass opposite and heard my own voice
break into something I'd never heard before.

Tom stood at last with the handcuffs on.

"It's your own fault, you damned little chump!" he said to me, as they
went out.

You lie, Mag Monahan, he's no such thing!  He may be a hard man to live
with, but he's mine--my Tom--my Tom!

What?  Latimer?

Well, do you know, it's funny about him.  He'd told the cop that I'd
peached--peached on Tom!  So they went off without me.

Why?

That's what he said himself when we were alone.

"In order to insure for myself another of your most interesting visits,
I suppose, Miss--not Omar?  All right....  Tell me, can I do nothing
for you?  Aren't you sick of this sort of life?"

"Get Tom out of jail."

He shook his head.

"I'm too good a friend of yours to do you such a turn."

"I don't want any friend that isn't Tom's."

He threw the pistol from him and pulled himself up, till he sat looking
at me.

"In heaven's name, what can you see in a fellow like that?"

"What's that to you?" I turned to go.

"To me?  Things of that sort are nothing, of course, to me--me, that
'luckless Pot He marr'd in making.' But, tell me--can a girl like you
tell the truth?  What made you hesitate when that fellow told you with
his eyes to murder me?"

"How did you know?"

"How?  The glass.  See over yonder.  I could watch every expression on
both your faces.  What was it--what was it, child, that made you--oh,
if you owe me a single heart-beat of gratitude, tell me the truth!"

"You've said it yourself."

"What?"

"That line we read the other night about 'the luckless Pot'."

His face went gray and he fell back on his pillows.  The strenuous life
we'd been leading him, Tom and I, was too much for him, I guess.

Do you know, I really felt sorry I'd said it.  But he is a cripple.
Did he expect me to say he was big and strong and dashing--like Tom?

I left him there and got out and away.  But do you know what I saw,
Mag, beside his bed, just as Burnett came to put me out?

My old blue coat with the buttons--the bell-boy's coat I'd left in the
housekeeper's room when I borrowed her Sunday rig.  The coat was
hanging over a chair, and right by it, on a table, was that big book
with a picture covering every page, still open at that verse about

Through this same Garden--and for ONE in vain!



IV.

No--no--no!  No more whining from Nance Olden.  Listen to what I've got
to tell you, Mag, listen!

You know where I was coming from yesterday when I passed Troyon's
window and grinned up at you, sitting there, framed in bottles of hair
tonic, with all that red wig of yours streaming about you?

Yep, from that little, rat-eyed lawyer's office.  I was glum as mud.  I
felt as though Tom and myself were both flies caught by the leg--he by
the law and I by the lawyer--in a sticky mess; and the more we flapped
our wings and struggled and pulled, the more we hurt and tore
ourselves, and the sooner we'd have to give it up.

Oh, that wizen-faced little lawyer that lives on the Tom Dorgans and
the Nance Oldens, who don't know which way to turn to get the money!
He looks at me out of his red little eyes and measures in dollars what
I'd do for Tom.  And then he sets his price a notch higher than that.

When I passed the big department store, next to Troyon's, I was
thinking of this, and I turned in there, just aching for some of the
boodle that flaunts itself in a poor girl's face when she's desperate,
from every silk and satin rag, from every lace and jewel in the place.

The funny part of it is that I didn't want it for myself, but for Tom.
'Pon my soul, Mag, though I would have filled my arms with everything I
saw, I wouldn't have put on one thing of all the duds; just hiked off
to soak 'em and pay the lawyer.  I might have been as old and ugly and
rich as the yellow-skinned woman opposite me, who was turning over
laces on the middle counter, for all these things meant to me--with Tom
in jail.

I was thinking this as I looked at her, when all at once I saw--

You know it takes a pretty quick touch, sharp eyes and good nerve to
get away with the goods in a big shop like that.  Or it takes something
altogether different.  It was the different way she did it.  She took
up the piece of lace--it was a big collar, fine like a cobweb picture
in threads,--you can guess what it must have been worth if that old
sinner, Mother Douty, gave me fifteen dollars for it.  She took it up
in a quick, eager way, as though she'd found just what she wanted.
Then she took out a lace sample from her gold-linked purse and held
them both up close to her blinky little eyes, looking at it through a
gold lorgnette with emeralds in the handle; pulling it and feeling it
with the air of one who knows a fine thing when she sees it, and just
what makes it fine.  Then she rustled off to the door to examine it
closely in the light, and--Mag Monahan, she walked right out with it!

At least, she'd got beyond the inner doors when I tapped her on the
shoulder.

"I beg pardon, madam."  My best style, Mag.

She pulled herself up haughtily and blinked at me.  She was a little,
thin mummy of a woman, just wrapped away in silks and velvets, but on
the inside of that nervous, little old body of hers there must have
been some spring of good material that wasn't all unwound yet.

She stood blinking at me without a word.

"That lace.  You haven't paid for it," I said.

Her short-sighted eyes fell from my face to the collar she held in her
hand.  Her yellow face grew ghastly.

"Oh, mercy!  You--you don't--"

"I am a detective for the store, and--"

"But--"

"Sh!  We don't like any noise made about these things, and you yourself
wouldn't enjoy--"

"Do you know who I am, young woman?"  She fumbled in her satchel and
passed a card to me.

Glory be!  Guess, Mag.  Oh, you'd never guess, you dear old Mag!
Besides, you haven't got the acquaintance in high society that Nance
Olden can boast.

  +--------------------------------+
  |    Mrs. MILLS D. VAN WAGENEN   |
  +--------------------------------+


Oh--Mag!  Shame on you not to know the name even of the Bishop of the
great state of--yes, the lean, short little Bishop with a little white
beard, and the softest eye and the softest heart and--my very own
Bishop, Nancy Olden's Bishop.  And this was his wife.

Tut--tut, Mag!  Of course not.  A bishop's wife may be a kleptomaniac;
it's only Cruelty girls that really steal from stores.

"I've met the Bishop, Mrs. Van Wagenen."  I didn't say how--she
wouldn't appreciate that story.

"And he was once very kind to me.  But he would be the first to tell me
to do my duty now.  I'll do it as quietly as I can for his sake.  But
you must come with me or I must arrest--"

She put up a shaking hand.  Dear little old guy!

"Don't--don't say it!  It's all a mistake, which can be rectified in a
moment.  I've been trying to match this piece of lace for years.  I got
it at Malta when--when Mills and I--on our honeymoon.  When I saw it
there on the counter I was so delighted--I never thought--I intended
taking it to the light to be sure the pattern was the same, my eyesight
is so wretched--and when you spoke to me it was the first inkling I had
that I had really taken it without paying!  You certainly understand,"
she pleaded in agitation.  "I have no need to steal--you must know
that--oh, that I wouldn't--that--I couldn't--If you will just let me
pay you--"

Here now, Mag Monahan, don't you get to sneering.  She was
straight--right on the level, all right.  You couldn't listen to that
cracked little voice of hers a minute without being sure of it.

I was just about to permit her graciously to pay me the money,--for my
friend?  the dear Bishop's sake, of course,--when a big floor-walker
happened to catch sight of us.

"If you'll come with me, Mrs. Van Wagenen, to a dressing-room, I'll
arrange your collar for you," I said very loud.  And then, in a
whisper: "Of course, I understand, but the thing may look different to
other people.  And that big floor-walker there gets a commission from
the newspapers every time he tells them--"

She gave a squawk for all the world like a dried-up little hen
scuttling out of a yellow dog's way, and we took the elevator to the
second floor.

The minute I closed the door of the little fitting-room she held out
the lace to me.

"I have changed my mind," she said, "and shall give you the lace back.
I will not keep it.  I can not--I can not bear the sight of it.  It
terrifies me and shocks me.  I can take no pleasure in it.
Besides--besides, it will be discipline for me to do without it now
that I have found it after all these years. Every day I shall look at
the place in my collection which it would have occupied, and I shall
say to myself: 'Maria Van Wagenen, take warning.  See to what terrible
straits a worldly passion may bring one; what unconscious greed may
do!' I shall give the money to Mills for charity and I will
never--never fill that place in my collection."

"What good will that do?" I asked, puzzled, while I folded the collar
up into a very small package.

"You mean that I ought to submit to the exposure--that I deserve the
lesson and the punishment--not for stealing, but for being absorbed in
worldly things.  Perhaps you are right.  It certainly shows that you
have at some time been under Mills' spiritual care, my dear.  I wonder
if he would insist--whether I ought--yes, I suppose he would.  Oh!"

A saleswoman's head was thrust in the door.  "Excuse me," she said, "I
thought the room was empty."

"We've just finished trying on," I said sweetly.

"Don't go!"  The Bishop's wife turned to her, her little fluttering
hands held out appealingly.  "And do not misunderstand me.  The thing
may seem wrong in your eyes, as this young woman says, but if you will
listen patiently to my explanations I am sure you will see that it was
a mere eager over-sight--the fault of absent-mindedness, hardly the sin
of covetousness, and surely not a crime.  I am making this confession--"

The tender conscience of the dear, blameless little soul!  She was
actually giving herself away.  Worse--she was giving me away, too. But
I couldn't stand that.  I saw the saleswoman's puzzled face--she was a
tall woman with a big bust, big hips and the big head all right, and
she wore her long-train black rig for all the world like a Cruelty girl
who had stolen the matron's skirt to "play lady" in.  I got behind
little Mrs. Bishop, and looking out over her head, I tapped my forehead
significantly.

The saleswoman tumbled.  That was all right.  But so did the Bishop's
wife; for she turned and caught me at it.

"You shall not save me from myself and what I deserve," she cried. "I
am perfectly sane and you know it, and you are doing me no favor in
trying to create the contrary impression.  I demand an--"

"An interview with the manager," I interrupted.  "I'm sure Mrs. Van
Wagenen can see the manager.  Just go with the lady, Mrs. Van Wagenen,
and I'll follow with the goods."

She did it meek as a lamb, talking all the time, but never beginning at
the beginning--luckily for me.  So that I had time to slip from one
dressing-room to the next, with the lace up my sleeve, out to the
elevator, and down into the street.

D'ye know what heaven must be, Mag?  A place where you always get away
with the swag, and where it's always just the minute after you've made
a killing.

Cocky?  Well, I should say I was.  I was drunk enough with success to
take big chances.  And just while I was wishing for something really
big to tackle, it came along in the shape of that big floor-walker!

He was without a hat, and his eyes looked fifty ways at once. But
you've got to look fifty-one if you want to catch Nance Olden. I ran up
the stairs of the first flat-house and rang the bell. And as I sailed
up in the elevator I saw the big floor-walker hurry past; he'd lost the
scent.

The boy let me off at the top floor, and after the elevator had gone
down I walked up to the roof.  It was fine 'way up there, so still and
high, with the lights coming out down in the town.  And I took  out my
pretty lace collar and put it around my neck, wishing I could keep it
and wishing that I had, at least, a glass to see myself in it just
once, when my eye caught the window of the next house.

It would do for a mirror all right, for the dark green shade was down.
But at sight of the shade blowing in the wind I forgot all about the
collar.

It's this way, Mag, when they press you too far; and that little rat of
a lawyer had got me most to the wall.  I looked at the window,
measuring the little climb it would be for me to get to it,--the house
next door was just one story higher than the one where I was, so its
top story was on a level with the roof nearly where I stood.  And I
made up my--mind to get what would let Tom off easy, or break into jail
myself.

And so I didn't care much what I might fall into through that window.
And perhaps because I didn't care, I slipped into a dark hall, and not
a thing stirred; not a footstep creaked.  I felt like the
Princess--Princess Nancy Olden--come to wake the Sleeping Beauty; some
dude it'd be that would have curly hair like Tom Dorgan's, and would
wear clothes like my friend Latimer's, over in Brooklyn.

Can you see me there, standing on one leg like a stork, ready to lie or
to fly at the first sound?

Well, the first sound didn't come.  Neither did the second.  In fact,
none of 'em came unless I made 'em myself.

Softly as Molly goes when the baby's just dropped off to sleep, I
walked toward an open door.  It was a parlor, smelly with tobacco, and
with lots of papers and books around.  And nary a he-beauty--nor any
other kind.

I tried the door of a room next to it.  A bedroom.  But no Beauty.

Silly!  Don't you tumble yet?  It was a bachelor's apartment, and the
Bachelor Beauty was out, and Princess Nancy had the place all to
herself.

I suppose I really ought to have left my card--or he wouldn't know who
had waked him--but I hadn't intended to go calling when I left home.
So I thought I'd look for one of his as a souvenir--and anything else
of his I could make use of.

There were shirts I'd liked for Tom, dandy colored ones, and suits with
checks in 'em and without.  But I wanted something easy and small and
flat, made of crackly printed yellow or green paper, with numbers on it.

How did I know he had anything like that?  Why, Mag, Mag Monahan, one
would think you belonged to the Bishop's set, you're so simple!

I had to turn on the electric light after a bit--it got so dark. And I
don't like light in other people's houses when they're not at home, and
neither am I.  But there was nothing in the bedroom except some pearl
studs.  I got those and then went back to the parlor.

The desk caught my eye.  Oh, Mag, it had the loveliest pictures on
it--pictures of swell actresses and dancers.  It was mahogany, with
lots of little drawers and two curvy side boxes.  I pulled open all the
drawers.  They were full of papers all right, but they were printed,
cut from newspapers, and all about theaters.

"You can't feed things like this, Nance, to that shark of a lawyer," I
said to myself, pushing the box on the side impatiently.

And then I giggled outright.

Why?

Just 'cause--I had pushed that side box till it swung aside on hinges I
didn't know about, and there, in a little secret nest, was a pile of
those same crisp, crinkly paper things I'd been looking for.
20--40--60--110--160--210--260--310!

Three hundred and ten dollars, Mag Monahan.  Three hundred and ten, and
Nance Olden!

"Glory be!" I whispered.

"Glory be damned!" I heard behind me.

I turned.  The bills just leaked out of my hand on to the floor.

The Bachelor Beauty had come home, Mag, and nabbed the poor Princess,
instead of her catching him napping.

He wasn't a beauty either--a big, stout fellow with a black mustache.
His hand on my shoulder held me tight, but the look in his eyes behind
his glasses held me tighter.  I threw out my arms over the desk and hid
my face.

Caught!  Nancy Olden, with her hands dripping, and not a lie in her
smart mouth!

He picked up the bills I had dropped, counted them and put them in his
pocket.  Then he unhooked a telephone and lifted the stand from his
desk.

"Hello!  Spring 3100--please.  Hello!  Chief's office?  This is
Obermuller, Standard Theater.  I want an officer to take charge of a
thief I've caught in my apartments here at the Bronsonia.  Yes, right
on the corner.  Hold him till you come?  Well--rather!"

He put down the 'phone.  I pulled the pearl studs out of my pocket.

"You might as well take these, too," I said.

"So thoughtful of you, seeing that you'd be searched!  But I'll take
'em, anyway.  You intended them for--Him?  You didn't get anything
else?"

I shook my head as I lay there.

"Hum!"  It was half a laugh, and half a sneer.  I hated him for it, as
he sat leaning back on the back legs of his chair, his thumbs in his
arm-holes.  I felt his eyes--those smart, keen eyes, burning into my
miserable head.  I thought of the lawyer and the deal he'd give poor
Tom, and all at once--

You'd have sniffled yourself, Mag Monahan.  There I was--caught. The
cop'd be after me in five minutes.  With Tom jugged, and me in
stripes--it wasn't very jolly, and I lost my nerve.

"Ashamed--huh?" he said lightly.

I nodded.  I was ashamed.

"Pity you didn't get ashamed before you broke in here."

"What the devil was there to be ashamed of?"

The sting in his voice had cured me.  I never was a weeper.  I sat up,
my face blazing, and stared at him.  He'd got me to hand over to the
cop, but he hadn't got me to sneer at.

I saw by the look he gave me, that he hadn't really seen me till then.

"Well," he answered, "what the devil is there to be ashamed of now?"

"Of being caught--that's what."

"Oh!"

He tilted back again on his chair and laughed softly.

"Then you're not ashamed of your profession?"

"Are you of yours?"

"Well--there's a slight difference."

"Not much, whatever it may be.  It's your graft--it's everybody's--to
take all he can get, and keep out of jail.  That's mine, too."

"But you see I keep out of jail."

"I see you're not there--yet."

"Oh, I think you needn't worry about that.  I'll keep out, thank you;
imprisonment for debt don't go nowadays."

"Debt?"

"I'm a theatrical manager, my girl, and I'm not on the inside: which is
another way of saying that a man who can't swim has fallen overboard."

"And when you do go down--"

"A little less exultation, my dear, or I might suppose you'd be glad
when I do."

"Well, when you know yourself going down for the last time, do you mean
to tell me you won't grasp at a straw like--like this?" I nodded toward
the open window, and the desk with all its papers tumbling out.

"Not much."  He shook his head, and bit the end of a cigar with sharp,
white teeth.  "It's a fool graft.  I'm self-respecting.  And I don't
admire fools."  He lit his cigar and puffed a minute, taking out his
watch to look at it, as cold-bloodedly as though we were waiting, he
and I, to go to supper together.  Oh, how I hated him!

"Honesty isn't the best policy," he went on; "it's the only one.  The
vain fool that gets it into his head--or shall I say her head?  No?
Well, no offense, I assure you--his head then, that he's smarter than a
world full of experience, ought to be put in jail--for his own
protection; he's too big a jay to be left out of doors.  For five
thousand years, more or less, the world has been putting people like
him behind bars, where they can't make asses of themselves.  Yet each
year, and every day and every hour, a new ninny is born who fancies
he's cleverer than all his predecessors put together.  Talk about
suckers!  Why, they're giants of intellect compared to the mentally
lop-sided that five thousand years of experience can't teach.  When the
criminal-clown's turn comes, he hops, skips and jumps into the ring
with the old, old gag.  He thinks it's new, because he himself is so
fresh and green.  'Here I am again,' he yells, 'the fellow that'll do
you up.  Others have tried it.  They're dead in jail or under
jail-yards.  But me--just watch me!' We do, and after a little we put
him with his mates and a keeper in a barred kindergarten where fools
that can't learn, little moral cripples of both sexes, my dear, belong.
Bah!"  He puffed out the smoke, throwing his head back, in a cloud
toward the ceiling.

I sprang from my seat and faced him.  I was tingling all through. I
didn't care a rap what became of me for just that minute. I forgot
about Tom.  I prayed that the cop wouldn't come for a minute yet--but
only that I might answer him.

"You're mighty smart, ain't you?  You can sit back here and sneer at
me, can't you?  And feel so big and smart and triumphant! What've you
done but catch a girl at her first bungling job!  It makes you feel
awfully cocky, don't it?  'What a big man am I!' Bah!"  I blew the
smoke up toward the ceiling from my mouth, with just that satisfied
gall that he had had; or rather, I pretended to.  He let down the front
legs of his chair and began to stare at me.

"And you don't know it all, Mr. Manager, not you.  Your clown-criminal
don't jump into the ring because he's so full of fun he can't stay out.
He goes in for the same reason the real clown does--because he gets
hungry and thirsty and sleepy and tired like other men, and he's got to
fill his stomach and cover his back and get a place to sleep.  And it's
because your kind gets too much, that my kind gets so little it has to
piece it out with this sort of thing.  No, you don't know it quite all.

"There's a girl named Nancy Olden that could tell you a lot, smart as
you are.  She could show you the inside of the Cruelty, where she was
put so young she never knew that children had mothers and fathers, till
a red-haired girl named Mag Monahan told her; and then she was mighty
glad she hadn't any.  She thought that all little girls were bloodless
and dirty, and all little boys were filthy and had black purple marks
where their fathers had tried to gouge out their eyes.  She thought all
women were like the matron who came with a visitor up to the bare room,
where we played without toys--the new, dirty, newly-bruised ones of us,
and the old, clean, healing ones of us--and said, 'Here, chicks, is a
lady who's come to see you.  Tell her how happy you are here.' Then
Mag's freckled little face, her finger in her mouth, looked up like
this.  She was always afraid it might be her mother come for her.  And
the crippled boy jerked himself this way--I used to mimic him, and he'd
laugh with the rest of them--over the bare floor.  He always hoped for
a penny.  Sometimes he even got it.

"And the boy with the gouged eye--he would hold his pants up like this.
He had just come in, and there was nothing to fit him. And he'd put his
other hand over his bad eye and blink up at her like this.  And the
littlest boy--oh, ha!  ha!  ha!--you ought have seen that littlest boy.
He was in skirts, an old dress they'd given me to wear the first day I
came; there were no pants small enough for him.  He'd back up into the
corner and hide his face--like this--and peep over his shoulder; he had
a squint that way, that made his face so funny.  See, it makes you
laugh yourself.  But his body--my God!--it was blue with welts!  And
me--I'd put the baby down that'd been left on the door-steps of the
Cruelty, and I'd waltz up to the lady, the nice, patronizing, rich
lady, with her handkerchief to her nose and her lorgnette to her
eyes--see, like this.  I knew just what graft would work her. I knew
what she wanted there.  I'd learned.  So I'd make her a curtsy like
this, and in the piousest sing-song I'd--"

There was a heavy step out in the hall--it was the policeman!  I'd
forgot while I was talking.  I was back--back in the empty garret, at
the top of the Cruelty.  I could smell the smell of the poor, the
dirty, weak, sick poor.  I could taste the porridge in the thick little
bowls, like those in the bear story Molly tells her kid.  I could hear
the stifled sobs that wise, poor children give--quiet ones, so they'll
not be beaten again.  I could feel the night, when strange, deserted,
tortured babies lie for the first time, each in his small white cot,
the new ones waking the old with their cries in a nightmare of what had
happened before they got to the Cruelty.  I could see the world barred
over, as I saw it first through the Cruelty's barred windows, and as I
must see it again, now that--

"You see, you don't know it quite all--yet, Mr. Manager!" I spat it out
at him, and then walked to the cop, my hands ready for the bracelets.

"But there's one thing I do know!"  He's a big fellow but quick on his
feet, and in a minute he was up and between me and the cop.  "And there
isn't a theatrical man in all America that knows it quicker than Fred
Obermuller, that can detect it sooner and develop it better.  And
you've got it, girl, you've got it!  ... Officer, take this for your
trouble.  I couldn't hold the fellow, after all.  Never mind which way
he went; I'll call up the office and explain."

He shut the door after the cop, and came back to me.  I had fallen into
a chair.  My knees were weak, and I was trembling all over.

"Have you seen the playlet Charity at the Vaudeville?" he roared at me.

I shook my head.

"Well, it's a scene in a foundling asylum.  Here's a pass.  Go up now
and see it.  If you hurry you'll get there just in time for that act.
Then if you come to me at the office in the morning at ten, I'll give
you a chance as one of the Charity girls.  Do you want it?"

God, Mag!  Do I want it!



V.

Do you remember Lady Patronesses' Day at the Cruelty, Mag? Remember how
the place smelt of cleaning ammonia on the bare floors?  Remember the
black dresses we all wore, and the white aprons with the little bibs,
and the oily sweetness of the matron, and how our faces shone and
tingled from the soap and the rubbing?  Remember it all?

Well, who'd 'a' thought then that Nance Olden ever would make use of
it--on the level, too!

Drop the Cruelty, and tell you about the stage?  Why, it's bare boards
back there, bare as the Cruelty, but oh, there's something that you
don't see, but you feel it--something magic that makes you want to
pinch yourself to be sure you're awake.  I go round there just doped
with it; my face, if you could see it, must look like Molly's kid's
when she is telling him fairy stories.

I love it, Mag!  I love it!

And what do I do?  That's what I was trying to tell you about the
Cruelty for.  It's in a little act that was made for Lady Gray, that
there are four Charity girls on the stage, and I'm one of 'em.

Lady Gray?  Why, Mag, how can you ever hope to get on if you don't know
who's who?  How can you expect me to associate with you if you're so
ignorant?  Yes--a real Lady, as real as the wife of a Lord can be.
Lord Harold Gray's a sure enough Lord, and she's his wife but--but a
chippy, just the same; that's what she is, in spite of the Gray
emeralds and that great Gray rose diamond she wears on the tiniest
chain around her scraggy neck.  Do you know, Mag Monahan, that this
Lady Harold Gray was just a chorus girl--and a sweet chorus it must
have been if she sang there!--when she nabbed Lord Harold?

You'd better keep your eye on Nancy Olden, or first thing you know
she'll marry the Czar of Russia--or Tom Dorgan, poor fellow, when he
gets out!  ...  Well, just the same, Mag, if that white-faced, scrawny
little creature can be a Lady, a girl with ten times her brains, and at
least half a dozen times her good looks--oh, we're not shy on the
stage, Mag, about throwing bouquets at ourselves!

Can she act?  Don't be silly, Mag!  Can't you see that Obermuller's
just hiring her title and playing it in big letters on the bills for
all it's worth?  She acts the Lady Patroness, come to look at us
Charity girls.  She comes on, though, looking like a fairy princess.
Her dress is just blazing with diamonds.  There's the Lady's coronet in
her hair.  Her thin little arms are banded with gold and diamonds, and
on her neck--O Mag, Mag, that rose diamond is the color of rose-leaves
in a fountain's jet through which the sun is shining.  It's long--long
as my thumb--I swear it is, Mag--nearly, and it blazes, oh, it blazes--

Well, it blazes dollars into Obermuller's box all right, for the Gray
jewels are advertised in the bill with this one at the head of the
list, the star of them all.

You see it's this way: Lord Harold Gray's bankrupt.  He's poor as--as
Nance Olden.  Isn't that funny?  But he's got the family jewels all
right, to have as long as he lives.  Nary a one can he sell, though,
for after his death, they go to the next Lord Gray. So he makes 'em
make a living for him, and as they can't go on and exhibit themselves,
Lady Gray sports 'em--and draws down two hundred dollars a week.

Yep--two hundred.

But do you know it isn't the two hundred dollars a week that makes me
envy her till I'm sick; it's that rose diamond.  If you could only see
it, Mag, you'd sympathize with me, and understand why my fingers just
itched for it the first night I saw her come on.

'Pon my soul, Mag, the sight of it blazing on her neck dazzled me so
that it shut out all the staring audience that first night, and I even
forgot to have stage fright.

"What's doped you, Olden?" Obermuller asked when the curtain went down,
and we all hurried to the wings.

I was in the black dress with the white-bibbed apron, and I looked up
at him still dazed by the shine of that diamond and my longing for it.
You'd almost kill with your own hands for a diamond like that, Mag!

"Doped?  Why--what didn't I do?" I asked him.

"That's just it," he said, looking at me curiously; but I could feel
his disappointment in me.

"You didn't do anything--not a blasted thing more than you were told to
do.  The world's full of supers that can do that."

For just a minute I forgot the diamond.

"Then--it's a mistake?  You were wrong and--and I can't be an actress?"

He threw back his head before he answered, puffing a mouthful of smoke
up at the ceiling, as he did the night he caught me.  The gesture
itself seemed to remind him of what had made him think in the first
place he could make an actress of me.  For he laughed down at me, and I
saw he remembered.

"Well," he said, "we'll wait and see...  I was mistaken, though, sure
enough, about one thing that night." I looked up at him.

"You're a darn sight prettier than I thought you were.  The gold brick
you sold me isn't all--"

He put out his hand to touch my chin.  I side-stepped, and he turned
laughing to the stage.

But he called after me.

"Is a beauty success going to content you, Olden?"

"Well, we'll wait and see," I drawled back at him in his own throaty
bass.

Oh, I was drunk, Mag, drunk with thinking about that diamond! I didn't
care even to please Obermuller.  I just wanted the feel of that diamond
in my hand.  I wanted it lying on my own neck--the lovely, cool,
shining, rosy thing.  It's like the sunrise, Mag, that beauty stone.
It's just a tiny pool of water blushing. It's--

How to get it!  How to get away with it!  On what we'd get for that
diamond, Tom and I--when his time is up--could live for all our lives
and whoop it up besides.  We could live in Paris, where great grafters
live and grafting pays--where, if you've got wit and fifty thousand
dollars, and happen to be a "darn sight prettier," you can just spin
the world around your little finger!

But, do you know, even then I couldn't bear to think of selling the
pretty thing?  It hurt me to think of anybody having it but just Nance
Olden.

But I hadn't got it yet.

Gray has a dressing-room to herself.  And on her table--which is a big
box, open end down--just where the three-sided big mirror can multiply
the jewels and make you want 'em three times as bad, her big
russia-leather, silver-mounted box lies open, while she's dressing and
undressing.  Other times it's locked tight, and his Lordship himself
has it tight in his own right hand, or his Lordship's man, Topham, has
it just as tight.

How to get that diamond!  There was a hard nut for Nance Olden's sharp
teeth to crack.  I only wanted that--never say I'm greedy, Mag--Gray
could keep all the rest of the things--the pigeon in rubies and pearls,
the tiara all in diamonds, the chain of pearls, and the blazing rings,
and the waist-trimming all of emeralds and diamond stars.  But that
diamond, that huge rose diamond, I couldn't, I just couldn't let her
have it.

And yet I didn't know the first step to take toward getting it, till
Beryl Blackburn helped me out.  She's one of the Charities, like me--a
tall bleached blonde with a pretty, pale face and gold-gray eyes.  And,
if you'd believe her, there's not a man in the audience, afternoon or
evening, that isn't dead-gone on her.

"Guess who's my latest," she said to me this afternoon, while we four
Charities stood in the wings waiting.  "Topham--old Topham!"

It all got clear to me then in a minute.

"Topham--nothing!" I sneered.  "Beryl Big-head, Topham thinks of only
one thing--Milady's jewel-box.  Don't you fool yourself."

"Oh, does he, Miss!  Well, just to prove it, he let me try on the rose
diamond last night.  There!"

"It's easy to say so but I don't see the proof.  He'd lose his job so
quick it'd make his head spin if he did it."

"Not if he did, but if they knew he did.  You'll not tell?"

"Not me.  Why would I?  I don't believe it, and I wouldn't expect
anybody else to.  I don't believe you could get Topham to budge from
his chair in Gray's dressing-room if you'd--"

"What'll you bet?"

"I'll bet you the biggest box of chocolate creams at Huyler's."

"Done!  I'll send for him to-night, just before Gray and her Lord come,
and you see--"

"How'll I see?  Where'll I be?"

"Well, you be waiting in the little hall, right of Gray's dressing-room
at seven-thirty to-night and--you might as well bring the creams with
you."

Catch on, Mag?  At seven-thirty in the evening I was waiting; but not
in the little hall of Gray's dressing-room.  I hadn't gone home at all
after the afternoon performance--you know we play at three, and again
at eight-thirty.  I had just hidden me away till the rest were gone,
and as soon as the coast was clear I got into Gray's dressing-room,
pushed aside the chintz curtains of the big box that makes her
dressing-table--and waited.

Lord, how the hours dragged!  I hadn't had anything to eat since lunch,
and it got darker and darker in there, and hot and close and cramped.
I put in the time, much as I could, thinking of Tom. The very first
thing I'd do after cashing in, would be to get up to Sing Sing to see
him.  I'm crazy to see him.  I'd tell him the news and see if he
couldn't bribe a guard, or plan some scheme with me to get out soon.

Afraid--me?  What of?  If they found me under that box I'd just give
'em the Beryl story about the bet.  How do you know they wouldn't
believe it?  ...  Oh, I don't care, you've got to take chances, Mag
Monahan, if you go in for big things.  And this was big--huge.  Do you
know how much that diamond's worth?  And do you know how to spend fifty
thousand?

I spent it all there--in the box--every penny of it.  When I got tired
spending money I dozed a bit and, in my dream, spent it over again.
And then I waked and tried to fancy new ways of getting rid of it, but
my head ached, and my back ached, and my whole body was so strained and
cramped that I was on the point of giving it all up when--that blessed
old Topham came in.

He set the big box down with a bang that nearly cracked my head. He
turned on the lights, and stood whistling Tommy Atkins.  And then
suddenly there came a soft call, "Topham!  Topham!"

I leaned back and bit my fingers till I knew I wouldn't shriek. The
Englishman listened a minute.  Then the call came again, and Topham
creaked to the door and out.

In a twinkling I was out, too, you bet.

Mag!  He hadn't opened the box at all!  There it stood in the middle of
the space framed by the three glasses.  I pulled at the lid.  Locked!
I could have screamed with rage.  But the sound of his step outside the
door sobered me.  He was coming back.  In a frantic hurry I turned
toward the window which I had unlocked when I came in four hours ago.
But I hadn't time to make it. I heard the old fellow's hand on the
door, and I tumbled back into the box in such a rush that the curtains
were still waving when he came in.

Slowly he began to place the jewels, one by one, in the order her
Ladyship puts them on.  We Charity girls had often watched him from the
door--he never let one of us put a foot inside.  He was method and
order itself.  He never changed the order in which he lifted the
glittering things out, nor the places he put them back in.  I put my
hand up against the top of the box, tracing the spot where each piece
would be lying.  Think, Mag, just half an inch between me and quarter
of a million!

Oh, I was sore as I lay there!  And I wasn't so cock-sure either that
I'd get out of it straight.  I tried the Beryl story lots of ways on
myself, but somehow, every time I fancied myself telling it to
Obermuller, it got tangled up and lay dumb and heavy inside of me.

But at least it would be better to appear of my own will before the old
Englishman than be discovered by Lord Gray and his Lady. I had my
fingers on the curtains, and in another second I'd been out when--

"Miss Beryl Blackburn's compliments, Mr. Topham, and would you step to
the door, as there's something most important she wants to tell you."

Oh, I loved every syllable that call-boy spoke!  There was a giggle
behind his voice, too; old Topham was the butt of every joke.  The
first call, which had fooled me, must have been from some giddy girl
who wanted to guy the old fellow.  She had fooled me all right.  But
this--this one was the real article.

There was a pause--Topham must be looking about to be sure things were
safe.  Then he creaked to the door and shut it carefully behind him.

It only took a minute, but in that minute--in that minute, Mag, I had
the rose diamond clutched safe in my fingers; I was on the top of the
big trunk and out of the window.

Oh, the feel of that beautiful thing in my hand!  I'd 'a' loved it if
it hadn't been worth a penny, but as it was I adored it. I slipped the
chain under my collar, and the diamond slid down my neck, and I felt
its kiss on my skin.  I flew down the black corridor, bumping into
scenery and nearly tripping two stage carpenters.  I heard Ginger, the
call-boy, ahead of me and dodged behind some properties just in time.
He went whistling past and I got to the stage door.

I pulled it open tenderly, cautiously, and turned to shut it after me.

And--

And something held it open in spite of me.

No--no, Mag, it wasn't a man.  It was a memory.  It rose up there and
hit me right over the heart--the memory of Nancy Olden's happiness the
first time she'd come in this very door, feeling that she actually had
a right to use a stage: entrance, feeling that she belonged,
she--Nancy--to this wonderland of the stage!

You must never tell Tom, Mag, promise!  He wouldn't see.  He couldn't
understand.  I couldn't make him know what I felt any more than I'd
dare tell him what I did.

I shut the door.

But not behind me.  I shut it on the street and--Mag, I shut for ever
another door, too; the old door that opens out on Crooked Street.  With
my hand on my heart, that was beating as though it would burst, I flew
back again through the black corridor, through the wings and out to
Obermuller's office.  With both my hands I ripped open the neck of my
dress, and, pulling the chain with that great diamond hanging to it, I
broke it with a tug, and threw the whole thing down on the desk in
front of him.

"For God's sake!" I yelled.  "Don't make it so easy for me to steal!"

I don't know what happened for a minute.  I could see his face change
half a dozen ways in as many seconds.  He took it up in his fingers at
last.  It swung there at the end of the slender little broken chain
like a great drop of shining water, blushing and sparkling and
trembling.

His hands trembled, too, and he looked up at last from the diamond to
my face.

"It's worth at least fifty thousand, you know--valued at that."

I didn't answer.

He got up and came over to where I had thrown myself on a bench.

"What's the matter, Olden?  Don't I pay you enough?"

"I want to see Tom," I begged.  "It's so long since he--He's up
at--at--in the country."

"Sing Sing?"

I nodded.

"You poor little devil!"

That finished me.  I'm not used to being pitied.  I sobbed and sobbed
as though some dam had broken inside of me.  You see, Mag, I knew in
that minute that I'd been afraid, deathly afraid of Fred Obermuller's
face, when it's scornful and sarcastic, and of his voice, when it cuts
the flesh of self-conceit off your very bones.  And the contrast--well,
it was too much for me.

But something came quick to sober me.

It was Gray.  She stormed in, followed by Lord Harold and Topham, and
half the company.

"The diamond, the rose diamond!" she shrieked.  "It's gone!  And the
carpenters say that new girl Olden came flying from the direction of my
dressing-room.  I'll hold you responsible--"

"Hush-sh!"  Obermuller lifted his hands and nodded over toward me.

"Olden!" she squealed.  "Grab her, Topham.  I'll bet she stole that
diamond, and she can't have got rid of it yet."

Topham jumped toward me, but Obermuller stopped him.

"You'd win only half your bet, my Lady," Obermuller said softly.  "She
did get hold of the Gray rose, worth fifty thousand dollars, in spite
of all your precautions--"

The world seemed to fall away from me.  I looked up at him. I couldn't
believe he'd go back on me.

"--And she brought it straight to me, as I had asked her to, and
promised to raise her salary if she'd win out.  For I knew that unless
I proved to you it could be stolen, you'd never agree to hire a
detective to watch those things, which will get us all into trouble
some day.  Here!  Scoot out o' this.  It's nearly time for your number."

He passed the diamond over to her, and they all left the office.

So did I; but he held out his hand as I passed.  "It goes--that about a
raise for you, Olden.  Now earn it."

Isn't he white, Mag--white clean through, that big fellow Obermuller?



VI.

I got into the train, Mag, the happiest girl in all the country. I'd a
big basket of things for Tom.  I was got up in my Sunday best, for I
wanted to make a hit with some fellow with a key up there, who'd make
things soft and easy for my Tommy.

I had so much to tell him.  I knew just how I'd take off every member
of the company to amuse him.  I had memorized every joke I'd heard
since I'd got behind the curtain--not very hard for me; things always
had a way of sticking in my mind.  I knew the newest songs in town, and
the choruses of all the old ones.  I could show him the latest tricks
with cards--I'd got those at first hand from Professor Haughwout.  You
know how great Tom is on tricks. I could explain the disappearing woman
mystery, and the mirror cabinet.  I knew the clog dance that Dewitt and
Daniels do.  I had pictures of the trained seals, the great elephant
act, Mademoiselle Picotte doing her great tight-rope dance, and the
Brothers Borodini in their pyramid tumbling.

Yes, it was a whole vaudeville show, with refreshments between the
acts, that I was taking up to Tom Dorgan.  I don't care much for a lot
of that truck--funny, isn't it, how you get to turn up your nose at the
things you'd have given a finger for once upon a time?  But Tom--oh,
I'd got everything pat for him--my big, handsome Tom Dorgan in
stripes--with his curls all shaved off--ugh!

I'd got just so far in my thoughts, sitting there in the train, when I
gave a shiver.  I thought for a minute it was at the idea of my Tom
with one of those bare, round convict-heads on him, that look like fat
skeleton faces.  But it wasn't.  It was--

Guess, Mag.

Moriway.

Both of us thought the same thing of each other for the first second
that our eyes met.  I could see that.  He thought I was caught at last.
And I thought he'd been sharp once too often.

And, Mag, it would be hard to say which of us would have been happier
if it had been the truth.  Oh, to meet Moriway, bound sure enough for
Sing Sing!

He got up and came over to me, smiling wickedly.  He took the seat
behind me, and leaning forward, said softly:

"Is Miss Omar engaged to read to some invalid up at Sing Sing? And for
how long a term--I should say, engagement?"

I'd got through shivering by then.  I was ready for him.  I turned and
looked at him in that very polite, distant sort o' way Gray uses in her
act when the Charity superintendent speaks to her. It's the only decent
thing she does; chances are that that's how Lord Gray's mother looks at
her.

"You know my sister, Mr.--Mr.--" I asked humbly.

He looked at me, perplexed for just a second.

"Sister be hanged!" he said at last.  "I know you, Nat, and I'm glad to
my finger-tips that you've got it in the neck, in spite of all your
smartness."

"You're altogether wrong, sir," I said very stately, but hurt a bit,
you know.  "I've often been taken for my sister, but gentlemen usually
apologize when I explain to them.  It's hard enough to have a sister
who--" I looked up at him tearfully, with my chin a-wabble with sorrow.

He grinned.

"Liars should have good memories," he sneered.  "Miss Omar said she was
an orphan, you remember, and had not a relative in the world."

"Did she say that?  Did Nora say that?" I exclaimed piteously. "Oh,
what a little liar she is!  I suppose she thought it made her more
interesting to be so alone, more appealing to kind-hearted gentlemen
like yourself.  I hope she wasn't ungrateful to you, too, as she was to
that kind Mr. Latimer, before he found her out.  And she had such a
good position there, too!"

I wanted to look at him, oh, I wanted to!  But it was my role to sit
there with downcast eyes, just--the picture of holy grief. I was the
good one--the good, shocked sister, and though I wasn't a bit afraid of
anything he could do to me, or any game he could put up, I yearned to
make him believe me--just because he was so suspicious, so wickedly
smart, so sure he was on.

But his very silence sort of told me he almost believed, or that he was
laying a trap.

"Will you tell me," he said, "how you--your sister got Latimer to lie
for her?"

"Mr. Latimer--lie!  Oh, you don't know him.  He expected a lady to read
to him that very evening.  He had never seen her, and when Nora walked
into the garden--"

"After getting a skirt somewhere."

"Yes--the housekeeper's, it happened to be her evening out--why, he
just naturally supposed Nora was Miss Omar."

"Ah!  then her name isn't Omar.  What might it be?"

"I'd rather not tell--if you don't mind."

"But when Latimer found out she had the diamonds--he did find out?"

"She confessed to him.  Nora's not really so bad a girl as--"

"Very interesting!  But it doesn't happen to be Latimer's version.  And
you say Latimer wouldn't lie."

I got pale--but the paleness was on the inside of me.  Think I was
going to flinch before a chump like Moriway, even if I had walked
straight into his trap?

"It isn't?" I exclaimed.

"No.  Latimer's note to Mrs. Kingdon said the diamonds were found in
the bell-boy's jacket the thief had left behind him."

"Well!  It only shows what a bad habit lying is.  Nora must have fibbed
to me, for the pure pleasure of fibbing.  I'll never dare to trust her
again.  Do you believe then that she didn't have anything to do with
the hotel robbery?  I do hope so.  It's one less sin on her wicked
head.  It's hard, having such a girl in the family!"  Oh, wasn't I
grieved!

He looked me straight in the eye.  I looked at him.  I was unutterably
sad about that tough sister of mine, and I vow I looked holy then,
though I never did before and may never again.

"Well, I only saw her in the twilight," he said slowly, watching my
face all the time.  "You two sisters are certainly miraculously alike."

The train was slowing down, and I got up with my basket.  I stood right
before him, my full face turned toward him.

"Are we?" I asked simply.  "Don't you think it's more the expression
than anything else, and the voice?  Nora's really much fairer than I
am.  Good-by."

He watched me as I went out.  I felt his eyes on the back of my jacket,
and I was tempted to turn at the door and make a face at him.  But I
knew something better and safer than that.  I waited till the train was
just pulling out, and then, standing below his window, I motioned to
him to raise it.

He did.

"I thought you were going to get out here," I called.  "Are you sure
you don't belong in Sing Sing, Mr. Moriway?"

I can see his face yet, Mag, and every time I think of it, it makes me
nearly die of laughing.  He had actually been fooled another time.  It
was worth the trip up there, to make a guy of him once more.

And whether it was or not, Mag, it was all I got, after all. For--would
you believe Tom Dorgan would turn out such a sorehead? He's kicked up
such a row ever since he got there, that it's the dark cell for him,
and solitary confinement.  Think of it--for Tom!

I begged, I bluffed, I cried, I coaxed, but many's the Nance Olden that
has played her game against the rules of Sing Sing, and lost.  They
wouldn't even let me leave the things for him, or give him a message
from me.  And back to the station I had to carry the basket, and all
the schemes I had to make old Tom Dorgan grin.

All the way back I had him in my mind.  He's a tiger--Tom--when he's
roused.  I could see him, shut up there by himself, with not a soul to
talk to, with not a human eye to look into, with not a thing on earth
to do--Tom, who's action itself!  He never was much of a thinker, and I
never saw him read even a newspaper.  What would he do to kill the
time?  Can't you see him there, at bay, back on his haunches, cursing
and cursed, alone in the everlasting black silence?

I saw nothing else.  Wherever I turned my eyes, that terrible picture
was before me.  And always it was just on the verge of becoming
something else--something worse.  He could throttle the world with his
bare hands, if it had but one neck, in the mood he must be in now.

It was when I couldn't bear it a moment longer that I set my mind to
find something else to think of.

I found it, Mag.  Do you know what it was?   It was just three
words--of Obermuller's: "Earn it now."

After all, Miss Monahan, this graft of honesty they all preach so much
about hasn't anything mysterious in it.  All it is, is putting your
wits to work according to the rules of the game and not against them.
I was driven to it--the thought of big Tom crouching for a spring in
the dark cell up yonder sent me whirling out into the thinking place,
like the picture of the soul in the big book at Latimer's I read out
of.  And first thing you know, 'pon honor, Mag, it was as much fun
planning how to "earn it now" as any lifting I ever schemed.  It's
getting the best of people that always charmed me--and here was a way
to fool 'em according to law.

So busy I was making it all up, that the train pulled into the station
before I knew it.  I gave a last thought to that poor old hyena of a
Tom, and then put him out of my mind.  I had other fish to fry.
Straight down to Mother Douty I went with my basket.

"A fool girl, mother, on her way up to Sing Sing, lost her basket, and
Nance Olden found it; it ought to be worth a good deal."

She grinned.  You couldn't make old Douty believe that the Lord himself
wouldn't steal if He got a chance.  And she knows the chances that come
butting up against Nancy Olden.

Why did I lie to her?  Not for practice, I assure you.  She'd have
beaten me down to the last cent if she thought it was mine, but she
always thinks there'll be a find for her in something that's stolen.
So I let her think I'd stolen it in the railway station, and we came to
terms.

With what she gave me I bought a wig.  Mag, I want you some day, when
you can get off, to come and see that wig.  I shouldn't wonder but
you'd recognize it.  It's red, of very coarse hair, but a wonderful
color, and so long it--yes, it might be your own, Mag Monahan, it's so
much like it.  I went to the theater and got my Charity rig, took it
home, and sat for hours there just looking at 'em both.  When evening
came I was ready to "earn it now."

You see, Obermuller had given me the whole day to be away, and neither
Gray nor the other three Charities expected me back. I had to do it on
the sly, you sassy Mag!  Yes, it was partly because I love to cheat,
but more because I was bound to have my chance once whether anybody
else enjoyed it or not.

I came to the theater in my Charity rig and the wig.  It looked as if
I'd slept in it, and it came down to the draggled hem of the skirt.
All the way there I walked like you, Mag.  Once, when a newsboy grinned
at me and shouted "Carrots!"  I grinned back--your own, old Cruelty
grin, Mag.  I vow I felt so much like you--as you used to be--that when
I lurched out on the stage at last, stumbling over my shoe laces and
trying to push the hair out of my eyes, you'd have sworn it was little
Mag Monahan I making her debut in the Cruelty room.

Oh, Mag, Mag, you darling Mag!  Did you ever hear a whole house, a
great big theater full of a peevish vaudeville audience, just rise at
you, give one roar of laughter they hadn't expected at all to give, and
then settle down to giggle at every move you made?

Girl alive, I just had 'em!  They couldn't take their eyes off me. If I
squirmed, they howled.  If I stood on one foot, scratching the torn leg
of my stocking with the other--you know, Mag!--they yelled.  If I
grinned, they just roared.

Oh, Mag, can't you see?  Don't you understand?  I was It.  The center
of the stage I carried round with me--it was just Nancy Olden.  And for
ten minutes Nancy had nothing to do but to play with 'em.  'Pon my
life, Mag, it's just like stealing; the old graft exactly; it's so
fascinating, so busy, and risky, except that they play the game with
you and pay you and love you to fool 'em.

When the curtain fell it was different.  Grays followed by the
Charities, all clean and spick-and-span and--not in it; not even on the
edge of it--stormed up to Obermuller standing at the wings.

"I'll quit the show here and now," she squawked.  "It's a shame, a
beastly shame.  How dare you play me such a trick, Fred Obermuller?  I
never was treated so in my life--to have that dirty little wretch come
tumbling on like that, without even so much as your telling me you'd
made up all this new business for her!  It's indecent, anyway.  Why, I
lost my cue.  There was a gap for a full minute.  The whole act was
such a ghastly failure that I--"

"That you'd better go out now and make your prettiest bow, Gray. Phew!
Listen to the house roar.  That's what I call applause.  Go on now."

She went.

Me?  I didn't say a word.  I looked at Obermuller and--and I just did
like this.  Yes, winked, Mag Monahan.  I was so crazily happy I had to,
didn't I?

But do you know what he did?  Do you know what he did?

Well, I suppose I am screaming and the Troyons will put me out, but--he
just--winked--back!

And then Gray came trailing back into the wings, and the shrieking and
thumping and whistling out in front just went on--and on--and on--and
on.  Um!  I just listened and loved it--every thump of it.  And I stood
there like a demure little kitten; or more like Mag Monahan after she'd
had a good licking, and was good and quiet.  And I never so much as
budged till Obermuller said:

"Well, Nance, you have earned it.  The gall of you!  But it only proves
that Fred Obermuller never yet bought a gold brick.  Only, let me in on
your racket next time.  There, go on--take it.  It's yours."

Oh, to have Fred Obermuller say things like that to you!

He gave me a bit of a push.  'Twas just a love-pat.  I stumbled out on
to the stage.



VII.

And that's why, Marguerite de Monahan, I want you to buy in with the
madam here.  Let 'em keep on calling it Troyon's as much as they want,
but you're to be a partner on the money I'll give you. If this fairy
story lasts, it'll be your own, Mag--a sort of commission you get on my
take-off of you.  But if anything happens to the world--if it should go
crazy, or get sane, and not love Nancy Olden any more, why, here'll be
a place for me, too.

Does it look that way?  Divil a bit, you croaker!  It looks--it
looks--listen and I'll tell you how it looks.

It looks as though Gray and the great Gray rose diamond and the three
Charities had all become a bit of background for Nance Olden to play
upon.

It looks as though the audience likes the sound of my voice as much
almost as I do myself; anyway, as much as it does the sight of me.

It looks as though the press, if you please, had discovered a new stage
star, for down comes a little reporter to interview me--me, Nancy
Olden!  Think of that, Mag!  I receive him all in my Charity rig, and
in Obermuller's office, and he asks me silly questions and I tell him a
lot of nonsense, but some truths, too, about the Cruelty.  Fancy, he
didn't know what the Cruelty was!  S. P. C. C., he calls it.  And all
the time we talked a long-haired German artist he had brought with him
was sketching Nance Olden in different poses.  Isn't that the limit?

What d'ye think Tom Dorgan'd say to see half a page of Nancy Olden in
the X-Ray?  Wouldn't his eyes pop?  Poor old Tom!  ...  No danger--they
won't let him have the papers....  My old Tommy!

What is it, Mag?  Oh, what was I saying?  Yes--yes, how it looks.

Well, it looks as though the Trust--yes, the big and mighty T.
T.--short for Theatrical Trust, you innocent--had heard of that same
Nance Olden you read about in the papers.  For one night last week,
when I'd just come of and the house was yelling and shouting behind me,
Obermuller meets me in the wings and trots me of to his private office.

"What for?" I asked him on the way.

"You'll find out in a minute.  Come on."

I pulled up my stocking and followed.  You know I wear it in that act
without a garter, and it's always coming down the way yours used to,
Mag.  Even when it doesn't come down I pull it up, I'm so in the habit
of doing it.

A little bit of a man, bald-headed, with a dyspeptic little black
mustache turned down at the corners, watched me come in.  He grinned at
my make-up, and then at me.

"Clever little girl," he says through his nose.  "How much do you stick
Obermuller for?"

"Clever little man," say I, bold as brass and through my own nose;
"none of your business."

"Hi--you, Olden!" roared Obermuller, as though I'd run away and he was
trying to get the bit from between my teeth.  "Answer the gentleman
prettily.  Don't you know a representative of the mighty T.  T.  when
you see him?  Can't you see the Syndicate aureole about his noble brow?
This gentleman, Nance, is the great and only Max Tausig.  He humbleth
the exalted and uplifteth the lowly--or, if there's more money in it,
he gives to him that hath and steals from him that hasn't, but would
mighty well like to have.  He has no conscience, no bowels, no heart.
But he has got tin and nerve and power to beat the band.  In short, and
for all practical purposes for one in your profession, Nancy Olden,
he's just God. Down on your knees and lick his boots--Trust gods wear
boots, patent leathers--and thank him for permitting it, you lucky
baggage!"

I looked at the little man; the angry red was just fading from the top
of his cocoanut-shaped bald head.

"You always were a fool, Obermuller," he said cordially.  "And you were
always over-fond of your low-comedian jokes.  If you hadn't been so
smart with your tongue, you'd had more friends and not so many enemies
in--"

"In the heavenly Syndicate, eh?  Well, I have lived without--"

"You have lived, but--"

"But where do I expect to go when I die?  Good theatrical managers,
Nance, when they die as individuals go to Heaven--they get into the
Trust.  After that they just touch buttons; the Trust does the rest.
Bad ones--the kickers--the Fred Obermullers go to--a place where
salaries cease from troubling and royalties are at rest.  It's a slow
place where--where, in short, there's nothing doing.  And only one
thing's done--the kicker.  It's that place Mr. Tausig thinks I'm bound
for.  And it's that place he's come to rescue you from, from sheer
goodness of heart and a wary eye for all there's in it.  Cinch him,
Olden, for all the traffic will bear!"

I looked from one to the other--Obermuller, big and savage underneath
all his gay talk, I knew him well enough to see that; the little man,
his mouth turned down at the corners and a sneer in his eye for the
fellow that wasn't clever enough to get in with the push.

"You must not give the young woman the big head, Obermuller.  Her own
is big enough, I'll bet, as it is.  I ain't prepared to make any
startling offer to a little girl that's just barely got her nose above
the wall.  The slightest shake might knock her off altogether, or she
mightn't have strength enough in herself to hold on.  But we'll give
her a chance.  And because of what it may lead to, if she works hard,
because of the opportunities we can give her, there ain't so much in it
in a money way as you might imagine."

Obermuller didn't say anything.  His own lips and his own eyes sneered
now, and he winked openly at me, which made the little man hot.

"Blast it!" he twanged.  "I mean it.  If you've got any notion through
my coming down to your dirty little joint that we've set our hearts on
having the girl, just get busy thinking something else.  She may be
worth something to you--measured up against the dubs you've got; but to
us--"

"To you, it's not so much your not having her as my having her that--"
"Exactly.  It ain't our policy to leave any doubtful cards in the
enemy's hands.  He can have the bad ones.  He couldn't get the good
ones.  And the doubtful ones, like this girl Olden--"

"Well, that's just where you're mistaken!"  Obermuller thrust his hands
deep in his pockets and put out that square chin of his like the
fighter he is.  "'This girl Olden' is anything but doubtful.  She's a
big card right now if she could be well handled.  And the time isn't so
far off when, if you get her, you people will be--"

"Just how much is your interest in her worth?" the little man sneered.

Obermuller glared at him, and in the pause I murmured demurely:

"Only a six-year contract."

Mag, you should have seen 'em jump--both of 'em; the little man with
vexation, the big one with surprise.

A contract!  Me?--Nance Olden!  Why, Mag, you innocent, of course I
hadn't.  Managers don't give six-year contracts to girl--burglars
who've never set foot on the stage.

When the little man was gone, Obermuller cornered me.

"What's your game, Olden?" he cried.  "You're too deep for me; I throw
up my hands.  Come; what've you got in that smart little head of yours?
Are you holding out for higher stakes?  Do you expect him to buy that
great six-year contract and divvy the proceeds with me?  Because he
will--when once they get their eye on you, they'll have you; and to
turn up your nose at their offer if in just the way to make them itch
for you.  But how the deuce did you find it out?  And where do you get
your nerve from, anyway?  A little beggar like you to refuse an offer
from the T. T.  and sit hatching your schemes on your little old 'steen
dollars a week!  ...  It'll have to be twice 'steen, now, I suppose?"

"All right, just as you say," I laughed.  "But why aren't you in the
Trust, Fred Obermuller?"

"Why aren't you in society, Nance?"

"Um!--well, because society's prejudiced against lifting, but the Trust
isn't.  Do you know that's a great graft, Mr. Obermuller--lifting
wholesale?  Why don't you get in?"

"Because a Trust is a lot of sailors on a raft who keep their places by
kicking off the drowning hands that clutch at it.  Can you fancy a
fellow like Tausig stooping down to help me tenderly on board to divide
the pickings?"

"No, but I can fancy you grappling with him till he'd be glad to take
you on rather than be pulled off himself."

"You'd be in with the push, would you, Olden, if you were managing?" he
asked with a grin.

"I'd be at the top, wherever that was."

"Then why the deuce didn't you jump at Tausig's offer?  Were you really
crafty enough--"

"I am artiste, Monsieur Obermuller," I gutturaled like Mademoiselle
Picotte, who dances on the wire.  "I moost have about me those who
arre--who arre congeniale--"

"You monkey!" he laughed.  "Then, when Tausig comes to buy your
contract--"

"We'll tell him to go to thunder."

He laughed.  Say, Mag, that big fellow is like a boy when he's pleased.
I guess that's what makes it such fun to please him.

"And I, who admired your business sagacity in holding off, Nance!" he
said.

"I thought you admired my take-off!  of Mademoiselle Picotte."

"Well?"

"Well, why don't you make use of it?  Take me round to the theaters and
let me mimic all the swell actors and actresses. I've got more chance
with you than with that Trust gang.  They wouldn't give me room to do
my own stunt; they'd make me fit into theirs.  But you--"

"But me!  You think you can wind me round your finger?"

"Not--yet."

He chuckled.  I thought I had him going.  I saw Nance Olden spending
her evenings at the big Broadway theaters, when, just at that minute,
Ginger, the call-boy, burst in with a note.

Say, Mag, I wouldn't like to get that man Obermuller hopping mad at me,
and Nancy Olden's no coward, either.  But the way he gritted his teeth
at that note and the devil in his eyes when he lifted them from it,
made me wonder how I'd ever dared be facetious with him.

I got up to go.  He'd forgotten me, but he looked up then.

"That was a great suggestion of yours, Olden, to put Lord Gray on to
act himself--great!"  His voice shook, he was so angry.

"Well!" I snapped.  I wasn't going to let him see that a big man raging
could bluff Nance Olden.

What did he mean?  Why--just this: there was Lord Harold Gray, the real
Lord behind the scenes, bringing the Lady who was really only a chorus
girl to the show in his automobile; helping her dress like a maid;
holding her box of jewels as he tagged after her like a big
Newfoundland; smoking his one cigarette solemnly and admiringly while
she was on the stage; poking after her like a tame bear.  He's a funny
fellow, that Lord Harold.  He's a Tom Dorgan, with the brains and the
graft and--and the brute, too, Mag, washed out of him; a Tom Dorgan
that's been kept dressed in swagger clothes all his life and living at
top-notch--a big, clean, handsome, stupid, good-natured, overgrown boy.

Yes, I'm coming to it.  When I'd seen him go tagging after her chippy
Ladyship behind the scenes long enough, I told Obermuller one day that
it was absurd to send the mock Lady out on the boards and keep the live
Lord hidden behind.  He jumped at the idea, and they rigged up a little
act for the two--the Lord and the Lady.  Gray was furious when she
heard of it--their making use of her Lord in such a way--but Lord
Harold just swallowed his big Adam's apple with a gulp or two, and said:

"'Pon honor, it's a blawsted scheme, you know; but I'm jolly sure I'd
make a bleddy ass of myself.  I cawn't act, you know."

The ninny!  You know he thinks Gray really can.

But Obermuller explained to him that he needn't act--just be himself
out behind the wings, and lo!  Lord Harold was "chawmed."

And Gray?

Why, she gave in at last; pretended to, anyway--sliding out of the
Charity sketch, and rehearsing the thing with him, and all that.
And--and do you know what she did, Mag?  (Nance Olden may be pretty
mean, but she wouldn't do a trick like that.) She waited till ten
minutes before time for the thing to be put on and then threw a fit.

"She's so ill, her delicate Ladyship!  So ill she just can't go on this
evening!  Wonder how long she thinks such an excuse will keep Lord
Harold off when I want him on!" growled Obermuller, throwing her note
over to me.  He'd have liked to throw it at me if it'd been heavy
enough to hurt; he was so thumping mad.

You see, there it was on the program:

THE CLEVER SKETCH ENTITLED

THEATRICAL ARISTOCRACY.

  The Duke of Portmanteau ....  Lord Harold Gray.
  The Duchess ................  Lady Gray.

The celebrated Gray jewels, including the great Rose Diamond, will be
worn by Lady Gray in this number.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

No wonder Obermuller was raging.  I looked at him.  You don't like to
tackle a fellow like that when he's dancing hot.  And yet you ache to
help him and--yes, yourself.

"Lord Harold's here yet, and the jewels?" I asked.

He gave a short nod.  He was thinking.  But so was I.

"Then all he wants is a Lady?"

"That's all," he said sarcastically.

"Well, what's the matter with me?"

He gasped.

"There's nothing the matter with your nerve, Olden."

"Thank you, so much."  It was the way Gray says it when she tries to
have an English accent.  "Dress me up, Fred Obermuller, in Gray's new
silk gown and the Gray jewels, and you'd never--"

"I'd never set eyes on you again."

"You'd never know, if you were in the audience, that it wasn't Gray
herself.  I can take her off to the life, and if the prompter'll stand
by--"

He looked at me for a full minute.

"Try it, Olden," he said.

I did.  I flew to Gray's dressing-room.  She'd gone home deathly ill,
of course.  They gave me the best seamstress in the place. She let out
the waist a bit and pulled over the lace to cover it. I got into that
mass of silk and lace--oh, silk on silk, and Nance Olden inside!  Beryl
Blackburn did my hair, and Grace Weston put on my slippers.  Topham,
himself, hung me with those gorgeous shining diamonds and pearls and
emeralds, till I felt like an idol loaded with booty.  There were so
many standing round me, rigging me up, that I didn't get a glimpse of
the mirror till the second before Ginger called me.  But in that
second--in that second, Mag Monahan, I saw a fairy with blazing cheeks
and shining eyes, with a diamond coronet in her brown hair, puffed
high, and pearls on her bare neck and arms, and emeralds over the
waist, and rubies and pearls on her fingers, and sprays of diamonds
like frost on the lace of her skirt, and diamond buckles on her very
slippers, and the rose diamond, like a sun, outshining all the rest;
and--and, Mag, it was me!

How did it go?  Well, wouldn't it make you think you were a Lady, sure
enough, if you couldn't move without that lace train billowing after
you; without being dazzled with diamond-shine; without a truly Lord
tagging after you?

He kept his head, Lord Harold did--even if it is a mutton-head. That
helped me at first.  He was so cold, so stupid, so slow, so
good-tempered--so just himself.  And after the first plunge--

I tell you, Mag Monahan, there's one thing that's stronger than wine to
a woman--it's being beautiful.  Oh!  And I was beautiful. I knew it
before I got that quick hush, with the full applause after it.  And
because I was beautiful, I got saucy, and then calm, and then I caught
Fred Obermuller's voice--he had taken the book from the prompter and
stood there himself--and after that it was easy sailing.

He was there yet when the act was over, and I trailed out, followed by
my Lord.  He let the prompt-book fall from his hands and reached them
both out to me.

I flirted my jeweled fan at him and swept him a courtesy.

Cool?  No, I wasn't.  Not a bit of it.  He was daffy with the sight of
me in all that glory, and I knew it.

"Nance," he whispered, "you wonderful girl, if I didn't know about that
little thief up at the Bronsonia I'd--I'd marry you alive, just for the
fun of piling pretty things on you."

"The deuce you would!"  I sailed past him, with Topham and my Lord in
my wake.

They didn't leave me till they'd stripped me clean.  I felt like a
Christmas tree the day after.  But, somehow, I didn't care.



VIII.

Is that you, Mag?  Well, it's about time you came home to look after
me.  Fine chaperon you make, Miss Monahan!  Why, didn't I tell you the
very day we took this flat what a chaperon was, and that you'd have to
be mine?  Imagine Nancy Olden without a chaperon--Shocking!

No, 'tisn't late.  Sit down, Maggie, there, and let me get the stool
and talk to you.  Think of us two--Cruelty girls, both of us--two mangy
kittens deserted by the old cats in a city's alleys, and left mewing
with cold and hunger and dirt, out in the wet--think of us two in our
own flat, Mag!

I say, it makes me proud of us!  There are times when I look at every
stick of furniture we own, and I try to pretend to it all that I'm used
to a decent roof over my head, and a dining-room, kitchen, parlor,
bedroom and bath.  Oh, and I forgot the telephone the other tenant left
here till its lease is up.  But at other times I stand here in the
middle of it and cry out to it, in my heart:

"Look at me, Nancy Olden, a householder, a rent-payer, the head of the
family, even if it's only a family of two and the other one Mag!  Look
at me, with my name in the directory, a-paying milk bills and meat
bills and bread bills!  Look at me with a place of my own, where
nobody's right's greater than my own; where no one has a right but me
and Mag; a place where--where there's nothing to hide from the police!"

There's the rub, Mag, as Hamlet says--(I went to see it the other
night, so that I could take off the Ophelia--she used to be a good
mimic herself, before she tried to be a leading lady.) It spoils you,
this sense of safeness that goes with the honesty graft.  You lose the
quickness of the hunter and the nerve of the hunted.  And--worse--you
lose your taste for the old risky life. You grow proud and fat, and you
love every stick in the dear, quiet little place that's your home--your
own home.  You love it so that you'd be ashamed to sneak round where it
could see you--you who'd always walked upright before it with the step
of the mistress; with nothing in the world to be ashamed of; nothing to
prevent your staring each honest dish-pan in the face!

And, Mag, you try--if you're me--to fit Tom Dorgan in here--Tom Dorgan
in stripes and savage sulks still--all these months--kept away from the
world, even the world behind bars!  Maggie, don't you wish Tom was a
ventriloquist or--or an acrobat or--but this isn't what I had to tell
you.

Do you know what a society entertainer is, Miss Monahan?  No? Well,
look at me.  Yes, I'm one.  Miss Nance Olden, whose services are worth
fifty dollars a night--at least, they were one night.

Ginger brought me the note that made me a society entertainer.  It was
from a Mrs. Paul B. Gates, who had been "charmed by your clever
impersonations, Miss Olden, and write to know if you have the leisure
to entertain some friends at my house on Thursday of this week."

Had I the leisure--well, rather!  I showed the note to Gray, just to
make her jealous.  (Oh, yes, she goes on all right in the act with Lord
Harold every night.  Catch her letting me wear those things of hers
twice!) Well, she just turned up her nose.

"Of course, you won't accept?" she said.

"Of course, I will."

"Oh!  I only thought you'd feel as I should about appearing before a
lot of snobs, who'll treat you like a servant and--"

"Who'll do nothing of the sort and who'll pay you well for it," put in
Obermuller.  He had come up and was reading the note I had handed to
him.  "You just say yes, Nance," he went on, after Gray had bounced of
to her dressing-room.  "It isn't such a bad graft and--and this is just
between us two, mind--that little beggar, Tausig, has begun his tricks
since you turned his offer down.  They can make things hot for me, and
if they do, it won't be so bad for you to go in for this sort of
thing--unless you go over to the Trust--"

I shook my head.

"Well, this thing will be an ad for you, besides,--if the papers can be
got to notice it.  They're coy with their notices, confound them, since
Tausig let them know that big Trust ads don't appear in the same papers
that boom anti-Trust shows!"

"How long are you going to stand it, Mr. O?"

"Just as long as I can't help myself; not a minute longer."

"There ought to be a way--some way--"

"Yes, there ought, but there isn't.  They've got things down to a fine
point, and the fellow they don't fear has got to fear them.... I'll put
your number early to-night, so that you can get off by nine.  Good
luck, Nance."

At nine, then, behold Nancy Olden in her white muslin dress,
long-sleeved and high-necked, and just to her shoe-tops, with a big
white muslin sash around her waist.  Oh, she's no baby, is Nance, but
she looks like one in this rig with her short hair--or rather, like a
school-girl; which makes the stunts she does in mimicking the corkers
of the profession all the more surprising.

"We're just a little party," said Mrs. Paul Gates, coming into the
bedroom where I was taking of my wraps.  "And I'm so glad you could
come, for my principal guest, Mr. Latimer, is an invalid, who used to
love the theaters, but hasn't been to one since his attack many years
ago.  I count on your giving him, in a way, a condensed history in
action of what is going on on the stage."

I told her I would.  But I didn't just know what I was saying. Think of
Latimer there, Maggie, and think of our last meeting!  It made me
tremble.  Not that I fancied for a moment he'd betray me. The man that
helps you twice don't hurt you the third time.  No, it wasn't that; it
was only that I longed to do well--well before him, so that--

And then I found myself in an alcove off the parlors, separated from
them by heavy curtains.  It was such a pretty little red bower.  Right
behind me was the red of the Turkish drapery of a cozy corner, and just
as I took my place under the great chandelier, the servants pulled the
curtains apart and the lights went out in the parlors.

In that minute I got it, Mag--yes, stage fright.  Got it bad. I suppose
it was coming to me, but Lordy!  I hadn't ever known before what it
was.  I could see the black of the men's clothes in the long parlors in
front of me, and the white of the women's necks and arms.  There were
soft ends of talk trailing after the first silence, and everything was
so strange that I seemed to hear two men's voices which sounded
familiar--Latimer's silken voice, and another, a heavy, coarse bass,
that was the last to be quieted.

I fancied that when that last voice should stop I could begin, but all
at once my mind seemed to turn a somersault, and, instead of looking
out upon them, I seemed to be looking in on myself--to see a
white-faced little girl in a white dress, standing alone under a blaze
of light in a glare of red, gazing fearfully at this queer, new
audience.

Fail?  Me?  Not Nancy, Maggie.  I just took me by the shoulders.

"Nancy Olden, you little thief!" I cried to me inside of me. "How dare
you!  I'd rather you'd steal the silver on this woman's dressing-table
than cheat her out of what she expects and what's coming to her."

Nance really didn't dare.  So she began.

The first one was bad.  I gave 'em Duse's Francesca.  You've never
heard the wailing music in that woman's voice when she says:

  "There is no escape, Smaragdi.
        You have said it;
    The shadow is a glass to me, and God
        Lets me be lost."


I gave them Duse just to show them how swell I was myself; which shows
what a ninny I was.  The thing the world loves is the opposite of what
it is.  The pat-pat-pat of their gloves came in to me when I got
through.  They were too polite to hiss.  But it wasn't necessary.  I
was hissing myself.  Inside of me there was a long, nasty hiss-ss-ss!

I couldn't bear it.  I couldn't bear to be a failure with Latimer
listening, though out there in that queer half-light I couldn't see him
at all, but could only make out the couch where I knew he must be lying.

I just jumped into something else to retrieve myself.  I can do
Carter's Du Barry to the Queen's taste, Maggie.  That rotten voice of
hers, like Mother Douty's, but stronger and surer; that rocky old face
pretending to look young and beautiful inside that talented red hair of
hers; that whining "Denny!  Denny!" she squawks out every other minute.
Oh, I can do Du Barry all right!

They thought I could, too, those black and white shadows out there on
the other side of the velvet curtains.  But I cared less for what they
thought than for the fact that I had drowned that sputtering hiss-ss-ss
inside of me, and that Latimer was among them.

I gave them Warfield, then; I was always good at taking off the
sheenies in the alley behind the Cruelty--remember?  I gave them that
little pinch-nosed Maude Adams, and dry, corking little Mrs. Fiske, and
Henry Miller when he smooths down his white breeches lovingly and sings
Sally in our Alley, and strutting old Mansfield, and--

Say, isn't it funny, Mag, that I've seen 'em all and know all they can
do?  They've been my college education, that crowd.  Not a bad one,
either, when you come to think of what I wanted from it.

They pulled the curtains down at the end and I went back to the
bedroom.  I had my hat and jacket on when Mrs. Gates and some of the
younger ladies came to see me there, but I caught no glimpse of
Latimer.  You'd think--wouldn't you--that he'd have made an opportunity
to say just one nice word to me in that easy, soft voice of his?  I
tried to believe that perhaps he hadn't really seen me, lying down, as
he must have been, or that he hadn't recognized me, but I knew that I
couldn't make myself believe that; and the lack of just that word from
him spoiled all my satisfaction with myself, and I walked out with Mrs.
Gates through the hall and past the dining-room feeling as hurt as
though I'd deserved that a man like Latimer should notice me.

The dining-room was all lighted, but empty--the colored, shaded
candlesticks glowing down on the cut glass and silver, on delicate
china and flowers.  The ladies and gentlemen hadn't come out to supper
yet; at least, only one was there.  He was standing with his back to
me, before the sideboard, pouring out a glass of something from a
decanter.  He turned at the rustle of my starched skirt, and, as I
passed the door, he saw me.  I saw him, too, and hurried away.

Yes, I knew him.  Just you wait.

I got home here earlier than I'd expected, and I'd just got off my hat
and jacket and put away that snug little check when there came a ring
at the bell.

I thought it was you, Mag--that you'd forgotten your key.  I was so
sure of it that I pulled the door open wide with a flourish and--

And admitted--Edward!

Yes, Edward, husband of the Dowager.  The same red-faced, big-necked
old fellow, husky-voiced with whisky now, just as he was before.  He
must have been keeping it up steadily ever since the day out in the
country when Tom lifted his watch.  It'll take more than one lost watch
to cure Edward.

"I--followed you home, Miss Murieson," he said, grabbing me by the hand
and pushing the door closed behind him.  "Or is it Miss Murieson?
Which is your stage name, and which your real one?  And have you really
learned to remember it?  For my part, any old name will smell as sweet,
now that I'm close to the rose."

I jerked my hand away from him.

"I didn't ask you to call," I said, haughty as the Dowager herself was
when first I saw her in her gorgeous parlor, the Bishop's card in her
hand.

"No, I noticed that," he roared jovially.  "You skinned out the front
door the moment you saw me.  All that was left to me was to skin after."

"Why?"

"Why!"  He slapped his leg as though he'd heard the best joke in the
world.  "To renew our acquaintance, of course.  To ask you if you
wouldn't like me to buy you a red coat and hat like the one you left
behind you that day over in Philadelphia, when you cut your visit so
short.  To insist upon my privilege of relationship. To call that wink
you gave me in the hall that day, you little devil.  Now, don't look at
me like that.  I say, let's be friends; won't you?"

"Not for a red coat trimmed with chinchilla," I cried.

He got between me and the door.

"Prices gone up?" he inquired pleasantly.  "Who's bulling the stock?"

"Never you mind, so long as his name isn't Ramsay."

"But why shouldn't his name be Ramsay?" he cooed.

"Just because it isn't.  I'm expecting a friend.  Hadn't you better go
home to Mrs. Dowager Diamonds?"

"Bully!  Is that what you call her?  No, I'll stay and meet your
friend."

"Better not."

"Oh, I'm not afraid.  Does he know as much about you as I do?"

"More."

"About your weakness for other girls' coats?"

"Yes."

You do know it all, don't you?  And yet you care for me, Maggie Monahan!

I retreated before him into the dining-room.  What in the world to do
to get rid of him!

"I think you'd better go home, Mr. Ramsay," I said again, decidedly.
"If you don't, I'll have to call the janitor to put you out."

"Call, sweetheart.  He'll put you out with me; for I'll tell him a
thing or two about you, and we'll go and find a better place than this.
Stock can't be quoted so high, after all, if this is the best
prospectus your friend can put up....  Why don't you call?"

I looked at him.  I was thinking.

"Well?" he demanded.

"I've changed my mind."

Oh, Mag, Mag, did you ever see the man--ugly as a cannibal he may be
and old as the cannibal's great-grandfather--that couldn't be persuaded
he was a lady-killer?

His manner changed altogether.  He plumped down on the lounge and
patted the place beside him invitingly, giving me a wink that was
deadly.

"But, Mrs. Dowager!" I exclaimed coquettishly.

"Oh, that's all right, little one!  She hasn't even missed me yet.
When she's playing Bridge she forgets even to be jealous."

"Playing Bridge," I murmured sweetly, "'way off in Philadelphia, while
you, you naughty man--"

Oh, he loved that!

"Not so naughty as--as I'd like to be," he bellowed, heavily witty.
"And she isn't 'way off in Philadelphia either.  She's just round the
corner at Mrs. Gates', and--what's the matter?"

"Nothing--nothing.  Did she recognize me?"

"Oh, that's what scared you, is it?  She didn't recognize you. Neither
did I, till I got that second glimpse of you with your hat and jacket
on.  But even if she had--ho!  ho!  ho!  I say; do you know, you
couldn't convince the Bishop and Henrietta, if you'd talk till
doomsday, that that red coat and hat we advertised weren't taken by a
little girl that was daffy.  Fact; I swear it! They admit you took the
coat, you little witch, but it was when you were out of your mind--of
course--of course!  'The very fact that she left the coat behind her
and took nothing else from the house shows a mind diseased,' insisted
Henrietta.  Of course--of course!  'And her coming for no reason at all
to your house,' adds the Bishop....  Say, what was the reason?"

Maggie, I'll tell you a hard thing: it isn't when people think worse of
you than you are, but better, that you feel most uncomfortable.  I got
pale and sick inside of me at the thought of my poor little Bishop.  I
loved him for believing me straight and--

"I've been dying of curiosity to know what was in your wise little head
that day," he went on.  "Oh, it was wise all right; that wink you gave
me was perfectly sane; there was method in that madness of yours."

"I will tell you, Mr. Ramsay," I said sweetly, "at supper."

"Supper!"

"Yes, the supper you're going to get for me."

His bellowing laughter filled the place.  Maggie, our little flat and
our few things don't go well with sounds like that.

"Oh, you're all alike, you women!" he roared.  "All right, supper it
is.  Where shall we go--Rector's?"

I pouted.

"It's so much more cozy right here," I said.  "I'll telephone. There's
Brophy's, just round the corner, and they send in the loveliest things."

"Oh, they do!  Well, tell 'em to begin sending."

I thought he'd follow me out in the hall to the 'phone, but he was
having some trouble in pulling out his purse--to count out his money, I
suppose.  I got Central and asked for the number.  Oh, yes, I knew it
all right; I had called up that same number once, already, to-day.
Brophy's?  Why, Maggie Monahan, you ought to know there's no Brophy's.
At least none that I ever heard about.

With my hand over the mouthpiece, so that nobody heard but Edward, I
ordered a supper fit for a king--or a chorus girl!  What didn't I
order!  Champagne, broiled lobster, crab meat, stuffed pimentoes,
kirschkaffee--everything I'd ever heard Beryl Blackburn tell about.

"Say, say," interrupted Edward, coming out after me.  "That's enough of
that stuff.  Tell him to send in a Scotch and soda and--what--"

For at that moment the connection was made and I cut in sweetly with:

"Mrs. Edward Ramsay?--just a minute."

Mag, you should have seen the man's face!  It was red, it was white; it
was furious, it was frightened.

I put my hand a moment over the mouthpiece and turned on him then.
"I've got her on the 'phone at Mrs. Gates' house.  Shall I tell your
wife where you are, Edward?  ...  Just a moment, Mrs. Ramsay, hold the
wire; some one wants to speak with you."

"You little devil!"  His voice was thick with rage.

"Yes, you called me that some time ago, but not in that tone. Quick,
now--the door or ...  Waiting, Mrs. Ramsay?"

He moved toward the door.

"How'll I know you won't tell her when I'm gone?" he growled.

"Merely by my saying that I won't," I answered curtly.  "You're in no
position to dictate terms; I am."

But I could, without leaving the 'phone, latch the chain on the door
behind him, leaving it half open.  So he must have heard the rest.

"Yes, Mrs. Ramsay, waiting?" I croaked like the driest kind of
hello-girl.  "I was mistaken.  It was a message left to be delivered to
you--not some one wanting to speak with you.  Who am I?  Why, this is
Central.  Here is the message: 'Will be with you in half an hour.'
Signed 'Edward.' ... Yes, that's right.  Thank you.  Good night."

I hung up, gave the door a touch that shut it in his face and went back
into the dining-room to throw open the windows.  The place smelled of
alcohol; the moral atmosphere left behind by that bad old man sickened
me.

I leaned out and looked at the stars and tried to think of something
sweet and wholesome and strengthening.

"Ah, Nance," I cried to myself with a sob--I had pretended to take it
lightly enough when he was here, but now--"if you had heard of a girl
who, like yourself this evening, unexpectedly met two men she had
known, and the good man ignored her and the bad one followed her--oh,
Nancy--what sort of girl would you think she was at heart?  What sort
of hope could you imagine her treasuring for her own future?  And what
sort of significance would you attach to--"

And just then the bell rang again.

This time I was sure it was you.  And, O Maggie, I ran to the door
eager for the touch of your hand and the look in your eyes.  I was
afraid to be alone with my own thoughts.  I was afraid of the
conclusion to which they were leading me.  Maggie, if ever a girl
needed comfort and encouragement and heartening, I did then.

And I got it, dear.

For there was a man at the door, with a great basket of azaleas--pale,
pink earth-stars they are, the sweet, innocent things--and a letter for
me.  Here it is.  Let me read it to you.

"My dear Miss Omar:

Once on a time there was a Luckless Pot, marred in the making, that had
the luck to be of service to a Pipkin.

It was a saucy Pipkin, though a very winning one, and it had all the
health and strength the poor Pot lacked--physically. Morally--morally,
that young Pipkin was in a most unwholesome condition.  Already its
fair, smooth surface was scratched and fouled.  It was unmindful of the
treasure of good it contained, and its responsibility to keep that good
intact.  And it seemed destined to crash itself to pieces among pots of
baser metal.

What the Luckless Pot did was little--being ignorant of the art by
which diamonds may be attained easily and honestly--but it gave the
little Pipkin a chance.

What the Pipkin did with that chance the Pot learned to-night, with
such pleasure and satisfaction as made it impossible for him not to
share it with her.  So while he sent Burnett out to the conservatory to
cut azaleas, he wrote her a note to try to convey to her what he felt
when, in that nicely polished, neatly decorated and self-respecting
Vessel on exhibition in Mrs. Gates' red room, he recognized the poor
little Pipkin of other days.

The Pot, as you know, was a sort of stranded bit of clay that had never
filled the use for which pots are created.  He had little human to
interest him.  The fate of the Pipkin, therefore, he had often pondered
on; and, in spite of improbabilities, had had faith in a certain
quality of brave sincerity the little thing showed; a quality that
shone through acquired faults like a star in a murky sky.

This justification of his faith in the Pipkin may seem a small matter
to make so much of.  And yet the Pot--that sleeps not well o' nights,
as is the case with damaged pots--will take to bed with him to-night a
pretty, pleasant thought due just to this.

But do not think the Pot an idealist.  If he were, he might have been
tempted to mistake the Pipkin for a statelier, more pretentious
Vessel--a Vase, say, all graceful curves and embossed sides, but
shallow, perhaps, possibly lacking breadth.  No, the Pipkin is a
pipkin, made of common clay--even though it has the uncommon sweetness
and strength to overcome the tendencies of clay--and fashioned for
those common uses of life, deprivation of which to anything that comes
from the Potter's hands is the most enduring, the most uncommon sorrow.

O pretty little Pipkin, thank the Potter, who made you as you are, as
you will be--a thing that can cheer and stay men's souls by ministering
to the human needs of them.  For you, be sure, the Potter's 'a good
fellow and 'twill all be well.'

For the Pot--he sails shortly, or rather, he is to be carted abroad by
some optimistic friends whose hopes he does not share--to a celebrated
repair shop for damaged pots.  Whether he shall return, patched and
mended into temporary semblance of a useful Vessel; whether he shall
continue to be merely the same old Luckless Pot, or whether he shall
return at all, O Pipkin, does not matter much.

But it has been well that, before we two behind the veil had passed, we
met again, and you left me such a fragrant memory.

LATIMER."

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *


O Maggie, Maggie, some day I hope to see that man and tell him how
sorely the Pipkin needed the Pot's letter!



IX.

It's all come so quick, Maggie, and it was over so soon that I hardly
remember the beginning.

Nobody on earth could have expected it less than I, when I came off in
the afternoon.  I don't know what I was thinking of as I came into my
dressing-room, that used to be Gray's--the sight of him seemed to cut
me off from myself as with a knife--but it wasn't of him.

It may have been that I was chuckling to myself at the thought of Nancy
Olden with a dressing-room all to herself.  I can't ever quite get used
to that, you know, though I sail around there with all the airs of the
leading lady.  Sometimes I see a twinkle in Fred Obermuller's eye when
I catch him watching me, and goodness knows he's been glum enough of
late, but it wasn't--

Yes, I'm going to tell you, but--it's rattled me a bit, Maggie. I'm
so--so sorry, and a little--oh, just a little, little bit glad!

I'd slammed the door behind me--the old place is out of repair and the
door won't shut except with a bang--and I had just squatted down on the
floor to unbutton my high shoes, when I noticed the chintz curtains in
front of the high dressing-box waver.  They must have moved just like
that when I was behind them months--it seems years--ago.  But, you see,
Topham had never served an apprenticeship behind curtains, so he didn't
suspect.

"Lordy, Nancy," I laughed to myself, "some one thinks you've got a rose
diamond and--"

And at that moment he parted the curtains and came out.

Yes--Tom--Tom Dorgan.

My heart came beating up to my throat and then, just as I thought I
should choke, it slid down to my boots, sickening me.  I didn't say a
word.  I sat there, my foot in my lap, staring at him.

Oh, Maggie-girl, it isn't good to get your first glimpse after all
these months of the man you love crouched like a big bull in a small
space, poking his close-cropped black head out like a turtle that's not
sure something won't be thrown at it, and then dragging his big bulk
out and standing over you.  He used to be trim--Tom--and taut, but in
those shapeless things, the old trousers, the dirty white shirt, and
the vest too big for him--

"Well," he said, "why don't you say something?"

Tom's voice--Mag, do you remember, the merry Irish boy's voice, with
its chuckles like a brook gurgling as it runs?

No--'tisn't the same voice.  It's--it's changed, Maggie.  It's heavy
and--and coarse--and--brutal.  That's what it is.  It sounds like--like
the knout, like--

"Nance--what in hell's--"

"I think I'm--frightened, Tom."

"Oh, the ladyfied airs of her!  Ain't you going to faint, Miss Olden?"

I got up.

"No--no.  Sit down, Tom.  Tell me about it.  How--how did you get here?"

He went to the door, opened it a bit and looked out cautiously.
Mag--Mag--it hurt me--that.  Why, do you suppose?

"You're sure nobody'll come in?" he asked.

I turned the key in the lock, forgetting that it didn't really lock.

"Oh, yes, I'm sure," I said.  "Why?"

"Why!  You have got slow.  Just because I didn't say good-by to them
fellows up at the Pen, and--"

"Oh!  You've escaped!"

"That's what.  First jail-break in fifteen years.  What d'ye think of
your Tommy, old girl, eh?  Ain't he the gamest?  Ain't you proud of
him?"

My God, Mag!  Proud of him.  He didn't know--he couldn't see--himself.
He, shut in like a wild beast, couldn't see what this year has done for
him.  Oh, the change--the change in him!  My boy Tommy, with the gay,
gallus manner, and the pretty, jolly brogue, and the laughing mouth
under his brown mustache.  And this man--his face is old, Mag,
old--oh!--and hard--and--and tough, cheap and tough.  There's something
in his eyes now and about his shaven mouth--oh, Maggie, Maggie!

"Look here, Nance."  He caught me by the shoulders, knocking up my chin
so that he could look down squarely at me.  "What's your graft?  What's
it to be between us?  What've ye been doing all this time?  Out with
it!  I want to know."

I shook myself free and faced him.

"I've been--Tom Dorgan, I've been to hear the greatest actors and
actresses in the world say and do the finest things in the world.  I've
watched princesses and kings--even if they're only stage ones.  I've
read a new book every night--a great picture book, in which the
pictures move and speak--that's the stage, Tom Dorgan.  Much of it
wasn't true, but a girl who's been brought up by the Cruelty doesn't
have to be told what's true and what's false.  I've met these people
and lived with them--as one does who thinks the same thoughts and feels
what others feel.  I know the world now, Tom Dorgan, the real world of
men and women--not the little world of crooks, nor yet the littler one
of fairy stories. I've got a glimpse, too, of that other world where
all the scheming and lying and cheating is changed as if by magic into
something that deceives all right, but doesn't hurt.  It's the world of
art and artists, Tom Dorgan, where people paint their lies, or write
them, or act them; where they lift money all right from men's pockets,
but lift their souls and their lives, too, away from the things that
trouble and bore and--and degrade.

"You needn't sneer; it's made a different Nance out of me, Tom Dorgan.
And, oh, but I'm sorry for the pert little beggar we both knew that
lied and stole and hid and ran and skulked!  She was like a poor little
ignorant traveler in a great country where she'd sized up the world
from the few fool crooks she was thrown in with.  She--"

"Aw, cut it!"

"Tom--does--doesn't it mean anything to you?  Can't it mean lots to
both of us now that--"

"Cut it, I tell you!  Think I killed one guard and beat the other till
I'd broke every bone in his body to come here and listen to such guff?
You've been having a high old time, eh, and you never give a thought to
me up there!  I might 'a' rotted in that black hole for all you'd care,
you--"

"Don't!  I did, Tom; I did."  I was shivering at the name, but I
couldn't bear his thinking that way of me.  "I went up once, but they
wouldn't let me see you.  I wrote you, but they sent back the letters.
Mag went up, too, but had to come back.  And that time I brought you--"

My voice trailed off.  In that minute I saw myself on the way up to
Sing Sing with the basket and all my hopes and all my schemes for
amusing him.

And this is what I'd have seen if they'd let me in--this big, gruff,
murdering beast!

Oh, yes--yes--beast is what he is, and it didn't make him look it less
that he believed me and--and began to think of me in a different way.

"I thought you wouldn't go back on a feller, Nance.  That's why I come
straight to you.  It was my game to have you hide me for a day or two,
till you could make a strike somewhere and we'd light out together.
How're ye fixed?  Pretty smart, eh?  You look it, my girl, you look--My
eye, Nance, you look good enough to eat, and I'm hungry for you!"

Maggie, if I'd had to die for it I couldn't have moved then. You'd
think a man would know when the woman he's holding in his arms is
fainting--sick at the touch of him.  A woman would.  It wasn't my Tom
that I'd known, that I'd worked with and played with and--It was a
great brute, whose mouth--who had no eyes, no ears, no senses but--ah!...

He laughed when I broke away from him at last.  He laughed!  And I knew
then I'd have to tell him straight in words.

"Tom," I gasped, "you can have all I've got; and it's plenty to get you
out of the way.  But--but you can't have--me--any more. That's--done!"

Oh, the beast in his face!  It must have looked like that when the
guard got his last glimpse of it.

"You're kiddin' me?" he growled.

I shook my head.

Then he ripped it out.  Said the worst he could and ended with a curse!
The blood boiled in me.  The old Nance never stood that; she used to
sneer at other women who did.

"Get out of here!" I cried.  "Go--go, Tom Dorgan.  I'll send every cent
I've got to you to Mother Douty's within two hours, but don't you
dare--"

"Don't YOU dare, you she-devil!  Just make up your mind to drop these
newfangled airs, and mighty quick.  I tell you you'll come with me
'cause I need you and I want you, and I want you now.  And I'll keep
you when once I get you again.  We'll hang together.  No more o' this
one-sided lay-out for me, where you get all the soft and it's me for
the hard.  You belong to me.  Yes, you do.  Just think back a bit,
Nance Olden, and remember the kind of customer I am.  If you've forgot,
just let me remind you that what I know would put you behind bars, my
lady, and it shall, I swear, if I've got to go to the Chair for it!"

Tom!  It was Tom talking that way to me.  I couldn't bear it. I made a
rush for the door.

He got there, too, and catching me by the shoulder, he lifted his fist.

But it never fell, Mag.  I think I could kill a man who struck me. But
just as I shut my eyes and shivered away from him, while I waited for
the blow, a knock came at the door and Fred Obermuller walked in.

"Eh?  Oh!  Excuse me.  I didn't know there was anybody else.  Nance,
your face is ghastly.  What's up?" he said sharply.

He looked from me to Tom--Tom, standing off there ready to spring on
him, to dart past him, to fly out of the window--ready for anything;
only waiting to know what the thing was to be.

My senses came back to me then.  The sight of Obermuller, with those
keen, quick eyes behind his glasses, his strong, square chin, and the
whole poise of his head and body that makes men wait to hear what he
has to say; the knowledge that that man was my friend, mine--Nancy
Olden's--lifted me out of the mud I'd sunk back in, and put my feet
again on a level with his.

"Tom," I said slowly, "Mr. Obermuller is a friend of mine. No--listen!
What we've been talking about is settled.  Don't bring it up again.  It
doesn't interest him and it can't change me; I swear to you, it can't;
nothing can.  I'm going to ask Mr. Obermuller to help you without
telling him just what the scrape is, and--and I'm going to be sure that
he'll do it just because he--"

"Because you've taken up with him, have you?" Tom shouted savagely.
"Because she's your--"

"Tom!" I cried.

"Tom--oh, yes, now I remember."  Obermuller got between us as he spoke.
"Your friend up--in the country that you went to see and couldn't.  Not
a very good-looker, your friend, Nance. But--farming, I suppose,
Mr.--Tom?--plays the deuce with one's looks.  And another thing it
does: it makes a man forget sometimes just how to behave in town.  I'll
be charmed, Mr. Tom, to oblige a friend of Miss Olden's; but I must
insist that he does not talk like a--farmer."

He was quite close to Tom when he finished, and Tom was glaring up at
him.  And, Mag, I didn't know which one I was most afraid for.  Don't
you look at me that way, Mag Monahan, and don't you dare to guess
anything!

"If you think," growled Tom, "that I'm going to let you get off with
the girl, you're mighty--"

"Now, I've told you not to say that.  The reason I'll do the thing
she's going to ask of me--if it's what I think it is--is because this
girl's a plucky little creature with a soul big enough to lift her out
of the muck you probably helped her into. It's because she's got
brains, talent, and a heart.  It's because--well, it's because I feel
like it, and she deserves a friend."

"You don't know what she is."  It was a snarl from Tom.  "You don't--"

"Oh, yes, I do; you cur!  I know what she was, too.  And I even know
what she will be; but that doesn't concern you."

"The hell it don't!"

Obermuller turned his back on him.  I was dumb and still.  Tom Dorgan
had struck me after all.

"What is it you want me to do, Nance?" Obermuller asked.

"Get him away on a steamer--quick," I murmured--I couldn't look him in
the face--"without asking why, or what his name is."

He turned to Tom.  "Well?"

"I won't go--not without her."

"Because you're so fond of her, eh?  So fond, your first thought on
quitting the--country was to come here to get her in trouble. If you've
been traced--"

"Ah!  You wouldn't like that, eh?" sneered Tom.  "Would you?"

"Well, I've had my share of it.  And she ain't.  Still--I ... Just what
would it be worth to you to have me out of the way?"

"Oh, Tom--Tom--" I cried.

But Obermuller got in front of me.

"It would be worth exactly one dollar and seventy-five cents. I think
it will amount to about that for cab-hire.  I guess the cars aren't any
too safe for you, or it might be less.  It may amount to something more
before I get you shipped before the mast on the first foreign-bound
boat.  But what's more important," he added, bringing his fist down
with a mighty thump on the table, "you have just ten seconds to make up
your mind.  At the end of that time I'll ring for the police."

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

I went down to the boat to see it sail, Mag, at seven this morning.
No, not to say good-by to him.  He didn't know I was there.  It was to
say good-by to my old Tommy; the one I loved. Truly I did love him,
Mag, though he never cared for me.  No, he didn't.  Men don't pull down
the women they love; I know that now. If Tom Dorgan had ever cared for
me he wouldn't have made a thief of me.  If he'd cared, the last place
on earth he'd have come to, when he knew the detectives would be on his
track, would have been just the first place he made for.  If he'd
cared, he--

But it's done, Mag.  It's all over.  Cheap--that's what he is, this Tom
Dorgan.  Cheaply bad--a cheap bully, cheap-brained.  Remember my
wishing he'd have been a ventriloquist?  Why, that man that tried to
sell me to Obermuller hasn't sense enough to be a good scene-shifter.
Oh--

The firm of Dorgan & Olden is dissolved, Mag.  The retiring partner has
gone into the theatrical business.  As for Dorgan--the real one, poor
fellow!  jolly, handsome, big Tom Dorgan--he died. Yes, he died,
Maggie, and was buried up there in the prison graveyard.  A hard lot
for a boy; but it's not the worst thing that can happen to him.  He
might become a man; such a man as that fellow that sailed away before
the mast this morning.



X.

There I was seated in a box all alone--Miss Nancy Olden, by courtesy of
the management, come to listen to the leading lady sing coon-songs,
that I might add her to my collection of take-offs.

She's a fat leading lady, very fair and nearly fifty, I guess. But
she's got a rollicking, husky voice in her fat throat that's sung the
dollars down deep into her pockets.  They say she's planted them deeper
still--in the foundations of apartment houses--and that now she's the
richest roly-poly on the Rialto.

Do you know, Maggie darlin', what I was saying to myself there in the
box, while I watched the stage and waited for Obermuller?  He said he'd
drop in later, perhaps.

"Nance," I said, "I kind of fancy that apartment sort of idea myself.
They tell you, Nancy, that when you've got the artistic temperament,
that that's all you'll ever have.  But there's a chance--one in a
hundred--for a body to get that temperament mixed with a business
instinct.  It doesn't often happen.  But when it does the result
is--dollars.  It may be, Nance--I shrewdly suspect it is a fact that
you've got that marvelous mixture.  Your early successes, Miss Olden,
in another profession that I needn't name, would encourage the idea
that you're not all heart and no head.  I think, Nance, I shall have
you mimic the artists during working hours and the business men when
you're at play.  I fancy apartment houses.  They appeal to me.  We'll
call one 'The Nancy' and another 'Olden Hall' and another..."

"What'll I call the third apartment house, Mr. O?" I asked aloud, as I
heard the rings on the portiere behind me click.

He didn't answer.

Without turning my head I repeated the question. And
yet--suddenly--before he could have answered, I knew something was
wrong.

I turned.  And in that moment a man took the seat beside me and another
stood facing me, with his back against the portieres.

"Miss Olden?" the man beside me asked.

"Yes."

"Nance Olden, the mimic, who entertains at private houses?"

I nodded.

"You--you were at Mrs. Paul Gates' just a week ago, and you gave your
specialties there?"

"Yes--yes, what is it you want?"

He was a little man, but very muscular.  I could note the play of his
muscles even in the slight motion he made as he turned his body so as
to get between me and the audience, while he leaned toward me, watching
me intently with his small, quick, blue eyes.

"We don't want to make any scene here," he said very low.  "We want to
do it up as quietly as we can.  There might be some mistake, you know,
and then you'd be sorry.  So should we.  I hope you'll be reasonable
and it'll be all the better for you because--"

"What are you talk--what--" I looked from him to the other fellow
behind us.

He leaned a bit farther forward then, and pulling his coat partly open,
he showed me a detective's badge.  And the other man quickly did the
same.

I sat back in my chair.  The fat star on the stage, with her big mouth
and big baby-face, was doing a cake-walk up and down close to the
footlights, yelling the chorus of her song.

I'll never mimic that song, Mag, although I can see her and hear it as
plain as though I'd listened and watched her all my life. But there's
no fun in it for me.  I hate the very bars the orchestra plays before
she begins to sing.  I can't bear even to think of the words.  The
whole of it is full of horrible things--it smells of the jail--it looks
like stripes--it ...

"You're not going to faint?" asked the man, moving closer to me.

"Me?  I never fainted in my life...  Where is he now--Tom Dorgan?"

"Tom Dorgan!"

"Yes.  I was sure I saw him sail, but, of course, I was mistaken. He
has sent you after me, has he?  I can hardly believe it of
Tom--even--even yet."

"I don't know anything that connects you with Dorgan.  If he was in
with you on this, you'd better remember, before you say anything more,
that it'll all be used against you."

The curtain had gone down and gone up again.  I was watching the star.
She has such a boyish way of nodding her head, instead of bowing, after
she waddles out to the center; and every time she wipes her lips with
her lace handkerchief, as though she'd just taken one of the cocktails
she makes in the play with all the skill of a bartender.  I found
myself doing the same thing--wiping my lips with that very same
gesture, as though I had a fat, bare forearm like a rolling-pin--when
all at once the thought came to me: "You needn't bother, Nancy.  It's
all up.  You won't have any use for it all."

"Just what is the charge?" I asked, turning to the man beside me.

"Stealing a purse containing three hundred dollars from Mrs. Paul
Gates' house on the night of April twenty-seventh."

"What!"

It was Obermuller.  He had pushed the curtains aside; the crashing of
the orchestra had prevented our hearing the clatter of the rings.  He
had pushed by the man standing there, had come in and--he had heard.

"Nance!" he cried.  "I don't believe a word of it."  He turned in his
quick way to the men.  "What are your orders?"

"To take her to her flat and search it."

Obermuller came over to me then, and took my hand for a minute.

"It's a pity they don't know about the Gray rose diamond," he
whispered, helping me on with my jacket.  "They'd see how silly this
little three-hundred dollar business is....  Brace up, Nance Olden!"

Oh, Mag, Mag, to hear a man like that talk to you as though you were
his kind, when you have the feel of the coarse prison stripes between
your dry, shaking fingers, and the close prison smell is already
poisoning your nostrils!

"I don't see--" my voice shook--"how you can believe--in me."

"Don't you?" he laughed.  "That's easy.  You've got brains, Nance, and
the most imbecile thing you could do just now, when your foot is
already on the ladder, would be just this--to get off in order to pick
up a trinket out of the mud, when there's a fortune up at the top
waiting for you.  Clever people don't do asinine things.  And other
clever people know that they don't. You're clever, but so am I--in my
weak, small way.  Come along, little girl."

He pulled my hand in his arm and we walked out, followed by the two men.

Oh, no!  It was all very quiet and looked just like a little theater
party that had an early supper engagement.  Obermuller nodded to the
manager out in the deserted lobby, who stopped us and asked me what I
thought of the star.

You'll think me mad, Mag.  Those fellows with the badges were sure I
was, but Obermuller's eyes only twinkled, and the manager's grin grew
broad when, catching up the end of my skirt and cake-walking up and
down, I sang under my breath that coon-song that was trailing over and
over through my head.

"Bravo!  bravo!" whispered the manager, hoarsely, clapping his hands
softly.

I gave one of those quick, funny, boyish nods the star inside affects
and wiped my lips with my handkerchief.

That brought down my house.  Even the biggest fellow with the badge
giggled recognizingly, and then put his hand quickly in front of his
mouth and tried to look severe and official.

The color had come back to Obermuller's face; it was worth dancing
for--that.

"Be patient, Mag; let me tell it my way."

There wasn't room in the coupe waiting out in front for more than two.
So Obermuller couldn't come in it.  But he put me in--Mag, dear, dear
Mag--he put me in as if I was a lady--not like Gray; a real one.  A
thing like that counts when two detectives are watching.  It counted
afterward in the way they treated me.

The big man climbed up on the seat with the driver.  The blue-eyed
fellow got in and sat beside me, closing the door.

"I'll be out there almost as soon as you are," Obermuller said,
standing a moment beside the lowered window.

"You good fellow!" I said, and then, trying to laugh: "I'll do as much
for you some day."

He shook his fist laughingly at me, and I waved my hand as we drove of.

"You know, Miss, there may be some mistake about this," said the man
next to me, "and--"

"Yes, there may be.  In fact, there is."

"I'm sure I'll be very glad if it is a mistake.  They do happen--though
not often.  You spoke of Dorgan--"

"Did I?"

"Yes, Tom Dorgan, who busted out of Sing Sing the other day."

"Surely you're mistaken," I said, smiling right into his blue eyes.
"The Tom Dorgan I mentioned is a sleight-of-hand performer at the
Vaudeville.  Ever see him?"

"N--no."

"Clever fellow.  You ought to.  Perhaps you don't recognize him under
that name.  On the bills he's Professor Haughwout.  Stage people have
so many names, you know."

"Yes, so have--some other people."

I laughed, and he grinned back at me.

"Now that's mean of you," I said; "I never had but one.  It was all I
needed."

It flashed through me then what a thing like this might do to a name.
You know, Mag, every bit of recognition an actress steals from the
world is so much capital.  It isn't like the old graft when you had to
begin new every time you took up a piece of work. And your name--the
name the world knows--and its knowing it makes it worth having like
everything--that name is the sum of every scheme you've planned, of
every time you've got away with the goods, of every laugh you've
lifted, of every bit of cleverness you've thought out and embodied, of
everything that's in you, of everything you are.

But I didn't dare think long of this.  I turned to him.

"Tell me about this charge," I said.  "Where was the purse? Whose was
it?  And why haven't they missed it till after a week?"

"They missed it all right that night, but Mrs. Gates wanted it kept
quiet till the servants had been shadowed and it was positively proved
that they hadn't got away with it."

"And then she thought of me?"

"And then she thought of you."

"I wonder why?"

"Because you were the only person in that room except Mrs. Gates, the
lady who lost the purse, Mrs. Ramsay, and--eh?" "N--nothing.  Mrs.
Ramsay, you said?"

"Yes."

"Not Mrs. Edward Ramsay, of Philadelphia?"

"Oh, you know the name?"

"Oh, yes, I know it."

"It was printed, you know, in gold lettering on the inside flap and--"

"I don't know."

"Well, it was, and it contained three hundred dollars, Mrs. Ramsay
says.  She had slipped it under the fold of the spread at the top of
the bed in the room where you took off your things in Mrs. Gates'
presence, and put them on again when no one else was there."

"And you mean to tell me that this is all?" I raged at him; "that every
bit of evidence you have to warrant your treating an innocent girl
like--"

"You didn't behave like a very innocent girl, if you'll remember," he
said dryly, "when I first came into the box.  In fact, if that fellow
hadn't just come in then I believe you'd 'a' confessed the whole
job....  'Tain't too late," he added.

I didn't answer.  I put my head back against the cushions and closed my
eyes.  I could feel the scrutiny of his blue eyes on my naked
face--your face is so unprotected with the eyes closed; like a fort
whose battery is withdrawn.  But I was tired--it tires you when you
care.  A year ago, Mag, this sort of thing--the risk, the nearness to
danger, the chances one way or the other--would have intoxicated me.  I
used to feel as though I was dancing on a volcano and daring it to
explode.  The more twistings and turnings there were to the labyrinth,
the greater glory it was to get out. Maggie darlin', you have before
you a mournful spectacle--the degeneration of Nancy Olden.  It isn't
that she's lost courage. It's only that she used to be able to think of
only one thing, and now--What do you suppose it is, Mag?  If you know,
don't you dare to tell me.

When we got to the flat Obermuller was already there.  At the door I
pulled out my key and opened it with a flourish.

"Won't you come in, gentlemen, and spend the evening?" I asked.

They followed me in.  First to the parlor.  The two fellows threw off
their coats and searched that through and through--not a drawer did
they miss, not a bit of furniture did they fail to move.  Obermuller
and I sat there guying them as they pried about in their shirt-sleeves.
That Trust business has taken the life out of him of late.  All their
tricks, all their squeezings, their cheatings, their bossing and
bragging and bullying have got on to his nerves till he looks like a
chained bear getting a drubbing. And he swears that they're in a
conspiracy to freeze him and a few others like him out; he believes
there's actually a paper in existence that would prove it.  But this
affair of the purse seemed to excite him till he behaved like a bad
school-boy.

And I?  Well, Nance Olden was never far behind at the Cruelty when
there was anything going on.  We trailed after them, and when they'd
finished with the bedrooms--yours and mine--I asked the big fellow to
come into the kitchen with Mr. O.  and me, while the blue-eyed
detective tackled the dining-room, and I'd get up a lunch for us all.

Mag, you should have seen Fred Obermuller with a big apron on him,
dressing the salad while I was making sandwiches.  The Cruelty taught
me how to cook, even if it did teach me other things.  You wouldn't
have believed that the Trust had got him by the throat, and was choking
the last breath out of him.  You wouldn't have believed that our
salaries hadn't been paid for three weeks, that our houses were
dwindling every night, that--

I was thinking about it all there in the back of my head, trying to see
a way out of it--you know if there is such an agreement as Obermuller
swears there is, it's against the law--while we rattled on, the two of
us, like a couple of children on a picnic, when I heard a crash behind
me.

The salad bowl had slipped from Obermuller's fingers.  He stood with
his back turned to me, his eyes fixed upon that searching detective.

But he wasn't searching any more, Mag.  He was standing still as a
pointer that's scented game.  He had moved the lounge out from the
wall, and there on the floor, spread open where it had fallen, lay a
handsome elephant-skin purse, with gold corners. From where I stood,
Mag, I could read the plain gold lettering on the dark leather.  I
didn't have to move.  It was plain enough--quite plain.

Mrs. EDWARD RAMSAY

Hush, hush, Mag; if you take on so, how can I tell you the rest?

Obermuller got in front of me as I started to walk into the
dining-room.  I don't know what his idea was.  I don't suppose he does
exactly--if it wasn't to spare me the sight of that damned thing.

Oh, how I hated it, that purse!  I hated it as if it had been something
alive that could be glad of what it had done.  I wished it was alive
that I could tear and rend it and stamp on it and throw it in a fire,
and drag it out again, with burned and bleeding nails, to tear it again
and again.  I wanted to fall on it and hide it; to push it far, far
away out of sight; to stamp it down--down into the very bottom of the
earth, where it could feel the hell it was making for me.

But I only stood there, stupidly looking at it, having pushed past
Obermuller, as though I never wanted to see anything else.

And then I heard that blue-eyed fellow's words.

"Well," he said, pulling on his coat as though he'd done a good day's
work, "I guess you'd just better come along with me."



XI.

"Don't you think you'd better get out of this?" I asked Obermuller, as
he came into the station a few minutes after I got there.

"No."

"I do."

"Because?"

"Because it won't do you any good to have your name mixed up with a
thing like this."

"But it might do you some good."

I didn't answer for a minute after that.  I sat in my chair, my eyes
bent on the floor.  I counted the cracks between the chair and the
floor of the office where the Chief was busy with another case.  I
counted them six times, back and forth, till my eyes were clear and my
voice was steady.

"You're awfully good," I said, looking up at him as he stood by me.
"You're the best fellow I ever knew.  I didn't know men could be so
good to women...  But you'd better go--please.  It'll be bad enough
when the papers get hold of this, without having them lump you in with
a bad lot like me."

He put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a quick little shake.

"Don't say that about yourself.  You're not a bad lot."

"But--you saw the purse."

"Yes, I saw it.  But it hasn't proved anything to me but this: you're
innocent, Nance, or you're crazy.  If it's the first, I want to stand
by you, little girl.  If it's the second--good God! I've got to stand
by you harder than ever."

Can you see me sitting there, Mag, in the bright, bare little room,
with its electric lights, still in my white dress and big white hat, my
pretty jacket fallen on the floor beside me? I could feel the sharp
blue eyes of that detective Morris feeding on my miserable face.  But I
could feel, too, a warmth like wine poured into me from that big
fellow's voice.

I put my hand up to him and he took it.

"If I'm innocent and can prove it, Fred Obermuller, I'll get even with
you for--for this."

"Do you want to do something for me now?"

"Do I?"

"Well, if you want to help me, don't sit there looking like the
criminal ghost of the girl I know."

The blood rushed to my face.  Nance Olden, a sniveling coward!  Me,
showing the white feather--me, whimpering like a whipped
puppy--me--Nance Olden!

"You know," I smiled up at him, "I never did enjoy getting caught."

"Hush!  But that's better....  Tell me now--"

A buzzer sounded.  The blue-eyed detective got up and came over to me.

"Chief's ready," he said.  "This way.

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