IV.—A RATHER SWIFT ADVENTURE WITH THE PIRATE
MIDWINTER had arrived when the checked current of our little history became active again. My wife had thought that our life in Pointview was a trifle sluggish, and we had been in town for two weeks. I had recommended the Waldorf-Castoria as being good for sluggish livers, but Betsey preferred the Manhattan. We were there when this telegram reached me from Chicago.
W. left for N. Y. this morning, broke. He will call on you. Important news by mail.
I expected to have some fun with him, and did.
The same mail brought the “important news” and a note from Wilton, which said:
I must see you within twenty-four hours. The need is pressing. Please wire appointment.
Many salient points in the career of Wilton lay before me. It's singular how much it may cost to learn the history of one little man. For half the sum that I was to pay for Wilton's record a commonplace intellect should have been able to acquire every important fact in the history of the world. Wilton, whose real name was Muggs, was wanted in Mexico for grand larceny, and very grand larceny at that, for he had absconded twelve years before with twenty thousand dollars belonging to the business in which he had been engaged. They had got their clue from a letter which he had carelessly left in his coat-pocket when he entered a Turkish bath, but of that part of the matter I need say no more. It was quite likely that he was wanted in other places, but this was want enough for my purpose.
It was Saturday, and Betsey had gone to Pointview; I was to follow her that evening for the week-end. No fog that day. The sun was shining in clear air.
When Wilton came my program had been arranged. It began as soon as he entered my room. The cat was purring when suddenly the dog jumped at her. It was the dog in my voice as I said:
“Good morning, you busted philanthropist! Why didn't you tell me at once that your name was Muggs. You might have saved me the expense of employing a dozen detectives to learn what you could have told me in five minutes. As a saint you're a failure. Why didn't you tell me that they wanted you down in Mexico?”
The cat was gone—jumped out of the open window, perhaps. I never saw her again. Muggs stood unmasked before me. He was a man now. His face changed color. His right hand went up to his brow, and then, as if wondering what it was there for, began deftly smoothing his hair, while his lower lip came up to the tips of his cropped mustache. His eyelids quivered slightly. The fingers in that telltale hand began to tremble like a flag of distress.
In a second, before he had time to recover, I swung again, and very vigorously.
“If you're going to save yourself you haven't a minute to lose. The detectives want that reward, and they're after you. They telephoned me not ten minutes ago. I'll do what I can for you, but I make one condition.”
“Excuse me,” he said, as he pulled himself together. “I didn't know that you had such a taste for history.”
“I love to study the history of philanthropists,” I said. “Yours thrilled me. I couldn't stop till I got to this minute. You're just beginning a new chapter, and I want you to give it a heading right now. Shall it be 'Prison Life' or 'In the Way of Reform'?”
Again the man spoke.
“As God's my witness, I want to live honest,” said he.
“Then I'll try to help you.”
I have always thought with admiration of his calmness as he looked down at me with a face that said, “I surrender,” and a tongue that said:
“May I use your bath-room for one minute?”
“Certainly,” was my answer.
He entered the bath-room and closed its door behind him.
I had begun to fear that he might have rashly decided to jump into eternity from my bath-room when he reappeared with no mustache and a gray beard on his chin. Then, as if by chance, he took my hat and gray summer top-coat from the peg, where they had been hanging, said “Good-by,” and walked hurriedly out of my door and down the corridor.
I had hesitated a little between my duty to Mexico and my duty to Norris, but I felt, and rightly, as I believe, that my client should come first, for I am rather human. But how about the reward? I thought. Well, that was none of my funeral. Shorn of his pull, he was now in the thorny path of the fugitive, and so I let him go.
I tried to work, but work was out of the question for me that morning. I went for a walk, and on my return sat down with my paper. Among the items in its cable news was the following:
Whitfield Norris and his family are at the Grand Hotel in Rome. His daughter, Miss Gwendolyn, whose beauty and wealth, as well as her amiable disposition, have attracted many suitors, is said to be engaged to the young Count Carola.
What I said to myself is not one of the things which should appear in a book, and I wish only to suggest enough of it here to put me on record.
Soon after one o'clock I was called to the 'phone by my secretary, who had followed Muggs when he left my room. At the time I gave my man his orders I did not know, of course, how my interview would turn out, and so, with a lawyer's prudence, I had decided to keep track of Muggs. When he settled down or left the city my young man was to report, and so:
“Hello,” came his voice on the telephone.
“Hello! What news?” I asked.
“Our friend has just sailed on the Caronia for England.”
“All right,” I said, and then: “Hold on! Find out if there is a fast ship sailing to-night, and if so engage good quarters for two.”
I sat down to get my breath.
“How deft and wonderful!” I whispered. “It takes a good lawyer to keep up with him.”
The man was on his way to Italy for another whack at Norris, and I had been thinking that he was broke. He would resume his philanthropic rôle in Italy and probably scare Norris to death. He had, of course, read that fool item in some paper. There was but one thing for me to do: I must get there first and meet him in the corridor of the Grand Hotel upon his arrival. Fortunately, my business was pretty well cleaned up in preparation for a long rest of which we had been talking.
I telephoned to Betsey that we should probably go abroad that night and that she must get her trunks packed and on the way to the city as soon as possible.
“But my summer clothes are not ready!” she exclaimed.
“Never mind clothes,” I answered. “Breech-cloths will do until we can get to Europe, and there's any amount of clothing for sale on the other side of the pond. Chuck some things into a couple of trunks and stamp 'em down and come on. We'll meet here at six.”
Then I thought of my talk with Gwendolyn, and telephoned to young Forbes and told him that I was going to Italy, and asked:
“Any message to send?”
“Sure,” said he. “I'll come down to see you.”
“We dine at seven,” I said.
“Put on a plate for me,” he requested.
I had scarcely hung up the receiver when the bell rang and my secretary notified me that he had engaged a good room on the Toltec, and would be at my hotel in twenty minutes.
I went down to the office and wrote a cablegram to Norris, in which I said that we were going over to see the country and would call on him within ten days.
To pay the charges I took out my pocket-book. There was no money in it. What had happened to me? There had been two one-hundred-dollar bills in the book when I had paid for last evening's dinner; now it held nothing but a slip of paper neatly folded. I opened it and read these words written with a pencil:
Thanks. This is the last call. M.
Then I remembered that yesterday's trousers had been hanging in the bath-room with my money in the right-hand pocket when Muggs was there. I had got the book and taken it with me when I went for a walk.
“He may be a busted philanthropist, but he's not a busted thief,” I mused.