"The keys to the office, sir. Miss Fortune left quite suddenly and requested me to deliver them to you."
"Where'd she go?" he asked, and, not getting an answer, he burst into a fit of cursing. He could see it all now. She had not gone for an operation, she had gone because she was mad. She was jealous, and that was her way of showing it—she had gone off and left him in a hole. He ought to have known from that look in her eye and the polite, smiling way she talked. Now he was tied to the mast and if he went to New York he would have to turn over the mine to Jepson! And that would give Jepson just the chance he wanted to jump the Old Juan claim.
For a man who was worth fifty million dollars and could claim a whole town for his friends Rimrock put in a most miserable night as he dwelt on this blow to his hopes. He was like a man checkmated at chess—every way he turned he was sure to lose if he moved. For the chance of winning a hypothetical two thousand shares, which Stoddard was supposed to have sold to Mrs. Hardesty, he had thrown away and lost forever his control over Mary Fortune's stock. Now, if he followed after her and tried to make his peace, he might lose his chance with Mrs. Hardesty as well; and if he stayed with her Mary was fully capable of throwing her vote with Stoddard's. It was more than her stock, it was her director's vote that he needed above everything else!
Rimrock paced up and down in his untidy room and struggled to find a way out. With Mary gone he could not even vote a dividend unless he came to an agreement with Stoddard. He could not get the money to carry out his plans, not even when it lay in bank. He could not appoint a new secretary, to carry on the work while he made his trip to New York. He couldn't do anything but stay right there and wait until he heard from her!
It was a humiliating position for a man to find himself in, and especially after his talk with Mrs. Hardesty. Perhaps he had not considered the ways and means very carefully, but he had promised her to go back to New York. A man like him, with his genius for finance and his masterful control of men, a man who could rise in a single year from a prospector to a copper king; such a man was wasted in provincial Arizona—his place was in Wall Street, New York. So she had said that night when they sat close together and their souls sought the high empyrean of dreams—and now he was balked by a woman. Master of men he was, and king of finance he might be, but woman was still his bane.
He looked at it again by the cold light of day and that night he appealed to Mrs. Hardesty. She was a woman herself, and wise in the ways of jealousy, intrigue and love. A single word from her and this impenetrable mystery might be cleared up like mist before the sun. And she ought to help him because it was through her, indirectly, that all this trouble had occurred. Until her arrival there had never been a moment when he had seriously worried over Mary. She had scolded, of course, about his gambling and drinking and they had had their bad half hours, off and on; but never for an instant had there been the suggestion of a break in their business affairs. About that, at least, she had always been reasonable; but now she was capable of anything. It would not surprise him to get a telegram from Stoddard that he was coming out to take over the control; nor to discover later, across the directors' table, Mary Fortune sitting grimly by. He knew her too well! If she once got started! But he passed—it was up to Mrs. Hardesty.
They met at dinner, the lady being indisposed during the day as a result of their strenuous trip, but she came down now, floating gracefully in soft draperies and Rimrock knew why he had built those broad stairs. He had thought, in jail, that he was building them for Mary, but they were for Mrs. Hardesty after all. She was a queen no less in her filmy gown than in the tiger-skin cloak that she wore, and Rimrock dared to use the same compliment on her that he had coined for Mary Fortune. They dined together in a secluded corner on the best that the chef could produce—and for a Chinaman, he accomplished miracles—but Rimrock said nothing of his troubles. The talk was wholly of gay, distant New York, and of the conflict that was forming there.
For a woman of society, compelled by her widowhood to manage her own affairs, it was wonderful to Rimrock how much she knew of the intricacies of the stock market and of the Exchange. There was not a financier or a broker of note that she did not know by name, and the complex ways by which they achieved their ends were an open book to her. Even Whitney H. Stoddard was known to her personally—the shrewdest intriguer of them all—and yet he, so she said, had a human side to him and let her in on occasional deals. He had been a close friend of her husband, in their boyhood, and that probably accounted for the fact; otherwise he would never have sold her that Tecolote.
"But he's got a string on it," suggested Rimrock shrewdly; but she only drooped her eyelashes and smiled.
"I never carry gossip between rivals," she said. "They might fly at each other's throats. You don't like Mr. Stoddard. Very well, he doesn't like you. He thinks you're flighty and extravagant. But is that any reason why we shouldn't be friends—or why my stock isn't perfectly good?"