In despair, he tried the lock of Tamms’s private box. To his astonishment it opened at the touch. With an intense relief, he saw it was full of papers. Far-sighted Tamms had foreseen this, too.
But the relief was short-lived. The papers were nothing but insurance policies, contracts of no money value, leases of real estate, and a deed of a pew in Tamms’s church. Could Tamms have taken the other papers with him to raise the money on himself? In his despair he tried old Mr. Townley’s box. This also was not locked. But, to his horror, he found that it was quite empty. Empty? His head swam, and the open box seemed to yawn before his eyes like some black pit. He even dragged down Mr. Townley’s box marked Trusts. That was empty too.
Charlie ran back to the office, streaming with a cold sweat of terror. His last hope—that Tamms would be there—proved equally vain. That ingenious person had not been heard from since the morning.
At three o’clock, the doors of Townley & Tamms, successors to Charles Townley & Son, which had not been closed in a business day before since sixty-eight years, were shut. And a notice, posted on the outer iron rail of the office, in Mr. Adolph Lauer’s neat writing, informed their creditors that the old firm were “temporarily unable to meet their obligations.”
But the “ticker” went on relentlessly through the afternoon; and the scared clerks, reading it, abandoning all other business, brought Charlie news, from time to time, of the great panic that was in the board; how Allegheny Central went to fifty; how even Starbuck Oil could find no purchasers. And while many a quiet home throughout the land was as yet undisturbed, little recking that the great railroad on which they had lived so long was at last insolvent, Charlie Townley sate doggedly in his barred office, hoping vainly for Mr. Tamms, or puzzling, equally vainly, how to meet the million that they owed that day, with his thousand shares of Starbuck Oil.
From time to time, he would lay down the hopeless task to think of the ball, that evening. Now he could not dare to go. Even he could not venture to ask a woman’s hand on the day that all the world knew he was ruined. Ruined—aye, and fraudulently. Where were Mr. Townley’s trusts that he so long had kept so well? In Tamms’s pocket, perhaps, flying with these, too, to Canada. There was a swarm of reporters pressing at the door; vociferating for a member of the firm. The noise at last attracted his attention; and he went out and told them, with as calm a face as he could wear, that Mr. Tamms was absent; but on the morrow when he returned, all would be made good. But Charlie knew well that Phineas Tamms would never return to the house of Townley & Tamms. He sent a despatch for Mr. Townley, however, and waited; and worked over the weary figures, once more, till after midnight.
And this was how he spent the evening, while poor Mamie was watching for him, vainly, at the ball.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE DUVAL BALL.
THE evening of the great ball has come, at last; all the preparations have been made to the very last touch; the thousand orchids have arrived, that are to fade away their costly blooms in this one evening’s pleasure; brought from forests of the Amazon, where, perhaps they saw no brighter colors and heard no louder chattering of bird or biped than they will to-night. And the fifty imported footmen have arrived also and cased their faultless calves in white silk stockings; and old Antoine is sitting in his private “library,” smoking, with his ashcup upon the billiard-table that is the chief furniture of that apartment; and his daughter Mrs. De Witt, still sleeping in her dressing-room, or trying to; but her sleep is troubled with her gorgeous dreams.