“If I were you I’d catch a ferry for the Jersey [357] shore before daylight—they run all night, the ferries do. And as soon as I landed on the Jersey shore I’d catch a train for the West or the South or somewhere and I’d stay on it till it stopped, no matter how far it took me—the farther from this town the better. And for the time being I’d change my name—that’s my parting confidential advice to you. Good-bye. I’ve wasted more time already than I can spare.” And having, as he figured, chosen the proper moment for ringing off, Mr. Foxman accordingly rang off.
But he made sure of the last detail—this calculating, foreseeing, prudent man. It was less than six blocks from his club to Singlebury’s hotel. He drove the distance as speedily as a motor could carry him and, halting the taxi he had hired in the quiet street on the opposite side of the roadway, he, hidden in its interior, sat waiting and watching through the cab window; until, a little later, he saw Singlebury issue from the doorway of the Godey Arms, carrying a valise in his hand, saw him climb into a hansom cab and saw him drive away, heading westward.
By Mr. Foxman’s directions his own cab trailed the cab bearing the other right to the ferry. Not until his eyes had followed the diminishing figure of the reporter while it vanished into the ferry house did he give orders to his driver to take him home to his apartment. Seasoned and veteran nighthawk of the Tenderloin [358] that he was, the driver concerned himself not a bit with the peculiar conduct of any passenger of his. He did simply as he was told. If he was paid his legal fare and a sufficient tip besides, he could forget anything that happened while he and his chariot were under charter. For a sufficiently attractive bonus he would have winked at manslaughter. That was his code.
Being deposited at his home shortly before three A. M., Mr. Foxman became aware of a let-down sensation. With the strain relieved he felt the after-effects of the strain. He was sleepy and he was very tired; likewise very happy. Not a slip had occurred anywhere. Blake had been tractable and Singlebury had been credulous, and Hemburg, of course, had been obedient. The story would never see daylight, the big merger would be announced according to schedule, and Pearl Street common would go kiting up thirty or forty, or maybe fifty points. And he was loaded to the gunwales with the stock—bought at nineteen and three-quarters. For obvious reasons Blake would keep his mouth shut; for other reasons, just as good, Pratt, Bogardus and Murtha would keep their mouths closed too. They might, in private, indulge in a spell of wonderment, but they would do their wondering where no outsider overheard it—that was sure.
Hemburg, who travelled in an alcoholic maze anyhow, doing as he was told and asking no [359] questions, would not be apt to talk. Why should he talk? Moreover, upon some plausible excuse Mr. Foxman meant that Hemburg and The Clarion should shortly part company. General Lignum, happily, would be absent from the country for at least a month and possibly for six weeks. If by the time he returned he hadn’t forgotten all about the East Side traction business it would be easy enough to make him forget about it. Pulling wool over Lignum’s eyes should be the easiest of jobs. Lignum would be having his political ambitions to think about; one beat more or less would mean nothing to Lignum, who had no journalistic instincts or training anyway.
As for Singlebury—well, the coup by which that young man had been disposed of was the smartest trick of them all, so Mr. Foxman told himself. Every avenue leading to possible detection was closed up, blocked off and sealed shut. In any event he, Hobart Foxman, was bound to make his pile; it was highly probable that there would be no price to pay in the subsequent loss of Hobart Foxman’s professional reputation. He had been prepared, if need be, to surrender his good name in exchange for a fortune, but if he might have both—the name and the fortune—so much the better for Hobart Foxman.
He hummed a cheerful little tune as he undressed himself and got into bed. There he slept like a dead man until the long hand of the [360] clock had circled the clock face a good many times.
It was getting along toward eleven o’clock in the forenoon and the summer sunlight, slipping through chinks in the curtains at the windows of his bedroom, had patterned the bed covers with yellow stencillings
when Mr. Foxman awoke. For a spell he yawned and stretched. Then, in his slippers and his dressing gown, he went through the hall to the dining room to tell the maid out in the kitchen she might serve him his breakfast. According to the rule of the household copies of all the morning papers were lying at his place on the dining table. There was quite a sizable heap of them. The Clarion, folded across, made the topmost layer of the pile. Governed more by a habit of long standing than by any active desire to see what it contained, he picked it up and opened it out.
Out in the kitchen the maid heard some one in the dining room give a queer strangled cry. She came running. Her master stood in the middle of the floor with an opened newspaper in his two shaking hands. He didn’t seem to see her, didn’t seem to hear the astonished bleat which promptly she uttered; but above the rim of the printed sheet she saw his face. She saw it in the first instant of entering, and for sundry succeeding seconds saw nothing else. It was a face as white as so much chalk, and set [361] in it a pair of eyes that popped from their sockets and glared like two shiny, white-ringed, agate marbles, and at its lower end a jaw that lolled down until it threatened self-dislocation. The maid figured Mr. Foxman had been rendered suddenly and seriously unwell by something shocking he had found in the paper.