CHAPTER VIII

The letter continued to be an interesting subject of speculation to the detective. His theory that Gorham had burned his own theatre, and that the boy, being a party to the crime or having knowledge of it, was seeking to extort money, had taken a strong hold upon him. He was determined to discover the contents of that letter.

Of course no one as yet except the chief of police knew that suspicions of Mr. Gorham were entertained. As the manager was a man of wealth and, in that sense, of influence and position, it was necessary to observe great caution in proceeding. The merest whisper of such suspicion would offer deadly offense to Gorham if he were innocent, and doubtless would entail consequences yet more serious to any speculator on the subject. If on the contrary he were guilty, it would be wise not to give him the alarm prematurely. Therefore very quietly and furtively did the detective address himself to the duty of investigating Gorham.

In common with most people connected with the theatre, Mr. Gorham was a late riser. These important events of the morning had happened before he was up. They had served to wake him earlier than usual. He had been informed of the suspicions against Ned, and being notified of his subsequent arrest, at once telephoned a lawyer and was thus present by his counsel at the examination.

The detective had become acquainted with some of his habits, and had learned that his letters, which before the fire were sent to his office at the theatre, were now left by his orders at the hotel where he lived. His business of late years had not been altogether satisfactory or successful, and he probably did not yearn for the contents of his letters as appetizers; he was wont to lay them aside unopened until breakfast was concluded.

The obliging waiter who served him at table had to this extent given him away, for and in consideration of a quarter of a dollar to him in hand paid by the detective. The attendant, however, mistook the officer for a creditor or a subscription agent merely, who wished to seize the manager at an auspicious moment when he might be made to pay up or subscribe or do something equally desperate.

The detective, the wily fox, had determined to be with Gorham at the instant when he should open Ned's letter.

"I'll ask to be allowed to read the letter, and I'll see how he takes that," thought the detective.

He contrived to meet Gorham in the corridor of the hotel just when he had finished his breakfast, and at once addressed him on the pretext of reporting the details of the investigation of the burning of the theatre, which the manager had joined the other sufferers by the fire in instituting, and the "shadowing" of the boy whom Pete had accused of entering the building with the avowed purpose of theft.

They walked while talking to the door of the hotel; and standing on the broad stone steps outside, Gorham paused to light his cigar. He listened to the particulars of the capture of the boy and the scenes in the committing magistrate's court without a show of feeling of any sort while he puffed his cigar into a glow. Then he threw the blazing match aside, thrust both hands into his pockets, and stared fixedly at the big, velvety red leaves of a hanging basket in a window hard by. His whole aspect was calculated to intimate to the detective that the recital was wearisome to the last degree and it would be well to have done with it.

How the wily fox watched him!

"He wrote a letter last night,--the boy did," the detective said slowly.

Gorham still stared absently at the great red, velvety leaves. He was satisfied with the amount for which the property was insured; he was busy with his plans for the future; he was already tired of the subject of the fire; he believed it the result of an accident or the carelessness of the night watchman. This official had testified at the trial that morning that an acquaintance, a minor employee of the theatre, a scene-shifter, passing on the street late in the night, had paused on the corner for a casual friendly word; he had been seized with the conviction that he smelled fire, and then opining that it issued from the basement of the theatre, he had accompanied the night watchman thither, and they were turning over the varied assortments in the property-room and hunting among the tangles of ropes and lifts and stage machinery, and examining the furnace-room and pervading the place while the house was actually in flames above their heads. The scene-shifter, too, had given testimony to the same effect. In this connection Gorham was recollecting the difficulty which he had experienced, in common with every householder perhaps, in forcing employees of whatever sort to observe even a minimum of caution in dealing with fire and lights. He thought the police were on a false scent and were magnifying the clue of the chance entrance of the boy--a child's device to steal a sight at a "show"--into a complicity with house-breakers and thieves and incendiaries.

The street was unusually quiet at this moment. Then a great transfer rattled by, its jarring turbulence filling the sunshine that blazed beyond the scalloped shadow of the awning, and calling up a hollow, tremulous echo from a cave which it was said lay under the town. What strange, high-colored dreams of the outside world must these prosaic vibrations take quivering into the darkened existence of the troglodytes--if any such mystic cave-dwellers could be here! What shadowy, picturesque fancies the echo led coyly out in the sunshine! The manager took his cigar from his lips and gazed pensively into the air. He had been thinking of trying the "spectacular" in a certain sort and on a grand scale when he should rebuild. Here was an idea,--some fantastic play, an opera perhaps, light but romantic, which should call for caverns, gnomes, grotesque conceits, subterranean splendors--all wrought with the newest mechanical contrivances and electric effects. He was trying to recall some story, some old romance, some half-forgotten heroic poem which would lend itself to these modern facilities of representation.

He would not have believed then that he was never to rebuild his theatre,--that in less than an hour the thought would be odious to him.

He was paying scant heed to the detective's words. The officer could but see that fact. The boy might burden the postal service with his missives for aught that Gorham cared. "Or else," thought the man of suspicion, "he is very cleverly pretending indifference."

"The letter was addressed to you," said the detective suddenly.

There was an abrupt change of manner.

"To me!" exclaimed Gorham sharply.

He thrust his cigar between his teeth and with a hasty gesture drew from his breast pocket the budget of letters which he had placed there unopened.

He instantly distinguished the aspect of Ned's letter from the others. He stared hard at the eccentric handwriting; then he ripped open the crumpled envelope. It contained half a dollar wrapped within a page evidently torn from an old copy-book, on which, without date or signature, two words were scrawled.

"_Conscience Money_," he read, amazed.

He looked from the bit of paper to the money. He looked from the money to the bit of paper. Then he handed both to the detective.

The detective silently gazed at the letter. With his head set inquiringly askew he looked more like a fox than ever,--very sly, very wise, so very wise as to appreciate that there are a few things--exceedingly few--which even _he_ could not explain.

For _this_ could not be construed as an attempt to _extort_ money!

The manager broke the silence with a laugh.

"I understand," he said. "This is the boy who says that he got into the theatre without paying--and it seems that his conscience nabbed him!"

And he laughed again.

His face changed as once more he fixed his eyes on the simple scrawl.

"And afterward he was arrested! Poor little chap!" he ejaculated gravely. And again, "Poor little chap!"

With a sudden look of determination, or rather of impulse, for Gorham rarely acted from deliberate intention, he set his hat firmly on his head, threw the half-smoked cigar into the gutter, and without another word strode off abruptly down the street, leaving the detective staring blankly after him.

With the same swift, resolute step Gorham presently took his way to a great, many-storied building, and paused at the office of a broker whose name was emblazoned on the glass door.

Here he pushed through the outer room, where several clerks, office-boys, and typewriters, a telephone, and a stock indicator seemed to be the presiding genii of the place. It was a very quiet day; there was an interval of stagnation in the market; and without ceremony he approached the inner door.

"Admission free?" he threw over his shoulder to a clerk, with an agreeable smile.

He hardly waited for the formal reply that Mr. Vanbigh was disengaged and would be pleased to see him. Gorham evidently had no doubts as to his welcome, for he opened the door of the inner room without so much as a tap on the panel.

Here he found at a desk a man still young, albeit his hair was whitened here and there and showed only a suggestion of its pristine auburn hue; his eyes were grave and had that steady, concentrated look characteristic of those who deal much with money in the abstract, as it were, as if they appreciated its elusive quality and fugitive tendency and kept a sharp lookout for unexpected vagaries. Nevertheless there was something in his aspect, even in the lines of his firm mouth, with its slightly compressed lips, that betokened geniality, and the tones of his voice were kind.

"Jim, I want you to do me a favor," said the manager without preamble.

He disregarded the chair close at hand and perched himself on the edge of the desk.

"You couldn't do me a greater favor than to ask one," said the broker, whose first thought was of course of the market, of bulls and bears, and he was prepared to do his utmost in the financial arena, for this was a friend whom he valued indeed. His well-controlled face changed as Gorham plunged into Ned's story; this was far from the sort of thing which he had expected, and taken by surprise he could not all at once adjust his mind to the point of view. He listened vaguely, perceiving no way in which this could concern any service that he could render Gorham, until at last the manager concluded with the blunt request,--

"Now Jim, I want you to go down and bail the little fellow."

The broker recoiled aghast. "_I?_ Why, the boy would jump the ranch! I should lose the money!"

The manager explained. "I'll stand in behind you. If the boy runs away and you have to pay the money I'll make it good. _I_ can't go on the bail-bond, you see, because it wouldn't do for me to appear as one of the prosecutors in the case and surety on the bond as well! Even if _I_ could get out of the case now against him, the other prosecutors would hold on to him."

Vanbigh said nothing. He looked at once surprised, distrustful, troubled.

Gorham talked on impulsively. "This is the first genuine case of conscience I have seen for many a year! Believe a boy who couldn't endure to chouse me out of half a dollar burned my theatre! No, sir! I tell you I have lived so long by sham heroics and sham sentiment--and I am so sick of shams, and the world is generally such a big, shameless sham--that I'm mighty apt to know a genuine thing when I see it by the sheer force of contrast. _That_ boy won't jump the town! A boy with all that conscience to carry _couldn't_ run away! He is innocent. And this is a terrible charge. He is helpless and he ought to be befriended. I want you to give bail for him!"

The broker was not only dubious--he was becoming greatly embarrassed as well.

"Suppose," he suggested in a constrained voice, "it should be discovered somehow that I am not acting for myself in bailing him, but for _you_."

Gorham snapped his fingers. "I don't care! I don't intend to leave that little boy to languish in jail for months, for a year perhaps, till his trial comes off. I tell you the idea of doing this little good turn freshens me all over. I feel as if I had been on a big drunk and somehow got a gourd of cold water from a little spring under a hillside, where I used to stop to drink when I was a boy driving the cows from the pasture. I _have_ been drunk,--on artificiality, and worldliness, and selfishness."

"But," remonstrated the broker. Then he paused.

"But what, man?" exclaimed Gorham impatiently.

The broker went red and was silent. Indeed, how could he find words to suggest seriously to a man of unblemished integrity that by this act of charity, as for mitigating circumstances men from sheer motives of humanity sometimes refuse to prosecute, he might compromise himself. He might be suspected of having connived at the burning of the theatre for the sake of the insurance money and then having secretly furnished bail for the captured accomplice for fear that the boy, if left in prison, would reveal and incriminate his principal.

"Oh, surely, surely,--no one could ever imagine such an absurdity!" thought Vanbigh, deeming this but a bit of over alert and captious caution.

Gorham was beginning to show unmistakable signs of anger, even offense. Yet he was only the more determined.

"Jim," he said in a different tone, "you and all your family have always protested yourselves under great obligations to me."

He paused as if for a reply.

"You know what we feel for you!" Vanbigh replied warmly. He lifted earnest eyes as he spoke.

For Gorham had been a schoolfellow of Vanbigh's elder brother, and although later in life they had drifted apart in point of association, there had always been that affectionate tie of old reminiscence between them. Only some two or three years earlier than the present they had chanced to meet in New Orleans, where they were lingering still at the time of the outbreak of one of the terrible pestilences of yellow fever. Gorham, when his friend succumbed, one of the first cases, nursed him like a brother, would not leave him, although he could then have escaped in the general panic-stricken exodus, never left him, indeed, for an instant, and after his death, being detained by the quarantine, contracted the infection and came very near death himself, alone and among strangers. People said that it was a mere impulse of Gorham's,--but the relatives of his friend felt and expressed great gratitude. He himself had never before mentioned it.

"I know what you all _said_," he remarked significantly. "I never doubted it before." He would have paid "good money" to an actor who could command a tone of so subtle an inflection as to make such a hit as that!

The broker rose and put on his hat.

"I shall not let you doubt it again!" he protested.

"You are a good fellow, Jim!" cried Gorham, with great satisfaction in carrying his point.

"But it must be understood that I cannot undertake to act for you, under the circumstances; if the boy takes flight I lose the money myself," Vanbigh resumed.

He was thinking himself justified in this after all. He could have the boy kept under surveillance without his knowledge, and at the first suspicious intimation of flight his bondsmen could surrender him. Vanbigh felt that he could hardly refuse Gorham aught in reason, and believing the boy innocent of the crime Gorham had evidently set his heart on bail for him. "But where am I to find another bondsman?" the broker exclaimed, realizing that these considerations would scarcely have weight with any other person. "The law, as you know, requires two sureties on the bond."

"Get Frank," suggested Gorham easily; for Frank was the broker's younger brother.

"Frank will kick like a mule!" Vanbigh said reflectively, rather wincing from the prospective fraternal conflict.

"Frank always kicks like a whole team!" commented Gorham. "But you can manage him."

The broker shook his head doubtfully. He appreciated, for indeed he had learned from experience, that a conflict with those of one's own household presents special and difficult belligerent elements. He was expectant of a controversy rather than disappointed by his brother Frank's attitude when, repairing to his residence for lunch, he broached the matter and requested the fraternal coöperation; for Frank promptly refused. Any disinterested spectator would have thought Frank the more formidable figure in any encounter, domestic or otherwise. Frank was an amateur athlete, and as he sat in the comfortable library lighting his cigar after luncheon, the contour of his strong, shapely limbs under his light fawn-tinted spring suit, the pose of his blond head on his broad shoulders, the strength of his grip suggested in the mere manner of using his fingers, in casting away the match, all intimated a muscular reserve power none the less formidably apparent for being relaxed.

"I am beholden to you, Jim," he replied satirically. "Seem to think I am insane!"

The windows of the room looked out upon the wide woodland vistas of the driving-park just across the street. The heavy velvet carpet, the antique tall bookcases of time-darkened mahogany that lined the walls, even the spacious mirror above the marble mantelpiece,--all were obviously relics of the past. The contour of the old-fashioned square brick house, faced with gray stone, bespoke its condition as overtaken by the march of municipal progress, rather than any choice of the fashionable site in the vicinity of the park. In fact it was the habit of the household to bewail the approach of the town, that in its swift strides and wealthy expansion had overhauled their quiet suburban home. But the approach of town had really worked them no harm, either material or sentimental. They were none the worse for the letter-box and lamp-post on the corner, and the splendid residences of the newcomers that made up the solid blocks of the vicinity had served to enormously enhance the value of the property. From the windows of the library and the drawing-rooms one might never know that the driving-park across the street was not still the "old woods" of years ago, save for the broad, smooth, well-kept roads winding deep among the vistas of the forest trees; and the sylvan tangles were no less picturesque now, because highly appreciated and carefully conserved by the taste of the park commissioners, than heretofore, when not considered at all. Even the sound of the town was but a dull murmur as it came in at the open windows; one could not discriminate the bang of the cable car which had set Jim down at the corner. They were to all intents and purposes as far away from city life and city thoughts as if the woodland opposite, that cast so welcome and soft a green shadow through the lace curtains and gave so verdant and vernal a sylvan view, were really a wilderness instead of its graceful simulacrum.

"It's just as well, perhaps, that nobody told Gorham that _he_ seemed insane when he fairly threw his life away, as he thought, rather than desert poor Phil,--who after all had no sort of claim on him," the broker replied, lighting his cigar also, but with quick, nervous gestures.

Frank was smoking hard. "Did you ask me to bail _Jasper Gorham_?" he demanded sarcastically, between two mighty puffs.

"I did _not_, indeed!" responded his brother, and then there was silence, save for a subdued clatter of dishes from the dining-room beyond a cross hall, and the sound of some pleasant feminine voices on a side veranda, upon which it opened.

Frank was more apathetic than his brother, and better held in hand, but nevertheless the tone of this rejoinder struck home.

"You ask me," Frank began to justify himself, holding his cigar to one side and waving the smoke from his head with his other hand,--"you ask me to play stalking-horse for Gorham, to _pretend_ to go on the bail-bond of this young criminal while Gorham is really his security."

"Frank," said the elder brother coolly, "I should really be warranted in throwing you out of the window."

"Lay hold!" said the athlete complacently.

Then there was silence for a time, and the two smoked quietly, now and again eying each other calmly, as if there had been no passage of arms between them.

The ladies were coming in from the veranda. Frank had a vague sensation of uneasiness. He was of that type of man who seeks to exclude women from the discussion of business and who doubts the propriety of their holding property in their own right, even more than the policy of extending to them the suffrage. But the broker's coolness in the feminine presence implied the conviction that after all it would be men who would control whatever extension of privilege the future might hold for women. He was contemplating even now an intention of enlisting the interest of these as against the fraternal kicker. It was he, therefore, who renewed the subject immediately upon their entrance.

"You are mistaken, Frank," he said. "I gave Jasper Gorham to understand distinctly that in any event we would act on our own responsibility, and lose any money that may be lost,--if the boy should escape surveillance."

"What is it that Mr. Gorham wants?" demanded their mother, younger of aspect than one would expect from the presence of these stalwart sons. Her hair was abundant, though white, and waved heavily back from a strong, sweet, animated face with fine, well-set blue eyes. She was clad still in a mourning dress in memory of the son who had perished in the pestilence, and her voice trembled on the syllables of the manager's name.

The younger lady paused, too, at the sound, and turned her head inquiringly. She wore a dainty house-gown, but even its tones were black and white. She had dark hair rolled _à la Pompadour_, and on her soft pink-and-white face was an incongruous expression of determination that glanced brightly, too, in her clear gray eyes. She had taken a baby of six months of age from a white-capped nurse, and was just consigning him to the arms of his uncle, for this was Jim's wife.

"Gorham wants to avoid imprisoning a boy--a mere child--who is somehow concerned in the fire and robbery--suspected of knowing something about the affair," explained the elder Vanbigh.

"Just like him!" cried both women, in a breath.

"Of course he will prosecute the little lad, if the evidence should warrant it, but he thinks it the unlikeliest thing in the world that the boy is guilty at all, and until there is more developed against the child he hates to lock him up for months and months! It would do no good for Gorham to refuse to prosecute him, for the other prosecutors would hold on to him. So the little boy has gone to jail. Gorham is terribly wrought up about it."

"But can't you arrange it somehow, James?" his mother asked. "I should so like for you to be able to do something for Mr. Gorham." She sighed as she spoke.

No adequate requital of their obligations had been possible, of course. They had not been able to further Gorham's plans in any respect. He was a rich man, and reputed even richer than he was. He had no speculative tendency outside of the theatrical business. As for social prestige, he was not of their sort, and their circle not his. In truth, he had not cared often to meet these tearful, exacting women, who regarded him as a hero, and whose ideals so far exceeded his imagination and his ambition.

"Gorham asked _me_ to go on the bail-bond," continued the broker, "although he said I should lose nothing if the boy absconds; but I wouldn't agree to that, and I asked Frank, for him,--but Frank wouldn't."

"Oh, _Frank_!" The poignant duet rose like a wail, and the athlete cowered behind his nephew's pink ribbon shoulder-knots and white frock as the child bounced and gurgled and squealed beguilingly at him.

"Do you think you are right to set them on me?" said the strong man weakly.

"Quit carousing with the baby and talk sense!" his brother adjured him.

"Oh, _Frank_! remember!" cried his mother in tears.

"Oh, _Frank_, money was nothing then! No friends, no help, every creature but Mr. Gorham fleeing from the plague-stricken!" cried Frank's sister-in-law.

"And how thoughtful for us--for _me_!--to remember and bring me my son's last words, his last messages!" The tears choked his mother's utterance.

"And then," said the younger woman, weeping in sympathy,--"to recall every incident,--the details of the treatment,--to make us feel that everything was done for poor Phil that we could have had done, had we been with him too! I don't see _how_ we could bear to think of Phil, except that Mr. Gorham was with him to the last."

"And listened to his latest sigh and closed his eyes in death!" said his mother.

"And then he almost died too; he risked his life--to make sure that Phil had every chance for his own! Oh,--_Frank_!"

"Yes, yes,--he followed him to the gates of death and was only turned back by a miracle, it seemed--oh, _Frank_!"

"But it can't be a question of money with Frank," said his sister-in-law, wiping her eyes. "_Frank_ would not stand on a question of mere money!"

"He thinks that we may be misconstrued," explained her husband. "And at first I was doubtful. But now it seems very plain. Gorham naturally does not want to keep this child cooped up in jail so long. He'll prosecute him fast enough if the boy seems to have really had anything to do with the crime or any guilty knowledge of it. But Gorham doesn't believe this. He thinks the facts will come out the sooner if the boy is footloose and free. Of course he will be kept under surveillance all the time, and could hardly run away if he wished. We are in no sort of danger of losing the money, as far as that goes, and really _I_ could not refuse Gorham,--he was so intent upon it!"

"Oh,--_Frank_!" cried his mother.

"Oh,--_Frank_!" cried his brother's wife.

"Where's my hat?" said the athlete faintly. "Take the baby before I drop him! I'm fairly knocked out! Let me go! Come, Jim!"

On the way down town Frank was again over the traces once or twice, but kicking was in vain, and he was going easily in harness, although fully realizing the awkwardness of the situation, when late in the afternoon they were admitted to the jail. As the door of the cell opened, the jailer with grim humor said to Ned, "I'm sorry to part with you, my boy,--the next time you come you must make us a longer visit!"

Ned turned his flushed, swollen, tear-stained face with a stare of blank amazement. He did not understand what the jailer meant, and he showed no recognition whatever of the newcomers.

The jailer suddenly noted the fact that the two gentlemen were evidently total strangers to Ned. He paused in his banter to look wonderingly from one to the other.

"I've come to bail you, youngster," said the elder of the two, affecting a familiarity which he by no means felt. "Get your hat!"

Ned mechanically obeyed. He was afraid to ask an explanation,--to speak a word,--lest it be discovered in some way that the extraordinary good luck in this deliverance was all a mistake.

The jailer still stared,--more than ever after the great gate had opened and let them out on the street. The two gentlemen walked on in advance, while Ned followed with an officer. The magistrate's office was but a little distance up the street on the opposite side, and there Ned, scarcely believing his eyes, watched the bold flourishes with which his two sureties signed his bail-bond, entering into an undertaking in the penal sum of one thousand dollars each for his appearance at the next term of the Criminal Court.

When these formalities were concluded he and his new friends came out together still in silence. He glanced instinctively over the way at the grim walls of the jail. There at the gate the jailer stood. He peered after them in the closing dusk as they walked silently away,--peered after them till the night seemed to swallow them up. "This beats all!" he ejaculated.

And still wondering he went back into his stronghold.