Front matter (continued 3)

But last night Reiberg's was honoured, we are credibly informed, by a guest from quite a different sphere--no less than a Senator of the United States. We are not able at present to give his name with certainty, and of course we are not willing to give names in such a case until we have verified our information with scrupulous care. But he certainly announced himself as Senator ----, and he looked the part, and distributed money, presumably from the salary paid to him out of public funds, with lavish abandon.

Having tried to kiss one of the prettier girls and been knocked down by her escort--who evidently knew naught of "senatorial courtesies,"--he emphasised the sincerity of his tipsy apologies by handing the lucky insulted one a fifty-dollar bill.

Later, it is said, he attached himself to another young woman, unaccompanied, it would seem, by any pugnacious swain, with whom he spent several hours, partly on the dancing floor and partly elsewhere.

Finally, with we fear little of his money left about him, he was charitably carried off by the chauffeur of his waiting taxi.

Well, well, after the arduous strain of legislative labours, one doubtless feels the need of a little relaxation. We hope the Senator enjoyed himself.

Rockwell folded up his clipping. "A tolerably close paraphrase of Simpson's story," he remarked. "They have the facts pretty straight."

"What is this Tidbits?" asked Merriam, sitting on his pillow with the tray in his lap. He had stopped eating.

"Oh, a dirty little sheet of scandal. Twice a week. But it's pretty widely read. And they know his name, of course. In fact any one can guess it, because Senator Norman is known to be in the city, and there is no other United States Senator stopping here now, so far as any one knows. It will be a bit nasty if they push this sort of thing. They'll put it in the regular newspapers next--a straight news item with his name in it."

"That article doesn't say where he went afterwards," said Merriam. "But Thompson knew.

"They're keeping that in reserve. Listen!"

Male voices were audible from the sitting room.

"The reporters!" exclaimed Rockwell. "I'll take that tray. Lie down and cover up. I must go and help Aunt Mary hold the fort."

Merriam finished his coffee in a gulp, and Rockwell set the tray on the seat of a chair and hastily entered the sitting room.

There followed a long period--more than an hour, in fact--during which Merriam lay in bed and listened to varied voices from the other room, and speculated as to what was going on, and wondered what he should do if the door should open and some irresistibly aggressive reporter or irresistibly important political friend of Norman's be ushered in.

But Rockwell and Aunt Mary, with the occasional support of Dr. Hobart, successfully withstood the army of reporters and a few minor politicians who called, and at length the loud masculine voices from the other room ceased, and Merriam lay still, somewhat fatigued by his prolonged strain of apprehension, and waited.

Presently the door opened, and Aunt Mary and Rockwell entered. Merriam had closed his eyes, but Rockwell speedily opened them.

"Oh, you can wake up," he said. "It's all right. The coast is clear."

Merriam rolled over so as to lie on his back. "Well, what next?" he said.

Aunt Mary and Rockwell looked at each, other. Rockwell spoke:

"Miss Norman and I are going out. We shall drop in at the Mayor's for a few minutes and then go on to a Reform League luncheon at the Urban Club. I am due to act as toastmaster or chairman for the speeches afterwards, and it will be just as well to have Miss Norman present. She will symbolise the prospective new alliance. We are going to leave you under the care of Alicia and Mrs. Norman. No one else is likely to come for several hours now. We shall be back at about half past two or three. Meanwhile luncheon. You didn't get a very big breakfast after all. Simpson shall serve it here by your bed, and Alicia and Mollie June can eat with you."

This disposition suited Merriam excellently well, but he made no comment. He tried to decide whether Aunt Mary was really eyeing him sharply or whether he only imagined it.

In any case she almost immediately added a rather formal "Good morning," and returned to the sitting room.

Rockwell lingered a moment.

"We're going to try to bring Norman back here this evening, you know. If it's at all possible. If it shouldn't be--if he's too sick or something, I suppose you could stay over another day still?"

Merriam thought with a panic of his school.

"Not unless it's absolutely necessary," he replied with a good deal of emphasis.

"It probably won't be," said Rockwell reassuringly. "We're quite as anxious to get rid of you, you know," he added smiling, "as you can be to get away from us. A double's a horribly dangerous thing to have around. Well, so long."

In less than five minutes after Rockwell's departure there came a knock at that door upon which Merriam's attention was concentrated--a distinctly feminine knock.

Merriam disposed himself as discreetly as possible under the bedclothes and answered it.

Alicia opened the door and peeped. "May I come in?" She opened it wider and came through. "I'm the chaperon, you know."

"Are you?" asked Merriam smiling.

Alicia was pleased by his smile and said so.

"I always like it when people laugh at the idea of my being a chaperon."

"Why?" said Merriam.

"Oh, so long as it seems funny for a woman to be a chaperon she's young."

"It seems funny for you," said Merriam.

"That's very nicely said," returned Alicia. "Come in, Mollie June."

As Mollie June did not appear, Alicia looked into the sitting room.

"Why," she said, "she must have gone into her bedroom. I do believe she's doing her hair over." And Alicia raised her eyebrows.

In spite of hope deferred Merriam was made happy. He recalled the supreme necessity of shaving earlier that morning.

Alicia dropped into the chair by the bed in which Rockwell had sat and pretended to scan the invalid's face solicitously.

"I should say, Senator," she remarked, "that you do not look like a very sick man. Your condition must be improving. We can hope you will be able to take a little nourishment."

"You can hope that all right," grinned the invalid.

"I've ordered----" Alicia, making talk, plunged into the details of a quite elaborate refection.

By the time she had finished and had replied to one or two humorous comments from Merriam, whose spirits were certainly rising, Simpson presented himself with the substantial fulfillment of her prospectus. And not until then did Mollie June join them. Her coiffure, though simple, was certainly faultless and so far as a masculine eye could judge newly arranged.

Alicia caught Merriam's glance and read his thoughts and smiled.

"What is it?" asked Mollie June suspiciously.

"What is what?" said Merriam, lamely.

"The Senator has been very humorous over the meal I have ordered," explained Alicia more deftly.

"Don't call him the Senator!" cried Mollie June. "His name is"--her eyes met Merriam's for an instant--"Mr. John."

"I see," said Alicia. In the dim light Merriam was not sure whether she raised her eyebrows again or not, but he was afraid she did.

Simpson, intent only on the proper illumination of his carefully laid cloth, but unwittingly conspiring with the elder gods (Fate and Destiny and the like), had turned on the night lamp and set it on the corner of the table next to Mollie June, and its radiance fell full on her slender, erect figure, now arrayed in--Merriam had not the slightest idea what kind of fabric it was, but it was creamy white, and at her waist was one of the red roses he had helped to freshen. The circle of bright light extended up to her white throat. Occasionally when she leaned forward her face dipped into it, but for the most part showed only dimly in the fainter glow that came through the shade of the lamp. He could see her eyes, however, and not infrequently they rested on him. His, it is to be feared, were on her most of the time.

When at length the luncheon was finished and Merriam had expressed himself as disinclined for cigarettes and Simpson had removed his dishes and his table and finally himself, Alicia, who was really a most good-natured person--a pearl among chaperons,--yawned and announced that she had a novel which she desired to finish, and that, if they didn't mind, she proposed to retire to the sitting room to prosecute that literary occupation.

"You can amuse him for a while, Mrs. Norman," she said, with a humorous smile; Merriam did not venture to question what more subtle thoughts that smile might veil. "He's your guest more than mine, seeing it's your husband he's impersonating. If he gets too boring, you can come for me and I'll spell you."

Neither Mollie June nor Merriam replied, but Alicia, still with that amused smile, rose and calmly departed. She left the door open, of course, between the two rooms.

Upon the two young people, thus abruptly left alone together, there descended an embarrassed silence. For a minute or so they heard Alicia moving about in the sitting room and then the small sounds which one makes in adjusting one's self comfortably in an armchair with a footstool and a book, ending in a pleasurable sigh.

Merriam was overwhelmed by the necessity of finding talk. He could not lie there in bed and stare at Mollie June, however beatitudinous it might have been to do so. Several seconds of prodigious intellectual labour brought forth this polite question:

"Do you hear often from the girls in Riceville?"

"Not very often," said Mollie June.

We can hardly describe this reply as helpful.

Again he struggled mightily, with the banal kind of result that usually follows such paroxysms conversational topic-hunting:

"You must find your life here and in Washington wonderful."

"It seemed so, at first," said Mollie June.

"But it didn't last?"

Merriam was conscious of danger on this tack but he must have a moment's rest before he could wrestle with the void again.

"No," said Mollie June.

Merriam waited, not shirking his responsibilities but conscious that she meant to continue. She was always deliberate of speech--a fact which gave a piquant significance to her simplest words.

"You see," she said, "I didn't really care very much for George. I thought I did at first, but I didn't. Papa really made me marry him. And you know he is untrue to me."

Merriam could have gasped. He felt himself falling through the thin ice of mere "conversation," on which he had tried so hard to skate, into the depths of real talk. But it was good to be in the depths. And after his first breathlessness he was filled with love and pity. How much the brief, girlish sentences portrayed of disillusionment and tragedy!

"You know about that then?" he asked gently.

"Of course," said Mollie June, almost scornfully. "Before company Aunt Mary and Alicia and Mr. Rockwell keep up the pretence that I can know nothing about such things. I keep it up too! But Aunt Mary knows all about them. George never can conceal anything from her. And I make her tell me everything. Everything!"

Merriam, I suspect, hardly sensed the amount of intellect and character which Mollie June's last statement betrayed--I use the word advisedly, for, of course, intellect and character detract from a young girl's charm, and if she desires to be pretty and alluring she should, and usually does, carefully conceal whatever of such attributes she may be handicapped with. But to "make" Aunt Mary disclose things she wished not to disclose was no small achievement.

"You know about this Jennie Higgins?" Merriam asked.

"Yes. I've seen her and talked with her."

"How?" was Merriam's startled question.

"She's a manicurist, you know. She's employed at ----" Mollie June mentioned a well-known establishment on Michigan Avenue, the name of which for obvious reasons I suppress. "When I found that out, I went there to have my nails done. I just asked for--Madame Couteau, and waited till she was free. She didn't know me, of course. She's pretty," said Mollie June, with judicial coldness.

After a moment she added, "And sweet and--warm."

"But how any man can leave you----" cried Merriam, treading recklessly on several kinds of dynamite.

"You haven't seen her," said Mollie June.

Merriam was silenced. It was true he had not seen her. And he remembered with confusion that he had talked with her over a wire and, as Rockwell put it, had not "needed much prompting."

He stole a glance at Mollie June. The purity of her white-clad figure, its brave erectness, and the impassive sadness so out of place on her young face caught at his heart.

"How can you stand it?" he cried, and would have put out his hand to her had he not remembered that he was in bed and that his arm was clad only in the sleeve of a suit of pajamas.

Mollie June looked at him.

"I don't know," she said. "What else can I do?"

Merriam lay still, now openly staring at her. Of all intolerable things of which he had ever heard it seemed to him the worst that Mollie June--"the prettiest girl,"--with all her loveliness and sweetness and courage and youthful joy in life, should be so slighted and wronged and saddened and degraded. It was like seeing a rose trampled under foot. (Merriam's mental simile was not very original perhaps, but to him it was intensely poignant.)

For a moment she met his gaze, then looked away. In the subdued light Merriam could not be sure, but he thought there was a new brightness of tears in her eyes, released perhaps by his very apparent though inexpressive sympathy.

Presently the thought which had inevitably come to him forced itself almost against his will to expression:

"You could divorce him."

"I've thought of that." (Somehow this shocked Merriam.) "But it would be too horrible. Have you read the divorce trials in the papers? With a Senator they would make the most of it. And Aunt Mary won't let me do that. It would ruin him politically, she says."

"Well, what if it did? How about you?"

"Oh, she loves him, you know. She thinks he can be brought to change his ways. She believes in him still."

"Do you?"

"No," said Mollie June, with the clear-eyed cruel simplicity of youth.

"He may die," was the thought in Merriam's mind, but this could not be said.

Full of pity, he gazed at her again, and something in the profile of her averted face overcame him. He started up on his elbow--all this time he had lain with his head on his arm on the pillow.

"Mollie June!" he cried, his voice softly raised.

She did not look at him.

"Dear Mollie June! You must know I love you. I loved you three years ago in Riceville. There's nothing wrong about that. When you're in such trouble I must tell you. It can't do you any good. There's nothing we can do. But--I do love you!"

She turned her eyes upon him.

"Why didn't you tell me that--in Riceville?"

"Oh!" he cried.

Mollie June rose and came to the bedside.

"I know," she said with womanly gentleness. "You couldn't, of course. Because you were so poor. I ought to have waited--John!"

For a moment her hand hovered above his head as if she would have stroked his ruffled hair. But it descended to her side again.

"We mustn't talk like this. I must go. I'll tell Alicia we are--bored!"

There were tears not only in her eyes but on her cheeks now. Undisguisedly she wiped them away and carefully dried her eyes with a small handkerchief.

"I shall see you at dinner," she said with a brave smile, and, turning, walked quickly out of the room.

CHAPTER XV

COUNCIL OF WAR

It was some time before Alicia, with something more, if possible, than her usual aplomb, covering, let us hope, a guilty conscience, entered the bedroom, presumably to "spell" Mollie June in amusing the supposed invalid.

Alicia made some remark which hardly penetrated the invalid's consciousness, but scarcely had she sat down in Mollie June's chair before a quick knock sounded at the hall door of the sitting room, almost immediately followed by the sound of the opening of that door, and Alicia sprang up again and hurried away, to be before Mollie June in receiving the newcomers. It began to irritate Merriam to perceive how they all treated her as a little girl, when as he now thrillingly realised she was very much a woman in spite of the youthfulness of her face and figure.

The arrivals in the other room proved to be Rockwell and Aunt Mary returned. Recognising their voices, Merriam glanced at his watch under his pillow and was amazed to find that it was nearly four o'clock.

Rockwell appeared in the doorway.

"Come into this other room," he said. "We must hold a council of war."

"Shall I dress?" asked Merriam, gladly getting out of bed.

"No, no," said Rockwell impatiently. "Just put on your bath robe and slippers."

Having followed this instruction, Merriam stepped to the glass and with a few quick strokes of the brush smoothed his hair, Rockwell watching him without comment. Then they went into the sitting room.

Merriam blankly perceived that the sitting room was empty--of Mollie June.

"She has a slight headache," said Alicia kindly--suffering still, we may hope, from pangs of conscience.

Aunt Mary was sitting in the senatorial armchair, which had been turned about to face the rest of the room. She looked long and hard at Merriam--an intensification of that close scrutiny with which, it seemed to him, she had always distinguished him. Merriam, in his bath robe, sustained it awkwardly but manfully. Alicia and Rockwell were standing. The silence was rather portentous.

"Sit down, all of you," said Aunt Mary suddenly.

The three younger persons present--even Rockwell seemed youthful beside Aunt Mary in her dominant mood--rather hurriedly found seats.

"Is the door locked, Philip?"

Rockwell rose, went to the hall door, turned the key, and returned to his chair.

"Tell him," said Aunt Mary.

Rockwell's budget of news was certainly considerable and important.

In the first place, George Norman was "better." Rockwell and Aunt Mary had gone to see him at Jennie's after the Reform League luncheon. That was why they were so late. He undoubtedly had a touch of bronchitis, with some fever and a cough, but seemed to be improving. He could be brought back to the hotel that evening. Aunt Mary had sat down by his bed and told him briefly but plainly of the happenings at the hotel the previous evening, and had extorted a feeble, amazed acquiescence in the astonishing turn which had been given to his career--an acquiescence which she had immediately communicated by telephone from Jennie's to Mayor Black.

In the second place, the story of Norman's evening at Reiberg's was all over the city--not among the populace, of course, but among the politicians and business men and clubmen--the men who know things. Not only the story in Tidbits, which everybody seemed to have read and to have assigned unhesitatingly to Norman, but the further fact that from Reiberg's he had gone in the taxi to "a certain little flat"--that seemed to be the approved phrase,--and had spent the night there, and was still there. The simple truth, in short, was known. Rockwell had taken his cue perforce from Merriam's impulsive denial to Thompson and had flatly contradicted the whole story. Senator Norman had spent the evening, after his interviews with Mr. Crockett and with Mayor Black, at the hotel with his wife, and was there now, slightly indisposed with a severe cold which had threatened to turn into bronchitis. His downright assertions had, Rockwell believed, shaken the confident rumours and would probably delay any further publication of them for at least a day. But it was necessary to produce evidence.

"We shall have to use you again to-night," he said to Merriam. "I have invited the Mayor and Mr. Wayward to dine with you here at the hotel--downstairs in the Peacock Cabaret."

"Shall I have to play the Senator there?" gasped Merriam--"in public!"

"Semi-public," said Rockwell. "I have reserved a table in an alcove. We shall put you in the corner. All the rest of us will be between you and the general gaze. Oh, we shall get away with it. It's much less dangerous than trying to impose at close range in a private interview on some one who really knows the Senator--as you did on Thompson this morning."

"Does Mr. Wayward know?" asked Merriam.

"Of the impersonation? Not yet. But Alicia shall prepare him in advance."

Alicia nodded. "That's all right," she said. "Daddy will enjoy it. He'll think it's a huge joke."

"Moreover," continued Rockwell, with rather apprehensive eyes on Merriam, "I have accepted an invitation for Senator Gorman to speak at the Reform League luncheon to-morrow."

"Do they have luncheons and speeches every day?" asked Merriam, sparring for time, for of course he saw what was coming.

"Not usually, but they've been having a series. To-morrow is the last one. It's the perfect opportunity for Norman to come out openly for the League. When the invitation came, I simply had to accept it."

"But if George Norman isn't able to speak?" queried Alicia, fearlessly coming to the point.

"Then you'll have to make the speech!" said Rockwell bluntly to Merriam.

"But how can I?"

"You were a debater in college."

"Yes, but the speech itself----"

"Oh, Aunt Mary will fix you up with a speech."

Merriam turned to that silent mistress of the situation, sitting calmly in the senatorial armchair.

"George is so very busy that I often write his speeches for him," she said, as if it were the most natural arrangement in the world. "I have several sketched out now. We can make a choice among them. I will write it out in full and you can learn it, or I will turn over the outline to you and you can work it up in your own words--if you have to make it."

"You probably won't," Rockwell hastened to say. "Norman is really much better. After a comfortable night here at the hotel he will be all right. If he's a little hoarse, we can't help it. But you must stay over, you see," he added determinedly,--"to make sure. That speech must be made."

"But my school!" cried Merriam.

"You'll have to send another telegram," said Aunt Mary.

"What's a day or two of school?" asked Rockwell impatiently, with a layman's insensibility to the pedagogical dogmas of absolute regularity and punctuality. "Besides, if you really were sick," he added more tactfully, "they would have to get along without you, wouldn't they?"

"So much is at stake," said Aunt Mary. "George's future, and all that that may mean to the State and Nation. If we can bring him to throw the weight of his popularity and leadership on the right side!"

"You can't desert us now, Mr. Merriam," cried Alicia. "When it means so much to Aunt Mary and Philip and Mollie June!"

Crafty Alicia! Her guile was, of course, clearly apparent to Merriam. But it is perfectly possible to perceive that an influence is being deliberately brought to bear on one without being able to resist that influence.

"Very well. I'll telegraph again," he said.

"Better do it now," said Rockwell, promptly clinching this decision. He rose, went to the writing table, got out a telegraph form, and sat down.

"What shall I write?"

Merriam collected himself as best he could under Alicia's admiring, expectant eyes and Aunt Mary's steady regard.

"Better," he dictated, "but doctor won't let me leave to-night. Expect to be down to-morrow night."

"That's good," said Aunt Mary, in a tone of quiet approval which gratified Merriam more probably than he realised.

Rockwell finished writing and turned in his chair.

"I'll be going down in a few minutes. I'll send it then. Now you'll need to dress for dinner--Senator! Pack up your things too. After dinner you and I will leave the hotel together in a taxi. We shall drive over to the University Club. There we shall simply go up to the Library for a few minutes and then come down again, walk up Michigan Avenue for a block or two and catch another taxi and drive to the Nestor House. There you can register under your own name. Simpson will send your things over. I shall go on and get Norman and bring him back here. You see? Senator Norman leaves the hotel about nine o'clock with his new manager--me. Within an hour or so he returns, still in my company, and goes to his room. If he's all right, you can go down to Riceville on the morning train if you like. I'll come to see you before you go."

"We'll all go over to see you," said Alicia, with an unmistakable emphasis on the "all." "We shall have so much to thank you for!"

Merriam did not reply to this cordial remark.

"Why do we go to the University Club?" he asked.

"And not directly to the other hotel?" said Rockwell. "Well, I'm afraid we may be rather closely watched. To tell the truth, I suspect that the driver of the taxi we take here may be questioned afterwards as to where he set us down. The University Club will tell them nothing."

To Merriam's excited mood this explanation, with its hint of powerful hidden enemies intently watching every move which he and his friends could make, added a touch of piquancy to the situation that was nothing short of delightful.

He could not well express this, however, and Rockwell, who was all business with no such romantic nonsense in his head, immediately sent them about their several parts. He himself was first to take Alicia to her waiting limousine.

When Alicia and Rockwell had departed Merriam sought to return to his--the Senator's--bedroom. But Aunt Mary detained him.

"Sit down, Mr. Merriam," she said, kindly enough but in a manner that demanded unquestioning obedience.

Then she rose and entered Mollie June's bedroom but immediately returned.

"Mollie June is dressing for dinner," she said. An instant's pause. Then, looking hard at Merriam, "She's a lovely child."

Both the look and the final word provoked Merriam to a sort of resentment.

"I don't believe she's as much of a child as you think," he said boldly.

"It depends on the point of view, no doubt," said Aunt Mary drily.

Then she began to ask him about himself, his family, his own life, on the farm of his boyhood, at college, and at Riceville--all those facts which Alicia had so much more tactfully elicited in the private dining room off the Peacock Cabaret the night before and some others in which Alicia had not been interested. Merriam had nothing to be ashamed of and spoke up promptly and manfully in his replies, wondering in the back of his mind the while what inscrutable thought or purpose prompted Aunt Mary in her catechising. He little dreamt that the whole course and happiness of his life turned on the showing he was able to make in this odd examination.

There is no doubt that Aunt Mary--whatever her idea may have been--was satisfied. When at length she had no more questions to ask the expression of her eyes, though they still rested on him, was almost one of absence. She drew a deeper breath than was her wont--suggestive, at least, of a sigh.

"You give a good account of yourself," she said. "You are worthy of the Norman blood."

Greater praise than that no man could have from Aunt Mary, as Merriam dimly realised.

"I wish George were more like you."

Immediately she added, with a conscious return to dominating briskness:

"You must dress. So must I."

And she rose and without looking again at Merriam went into Mollie June's bedroom.

CHAPTER XVI

THE SENATORIAL DINNER

At last, at twenty-five minutes after six, Merriam sank, exhausted but immaculate, into an easy chair and lit a cigarette, in an effort to compose his nerves and regain the sang froid he needed for his imminent rôle of a particularly debonair senator of the United States acting as host to a brilliant dinner party.

At half past six precisely, Aunt Mary knocked on his door and he opened that door and announced himself ready.

Aunt Mary wore another black evening gown, very similar, in masculine eyes, to the one in which she had appeared the night before, except that it was less conspicuously burdened with jet. Tall and erect, with her gray hair plainly but carefully dressed, she looked every inch a senator's sister and--this would have pleased her--a Norman.

Advancing into the sitting room, Merriam encountered Mollie June, standing again beside the bowl of roses. She was in pink--tulle over satin, though Merriam could not have described it so. But the vivid colour and the dainty softness of the fabric he could appreciate quite well enough, at least in their contiguity to the slender figure, white throat and shoulders, and charming complexion of Mollie June. There is no doubt that he looked a moment longer than he should. The debonair senatorial outside of him was moved to say, "How lovely you are!" But the Ricevillian pedagogue underneath blocked the utterance. Perhaps his eyes said it plainly enough to satisfy Mollie June, for she evinced no disappointment.

"We must go right down, mustn't we?" she said, raising her eyes from the roses.

"Yes," said Aunt Mary, in a tone of jarring briskness.

A male figure which Merriam had not perceived stepped out of the background, moved to the hall door, and opened it. Merriam saw that it was Dr. Hobart, quite as point-device as himself and rather more at ease but not nearly so handsome (though of this, I assure you, Merriam never thought at all).

Aunt Mary and Mollie June passed through the door.

"Come along, Senator," said Dr. Hobart, in excellent spirits, and Merriam mechanically followed and mechanically paused and waited while the physician closed and locked the door.

"This must be great fun for you," said Dr. Hobart as they went down the hall towards the elevators.

"Yes," returned Merriam without conviction, his eyes on a girlish figure in pink that moved ahead of him. "Fun" did not strike him as exactly the word.

Fortunately at this point a small incident occurred which served to bring Merriam out of the brown study--or perhaps we may say the roseate study--into which he had fallen.

As they approached the elevator lobby he became aware of the pretty floor clerk who on the previous evening had been wearing Senator Norman's violets. He was, of course, entirely unmindful of the fact that on his way to Norman's rooms that morning he had passed her rudely by without a glance, but he did notice that this evening she wore no flowers and that she studiously avoided seeing him and smiled her best smile upon Dr. Hobart instead. That gentleman, with a shade too much alacrity, stepped aside so as to pass close to her desk and, leaning down, spoke to her. The pretty floor clerk, from the toss of her head and the pleased smile on Hobart's face, had said something saucy in reply.

"Good enough," thought Merriam, as they all stepped into the elevator. "I'm glad she has more interests than one," and thought no more of the incident at the time.

In a moment or two more they had reached the basement floor, which was their destination.

Opposite the elevators on this floor was a small reception room or parlour, and here Senator Norman's other guests were awaiting him--Rockwell, Murray, Mayor Black, Alicia, and Alicia's father.

To the last-named gentleman Merriam was immediately presented. He was a stoutish, jovial man of fifty or so, bald of pate and humorous of eye, and the amused particularity with which he surveyed Merriam and the gusto with which he addressed him as "Senator" showed both that Alicia had performed her task of enlightening him and that she had been right as to the attitude he would take.

"Splendid!" he whispered to Merriam. "You would have fooled me all right," and he beamed delightedly.

Alicia gave him only a minute. "They are ready," she said. "We are to go right in. You are to walk with me." (This last to Merriam.)

In a moment, therefore, Merriam found himself escorting Alicia down a sort of central aisle among the tables of the Peacock Cabaret, behind an excessively urbane head waiter, conscious that the rest of his guests were making a more or less imposing procession after them, and intensely conscious of suspended conversation throughout the great restaurant and of countless curious eyes staring across rosebuds and water bottles at himself.

"Say something to me," whispered Alicia. "You mustn't look self-conscious."

Merriam glanced at her and realised for the first time that evening her vivid, vigorous, peony-like beauty.

"What can I say," he asked smiling, "except 'How lovely you are'?" and he wondered why it was so easy to say this to Alicia when he had been unable to say it to Mollie June.

"Bravo, Boy Senator!" applauded Alicia, and then they reached the haven of that alcove which Rockwell had promised.

It was really a small square room quite separate from the main part of the Peacock Cabaret except that there was no wall between. The head waiter guided Merriam to the seat at the far end of the table. Thus when he sat down he would be facing the main dining room, visible to all its occupants, yet screened from them by the table and his own guests about that table. It was really an excellent device for displaying him in public and still protecting him from close inspection.

In a moment the whole party had arrived and been seated.

A canapé was being served, and Alicia at his end of the table and her father at the other end were starting conversation. Merriam glanced across the board at Mollie June. For some reason a charming girl never looks more lovely than at table. She looked up and caught his gaze. Her face was grave. He thought she looked wistful. For a moment only he met her eyes, then turned to reply to a remark of Alicia's. Somehow his spirits soared. He plunged into the conversation with a zest which he had hardly known since his fraternity days. Mollie June said little, but she laughed at the stories and seemed to become excited and happy. She was content, perhaps, to enact the rôle of the gallery to which Merriam was playing with such excellent effect. As for Rockwell and Aunt Mary, they sat by in serene content: the affair was going well; as long as that was the case they need not exert themselves.

The mildly uproarious party undoubtedly attracted the desired amount of attention from the main dining room. Eyes were turned and necks craned, and couples and groups that passed the alcove almost invariably slowed their steps to stare. Some dozens of men who had heard the stories of the real Norman's whereabouts were convinced that these were false, at least in part; by the witness of their own eyes they knew that the Senator was that evening at any rate in the bosom of his family at the hotel. They could be relied upon to assert as much in all parts of the city on the following day.

Only one outsider ventured to intrude upon the party and submit Merriam to the ordeal of closer inspection, and he got no nearer than the length of the table. This was the Colonel Abbott whom Merriam had so perilously encountered at the very beginning of his play-acting the night before. Merriam remembered him vividly, called him by name, and replied cordially to his expressions of pleasure at finding him recovered from his threatened indisposition. So that danger passed, and the table, after a brief exchanging of relieved glances, recovered its gayety, perhaps with some accentuation.

A little later came a reporter. Merriam professed that he had "nothing to say." Asked if it was true that he was to speak at the Reform League luncheon on the morrow, he replied, with an inner quailing but with outward composure, that he was.

The reporter turned to Mr. Wayward. Was it true that he intended to make a contribution to the campaign fund of the Reform League? Mr. Wayward's joviality suffered an eclipse. His eyes fell. But on raising them he encountered a glance from his daughter that can only be described as stern, and promptly admitted that it was true.

The reporter tried Rockwell, but the latter shook his head so indomitably that the interviewer at once abandoned him and passed to Mayor Black. That gentleman promptly and as it were automatically gave utterance to several eloquent phrases, too meaningless to be recorded. Even the reporter neglected to make notes of them, and looked about the table for other prey. Finding none, he excused himself with the remark, "I am making note of the names, of course," and disappeared.

Once more the conspiratorial table drew a long breath and endeavoured to recover its festive mood, but before much progress had been made in that direction a bell boy came with a note addressed to Senator Norman and asking that he and Mr. Rockwell come to Room D, one of the private dining rooms.

Merriam passed the note to Rockwell and then to Aunt Mary, and the three prime conspirators stared at one another. None of them knew the handwriting, which was poor and hurried and in pencil.

"I'll go," said Rockwell. "You stay here."

The rest of the party did not know what had happened, but in their situation the most trivial incident was, of course, sufficient to cause uneasiness. The conversation during Rockwell's absence was forced and fragmentary. In fact, it was almost a solo performance on Alicia's part. Merriam caught Mollie June's eyes upon him, and was grateful for their expression of self-unconscious solicitude.

Presently the boy returned again with the same note, at the bottom of which was scribbled: "Come--Room D. Rockwell."

Merriam showed it to Aunt Mary.

"Is that his handwriting?"

"Yes, it is."

"Then I suppose I must go."

He rose, murmured an "excuse me" to the table at large, and made his way towards the open end of the alcove. As he did so he glanced at Mollie June. Alarm stood in her eyes. Coming opposite her chair, he bent down and said gently:

"It's all right. I probably shan't be long."

It was perhaps a little too much in the tone and manner that Mollie June's real husband might properly have used. Mollie June herself did not seem to notice this; she appeared duly comforted. But Mr. Wayward, at her left, undoubtedly stared after Merriam with an odd expression in his genial eyes.

Following the bell boy, Merriam tried hard to think what might be in store for him. "Thompson" and "Crockett" were the only ideas his blank mind could muster. Had they discovered the trick and come to threaten him with exposure? Well, Rockwell would be present. He leaned heavily on Rockwell.

The boy stopped before a curtained door.

"This is it, sir," he said and waited expectantly.

Merriam fumblingly produced a dime, and the boy departed. Drawing a deep breath, he pushed aside the curtain and entered Room D.

To his great relief the only persons present were Rockwell and Simpson. They were both standing, beside a bare table. Merriam vaguely remembered that Simpson had not appeared in connection with the serving of the last two or three courses.

"Now tell it again," said Rockwell promptly.

The waiter looked steadily at Merriam.

"It's this way, sir," he said. "Mr. Thompson, as was the Senator's manager until this morning, has found out where the Senator really is, at----" the man looked away. "Jennie's," he finished, without expression in his tone. "There's a girl she lives with, Margery Milton, who's a milliner's assistant at one of the department stores. He got it from her. Straight from her he came here to have dinner with Mr. Crockett, out in the Cabaret. When I saw them come in, I turned your party over to another man and served them myself. I managed to hear a lot of what they said. Mr. Crockett had learned of your dinner party, of course. Putting that together with what Mr. Thompson had got from Margery, they saw the game. Mr. Crockett would hardly believe it at first. But Mr. Thompson means to make sure. He's going to Jennie's himself about ten o'clock to-night--they have some kind of a committee first,--and force his way in, if necessary, and see the Senator himself. Then they'll have proof, you see. I thought I'd better let you and Mr. Rockwell know."

"You did just right," said Rockwell warmly, "and we'll make it worth your while."

He turned abruptly to the younger man.

"Merriam! You're the only one who can save us in this fix."

"How?" said Merriam, to whom it seemed that all was lost.

"Listen, man. You go back to our table and excuse yourself and me. 'Important business.' Don't tell them anything more. Not even Aunt Mary. We haven't time. Better bring Murray. We may need an extra man, and we can trust him best. We three will take a taxi at once. We shall have to circle about a bit, to throw off possible trailers. But in less than an hour we'll be at Jennie's. You shall take Norman's place there, and we'll take Norman and bring him back to the hotel, to his room. Just as we planned, only a bit sooner. When Thompson arrives, Jennie shall let him in. He'll insist on seeing you. Let him. You're not Senator Norman. Tell him so. Jennie shall tell him so, too. He'll see it himself, of course, as soon as he looks close with his eyes open. You and Jennie must make him think you played off the resemblance on this Margery Milton for a joke. We'll fix her, too, of course. You'd better tell him your real name, so he can look you up if he wants to. He won't expose you in Riceville. He'll have no motive to. And he won't think anything of your little escapade in itself. You came to Chicago on school business--went out to see the sights--got a little more liquor than you were used to. Your taxi driver took you to some dance hall. He'll interpret 'Reiberg's.' You stayed there a while--don't know what you did--met Jennie there--and she brought you home. You were pretty sick in the morning and stayed over all day: You see? It all hangs together, and relieves Norman entirely of the Reiberg incident and Jennie, and cinches his blameless presence at the hotel all last night and all to-day. It'll save everything! Better than we planned. Couldn't be better!"

Rockwell had worked himself up to exultant enthusiasm.

Merriam's emotions while this new plot was unfolded were sufficiently complex. There was an opaque background of sheer bewilderment. There was also a sharp sense of alarm at the thought of having his own name appear in this business. But other sentiments, less acute individually, but of some potency none the less, joined their voices with Rockwell's to silence that alarm. There was the mere love of adventure, of playing a dangerous game, which is strong in any healthy young man. Then there was the thought of Mollie June: he would be doing it for her--making a real sacrifice, of his reputation, possibly of his position, his pedagogical career, for her sake. And, oddly enough, quite simultaneously with this thought of Mollie June, there was a recollection of "Jennie's" voice over the telephone. He was not conscious that he was curious to see "Jennie," but I am afraid he was.

Scarcely half a minute had passed when Rockwell, eagerly scanning his face, cried, "You'll go!"

"Yes," said Merriam, looking at Simpson's impassive countenance and surprised at his own words, "I suppose I will."

CHAPTER XVII

A DEVIOUS JOURNEY

Rockwell, as usual, gave Merriam no time for reconsideration.

"Go and make your excuses at the table then."

But Merriam was still looking at Simpson. He had perceived that the impassivity of the waiter's countenance covered a blank misery.

"Simpson," he said, "we'll try to see that this works out to your advantage--at Jennie's. Shake on that." And, in violation of all codes on which the social system rests, he held out his hand as one man to another.

Simpson, much more rigorously trained in those codes than Merriam had been, hesitated, glanced at Rockwell. But a light came into his eyes. He seized the hand, gripped it, gave one spasmodic shake.

"Thank you, sir!" he said.

He dropped the hand and as quickly as possible regained his servitorial manner.

Merriam smiled at him and then spoke to Rockwell:

"Where shall I join you--Murray and I?"

"At the Ladies' Entrance," Rockwell replied. "It's less likely to be watched than the other."

Merriam turned and passed through the curtained doorway, down the hall, and along one side of the Peacock Cabaret. The curtain being up on the small stage and the moderately comely demoiselles of the chorus executing a dance which involved a liberal display of white tights, he reached his alcove comparatively unnoticed.

He stopped beside Mollie June's chair, which was nearest the open side of the alcove. All the members of the dinner party regarded him anxiously; Aunt Mary's face was more than usually grim. Carefully pitching his voice so that it should be audible to all at the table yet should not carry to the main dining room without, he said:

"I am tremendously sorry to have to desert this pleasant company, but Mr. Rockwell and I are called away on important business. We should be very glad if you will come too, Father Murray.--Can you come at once?" he added as the priest stared.

Aunt Mary's lips opened.

"I'll explain later," said Merriam hurriedly.

As he spoke, however, he realised that no opportunity to "explain later" would probably be afforded him. Alicia had said they "all" would go to see him in the morning at the Nestor House. They could not "all" come to Jennie's.

He looked down at Mollie June. She was looking up at him. His view of her from above--the contour of her face and throat, the recalcitrant wave of her soft hair, the brightness of her lifted eyes--might have moved older and colder blood than Merriam's. He was close enough to catch a faint, warm sense of her in the air. He desired to envelop her in love. What he might do he could not resist. He laid his hand gently over one of hers that rested on the edge of the table and bent to her ear.

"Mr. Rockwell will tell you to-morrow what I have done," he whispered. "It is for your sake, Mollie--June."

He straightened up. He was not flushed outwardly. He looked almost cold. Father Murray was making his way down the side of the table.

"Good night, all," said Merriam. "This way, Father Murray."

He glanced once more at Mollie June--his last sight of her, he thought. Her face was rosy and her eyes glistened. It was a picture for which a man--a very young man, at least--might do anything, even sacrifice his love. He smiled at her almost gaily, turned, and passed out of the alcove, Father Murray following.

They skirted the sides of the Peacock Cabaret in an effort to reach the exit as little observed as possible. Unfortunately, before they attained that goal, the curtain of the small stage descended, the white legs of the chorus, kicking at it as it fell, were hidden from the attentive eyes of the male diners, and not a few of these observed the famous senator's escape. This probably mattered little, however, because of Father Murray. The well-known High Churchman was enough to shield the name of Norman. He could hardly be bound for Reiberg's, or even, it would be argued, for "a certain little flat," in Father Murray's company.

They got their coats from the checkroom, went up the stairs to the first floor, and made a detour through passages to the Ladies' Entrance.

Rockwell was already there with a taxicab. He motioned to them to enter it.

Merriam was a little surprised, and Father Murray probably more so, to find Simpson already within. Father Murray greeted him with clerical suavity. Merriam said nothing. He was listening to Rockwell's colloquy with the chauffeur:

"This cab will probably be followed. Your first job is to shake off pursuit. Circle around through the Loop--twist and turn--until you're absolutely sure you've lost anybody who is after us. Then make for the Eighteenth Street Station of the Alley L. If there's no one behind us when you get there, it will be worth twenty-five dollars to you above the fare."

"Right, sir," said the man. "Jump in, sir."

Rockwell stepped in and slammed the door, seating himself with Simpson, his back to the driver. In a moment he was staring intently through the peephole window in the back of the taxi.

"See!" he said.

Merriam, turning to look over his shoulder, perceived a yellow cab about sixty feet behind them, also starting, at about the same pace as their own.

They went west to Fifth Avenue and turned north along the car tracks under the Elevated. A moment later the yellow cab also turned north on the car tracks.

They swerved east on Randolph Street. For a minute or two the yellow cab did not appear. It must have been caught behind some car or truck. But presently it rounded the corner and sprinted till it was again within about thirty yards of them, when it slowed down to their own pace.

Rockwell spoke through the tube to the chauffeur:

"That yellow cab!"

"I'll lose 'em!" the man replied, with reassuring confidence.

At the second corner he turned north again and sped across the Clark Street Bridge. The yellow cab also had business north of the river.

Their subsequent maneuvers were at first decidedly puzzling to Merriam and his fellow passengers, with the possible exception of Simpson. They sped around and around a rectangle of streets enclosing half a dozen squares, with one of its sides only one block from the River. On the shorter sides they sometimes lost the yellow cab, but on the longer stretches it always appeared in full and open chase behind them.

"What the devil!" cried Rockwell as their driver turned west for the fourth time on the southern, side of the rectangle--the street nearest the River.

Simpson spoke: "He's all right. It's the bridge trick."

No further explanation was necessary. Their chauffeur suddenly swerved south on Dearborn Street, making in a burst of speed for the River. The bridge bell was jangling its warning that traffic must stop for the opening of the bridge to let a steamer pass. Theirs was the last vehicle on the bridge. The bars dropped behind them. Looking back through the peephole window, our passengers had the satisfaction of seeing the yellow cab caught behind the bars, unable to follow them, unable even, because of other vehicles crowding behind, to turn out and make a detour to another bridge.

Rockwell excitedly seized the tube. "Good work!" he called. "I'll give you another ten for that."

"Thank you, sir," came the complacent reply.

With a sigh of relaxing tension Merriam sank back in his corner, abandoning the peephole.

"Who do you suppose it was?" he asked.

"Thompson?"

"Oh, no, not Thompson himself. One of his henchmen. He and Norman have all kinds of assistants!"

"Where are we going?" asked Father Murray.

Rockwell laughed. "I'd almost forgotten that you don't know yet. I'll tell you," and he entered upon an explanation of Thompson's discovery and proposed method of verification and their own counterplot.

Father Murray was feebly protesting against the difficulties and dangers of the counterplot, but these complaints were interrupted by the stopping of the taxi. They had reached the Eighteenth Street Station of the Elevated.

Rockwell looked quickly through the peephole window and then opened the door and jumped out. The others followed. They scanned the street in both directions. There was no other taxicab in sight.

Rockwell stepped up to the smiling chauffeur, asked the amount of the fare, and paid it with the thirty-five dollars bonus.

"You did the trick very neatly," he said. "Now scoot!"

"Thank you, sir. Yes, sir."

There was still no trace of curiosity in the man's tone or glance.

"Come!" said Rockwell, and he led them to the entrance of the Elevated Station.

At Forty-Seventh Street they left the Elevated and, walking to the corner, waited for a cross-town surface car.

"What's the idea?" Merriam asked, his mind becoming active again.

"Well," said Rockwell, "the first thing our late chauffeur will do after getting back to town will be to gather in another twenty-five dollars or maybe more for telling some one of Thompson's men where he left us. So it's best to muss up our trail a bit more before we strike Jennie's."

He was hailing an east-bound car.

As they sat silent again inside, Merriam's mind took its cue from Rockwell's last word. "Jennie's!" Phrases from his one brief telephone dialogue with Jennie sounded in his ear, oddly clear and melodious:

"Georgie, boy! Don't you know me?--You ought to!" with a thrilling little laugh. "You must be careful, Georgie," in a lowered tone. "Can you come anyway?--You'll telephone again?--Georgie, boy!" and the sound of a kiss!

These phrases--surely nothing in themselves--echoed in his mind with the same unaccountable piquancy and warmth with which they had first come to him over the telephone. He flushed a little, sitting there in the stuffy, bumping, jangling car, as he recalled the way he had involuntarily "played up" to them. He had promised to go to her if he could get away, to telephone her again if he could. That was mere trickery and deceit, a part of the game he was playing; that was all right. But his final whispered "Dearie, good night!" Had that been necessary? He remembered Rockwell's dry comment: "You don't need much prompting!" But his thoughts ran away with him again. Now he was going to see her--to spend a night in her apartment. What would she be like--tall or short, slender like Mollie June or plump like Alicia, fair or dark, with blue eyes or brown or black, curly hair or straight? He could not frame an image that satisfied him as the instrument of that voice.

"Well, what is it to me?" he demanded roughly of himself, suddenly realising the tenor of his meditations. "See here, my boy, you must be careful. She's probably a regular chorus girl--or worse." (But he did not really believe that of her.) "She's nothing whatever to me," he asserted sternly to his truant fancy. "She belongs to--Simpson. And I belong to Mollie June."

The car stopped at last, and Rockwell was getting up.

When they had descended into the street Merriam found that they were at the end of the line by the Lake.

"Illinois Central next," said Rockwell, grinning, and marched them to the Forty-Seventh Street Station of that railway. None of the others spoke.

Their guide bought tickets to the City. "Are we going back to the Loop, then?" thought Merriam.

In a moment they were on the platform. Merriam walked back and forth apart from the others, drawing deep breaths of the Lake air and looking up at the stars, dimly bright in the April night. "I belong to Mollie June," he said firmly to himself.

Presently one of the odd little suburban trains drew up, and they entered.

But they had scarcely sat down and yielded up their tickets when Rockwell routed them out--at Forty-Third Street. Evidently his buying tickets clear to the City had been a part of his elaborate ruse.

Rockwell went at once to a telephone to call up a neighbouring garage.

Merriam took a cigarette and lighted it and again walked up and down. His thoughts now ran unbidden upon Mollie June. Images of her crowded his mind: Mollie June rosy and bright-eyed as he had seen her last at the dinner table in the alcove of the Peacock Cabaret; Mollie June by his "sick" bed, standing over him after he had impulsively declared his love, her hand hovering above his hair, tears upon her face, turning bravely away from him; Mollie June above the roses, as he had first seen her that morning--was it only that morning?--lifting the wet stems from the bowl; Mollie June confronting Mayor Black, refusing in angered innocence to leave the room; Mollie June in the Peacock Cabaret the night before; Mollie June in the front row in "Senior Algebra" back in Riceville. Ah, he did belong to Mollie June, heart and soul. There was no doubt of that, and all the Jennies in the world were of no account whatever.

So it was a young man in a very laudable frame of mind indeed--waiving the fact that Mollie June was a married woman!--whom Rockwell presently bundled into the taxi he had summoned. Father Murray was already inside. Rockwell followed, leaving Simpson to speak to the chauffeur.

It puzzled Merriam to find Simpson thus placed in command, as it were, and his thoughts came back to the present adventure. He listened closely.

"Stop first at Rankin's Hardware Store," Simpson said to the chauffeur, "on Forty-Third Street."

In a couple of minutes, it seemed, they stopped before Rankin's emporium. Simpson alone descended. The other three remained in the taxicab, Rockwell openly smiling at the puzzled inquiry on Merriam's face but vouchsafing no enlightenment. Merriam would not ask questions.

The hardware shop was closed, but there was a light within and a man. Simpson pounded at the door till he gained admittance, and in a few minutes returned bearing--a small stepladder!

"What on earth----?" The words were almost starting from Merriam's lips, but he managed to swallow them, and listened again for Simpson's direction to the driver.

It was an address: "612 Dalton Place." That meant nothing to Merriam.

Again a brief drive, Merriam laboriously cogitating, with bewildered eyes on the small ladder--an affair of some six steps,--which Simpson had brought into the cab and was holding upright between them.

Father Murray asked the question which Merriam had so manfully (and youthfully) repressed:

"What's that for?"

"You'll see," said Rockwell, grinning, enjoying the mystery.

Simpson remained as silent and grave as an undertaker.

The taxicab had turned several corners and covered perhaps a couple of miles of streets. Now it slowed down, stopped.

"There ain't no 612," said the driver through the tube.

Rockwell took command again.

"Isn't there?" he said. "Let's see."

He got out. Peering through the open door of the taxicab, Merriam could see that the house before which they had stopped was numbered 608.

"612's a vacant lot," he heard the chauffeur say.

"So it seems," Rockwell replied. "Well, we'll get out here anyway."

Merriam eagerly took this cue, and the other two followed, Simpson bringing his ladder. Rockwell was handing a couple of green bills to the driver.

"Drive on opposite where 612 ought to be," he said, "and wait. We'll be back by and by."

"This way," he added, and started with Merriam and Father Murray down the street past the vacant lot. Simpson, carrying his small stepladder as unobtrusively as possible at his side, followed laggingly behind.

The square beyond the next avenue seemed to be occupied entirely by a huge block of apartments. They did not cross the avenue but turned the corner and walked on down one side of the great flat building but on the opposite side of the street. Their side held a miscellany of small detached houses.

Merriam glanced at Rockwell. He was slowing his steps and seemed to be watching a couple of men who were moving in the same direction as their own on the other side of the street immediately under the apartments.

A moment later these two men turned in at one of the entrances of the flat building. After perhaps twenty feet more Rockwell glanced over his shoulder. Merriam involuntarily did likewise. Half a block behind them was Simpson with his ladder. There was no one else in sight.

Rockwell stopped for a second, then said, "Come!" and quickly crossed the street and entered another door of the flat building.

Within the vestibule he stopped again.

"We must wait for Simpson," he said.

He began reading the names below the battery of bells. Merriam and Father Murray stared at each other.

In a moment Simpson joined them with his ladder. Rockwell promptly opened the inner door of the vestibule and proceeded to ascend the stairs. Simpson trudged after him, and Merriam and the priest followed perforce.

They reached the second floor and the third and continued on up to the fourth, which was the top floor.

Arriving there, Merriam found Rockwell pointing to a sort of trapdoor in the ceiling above the landing at the head of the stairs.

"Right!" he whispered.

Simpson calmly set his ladder down, separated its legs, and planted it firmly beneath the trap. He and Rockwell paid no attention to the doors of the two apartments which opened off the landing within a few feet of them. Simpson amended the ladder and, exerting his strength, pushed the trap door up. It moved with a grating sound, startlingly loud in their quasi-burglarious situation The night air rushed in. The trap gave upon the roof of the building.

Simpson did not hesitate but pulled himself up on to the roof.

Rockwell followed.

"You're to come too," he said as he looked down at Merriam gleefully and winked. He was evidently pleased with himself. "You wait here, Father Murray. Remember, if any one comes you're a roof inspector. That's next door to a sky pilot anyway!"

The priest groaned but made no protest, well knowing, doubtless, that rebellion now would avail him naught, and Merriam quickly followed Rockwell on to the roof.

It was a flat tar-and-gravel roof--not an unpleasant place to be in the starry April night. They circled about chimneys and miscellaneous pipe heads and stepped across brick ledges, which seemed to separate different sections of the building from one another.

Presently they were approaching the opposite side of the building, having circled the interior court and light wells. They came to another trap-door, a twin of the one by which they had ascended.

Simpson was about to open this second trap when Rockwell spoke:

"Wait a minute!"

Stooping lower and lower till at last he seemed to be almost sitting on his heels as he walked, he made his way to the edge of the roof on the new street and peeped over the parapet--a dozen feet perhaps beyond the trapdoor. For a moment only he looked, then returned in the same cautious and laborious manner.

"We were right," he said to Simpson.

"Watchers?" Simpson asked.

"Two of them. And half way down the block a taxi."

But now Simpson was carefully raising the trap-door. After listening for a minute he put his head down and looked.

"Coast is clear," he reported.

"Go ahead, then," said Rockwell.

So Simpson put his legs down inside, hung, and dropped into the vestibule. Rockwell and Merriam followed.

Straightening himself up inside, Merriam found Rockwell facing the door of the right-hand apartment.

"This is Jennie's!" he whispered.

CHAPTER XVIII

JENNIE

Rockwell knocked twice. A girl with a thin, dark face peeped out.

"Hello, Margery," said Rockwell.

"Oh, how d'you do?" said the girl, recognizing the speaker. Relief was mingled in her tone with continuing caution. "Who's with you?"

"Friends," said Rockwell. "Mr. Merriam, the Senator's double. And Simpson."

"Simpson can't come here!" said Margery sharply.

Merriam glanced at Simpson and was amazed to see how moved he was. He had a sense that the man could hardly keep himself from trembling.

"He's come to help take Norman away," said Rockwell. "He need go no farther than the hall. Come, Margery, let us in. We can't stand here all night. I'll explain to both of you inside. I'm George's friend, you know."

"Well!" Still unwillingly Margery released the chain and moved back, opening the door for them.

As they stepped inside she stared at Merriam.

"The devil!" she exclaimed.

"No," said the young man, "my name's Merriam. How do you do, Miss Milton?"

He looked at Margery almost as curiously as she was looking at him. He was really as innocent as Mollie June--more so, in fact, not being married,--and Margery was the first member of the demi-monde or the near demimonde with whom he had ever had personal contact. He found her disappointing. She was thin to the point of angularity, in a trying yellow negligee, with straight black hair, black eyes that were unpleasantly direct, and a lean dark face that was undeniably hard.

For a moment only she stared. Then she shut the door and spoke to Simpson:

"You stay here!"

"Yes," said Simpson, with more than servitorial humility.

Rockwell was advancing into the sitting room, which opened immediately off the tiny hall, and Merriam, feeling himself dismissed by Miss Milton, followed.

Merriam's sole first impression of the sitting room was of a soft, rather agreeable harmony in yellow. The wall paper, the hangings, the upholstery of chairs and davenport, the shades of lights were all in mild tints of that pleasant colour. Probably Margery's yellow negligee was intended to fit into this ensemble.

But he had no time for detailed observation. For as they stepped forward the yellow portières at one side of the room parted, and another girl appeared between them--undoubtedly Jennie.

This time he was surprised but hardly disappointed. The figure between the portières was that of a stage parlour maid--just the right height for a soubrette and just pleasantly, youthfully slender, yet rounded, in a trim-fitting dress of some black material, cut rather low at the throat and edged with white, with a ridiculously small, purely ornamental, white apron with pockets. Black-silk-stockinged ankles and black, high-heeled satin pumps completed a picture that was both chic and demure. Merriam remembered that it was as a parlour maid that Norman had first known Jennie and guessed that this costume had been assumed for his benefit.

In a moment the portières closed behind her. She was looking at the older man, having barely glanced at Merriam.

"How do, Mr. Rockwell," she said.

Merriam, almost with alarm, recognised the tones that had so piqued him over the telephone.

Then she turned to him.

"This is---- Gee, but you're like him! I wouldn't have believed it."

"Miss Higgins, Mr. Merriam," said Rockwell tardily.

Merriam responded awkwardly:

"How do you do, Miss----"

"'Miss Jennie' will do," interrupted Jennie.

(Merriam remembered uncomfortably how Mollie June had hit upon a similar "compromise.")

"I ain't partial to 'Higgins,'" Jennie added. "I'm thinking of changing it to 'Montmorency.' Wouldn't 'Jennie Montmorency' be nice, Mr. Rockwell?"

"I don't think it fits very well," said Rockwell. "You'd better change it to Simpson."

Jennie coloured. She coloured easily, as Merriam was to learn. Now that she had turned again to Rockwell he had a chance to look at her face. She was an exceedingly pretty blonde. Her throat was attractively rounded, her shoulders also. Those shoulders might be unpleasant when she was older and stouter, but at present they were charming. Her chin and cheeks were also daintily full--quite the opposite of Margery Milton's. The cheeks were pink, slightly heightened with rouge perhaps but not with paint. The eyes were softly, brightly blue. The hair fair and smoothly wavy, if one may attempt to express a nuance by combining contradictory terms. In short, she was, as some of her admirers undoubtedly expressed it, "not a bit hard to look at."

For a moment Jennie's colour flooded. Then came her retort to Rockwell:

"Mind your own business," she said.

The words were sharp, but somehow the tone was not. The voice was still soft and--warm. It is the only word. It was the voice one might attribute to a kitten, if a kitten were gifted with articulate speech.

Rockwell only laughed. At the same moment Margery Milton entered from the hall, where she had presumably been impressing upon Simpson the necessity of remaining in strict hiding.

Jennie glanced at her friend.

"Well," she said, "may as well sit down."

She dropped into a chair and crossed one leg over the other.

"You've come to take Georgie away," she continued as the others sat down.

"Yes," said Rockwell. "Listen, Jennie. You too, Margery," and he began to explain the new situation which had resulted primarily from Margery's confidences to Thompson. He did not soften this point in his relation.

"See what your gabbling's done," said Jennie, without anger, to her friend when he had finished. "You always talk too much."

"I can talk if I please," said Margery sullenly.

"It will pay you better to keep still this time," said Rockwell.

"Pay me? How much?" demanded Margery promptly.

"Say a hundred dollars."

"A hundred----! I'm mum as a stone image. When do I get it, though?"

"Here's twenty now on account." Rockwell held out a yellow-backed bill, which Margery quickly accepted. "You get the rest when this is all over."

"How do I know I get the rest?"

"Shut up, Marge," said Jennie. "You know Mr. Rockwell."

"We've no time to lose," Rockwell continued, looking at his watch. "It's twenty-five minutes to ten now. Thompson said ten, but he might come a bit sooner. We must get Norman away at once. You understand that you're to let Mr. Merriam go to bed in his stead. When Thompson comes you must admit him. You can pretend to be unwilling to do so, but you must let him in without too much fuss. You're to tell him that Norman's not here and has not been here--that there's a man here who looks tremendously like Norman and that at first you fooled Margery into thinking it was Norman."

While Rockwell was issuing these instructions Jennie's cheeks had grown hot.

"I'm not that kind," she cried. "I've never had any one but George." Margery also glowered.

"I know that, my dear," said Rockwell, mendaciously perhaps but promptly. "But you've got to do what I tell you to-night. You don't care what a fellow like Thompson thinks. He always thinks the worst anyhow. It's to save George. He'll be ruined unless we can fool Thompson completely to-night. It's for George," he repeated. "You'd do a lot for George."

Jennie's colour was subsiding. She had uncrossed her legs and was sitting erect. She looked fixedly at Rockwell.

"I have done a lot for him," she said.

"I know," said Rockwell. "And you'll do this to-night." He was using his most persuasive tones.

Jennie stole an almost timid glance at Merriam.

The latter's youthful chivalry was aroused. He was filled with pity for her, mingled with something like admiration on account of her prettiness. He saw her, more or less correctly, as a pathetic victim of real love and a false social system. He smiled at her reassuringly.

"It'll be all right," he said. "I shan't trouble you at all."

Jennie's glance lingered on his face--the face that was so much like Norman's. She saw him for the clean, innocent, naïve boy that he was. He was what George Norman might once have been, long years ago. I am afraid that something akin to interest crept into her look. She dropped her eyes.

"All right," she said curtly to Rockwell. "I suppose I will."

"Jennie, you're a fool!" cried Margery.

"Shut up, Marge," said Jennie, with whom this seemed to be a frequent locution.

Rockwell had already risen.

"Is George dressed?" he asked.

"No," said Jennie. "He's too sick."

"Come, then," said Rockwell to Merriam. "We must help him into his things."

He crossed the small room and passed through the yellow portières. Having been at the apartment earlier in the day with Aunt Mary, he was acquainted with its geography.

Merriam rose to follow, but he felt that something more ought to be said to relieve the half-hostile awkwardness of the situation. Jennie's eyes were still cast down.

"Is he pretty sick?" he asked as he moved across the room. He was not much concerned about Senator Norman, but he could think of no other remark.

Jennie raised her eyes and looked at him--an unreadable glance.

"Pretty sick," she said, almost indifferently.

Merriam paused a moment before the portières, looking back, still meeting her eyes.

Then he turned his own away and pushed the portières aside. He found himself in a dining room, done entirely in blue, as the sitting room was in yellow. Rockwell was already opening a door on the further side. Merriam quickened his steps and was close behind the older man in entering a small white bedroom.

On a single bed therein lay Senator George Norman. Evidently he had heard their voices in the sitting room, for he had raised himself on his elbow.

He and Merriam stared at each other in the amazement that is inevitable to two men who find themselves really bearing a striking physical resemblance to each other, however much they may have been forewarned. We are so accustomed to the idea that each of us has a sort of exclusive copyright on his own particular exterior that we cannot seriously believe in anything approaching a replica unless actually confronted with it.

The Senator did not look especially "boyish" as he lay there. His ruffled hair was indeed practically untouched with gray, but his cheeks were haggard and feverish, and there were many little wrinkles about his mouth and eyes. For all that Merriam could hardly believe he was not looking into a mirror. The experience was hardly pleasant for either man. "This is what I shall be like some time when I am old and ill," Merriam thought; and the Senator can hardly have escaped the bitter reflection of the man who has left many years behind him: "That is what I was once." Looking closer, Merriam could detect slight differences. The lips and nostrils of his distinguished relative were undoubtedly a little fuller than his own, and--yes, he surely was not flattering himself in thinking that the chin was rounder and weaker. But above all such trivial points the likeness rose overwhelmingly, incredibly complete. Merriam even recognised a similarity of movement as the sick man impatiently twisted himself on the bed.

Rockwell was standing silent, also no doubt inspecting the resemblance of which he had made such remarkable use.

The Senator was the first to find his tongue.

"So you're my virtuous double," he said, with a sort of petulant scorn.

"The voice, too!" Rockwell thought. He almost dreaded to hear Merriam's reply, which would echo the very quality and timbre of the other's speech, as if he were mocking him. But Merriam did not seem to notice. The fact is one cannot judge the sound of one's own voice nor appreciate the similarity in another's tones or in an imitation.

"I'm the double," Merriam was saying.

For a moment longer the Senator stared. Then he laughed. He evidently laughed more easily than Merriam, and somewhat differently. Merriam made a mental note that if he should be involved in any further impersonation he must be careful of his laugh.

"Well, it's rather convenient just this minute," said Norman, none too courteously, "though it may be damned inconvenient in the end."

"We'll help you dress," said Rockwell. "We've come to take you to the hotel, you know."

"Yes, I know that all right," said Norman. "If I'm to be a damned reformer, I must get out of this." He laughed again. "Hand me those trousers, will you?"

He put his legs out of the bed. He had already dressed himself as far as his shirt. Then he had apparently given the job up and got back into bed.

"I'm weak as a kitten," he continued, "and I've the deuce of a fever, but I guess I can make it. You've a taxi, of course?"

"Yes," said Rockwell.

He did not tell Norman that the road to the taxi lay through two trapdoors and across a roof. Neither did he mention the fact that Merriam was to stay at Jennie's or allude to Thompson's coming. Perhaps he feared that if Norman knew of Thompson's approach he would prefer to stay where he was and join forces with him again.

In a very few minutes Norman was fully dressed--in the evening clothes in which he had left the hotel the night before, on his way, as he supposed, to Mayor Black's. Rockwell tied his white bow for him.

During the process of dressing he and Merriam were continually glancing at each other. Neither could resist the attraction. Several times they caught each other at it.

At about their third mutual detection, which happened during the tying of the bow, Norman laughed again.

"We're certainly a pair," he said. "Whether aces or deuces remains to be seen, eh?

"Gad, but I'm weak," he added, sinking on to the bed as Rockwell finished his job. "You may have to carry me downstairs."

"We'll carry you all right," said Rockwell. "We're all ready, aren't we?"

"I suppose so," said Norman.

Rockwell stooped and picked him up in his arms, exerting himself only moderately, apparently, in so doing. The Senator was light on account of his carefully preserved slenderness, and Rockwell was really very strong.

"Bring his hat, Merriam," said the latter.

Rockwell carried him through the blue dining room into the sitting room, Merriam following with the silk hat. Both Jennie and Margery were standing.

Norman waved his hand limply to Jennie over Rockwell's shoulder.

"Bye-bye, pet," he said. "I'm all in, you see. Sorry to have bothered you like this when I wasn't fit."

"Georgie boy!" cried Jennie.

With a little run she came up behind Rockwell, caught Norman's hand, and kissed it.

"You'll let me know how you are? You'll come back?"

"Course I will," said Norman, though he had promised Aunt Mary that afternoon that he would "cut out" Jennie and the whole of that part of his life to which she belonged.

It may be that Jennie suspected something of the sort. There were tears in her bright, soft eyes, and her cheeks were pale enough to make her slight rouging obvious.

"You will, won't you?" she said. "Come soon, Georgie boy!"

Norman only smiled at her and feebly waved again. Rockwell meanwhile was moving towards the hallway. Jennie followed closely, though Margery tried to prevent her.

"Let them go, Jen!" whispered Margery.

"Shut up, Marge!" said Jennie almost fiercely.

And then the catastrophe which Margery had been trying to forestall, and which Rockwell had not sufficiently foreseen or else had not cared to prevent, occurred: Jennie came face to face with Simpson in the little hallway. She stopped short.

"You!" she said.

"Yes, Miss Jennie," said Simpson, looking at her steadily. "I didn't mean you should see me. I came to help take Mr. Norman away. It was me that discovered the plan to catch him here."

Jennie knew from Rockwell's earlier explanation that this was true. She tried to give Simpson what she herself would probably have called the "once-over"--a scornful survey from head to foot. But her histrionic purpose failed her. Her eyes fell too quickly.

"Well, be quick about it," she said. For the first time her voice was harsh.

Rockwell meanwhile had carried Norman on into the outer hall--for Simpson had already opened the door--and set him down leaning against the banister.

"Margery!" he called sharply.

Margery, glad of any diversion, advanced quickly:

"What do you want?"

"A stepladder. Got one?"

"Why--yes!"

"Go with her, Simpson, and get it," Rockwell commanded.

"Yes, Mr. Rockwell."

"This way," said Margery, and she and Simpson passed by Jennie and Merriam, who stood a little behind Jennie, and disappeared into the flat.

Jennie gave one quick look at Norman, who was leaning weakly against the railing staring in front of him, turned away with eyes that were very bright and a little hard, brushed past Merriam, and went back into the sitting room and sat down.

Almost at the same moment Simpson returned, carrying a rather tall stepladder and followed by Margery.

Norman came out of his apathy and stared. Simpson set the ladder up in the center of the hall, mounted it, and climbed through the trap, which they had left open when they descended.

"Here. Catch!" said Rockwell. He tossed Norman's silk hat up through the trap, and Simpson caught it.

Then he stooped, picked Norman up again, and began to mount the ladder with him.

"What in hell!" said the sick man.

Rockwell did not reply but continued to mount and then hoisted the Senator up so that Simpson could catch him under the arms and draw him through the trap.

Finally he spoke to Merriam:

"Take this ladder inside. Then you must go straight to bed. He'll be here any time now. I'll 'phone from the hotel when we get there."

He swung himself up on to the roof. The trap closed.

"Well, I'll be damned!" said Margery Milton.

Merriam did not like profanity in women, even in Margeries.

"Very likely you will," he said.

Margery looked at him sharply:

"You think you're smart, don't you? Are you going to bring that ladder in?"

CHAPTER XIX

A NEW ANTAGONIST

Merriam shut the stepladder together, lifted it into an oblique position, and carried it through the inner hallway into the sitting room, where he stopped, not knowing where to go with it.

Jennie was still sitting. She looked up at him. The same expression of interest which had showed in her eyes once before returned to them. She smiled and shifted her position, crossing her knees. But she volunteered no information as to what he should do with the stepladder which he was awkwardly holding.

Meanwhile Margery had followed him into the inner hall, closed the door, and put up the chain. She now came past him and pushed aside the portières into the dining room.

"Bring it this way, please," she said, quite politely.

He carried the ladder through the blue dining room into a kitchenette, and thence through a door which Margery held open on to a narrow back porch, from which he had a glimpse of a sort of orderly labyrinth of steep wooden stairs and narrow back porches around the four sides of an inner court.

He returned into the kitchenette, which was almost entirely filled up with a gas stove. Margery shut the door.

"Go into the sitting room and talk to Jen," she said. "I want her to forget about Simpson. I'll change the bed for you."

"Thank you," said Merriam, who began to perceive that Miss Milton, in spite of her profanity, had certain admirable qualities.

He went through the dining room, hesitated for a moment before the portières--he could not have said why--and then pushed them open.

Jennie had risen and was standing beside a table between the windows. The table held a parchment-shaded lamp, a newspaper, a small camera, and a bowl of violets. Merriam had not noticed the flowers before. He remembered the violets worn by the floor clerk at the hotel, and wondered whether George Norman had saved himself trouble at the florist's by ordering two bunches from the same lot, to be sent to different addresses.

Jennie was looking down at the flowers. She must have been aware of his presence. If so, she was apparently content that he should have the benefit of a good look at her trim figure and at her face in profile, which was its best view. She had a pretty nose; the artificially heightened colour of her cheeks was charming in this light; and the bright knob of her fair hair over her ear was a most alluring ornament.

In a moment she bent gracefully down to smell the violets. As she straightened up she turned to look at him--a serious, appraising look that was somehow intimate. Then she smiled brightly.

"Come in, Mr.----" (she seemed to forget his name and let it go) "and sit down."

She tripped across the room to the davenport and sat, indicating that he was to sit beside her.

Merriam wanted both to take that seat and not to take it. He took it.

She crossed one leg over the other and looked at him, smiling. One small, squarish, plump hand lay on her knee, ready, Merriam half divined, to be taken if any one should desire to take it. He wondered if it were true that she had "never had any one but George."

"I forget your name," she said confidentially.

"Merriam." It was not said stiffly. He was too much attracted to be stiff. He realised that he was answering her smile.

"What's your first name?"

"John."

"Then I shall call you 'John.' I don't like last names--and 'Mister' and 'Miss.'"

"They're stiff," he said, "playing up" alarmingly as on a former occasion.

She scrutinised his face, growing grave.

"You're awfully like George," she said, "except here."

She raised her hand, and with the tip of her forefinger touched his chin.

"You're sterner," she added.

It was the very point Merriam himself had noted. He admired her acuteness of observation. And of course he was flattered. But he realised that he was not being particularly stern at that moment.

"I expect I am," he said, trying to look, if not to be, more so.

Jennie moved an inch or two farther away from him, as if a little frightened by the iron qualities of this male.

"Where's Margery?" she asked.

"Here," said Margery's voice, with disconcerting patness.

She came through the portières and surveyed the two of them with an ironical look that was by no means lost on Merriam. He felt ashamed of himself.

But Jennie gave him a quick glance with a little pout in it, as if to say, "What a nuisance! When we were just beginning to get acquainted!"

And straightway his shame fled and he smiled at her.

Margery, however, was speaking in her most businesslike tones:

"I've changed your bed, and you'd better get into it as quick as you can. It's late now."

"Yes," said Merriam, rising. "What time is it?"

Before he could get out his own timepiece Jennie raised her arm and glanced at a small gold wrist watch.

"Oh! Five minutes after ten!" she cried. She rose too. "You must hurry."

"Yes," said Merriam.

He moved to the portières--hesitated. He did not know how to take leave under these novel circumstances.

"Good night, ladies," he ventured in rather ceremonious tones.

To his chagrin both girls burst out laughing.

"Good night, gentleman!" Jennie called merrily after him, and their renewed giggling pursued him as, in painful confusion, he crossed to the door of the bedroom.

He shut that door behind him and rapidly undressed, stimulated to speed in his operations by a vigorous mental kicking of himself as an ass and a "boob." A suit of pajamas, apparently quite new; was laid out on a chair. He got into these and slipped into bed.

The moment he was recumbent he realised that he had forgotten to turn out his light. No matter. He had no idea of sleeping. Besides Thompson would be there any minute.

Ah, Thompson! With relief his mind seized upon this topic. It was sufficiently absorbing. Any minute now Thompson would burst in, demanding Senator Norman. He, Merriam, would pretend he had never seen Thompson before, never even heard of him. "My name is not Norman," he would say. "My name is Merriam. Who are you? And what do you want?" Thompson would stare, falter, begin to apologise and explain. It was pleasingly dramatic. He pursued the interview. His own conduct therein displayed the quintessence of composure and savoir faire. Jennie and Margery--yes, both of them were present--would be impressed; they would laugh at him no longer. Thompson was sacrificed mercilessly.

But the minutes passed and nothing happened. There was no sign of the real Thompson. What was wrong? The silence of the small, lighted bedroom began to get on Merriam's excited nerves. Had Thompson somehow, in spite of Rockwell's elaborate precautions, got wind of the real situation, discovered their trick before it was played? Had he remained at the hotel, seen the real Norman return, and perceived the whole imposition?

A light knock sounded on his door. Merriam jumped and then lay still.

"Can I come in?"

It was Jennie's voice.

"Yes," he said, embarrassed; but what other reply could be made?

Jennie opened the door and came to his bedside. She had changed her attire completely. She now wore the costume of a ballerina--a tight pink corsage, very low and sleeveless, with the slightest of pink loops over her shoulders, a short, fluffy pink skirt barely to her knees, pink tights, and pink dancing slippers. Over one of the bright knobs of her hair was a pink rose. She was much more brilliantly rouged than before, and he was conscious of a warm scent of powder and perfume.

Merriam lay staring at her without speaking, subconsciously shocked perhaps, but openly bewildered and fascinated.

She smiled at him and seemed to be inspecting him in return. Her left hand hung at her side, holding something heavy, but she put out her right and touched his hair--with a single little movement ruffled it.

"You look very nice lying there," she said in the most natural tones in the world. "How do I look?"

She stepped back and pirouetted, turning completely around on her toes. The fluffy pink skirts swung out and circled with her in a most entrancing manner. Merriam was quite dazzled. The white gleam of her back as she turned, the slender white arms, held gracefully away from her sides, in spite of that heavy something in one hand, the tight slimness of the waist, the glimpse of pink legs beneath the circling skirt--he had seen the like only on the stage. It was rather overpowering so close at hand.

But in a single rosy moment her revolution was completed. She was facing him again and relaxing down off her toes.

"How do I look?" she repeated, smiling, with the slightest natural augmentation of her artificial flush.

Merriam swallowed. "Stunning!" he ejaculated.

She beamed. "Of course I do," she said.

Then her face seemed to harden. She stepped closer to the bed so that she was almost bending over him.

"I've got a part to play," she said. "Well, I'm going to play it." There was a touch of something like defiance in her voice now. "I've cooked up a plot for Mister Thompson. Marge don't like it, but she'll help. I'll show him! You've got to help too."

She raised her left hand, displaying the heavy object held therein, which he had not yet identified. He was somewhat startled to see that it was a small revolver.

"Take it," she said.

As he did not instantly put out his arm she tossed it across so that it fell on the bed on the other side of him.

"It's loaded," she said, "with blanks. Mister Thompson shall see you first. But afterwards Marge and I will see what we can do with him. We'll get him to stay for a little supper, and I'm going to play up to him. I'll do a dance on the table. But when he tries to catch me I'll scream. That's where you come in. You rush out with your revolver and drive him out of the house. Won't it be fun?" she demanded, glowing with excitement. "We'll have the goods on him. He'll keep his face shut after that. Whatever he knows or thinks about George! We'll have a fine story for Mrs. Thompson, if he don't. Oh!"

A doorbell had rung loudly in the kitchenette.

"There he is now. Remember! When I scream!"

She was gone from the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

Merriam lay as if dazed. This "high life" was proving almost too fast for his bucolic and pedagogical wits. He jumped when the bell rang again more violently. Then he heard the sound of the hall door being opened and a loud masculine voice. Was it Thompson's? A moment or two later the voice became more distinct, and he could hear the girls' voices too. He could not be sure it was Thompson. Was it some one of his "henchmen" instead? Whoever he was, he was in the sitting room. In a moment or two he would almost certainly be coming out to the bedroom.

Merriam suddenly remembered the revolver and reached for it and slipped it under the bedclothes. He had several minutes more to wait. The voices became lower. Then they were raised again. Suddenly he heard the rings of the portières clash--the curtains had been sharply flung aside. Margery's thin voice came to him.

"See for yourself, then!" it said.

"That's better," said the masculine voice in tones half amused, half irritated. Was it Thompson?

Light footsteps and heavy footsteps crossed the dining room together. The bedroom door was opened.

"Sir," said Margery to Merriam, in tones a little shrill with excitement, "this is a Mr. Crockett. He has some crazy notion about your being Senator Norman. See for yourself, Mr.--Crockett!" She spoke his name as though it were an insult. "Remember, he's sick," she added warningly. Margery was not a bad actress.

Crockett! Crockett himself! So much the better! With an effort Merriam steadied his nerves. Mr. Crockett advanced to the bedside--a tall, imposing gentleman in evening clothes with keen blue eyes and a thin remnant of lightish hair.

"Well, George," he said blandly, "glad to see you. Your little friends are very loyal. But they couldn't keep me away from you."

Merriam instantly disliked Mr. Crockett. He plunged with zest into his part.

"George?" he inquired coldly. "My name's not George!"

"Oh, come, come, Norman! You're caught. Fess up."

But he looked closer. At the same moment Margery lifted a silk shade off the electric bulb by the bureau, and the cold hard light fell full on the younger man's face.

"Who do you think I am?" said Merriam. "And who are you?" he added in an insolent tone.

The impressive financier stared. He bent down and stared harder.

"Well?" Merriam demanded with all the hauteur he could muster. And then: "Got an eye-ful?"

He had preconceived this colloquy in much more dignified phrases, but the insulting tag of boyish slang popped out of him unawares. However, he could not have done better. Probably he could never, by taking thought, have done as well. Senator Norman would assuredly not have used that expression; it had been coined long since his day in Boyville.