Front matter (continued 5)

"I was just thinking it was about time for you to be back," he said, though he surely did not expect them to believe that he had just been thinking anything of the sort.

The pretty floor clerk, no whit nonplused, bowed and smiled at Rockwell. But she studiously failed to observe Senator Norman's presence.

Dr. Hobart walked down the hall with them.

"How's Norman?" Rockwell asked.

"No better, I'm afraid," said the physician apologetically. "He has a high fever, and a while ago he was slightly delirious. I had to give him more of the drug. He's sleeping again now. Simpson is with him, of course."

"Damn!" said Rockwell, with a sort of deliberate earnestness.

They reached the sitting room and entered it. There was no one there. Simpson was apparently in the Senator's bedroom. Merriam dropped into a chair and closed his eyes again. Rockwell walked across to a window and stood staring out. Dr. Hobart stopped uncertainly in the middle of the room and fiddled with a cigarette without being able to make up his mind to light it. For several moments none of them spoke.

But Rockwell was not the man to remain long in any apathy of inaction. He turned suddenly, and Merriam, whom the prolonged unnatural silence had caused to open his eyes, saw that he had made up his mind to something.

"Hobart," he said, "I suppose Simpson isn't practically necessary in there." He indicated the sick room.

"N-no," said Dr. Hobart, "I suppose not. He's just watching. Norman will sleep soundly for some time."

"Then ask him to come here, will you?"

The physician disappeared into the bedroom and in a moment returned with Simpson.

"Simpson," said Rockwell, "we're going to have a meal here, for nine people. A luncheon, if you like. But make it hearty. Choose the stuff yourself, and serve it as quickly as you can, please."

For a moment Simpson stared. Then, as if remembering a nearly forgotten cue, he replied submissively, "Yes, sir," and turned to the door.

As that door closed behind Simpson, Merriam suddenly stood up.

"I must send a telegram to Riceville," he said, starting for the writing table for a blank.

"Wait a bit," said Rockwell. "You can send it just as well an hour from now."

Merriam was disposed to argue, but just then the rest of their party trooped in, having returned to the hotel in Mayor Black's car.

Alicia walked straight up to Merriam, gay with enthusiasm, caught his hand, and squeezed it.

"My dear boy," she cried, "it was perfectly splendid! I've half a mind to kiss you!"

"Please do," said Merriam.

"I will," said Alicia promptly, and before the young man could realise what was happening she had put her gloved hands on his shoulders and kissed him on one cheek.

Merriam was vastly astonished. In the circles in which he had moved in Riceville or even at college, his remark could have been taken only as a daring pleasantry. But he undoubtedly had sang froid, for he concealed his confusion, or most of it, and said:

"Let me turn the other cheek."

"Oh, I mustn't be a pig," said Alicia. "I'll leave the other cheek for Mollie June."

At this Merriam's confusion became, I fear, perfectly apparent, for the remainder of the party had followed Alicia into the room and were grouped about him.

"Kiss him quick, Mollie dear," said the incorrigible Alicia, thereby causing confusion in a second person present.

But Mayor Black, no longer to be restrained, saved the situation. He seized Merriam's hand and pumped it.

"One of the best speeches I ever heard the Senator make!" he asserted, in tones which Merriam feared might rouse the real Senator in the adjoining room.

Mr. Wayward meanwhile was patting him on the back and murmuring, "Fine! Excellent!"

Merriam turned to Aunt Mary:

"I tried to do it justice," he said.

"You gave it exceedingly well," said Aunt Mary, with less reserve than he had ever seen her exhibit before.

"Indeed you did!" cried Mollie June earnestly, her eyes shining with sincerity.

And that tribute, from the least qualified judge of them all, was, I regret to state, the one which young Merriam treasured the most.

Simpson, who had worked with amazing alacrity, and even inspired his assistants to celerity had completed his preparations and announced that he was ready to serve the luncheon.

Rockwell delayed the meal for several minutes the sake of an apparently important conference into which he had drawn Mr. Wayward and the Mayor over by the window.

Presently, however, they all sat down, with Merriam beside Mollie June. The luncheon passed, as luncheons do, in small talk and anecdote.

At last Rockwell, having finished the last morsel of a piece of French pastry, laid down his fork and fixed his eyes significantly on Mr. Wayward, who was in mid-career with something like his fifteenth anecdote. Mr. Wayward faltered but rallied and finished his story. It was the best one he had told, but there was only perfunctory laughter. Every one about the table was looking at Rockwell, realising that at last the great question that was in all their minds, "What are we to do next?" was to be discussed and decided. Simpson, it should be added, had dismissed his assistants as soon as the dessert course was served, so that only the initiated were present.

Three times during the meal Dr. Hobart had left the table to enter the sick room. On the second occasion he had remained away some minutes. Rockwell now turned to him.

"Give us your report, Doctor," he said abruptly.

"Well," replied the physician, "he is better. Half an hour ago he was awake for perhaps five minutes. His temperature is lower, though he still has some fever. He is sleeping again now, more quietly than at any time since he returned to the hotel. In short, he is doing as well as could be expected. But it is out of the question for him to start on that speech-making tour this evening."

"Undoubtedly," said Aunt Mary, with much decision.

"Just so," said Rockwell. "That being the case, two alternatives present themselves: to announce his illness and call off the trip, or to go on playing the game as we have begun, with Mr. Merriam's help."

Merriam gasped and opened his mouth to protest, but Rockwell waved him down.

"The Mayor and Mr. Wayward and I have been discussing the matter. At first blush, there may seem to be little question as to which of these two courses we should pursue. Having come safely--so far as we know at least--through all the perils of discovery thus far, it may seem that we should tempt fortune no further, but let Mr. Merriam return to his school, publish the fact of the Senator's illness, and cancel the speaking engagements."

"Surely yes," interjected Merriam, and Aunt Mary and Father Murray and Mollie June and even Alicia seemed to assent.

"On further consideration," Rockwell continued imperturbably, "I think you will all see that the thing is not so clear. The course I have just suggested may be--doubtless is--the more prudent one, if prudence were all, but it is decidedly unfair to George Norman."

At this Aunt Mary almost visibly pricked up her ears.

"In his name," Rockwell went on, "we have thrown over the conservative wing of the party, with whom he has always stood and who have supported him--have 'betrayed' them, as they will put it, in this traction matter and in aligning him with the Reform League. We did so on the theory that he was to appeal to the people and to come back stronger than ever as the leader of the new and growing progressive element, which is sure to be dominant in the next election if only they can find such a leader as Norman could be. But if we cancel this trip and let him drop out of the campaign, if we stop now, where will he be? He will have lost his old backers and will not have made new ones. He will be politically dead. We shall have played absolutely into the hands of Crockett and Thompson and the rest of the gang, and shall have accomplished nothing but the political ruin of George Norman."

All the persons about the table except Mayor Black and Mr. Wayward stared hard at Rockwell as this new view of their predicament sank into their minds. The Mayor and Mr. Wayward smiled and nodded and watched the effect on the others. Particularly they watched Merriam, who sat dumfounded and vaguely alarmed. What new entanglements was Rockwell devising for him? He must get back to Riceville. Involuntarily--he could not have said why--he cast a quick glance at Mollie June, and encountered a similar glance from her. They both looked away in confusion.

Aunt Mary spoke:

"Tell us your plan."

It was like her--that masterful acceptance, without comment, of the situation.

"My plan, as you call it," said Rockwell, fixing his eyes not on Aunt Mary but on Merriam, "is simply that we should go on for another day or two as we have begun--play the game for George until he can take the cards in his own hands. This is Thursday. He is scheduled to leave this evening for Cairo, to speak there at nine o'clock to-morrow morning, to go on to East St. Louis for a talk before the Rotary Club at noon, and then up to Springfield for an address in the evening. Is that correct?"

"Yes," said Aunt Mary. "And he was to speak in Bloomington and Peoria on Saturday and in Moline and Freeport on Sunday."

"The speeches are all ready, I believe?"

"Yes. George and I outlined them together some time ago, and I have them written and typed."

"Exactly. Turn the manuscripts over to Mr. Merriam as you did this morning. He will have time on the train on the way to each place to master the speech to be given at that point. We shall take a special car. Mr. Wayward and I will go with him. You"--he was addressing Aunt Mary--"and the Mayor and Dr. Hobart--and Simpson," he added, glancing up at the waiter, who stood listening in the background,--"and the rest of you will stay here to guard George. That will be easy when the newspapers are full of his speeches out in the State."

"Mr. Crockett will know," said Father Murray timidly.

"He may suspect," said Rockwell with a grin. "But if you keep every one away from George--conceal his presence here,--he can't be sure whether it's George himself or his double who is speech-making over the State. And if he were sure, he wouldn't dare denounce him. Thanks to Mr. Merriam's clever trick last night, he has a particularly strong reason for keeping his mouth shut. If on the other hand we give up and lie down--cancel the trip,--he can easily start all manner of nasty stories about his escapades. I'm sorry to say it, but George has a pretty widespread sporting reputation." Rockwell glanced apologetically at Mollie June, but continued. "When a man with such a character is laid up, people are ready to believe anything except that he is really legitimately sick. Things will be safer here than they would be if we abandoned our trick. And our part out in the State will be 'nuts,' compared to what it was at the Urban Club this noon, for instance. Very few people out there know Norman well. There is no question at all that Mr. Merriam will get by. And we know from this noon that he will make the speeches in fine shape."

"The speeches will need to be altered a bit," said Aunt Mary, "if they are to appeal to the progressives."

"Mr. Merriam can attend to that on the train," said Rockwell. "Soften the standpattism and throw in some progressive dope. Can't you?" He appealed to Merriam.

"I suppose I could," said Merriam, "but--my school."

"I know," said Rockwell, "but it will be only a day or two longer. We'll telegraph again, of course. If you were really sick, as we've been telling them, they'd have to get along, wouldn't they? You've got to see us through. We must keep the ball rolling. It will probably be only one more day. George will be able to travel to-morrow, I presume?" he asked of Dr. Hobart. "By noon, anyway?"

"By noon, I hope," said the physician with cheerful optimism.

"You see?" said Rockwell. "George can catch the noon train for Springfield and get there in time to take on the evening speech. Mr. Merriam will have made the two at Cairo and East St. Louis. He can go back to Riceville from Springfield."

Just then the telephone rang, and I believe every person in the room jumped.

Rockwell rose to answer it.

"Senator Norman? Yes, he is here. But he is engaged. This is Mr. Rockwell, his manager. You can give the message to me."

A moment later he put his hand over the receiver and turned to Merriam.

"He insists on speaking to the Senator. You'll have to answer. I think it's Crockett. For Heaven's sake, be careful!"

Merriam took the receiver:

"Hello!"

A voice which he remembered only too well from the night before at Jennie's replied:

"This is Mr. Crockett, I have the honour, I believe, of speaking to Mr. Merriam."

"You have the wrong number!" said Merriam and hung up.

But before he had had time to explain to the others or even to wonder whether he had done wisely, the bell jangled again. He turned back to the instrument. Rockwell came quickly to his side, and Merriam, taking down the receiver, held it so that his "manager" too should be able to hear what came over the wire.

"Hello!"

"Ah! Senator Norman, by your voice," said Crockett in tones of elaborate irony. "I wish to congratulate you, Senator, on your speech this noon. It was a magnificent effort. So full of progressive ideas and youthful virility!"

"Thank you," said Merriam.

"And, Senator, I really must see you right away. I am calling from the lobby. I will come up to your rooms at once, if I may. Or meet you anywhere else you say. It is of the utmost importance to you, Mr. Mer----" (he pretended to correct himself) "to you, Senator, as well as to me."

"Wait a minute," said Merriam. He put his hand over the mouthpiece and looked at Rockwell.

"Tell him you will see him at eight o'clock this evening, here."

Merriam repeated this message.

"At eight?" said Crockett, with significant emphasis on the hour. "Very good, Senator. Thank you." He hung up.

Rockwell and Merriam turned to the others. Aunt Mary and the rest had risen. They were standing by their places about the table, looking rather scared.

"Eight o'clock?" questioned Aunt Mary, with an emphasis similar to Crockett's.

"Yes," said Rockwell doggedly. "Because"--he addressed Merriam--"your train goes at seven. At seven-thirty Miss Norman shall telephone Crockett, expressing your regret that you overlooked the fact that you would have to be gone by that time. Man alive!" he cried. "Don't you see? The Senator can't be sick now--after your public appearance this noon. Half the people who count in Chicago saw you--him, there--right as a trivet--obviously perfectly well. And we can't keep you here, with Crockett and Thompson continually nosing 'round. There's nothing for it but for you to start on that trip. The trip's a godsend. Write your telegram to Riceville!"

Merriam glanced around the circle of faces. Mad as the thing was, they all seemed to agree with Rockwell. Mayor Black and Mr. Wayward and even Simpson seemed to be asking him, as man to man, to stand by them. Father Murray was timidly expectant. Dr. Hobart, he noticed, was staring down at the table as if in thought. Aunt Mary, looking him full in the eyes, gave an affirmative nod. Alicia's eyes and shoulders registered appeal as conspicuously as if she had been a movie actress. And Mollie June seemed to be begging him not to desert her.

With a gesture of resignation he went over to the writing table and sat down to compose his third mendacious telegram to Riceville.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE BUSINESS OF BEING AN IMPOSTOR

The writing of that telegram occupied Merriam for several minutes. He was distracted by scruples. He did not like lying, and he felt, truly enough, that he was cheating his employers, the Board of Education of Riceville, and the patrons of the school, and his boys and girls, by staying away from the work he was paid to do.

When, after a last momentary hesitation, he wrote his name and looked up, he found Simpson standing by him, ready to take the message. He noticed the man's new air of cheerfulness.

But he had no time to reflect on this phenomenon, for the party was breaking up.

There were four of them left--Merriam and Rockwell, Aunt Mary and Mollie June.

"Well," said Rockwell, with a sigh, "we're off again. You'd better go to your own room--Mr. Wilson's room. I promised the reporters to see them at half past four, and it's nearly that now. You'll need to pack. Take these speeches with you. I'll let you know when the taxi comes."

In a moment Merriam was crossing the Senator's room. Involuntarily he cast a glance at the sick man in the bed. In a small chair by the head of the bed Mollie June was sitting, her eyes on her husband. She looked up as Merriam traversed the room, met his gaze soberly for an instant, and then looked back at Norman.

Merriam passed through the door on the other side into his own room. He closed the door softly behind him, set the portfolio on a chair, and put his hand to his forehead. The tiny connubial tableau of which he had just had a glimpse had brought home to him, as nothing before had done, the fact that Mollie June really was another man's wife. The acute realisation left him blank. He crossed over, sank into a chair by the window, and stared out across the fire escape. Another man's wife! And he loved her. Of course he loved her, just as he had always done. And she loved him, a little at least. That such a thing should happen to him--and her! Because he had been a coward three years ago in Riceville!

How long he sat dully revolving such thoughts as these he had no idea. He was startled by the opening of the door from the Senator's bedroom. He sprang to his feet with the involuntary thought that it might be Mollie June--though of course she would have knocked. It was Simpson.

"Shall I pack your things, sir?"

"Why--yes," said Merriam.

He knew from novels that the valet of the hero always packs his bag. Evidently Simpson had come in this capacity. To Merriam's American self-sufficiency it seemed an absurd practice. Why shouldn't any man put his own things into a grip for himself? But he was glad of company.

"You can help," he added, and took a couple of steps in the direction of the bureau, with the idea of taking things out of drawers.

"Oh, don't bother, sir!" said Simpson quickly. In his tone there was something subtly patronising. For he who has been a butler and a waiter and a valet among the real elite feels even himself to be socially superior to the unbutlered and unvaleted.

"Simpson," said Merriam suddenly, "you've seen Jennie!"

Simpson stopped absolutely still for a moment with a couple of folded shirts in his hands. Then he placed the shirts in the suit case, straightened up, and looked at Merriam.

"Yes, Mr."--he hesitated and decided to use the real name--"yes, Mr. Merriam, I have. I went out there this morning, as you suggested."

"She let you in?"

"Yes she did. She let me sit down on the sofa with her, and we had a long talk. I ended by asking her again to marry me--and she said she would."

"And she kissed you!" Merriam cried gaily. He had for the moment forgotten his own troubles in Simpson's happiness, for which he rightly felt he might claim some credit, and in an appreciative recollection of Jennie's temperament. Within a dozen hours she had also kissed Crockett and himself. But Jennie was born to kiss.

Simpson looked quickly at the younger man and returned to his packing. "Yes," he said, "she did."

Merriam regretted his exclamation, which had, in fact, told too much. For several minutes he watched in silence the deft, efficient work of his companion. Then he asked:

"When is it to be?"

"The wedding, sir?"

"Yes."

"As soon as you and Mr. Rockwell can spare me, sir."

Simpson closed the hand bag, closed the suit case and strapped it.

"Is there anything else I can do, sir?"

"I believe not."

The waiter hesitated. Then he decided to speak what was in his heart:

"I am very greatly indebted to you, sir," he said, with an admirable combination of dignity and feeling. "You have made a happy man of a very wretched one and have--saved a young girl who was on a very wrong track. If ever I can render you any service, you can always command me, sir."

Merriam sprang up and advanced, holding out his hand.

"I'm tremendously glad," he said. "I have accomplished one thing anyway with all this miserable imposture."

Simpson shook his hand heartily. Then:

"Shall I leave you now, sir?"

"Why, yes, please," said Merriam. He was loth, to be left alone, but there was clearly nothing more to be said between him and Simpson.

In a moment the waiter had withdrawn through the door into the Senator's bedroom. Merriam's thoughts followed him into that room, where Mollie June doubtless still sat by her husband's bed.

But just then a knock sounded at the hall door. He looked up startled. He was not expecting any one to approach from that direction. Who could have any business with "Mr. Wilson"?

Another knock. Merriam hesitated. Should he go to the door, or simply sit tight till the knocker became convinced that there was no one within and went away? He decided upon the latter course. Any one whom he ought to see Rockwell would bring to him.

A third time the knock sounded, discreet but persistent. Then suddenly a key was inserted in the lock and turned, the door opened, and in stepped--Crockett!

Merriam sprang to his feet but did not speak.

"Thank you," said Crockett over his shoulder--to whom Merriam could not see.

He closed the door and advanced:

"Is it Mr. Wilson?" he asked ironically, "or Mr. Merriam--or Senator Norman?"

"Is it Mr. Crockett, the financier, or a house-breaker?" Merriam retorted.

Mr. Crockett laughed, but it was an unpleasant, forced laugh.

"Since you do not answer my question," he said, "I don't see that I need answer yours. See here," he continued, with a change of tone, "how much is it worth to you to turn over to me those pictures you took last night--films and all, of course--and get out of this?"

"You won't accomplish anything by insulting me!" cried Merriam, a flare of youthful anger somewhat impairing his dignity.

"Insulting you!" echoed Crockett sneeringly. "My dear sir, as a complete impostor you can hardly expect to get away with that pose. I'll admit you're good at it. That impersonation of the Senator before the Urban Club this noon was a masterpiece. But what's the game? Does Rockwell really suppose he can swing Senator Norman over permanently to the so-called Reformers? Let me tell you that as soon as the real Norman is on his feet again Thompson and I and the rest of us will get hold of him and bring him around in no time. We know too many things about your handsome Boy Senator. He can't shake us now. So what's the use? Unless," he added suddenly, "the plan is to kill him off and substitute you permanently!"

"Hardly so desperate as that," said Merriam, smiling. The other man's long speech had given him time to recover himself.

"Well, then, why not make a good thing out of it for yourself and get away while you can? It isn't as if no one had suspected you. I not only suspect but know. I haven't told any one else yet, but you can hardly expect me to keep your secret indefinitely."

"You forget the pictures," said Merriam, as sweetly as he could.

Crockett obviously mastered a "damn" and chased the expression that rose to accompany it from his face.

"Let's keep to business," he said. "How much is Rockwell paying you for this job?"

"No monetary consideration has been mentioned between us," said Merriam. It was the truth, of course, but perhaps he need not have been so stilted about it.

"You surely don't expect me to believe that. Come! Whatever the amount is, I'll double it. All I ask of you is, first, to hand over to me the pictures, and, second, to pick up your bags, which I see are already packed, and walk out of that door with me. We'll step across the street to my bank, I'll pay you the sum in cash, and you can skidoo. No exposure is involved, you see--of you or your friends. I'm not revengeful. I don't need to be. All I have to do is to wait until I can get hold of Norman. In the meantime you get clear of a situation that otherwise is likely to prove very nasty for you personally and very nasty likewise for your Reformer associates. You will note that I trust to your honour to give me all the copies of the pictures and not to sting me on the amount I am to pay you."

"Honour among thieves?" queried Merriam.

"Who's insulting now?" Crockett demanded.

"I am," said Merriam. "At least, I'm trying my best to be. Mr. Crockett, you spoke of walking out of that door. I'll thank you to do that very thing--at once! If you don't, I'll call in Mr. Rockwell, and we'll put you out. I'm tempted to try it by myself, but I don't care to risk any noisy scuffling."

"Prudent young man!" sneered Crockett, retreating nevertheless in the direction of the hall door. "I understand that you reject my offer?"

"I certainly do."

"Very good. I hereby serve notice on you that I shall immediately expose the whole of your atrocious masquerade! It will be the ruin of you and Rockwell and Norman and Mayor Black and every other person who has been mixed up in it. Oh, you'll be a nine days' wonder in the city, but no one of you will ever have a scrap of public credit again!"

"And on the following day," retorted Merriam, "those pretty pictures we know of will be published in Tidbits. They'll be running sketches called 'A Financier in a Flat' in every music hall in town."

"You blackmailer!"

"On the contrary you've tried to get me to take blackmail and I've refused it."

With a sound remarkably like the snarling "bah" which regularly accompanies the retreat of the foiled villain of melodrama, Crockett turned towards the door through which he had been invited to depart. But in the course of the three or four steps which he had to take to reach, that exit he recovered something of his dignity and finesse.

Having opened the door, he turned and bowed ironically.

"Good evening, Senator," he said. "I'm afraid I shall be prevented from keeping my appointment with you at eight. If you should change your mind within the next half hour, you can reach me by 'phone at the Union League. Otherwise, look out!"

On this warning note he closed the door behind him.

Merriam found himself with a whirling brain. As a quiet pedagogue he was not accustomed to scenes of battle such as he had just passed through. He walked up and down and mechanically lit a cigarette.

As he did so, his mind seized upon one question. Who had unlocked the door for Crockett? Some chambermaid or bell boy? Or the floor clerk? At any rate it must have been done with her connivance and by her authority, for she was the commanding general of Floor Three. Why had she done or permitted this outrageous thing? Suddenly Merriam recalled her studied ignoring of him on the last two occasions of his passing her desk, and compared it with her whispered "The violets are lovely" when he first asked for Senator Norman's key. There had been something between her and Norman. He, Merriam, in taking on the Senator's rôle had dropped out that part of it, and she was offended. How seriously he could not tell.

He concluded that he must attempt to reinstate himself--Norman--in the pretty floor clerk's good graces, and rather hastily decided upon a plan, He went to the telephone and asked for the hotel florist. How much were violets? Well, they had some lovely large bunches for five dollars. This figure rather staggered the rural pedagogue, but he promptly asked to have one of those bunches sent up at once to "Mr. Wilson," giving his room number, 325. He would present his peace offering in person. "I am sure these flowers will look lovely on your desk--or if you will wear them at your waist?" he would say, or something of the sort. This was probably not the way Senator Norman would have done--he would have run no such open risk,--but we must make allowances for Merriam's inexperience.

But he never carried out his ill-conceived plan. For he had barely left the telephone when he was arrested by a light knock on the door leading into the Senator's bedroom. This time he was sure it was Mollie June, and he was right.

When he opened the door she stood there with a finger at her lips.

"Aunt Mary has taken my place with George," she said in a low tone. "She says I may give you some tea. It will be late before you can get your dinner on the train. Would you like it?"

"Tremendously," said Merriam sincerely.

"Come into the sitting room, then."

She crossed the sick room to the door at the other side which led to the sitting room, and he followed, with a nod to Aunt Mary, who now sat by the sleeping Senator's bed.

Arrived in the sitting room, he was further delighted to find that neither Rockwell nor Simpson was present. It was to be a genuine tête-à-tête. By one of the windows stood a small table with the tea things upon it, the kettle already singing over an alcohol flame. Beside the table stood a large armchair and a small rocker.

"The big chair is for you," said Mollie June, seating herself in the rocker and adjusting the flame.

"Thank you," he said and sat. Then a mingling of pleasure and embarrassment held him awkwardly silent.

Mollie June was apparently quite composed.

"George is ever so much better," she said. "He was awake a few minutes ago, and he seemed almost well. He has only a very little fever left."

She smiled brightly at Merriam, who dimly realised that it was to the fact that her mind was now at ease about her husband that he owed this treat.

Mollie June set a brightly flowered cup on a saucer to match and placed a small spoon beside it. Then she took up the sugar tongs, and her hand hovered over the bowl.

"One lump or two?"

"Two, please," said Merriam, noting the slenderness and whiteness of the fingers that held the tongs and the pinkness of the small nails. (Why else except to display charming fingers and nails were sugar tongs invented?)

"Lemon or cream?"

Merriam was sophisticated enough to know that the right answer was "Lemon," but he preferred cream, and an admirable instinct of honesty led him to say so.

Through the open window came the pleasant air of the spring afternoon. The canyon-like street without, being an east-and-west street, was flooded with sunlight. With the breeze there entered also the stimulating roar of the city's lively traffic. The breeze stirred Mollie June's soft wavy hair. It also caused the alcohol flame under the brass kettle to flutter and sputter, and Mollie June leaned forward to regulate it. The youthful firmness of her cheeks and chin showed like a lovely cameo in the bright light, which would have been unkind to an older face. Having adjusted the flame, she suddenly looked up at Merriam and smiled.

"Mollie June," he cried, "there is nothing lovelier in the world than your eyes when you look up and smile like that!"

He had not meant to say anything of that sort, but it was forced out of him.

Mollie June's smile lingered, and the cameo became faintly, charmingly tinted. But she evidently felt that some rebuke was needed.

"Mrs. Mollie June, you must remember," she said gently.

Then, taking up her cup and leaning back in her small rocker, she asked:

"How did you get along with the speeches?"

"Not very well," said Merriam. He hesitated in his mind whether to tell her of Crockett's interruption but decided not to. It would take too long--he could not waste the precious minutes so. "I'll have the dickens of a time with them," he added.

"Oh, no, you won't!" she cried, as if shocked at the idea. "You were wonderful this noon. I was so proud of you."

"You had a right to be," said Merriam. "It was because you were there that I could do well." Which was perhaps partially true.

"Why don't you go into it yourself?" asked Mollie June.

"Public life? Perhaps I will. I may go back to the University for a law course and then try to get into politics."

This plan had just occurred to Merriam, but he did not disclose that fact. In uttering one's inspirations to a pretty woman one usually presents them as though they were the fruit of mature consideration.

"That would be fine," said Mollie June without much enthusiasm. "But you'll be at Riceville next year?"

"I suppose so. I'll have to save up a bit more."

"I may be at home for Christmas," she said. "I'll see you then."

Merriam considered this painfully.

"No," he said at last slowly. "I shan't be there. I shall be away for the holidays."

"You could stay over," said Mollie June, wonderingly reproachful.

"I suppose I could. But I mustn't. Just to see you--publicly, is too hard on me. And if I see you alone like this,--I say things I oughtn't to--make love to you."

Mollie June sat drooping, with downcast eyes, her cup in her lap.

Suddenly he was on his knees beside her. He put his arms about her, to the great peril of flowered china.

"Mollie June!" he whispered. He softly kissed her cheek.

She raised her eyes and looked deep into his.

"John!" she whispered back, though she seemed to struggle not to do so.

After a moment he smiled sadly and got to his feet.

"I mustn't have any more tea," he said, as if that beverage was too intoxicating, as indeed under the circumstances it was.

Fortunately--since of all things what they needed was a diversion,--Merriam at that moment became conscious of a portentous knocking on a distant door. He realised that it was on the door to "Mr. Wilson's" room and remembered. The flowers--for the floor clerk!

He hurried to the hall and called the boy from the second door down the corridor, where he was about to pound again.

In a moment he reëntered the room, bearing a lovely great bunch of fragrant English violets--and thinking hard. But he was equal to the emergency.

He advanced to Mollie June, who stood now with her back to the window, her slender form outlined against the light, her face in shadow.

"I've never given you anything, Mollie June," he said. "These are for you--and the sick room." He held them for her to smell.

She took them from him, barely touching his hand as she did so, and buried her face in them for a long minute. Then she raised her eyes to him over them.

"Thank you, Mr. John," she said with a sad smile.

And just then Aunt Mary entered from the Senator's bedroom.

"See what Mr. Merriam has ordered for George!" said Mollie June. "Isn't he thoughtful?"

"Very," said Aunt Mary, in her customary dry tone.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE CODE TELEGRAM

Rockwell had returned with Alicia. He briskly declared that it was time to start for the train. Mayor Black, it appeared, was below in his car and was going to the station with them.

"I've told Simpson to take your bags down. Except the portfolio. You'd better keep that in your own hands. What progress with the speeches?"

"Not much," said Merriam. "But I shall have the whole evening on the train. I'll get them."

He crossed the sick room, where Dr. Hobart was now bending over the Senator, apparently making an examination. He thrust the pile of manuscripts back into the portfolio. Then, after a glance about the room, reminiscent of his burglarious entry the night before, he caught up his coat and hat and returned to the sitting room again.

"Are we ready?" he asked of Rockwell.

"Waiting for Hobart--for a final report on the Senator's condition."

"Aren't you coming to the station with us, Mollie June?" Alicia was saying.

"No," said Mollie June, her eyes on a large bunch of violets which she was arranging in a bowl. "I must stay with my husband."

"But Aunt Mary will be here. I think she owes it to you to come with us, don't you, Mr. Merriam?"

"No," said Merriam, "I think she is right in staying."

Alicia looked from him to Mollie June, then shrugged her shoulders and turned to Rockwell, who was cautioning Aunt Mary--as if Aunt Mary ever needed cautioning!--about maintaining the closest possible guard on the Senator's rooms in their absence.

Merriam moved to Mollie June's side.

"I shan't see you again," he said.

"No," said Mollie June.

For a single moment she looked up from the flowers into his face. Her eyes held tears, and she blushed slightly. In her look he read unwilling love and shame.

He would have moved away, impotently miserable, but her hand, which had dropped to her side between them, suddenly touched his, closed in his for an instant, and was withdrawn, leaving something--something very small, cool, and fragile--a single violet.

He understood, of course, that it was to be his souvenir of her, all he could have of her, through the long years to come while she played out her loathsome rôle as the wife of the dissipated Boy Senator and he taught school at Riceville or--what did it matter what he did?

His hand closed quickly on the violet, and he turned to face Dr. Hobart, who was just entering from the sick room.

The physician was highly reassuring. The Senator was doing very well indeed.

"He'll be able to meet us in Springfield, then, to-morrow night?" demanded Rockwell.

"I think he'll be well enough to do that," returned Hobart, with a slight evasiveness which Rockwell and Merriam had occasion a few hours later to recall with some vividness. But at the moment they scarcely noticed it.

"Good!" cried Rockwell. "We're off. No! Wait."

He drew a folded paper from his pocket and handed it to Aunt Mary.

"This paper describes a simple form of code telegram. Use it in your messages to us in regard to the Senator's progress and when and where he is to join us. You'll wire at least once a day, of course."

"Yes," said Aunt Mary, accepting the paper.

Merriam shook hands with Aunt Mary.

"I hope," she said, "that some day, after all this is over, we may be able to have you visit us, when George can thank you for the inestimable service you have rendered him."

"I should be delighted," Merriam murmured, though he had no great mind to be thanked by George Norman.

Then he shook hands with Mollie June and met her eyes for a moment, but, under the gaze of Aunt Mary and Rockwell and Alicia, "Good-bye," was all he could say.

"Good-bye. Thank you for--everything," she replied, and her eyes followed his figure as Rockwell swept him from the room.

The closing of the door of the Senator's sitting room upon Merriam marked the beginning of a period of a dozen hours or more that was utterly phantasmal and unreal to him both at the time and in his recollection afterwards. He seemed to move and speak and act without volition and without any clear realisation of what he was doing or why he was doing it.

After dinner with Rockwell and Mr. Wayward--an excellent meal served in the private car by an amiable gentleman of colour, Merriam read the speech which he was to deliver at Cairo in the morning, and then had to pull himself together and commit that speech, but he did even this mechanically. And finally to bed in his compartment, at first to a long, uneasy dream, in which he appeared to be making an interminable speech to an audience consisting of Mollie June, Jennie, an inattentive floor clerk, Aunt Mary, and Simpson, and then to a heavy slumber, from which he was roused with difficulty the next morning.

In the morning it was the same way with him--everything dully unreal. Breakfast. Going over the speech again. Then it was nine o'clock, and the train was running into Cairo. A crowd at the station. A cheer or two. He was being assisted into an automobile. A sort of procession with a band through several blocks of streets to a small park.

Merriam found himself sitting with Rockwell and Mr. Wayward and several local notables in a band stand, with a considerable concourse of people sitting and standing about on the grass below. Some native orator made a short speech. A number by the band. Then the Mayor of Cairo was effusively introducing Senator Norman. The Mayor sat down amid applause.

Merriam rose, advanced to the rail, and began on his speech. He felt himself to be a sort of animated phonograph. The words which he had learned the night before and reviewed that morning ran trippingly off his tongue. His collegiate training and subsequent experience in public speaking came to the aid of his subconscious self, which seemed to be functioning with practically no direction from his higher centers. He turned pleasantly as he spoke to face now one part of his circle of auditors and now another. He suited his tone to the words in different parts of the speech. He even achieved an occasional appropriate gesture.

At last he came to the end of what he had learned and stopped as the phonograph stops when the end of a record is reached. And for a moment he stood there by the rail, blank, at a loss--as a phonograph would have stood. He had to rouse himself with a jerk of conscious attention before he perceived that what he had to do next was to step back and sit down.

The applause was fairly satisfactory. The Mayor of Cairo leaned across Rockwell to shake hands and congratulate him, and Mr. Wayward, on the other side, patted his shoulder and said, "Good enough!" And the band struck into a patriotic air.

Merriam awoke. It was as if lights had been turned on and doors opened. He realised that it was a bright, sunny morning, that a band was playing, that he, John Merriam, was alive and young, and that he was having a whimsically glorious adventure which he could not afford to miss the joy of even if Mollie June was Senator Norman's wife.

In this rejuvenated mood he joyously descended with the others from the band stand and climbed into the automobile and lay back happily, between Rockwell and the Cairo Mayor, to relish the slow processional drive--still preceded by the band--back to the station.

"Feeling better?" asked Rockwell, who had not failed to note his previous lethargy.

"Feeling fine!" he replied, and gave his attention to the scenery of Cairo's Main Street and the crowds therein, waiting eagerly for a glimpse of the remarkable Boy Senator.

As the automobile passed close to the curb on turning a corner, Merriam caught one remark:

"He does look just like a young man!"

The speaker was a decidedly pretty girl in a boldish sort of way. Merriam sensed and seized upon the privileges of age. He leaned forward:

"Thank you, my dear," he said. "At least I'm young enough to know a pretty girl when I see one."

Which incident will serve to show that Merriam was really awake again. Also, it probably won more votes for Senator Norman's party at the next election than the whole of Aunt Mary's able speech as delivered by the human phonograph a few minutes earlier.

They reached the station and regained the private car. Merriam sank into a wonderful armchair in the sitting room compartment, glanced about him at the luxurious appointments, and lit a cigarette with gusto.

"I shouldn't mind this riches-and-fame business for quite a while," he thought. (Mollie June was for the time forgotten; thus it is with the fickle male.)

Rockwell had sat down in the next chair. Merriam made an effort of memory.

"East St. Louis next?" he asked.

"Yes," said Rockwell. "We'll have to get at the speech as soon as the train starts."

Just then a small but vociferous urchin appeared in the door of the car. His cap proclaimed him a telegraph messenger.

"Telegram for Mr. Rockwell!" he shouted, as though Mr. Rockwell were probably in the next county.

Rockwell signed the book, and the lad slowly withdrew himself, taking generous eyefuls of Rockwell, "Senator Norman," and the private car. As he lingered with a last backward stare in the doorway, Merriam winked at him, and the boy grinned and generously, democratically winked back.

Turning from that wink to Rockwell, Merriam was startled. The man sat limp with the telegram on his knee and a pencil in his hand. I will not say he was pale, but certainly he was haggard.

He handed the telegram to Merriam.

Merriam tried to read it, but could make no sense at all. It was very long but apparently a mere string of words with little intelligible meaning.

"What----?" he began.

"It's code," said Rockwell. "I've underlined the words that count."

Picking out the significant words by means of Rockwell's underlining, Merriam read:

George kidnapped from rooms whereabouts unknown doctor disappeared cancel trip return Mary.

CHAPTER XXVIII

SIMPSON AS DETECTIVE

A moment later Mr. Wayward, who had stopped at the station cigar stand to replenish his stock of nicotine, rejoined them and was shown the telegram.

His first comment was profane.

"We've got to go back," said Rockwell. "Now that they have Norman in their power--for Crockett is behind this, of course,--they may denounce us--may make Norman himself denounce us--any minute. They have no end of a grip on him, and he has no great love for the rôle of Reformer himself--nor for me. Our only hope is to get back to Chicago and find him and get hold of him again." He jumped to his feet, "I must see the station master at once."

"Yes," said Mr. Wayward, "there's nothing else for it."

Rockwell hastily departed to announce their changed plans to the station master, and Merriam and Mr. Wayward looked at each other. The latter's face had assumed the humorous smile which had been his expression towards the whole affair from the beginning.

"It's been a damn fool business all along," he said.

"I suppose it has," said Merriam.

"Good fun for you, though." Mr. Wayward lit a cigar.

"Yes," Merriam assented. But he was thinking of something else. Back to Chicago! The young rascal was realising that that meant he should see Mollie June again.

Mr. Wayward puffed meditatively.

"'Doctor disappeared,'" he quoted from the telegram. "That means Hobart was in it. Probably he was the chief agent. Crockett's bribed him."

Merriam suddenly remembered the tableau which Rockwell and he had surprised as they stepped out of the elevator at the Hotel De Soto on the previous afternoon: Dr. Hobart in confidential conference with the floor clerk.

"Probably they bribed the floor clerk, too," he said. "Hobart seemed to be sweet on her."

"So?" said Mr. Wayward. And after a minutes consideration: "Very likely. They could hardly have managed without the floor clerk in fact."

Presently he added:

"We've got to go back all right. But I don't what we can do except to surrender."

"We still have my pictures of Crockett at Jennie's."

"Well, I hope so. Unless they've bribed Simpson, too. Those pictures are one of the things that may make them give us a chance to surrender."

The two men smoked in silence for several minutes--until Rockwell returned.

"Well, that's fixed," he announced. "There's a north-bound express due in half an hour and reported on time that will take us into Chicago by nine o'clock to-night. You're sick, of course, Senator," he added to Merriam. "Bronchitis again!"

They continued to talk until the north-bound train arrived and picked up their car, and they were started on their return trip.

At Carbondale Rockwell sent off telegrams to the several cities which Merriam was to have visited, cancelling Senator Norman's speaking tour on account of a renewed attack of bronchitis. He also sent a message in code to Aunt Mary, giving the hour when they were due to arrive.

The three men talked, of course, but they had so few facts to go on that they could only formulate gloomy speculations, with nothing really in the way of definite conclusion beyond what Mr. Wayward and Merriam had reached in their first few minutes of chat immediately after the arrival of Aunt Mary's message. How the kidnapping had been managed or where Norman might be, they simply could not tell.

They had one practical point to decide, namely, their first procedure on reaching the city. It was obviously not safe for "Senator Norman" to go directly to the Hotel De Soto. They could not tell what the situation there might be since the kidnapping. It was finally agreed that Rockwell and Merriam should leave the train at Fifty-Third Street and take a taxicab to Rockwell's bachelor apartment on Drexel Boulevard, while Mr. Wayward should go on to the Twelfth Street Station and thence to the hotel to see Aunt Mary. Their next step was to depend on what he learned there. Rockwell was afraid even to telephone from his apartment, for fear the wire to the Senator's suite might be tapped. Merriam was not keen on this arrangement because it evidently postponed his seeing Mollie June and might even prevent his doing so altogether. But this was not an objection which he could raise in the discussion.

At last they were running into the City. Fifty-Third Street was reached, and Rockwell and Merriam shook hands with Mr. Wayward and descended from the private car.

Rockwell's first act in the station was to buy an evening paper. He scanned the sheet anxiously, with Merriam looking over his shoulder. The first page carried a paragraph reporting the abandonment of Senator Norman's down-State speaking tour "on account of a return of his bronchitis." Rockwell had sent no word to this effect to any one in Chicago, but evidently the news had come in from some one or more of the towns to which he had wired cancellations. There were, however, no headlines in regard to the kidnapping of a United States Senator from one of the city's leading hotels and no exposé of their imposture.

"They're still keeping it dark," said Rockwell, with a flash of renewed hope on his haggard face. "We're going to have a chance to make terms."

A moment later they were in a taxicab bound for his apartment. They rode in silence. Merriam wondered if he should see Mollie June again--though just what good that would do him or what he should say to her he could not have told.

"I shall see her once--alone," he said to himself, "whatever happens. I've done enough for them to have a right to demand that."

And on that scene of unhappy farewell--for what else could it be?--his thoughts halted. His mind would go no farther.

The taxicab stopped, and they got out, and Merriam found himself in front of a decidedly imposing apartment building. Rockwell hurried him through a sumptuous entry and into an elevator. They shot up three flights. Then in a hallway Rockwell unlocked a door, and they entered the sitting room of his apartment--a large room in quiet tones, furnished somewhat in the taste of a good men's club.

Merriam sank into a chair.

"Played out?" asked Rockwell, standing over him and speaking in his old manner of matter-of-fact good humour, which had deserted him during that trying day.

"Yes," said Merriam. He felt, in fact, quite exhausted, although he had done nothing since ten o'clock that morning except smoke and eat two meals and wait.

"So am I," said Rockwell, "and we must get fit again. We may have a busy night ahead. Suppose we have a shower and then coffee? That'll brace us up."

Three quarters of an hour later, the two men, much refreshed by the shock of cold water and the odd stimulation which always follows re-dressing in fresh clothes, were sitting on opposite sides of Rockwell's writing table, waiting for an electric percolator to "perk," when the doorbell rang. They looked at each other.

"Curtain up for the last act," said Rockwell as he went to answer it.

It was Mr. Wayward with Aunt Mary and Father Murray and Mayor Black. Mollie June, Merriam saw, was not with them.

"Come in," said Rockwell, oddly formal.

Merriam, as he rose, noticed the change in Aunt Mary. Always before she had seemed a creature of no age at all; now she was obviously a quite elderly woman. The Mayor's plump face was gray and drawn with anxiety. Even Mr. Wayward looked more worried than he had seemed all day.

For a moment the four of them stood together just inside the room, staring at Merriam, accusingly as it were, as if he had been the cause of their trouble.

But Rockwell, having closed the door, turned and after one glance at the group spoke loudly, with exaggerated briskness:

"Sit down, all of you--and tell me. You'll find this a comfortable chair, Aunt Mary. Over there, Mayor. You're at home here, Wayward."

Father Murray took Aunt Mary's arm and led her to the chair Rockwell had indicated. Solemnly they all sat down.

Rockwell was both daunted and impatient. After another look at Aunt Mary, he turned to the Mayor:

"When did it happen?"

But before the Mayor could reply, Aunt Mary spoke up. She was not so far gone as she looked.

"Between five minutes after eight and half past nine this morning," she said. "Mollie June and I had gone downstairs for breakfast in the Wedgewood Room and then for a short walk--over to Michigan Avenue and back. Dr. Hobart suggested both. He said we ought to get out that much before we settled down for the day in the rooms, and that he would stay with George till we returned. He said that George was much better, and he looked better. When we got back--it was exactly half past nine,--both he and George were gone."

Aunt Mary paused for an instant on this disastrous climax.

"We were terribly upset," she continued. "We could hardly believe our senses. Mollie June cried, and at first I could not think what I ought to do. But presently I had mind enough to telephone for Mayor Black and Father Murray, and by the time they came I was calm enough to think quietly and join them in making plans."

"You were wonderful," said Father Murray.

"We could make no kind of announcement or complaint. George was not supposed to be there. You"--she looked at Merriam---"were probably at that very moment making a speech in his name at Cairo. We could say nothing to anybody. We figured out that you were either still at Cairo or on your way to East St. Louis, and we sent messages to Mr. Rockwell at both places. We had to stop that insane speaking tour and get you both back here as soon as possible. We telephoned to the hotel office for Dr. Hobart, but they said he had resigned as house physician the night before. Then we sent for Simpson. He didn't seem greatly surprised. In fact, he said that Dr. Hobart had offered him money early that morning 'to help in restoring Senator Norman to his real friends.' That seems to have been the way Hobart put it. Simpson refused the money, he said, and didn't learn what the plan was. He said that he had meant to tell me of the offer but hadn't been able to get away from his work. It was still only a couple of hours since Dr. Hobart had talked with him. He said he would try to find Hobart and learn where George was, and then he went away, and we haven't heard from him since. Finally, I went out to see the floor clerk, thinking she must have seen when George was taken out, but there was a new girl. The former one had quit, she said, at nine o'clock--simply telephoned the office that she was leaving and hung up and slipped away."

"Have you tried to see Crockett?" Rockwell asked.

"I have," said the Mayor. "Been trying all day. But both at his office and at his house they say he isn't in and they don't know where he is or when he will be back. And he wasn't at any of his clubs."

"It's a pretty clean get-away," said Rockwell.

Merriam spoke up. "I have some hopes of Simpson," he said. "His continued absence may mean that he is following some sort of trail."

"Maybe," said Rockwell. "Meanwhile this coffee"--he drew attention to the percolator--"is getting pretty black, and black coffee is what we all need. After that we'll see."

"Where is Mrs. Norman?" Merriam asked timidly while Rockwell was pouring and passing the coffee.

"We left her at the hotel with Alicia," said Mr. Wayward. "We had to leave some one there, in case some message should come from Simpson or from Crockett or from George himself."

The coffee was drunk in a dismal silence. Mr. Wayward attempted one or two semi-cheerful remarks, but they fell flat.

"The first question," said Rockwell when the cups had been emptied, "is: where is George Norman? Crockett may have taken him to his own house. But that is unlikely. Or to some other hotel. Or to one of his clubs. Or, if he is still really sick, to a hospital. I think myself a hotel is the most probable. That could have been managed with a minimum of explanations. In any case we have got to find him. But this is no case for amateurs. I propose to engage a professional private detective and commission him to find George. Also Hobart. It oughtn't to take him more than twenty-four hours. Then we can make further plans. If Norman is still sick, we may have to re-kidnap him. If he is up and himself again, it will be a matter of parleying with him and Crockett and making such terms as we can. Has any one a better suggestion?"

It appeared that no one had, and Rockwell was looking up the detective agency, when the doorbell rang again.

Father Murray sprang to his feet.

"Yes, you answer it," said Rockwell.

Before the priest could reach the door an impatient rat-a-tat-tat sounded on the panel.

He opened to Alicia and Simpson.

"Good heavens, you're slow!" cried Alicia. "And glum as the grave," she added, glancing about the circle of faces. "Simpson has found George."

There were exclamations.

Rockwell put down the telephone book and went to Alicia.

"Dear!" he said.

And Alicia, turning, put her arms about his neck and kissed him. "You poor fellow!" she cried.

Then Rockwell turned to Simpson.

"Sit down here, Simpson," he said. "Have some coffee? You look fagged."

"Thank you, sir. I am pretty much all in."

Rockwell drew a cup of coffee and took it to him, and the waiter gulped it down.

"Thank you, sir," he said again. "Now I can tell you. I owe a good deal to that young gentleman"--he indicated Merriam,--"and when I saw the trouble you were all in I decided to do what I could. Of course we knew Mr. Crockett was at the bottom of the thing, and I decided he was the most findable person in it. I figured that he wouldn't appear at his office and wouldn't go home, but that sooner or later he would show up at one of his clubs. You remember I asked you this morning what clubs he belonged to." This to Mayor Black.

The Mayor assented.

"You mentioned five. That was a pretty large order, but I got some of my pals who are taxicab drivers to help me, and between us we kept a pretty close watch on all of them. He didn't come near the one I was watching myself, and I didn't hear anything from the others till five o'clock. Then one of the boys sent word to me that he had entered the Grill Club on Monroe Street. I went right over and hung around there for nearly three hours. It was a quarter to eight when he came out. He took a taxi, and I followed in another. He drove to St. John's Hospital over on the West Side. I was right after him and followed him into the building. He doesn't know me, of course, and paid no attention to me. He spoke to the nurse at the desk and then stepped into a waiting room. The nurse looked hard at me, but I said, 'I'm with him,' and stepped back towards the door. She thought I was his man and took no further notice of me. Pretty soon Dr. Hobart came down. He didn't see me, but I saw him plainly. He looked pretty much worried--scared, I thought. He and Mr. Crockett talked for a while in the waiting room, but I couldn't hear anything they said. Then Mr. Crockett left, and Dr. Hobart went back upstairs. I could have spoken to him after Mr. Crockett had gone out, but I thought I had better not let them know that any one was on their trail--for fear they would move him again. Then I had an idea. I went up to the desk again. I said to the nurse: 'How is Mr. Merriam?' She looked at me. 'He's pretty sick,' she said, and turned away. I didn't see what more I could do, so I took my taxi back to the De Soto and went up to the Senator's suite and found Miss Wayward and Mrs. Norman, and Miss Wayward brought me here."

For a moment Rockwell seemed sunk in thought. Then he roused himself, glanced around the circle of faces, and spoke:

"First of all, Mr. Simpson, I want to say that you have done a very clever bit of work. We were about to engage a private detective to undertake what you have already accomplished. I think I can safely say that we will see that you are suitably rewarded."

"You can," said Mr. Wayward emphatically--which was satisfactory since he was the person present from whom any substantial monetary reward must come.

"Thank you, sir," said Simpson.

The Mayor broke in:

"It's pretty clear what has happened. They got Norman downstairs while Miss Norman and Mrs. Norman were at breakfast, put him in a taxi, drove to the hospital, and entered him under the name of Merriam. And Dr. Hobart has stayed in attendance."

"And he's still sick--perhaps worse," said Aunt Mary anxiously.

"Why did they enter him as Merriam?" asked Rockwell, thinking aloud. "It must mean that Crockett doesn't dare denounce us or doesn't wish to do so, that he means to make terms with us and preserve the secrecy of the whole affair. As I see it, there will have to be one more substitution"--he addressed the real owner of the name of Merriam,--"of you for Norman--at the hospital. You have reported yourself to your Riceville people as sick. Very well, you have gone to a hospital. From the hospital you return to your work. It will strengthen your alibi. And Norman will be restored to us--on Crockett's conditions, of course. But we shall escape the worst. We shall come off safe yet. But it must happen at once," he continued, with a note of new anxiety. "The whole State knows that Norman's speaking tour has been abandoned, that he came back to Chicago to-day, that he is in the City now. We must get hold of Crockett some way to-night. The final substitution must be made before morning."

Mr. Wayward was looking at his watch. "It's eleven o'clock now," he said. "But you'd better try telephoning. His clubs, I think."

"Yes," said Rockwell. "The Grill Club! That's where you found him, Simpson? He may have gone back there for the night. I'll try that first."

He went quickly to the telephone.

While Rockwell was looking up the number and the rest waiting in painful expectancy, the doorbell for the third time startled them.

"I'll go, sir," said Simpson.

In a moment he had opened the door.

On the threshold stood Crockett--a pale, hesitant, almost seedy Crockett, very different from the serene, confident, well-groomed financier whom Merriam had first encountered forty-eight hours before at Jennie's.

Rockwell dropped the book:

"Come in, Mr. Crockett. I was just going to 'phone to you."

Crockett advanced a couple of steps into the room. Then he stopped. There was something portentous in his air of mournful gravity. His eyes travelled from face to face. For a moment they rested on Merriam. Then they came to a full stop on Aunt Mary.

The whole roomful remained silent, fascinated by his look, which seemed to speak, not of threat, which they might have expected, but of some disaster beyond threat.

At last with an effort he turned his eyes from Aunt Mary to Rockwell.

"I have to tell you," he said, "that George Norman is dead."

CHAPTER XXIX

THE FINAL DILEMMA

I do not suppose Mr. Crockett desired to be unnecessarily cruel. Doubtless he would have preferred to break his devastating news more gently. But he was himself in a state of nervous exhaustion from fatigue, worry, and perhaps remorse, and the circle of anxious faces had proved too much for his self-control.

Realising too late the brutal bluntness of his announcement, he broke into a hurried flow of words:

"We took him from the hotel this morning to St. John's Hospital. We thought he would be just as well off there--even better off. Dr. Hobart thought he was nearly well anyway. But the ride and the effort of listening to Hobart's explanations apparently fatigued him. By the time they got to the hospital he was very sick again. His bronchitis--if it ever was bronchitis--turned into pneumonia--double acute pneumonia. He got worse and worse all day. Dr. Hobart and the physicians and nurses at the hospital did everything possible for him. But it was no use. He died at nine o'clock."

All eyes turned suddenly to Aunt Mary, who had risen, holding on to the back of her chair.

Father Murray was at her side in an instant, and Alicia hurried to her.

"No," said Aunt Mary, brokenly, "I'm not going--to faint--or anything. But I want--to be alone."

Rockwell sprang to his feet. "My bedroom," he said, and led the way to the door of his chamber, which opened off the sitting room.

In a moment Aunt Mary, walking between Father Murray and Alicia, had passed into the bedroom.

Mr. Wayward's voice broke the stillness.

"Poor fellow!" he said.

For a minute or two they all paid the tribute of silence to the dead. But it was impossible to be really very sorry for George Norman. He had had an easy, pleasure-filled life--wealth, luxury, fame, and a good time, according to his own conception of a good time, up to the very beginning of his brief illness. That his last few, largely unconscious hours had been passed in a hospital away from his friends had certainly been almost no grief to him. The only sorrow genuinely possible was over the common folly, and the universal final tragedy, of humankind. In a few moments the thoughts of the entire group that remained in Rockwell's sitting room were irresistibly drawn back to the strange and somewhat dangerous situation in which the unexpected death had left them.

Presently Rockwell spoke:

"Technically, Mr. Crockett, I suppose it is not Senator Norman but Mr. Merriam who died at St. John's Hospital."

(Merriam was somewhat startled at this turn of thought; this phase of the matter had not yet occurred to him.)

"You have made no announcement?" Rockwell asked.

"No," said Crockett. "I have done nothing. When Hobart telephoned me that--what had happened, I rushed out to the hospital again--I don't know why. I couldn't believe it. Then I telephoned from the hospital to the De Soto and got Mrs. Norman, and she told me you were all here, so I came here. I have done nothing."

While he was speaking Alicia and Father Murray returned from the bedroom.

"She is all right," said Alicia. "She asked us to leave her alone for a few minutes. Did you tell Mrs. Norman?" she added, addressing Crockett.

"What had happened? Yes," said Crockett.

Merriam's thoughts flew to Mollie June, alone in the vast, heartless hotel with the news of her husband's death.

"Ought not some one to go to her?" he asked.

"Presently," said Rockwell. "We must first consider the situation a little--hers as well as ours."

Mayor Black spoke up:

"It will be pretty awkward for her--aside from natural grief and all that--that her husband should have died in a hospital under another name without her being present, while the man to whom the other name belongs was impersonating him in public. And awkward for Miss Norman. For the rest of us, too. Damned awkward!"

"It is a hard thing to have to close the career of George Norman with such a story," said Mr. Wayward.

"It must never happen!" said a voice behind them.

They all turned. Aunt Mary was standing in the door of the bedroom. She already looked more like herself. She was one of those souls who may sink under passive anxiety and suspense but find themselves again immediately when a call for action comes. She had scarcely been left alone, apparently, when the same thought which the Mayor and Mr. Wayward had expressed had occurred to her--the peril to the name of Norman, which was perhaps even more dear to her than her brother himself had been. And instantly, by some powerful effort of will, she had put grief behind her and turned to face this new danger.

"It must never happen," she repeated, advancing into the room, where Alicia, and the men too, unmindful of the etiquette which should have brought them to their feet, sat staring at her. "The secret must be kept. It is more important now than ever. With George alive, it would not have mattered so much. He would have lived it down triumphantly. Only the rest of us would have suffered--not he, nor the Name. But now--it must be kept!"

"But how can it be kept?" said Crockett, in a tone of desperation.

For a moment no one spoke.

Then Rockwell, looking from face to face, drew a deep breath.

"There is just one way," he said. "It was John Merriam who died. Senator Norman is alive." He waved his hand at Merriam. "He must go on living!"

"But that is impossible," said Mayor Black and Merriam together.

"Face the alternative first," said Rockwell. "George--the real George--was admitted to the hospital about nine o'clock this morning. At that same hour Senator Norman was making a speech at Cairo before an audience representing the entire county. That is known all over the State. He took the next train back to Chicago. But that train did not reach Chicago until after--after the death."

"We could have the hour of the death changed on the records," proposed Mr. Wayward. "It is already announced all over the State that Senator Norman is ill again. He could be rushed from the train to the hospital and die there during the night."

"Then we should have two deaths on our hands," said Rockwell, "and only one body. Unless we bring Merriam to life again. How are we to do that? It is pretty hard to get hospital authorities to falsify their records. And dozens of people must know the supposed facts--nurses, doctors, clerks at the hospital. We could never keep them all from talking. The reporters would get hold of it within twenty-four hours. No, Senator Norman cannot have died at the hospital. He is alive. He must go on living!"

"Can't he die at the hotel--to-night or to-morrow?" said Merriam.

"Then what becomes of you?" asked Rockwell.

"Why, I should go back to Riceville."

"You can't. You're dead! And how can Senator Norman die at the hotel when we should not be able to produce his body there?"

"We could get the body," said Mr. Wayward, speaking in a lowered tone. "As Mr. Merriam's friends we would take his body away from the hospital to be buried and bring it to the hotel."

"We shall have to send for the real Merriam's friends," said Rockwell. "From Riceville and--wherever your people live." He looked at Merriam. "We should have no body to show them. We could bury a loaded casket. But why should we, who must be strangers to him from their point of view, have been in such a hurry when they could get here in a few hours? Probably they would want to take his body elsewhere for burial. Very likely they would have the coffin we had buried raised and opened. And how could we get a dead body into the Hotel De Soto? Up a fire escape?"

In the earnestness of his argument Rockwell evidently did not realise the gruesomeness of his language.

Aunt Mary shuddered.

"No!" she said. "I will not have George's body smuggled about the city."

She paused, looking strangely at Merriam. None of the others, not even Rockwell, ventured to speak.

"Alicia told me, I believe, that you have no near relatives?" she said presently.

"None nearer than cousins," Merriam replied.

For a long minute more Aunt Mary stared at him. She closed her eyes, opened them, and looked again. Then her lips shut tight for a moment in an expression of momentous decision. She leaned forward.

"You have the Norman blood in you," she said to Merriam, "on your mother's side. You are fine stuff. We have all seen that. We will make a Norman of you, if you will. You shall take George's place--to save his name!"

"But----" Merriam began.

But Rockwell cut in:

"It's absolutely the only way," he cried. "The only other alternative is to let the whole story come out."

"Then that's what we have to do," said Mr. Wayward. "Make a clean breast of it."

"No!" said Aunt Mary.

"No!" echoed Rockwell. "Think what that means--to George's memory, first of all. That in his last hours his relatives and friends were conspiring against him, with the help of a stranger double, to force him to abandon the kind of life he was leading and the disreputable interests with which he was associated.--I beg your pardon, Mr. Crockett!"

Crockett waved a feeble hand to indicate forgiveness or indifference.

"And then to Mollie June," Rockwell continued. "That she had connived at the impersonation of her husband during his last illness by another man. How far did that other man take her husband's place, will be the question every man and woman in the State will ask. And all the rest of us. Aunt Mary. And Mr. Merriam, who will lose his job and his professional standing. And the Mayor and myself, who will be ruined politically and every other way. Even you, Mr. Wayward, would find yourself in an exceedingly unpleasant situation. And Mr. Crockett, on the other side, would be no better off. For the story of the kidnapping must come out."

The wilted financier uttered a sort of groan.

"But can the other thing be done?" asked the Mayor, the perspiration of mental anguish showing on his forehead.

"Certainly it can," said, Rockwell eagerly. "Senator Norman has come back to Chicago. Here he is. Presently he will arrive at the hotel. He will be pretty sick. You and I"--he looked at Mr. Wayward--"will support him to the elevator and to his rooms. He will be ill for several days. We must get hold of Hobart again to attend him. Then we will announce that he is threatened with tuberculosis and is to retire from public life. He must resign his seat in the Senate. We daren't go ahead with that. It would be too dangerous--and too serious a fraud besides." (Evidently there was some limit to a Reformer's unscrupulousness.) "He will go to his ranch in Colorado to recuperate. You will actually go." He was addressing Merriam now. "You must live there for a year or so. During that time only a few of Norman's private friends will visit you. We will coach you up on these a few at a time. If any of them notice any slight changes in you, they will lay it to your illness. You will easily take your place in the whole circle of his private life."

"But the property," said Mr. Wayward. "The Norman fortune."

"Reverts to me and Mollie June," said Aunt Mary, who was evidently heart and soul with Rockwell. "If we are satisfied----"

She stopped. The mention of Mollie June had recalled a phase of the situation which Rockwell and the Mayor and even Mr. Wayward had apparently forgotten--so little are men accustomed to consider their women folk when the real game of business or politics is on. Merriam and Alicia had not forgotten it, but had not been able so far to get a word in. As for Aunt Mary I cannot say--she was so near to being a man herself.

"Mollie June!" repeated Rockwell aghast.

"Exactly," said Merriam, somewhat bitterly. Him, too, Rockwell had been treating pretty much as a lifeless pawn in the game.

But Aunt Mary, when roused, was equal to anything.

"We shall manage that," she said. "I will go to Colorado with Mr. Merriam. Mollie June can return to her father for a time. We can arrange a separation--or----"

Even Aunt Mary hesitated. But Alicia took the cue.

"Or they can be married--or remarried," she said, fixing her bright eyes, with a gleam of mischievous understanding in them, on Merriam.

The argument had come to a full stop. The whole roomful sat looking at Merriam, who tried to think and found he could not, except that he realised that all the rest had tacitly accepted Rockwell's plan.

"Come!" said Alicia vivaciously. "It isn't so bad, is it? The Norman fortune and--Mollie June!"

Bad! The prospect was so dazzling to Merriam that he could not take his mind off it in order to think calmly. To die to his old self--to his poverty and loneliness, to his teaching with which he had long been bored,--and to step as if by magic into a new life with wealth, leisure--and Mollie June! For surely she loved him, and she had not loved George Norman. She would marry him--after an interval, of course.

"I must think," he said, weakly, in response to Alicia's exhortation.

"Of course you must," said Rockwell. "You must accustom your mind to it. But it will all be perfectly easy. You were brought up on a farm, weren't you? You will take to the ranch life like anything. It's mostly stock-raising. You can go in for scientific farming. After a few months it would probably be a good thing for you to travel, perhaps for a year or two--especially if you and Mollie June should marry. Get out of the country, so as to leave Norman's old life entirely behind you for a while. You might take a trip around the world."

Merriam's youthful heart bounded in spite of himself. A trip around the world with Mollie June!

"As to your old self," Rockwell continued, "that's quite simple, too. Norman was entered at the hospital under your name. A death certificate must have been given by now." He looked at Crockett.

"I don't know," said Crockett. "Hobart may have held off on that."

"At any rate it can be. In fact, it will have to be. Hobart shall telegraph to Riceville and to your cousins, wherever they are. He was the house physician at the De Soto where you took sick. That was how he came to be attending you. When you got bad he took you to the hospital. Nothing more natural. The rest of us will not need to appear at all."

"Aunt Mary will have to appear," said Alicia. "She will want to attend the funeral."

"She became acquainted with you at the hotel, then," said Rockwell. "Took an interest in a young man who was alone and ill. When your relatives and friends come Hobart will have the body already laid out in a casket. He can advise immediate burial here in the city. Aunt Mary can offer a lot in the Norman plot at Lakewood. Would your cousins probably consent to that?"

"Very likely," said Merriam, rather in a daze. It was confusing to be discussing the details of one's own interment.

"Then everything will follow in regular course," said Rockwell, speaking as if all difficulties were solved. "George will be buried with his family, and you can start for Colorado."

For a second time the talk came to a full stop. The new plan was outlined in full. It remained only to decide upon it or to reject it and face the alternative of a public confession. All of them except Merriam had already accepted the scheme, apparently, gruesome and bizarre as it was. It was for all the rest so much the easiest way and the most advantageous. But it did not require any of them to die--to die to his own self, his friends, his very name. On the other hand it did not offer them any such positive rewards as were proffered to Merriam--a fortune and love. We can hardly wonder that he was somewhat stupefied by the alternatives that beat upon his mind. The loss of all that up to this point in his life had been his identity versus Mollie June--that was the essence of the struggle within him.

He sat beside Rockwell's table, staring at the now silent percolator, trying to think but able only to feel. The others were looking uneasily at him and at one another. Aunt Mary's eyes and Alicia's demanded of Rockwell, who had always managed everything, that he should manage this too. Once he started to speak, but gave it up and looked appealingly at Alicia instead. Indeed he might justifiably feel that this was Alicia's job. She acknowledged as much in her own mind and was trying to decide what to do or say, when the one person present who had not spoken throughout the entire scene came to the rescue.

Through all their long discussion Simpson had stood unobtrusive and unnoticed in the background, but he had followed every word. For his fortunes too, humble, indeed, but sufficiently important to him, were bound up in this decision. If the deception was to be continued, his assistance, in the matter of silence at least, would be necessary, and he could expect a large--honorarium; if it came to a public confession, he could still expect something, but probably a good deal less; and to win and hold Jennie he needed a considerable sum of money.

So now he advanced a step and spoke:

"Shall I call a taxi for you, Mr. Merriam, to take you to the hotel?"

"Of course!" cried Alicia, jumping up. "You must go and see Mollie June. It all depends now upon her."

The others too stirred and expressed more or less audible acquiescence, and Simpson had his reward in the shape of approving glances from Rockwell and Mr. Wayward.

Merriam got to his feet with the other men because Alicia had risen. He was not so obtuse nor so much dazed that he did not see what they were doing. They were trying to rush him. They calculated that though Mollie June in the abstract might contend indecisively with other abstract considerations, Mollie June in the flesh would decide him in the twinkling of an eye. He saw that plainly enough. Nevertheless, for his part it did now depend altogether upon Mollie June. If he was to do this thing--to abandon his old self and enter upon what must be in some degree a lifelong career of deception,--it would be for her sake--not only in order to win her sooner, years sooner, than he could otherwise have the slightest hope of doing, but to save her from scandal, and because she loved him and wanted him too at once (comparatively speaking) as he wanted her.

So his decision was made almost as soon as he was on his feet. He looked with some dignity from one waiting face to another about the circle.

"Yes," he said quietly, "it does depend on her. You may call a taxi, Simpson."

CHAPTER XXX

MOLLIE JUNE

Almost before Merriam's brief sentence was out of his mouth Simpson had started for the telephone. But Mayor Black spoke up:

"My car and chauffeur are below. We came up from the hotel in it. You can use it."

"You go with him, Aunt Mary," said Rockwell, again taking command. "You see her first," he continued. "Mr. Merriam can wait somewhere--in 'Mr. Wilson's' room. When you have explained the general situation you can call him in and leave them together and--give him his chance."

Even at this moment it was a slight shock to Merriam to realise that the state of feeling between himself and Mollie June, which they had supposed completely hidden, had been clearly perceived by the others--or at least, he thought swiftly, by Rockwell and Aunt Mary and Alicia. He smiled a little cynically to himself as he understood that they had been willing to use this interest of his as a motive in securing his easy acquiescence in their previous schemes. Evidently they were counting on it in Mollie June too. That gave him a thrill of hope which made him forget his cynicism.

Father Murray had put Aunt Mary's wrap about her, and Rockwell had got Merriam's hat and his own.

Merriam found Alicia by his side. She held out her hand, and when he took it she squeezed his fingers in the way she had and said significantly, with all of a woman's interest in a romance:

"Good luck!"

"Thank you," said Merriam, but his answering smile was again a little cynical.

Then he opened the door for Aunt Mary and waved his hand to the others, with some amusement at the anxious looks with which they were regarding him. Even Simpson's countenance was perturbed!

Rockwell and the Mayor went down to the street with them and put them in the limousine. The Mayor directed the chauffeur to drive them to the hotel and then to return for himself and the others. Rockwell spoke to Aunt Mary:

"You put the essential facts before her and then leave them--leave Mr. Merriam to do the rest!"

And again Merriam smiled with an acid amusement that is commonly supposed to belong to the middle-aged and old but is really most characteristic of those who are under thirty.

Rockwell glanced at Merriam as if about to give him too a parting exhortation, but hesitated, checked perhaps by the younger man's expression, and spoke to the driver instead: "All right!"

They had started, and Merriam tried to think. His whole life turned in a very peculiar sense on the events of the next hour--whether he should continue to be himself or take up the life of another man. He got that far. But what he should say to Mollie June--even what it was he wanted to say to her--he could not get on with it. The mood of youthful cynicism was by no means the right mood for the business in hand.

And then--too soon for him now--they were at the hotel.

So little had he been able to think clearly that it was not until he was helping Aunt Mary out of the machine that he realised that in entering the hotel with her again this way, in the character of the dead Senator, he was already in effect consenting to Rockwell's plan and binding its consequences upon himself and Mollie June.

He had a wild idea of getting back into the limousine and driving away and later entering the hotel via the fire escape again. But Aunt Mary was already on the pavement.

As they entered the lobby Merriam glanced about to see whether he was noticed and recognised as the Senator. He was. At least three men whom he did not know bowed and raised their hats, and one of them took a step forward as if to approach them. But Merriam looked away and guided Aunt Mary as rapidly as possible to the elevators.

When they emerged on Floor Three, Merriam asked for the key, explaining casually that "Mr. Wilson" was a friend.

In a couple of minutes he had escorted Aunt Mary to the door of her sitting room--Senator Norman's no longer--or was it still to be Senator Norman's?--and had himself entered "Mr. Wilson's" room.

His first act there was to call up the hotel florist--as he had done once before on this same telephone. But this time Merriam's order was for roses, to be sent up at once.

He hung up the receiver and walked nervously about the room.

Was it not time for him to go to Mollie June? Aunt Mary was being terribly long about her explanation. Had Mollie June broken down under her grief--grief for George Norman?--or merely from anxiety and conflicting emotions? Was she refusing to see him? Was she ill?

He jumped up and walked back and forth in his nervousness, watching the door to the other bedroom, at which he might expect to receive Aunt Mary's summons.

A knock at last! But it was at the wrong door, the hall door. In a sort of hesitating amazement he went to answer it. It was the boy with the roses. He had forgotten ordering them.

He signed for the flowers and brought them into the room and took them out of their box and tissue paper. They were lovely--the most exquisite colour, between pink and red, that has no name but that of the flower itself--pink and red harmonised in soft coolness and fragrance--Mollie June's flowers without a doubt.

But had he done well in ordering them? Was this a time for lover-like gifts? Should he not have got white roses, such as one sends to a funeral?

And then, as he stood in this anxiety, came Aunt Mary's knock at the bedroom door.

He started as if caught in a guilty action and thrust the flowers back into their box before he went to open to her.

"How is she?"

But Aunt Mary herself looked so broken that he led her to a chair.

Then, "How is she?" he repeated. He could not wait.

"She is very quiet."

"You told her the--the plan?"

"Yes."

"She understood it?"

"I think so."

"Am I to go to her?"

"I suppose so," said Aunt Mary with a sigh. "Mr. Rockwell said----" She stopped.

Merriam showed her the roses.

"Should I take these to her?"

Aunt Mary looked at him and at the flowers.

"I think perhaps you might," she said, and then sat staring out across the fire escape.

She looked so very miserable that Merriam impulsively patted her shoulder. She glanced up quickly at that, then turned her eyes to the window again. He could not read her look, but he was not sorry he had betrayed his affectionate sympathy. If he was to be her brother for the rest of their lives----

After a moment more of hesitation he picked up the flowers and passed through the former sick room to the sitting room.

Mollie June was sitting in a small straight-backed chair by the window, looking out. But Merriam was sure at the first glance that she saw nothing. She had merely turned automatically towards the light, as all but the old or the self-conscious tend to do. As Aunt Mary had said she was very quiet. Her back was of course towards the room and Merriam.

He waited for a moment just inside the door, looking at her, forgetting the flowers in his hands. He was sorry for her and very uncertain what he ought to do. Then he became a little frightened, because she sat so still. She gave no sign of having heard him.

With conscious effort, because he must do something, he crossed the room till he stood beside her. Still she did not turn her eyes from the window.

He stood looking down at her. She was a pathetic figure as she sat there--the more pathetic, to the eyes of youth at least, because she was so lovely, so young and fresh really, although a little pale and heavy-eyed. He saw dark shadows under her eyes which must have come from tears.

The sight of these unlocked him, drowned all his hesitations in pitying love. He dropped on his knees beside her chair, laying the long-stemmed roses regardlessly on the floor and putting one hand on the back of her chair.

"Mollie June!" he said.

She did not start. Evidently she had known he was there. She looked first at the flowers on the floor and then at his face.

"I am so sorry," he cried.

"Are you sorry or glad?" she asked.

"I am terribly sorry for you," he answered. Her hands lay together in her lap, and he attempted to take one of them.

But she moved them slightly.

"Don't," she said.

"Don't make me strange to you, Mollie June," he cried.

"How can I help it?" she answered. "I am strange to myself too. You see, I am glad! I am sorry for George," she went on quickly. "It is terrible to me that he is dead. But I am so glad I do not have to be his wife any more!"