The musician closed his eyes.

"Thank you," said Jones, who began to write:

I, Angelo Cara, being in full possession of my senses and conscious of the immanence of death, do solemnly swear to the truth of this my dying declaration, which, I also solemnly swear, is made by me without any collusion with Keith Lennox. First; I firmly believe in God, in a life hereafter, and in future rewards and punishments. Second; I alone am guilty of the murder of Montagu Paliser, Jr., whom I killed without aid or accomplices and without the privity or knowledge of any other person.

Jones, wishing that in his law-school days he had crammed less and studied more, looked up.

"I cannot compliment you on your pen, Mr. Cara. But then, pen and ink always seem so emphatic. Personally, I prefer a pencil. Writing with a pencil is like talking in a whisper."

It was in an effort to deodorise the atmosphere, charged with the ghastly, that he said it. The declarant did not appear to notice. His sunken eyes had been closed. Widely they opened.

"The other side!"

Jones blotted the declaration. "The other side cannot be very different from this side. Not that part of it at least which people, such as you and I, first visit. A bit farther on, I suppose we prepare for our return here. For that matter, it will be very careless of us, if we don't. We relive and redie and redie and relive, endlessly, ad infinitum. The Church does not put it in just that manner, but the allegory of the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting amounts, perhaps, to the same thing. 'Never the spirit was born, the spirit shall cease to be never.' That is the way Edwin Arnold expressed it, after the 'Gita' had expressed it for him. But probably you have not frequented the 'Gita,' Mr. Cara. It is an exceedingly——"

"Cassy's lace dress is all torn. It was so pretty."

He is in the astral now, thought Jones, who said: "She will have a much prettier one."

But now again from the hall came that quick click and Cassy appeared, a little fat man behind her.

Jones stood up. "How do you do. You know Mr. Cara. Mr. Cara wants his signature attested."

The little man exhibited his gold teeth. "With a will that is not the way. I told this young lady so but she would have it that I come along."

The young lady, who was taking her hat off, left the room.

Jones fished in a pocket. "It is very good of you. Here, if you please, is your fee. The document is not a will, it is a release."

As the novelist spoke, he put the pen in the musician's hand and, finding it necessary, or thinking that it was, for, as he afterward realised, it was not, he guided it.

"You acknowledge this——" the notary began. But at the moment Cassy returned and, it may be, distracted by her, he mumbled the rest, took the reply for granted, applied the stamp, exhibited his teeth. Then, at once, the hall had him.

Cassy turned to Jones. Her face disclosed as many emotions as an opal has colours. Relief, longing, uncertainty, and distress were there, ringed in beauty.

"Miss Austen ought to know how she has misjudged him. Do you suppose she would let me see her?"

Bully for you! thought Jones, who said: "I cannot imagine any one refusing you anything."

In speaking, he heard something. Cassy turned. She too had heard it. But what?

With a cry she ran to the sofa. "Daddy!"

His face was grey, the grey that dawn has, the grey than which there is nothing greyer and yet in which there is light. That light was there. His upper-lip was just a little raised. It was as though he had seen something that pleased him and of which he was about to tell.

"Daddy!"

Jones followed her. He drew down the rug and bent over. After a moment, he drew the rug up, well up, and, with a forefinger, saluted.

Cassy, tearing the covering back, flung herself there. Jones could not see her tears. He heard them. Her slim body shook.



XXXI

On leaving the walk-up Jones discovered a restaurant that he judged convenient and vile. But the convenience appealed, and the villainy of the place did not extend to the telephone-book, which was the first thing he ordered.

While waiting for it, it occurred to him that in a novel the death he had witnessed would seem very pat. Why is life so artificial? he wonderingly asked.

The query suggested another. It concerned not the decedent but his daughter.

By the Lord Harry, he told himself, her linen shall not be washed in public if I can prevent it, and what is the use in being a novelist if you can't invent?

But now the book was before him. In it he found that Dunwoodie resided near Columbia University. It was ages since he had ventured in that neighbourhood, which, when finally he got there, gave him the agreeable sensation of being in a city other than New York.

Hic Labor, Haec Quies, he saw written on the statue of a tall maiden, and though, in New York, quiet is to be had only in the infrequent cemeteries, deep down, yet with the rest of the inscription he had been engaged all day.

Gravely saluting the maiden, who was but partly false, he passed on to an apartment-house and to Dunwoodie's door, which was opened by Dunwoodie himself. In slippers and a tattered gown, he was Hogarthian.

"I thought it a messenger!" he bitterly exclaimed.

Jones smiled at him. "When a man of your eminence is not wrong, he is invariably right. I am a messenger."

In the voice of an ogre, Dunwoodie took it up. "What is the message, sir?"

Jones pointed at the ceiling. Involuntarily, Dunwoodie looked up and then angrily at the novelist.

"An order of release," the latter announced.

Dunwoodie glared. "I suppose, sir, I must let you in, but allow me to tell you——"

Urbanely Jones gestured. "Pray do not ask my permission, it is a privilege to listen to anything you may say."

Dunwoodie turned. Through a winding hall he led the way to a room in which a lane went from the threshold to a table. The lane was bordered with an underbush of newspapers, pamphlets, magazines. Behind the underbush was a forest of books. Beside the table were an armchair and a stool. From above, hung a light. Otherwise, save for cobwebs, the room was bare and very relaxing.

Dunwoodie taking the chair, indicated the stool. "Now, sir!"

Jones gave him the declaration.

With not more than a glance Dunwoodie possessed himself of the contents. He put it down.

"If I had not known you had studied law, not for a moment would that rigamarole lead me to suspect it."

In a protest which was quite futile, Jones raised a hand. "The notary is unnecessary, I know that. I know also that a dying declaration is not the best evidence, but——"

"Do you at least know that the declarant is dead?"

Jones, who favoured the dramatic, nodded. "He died in my arms."

Dunwoodie took it in and took it out. "It is curious how crime leads to bad taste."

Jones leaned forward. "I may tell you for your information——"

"Spare me, I am overburdened with information as it is."

Jones sat back. He had no intention of taking Dunwoodie then behind the scenes. That would come later. But he did want to try out an invention that had occurred to him. He sighed.

"Don't you care to hear why he did it?"

"Not in the least."

"But——"

Dunwoodie fumbled in a pocket. "The district attorney may be more receptive. I shall go to him in the morning and I will thank you to go with me."

"I am not up in the morning."

"Then don't go to bed."

From the pocket, Dunwoodie extracted an enormous handkerchief. It fascinated Jones. He had never seen one that resembled it.

"You dispose of me admirably. The district attorney, I suppose, will enter a nolle prosequi."

In that handkerchief, Dunwoodie snorted. "You may suppose what you like."

Jones laughed. "It is my business to suppose. I suppose, when the murder was committed, that Lennox was at home. If I am right, he has an alibi which his servant can confirm."

Dunwoodie stared. "Whatever your business may be, it is not to teach me mine."

Jones drew out a cigarette-case. "Let me sit at your feet then. What does Lennox say?"

"How inquisitive you are! But to be rid of you, he——"

"May I smoke?" Jones interrupted.

"Good God, sir! You are not preparing to make a night of it?"

"I have one or two other little matters in hand. But since I may suppose all I like, I take it that Lennox intended to go to the opera, though I fancy also that he had no intention of going to Paliser's box. I suppose that he intended to wait about and go for him hot and heavy when he came out. I suppose also that, while dressing, he changed his mind. And, by the way, isn't there such a writ as a mandamus, or a duces tecum? I would like my paper-cutter returned."

"Confound your paper-cutter! You don't deserve to have me admit it, but Lennox' account of it is that before going on to the opera, he stopped to write a letter to Miss—er—Hum! Ha!"

"Miss Austen?"

"And when he got through it was midnight."

"I'll lay a pippin he didn't send it."

"What, sir?"

"Lennox had a lot to say. It was gagging him. He would have suffocated if he had kept it in. The effect of getting it on black and white was an emetic. He read it over, judged it inadequate, tore it up. I have done the same thing. I daresay you have."

The great man sat back. "His scrap-basket has been visited. The letter was there."

"Well, then, I suppose the short and long of it is, you will have him out to-morrow."

"As I said, you may suppose all you like."

"Without indiscretion then, may I suppose that you live here alone?"

Dunwoodie flourished his handkerchief. It was cotton and big as a towel.

"I am not as young as you are, sir, and whether erroneously or not, I believe myself better informed."

"Ah!" Jones put in. "Your physiognomy corroborates you. I have sometimes thought that it were difficult for the Seven Sages to be as wise as you look—which is the reason, perhaps, why I do not quite follow you."

"I did not imagine that you would. You are a sociable being. Every imbecile is pitiably sociable. But for a thinking man, a man without vices and without virtues, what is there except solitude?"

Appreciatively Jones motioned. "Thank you for descending to my level. As it happens, I also have a cloister where I have the double advantage of being by myself and of not being with others. But now that I am in your hermitage, there is this Matter of Ziegler, concerning which I would like the benefit of your professional advice."

"Hum! Ha! Got yourself mixed up with a woman and want me to pull you out. Well, sir, you will find it expensive. But a hermitage is not an office. I shall expect you at mine to-morrow. I shall expect you before ten."

Dunwoodie stood up. "To-morrow, though, your turpitudes will have to wait. Have you been served?"

Jones laughed. "Not yet."

"Time enough then. You can find the door?"

Through the lane, bordered by rubbish, and on through the winding hall, Jones went out. As Dunwoodie had said, there was time enough. There had been no service—no summons, no complaint. It might be that there would be none. The matter might adjust itself without any. It might be that there was no ground for action. Jones could not tell. After the manner of those who have crammed for a law examination, there had been a moment when he knew, or thought he knew, it all. But also after the manner of those who have not taken the post-graduate course which practice is, the crammed knowledge had gone. Only remnants and misfits remained. It was on these that he had conjectured the suit which, meanwhile, constituted a nut to crack. There was time and to spare though. Besides, for the moment, he had other things to do.

Then, as he went on to attend to them, he wondered why Dunwoodie, who, he thought, must make a hundred thousand a year, lived like a ragpicker.

Before him, the starshell, which imagination projects, burst suddenly.

He said he had no virtues and probably told the truth, Jones decided. In which case he cannot be a miser. But he also said he had no vices and probably lied like a thief. The old scoundrel is a philanthropist. I would wager an orchard of pippins on that, but there is no one to take me up—except this policeman.

"Officer," he resumed aloud. "Behold a stranger in a strange land. By any miracle, is there a taxi-stand nearby?"

Then presently Jones was directing a driver.

"The Tombs!"



XXXII

In a dirty cell Lennox sat on a dirty cot. Through a door, dirty too, but barred, came a shuffle of feet, the sound of the caged at bay and that odour, perhaps unique, which prisons share, the smell of dry-rot, perspiration, disinfectants and poisoned teeth. In addition to the odour there was light, not much, but some. Nearby was a sink. Altogether it was a very nice cell, fit for the Kaiser. Lennox took no pleasure in it. Rage enveloped him. The rage was caused not by the cell but by his opinion of it. That was only human.

Events in themselves are empty. It is we who fill them. They become important or negligible, according to the point of view. We give them the colours, violent, agreeable, or merely neutral, that they obtain. It is the point of view that fills and affects them. The point of view can turn three walls and a door into a madhouse. It can convert them into an ivory tower. To Lennox they were merely revolting.

That morning he had laughed. His arrest amused him. He laughed at it, laughed at the police. They took no offence. Instead they took the cigars that he offered and a few accessories which they grabbed. It is a way the police have. Still Lennox laughed. He knew of course that at Headquarters he would be at once released, the entire incident properly regretted. When he found himself not only elaborately wrong but in court, laughter ceased. Anger replaced it. He had been first amused, then surprised, afterwards exasperated, emotions that finally addled into rage, not at others but at himself, which was rather decent. In any of the defeats of life, the simple blame others; the wise blame themselves; the evolved blame nobody. Lennox had not reached that high plane then but in directing his anger at himself he showed the advantages of civilisation which the war has put in such admirable relief.

Now, on that cot, in that cell, ragingly he retraced his steps. He saw himself loving Margaret Austen as though he were to love her forever. A hero can do no more. He saw her loving him with a love so light that a breath had blown it away. A nymph in the brake could do no worse. Yet whether on her part it were perversity or mere shallowness, the result was the same. It had landed him in jail. For that he acquitted her completely. What he could not forgive was his own stupidity in persisting in loving her after she had turned away.

The night before, while, at the opera, the Terra Addio was being sung, he had been writing her one of the endless letters that only those vomiting in an attack of indignation morbus ever produce. In the relief of getting it in black and white, the nausea abated. Then judging it all very idle, he tore the letter in two. It was a gesture made before relapsing into a silence which he had intended should be eternal. At the very moment when Paliser was being run through the gizzards, he, turning a page of life, had scrawled on it Hic jacet.

Now, on that cot, Paliser recurring, he thought of him with so little animosity that he judged his spectacular death inadequate. But who, he wondered, had staged it? Not Cassy. Cassy took things with too high a hand and reasonably perhaps, since she took them from where her temperament had placed her. Then, without further effort at the riddle, his thoughts drifted back to that afternoon when, from his rooms, the sunlight had followed her out like a dog.

He had been looking at the floor, but without seeing it. Then at once, without seeing it either, he saw something else, something which for a long time must have been there, something that had been acting on him and in him without his knowledge. It was the key to another prison, the key to the prison that life often is and which, in the great defeats, every man who is a man finds at his feet and usually without looking for it either.

"But I love her!" he suddenly exclaimed.

There is a magic in those words. No sooner were they uttered than his mind became a rendezvous of apparitions. He saw Cassy as he had seen her first, as he had seen her last, as he had seen her through all the changes and mutations of their acquaintance, saw her eyes lifted to his, saw her face turned from him.

The crystallisation which, operating in the myriad cells of the brain, creates our tastes, our temptations, our desires; creates them unknown to us, creates them even against our will, and which without his will or knowledge, had, like a chemical precipitate, been acting on him, then was complete.

"I love her!" he repeated.

The dirty cot, the dirty cell, the dirty floor, a point of view was transforming. At the moment they ceased to be revolting. Then immediately another view restored their charm.

"She won't have me!"

The dirty cell reshaped itself and he thought of life, a blind fate treacherous always.

"Good Lord, how I envy you!"

Lennox turned. Wriggling through the bars a hand which a keeper checked, stood Jones.

"When Cervantes enjoyed the advantages that you possess, the walls parted and through them cavalcaded the strumpet whose name is Fame. In circumstances equally inspiring Bunyan entertained that hussy. Verlaine too. From a dungeon she lifted him to Parnassus, lifted him to the top. If I only had their luck—and yours! It is too good for you. You don't appreciate it. Besides you will be out to-morrow."

"I ought not to be here at all," Lennox indignantly retorted.

"No, you are most undeserving. Mais ecoute. C'est le pere de la petite qui a fait le coup. Il me l'a avoue, ensuite il a claque et depuis j'ai vu ton avocat. C'est une brute mais——"

"Can that," put in the keeper, a huge creature with a cauliflower face, dingy and gnarled. "You guys got to cough English."

Ingratiatingly Jones turned to him. "I mistook you for a distinguished foreigner. Dear me, my life is too full of pleasure!"

He turned to Lennox. "That's it. You are here to-day and gone to-morrow. Now that I have envied you insufficiently I'll go too. While I am about it I'll go to Park Avenue. Any message?"

"None."

"Make it briefer. Besides, look here. I'll wager a wilderness of pippins that Park Avenue was not and never thought of being engaged to what's his name. I'll wager because it is not in the picture. Do you hear me?"

"I hear you."

"You are very gifted. Nothing wrong with your tongue, though, is there?"

"Nothing whatever."

"Behold then the messenger awaiting the message."

"Very good. I'm through. Absolutely, completely, entirely. If you must be a busybody say that. I'm through."

But that was not Jones' idea of the game and he out with it. "I'll do nothing of the kind."

"Won't you?" Lennox retorted. He had remained seated. But rising then, he looked at the keeper, motioned at Jones.

"If that man asks for me again, say I'm out."

Jones laughed. "Wow-wow, old cock! I wish I could have said that but I probably shall. Meanwhile book this: Dinner to-morrow, Athenaeum at eight. By-bye. Remember Cervantes. Don't forget Verlaine. Sweet dreams."

Lennox sat down, looked at the key, tried to turn it. That door too was barred.



XXXIII

The offices of Dunwoodie, Bramwell, Strawbridge and Cohen were supplied with a rotunda in which Jones sat waiting, and Jones loved to sit and wait.

Since the musician's tenement had crumbled and the soul of the violinist had gone forth, gone to the unseen assessors who pityingly, with indulgent hands, weigh our stupid sins, since then a week had passed. During it, a paper signed by the dead had been admitted by the living, a prisoner had been discharged and for no other imaginable reason than because he had killed nobody, Lennox became a hero.

New York is very forgetful. Lennox sank back into the blank anonymity to which humanity in the aggregate is eternally condemned and from which, at a bound, he had leaped. The papers were to tell of him again, but casually, without scareheads, among the yesterdays and aviators in France. That though was later.

Meanwhile an enigma remained. Very heroically a young man had done nothing. Hurrah and good-bye! The calciums of curiosity turned on an obscure fiddler who, after murdering another young man, had succeeded in bilking the chair.

But why had he killed him? That was the enigma, one which would have been exciting, if the solution had not been so prompt and so tame. At the proceedings which resulted in Lennox' discharge, it was testified that Angelo Cara had been temporarily deranged.

The testimony, expertly advanced by a novelist who was not an expert, the reporters grabbed before the court could rule it out. The grabbing was natural. The decedent's declaration had been made to Jones who, though not an alienist, was the teller of tales that have been translated into every polite language, including the Japanese, which is the politest of all. Moreover, have not the mendacious been properly subdivided into liars, damned liars and expert witnesses? To Verdun with the lot! Mr. Ten Eyck Jones was certainly not an expert, but certainly too he was somebody, he was a best-seller and in the way we live now, the testimony of the best-seller is entitled to every editorial respect. The court might rule his testimony out, city editors saluted it.

Jones' little invention did wash therefore and, in the washing, poured balm by the bucket over the father of the murdered man.

Then, gradually, like everything else, except war and the taxes, both murderer and murdered were dropped in the great dust-bin of oblivion that awaits us all.

In the rotunda, meanwhile, Jones sat kicking his heels. It was in the morning, and always in the morning Jones was invisibly at work. Now, his routine upset, loathingly he kicked his heels. But Jones had ways of consoling himself that were very commonplace.

I am doing all the evil I can, he vindictively reflected, and it was with the comfort of his animosity about him that, ultimately, he was shown into an office—bright and, on this May forenoon, very airy—that gave on Broad Street.

Dunwoodie, twisting in a chair, glared at him.

"Ecce iterum Crispinus!" Jones tritely began. "What price retainers to-day?"

"I hoped to God I had seen the last of you," Dunwoodie, with elaborate, old-fashioned courtesy, replied.

Jones, disdaining to be asked, drew a chair.

Viciously Dunwoodie eyed him. "What the devil do you want?"

Jones smiled at him. "That decision."

"What decision, sir?"

"The one I cited when I brought you the paper that secured Lennox' discharge."

"Damme, sir, nothing of the kind. I would have had him discharged any way."

Jones' smile broadened. "You seem capable of anything. It is a great quality. Believe me, if I thought you lacked it, you would not now be enjoying my society."

"You flatter yourself strangely, sir. If you have nothing to say, don't keep on saying it."

"On the contrary, I am here to listen to you," Jones agreeably put in. "I want your views on that case, 'The Matter of Ziegler.'"

"Hum! Ha! Got yourself in a mess. Yaas. I remember. Been served yet? Give me the facts."

One after another, Jones produced them.

During their recital, Dunwoodie twirled his thumbs. At their conclusion, he expressed himself with entire freedom. After which, he saw Jones to the door, an act which he performed only when he felt particularly uncivil. At the moment the old bulldog's lip was lifted. But not at Jones.

Broad Street was very bright that day. Its brilliance did not extend to the market. Values were departing. The slump was on. Speculators, investors, the long and the shorts, bank-messengers, broker's-clerks, jostled Jones, who went around the corner, where a cavern gaped and swallowed him.

Crashingly the express carried him uptown. He did not know but that he might have lingered. There is always room at the top, though perhaps it is unwise to buy there. At the bottom, there is room too, much more. It is very gloomy, but it is the one safe place. Jones did not think that the market had got there yet. None the less it was inviting. On the other hand, he did think he might eat something. There was a restaurant that he wot of where, the week before, he had had a horrible bite. The restaurant was nauseating, but convenient. To that dual attraction he succumbed.

At table there, he meditated on the inscrutable possibilities of life which, he decided, is full of changes, particularly in the subway; whereupon a tale in Perrault's best manner occurred to him.

A waiter, loutish and yet infinitely dreary, intervened. Jones paid and went out on the upper reaches of Broadway. The fairy-tale that he had evoked accompanied him. It was charmful as only a fairy-tale can be. But the end, while happy, was hazy. He did not at all know whether it would do.

Abruptly he awoke.

"Will you come in?" Cassy was saying.

She had her every-day manner, her every-day clothes, her usual hat. Jones, noting these details, inwardly commended them. But at once, another detail was apparent. The entrance to the room where the Bella figlia had been succeeded by a dirge, was blocked. There was a table in it.

Cassy motioned. "I was trying to get it out when it got itself wedged there. Will you crawl under it, as I have to, or would you prefer to use it as a divan?"

"Where your ladyship crawleth, I will crawl," Jones gravely replied. "I just love going on all fours."

As he spoke he went under. With a sad little smile she followed.

"I know I ought to be in mourning," she told him as he brushed his knees.

She hesitated and sat down. She did not say that she lacked the money to buy the suits and trappings. She did not want to say that she had sold the table, which was the last relic of her early home, nor yet that she had been trying to get it out, in order to prevent the Jew purchaser from again coming in. Instead, she fingered her smock.

"I have been looking for an engagement and they don't want you in black."

Jones took a chair. "War has made mourning an anachronism in Europe. If it lasts long enough, it will do the same here and do the same with art. But you are very brave." He looked about. "I understood your father had a Cremona."

"The poor dear thought so, but a dealer to whom I took it said it was a Tyrolean copy."

Jones put down his hat. "The brutes always say something of the kind. What did it look like?"

Cassy glanced at him. "A flute, of course. What else would a violin look like?"

"You are quite right. I meant the colour."

"Oh, the colour! Madeira with a sheen in it."

"Yes!" Jones exclaimed. "That is the exact and precise description of the Amati varnish, of which the secret is lost. I hope you did not let the brute have it."

Cassy did not want to tell him that either. But when you are very forlorn it is hard to keep everything in.

"I needed a little for the funeral and he gave it to me."

"And it was worth thousands! Have you found an engagement?"

"The season is ending. Then too, either I have lost confidence or I am not up to it, not yet at least."

"I can understand that."

Cassy gestured. "It is not this empty room, it is the doors that slam. We know we should hasten to love those whom we do love, lest they leave us forever before we have loved them enough. But do we? We think we have time and to spare. I know I thought so. I was careless, forgetful, selfish. That is one of the doors. I can't close it."

"Time will."

"Perhaps. Meanwhile I am told I should change my name. At first, I felt very bitterly toward you for what you did here. It seemed inhuman of you. Since then I have realised that you could not have done otherwise. It saved Mr. Lennox. I would have done that."

"I am sure of it."

"But I won't change my name. I won't put such an affront on the poor dear who thought—yet there! I shall never know what he thought, but who, however wrongly, did it because of me. If only I had not told him! I ought never to have said a word. Never! That door slams the loudest. It wakes me. It is slamming all the time."

"That too shall pass."

Cassy doubted it. The door and the noise of it hurt. Her eyes filled. Yet, too sensitive to weep at anybody, even at an inkbeast, she stood up, went to the window and, while reabsorbing her tears, looked, or affected to look, at a lean stripe of blue sky.

Meditatively Jones considered her. "Fine day for a walk."

It was as though he had offered her a handkerchief. Tearful no longer, but annoyed, she turned and sat down.

"You seem very original."

"It is absentmindedness, I think. I meant to ask, are you ever down near the Stock Exchange?"

"That is where Mr. Lennox goes, isn't it?"

"There are others that frequent the neighbourhood. Among them is a deacon named Dunwoodie."

"Isn't he the lawyer who acted for Mr. Lennox?"

"Now you mention it, I believe he is. Anyway, I wonder if you would care to have him act for you?"

Cassy crossed her hands. "I don't understand you."

"For a moment or two, he didn't either. Then he said he would like to see you. That was an hour ago. I have just come from his office."

"But what in the world does he want of me? Everything is over now, isn't it? Or are there more doors? Really, if there are, I don't think I can stand it. I don't think I can, Mr. Jones."

"Yes, but there are doors that don't slam, doors that are closed and locked and barred. Sometimes there is romance behind them, sometimes there are santal-wood boxes crammed with rubies; sometimes there are secrets, sometimes there are landscapes of beckoning palms. One never quite knows what there is behind closed doors. He may open one or two for you. Wouldn't it interest you to let him try?"

Cassy's eyelids had been a trifle tremulous, in her under-lip there had been also a little uncertainty. But at the vistas which the novelist dangled at her, she succeeded in looking, as she could look, immeasurably remote.

"That sort of thing is chorus-girl!"

Blankly Jones stared. "What sort of thing?"

"Why, you want me to bring an action. I will do nothing of the kind. Even if he were living, I would rather be dead. Besides, it was all my fault. I ought to have known better."

"Better than what?" enquired the novelist, who now had got his bearings.

"Mr. Jones, I told you all about it."

"Forgive me, if I seem to contradict you. You did not tell all."

Cassy stiffened.

"How could you?" Jones continued. "Details are so tiresome. To-day when I was talking to Dunwoodie, I advanced a few. Dunwoodie is a very ordinary person. Details bore you, they bore me. He dotes on them. By the way, you said something about changing your name. I wish you would. Couldn't you take mine?"

"You are ridiculous."

"As you like. Any one else would call me mercenary."

He's crazy, Cassy uncomfortably reflected. What shall I do?

Modestly the novelist motioned. "Ten Eyck Jones now! It doesn't rhyme with Victor Hugo or even with Andrew Carnegie, but it has a lilt. It might be worse."

"What are you talking about?" Cassy, with increasing discomfort, put in.

"There is a little thing that turns men into flint and women into putty. That's what I am talking about. I am talking money."

"Thank you. The subject does not interest me."

"Ah, but you are evolved! Would that the butcher were! We all have to consider his incapacities and money helps us. I have an idea that your dear departed may have left you a trifle."

"Really, Mr. Jones, you are talking nonsense."

"It is a specialty of mine."

"Besides, it is impossible."

"Impossible is a word that intelligent young women never employ."

"Very good. Admitting the possibility, I won't take it."

"It might be paid into your bank."

"I haven't any bank."

"One could be found for you."

"I would tell them not to accept it."

"The bank that won't accept money does not exist."

Cassy flushed. "I rather liked you. Couldn't you be less hateful?"

"You are trying to pick a quarrel with me."

"Nothing of the kind."

"Then will you let me take you to Dunwoodie?"

"Certainly not."

"Then will you go alone?"

"But why? Why should I? What does this man with an absurd name want of me?"

Jones pulled at a cuff. "Well, look at it from this angle. Before you discovered that your marriage was a sham, you were prepared to assume a few obligations and some of them may still subsist. The man with the absurd name can tell you what they are. Surely you are not a slacker. This is war-time."

With that abandonment which is so gracious in a woman, Cassy half raised a hand. "My front line is wavering."

Jones reached for his hat. "Over the top then!"

Under the table they crawled.



XXXIV

"Your very obedient servant, madam."

With that and a fine bow, Dunwoodie greeted Cassy when Jones had succeeded in getting her into the inner and airy office. The old ruffian drew a chair.

"Do me the honour."

Cassy sat down. What a funny old man, she thought.

Jones addressing the door, remarked dreamily: "Pendente lite, I will renew my acquaintance with Swinburne's 'Espousals.'"

Dunwoodie glared. "You will find it in the library." Then he sat down, folded his hands on his waistcoat and smiled at Cassy. "Nice day."

"Very."

"Down here often?"

Cassy shook her docked hair. "No, and I don't at all know why I am here now. I do know though, and I may as well tell you at once, I have no intention of making a fuss."

Dunwoodie's smile, a smile quasi-ogrish, semi-paternal, expanded. "If our Potsdam friend only resembled you!"

For a young woman so recently and doubly bereaved, Cassy's blue smock and yellow skirt seemed to him properly subdued. Moreover, from a word that Jones had dropped, he realised that wealth had not presided at their selection.

He twirled his thumbs. "But let me ask, what may your full name be?"

"Bianca Cara."

"Hum! Ha! Most becoming. And how young are you?"

Well, I like that! thought Cassy, who answered: "Twenty-one."

Dunwoodie crossed his legs. "You think me an impertinent old man. I don't mean to be impertinent. I take a great interest in you."

"Very good of you, I'm sure."

"Not at all. Is your grandmother living?"

"For heaven's sake! You did not know her, did you?"

"No, but I stand ready to take her place."

"You would find it difficult. She is buried in Portugal."

"The place of your grandfather then, the place of any one whom you can trust."

"But why?"

"Well, let me ask. What are your plans?"

"My plans? Mr. Jones asked me that. I have a sort of a voice and I am looking for an engagement. But the season is ending. Then too I am told I ought to change my name. I won't do it."

"Hum! Ha! But it appears that you have."

He's crazy too, thought Cassy, who said: "I don't know what you are talking about."

Dunwoodie extracted his towel. "Why, my dear young lady, you are Mrs. Paliser."

Cassy flushed. "I am nothing of the kind. I don't know how you got such an idea."

Dunwoodie, quite as though he were doing some hard thinking, folded and refolded that towel which was his handkerchief. "Yet you married Montagu Paliser, Jr., did you not?"

"Not at all. That is I thought I did, but the man who performed the ceremony was a gardener."

"Dear me! Is it possible! And where was this?"

What is it to you? thought Cassy. "At Paliser Place, if you must know."

"And when did it occur?"

"Really, Mr. Dunwoodie, I can't see why you are putting me through this examination, but if it is of any benefit to you, it happened just five days before he died."

"Anybody about?"

"Oh, yes. There were two other servants who enjoyed it very much. I heard them laughing and I don't blame them. It was a rare treat. A child would have laughed at it. All my fault too. I behaved like a ninny. But my great mistake was in telling my father. I would give the world if I had not. Won't you please send for Mr. Jones? As I told you, I don't know why I am here."

Dunwoodie shook out the towel. "You must blame him then. He said you were Paliser's widow."

"Well, you see I am not."

"Yet you consented to be his wife."

"Whose? Mr. Jones'?"

"Paliser's, my dear young lady. However fictitious the ceremony, you consented to be Paliser's wife."

"What if I did? It has nothing to do with it now."

"Just a little, perhaps. Did you hear Jones say that he would renew his acquaintance with Swinburne?"

"From the way he talks, one might think he knew him by heart."

"Yaas, he is very objectionable. But you are referring to the poet. He was referring to the jurist. The jurist wrote a very fine book. Let me quote a passage from it. 'It is the present and perfect consent the which alone maketh matrimony, without either solemnisation or'—here, Dunwoodie, skipping the frank old English, substituted—'or anything else, for neither the one nor the other is the essence of matrimony, but consent only. Consensus non concubitus facit matrimoniam.' Hum! Ha! In other words, whether marriage is or is not contracted in facie ecclesiae, it is consent alone that constitutes its validity. You understand Latin?"

Cassy laughed. "I dream in it."

Dunwoodie laughed too. "Pleasant dreams to you always. But what I have quoted was the common law, and so remained until altered by the Revised Statutes, with which no doubt you are equally familiar."

Cassy smoothed her frock. "I was brought up on them."

"I don't need to tell you then that when adopted here they provided that marriage should be a civil contract. In so providing, they merely reaffirmed the existing common law. Subsequently, the law was changed. The legislature enacted that a marriage must be solemnised by certain persons—ecclesiastic, judicial or municipal—or else, that it should be entered into by written contract, which contract was to be filed in the office of the town clerk. Coincidentally the legislature prohibited any marriage contracted otherwise than in the manner then prescribed."

That morning Cassy had been to an agent, a saponacious person with a fabulous nose. At the moment the nose was before her. She was wondering whether it would scent out for her an engagement.

"However," Dunwoodie, twisting the edge of his towel, continued, "various amendments were afterward adopted and certain sections repealed. Among the latter was the one containing the prohibition which I have cited. In my opinion, it was not the intention of the legislature to repeal it. Yet, however that may be, repealed it was. Since then, or, more exactly, a few weeks ago, the enactments regarding the manner in which marriage must be solemnised were held to be not mandatory but directory, the result being that the law originally prevailing has now come again into operation, common-law marriages are as valid as before and——"

Here Dunwoodie flaunted the towel.

"And you are Mrs. Paliser."

Of the entire exposition, Cassy heard but that. It ousted the agent and his fabulous nose. She bristled.

"I can't be. I don't want to be. You don't seem to see that the clergyman was not a clergyman at all. He was one of the help there. I thought I told you. Why, there was not even a license! That man said he had one. It was only another of the whimsicalities that took me in."

Dunwoodie repocketing the towel, showed his yellow teeth. "A young gentlewoman who dreams in Latin, and who was brought up on the Revised Statutes, must be familiar with Byron. 'Men were deceivers ever.' Not long ago, a Lovelace whose history is given in the New York Reports conducted himself in a manner that would be precisely analogous to that of your late husband, were it not that, instead of dying, he did what was less judicious, he married again—and was sent up for bigamy. He too had omitted to secure a license. He also entertained a lady with a fancy-ball. None the less, the Supreme Court decided that he had legally tied the matrimonial noose about him and that decision the Court of Appeals affirmed."

Cassy shook her pretty self. "Well, even so, I don't see what difference it makes, now at any rate. He is dead and that is the end of it."

"Hum! Not entirely. As widow you are entitled to a share in such property as your late husband possessed. How much, or how little, he did possess I cannot say. But I assume that such share of it as may accrue, will be—ha!—adequate for you."

"But he hadn't anything. He told me so."

"He didn't always tell you the truth though, did he? In any event it is probable that he left enough to provide for your maintenance."

Cassy threw up her hands. "Never in the world."

Dunwoodie again ran his eyes over the severity of her costume. "You think it would be inadequate?"

But Cassy was angry. "I don't think anything about it. Whether it would or would not be adequate, does not make the slightest difference. I won't take it."

"Ha! And why not?"

Cassy fumed. "Why not? But isn't it evident? That man had no intention of marrying me, no intention whatever of leaving me a cent."

"As it happens, he did both."

Cassy clenched her small fist. "No matter. He did not intend to and don't you see if I were to accept a ha'penny of his wretched money, I would be benefiting by a crime for which may God forgive my poor, dear father."

There was a point which the legislature had not considered, which not one of all the New York Reports construed, a point not of law but of conscience, a point for a tribunal other than that which sits in banco. It floored Dunwoodie.

Damnation, she's splendid, he decided as, mentally, he picked himself up. But it would never do to say so and he turned on her his famous look.

"Madam, once your marriage is established, the money becomes rightfully and legally yours, unless——"

With that look he was frowning at this handsome girl who took law and order with such a high hand. But behind the frown was a desire, which he restrained, to hug her.

Frowning still he looked from Cassy to the door and there at a boy, who was poking through it a nose on which freckles were strewn thick as bran.

"Mr. Rymple, sir, says he has an appointment."

The old ruffian, rising, turned to Cassy. "One moment, if you please."

The door, caught in a draught, slammed after him, though less violently than other doors that were slamming still. Would they never stop? Cassy wondered. Would they slam forever? Were there no rooms in life where she might enter and find the silence that is peace? Surely, some time, somewhere that silence might be hers.

She turned. Jones, looking extremely disagreeable, was walking in.

Cassy, closing her ears to those doors, exclaimed at him. "Here's a pretty how d'ye do. Mr. Dunwoodie says I am Mrs. Paliser."

"That afternoon, when you sent your love to my cat, I could have told you that. In fact I did."

From Jones' air and manner you would have said that he was willing and able to bite a ten-penny nail.

Cassy did not notice. "It appears, too, that I am entitled to some of his wretched money."

"It is unfortunate I did not know that also."

"I believe you did. But I sha'n't take it."

Jones drew a chair. Hatefully he looked her up and down.

"You are quite right. Sixty years ago there was but one millionaire in the country. The plutocrat had not appeared in the street, he had not even appeared in the dictionary. The breed was unknown. To-day there are herds of such creatures. I was reading the statistics recently and they depressed me beyond words. It is always depressing to know how much money other people have. You are quite right not to suffer poor devils to be depressed by you."

Mrs. Yallum! thought Cassy, who said as much; "I don't know what you are talking about."

"You are very intelligent. I am talking small change."

Cassy gave a shrug. "Mr. Dunwoodie said I would have enough to live on. I can do as well as that myself, thank you."

"No doubt," Jones snarled. "I am even sure you could do worse. It is extraordinary how much one can accomplish in refusing a dollar or two that might save another man's life. To hell with everybody! That is the noble attitude. I admire your spirit. A handful of bank-notes are crying at you: 'I'm yours, take me, give me to the wounded, to the starving!' Not a bit of it. The Viscountess of Casa-Evora is too proud. That's superb."

Cassy turned on him. "See here, young man——"

"Don't you young man me," Jones irritably cut in. "In the rotunda out there, Dunwoodie gave me a foretaste of your swank and I can tell you I relished it. You won't look at a penny of this money because, if you did, you would be benefiting by an act committed by your father, who, as sure as you live, was impelled by the powers invisible to rid the earth of Paliser and to rid it of him for no other reason than that this money might serve a world in flames. Refused by you it will only revert to an old rounder who never did a good deed in his life; whereas, instead, it could call down blessings on your father's grave. But no, perish the thought! All that is leather and prunella to a young woman who regards herself as the arbiter of destiny. By God, you are prodigious!"

"I think you are horrid."

"So are you. You are the heiress to millions and millions. No wonder you put on airs."

Occasionally, to exceptional beings, a hand issuing from nowhere offers a cup brimming with madness, filled to the top with follies and dreams.

At that cup Cassy stared. It was unreal. If she tried to touch it, it would vanish.

"It is impossible!" she cried.

Jones looked about. "Where is my harp?"

Cassy did not know, she could not tell him. She had not even heard. A crater in the Wall Street sky had opened and from it, in an enchanted shower, fell sequins, opals, perfumes and stars.

But Jones must have found his harp. To that shower he was strumming an accompaniment.

"In to-day's paper there is a Red Cross appeal which says that what we give is gone. It is incredible, but educated people believe it. The ignorance of educated people is affecting. By reason of their education, which now and then includes mythology, they believe that happiness is the greatest of all the gifts that the gods can bestow. Being mortal, they try to obtain it. Being ignorant, they fail. Ignorance confounds pleasure with happiness. Pleasure comes from without, happiness from within. People may be very gay and profoundly miserable, really rich and terribly poor. In either case their condition is due to the fact that the happiness which they sought, they sought for themselves. Their error would be stupid were it not pathetic. In seeking happiness for themselves they fail to find it, but when they succeed in securing it for others, they find that on them also it has been bestowed. The money we give is not gone. It comes back to us. It returns in happiness and all the happiness that the richest, the poorest, the wisest, the stupidest can ever possess, is precisely that happiness which they have given away."

Where now where those doors? Cassy, the cascade of flowers and stars about her, looked at the harper. In listening to him, the doors had ceased to slam. About them there was peace. But her eyes had filled.

Jones was still at it.

"The greatest happiness is the cessation of pain. That pagan aphorism the Red Cross might put on its banners. Spiritually it is defective, but practically it is sound and some relief the Red Cross supplies. Give to it. You can put your money to no fairer use. It will hallow the grave where your father lies."

From beyond, from the adjacent Curb, came the shouts of brokers.

Jones, abandoning his harp, looked over at the girl. "What are you crying about?"

"I am not crying," spluttered Cassy, who was blubbering like a baby. "I never cry. It is disgusting of you to say so."

"You are crying."

"I am not crying," Cassy, indignantly sniffing and sobbing, snapped at him. Fiercely she rubbed her eyes. "It is none of your business, anyhow." Pausing, she choked, recovered and blearily added: "And, anyway, if the money is mine, really mine, honestly mine, I will give it away, all of it, every p—penny."

"No, no, not all of it," Jones hastily threw in, for now the door was opening and Dunwoodie appeared. "Keep a pear for your thirst, put a little million aside."

He turned to the lawyer. "Mrs. Paliser accepts her responsibilities."

"Hum! Ha!" The great man sat down and looked at Cassy. He looked many things but he said very few. "My dear young lady, familiar as you are with Latin, with law and with literature, who am I to remind you that chickens should first be hatched? Your rights may be contested. The Paliser Case, as it will be called, may——"

"The Paliser Case!" interjected Jones, who could see the headline from where he sat. "Shade of Blackstone! It will be famous! It will be filmed! The eminent jurist here will be screened and you, too, my lady."

Balefully Dunwoodie shot a glance at the inkbeast and another at Cassy.

"It may last some time. I have no doubt of the result. None whatever. But in spite of your legal knowledge I suggest that you have associate counsel. Now, permit me to ask, would you care to retain me or would you prefer some one else?"

Cassy, who had dried her eyes, looked at him and it was remarkable how pretty she looked.

"Why, no, Mr. Dunwoodie, I would much rather have you, only——" Uncertainly she paused.

The eminent jurist took it up. "Only what?"

"Well, all I know about law is that it is very expensive and I have nothing except my grandfather's portrait."

Dunwoodie touched a button. "Ha! One moment."

A thin young man, with a pasty face and a slight stoop, opened the door.

The old ruffian raised a stubby finger. "Purdy, a cheque for a thousand dollars, to the order of Bianca Paliser, is to be mailed to this lady to-night."

"But, Mr. Dunwoodie!" Cassy exclaimed.

"You must allow me to be your banker," he told her, and turned again to the clerk. "Get Mr. Jeroloman. Say, with my compliments, I shall be obliged if he will look in here. And, Purdy, see to it that that cheque is attended to. Mrs. Paliser will give you her address."

"But, Mr. Dunwoodie!" Cassy exclaimed again, as the sallow youth went out.

To distract her attention, instantly Jones improvised a limerick. "There was a young man named Purdy, who was not what you'd call very sturdy. To be more of a sport, he drank gin by the quart, and danced on a hurdy-gurdy."

"You're insane," announced Cassy, who was a trifle demented herself.

Dunwoodie extracted his towel. "Jeroloman is the attorney for the other side. He will want to meet Mrs. Paliser, but that honour will not be his to-day."

Cassy stood up. "I should hope not. He would be the last camel on the straw—I mean the last straw on the camel."

Dunwoodie, rising also, gave her his fine bow and to Jones a hand.

Then as the two made for the door, from over her shoulder she smiled back at him.

"My grandmother could not have been nicer."

"What do you mean by that?" Jones absently inquired.

But, in the rotunda now, Mr. Purdy was asking her address. If he had dared he would have followed her there. Fortune favouring, he would have followed her to the ends of the earth. It was what one of our allies calls the thunderbolt. Never before had he beheld such a face. Earnestly he prayed that he might behold it again. Allah is great. The prayer was granted.

In the canon below, Jones, as he piloted her to the subway, pulled at his gloves.

"If I had the ability, I would write an opera, call it 'Danae' and offer you the title-role."

Cassy, her thoughts on her grandmother, repeated it. "Danae?"

"Yes, the lady disconnected by marriage with Jupiter who tubbed her in gold—gold ink, I suppose. But as I am not a composer I shall put you between the sheets—of a novel I mean. Fiction has its consolations."

But now, leaving the canon, they entered a cavern which a tunnel fluted. There Cassy looked up at the inkbeast. "How is Mr. Lennox? Do you see him?"

"I find it very difficult not to. Unattached people are sticky as flies. When Lennox was engaged, he was invisible. Now he is all over the place."

From the tunnel a train erupted. It came with the belch of a monstrous beetle, red-eyed and menacing, hastening terribly to some horrible task.

Jones, shoving the girl into its bowels, added: "I was happier when he was jugged."

A corner beckoned. There, as the beetle resumed its flight, the novelist spread his wings.

"I would have wagered a red pippin that you couldn't say Jack Robinson before he and that young woman were convoluting joyously. I even planned to be best man. Saw my tailor about it. Whether it were on that account or not the Lords of Karma only know, but he told Miss Austen to go to hell."

Cassy started. From before her everything was receding.

Jones noting the movement, interpreted it naturally and therefore stupidly. He apologised.

"Forgive me. I picture you as Our Lady of the Immaculate Conversation. Forgive me, then. Besides, what Lennox did say, he said with less elegance. He said: 'I'm through.' Yes and asked me to repeat it to her. I studiously omitted to, but as Proteus—Mr. Blount in private life—somewhere expressed it, 'Hell has no more fixed or absolute decree.'"

Because of the crashing beetle Jones had to shout it. He shouted it in Cassy's ear. It was a lovely ear and Jones was aware of it. But only professionally. Since that night in Naples when, by way of keepsake, he got a dagger in his back, he had entertained the belief that a novelist should have everything, even to sex, in his brain. Such theories are very safe. Jones' admirations were not therefore carnal. To Balzac, a pretty woman was a plot. Cassy was a plot to Jones, who continued to shout.

"If Lennox and Margaret Austen moved and had their being in a novel of mine, the wedding-bells would now be ringing at a cradle in the last chapter. Commercially it would be my duty to supply that happy and always unexpected touch. I even made a bet about it, which shows how iniquitous gambling is. What's more, it shows that I must have an unsuspected talent for picture-plays. As it was in heaven, so it is now in the movies. It is there that marriages are made. But forgive me again. I am talking shop."

The renewed apology was needless. Though Jones shouted, Cassy did not hear. It was not the clattering beetle that interfered. To that also Cassy was deaf. She heard nothing. The echo of noisy millions had gone. The slamming doors were silent. But her face was pale as running water when, the beetle at last abandoned, she thanked Jones for seeing her all the way.

All the way to where? God, if she only knew!



XXXV

Later that day, Jeroloman, the attorney for the other side, who at the time had no idea that there was another side, or any side at all, entered the rotunda and asked for Dunwoodie.

In asking, he removed his hat, glanced at its glisten, put it on again. The hat was silk. It topped iron grey hair, steel-blue eyes, a turn-under nose, a thin-lipped mouth, a pointed chin, a stand-up collar, a dark neckcloth, a morning coat, grey gloves, grey trousers, drab spats and patent-leather boots. These attributes gave him an air that was intensely respectable, equally tiresome. One pitied his wife.

"This way, sir."

In the inner and airy office, Dunwoodie nodded, motioned at a chair.

"Ha! Very good of you to trouble."

Jeroloman, seating himself, again removed his hat. Before he could dispose of it, Dunwoodie was at him.

"Young Paliser's estate. In round figures what does it amount to?"

Jeroloman, selecting a safe place on the table, put the hat on it and answered, not sparringly, there was nothing to spar about, but with civil indifference: "Interested professionally?"

"His widow is my client."

Jeroloman's eyes fastened themselves on Dunwoodie, who he knew was incapable of anything that savoured, however remotely, of shysterism. But it was a year and a day since he had been closeted with him. In the interim, time had told. Diverting those eyes, he displayed a smile that was chill and dental.

"Well, well! We all make mistakes. There is no such person." He paused, awaiting the possible protest. None came and he added: "The morning after the murder, his father told me that the young man contemplated marriage with a lady who had his entire approval. Unfortunately——"

"Yaas," Dunwoodie broke in. "Unfortunately, as you say. The morning after was the 26th. On the 21st, a gardener, who pretended to be a clergyman, officiated at his marriage to my client."

Dryly but involuntarily Jeroloman laughed. Dunwoodie was getting on, getting old. In his day he had been remarkably able. That day had gone.

"Well, well! Even admitting that such a thing could have happened, it must have been only by way of a lark."

Dunwoodie whipped out his towel. "You don't say so!"

Carelessly Jeroloman surveyed him. He was certainly senile, yet, because of his laurels, entitled to all the honours of war.

"Look here, Mr. Dunwoodie. You are not by any chance serious, are you?"

"Oh, I'm looking. While I was about it, I looked into the case. Per verba de praesenti, my client consented to be young Paliser's wife. Now she is his widow."

Jeroloman weighed it. The weighing took but an instant. Dunwoodie was living in the past, but there was no use in beating about the bush and he said as much.

"You are thinking of the common law, sir."

Absently Dunwoodie creased his towel. "Now you mention it, I believe I am."

Jeroloman glanced at his watch. It was getting late. His residence was five miles away. He was to dress, dine early and take his wife to the theatre. He would have to hurry and he reached for his hat.

"The common law was abrogated long ago."

Dunwoodie rumpled the towel. "Why, so it was!"

Jeroloman took the hat and with a gloved finger rubbed at the brim. "Even otherwise, the term common-law wife is not legally recognised. The law looks with no favour on the connection indicated by it. The term is synonymous for a woman who, having lived illicitly with a man, seeks to assume the relationship of wife after his death and thereby share in the proceeds of his property."

From under beetling brows, Dunwoodie looked at him. "Thanks for the lecture, Jeroloman. My client has no such desire. In this office, an hour ago, she refused them."

Jeroloman stood up. "Very sensible of her, I'm sure." He twirled the hat. "Who is she?"

"I thought I told you. She is Mrs. Paliser."

Jeroloman waved that hat. "Well, well! I thought I told you. As it is, if you will take the trouble to look at the laws of 1901, you will find that common-law marriages are inhibited."

"Hum! Ha! And if you will trouble to look at the Laws of 1907, you will find they are inhibited no longer."

Jeroloman stared. "I have yet to learn of it."

Dunwoodie repocketed his towel. "Is it possible? Then when the opportunity occurs you might inform yourself. At the same time let me recommend the Court of Appeals for March. You may find there additional instruction. But I see you are going. Don't let me detain you."

Jeroloman sat down. "What case are you referring to?"

"The Matter of Ziegler."

Uncertainly Jeroloman's steel-blue eyes shifted. "It seems to me I read the syllabus."

"Then your powers of concealment are admirable."

"But just what does it hold?"

"Can it be that you don't remember? Well, well!—to borrow your own agreeable mode of expression—it holds that common-law marriages that were valid before and until the enactments which you were good enough to cite, were again made valid by their appeal in Chapter 742 of the Laws of 1907."

"But," Jeroloman began and paused. "But——" He paused again.

Comfortably Dunwoodie helped him. "Yes?"

"You say that marriages valid before and until the Laws of 1901 are, by virtue of a repeal, now valid again?"

"That is what I say, Jeroloman. Merely that and nothing more. In addition to the Ziegler case, let me commend to you 'The Raven.'"

"Let's get down to facts, sir. From your account of it, this alleged marriage never could have been valid."

Dunwoodie wiped his mouth. "Dear me! I had no idea that my account of it could lead to such interesting views. You do surprise me."

"Mr. Dunwoodie, you said the ceremony was performed by a gardener who pretended to be a clergyman. Those were your very words."

"Yaas. Let the cat out of the bag, didn't I?"

Archly but chillily Jeroloman smiled. "Well, no, I would not care to put it in that way, but your office-boy must know that false representations void it."

"Good Lord!" Dunwoodie exclaimed. It was as though he had been hit in the stomach.

Jeroloman, who was eyeing him, gave a little nod that was tantamount to saying, "Take that!"

But Dunwoodie was recovering. He sat back, looked admiringly at Jeroloman, clasped his hands and twirled his thumbs.

Jeroloman, annoyed at the attitude and in haste to be going, pursed his thin lips. "Well, sir?"

With an affability that was as unusual as it was suspicious, Dunwoodie smiled at him. "Your objection is well taken. Not an hour ago, in that chair in which you are sitting, this lady, my client, who not once in her sweet life has opened the Revised Statutes, and who, to save it, could not tell the difference between them and the Code, well, sir, she entered that same objection."

"I don't see——"

"Nor did she, God bless her! And I fear I wearied her with my reasons for not sustaining it. But I did not tell her, what I may confide in you, that in Hays versus The People—25 New York—it is held immaterial whether a person who pretended to solemnise a marriage contract, was or was not a clergyman, or whether either party to the contract was deceived by false representations of this character. Hum! Ha!"

Jeroloman pulled at his long chin. In so doing he rubbed his hat the wrong way. He did not notice. That he was to dress, dine early, take his wife to the theatre, that it was getting late and that his residence was five miles away, all these things were forgotten. What he saw were abominations that his client would abhor—the suit, the notoriety, the exposure, the whole dirty business dumped before the public's greedy and shining eyes.

"Who is she?" he suddenly asked.

"Who was she?" Dunwoodie corrected. "Miss Cara."

Jeroloman started and dropped his hat. "Not——?"

Dunwoodie nodded. "His daughter."

Jeroloman, bending over, recovered his hat. Before it, a picture floated. It represented an assassin's child gutting the estate of a son whom the father had murdered. It was a bit too cubist. Somewhere he had seen another picture of that school. It showed a young woman falling downstairs. He did not know but that he might reproduce it. At least he could try. Meanwhile it was just as well to take the model's measure and again his eyes fastened on Dunwoodie.

"What do you suggest?"

Dunwoodie, loosening his clasped hands, beat with the fingers a tattoo on his waistcoat.

"Let me see. There is 'The Raven,' the first primer, the multiplication table. Is it for your enlightenment that you ask?"

Jeroloman moistened his lips. Precise, careful, capable, intensely respectable, none the less he could have struck him. A moment only. From the sleeve of his coat he flicked, or affected to flick, a speck.

"Yes, thank you, for my enlightenment. You have not told me what your client wants."

"What a woman wants is usually beyond masculine comprehension."

Methodically Jeroloman dusted his hat. "You might enquire. We, none of us, favour litigation. In the interests of my client I always try to avoid it and, while at present. I have no authority, yet——Well, well! Between ourselves, how would a ponderable amount, four or five thousand, how would that do?"

Blandly Dunwoodie looked at this man, who was trying to take Cassy's measure.

"For what?"

"To settle it."

That bland air, where was it? In its place was the look which occasionally the ruffian turned on the Bench.

"Hum! Ha! Then for your further enlightenment let me inform you that my client will settle it for what she is legally entitled to, not one ponderable dollar more, not one ponderable copper less."

Mentally, from before that look, Jeroloman was retreating. Mentally as well, already he had reversed himself. He had judged Dunwoodie old, back-number, living in the past. Instead of which the fossil was what he always had been—just one too many. Though not perhaps for him. Not for Randolph F. Jeroloman. Not yet, at any rate. The points advanced were new, undigested, perhaps inexact, filled with discoverable flaws. Though, even so, how M. P. would view them was another kettle of fish. But that was as might be. He put on his hat and stood up.

"Very good. I will give the matter my attention."

"Do," Dunwoodie, with that same look, retorted, "And meanwhile I will apply for letters of administration. Hum! Ha! My compliments to your good lady."

He turned in his chair. Attention, indeed! He knew what that meant. The matter would be submitted to M. P. The old devil had not a leg to stand on, he lacked even a crutch, and in that impotent, dismembered and helpless condition he would be thrown out of court. A ponderable amount! Hum!

For a moment he considered the case. But it may be that already it had been heard and adjudged. Long since, perhaps, at some court of last resort, the Paliser Case had been decided.



XXXVI

On the morrow, Jeroloman waited on his client, who received him in the library, an agreeable room in which there was nothing literary, but which succeeded at once in becoming extremely unpleasant.

M. P. was in tweeds. When his late lamented departed this life, he wore crepe on his hat for ninety days. It was a tribute that he paid, not to the lady's virtues, which were notoriously absent; nor to any love of her, for he had disliked her exceedingly; nor yet because it was conventional, he hated conventionality; but, by Gad, sir, because it bucks the women up! All that was long ago. Since then he had become less fastidious. At his son's funeral he appeared in black.

Now, on this day, dressed in tweeds, he greeted Jeroloman with his usual cordiality.

"I hope to God you are not going to bother me about anything?"

The wicked old man, who had faced wicked facts before, faced a few of them then. The stench of the main fact had been passing from him, deodorised by the fumigating belief that his son had been killed by a lunatic. Now here it was again, more mephitic than ever, and for the whiffs of it with which Jeroloman was spraying him, he hated the man.

"Whom has she?"

"Dunwoodie."

He reviewed the bar. There was Bancroft, whose name was always in the papers and to whom clients flocked. There was Gwathmay, whom the papers ignored and whom only lawyers consulted. He might have either or both, the rest of the crew as well, and in spite of them all, unless he permitted himself to be done, the publicity would be just as resounding.

In the old nights, when social New York was a small and early, threats had amused him. "I have my hours for being blackmailed, this is not one of them," he had lightly remarked at a delightful gang. "Do your damnedest."

They took him at his word and so completely that the small and early saw him no more. What was that to him? There were other pastures, less scrumptious perhaps, but also far less fatiguing. He had not cared, not a rap. Behind him the yard of brass yodled in a manner quite as lordly as before. His high-steppers lost none of their sheen; his yacht retained all its effulgence; so, too, did the glare of his coin. No, he had not cared. But that was long ago, so long that it might have happened in an anterior existence. He had not cared then. Age is instructive. He had learned to since. Moreover, in testimony of his change of heart, a miracle had been vouchsafed. The affair at the Opera, attributed to a lunatic, had been buried safely, like his son, the scandal tossed in for shroud. How freely he had breathed since then! The little green bottle of menthe he had barely touched. He might live to see everything forgiven or, what is quite as satisfactory, forgotten. And now! Columns and columns, endlessly, day in, day out; the Paliser Case dragged from one court to another, the stench of it exceeded only by that of the Huns! But, by comparison, blackmail, however bitter, was sweet. When one may choose between honey and gall, decision is swift.

"What'll she take?"

Jeroloman, who had left his hat on the malachite bench in the hall, smoothed his gloves. He was about to reply. Before he could, his client shook a fist at him.

"The slut hasn't a cent. Came to the Place with a bundle, damn her. A suit like this costs something. Where's she going to get it? What'll she take?"

Jeroloman looked up from his gloves. "I don't know."

"Then find out."

"I offered Dunwoodie a ponderable amount."

"Well?"

"He refused it."

"Double it, then, triple it."

"Mr. Paliser, I'm sorry, but it won't do."

"Damnation, why not?"

"It is all or nothing with him and maybe nothing in the end. I told him so. I told him that the courts view with no favour a woman who, having lived illicitly with a man, claims, on his demise, to be his widow. Such a claim is but the declaration of a woman entered after the death of her alleged husband and, as such, is inadmissible under Section 829 of the Code. I have posted myself very thoroughly in the matter, though I find it has been held——"

"Damn what has been held. It's all or nothing, is it?"

Jeroloman pulled at his long chin.

All, the wicked old man reflected. All! All would be ten million and ten million was less than a tenth of his wealth—ten million for which he had no earthly need, which it would fatigue him to spend, burden him to hoard, disgrace him to fight for, and which, normally, would go to a brat whom he had never seen and whom, as next in line, he hated.

Already he had decided. Though, it may be that on planes of which he knew nothing, long since it had been decided for him.

None the less it hurt. It hurt horribly. From a pocket, he drew a little bottle.

"Settle it then."

"On what basis?"

"All and be damned to her."

But now the menthe that he had raised to his lips was trickling from the bottle, staining his tweeds. He hiccoughed, gasped, motioned.

"And good-day to you."

Below, on the malachite bench, a silk hat was waiting. When that hat again appeared in Dunwoodie's office, the Paliser Case was over. It had ended before it began.



XXXVII

Cassy sat in the kitchen. Before her were a cheque and a letter. The letter was from the theatre-man. The cheque was Dunwoodie's. The cheque begged to be cashed, the letter begged her to call.

During the night she had gone looking along an avenue where there were houses with candid windows from which faces peered and smiled. But it was not for these that she was looking and she awoke in a tempest of farewells.

Now, across the court, in the kitchen opposite, were two inoffensive beings. On that evening when her father had made her cry, they had seemed unreal. On this forenoon their baseless appearance persisted. But their unreality was not confined to them. Their kitchen, the court, the building shared it. They were all unreal, everything was, except one thing only, which perhaps was more unreal than all things else.

She looked at the letter and from it at the cheque. The day before, on returning from the shower of millions that had caught and drenched her in Broad Street, she was not entirely dry. The glisten of the golden rain hung all about her. None the less on reaching the walk-up she forgot it. There were other matters, more important, that she had in mind. But only a philosopher could be drenched as she had been and remain unaffected. The bath is too voluptuous for the normal heart. On its waters float argosies crimson-hulled, purple-rigged, freighted with dreams come true. You have but a gesture to make. Those dreams are spaniels crouching at your feet. At a bath not dissimilar but financially far shallower, Monte Cristo cried: "The world is mine!" It was very amusing of him. But though, since then, values have varied, a bagatelle of ten millions is deep enough for any girl, sufficiently deep at least for its depths to hold strange things.

At those things, strange indeed and yet not unfamiliar, Cassy beckoned. In their embrace she saw herself, as Jones had pictured her, going about, giving money away, strewing it full-handed, changing sobs into smiles. The picture lacked novelty. Often she had dreamed it. Only recently, on the afternoon just before the clock struck twelve, just before the gardener lit his pipe and the mask had fallen, only then, and, relatively, that was but yesterday, she had promenaded in it. It was a dream she had dreamed when a child, that had haunted her girlhood, that had abided since then. It was the dream of a dream she had dreamed without daring to believe in its truth. Now, from the core of the web that is spun by the spiderous fates, out it had sprung. There, before her eyes, within her grasp was that miracle, a rainbow solidified, vapour made tangible, a dream no longer a dream but a palette and a palette that you could toss in the air, put in the bank, secrete or squander, a palette with which you could paint the hours and make them twist to jewelled harps. No more walk-up! Good-bye, kitchy! Harlem, addio! The gentleman with the fabulous nose could whistle. Vaudeville, indeed! She could buy the shop, buy a dozen of them, tear them down, build them up, throw them into one and sing there, sing what she liked, when she liked, as she liked. Yes, but for whom? God of gods, for whom?

A local newspaper bears—or bore—a sage device: La nuit porte conseil. That night, on her white bed, in her black room, Cassy sought it. But the counsel that night brings is not delivered while you toss about. Night waits until you sleep. Then, to the subjective self that never sleeps, the message is delivered. It may be fallible, often it is and, in our scheme of things, what is there that is not? Yet in any dilemma bad advice may be better than none. Then, without transition, the black room changed into an avenue where faces peered and smiled. It was not though for these that she was looking, but for her way. It must have been very narrow. Though she looked and looked she could not find it. Yet it was near, perhaps just around the corner. But in some manner, she could not reach it. Sleep sank her deeper. When she awoke, there it was.

Now as she sat in the kitchen, before which, in the kitchen opposite, bundles of baseless appearances came and went, she began counting her wealth on her fingers. Youth! Up went her thumb. Health! The forefinger. Lungs! The second finger. Not being a fright! The fourth. How rich she was! But was there not something else? Oh, yes! Sadly she smiled. A clear conscience! She had forgotten that and that came first. Youth, health, lungs, looks, these were gamblers' tokens in the great roulette of life. In the hazards of chance at any moment she might lose one or all, as eventually she must lose them and remain no poorer than before. But her first asset which she had counted last, that was her fortune, the estate she held by virtue of a trust so guardedly created that if she lost one mite, the whole treasure was withdrawn.

On the washtub—covered admirably with linoleum—at which she sat, were the cheque for a thousand dollars and the bid from the vaudeville man. The bid, she knew, meant money. But the cheque would beggar her.

She drew breath and sat back. From above a filter of sunlight fell and told her it was noon. Across the court the bundles of baseless appearances transformed themselves into a real woman, an actual child. The kitchen in which they moved, the house in which they dwelled were no longer the perceptions of a perceiver. They also were real. So, too, was life.

An hour and Mr. Purdy's pasty face turned feebly red. He stammered it.

No, unfortunately, Mr. Dunwoodie was out. Would Mrs. Paliser wait? In Mr. Dunwoodie's private office? And the 'Herald' perhaps or the 'Times'—or—or——

Everything there, Broad Street to boot, the Stock Exchange included, Mr. Purdy was ready and anxious to offer.

No, Mrs. Paliser would not wait—and mentally she thanked her stars for it. But would Mr. Purdy do something for her?

Would he! The brave spirit of Talleyrand must have animated that sickly young man. If what Mrs. Paliser desired were possible it would be done: if impossible, it was done already.

Cassy gave him the rare seduction of her smile. She also was entertaining an emotion or two. She had not at all known where she would find the strength to confront and confute a grandmotherly old ruffian. But luck was with her. He was out.

So very good of Mr. Purdy then and would he please give Mr. Dunwoodie this cheque and say she's sorry she can't accept it or the other money either? She had said she would, but, really, it was not intended for her. Supposing she took it. She would feel like a thief in a fog. Exactly that. A thief in a fog. No, she couldn't. Couldn't and wouldn't. Just as grateful though to Mr. Dunwoodie. Her regrets to him and a thousand thanks.

"And good-day, Mr. Purdy. I thank you also."

Mr. Purdy, flushing feebly, saw her to the door, saw her to the hall without. There, while he waited with her for a descending lift, a silk hat that had just come from a malachite bench, alighted from an ascending one. Immediately the other lift took her.

"Who was that?" the hat's owner alertly asked.

Mr. Purdy rubbed his perspiring hands. "Mrs. Paliser."

Jeroloman wheeled like a rat. He looked at the cage. It had vanished. He looked at the other. Above it a moving finger pointed upward. Cold-blooded, meticulously precise, intensely respectable, none the less, for one delirious second, madness seized him. He wished to God he could hurry down, overtake the impostor, lure her into his own office, frighten her out of such wits as she possessed and buy her off for tuppence. Instantly Respectability had him by the collar. He could not. Precision gave him a kick. Wouldn't stand if he did.

Deeply he swore. The millions were gone. Hands down, without a struggle, the Paliser estate was rooked. No fault of his though, and mechanically he adjusted that hat. Damn her!

In the street below, superbly, with sidereal indifference, the sun shone down on the imbecile activities of man. The storm of the day before that had drenched Cassy so abundantly, had been blown afar, blown from her forever. The sky in which a volcano had formed was remote and empty.

"Ouf!" Cassy muttered in relief and muttered, too: "Now for the agent!"

She had reached the corner. Just beyond was the subway. It would land her within two squares of the man's greasy office. Now, though, suddenly, she felt a gnawing. A sandwich would taste good. Two sandwiches would taste better. Then, quite as suddenly, that vision, the street with it, everything, except one thing only, vanished.

Blocking the way stood Lennox.

"Where to in such a hurry?"

Easily she smiled and told him. "I'm going to buy a rhinoceros." But for all the easiness of it her tongue nearly tripped. "And what are you doing?"

"I? Oh! Cleaning up."

Wall Street is not a Japanese tea-garden. It lacks the klop-klop of fountains. Yet, even in its metallic roar there may—for exceptional beings—be peace there. Not for Cassy, though. She could have screamed.

A moment only. Lennox turned and both moved on.

"Let's get out of this."

Cassy looked up at him. "You forget my little errand."

"Ah, yes! The rhinoceros. Couldn't you ask me to meet him?"

"I shall be giving dinner-parties for him every evening. Would you care to come?"

They had reached cavernous steps down which Cassy was going.

Lennox raised his hat. "I will come to-night."

Through the metallic roar, the four words dropped and hummed.



XXXVIII

"It is going to be splendid. There will be candles!"—a young person, dead since but still living, exclaimed of her poet's fete. The fete, however lavish, and which you will find reported by Murger, was not held in a kitchen. The poet's garret did not contain a kitchen. That was Paris.

Hereabouts, nowadays, walk-ups are more ornate. Cassy's dinner that night was served on rich linoleum and not out of snobbishness either but because the table had gone from the living-room and though the piano remained one could not very well dine on that, or, for that matter, on the sofa. There are details into which a hostess never enters. Cassy—in black chiffon—did not offer any and Lennox—in evening clothes—did not ask. He had never dined in a kitchen before and, so far as the present historian knows not to the contrary, he did not dine in one again. But he enjoyed the experience. There was cold chicken, a salad, youth, youth's wine and running laughter. For dessert, a remark.

The rich linoleum then had been abandoned for the other room where Cassy sat on the sofa and Lennox on the one surviving chair. Beyond was the piano. Additionally, in some neighbourly flat, a phonograph performed.

Among these luxuries sweets were served. A question preceded them.

"Do you remember the afternoon you were in my rooms?"

Yes, Cassy remembered it.

Then came the remark. "That afternoon I laughed. Until to-night—except once—I haven't laughed since then."

Very good dessert, with more to follow.

"When you went, the sunlight went with you. It went out at your heels like a dog. I was thinking about it recently. I don't seem to have seen the sunlight again, until it played about your rhinoceros."

There are sweets that are bitter. Cassy took one.

"Mr. Jones told me. It does seem such a pity, such a great pity. I saw her once and I could see she was not merely good to look at but really good, good through and through."

"May I smoke?" Lennox asked.

Had he wished he could have stood on his head. Cassy nodded at him. He got out a cigar.

"Miss Austen is all you say. She is a saint. A man doesn't want a saint. A man wants flesh and blood."

Cassy took another bitter-sweet. "She's that. Any one would know it."

Lennox bit at the cigar. "Too good for me, though. So good that she threw me over."

Cassy put a finger through it. "She did not understand. Any girl might have done the same."

Sombrely Lennox considered her. "Would you? You say she did not understand. I know well enough she did not. But if you cared for a man, would you throw him over because of a charge which you could not be sure was true and without giving him a chance to disprove it? Would you?"

He could stand on his head, yes, but it was unfair to grill her. She flushed.

"I don't see what that has to do with it."

"How, you don't see?"

"Isn't it obvious? Miss Austen and I move in different worlds. On any subject our views might differ and I don't mean at all but that hers would be superior."

"There can be but one view of what's square."

"I am sure she meant to be."

Unconcernedly, Lennox smiled. The smile lit his face. From sombre it became radiant.

"That's all very well. The point is what you would think. Would you think it square to throw a man over as she threw me?"

Cassy showed her teeth. "If I didn't care for him, certainly I would."

"But if you did?"

That was too much. Cassy exclaimed at it. "If! If! How can I tell? I don't know. I lack experience."

"But not heart."

He was right about that, worse luck. How it beat, too! It would kill her though to have him suspect it.

"I do wish you would tell me," he added.

Cassy, casting about, felt like an imbecile and said brilliantly: "Haven't you a match? Shall I fetch one?"

Lennox extracted a little case. "Thanks. It's an answer I'd like."

It was enough to drive you mad and again casting about, but not getting it, she hedged.

"It will have to be in the abstract, then."

"Very good. Let's have it in the abstract."

Yet even in the abstract! However, with an uplift of the chin that gave her, she felt, an air of discussing a matter in which she had no concern at all, she plunged.

"One never knows, don't you know, but it seems to me that if by any chance I did care for a man—not that it is in the least presumable that I ever shall—but if I did, why, then, no. He couldn't get rid of me, not unless he tried very hard, but if he didn't, then no matter what I heard, no matter how true it might be, I would cling to his coat-tails, that is, if he wore them, and if, also, he cared for a ninny like me."

Cassy paused, shook her docked hair and solemnly resumed: "Which, of course, he couldn't."

"I knew you would say that."

"Say what?" Previously flushed, she reddened. But there is a God. The room had grown dim.

"That you wouldn't cut and run."

She could have slapped him. "Then why did you ask me?"

Lennox blew a ring of smoke.

"To have you see it as I do. To have you see that at the first flurry Miss Austen ran to cover. I am quite sure I could show her that she ran too quick, but I am equally sure it is a blessing that she did run. It is not ambitious of a man to want a girl who will stand her ground. Sooner or later some other flurry would have knocked the ground from under and then it might have been awkward. This one let me out."