_ BOOK I CHAPTER XIII. BEARDING THE LION
Early the next morning, Littleson's automobile dashed up to the door of Weiss' office. Without even waiting to be announced, its owner pushed his way through the clerk's office and entered the private room of his friend.
"Heard the news?" he demanded quickly.
"No! What is it?" Weiss asked.
"Phineas Duge is in the city. He was going into Harrigold's as I came out. I tried to speak to him, but he cut me dead. They say that he has sent for all his brokers, and is coming on this market heavily!"
"Then his illness was a fake after all," Weiss declared. "We can't stand this, though. I'll get on to his office. We must speak to him."
He gave some rapid instructions to a clerk whom he had summoned, then took a printed sheet of prices from a machine which ticked at his elbow.
"If it's war," he muttered, "we shall have to fight hard, but what I don't understand is why he wants to break with us."
The clerk re-entered the room.
"There is a young lady here," he said, "who wishes to speak to you, sir."
"Name?" Weiss demanded curtly.
"Miss Virginia Longworth," he answered.
Weiss and Littleson exchanged quick glances.
"Show her in at once," Weiss ordered. "What do you suppose this means?" he asked, turning to Littleson.
The young man had no time to reply. Almost immediately Virginia was ushered into the office. She was very pale, and there were dark lines under her eyes. Stephen Weiss rose at once, and Littleson hastened to offer her a chair, but she took no notice. They could see that she was agitated, and she seemed to find some difficulty in commencing what she had to say.
"What can I have the pleasure of doing for you, Miss Longworth?" Weiss asked. "I hope that you have come to tell me--"
"I have come to tell you that you are both thieves!" she interrupted. "If you do not give me back that paper, I don't care what my uncle says, I shall go to the police station."
The men exchanged swift glances. Littleson suddenly started. He drew Weiss on one side.
"Stella has got it," he whispered, in a tone of triumph. "Get rid of this girl easily. That is what she must mean."
Weiss turned round and faced her.
"My dear Miss Longworth," he said, "a thief I would have been if I could have found the chance, and a thief I would have made of you if you would have stolen that paper for me, because I considered that it belonged to us, and we had a moral right to take it. But the fact remains that we have not got it. When I heard your name announced I hoped that you had brought it to us."
"You have not got it!" she repeated contemptuously.
"Upon my honour we have not!" Littleson declared.
"Perhaps," she said, turning to him, "you will deny that it was you who incited my cousin Stella to come and rob her own father?"
The two men exchanged swift glances. Littleson's surmise had been correct then. It was Stella who had succeeded where the others had failed!
"We know nothing of Miss Duge," Littleson said, "nor have we received the paper nor any news of it. If Miss Stella has stolen it, she has not brought it to us. That is all I can tell you."
Virginia read truth in their faces. She turned away.
"Oh, I do not understand!" she said. "Perhaps I have made a mistake. I will go."
She hurried outside to the automobile which was waiting, and drove to the address which Stella had given her. It was a kind of residential hotel, and a boy in the hall took her up in the lift to the floor on which Stella's rooms were. She knocked at the door. Stella herself opened it. She started back when she saw who her visitor was.
"You!" she exclaimed.
Virginia stepped into the room.
"Yes!" she answered. "What have you done with the paper that you stole from the safe?"
Stella closed the door and looked at her cousin thoughtfully. She had evidently been busy packing. Dresses and hats lay about on the bed, and in the next room the maid was busy emptying the cupboards. Stella closed the communicating door.
"Why have you come here?" she said to Virginia. "You don't suppose I ran risks like that, to possess myself of a thing which I meant to give up. Oh! you need not look as though you were going to spring at me. I have not got it here, I can assure you. I parted with it hours ago!"
"To whom?" Virginia demanded.
"My father will find out some day, perhaps," Stella answered. "I don't see that it's so much his affair. The men who have to pay for their folly are the men who deserve to pay. I see that my father was too cunning to write his name down with theirs."
"You mean," Virginia demanded, "that you have not given it to Mr. Littleson and his friends?"
"Not I!" Stella laughed,--"although they offered me one hundred thousand dollars for it."
Virginia sat down on the bed. She had not slept all night, and she had eaten no breakfast.
"Stella," she said, looking at her cousin with her big eyes full of tears, and her voice becoming unsteady, "you have done a very, very cruel thing. You have ruined my life. Your father had done so much for my people, and now he is going to stop it all and send me back to them. You can't imagine what it means to be thrown back into such poverty. It isn't for myself I mind; it is for their sakes."
"I don't see," Stella answered, "how my father can blame you."
Virginia shook her head sadly.
"Your father is one of those men," she said, "who judges only by results. He trusted me, and whether it was my fault or my misfortune, I was a failure. Stella, does it mean so much to you, after all, that you should keep that paper? Why don't you bring it back and be reconciled to your father? I should be quite content to go away; anything so long as he gets it back. Don't you understand that after he has been so kind, I hate the feeling that I have been so abject a failure?"
Stella smiled a little bitterly.
"It is my turn," she said, "to tell you that you do not understand my father. He would never forgive me, nor do I want him to. If you think that I was the tool of these men Littleson and Weiss, you make a mistake. What I did, I did for the sake of the only man I have ever cared for. Never mind his name, never mind who he is. But if it makes my father any happier, you can tell him that his friends are no nearer safety now than they were when the paper was in his keeping."
Virginia looked around the room drearily.
"You are going away?" she said.
"I am going to Europe," Stella answered. "I hate America. I hate the whole atmosphere here. It is a vile, unnatural life. I am going to try and live somewhere where people are simpler, and where life is not made up of gambling and plotting and senseless luxuries. I am tired to death of it all!"
"You are going to be married?"
Stella turned away and hid her face.
"No!" she said, "I do not think so."
There was a short silence. Virginia rose to her feet.
"Well," she said, "I think you have been a little unkind to me, Stella. I could have reached the bell and stopped you, only I hated to seem rude in your father's house."
"I am sorry," Stella said simply. "You see I am like all those other poor fools who care for a man. I put him first, and everybody else nowhere. Don't be afraid that I shall not have to suffer for it. I dare say if you know me, or anything about me, in five years' time, you will feel that you have had your revenge. If you take my advice, little girl," she added, speaking more kindly, "you will go back to your farmhouse and take up your simpler life there. I do not fancy that you were made for cities, or the ways of cities. I lived in the country once, and I was a very different sort of person. Run away now. I can do nothing for you, so it is no use staying, but if ever you need help, the ordinary, commonplace sort of help, I mean, write to me to Baring's, either in London or Paris. I'll do what I can."
Virginia went out again into the street and drove back home. Mechanically she changed her clothes and dressed for dinner. At eight o'clock she descended, shivering. Her uncle was already in his place. He rose as she entered, gravely, and took his place again as she sank into hers. His face was like a mask. He said nothing, and the few remarks which he made during dinner-time were on purely ordinary topics. There was only a minute or two, after the dessert had been placed upon the table and the remaining man servant had gone out with a message, during which they were alone. Then Virginia summoned up her courage to speak of the matter which was like a nightmare in her thoughts.
"Uncle," she said, "I think you ought to know this. I went to Mr. Weiss' office. He did not know that the paper was not still in your keeping. I went to Stella, and she told me that she had not taken it for them. She told me that they had offered her one hundred thousand dollars for it, but she never had any idea of letting them have it."
If Phineas Duge was surprised, he showed no signs of it, only he looked steadily into his niece's face for a moment or two before he replied.
"Stella," he said coldly, "has taken her goods to a poor market. Norris Vine is on the brink of ruin. If I turn the screw to-morrow, he must come down."
He sipped his wine for a moment thoughtfully. Then a grim, hard smile parted his lips.
"No wonder," he said, "that my friends are still in something of a panic."
Virginia rose in her place. It seemed as though her appearance was woebegone enough to soften the heart of any man, but Phineas Duge looked into her face unmoved.
"Uncle," she said, "I am no longer any use to you. I think that I had better go home."
He took out his pocket-book, looked through its contents, and passed it across the table to her.
"As you will," he answered. "I have a great weakness which I am always ready to admit. I cannot bear the presence about me of people who have failed. You have become one of them, and I do not wish you to remain here. If," he added, speaking more slowly, and looking meditatively into the decanter by his side, "if you saw any chance by which, with the help of what you will find in that pocket-book, a little application, a little ingenuity, and a good deal of perseverance, you could undo some part of the mischief which your carelessness has caused, then, of course, I should lose that feeling concerning you, and your place here would be open for your return. It would probably, also, be to the advantage of your people if any such idea as this resulted in successful action on your part. There is enough in that pocket-book," he added, "to take you where you will, and to enable you to live as you will for the remainder of the year, and during that time your people also are provided for. I leave the matter in your hands."
He turned and left the room. Virginia stood at the end of the table, clasping the pocket-book in her hands, and watching his retreating figure. He opened and closed the door. She sank back into her place for a moment and covered her face with her hands. For a moment she forgot where she was. The perfume of the roses, with which the table was laden, had somehow reminded her of the little farmhouse with its humble garden, far up amongst the hills. _