Books: Her Weight in Gold
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George Barr McCutcheon >> Her Weight in Gold
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"Sir! I am but twenty-five!" exclaimed Mrs. Gloame indignantly.
"Madam, I must remind you that you have a great-great-grandson in
Colonel Gloame the present, who, by the way, is very proud of his
ancestry. But pardon my jesting, please. Would you like a little
brandy or a glass of wine? It is a cold night, even for shades. Let me
prepare a toddy--it won't take a minute, and I know how to get up a
cracker-jack. New thing in all of the New York clubs."
After a moment of indecision the two Gloames sank into chairs beside
the table. Godfrey waved his hand pleasantly, courteously, to the
young New Yorker.
"My dear sah," he said, "your explanation of this rather unaccountable
situation is entirely acceptable. I see the position clearly, just as
it is, and I humbly apologise for afflicting you with an insinuation.
Beatrice, I crave your forgiveness again. Your proffer of the toddy,
Mr. Garrison, is timely and I should be happy to place my approval
upon your particular concoction."
"Godfrey," cried his wife in distress, "you swore you would never
drink another drop."
"But this shall be the last," he pleaded, "so help me--so help me--
Moses."
Garrison set to work with the Colonel's decanters, concocting a brew
over the spirit lamp, the two wraiths looking on in silent admiration.
"How like you Mr. Garrison is, Godfrey," said Mrs. Gloame.
"Except the water, my dear," agreed Godfrey, taking it for granted
that she referred to his ability to mix drinks. "Do you use the water
to cleanse the goblet, Mr. Garrison?"
"Chief ingredient, Mr. Gloame," explained Gates, and Godfrey's heart
sank heavily.
"By the way, have a cigarette while I am busy with this."
He tossed his cigarette case to Godfrey, who inspected it and the
contents curiously.
"Are they to smoke, sah?"
"Certainly, light up, if Mrs. Gloame doesn't object."
"It used to be we had nothing but tobacco to smoke," said Godfrey
Gloame, lighting a cigarette from a coal in the grate.
"Will it make him ill?" asked Mrs. Gloame. "He has a very frail
stomach."
"I think the smoke will mix very nicely with his stomach," said Gates.
"For want of something better to say, I'll ask you how you spent the
summer."
"For my part, I stayed at home with the old complaint: nothing to
wear," said Mrs. Gloame. "I am curious to know where my husband was,
however."
"Well, I didn't need anything to wear," said he, naively. "My summer
was spent a long way from heaven, and I have just this much to say to
you mortals: you did not know what you were talking about when you
said that the past summer was hotter than--excuse me, Beatrice; I
almost uttered a word that I never use in the presence of a lady."
"You don't mean to say you have gone to--to--oh, you poor boy!" cried
Mrs. Gloame, throwing her arms about her husband's neck.
"Not yet, dearest," said Godfrey consolingly. "I was merely spending a
season with an old friend, Harry Heminway. He asked about you and I
told him you were so far above him that he ought to be ashamed to
utter your name. Ah, Mr. Garrison has finished the toddy."
Garrison ceremoniously filled the goblets and handed them to his
guests. Godfrey Gloame arose grandly, holding his glass aloft.
"Well, Mr. Garrison," he said, "I can only say to you that I am glad
to have met you and that I am sincerely sorry we have not been friends
before. You have given us a very pleasant evening, quite unexpectedly,
and I drink to your very good health." "Hold, sir!" cried Gates. "I am
sure you will allow me to suggest an amendment. Let us drink to the
everlasting joy of the fair woman who is your wife. May her shadow
never grow less."
"Thank you," said she, "I bid you drink, gentlemen, and share the joy
with me. Ah!" as she set the goblet down, "that is delicious."
"Superb!" cried her husband. "My dear sah, it thrills me, it sends a
warmth through me that I have not experienced in a hundred and thirty-
five years. How long do you expect to remain at Gloaming?"
"One week longer."
"I shall come again if you will but prepare another like this."
"You swore that this would be your last, Godfrey; are you as
vacillating as ever!" cried his wife.
"I--oh, dearest, a few of these won't hurt me--you know they won't,"
came earnestly from the other wraith.
"If you touch another I shall despise you forever and forever," she
cried firmly. "Take your choice, Godfrey Gloame."
"It's plain that I am doomed to eternal punishment, whichever way you
put it," mourned poor Godfrey. "Take away the glasses, Mr. Garrison.
I'll no more of it if my wife so disposes."
"Noble fellow," said Gates. "Have another cigarette!"
"Stay! I have heard that they are worse than liquor," objected Mrs.
Gloame.
"I don't know but you are right," supplemented Gates.
"But I must have some sort of a vice, dear," pleaded poor Godfrey.
"Vice may be fashionable on earth, but if that's the case it was
fashion that ruined us, you'll remember, Godfrey," she reminded him.
"That's worth thinking about," mused Garrison. "There is something
deep in that observation. You spooks are--"
"'Spooks!" cried the Gloames, arising in deep resentment.
"I mean shades," apologised Gates. "You do say--"
"Pardon me," interrupted Godfrey, nervously, "but can you tell me what
time it is?"
"Ten minutes after twelve, sir." "Oh, we must be going," cried Mrs.
Gloame.
"What's the rush?" demanded Gates.
"We cannot stay out after twelve-fifteen, sah. We get an extra fifteen
minutes on Christmas Eve, you know," explained Godfrey.
"We are led to believe that you stay out till the cock crows," said
Gates.
"Oh, these absurd superstitions," cried Mrs. Gloame merrily. "How
ignorant the people are. Are you going my way, Godfrey?"
"Yes, dear, and I care not what the direction may be. Good-night, Mr.
Garrison."
"Good-night," added the beautiful Mrs. Gloame," and a Merry Christmas.
I sincerely hope we have not annoyed you."
"I have never enjoyed anything so hugely. No one will believe me when
I tell this story at the club. Merry Christmas to both of you. You'll
come again, won't you?"
They were at the door and looking back at him.
"If you care to come to the room in the south wing, you will find me
there at most any time, Mr. Garrison," was her parting invitation.
Gates was positive he heard Godfrey swear softly as they glided away
in the darkness.
And no one did believe him when he told the story at the club.
WHEN GIRL MEETS GIRL
At a glance one would have said that they were desperadoes--the two of
them. The one who stood outside the shadow of the black, low-lying
wall was a brawny, sinister-looking woman whose age might have been
fifty or it might have been thirty, so deceptive was the countenance
she bore. Her companion, a short, heavily built creature, slunk
farther back into the protecting shadows and betrayed unmistakable
signs of nervousness, not to say fear. At the corner below a
shuddering automobile purred its ugly song, the driver sitting far
back in the shelter of the top, her eyes fixed steadily upon the two
who lurked in the shadow of the wall that surrounded the almost
deserted club house. The woman who drove the car manifestly was of a
station in life far removed from those who stood watch near the
opening in the hedge-topped wall that gave entrance to the grounds of
the Faraway Country Club. Muffled and goggled as she was, it was
easily to be seen that she was of a more delicate, aristocratic mould
than the others, and yet they were all of a single mind. They were
engaged in a joint adventure, the character of which could not be
mistaken.
The taller of the two women suddenly darted into the shadow, gripping
the arm of her companion with a hand of iron.
"Sh! Here he comes. Remember now, Brown: no faltering. He's alone.
Don't lose your nerve, woman."
"I'm new at this sort of thing, Quinlan," whispered the other
nervously. "I don't like it."
"You're not supposed to like it, but you've got to see it through,
just the same. Stand ready, and do what I told you. I'll take care of
the rest."
A young man, tall and graceful, came swinging down the shrub-lined
walk, whistling a gay little air, far from suspecting the peril that
awaited him at the gate below. His cheery farewell shout to friends on
the club-house veranda had been answered by joyous voices. It was
midnight.
"Better wait awhile, old man," some one had called after him. "It's
bound to rain cats and dogs before you get to the trolley."
"A little water won't hurt me," he had shouted back. "So long,
fellows."
When he passed through the gate, under the single electric light that
showed the way, and turned swiftly into the dark lane, threatening
rolls of thunder already smote the air and faint flashes of lightning
shot through the black, starless sky. A gust of wind blew a great
swirl of dust from the roadway, filling his eyes and half blinding
him. As he bent his half-turned body against the growing hurricane, a
pair of strong arms seized him from behind; almost simultaneously a
thick blanket from which arose the odour of chloroform was thrown over
his head and drawn tight. Shrill, sibilant whispers came to his ears
as he struggled vainly to free himself from those who held him.
Some one hissed: "Don't hit him, you fool! Don't spoil his face!"
He remembered kicking viciously, and that his foot struck against
something hard and resisting. A suppressed screech of pain and rage
rewarded the final conscious effort on his part. Very hazily he
realised that he was being dragged swiftly over the ground, for miles
it seemed to him, then came what appeared to be a fall from a great
height, after which his senses left him.
The automobile leaped forward, swerved perilously at the sharp curve
below the club gate and rushed off into the very teeth of the storm,
guided by the firm, resolute hands of the woman at the wheel.
Once, when they had traversed a mile or more of the now drenched and
slippery road, the woman who drove the car in its mad flight--
unmistakably the master-mind in this enterprise--called back over her
shoulder to the twain who held watch over the captive in the tonneau:
"Is he regaining consciousness? Don't let him go too long."
"He's all right, ma'am," said the taller of the two ruffians, bending
her ear to the captive's breast. "Fit as a fiddle."
"Say, we'll get twenty years for this if we're nabbed," growled the
burly one called Brown. "Kidnapping is a serious business--"
"Hold your tongue!" cried the woman at the wheel.
"Well, I'm only telling you," grumbled Brown, nervously straightening
her black sailor.
"It isn't necessary to tell me," said the driver. Her voice, high and
shrill in battle with the storm, was that of a person of breeding and
refinement, in marked contrast to the rough, coarse tones of her
companions.
Mile after mile the big machine raced along the rain-swept highway,
back from the Hudson and into the hills. Not once did the firm hand on
the wheel relax, not once did the heart of the leader in this daring
plot lose courage. Few are the men who would have undertaken this
hazardous trip through the storm, few men with the courage or the
recklessness.
At last, the car whirled into a narrow, almost unseen lane, and, going
more cautiously over the treacherous ruts and stones, made its way
through the forest for the matter of a mile or two, coming to a stop
finally in front of a low, rambling house in which lights gleamed from
two windows on the ground floor.
The two strong-armed hirelings dragged their still inert prisoner from
the car, and, without a word, carried him up the walk to the house,
following close upon the heels of their mistress.
A gaunt old woman opened the door to admit the party, then closed it
behind them.
Two days passed before Cuthbert Reynolds, one of the most popular and
one of the wealthiest young men in New York, was missed from his usual
haunts, and then the city rang with the news that he had disappeared
as completely as if the earth had opened to swallow him in a hungry,
capacious maw.
Heir to a vast estate, unusually clever for one so markedly handsome,
beloved by half the marriageable young women in the smartest circles,
he was a figure whose every movement was likely to be observed by
those who affected his society and who profited by his position. When
he failed to appear at his rooms in Madison Avenue,--he had no
business occupation and therefore no office down town,--his valet,
after waiting for twenty-four hours, called up several of his friends
on the telephone to make inquiries. Later on, the police were brought
into the case. Then the newspapers took up the mystery, and by
nightfall of the third day the whole city was talking about the
astounding case.
Those whilom friends who had shouted good-bye to him from the country
club veranda were questioned with rigid firmness by the authorities.
They could throw no light upon the mystery. The unusual circumstance
of his returning to town by trolley instead of by motor was easily
explained. His automobile had been tampered with in the club garage
and rendered unfit to use. The other men were not going into town that
night, but offered him the use of their cars. He preferred the
trolley, which made connections with the subway, and they permitted
him to go as he elected.
Naturally the police undertook to question his friends of an opposite
sex. It was known that many of them were avowedly interested in him
and that he had had numerous offers of marriage during the spring
months of the year, all of which, so far as could be learned, he had
declined to consider. As for possessing evil associates among women,
there was no one who could charge him with being aught but a man of
the most spotless character. No one, man or woman, had ever spoken ill
of him in that respect. The police, to whom nothing is sacred, strove
for several days to discover some secret liaison which might have
escaped the notice of his devoted friends (and the more devoted one's
friends are, the more they love to speculate on his misdemeanours),
but without avail. His record was as clear as a blank page. There was
not a red spot on it.
Gradually it dawned upon every one that there was something really
tragic in his disappearance. Those who at first scoffed at the idea of
foul play, choosing to believe that he was merely keeping himself in
seclusion in order that he might escape for the while from the notably
fatiguing attentions of certain persistent admirers, came at last to
regard the situation in the nature of a calamity. Eligible young men
took alarm, and were seldom seen in the streets except in pairs or
trios, each fearing the same mysterious and as yet unexplained fate of
the incomparable Reynolds. Few went about unattended after nightfall.
Most of them were rigidly guarded by devoted admirers of an opposite
sex. It was no uncommon thing to see a young man in the company of
three or four resolute protectors.
In the meantime, Reynolds' relations had the reservoir dredged, the
Hudson raked, the Harlem scooped, and all of the sinister byways of
the metropolis searched as with a fine-tooth comb. A vast reward was
offered for the return of the young man, dead, or alive or maimed. The
posters said that $100,000 would be paid to any one giving information
which might lead to the apprehension of those who had made way with
him. The Young Women's Society for the Prevention of Manslaughter
drafted resolutions excoriating the police department, and advocating
wholesale rewriting of the law.
The loveliest of Cuthbert's admirers was Linda Blake, and the most
unheralded. No one regarded her as a favourite rival, for no one took
the slightest notice of her. The daughter of a merchant princess, she
was somewhat beyond the pale, according to custom, and while she was
an extremely pretty young woman she was still shy and lamentably
modest. As third corresponding secretary of the Spinsters' League she
was put upon dreadfully by four fifths of the members and seldom had a
moment of her own in which to declare herself to be anything more than
a drudge in the movement to establish equality among God's images. She
had little time for social achievements and but little opportunity to
escape from the Spinsters' League by the means looked upon as most
efficacious. She loved Cuthbert Reynolds, but she was denied the
privilege of declaring her love to him because she seldom got near
enough to be seen by the popular bachelor, much less to speak to him
except to pass the time of day or to hear him reply that his programme
was full or that his mother was feeling better.
She had but three automobiles, whereas her haughty rivals possessed a
dozen or more.
And yet it was Linda Blake who took the right and proper way to solve
the mystery attending the disappearance of Cuthbert Reynolds, the pet
of all the ladies.
Let us now return to Reynolds, whom we left on the threshold of that
mysterious house in the hills back of Tarrytown. When he regained his
senses--he knew not how long he had been unconscious--found himself in
a small, illy furnished bed-chamber. The bed on which he was lying
stood over against a window in which there were strong iron bars. For
a long time he lay there wondering where he could be and how he came
to be in this unfamiliar place. There was a racking pain in his head,
a weakness in his limbs that alarmed him. Once, in his callow days, he
had been intoxicated. He recalled feeling pretty much the same as he
felt now, the day after that ribald supper party at Maxim's. Moreover,
he had a vague recollection of iron bars but no such bed as this.
As he lay there racking his brain for a solution to the mystery, a key
rasped in the door across the room. He turned his head. A gas jet
above the wretched little washstand lighted the room but poorly. The
door opened slowly. A tall, ungainly woman entered the room--a
creature with a sallow, weather-beaten face and a perpetual leer.
"Where am I?" demanded he.
The woman stared at him for a moment and then turned away. The door
closed swiftly behind her, and the key grated in the lock. He
floundered from the bed and staggered to the door, grasping the knob
in his eager, shaking hand.
"Open up, confound you!" he cried out. The only response was the fast
diminishing tread of heavy footsteps on a stairway outside. He tried
the window bars. The night was black outside; a cool drizzle blew
against his face as he peered into the Stygian darkness. Baffled in
his attempt to wrench the bars away, he shouted at the top of his
voice, hoping that some passer-by--some good Samaritan--would hear his
cry and come to his relief. Some one laughed out there in the night; a
low, coarse laugh that chilled him to the bone.
He looked at his watch. The hour was three. With his watch in his
hand, he came to realise that robbery had not been the motive of those
who held him here. His purse and its contents were in his pocket; his
scarf pin and his gold cigarette ease were not missing. Lighting a
cigarette, he sat down upon the edge of the bed to ruminate.
Suddenly his ear caught the sound of soft footsteps outside the door.
They ceased abruptly. He had the uncanny feeling that some one was
peeping through the keyhole. He smiled at the thought of how
embarrassing it might have been.
"Get away from there!" he shouted loudly. There came the unmistakable
sound of some one catching breath sharply and the creaking of a loose
board in the floor. "A woman," he reflected with a smile.
"If this is a joke, I don't appreciate it," he said to himself,
looking at himself in the mirror. After adjusting his disarranged
necktie and brushing his hair, he sat down in the low rocker to await
developments.
He had not long to wait. A resolute tread sounded on the stairway, and
a moment afterward the door was thrown open to admit the tall athletic
figure of a very handsome young woman. Reynolds leaped to his feet in
amazement.
"Miss Crouch!" he cried, clutching the back of the chair. A slow flush
of anger mounted to his brow. "Are you responsible for this beastly
trick?"
She smiled. "I expected to hear you call it an outrage," she said
quietly.
"Well, outrage, if it pleases you. What does it mean?"
She crossed the room and stood directly in front of him, still
smiling. He did not flinch, but the light in her eyes was most
disquieting.
"It means, my dear Cuthbert, that you are in my power at last. You'll
not leave this house alive, unless you go forth as my husband."
He stared at her in utter amazement. "Your husband? My God, woman,
have you no pride?"
"Bushels of it," she said.
"But I have refused to marry you at least a half-dozen times. That
ought to be ample proof that I don't love you. To be perfectly brutal
about it, I despise you."
"Thanks for the confidence, but it will do you no good. I am not the
sort of woman to be thwarted, once my mind and heart are fixed on a
thing. Whether you like it or not, you shall be my husband before
you're a day older."
"Never!" he exclaimed, his eyes flashing.
Before he could make a move to defend himself, she clasped him in her
strong, young arms and was raining passionate kisses upon his lips,
his brow, his cheek.
Weak from the effects of the chloroform, his struggles were futile. He
would have struck her had there been a weapon handy.
"I'll die before I'll marry you, Elinor Crouch," he shouted, freeing
himself at last.
"We'll see about that," she said, standing off to survey him the
better. "I'll give you until tomorrow night to submit to my demands,
peaceably and sensibly. Then, if you are still obdurate, we'll see
what starvation will do to--"
"You wouldn't starve me, you wretch," he cried in horror.
"It's a most efficacious way of bringing a man to terms," said Miss
Crouch, fixing him with glittering eyes.
"By Jove," said he, shaking his head in despair, "I knew we'd come to
this sort of thing if we passed that infernal law giving you women the
upper hand of us."
"We only ask for equal rights, my friend," she said. "This is the sort
of thing you men used to do and no one made a fuss about it. Now it's
our turn to apply the whip."
"I'm blessed if I'll vote for another woman, if I live to be a
million," he growled.
"Oh, yes, you will. You'll vote just as your wife tells you to vote,
and there's the end to that. But, I can't stand here discussing
politics with you. I give you until tomorrow night to think it over. A
justice of the peace will be here to perform the ceremony. You know I
love you. You know I'll make you a good wife--a devoted, adoring wife.
I am fair to look upon. I am rich, I am of good family. Half the men
in the town would give their boots to be in yours. You have but to say
the word and we set sail this week on my yacht for a honeymoon trip to
the ends of the earth. Everything that love and money can procure for
you shall be--"
"Stop! I will hear no more. Leave the room! No! Wait! Where am I?"
She laughed softly. "You are where no one will ever think of looking
for you. Good night!"
She turned and went swiftly through the door. With an execration on
his lips, he sprang after her, only to find himself confronted by two
vicious-looking women with pistols in their hands. With a groan, he
drew back into the room. The door closed with a bang, the key turned
in the lock, and he was alone to reflect upon the horrors of the fate
ahead of him.
Elinor Crouch was a beautiful girl, and an alluring one. Even though
he hated her, he was forced to admit to himself that she was the most
beautiful creature he had ever seen. Not once, but a hundred times,
had he passed judgment upon her physical charms from a point of view
obtained in his club window, but always there had been in his mind the
reservation that she was not the sort of woman he would care to marry.
Now he was beginning to know her for what she really was: a scheming
amazon who would sacrifice anything to appease a pride that had been
wounded by his frequent and disdainful refusals to become her husband.
Would she carry out her threat and starve him if he persisted in his
determination to defy her? Could she be so cruel, so inhuman as that?
He was considerably relieved after the few hours of sleep that
followed his interview with the fair Miss Crouch, to find a bountiful
and wholesome breakfast awaiting him. True, it was served by an evil-
appearing woman who looked as though she could have slit his throat
and relished the job, but he paid little heed to her after the first
fruitless attempts to engage her in conversation. She was a sour
creature and given to monosyllables, this Quinlan woman.
Reynolds had been brought up to respect the adage concerning "a woman
scorned." He knew that women in these days are not to be trifled with.
If Elinor Crouch set about to conquer, the chance for mercy at her
hands would be slim. There was absolutely no means of escape from his
prison. Daylight revealed a most unpleasant prospect. The barred
window through which he peered was fifty or sixty feet from the
ground, which was covered with jagged boulders. On all sides was the
dark, impenetrable forest which marks the hills along the Hudson.
After a few minutes' speculation he decided that he was confined in an
upper chamber of the pump house connected with the estate.
Investigation showed him that the bars in the windows had been placed
there but recently.
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