The Last Woman Part 11

Duncan swore, softly and rapidly, but with emphasis; Jack Gardner, broke into uproarous laughter, which he could not possibly repress or control; the chauffeur started up the avenue on a run, in a fruitless chase after the on-rus.h.i.+ng car, which even at that moment whirled around the corner toward Madison avenue, and disappeared. Gardner continued to laugh on, until Duncan seized him by the shoulder, and shook him with some violence.

"Shut up your infernal clatter, Jack!" he exclaimed, momentarily forgetful of his anger at his friend. "Help me to think what can be done to head off that crazy fool, will you? It isn't half-past two o'clock, yet, and he will succeed in catching at least one of the newspapers, before it goes to press; G.o.d only knows how many others he will connect with, by telephone. What shall we do?"

"I can get out one of my own cars in ten minutes," began Gardner. But his friend interrupted him:

"Come with me," Duncan exclaimed; and, being almost as familiar with the interior of the house as its owner was, he dashed up the steps through the still open doorway, and ran onward up the stairs toward the smoking-room on the second floor, closely followed by Gardner.

There he seized upon the telephone, and asked for the _New York Herald_, fortunately knowing the number. While he awaited a response to his call he put one hand over the transmitter, and said, rapidly, to his companion:

"Jack, I have just called up the night city editor of the _Herald_.

While I am talking with him, I wish you would make use of the telephone-directory, and write down the numbers of the calls for the other leading newspapers in town. This is the only way possible by which we may succeed in getting ahead of Radnor."

Any person who has ever had to do with newspaper life will understand how futile such an attempt as this one would be to interfere with interesting news, during the last moments before going to press. City editors, and especially night city editors, have no time to devote to complaints, unless those complaints possess news-value. Nothing short of dynamite, can "kill" a "good story," once it has gone to the composing-room. Whatever it was that Duncan said to the gentleman in charge of the desk at the _Herald_ office, and to the gentlemen in charge of other desks, at other newspaper offices, need not be recorded here. Each of the persons, so addressed, probably listened, with apparent interest, to a small part of his statement, and as inevitably interrupted him by inquiring if it were Mr. Duncan in person who was talking; and, when an affirmative answer was given to this inquiry, Roderick was not long in discovering that he had succeeded only in supplying an additional value to the story, and in giving a personal interview over a telephone-wire. He realized, too late, that instead of interfering with whatever intention Burke Radnor might have had in making the escape, he had materially aided this ubiquitous person in his plans. The mere mention by him to each of the city editors that Radnor was the man of whom he was complaining, gave a.s.surance to those gentlemen that some sort of important news was on the way to them, and therefore Duncan succeeded only in accomplis.h.i.+ng what Radnor most desired--that is, in holding back the closing of the forms, as long as possible, for Radnor's story, whatever it might prove to be.

Meanwhile, directly beneath the room where Duncan was so frantically telephoning, a scene of quite a different character was taking place.

When Patricia entered the house, she pa.s.sed rapidly forward to the s.p.a.cious library, encountering no one. Entering it, she found Sally Gardner seated upon one of the chairs, convulsed with laughter, while directly before her stood Beatrice, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng contemptuous anger, and scorn upon the fun-loving and now half-hysterical young matron, who seemed to be unduly amused. Neither of them was at the moment, conscious of Patricia's presence. She had approached so quietly and swiftly that her footsteps along the hallway had made no sound.

"You helped Burke Radnor to escape from us, Sally!" Beatrice was exclaiming, angrily. "I haven't a doubt that you put him up to it. I believe you would be delighted to see that hateful story in the newspapers. It was a despicable thing for you to do."

"Oh, Beatrice!" Sally exclaimed, when she could find breath to do so.

"It is all so very funny--"

She discovered Patricia's presence, and stopped abruptly; then, she started to her feet, and, pa.s.sing around the table quickly, greeted Miss Langdon with effusion.

"Why, Patricia!" she exclaimed. "I had no idea that you were here."

Beatrice turned quickly at the mention of Patricia's name, and her anger at Sally Gardner was suddenly turned against Patricia Langdon, with tenfold force and vehemence. It is an axiom that blue-eyed women have more violent tempers than black-eyed ones, once they are thoroughly aroused. Your brunette will flash and sputter, and say hasty things impulsively, or emotionally, but her anger is likely to pa.s.s as quickly as it arises, and it is almost sure to leave no lasting sting, behind it. Your fair-haired, fair-skinned, man or woman, when thoroughly aroused, is inclined to be implacable, unrelenting, even cruel.

Beatrice Brunswick's eyes were flas.h.i.+ng with pa.s.sionate fury, and, although she did not realize it, the greater part of her display of temper, was really directed against herself, because deep down in her sub-consciousness she knew that she alone was responsible for the present predicament. But anger is unreasoning, and, when one is angry at oneself, one is only too apt to seek for another person upon whom to visit the consequences. Patricia made her appearance just in time to offer herself as a target for Miss Brunswick's wrath; and Beatrice, totally unmindful of Sally's presence, loosed her tongue, and permitted words to flow, which, had she stopped to think, she never would have uttered.

"It is you! you! Patricia Langdon, who are responsible for this dreadful state of affairs," she cried out, starting forward, and, with one hand resting upon the corner of the library table, bending a little toward the haughty, Junoesque young woman she was addressing.

"It is you, who dare to play with a man's love as a child would play with a doll, and who think it can be made to conform to the spirit of your unholy pride as readily. It is your fault that I am placed in this dreadful position, so that now, with Sally's connivance, this dreadful tale is likely to appear in every one of the morning papers.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Pat Langdon, for doing what you have done! You ought to get down on your knees to Roderick Duncan, and beg his eternal pardon for the agony you have caused him, since noon of yesterday. I know it all--I know the whole story, from beginning to end! I know what your unreasoning pride and your haughty willfulness, have accomplished: they have driven almost to desperation the man who loves you better than he loves anything else in the world! But you have no heart. The place inside you where it should exist is an empty void. If it were not, you would realize to what dreadful straits you have brought us all, and to what degree of desperation you have driven me, who sought to help you. I tell you, now, to your face, that Roderick Duncan is one man in ten thousand; and that he has loved you for years, as a woman is rarely loved. But you cast his love aside as if it were of no value--as if it were a little thing, to be picked up anywhere, and to be played with, as a child plays with a toy.

Possibly it may please you now to hear one thing more; but, whether it does or not, you shall hear it. Roderick was in a desperate mood, to-night, because of your treatment of him, and he did ask me to marry him. So there! He did ask me! And I--I was a fool not to take him at his word. But he doesn't--he didn't--he--" She ceased as abruptly as she had begun the tirade.

Patricia had started backward a little before Beatrice's vehemence, and her eyes had gradually widened and darkened, while she sought and obtained her accustomed control over her own emotions. Now, with a slight shrug of her shoulders and a smile that was maddening to the young woman who faced her, she interrupted:

"You should have accepted Mr. Duncan's proposal," she said, icily, "for, if I read you correctly now, the fulfillment of it would have been most agreeable to you. One might quite readily a.s.sume from your conduct and the words you use that you love Roderick Duncan almost as madly as you say he loves me."

"Well?" Beatrice raised her chin, and stood erect and defiant before her former friend. "Well?" she repeated. "And what if I do?"

Patricia shrugged her shoulders again, and turned slowly away, but as she did so, said slowly and distinctly:

"Possibly, I am mistaken, after all. I had forgotten the attractive qualities of Mr. Duncan's millions." Beatrice gasped; but Patricia added, without perceptible pause: "I should warn you, however, that Mr. Duncan is under a verbal agreement with me! We are to meet and sign a contract, Monday morning. It seems to be my duty to remind you of that much, Miss Brunswick."

Patricia did not wait to see the effect of her words. Outwardly calm, she was a seething furnace of wrath within. She turned away abruptly, and pa.s.sed through the open doorway into the hall. There, she stopped.

She had nearly collided with Duncan and Jack Gardner, who were both standing where they must have heard all that had pa.s.sed inside the library. Both were plainly confused, for neither had meant to hear, but there had been no way to escape. Patricia understood the situation perfectly, and she kept her self possession, if they did not. For just one instant, so short as to be almost imperceptible, she hesitated, then, addressing Gardner, she said in her most conventional tones:

"Jack, will you take me to my car, please?"

"It's gone, Patricia," he replied, relieved by the calmness of her manner. "Radnor took it, you know, when he made his escape. I suppose it is standing in front of some newspaper office, at the present moment, but G.o.d only knows which one it is. I'll tell you what I'll do, though: I'll order one of my own cars around. It won't take five minutes, even at this unG.o.dly hour. I always keep one on tap, for emergencies."

"I prefer not to wait," she replied. "It is only a short distance. I shall ask you to walk home with me, if you will."

"Sure!" exclaimed Gardner, glad of any method by which the present predicament might be escaped; and he called aloud to one of the servants to bring him his hat and coat.

Duncan had moved forward quickly, toward Patricia, to offer his services, but had paused with the words he would have said unuttered.

He understood that the trying scene through which Patricia had just pa.s.sed, had embittered her anew against him; and so he stood aside while she went with Gardner from the house to the street. His impulse was to follow, for he, also, wished to escape. Then, he was aware that he still wore his hat. During the excitement, he had not removed it, since entering the house. He started for the door, but was arrested before he had taken two steps, by Sally Gardner's voice calling to him frantically from the library.

He turned and sprang into the room, to find that Beatrice was lying at full length on the floor, with Sally sobbing and stroking her hands, and calling upon her, in frightened tones, to speak. But Beatrice had only fainted, and, when Duncan knelt down beside her, she opened her blue eyes and looked up at him, trying to smile.

In that instant of pity and remorse, he forgot all else save the stricken Beatrice, and what, in her anger, she had confessed to Patricia. The rapidly succeeding incidents of that day and night had unnerved him, also. He was suddenly convinced of the futility of winning the love and confidence of Patricia, and, with an impulse born, he could not have told when, or how, or why, he bent forward quickly and touched his lips to Beatrice's forehead.

"Is it true, Beatrice? Is it true?" he asked her, in a low tone; and, totally misunderstanding his question, entirely misconstruing it's meaning, she replied:

"G.o.d help me, yes. G.o.d help us all."

Then, she lapsed again into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER VIII

BETWEEN DARKNESS AND DAYLIGHT

Sally Gardner had found time during this short scene to recover from her moment of excitement. She had heard, and she thought she understood. Being a many-sided young matron, the best one of all came to the surface now--the one that even her best friends had never supposed her to possess. Underneath her fun-and-laughter-loving nature, Sally was gifted with more than her share of rugged common-sense, inherited, doubtless, from her Montana ancestors.

Even as Duncan bent above Beatrice's unconscious form, and before he spoke to her, Sally had started to her feet and pressed the electric-b.u.t.ton in the wall, with the consequence that, at the instant when Beatrice became unconscious the second time, two of the servants entered the room.

"Miss Brunswick has only fainted," she told them, rapidly. "Lift her, and carry her to my room. Tell Pauline to care for her, and that I shall be there, immediately." She stood aside while they carried out her commands; then, she turned upon Duncan.

"You are a great fool, Roderick!" she exclaimed, without stopping to weigh her words. "I thought you had some sense; but it seems that you have none at all. Leave the house at once; and don't you dare to seek Beatrice Brunswick, until you have settled, in one way or another, your affairs with Patricia Langdon. Now, go! Really, I thought I liked you, immensely, but, for the present moment, I am not sure whether I hate you, or despise you! Do go, there's a good fellow; and I'll send you word, in the morning, how Beatrice is."

"Sally, what a little trump you are!" he exclaimed. "I know I'm a fool; I have certainly found it out during the last twelve or fourteen hours. You'll have to help me out of this muddle, somehow; you seem to be the only one in the lot of us who has any sense."

"Then, help yourself out of the house, as quickly as you know how,"

she retorted; and she ran past him up the stairs, toward the room where she had directed that Beatrice should be taken.

Duncan sighed. He looked around him for his hat, to find that it was still crushed down on the back of his head, and, smiling grimly to himself, he pa.s.sed out of the house upon the street.

Only one of the great dailies of New York City, published that Sunday morning, contained any reference whatever to the supposed incident of the wedding ceremony between Roderick Duncan and Miss Brunswick, at "The Little Church Around the Corner." The editors had been afraid to use Radnor's story, without verification. To them, it had seemed preposterous and unnatural, and especially were they reluctant to print anything concerning it when Radnor was forced to admit to them that Jack Gardner had ultimately denied the truth of the story he had first told.

But there is one paper in the city that is always eager for sensations, and unfortunately it is not very particular concerning the use of them. This paper published a "story," as a newspaper would call it, which was told so ambiguously and with such skill as to preclude any possibility of a libelous action, while the suggestions it contained were so strongly made that the article was entertaining, at least, and it supplied, in many quarters, an opportunity for discussion and gossip. It hinted at scandal in a.s.sociation with Roderick Duncan and his millions. What more could be desired of it?

The story was merely a relation of the events as we know them, at the outset. It told of the party in the box at the opera-house, of the departure therefrom of Duncan and Miss Brunswick and of their destination when they entered the taxicab; after that, everything contained in the article, was surmise, but it was couched in such terms that many who read it actually believed a marriage-ceremony had taken place. During Sunday, Duncan was sought by reporters of various newspapers. He readily admitted them to his presence, but would submit to no interview further than to state that the rumor was absolutely false, was utterly without foundation, and that he would prosecute any newspaper daring to uphold it. Miss Brunswick could not be found by these news-gatherers. Old Steve Langdon laughed when they sought him, and a.s.sured them that there was no truth whatever in the rumor.