Framed at the Benefactors Club/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I.
WHERE THINGS HAPPEN.
ACTING on a headlong impulse, he called on Martyn Spencer. His motive was typical of Blaine Ogilvie's character and life as he had lived it these last ten years, since he had left college. Marie Dillon, Spencer's distant cousin, had told him of the latter's return to New York, a few months back, after a decade spent away from America, and had given him his address.
“Marie,” Ogilvie had said, “he's the very man for me.”
“To do what?”
“To help me.”
“Do you really need help as badly as all that?”
Ogilvie wasn't a very good liar. He tried his best, though.
“Really, dear,” he said, “don't you worry. I am all right. I”
“Please, Blaine! Be truthful with me! That's our agreement, you know—the truth—always—be it pleasant or unpleasant.”
Ogilvie sighed. “The truth is always unpleasant! Fact is—I am not starving yet!”
“I don't like that 'yet.'”
“Nor do I, Marie!” Ogilvie laughed. But, deep down, he was serious and just a little frightened. Life, financially, had not been kind to him of late. “That's why I have to do something—something that pays. And, too, after we're married, I don't want you to wear summer hats all during the winter!”
“Of course not,” she replied with a smile. “But why appeal to Spencer?”
“Why not? I've tried all the men I know. But there isn't a chance. Business is rotten, and they're discharging people right and left. But Spencer was always a regular whirlwind at getting the coin. And he and I used to be friends.”
“All right, dear, ask him. It can't do any harm.”
“Indeed not. Press your darling little thumb for me. D'you mind?”
He found Martyn Spencer much the same man he had known at college: debonair, yet with an undertone of acrid sarcasm, quick of speech and repartee, yet curiously lumbering of gesture, direct in his opinions, yet at times with a queerly footling manner of commenting on life and life's problems. This was the Spencer he had known at college, and this was the Spencer whom he saw again to-day, in his wainscoted, cigar-flavored office, on top of the Macdonald skyscraper. Now the man was surrounded by a perfect array of steel filing cabinets, safes, noiseless typewriters, switchboards, marceled stenographers, and relays of private secretaries in immaculate, sober, pin-striped worsted, with an almost episcopal unction of voice.
The man's face, too, was as it had always been: massive jowled, dead white, and with an exaggerated beak of a nose, the smoke-blue eyes set close together beneath hooded, fleshy lids. If there was a change in him, Blaine Ogilvie did not notice it at first. Of course he had heard rumors about Spencer, but he had dismissed them. Not that he disliked gossip, since he had the average healthy male's appetite for the intriguing cross sections and cross currents of conflicting personalities.
But the rumors that had drifted through occasionally, via commercial traveler, returned globe-trotter or explorer, missionary on sabbatical leave, or rust-spotted freighter's skipper, from the exotic lands where Spencer was said to be piling up a shocking total of millions, were both too grim and too fantastic for the prosy twentieth century. Romance in business had died with Dutch patroons and Spanish privateers, Ogilvie used to say, and he would dismiss the tales with an incredulous laugh, as did the rest of New York that had known Martyn Spencer in the old days.
Ogilvie laughed now at the very thought.
Spencer had always been congenitally a money getter, nothing else, even at college. He seemed to have reached the height of his ambition. The man breathed moneyed success, a very surfeit of it.
Ogilvie, who had announced his coming over the telephone, had been civilly inspected and scrutinized by the private secretary in the outer office, by another private secretary—the first's twin brother as to well-cut clothes, pompadoured hair, and straw-colored mustache—in the inner office, and then Martyn Spencer greeted him with a hearty handshake and a fat, crimson-and-gold banded Havana.
“Ten years since we have seen each other, eh, Blaine?” he asked.
“Every day of it, Martyn!”
A rapid gathering-up of broken threads and college gossip, inquiries, as perfunctorily polite as perfunctorily answered, about the fortunes, marriages, and divorces of Tom “This” and Mabel “That” followed. Then suddenly, characteristically, Ogilvie came to the point.
“Martyn,” he said, “I want a job.”
“Why?”
“Simplest reason in the world. I need it.”
“Broke?”
“Well—bent all out of shape! Don't you need a handsome, industrious, and intelligent junior partner—or office boy?”
“I don't need as much as a scrubwoman.”
“I beg your pardon!” Ogilvie said stiffly.
“Come, come. Don't fly off the handle. I am sorry, but honestly I don't need anybody.”
“Seem to have a lot of affairs here?” Ogilvie pointed through the glass partition at the humming outside office.
“Affairs is right, but I am winding them up. I am going to retire from business.”
“Rather young to do that, aren't you?”
“At times I feel seven years older than the hills!” Spencer passed a pudgy hand across his round, dead-white face. The hand trembled a little.
The other rose. “Sorry I bothered you, old man.”
“Don't go yet. Perhaps I can help you.”
“I wish you would. Really—I need it."
“What sort of a job do you want?”
“Anything—anywhere—where I can earn a decent living.”
“What do you know? What can you do?”
“I've been to war. I can drill a company and”
“I know, I know!” Spencer interrupted impatiently. “You can kill people according to the most scientific and up-to-date methods. But there's nothing to that. The world is still groggy. That last round lasted too long. What else do you know?”
“I have a smattering of languages—French, German, Spanish”
“Which means that you can order a dinner without precipitating a riot between the Alsation chef and the Polish head waiter, and that you can get the point of a joke in a French comic paper. Nothing to that. One can get any number of bright young Europeans at eighteen per, who can stenog and talk fluently in half a dozen languages. What else can you do?” he continued inexorably.
Ogilvie considered for quite a while.
“I am reckless,” he replied.
“Hardly a paying quantity. What else?”
“Nothing.”
“Well—marry money.”
“But”
“I've an aunt in Chicago who'll introduce you to the right sort of girl. Marrying off people is her particular avocation.”
Ogilvie shook his head. “Marry—nothing!” he said with a laugh. “I asked you what I am going to do with myself, not with somebody else's daughter. Besides, I've the girl all picked out.”
“Who is she, may I ask?”
“Marie Dillon, your cousin.”
“Oh! What the deuce did you want to fall in love with her for? The Dillons haven't a blessed cent!”
“I'm contrary by nature, I guess.”
“Ah”
“Well—what do you advise, Martyn?”
“Serious, are you? Really need the money?”
“Yes,”
Martyn Spencer was silent for several minutes. He turned slightly in his swivel chair and looked out of the window. It was winter, with a bitter, hacking north wind that rode a wracked sky and drove harshly across the roofs of New York. Tiny, sharp points of frozen snow rattled the panes and moaned dismally in the chimneys.
Ogilvie gave an involuntary shudder. His overcoat, though fashionably tailored, was a thin spring garment, and his gorgeously striped silk muffler was arrestingly ineffectual. Spencer's heavy ulster, lined with Russian sable, was tossed carelessly across a chair. He stared at it enviously, and the other noticed it out of the corner of his eyes.
“Peach of a coat, Blaine, isn't it?” he asked.
“I'll say so!”
“Unique coat, too!”
“Oh!”
“Yes. Imperial Russian sable—priceless—not another like it in America.”
“Where did you get it?”
“Grand Duchess Anastasia Michailovna gave it to me.”
“Know her?” came Ogilvie's casual question.
“Ran across her in Moscow.”
“I thought you were in Africa.”
“I've kicked around all over.”
“I see.”
They were both silent. Then Spencer looked up. A vertical wrinkle cleft his forehead sharply and drew apart his close-set eyes as if he had been thinking deeply.
“Blaine,” he said rather sententiously, “there are two types of man. One is the type, like myself, which goes after things, and the other the type which waits for things to happen. I think you belong to the latter.”
“You do?”
“Right. You see, I've offered you an introduction to my aunt in Chicago—the finest matchmaker in seven counties—who would have shuffled the right girl, the rightly rich girl, out of the marriage deck for you. In other words, I asked you to go after things so that you might be able to achieve man's real object in life—a silk-hatted, patent-leather-shoe state of genteel vagabondage. You tell me that you are engaged to Marie Dillon, who is as poor as a church mouse. Very sentimental and honorable and charming and all that, I grant you, but hopelessly impractical. Very well. I see that you aren't the pushing sort. Therefore you've got to wait for things to happen to you.”
Ogilvie rose impatiently.
“Wait!” came the other's smooth voice. “Things—to happen to you!” he repeated with a queer smile. “And—you said you are reckless?”
“You know I am!”
“Yes, yes.” Spencer mused, smiled again, and continued: “Now, in all the world, there are exactly three places where a man can wait for things—things to happen. A man of your sort”
“Meaning a reckless man?”
“Meaning a fool!”
“Sure I am?”
“Positive. I knew you at college.”
“Thanks awfully. And where are these three mysterious places?”
“One is a small and very smelly caravansery near the Kabool Gate in the city of Lahore, in India. One is the northern end of the great bridge at Constantinople”
“Too far away—both of them—particularly for a chap who's broke.”
“It'll cost you a nickel, and, perhaps, an extra two cents for a cross-town fare, to reach the third place.”
“Oh”
“Yes. It is right here in New York.” Spencer pointed vaguely through the window, where the houses were running together in purple and gray spots beneath the sweep of oncoming evening.
“Really?” Ogilvie looked up, interested.
“Familiar with the slums of New York?”
“Quite. I had money once and used to dine there, eating beans at fancy prices, when we went slumming.”
“Know Meeker Street?”
“I've been there—during my years of affluence.”
“Know where Meeker and Commerce Streets come nearly together, in a sort of a triangle, pointing toward Seventh Avenue?”
“Yes.”
“Remember a crooked little side street, rather an alley, nearer Commerce Street, which runs in the general direction of the river, like a drunken man?”
“I've a shadowy recollection, What's the name of the street?”
“Braddon Street.”
“Oh, yes, I recall now. Funny old brick houses, with Georgian columns and deep-set windows!”
“Exactly, Blaine.”
“Well—what about this street?”
“Go there—to No. 17.”
“What for?”
“If you want things to happen to you!”
“Do I?”
“I don't know, Blaine, I'm sure. But, at No. 17, you'll find a queer, old-fashioned restaurant, dating back to the days when Aaron Burr dreamed largely about empire and made a sorry mess of it. There's the place”—he slurred, stopped, went on—“the place for”
“Things to happen?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks for the tip, Martyn. I am going there.”
Spencer smiled lopsidedly. “I repeat,” he said, “that you are a fool!”
“Thanks!” the other interjected.
“What I told you about the Braddon Street place is straight. It isn't a very nice place, Blaine.”
Ogilvie laughed. “Oh, yes—you told me things happen there, didn't you?”
“To some people.”
“Shall I carry a gun?”
“Heavens, no! Even the slums are well policed these decadent days. Only—well, I warn you. The beginnings and the ends of many things have been brewed in that restaurant—things which men do not speak of except in whispers behind closed doors.”
Ogilvie looked up sharply. “As you are talking in whispers—right now!” he said, with a purring laugh. “As your door is closed—right now!”
“Exactly!” came the even, passionless reply. Spencer hesitated. “Blaine,” he went on, “if I were you I would not go!”
“Why—you've made me quite anxious to see the place, old man. I guess I shall go.”
“When?” came the quick question.
“The sooner the better, To-night's the night!”
Martyn Spencer studied the other's face for a few tense seconds. Then he gave a forced laugh.
“All right,” he said. “I see that you have decided.” He coughed, mused, looked at Ogilvie from beneath hooded eyelids. “If you get there after ten in the evening,” he said very slowly, “you will find the place closed.”
“That so?”
“Yes. But you can still get in.”
“How?”
“By knocking at the door. Two short knocks—a pause—then a double knock. A pause—then again a short knock.”
“Seem to know all about the place and its habits, Martyn?”
“I've never been there in my life.”
“Ah—tell it to the marines!”
“Never in all my life,” Spencer repeated. “I'm speaking the literal truth.”
Again both men were silent; they were studying each other sharply, unwinkingly.
Then Blaine Ogilvie asked a sudden, brutally direct question: “Why do you want me to go there?”
The other gave a start. “Wh-what?” he stammered. “What d-do you mean?”
“Just exactly what I said!”
Spencer flicked his cigar ash. “Go,” he said, “and find out!”
Ogilvie smiled. “Don't want to tell me the reason,” he said, “but you do want me to go! Is that right? Of course it is, old man! No use denying it!”
“I'm not saying anything.”
“Sure you aren't. I know. Didn't we play stud poker at college, and didn't you always have a high pair back to back? Question is—to put it bluntly—how much is it worth to you if I go—to-night—after ten?”
“I believe I told you that you're a fool?”
“And I believe I told you that I'm broke? Well—how much?”
“Name your own price!”
“A thousand dollars?”
Martyn Spencer laughed. “Blaine,” he said, “I am a poor business man, for I'll give you more than you asked. Twenty thousand dollars—how'd that strike you?”
“Splendidly!”
“It's a bargain? To-night after ten, and you go alone—and tell nobody?”
“Right!”
Spencer walked to the safe, opened it, and drew forth a thick sheaf of high-denomination bills. “Here you are!”
“Thanks!” Ogilvie crammed the money into his inside pocket. “So long, Martyn!” He made for the door.
“Wait!”
“What is it now?”
“You'll catch your death of cold with that thin coat of yours.”
“I'll invest part of the twenty thousand in a new coat on my way down Broadway.”
“It's after six, and the stores are closed. I'll lend you my coat.”
“But”
“I am going to work for an hour or two and then I'll telephone to my valet to bring me another ulster. Better take this. It's terribly cold.”
“I may hock it, old man. You told me it's priceless—and didn't you say something about a grand duchess who gave it to you—tender souvenirs, eh?”
“Not quite as tender as you imagine!” Spencer laughed disagreeably. “Come!” He helped the other on with the warm, soft sable-lined coat. “Bring it back when you're through with it.”
“Sure—and thanks.” He opened the door to the outer office, when he heard Spencer's voice:
“Blaine!”
“Yes?” The latter turned. “What is it?”
“Oh—nothing, nothing—never mind.”
“All right. Au revoir, Martyn!”
“Au revoir!”
And Blaine stepped out of the office into the street, not quite sure if the pleasantly warm feeling that suffused his body was due to the fur coat or to the twenty thousand dollars that nestled in his inside pocket.
It was still snowing hard that night, with a bitter wind piping across the roofs of the city, a little before ten, when he left his modest hotel in the West Forties, after agreeably surprising the desk clerk by calling for his overdue bill and settling it in full.
“Stroke of luck, Mr. Blaine?” asked the clerk, familiar with the ups and downs of the Rialto.
“Luck—or the opposite; I'm not exactly sure yet, Tommy.”
He felt a prey to a tremendous, voiceless excitement as he turned down Seventh Avenue. He preferred walking, thinking that the touch of the cold, snow-wet wind on his forehead would clear his mind. He had been reckless all his life, and usually he had come through with flying colors in the occasional small adventures such as he had run across in the streets of New York and in the Adirondacks and the Maine woods. Besides he had come out of the war unscathed. But the unknown adventure upon which he was embarking to-night—and he realized that there was a reason for it all, for Martyn Spencer was not the type of man to give away twenty thousand dollars, nor any part of twenty thousand dollars, without demanding full value—the unknown adventure upon which he was embarking to-night made him uneasy. As he thought about Spencer, as he reconstructed the scene in the office, he remembered the man's nervous hands, the occasional look of fear which had come into the other's smoke-blue eyes, the suddenly lowered voice, the interrupted sentence when he had left. Doubtless the other had meant to warn him, and had then reconsidered and said nothing. He remembered, too, the vague, fantastic tales as to the origins of Martyn Spencer's wealth that had drifted into New York.
He went unarmed, for Spencer had told him that he would not need a gun. And the very fact that there was thus no prospect of physical danger made him yet more uneasy. He was a very sane and normal man, with sane and normal reactions, preferring physical contest, even physical danger, to the twisting, gliding struggle between soul and soul or intelligence and intelligence.
“I guess I'm a fool,” he thought. “But—I am in love.”
Obeying the suggestion of the last thought, he stepped into a telephone booth and called up Marie Dillon.
“I saw Spencer.”
“Yes?”
“It's all right. He's giving me a chance, Marie!”
“I'm so glad, dear.”
Then a few strictly personal remarks which caused listening-in central to make a sentimental aside to the girl at the next switchboard, and the receiver clicked down. The steely sound jarred Ogilvie unpleasantly. It seemed like an ending to a chapter of his life.
He walked down Seventh Avenue, and by short cuts into Meeker Street and toward Braddon, down through the evil, sodden alleys of that part of town, prurient with dirty memories of the past, slimy with refuse stabbing through the mantle of snow. Foul invectives in English, Yiddish, Greek, and Sicilian cut the air, while garish posters outraged the faces of the buildings.
Braddon Street leaped out of the snow with a packed wilderness of secretive, red-brick dwellings, with stealthy, enigmatic back yards, skulking gables, and furtive, reticent side entrances.
No. 17 was just beyond the corner. It assaulted the night with a flare of yellow lights. He consulted his watch. It was twenty-three minutes after ten. He knocked at the closed door, according to Spencer's directions: two short knocks, a pause, a double knock, another pause, then again a short knock.
The door swung open, and he entered.