In the Bishop's Carriage Part 22

"Tom--oh, yes, now I remember." Obermuller got between us as he spoke.

"Your friend up--in the country that you went to see and couldn't. Not a very good-looker, your friend, Nance. But--farming, I suppose, Mr.--Tom?--plays the deuce with one's looks. And another thing it does: it makes a man forget sometimes just how to behave in town. I'll be charmed, Mr. Tom, to oblige a friend of Miss Olden's; but I must insist that he does not talk like a--farmer."

He was quite close to Tom when he finished, and Tom was glaring up at him. And, Mag, I didn't know which one I was most afraid for. Don't you look at me that way, Mag Monahan, and don't you dare to guess anything!

"If you think," growled Tom, "that I'm going to let you get off with the girl, you're mighty--"

"Now, I've told you not to say that. The reason I'll do the thing she's going to ask of me--if it's what I think it is--is because this girl's a plucky little creature with a soul big enough to lift her out of the muck you probably helped her into. It's because she's got brains, talent, and a heart. It's because--well, it's because I feel like it, and she deserves a friend."

"You don't know what she is." It was a snarl from Tom. "You don't--"

"Oh, yes, I do; you cur! I know what she was, too. And I even know what she will be; but that doesn't concern you."

"The h.e.l.l it don't!"

Obermuller turned his back on him. I was dumb and still. Tom Dorgan had struck me after all.

"What is it you want me to do, Nance?" Obermuller asked.

"Get him away on a steamer--quick," I murmured--I couldn't look him in the face--"without asking why, or what his name is."

He turned to Tom. "Well?"

"I won't go--not without her."

"Because you're so fond of her, eh? So fond, your first thought on quitting the--country was to come here to get her in trouble. If you've been traced--"

"Ah! You wouldn't like that, eh?" sneered Tom. "Would you?"

"Well, I've had my share of it. And she ain't. Still--I ... Just what would it be worth to you to have me out of the way?"

"Oh, Tom--Tom--" I cried.

But Obermuller got in front of me.

"It would be worth exactly one dollar and seventy-five cents. I think it will amount to about that for cab-hire. I guess the cars aren't any too safe for you, or it might be less. It may amount to something more before I get you shipped before the mast on the first foreign-bound boat. But what's more important," he added, bringing his fist down with a mighty thump on the table, "you have just ten seconds to make up your mind. At the end of that time I'll ring for the police."

I went down to the boat to see it sail, Mag, at seven this morning.

No, not to say good-by to him. He didn't know I was there. It was to say good-by to my old Tommy; the one I loved. Truly I did love him, Mag, though he never cared for me. No, he didn't. Men don't pull down the women they love; I know that now. If Tom Dorgan had ever cared for me he wouldn't have made a thief of me. If he'd cared, the last place on earth he'd have come to, when he knew the detectives would be on his track, would have been just the first place he made for. If he'd cared, he--

But it's done, Mag. It's all over. Cheap--that's what he is, this Tom Dorgan. Cheaply bad--a cheap bully, cheap-brained. Remember my wishing he'd have been a ventriloquist? Why, that man that tried to sell me to Obermuller hasn't sense enough to be a good scene-shifter.

Oh--

The firm of Dorgan & Olden is dissolved, Mag. The retiring partner has gone into the theatrical business. As for Dorgan--the real one, poor fellow! jolly, handsome, big Tom Dorgan--he died. Yes, he died, Maggie, and was buried up there in the prison graveyard. A hard lot for a boy; but it's not the worst thing that can happen to him. He might become a man; such a man as that fellow that sailed away before the mast this morning.

X.

There I was seated in a box all alone--Miss Nancy Olden, by courtesy of the management, come to listen to the leading lady sing c.o.o.n-songs, that I might add her to my collection of take-offs.

She's a fat leading lady, very fair and nearly fifty, I guess. But she's got a rollicking, husky voice in her fat throat that's sung the dollars down deep into her pockets. They say she's planted them deeper still--in the foundations of apartment houses--and that now she's the richest roly-poly on the Rialto.

Do you know, Maggie darlin', what I was saying to myself there in the box, while I watched the stage and waited for Obermuller? He said he'd drop in later, perhaps.

"Nance," I said, "I kind of fancy that apartment sort of idea myself.

They tell you, Nancy, that when you've got the artistic temperament, that that's all you'll ever have. But there's a chance--one in a hundred--for a body to get that temperament mixed with a business instinct. It doesn't often happen. But when it does the result is--dollars. It may be, Nance--I shrewdly suspect it is a fact that you've got that marvelous mixture. Your early successes, Miss Olden, in another profession that I needn't name, would encourage the idea that you're not all heart and no head. I think, Nance, I shall have you mimic the artists during working hours and the business men when you're at play. I fancy apartment houses. They appeal to me. We'll call one 'The Nancy' and another 'Olden Hall' and another..."

"What'll I call the third apartment house, Mr. O?" I asked aloud, as I heard the rings on the portiere behind me click.

He didn't answer.

Without turning my head I repeated the question. And yet--suddenly--before he could have answered, I knew something was wrong.

I turned. And in that moment a man took the seat beside me and another stood facing me, with his back against the portieres.

"Miss Olden?" the man beside me asked.

"Yes."

"Nance Olden, the mimic, who entertains at private houses?"

I nodded.

"You--you were at Mrs. Paul Gates' just a week ago, and you gave your specialties there?"

"Yes--yes, what is it you want?"

He was a little man, but very muscular. I could note the play of his muscles even in the slight motion he made as he turned his body so as to get between me and the audience, while he leaned toward me, watching me intently with his small, quick, blue eyes.

"We don't want to make any scene here," he said very low. "We want to do it up as quietly as we can. There might be some mistake, you know, and then you'd be sorry. So should we. I hope you'll be reasonable and it'll be all the better for you because--"

"What are you talk--what--" I looked from him to the other fellow behind us.

He leaned a bit farther forward then, and pulling his coat partly open, he showed me a detective's badge. And the other man quickly did the same.

I sat back in my chair. The fat star on the stage, with her big mouth and big baby-face, was doing a cake-walk up and down close to the footlights, yelling the chorus of her song.

I'll never mimic that song, Mag, although I can see her and hear it as plain as though I'd listened and watched her all my life. But there's no fun in it for me. I hate the very bars the orchestra plays before she begins to sing. I can't bear even to think of the words. The whole of it is full of horrible things--it smells of the jail--it looks like stripes--it ...

"You're not going to faint?" asked the man, moving closer to me.

"Me? I never fainted in my life... Where is he now--Tom Dorgan?"

"Tom Dorgan!"

"Yes. I was sure I saw him sail, but, of course, I was mistaken. He has sent you after me, has he? I can hardly believe it of Tom--even--even yet."