The Auction Block Part 13

Lorelei laughed. "You ARE inexperienced. The Johns never eat on Fifth Avenue, the lights are too dim. But why supper? You can't eat."

"A Welsh rarebit would be the death of me; lobsters are poison,"

he confessed; "but I've read that chorus-girls are carnivorous animals and seek their prey at midnight."

"Most of them would prefer bread and milk; anyhow, I would. But I'm not hungry, so let's ride--we can talk better, and you're not the sort of man to be seen in public with one of Bergman's show- girls."

The banker acquiesced with alacrity. To his driver he said, "Take the Long Island road."

As the machine glided into noiseless motion Lorelei noted a limousine waiting near by, and saw a dim figure within. The dome- light had been turned off, and she could detect only a white shirt-front, the blurred outline of a face, and the glowing point of a cigar.

"You can follow that man's example if you wish," said she, "and hide until we're away from the bright lights."

Merkle answered shortly, "Your reputation may suffer, not mine."

He leaned forward and inquired of the chauffeur, "Who's car is that?"

"Mr. Hammon's, sir. He's going our way, so his man said."

"I thought so. We'll have company."

"Why do you choose the Long Island road?" asked Lorelei.

"It's pleasant," responded Merkle. "I ride nearly every night, and I like the country. You see, I can't sleep unless I'm in motion. I get most of my rest in a car; there's something about the movement that soothes me."

"How funny!"

"Peculiar, perhaps, but scarcely humorous. I'd be dead or insane without an automobile. You see, I'm nothing but a rack of bones strung together with quivering nerves--always been so, and I'm getting worse. I keep four French cars in my garage, all specially built as to spring-suspension and upholstery, and I spend nearly every night in one or the other of them. It's seldom I do less than a hundred miles between midnight and morning; sometimes, when I'm bad, I do twice that. So long as I'm moving fast I manage to s.n.a.t.c.h a miserable sort of repose, but the instant we go slow I wake up. It's the sensation of flight, the music of a swift- running motor, the wind blowing in my face, that lulls me; but it's getting harder all the time. I used to sleep at twenty miles an hour; now I can't relax under thirty. Forty is fine--sixty means dreamless peace."

"It does, indeed, if one happens to have a blowout," laughed the girl.

"I have trouble keeping chauffeurs. The darkness breaks their nerve, and they play out in two or three months. I've known them to crack under the strain in a week, and yet all the time I want to go faster--faster. Some night, when a bolt breaks, or my driver's eye and hand fail to co-ordinate, it will all end, I suppose, in a twinkling, and--I'll get a good rest at last.

Meanwhile I thank Heaven and Mr. Vanderbilt for the Motor Parkway."

The car had threaded the after-theater congestion of traffic with a swiftness that testified to the practised hand on the wheel, and was now darting through unfrequented side-streets where the asphalt lay in the shadows like dark pools. Up the approach to the Queensborough Bridge it swept, and took the long incline like a soaring bird. Overhead, the ma.s.sive towers pierced the night sky; the steel-ribbed skeleton-tunnel rushed past the riders; far beneath, the river itself lay like a sheet of metal, glittering here and there with the yellow lights of ships. Blackwell's Island slipped under them, an inky bottomless pit of despair, out of which points of fire gleamed upward--like faint, steady-burning sparks of hope in the hearts of miserable men. The breath of the overheated city changed as by magic, and the thin-faced sufferer at Lorelei's side drank it in eagerly. Even in the dim flash of the pa.s.sing illuminations she noted how tired and worn he was, and a sudden pity smote her.

"Won't you pretend I'm not here, and drive just as you always do?

I won't mind," she said.

"My dear, it's late. You'll need to get home."

"No, no."

"Really?" His eagerness was genuine. "Won't your people worry?"

Her answer was a short, mirthless laugh that made him glance at her curiously. "They know I'm perfectly safe. It's the other way round: a man of your standing takes chances by being alone with a woman of--mine"

"Which reminds me of Miss Lynn and Mr. Hammon. You've decided to accept my offer?"

"No. I can't be a hired spy."

"You said over the 'phone that you had learned something."

"I have. I believe there is an effort on foot to get some of Mr.

Hammon's money dishonestly. I have a reason for wishing to prevent it."

"I knew I wasn't mistaken in you," smiled Merkle.

"Oh, don't attribute my actions to any high moral motives! I'm getting a little rusty on right and wrong. Personally, I have no sympathy with Mr. Hammon, and I don't imagine he acquired all of his tremendous fortune in a perfectly honorable way. Besides, he's a married man."

"It isn't alone Jarvis or his family or their money that is concerned," Merkle said, gravely. "Great financial inst.i.tutions sometimes rest on foundations as slight as one man's personality-- one man's reputation for moral integrity. A breath of suspicion of any sort at the wrong time may bring on a crash involving innocent people.

"Hammon at this moment carries a tremendous top-heavy burden of responsibilities; his death would be no more disastrous than a scandal that would tend to destroy public confidence in him as a man."

"Doesn't he know that himself?"

"Perhaps. But his infatuation overtook him at an age when a man is a fool. Young men are always objects of suspicion in the financial world, for their emotions are unruly; but when old men fall in love they are superbly heedless of consequences. I promised to tell you something about Jarvis, and I will, since you spoke of his married life. To begin with, his father and his father's father were steel-workers. They came from Cornwall before he was born, and Jarvis grew up in the glare of the Pennsylvania furnaces. From the time he could walk he never knew anything, never heard anything except steel. He inherited all the driving strength of his father and developed such a remarkable business ability that he became a rolling-mill superintendent almost before he was of age. They say he never did less than two men's work and often more; but he could make others work, too, and there lay the secret of his success. He was indefatigable; he was a machine; he never rested, nor played, nor relaxed, as other men do. He just worked; and his mill held the tonnage record for years.

"When the Corporation was formed he played a big part in the deal and got a big slice of the profits. He had been successful, noted: at one turn of the wheel he became enormously wealthy. The story of Alladin is nothing to the story of the men who took part in that combination. Hammon went into other things than steel, and he prospered. He never failed at anything. Now, here comes the part of the story that interests me most of all and will interest you if you can understand the workings of a man's mind. Jarvis had no vices and but one hobby--at least his vices were neutral, for he had never taken time to acquire the positive kind. His hobby was Napoleon Bonaparte. He read everything there was to read about Napoleon; he studied his life and patterned his own on similar lines. His collection of Napoleona is the finest in this country; he is an authority on French history of that period--in fact, he's as nearly hipped on the subject as a man of his powers can be considered hipped on anything. Do I bore you, Miss Knight?"

"No; go on. I'm tremendously interested."

"Well, naturally, Hammon began to consider himself another Napoleon, and his accomplishments were in a way quite as wonderful; his strategy was quite as brilliant, and his victories quite as complete. He even confided to me once that his idol surpa.s.sed him in only one respect--namely, the power to relax--a pardonable conceit, under the circ.u.mstances. Jarvis had never taken time for relaxation, and he was beginning to wear out; and so--he deliberately set about learning to play. The Emperor of France, so history tells us, took his greatest pleasure in the company of women; therefore Hammon sought women, just as he had sought and gained financial conquest. He doesn't know the taste of defeat; so the result was fore-ordained."

"But surely he thought something of his family," protested Lorelei. "Didn't he consider them?"

"I fancy he wasn't well acquainted with his family. I'm sure he never enjoyed any home life, as we understand it. He lived with a rich old woman who bore his name but scarcely knew him; his daughters were grown women whom he saw on rare occasions and whose extravagant whims he gratified without question. But there was little real intimacy, little sympathy. Remember, Jarvis had been a boy, but he had never been young, and this was his first taste of youth, But--he was not Napoleon. As you've noticed, he's quite mad on the Lynn woman. He's no longer himself. He has been drugged by her charms, and--now he's paying the price. I wanted you to know the story before we went any further. Now tell me what you have learned."

CHAPTER VII

By the time Lorelei had completed her recital of those occurrences that had excited her suspicions the car was rolling out the roads leading toward the Long Island plains, and, with head-lights ablaze, was defying all speed laws. Other vehicles on their way home to the fashionable estates of Wheatley Hills, Hempstead, and the South Sh.o.r.e were overhauled and left behind. The big machine had begun its long night-song, and it flashed over the rises or dipped into the swales with the gliding ease of movement characteristic of an aeroplane. It went with almost the silence of a phantom--only the sustained murmur of the motor, the whisper of the whirling tires as they parted from the road surface, the rush of the night wind pouring past, came to the ears of the pa.s.sengers. These softly rhythmic sounds, combined with the swaying of the deep cushions, were decidedly restful, and had there been nothing to challenge her sight Lorelei felt that she, too, might have been soothed as Merkle was. But she was fascinated, hypnotized by the gleaming tunnel of light into which she was being hurled. The blazing panorama of fence, forest, and hedge that took dim shape out of the blackness grew, rushed at her, then leaped away into oblivion, dazzled her too much for relaxation. Merkle, however, had drawn the conversation-shield rearward, and in its shelter leaned back with eyes closed. He seemed asleep, but after a time he spoke abruptly:

"Melcher is a shrewd man. He wouldn't tackle a blackmailing job of this size without protection; otherwise I could put him out of the way very quickly. I dare say Miss Lynn, herself, doesn't know who is behind him."

"Why don't you warn Mr. Hammon at once?"

Merkle rolled his head loosely. "You don't know the man. His self- reliance is so monumental, his scorn of opposition is so deep, that he would laugh at the idea of a plot against him. Then, too, he's mad about the woman, and he'd probably tell her everything I said. After all, we have only our suspicions to go upon."

Merkle dozed again, half buried in the cushions. They had pa.s.sed Jamaica; the country lay dark and silent on every side save for a dim-lit window here and there. The car was eating the miles in a flight as swift and undeviating as that of an arrow; but it was not until it had swept into the Motor Parkway that the girl fully understood what her host termed fast driving.

Then it was that the chauffeur let the machine out. Over the deserted plains it tore, comet-like, a meteor preceded by a streamer of light. It swung to the banked curves with no slackening of momentum; it devoured the tangents hungrily; the night wind roared past, drowning all other sounds. Crouched immovably in his seat, the driver scanned the causeway that leaped into view and vanished beneath the wheels, like a tremendous ribbon whirling upon spools. Merkle lay back inertly, lolling and swaying to the side-thrust of the cushions; but Lorelei found her fists clenched and her muscles hard with the nervous strain.

Finally she pushed the shield forward, and, leaning over the front seat, stared at the tiny dash-light. The finger of the speedometer oscillated gently over the figure sixty, and she dropped back with a gasp. They had been running thus for a long time.

Merkle roused to say, "Is this too fast for you, Miss Knight?"

She laughed nervously. "N-no. I'm sorry I woke you."