The Auction Block. Rex Beach

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СКАЧАТЬ imagine, but he keeps his badness to himself. No.

       I've overheard you and Max talking."

      "Nonsense. We've never mentioned such a thing. The idea is absurd. I get mad at Jarvis—he's enough to madden anybody—perhaps I'm jealous, but blackmail! Why, you're out of your head."

      The girls had nearly finished dressing when a commotion sounded in the hall outside and Mrs. Croft, after investigation, reported that Robert Wharton had been forcibly expelled from a dressing-room. He could be heard gently apologizing and explaining that he was in quest of a Fairy Princess, whereupon Lorelei hastily locked her door.

      "That's the worst of these swells," observed Lilas, as she left. "They pay high and go anywhere they please. Bergman caters to them."

      Lorelei delayed her toilet purposely, and finally dismissed Croft; then she wrote a note to John Merkle, in care of his bank. By this time the cavernous regions at the rear of the theater were nearly deserted. She listened; but, hearing Wharton still in conversation with the watchman, she locked her door once more and sat down to wait. As she fingered the note a doubt formed in her mind—a doubt as to the advisability under any circumstances of leaving written evidence in another's hands. Finally she destroyed the missive, determining to make use of the telephone on the following day. As to just what to do after that she was undecided.

      When quiet had finally descended she opened her door cautiously and peered out. Robert Wharton sat on the top step of the stairway near at hand, but his head rested against the wall, and he slept. Beside him were his high hat, his gloves, and his stick. As Lorelei, with skirts carefully gathered, tiptoed past him she saw suspended upon his gleaming white shirt-bosom what at first glance resembled a foreign decoration of some sort, but proved to be Mr. Regan's false teeth. They were suspended by a ribbon that had once done duty in the costume of a coryphee; they rose and fell to the young man's gentle breathing.

      Lorelei carried out her intention of telephoning on the following day, and about the close of the show that night Merkle's card was brought up to her dressing-room. A moment later Robert Wharton's followed, together with a tremendous box of long-stemmed roses. She went down a trifle apprehensively, for by this time the current tales of Bob's drunken freaks had given her cause to think somewhat seriously, and she feared an unpleasant encounter. More than once she had witnessed quarrels in the alleyway behind the Circuit, where pestiferous youths of Wharton's caliber were frequent visitors.

      But Mr. Merkle relieved her mind by saying, "I sent Bob away on a pretext, although he swore you had an engagement with him."

      "I'm glad you did. I left him asleep outside my dressing-room last night, and I almost hoped he'd caught pneumonia."

      Beside the curb a heavy touring-car was purring, and into this Merkle helped his companion. "I'm not up on the etiquette of this sort of thing," he explained, "but I presume the proper procedure is supper. Where shall it be—Sherry's?"

      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 snatch 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 massive 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 passing 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. СКАЧАТЬ