Carmen Ariza Part 107

The Sister eyed him keenly. "She attracts and repels me, both," she said. "At times she seems positively uncanny. And she appears to be suffering from religious dementia. Do you not think so?"

It was a compromising question, and the priest weighed his words carefully before replying. "She does--seem to--to have rather--a--rather unusual--religious views," said he slowly.

"Would it not be well to have Dr. Sullivan examine her?"

"To what end?"

"That we may know what to do with her. If she is mentally unsound she must not be sent to the orphanage."

"She should be taken--a--I mean, we should try to locate her friends.

I have already searched the city directory; but, though there are many Reeds, there are none listed with the initials she gave me as his. I had thought," he continued hesitatingly, "I had thought of putting her in charge of the Young Women's Christian a.s.sociation--"

"Father Waite!" The Sister Superior rose and drew herself up to her full height. "Do you mean to say that you have contemplated delivering her into the hands of heretics?" she demanded coldly, her tall figure instinct with the mortal pride of religious superiority.

"Why, Sister," returned the priest with embarra.s.sment, "would it not be wise to place her among those whose views harmonize more closely with hers than ours do?"

"Father! I am surprised--!"

"But--she is not a Catholic!" urged the man, with a gesture of impatience. "And she will never be one. The combined weight of all the centuries of church authority could not make her one--never! I must take her to those with whom she rightfully belongs."

The Sister Superior's eyes narrowed and glittered, and her face grew dark. "Never!" she said in a low tone. "I would rather see her dead!

Father Waite, you exceed your authority! I am in charge here, and I shall report this case to the Bishop!"

The priest stood hesitant for a moment. The futility of his case seemed to impress him. Taking up his hat, he bowed without speaking and went out. The Sister Superior stepped to the telephone. Outside the door the man listened until he caught the number she called. His face grew dark and angry, and his hands clenched a she strode down the hall.

On the stairs that led up from the kitchen stood Sister Katherine.

"Hist! Father!"

He stopped and turned to the woman. Her finger went up to her lips.

"Wait on th' corner--behind the church! The la.s.sie will meet you there!"

Before he could reply the woman had plunged again into the dark stairway. Stopping at a small closet below, she took out a bundle.

Then she hurried to the kitchen and summoned Carmen, who was sitting at a table peeling potatoes.

"Troth, lazy la.s.s," she commanded sharply, "do you take the bucket and mop and begin on the front steps. And mind that ye don't bring me heavy hand down on ye! Och, la.s.sie darlin'," she added, when she had drawn the startled girl out of hearing of the others, "give yer old Katie a kiss, and then be off! Troth, it breaks me heart to see ye go--but 'twould break yours to stay! Go, la.s.sie darlin', an' don't fergit old Katie! Here," thrusting the girl's bundle and a dollar bill into her hands, "an' G.o.d bless ye, la.s.s! Ye've won me, heart an' soul!

Ye'll find a frind at th' nixt corner!" pointing up the street. She strained the girl again to her breast, then opened the door and hastily thrust her out into the street.

For a moment Carmen stood dazed by the suddenness of it all. She looked up confusedly at the great, yellow building from which she had been ejected. There was no visible sign of life. Then, grasping her bundle and the dollar bill, she hurried out through the gate and started up the street.

Around the corner stood Father Waite. The man's face was furrowed, and his body trembled. The girl went up to him with a glad smile. The priest looked up, and muttered something incoherent under his breath a she took her hand.

"Where are we going, Padre?" she asked.

He drew some loose change from his pocket, and hailed an approaching street car.

"To police headquarters," he replied, "to ask them to help us find your friends."

CHAPTER 4

From the mysterious wastes which lie far out on the ocean, the fog was again creeping stealthily across the bay and into the throbbing arteries of the great city. Through half-opened doors and windows it rolled like smoke, and piled like drifted snow against the mountains of brick and stone. Caught for a moment on a transient breeze, it swirled around a towering pile on lower Broadway, and eddied up to the windows of the Ketchim Realty Company, where it sifted through the c.h.i.n.ks in the loose frames and settled like a pall over the dingy rooms within.

To Philip O. Ketchim, junior member of the firm, it seemed a fitting external expression of the heavy gloom within his soul. Crumpled into the chair at the broad table in his private office, with his long, thin legs stretched out before him, his hands crammed into the pockets of his trousers, and his bullet-shaped head sunk on his flat chest, until it seemed as if the hooked nose which graced his hawk-like visage must be penetrating his breast-bone, the man was the embodiment of utter dejection. On the littered table, where he had just tossed it, lay the report of Reed and Harris on the pseudo-mineral properties of the Molino Company--the "near-mines" in the rocky canon of the far-off Boque. Near it lay the current number of a Presbyterian review, wherein the merits of this now moribund project were advertised in terms whose glitter had attracted swarms of eager, trusting investors.

The firm name of Ketchim Realty Company was something of a misnomer.

The company itself was an experiment, whose end had not justified its inception. It had been launched a few years previously by Dougla.s.s Ketchim to provide business careers for his two sons, James and Philip. The old gentleman, still hale and vigorous, was one of those st.u.r.dy Englishmen who had caught the infection of '49 and abruptly severed the ties which bound them to their Kentish homes for the allurements of the newly discovered El Dorado of western America.

Across the death-haunted Isthmus of Panama and up the inhospitable Pacific coast the indomitable spirit of the young adventurer drove him, until he reached the golden sands of California. There he toiled for many years, until Fortune at length smiled upon his quenchless efforts. Then he tossed aside his rough tools and set out for the less constricted fields of the East.

He invested his money wisely, and in the course of years turned it several times. He became a banker. He aspired to the hand of a sister of a railway president, and won it. He educated his sons in the best colleges of the East, and then sent them to Europe on their honeymoons. And finally, when the burden of years began to press noticeably, and the game became less attractive, he retired from the field of business, cleared off his indebtedness, organized the Ketchim Realty Company, put its affairs on the best possible basis, and then committed the unpardonable folly of turning it over to the unrestricted management of his two sons.

The result was chaos. At the expiration of a year the old gentleman hurried back into the harness to save the remnant of his fortune, only to find it inextricably tied up in lands of dubious value and questionable promotional schemes. The untangling of the real estate he immediately took into his own hands. The schemes he left to his sons.

A word in pa.s.sing regarding these sons, for they typify a form of parasitical growth, of the fungus variety, which in these days has battened and waxed noxious on the great stalk of legitimate commercial enterprise. They were as dissimilar, and each as unlike his father, as is possible among members of the same family. Both sought, with diligent consecration, the same goal, money; but employed wholly different means to gain that end. James, the elder, was a man of ready wit, a nimble tongue, and a manner which, on occasions when he could think of any one but himself, was affable and gracious. He was a scoffer of religion, an open foe of business scruple, and the avowed champion of every sort of artifice and device employed in ancient, mediaeval, or modern finance to further his own selfish desires, in the minimum of time, and at whatever cost to his fellow-man. In his cups he was a witty, though arrogant, braggart. In his home he was petulant and childish. Of real business ac.u.men and constructive wisdom, he had none. He would hew his way to wealth, if need be, openly defiant of G.o.d, man, or the devil. Or he would work in subtler ways, through deceit, jugglery, or veiled bribe. But he generally wore his heart on his sleeve; and those who perforce had business relations with him soon discovered that, though utterly unscrupulous, his character was continuously revealed through his small conceit, which caused him so to work as to be seen of men and gain their cheap plaudits for his sharp, mendacious practices.

Philip retained a degree of his father's confidence--which James wholly lacked--and he spared himself no pains to cultivate it. Though far less ready of wit than his stubby, bombastic brother, he was a tenacious plodder, and was for this reason much more likely ultimately to achieve his sordid purposes. His energy was tireless, and he never admitted defeat. He never worked openly; he never appeared to have a decided line of conduct; and no one could ever say what particular course he intended to pursue. Apparently, he was a man of exemplary habits; and his mild boast that he knew not the taste of tobacco or liquor could not be refuted. He was an elder in the Presbyterian church in the little suburb where he lived, and superintendent of its Sunday school. His prayers were beautiful expressions of reverent piety; and his conversation, at all times chaste and modest, announced him a man of more than ordinary purity of thought and motive. While it is true that no one could recall any pious deed, any charitable act, or any conduct based on motives of self-abnegation and brotherly love performed by him, yet no one could ever point to a single coa.r.s.e or mean action emanating from the man. If there was discord in company affairs, the wanton James always bore the onus. And because of this, relations between the brothers gradually a.s.sumed a condition of strain, until at length James openly and angrily denounced Philip as a hypocrite, and refused longer to work with him. Thereupon the milder Philip offered the other cheek and installed a mediator, in the person of one Rawlins, a sickly, emaciated, bearded, but loyal Hermes, who thenceforth performed the multifold functions of pacificator, go-between, human telephone, and bearer of messages, doc.u.ments, and what-not from one to the other for a nominal wage and the crumbs that dropped from the promoter's table.

The fog and the gloom thickened, and Ketchim sat deeply immersed in both. He was still shaking from the fright which he had received that morning. On opening the door as he was about to leave his house to take the train to the city, he had confronted two bulky policemen.

With a m.u.f.fled shriek he had slammed the door in their astonished faces and darted back into the house, his heart in his throat and hammering madly. How could he know that they were only selling tickets to a Policemen's Ball? Then he had crept to the window and, concealed in the folds of the curtain, had watched them go down the street, laughing and turning often to glance back at the house that held such a queer-mannered inmate.

Rousing himself from the gloomy revery into which he had lapsed, Ketchim switched on the light and took up again the report of Reed and Harris. Sullenly he turned its pages, while the sallow skin on his low forehead wrinkled, and his bird-like face drew into ugly contortions.

"Fools!" he muttered. "Didn't they see that clause in their contract, providing an additional fifty thousand in stock for them in case they made a favorable report?"

A light tap at the door, and a low cough, preceded the noiseless entrance of the meek-souled Rawlins.

"A--a--this is the list which Reverend Jurges sent us--names and addresses of his congregation. I've mailed them all descriptive matter; and I wrote Mr. Jurges that the price of his stock would be five dollars, but that we couldn't sell to his congregation for less than seven. That's right, isn't it? I told him Molino stock would go up to par next month. That's what you said, I believe."

"How much stock did Jurges say he'd take?" demanded Ketchim, without looking up.

"Why, he said he could only get together two thousand dollars at present, but that later he would have some endowment insurance falling due--"

"How soon?"

"About a year, I think he said."

"Well, he ought to be able to borrow on that. Did you write him so?"

"No--but I can."

"Do so--but only hint at it. And tell him to send his check at once for the stock he has agreed to take."

"Why, he sent that some days ago. I thought you--"

"He did?" cried Ketchim, his interest now fully aroused. "Well, where is it?"