Master Tales of Mystery Part 60

"Good G.o.d! It isn't because you feel that you have no home with me?"

"I love him. It's a much older story than you think," she said simply.

"I say, that hits me hard," said the duke, with a wry face. "Still, I join in saying G.o.d bless you."

"We're trying to end the feud, you see," said Penelope.

Tears came into his lords.h.i.+p's pale eyes. He looked first at one and then at the other, and then silently extended his hand to Randolph Shaw. He wrung it vigorously for a long time before speaking. Then, as if throwing a weight off his mind, he remarked:

"I say, Shaw, I'm sorry about that dog. I've got an English bull-terrier down there that's taken a ribbon or so. If you don't mind, I'll send him up to you. He--he knows Penelope."

THE CASE OF MRS. MAGNUS

BY BURTON E. STEVENSON

CHAPTER I

The position of confidential family adviser is not without its drawbacks, and it was with a certain reluctance that I told the office boy to show Mrs. Magnus in. For Mrs. Magnus was that _bete noire_ of the lawyer--a woman recently widowed, utterly without business experience, and yet with a firm belief in her ability to manage her husband's estate. If Mrs. Magnus chose to ruin herself there was, of course, no reason why I should worry, but it is annoying to have a person constantly asking for advice and as constantly disregarding it.

I never really understood why Mrs. Magnus asked for advice at all.

She was a woman of about fifty, thin and nervous, with a curious habit of compressing her lips into a tight knot, under the impression, I suppose, that the result indicated strength of character. Peter Magnus had married her when he was only an obscure clerk in the great commission house which he was afterward to own, and she was a school teacher or governess, or something of that sort. Perhaps she was a little ahead of him intellectually at the start, but he had broadened and developed, while she had narrowed and dried up, but she never lost the illusion of her mental supremacy, nor the idea that she had, in some dim way, married beneath her.

There were no children, and for the past ten years the old Magnus house on Twenty-third Street had been for her a kind of hermitage from which she seldom issued. Great business blocks sprang up on either side of it, but she would never permit her husband to sell it and move farther uptown.

For Magnus, on the other hand, the house became in time merely a sort of way station between the busy terminals of his life. I dare say he grew indifferent to his wife. That however, has nothing to do with this story.

Mrs. Magnus usually entered my office as one intrenched in conscious strength, but this morning it was evident that something had occurred to disturb her calm a.s.surance. Her lips seemed more shrunken than ever; there were little lines of worry about her eyes, and dark circles under them, and as she dropped into the chair I placed for her, I saw that her hands were trembling. As I sat down in my own chair and swung around to face her, the conviction struck through me that she was badly frightened.

"Mr. Lester," she began, after a moment in which she was visibly struggling for self-control, "I want fifty thousand dollars in currency."

"Why--why, of course," I stammered, trying to accept the demand as quite an ordinary one. "When?"

"By eight o'clock to-night."

"Very well," I said. "But I suppose you know that, to secure the money so quickly, some of your securities will have to be sacrificed. It's a bear market."

"I don't care--sacrifice them. Only I must have that sum to-night."

"Very well," I said again. "But I hope you will tell me, if you can, what the money is for, Mrs. Magnus. Perhaps my advice--"

"No, it won't," she broke in. "This isn't a case for advice. There's nothing else for me to do. I've been fighting it and fighting it--but--"

She ended with a little gesture of helplessness and resignation.

"Perhaps we might borrow the money," I suggested, "until a better market--"

"No," she broke in again, "you know I won't borrow. So don't talk about it."

It was one of the fundamental tenets of this woman's financial creed that on no account was money to be borrowed.

"Very well," I said a third time; "I will get the money. I will look over the market and decide how it would best be done. Have you any suggestions to make?"

"No," she answered; "I leave it all to you."

This was almost more astonis.h.i.+ng than the demand for the money had been. Mrs. Magnus was clearly upset.

"I shall probably have to send some papers up to you this afternoon for your signature," I added.

"I shall be at home. And remember I must have the money without fail."

"I will bring it to you myself. I think you said eight o'clock?"

"Yes--not later than that."

"I will have it there by that time," I a.s.sured her.

She started to rise, then sank back in her chair and looked at me.

Yes, she was frightened.

"Mr. Lester," she said, her voice suddenly hoa.r.s.e and broken, "I think I will tell you--what I can. I--I have no one else."

For the first time in my life I found myself pitying her. It was true--she had no one else.

"Don't think that I've been gambling or speculating or anything of that sort," she went on. "I have hesitated a long time before asking for this money--I don't enjoy giving away fifty thousand dollars."

"Giving it away?" I repeated. Certainly she was not the woman to enjoy doing that!

"Yes--giving it away! But--I must have peace! Another such night as last night--"

A sudden pallor spread across her face, and she touched her handkerchief hastily to lips and eyes.

"My--my husband wishes it," she added, almost in a whisper.

I don't know what there was about that sentence that sent a little s.h.i.+ver along my spine. Perhaps it was the tense of the verb. Perhaps it was the voice in which the words were uttered. Perhaps it was the haggard glance which accompanied them. Whatever the cause, I found that some of my client's panic was communicating itself to me.

"You mean he indicated his wish before he died?" I asked.

She shook her head.

"Or left a note of it, perhaps?"

"Yes," she said, "he has left a note of it," and she opened the bag she carried on her arm. "Here it is."