The Destroying Angel Part 8

The boy dived through one part.i.tion-door and reappeared by way of another with the deft certainty of a trained pantomime.

"Says t' come in."

Whitaker found himself in the presence of an ashen-faced man of thirty-five, who clutched the side of his roll-top desk as if to save himself from falling.

"Whitaker!" he gasped. "My G.o.d!"

"Flattered," said Whitaker, "I'm sure."

He derived considerable mischievous amus.e.m.e.nt from Drummond's patent stupefaction. It was all so right and proper--as it should have been. He considered his an highly satisfactory resurrection, the sensation it created as complete, considered in the relation of antic.i.p.ation to fulfilment, as anything he had ever experienced. Seldom does a scene pa.s.s off as one plans it; the other parties thereto are apt to spoil things by spouting spontaneously their own original lines, thus cheating one out of a crus.h.i.+ng retort or cherished epigram. But Drummond played up his part in a most public-spirited fas.h.i.+on--gratifying, to say the least.

It took him some minutes to recover, Whitaker standing by and beaming.

He remarked changes, changes as striking as the improvement in Drummond's fortunes. Physically his ex-partner had gone off a bit; the sedentary life led by the average successful man of business in New York had marked his person unmistakably. Much heavier than the man Whitaker remembered, he wore a thick and solid air of good-natured prosperity.

The hair had receded an inch or so from his forehead. Only his face seemed as it had always been--sharply handsome and strong. Whitaker remembered that he had always somewhat meanly envied Drummond his good looks; he himself had been fas.h.i.+oned after the new order of architecture--with a steel frame; but for some reason Nature, the master builder, had neglected sufficiently to wall in and conceal the skeleton.

Admitting the economy of the method, Whitaker was inclined to believe that the effect must be surprising, especially if encountered without warning....

He discovered that they were both talking at once--furiously--and, not without surprise, that he had a great deal more enlightenment to impart to Drummond than he had foreseen.

"You've got an economical streak in you when it comes to correspondence," Drummond commented, offering Whitaker a sheet of paper he had just taken from a tin doc.u.ment-box. "That's Exhibit A."

Whitaker read aloud:

"'DEAR D., I'm not feeling well, so off for a vacation. Burke has just been in and paid $1500 in settlement of our claim. I'm enclosing herewith my check for your share. Yours, H. M. W.'"

"Far be it from me to cast up," said Drummond; "but I'd like to know why the deuce you couldn't let a fellow know how ill you were."

Whitaker frowned over his dereliction. "Don't remember," he confessed.

"I was hardly right, you know--and I presume I must have counted on Greyerson telling."

"But I don't know Greyerson...."

"That's so. And you never heard--?"

"Merely a rumour ran round. Some one--I forget who--told me that you and Stark had gone sailing in Stark's boat--to cruise in the West Indies, according to my informant. And somebody else mentioned that he'd heard you were seriously ill. More than that nothing--until we heard that the _Adventuress_ had been lost, half a year later."

"I'm sorry," said Whitaker contritely. "It was thoughtless...."

"But that isn't all," Drummond objected, flouris.h.i.+ng another paper. "See here--Exhibit B--came in a day or so later."

"Yes." Whitaker recognized the doc.u.ment. "I remember insisting on writing to you before we turned in that night."

He ran through the following communication:

"DEAR DRUMMOND: I married here, to-night, Mary Ladislas. Please look out for her while I'm away. Make her an allowance out of my money--five hundred a month ought to be enough. I shall die intestate, and she'll get everything then, of course. She has your address and will communicate with you as soon as she gets settled down in Town.

"Faithfully--

"HUGH MORTEN WHITAKER."

"If it hadn't been so much in character," commented Drummond, "I'd've thought the thing a forgery--or a poor joke. Knowing you as well as I did, however ... I just sat back to wait for word from Mrs. Whitaker."

"And you never heard, except that once!" said Whitaker thoughtfully.

"Here's the sole and only evidence I ever got to prove that you had told the truth."

Drummond handed Whitaker a single, folded sheet of note-paper stamped with the name of the Waldorf-Astoria.

"CARTER S. DRUMMOND, Esq., 27 Pine Street, City.

"DEAR SIR: I inclose herewith a bank-note for $500, which you will be kind enough to credit to the estate of your late partner and my late husband, Mr. Hugh Morten Whitaker.

"Very truly yours,

"MARY LADISLAS WHITAKER."

"Dated, you see, the day after the report of your death was published here."

"But why?" demanded Whitaker, dumfounded. "_Why?_"

"I infer she felt herself somehow honour-bound by the monetary obligation," said the lawyer. "In her understanding your marriage of convenience was nothing more--a one-sided bargain, I think you said she called it. She couldn't consider herself wholly free, even though you were dead, until she had repaid this loan which you, a stranger, had practically forced upon her--if not to you, to your estate."

"But death cancels everything--"

"Not," Drummond reminded him with a slow smile, "the obligation of a period of decent mourning that devolves upon a widow. Mrs. Whitaker may have desired to marry again immediately. If I'm any judge of human nature, she argued that repayment of the loan wiped out every obligation. Feminine logic, perhaps, but--"

"Good Lord!" Whitaker breathed, appalled in the face of this contingency which had seemed so remote and immaterial when he was merely Hugh Morten, bachelor-nomad, to all who knew him on the far side of the world.

Drummond dropped his head upon his hand and regarded his friend with inquisitive eyes.

"Looks as though you may have gummed things up neatly--doesn't it?"

Whitaker nodded in sombre abstraction.

"You may not," continued Drummond with light malice, "have been so generous, so considerate and chivalric, after all."

"Oh, cut that!" growled Whitaker, unhappily. "I never meant to come back."

"Then why did you?"

"Oh ... I don't know. Chiefly because I caught Anne Presbury's sharp eyes on me in Melbourne--as I said a while ago. I knew she'd talk--as she surely will the minute she gets back--and I thought I might as well get ahead of her, come home and face the music before anybody got a chance to expose me. At the worst--if what you suggest has really happened--it's an open-and-shut case; no one's going to blame the woman; and it ought to be easy enough to secure a separation or divorce--"

"You'd consent to that?" inquired Drummond intently.

"I'm ready to do anything she wishes, within the law."

"You leave it to her, then?"