Hearts of Three 54

Hearts of Three 54

“There’s the Mexican revolution, and our own spineless administration.

If we involved Tampico Petroleum, and anything serious should break down

there, you’d be finished, cleaned out, broke.

 

“And yet,” Bascom resumed, “I see no other way out than to use Tampico

Petroleum. You see, I have almost exhausted what you have placed in my

hands. And this is no whirlwind raid. It’s slow and steady as an

advancing glacier. I’ve only handled the market for you all these years,

and this is the first tight place we’ve got into. Now your general

business affairs? Collins has the handling and knows. You must know.

What securities can you let me have? Now? And to-morrow? And next week?

And the next three weeks?”

 

“How much do you want?” Francis questioned back.

 

“A million before closing time to-day.” Bascom pointed eloquently at the

ticker. “At least twenty million more in the next three weeks, if——and

mark you that _if_ well——if the world remains at peace, and if the

general market remains as normal as it has been for the past six

months.”

 

Francis stood up with decision and reached for his hat.

 

“I’m going to Collins at once. He knows far more about my outside

business than I know myself. I shall have at least the million in your

hands before closing time, and I’ve a shrewd suspicion that I’ll cover

the rest during the next several weeks.”

 

“Remember,” Bascom warned him, as they shook hands, “it’s the very

slowness of this raid that is ominous. It’s directed against you, and

it’s no fly-by-night affair. Whoever is making it, is doing it big, and

must be big.”

 

* * * * *

 

Several times, late that afternoon and evening, the Queen was called up

by the slave of the flying speech and enabled to talk with her husband.

To her delight, in her own room, by her bedside, she found a telephone,

through which, by calling up Collins’ office, she gave her good night to

Francis. Also, she essayed to kiss her heart to him, and received back,

queer and vague of sound, his answering kiss.

 

She knew not how long she had slept, when she awoke. Not moving, through

her half-open eyes she saw Francis peer into the room and across to her.

When he had gone softly away, she leapt out of bed and ran to the door

in time to see him start down the staircase.

 

More trouble with the great god Business——was her surmise. He was going

down to that wonderful room, the library, to read more of the dread

god’s threats and warnings that were so mysteriously made to take form

of written speech to the clicking of the ticker. She looked at herself

in the mirror, adjusted her hair, and with a little love-smile of

anticipation on her lips put on a dressing-gown——another of the

marvelous pretties of Francis’ forethought and providing.

 

At the entrance of the library she paused, hearing the voice of another

than Francis. At first thought she decided it was the flying speech, but

immediately afterward she knew it to be too loud and near and different.

Peeping in, she saw two men drawn up in big leather chairs near to each

other and facing. Francis, tired of face from the day’s exertions, still

wore his business suit; but the other was clad in evening dress. And she

heard him call her husband “Francis,” who, in turn, called him “Johnny.”

That, and the familiarity of their conversation, conveyed to her that

they were old, close friends.

 

“And don’t tell me, Francis,” the other was saying, “that you’ve

frivoled through Panama all this while without losing your heart to the

senoritas a dozen times.”

 

“Only once,” Francis replied, after a pause, in which the Queen noted

that he gazed steadily at his friend.

 

“Further,” he went on, after another pause, “I really lost my heart——but

not my head. Johnny Pathmore, O Johnny Pathmore, you are a mere

flirtatious brute, but I tell you that you’ve lots to learn. I tell you

that in Panama I found the most wonderful woman in the world——a woman

that I was glad I had lived to know, a woman that I would gladly die

for; a woman of fire, of passion, of sweetness, of nobility, a very

queen of women.”

 

And the Queen, listening and looking upon the intense exaltation of his

face, smiled with proud fondness and certitude to herself, for had she

not won a husband who remained a lover?

 

“And did the lady, er——ah——did she reciprocate?” Johnny Pathmore

ventured.

 

The Queen saw Francis nod as he solemnly replied.

 

“She loves me as I love her——this I know in all absoluteness.” He stood

up suddenly. “Wait. I will show her to you.”

 

And as he started toward the door, the Queen, in roguishness of a very

extreme of happiness at her husband’s confession she had overheard, fled

trippingly to hide in the wide doorway of a grand room which the maid

had informed her was the drawing room, whatever such room might be.

Deliciously imagining Francis’ surprise at not finding her in bed, she

watched him go up the wide marble staircase. In a few moments he

descended. With a slight chill at the heart she observed that he

betrayed no perturbation at not having found her. In his hand he carried

a scroll or roll of thin, white cardboard. Looking neither to right nor

left, he re-entered the library.

 

Peeping in, she saw him unroll the scroll, present it before Johnny

Pathmore’s eyes, and heard him say:

 

“Judge for yourself. There she is.”

 

“But why be so funereal about it, old man?” Johnny Pathmore queried,

after a prolonged examination of the photograph.

 

“Because we met too late. I was compelled to marry another. And I left

her forever just a few hours before she was to marry another, which

marriage had been compelled before either of us ever knew the other

existed. And the woman I married, please know, is a good and splendid

woman. She will have my devotion forever. Unfortunately, she will never

possess my heart.”

 

In a great instant of revulsion, the entire truth came to the Queen.

Clutching at her heart with clasped hands, she nearly fainted of the

vertigo that assailed her. Although they still talked inside the

library, she heard no further word of their utterance as she strove with

slow success to draw herself together. Finally, with indrawn shoulders,

a little forlorn sort of a ghost of the resplendent woman and wife she

had been but minutes before, she staggered across the hall and slowly,

as if in a nightmare wherein speed never resides, dragged herself

upstairs. In her room, she lost all control. Francis’ ring was torn from

her finger and stamped upon. Her boudoir cap and her turtle-shell

hairpins joined the general havoc under her feet. Convulsed, shuddering,

muttering to herself in her extremity, she threw herself upon her bed

and only managed, in an ecstasy of anguish, to remain perfectly quiet

when Francis peeped in on his way to bed.

 

An hour, that seemed a thousand centuries, she gave him to go to sleep.

Then she arose, took in hand the crude jeweled dagger which had been

hers in the Valley of the Lost Souls, and softly tiptoed into his room.

There on the dresser it was, the large photograph of Leoncia. In

thorough indecision, clutching the dagger until the cramp of her palm

and fingers hurt her, she debated between her husband and Leoncia. Once,

beside his bed, her hand raised to strike, an effusion of tears into her

dry eyes obscured her seeing so that her dagger-hand dropped as she

sobbed audibly.

 

Stiffening herself with changed resolve, she crossed over to the

dresser. A pad and pencil lying handy, caught her attention. She

scribbled two words, tore off the sheet, and placed it upon the face of

Leoncia as it lay flat and upturned on the surface of polished wood.

Next, with an unerring drive of the dagger, she pinned the note between

the pictured semblance of Leoncia’s eyes, so that the point of the blade

penetrated the wood and left the haft quivering and upright.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XXV

 

 

Meanwhile, after the manner of cross purposes in New York, wherein Regan

craftily proceeded with his gigantic raid on all Francis’ holdings while

Francis and Bascom vainly strove to find his identity, so in Panama were

at work cross purposes which involved Leoncia and the Solanos, Torres

and the Jefe, and, not least in importance, one, Yi Poon, the rotund and

moon-faced Chinese.

 

The little old judge, who was the Jefe’s creature, sat asleep in court

in San Antonio. He had slept placidly for two hours, occasionally

nodding his head and muttering profoundly, although the case was a grave

one, involving twenty years in San Juan, where the strongest could not

survive ten years. But there was no need for the judge to consider

evidence or argument. Before the case was called, decision and sentence

were in his mind, having been put there by the Jefe. The prisoner’s

lawyer ceased his perfunctory argument, the clerk of the court sneezed,

and the judge woke up. He looked about him briskly and said: