Perkins, the Fakeer. Edward Sims van Zile
be serious, will you?" gruffly, from the office.
"Tell Morse to sell L stock and industrials at once. Do you get that?"
"I'll have to use my own judgment in that matter, Caroline." My voice came to me through the 'phone with its own stubborn note.
"Great Scott!" I cried, realizing that I was absolutely helpless. "Be careful what you do–ah–Reginald. It's a very treacherous market. For heaven's sake, sell out at once, will you?"
"I must get to work now, my dear," said my wife, gruffly. "There's a heavy mail this morning, and several men are waiting to see me. Mr. Rogers comes in to me at once."
A cold chill ran through me, and Caroline's voice trembled as I cried:
"Don't see Rogers–ah–Reginald! I haven't decided yet what answer to give the man. Bluff him off, if you've got a spark of sense left in you. Tell him to call at the office next week."
"Good-bye, Caroline," came my voice to me, remorselessly. "I'll call you up again later. How's your ball dress? Does it fit you nicely? Don't over-exert yourself, my dear. You weren't looking well at breakfast. Ta-ta! See you later."
I heard the uncompromising click of the receiver, and knew that my wife had returned to my affairs. As I turned my back to the telephone, I felt that ruin was staring me in the face. If Caroline played ducks and drakes with my various stocks I stood to lose half my fortune. What a fool I had been, engaged in a profitable business, to go into speculation! Had it not been for what may be considered a feeling of false pride I should have sent Suzanne for a cocktail at once. It seemed to me that my masculine individuality exhausted Caroline's nervous energy at a most deplorable rate.
CHAPTER V.
SUZANNE'S BUSY DAY
Births have brought us richness and variety, and other births have brought us richness and variety.
Buttons, the hall-boy was accustomed to sit where he could keep one ear on the 'phone in the library, the other on the bell in the main entrance, and both of them on the voice of Jones, the butler. The library stifled me, and the very sight of the telephone threatened me with nervous prostration.
"Tell Buttons," I said to Suzanne, "to listen to the 'phone, and if–ah–Mr. Stevens calls me up again, to let me know of it at once. Then come to me up-stairs. And, Suzanne, say to Buttons that if–what was her name?–ah, yes, Louise–rings me up again to tell her I've got an attack of neuralgia in my–ah–astral body, and that I'm writing to Buddha to ask for his advice in the matter. That'll shut her off for all day, I imagine."
"Oui, madame," murmured Suzanne, wearily. She was beginning to feel the effects of a great nervous strain. As I reached the door of the library, the effort to carry myself like a lady overcame my momentary infusion of energy.
"Suzanne," I said, "it might be well for you to bring some cracked ice with you. Ask Jones for it. Tell him I have a headache, if he glares at you."
As I mounted the stairs slowly, wondering how women manage to hold their skirts so that their limbs move freely, a feeling of relief came over me. It was pleasant to get away from the floor over which Jones, the phlegmatic and tyrannical, presided. I had lost all fear of Suzanne, but the butler chilled my blood. If Caroline and I failed to obtain a psychical exchange to-night Jones must leave the house to-morrow. Suddenly, I stood motionless in the upper hallway and laughed aloud, nervously. What would Jones think could he learn that he had become unwittingly a horror in livery to a lost soul? The absurdity of the reflection brought a ray of sunshine to my darkened spirit, and I entered Caroline's morning-room in a cheerful mood.
"Pardon me, Mrs. Stevens, but I was told to wait for you here."
A pretty girl confronted me, standing guard over a large pasteboard box that she had placed upon a chair.
"You–ah–have something for me?" I asked, coldly. I was beginning to wonder where Caroline's leisure came in.
"Your new ball-dress, Mrs. Stevens. You promised to try it on this morning, you remember."
"Very well! Leave it, then. I'll get into it later on. I've no doubt it'll fit me like a glove."
The girl stared at me for a moment, then recovered herself and said:
"Madame Bonari will be displeased with me, Mrs. Stevens, if I do not return to her with the report that you find the dress satisfactory. I may await your pleasure, may I not? Madame Bonari would discharge me if I went back to her now."
"Let me see the dress, girl," I muttered, reluctantly. To don a ball-dress in full daylight to save a poor maiden from losing her situation was for me to make a greater sacrifice than this dressmaker's apprentice could realize.
The girl opened the box, and I gazed, awestruck, at a garment that filled me with a strange kind of terror. There was not a great deal of it. It was not its size that frightened me; it was the shape of the thing that was startling.
"That'll do, girl," I exclaimed, somewhat hysterically. "Tell–ah–Madame Bonari that this–ah–polonaise is a howling success. I can see at a glance that it was made for me," and added, under my breath, "to pay for."
The girl stood rooted to the spot, gazing at me in mingled sorrow and amazement.
"But oh, Mrs. Stevens," she cried, the tears coming into her eyes, "you will not dismiss me this way? I will lose my place if you do!"
I sank into a chair, torn by conflicting emotions, as a novelist would say of his distraught heroine.
"Do you want me to climb into that thing, here and now?" I gasped.
"If madame will be so kind," murmured the girl, imploringly.
With joy, I now heard the tinkling of cracked ice against cut-glass. Suzanne, to my great relief, entered the room.
"Suzanne," I said, courageously, "I will trouble you to tog me out in this–ah–silk remnant. Have you got a kodak, girl?" I asked, playfully, turning toward the astonished young dressmaker. "You're not a yellow reporter?"
"Oh, Mrs. Stevens!" cried the girl, deprecatingly, glancing interrogatively at Suzanne. Perhaps the cracked ice and my eccentric manner had aroused suspicions in her mind.
A moment later, I found myself in Caroline's dressing-room alone with Suzanne, who had recovered her spirits in the delight that her present task engendered.
"Madame's neck and arms are so beautiful!" she murmured in French, pulling the skirt of the ball-dress, a dainty affair made of mauve silk, with a darker shade of velvet for trimmings, into position. "Ah, such a wonderful hang! It is worthy of Paris, madame."
"Don't stop to talk, Suzanne," I grumbled. "This is indecent exposure of mistaken identity, and I can't stand much of it; so keep moving, will you?"
"The corsage is a marvel, madame!" exclaimed Suzanne, ecstatically.
"It is, girl," I muttered, glancing at myself in a mirror. "It feels like a cross between a modern life-preserver and a mediæval breast-plate. Don't lace the thing so tight, Suzanne. I've got to talk now and then!"
Suzanne was too busy to listen to my somewhat delirious comments.
"It is a miracle!" she cried in French. "Madame is a purple dream, is she not?"
"Madame will be a black-and-blue what-is-it before you know it," I moaned. "Does that girl outside there expect to have a look at–ah–this ridiculous costume?" I asked, testily.
"Madame is so strange to-day," murmured Suzanne, wearily. "You are free to go now, madame."
"I clutched at the train that anchored me to my place of torture, and moved clumsily toward the room in which the young dressmaker awaited me.
"Ah!" cried the girl, as I broke upon her vision, a creature of beauty, but very far from graceful. "Madame Bonari will be overjoyed. The dress is perfection, is it not, Mrs. Stevens? I've never seen such a fit."
"It feels like a fit," I remarked, pantingly. "Suzanne," I called out, desperately, "slip a few cogs in front here, will you?