THE RED LEDGER. Frank L. Packard
There has been enough—I have taken life—she is dead—come what may, no more blood." He looked up suddenly into Stranway's face. "See! See!" he cried, and jumping to his feet, ran with quick, short steps to the safe.
Staggered for a moment at this sudden change of front, weak from the revulsion of feeling brought about by the reprieve from what he had felt was almost certain death, Stranway hung against the desk, following the queer, grotesque figure with his eyes. He saw the other swing wide the door of the safe; and then, almost on the instant, it seemed, Charlebois came running back to the desk with laden arms.
"See! See!" he cried again. "Your oath, your oath that you will say nothing, and this is yours—all of it—all of it!" He tumbled great packages of banknotes on the desk, and his fingers fumbled with the string around a canvas bag. "All—all!" From the bag poured a glittering pile of gold.
All! Immunity for a grovelling wretch from the crime of murder! Stranway's hands clenched. A fierce resentment sent the blood whipping to his temples. Hush money! Money to buy his silence! Money to turn him, too, into a craven thing. His lips tightened into a straight line.
"Is it not enough?" Charlebois was pushing the notes and gold with nervous haste along the desk toward Stranway. "Then you shall have more. It is very easy money for you—very easy. You have only to say nothing, just that little thing is all I ask of you—to say nothing. You have never been here. You have seen nothing. Who will question you? There are thousands of dollars here—thousands. Take them! Take them, and go away! And there will be more each month, each week. I will make you rich! Take them, and——"
With a sudden leap, Stranway caught the other's wrists in a vice-like grip.
"I'll take your revolver," he said, his voice out of control and rasping strangely in his own ears. "I don't think I'd care to touch anything else of yours!" Mercilessly he jerked the old man around, and, holding Charlebois now by the collar of his jacket, snatched the revolver from the other's pocket. "Now then! You'll either open that door, which someway or other you locked, and march out to the first policeman, or I'll telephone the police from here. You can take your choice."
"Money!" The old man choked from the tightening grip. "Listen! Don't be a fool! You are young! I will give you anything in the world you want. You shall live in luxury. Do you know how much is there on the desk? Look at it! All big bills! Big bills! There is a fortune even there—and that is only a beginning. Monday——"
With his grip still upon the other, Stranway reached for the telephone.
"You are an old man," he said between his teeth, "or I would ram your money down your throat! As it is, I'll do it anyhow if you——"
His sentence ended with a low, startled cry. His hand from Charlebois' collar dropped nervously away. He was staring like a man bereft of his senses at the red portière before the glass-panelled door. It had swung wide again—and standing there, brown eyes fixed upon him, half challenging, half coyly demure, was the woman with the orchid who, but a moment since, he would have sworn had been murdered before his eyes.
And then Stranway burst suddenly into a harsh, savage laugh. Perhaps he was mad, too! Certainly, at least, he had been made to play the part of a fool!
But it was Charlebois who spoke—in a strangely gentle way, as he adjusted the ruffled collar of his red velvet jacket.
"My boy," he said, "you are piqued. You feel that, whether I am mad or not, the prank has been carried a little too far at your expense."
Stranway did not answer. He looked at the girl. Her eyes met his again, but very steadily now; great, self-reliant, deep brown eyes—and, curiously putting a curb upon his anger, they seemed to hold now a strange sincerity.
But now, with a little flush of colour mounting to her cheeks, she turned quickly away, and the red portière dropped into place behind her. He heard the glass-panelled door close softly. She was gone.
He bit his lips. If this Henri Raoul Charlebois was mad, she wasn't. But what was the meaning of it all? Who was she?
Again it was Charlebois who spoke—-as naturally as though Stranway had asked his question aloud.
"She is very fond of that flower you saw her wearing," said the little old gentleman quietly; "and so here we call her—the Orchid."
Stranway, with a little start, lifted his eyes from the red portière upon which they had been fixed, and looked at the other. Tempted to nurse back his waning resentment, he was minded to make no reply. And yet, was it curiosity that was the stronger—or what?
"And—the Orchid"—he stumbled over the name—"is a member of this organisation of yours that you spoke of, I suppose?"
"She is more than that," replied the little old gentleman softly. And then suddenly he came forward and laid both hands on Stranway's shoulders. "My boy," he said earnestly, "it was all necessary. There has been no jest, no mockery, no intention to hurt or wound your pride. There was far too much at stake for me to base my decision in reference to you on anything but certainty and proof. Do you not remember that I said I hoped I should find in you the one I have been seeking? And so I risked giving you offence to prove you. You have shown that neither fear nor bribery will move you to an act that is foreign to your conscience, as acquiescence in a demand such as I made upon you must be foreign to the conscience of any decent man. You have shown—what I require most of all—that implicit confidence can be placed in you. And so I ask you now to come here and join me in a very intimate way in my work; to come here and share with me the burden that in these later years, I might almost say the closing years during which that book there will be balanced forever, have grown too heavy for me alone. We will not speak of material recompense, for money will be the consideration of least importance between us. I promise you adventure, I promise you romance; and I promise you that you will never be called upon to participate in any act of which you do not conscientiously approve. But again, too, I must warn you that you will not be free from the dangers that surround me—and they are many and grave."
The little old gentleman's hands fell from Stranway's shoulders, and he stepped quietly to the door and opened it.
"I do not want you to answer now," he said. "You are mentally disquieted for the moment. Think well about it—and come to me to-morrow morning with your decision."
And Stranway, finding himself a moment later in the sunlight of the quaint courtyard, rubbed his eyes. It was as though he had been dreaming.
Chapter III.
A Month Later
It was night in the Red Room of 2½ Dominic Court; but it was Ewen Stranway, not Henri Raoul Charlebois, who sat now at the antique desk under the soft glow of the red-shaded lamp. A strange, quickened sense of excitement was upon him. Before him lay a note written in Charlebois' angular, crabbed hand. So the time had come at last! This was to be his first active participation in——
He leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head, and stared musingly around him. A month had gone since that morning when, following his strange afternoon experience in this same room here, he had entered the service of Henri Raoul Charlebois. He had done so after a night of troubled mental debate, prompted to his final decision by he could not exactly have explained what, except that perhaps a dogged determination to see the thing through, a vividly aroused curiosity, and, perhaps too, a haunting recollection of brown eyes that had looked at him very steadily, had all played their part. And, having come to Dominic Court, he had remained—he smiled gravely—because almost from the first moment he had become lost, engrossed in his surroundings and his work, and because as the days went by he had come more and more to know and respect and admire that little old white-haired gentleman in the red velvet jacket and shoes, and the red skull-cap with its bobbing tassel, whom once he had thought mad.
His mind, harking back now over the weeks that were gone, lingered upon the picture that