The Girl in his House, Harold MacGrath [e book free reading TXT] 📗
- Author: Harold MacGrath
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Armitage nodded understandingly. Bordman had planned this day years before.
Miss Corrigan continued. “Sometimes he’d talk. You’d swear he’d been everywhere. And besides that, he was a Who’s Who on New York families. You see, there wasn’t much work. He handled three other estates like yours. It seems he notified those clients, transferred the papers, and so forth, the day he intended to leave. I had come to the conclusion that he had suddenly determined to retire with his savings and take one of those tremendous journeys he’d always been dreaming about.”
“He’s taking it—at my expense. What sort of personality?”
“Shy and kindly, and very lonely, I imagine.”
“Family?”
“Never heard of any. I think he was all alone, without kith or kin.”
“Never any woman came to see him?”
“Never a one.”
“I’m going to ask you a big favor. I really haven’t the nerve to do it myself.
Here’s a list of the three banks. Find out if I have anything on the books. See if this building is really still mine. I’ll go out for a short walk.”
“Very well, Mr. Armitage.”
Armitage returned at eleven. The building was still his; but there was nothing in two banks and only about four thousand dollars in the third. On March 1st there had been two hundred and ten thousand dollars in the three banks.
“For a shy and kindly old man he seems to have done pretty well,” was Armitage’s ironical comment. “Have you any idea where those mortgages were kept?”
“No. The boxes at the banks are empty. They are very curious over at the banks to learn what is up. Here’s the mail Morrissy brought up. Suppose we open it?” she suggested.
They sat down at the desk and opened the letters. They found twelve checks, aggregating nearly six thousand. The check was dated July, made out to the Armitage estate, its character indicated in the lower left-hand comer by the word “interest.”
“Congratulations!” she said.
“Are these mine?”
“They are. Don’t you understand?”
“Miss Corrigan, I’m only a benighted grasshopper.”
“And a very poor business man. It means that somewhere you have a trifle over two hundred thousand dollars out in first or second mortgages. I’ve taken these checks over myself many times and deposited them.”
Armitage did rather an unconventional thing. He seized Miss Corrigan by the shoulders and waltzed her around the room. There was a good deal of astonishment and protest in the young woman’s eyes, but there was no resentment. She understood this exuberance. From the abyss of genteel poverty—her own lot—he had been wafted back to affluence, to the old order of things.
“I hope you’ll forgive me. Miss Corrigan,” he said, suddenly releasing her.
“It was rather unexpected.” Her laughter had a break in it. There was a bit of color in her cheeks as she patted her hair.
“Where can I find a sign-painter?” he asked.
“A painter?”
“Yes. I’m going to rub out that ‘Bordman’ and substitute ‘Armitage.’ I’ve got some eggs left in the basket, and maybe I’m not going to watch them hereafter! I’m coming down here regularly every morning. I’m going to learn how the ant does it. My grasshopper days are over. I wonder if we can get into that safe.”
“Wait a moment,” said Miss Corrigan. Once more she had recourse to the notebooks. After a few minutes she returned triumphantly. “I know the combination. I used to open the safe sometimes. Nothing of real value inside—ledgers. He gave me the combination and I wrote it down here.”
They found the estate ledgers and a sealed envelope, the latter addressed in this formal legal style:
Attention James Armitage
Armitage opened it. In a neat flowing hand, with characteristic little curlicues and flourishes and shaded capitals—curiously reminding him of the script of the Declaration of Independence—Armitage read the following :
You may or may not return some day. This is against the possibility of your return. You went away with a broken heart. But hearts never break, my son; they wear out, wither, and die. So no doubt some day you will return. I confess I always rather admired you, you were so different from the run of your breed. The personalities of your father and mother were strong and individualistic, and no doubt they reacted upon your own. But somehow you never struck me as a personality, as an individual; rather you were a type. You were born to riches; you had no ordinary wish that money could not instantly supply; you seemed to be without real interest in life, bored. You were to me a cipher drawn on a blackboard; something visible through the agency of chalk, but representing—nothing. I have helped myself to half your fortune, because I am basically tender of heart. Had you been a wastrel, I should have taken everything. But the spirit in you was generous and kindly. I don’t suppose you ever did a mean thing—or an interesting thing. Going into the wildernesses as you have done may teach you some sound facts regarding life. Don’t worry about me. What I have done does not appear to me as a crime. I have merely relieved you of half of your responsibilities and half your boredom. I knew, the moment you turned over that power of attorney to me, what I was eventually going to do, provided you remained away long enough. Don’t bother to pursue me; you would only waste your time and money.
Samuel Bordman.
“The infernal cheek of him!” cried Armitage, hotly. “But I’ll keep the letter in my pocket. Whenever I feel proud of myself I’ll take it out and read it. I say, Miss Corrigan, if you’ll take the old job back again, it’s yours at any salary you say.”
Miss Corrigan was twenty-eight; she had no illusions. She looked at Armitage thoughtfully. She knew that she could trust this man absolutely; but she was not sure of herself. A great moment had come into her drab life, and resolutely she closed the door upon it.
At length she shook her head. “Thank you, Mr. Armitage, but I’ll keep the job I’ve got.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, quite oblivious to the little tragedy in her smile.
ARMITAGE decided to accept his losses silently. The swift anger, the naturally savage longing to hunt down the man who had so simply and absurdly robbed him, receded, leaving only a residue of philosophical calm, generously leavened with a sardonic humor. Perhaps, too, he was actuated by a keen idea of shame. Hue and cry would only acquaint the town with the colossal folly of one James Armitage. Moreover, Bordman had six months’ leeway; and, because he was so insignificant in appearance, he would be as difficult to locate as the proverbial needle. There were a few hundred thousand individuals in the United States; the other millions were of the Bordman type. Besides, Armitage had been laughed at once before; he could not tolerate the thought of being laughed at again. The
Burlinghams, the Corrigan girl and himself; the tale mustn’t go any farther.
The house in Seventy-second Street was gone, doubly gone. In the first place, it had been bought and paid for in good faith; in the second place, he would have cut his hand off rather than have told that girl. Why? He asked himself this question in a kind of detached wonder. Why should he consider her? For what reason should he hold back the truth from her? After all, he had no war with her. If he told her it would only worry her, make her unhappy, without benefiting himself in the least. In law the house and all its contents were hers, and she would have no difficulty in defending her title.
From Bordman’s office he proceeded to the banks and annulled the power of attorney and examined the lock -boxes in the vaults. He went back mentally to that painful epoch prior to his departure for the Orient. The mortgages had no place in his recollections. Anyhow, Bordman hadn’t them; the interest checks certified that. Bordman might have left them at the Concord, among his discarded effects. Later he would obtain the right of search.
One of the bankers asked him what he had done with his big balance.
“Invested it in experience,” answered Armitage, gravely.
“Foreign stock markets, eh? Well, we all have to learn,” said the banker, convinced that Armitage had been fooling around the foreign bourses. “I called Bordman in after the third withdrawal. He said you wanted the money.”
Summed up or simmered down, Armitage had, instead of forty thousand a year, something like twenty-four thousand. As he had seldom spent more than half his income, his life might continue along the old grooves with nothing more serious than a deep sense of irritation. He carried Bordman’s letter around in his pockets for weeks, and whenever time hung heavy on his hands he reread it. He even perpetrated a mild form of forgery by copying it.
At four-thirty that afternoon his worries evaporated temporarily. He found himself on the lounge in the Burlingham library, his elbow touching Miss Athelstone’s; and frequently, whenever she stirred, he caught the vague perfume of lavender. He could not keep his eyes off her.
“How could you do it?” she asked abruptly.
The unexpectedness of the question threw him off his balance for a moment. Naturally —his conscience being normal and unwarned—his first supposition was that she had seen his face the night before and now recognized him.
“How could I do what?” he countered, lamely.
“Sell all those beautiful things without reservation.”
“Oh! Well, I never expected to return.”
“It’s all like a fairy-story to me. Nearly all my life has been spent in a convent school. And here I am, with Aladdin’s lamp in my hand! True, I had a good deal of liberty. But the room I lived in was white and bare, and my appetite for lovely things was stirred keenly by what I saw in the galleries and museums. For several years I used to go on horseback into the country. My father insisted that I should grow up physically strong. Those hours on a lively horse were spells of wonderful freedom. I suppose it’s in my blood to love the open. My father”—her voice softened magically with the most patent adoration— “wanders about in all the strange nooks. To-day I’ll receive a letter from Shanghai; the next one will come from Chimborazo; or he’s at the emerald-mines in Bolivia or the gold-fields in Africa. I don’t suppose he’s ever remained in any one place more than a month, except when he’s on archeological work.” She laughed. “Sometimes I’m convinced that he is the Ancient Mariner, or the Flying Dutchman, or the Prince of India, condemned to wander over the face of the earth. Have you ever by chance run across him? Have you ever heard of him?”
“There’s an echo to the name, but I can’t place it. Besides, I’m only a big-game hunter, and he, as I understand it, goes in for ruins and tombs and excavations. I’m a know-nothing on those points. Miss Athelstone. There are only a few men like your father, and the world at large never hears of them until they discover a new Babylon; and even then the world forgets all about it day after to-morrow. What’s he like?”
Her gaze wandered toward the fire, and this gave him the opportunity he had been longing for—unembarrassedly to study her beauty in detail. Beauty always attracted him strongly; a sunset on the desert, a moonrise on the Taj Mahal, a sunrise on the Himalayas—all enchanted him. What hair! It was
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