Peter had a midnight appointment with McGivney, and now had to go and admit this humiliating failure. He had done his best, he declared; he had inquired at the desk, and waited and waited, but the hotel people had failed to notify him of Lackman’s arrival. All this was strictly true; but it did not pacify McGivney, who was in a black fury. “It might have been worth thousands of dollars to you!” he declared. “He’s the biggest fish we’ll ever get on our hook.”
“Won’t he come again?” asked grief-stricken Peter.
“No,” declared the other. “They’ll get him at his home city.”
“But won’t that do?” asked Peter, naively.
“You damned fool!” was McGivney’s response. “We wanted to get him here, where we could pluck him ourselves.”
The rat-faced man hadn’t intended to tell Peter so much, but in his rage he let it out. He and a couple of his friends had planned to “get something” on this young millionaire, and scare the wits out of him, with the idea that he would put up a good many thousand dollars to be let off. Peter might have had his share of this—only he had been fool enough to let the bird get out of his net!
Peter offered to follow the young man to his home city, and find some way to lure him back into McGivney’s power. After McGivney had stormed for a while, he decided that this might be possible. He would talk it over with the others, and let Peter know. But alas, when Peter picked up an afternoon newspaper next day, he read on the front page how young Lackman, stepping off the train in his home city that morning, had been placed under arrest; his school had been raided, and half a dozen of the teachers were in jail, and a ton of Red literature had been confiscated, and a swarm of dire conspiracies against the safety of the country had been laid bare!
Peter read this news, and knew that he was in for another stormy hour with his boss. But he hardly gave a thought to it, because of something which had happened a few minutes before, something of so much greater importance. A messenger had brought him a special delivery letter, and with thumping heart he had torn it open and read:
“All right. Meet me in the waiting-room of Guggenheim’s Department Store at two o’clock this afternoon. But for God’s sake forget Nell Doolin. Yours, Edythe Eustace.”
So here was Peter dressed in his best clothes, as for his temporary honeymoon with the grass widow, and on the way to the rendezvous an hour ahead of time. And here came Nell, also dressed, every garment so contrived that a single glance would tell the beholder that their owner was moving in the highest circles, and regardless of expense. Nell glanced over her shoulder now and then as she talked, and explained that Ted Crothers, the man with the bulldog face, was a terror, and it was hard to get away from him, because he had nothing to do all day.
The waiting-room of a big department-store was not the place Peter would have selected for the pouring out of his heart; but he had to make the best of it, so he told Nell that he loved her, that he would never be able to love anybody else, and that he had made piles of money now, he was high up on the ladder of prosperity. Nell did not laugh at him, as she had laughed in the Temple of Jimjambo, for it was easily to be seen that Peter Gudge was no longer a scullion, but a man of the world with a fascinating air of mystery. Nell wanted to know forthwith what was he doing; he answered that he could not tell, it was a secret of the most desperate import; he was under oath. These were the days of German spies and bomb-plots, when kings and kaisers and emperors and tsars were pouring treasures into America for all kinds of melodramatic purposes; also the days of government contracts and secret deals, when in the lobbies and private meeting-places of hotels like the de Soto there were fortunes made and unmade every hour. So it was easy for Nell to believe in a real secret, and being a woman, she put all her faculties upon the job of guessing it.
She did not again ask Peter to tell her; but she let him talk, and tactfully guided the conversation, and before long she knew that Peter was intimate with a great many of the most desperate Reds, and likewise that he knew all about the insides of the Goober case, and about the great men of American City who had put up a million dollars for the purpose of hanging Goober, and about the various ways in which this money had been spent and wires had been pulled to secure a conviction. Nell put two and two together, and before long she figured out that the total was four; she suddenly confronted Peter with this total, and Peter was dumb with consternation, and broke down and confessed everything, and told Nell all about his schemes and his achievements and his adventures—omitting only little Jennie and the grass widow.
He told about the sums he had been making and was expecting to make; he told about Lackman, and showed Nell the newspaper with pictures of the young millionaire and his school. “What a handsome fellow!” said Nell. “It’s a shame!”
“How do you mean?” asked Peter, a little puzzled. Could it be that Nell had any sympathy for these Reds?
“I mean,” she answered, “that he’d have been worth more to you than all the rest put together.”
Nell was a woman, and her mind ran to the practical aspect of things. “Look here, Peter,” she said, “you’ve been letting those ‘dicks’ work you. They’re getting the swag, and just giving you tips. What you need is somebody to take care of you.”
Peter’s heart leaped. “Will you do it?” he cried.
“I’ve got Ted on my hands,” said the girl. “He’d cut my throat, and yours too, if he knew I was here. But I’ll try to get myself free, and then maybe—I won’t promise, but I’ll think over your problem, Peter, and I’ll certainly try to help, so that McGivney and Guffey and those fellows can’t play you for a sucker any longer.”
She must have time to think it over, she said, and to make inquiries about the people involved—some of whom apparently she knew. She would meet Peter again the next day, and in a more private place than here. She named remote for a quiet conference.
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