The Brand of Silence | Page 7

and went toward the north, looking at the bright lights and the crowds. He passed through two or three hotel lobbies, satisfied for the time merely to be in the midst of the throngs.
At the proper time, he hurried to the theater and claimed his seat. The performance was a mediocre one, but it pleased Sidney Prale. He had seen a better show in Honduras a month before, had seen better dancing and heard better singing and comedy, but this was New York!
The show at an end, Prale claimed his hat and coat at the check room and walked down the street toward a cabaret restaurant. He reached into his overcoat pocket for his gloves, and his hand encountered a slip of paper. He took it out.
There was the same rough handwriting on the same kind of paper, and evidently with the same blunt pencil.
"Remember--retribution is sure!"
"This thing ceases to be a joke!" Prale told himself.
His face flushed with anger, and he turned back toward the theater. But he had been among the last to leave, and already the lights of the playhouse were being turned out. The boy in charge of the check room would be gone, Prale knew.
He thought of Kate Gilbert again, and the bit of paper she had dropped as she got into the limousine down on the water front. Surely she could have no hand in this, he thought. What interest could Kate Gilbert, a casual acquaintance and reputed daughter of a wealthy house, have in him and his affairs?
"Somebody is making a mistake," he declared to himself, "or else it is some sort of a new advertising dodge. If I ever catch the jokesmith who is responsible for these dainty little messages, I'll tell him a thing or two."
Prale turned into the restaurant and found a seat at a little table at one side of the room. The after-theater crowd was filling the place. The orchestra was playing furiously, and the cabaret performance was beginning. Sidney Prale leaned back in his chair and watched the show. The waiter came to his side, and he ordered something to eat and drink.
Then he saw Kate Gilbert again, at a table not very far away from his. She was dressed in an evening gown, as if she had just come from the theater or opera. She was in the company of the elderly man who had met her at the wharf, and a young man and an older woman were at the same table.
Prale's eyes met hers for an instant, and he inclined his head a bit in a respectful manner. But Kate Gilbert looked through him as if he had not been present, and then turned her head and began talking to the elderly man.
Prale's face flushed. He hadn't done anything wrong, he told himself. He merely had bowed to her, as he would have bowed to any woman to whom he had been properly introduced. She had seen fit to cut him. Well, he could exist without Kate Gilbert, he told himself, but he wondered at her peculiar manner.
He left the place within the hour and went back to the hotel and to bed. In the morning he walked up the Avenue as far as the Circle, dropped into a restaurant for a good breakfast, and then engaged a taxicab and drove downtown to the financial district. He had remembered that he was a man with a million, and that he had to pay some attention to business.
He went into the establishment of a famous trust company and sent his card in to the president. An attendant ushered him into the president's private office immediately.
"Sit down, Mr. Prale," said the financier. "I am glad that you came to see me this morning. I was just about to have somebody look you up."
"Anything the matter?" Prale asked.
"Your funds were transferred to us by our Honduras correspondent," the financier said. "Since you were leaving Honduras almost immediately, we decided to care for the funds until you arrived and we could talk to you."
"I shall want some good investments, of course," Prale said. "I have disposed of all my holdings in Honduras, and I don't want the money to be idle."
"Idleness is as bad for dollars as for men," said the financier, clearing his throat.
"Can you suggest some investments? I have engaged no broker as yet, of course."
"I--er--I am afraid that we have nothing at the present moment," the financier said.
"The market must be good," Prale observed. "I never knew a time when investments were lacking."
"I would not offer you a poor one, and good ones are scarce with us at present," said the banker. "Sorry that we cannot attend to the business for you. Perhaps some other trust company----"
"Well, I can wait for something to turn up,"