The Lady of Big Shanty | Page 5

telling how he got
the square meal at Lower Saranac, Ed said to him:
"'Bob, you're welcome to what I've got,' and I told him, 'What I've got
is yours, and you know it.'
"He tried to say a little something, but he choked up, then he said:
'Boys, I'm sick of bein' hounded. There's been nights and days when
I've most died; if I can only get into Canady there won't none of 'em git
me.'
"Ed and I had about eleven dollars between us. 'That will get you there,
Bob,' I said, 'if you look sharp and don't take risks and keep to the
timber.' We gave him the eleven dollars and what cartridges and
matches we could spare, and what was left of the deer. I never saw a

fellow so grateful; he didn't say anything, but I saw his old grit come
back to him. That was Monday night, and about nine o'clock we turned
in. Before daylight I woke up to attend to the fire and saw he was
gone."
The men drew a deep breath. Keene and the actor looked blankly at
each other. Compared to the tale just ended, their own stories seemed
but a reflex of utterly selfish lives. Even the Emperor experienced a
strange thrill--possibly the first real sensation he had known since he
was a boy. As to Thayor--he had hung on every word that fell from
Holcomb's lips.
"And what motive had Dinsmore in killing Bailey?" asked Thayor,
nervously, when the others had gone to the hall for their coffee and
liqueurs. "I asked your father but he did not answer me, and yet he must
have known."
"Oh, yes, he knew, Mr. Thayor. Everybody knows, our way, but it's one
of those things we don't talk about--but I'll tell you. It was about his
wife."
Thayor folded his napkin in an absent way, laid it carefully beside his
plate, unfolded it again and tossed it in a heap upon the table, and said
with a certain tenderness in his tone:
"And did he get away to Canada, Holcomb?"
"No, sir; his little girl fell ill, and he wouldn't leave her."
"And the woman, Holcomb--was she worth it?" continued Thayor.
There was a strange tremor in his voice now--so much so that the
young man fastened his eyes on the banker's, wondering at the cause.
"She was worth a lot to Bob, sir," replied Holcomb slowly. "They had
grown up together."

CHAPTER TWO

That same afternoon the banker passed through the polished steel grille
of his new home by means of a flat key attached to a plain gold chain.
The house, like its owner, had a certain personality of its own, although
it lacked his simplicity; its square mass being so richly carved that it
seemed as if the faintest stroke of the architect's soft pencil had made a
dollar mark. So vast, too, was its baronial hall and sweeping stairway in
pale rose marble, that its owner might have entered it unnoticed, had
not Blakeman, the butler, busying himself with the final touches to a
dinner table of twenty covers, heard his master's alert step in the hall
and hurried to relieve him of his coat and hat. Before, however, the
man could reach him, Thayor had thrown both aside, and had stepped
to a carved oak table on which were carefully arranged ten miniature
envelopes. He bent over them for a moment and then turning to the
butler asked in an impatient tone:
"How many people are coming to dinner, Blakeman?"
"Twenty, sir," answered Blakeman, his face preserving its habitual
Sphinx-like immobility.
"Um!" muttered Thayor.
"Can, I get you anything, sir?"
"No, thank you, Blakeman. I have just left the Club."
"A dinner of twenty, eh?" continued Thayor, as Blakeman disappeared
with his coat and hat--"our fourth dinner party this week, and Alice
never said a word to me about it." Again he glanced at the names of the
men upon the ten diminutive envelopes, written in an angular feminine
hand; most of them those of men he rarely saw save at his own dinners.
Suddenly his eye caught the name upon the third envelope from the end
of the orderly row.
"Dr. Sperry again!" he exclaimed, half aloud. He opened it and his lips
closed tight. The crested card bore the name of his wife. As he dropped
it back in its place his ear caught the sound of a familiar figure

descending the stairway--the figure of a woman of perhaps thirty-five,
thoroughly conscious of her beauty, whose white arms flashed as she
moved from beneath the flowing sleeves of a silk tea-gown that reached
to her tiny satin slippers.
She had gained the hall now, and noticing her husband came slowly
toward him.
"Where's Margaret?" Thayor