The Moneychangers | Page 8

along with him."
"They tell me he goes in for horses," said Lucy.
"He has a splendid stable," he answered.
"It was good of Ollie to bring him round," said she. "I have certainly jumped into the midst of things. What do you think I'm going to do to-morrow?"
"I have no idea," he said.
"I have been invited to see Mr. Waterman's art gallery."
"Dan Waterman's!" he exclaimed. "How did that happen?"
"Mrs. Alden's brother asked me. He knows him, and got me the invitation. Wouldn't you like to go?"
"I shall be busy in court all day to-morrow," said Montague. "But I'd like to see the collection. I understand it's a wonderful affair,--the old man has spent all his spare time at it. You hear fabulous estimates of what it's cost him--four or five millions at the least."
"But why in the world does he hide it in a studio way up the Hudson?" cried Lucy.
The other shrugged his shoulders. "Just a whim," he said. "He didn't collect it for other people's pleasure."
"Well, so long as he lets me see it, I can't complain," said Lucy. "There are so many things to see in this city, I am sure I shall be busy for a year."
"You will get tired before you have seen half of them," he answered. "Everybody does."
"Do you know Mr. Waterman?" she asked.
"I have never met him," he said. "I have seen him a couple of times." And Montague went on to tell her of the occasion in the Millonaires' Club, when he had seen the Croesus of Wall Street surrounded by an attending throng of "little millionaires."
"I hope I shan't meet him," said Lucy. "I know I should be frightened to death."
"They say he can be charming when he wants to," replied Montague. "The ladies are fond of him."
On Saturday afternoon, when Montague went down to Harvey's Long Island home, his brother met him at the ferry.
"Allan," he began, immediately, "did you know that Lucy had come down here with Stanley Ryder?"
"Heavens, no!" exclaimed Montague. "Is Ryder down here?"
"He got Harvey to invite him," Oliver replied. "And I know it was for no reason in the world but to be with Lucy. He took her out in his automobile."
Montague was dumfounded.
"She never hinted it to me," he said.
"By God!" exclaimed Oliver, "I wonder if that fellow is going after Lucy!"
Montague stood for some time, lost in sombre thought. "I don't think it will do him much good," he said. "Lucy knows too much."
"Lucy has never met a man like Stanley Ryder!" declared the other. "He has spent all his life hunting women, and she is no match for him at all."
"What do you know about him?" asked Montague.
"What don't I know about him!" exclaimed the other. "He was in love with Betty Wyman once."
"Oh, my Lord!" exclaimed Montague.
"Yes," said Oliver, "and she told me all about it. He has as many tricks as a conjurer. He has read a lot of New Thought stuff, and he talks about his yearning soul, and every woman he meets is his affinity. And then again, he is a free thinker, and he discourses about liberty and the rights of women. He takes all the moralities and shuffles them up, until you'd think the noblest role a woman could play is that of a married man's mistress."
Montague could not forbear to smile. "I have known you to shuffle the moralities now and then yourself, Ollie," he said.
"Yes, that's all right," replied the other. "But this is Lucy. And somebody's got to talk to her about Stanley Ryder."
"I will do it," Montague answered.
He found Lucy in a cosy corner of the library when he came down to dinner. She was full of all the wonderful things that she had seen in Dan Waterman's art gallery. "And Allan," she exclaimed, "what do you think, I met him!"
"You don't mean it!" said he.
"He was there the whole afternoon!" declared Lucy. "And he never did a thing but be nice to me!"
"Then you didn't find him so terrible as you expected," said Montague.
"He was perfectly charming," said Lucy. "He showed me his whole collection and told me the history of the different paintings, and stories about how he got them. I never had such an experience in my life."
"He can be an interesting man when he chooses," Montague responded.
"He is marvellous!" said she. "You look at that lean figure, and the wizened-up old hawk's face, with the white hair all round it, and you'd think that he was in his dotage. But when he talks--I don't wonder men obey him!"
"They obey him!" said Montague. "No mistake about that! There is not a man in Wall Street who could live for twenty-four hours if old Dan Waterman went after him in earnest."
"How in the world does he do it?" asked Lucy. "Is