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Read Ebook: Captivating Mary Carstairs by Harrison Henry Sydnor
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Ebook has 1986 lines and 85794 words, and 40 pages
I The Chief Conspirator Secures a Pal
II They Embark upon a Crime
IV Which Concerns Politics and other Local Matters
V Introduces Mary Carstairs and Another
VI The Hero Talks with a Lady in the Dark
XX Varney, Having Embarked upon a Crime, Finds out that there is a Price to Pay
CAPTIVATING MARY CARSTAIRS
Captivating Mary Carstairs
THE CHIEF CONSPIRATOR SECURES A PAL
In a rear room of a quaint little house uptown, a great bronzed-faced man sat at a piano, a dead pipe between his teeth, and absently played the most difficult of Beethoven's sonatas. Though he played it divinely, the three men who sat smoking and talking in a near-by corner paid not the least attention to him. The player, it seemed, did not expect them to: he paid very little attention himself.
Next to the selection of members, that is, no doubt, the most highly prized thing about the Curzon Club: you are not expected to pay attention unless you want to. It is a sanctuary where no one can bore you, except yourself. The members have been chosen with this in mind, and not chosen carelessly.
Lord Pembroke, who married a Philadelphian, is quoted as saying that the Curzon is the most democratic club in a too confoundedly democratic country. M. Arly, the editor, has told Paris that it is the most exclusive club in the world. Probably both were right. The electing board is the whole club, and a candidate is stone-dead at the first blackball; but no stigma attaches to him for that. Of course, it is a small club. Also, though money is the least of all passports there, it is a wealthy club. No stretch of the imagination could describe its dues as low. But through its sons of plutocracy, and their never-ending elation at finding themselves in, has arisen the Fund, by which poor but honest men can join, and do join, with never a thought of ways and means. Of these Herbert Horning, possibly the best-liked man in the club, who supported a large family off the funny department of a magazine, was one. He had spurned the suggestion when it was first made to him, and had reluctantly foregone his election; whereon Peter Maginnis had taken him aside, a dash of red in his ordinarily composed eye.
"How much?" he demanded brutally.
"How much for what?"
"How much for you?" roared Peter. "How much must the club pay you to get you in?"
Horning stared, pained.
"God meant no man to be a self-conscious ass," said Peter more mildly. "The club pays you a high compliment, and you have the nerve to reply that you don't take charity. I suppose if Congress voted you a medal for writing the funniest joke in America, you'd have it assayed and remit the cash. Chuck it, will you? Once in a year we find a man we want, and then we go ahead and take him. We don't think much of money here but--as I say, how much?"
The "but" implied that Horning did, and hurt as it was meant to. He came into the club, took cheerfully what they offered him that way, and felt grateful ever afterwards that Maginnis had steered him to the light.
The big man, Maginnis himself, sat on at the piano, his great fingers rambling deftly over the keys. He was playing Brahms now and doing it magnificently. He was fifteen stone, all bone and muscle, and looked thirty pounds heavier, because you imagined, mistakenly, that he carried a little fat. He was the richest man in the club, at least so far as prospects went, but he wore ready-made clothes, and one inferred, correctly, that a suit of them lasted him a long time. He looked capable of everything, but the fact was that he had done nothing. But for his money and a past consisting of thirty years of idleness, he might have been the happiest dog alive.
"The best government," said one of the three men who were not listening to the piano, "is simply the surest method for putting public opinion into power."
The sentence drifted over the player's shoulder and Brahms ended with a crash.
"Balzac said that," he cried, rising abruptly, "and said it better! But, good heavens, how you both miss the point! Why, let me tell you."
But this they stoutly declined to do. Amid laughter and protests--for the big man's hobbies were well known to the club--two of them sprang up in mock terror, and headed for the door. They indicated that they had promised each other to play billiards and dared not break the engagement.
"I couldn't stay to the end, anyway, Peter," explained one, from the door. "My wife sits up when I'm out after midnight. Meet me here for breakfast some bank-holiday, and we'll give the day to it."
Maginnis, who never got over feeling disappointed when he saw his audience slipping away from him, sighed, searched through his frowzy pockets for a match, lit his pipe, and fell upon a lounge near to all the society that was left him.
"Why weren't you up?" said this society presently.
"The idea of dinner was repellent to me."
"To you, Peter--the famous trencherman of song and story? Why this unwonted daintiness?"
"Lassitude. Too weary to climb the stairs. Besides, I wasn't hungry."
"Ah," said Reggie Townes, "you have the caveman's idea of dinner, I see. It strikes you as purely an occasion for purveying provender to man's interior. The social feature eludes you. You know what I think, Peter? You ought to go to work."
"That's the word. What of it?"
"Not a thing. The idea was new to me; that's all."
"Persiflage and all that aside, why don't you take a stab at politics?"
"Politics! Here in New York! I'd sooner go into Avernus of the easy descent. If you had a town to run all by yourself now, there might be something in it. That idea of yours as to going to work, while unquestionably novel, strikes me as rather clever."
"No credit belongs to me," said Townes, "if I happened to be born brilliant instead of good-looking."
"I'll ponder it," said Peter; and stretching out his great hand with a gesture which banished the subject, he pushed a service button and begged Townes to be so kind as to name his poison.
Outside in the hall a voice just then called his name, and Maginnis answered.
A young man in evening dress strolled through the doorway, a tallish, lithe young man with a pleasant clean-cut face and very light hair. It was evident enough that he patronized a good tailor. He glanced at the two men, nodded absently, and dropped without speech into a chair near the door. Townes eyed him somewhat quizzically.
"Evening, Larry. A little introspective to-night, yes?"
The young man, unseeing eyes on Peter, did not answer. Instead, he sprang up, as though struck by a thought of marked interest and bolted out the door. They saw him vanish into the telephone booth across the hall and bang the glass door shut behind him.
"Forgot an engagement."
"You mean remembered one," said Peter.
"It all figures out to the same answer," said Townes; and glancing presently at his watch, he announced that he must be trotting on.
"But I've ordered something for you, man."
"Varney can use it, can't he?"
The door opened, and the tallish young man stood on the threshold again, this time social and affable. His distraitness, oddly enough, had all gone. He greeted the two in the smoking-room as though he had seen them for the first time that evening; expressed his pleasure at being in their company; inquired after their healths and late pursuits; pressed cigarettes upon them.
They rallied him upon his furtive movements and fickle demeanor, but drew only badinage in kind, and no explanations; and Townes, laughing, turned to the door.
"Dally with us yet a little while, Reggie."
"No, gentles, no! I'm starting abroad to-night and have already dallied too long."
"Abroad!"
"My sister," said Townes, "as perhaps you don't know, wedded a foreigner--Willy Harcourt, born and raised in Brooklyn. Therefore, I am now leaving to go to a party in Brooklyn. Say that to yourself slowly--'a party in Brooklyn!' Sounds sort of ominous, doesn't it? If the worst happens, I look to you fellows to break it to my mother. Please mention that I was smiling to the last."
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