The Fourth King

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “Kindly leave me out of your insinuations,” said Folwell quietly. “I came here to-day in spite of a lot of personal troubles to tell you the truth. I have no interest whatsoever in the Shanks Dictatograph and I am not even working for the National Industrial Securities Company since Mr. Eaves’s death.”

  Shanks appeared to be seething with rage. His voice trembled. He addressed himself to Lionel. “Then ‘y lad, you’re — you’re trying to close in on ‘e and hog it all. You’re — you’re — ” He raised a hairy fist and shook it violently at Eaves’s stepson. “Nary — nary a share you get of ‘y holdings. Try and — and foreclose and see where you get off at. I’ll lick you at law. Try it. Why, you little skunk” — he soared from his chair in his passion, and threateningly stepped toward Lionel — “I’ll — I’ll s’ash your white teeth down your little red throat. I’ll — ”

  Lionel’s voice rose into a terrified scream. “Folwell, protect me. This ruffian — ”

  Folwell rose abruptly from his chair. “Keep your shirt on, Shanks. No rough tactics in this place.”

  Shanks glared at him. Then his deformed lip rose into a snarl of triumph. “As f’r you, you da’ned thief, don’t you think I read your na’ in the case — in that letter written to that fellow Jeng? What’s your end of it, anyway, workin’ hand an’ head with the young one here? Why, say, if you hadn’t stole that fellow Eaves’s coin, accordin’ to that sa’ Jeng letter, I’d had an additional loan I was negotiatin’ with Eaves for. And you, of all, tryin’ to ‘ersuade ‘e out of a good thing!”

  Folwell sighed. “I merely told you some facts, my friend. That’s all. As for any allegations concerning me, just see that you keep them to yourself. What may have transpired between Eaves and myself is none of your business and doesn’t affect your interests.”

  Lionel, in the meantime, through the protection afforded by Folwell’s threatening manœuvre, had regained his courage.

  “What do you hold your shares at, Shanks?” he ripped out.

  “Twenty-five thousand, ‘inus the two thousand loan your stepfather ‘ade ‘e on the stock.”

  Lionel gave vent to a harsh laugh. “You poor halfwit. Here, I’ll give you two thousand cash, out of pity.”

  “Fui,” was Shanks’s grunted reply, such as one might return to a wholly ridiculous and impossible proposition. He was buttoning up his coat.

  Lionel glared at him. “Shanks, you’re a nut. If you come back here later to-day, I may change my mind entirely about giving you anything at all. Here — I’ll give you three thousand. If you don’t take that, you ought to be eating dust out of the gutter in another five years.”

  “Go to hell,” was Shanks’s succinct and decisive reply. He had finished the buttoning up of his cheap cotton coat. “Good-day, you young stock-selling crook. And you too, friend ‘echanical ex’ert — and thief!” And he trod across the room, kicked open the library door with a vicious kick, stamped down the hall, and with a mighty slam of the front door that shook the entire building, was away and down the steps.

  Lionel was in a fury. “The son of a mule,” he raved, walking up and down the floor. “The son of a mule. And I offered him three thousand cash. The poor, blind fool. The louse. The half-witted chimpanzee.” He turned vehemently to Folwell. “Folwell, can — can he use the notes of that letter father wrote to this fellow Jeng, to prove that father gave him the extension on the loan?”

  “The law has accepted stenographer’s notes as evidence in hundreds of cases, and I think that, while this would involve a new factor, it would be decided in the affirmative by precedent. At least a jury, impressed as it would surely be by the Dictatograph, would so decide. Yes, I’m willing to say he has you.”

  Lionel lighted a cigarette and then tossed it away from him in anger.

  “The impudent son of a mule,” he began again to rave. “I — I ought to have beaten the daylights out of him for his insults. I — I — should have smacked him one on the bean and laid him flat.”

  He continued to walk up and down, his face working convulsively. Folwell waited patiently. At last he spoke.

  “Well, Lionel, I’ve done all that I promised and all that you asked. It’s possible that he may consult another engineer and find out that what he heard here — from me, at least — was the truth. At any rate, I’ve fulfilled my part of the contract.

  “And now if you’ll hand me over the little paper comprising your end, we’ll part and call it a day — a bad day, perhaps, for all of us.”

  Lionel stood and regarded him narrowly. His tiny eyes grew even tinier as he surveyed the man in front of him with the sad, tired look on his countenance. A faint sickly smile came over his own face.

  “But, Folwell, I said if I could get Shanks to part with his stock, don’t you know?”

  “You said nothing of the kind,” retorted Folwell sharply. “The agreement was simply that I should tell him the truth in a straightforward, convincing technical manner, regardless of whether he was convinced or not. That man isn’t a man that can be convinced, that’s all.”

  Lionel tossed his head pettishly. “You’re crazy. I’ll part with no confession. You stole those bonds from the old man, by your own admission. So make good with me, his heir, or else separate from your own good name.” He paused. “Say, you’re some kind of an inventor yourself, aren’t you? Father told me once you had a good thing in a small way in that rotogravure disk of yours. I’ll tell you what, Folwell. Raise some coin on that disk, and pony over — say — one-half of what you lifted — say $2,500 — and I’ll hand you back your confession.”

  The withering look that Folwell turned on Lionel Pettibone made that young man shrink back in fear.

  “Lionel” — Folwell’s tone was ominous — “do you mean to tell me that you’re going to welsh on your agreement — that you’re going to try and sell me back that confession now, instead of giving it to me?”

  “Don’t strike me!” warned Lionel threateningly. “I’ll — I’ll have you sent over the road for assault as well as grand larceny, my man.”

  “Strike you?” sneered Folwell, his heart heavy as lead. “Strike you? I strike only men.” He leaned forward. “Come, Lionel, your promise. We’re both losing our tempers fast. Let’s not quarrel. That will bring us nothing. Give me back the paper as you said you would.”

  Lionel shook his head obdurately. “No. We agreed that I should give it over only if I succeeded in getting Shanks’s stock by your spiel. He didn’t fall for your talk, and I don’t have to fulfil my part of the bargain.” He looked at Folwell again, and the avaricious gleam in his eyes was a match for that which had lurked in Shanks’s orbs “What more do you want, Folwell? Raise me half that sum, I tell you — only half — and I’ll call matters square. And if not, so help me, you thief, I’ll run you to prison, where you belong.”

  Folwell gazed at him for a full five minutes. His gaze was a strange admixture of scorn and curiosity. At last, with a sigh, he placed his hat on his head, and without a further word left the room, walked down the hall and went quietly out into the bright noon sunlight. To himself, he said nothing. Indeed, he thought nothing. He boarded a car and rode, slumped in a corner seat, back to his little room on Rokeby Street.

  He met no one going in. A letter was on his bureau, a letter whose superscription was written in a precise, angular Teutonic hand. He took it up listlessly, and without opening it, flung himself back on his bed, where he lay with hot, indignant eyes, letter in hand, staring unseeingly up at the ceiling. What a miserable sort of world it was, after all. He felt so tired, so weary of it all. He wished he were lying on the beach of some tiny deserted island in the South Seas; an island where there were no traces of civilization nor of modern men who fought each other treacherously, tooth and nail, for money, money, money.

  At last he essayed to open his letter, lying on his back to read it. The oddly cramped signature was that of Franz Schierling, the young German rotogravure worker who was his co-partner in the roto
gravure disk. He read the simply worded missive indifferently. It had, indeed, come at a strange moment, discussing as it did — money! It ran:

  “1711, South Washtenaw Avenue,

  “Chicago.

  “Dear Jason:

  “I am sorry you could not see your way clear to raising the money I asked for my half in the disk, Jason; I still don’t think there is enough in that disk for two of us. Since this last proposition has fallen through, suppose I make you a counter-offer? I just managed at last to sell my cottage gros-papa left me near Sedgwick and Oak. Eleven years it has stood now, without never an offer. Two thousand clean I got, Jason, and lost a thousand in the sale. That district around Little Italy sure is dead.

  “Before I invest the money, Jason, are you interested in taking that amount for your own rights in the disk? If you are, Jason, call me up. Rockwell 2437, any time after six-thirty in the next three days, and I’ll close with you. This is best I can do, you know that, Jason. And you know I am interested only in a clean sale, leaving it a one-man affair.

  “Sincerely yours truly,

  “FRANZ SCHIERLING.”

  Folwell read the letter once more, and, folding it up, inserted it in his vest pocket. Still lying on his back, he tried to concentrate his mind upon Schierling’s insignificant offer, yet made in good faith. But there was about all his mental reactions now a listlessness, a languidness, an emotional torpidity that he could not shake off. And it was thus that he lay, staring at the ceiling, when he heard, repeated for the third time, the timid knock that at first had but briefly filtered into his consciousness. And hardly cognizant of what he did, he voiced the words, “Come in.”

  At first he thought it was an illusion, a hallucination. For, peeping through the now half-opened door in the flesh itself, stood a girl. And it was a girl whose body, according to the newspapers, had been found floating and had been identified after its fatal plunge from the out-going City of Duluth.

  “Avery!” he cried huskily. And he somehow managed to struggle to his feet.

  CHAPTER XI

  “BACK TO THE MILLS”

  FOR but the space of a second Folwell stood rigid at the side of the bed. As in a trance he saw Avery come in, closing the door quietly behind her. Then, regaining his senses, he crossed the room in three giant strides, and folded her to him. It was no dream. He could feel her heart pulsing wildly against his own thumping breast. He could feel her soft petal cheek against his own.

  “My dear one — my dear one!” was all he could say. And in the reiteration of those three words a world of tenderness, of love, of happiness, of exultation radiated from him.

  She spoke finally, looking up at him. In her eyes were the traces of tears, but her lips framed themselves in a reassuring smile.

  “Jason, you read it in the papers?”

  “Read it?” he repeated. “Did I read it? Merciful heavens — it was the most terrible piece of news I have ever read. And — and the paper said that your body had been definitely identified. I never dreamed that it was not you, that — ”

  “No,” she said, withdrawing gently from his arms in order to remove her hat and place it on the small stand near the door. With a brief appraising look around his neat little room, she resumed speaking. “No, Jason, much happened day before yesterday after you left the house, but what did take place meant that I was never even to leave for Sault Ste. Marie.”

  She dropped on the side of the bed and motioned to him to sit beside her. He did so without a word. Close he sat, and placed his hand over her slim, tapering fingers. He did not care if Mrs. Peters, his landlady, should come up and knock at the door because he was violating her rules anent “ladies as comp’ny.” All he cared about, all he considered, all he knew was that Avery Reardon had come back to him after he had visualized a long new life without her.

  “Tell me all about it,” he managed to say.

  She fastened her brown eyes solicitously upon him. Then she smiled comfortably. “Jason, Jason, how tired and worn you look. I didn’t dream you cared so much for me.” She paused. Then she began her explanation.

  “You will remember that I told you I was going to Toronto, not altogether as a vacation, but on a mission — something that I could not divulge. Perhaps you jumped to the conclusion that it may have been slightly connected with the National Industrial Securities Company. But this was not the case. The only connection between my trip and the company was its relation to Mr. Eaves’s son, Lionel Pettibone.”

  She paused while he stared puzzledly at her, but he made no comment.

  “You see, Jason, I had formed something of a friendship with Roslyn Van Etten, Lionel’s fiancée, through talking with her at times when she accompanied Lionel to the office to see his father. To be sure, I was only a girl who worked for a living, and she an heiress to a rich, rich wealth, but in her gentle, refined way she was dear and kind and interested in me. I never dreamed, though, that our mutual interest would amount to any actual dealings between us till the night she called at my home on Wisconsin Street.”

  “She got your address from Eaves?” asked Folwell quickly.

  “No. She had asked me for it herself in the office two days before, and had entered it in her little red leather engagement-book. And just two days later, as I have said, she called to see me at my home. She talked to me a long while as though to draw me out on several things, and at last she came to the point. She was engaged, as everyone knew — as had been announced in the papers, in fact — to Lionel Pettibone, but she had a haunting, intuitive fear that there was something in Lionel’s past life that was being concealed by him; something which might affect the happiness, the ultimate success of their marriage. It was after she had unburdened herself completely to me that she explained it. Lionel, so she said, seemed to be acutely distressed by all references to the city in which he studied art for two years, quite some five years ago — before, in fact, Eaves had met and married Lionel’s mother. Lionel’s mother had lived alone in the East, at this time, and Lionel, she knew, had lived in the ‘Bohemian’ quarter of that city during those two years, and Roslyn Van Etten’s woman’s instinct, Jason, told her that there was something definite and hidden, which Lionel was trying desperately to forget.”

  “The city in question was Toronto?” surmised Folwell. And he hazarded further: “And she came to you to get you to go to Toronto for her?”

  The girl nodded. “Yes. She had heard me mention shortly before our meeting, that I was to get a vacation with pay up in the late fall, and that I expected to remain quietly at home on account of lack of funds to do anything else with. She put a simple and attractive proposition to me. She herself wanted very much an opportunity to go secretly to Toronto, but the opportunity was not present on account of her having a strict and old-fashioned Dutch father who did not so much as allow her out of his sight. Therefore she wanted me to go in her place, and, under my own name, manage to meet several people whom Lionel had known in those two missing years and whose names he had dropped in casual conversation from time to time. Bit by bit, if at all possible, I was to unearth any details of his life in the Toronto art quarter that might throw some light on that hidden something — that concealed something which pained him so. For payment she offered to buy me a triangle-tour ticket, that would allow me to take in Sault Ste. Marie, and Buffalo as well, and give me forty dollars as expense money in Toronto.”

  “She wished you to do some actual detective work?” said Folwell.

  Avery nodded. “Exactly, but she felt that in its nature it was hardly such that she could or would hire a detective agency to do it. There was danger of publicity, and there was this in addition: Heiress though she was, she had actually little cash of her own to carry on extensive investigations. She was a girl who had never in her life had any business dealings, and she came to me, perhaps the only girl of the business world she knew, perhaps the only girl she had ever known out of her own set of women of leisure and dancing and teas.”

  “Was
she not afraid,” asked Folwell curiously, stroking the soft forearm of the girl, “that your connection with Eaves’s company might make you consider it disloyal to investigate his son and its heir?”

  “She touched upon that matter after she had carefully drawn me out,” replied Avery. “It was something that you may or may not understand, Jason, but I think you will. It was woman relying upon woman. That was all. She told me that if there really were nothing in Lionel’s past that he or she could be ashamed of, as an employee of his stepfather I would be only too glad to clear it up for all concerned; and that if there were something — that, as one woman seeing another good woman going to the altar — she knew I would speak to her secretly, tell her the truth, and save her from a serious mistake.”

  “Well,” Folwell agreed, “I venture she judged correctly in taking that attitude about you, honey-girl.” He paused. “But go ahead. How did it happen that the trip was called off? I am beginning to see the dreadful facts already, but not all the details.”

  “About an hour or so after you left, Jason, I finished the packing of my suitcase so that I would not have anything to delay me when it came time to go to the boat, which drew out from the Goodrich docks at 6 p.m. exactly. Mother kissed me good-bye, cautioned me to lock up the house well when I left, and departed for the Aurora and Elgin electric to get the three o’clock train for Elgin. Mr. Eaves had telephoned earlier in the afternoon that he would order a taxicab to take me to the boat, and directed me not to pay the charges, as they would be billed to him. It was at four o’clock —