Miss Welles and the Rev. Mr. Pursen were the first to come. They were closely followed by Mr. Stickler, for whom Secor had sent. Mr. Stickler entered, white and shaky. It was quite evident that the accident to his employer had been a terrible shock to him.
Mr. Stickler had read an account of the daring robbery in his morning paper. He had known that Ogden Secor lay at St. Luke’s hospital; but he had paced up and down his office for two hours before receiving Secor’s summons to his bedside. Even then he had put off the ordeal for another half hour - surely Mr. Stickler’s must have been a most sympathetic temperament, which shrank from the sight of the mangled countenance of his employer!
Before he started for the hospital he used the telephone.
“Is Officer Doarty there?” he asked, when he had obtained his connection.
“Hello, Mr. Doarty. You’ve read of what happened to Mr. Secor last night?
“And did you notice that the fellow they got — the one who was wounded — has been recognized as an habitué of Abe Farris’s? Yes, and do you remember what you told me about that Lynch girl yesterday? Did you know she knew the combination to the safe? Sure; I thought of that right away.
“Yes, you bet. Wait a minute — I’ve got it here in my file. Here it is — Calumet Avenue,” and he gave a number, “she’s rooming there. You’d better hurry. You’ll be lucky if she hasn’t left town already.
“What? Oh, I don’t know yet — I’ve been too upset to figure it up, but it must have been close to twenty-five thousand dollars. No, bring her right to the hospital — I’ll be there. All right. Good-by.”
Half an hour later Mr. Stickler, on tiptoe and hat in hand, approached the bedside of his wounded chief. On his face was an expression of funereal sorrow.
“This is terrible,” he murmured huskily.
“Well,” said Secor with a wan smile, “they didn’t quite get me, though it wasn’t any fault of theirs that they didn’t. Have you discovered just what they got away with, Stickler?”
Mr. Stickler hemmed and hawed. Evidently the answering of that question was one he dreaded.
“Why, I’m not quite sure yet, Mr. Secor,” he said at last; “but there was, unfortunately, a considerable amount of negotiable securities as well as currency in the safe last night. You see, we had an exceptionally large pay roll on two big jobs for today, and we had drawn the cash yesterday because today, being Saturday, and a short day, we wanted to have everything in readiness to pay off promptly at noon.”
“We’ve never been in the habit of doing that, Mr. Stickler,” was Secor’s only comment. “But come, how much did they get?”
“Close to twenty-five thousand dollars,” whispered Mr. Stickler, and that it cost him an effort to say it was apparent to those about the bedside as well as to the injured man.
“But I think we’ll get it all back,” Mr. Stickler hastened to add. “They caught one of the fellows, and Doarty — of the detective bureau — telephoned me this morning that he expected to make an arrest within a few hours of the principal in the case.”
“Good,” exclaimed Secor. “But I cannot imagine who it could have been, or how they obtained the combination to the safe. Do you suspect any one in the office, Stickler?”
“I’d rather not say just yet, Mr. Secor,” replied Stickler, “though I have my suspicions. When Doarty comes I think he will bring a big surprise along with him.”
“It must have been through the connivance of some one in the office that they obtained the combination,” said Miss Welles.
Mr. Pursen nodded. In the back of his brain an almost dead memory was struggling toward the light. Somehow it was inextricably confused with recollection of the face of Ogden Secor’s stenographer, and a haunting, though vague, conviction that he had met the girl before and under no pleasant circumstances.
A moment later there came a knock upon the door. Mr. Pursen crossed the room and opened it, admitting a young woman and a large man. One glance at the latter would have been all sufficient to identify him to one city bred. There is something about the usual plain clothes man — whether his build, his carriage, or the way be wears his clothes, is difficult to say — that tags him almost as convincingly as would a uniform.
“Ah, Mr. Doarty, good morning,” purred Mr. Pursen. He recognized June with an inclination of his head — very slight indeed.
The girl crossed directly to Secor’s side.
“Oh, Mr. Secor,” she exclaimed, her voice trembling with emotion. “It is awful. I had not seen a paper this morning and did not know until Mr. Doarty came for me, and told me.”
She did not say what else Mr. Doarty had told her, principally by innuendo. Self was forgotten in the real affliction she felt at sight of her employer’s pitiable condition. Secor looked up at her, his old, pleasant smile lighting his features.
“Oh, I guess it’s not so bad,” he said. “They ought to have me out of here in no time.”
Miss Welles came closer to the bedside. Instinctively she guessed why Doarty had brought the girl here. Secor alone seemed to realize no connection between Mr. Stickler’s recent hint and the coming of June Lathrop with the plain clothes man.
Doarty crossed the room to June’s side, laying a heavy hand upon her arm.
“None of the soft stuff, Mag,” he said roughly; “cut it out.”
Secor looked up at the man in surprise, a frown crossing his face.
“What is the meaning of this?” he asked. “Miss Lathrop is my secretary. There has been nothing in her manner at all offensive — to me.”
“I guess you don’t know who she is, Mr. Secor,” said Doarty. “Her name ain’t Lathrop — it’s Lynch, Maggie Lynch, and when I first seen her she was an inmate of Abe Farris’s joint on Dearborn.”
Secor looked at June questioningly. There was an expression of disbelief in his eyes. The girl dropped her own before his steady gaze.
The horror of it! If he could know — if Ogden Secor of all other men on earth could but know the truth — the truth that not even the shrewd Mr. Doarty had guessed.
At the voicing of the name Maggie Lynch, the Rev. Mr. Pursen stepped suddenly forward. The mists had been swept from his memory. As distinctly as it had been yesterday he recalled the humiliation that this girl had put upon him before the representatives of several of the city’s great dailies. Even now he flushed at the memory of the keen shafts of ridicule that had resulted, and which had made the papers of the following day such frightful nightmares to him.
“Don’t you remember her, Mr. Secor?” he cried. “She’s the woman we tried so hard to help, and who ignored our godly efforts.”
Mr. Secor remembered. He recalled the scene within the Grand jury room, and in the antechamber without. And he recalled many other things of which the others knew nothing — the intelligence and the loyalty of the girl since she had been in his employ. He remembered the several occasions upon which her tact or judgment had saved him from severe losses. He thought of the pleasure that he had always experienced in taking up the day’s work since June Lathrop had been with him — something that he had never realized until that moment — and something of a dull ache oppressed his heart with the sudden knowledge that it was all over.
He had always thought of her merely as a part of the office force. He had never for a moment considered her in any other light than a faithful and almost flawless stenographer — nor did he now; yet there was a distinct sensation of personal loss accompanying the knowledge that he could now no longer employ her in so intimate a capacity as that of private secretary. His Puritanical prudery was too deeply ingrained to permit even a thought to the contrary.
To him, so far as his own personal association with such a person was concerned, the girl was as good as damned. He would as easily have considered consociation with a leper, though he would have been equally as willing to have helped either one or the other in any other way that did not require him to come into contact with them.
“What did you bring her h
ere for?” he asked wearily. “There has been nothing in her deportment since she has been in my employ but what was entirely proper. It seems unnecessary that she should be subjected to this humiliation.”
“Her deportment in the office may have been all right,” spoke up Mr. Doarty, “but we don’t know so much what she was doin’ with her time after office hours.”
Mr. Stickler nodded his head portentously.
“You see, Mr. Secor,” went on the plain-clothes man, “one of the guys that slugged you hangs out at Abe Farris’s saloon, an’ I seen Mag here, not so long ago, feedin’ up in a beanery with another crook that hangs out at Farris’s — Eddie the Dip’s his name,” and Doarty shot a sudden look in June’s direction in time to see the quick intake of her breath in consternation and surprise.
“We got a drag-net out for Eddie now, an’ when we get him I guess we’ll have all three of ‘em,’’ concluded Mr. Doarty. He was very proud of this piece of police work of his.
“What has Miss Lathrop to do with it?” asked Secor. “She did not slug me.”
“She knew the combination to your safe didn’t she?” asked Doarty.
During the conversation June was aware that Miss Welles had drawn away from her, casting such a look of horror and disgust in her direction as might have withered her completely could looks wither.
Mr. Pursen, too, stood coldly aloof, while Stickler looked nervously down into Michigan Avenue from the window of the room, not once meeting the girl’s eyes squarely.
Ogden Secor half raised himself upon his elbow. He looked straight into June Lathrop’s eyes, and hers met his, as level and unflinching.
“Miss Lathrop,” he said, in a very quiet voice, “are you in any way responsible for the rifling of the safe — tell me the truth.”
The girl’s eyes never left his for a moment. Her reply was but a single word, delivered without emphasis, in a very ordinary tone.
“No,” she said.
Secor sank back upon his pillow.
“That is all,” he said, “you may go.”
The doctor had just entered the room.
“You may all go!” he cried in a petulant voice. “I am surprised, Miss Castrol,” to the nurse, “that you should have permitted this — come, get out, all of you.”
Doarty came closer to the bed.
“You wish this woman held, of course?” he asked.
“Has any complaint been lodged against her?” asked Secor.
“Not yet.”
“There will be none — you may let her go,” said Secor.
Doarty looked his surprise, and seemed on the point of arguing, when the doctor placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Quick!” said the physician. “Get out of here, or I cannot be responsible for the recovery of this patient.”
June took an impulsive step toward the injured man.
“How can I thank you for believing in me?” she cried.
With a weary sigh Ogden Secor turned away from her — he made no reply. The doctor led her to the door.
“Leave the room,” he said.
Outside were those who had preceded her from the apartment. Mr. Pursen was the first to speak. He pointed toward the elevator.
“Leave the hospital at once,” he said.
Her eyes filled with unshed tears, the girl walked quickly down the hall. At the elevator stood Doarty.
“You’d better beat it, Mag,” he said.
“This town’s too wicked for an innocent girl like you,” and from his tone she knew that he meant it — that much of it which warned her to leave the city.
10. “RATS DESERT...”
For a long month Ogden Secor lay at St. Luke’s. Surgeons pulled their whiskers, glaring owl-like at the patient the while they wondered why the deuce nature had not come to their rescue. At last she did — to some measure at least — and he was bundled off home, weak and broken.
They advised him to seek change and rest in a long ocean voyage; but he felt that his business, already long neglected, needed him. Not that he longer found the old keen delight in anticipation of strenuous coping with the storms and buffetings of the commercial world, but rather that habit drove him to it.
He found conditions in a frightful muddle. No one seemed to know what had been transpiring in the office — Stickler least of all. Secor did not deem it necessary to question Sammy — it had been better for him had he done so.
One of his first inquiries was for Miss Lathrop. Mr. Stickler looked at him in surprise.
“Why, I discharged her, Mr. Secor,” he said. “You certainly cannot mean that you would have cared to continue her in our employ after learning the reputation she bore?”
“‘Reputation’?” repeated Secor, “I do not quite grasp you, Mr. Stickler.”
Mr. Stickler explained. It soon became evident to him that there was something radically wrong with his employer. There was a blank look of utter incomprehension upon Ogden Secor’s face.
“It is odd,” he said at last, “that I do not recall any of the incidents which you relate. You are quite sure, Stickler?”
“Quite sure, Sir.”
As day succeeded day Ogden Secor realized more and more fully what an unusual secretary Miss Lathrop had been. He no longer mentioned her to Mr. Stickler, but he missed her very much, just the same. At times he recalled with a start the things that Stickler had told him about the girl’s past, and then he would realize that after all it would have been impossible to have retained her. It was too bad, he thought; too bad — such secretaries as she were scarce.
As to Stickler’s assertion that she had connived with the cracksmen, furnishing them the combination to the safe, Secor would not believe it.
Months rolled by. September came again. Long since Mr. Stickler had realized that his chief’s memory was far from what it had been prior to the injuries he had received at the hands of the burglars. Ogden Secor, too, had guessed at something of the sort. He seemed to have lost his grasp. His usually alert mind was no longer equal to the emergencies that were constantly arising in his business.
Not only did he find it more and more difficult to close contracts, but those that he did obtain netted him losses now instead of the profits of the past. There was a leak somewhere, but Ogden Secor was not mentally fit to discover it.
Matters went from bad to worse. His losses on the year’s work entailed the necessity of mortgaging the bulk of his real-estate holdings to complete a large public works contract in a neighboring city. Unable longer to concentrate his mind upon the work in hand, it ran completely away with him. Stickler assumed more and more the direction of it.
High prices were paid for inferior material, and for large amounts that were never delivered. Where the difference went the books of the corporation did not show, and if they had it is doubtful if Ogden Secor’s waning mentality would have been able to understand that he was being persistently and systematically betrayed and robbed.
The final blow came when the engineers of the city for which the work was being done refused to accept it on the grounds that scarcely any of the material used was up to specifications. Coincidentally Mr. Stickler resigned his position with John Secor & Co., to accept the management of a stronger competitor.
An expensive lawsuit followed the refusal of the municipality, for which the work had been done, to pay the bill. In the end Secor lost. Bankruptcy proceedings followed, and on the first of the following February Ogden Secor found himself a ruined man — almost penniless, and broken as well in health and mentality.
With the exception of a worthless and barren farm in Idaho and a few articles of clothing, he had disposed of everything he possessed in an endeavor to meet the demands of his creditors. The farm, too, would have gone with the rest had he recalled the existence of it.
During the past few months of mental and nervous stress Secor had seen but little of Sophia Welles. He had not felt equal to the rounds of social activity which constituted her life, nor had he found her ge
nerously sympathetic.
Now that the end had come he sought her, hoping against hope that the ubiquitous Mr. Pursen would not be present. To his relief he found Sophia Welles alone.
She did not need the evidence of his tired and haggard face to realize the demand that might presently be made upon her sympathy and generosity — she had but just laid aside the noon edition of an afternoon paper in which she had perused the last of the rapidly dwindling references to a failure that had at first occupied a large part of the front pages of many editions. Sophia Welles knew at last that Ogden Secor was a hopelessly ruined man.
There was but one thing to do — she must forestall him.
“I am glad that you have come today, Ogden,” she said, after a brief exchange of greetings. “For almost a year now I have had a great load weighing heavily upon my shoulders.” — Miss Welles did not say upon her heart— “and I am only sorry that I did not speak of it long ago, for I can only too well realize the motives that may now be unjustly attributed to me in pressing the subject at this time of temporary financial trouble in which you find yourself.
“To be quite frank, I discovered long since that my affections were surely directing themselves toward another. I should have told you at once, but I was not sure at first, and I dreaded causing you useless pain.”
She paused. Secor looked at her through dull eyes. It was evident that he was going to take it much harder than she had supposed.
It is true that not once since his accident had he spoken to her of their engagement. There had never been much in the way of sentimental exchanges between them, so that the absence of these had aroused little or no surprise in the girl’s mind. She was glad now that it had been so, for it was going to make a difficult job much less difficult than it would otherwise have been.
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 716
