One day he implored the faithful Bragdon to steal the Boston terriers. He could not and would not sell them and he dared not give them away. Bragdon dejectedly appropriated the dogs and Brewster announced that some day he would offer a reward for their return and “no questions asked.”
He took a suite of rooms in a small hotel and was feverishly planning the overthrow of the last torturing thousands. Bragdon lived with him and the “Little Sons of the Rich” stood loyally ready to help him when he uttered the first cry of want. But even this establishment had to be abandoned at last. The old rooms in Fortieth Street were still open to him and though he quailed at the thought of making them a refuge, he faced the ordeal in the spirit of a martyr.
XXX
The Promise of Thrift
“Monty, you are breaking my heart,” was the first and only appeal Mrs. Gray ever made to him. It was two days before the twenty-third and it did not come until after the “secondhand store” men had driven away from her door with the bulk of his clothing in their wagon. She and Peggy had seen little of Brewster, and his nervous restlessness alarmed them. His return was the talk of the town. Men tried to shun him, but he persistently wasted some portion of his fortune on his unwilling subjects. When he gave $5,000 in cash to a Home for Newsboys, even his friends jumped to the conclusion that he was mad. It was his only gift to charity and he excused his motive in giving at this time by recalling Sedgwick’s injunction to “give sparingly to charity.” Everything was gone from his thoughts but the overpowering eagerness to get rid of a few troublesome thousands. He felt like an outcast, a pariah, a hated object that infected everyone with whom he came in contact. Sleep was almost impossible, eating was a farce; he gave elaborate suppers which he did not touch. Already his best friends were discussing the advisability of putting him in a sanitarium where his mind might be preserved. His case was looked upon as peculiar in the history of mankind; no writer could find a parallel, no one imagine a comparison.
Mrs. Gray met him in the hallway of her home as he was nervously pocketing the $60 he had received in payment for his clothes. Her face was like that of a ghost. He tried to answer her reproof, but the words would not come, and he fled to his room, locking the door after him. He was at work there on the transaction that was to record the total disappearance of Edwin Brewster’s million—his final report to Swearengen Jones, executor of James Sedgwick’s will. On the floor were bundles of packages, carefully wrapped and tied, and on the table was the long sheet of white paper on which the report was being drawn. The package contained receipts—thousands upon thousands of them—for the dollars he had spent in less than a year. They were there for the inspection of Swearengen Jones, faithfully and honorably kept—as if the old westerner would go over in detail the countless documents.
He had the accounts balanced up to the hour. On the long sheet lay the record of his ruthlessness, the epitaph of a million. In his pocket was exactly $79.08. This was to last him for less than forty-eight hours and—then it would go to join the rest. It was his plan to visit Grant & Ripley on the afternoon of the twenty-second and to read the report to them, in anticipation of the meeting with Jones on the day following.
Just before noon, after his encounter with Mrs. Gray, he came downstairs and boldly, for the first time in days, sought out Peggy. There was the old smile in his eye and the old heartiness in his voice when he came upon her in the library. She was not reading. Books, pleasures and all the joys of life had fled from her mind and she thought only of the disaster that was coming to the boy she had always loved. His heart smote him as he looked into the deep, somber, frightened eyes, running over with love and fear for him.
“Peggy, do you think I’m worth anything more from your mother? Do you think she will ask me to live here any longer?” he asked, steadily, taking her hand in his. Hers was cold, his as hot as fire. “You know what you said away off yonder somewhere, that she’d let me live here if I deserved it. I am a pauper, Peggy, and I’m afraid I’ll—I may have to get down to drudgery again. Will she turn me out? You know I must have somewhere to live. Shall it be the poorhouse? Do you remember saying one day that I’d end in the poorhouse?”
She was looking into his eyes, dreading what might be seen in them. But there was no gleam of insanity there, there was no fever; instead there was the quiet smile of the man who is satisfied with himself and the world. His voice bore traces of emotion, but it was the voice of one who has perfect control of his wits.
“Is it all—gone, Monty?” she asked, almost in a whisper.
“Here is the residue of my estate,” he said, opening his purse with steady fingers. “I’m back to where I left off a year ago. The million is gone and my wings are clipped.” Her face was white, her heart was in the clutch of ice. How could he be so calm about it, when for him she was suffering such agony? Twice she started to speak, but her voice failed her. She turned slowly and walked to the window, keeping her
