He swore again. Fate, in the shape of Revell, was slowly, but surely, dragging from him the two things that he wanted most in the world—that girl and that money. But hope is forever saying “good morning” to you, and, the whisky prompting, he told himself that Revell had not got either of them yet—and never would so long as his lungs held out and he could cry, “Stop thief!”
Only, to whom could he cry it? Not to Camille; she would not listen. Not to Revell; he would only laugh. But thank the Lord there still were the courts. Yet there, too, at the moment, he was stumped, for, barring the certainties of his own intuitions, he had not a thing to go on.
For him, those certainties were ample. They screamed at him. They shrieked the loose joints in Revell’s armor. They flaunted the fact, undeniable and beyond peradventure, that in the problematic event of Mike’s having made a will, it was in Camille’s favor that he would have made it. Therefore, he had but to show that the will was a forgery and that impostor would be jailed, the estate would be his, and, in the rebound, Camille also.
From that dream he started. Tatum, with his chucker-out air and prima-donna voice, was addressing him.
“Well, and did you do him?”
At a hovering waiter he murmured, “A high ball.” After which, he sat massively down and with a bulldog look listened while Glendenning recited the Alaskan epic.
The tale ended, Tatum drank and wiped his mouth.
“That was a very good show I saw tonight, but Revell must be a better one. Have you a match?”
Glendenning shoved him a box.
“Thanks. Have you a cigar also? Thanks again. As our friend probably knows, no law of God or man runs north of fifty-three. His Alaskan romance is, therefore, admirable. In it is the real artist’s surety of touch. It ought to be put to music. Of course, if I had him on the witness stand, I could run a limousine through it. But haven’t him there and I doubt now that I ever shall.”
“Why, today you—”
“Yes, I know, and afterward I saw Marvalho. As an expert, he has no superior and but one equal, Bakharoff, who lives in Petrograd, unless he is dead at the front. Marvalho said that the writing in the will and in Mike’s letters is identical. He said that I could take it or leave it, but that all three were written by the same man.”
Tatum drank again and added:
“It’s a great pity.”
He meant it, too, but he was thinking of his bill.
“I had quite counted on landing the estate,” he continued. “But as this life is ordered, nothing is certain except what has already happened. None the less—”
He paused, beat a brief tattoo on the table, nodded at Glendenning, and resumed.
“None the less, with the least adroitness, we ought still to grab the lion’s share. We have only to adopt toward Mike the same fiduciary position that Revell occupies and we will have turned the trick.”
Glendenning, who took it for granted that Tatum was drunk, groaned helplessly.
“Yes,” Tatum was saying, “it may be, as you once said, that Mike did for his father, and it may also be that Revell knows it. For the moment, however, all that is obscure and immaterial. But for some reason, Mike shuns the light of day. For some reason, he is hiding. For some reason, he covers his tracks, makes a will, and pretends to die, having previously arranged with his beneficiary to share the estate with him. But we can do any sharing as well as Revell, can’t we?”
Glendenning covered his mouth with a hand. Tatum, he saw, was not drunk, but was he mad?
“Of course we can,” Tatum, answering his own question, ran on. “Better, even. For Revell would certainly pocket it all; whereas we, as men of honor, would see to it that Mike received—well, a third. Perhaps a trifle less. But we would do the square thing.”
“Tatum,” Glendenning got out, “what are you driving at?”
“The estate of course. What else? I want my share in it, too. And I’ll get it. For Mike did not die in San Francisco and, since he omitted to there, it’s even money that he omitted to entirely. We have only to find him and—”
“Yes!” the exasperated Glendenning exclaimed. “But where?”
“Why, here in New York. I doubt if he ever left this sordid city.”
“But since Marvalho says that the will is in his writing, he must have made it out West.”
“Not in the least. He drew it here, signed it here, and shipped it to Revell, who, in affecting to recopy it, flimflammed the San Francisco lawyers with the original. These lawyers certainly did not reread it. Why should they? They merely had their clerks witness a paper which Revell pretended to sign. Anyway, if Mike was not here then, he is here now. Consequently, all we have to do is to find him, tell him that we will do as well by him as Revell, put on the thumbscrews, and there you are.”
Helplessly Glendenning looked into his empty glass. He could not see it and said so.
Tatum took it up.
“Then follow Revell.”
“Oh, as for that, I have.”
Tatum nodded.
“Good! You are over seven years of age.”
Glendenning nodded back.
“At the hotel where he is stopping, he has no visitors, receives no mail, never telephones.”
“Pays his bill regularly?”
“And in cash.”
“In twenty-dollar bills, perhaps. Where does he go?”
“To the Public Library or else to Miss Marcy’s.”
“He’s a bigger man than I thought.”
“In what way?”
“He stands alone—or appears to. What hotel is he stopping at?”
“The St. Jasper.”
Tatum beat another brief tattoo.
“There are a lot of rooms in that house.”
“What of
