She stopped suddenly and, bending forward in her chair, thrust her hand behind the picture and drew forth a package wrapped in paper. Placing it on the desk at my elbow she broke the string and, tearing off the paper, placed the contents before me.
One glance was enough — involuntarily I uttered a cry of amazement.
It was the fifty thousand dollars stolen by William Markton from the Montague Bank!
Opening a large handbag she had carried with her, Miss Markton picked up the package of money and dropped it inside.
“There,” she said, patting the bag, “is the money you have been searching for, Mr. Moorfield. I shall keep it. Heaven knows I have earned it!
“You may wonder,” she continued as, scarcely hearing or comprehending, I sat with staring eyes set straight before me, “why I did not remove the money without your knowledge. It was because I felt that I owed you an explanation.
“I took the money from Uncle Will’s safe ten minutes after he had put it there. At first it was my intention to return it, but after I opened it and saw — well, I am not making excuses. When I found that Uncle Will had been arrested, I saw plainly that I, too, was in danger.
“They were absolutely certain to search the apartment, so I went home to get the money, and started downtown with it, having no idea of where to go. Then I saw that I was being followed, and, thoroughly frightened, came to your office merely by chance, although I had heard something of you. Almost the first thing I saw was the picture and, hardly knowing what I did, I thrust the money behind it when you stooped to throw away your cigar. It was only afterward, when your manner told me that it had not been discovered, that I realized what an excellent hiding place I had chosen.
“You know the rest. You know why I feel myself safe in telling you. And yet you do not know all. There is one thing that such a woman as I am has no right to say to such a man as you. If I had the right” — the hard voice faltered ever so little — “I would say it. Heaven knows it is true. No — let me finish!
“I have fooled you and cheated you enough. I am speaking now simply that you may know me for the thing I am. If I could only—”
Here her voice broke, harsh with pain. As I sat with my head bowed between my hands I felt a breath, the merest touch, on my cheek. A moment later the door closed. She was gone.
I have never found her except in my dreams.
Perhaps it is just as well.
I seem somehow to get along better with my memories than most men do with their wives; and the passing years have given me philosophy.
As for the picture — I returned it to my friend who painted it, and who later sold it for quite a handsome sum.
Sometimes even memories are sharp-tongued.
Rose Orchid
Accepting as postulates the assertions that human beings are pegs, and that Lieutenant Commander Brinsley Reed, U.S.N. was a human being, it follows with certainty that he was beautifully fitted for his particular hole.
He was third in his class out of Annapolis. By the time he attained his two full stripes he had successfully dominated three junior messes and been the subject of unusual commendation in two wardrooms; and before he had advanced halfway up the list he was known as the best deck officer in the North Atlantic.
Four different captains applied for his services as executive when he passed into the next rank. But Lieutenant Commander Reed, who had ideas of his own concerning the proper discipline of a ship, and who was lucky enough to possess a key to a certain door in the bureau at Washington, disappointed them all by obtaining for himself the command of the gunboat Helena.
For the two years that followed, every man who had the good fortune to be transferred from the Helena to another ship swore at every chance, with violent and profane asseveration, that the Helena was a “madhouse.”
“The old man’s a holy terror,” they would say. “Bag and hammock inspection and fire drill twice a week. Abandon ship three times a month; and when he can’t think of nothing else it’s general quarters. For a seagoin’ hat it’s ten days in the brig. And brasswork? Say! Why, this is a home!”
All of which meant to indicate that Lieutenant Commander Reed was one of those persons who illustrate and justify the rather curious order of the words in the phrase: an officer and a gentleman.
He had at one time believed in the Bible; but it had long ago been discarded for the Blue Book, which is officially known as “Navy Regulations, 1914.”
In the third winter under his command, at the conclusion of the annual target practice and maneuvers at Guantanamo, the Helena was ordered to San Juan to relieve the Chester, which was returning to go into dry dock at New York.
Lieutenant Commander Reed was much pleased at this, for two reasons: first, it would remove him from continual subordination to a flag officer; and second, he would have an opportunity to visit a boyhood friend whom he had not seen for many years, and who was now the owner of a tobacco plantation in Puerto Rico. The Helena had lain at San Juan for a month the previous spring; but the lieutenant commander had not then known that his friend was on the island.
After all, the visit proved to be disappointing. I will not go so far as to say that Lieutenant Commander Reed had lost all social instinct, but the fact is that in his endeavor to perfect himself as a military machine he had forgotten how to be a man. He found his friend dull, and his friend found him insufferable.
For two days they made a pretense of amusing each other. On the third morning the lieutenant commander begged his friend to take no notice of his presence, but to follow his own inclinations; the guest would amuse himself.
“Very well,” the other agreed, “then I shall ride over to the north enclosure; the carts should arrive today. You won’t join me?”
The lieutenant commander refused, and spent a miserable day lounging in a hammock between two giant cedars, drinking crushed pineapple and reading some ancient copies of popular magazines. That evening he announced his intention of returning to the Helena at San Juan on the following morning.
“But you were to stay a week,” his host protested rather feebly. “And a rest will do you good. It’s not very amusing out here, but I’d be glad to have you. What’s the hurry?”
“Confound your politeness,” said the lieutenant commander, who regarded bluntness as an untainted virtue. “It’s no good, Dick; we don’t cut in. We’re only in each other’s way — and I want to get back to the ship.”
Accordingly, at four o’clock in the following afternoon (the start having been postponed some hours on account of the midday heat), the lieutenant commander mounted his little native pony that had carried him from San Juan to Cerrogordo in six hours, waved a last farewell to his host, and departed on his journey of forty miles across the mountains, through the foothills and down the long plain to the sea.
As he turned into the white wagon road that leads through San Lorenzo, the lieutenant commander felt a pleasant sense of relief.
He understood himself perfectly. Stern, passionately fond of authority, conscious of but one code of morals and of conduct, and supremely happy in his power and ability to enforce it, he was utterly unable to breathe in any other atmosphere than that of his cabin. As his pony carried him forward, past the wonderful blue limestone cliffs and innumerable rushing streams of the southern slope of the Sierra de Luquillo, his mind was thirty miles away, on the decks of the Helena.
It dwelt on a score of petty details: the independence of Ensign Brownell, the return of Quartermaster Moran, the disgraceful condition of the pay storeroom at the last Sunday inspection. He considered these matters at some length; he liked their flavor; and he earnestly desired to deal out justice — according to the code.