The House of Mystery, Page 2

  II

  MR. NORCROSS WASTES TIME

  Robert H. Norcross looked up from a sheet of figures, and turned hisvision upon the serrated spire of old Trinity Church, far below. Sincehis eyes began to fail, he had cultivated the salutary habit of restingthem every half-hour or so. The action was merely mechanical; his mindstill lingered on the gross earnings of the reorganized L.D. and M.railroad. It was a sultry afternoon in early fall. The roar of lowerNew York came up to him muffled by the haze. The traffic seemed to movemore slowly than usual, as though that haze clogged its wheels andcongealed its oils. The very tugs and barges, on the river beyond,partook of the season's languor. They crept over the oily waves at asluggard pace, their smoke-streamers dropping wearily toward the water.

  The eyes of Robert H. Norcross swept this vista for the allotted twominutes of rest. Presently--and with the very slightest change ofexpression--they fixed themselves on a point so far below that he needsmust lean forward and rest his arms on the window sill in order tolook. He wasted thus a minute; and such a wasting, in the case ofRobert H. Norcross, was a considerable matter. The Sundaynewspapers--when in doubt--always played the income of Robert H.Norcross by periods of months, weeks, days, hours and minutes. Everyminute of his time, their reliable statisticians computed, was worth atrifle less than forty-seven dollars. Regardless of the waste of time,he continued to gaze until the watch on his desk had ticked off fiveminutes, or two hundred and thirty-five dollars.

  The thing which had caught and held his attention was a point in thechurchyard of old Trinity near to the south door.

  The Street had been remarking, for a year, that Norcross was growingold. The change did not show in his operations. His grip on the marketwas as firm as ever, his judgment as sure, his imagination as daring,his habit of keeping his own counsel as settled. Within that year, hehad consummated the series of operations by which the L.D. and M.,final independent road needed by his system, had "come in"; within thatyear, he had closed the last finger of his grip on a whole principalityof our domain. Every laborer in that area would thenceforth do a partof his day's delving, every merchant a part of his day's bargaining,for Robert H. Norcross. Thenceforth--until some other robber baronshould wrest it from his hands--Norcross would make laws and unmakelegislatures, dictate judgments and overrule appointments--give thehigh justice while courts and assemblies trifled with the middle andthe low. Certainly the history of that year in American financeindicated no flagging in the powers of Robert H. Norcross.

  The change which the Street had marked lay in his face--it had taken onthe subtle imprint of a first frosty day. He had never looked the powerthat he was. Short and slight of build, his head was rather small evenfor his size, and his features were insignificant--all except themouth, whose wide firmness he covered by a drooping mustache, and theeyes, which betrayed always an inner fire. The trained observer offaces noticed this, however; every curve of his facial muscles, everyplane of the inner bone-structure, was set by nature definitely andproperly in its place to make a powerful and perfectly cooerdinatedwhole. In this facial manifestation of mental powers, he was like oneof those little athletes who, carrying nothing superfluous, show thepower, force and endurance which is in them by no masses of overlyingmuscles, but only by a masterful symmetry.

  Now, in a year, the change had come over his face--the jump as abruptas that by which a young girl grows up--the transition from middle ageto old age. It was not so much that his full, iron-gray hair andmustache had bleached and silvered. It was more that the cheeks werefalling from middle-aged masses to old-age creases, more that the skinwas drawing up, most that the inner energy which had vitalized his walkand gestures was his no longer.

  In the mind, too--though no one perceived that, he least of all--hadcome a change. Here and there, a cell had disintegrated and collapsed.They were not the cells which vitalized his business sense. They laydeeper down; it was as though their very disuse for thirty years hadweakened them. In such a cell his consciousness dwelt while he gazed onTrinity Churchyard, and especially upon that modest shaft of granite,three graves from the south entrance. And the watch on his desk clickedoff the valuable seconds, and the electric clock on the wall jumped tomark the passing minutes. "Click-click" from the desk--seventy-eightcents--"Click-click"--one dollar and fifty-seven cents--"Clack" fromthe wall--forty-seven dollars.

  Presently, when watch and clock had chronicled four hundred and seventydollars of wasted time, he leaned back, looked for a moment on thebrazen September heavens above, and sighed. He might then have turnedback to his desk and the table of gross earnings, but for hissecretary.

  "Mr. Bulger outside, sir," said the secretary.

  "All right!" responded Mr. Norcross. In him, those two words spokeenthusiasm; usually, a gesture or a nod was enough to bar or admit avisitor to the royal presence. Hard behind the secretary, entered witha bound and a breeze, Mr. Arthur Bulger. He was a tall man aboutforty-five if you studied him carefully, no more than thirty-five ifyou studied him casually. Not only his strong shoulders, his firm seton his feet, his well-conditioned skin, showed the ex-athlete who haskept up his athletics into middle age, but also that very breeze andbound of a man whose blood runs quick and orderly through its channels.His face, a little pudgy, took illumination from a pair of lively eyes.He was the jester in the court of King Norcross; one of the half-dozenmen whom the bachelor lord of railroads admitted to intimacy. Ameasured intimacy it was; and it never trenched on business. Bulger,like all the rest, owed half of his position to the fact that he neverasked by so much as a hint for tips, never seemed curious about theoperations of Norcross. There was the time on Wall Street whenNorcross, by a lift of his finger, a deflection of his eye, might haveput his cousin and only known relative on the right side of the market.He withheld the sign, and his cousin lost. The survivors in Norcross'scircle of friends understood this perfectly; it was why they survived.If they got any financial advantage from the friendship, it was throughthe advertising it gave. For example, Bulger, a broker of only moderateimportance, owed something to the general understanding that he was"thick with the Old Man."

  Norcross looked up; his mustache lifted a little, and his eyes lit.

  "Drink?" he said. His allowance was two drinks a day; one just beforehe left the office, the other before dinner.

  "Much obliged," responded Bulger, "but you know where I was last night.If I took a drink now, I would emit a pale, blue flame."

  Norcross laughed a purring laugh, and touched a bell. The secretarystood in the door; Norcross indicated, by an out-turned hand, the topof his desk. The secretary had hardly disappeared before the office-boyentered with a tray and glasses. Simultaneously a clerk, entering fromanother door as though by accident, swept up the balance sheets of theL.D. and M. and bore them away. Bulger's glance followed the papershungrily for a second; then turned back on Norcross, carefully mixing aScotch highball.

  As Norcross finished with the siphon, his eyes wandered downward again.

  "Ever been about much down there?" he asked suddenly. Bulger crossedthe room and looked down over his shoulder.

  "Where?" he asked, "The Street or--"

  "Trinity Churchyard."

  "Once I sang my little love lays there in the noon hour," answeredBulger. "I was a gallant clerk and hers the fairest fingers that evercaressed a typewriter--" The intent attitude of Norcross, the fact thathe neither turned nor smiled, checked Bulger. With the instinct of thecourtier, he perceived that the wind lay in another tack. He racked theunused half of his mind for appropriate sentiments.

  "Bully old graveyard," he brought out; "lot's of good people buriedthere."

  "Know any of the graves?"

  "Only Alexander Hamilton's. Everyone knows that."

  "That one--see--that marble shaft--not one of the old ones."

  "If you're curious to know," answered Bulger easily, "I'll find out onmy way down to-morrow. I suppose if you were to go and look, and thereporters were to see you meditating among the tomb
s, we'd have a scarehead to-morrow and a drop of ten points in the market." Bulger's shiftto a slight levity was premeditated; he was taking guard againstoverplaying his part.

  "No, never mind," said Norcross, "it just recalls something." He pausedthe fraction of a second, and his eye grew dull. "Wonder ifthey're--anywhere--those people down under the tombstones?"

  "I suppose we all believe in immortality."

  "Seeing and hearing is believing. I believe what I see. Born that way."Norcross was speaking with a slight, agitated jerk in his voice. Herose now, and paced the floor, throwing out his feet in quick thrusts."I'm getting along, Bulger, and I'd like to know." More pacing. Comingto the end of his route, he peered shrewdly into the face of theyounger man. "Have you read the Psychical Society's report on Mrs.Fife?"

  Bulger's mind said, "Good God no!" His lips said, "Only some newspaperstuff about them. Seemed rather remarkable if true. Something in thatstuff, I suppose."

  "I've read them," resumed Norcross. "Got the full set. We ought toinform ourselves on such things, Bulger. Especially when we get older.That gravestone now. There's one like it--that I know about." Norcross,with another jerky motion, which seemed to propel him against his will,crossed to his desk and touched a bell, bringing his secretaryinstantly.

  "Left hand side of the vault, box marked 'Private 3,'" he said. Then heresumed:

  "If they could come back they would come, Bulger. Especially those weloved. Not to let us see them, you understand, but to assure us it isall right--that we'll live again. That's what I want--proof--I can'ttake it on faith." His voice lowered. "Thirty years!" he whispered."What's thirty years?"

  The secretary knocked, entered, set a small, steel box on the glass topof the desk. Norcross dismissed him with a gesture, drew out his keys,opened the box. It distilled a faint scent of old roses and old papers.Norcross looked within for a moment, as though turning the scent intomemories, before he took out a locket. He opened it, hesitated, andthen extended it to Bulger. It enclosed an exquisite miniature--a youngwoman, blonde, pretty in a blue-eyed, innocent way, but characterless,too--a face upon which life had left nothing, so that even the greatpainter who made the miniature from a photograph had illuminated itonly with technical skill.

  "Don't tell me what you think of her," Norcross said quietly; "I preferto keep my own ideas. It was when I was a young freight clerk. Shetaught school up there. We were--well, the ring's in the box, too. Theytook it off her finger when they buried her. That's why--" to put thebrake on his rapidly running sentiment, he ventured one of his rarepleasantries at this point--"that's why I'm still a stock newspaperfeature as one of the great matches for ambitious society girls."

  Bulger, listening, was observing also. Within the front cover of thecase were two sets of initials in old English letters--"R.H.N." and"H.W." His mind, a little confused by its wanderings in strange fields,tried idly to match "H.W." with names. Suddenly he felt the necessityof expressing sympathy.

  "Poor--" he began, but Norcross, by a swift outward gesture of thehand, stopped and saved him.

  "IT WASN'T THE MONEY; IT WAS THE GAME--"]

  "Well, I got in after that," Norcross went on, "and I drove 'em! Itwasn't the money; it was the game. She'd have had the spending of_that_. And it isn't just to see her--it's to know if she is stillwaiting--and if we'll make up for thirty years--out there."

  As Bulger handed back the locket, the secretary knocked again. Norcrossstarted; something seemed to snap into place; he was again the silent,guarded baron of the railroads. He dropped the locket into the box,closed it. "The automobile," said his secretary. Norcross nodded, andindicated the box. The secretary bore it away.

  "Come up to dinner Tuesday," said Norcross in his normal tone. But hisvoice quavered a little for a moment as he added:

  "You're good at forgetting?"

  "Possessor of the best forgettery you ever saw," responded Bulger.Forthwith, they turned to speech of the railroad rate bill.

  * * * * *

  When, after a mufti dinner at the club, Bulger reached his bachelorapartments, he found a telegram. The envelope bore his office address;by that sign he knew, even before he unfolded the yellow paper, that itwas the important telegram from his partner, the crucial telegram, forwhich he had been waiting these two days. It must have come to theoffice after he left. He got out the code book from his desk, laid itopen beside the sheet, and began to decipher, his face whitening as hewent on:

  BUTTE, MONT.

  Reports of expert phony. Think Oppendike salted it on him. They will finish this vein in a month. Then the show will bust. Federated Copper Company will not bite and too late now to unload on public. Something must be done. Can't you use your drag with Norcross somehow?

  WATSON.

  Bulger, twisting the piece of yellow paper, stared out into the street.His "drag with Norcross!" What had that ever brought, what could itever bring, except advertising and vague standing? Yet Norcross by aword, a wink, could give him information which, rightly used, wouldcancel all the losses of this unfortunate plunge in the Mongolia Mine.But Norcross would never give that word, that wink; and to fish for itwere folly. Norcross never broke the rules of the lone game which heplayed.

  As Bulger stood there, immovable except for the nervous hands whichstill twisted and worried the telegram, he saw a sign on the buildingopposite. The first line, bearing the name, doubtless, was illegible;the second, fully legible, lingered for a long time merely in hisperceptions before it reached and touched his consciousness.

  "CLAIRVOYANT," it read.

  He started, leaned on a table as though from weakness, and continued tostare at the sign.

  "Who is the cleverest fakir in that business?" he said at length tohimself.

  And then, after a few intent minutes:

  "When he was a freight clerk--thirty years ago--that was at FarnhamMills--'H.W.'--granite shaft--sure it can be done!"