PAGE 17
"Worth 10,000"
by
For Marr suddenly to hail a man he was supposed not to know might be fatal; almost surely at this critical moment it would stir up suspicion in Hartridge’s mind. Yet some way, somehow, at once, he must stop the word bearer. But how? That was it–how?
Ah, he had it! In the fraction of a moment he had it. It came to him now, fully formed, the shape of it conjured up out of that jumble of words which had been flowing to him from the telephone desk all the while he had been sitting there and which had registered subconsciously in his quick brain. The pause, naturally spaced, which fell between Hartridge’s ’bout-faced concession and Marr’s reply, was not unduly lengthened, yet in that flash of time Marr had analyzed the puzzle of the situation and had found the answer to it.
“Bully, Hartridge!” he exclaimed. “You’ll never regret it. Our man ought to be here any minute now…. By Jove! That reminds me–I meant to telephone for some tickets for to-night’s Follies–you’re going with me as my guest. Just a moment!”
He got on his feet and as he came out of the corner and still was eight feet distant from the telephone girl, he called out loudly, as a man might call whose hurried anxiety to get an important number made him careless of the pitch of his voice: “Worth 10,000! Worth 10,000!”
He feared to look toward the door–yet. For the moment he must seem concerned only with the hasty business of telephoning.
Annoyed by his shouting, the girl raised her head and stared at him as he came toward her.
“What’s the excitement?” she demanded.
With enhanced vehemence he answered, putting on the key words all the emphasis he dared employ:
“I should think anybody in hearing could understand what I said and what I meant–Worth 10,000!”
He was alongside her now; he could risk a glance toward the door. He looked, and his heart rejoiced inside of him, for the messenger had swung about, as had half a dozen others, all arrested by the harshness of his words–and the messenger was staring at him. Marr gave the correct signal–with quick well-simulated nervousness drew a loose match from his waistcoat pocket, struck it, applied it to his cigar, then flipped the still burning match halfway across the floor. No need for him again to look–he knew the artifice had succeeded.
“Here’s your number,” said the affronted young woman. With a vicious little slam she stuck a metal plug into its proper hole.
Marr had not the least idea what concern or what individual owned Worth 10,000 for a telephone number. Nor did it concern him now. Even so, he must of course carry out the pretense which so well had served him in the emergency. He entered the booth, leaving the door open for Hartridge’s benefit.
“Hello, hello!” he called into the transmitter. “This is V. C. Markham speaking. I want to speak to”–he uttered the first name which popped into his mind–“to George Spillane. Want to order some tickets for a show to-night.” He paused a moment for the sake of the verities; then, paying no heed to the confused rejoinder coming to him from the other end of the wire, and improvising to round out his play, went on: “What’s that?… Not there? Oh, very well! I’ll call him later…. No, never mind, Spillane’s the man I want. I’ll call again.”
He hung up the receiver. Out of the tail of his eye as he hung it up he saw Sig Gulwing just entering the hotel, in proper disguise for the character of the district telegraph manager with a grudge against pool rooms and a plan for making enough at one coup to enable him to quit his present job; the job was mythical, and the grudge, too–bits merely of the fraudulent drama now about to be played–but surely Gulwing was most solid and dependable and plausible looking. His make-up was perfect. To get here so soon after receiving the cue he must have been awaiting the word just outside the entrance. Gulwing was smart but he was not so smart as Marr–Marr exulted to himself. In high good humor, he dropped a dollar bill at the girl’s elbow.