Jacob's Ladder
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“I think that by to-morrow or the next day you will be able to see him, and I feel confident that Mr. Morse will be able to get his signature to any cheque or document required.”
“I have been trying to persuade the doctor,” Morse intervened, “to let me make out a cheque for this amount,” – drawing a statement from his pocket, – “and guide Mr. Samuel’s hand while he signed it. Then we need not trouble you in the matter at all.”
The physician seemed to consider the point.
“On the whole,” he decided, “my patient is a man of such wealth that I don’t think it is advisable to run the slightest risk where a financial question is concerned. Mr. Samuel Pratt is a very old friend of mine, and if a few hundred thousand dollars or so are any convenience, Mr. Morse – ”
“Certainly not,” Jacob interrupted. “I am sure my brother will be glad to hear of your offer, Doctor, but I am on the spot and I can easily manage anything that is required. Let me have that statement, Mr. Morse.”
The secretary passed over a stockbroker’s statement from Messrs. Worstead and Jones, showing a balance of six hundred and eighty-two thousand four hundred and twenty dollars. Jacob drew out his cheque book. Morse watched him indifferently as he wrote.
“I’m afraid his lordship is not feeling quite himself this morning,” he observed. “Sorry he troubled to go round to the druggist’s. I could have fixed him up something myself. We had – ”
The door opened softly. Felixstowe crossed the threshold, smiling amiably. He was dressed with his usual precision in a blue serge suit, a regimental tie, and wonderfully polished brown shoes. His Homburg hat, which he removed as he entered, was just a shade on one side. He looked the picture of health.
“Good morning, everybody,” he said genially, closing the door behind him. “Just in the nick of time, eh?”
“In the nick of time for what?” Jacob asked, turning around.
“To stop your signing that cheque.”
Jacob stared at the newcomer in amazement. Neither the physician nor Morse uttered a syllable. Their eyes were fixed upon the young man.
“Hearken now to the tale of the sleuthhound,” the latter continued, setting down his hat, cane and gloves upon the sideboard and thrusting his hands into his trousers pockets. “Fact is, I just toddled round to Number 1001 West Fifty-seventh Street this morning, and I’ve been having a chat with Doctor Bardolf.”
“What are you talking about?” Jacob demanded. “Doctor Bardolf is here.”
“Oh, no, he isn’t!” the young man retorted pleasantly. “Or, as I should say in the vernacular of this amazing country, I guess not! This gentleman gives a very creditable rendering of the part, but he is no more Doctor Bardolf than the Johnny upstairs is Mr. Samuel Pratt. The fact is, Jacob, the whole thing is a layout, and you’ve been very nearly pinched.”
Doctor Bardolf picked up his hat with dignity.
“I do not understand your young countryman’s phraseology,” he said, turning towards the door.
“He isn’t sober yet!” Morse gasped, with a frightened look in his eyes.
Felixstowe’s slim young form seemed to expand.
“You stay where you are,” he ordered the pseudo-physician sternly. “This is about the hang of the thing, Jacob. Your brother went to the Adirondacks, all right, leaving his house here in the charge of Morse, whom, like a fool, he seems to have trusted. Morse planned the rest of it. Not so difficult, either. He couldn’t get at any of your brother Samuel’s oof, so he cabled to you, dismissed the servants whom he couldn’t bring into the job, and got this chap Worstead, who is a ruined stockbroker, to play the part of the physician. Damned good scheme, too! – Hullo!”
The door had opened a little abruptly, and a small man, bearing an unmistakable resemblance to Jacob, had entered. His cheeks were sunburnt, and he had the unkempt appearance of one who has been living in the backwoods.
“Jacob!” the newcomer exclaimed enthusiastically, holding out both his hands. “Welcome to New York!”
Jacob felt a little dazed.
“You haven’t been ill at all then, Samuel?”
“Ill?” the other repeated contemptuously. “I was never better in my life. What’s it all about?”
Morse threw up the sponge, and Worstead, alias Bardolf, followed suit.
“He led me into this mess,” the former declared, shaking his fist at Worstead. “Got me gambling on differences, and when I couldn’t pay he cooked up this joint. It’s the first time I haven’t run straight, Mr. Pratt, and I didn’t touch any of your money, anyway.”
“So there’s been some crooked business, eh?” Samuel Pratt remarked. “Will some one tell me exactly what’s happened?”
Felixstowe gently intervened.
“You’ll pick the whole thing up by degrees,” he said, “but this is the long and short of it. Your brother Jacob gets a cable over in England, sent by Morse here, to say that you are dangerously ill. Out we come, first steamer. Morse meets us, brings us here; you are supposed to be upstairs with a hospital nurse, too ill to be seen. A financial crisis arises and Jacob is asked to find a trifle of six hundred thousand dollars to pay some differences on your account. The dear boy was on the point of signing his cheque when I popped in and put the kybosh on it.”
“But what on earth made you suspicious?” Jacob demanded.
“First night we were out together,” Felixstowe continued, “I began to tumble to it that Morse here had a pretty considerable acquaintance amongst the crooks. Then he dropped a note from you, Mr. Pratt, saying that you were staying three or four days at the Touraine Hotel in Boston, on your way home, so I slipped out and sent that dispatch to you on the chance. Last night again he made one or two bloomers, so this morning I just hopped round to Doctor Bardolf’s address, and that, of course, busted the whole show.”
“Make me out a list of the people in my household associated with you in this,” his employer ordered Morse sternly, “and bring it to my den immediately. – Stay where you are, Worstead. I shall treat you both alike. – Jacob,” he added, indicating Felixstowe, “who is this remarkably intelligent young man?”
“My secretary,” Jacob replied.
“Name of Felixstowe,” the young man observed, holding out his hand with a winning smile. “Glad to meet you, Mr. Samuel Pratt.”
Samuel passed a hand through the arm of each.
“Come right along with me, boys, to my den, where the still waters flow,” he invited. “We’ll talk over the business quietly. Bring me the list I asked for in five minutes, Morse, and you’d better induce Mr. Worstead to take a seat and wait quietly. I stopped at the station and brought along a couple of plain-clothes men, in case there was any trouble. – This way.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
Jacob and Lord Felixstowe stood side by side on the deck of a homeward-bound steamer, a few weeks later, watching the pilot come out from Plymouth Harbour.
“Some trip,” the latter remarked, with a reminiscent sigh. “I feel as though I’d had the beano of my life.”
“You scored it up against me, all right,” Jacob acknowledged. “Those fellows might easily have got away with my hundred thousand pounds. I’m not at all sure that I ought not to settle an annuity on you.”
“Nothing doing,” was the prompt reply. “Believe me, Jacob, old dear, mine is one of those peculiar intelligences which thrive best in a state of penury. Give me an absolutely assured income and my talents would rust. I should no longer be equal to measuring my wits against the Morses of the world.”
Jacob smiled.
“I think you gave that young man the surprise of his life.”
“I’m not at all sure that I didn’t play it a trifle low down on Mr. Sydney Morse,” Felixstowe reflected. “He was a very credulous simpleton, for all his cunning. The stage setting of his scheme was wonderful and the details perfect, but he lacked the insight of a great crook. On the whole I am glad that your brother let the bunch off lightly.”
“Samuel is almost fatally good-natured,” his brother remarked. “I have never known him to stay angry for long with any one.”
“But what a prince! What a pasha!” Felixstowe declared enthusiastically. “He decked me out at Tiffany’s till I feel like a walking jeweller’s shop in the evening. And what a send-off! The old country’s going to seem a bit flat, Jacob. I feel as though I were coming back to the rustic life.”
“It’s something to have any sort of life to come back to,” Jacob sighed.
The young man glanced at his companion with thoughtful eyes.
“Got the pip, old bean?” he enquired, with gentle sympathy.
Jacob shook his head.
“Slight attack of the blues, I suppose,” he confessed, his eyes travelling over the deep green of the fields and the dark woods beyond the harbour. “Homecoming always seems a bit flat for a lonely man. I suppose Dick Dauncey will be the only human being who cares sixpence whether I turn up again or not.”
“What did you have for luncheon?” Felixstowe asked anxiously.
“Whereas you,” Jacob went on, —
“That reminds me,” his companion interrupted, “I told Mary to bring the little car down for me, if there was nothing much doing in town. I wonder whether she’s here.”
“Good heavens!” Jacob exclaimed. “Do you mean to say that you have asked your sister to drive that crazy old tin kettle of yours all the way down from London?”
“It’s a damned nice little car, properly handled,” its owner objected stiffly. “I’ll lay odds that if Mary started we shall see her on the dock.”
Notwithstanding his avowed disapproval, Jacob’s interest in the landing perceptibly increased, and much of his depression had passed away when they recognised Lady Mary amongst the little crowd waiting on the dock. She was looking very smart and pretty in her simple motoring clothes, and Jacob realised, even as they shook hands, why his interest in the ladies of New York had lacked spontaneity. She chattered to them gaily enough as they stood waiting for their luggage, but Jacob fancied that there was a shade of reserve in her manner.
“I couldn’t wait till you got to London to hear all about it,” she declared. “I must have the whole story.”
“At dinner time,” Jacob suggested. “Only you must promise that you won’t laugh too much at the poor guileless Britisher who would probably have been sharked of a hundred thousand pounds in New York, but for Felix.”
The girl’s eyes danced with pleasure.
“You really mean that he was useful?”
“I can assure you – ”
“Chuck that,” the young man interrupted gruffly. “Non-stop run down, I suppose, Mary?”
His sister looked a little dubious.
“I had to stop a few times for repairs,” she admitted, “and two policemen told me I should be summoned for making that awful noise.”
“A wonderful engine,” Felixstowe declared, “but it needs a master hand.”
“It needs a silencer more than anything,” Jacob commented.
“Are you going to ride up with us in the dickey to-morrow?” Lady Mary asked.
“I am not,” Jacob replied firmly. “I have wired for my own car.”
“Race you up for a tenner, old bean,” Felixstowe suggested promptly.
“I wouldn’t imperil Lady Mary’s existence,” Jacob replied, – “that is, unless she rode with me.”
“No fear,” the young man scoffed. “Mary would never desert the old tin kettle, as you call it.”
“I rather like the smoothness of a Rolls-Royce,” she murmured.
Over dinner that evening, their adventures in New York were recounted at length. It was not until her brother had wandered out to get some cigarettes, however, that Lady Mary referred to the subject which all three seemed to have been avoiding.
“It must have been rather a shock to you, I am afraid, to meet Captain and Mrs. Penhaven on the steamer,” she remarked sympathetically.
“I thought it was going to be,” he admitted. “It didn’t turn out that way.”
“Are you very broken-hearted?”
“Are you?”
“I didn’t give myself the chance,” she replied, “When I found that things were going wrong between Maurice and me, I just told him so.”
“But you did care for him very much, didn’t you?” he ventured.
She considered the matter indifferently.
“I suppose I did once, in a way,” she decided. “He was rather a dear, but a very obvious person in many respects. I always felt I knew exactly what he was going to do or say, and that does get so irritating. I am perfectly certain that we should have led a cat-and-dog life if we had married.”
Jacob looked across the little round table. For the first time during the evening, Lady Mary’s eyes met his. They were amazingly blue, and Jacob lost his head.
“As for me, I am a faithless brute,” he confessed. “I used to think there couldn’t be any other girl in the world except Sybil. But I changed. I was glad when I found that she was married.”
“Did you change because of another girl?” Lady Mary asked softly.
“Yes,” Jacob faltered.
“Then why don’t you tell the other girl so?”
“Lady Mary – ” he began.
“Jacob,” she murmured, “come and tell me quickly, or Jack will be back with those cigarettes.”
Which is where the real and most wonderful adventure of Jacob Pratt’s life commenced.
THE END