The Loot of Cities (Mystery Classics Series). Bennett Arnold

And? and? the millionaire proves to be nothing but a blackmailer."

      "You must understand, my dear lady—"

      "I understand everything, Mr. Thorold, except your object in admitting me to the scene."

      "A whim!" cried Thorold vivaciously, "A freak of mine! Possibly due to the eternal and universal desire of man to show off before woman!"

      The journalist tried to smile, but something in her face caused Thorold to run to a chiffonier.

      "Drink this," he said, returning with a glass.

      "I need nothing." The voice was a whisper.

      "Oblige me."

      Miss Fincastle drank and coughed.

      "Why did you do it?" she asked sadly, looking at the notes.

      "You don't mean to say," Thorold burst out, "that you are feeling sorry for Mr. Bruce Bowring? He has merely parted with what he stole. And the people from whom he stole, stole. All the activities which centre about the Stock Exchange are simply various manifestations of one primeval instinct. Suppose I had not— had not interfered. No one would have been a penny the better off except Mr. Bruce Bowring. Whereas—"

      "You intend to restore this money to the Consolidated ? " said Miss Fincastle eagerly.

      "Not quite! The Consolidated doesn't deserve it. You must not regard its shareholders as a set of innocent shorn lambs. They knew the game. They went in for what they could get. Besides, how could I restore the money without giving myself away ? I want the money myself."

      "But you are a millionaire."

      "It is precisely because I am a millionaire that I want more. All millionaires are like that."

      "I am sorry to find you a thief, Mr. Thorold."

      "A thief! No. I am only direct, I only avoid the middleman. At dinner, Miss Fincastle, you displayed somewhat advanced views about property, marriage, and the aristocracy of brains. You said that labels were for the stupid majority, and that the wise minority examined the ideas behind the labels. You label me a thief, but examine the idea, and you will perceive that you might as well call yourself a thief. Your newspaper every day suppresses the truth about the City, and it does so in order to live. In other words, it touches the pitch, it participates in the game. To-day it has a fifty-line advertisement of a false balance-sheet of the Consolidated, at two shillings a line. That five pounds, part of the loot of a great city, will help to pay for your account of our interview this afternoon."

      "Our interview to-night," Miss Fincastle corrected him stiffly, "and all that I have seen and heard."

      At these words she stood up, and as Cecil Thorold gazed at her his face changed.

      "I shall begin to wish," he said slowly, "that I had deprived myself of the pleasure of your company this evening."

      "You might have been a dead man had you done so," Miss Fincastle retorted, and observing his blank countenance she touched the revolver.

      "Have you forgotten already?" she asked tartly.

      "Of course it wasn't loaded," he remarked. "Of course I had seen to that earlier in the day. I am not such a bungler?"

      "Then I didn't save your life?"

      "You force me to say that you did not, and to remind you that you gave me your word not to emerge from behind the screen. However, seeing the motive, I can only thank you for that lapse. The pity is that it hopelessly compromises you."

      "Me?" exclaimed Miss Fincastle.

      "You. Can't you see that you are in it, in this robbery, to give the thing a label. You were alone with the robber. You succoured the robber at a critical moment...

      "Accomplice! Mr. Bowring himself said. My dear journalist, the episode of the revolver, empty though the revolver was, seals your lips."

      Miss Fincastle laughed rather hysterically, leaning over the table with her hands on it.

      "My dear millionaire," she said rapidly, " you don't know the new journalism to which I have the honour to belong. You would know it better had you lived more in New York. All I have to announce is that, compromised or not, a full account of this affair will appear in my paper tomorrow morning. No, I shall not inform the police. I am a journalist simply, but a journalist I am."

      "And your promise, which you gave me before going behind the screen, your solemn promise that you would reveal nothing ? I was loth to mention it."

      "Some promises, Mr. Thorold, it is a duty to break, and it is my duty to break this one. I should never have given it had I had the slightest idea of the nature of your recreations."

      Thorold still smiled, though faintly.

      "Really, you know," he murmured, "this is getting just a little serious."

      "It is very serious," she stammered.

      And then Thorold noticed that the new journalist was softly weeping.

      V.

      The Door opened.

      "Miss Kitty Sartorius," said the erstwhile liftman, who was now in plain clothes and had mysteriously ceased to squint.

      A beautiful girl, a girl who had remarkable loveliness and was aware of it (one of the prettiest women of the Devonshire), ran impulsively into the room and caught Miss Fincastle by the hand.

      "My dearest Eve, you're crying. What's the matter?"

      "Lecky," said Thorold aside to the servant. "I told you to admit no one."

      The beautiful blonde turned sharply to Thorold.

      "I told him I wished to enter," she said imperiously, half closing her eyes.

      "Yes, sir," said Lecky. "That was it. The lady wished to enter."

      Thorold bowed.

      "It was sufficient," he said. "That will do, Lecky."

      "Yes sir."

      "But I say, Lecky, when next you address me publicly, try to remember that I am not in the peerage."

      The servant squinted.

      "Certainly, sir." And he retired.

      "Now we are alone," said Miss Sartorius. "Introduce us, Eve, and explain."

      Miss Fincastle, having regained self-control, introduced her dear friend the radiant star of the Regency Theatre, and her acquaintance the millionaire.

      "Eve didn't feel quite sure of you," the actress stated; "and so we arranged that if she wasn't up at my flat by nine o'clock, I was to come down and reconnoitre. What have you been doing to make Eve cry?"

      "Unintentional, I assure you―" Thorold began.

      "There's something between you two," said Kitty Sartorius sagaciously, in significant accents. "What is it?"

      She sat down, touched her picture hat, smoothed her white gown, and tapped her foot. "What is it, now? Mr. Thorold, I think you had better tell me."

      Thorold raised his eyebrows and obediently commenced the narration, standing with his back to the fire.

      "How perfectly splendid!" Kitty exclaimed. "I'm so glad you cornered Mr. Bowring. I met him one night and I thought he was horrid. And these are the notes? Well, of all the―"

      Thorold proceeded with his story.

      "Oh, but you can't do that, Eve!" said Kitty, suddenly serious. "You can't go and split! It would mean all sorts of bother; your wretched newspaper would be sure to keep you hanging about in London, and we shouldn't be able to start on our holiday to-morrow. Eve and I are starting on quite a long tour to-morrow, Mr. Thorold; we begin with Ostend."

      "Indeed!" said Thorold. "I,