THE VOLUNTEER

NEMESIS

Perley Poore Sheehan

(The Popular Magazine 20 Aug 1916)

Contents

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

Chapter 9 | Chapter 10

Chapter 11 | Chapter 12

Chapter 13 | Chapter 14

Chapter 15 | Chapter 16

Chapter 17 | Chapter 18

Chapter 19 | Chapter 20

Chapter 21 | Chapter 22

Chapter 23 | Chapter 24

Chapter 25

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Chapter 1

CHRISTOPHER QUERLE had the vague quiver of an idea that he might have written the thing himself, and yet the mere possibility of such an explanation was enough to make him grin. So he grinned, in spite of his uneasiness and in spite of his growing wrath. If he had written it, that would mean that he was going crazy. Doctor White, who was an expert in such matters, had distinctly told him that if he continued to keep the pace he had been traveling his reason would give way. Was the doc right?

Querle stared at the note, but his manicured fingers began to twitch. With his free hand he fished into a silver cigarette container on the table at his side, brought out a cigarette, lit it, inhaled deeply.

Querle was young— just twenty-seven— and he had a bull neck, also the blond hair and freckled face that so often go with courage that is moral as well as physical. Moreover, here he was in his own home, sober, freshly bathed, and dressed; and, this above all, he had all the money he needed— about six millions of it, at any rate.

These features of his mental landscape were the background, so to speak, of his consideration of this note. They brought him a degree of assurance. Finally he read the missive again from start to finish, analytically this time and at his leisure. He noticed the absence of date and honorary address. He studied the signature: The Volunteer Nemesis!

He had been standing, thus far. Now he dropped into a leather easy-chair and pressed a button under the table rim. There was no sound, but almost instantly a manservant appeared.

"Tell Oakley to come here," said Querle, without looking up.

"Yes, sir."

Oakley came in. He was a slim man, thirty or so, with a bulging forehead covered by a curly bang, but a face otherwise given to concavity and length. He brought a sheaf of papers with him, a sort of badge of secretaryship. He advanced with a wriggle and a nervous smile, the air of one who expects and willingly accepts bad treatment. There was a momentary shrinking on his part as he saw the paper in Querle's hand. But his nervous smile was replaced by a look of alarm under Querle's stare.

"Where did this come from?" Querle demanded softly, with an obvious enjoyment of Oakley's fright.

"You mean—"

"Did you write it?" roared Querle.

Oakley wriggled and tried to master his grin again. He merely succeeded in rendering his alarm ludicrous.

"It came through the mail, sir," he managed to articulate.

"Well, then, what do you stand there for and try to make me think that you never saw it before?"

"I— I didn't intend—"

"You're such a liar, Oakley," said Christopher Querle, "that you don't know what the truth is, anyway."

Oakley's head shook with silent laughter— not too much; just enough to let his master know that the joke was good and that he appreciated it. Then he was serious again.

"I saved the envelope, sir," he said; and he began to sort among the papers he had brought with him. "I was struck by the fact that both the handwriting and the stationery appeared to be your own."

Querle took the envelope, glanced at it.

"Oakley," he said, "you're familiar with my handwriting, aren't you?"

"I assure you, Mr. Querle—"

"Don't stand there and lie to me, Oakley. You thought that I'd be drunk again last night, and that you could put this over on me. So you're Mr. Nemesis, are you? By gad, you look the part!"

"I didn't write it, sir."

Oakley said this apologetically. He looked as if he were almost sorry that he hadn't written it, just to relieve Mr. Querle's mind. Querle was studying him contemptuously.

"Then who did write it?" Querle snapped.

"It was in your handwriting, sir."

"Don't stand there and tell me something that I know already," Querle yelled. "You're enough to drive a fellow crazy, Oakley."

The expression flung back on Querle like a boomerang. It brought back with it another recollection of what Doctor White, the great specialist in nervous diseases, had told him, Christopher Querle, less than a month ago. And Doctor White was not only a man whose word in scientific matters was not to be doubted, years ago he had been the Querle family physician, and he remained one of the few men bold enough to tell young Mr. Querle exactly what was what.

Oakley, now recognizing the fact that the time for persiflage was past, set himself seriously to the task of explanation.

Said he: "Mr. Querle, please! There were a dozen letters in the morning delivery, and this was one of them. When I saw the handwriting on the envelope, I thought that it was possibly some return communication that you had sent out yourself, especially when I saw that the envelope itself was ostensibly your own."

"Go on! Go on!"

"So I opened it. I assure you, sir, that I was as surprised as you are. I was quite upset."

"You want me to believe, then, that some outsider has written this thing— that you haven't had anything to do with it?"

Oakley squirmed and looked grieved.

"I'm going to ask you to read it to me," said Mr. Querle, with a menace in his voice and eyes. "I'm going to ask you to read it out loud. And I want you to remember that I'm going to have my eyes on you, every second of the time that it takes you. And, Oakley, if I find out that, after all, you've tried to put a thing like this over on me— by gad, you'll get the beating of your life, Oakley, before I send you to jail!"

Oakley took the letter from his master's hand. It wasn't the first time that Oakley had been put through an ordeal like this. He was manifesting just the right shade of terror to impress Mr. Querle the most pleasantly. He scanned the missive. A look of panic and consternation came into his face, followed by his sickly smile.

"It doesn't express my sentiments, sir; I needn't tell you that. It must have been written, as you say, by a madman."

"I never said any such thing."

"No, sir." And Oakley read:

"The hour and the opportunity are here for your redemption. Better were it that you die than that you continue to live as you have been living. Therefore, submit to all that is about to be done in your name. If you do, you will become worthy of her who loves you! Resist, and you bring upon your shoulders the scourge of

"THE VOLUNTEER NEMESIS."

"Who wrote it, Oakley?" asked Querle, as soon as Oakley had finished.

"I don't know, sir. All that I know is that it is in—"

"Don't tell me that again, Oakley!" Querle roared. "I know that it is in my handwriting, as you say. I'm not blind, and I'm not deaf. And I'll also tell you that you are the only one who has access to my private stationery and who has all the time in the world to sit around and practice my handwriting. What did you mean by saying that you'd put the scourge to me? And what did you mean by calling yourself my Nemesis?"

"Mr. Querle, as the Lord is my witness—"

"Shut up, I tell you!"

They were so engrossed that they did not notice the arrival of a visitor— an old man, white-haired, with a white, ascetic face, intellectual, dignified. The room was large. The carpet was thick. The visitor had entered unannounced. He stood there for a while, listening to what was being said, and into his face came an expression that, for the want of a better definition, might have been called one of smiling pain. He spoke, and his voice cut through the sudden silence with a vibrancy of a soft-toned bell:

"Well, Christopher, I trust that I haven't arrived too soon— or too late."

Querle kept his attention concentrated on Oakley for a second or two longer.

"Go on and get out, you sneak!" he commanded; "but leave me that letter. And see that you don't try to write another like it." He tossed a look over his shoulder in the direction of the visitor. "Hello, there, Doctor White!" he exclaimed. "What brought you here?"

"Nothing but your letter," the doctor answered amiably.

"My letter! I didn't write you a letter."

"Whether you wrote it or not," the doctor replied, coming forward, "I received it."

Perhaps these simple words of his brought a queer look into Christopher Querle's face. Or perhaps Querle had not quite recovered yet from his out-burst of wrath against Oakley. At any rate, the physician stopped. His smile was wiped out by a flash of observant gravity.

"What's the matter?" he asked very softly and very kindly. "Not quite yourself?"

Chapter 2

"SIT DOWN," said Christopher Querle. "I've just been having a session with Oakley." And he tossed the strange letter over on the table where the doctor could reach it.

Doctor White had seated himself with the air of one who, while dignified, is perfectly at home. As a matter of fact, he had been in young Querle's quarters often enough— even in these quarters, where Querle received none except his intimates. Querle called this his "studio." Twelve rooms there were, garnished with something of Oriental luxury, all on the top floor of a Fifth Avenue skyscraper. Farther up the Avenue was a granite-and-marble mansion that the elder Querle had built, but this had been rarely opened since the old man's death. Mrs. Querle, Christopher's mother, after a life of much bitterness and sorrow, had preceded her husband by a year or so. Querle had been the only son, the sole heir. His mourning had been brief and tumultuous.

Doctor White slowly read the Nemesis letter.

"What's the meaning of this?" he asked, looking up.

"I don't know," Querle answered. "I didn't write it."

"Didn't write it! Why, that's what you just said about the letter I received!"

The physician slowly pulled up his glasses at the end of their silk ribbon and adjusted them. With one of his slim, white hands he brought out a second letter from the breast pocket of his black coat.

"Christopher," he said, with mild finality, "I've been familiar with your handwriting ever since you were scratching on the footpaths of Central Park with a piece of chalk. I need not tell you that the writing of this extraordinary Nemesis communication is singularly like your own, as is also— also—"

Doctor White was studying the letter he had taken from his pocket.

"Not only that," he continued, "but there are certain correlative circumstances which would justify— I do not say myself, but— any one in surmising that the authorship of this is yours as well."

Querle had been sitting there looking at his ancient friend. The skin of Querle's face was tawny and freckled, and just now it appeared to be darker than either his tow hair or his very pale-gray eyes. His expression was one of baffled curiosity, tinged with anger. Very easily the anger could flame out into overwhelming rage. He looked the fighting animal momentarily tormented and trapped. There was something about the poise of the old gentleman in front of him, however, which made the young millionaire control himself.

"What do you mean by those other circumstances?" Christopher Querle asked thickly.

"In the first place, and with reference to this letter which I myself received," Doctor White replied softly and slowly, without taking his eyes from the letter he held, "there is an allusion to something which was said in an earlier interview of ours. You will doubtless recollect, Christopher—  I take it that there is no danger of our being overheard."

"Not unless Oakley is snooping around. Go on; I don't mind him."

"You will recollect that I warned you against persevering in a certain line of conduct. Even when one has the physical equipment of a gladiator, my son, he cannot continue to punish himself without dire results. You see, man is not merely so much beef-and-brawn avoirdupois. He has nerves. He has a brain. Nerves and brain are not to be tampered with."

"Go on, doctor. What are you driving at?"

"Before I go on, Christopher, you will permit me to remind you that I was your father's physician long before you were born, and on up to the time of his death. You might say that I was something more than a mere physician. Every medical man worthy of his calling is. I was also, you might say, something of the priest. Your father, like you, was a man of strong motives, not to say appetites, not to say passions. I merely refer to this, Christopher, for the sake of any extra weight that this might lend to what I tell you with regard to yourself. I put it to you: Is it reasonable to believe that some one other than yourself should have been capable of writing two such documents as these?"

Querle shifted uneasily, lit a fresh cigarette.

"Let us confine ourselves first to this letter which I received and which you say you did not write. It's on your paper and in your handwriting. You refer to what I said to you about your continued abuse of alcohol and various other indulgences. You even say— or the writer says— that you may deny-having wanted to see me; but that I am to come here, anyway, tell you the truth, anyway, and put the screws to you, anyway, for the good of your soul. Here, look at it!"

Querle took the letter the physician surrendered to him, but he didn't look at it.

"What's the answer?" he mumbled.

But Doctor White was engrossed in his study of the Nemesis letter. He droned that unspellable expression through the nose, signifying a discovery.

"May I ask you, Christopher, who the young lady is that this letter refers to?"

"How should I know?" Querle retorted uneasily.

"I dare say there are many of them, my boy," said Doctor White, with nice detachment. "But is there not one— some one of the many— who is preeminent in, let us say, your self-esteem, your respect; one whom, in your better moments, you regard as a possible Mrs. Christopher Querle?"

"I love them all," Querle answered, with an attempt at humor.

"The writer of this seems to predicate the existence of some such lady, Christopher. Also, the writer is apparently concerned with your welfare in other respects."

"He's got me guessing," said Querle.

The doctor slowly removed his glasses. He dedicated perhaps thirty seconds more to concentrated thought.

"And you are absolutely certain that you did not write either of these letters?"

"Absolutely certain."

"Ostensibly they were mailed last night. May I ask how you passed the evening?"

"A bunch of us motored out to the Rookwood Inn— met some girls out there. But I was all right, doctor. Remembered what you said. Didn't have more than half a dozen cocktails all evening— and a little wine. Got home about three, sober as a judge, and turned in. Swensen was sitting up for me. He'll tell you that I didn't write any letters."

"Mystery! Mystery!" murmured the physician. "My boy, I do not wish to alarm you, but I do wish to impress upon you that you have nerves and a brain and that they are not to be tampered with. I might even go farther and say that you have a soul."

Christopher Querle broke into a chortling laugh, which he instantly checked under the quick flash of the physician's eyes.

"Yes, young man," said Doctor White, with quiet intensity, "and I'll also say that you have a better self. I need not refer you to the numerous recorded instances of dual and multiple personality. This may be entirely beside the issue, anyway. But suppose we do brush such speculations aside. Suppose we do accept your contention that some hand other than your own wrote these two communications. Do you see where this is likely to lead us? Forgeries! Forgeries so clever as to deceive your best friends!"

The doctor would have said more, doubtless; he was just getting warmed up to his subject. But he was interrupted by the sound of a muffled cough from the door. Both he and Querle turned. The manservant was standing there, the butler-valet Querle had referred to as Swensen.

"A lady to see you, sir," he announced.

Querle and Doctor White exchanged a glance. The physician made a slight movement— a movement with something of hopelessness in it— preparatory to leaving. Querle checked him.

"I'll be a sport, doctor," he said. "Stay where you are. This was no date of my making." He grinned rather sheepishly. He turned to the servant. "Show her in!" he commanded.

"Oh!" exclaimed the lady from the door.

She was very young, only twenty or so; slender, dark-eyed, dressed with a simple and supple smartness that was the very quintessence of fashion. Her eyes had fallen first on the aged physician there, and his on her.

"Doctor White!" she gasped.

"Marcia, my child!" he came back. "This is indeed a surprise."

But if their surprise was great, that of Christopher Querle was no less so. There had been a moment there, when Doctor White was asking Querle if there was not some one lady preeminent in his thought, that a portrait of Marcia Schermerhorn had quavered across the canvas of Querle's imagination. And now here she was— certainly one of the last persons in New York he expected to see here in this so-called "studio" of his.

Both Querle and the physician had arisen. Miss Schermerhorn had come forward nimbly, yet in her bearing there were modesty and wonder. She and Querle had saluted each other briefly by their first names, but it was obvious that there was no great or recent intimacy between them. She seated herself. She let her dark eyes drift from Querle to the doctor, then back again— always with that note of alert surprise in them.

"Does Doctor White know why I am here?" she asked softly. She had a very wonderful voice. It was full of echoes and music.

"Why, no," Querle answered; "but there isn't any reason why you shouldn't speak right out in his presence."

He didn't add that he himself hadn't the slightest idea in the world how or why she happened to be there.

"It was because of your letter." she replied, with a slight catching of her breath, "and because of your present. It was a perfectly gorgeous present, and I do appreciate it. But why didn't you bring it yourself? And why did you ask me to come here like this? I was sure that you were sick in bed, or that something dreadful had happened to you."

Her emotion was rising in a fairly perceptible tide. Again she glanced at Doctor White. He had been the Schermerhorn family physician, also since time out of mind. She smiled at him, and he smiled back at her; and Miss Schermerhorn's eyes there was a suspicious brightness.

Querle winced.

"Marcia, I've been a little erratic here of late," he exclaimed urgently. "The doctor will tell you that. But it isn't serious, is it, doctor?"

Doctor White was still hovering over his answer when Swensen again made his appearance. This time he brought two cards— brought them on a silver platter. Querle took them one by one, studied them with a deepening frown, while both Doctor White and Marcia Schermerhorn looked up at him.

"Detective Burke,", said Querle slowly. "What in the deuce does he want with me? And Mr. Gough, our lawyer."

"Oh, I must go!" cried Miss Schermerhorn.

Doctor White stayed her with a movement of his hand.

"Send them in!" Querle exclaimed, with a burst of recklessness.

Chapter 3

THE TRUTH came out with almost endless repetitions— the facade of it did, like a blank wall, brick on brick. And also it was something that no one could see through; not even Burke, the famous detective; not even John T. Gough, who had been dabbling in the legal aspects of criminal and civil riddles for well onto half a century.

Gough, Burke, and Doctor White had each been brought there by letters presumably written by Christopher Querle, but which Christopher Querle himself denied having written. So had Marcia Schermerhorn, for that matter; only from the first Querle had had the decency to insist that the letter she had received and the present she had mentioned were genuine so far as he was concerned. Privately, though, he insisted to Burke that he had never heard of Miss Schermerhorn's letter, either, or the accompanying present, until she brought word of them.

Burke was a cool man, chunky and stolid, with, however, a sort of slumbering agility about him both as to eye and hand.

He had seized upon his own letter the minute he was told that it was a forgery. Years of experience had made him more or less familiar with the tricks of the handwriting experts. At his direction, Querle wrote copies of not only Burke's own letter, but those received by Doctor White and Judge Gough, the lawyer.

"Paper, ink, and handwriting are so much alike in the two sets of exhibits," said Burke, "that you can't tell them apart. Look out, or you'll get them mixed."

Querle wrote out a copy of the Nemesis letter.

"And you say you don't know anybody named Nemesis?" Burke demanded.

"Nemesis was the lady in Greek mythology who took after criminals," Mr. Gough explained. "You might call her a predecessor of yours."

"If this is forgery," Burke declared, "it's the work of the slickest forger in the United States. I thought I knew him, but I see I don't. I thought he was 'Blackie' Smith, who's doing time in Joliet. But even if Blackie was loose he couldn't have pulled a thing like this."

"What do you mean by 'if this is forgery?'" Querle wanted to know, with a touch of asperity. "I've told you a hundred times already that I didn't write these letters myself."

"Mr. Querle," said Burke, "as to that I'll take your word for it, naturally. But do you know what that means? It means that there is somebody loose who can duplicate your handwriting in a way to fool you yourself. If he's a crook, he may get in on you for a million dollars. Have you notified the banks?"

"But if he was a crook," Querle demanded, "why should he have notified you so early in the game?"

"To show off," Burke answered. "It's a trick of theirs."

At Burke's mention of the banks, Mr. Gough had given a start. It was eleven o'clock in the morning. He disappeared. There was a telephone booth in the little room that served Oakley as an office. It was less than ten minutes later that Mr. Gough returned. He was an elderly gentleman, stout, with iron-gray whiskers. Ordinarily he was not given to nerves. There was nothing hysterical about him now, but he was excited.

"I've just had the Chelsea National," he panted, with a suspicion of asthma. "Three of your checks have just come in for an aggregate of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars."

He had barely made the announcement when Oakley came in. He was grinning and gibbering. It was almost a minute before he could deliver his message.

"They say it's a panic," he finally articulated, "and they want to know if you want them to keep it up."

"Who?" Querle barked.

"Simpson & Simpson, the brokers. They've been trying to get you on the phone. It wasn't my fault—"

Querle made a movement as if to seize Oakley by the throat. It was Burke and Mr. Gough who got the next shred of truth from Oakley. It was the elder Simpson who had telephoned. The office had received Mr. Querle's explicit instructions, in writing, he knew, to close out the entire Querle account at any price, but possibly Mr. Querle had not foreseen the consequences. Mr. Simpson himself had just reached town from his place in the country. He was waiting at the other end of the wire. Querle staggered somewhat and sat down as Mr. Gough once more retreated in the direction of Oakley's office.

Mr. Burke took charge of Oakley. Mr. Burke introduced himself in a voice that was little more than a whisper and with eyes that had become twinkling points of cold flame. Oakley went shivering and white.

Throughout all this Miss Schermerhorn had remained seated, wonderstruck, sympathetic, her dark eyes lifting from one to the other, but turning always to Christopher Querle himself. Once or twice he had glanced at her, but he was like a boxer in the ring who has received a blow, or a series of them, dangerously close to the knock-out.

Doctor White spoke to her.

"He told you that he has been erratic of late," he murmured. "Don't let that alarm you."

Miss Schermerhorn leaped to her feet and caught the physician by the arm. He allowed her to sweep him into the embrasure of one of the windows overlooking the Avenue. Doctor White had been something of the priest as well as the physician for others beside the elder Querle. The girl at his side was one of them.

"What's the meaning of it all?" she asked, when they were well out of earshot.

"The Lord only knows," he responded gently.

"But his letter to me was so beautiful," Marcia Schermerhorn whispered, as a slight stain of added color crept into her cheeks. "And the present he sent me! It was a pearl, so huge and beautiful that I was going to give it back to him. It must have been frightfully expensive. I could never let anybody see it. You know what papa would think if he ever found out that I had accepted such a present from— from Christopher. But when I came here and found you with him, and saw you both looking so terribly solemn—"

She paused, with her dark eyes uplifted to the pale face of the old physician. Doctor White looked back at her with the same sort of inscrutable mask he had turned upon so many human problems. There was possibly the faint suggestion of a smile on his thin lips. There was certainly affection in his pondering, intelligent eyes. He was an old bachelor. There was hardly a girl or boy of Marcia's age along the Avenue, however, who had not grown up to consider the doctor as a sort of foster parent.

"I shouldn't worry about that," he advised gently; "nor should I worry Christopher about it. You have known each other a long time."

"Since we were children. Since we were babies."

"And you are fond of him?"

Miss Schermerhorn's only answer was an added sparkle in her eyes, a slight parting of her lips. But the doctor was used to getting his answers in symptoms. There was no one in America who was more skilled in diagnosis.

They stood there like that when Burke's voice reached them. Burke had evidently dismissed Oakley for the moment, was talking to the present master of the Querle millions.

"Well, is there any woman you suspect?" Burke was asking.

Querle's answer was a burst of uneasy laughter.

"Every man has two natures," said Doctor White impulsively, as if he would have gladly shut out the sound of that laugh from Miss Schermerhorn's attentive ears. "And the two natures cannot live very well together— can they?— although they do manage to worry along sometimes— in misery— for a good many years."

"He has a better nature," said Miss Schermerhorn, as if she were making a declaration of faith.

"Undoubtedly," the doctor replied. He let his eyes wander into the distance. He added: "Christopher's mother was an angel. She was. She was!"

Again Mr. Gough was panting in from the telephone.

"We'll have to be getting down-town," he struggled into speech. He was short of breath. To do everything that is to be done, we should have to have a dozen telephones. As I understand it, Christopher, you gave no such order to Simpson. There's turmoil down there. The clerks got started before the old man showed up. Heaven only knows how many checks are pouring into the banks. You say that you have written none but the usual checks in the past week? Burke, find out all that you can, then get down to my office. We'll have to get a line on this, and that with no loss of time. Before I go, however, I just wanted to tell you, Christopher, that I've settled up everything in connection with the sale of the house. Mr. Lathrope has consented to take it over exactly as it stands."

"The sale of the house!"

The way that Querle received the announcement was enough to set Judge Gough to panting harder than ever.

"Good Lord, Christopher! Don't tell me that your instructions concerning the sale were also a fake. Why, you gave me your reasons— said that the old place was too ostentatious for a young bachelor, said that you were going in for simplicity."

"I never said any such thing. Is everybody going crazy? Am I going crazy? What has happened? For God's sake, some one answer me!"

Chapter 4

THERE WAS A gradual scattering of forces. Judge Gough was gone— gone with the red-hot nugget in his brain that he had sold the Querle mansion at a sacrifice pursuant to an order that had been forged. Detective Burke had followed, possessed of evidence to one of the greatest criminal conspiracies of the age. Doctor White had been forced to leave. He was a man of precious moments. Even Oakley had left. And a score of times Marcia Schermerhorn had been on the point of leaving, too, but some instinct stronger than caution had kept her where she was— the womanly instinct to stand by in time of need.

"Somebody's gunning for me," said Querle. He let the statement sink into his own mind as he stood there confronting Marcia Schermerhorn. "Do you see what they've done? They've sold the old house. They've started something down in Wall Street. They've started a snowstorm of phony checks."

"There was something said about the checks all being for charity. Oh, Christy! I thought that possibly you had done something like that, and I was so glad, so proud!"

Again Querle laughed.

"Don't laugh like that, Christy. I know that it's true— the thing that Doctor White said."

"What did he say?"

"That you had a better nature."

"Doctor White's a good old dope, Marcia. How about lunching with me somewhere? Are you on?"

"I must be going, Christy. I should never have come here. But I did want to thank you for your beautiful present— and— and see what was the matter with you."

"You've seen."

"But you didn't know about all this when you wrote to me. Oh, what if it wasn't you who wrote to me, after all?"

"You're looking great this morning, Marcia. How about that luncheon?"

Querle had drawn closer to the girl.

There was something in his eyes that brought back that look of startled surprise to her own eyes, again that tinge of color to her cheeks. She retreated slightly, without an air of doing so. The movement seemed merely to stir Querle to more decided action.

"I haven't seen you for six months, Marcia. Don't jerk your hand away like that. Marcia! What are you kicking about? Are you going to leave me without one little kiss?"

"Christy! Don't!"

He had caught one of her hands in his. He continued to hold it in spite of her struggle to free herself. With his free arm he was slowly encircling her waist.

"Don't make me call for help," she pleaded.

"It wouldn't do you one particle of good if you did, Marcia," he laughed. His demeanor underwent a slight change. He was becoming a trifle more brutal, a trifle more purposeful. "By gad! Marcia! I didn't know you were so beautiful. You're driving me mad—

He checked himself. Why was it, he wondered, that the infernal hint of insanity was constantly recurring in his speech? But, instead of sobering him, the question merely stoked his already heated head. He had managed to get his arm about Marcia's waist now, and he was drawing her closer and closer. She was almost near enough for him to touch her cheek with his lips when she suddenly twisted about in his grasp and he found himself looking into her eyes.

"Christopher!" she panted.

"What?"

"Let me go!"

"Kiss me first."

"No! Surely you don't mean this!"

"If you didn't expect something like this, what did you come here for?" he demanded, still retaining his hold on her. "I'm not going to hurt you. What are you so touchy about, Marcia?"

"Christopher, listen! I came here because you said that you were in a bad way. You asked me to help you. You said that you were having a struggle that would see you either saved or— or— damned. There! And when I get here, I do find that you are in trouble of some kind, and, oh, I do see, Christopher, that the other things in the letter were so."

"Shall I tell you the truth?" Querle asked, with his lips still close to her face.

"Yes."

"All right. I never wrote that letter you mention at all. It was all of a piece with those phony checks, with the fake letters that brought Burke and Gough and old Doc White here. Do you understand? It was another one of these cursed forgeries."

"And the pearl?"

"So it was a pearl, was it? I wonder if this Nemesis chap had the good taste to pay for it."

"Let me go!"

"Kiss me first."

"The Nemesis letter— it said that something terrible would happen to you if you kept on in the way that you have been going. Christy, can't you see that it is so? Can't you see that you have been the despair of all those who really had your interest at heart— all those who really loved you?"

"Did you love me, Marcia? There! What are you crying about? Why, you little witch, you're even more beautiful with tears in your eyes than you were before."

"Think of all the things that have happened to you already, that might happen to you still."

"Just once!"

The library was so large that the frontiers of it were dim even at noon. As Christopher Querle carried out his purpose and pressed his lips to Marcia Schermerhorn's pliant but unwilling cheek, it is possible that there were a number of witnesses. The catlike Swensen was in the hall, and there was a slight movement of the plum-colored portieres through which he had previously appeared. From the door of Oakley's office there came a sibilance of stealthy movement. Oakley, unobserved, had returned from the errand that had called him forth. In the farthest corner of the room, where he had been dusting and furbishing quite unobserved, a small Japanese returned silently to the work in hand.

"I'm broken-hearted," said Marcia Schermerhorn, backing away and biting her lip.

"Don't be a prude."

"I'm not a prude. I'm broken-hearted because you should do such a thing when you had me in your power and when I had asked you not to. I shall never see you again."

"Never?"

"Never! Never, that is, until I know that the Christopher Querle who acted— acted like a brute just now— has been killed, and the other—" Speech had become too great an effort, and she gave it up. But she was still engaged in those deft movements by which some women, whatever the excitement, will still assure themselves that hat and hair are in order before they trust themselves to public scrutiny, when the faithful Oakley put in an appearance.

Querle saw his secretary approach, and greeted him with a muttered curse. This wasn't lost on Oakley. It added a certain askewness to his manner of walking, that was all. But Oakley was well within his rights. He brought a newspaper with him— the early edition of an afternoon paper, one of the most sensational— and there was a red headline on the front page of it, up above the very name of the paper itself, and in this red display was an announcement that gave even Oakley the courage of self-importance. The headline was this:

YOUNG MILLIONAIRE

GIVES FORTUNE TO CHARITY!

Querle was mad enough to hit Oakley for appearing just then, but Oakley held his paper out in front of him like a sacred shield to ward off evil.

"It's about you, sir," he said rapidly, in order to get his blow in first.

"You're a liar!" grated Querle. "It can't be!"

"Yes, sir; I beg your pardon," Oakley squeaked. He had dodged the insult as if it were a missile, and succeeded in getting the paper within Querle's reach.

A glance had told Querle that Oakley was right, had confirmed his own swift foreboding. There was a lesser headline— not much lesser— in black ink and likewise adorning the front page. It stated that Christopher Querle, "famous clubman," had contributed one million dollars to the war sufferers of Europe. The announcement made Querle giddy. It hypnotized him. For half a dozen seconds he was as incapable of action as if he had been chloroformed. All around him was darkness, and the headlines were all that he could see; but these flamed and glared before his eyes like a Broadway sky sign at night.

When he recovered himself to some extent, it was to discover that Marcia Schermerhorn was gone. The discovery gave him a twinge of regret, but altogether it left him apathetic. He started to read the article. His brain was too flighty to permit of careful reading at first. He got the article through tags and snatches.

He discovered that he had long been known as a member of "society's gayest set." His fortune, it appeared, was reckoned as between twenty and thirty millions. He was the sole heir of the late Curtiss Querle, "who had died while under indictment for looting the New York Southern." Querle cursed between his teeth, and again he went giddy for a moment or two. Then some atavistic trait of financial cunning came to his rescue. He had seen a sentence to the effect that, "at his own request" the money had been cabled immediately to London and Paris.

"Oakley," he whispered, "call up these pups and find out who gave them this fake."

He was still reading when Oakley returned.

"Well?"

"They say that you gave it to them yourself," said Oakley, perturbed.

"They say that I gave it to them myself! What do they mean? What do you mean, you hound?"

"Just that, sir," Oakley answered, in great distress. "I asked them particularly, and they said that they got the tip from you. They have your letter, sir, to prove it."

Chapter 5

JUDGE GOUGH, gray-whiskered and bespectacled, calmly looked over those assembled with him in his private office. It was quite a gathering. There were two handwriting experts, Kingsley and Forsythe. Kingsley was a small, nervous man, with a prominent yellow mustache which failed to conceal his prominent white teeth. Forsythe was large, dark, and stealthy. All the way from Chicago he had come. Also present were the elder Simpson and his chief clerk, Mr. Blell. As to looks, Mr. Blell was a sheep, and he spoke with a bleat; but he had what is called a mathematical mind. As for Simpson, he looked like an old gray wolf— red-lipped, hungrily intent on business.

"But, my dear friend," said Mr. Simpson, talking between his teeth and stressing every word, "we are permitting our client to ruin himself. Bank after bank reports that his account is cleaned out or overdrawn. He refuses to come to see us, but he does not refuse to send us the most ruinous orders. Charity is all right, but one must be charitable to oneself— to one's clients."

"I agree with every word that you say," said Judge Gough, with gravity and heat. "But I tell you that the only way we can stop it is to go into the courts and prove Christopher is insane."

"We should do it," snapped the wolf. "He's crazy, absolutely crazy!"

"As for that," the judge retorted, with a touch of humor, "we'll have to consider the testimony of our friend, Doctor White. The doctor says that Mr. Querle is no such thing. He says that it's merely a case of dual personality, and that such cases are of everyday occurrence. Society would be in a pretty state if a fellow were permitted to go back on a check or a promissory note every time that he happened to feel a trifle bilious. Of course, if we cared to go into court, I dare say that we could find enough experts, notwithstanding what Doctor White says, who would swear that Mr. Querle was incapable of handling his own affairs. But you wouldn't call that protecting our client's interest, would you?"

"We could conserve a fragment of his fortune," growled Simpson.

"At the cost of his reputation," the judge countered. "Let me tell you, in this connection, something that you know as well as I do." The judge smiled ruefully. "For the first time in his life— I say this among ourselves— Christopher has a reputation, too, which is worth conservation. He appears to have the newspapers at his beck and call. Why shouldn't he? He's been giving away more money than any one else in New York. He's been taking them into his confidence. He's what they call 'good copy.' He himself has been bearing out the theory of Doctor White. Kingsley, where's that letter you secured from the Recorder?"

Kingsley sifted it from among his papers, passed it over.

"Listen to this," said the judge, and he read:

"I beg of you, therefore, to bear in mind that this unfortunate youth is still subject to outbreaks during which he is prone to use my name ... nothing criminal.... Eventually, through my own efforts, I hope to bring this folly of his to an end....

"Do you get the purport of that?" queried the judge. "It's an alibi, by means of which the good Mr. Querle protects his reputation from the depredations of the bad Mr. Querle. Bad Mr. Querle goes out on a spree and attracts a lot of unsavory attention to himself. Good Mr. Querle says, in effect: 'That fellow is using my name, but he has no right to it.'"

"And Mr. Querle wrote that communication," said Kingsley, grinning, but serious. "Mr. Forsythe and I are agreed on that. We are agreed on all the documents. It's about the only time in our lives that we have agreed on anything, and both of us have been called in all the big cases of disputed handwriting for the past fifteen years. Haven't we, Forsythe?"

"Yes," whispered Forsythe stealthily, as he glanced around.

"So far, we haven't been able to turn up a check or a letter, whether they were signed with Mr. Querle's own name or that of 'The Volunteer Nemesis,' which we would be justified in swearing were not written by Mr. Querle himself."

"And yet he does deny having written either letters or checks," said Judge Gough. "That's the only reason that I have continued to keep Burke on the job. I'm expecting him—"

"Mr. Burke," the office boy announced.

The head of the Burke Detective Agency stepped into the room with that air of suppressed strength and agility of his. He was always like some machine which might fly into murderous action at the touch of a button. There were criminals enough, according to all reports, who would attest that Mr. Burke was such a machine.

"Good morning, judge," he saluted briefly.

He sat down, swept a quick glance over the others there. He knew them all, gave each a nod; but it was business that engrossed him quite as much as business engrossed the wolfish Mr. Simpson.

"Say anything you want to, Mr. Burke," Judge Gough sighed. "We're all here on the same affair."

"I and my operatives," said Mr. Burke intensely, "have been keeping in close touch with our friend. He is leading the same kind of life that he has always led, so far as anything appears to the contrary. I cornered him myself, without his knowing who I was — dress suit, diamond studs; I was supposed to be a Pittsburgh millionaire; get me?— and I says to him: 'Mr. Querle.' I says, 'you're all to the good.' 'What's the lay?' he asks. 'Why,' I says, 'you're giving away all this money and everything.' 'Giving away— nothing!" he says. 'I'm being shook down.' I sort of laughed at him. 'You're not letting your right hand know what thy left hand does,' I says. 'You got me wrong,' he comes back. 'Why don't you put a stop to it, then?' I ask. 'Because I haven't got the time,' he says, and I could see that he was getting a little nervous. These were his words, gents, not mine. 'And because,' he says, 'I'm surrounded by a lot of old dubs that don't know what they're doing.'"

"You see?" grated Simpson.

"What's your conclusion, to date?" queried Judge Gough.

"That he's making a monkey of us," the detective answered, without requiring time to reflect.

"On what grounds?"

"That no one but him would pull such a thing."

"But you yourself have just said that he denies it."

"Gents, it's either Querle himself or it ain't. If it ain't him, it's a crook. And I ask you: Did you ever know of a crook— and all of you gentlemen have known quite a few— who would do his level best to make a rich young fellow famous and to plant his money for him where it was most likely to do good— to some one else? We've traced out those checks for you. There hasn't been a one of them that hasn't gone where it was needed. Not one of them was cashed by anybody who didn't have some sort of a letter from Querle stating just why he come across."

"Have your operatives caught him mailing any letters?"

"No, but he's running around with a bunch of Willy boys a lot of the time. There's no law against their mailing letters for him. And we can't go through his clothes every time that he comes out of his house. If we could do that, we could settle up the business in no time. But instead of that, what are we up against? We get a letter from him, telling him that he will not be molested— tells me, in writing, that his private charities are none of my business.

"Something else." And this time Mr. Burke did pause to reflect. "It's a part of my business to study faces. You'll all admit that. A face, to me, is what handwriting is to Brother Kingsley, here, or Mr. Forsythe. I've been studying Querle's face. Well, I tell you frankly that if I did discover, once and for all, that Querle was getting rid of his money and trying to live— you know!— like a regular fellow, why, it wouldn't surprise me; that's all."

"But it's folly," put in Mr. Simpson. "No man throws away good money like that."

"Say," retorted Mr. Burke, with his keen eyes, unfrightened, on the wolf, "if you could invent some new scheme of getting rid of money for them that has too much of it, you'd find ten thousand people in this town ready to kiss you as a public benefactor."

Mr. Burke had just finished speaking when the office boy once more put in his appearance. Without a word, the lad advanced and placed on the desk in front of his employer a letter, unopened, which bore a special-delivery stamp.

"Here's a letter from him now," breathed the judge heavily. He ripped open the envelope hastily with a stubby forefinger, and read:

"PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.

"DEAR JUDGE: Please call off your hounds. My fortune is mine to do with it what I will. I will to do good, and I refuse to be hampered or annoyed."

"Then he is ruined, and we are unable to help him," said the elder Simpson, with a smacking of his red lips.

The meeting broke up.

Chapter 6

QUERLE STRETCHED himself and opened one eye. He took note of the fact that he was in his own bed. That encouraged him to shut his eye again. He didn't feel very good. He had a premonition that his head was going to be heavy when he tried to lift it. For the present, at least, the only comfort to be had in life was in lying still. But into this first cranny of his wakefulness excitement thrust a preliminary wedge. He turned over, and Swensen pussy-footed forward.

"Gimme some water!" Querle commanded.

Swensen, well trained, had brought just that. Querle drained the crystal goblet. Swensen took it and hurried away to draw the damask curtains at the tall windows. Querle contemplated the pros and cons of getting up. While he was still undecided, Swensen drew close with a silken robe. Querle obeyed mechanically as the-Swede-who-looked-like-an-Englishman helped him from his couch and steered him in the direction of the bathroom. It was a familiar process to both of them. An absinth frappe topped the bath, and young Mr. Querle was ready for an egg. He finished the egg, and Oakley appeared with his sheaf of secretarial papers.

"What's new?" Querle demanded, as Oakley squirmed near.

"Good morning, Mr. Querle. There was a communication from Mr. Simpson."

"Oakley, you shut up!" Mr. Querle roared. "I've told you ten thousand times that I don't want to talk about financial matters at this time in the day. You know well enough that I've got a headache."

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Querle—"

"Well, that's all right, then. Shut up when I ask you. And don't stand there staring at me like an owl, either. Take away those things you have there. Give me the newspapers. You keep me sitting around here, wasting my time."

Oakley permitted himself a frightened grin. It was his favorite device for wooing his master into a good humor.

"All of the papers mentioned a new bequest— in your name, sir."

"What is it this time?"

"Twenty-five thousand dollars—"

"Leave all this stuff with me and get out! I can read."

"And the communication from Mr. Simpson—"

Mr. Querle, with a narrowing of his eyes, seized a crystal flower stand which stood on the table near his silver coffee service, made a movement as if to throw it. Oakley fled skitteringly and sidewise, like a frightened but watchful crab, thrusting the objectionable Simpson communication into his pocket.

But Querle was in no humor for reading. He discovered this after Oakley was gone; but, instead of calling Oakley back, he shoved the papers that the secretary had left with him to one side. He brooded for a while. The edge had been worn off the excitement of seeing his name in the papers in connection with philanthropies of one sort and another. He didn't pretend to understand this mystery that had come into his life. It was making him interesting, though, not only to himself, but to others. He understood that. Whatever was the price, it couldn't come too high.

A clock chimed noon, and he recollected that he had an engagement for one o'clock. Swensen helped him dress. He caught a glimpse of Oakley just as he was on the point of leaving.

"You take care of everything," he said. "You'll find all the papers where you left them on the table. I'm off for the day."

"HE HASN'T got a cent left," said Oakley, in a squeaking whisper, when his master was gone. "Here, you can read it for yourself. This was the letter that I wanted him to look at when he was eating his breakfast."

And Oakley went off into a paroxysm of pain or joy— no one could have told which from the looks of him.

Swensen had taken the letter. The little Japanese peered at it over a crook of Swensen's arm, and an Oriental grin slowly suffused his cunning face. Swensen was reading the communication judiciously, not willing to make any mistakes. Swensen finished his reading, turned to Oakley.

" 'As he got no other funds?" he inquired.

"No!" squeaked Oakley, convulsed.

Swensen meditated gravely, taking plenty of time to avoid rash judgment.

"Why, the dirty bounder!" he exclaimed. "He owes me a month's wages. And where is that to come from?"

The little Japanese passed from a grin to a quiet laugh.

"I guess you swipe enough, Mr. Swensen, when he come home drunk so very often, to make more than one munse salaree."

Swensen allowed his English gravity to melt somewhat. It was an acknowledgment of the soft impeachment. He allowed his pleasant memories of gain to get the better of his present bitterness.

"It's you that's been getting to him right out there in the kitchen," he retorted, with a touch of friendly envy.

"I'm satisfite," said the Japanese, tickled.

They both turned on Oakley.

"I'll be jolly well blowed," said Swensen, "if I don't believe as how it was you that was playing the part of this here Mr. Nemesis yourself."

Oakley took the suggestion as a compliment. He remained noncommittal.

"I ain't saying whether I did or didn't," he said; "but the fact remains that I haven't got any money for a month, either. You know how he has been, and all the checks having to pass through the hands of a committee, you might say, before they were paid."

"Well, he's got to pay me, the blighter!" said Mr. Swensen.

"How can he?" crowed Oakley. "The chances are that in a few hours word will get out that he's run himself out of funds, and then we'll have the sheriff coming up here and attaching even what there is here in the flat."

"Here in the flat?" Swensen asked.

"Yes, sir; right here in the flat."

"Then, I take it," said Swensen judiciously, "that it's for us to see that we do— what is right and proper. I've been serving gentlemen for a long time, and I've never done anything what wasn't right and proper."

So saying, he stared fixedly at Oakley.

Oakley shrank and blushed, a good deal like a bashful girl.

"I'm going into the office," said Oakley coyly.

"I'm going to the k-kitsen," declared the little Japanese.

Left alone, Swensen stood where he was for a while, taking a leisurely survey of his surroundings. Presently, with great dignity, with no sign of haste, he walked over to a table and picked up a gold cigarette case that was lying there. He weighed it in his hand. He slipped it, with grave satisfaction, into the tall pocket of his livery coat. He recollected various bits of gold jewelry, then a set of diamond studs and sleeve links to match. He pocketed all of these things calmly, with beautiful philosophy. After all, he was only doing what was right and proper.

There was more quickness in the activities of the little Japanese. He had a grass-woven dress-suit case, and he was trying to get into this the maximum of value with the minimum of weight and space. It was a process that required nice calculation, and, in spite of his speed, Swensen surprised him still busy at his task.

As usual, Swensen had come upon the scene unheralded by so much as a footfall. The-Swede-who-looked-like-an-Englishman stood there for a while, looking down at the little Japanese, industrious, unconscious that he was being watched. Then the Japanese looked up with a clicking gasp.

Said Swensen: "Let us now go and ask Mr. Oakley for our recommendations."

While Swensen and the Japanese were proceeding together through the apartment, Oakley was still engaged in fighting over a little problem of his own in the room which he called his office. Oakley had locked the door. From a drawer of his desk he had drawn a large gray envelope which was addressed to "Christopher Querle, Esq.," in the large and somewhat florid handwriting of Marcia Schermerhorn. Oakley read the letter which this envelope contained with considerable satisfaction. It had been written shortly after Miss Schermerhorn's visit to Querle. It referred— just a bit incoherently, but in a way which filled Oakley with a quiver of delight— to Mr. Querle's actions on that occasion.

Also, the letter referred to the necessity under which Miss Schermerhorn felt herself to return a certain cherished present. And Oakley, after meditating over this portion of the letter, brought from the same drawer of the desk a small white box. He opened this box and disclosed a pendant comprising one large pink pearl and a number of small brilliants.

It was this that constituted the nodus of Oakley's little problem.

Should he take it, or should he not?

He looked at the ceiling. He looked at his thumbs. He squinted at the pearl from an angle. He smiled and he scowled. Then he heard Swensen and the Japanese talking together just outside the door. He was grateful for the interruption. He was forced to act. He was a victim of fate. There was a knock at the door, and Swensen was asking to be admitted.

Oakley thrust both the letter and the pearl into his pocket as he arose to open the door.

Chapter 7

THE WAITERS and other employees at Zell's were certainly well trained. They were rapidly surrounding Querle on all sides, forming a solid phalanx, through which it was impossible for him to break or to throw anything. The phalanx was already under way toward the principal door. The crowd seemed to realize that the danger was over so far as they were concerned. There was a beginning of laughter. To most of them there, doubtless, the thing was regarded as a Godsend anyway— a blase lot, keen on new forms of amusement. The Hawaiians finished their love song, and, without a moment's delay, a Viennese band zinged merrily into a waltz.

Querle was still fighting with all his might, but he was fairly suffocated by numbers.

The well-trained phalanx was moving with increased momentum down the aisle. The movement was as irresistible as if they all were in the same boat, headed for the brink of Niagara. But, instead of passing on out through the broad archway into the hall, the phalanx swerved off to one side and out through a service door.

The head waiter was beyond the door. He took charge of the situation so far as the forces mobilized were concerned.

"Get back to your places!" he commanded. "It's nodings but a drunk."

The waiters scurried away. As the door swung open and shut, there entered, from the famous gold room, various gusts of Viennese music. In there it was as if nothing had happened. The beautiful ladies and their escorts were sipping their drinks again and dabbling with their food. The recent shouts and laughter had subsided into a rippling babble of polite conversation. And, over all this, there swooned and crooned the music of the waltz.

But out in the place where they had brought him, Querle was again fighting that ghost of his.

A stout man had him now. The man had a derby hat shoved down to his ears. He was armed with a billy. He was inclined to be rough. Querle suddenly uppercut him. The stout man staggered back and lost his grip. Querle started to run.

There was no telling what might have happened if he had got back to the gold room just then. But he had apparently lost his bearings. The place he was in was a cement-paved corridor adjoining the kitchens. He started up this in the wrong direction swiftly, crouching low, looking to the left and the right both for a way of escape and to ward off attack.

While this was in progress, Freddie and the ladies had been approached by the floor manager. The floor manager was quite himself again, perfectly suave, unruffled. But he had a glint in his eye that Freddie found uncomfortable. The floor manager suggested that it might be just as well for Freddie and the ladies, since they had arrived in company with Mr. Querle—"or the gentleman who called himself Mr. Querle"— to yield their places to other guests who had already reserved this particular table.

"We'll send the car back for him," said Freddie, shortly afterward, as he and the girls entered the plum-colored limousine.

All of them were frightened.

The lobby at Zell's was more crowded than ever. The late-afternoon crowd and the early diners were arriving. A good many of the five-o'clockers were preparing to go back to New York. Suddenly there was a shout that electrified this crowd even more than the fight in the gold room had electrified the crowd back there.

There was a decorative balcony of forged iron at one end of the lobby, meant to serve as a band stand, probably, for gala occasions. The only entrance to it was a small door leading from an upper floor. Through this door Querle had plunged, disheveled and wild. It was he who had shouted. It wasn't an ordinary shout. It was a whoop. It was a battle cry. It spread silence over the lobby like a pistol shot. Every one twisted around to look. Up in the balcony Querle was all alone. He waved his arms.

"I'm Christopher Querle," he yelled; "and no blankety-blank Nemesis can get me. And I won't be reformed. I'm rotten. I know it, but no one can tell me how to behave. I won't submit. I tell you I won't."

There was more of it. There was a good deal of it. Once or twice the crowd had broken out into a murmur of excitement. But every one was spellbound, more or less, and anxious to hear what the man in the balcony had to say. Right off, the word had spread around that this was Christopher Querle, the young millionaire who had recently been giving a fortune to charity, and there was something so grotesque in the aspect of a philanthropist obviously drunk and disorderly that almost every one was getting a thrill from it that he had never had before. But right on top of this came that other rumor. The man up there was not Querle at all, but a reprobate who had assumed the young altruist's name.

And as this explanation began to circulate and find general acceptance, the voice of the crowd began to take on definite meaning.

There were cries of "Throw him out!" and "Kill him!"

Every crowd is a potential mob, even the kind of crowd that assembles at a fashionable restaurant like Zell's.

Then those who had been chasing Querle all over the place ever since his escape from the kitchens came out onto the balcony. They were headed by the stout man with the derby hat pulled down to his ears. There were a good dozen of them— house detectives, elevator starters, porters.

Querle made a movement to jump over the railing of the balcony, but before he could carry out this purpose, the pack piled onto him and bore him to the floor.

QUERLE opened one eye, as was a habit of his when waking up. The first impression that smote him was that he must have had an awful night of it. There wasn't an inch of him that didn't ache, and his head ached worst of all. Then he got another impression, and it gave him a shock that brought him up in spite of his pains. He was not only not in his own bed, but in no bed at all. He had been sleeping on a plank inside a latticed window. He had just begun to wonder what sort of a house the latticed window belonged to when the latticework resolved itself into the flat, steel crossbars of a prison. And, as impression number three, Christopher Querle became aware that he was the inmate of a cell.

He was all alone in the cell. Manifestly, from the nature of the light in the room outside of the cell, it was day; but he saw no one, heard no one. It supplemented his widening knowledge with a sentiment that was creepy and weird. But he didn't want to see any one just then. He was sure of that. To think and to remember was a more imperious need than to ask questions.

In the corner of the cell, which was exceedingly small, with a floor space not much greater than that of a coffin, he spied a water tap and a metal bucket. He crept over to the tap. He washed his face and soaked his head. He drank copiously out of his hands.

Still wet, he subsided on the wooden bench that had been his bed, and made an effort to think. By slow degrees he recalled a former awakening— in his own bed, with Swensen there to help him; there followed a certain bickering with the unspeakable Oakley, then a date he had had with a party of friends, among whom were Lottie and Rose of the Follies and also Freddie Nash. Also he remembered that Agnes Sidell, who was supposed to be Freddie's particular friend, had looked at him, Querle, with sulphurous promise. But all this seemed to be of the remote past— of a month ago, at least. He wondered where they all were now, not that it mattered very much. They might all be dead, for all he cared.

He was sitting there like that, when a vision drifted into the field of gray light beyond the crossbars. It was the vision of a very old man. The ancient was bearded. He looked supernaturally dirty. He was smoking a pipe, and his chin was pressed almost up to his nose at each succeeding puff. Also the vision was dragging a broom behind him.

"Say!" cried Querle.

The vision stopped and looked around, so it was reality, after all.

"Good morning, sir," said the old gentleman, with exquisite politeness.

"Can you tell me where in the devil I am?" asked Querle.

"Why, yes, sir," the elder responded. "This is the station house, sir. Do you expect to be with us long?"

"When was I brought here? What did I do? Where can I get a telephone?"

Querle was greedy for information now, but it was clear that the old gentleman, albeit inspired by the greatest kindness in the world, was not able to enlighten him.

"You will find it most pleasant here," the old man said gently. "Do you know how to play checkers?"

"Get somebody here who can answer my questions!" Querle commanded, with a reversion to form.

"I'll speak to the gentleman at the door, sir."

The gentleman at the door must have been an abnormally fat policeman, with a closely clipped, bullet-shaped head. He was the only one who appeared after the old man went away.

"Officer," said Querle, "I wish to telephone. I wish to get out of here. Anything you may do to help me will be well worth your while. Open the door, please."

The fat officer looked back at him through the bars.

"What's your name?" he asked shortly.

"Christopher Querle."

"Yes, you ain't," the policeman came back.

He hoisted the back of his coat and brought out the section of a morning's newspaper he had been carrying in his hip pocket. He slowly unfolded this, sought out the article he wanted.

"I thought you was going to pull that old lie on us again," he said, "and I was fixed for you. I'm a believer in preparation. So you're Christopher Querle, are you? Well, before throwing any more bull and getting yourself into any worse trouble than you're in already, kindly cast your eye over this."

He shoved the paper between the bars.

Querle took the paper. But even before he saw the headline the policeman indicated, he had a premonition of the truth. The officer's words had been enough.

The headline read:

POSED AS PHILANTHROPIST,

WOUND UP IN A CELL.

"Well," demanded the officer, "are you Querle or ain't you?"

He followed up the query with a coarse but not wholly unpleasant laugh. The laugh encouraged Querle to take his time. He was reading the article with eyes that failed him every now and then, but he managed to get the gist of it. The article said that for several months a gilded youth had been going about town, passing himself off as Christopher Querle, the well-known young millionaire. Yesterday, however, the bogus philanthropist had created a scandal in a certain famous restaurant and had been arrested after a fight.

"Well, are you or ain't you?" the officer persisted.

Querle had one of the first moments of genuine inspiration in his life. He threw back his head. He passed back the paper through the bars. He said:

"I ain't!"

Querle repeated this declaration two hours later before a bored magistrate. He had thought it over, and the thinking had cleared his brain. There was a Christopher Querle who had his name in the newspapers. There was a Christopher Querle who had been loved by Marcia Schermerhorn, and who loved her in return. The thought of this Christopher Querle brought a lump to his throat, made him feel sad and lonely, as if he had lost a great and good friend. But he had determined that no act or word of his should sully this friend's fair reputation.

"What is your real name?" the magistrate asked him, while the reporters looked on and grinned.

"Henry Smith, your honor," said Christopher Querle.

"All right, Henry," said the magistrate. "I'm giving you thirty days on the Island."

All the papers commented that afternoon on the fact that the real Mr. Querle hadn't appeared in court at all.

Chapter 8

A NEAT LITTLE sedan drew up in front of the old brownstone house where Doctor White lived. A footman ran up to the door. He brought back word that the doctor was in. Marcie Schermerhorn, with the air of one engaged in an adventure, left the car and hurried up the steps in her turn. The doctor himself met her in the hall. He showed her into his drawing-room with old-fashioned courtesy. The doctor was an old bachelor, but no man in New York had more gracious manners with women, were they young or old. His manners, in fact, were about the only basis for that nebulous old tradition that hovered about him to the effect that the doctor had once been disappointed in love.

"I was just asking Emlen to prepare me a cup of coffee," the doctor said. "He is a miraculous coffee maker, but I believe that he is also adept in the matter of tea, should you prefer it. Or may I offer you a sip of port?"

Marcia had impulsively taken the doctor's arm. She was immeasurably relieved, now that she knew that she wasn't going to be forced to reveal immediately the purpose of her visit. Her gratitude expressed itself in a burst of affection, unexpressed except by that movement of her hand to his arm.

"Your Emlen appears to be quite miraculous in a number of ways," she said.

She checked herself with rounded lips and startled eyes as she discovered that the subject of her remark was himself in the room. But if Emlen Gonthorpe had heard her, he gave no sign of it. His back was turned. His shoulders were hunched up. He was trimming the wick of an alcohol lamp. There was something about him vaguely suggestive of a priest engaged about some instrument of his cult. He brought the blue flame to the proper height. He vanished from the room as silently as a shadow.

"I'm afraid that I hurt his feelings," said Marcia.

The doctor shook his head.

"Not Emlen's," he said. "Gonthorpe is a philosopher, a true stoic, and a higher compliment than that I couldn't pay to any man. He's been with me now for close on to forty years. I trust that he will be here at the last. He's all I have— -except for my children." And the doctor looked down at Marcia with his most gracious smile.

"Where did you ever find him?"

"He came to me in very peculiar circumstances," the doctor replied. "It's an old story, and a long one. It's scarcely worth repeating. Suffice it to say that it redounded greatly to Emlen's honor, revealed to me that he possessed quite extraordinary qualities of mind and heart besides a most singular talent. And— ah, yes!— it had something to do with the elder Querle. I'll tell you all about it some day. But now—"

Marcia Schermerhorn gave a little tug at her courage.

"Doctor White," she said, "where is Christopher Querle?"

The physician had given her exactly the opening she had longed for. Perhaps he had guessed the real reason of her visit. Like many another old physician, his qualities as a guesser were almost uncanny at times. "Why, I imagine that he has left town for a few days. But I see him mentioned in the papers every now and then."

"That is just what worries me," said Marcia. "There is some mystery about it all. The papers said that he was present at the Jameson wedding. I was a bridesmaid. I'm quite sure that he wasn't there. The papers also said that he was at the Milliken coming-out affair. If he was, I missed him altogether. I saw a piece in the papers about his making another huge donation to the Polish Bazaar—"

Marcia checked herself as Emlen Gonthorpe came back into the room. He noticed her, for the first time, apparently. He murmured a throaty greeting.

Gonthorpe looked as if he might be everything that the doctor had said of him. He was anything but handsome— spectacled, sparsely bearded, big but gnarled, dour as to expression. And yet there was unquestionably something about him that was instantly gripping and impressive. This something was hard to define. It may have been composed of a thousand elements. In spite of his gnarled strength, for example, there was a lightness and delicacy about the movement of his hands as he manipulated the coffee urn that any woman might have envied, and which Marcia Schermerhorn herself found beautiful. And that dour expression of his face, on closer scrutiny, or for those who knew him well, was filled with the lights and shadows of a powerful and sympathetic mind.

There must have been some great qualities about him, anyway, so Marcia Schermerhorn was telling herself, if he could have remained the friend of a man like Doctor White through so many years.

Doctor White spoke up.

"Emlen," he said, "Miss Schermerhorn was just asking me about Querle. Do you happen to have seen him lately?"

"I saw him yesterday," said Gonthorpe gruffly.

Marcia leaned forward in her chair.

"In New York?"

"Yes."

"I tried to telephone him at his apartments," Marcia confessed, with a slight catching of her breath, "and they told me that he wasn't living there any more. I had written him there. The letter was rather important. I didn't get any answer."

Gonthorpe heaved a species of sigh, which was his method of saying that small talk did not interest him greatly. But he looked up with a bearded smile, none the less.

"He's in retirement for a while," he volunteered. "It's doing him good. If I were you, I'd just wait until he came out of it. What kind of tea do you want?"

"Any kind," said Miss Schermerhorn, meaning that nothing but Christopher Querle really interested her just then.

"It was on my advice," said Doctor White blandly. "Emlen, I think we could stand just a shade more Mocha in our next blend." He regarded Miss Schermerhorn for a second or two, measuring his words. "Christopher, you know, has been under something of a strain. I am sure that we are all eager to see him safely through it."

"Has he— heard anything more from — 'The Volunteer Nemesis?'"

"Can you answer that, Emlen?"

"Yes," said Gonthorpe. He finished his task of filling a silver tea ball. The movement of his hands were more deft and delicate than ever. He arranged the tea things on a lacquer tray and placed the tray on a small table, where the visitor could serve herself. "Yes; he's had more than one communication from The Volunteer Nemesis, but they're not hurting him any. You haven't asked me, but I'm going to tell you. I think that they are doing him a world of good."

Gonthorpe often said things that gave those who heard him the impression of listening to a sphinx.

"I'm very much relieved," said Marcia Schermerhorn.

"Burke's gone right on working at this Volunteer Nemesis case," said Gonthorpe, with a disgusted air, "but he won't find out anything. He's found out that Mr. Querle has given away most of his fortune, if not all of it; but that's no news. And he's found out that there isn't any way to undo the sale of the Querle house up the Avenue to Henry Lathrope. But when the sale was put through by as good a lawyer as Judge Gough, what is there surprising about that?"

"I— I telephoned to Judge Gough yesterday," Marcia confessed, "and he told me that he didn't know where Christopher was, either. What is this mystery? Where is he? What has happened to him? And this so-called Nemesis; what is it? Is it an enemy? Or is it a friend? Or is it just himself?"

"You read the original Nemesis letter, did you not?" asked Doctor White, with his eyes on the ceiling.

"Yes; the day we all met there together."

"What was your opinion of it?"

"That Christopher wrote it himself."

"Hold the thought," said the doctor, with a smile. "If Querle will ever admit that he did write that letter, and all the subsequent documents which he attributes to the same pen, but which he maintains was not his own, then— then, indeed— he will be worthy of the finest girl in New York."

It was a direct reference to what that cryptic note had said about Querle becoming worthy of some one as yet unmentioned.

Marcia flashed her eyes first upon Emlen Gonthorpe, the doctor's queer companion and friend, then upon the doctor himself. Gonthorpe was upward of fifty. The doctor was a good score of years older. Neither of them were looking at her, and their age gave her confidence to say what was in her mind.

"Do you think," she asked, with a quickening of her breath and a slight heightening of her color, "that I— was really the person referred to?"

Gonthorpe scowled at the floor. Doctor White gazed at the ceiling.

"Emlen," said the doctor softly, "kindly look among my papers and see if you can't find that note Querle wrote to me last March. Don't worry, Marcia. I am violating no confidence. He said— said— that if he ever married at all— he hoped that it would be—"

Gonthorpe humpbacked out of the room. He was gone a long time, but he returned with the paper that the doctor had asked him to seek. He held it out to Marcia with a grim smile.

She started to take it, but when she recognized Querle's handwriting, her delicacy overthrew her curiosity. She drew back.

"What he said"— and Gonthorpe glanced at the note with perfect indifference, "was that he hoped he would be worthy of a girl like Marcia Schermerhorn—"

Chapter 9

AS CHRISTOPHER Querle stood on the deck of the municipal ferryboat that brought released prisoners and visitors back to Manhattan from the city prison on Blackwell's Island, he felt like an immigrant. He was an immigrant in a good many respects. He had put his old life behind him. A new life, full of unsounded possibilities, lay ahead of him.

They had made him work over on the Island. It was hard work, hard and dirty— breaking up old cotton and jute in the mattress factory— and it was the first real work he had ever done in his life. He had learned rapidly enough, though, to get through it in the aimless and abstracted way in vogue among prisoners everywhere, and he had had ample time to reflect.

There had been plenty to reflect about.

On at least two occasions he had seen his name, Christopher Querle, in the newspapers, once as having been present at a ball of the ultra fashionable, again as having contributed a large check to an ultra fashionable charity. His facilities for newspaper reading had been strictly limited. He had reason to believe that his name must have appeared in the papers on other occasions as well. He wondered how this could be. There was no other Christopher Querle that he had ever heard of. There was certainly no other Christopher Querle in the limited circles of what the newspapers had never ceased to call "the Four Hundred."

It was with a shiver that almost sent him to the hospital that he received the one letter that had been given to him since becoming a prisoner on the Island.

This letter had come to him under his assumed name of Henry Smith. The letter was brief. It said that the works of Nemesis were dark but salubrious. It recommended him to courage. So much, so well. But there were three facts about this letter, brief as it was, that had ensnared and bewildered him. The letter contained a five-dollar bill. Although it had been recently mailed, the date on it was that of a month back. Apparently it had been written and signed by himself— signed Christopher Querle.

Just as an immigrant might have done, he gave a little gulp as the boat neared the dock.

New York shimmered in the young sunlight of an April morning. It was like a city that be had never seen before. He had never stopped to think of it as so stupendous, so magical, so wholly a creation of swiftly materialized imagination. The gates of this city were opened to him. He was free. There was no limit to the materializations of his own imaginings except the limit of his own will.

He had mapped out a definite plan.

First of all, he would go to his quarters on the Avenue for a bath and a change of clothing. He would put an extra lot of perfume in the bath. He felt the taint of the prison strong upon him. It was physical; he could smell it. It exuded from his pores. And, once free of this taint, he could become Christopher Querle again and pursue his investigations of his besetting mystery at leisure.

There was a hansom cab in the street just outside the dock. The cab stood just in front of the morgue, and every now and then the cabman cast a disconsolate glance at the morgue, as if chiding the inmates of it for not coming out and giving him a fare. Old habit flared up. Querle stepped into the cab and gave his old address.

It was still early when he arrived in front of the familiar door. The cabman relieved him of two dollars. Querle would have given him all of his five had the cabman asked it. He swung into the lobby. There was a strange boy in charge of the elevator. The boy looked at him askance, but Querle's bearing and the fact that he had arrived in a cab were impressive. The boy shot him up to the twelfth floor. Querle had his latchkey out. He stepped nimbly across the hall, opened the door of the place that had been his home only a month ago. He entered.

It was dark and deserted. He stumbled into the room that had been his library. The place was as bare as a barn.

He stood there, stricken. He was sure of the floor. He was sure of the room. The walls were still tinted in the shade he had specially ordered. A window shade floated back and gave him an unmistakable vista of the housetops opposite. He crept, under the weight of a growing depression, into the place that had been his bedroom. He caught a faint whiff of the unforgetable aroma of it— a compound of burned perfume and Egyptian cigarettes. The walls were paneled in silk. The room might have been the deserted apartment of a courtesan.

There was a large element of disgust in the rage that was making Querle's breast heave. Even the rage— he recognized it— was directed against himself, against his old self.

Also he was invaded by a gradual sense of the uncanny which almost amounted to fear.

Now that he was this far, he decided to look about the rest of the place— not that he expected to find anything of interest. He was disillusioned in this, however. As he stepped back into the library, he noticed an envelope thrust into a window frame. It looked like an old envelope, placed there to keep the window from rattling on a windy night. He drew it from its place, a souvenir of his past. He saw that the envelope was addressed to himself, but in that handwriting he had come to dread— his own. He drew out the paper the envelope contained. The handwriting on the paper was also his own, but once more the signature was: "The Volunteer Nemesis." The communication consisted of but a single sentence. It was this:

Enter into possession of your own name only when you have shown yourself worthy of it.

The hallman was on duty when Querle came down. The fellow gave Querle a look that rapidly evolved from plain inquiry into outraged decorum.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

Both the intonation and the way that the fellow had stepped toward him had thrown Querle on his guard.

Querle met the inquiry with a blaze of contempt that left him speechless for a moment or two. He was suddenly aware that he had always hated this fellow, seven feet tall and capering about like a trained monkey.

"Have you the effrontery to ask me?" Querle stammered.

"I have my orders," said the hallman, squirming with indecisive action. His eyes lit up with a gleam of confidence. "I have my orders from Mr. Querle himself."

"Jackass!" panted Querle.

"I'm going to hold you and place you in charge if you don't get out of here," said the other. "That is what Mr. Querle arsked me to do. Come, now, lively, please!"

Such elevator boys as were free pressed near. From an alcove in the back of the hall Querle saw from the tail of his eye the blond head of the girl in charge of the switchboard. His quickened perceptions also told him that the hallman intended to achieve a cheap victory by pouncing upon him the moment that his back was turned. Querle drew himself together. For his own salvation he couldn't permit himself to be humiliated this early in his first day of liberty. Even so, action came more quickly than he himself had foreseen.

The big guardian also had remarked the blond head back of the switchboard. The assembled elevator staff encouraged him. He stooped somewhat. He put out his long arms.

Querle went at him with a roar. He struck him four times at the first impact— once with each fist and once with each foot.

It was no fight at all The hallman had grabbed a wild cat and then let go again. That was all there was to it. Then the wild cat, Querle, to wit, was out on the Avenue and headed south. He didn't run. There was no need of it, even had he been so inclined, which he was not. He had correctly read the expression of desperate fright that had appeared in the hallman's face, and also the guarded joy that had appeared in the faces of the onlookers. Recollection of it all gave him a breath of pure exultation even then, in the midst of his general bafflement.

Nine o'clock, and he made his way into the Crillon Trust Company. He had always left such details to Oakley, but he remembered in a general way that his balance there was usually large. He wrote out a countercheck at one of the glass-topped tables. There was a long line of office boys and other menials, principally, in front of the one paying teller's window open. Querle sought to place himself at the head of the line, but a Negro attendant politely and firmly instructed him to take his turn like the others. Querle acceded. After all, he had plenty of time. His check was for five hundred dollars. With that sum to begin with, he could set seriously about his rehabiliment.

The line made its way forward with fits and starts and long pauses. At last Querle shoved his check through the small window. The teller he had never seen before— a face shrewd and kindly, wrinkled and pale. The teller took the check, gave it a quick glance, gave a more careful glance at Querle himself. He turned and spoke to some one invisible. Querle's heart was sinking rapidly. His eyes and his intellect went somewhat blurred. Then he was seeing the face of the teller again. Very shrewd and kindly it looked. But also the eyebrows were lifted. And there was the check with a row of letters on it that spelled: "No funds."

There was a good restaurant a couple of blocks from the bank. Querle had never been in the habit of going there. It was an old-fashioned place. But it appealed to him in his present mood. He found the place almost deserted, perfectly suited to the needs of a man who wanted to think as well as eat. So he breakfasted copiously and taking his time over it. This was food. He had almost forgotten that there was food like this in the world, and such service and spaciousness and quiet.

He was surprised at the thing that had befallen him at the Crillon Trust Company. He would have to try the other banks. He would have got into touch with Judge Gough immediately, only he had had a quarrel with the judge over the Nemesis matter. He had told the judge exactly what he thought of him.

He called for his bill. It amounted to two dollars and something. The old waiter held a match for him while he lit one of the king-size cigarettes he had ordered.

Querle had started to initial the bill when he remembered that he was unknown in this place. He had three dollars left of his five. He brought these out and tossed them into the silver plate. It never occurred to him to wait for his change.

Chapter 10

WHEN THE thought first came to Christopher Querle that he was actually penniless, it was like the preliminary pang of a severe indigestion, and it came to him in the same way— after sundry warnings and misgivings, a sense of goneness, a feeling of being shut off from the rest of humanity.

He had visited six other banks. In the last one he had had an overwhelming foreboding of arrest that sent him back to the sidewalk determined to enter no bank again until he was more certain of just where he stood. Out on the sidewalk, he was uncertain which way to turn; and he stood there, undecided, until he became aware that he was an object of curiosity to a messenger boy. He felt that it would be merely a matter of time before he was the center of a crowd. He started off rapidly down the street. It then occurred to him that he would dislike greatly to meet any of his friends while he was in his present mood. The dislike became a fear, and the fear verged on panic. He turned off into a side street, and, still walking rapidly, came into a section of the city where he felt that he was safe. But now that he was there, he was at a loss to know what to do with himself.

He felt dirty and disreputable. But it was the knowledge that he had no money in his pocket, and had no means of getting any, that kept bombarding his brain more than anything else. Now that he thought of it, he had passed months at a time during his former life without knowing the feel of currency. In fact, he had always had a certain squeamishness about touching money. He let Oakley do that. He had moved in a set of concentric circles where the signing of his name, or just his initials, had always been enough. He reflected, with a flash of fresh confidence, that there must be a hundred places now where the signing of his name would still be ample to provide for his needs. But his optimism was a mere flash. He was penniless. The taint of Blackwell's Island was still on him. It was in his clothing. It was in his skin. He lacked the nerve.

He came to an open square with benches in it. He sat down. He was tired. He couldn't remember ever having been so lonely. About him, on other benches, there sagged and dozed and argued the tramps and the out-of-works. Some of these occasionally drifted into a large brown building at one side of the square. Out of sheer ennui, Querle also entered the building after a time. He went up a flight of stairs, in momentary expectation of some one stopping him and asking him what he wanted. He found the reading room of a public library on the second floor. It was pretty well filled by the same sort of men as those he had seen in the square. There was one magazine which appeared to be fairly clean. It was called the Journal of Reform.

Querle seated himself and began to turn the pages. Suddenly he responded to a shock that ran through him like the jolt from an electric battery. He was looking at the line under the title of an article. The line read: "By Christopher Querle."

The title of the article denoted that it had to do with prison reform.

After what seemed to be a long time, he had succeeded in reading the article through. It was almost wholly concerned with conditions on Blackwell's Island. There were moments when he almost forgot the name at the head of the article in faint gusts of enthusiasm at the manner in which the author stated his case. Querle certainly knew a lot about Blackwell's Island. He knew the feel of it. The aroma of it was his own. He was familiar with the sort of taint that hovered about a man after he had been there for a few weeks. It was evident that in all this special knowledge he was no better informed than this other Christopher Querle. In fact, he discovered that he and the writer of the article entertained many views in common.

The discovery that there was a reformer of his own name who could write on the subject of Blackwell's Island with the same amount of knowledge which he himself possessed held Christopher Querle absorbed for a couple of hours. But the shock and the sustained interest of it was as nothing compared to what was to follow. Abstractedly he had turned over to the magazine's editorial page.

There he saw the name of Christopher Querle again. It was in the middle of an editorial paragraph. The paragraph called attention to the article Querle had just read, and it spoke of the author as the gifted young millionaire who had but recently made so many magnificent gifts to charity. There was only one man in New York of his name who could have been called a millionaire. That was himself. And there was only one Christopher Querle who had recently made magnificent gifts to charity. In those last few tumultuous days of his old life he had received so many letters of beggary and thanks that they had ceased to become a joke. They had become a bore. He had ordered Oakley to destroy them as fast as received.

Querle crept down the steps and out into the open air. He had a headache. He was once more feeling the need of food. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. He had decided on another effort to assert himself.

The Gotham Club was the least pretentious of all the clubs he had belonged to. It was located in a neighborhood that had once been fashionable, but which was now invaded by business. No one ever went to the Gotham Club in the daytime, but it was often day when they went away, for the Gotham had become one of the most notorious private gambling houses among the younger fashionable set. And, as in a good many gambling clubs, one could get a very fair meal there, too.

Querle had it all thought out.

He made a semblance of running blithely up the steps of the club. It was quartered in an old residence of the "high-stoop" school of architecture. The doorman of the Gotham was a short and powerful Negro by the name of Connie. Connie met Querle just inside the door, and the expression on Connie's face was the expression of a darkey who sees a ghost.

"You cain't come in, suh," said Connie, blocking the passage.

"Forget it!" grated Querle.

Connie raised his voice.

"Mistuh Johnson," he called, "here's dat gemmun Mr. Querle done wrote about, and he's tryin' to run into the premises."

Johnson was the secretary of the club, a gentleman with a reputation for being hard and smooth. He stepped out of his office at the back of the hall and sauntered forward. His movements were leisurely, but he wasn't losing any time. His eyes never left Querle from the moment that they saw him. They were small eyes, dark and penetrating.

"Johnson," said Querle, "what is the meaning of this?"

The familiar surroundings had reacted upon him sufficiently to make him forget to some extent the preceding adventures of the day. But Mr. Johnson brought back his memory with a jerk.

"Who are you?" Mr. Johnson asked, as cold as ice.

"Have you got the nerve to ask?"

"Yes, Mr. Smith, I have," said Mr. Johnson freezingly. "We've got your number. Mr. Querle told us all about you. Now you beat it. First let me give you a tip. The next time you try to pass yourself off as one of our members, at least get a shine and have your clothes pressed. Go on and get out, you poor bum!"

Querle tried to speak. He mouthed a few crumbs of speech, but nothing very articulate. Before he could get his mind fairly into action, though, Mr. Johnson had turned his back and started for the place he had come from. Querle made a movement to follow. As he did so, he felt an odd sensation in the middle of his back, a tightening of his coat about his chest. Then there was a similar and simultaneous sensation at the seat of his trousers. In a state of nightmare he was rushed through the door. He was halfway down the stoop when he caught himself.

He turned to look back of him. The door of the Gotham was closed. For about six seconds he struggled to express himself, but the language he needed stuck in his throat. His breath failed him. He was dimly aware, moreover, of the presence of a special policeman not far away. He had a fearful vision of himself being thrust back into the still deeper horror of the Island again.

He descended the remaining steps like a meek old man.

By the time that night was settling down, Christopher Querle was not only tired and hungry, he was also possessed of the idea that the whole world had turned against him utterly. In all the vain searching of his mind, he could not think of a single friend to whom he cared to present himself.

He was in no mood to be laughed at. And yet he himself had given every one ample grounds to laugh at him. He had acted like a fool. He could not deny it, didn't try to deny it. He had been warned time and again that he was being impoverished. Once or twice, as he remembered it, he had given some vague thought to the subject himself— ten minutes or so, perhaps, in all; but he had resisted every movement set on foot to check his ruin. It wasn't because of any threat that The Volunteer Nemesis had made. It was merely because he hadn't wanted to be bored. Should he go around now and place himself in a position to be jeered at?

He would rather die first.

But it was that remark of Johnson's about his needing the attention of a valet that rankled most in his heart. It was like a ball and chain on his leg. His appearance he dragged with him. He would have to get back to normal in that respect, or even the rim of his former orbit would remain closed to him.

He sought out the library where he had read the article by Christopher Querle. There, at least, no one found anything strange about his appearance. It brought to Querle's heart a dim, unidentified glow of brotherhood. He made his way among the strays and waifs of the reading room, found once more the magazine of reform. He settled himself into a chair. He turned to the editorial paragraph concerning the author. By this time Querle experienced no sense of ownership in the name whatsoever. This referred to some one else— some one who was happy and prosperous, who was clean and well clothed, had a home, had an interest in some one other than himself, who had no idea, most likely, what hunger was at all.

Querle felt as if he would faint pretty soon if his hunger kept on getting worse.

It was rather in an effort to forget it than any desire for information that led him finally to go over the files of the daily papers. But here, time and again, the usurper of his name also reared up to mock at him. There was scarcely an allusion to him anywhere that was not laudatory. He was recorded as present at dances and bazaars. He was mentioned as on the committees of popular and fashionable entertainments. Twice he discovered letters signed by Christopher Querle in the columns open to contributors, and the letters dealt with social problems about which Querle himself had never dreamed.

By unnoticed degrees Querle stopped reading and brooded instead. Once more he was seeing this man named Christopher Querle as some one wholly apart from himself— some one as he himself might have been; some one who was even now, perhaps, courting Marcia Schermerhorn. And to Querle's hunger was added a sickening pang of envy.

Out into the dark and windy street Querle went with the others who had remained in the library until the closing hour.

There was something familiar about the appearance of an old man who was just ahead of him on his way down. Querle waited until they were both in the street, then he made the opportunity to look at the ancient's face. Querle recognized it. It was the face of the old gentleman he had seen in the jail on the morning after his arrest. The other had paused, was looking back at him gently and politely, but without recognition.

"Hello!" said Querle.

"Good evening, sir," said the elder.

He studied Querle for a moment or two as he proceeded to fill his pipe, then inquired: "May I ask if you are going to get your coffee?"

At the mention of coffee, Querle had a desperate gleam of yearning hope. His mouth watered. His empty stomach turned over.

"Where?" he asked weakly.

"There is a new bread line," the old one began, with gentle satisfaction. He looked about him to see that he was not overheard. He whispered: "It is only patronized by the better sort as yet. I don't like the class who patronize certain bread lines."

"Lead me to it," said Querle, abandoned.

"Why, gladly," quavered the ancient.

They passed the square and entered a broad thoroughfare where the elevated railroads thundered overhead. The old man identified this as the Bowery, and Querle felt as if he were Dante conducted through Inferno by Virgil. They came into a nebulous region, where there was a long line of drab and sombrous men ahead of them.

"This is a new charity but recently established," Virgil quavered, patiently and willing to instruct. "It was established by a young gentleman—"

"Who?" asked Querle, while the cold shivers ran down his back and something clutched at his throat.

The old man stoked humbly at his pipe.

"His name," he said reverently, "is Christopher Querle."

Chapter 11

QUERLE STAYED out all night. As early as he decently could, he went to call on Doctor White. He was in desperate need of friendship. Every hour that had passed between midnight and morning had seen a steady shrinking of his pride. But it required no special humility to take him to the doctor's door.

He had been there before, in worse states than his present one, and, while he had been forced to swallow some pretty bitter medicine, both spiritual and physical, there never had been any uncertainty about the quality of the doctor's welcome.

The doctor was an early riser. He and Emlen Gonthorpe were just about to sit down to breakfast. The butler brought Querle straight into the breakfast room.

"Christopher!" cried the doctor. "All well, I trust?"

"First of all, doctor," Querle replied, "I shall be grateful for a chance to wash and brush up. After that, I shall be grateful for an invitation to breakfast."

Doctor White smiled indulgently, but showed no great surprise. And all through the subsequent meal, while they talked about sundry things, he gave Querle only an occasional shrewd and piercing glance while Querle's attention was otherwise engrossed. Querle was eating like a hungry boy. Finally the silent and nimble-fingered Gonthorpe mumbled an excuse and withdrew. Doctor White and Querle confronted each other.

"Emlen doesn't look as if he's had a good night, either," said Querle, fishing for an opening.

"We doctors and our assistants are apt to suffer in that respect," replied the doctor blandly, as he continued to study his guest. "I am sorry to see, Christopher, that you do show symptoms of a certain irregularity in that respect."

"I admit it," said Querle. "I was a fool for not coming to you immediately. I've had a beastly day and night— I've had many of them. I might as well unbosom myself."

"By all means, my boy."

"Yesterday I got out of jail. I came back to New York from Blackwell's Island. I went to my old quarters over on the Avenue, found them deserted and cleaned out. Had a scrap with the hallman, who tried to tell me something about me not being myself."

Querle interrupted himself with a dry laugh, but the old physician was listening to him with unchanged expression.

"Then," Querle continued, "I tried all the banks in which I've been keeping my accounts. At every one of them they turned me down; told me that I didn't have a cent on deposit. It staggered me. It staggered me worse when I tried to get a bite to eat at the Gotham Club and was thrown out bodily as an impostor. I was pretty badly shaken up. I wound up in Cooper Union— library down there. I found an article by a fellow who swiped my name. I supped pretty late at a bread-line charity which an old fellow told me was established by Christopher Querle, esquire. Great boy, that old fellow— looks like what Gonthorpe will look like if he lives to be ninety years old."

"Interesting! Most interesting!" breathed the doctor, with his calm eyes fixed on Querle's face.

"Now, what I want you to explain to me," Querle exploded, "is, what in the devil it's all about."

The doctor put across a cool hand and felt Querle's pulse. He leaned a trifle closer and had a good look at Querle's eyes. He asked him a few professional questions as to his condition generally. It was like the old physician to proceed just so, even after the amazing tale that Querle had just unfolded to him.

"I'm glad to see," said Doctor White, "that you have suffered no really ill effects." He remained thoughtful for an interval. When he spoke again, it was with seeming reluctance. "I've told you quite a little about dual personality."

"This isn't a case of dual personality. Some one has stolen my name. Some one has left me stone broke. It's all the work of this cursed Nemesis."

"I shouldn't call him cursed."

"I call him cursed!" Querle shouted.

"Many a man has chosen to act as his own Nemesis. In fact, I should say that it is generally so."

"But I didn't."

"Not your present self."

Reeves, the doctor's butler, appeared. "Did you ring, sir?"

"In the upper right-hand pigeonhole of my desk you will find a letter in a cream-colored envelope. Bring it to me, please."

"Another of these infernal Nemesis letters!" Querle grated.

The physician merely looked at him as he might have looked at a petulant child. When Reeves came back with the letter, the doctor passed it over to Querle without a word.

"My handwriting," said Querle.

"Read it."

"I never wrote this."

"Not your present self, my dear Christopher."

"It says that I have decided to cut out all the old stuff. Well, maybe I will, and maybe I won't."

"It also says, my boy, that you will come to see me, that you will ask me to help you in a financial way. It begs of me, for your own sake, not to accede to that demand."

"I never had any intention of asking you for financial aid. He's got a nerve to say such a thing!"

"When you say 'he'—"

"This other— this other Christopher Querle."

"Read the letter through, Christopher."

"It says that I'll deny that I ever wrote this letter. Of course I'll deny it! It says that it is going to cut me off from all the— evil acquaintances— connections—  Who has any right to dictate what I shall do or what I shall not do? I'm my own boss! If I want to go to hell, it's nobody's business but my own."

"Your tone now and that of the letter, Christopher, are so different. Listen! Shall we ignore what it says about financial assistance? Christopher, will you become my son— let me steer you through this crisis— let me help you in every possible way?"

"You've sprung that on me before," Querle cried. "And again I tell you that I won't be bossed."

"We're all 'bossed,' as you put it, Christopher. It's the price of living."

"Why didn't you or some one try to find out where I was all the time that I was doing time like an ordinary jailbird, if you've got my interests so greatly at heart? Why didn't you keep me from getting robbed? I suppose that I could have died over there of leprosy or something for all any one would care."

Doctor White's face was stern, but his voice was mild:

"Are you aware, Christopher, that you were never so rich in friendship as you are to-day? Are you aware that your studies of conditions on the Island have already pointed the way to important reforms? You tell me that last night you supped in a bread line. Did you hear anything in that line to make you ashamed of the name you bear?"

Querle's answer was neither yes nor no. He picked up a goblet which still contained a little water. He slowly poured the water into his coffee cup. He hurled the glass against the white marble fireplace across the room. He flung himself out of the room.

He stood in the hall for a few seconds, trembling, his outburst over, and hopeful that the doctor would call him back. But from the room he had just left there came not a sound. And presently Querle, having recovered his hat from the place where Reeves had hung it, opened the door for himself and went out into the street.

It was a long, long walk downtown to the place where Judge Gough had his offices, but Querle made it. He had determined to act as if he had forgotten all about his quarrel with the judge anent the sale of the family house. After all, Querle was telling himself, the judge was old. Perhaps he was in his dotage. He was willing to make allowances. If there was a man in New York, moreover, who needed the services of a first-class lawyer, that man was himself. And he couldn't very well requisition the services of another lawyer. Even if the fellow should not demand a retaining fee as a preliminary to business, how could he, Querle, ever explain the situation in which he found himself?

The food he had consumed at the doctor's, and the fact that he was clean, both contributed to Querle's courage. He was admitted readily enough to the lawyer's private office.

Judge Gough, rotund and gray though he was, got to his feet and shook him cordially by the hand.

"How's everything over on the Island?" the judge asked jovially. "Bully for you! I didn't think you had it in you."

The salutation and the congratulations caught Querle by surprise.

"Who told you about it?" he asked, frigid.

The judge gave him a quick glance, disconcerted. "Be seated," he said briefly. "I took it, Christopher, in view of your letter, and also in view of your kindness in coming to see me, that we were to be on good terms again. I have a good many affairs on my mind—"

"Mr. Gough," said Querle, "let bygones be bygones, and the less that you say about any letters of mine the better. I want to tell you this: I've been robbed! I want to know what you are going to do about it."

"Robbed?"

"You heard me. You were my father's lawyer. You were my legal guardian until I became of age. Now I tell you that I have been robbed— that there isn't a bank in New York, probably, that will honor my check for a paltry hundred. I've tried seven of them. They all tell me the same thing: 'No funds!' What's the meaning of it?"

Judge Gough was now looking at Querle with a peculiar expression. For several seconds he did not answer. He combed his gray whiskers with his fingers. At last he spoke soberly, a trifle shocked:

"You told me that you would come and tell me just such a story. I tell you frankly that I didn't believe it."

"Believe what?"

"I have the letter right here."

"I don't want to see it!" Querle shouted.

The shout echoed in the subsequent silence. Judge Gough had sunk back into his chair.

"You told me," said the old lawyer solemnly, "that you were doing this for your own good, that you were your own Nemesis, that you were going to emerge from this worthy— worthy—  Shall I go on?"

"You've had Burke working on this, haven't you?"

"He worked on it, yes, until you told us that there was nothing to work on. Christopher, I have always had your best interests at heart. Let me, as your friend and a friend of your father's, congratulate you on the splendid start you have made. Let me urge it upon you— stick to it."

"I haven't any money," yelled Querle, "and I haven't any name, and yet you sit there and congratulate me!"

"Christopher," the judge suggested, "suppose that you and I run up and see our old friend, Doctor White."

"I have just seen him," said Querle, "and he's crazier than you are. Every one's crazy but me. Oh, I can see what you're thinking. Well, let me tell you something: I haven't touched a drop of liquor for a month."

"I never saw you looking better," said the judge hastily, unsmiling. "You will have to ask Mr. Simpson about your financial matters, Christopher. I can't understand it, I assure you, so long as you withhold your confidence. You still have plenty of money, apparently, to continue your charities. Go to it! Hold on! My boy, you asked me expressly not to offer you money—

"I know the rest of it," Querle broke in brutally, with his chin out. "I'm no panhandler. Good day!"

Simpson's office was not very far away. He was grateful for that. The streets through which he passed were crowded, and if any one was following him as he turned from Nassau into Wall Street, he was unaware of it. He entered the tall building where the banking-and-brokerage house of Simpson & Simpson had handled the financial matters of the Queries— grandfather, father, and son— for half a century.

The elder Simpson was more wolf-like than ever. He greeted Querle with a widening of his red lips; but the grimace, by no stretch of the imagination, could have been considered a smile.

"Well, I am at your service, Mr. Querle," he said, waving Querle to a chair with formal courtesy.

"How much money have I?" asked Querle.

"How am I to know?" the banker asked, injured and amazed.

"How are you to know?" Querle retorted. "Who is supposed to know, if you don't?"

Mr. Simpson was inclined to be temperamental himself.

"I'm sick and tired of this monkey business," he snapped. "You take away your account from me, after squandering half of what you got on silly charities, and now you come around to me and ask me how much money have you got. Frankly, Mr. Querle, I'm getting about enough of it."

"Maybe you've got so much of it that you don't want to answer my questions," Querle came back.

"Ah! Ah! Ah! Shall I show you the door?" yelped Mr. Simpson. "As if I had not already enough on my shoulders, with the war and the market and a thousand customers running to me every minute, that now you should intimate that I steal?"

"I came here and asked you a simple question," said Querle.

"Wait!" cried Simpson. He pressed a button. Mr. Blell came in. "This young man," said Mr. Simpson, "wishes to know how his account stands with us."

"Why," Mr. Blell bleated, "we have no account with Mr. Querle— not at present. I have a letter for him which I have been holding for several days."

"Let's have it," said Querle weakly.

It was from The Volunteer Nemesis. He suspected as much. All that it said was this:

Show your nerve. Try poverty a while.

Chapter 12

QUERLE HAPPENED to have a number of articles about him which he could pawn; nothing much, for he had always hated jewelry; but the funds they brought him were sufficient, when eked out by the knowledge that Virgil gave him, to carry him farther across the days and nights of Inferno than he had ever expected to go. Virgil was the old man who had guided him to the Christopher Querle bread line on the first night. By and by, Querle called the old man Virgil, and the old man took to the name as if he had never possessed another one. And he taught Querle to show his nerve, the while the both of them were trying poverty— the very dregs of it.

Life wasn't so bad. The sort of life he was leading, in fact, was interesting Querle more than the old life had ever done.

On the preceding night he had had a bath, and he had washed his linen at Mills Hotel No. 6. His beard was just long enough not to stick him each time he touched it. He had fifteen cents in his pocket. Altogether he was feeling pretty good. He was on his way to the public library where he and Virgil passed happy hours together when it so pleased them. Querle had developed into a reader. Not only that, he had developed into a fervent follower of the person who had usurped his name. Whoever or whatever this man was, Querle was forced to admit that he was willing, after a manner of speaking, to take off his hat to him. The pseudo Querle was still giving largely to charity, was writing with surprising fecundity and skill on poverty and crime. And nothing pleased Querle more than to hear this other Christopher Querle discussed and commended by the begging friars of the nightly bread line.

There was only one thing that continued to stick in Ouerle's crop, and that was that the usurper appeared to be present at all the social functions to which Marcia Schermerhorn had been invited.

But altogether Querle was feeling pretty good as he turned from lower Sixth Avenue. Washington Square lay just ahead of him, its distances magnified by the fresh spring foliage of its trees.

He was Henry Smith for the moment.

"Christopher Querle is right," he said to himself, recollecting a recent article that he had read by the man who had taken his name. "What this town needs is more parks like that, and with trees in them. Trees are a big town's salvation."

He had got this far in his meditations when he was aware that an automobile— it happened to be a neat sedan-had abruptly stopped just after passing him. He turned to look at it. His old personality rushed back upon him, so to speak. He had recognized the car as that of Marcia Schermerhorn. A second later, before he could make up his mind to turn and run, Marcia herself had got out of the car. She cast a single questioning glance at him, then started forward with a stifled exclamation, a half-suppressed gesture.

"Christy!"

But Querle could see that she was smitten with doubt and fear. His own breath was coming quickly. His brain felt like a rat in a trap, scurrying back and forth and all around, looking for a way out. Recent habit gave him his cue.

"I'm Henry Smith," he choked.

Marcia checked her advance. She was only five or six feet away from him. They were standing on a side of Washington Square where mercifully there were very few people about.

"Christy!" she repeated, in a small voice.

"I'm Henry Smith," Querle said again.

At least he tried to say it, but his mouth twitched down spasmodically, and so hard as to make articulation difficult. Moreover, he was conscious of his failure to control the expression in his eyes. He saw Miss Schermerhorn smile slightly, as if her first doubts had been swept away. She stepped toward him— eyes brilliant, cheeks flaming, one of her small, white-gloved hands out-stretched.

"Don't deny your identity, Christy," she said soothingly. "Deny it to others, if you will, but not to me. I have already suffered so greatly. I feel that I am to blame for this whole terrible business."

"I— I don't know what you mean," said Querle, not certain of anything, but feeling that this was the safest line to pursue.

"Did you get my letter?"

"What letter?"

"The letter about the pearl. I sent back the pearl. I've bitterly regretted it, Christy. I didn't think that you'd take it so much to heart."

Through Querle's mind there fluttered a suspicion that she was, after some manner, speaking about this other Christopher Querle. For the moment he had forgotten all about the pearl which she had once mentioned as having received from him, but which he knew he had never sent to her. Perhaps it was this other Querle who had been responsible for that as well. His involuntary expression of doubt and speculation was a strong point for his alibi. He saw that Marcia was once more afflicted with uncertainty. Querle jumped at the occasion to find out something about the usurper.

"Lady," he said, "you've got me wrong, but if I can help you in any way, call on me. Who— who is Christy?"

Miss Schermerhorn threw a glance over her shoulder in the direction of her car. The tidy footman was standing at rigid attention. He was evincing about as much interest in this extraordinary interview as one of the neighboring sycamore trees. The chauffeur had his eyes straight ahead.

"You are Christopher Querle," said Miss Schermerhorn, with desperation.

"I've read about him in the newspapers," said Querle, with equal desperation. The sound of his own name on Marcia's lips sounded like the memory of a long-forgotten anthem. He added; "He appears to be— a regular fellow."

"You have his voice. You have his look in your eyes. My heart is screaming to me that you are he."

Querle was silent.

"Just so that you won't think that I'm mad, let me tell you that we were children together. We used to play together in Central Park. Oh, how utterly absurd that I should tell you all this if you were not Christopher Querle. And yet, how absurd that I should tell you this when I know that you are he!"

"Go on," whispered Querle, trying not to look at her.

But Marcia was looking at him, measuring the effect of her words on him, watching for a possible revelation.

"He always was a boy of strong feelings. He was willful. He wanted to have his own way. But these are the very qualities that always help a man to make something of himself. I never lost faith in him. Neither did any of those who knew him best and— and— loved him best,"

There was a slight catch in her voice as she said this, an instantaneous shining of her eyes. Her lips parted. She drew a couple of quick breaths. This time Querle hung his head.

"And then what?" he demanded hoarsely.

"My prayers were answered," Marcia gasped, as her eyes met his and held them for a moment.

"How?"

"His better nature asserted itself. He began to do wonderful things— help the poor— everything like that. But at the same time his old self— no, his possessing demon—"

She stopped, confused. Querle slowly scratched his bearded cheek, and the hedgehog sensation reminded him that he was Henry Smith, after all.

"I really don't know how to explain it," said Miss Schermerhorn. "But there appears to have been some sort of a struggle. The struggle is still going on. He is still doing an immense amount of good. I follow everything he does. He writes me the most beautiful letters. Christopher! Christopher! Why do you stand there like that? What has happened to you? Or what have I done?"

The spectacle of a charming and exquitely dressed young woman, who has obviously just got down from her motor car, talking to a tramp, cannot pass unnoticed for an indefinite period, even on Washington Square. A flock of Italian children had stopped to look and listen. They were joined by a colored nurse girl pushing a perambulator. A policeman was strolling near.

"Christy!" whispered Marcia Schermerhorn swiftly. "Quick! Get into my car! You can trust me. You can tell me all about it. I shan't tell a soul in the world."

Under the shirt which he himself had washed, Querle's heart was pounding. But he was incapable of speech just then. The golden seconds fled.

"I— I— ah— I am Henry Smith," he blurted.

He didn't like the looks of the approaching policeman. There was a barrier between him and this girl which he suddenly found to be as hard and huge as it was subtle and inexplicable. There was another Christopher Querle, in truth, and this was the Christopher Querle about whom she had been speaking. But it was not himself.

"Good-by!" he blurted.

He half lifted his hat. He was too dizzy to be quite sure as to what he was doing, or whether he was really seeing her any longer. He turned and walked away.

Chapter 13

THAT NIGHT, Querle ran into a crowd collected about a soap-box orator who was discussing politics. He had barely paused when the speaker sprang a remark that popped in his brain like a rocket, made him see red.

"It's the spike-tail reformers that's trying to put our party on the blink," the orator howled, "and the worst one of the whole bunch is this here Christopher Querle."

"You're a liar!" Querle exploded.

"Who says I'm a liar?"

Querle was silent, but half a dozen men and boys had spotted him as the one who had made the remark, were urging him to stick to it and to come back again.

"I repeat, in spite of what any pin-head out there says about it," the orator proclaimed, trying to get back once more into the stride of his eloquence, "that the capitalistic class is represented by a lot of spike-tail Judases who pretend to be with us, and that Christopher Querle is their summum bonum and their sine qua non!"

There was a spluttering cheer, and this moved Querle to a fresh outbreak. All day, ever since he had seen Marcia Schermerhorn, he had been meditating on this white shadow of himself who had adopted the name of Christopher Querle and who had won Marcia Schermerhorn's love. Most of the time he had nursed murderous thoughts about the interloper, tried to attach him in every possible way to all which he, the rightful Christopher Querle, had suffered. But at the sound of this unknown orator, denouncing the man whom Marcia loved to a lot of potential bread-liners, all the rage and bitterness in Querle's heart was panting for expression.

"You're a liar!" he yelled again.

There was a brief interval of uproar, not very loud, and of movement not very violent. The orator lifted his hand, palm outward, in the well-known gesture of peace at any price.

"Who are you, might I ask?" he queried sarcastically, cocking his ear and grinning off to one side.

"I'm a friend of his," Querle answered stoutly; "and you're a liar if you try to run him down."

There were one or two shouts of "Throw him out!" and "He's drunk!" but it was easily manifest, both to Querle and the orator, that the crowd had taken to the interruption kindly.

"Is there a policeman in the vicinity?" the orator wanted to know, looking about him with dignity.

The crowd began to boo. A small boy with a shrill voice cried: "De guy's got his goat!" From the rest of the crowd came various cries of "What's the matter with Querle?" and "What's the matter with the Bowery's friend?"

"My friends," shouted the orator, "but let me proceed with my argument, and after I have concluded I shall permit this highly intelligent possessor of an ivory dome—"

But most of his erstwhile audience was turning its back, taking a friendly interest in the rival who had appeared. For the first time in his life Querle tasted the sweet waters of popularity that didn't have to be bought and paid for. They went to his head.

"Why," he said, in an accent that had become familiar to him during his first days on Blackwell's Island, "I and a lot of you stiffs have been dining with this guy Querle every night for the past month. What do you want us to do now— stand around and listen to some stiff on a soap box bawl him out?"

"Where did you ever eat dinner with him?" some one asked.

"Down at the old bread line," Querle retorted. "You don't catch any of your phony reformers pulling that sort of stuff, boes. Am I right, or am I wrong?"

There was a hoarse murmur of "You are right."

In the midst of the murmur there came an interruption. It was caused by a young man thrusting himself through the thick of the crowd with a great showing of strength and authority. He had a cloth cap pulled down on his head until his small, outstanding ears had the appearance of pegs put there to prevent it from going down any farther. He had abnormally broad shoulders. Under his coat he wore a sweater. For the rest, he was about the height and the age of Querle.

"Bo," said this newcomer, "I see right away that you're one of these fresh guys. What t'ell do you mean by trying to bust up the meeting? Beat it! Fan— or I'll bust you one!"

Querle looked at the youth in front of him.

"Who are you?" he asked. The other went through a peculiar form of shoulder dance— first one shoulder down, then another.

"He wants me to paste him one," the shoulder dancer announced. The crowd was pushing in, gaining in size and stolidity with every passing moment. It was pretty clear that if there was any sparring to be done there would be small chance for footwork or ring generalship.

"Me," Querle shouted, so that he could be heard over the mounting clamor, "I'm for the Bowery's friend, Christopher Querle!" There was a brief cheer, which gave him a moment to reflect. The mere, bald statement he had just made was having a peculiar effect on the inner chambers of his mind. Was he for Christopher Querle? And who was Christopher Querle? The only answer that occurred to him was a remembered semblance of Marcia Schermerhorn as he had last seen her, face to face, there on the north side of Washington Square. "He's a regular guy. He's got a lot of real friends up on Fifth Avenue, but he's got a good many more of them right down here on the Bowery."

He was talking loud, but he was addressing his remarks straight to the gentleman who had promised to "bust him one."

The crowd howled approval for the most part. There was a good deal of pushing and hauling. Suddenly the young man in the sweater had hunched one of his shoulders higher yet. At the same instant Querle was aware of a crushing impact a little to the left of his solar plexus. He didn't have to be told that the youth in front of him had landed a blow, and that it had come within an ace of being a knock-out. His own brain was acting quickly. That portrait of Marcia Schermerhorn was still somewhere in his thoughts. It was to her image, more or less, that he turned for help and inspiration, somewhat as if she were a saint. Anyway, if it hadn't been for her, it would never have occurred to him to fight for Christopher Querle.

Such a thing scarcely occurred to him now. Afterward it did. And it brought him satisfaction.

Querle clinched. As he did so, he heard a voice back of him saying that the Whyo Kid had hit a gink, and he knew that he was at grips with one of the minor champions of the lower East Side. Just for the fraction of a second, it may have quavered in his thought that this was a fight for Marcia Schermerhorn, after all. He needed some sort of a stimulant. He wasn't in the best of training. Free lunch, coffee and bread, uncomfortable nights— these had been his portion ever since he came from the Island. But he had cut out the drink. His head was clear. The crowd was with him. He was sure of that. He was also sure that the fight couldn't last very long.

He clung to the Kid while the crowd swerved. The Kid was mauling him right and left, but he couldn't get his hands up. Querle suddenly let go and made two chopping blows at the Kid's face, then some more.

After the first five seconds or so, he wasn't seeing the Kid at all. He wasn't seeing anything except for an occasional glimpse of the elevated trains flashing past overhead. Their thunder and the thunder of the crowd were all one to him. So was their heavy movement. But somehow or other he was putting into his movements every ounce he possessed of energy; this and something else— the idea that he was fighting for a myth or a dream of which he wanted to possess himself.

Long before he knew what had happened— he never did know precisely except for what he was told— he found that the fight was over. He saw a section of the crowd moving off, and vaguely recognized the Kid as the nucleus of it. Then he awoke to the fact that the remainder of the crowd was acclaiming him as the winner.

Querle was doing his best to appear indifferent and cool. He had a slightly uncomfortable sensation that if the Whyo Kid had been beaten it couldn't possibly be himself who had accomplished that feat. But congratulations were being thrust in upon him.

A small man with beady eyes pressed up to him.

"You can scrap," said the small man, with unction. "When was you ever in the ring?"

"I never was," Querle answered.

"Would you like me to get you a mill?" asked the other.

"No."

"Well, think it over," the small man persisted genially; "and if you think of it different, come around to the Essex Pastime Club and ask for Mr. Max."

Chapter 14

ONCE OR TWICE before, since his return from Blackwell's Island, Querle had registered the impression that he was being followed. There came a night when this impression was so strong that he spoke about it to Virgil. They were sauntering down the Bowery at the time, in the direction of a mission where the music was good and the seats were comfortable. It was generally reported on the Bowery that this mission also had been established by Christopher Querle— in the memory of some one or other.

Old Virgil showed an extraordinary interest in Querle's intimation that they were being followed. Virgil, for all his gentle passivity, could display an exceptional agility of intellect on occasion. That's what he did now.

"You keep right on down the street, sir," he said, "while I linger in this doorway. I see no reason why any one should wish to follow two gentlemen on their way to services. I don't like it."

"What are you going to do about it?" Querle asked.

"I can at least discover whether we are being followed by an officer of the law," said Virgil uneasily; "and, if such be the case, it may be just as well that you be informed."

Querle patted the old man affectionately on the back.

"Virgil," he said, "I'm innocent of everything but a run of hard luck."

Querle left Virgil in his doorway and proceeded slowly down the street alone. But he didn't go very far. After all, he had nothing to lose, nothing to fear. That boast he had made to Virgil about his state of innocency smoked back upon him with a smell of incense. As a matter of fact, he was feeling more innocent than he ever had in his life before. Finally he abruptly turned, started to retrace his steps. He was startled to see Virgil approaching in the company of some one who was strikingly familiar. It was Oakley.

Querle resisted an impulse to flee. He saw that Oakley had recognized him from afar. Into Querle's heart and mind there came a reminiscent glow of authority and rage.

Oakley was looking at Querle with a mixture of joy and fear, of certainty and doubt, as he came up. He would have spoken, but he was muted by Querle's stare. It was old Virgil who spoke:

"This was the gentleman who has been following us—"

Oakley broke bounds.

"Mr. Querle," he blurted, "I recognized you."

Virgil looked from Querle to Oakley with his bearded mouth open. Finally Virgil directed all his attention to Querle.

"That's what he said back there, sir," Virgil announced. "He said that he used to work for Christopher Querle— that there was only one of them— that he recognized you— and that you were he."

"This fellow," said Querle, as he looked at Oakley hard, "is evidently a new kind of nut. Don't say that you are not!" he commanded sharply.

Oakley grinned and squirmed. "No, sir," he said.

"Since he was so bent on following us, Virgil," Querle went on, "I suppose that we might as well take him along."

"Why, if you don't mind about his being seen with us," Virgil consented, respectable but kind.

"Do you hear what he says?" Querle demanded. "We're going to let you come along with us. What's your name?"

"Oakley, sir," the ex-secretary confessed, in discomfort.

"Oakley, is it? Well, Oakley, my name is Henry Smith. Got that? And you don't know me any more than I know you. What sort of a man was this Christopher Querle you used to work for?"

"Do you want me to tell the truth?" asked Oakley, looking sick.

"Yes."

"He was two men," said Oakley; "one good and the other bad."

"I told you," said Querle thickly, turning to Virgil, "that he was some new sort a nut."

But all the playfulness had gone out of Querle's mood. The former secretary's answer was strangely in accord with all the known facts in the case so far as he was aware of them. He had no illusions now that there was a split in his own personality. That was all scientific folderol fit for quacks like Doctor White and the metaphysicians. But he conceived that it was just possible that up there some place in the regions which he had recently called his own there was another Christopher Querle, a double of his, perhaps, who was grooming himself and was being groomed to assume that name permanently before the world.

Late that night, when the mission was closed and Querle had brought his former secretary to Mills Hotel No. 6, Querle questioned Oakley for such light as he might throw on the truth.

"You're telling this to Henry Smith," said Querle, "but you're telling it exactly as if I was Christopher Querle myself."

"Yes, Mr. Quer—"

"What?"

"Yes, Mr. Smith."

"All right; go on."

"That was the truth what I was telling you," said Oakley, nervously at first, but with the increasing courage of his convictions. "You were just like two different people. The morning that you went away, the last morning that I saw you"— Oakley quailed, but he recovered himself—"when I say you, I mean, of course, Mr. Querle."

"Ah, go on!" growled Querle.

"The last morning that I saw you, I tried to show you a letter from Simpson & Simpson. In that letter they told you that your entire fortune was gone and that you didn't have a cent left. You wouldn't look at it. Swensen. Yodo, and I all felt very badly about it— not because you owed us a month's salary each, but on your account. Just as we were debating what to do, you sent me that letter by messenger—"

Querle gave a start, but did not interrupt.

"—telling me to clean out the apartment and put everything in storage. I want to say right now that we are all grateful for the extra month's pay."

"So the letter contained a check, did it?"

"No, sir; currency. I did everything that you requested. I felt lost when the apartment was closed. I had been with you so long."

"I thought that you told me that Querle was cussing you out all the time?"

Oakley winced. "It was a bit unpleasant at times, but I want to get back. That's what I was used to. I'm— I'm lonely and sick, sir, without it."

"You do look pretty seedy, Oakley," said Querle, softened.

"I thought at first that I could get into touch with you again at the storage warehouse where you ordered all your stuff sent. But when I found out that you had ordered everything sold at auction—"

"Go on, go on!" sighed Querle.

"— and that you hadn't left any address, and that nobody else seemed to know where you were, all I could do was to start out on my own to look for you."

"Oakley," said Querle, "this is all bunk about your being so devoted to your beloved master that you just simply couldn't wait."

"It's the truth," Oakley shivered.

"Oakley," said Querle, "you're the same old liar that you always were. Remember! This is Henry Smith who is speaking to you. But I know you like a book, Oakley. You've got something on your conscience. You wrote that Nemesis letter, you hound! And you know all about this fake Christopher Querle correspondence. The thing's turned out to be too big for you, and now you are trying to stand from under."

Oakley took this accusation as a compliment. In spite of his recent sentiment, which was genuine, he smirked, let just enough time elapse to enjoy the attributes of skill and cunning which the charge implied.

"I never wrote the Nemesis letter or any of the things you say you did not write," he confessed at last.

"Then who did?"

"You won't get mad if I tell you what I think?"

"Don't be a fool. You know I never get mad except when you drive me to it."

"You wrote them all yourself," cackled Oakley. "That's what kept me working for you so long— the qualities of heart and soul that you have manifested in these sub-rosa activities."

"'Sub-rosa activities!' 'Qualities of heart and soul!' Ye gods, Oakley! You've learned that claptrap by heart and tried to put it over on me as something spontaneous. Now I do know that you are a crook. Now I do know that you've got something on your conscience. Spring it! Open up! What is it?"

Oakley went a fishy white. He was trembling again. He smiled, but it was a smile for mercy.

"This!" he faltered.

From one pocket he brought the box containing the pink pearl which Marcia Schermerhorn had returned to Querle and which he had never seen. From another pocket Oakley brought forth Miss Schermerhorn's letter. Querle seized upon both of them as a scientist might seize upon the fragments of a fallen star.

Chapter 15

QUERLE READ the letter through. All the time that he was doing it he was going over again, by a secondary mental process, that interview of his with Marcia Schermerhorn in Washington Square. Here was a clew to what Marcia had meant when she took upon herself the blame for all that had befallen him. But on the other hand, the mystery was likewise increased. How about that other Christopher Querle? Or how about that other personality of his? Marcia had started to say something about the beautiful letters that she had received. They came certainly not from Querle himself. They must have been the product, also, of the hand and brain of Nemesis. Querle thought and thought, with changing expression. Oakley, having expected an outburst of wrath, seeing Querle so mild, looked on in a transport of admiration and gratitude amounting to worship.

"And this," said Querle, looking at the pink pendant, "will at least give me an excuse for calling on Marcia one of these days."

"You don't need any excuse, sir," Oakley broke in.

Querle looked up at him, remembered his forgotten presence.

"Oakley," said Querle, "now that I've got you, I have to get rid of you."

"Oh, not that, sir!"

"What do you expect me to do with you?"

"I want to be your secretary."

"Yes, no doubt you do. All the gentlemen here in the hotel have secretaries. Oakley, for this room we are in I pay the sum of fifteen cents a day, and I sometimes find it difficult, Oakley, to have the fifteen cents ready at the time that it is due."

"I'll work without salary—"

"Perhaps I could get Doctor White or Judge Gough to give you a job."

"I can stand anything that you can stand, sir," Oakley blurted. "Do you think that I could live in luxury while you did not? Keep me with you until you take up your old life again."

"Do you actually believe that I'll ever get back into my old life again?"

Oddly enough, this question struck Oakley as too ludicrous for serious consideration. He did not answer, even when Querle repeated the question— shouting it the last time. Querle gave up.

"All right, Oakley," he said, "if you want to be secretary to a hobo, that's your funeral, not mine. Only I won't have you sniveling around me and asking for free lunch when there's none to be had."

But Querle was not to remain a hobo for very long. The next morning, followed by his secretary, he had strolled over to the library, which had become his one dependable club, and there he had found Virgil waiting for him. Most of Virgil's usual serenity was missing. He had important information to impart.

"I know where you can get a job, sir," he said tremulously. It was evident that Virgil was not absolutely certain how Querle would receive the proposal. Virgil was vastly relieved when he saw that Querle heard the announcement with a degree of excitement almost equaling his own.

"You won't think me indelicate, sir, for speaking about such a thing. I am an old man. I once had a young friend. I discovered a chance for him to get work. I mentioned it to him. I never saw him again."

"That's not the sort of guy I am, pop," said Querle. "Tell me where the job is, and I'll do the rest."

"The gentleman who offers it," said Virgil, "is a Mr. Leppert. He is an interior decorator— a gentleman quite famous in his line. You will go over to him at this address"— Virgil showed a scrap of paper with the address scribbled on it—"and say: 'I'm the man from Mr. Donahue.' He'll say: 'Do you know how to stir paint?' You say: 'Yes, sir.' And the job is yours for as long as it lasts."

Querle followed out the formula. He even added something to it. He found Mr. Leppert to be a sly and indulgent man with a twinkle in his eye and a large, fuzzy mustache at right angles with the line of his nose.

"Who's that other feller?" asked Mr. Leppert cunningly, nodding his head in the direction of Oakley.

"He's just a poor guy who wants to help me," said Querle. "I think that he's a little out of his head."

"All right," said Mr. Leppert, with indulgent cunning. "Let him come along."

Mr. Leppert supplied both of them with paint-smeared overalls. Presently he invited them to climb into the back of a paint-smeared wagon which had been standing in front of his place of business. Mr. Leppert himself took the reins and drove off to the north. They jogged and jolted along, getting deeper and deeper into the territory which young Christopher Querle had always meant when he spoke of New York.

"Oakley, what is my name?" asked Querle.

Oakley, seated on a ladder at Querle's side, grinned back in an access of familiarity.

"If you refer to me once as Querle," the former millionaire hinted darkly, "this will be your last day on earth."

Oakley went owl-eyed.

The horse attached to the wagon was an efficient cob with a taste for speed. He flung the side streets rattling behind him. Then, at a touch from the driver, he swerved into one of these streets. Querle felt his heart jump. It was the street in which Marcia Schermerhorn lived. But while the panic that this thought brought with it was still riotous in his breast, the house itself was sliding by. They came out into Fifth Avenue. Querle was having a hard enough time to hang onto his seat in the wagon. He was having a still harder time to keep his feelings from being jolted out of control. All sorts of foolish fancies kept bubbling and popping in his mind— that this was the Return of the Prodigal, that he was a modern Rip van Winkle, a Prometheus Unbound.

It was like the confirmation of something that had been told to him in advance when the wagon swung-in to the curb and stopped in front of the house where he had been born, the house which only recently had been his own.

Querle didn't dare to look at Oakley. He regretted bitterly having been instrumental in bringing him along. In a way, he himself was enjoying the experience. It brought home to him a certain exaltation of tragedy that was almost sublime. But he wanted to be alone. He wanted to be unobserved, so that he himself could the better observe.

Leppert was unmoved. The only emotion the master painter and decorator showed at all was a sort of sly satisfaction at having work to do in a house like this. It was a noble house, even for upper Fifth Avenue, enough to awaken the pride of any decorator.

Leppert turned to Querle with a cunning smile.

"I guess you fellers have never been in a house like this," he said.

"No, sir," said Querle, after a stammering pause. And it actually seemed to him as if he were speaking the truth. Oakley appeared to be on the point of cackling something— rather hysterically than otherwise— but Querle checked him with a blazing regard.

"It belongs to a young millionaire," Leppert went on, as he watched Querle and Oakley unloading various materials from the back of the wagon. "Mebbe you've heard about him. His name is Christopher Querle."

"Is that so?" asked Querle. He could taste blood in his throat. He wondered how it was that Leppert was so illy informed. But Leppert's very next remark set his head to ringing with doubts again:

"He's getting the place fixed up for his marriage."

"How do you know?" Querle asked.

Had the master painter been less good-natured, he might have considered such a question from an underling as bordering closely upon insolence. He did give Querle a glance of his twinkling eyes.

"Why, he told me," Leppert declared, with an intonation indicating that this was the most natural thing in the world. He reflected a moment. "He's a good-looking young feller, just about your age. You want to keep your eyes and ears open when you're working around on jobs like these. People'll say a lot of things to a feller when he's got a suit of overalls on."

"Is— is Mr. Querle living here now?" asked Querle.

"No," Mr, Leppert answered, "but I guess you'll get a chance to see him. He comes here almost every day— along with the girl he's going to marry. Now listen closte to what I'm going to tell you, will you?"

"Yes."

"Be mighty careful," Mr. Leppert advised, "to every time you open a fresh can of paint to spread a newspaper so's not to spill any of it on the floor."

Chapter 16

A WILD PLAN had presented itself to Querle. It kept him company and made him almost oblivious to everything else as he and Oakley followed Leppert up the front steps and on into the house. Signs were not wanting that the work of redecoration had already been in progress for some time, yet none the less the place was perfectly familiar. Not a door, not a step of this house was unfamiliar to Querle. What was to prevent him from entering into the mastery of it— just that and quite simply— and making a fight then and there of his besetting mystery and nightmare?

After all, this was his house. After all, the fortune which by some grotesque and outrageous process had been spirited away from him, that also was still his. He had seen for himself that the frontier between wealth and want was of the shadowiest. It was something like the dividing line between good repute and bad repute. There was certainly no Chinese wall there, at any rate. And, having jumped over this dividing line in one direction, why shouldn't he jump back again and see what folks could say about it? Doubtless, upstairs, in closets which had not yet been cleared out, he would be able to find a fresh outfit of his own things. He remembered when Swensen had told him, while he was still living in this house, that he had upward of a hundred shirts, twenty-three suits, eight overcoats, seventeen pairs of shoes. The numbers came back to haunt him— like ghosts of slain victims. But surely there must be remnants of this wardrobe lying about sufficient to give him a fresh start; and there would be enough left to bring him in sufficient funds, now that he had a working knowledge of pawnshops, for a good long siege, should it come to that.

He could lock himself in a room. Here was Oakley to act as messenger. He could summon his friends. He could state his case.

"Go right on through," said Leppert, "and take them things down the back stairs into the kitchen."

The kitchen brought memories of hot muffins to Querle. He could smell them. He could taste them. He could see, with the eyes of his mind, the generous proportions of old Mary, the cook, as she waddled about the familiar precincts of the place and grumbled fondly at his being more trouble than all the rest of the household combined. He used to watch her out of the tail of his eye while he stuffed himself. Presently these recollections had become so poignant that that wild scheme of his took possession of him altogether.

He and Oakley had opened a can of paint. It didn't look like any paint that either of them had ever seen. It looked like nothing but oil, and the can was very full of it.

"Oakley," said Querle, "you stay here and find out about this darn stuff. I'm going to beat it for a look around. Keep your ears cocked, and if you hear me call to you, come on the jump. Have you got that clear?"

Oakley gave such a jump that he set the can to rocking.

"Green paint!" Querle cried. "Look out, idiot, or you'll have it all over the place!"

They both had grabbed the can. Oakley was shaking.

"You spoke just as you used to speak," Oakley quavered.

His paroxysm of sentiment was such that he set the paint to splashing. But this time Querle made no comment. He himself was in a fever of excitement.

He left the kitchen a good deal as he had left it after one of his marauding tours when Mary was still alive— vicious and determined, bent on giving a fight to any one who tried to interfere with him. He made his way up the stairs again and turned off through the butler's pantry to the rear stairs leading to the upper floors. The house was dark, for the most part, but he could have gone to any part of it blindfolded; and he knew that, in case of trouble, he would have the advantage in this respect over any one who attempted to follow or trap him.

Even so, however, his feelings were not exactly what he would have liked them to be. There was always that idea pressing in upon him that he was where he had no right to be, that he was no better than any other patron of the bread lines and the cheap lodging houses, that he was but recently out of jail.

He came into the apartments that had been exclusively his own. Inside the door, he paused.

The feeling that he was an interloper, a parasite, a crook, had suddenly gone retroactive. What right had he ever had to all this luxury? What had he ever done to have and hold all this spaciousness and quietness and running water as his own? How came it that some one had not come and taken him by the collar and pulled him out of it long ago? He shuddered a bit. It was just as if the ghost of the Nemesis had reared up in front of him out of the shadows and replied: "I was waiting to see what you were going to do with it. I had my eye on you all the time."

It was a morbid touch. It didn't last very long. It required a conscious effort of the will, though, to set his feet in motion again.

Just off the bedroom was a room about half as large, and lined with closets. That was where his clothing had been kept. He hadn't changed greatly in the last couple of years. Such clothing as he might choose would fit him all right. The styles would be slightly out of date, but not enough to consider in a crisis like this. The best-dressed men of his acquaintance stuck to the same styles year after year, anyway.

He put out his hand automatically and switched on the electric lights.

As he did so, he caught the reflection, in a large mirror across the room, of some one whom he did not recognize. He saw a workman standing over there. The fellow wore painty overalls. He had hollow eyes and a scraggly beard. But there was something else about his face that gave him an uncanny, unwholesome look. Then Querle saw that the face in the reflection had a smear of green paint across its forehead. Then he saw that the face was his own.

He swore.

He ran into the familiar bathroom and turned a tap. The only response from it was a sucking gasp. The water must have been turned off down in the cellar.

Right in front of him was another mirror. Very carefully, with the sleeve of his jumper, he tried to wipe the paint off clean. He left a wider streak which this time had an indefinite border of red. He looked like a freak. He looked like an Apache ready for the warpath.

He grated another curse out loud. But this time he checked himself so sharply that he almost bit his tongue off. He had heard the door of the bedroom being opened, a confusion of voices.

It was too late for him to hide himself. The door of the bathroom he had left open. Discovery was inevitable. In fact, at his first wild movement, his eyes had plunged into the mirror and caught just enough of a reflection of the newcomers to make him aware that they had already seen him.

A second later he reeled as his straining senses told him that at least one of the visitors was Marcia Schermerhorn. The qualities that go for self-preservation are developed swiftly in the somewhat exotic surroundings which had known Querle of late. He had never been lacking in presence of mind. But also his mind had never acted so quickly as it was acting now. His deductions and reactions were proceeding with the swiftness of an automatic riveter.

He was caught. He couldn't escape in flight. Yet he mustn't be recognized. With his face painted like that he would be frightful and ridiculous. Even Marcia would take him for a madman or worse.

Querle dropped to his knees. Providentially there was an old cloth on the floor— left there, doubtless, by the last housekeeper. He seized this. He pressed up close to the wall and began to wipe the tiles with a semblance of concentrated attention. As he did so, he became aware that the person who accompanied Marcia was Doctor White's companion and confidential man, Emlen Gonthorpe.

Querle had always been conscious that Gonthorpe entertained for him a feeling of contempt. For his part, the feeling had been mutual. This old feeling of enmity was smoldering in him now. It wasn't long before it became dumb rage. If it hadn't been for the self-shame mingled with this rage, Querle, in the few minutes that followed, would have found it impossible to hold his tongue.

"I see," said Gonthorpe, "that Mr. Querle is having this part of the house done over, too."

And Querle had a feeling in the middle of his back that warned him that both the doctor's man and Marcia were looking at him. He hunched up his shoulders and rubbed the tiles. He was in an agony for a moment for fear thatf they were going to speak to him. If they did, he decided, he would act the boor and get rid of them.

"The whole house," said Marcia, with the accent of a modest laugh. "That's what he told me. He asked me to examine it from top to bottom so that I could have any suggestions of my own carried out."

Querle felt a color of his own creeping up into his painted face. To whom did she refer?

"Christopher has become so thoughtful, so considerate!" sighed Marcia.

"About time," Gonthorpe commented. "But I agree with you. He's changed— changed for the better. Six months ago he was a curse to himself and society at large—"

"You are cruel."

"Cruel, but correct. I don't say this to hurt your feelings. I merely say it to point the contrast with what he is to-day— one of the most talked-of young men in New York, one of the most deservedly popular."

"That's what papa says."

"And what you yourself think."

"Dear Mr. Gonthorpe, you are such a mind reader! You'll tell me, won't you? How did you happen to know that Christy was carrying on all this wonderful work?"

"I've been in close touch with him right along," Gonthorpe answered gruffly.

"Liar!" screamed Querle in his heart.

"And do you really think that they will nominate him for the mayoralty?" Marcia asked. Her voice contained an element of playful endearment that made Querle squirm.

Gonthorpe did not answer immediately. He came striding over to the door of the bathroom. He stood there for an interval. Querle, rubbing at the tiles, tried to breathe normally, found it difficult. Once more the unnamed sensory nerves of his back were telling him that he was being looked at.

"It's a new Querle you're asking me about," said Gonthorpe; and to Querle it sounded as if the voice of the doctor's man came to him through a megaphone. "It's a new Querle you're talking about. Maybe the old one put such a curse on the name that it's all hopeless. We've got to wait and see."

LEPPERT knew what he was talking about when he said that people were in the habit of talking freely in the presence of overalls. That was about the only thought that would come to Querle for a long interval after Emlen Gonthorpe and Marcia Schermerhorn had passed on in their tour of inspection. Then gradually the questions began to arrive— like an invading army, with a few scout questions in advance, a vanguard of questions afterward, then questions by regiments and corps.

So there was another Querle! He was going to marry Marcia Schermerhorn! He owned this house! He had won the approval of that bluff old political reformer, Major Schermerhorn, Marcia's father! Marcia approved of him, evidently; loved him; revered him! She had called his work wonderful. He was in close touch with Emlen Gonthorpe. There was a political party getting ready to nominate him for mayor.

Who?

Why, some one named Christopher Querle.

Querle— the only real Querle, so he had hitherto always believed— reared up and looked at himself again in the glass. At the reflection he saw there the very last semblance of that bold, wild plan of his evaporated.

"Madness!" he exclaimed.

Chapter 17

THERE COMES a crisis in the life of almost every man when that man needs some one to whom he can talk frankly about his own affairs. This is so even when he feels in his own heart that no one can possibly advise him. What he pants for, as doth the hart after the water brooks, is the sound of his voice stating his own case without the necessity of talking to himself.

Querle, confronted by such a crisis, elected Virgil. Oakley was there, too, but Oakley didn't count.

Mr. Leppert, cunning but kind, had permitted both Querle and Oakley to resign at the end of their first day. He gave Querle a dollar and a half and told him to pay Oakley his share out of that. Querle would have accepted any sum with the same amount of apathy. As in the old days, but with a difference, his mind had soared above mere finance. He felt like Oedipus up against the Sphinx. It was solve the riddle or die.

"Virgil," said Querle, "to-night I want you to be my dinner guest; not on the bread line, not in a lunch room, but at a real restaurant. Have you any favorite?"

"There's Tony's," said Virgil, with a certain courtliness. "Tony serves an excellent table d'hote, with wine, for twenty-five—"

Oakley looked as if he were stricken with a pain.

"You're to come along," said Querle briefly.

Oakley recovered.

The wine flowed red at Tony's, but Querle touched none of it. He gave his share to the others. All through the meal he meditated what he had to say, and when he said it he was able to put it clearly. There was hardly a thing that he did not know about what had happened to him since his receipt of the first Nemesis letter that he failed to state. He made a clean breast of it.

In the first place, he said right out who he was; and, with his eyes guardedly on old Virgil, he was glad to see that Virgil had manners enough not to show disbelief. He told about his going to jail and how he had found things on his return.

"I knew all along that you were a gentleman, sir," said Virgil.

Querle softened still further. He told about Marcia Schermerhorn. He said right out that he loved her and hoped to marry her. But now here was this fake Querle, the white shadow of himself, who had somehow usurped his place as well as his name. And yet the usurper had succeeded in giving to the name of Querle a glamour which it had never possessed before— had made it the name of the Bowery's friend, had got it mentioned as a big political possibility, had made it figure among the leaders in a wide movement of reform, had transformed it into a young rival of the names of Rockefeller and Carnegie.

Querle got eloquent. There was enough noise in Tony's place to permit of his speaking loud enough. He used gestures. His eyes shone. He didn't have to stop to find the words he needed.

"You speak remarkably well, sir," said Virgil, with a stir almost of enthusiasm under his perpetual meekness.

Querte panted for a moment in silence.

"You're an old man, Virgil," he pleaded suddenly. "What would you do?"

"If I were a young man, sir," said Virgil he lifted his gray head, thought mystically for a second or two, with his bearded mouth open—"I should put it up squarely to the young lady."

"You're right," said Querle; "but how am I to go to her now? I've told you how she braced me over in Washington Square, and how I turned her down."

"Go in your old guise, sir," said Virgil. Perhaps the wine was helping his enthusiasm, but he seemed to be less daft than usual, more quick-witted. Again he had given himself to thought— mouth open, eyes on the low, discolored ceiling. "Go to her as a gentleman. There is a mystery here, in truth. For her and for the rest of your friends there seems to have come into existence some counterpart of yourself. You will pardon me, sir, but perhaps I should say some counterpart of your better self— of yourself as you should like to be."

The old man displayed a certain amount of wistfulness. He became a trifle reminiscent.

"I know how it is," he said; and, although he spoke in a whisper, his voice came to Querle perfectly audible. "When I was a younger man, I studied for the ministry. I was one person for myself. There was another self who circulated among my family and friends, who was acclaimed by them, who— as you have so eloquently put it was the white shadow of myself. I dared not challenge him. Instead of boldly asserting myself, rising up and making this shadow's place my own, I dawdled, I shrank, I let those who loved me discover that the white shadow was nothing but a shadow."

Oakley thought that the old man's rambling was funny. Oakley was convulsed. He sought to wink at Querle, but neither Querle nor the old man paid any attention to him. Querle was as if hypnotized. He himself suspected the old gentleman of being slightly out of his head, but it was madness with a touch of genius in it.

"I'd have to have a new front," said Querle, "a new outfit."

"I presume so," mused Virgil. He was still under the domination of his recent flight. "Many of us act according to the courage or the cowardice of our clothes. It would take a mint of money, I suppose."

Querle made a mental calculation.

"Seventy-five dollars," he said, "at least."

Not so very long ago he would have put the required sum at five times his present estimate.

Virgil made a confession— did it with a note of surprise as if it were something that had just occurred to him: "I have a certain wealthy friend— a gentleman!— on whom I am permitted to call in cases of emergency. I dare say that he would let me have seventy-five dollars."

Querle smiled.

"You're all to the good, Virgil," he said. "I hope that you know how much I appreciate it. But this is my fight. To get that seventy-five dollars is just as much a part of it as anything that might follow." He was thinking, thinking with a persistency and concentration which had become something of a habit with him of late. He was beginning to see that Virgil certainly had gone straight to the crux of the question. "Virgil," he asked, "do you suppose that the Essex Pastime Club would come across with a sum like that?"

Virgil gave a start.

"Beyond the peradventure of a doubt," he affirmed solemnly. "For quite a long period I myself was connected with that organization. I used to clean out the clubrooms. They are grand, good people, specially Mr. Max."

"Virgil," Querle demanded, "do you suppose that I really could lick the Whyo Kid?"

"You could, sir, if you were sufficiently prepared. Preparedness isn't everything, though. It means a lot to be fighting for a great moral principle. I used to notice it among the boys who fought over there— those who merely wanted a little more money for mixed ale and those who were paying installments on a harmonium."

"I'd fight him," said Querle, "if there were seventy-five dollars in it."

For the first time in their long and intimate acquaintance Querle found himself looking into Virgil's eyes. His brain was too much occupied just then to be wholly alive to what he noticed there. But he remembered it later. They were not particularly the eyes of a poetic dreamer. Virgil's eyes had gone speculative and keen. There was no change in his voice, however, when he spoke.

"I should like to manage this thing for you, sir," he said. "I believe that I could manage it."

Querle had a hunch. Call it an inspiration. It came as a natural reaction to that somewhat surprising expression he had seen in Virgil's eyes.

"I suppose that every pug has to have a manager," he reflected. "Go to it, Virgil. You be mine."

Chapter 18

ON THE NIGHT of the battle Querle felt better than he had ever felt in his life before. "Mysterious Smith" was to fight the Whyo Kid for a purse of seventy-five dollars, winner to take all, the loser to get no portion of it. That seventy-five dollars appealed to Querle. He had to get it. He was going to get it. His very life depended upon it And in a way he had sealed this purpose by burning his bridges behind him. Two days ago he had commissioned Oakley to go forth and not return without the stationery of at least one first-class hotel. Oakley had come back with the paper and envelopes of several first-class establishments. Querle had taken his pick and used it to write a note to Marcia Schermerhorn, telling her that he would come to call on her at ten p. m., Saturday night. He explained that he couldn't get there earlier on account of an important engagement. Saturday night was the date of the conflict, and eight-thirty was the hour.

This confidence of his was strangely shared— was inspired, perhaps, in large measure— by Virgil, the manager.

"You will knock him out in the third round, sir," Virgil kept repeating, as if this were the conclusion of some inevitable process of logic. "Let us say that it will be toward the end of the third round. You will see young Mr. Jonescu— that is the real name of the Whyo Kid— a good-natured lad, but lacking in breeding— drop his hands— he always does that— and all that you will be required to do, sir, is to swing heavily with your right hand, and that will be the knock-out."

Virgil said all this decently and thoughtfully, accenting his points with tiny gestures.

"If I didn't know that you were so honest," said Querle, "I'd think that you had got the whole thing framed up."

"Oh, no, sir!" Virgil came back, with an intaking of his breath. "But, you see, I've associated a great deal in my time with the young men engaged in their sports. It is nothing rare for certain ones to know exactly how a contest of this kind is to end, I assure you."

There was a certain confidence, as well, radiated by Mr. Max, the genial manager of the Essex Pastime Club, every time that he met Querle. Mr. Max from the outset had insisted that Querle use the club as his training quarters. At a pinch, this place might have been called a gymnasium. There was ample evidence, though, of several sorts that until recently it had been a stable. It still was a big barn of a place, and in this Querle spent most of the week preceding the battle— shadow boxing, doing all the Swedish movements he could remember, washing himself down with a hose. Not only did Mr. Max extend this hospitality to him, but he insisted on taking Querle, Virgil, and Oakley out with him nightly to dinner, and seeing that a near-by saloon granted them unlimited privileges in the matter of free lunch.

Querle liked Mr. Max, but he demurred on the grounds that hospitality was all right, only this was going too far. Mr. Max was a gum chewer. He stopped his chewing long enough to grin.

"I never do anything for my health," he averred cryptically.

"Mr. Max is expecting a large gate," Virgil elucidated.

"And then some," Mr. Max amplified.

There was ample reason to believe that, however the battle went, there was to be no disappointment in the matter of what Virgil had referred to as the "gate."

There must have been a lot of clever publicity. Two hours before the doors of the Essex Pastime Club were scheduled to be opened, the narrow street outside was crowded. All the grand monde from the sporting and political circles of the lower East Side was there. Querle heard himself referred to as he pawed and shouldered his way to the door. He was "Mysterious Smith." He had already knocked out the Kid once in a free fight over on the Bowery. The Kid was out for blood, but the betting odds were swinging around in favor of Smith. The Kid was still the favorite, but such a flood of Smith money had appeared on the scene that there were no more takers.

Querle found Oakley and Virgil already in the box stall that was to serve him as a dressing room.

"Oakley, are those clothes sure to get here?" Querle asked.

"Yes, sir," Oakley answered, with a spasmodic wriggle.

Both Oakley and Virgil had donned secondhand sweaters which had been lent to them by the generous Mr. Max. They were to act as Querle's seconds. His sweater frightened Oakley, but Virgil had taken to his own as an old soldier might have taken to a uniform. Virgil had lost his meekness. He had lost his habitual manner of speech as well. He seemed to have undergone some peculiar renaissance of both energy and wickedness.

"Remember," said Virgil, "all you got to do is to dance and stall until the third round. Then land your wallop."

"If I can," said Querle slyly.

"Boss," chuckled Virgil, "it's a pipe. Friend Oakley could do it."

Friend Oakley shook, but he managed a smile.

The regulation roped square had been set up in the middle of the stable.

Around the four sides of this were benches sufficient to seat perhaps seven hundred people. Directly over the ring an arc lamp had been swung. Through the white glare of this the blue smoke clouds lazily trailed and eddied. There didn't appear to be a vacant seat. It was a solid mass, unlighted and black on its outer circumference save for the occasional flare of a match and the dim constellations made by glowing cigars and cigarettes. All the real light, like all attention, was concentrated on that clean and quiet oasis inside the rope fence.

The Whyo Kid came in. He wore an overcoat, jersey trunks, and tennis shoes. At the sight of him there was a howl of joy. He looked about him with a scowl, as if he did not like it. But presently he got up from the wooden stool which had been placed in his corner of the ring and ducked his closely cropped head a couple of times.

More cheers. Cries of: "Hello, Kid!" "Eat him up, Whyo!"

The Kid's triumphal entry had been shared by two human bulldogs who fussed about him like a couple of French maids preparing a debutante for a coming-out party. While they were still engaged in toying with his tennis shoes, there was a fresh explosion of yells. Both the bulldogs and the Kid so far forgot themselves as to look up.

"Mysterious Smith" was on his way up the narrow aisle from the box stall where he had prepared himself for battle. He also wore trunks and tennis slippers. But he had no overcoat nor dressing gown. He looked like a fighter. The white light of the arc lamp accentuated the tawniness of his hair, the freckles on his nose, the whiteness of his shoulders. The cheers kept getting louder and louder. Then the cheers were mingled with laughter as the crowd caught sight of Virgil and Oakley.

They were calling Virgil "Pop" and Oakley "Fish Eye."

But there was no questioning that the mysterious one was getting a greater reception than that which had been given to the Whyo Kid. Querle himself felt that this was true, and he wondered why it was. Whatever was the reason for it, though, the shouting ran through his veins like a medicine that both soothed and stimulated. He would rather die than have those cheerers disappointed.

He ducked through the ropes at his corner of the ring as nimbly as a veteran and sat down in the wooden chair that had been provided for him there."

There had been no interruption of the cheering as yet. Then, while Querle sat there and listened to it, he heard something that gave him a new sort of thrill— one that was not altogether pleasant, such a thrill as he might have received had he glimpsed a ghost. He told himself that he had been mistaken. Then he heard it again.

It was his own name that he had heard— both names. There they were again: "Christy" and "Querle." Then once more: "Chris, old boy!"

Right on top of this came an unmistakable cry: "Wot's de matter wit' de Bowery's friend?"

Querle turned and looked in the direction of the shout. The zone of light was so limited and the curling smoke clouds were so heavy that he could see nothing. He was still looking as a chunky man with a broken nose crawled into the ring and waved his derby hat to command silence. It was the official announcer. Querle heard only a fraction of what he said. In this he could not have differed greatly from the other people there. The excitement was growing. The official announcer had introduced the referee— a bald-headed man whom Querle recognized as the bartender of the saloon which had furnished the free lunch during his days of training.

Then the announcer jerked down his derby hat toward Querle's rival.

"In dis corner," he howled, "champeen welterweight of New York below Fourteent' Street, Whyo Kid!"

Whyo Kid got up and ducked his head as if he were ashamed of himself.

"And in dis corner," whooped the announcer, "gents, if I was to tell you his right name you'd blow up right through the roof, so I interjuce him to you as"— he yelled louder than ever—  "Mr. Mysterious Smith!"

There was a great merging of cheers both for Querle and the Kid. Then once more through the din he heard a foghorn voice shouting something about "The Bowery's friend." Again he turned in an effort to see the possessor of the voice. As he did so, he saw a sharp eddy in the crowd over in the direction of the main entrance. He made out the dim contours of half a dozen policemen, backed up by a vague blur of white and black.

Virgil had been engaged in fastening on his boxing gloves. It was all confusion and tumult in his mind even while he was listening to the final whisper of Virgil, feeling a farewell tap on his shoulder. Somehow or other, in the very remote past, he and the Whyo Kid had made a semblance of shaking hands together, had made a further semblance of listening to what the bald-headed referee was giving them in the guise of final warnings against foul play. Then he and the Kid were facing each other again in the middle of the ring, and the noise from the crowd was dying down to a mere whisper.

Both he and the Kid circled around each other once or twice, feinting at each other.

Then some impulse which was stronger than his will made Querle glance once again in the direction of the door. The storm center had approached the ringside. There were the policemen. The white-and-black blur had transformed itself into a galaxy of men in evening dress. These elements of the interruption were mere atmosphere for the center of the disturbance. There was a lady— tremulous, delicate, fashionable, young, and wide-eyed.

Querle found himself looking straight into the face of Marcia Schermerhorn.

At the same moment the Whyo Kid must have seen an opening too good to miss. He landed a smashing jolt on the neck that made Querle reel.

Chapter 19

QUERLE RALLIED while he sparred for time. He didn't need much of it. The jolt had served to speed up his mind. His good judgment told him that with such an opening the Kid might have knocked him out had the Kid possessed either the will or the punch. It was manifest that the Kid had neither. With no intermission there came a second express train of thought. There was a deliberate plot on to dishonor him. That was why Marcia had been inveigled into coming here. He stole another glance in her direction. Her father was there. Her father had always disapproved of him.

The Kid thought he saw another chance to land, but this time Querle blocked him and sent a left hook to the chin.

As Querle felt his mitted fist find solid contact with the bone and flesh of his adversary, the sensation was so positively pleasing that it made him smile. There was luxury in it. For all he cared, it might have been the Whyo Kid who had invited Major Schermerhorn and his party to be present. In his heart he accused the Kid of it. And thereupon Querle mixed things— walked in and slugged right and left.

The Kid clinched. He got his mouth up close to Querle's ear.

"What yuh doin', yuh big stiff?" the Kid whispered. "Dis ain't de thoid."

"Break!" ordered the bartender, plowing in between them.

What the Kid said brought light to Querle's mind in one respect, anyway. It had told him clearly enough, in view of all the queer hints that had been dropped by Virgil and Mr. Max, that the fight had been fixed. The thought that he should have been made a party to conduct so unsportsmanlike made him doubly frantic.

"I'm going to lick you now," he told the Kid.

The Kid went ugly. He shoved his own left straight forward. As he did so, Querle came up with his right. Both landed hard.

The gong clanged. The round was ended.

All during the dribbling seconds between the first round and the next, Querle sat leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed. He felt Oakley fanning him. Virgil was sponging him off. "You're doing fine, sir," said Virgil. "I almost regret, sir, that it is to be so brief." But Querle did not answer. He listened complacently enough. His soul, however, was groping backward through the ages.

Here he was naked practically, and there in front of him was an unclothed enemy. They were here to fight until one of them fell. And over there, so near that it seemed to him his nostrils could detect the very perfume of her presence, was the woman whom he loved, whom he had determined to make his mate. Querle lost his sense of shame. He was a man in the Stone Age, and this was the cave of his ancestors.

"Time!" called the bald-headed referee.

Querle opened his eyes, but it was with no loss of illusionment. In fact, the only thing that he now saw was the face and body of the Kid, and these merely fortified his vagary. The Kid's forehead was low and wrinkled. His lips were curled back from his teeth. But from his chin down, he was as beautiful as any young and unspoiled animal. That threat that Querle had whispered at the end of the other round had evidently gone home, though. The Kid looked as if he were already beaten in spirit.

The crowd was roaring. But the shouts meant nothing to Querle. They weren't even human. They had nothing whatsoever to do with the Essex Pastime Club. The roar might have been the music of a cataract in wild mountains or that of a gale rushing through primeval woods. For Querle was still the man of the old Stone Age, and this was his cave, and over there was the thing that he was fighting for— his woman.

He had no weapons but his fists, and these were padded. He started out to kill none the less.

He crouched a little. He felt an instinctive flexing of his arms until he knew that they were adjusted to a hair's breadth for either murder or defense. He rushed. The Kid broke ground. Querle gouged into him. He felt triumphant. He smashed and crushed. The Kid covered his face with his hands and started to run. Querle lifted him with his right.

There for an interval it seemed as if that cataract had turned into a Niagara, or the gale had become a tornado.

By degrees one voice made itself heard through the din. It was the voice of the referee slowly counting:

"— seven— eight— nine— ten!"

BACK OF the box stall, Oakley was playing the hose over Querle. He wasn't the cave man any more. He felt as if he had just come out of a dream. But cold realities were dousing his brain as the water from the hose was dousing his body.

Oakley and Virgil were still proclaiming to each other that their man had knocked out the Whyo Kid in the second round, and there was Mr. Max with the seventy-five dollars in his hand, laughing himself sick and trying to exact a promise from Querle to fight again next week.

"How's the Kid?" asked Querle.

"A trifle sore," Mr. Max replied jovially. "But he's all right. You see, I could have refused to pay him for not sticking it out another round, but I ain't kicking, and neither is he."

Querle felt sick.

"What— what became of the others?" he asked.

"They're waiting for you," Oakley answered hastily.

"Oh, I don't know," chuckled Mr. Max. "What do you think of all them swells coming down to the old Essex Club with the commissioner of police himself in the bunch. Boy! Boy! The papers to-morrow morning'll give us two columns."

Querle sprang forward— back in the Stone Age again.

"If they do," he said, "I'll knock your block off."

"Go as far as you like," said Mr. Max, still grinning, but jumping back. "It'll be worth it."

A dapper little man appeared from the box stall.

"Would you like me to remain until you have tried on your things, sir?" he asked, with almost drunken admiration.

"Hand him seventy-one of that seventy-five," Querle ordered, "and let him go."

Querle dressed hastily— everything new. He was in evening clothes. In the old days he would have complained of the fit, but the fit wasn't bad, and he had more important things to think about. He had four dollars left of the purse he had won. He gave a dollar of this to Oakley and ordered him to pack up the old clothes and take them back to the fifteen-cent hotel. He tried to press two dollars on Virgil, but the old man wouldn't accept a cent of it.

"I made a small killing, sir," said Virgil, with a return to meekness. "I have been amply rewarded."

Querle let matters rest there for the time being. His mind was dazzled by the word that had come to him immediately after the close of the battle. Waiting for him out there were those other men in evening dress, also Major Schermerhorn, also Marcia; and the major, on his own card which he had sent to him, had penciled the three words:

Bravo! Well done!

Chapter 20

AS QUERLE, in full regalia, came forward from his dressing quarters he exchanged one brief glance from a distance with Marcia Schermerhorn. Her dark eyes glowed upon him with an unmistakable message. It warmed his heart with devotion and courage. After all, said he to himself, nothing could be very wrong with the world when a girl looked at a fellow like that.

Then he glanced at the men— the battery of shirt fronts. Just an instant was enough to tell him that he had been the subject of their conversation. Major Schermerhorn, at a tip from one of the others, had turned in his direction with a smile. There was only one other member of the group whom he recognized— Billy Andrews, a former classmate of his at Union. He remembered now. That must have been Billy who had shouted his name before the fight began from the back of the hall.

Major Schermerhorn advanced to meet him, seized him by the hand.

"This is a most propitious occasion, my boy," the major cried.

Querle took half a dozen seconds from the time of the waiting delegation to exchange a word with Marcia. There wasn't much said, hardly anything articulate, but if there was any doubt in Querle's mind as to her feelings toward him after that first glance they had interchanged, the doubts were gone.

"I want to see you," he whispered; and he added the word: "Alone."

"And I want to see you," she assured him.

"Mr. Querle," the major began, "I wish you to meet our police commissioner, Colonel Temple. Commissioner, permit me! Mr. Querle, our next mayor."

The final word made Querle gasp, but he recovered himself, managed a smile and an air of nonchalance.

The major was proceeding with his introductions. There were two State senators in the group, a national committeeman, a congressman, and the Honorable Dexter Agneu Willis, president of the Civic Federation for Reform.

"Letters weren't sufficient," said the major. Had he been younger and less dignified, the major's mood and fashion of speaking might have been characterized as bubbling. "I told these gentlemen that it was next to impossible to get an interview with you. I suppose that we shouldn't have been able to find you here now— a joke on you, commissioner, with all those police and detectives at your command— if your secretary hadn't let the cat out of the bag."

"You refer to Oakley," said Querle.

"Marcia discovered him coming out of the Plaza," the major whispered, with a chuckle. He raised his voice, became the spokesman for the others. "We are all agreed that to-night we have had the best sort of a demonstration that our judgment was sound."

There was an echo in his words of that thing the major had said when introducing Querle to Colonel Temple—  "our next mayor." In his own mind, Querle was debating whether or not to come right out and make a confession that he didn't know what the major was talking about. A glance from Marcia encouraged him to abandon himself to fate.

"I'm deucedly hungry," he put in.

There was an outburst of polite comment and laughter.

"Gentlemen," Major Schermerhorn proposed, "if our candidate has no objections, let us all adjourn to the Brevoort. I dare say we can secure a private room, and, while breaking bread together—"

"I'm in the hands of my friends," said Querle, but he referred to Oakley, Virgil, and Mr. Max, who had remained in the offing.

"We solicit their presence," cried the major.

To Querle there came a mental whisper that Virgil and the police commissioner had some previous acquaintance. The commissioner had been on the point of saying something as he and the old man shook hands, but the commissioner had instantly checked himself. A little later, Querle heard the commissioner introducing Virgil as "Mr. Donahue" and treating the name as if it were something new.

There was no question about the friendship which already existed between Mr. Max, moving spirit of the Essex Pastime Club, and the Honorable Dexter Agneu Willis, president of the Civic Federation for Reform. It was more than a friendship. It was almost a fraternity. They put their arms around each other. Snatches of their conversation came to Querle on the general sweep of the tide.

"A candidate to appeal to the people—" from the Honorable Dexter.

"Sure! He's got the punch." This from Mr. Max.

"— silk socks and yet a mixer," said the Honorable Dexter.

"— all the bonn tonn, but the Bowery's friend," from Mr. Max. "It's my idea we could elect him hands down."

It was all a dream to Querle— brilliant, wholly illogical, yet convincing. There was only one moral certainty in his mind, and that was that— for the time being, at any rate— he was doing to the psuedo Christopher Querle what a little while ago he was doing to the Whyo Kid. The same sort of deadly purpose began to circulate in his veins. This was going to be his round. He had the usurper on the run.

There was a flock of automobiles out in the street, guarded by a dozen policemen. Beyond the policemen there was a waiting crowd. The crowd sent up a whoop when the shirt fronts appeared, but the cries were all for Querle even when launched under the alias of Mr. Mysterious Smith.

"Hello dere, Schmitty!"

"Give them a salute," the major urged.

Querle had just helped Marcia into her father's open car. He had followed her. He stood up, looked out over the crowd, lifted his silk hat.

There was a responding ovation of squeals and shouts.

"Isn't his hold on the people marvelous?" the Honorable Dexter demanded, with something almost like tears in his voice.

The flock of cars got under way— slowly, at first, through the narrow streets— giving the small boys time to fire further excitement along the route. A good many of those who shouted as the cars rolled past couldn't have known what it was all about. Perhaps they thought it was a wedding. But at that they knew almost as much as did Querle himself. In his own brain there was a shouting and a turbulence, and the avenues of his thought were as dark and slippery and congested with squirming enigmas as were these East Side streets.

Marcia sat at his side in the private dining room at the Brevoort. Querle was at the head of the table. And it was no more surprising to him that he should have been given this place of honor than that Marcia should have taken the chair next to him as a matter of course. Once, under the low-draped tablecloth, his hand sought hers. There was a responsive pressure from her finger tips. Several times, in the depths of her eyes, he surprised a soft light that quickened his pulse. But he felt that he could defer the solution of this mystery of Marcia until this other one was solved.

The delegation was letting him eat in peace. At least, the members of it were so busy talking among themselves that they were not obtruding.

It was from what they said and by degrees that Querle got at least a partial grasp of the situation.

There was an opportunity as never before in the history of the big town to elect an independent mayor. There had been a general compromise of all the warring elements outside the regular organizations. They had agreed to nominate Christopher Querle.

"But not myself," Querle gasped, inside of his brain.

Now that his hunger was satisfied— satisfied as it hadn't been in the seven months that had elapsed since his outbreak at Zell's— he felt his moral fiber weakening, felt a recurrence of indifference to fate. Once more the waters of mystification were rocking under his chin. He felt like letting himself go down. It was Marcia who threw him a life line— in the nature of another touch of her tapering fingers under cover of the tablecloth.

Major Schermerhorn had risen to his feet.

"Gentlemen," he said, "Mr. Querle has already informed us in writing that he was willing to be our candidate for the mayoralty if such was the will of the people. We think that we know that such is their will. What we have seen to-night has gone far to confirm our judgment in that respect. Here we have the scion of one of our best families whose writings have stirred the enthusiasm of all classes. He is still Christy Querle, the popular young clubman, on the Avenue. Downtown he is 'the Bowery's friend.' Throughout this broad land he is Christopher Querle, the devoted and unselfish altruist who has poured a fortune into the lap of charity."

"And the town's ripe for a kid mayor," grunted Mr. Max genially, rolling his cigar into the side of his mouth. "It'll try anything once."

"The main thing," the major went on, "is to get him before all the people at one and the same time. On the chance of getting his consent to speak on that occasion" — and the major turned to Querle with the smile of confidence—  "I have reserved Carnegie Hall two weeks from to-night."

There was a brief explosion of applause. This was followed by a momentary suspense.

"You expect me to speak in Carnegie Hall?" Querle asked.

"We demand it of you," cried the major.

"But I don't know how to speak in public," Querle rejoined, with the nightmare of stage fright already upon him.

"You're too modest," roared the major rapturously. "Any man who can wield a pen like yours and defend his honor with his fists can swing any crowd ever got together."

"Say you'll speak," Marcia whispered irresistibly.

"All right," said Querle; "I'll speak."

"Gentlemen, to our next mayor," cried the major. "Let us drink the toast standing!"

Chapter 21

"OH, CHRISTY! Isn't it just perfectly wonderful?" And Marcia pressed a little closer to Querle as the big tonneau floated up Fifth Avenue. They were all alone in the car. "But I'm frightened to death. Do you think that I shall be able to maintain the dignity of the position?"

Querle obeyed a spasmodic impulse. He snatched Marcia's gloved hand to his lips. He hadn't intended to ask her the question until he had asked her other questions, and, above all, told her certain things. But the question was out before he could check it:

"Marcia, will you marry me?"

Marcia gave a little start.

"I've already told you that I would. How strange you are! You know well enough that I couldn't dream— that I haven't dreamed— of anything else. Poor dear! You must be worn out."

"I know I'm strange," said Querle. He was speaking as much to himself as he was to her. "Everything is strange."

"I'm not strange," laughed Marcia. "I'm just crazy at the prospect of marrying the most wonderful boy in New York. That's all."

"Why do you think that I'm wonderful?" Querle asked. He was trying to get a line on this other Christopher Querle who had haunted him. He continued to hold Marcia's hand, but he kept his eyes straight ahead. The chauffeur was driving slumped down in his seat, and there was an unobstructed view of the Avenue. There was but little other traffic. The street glistened and melted into a vista of light like a road of magic leading into a magic principality. Querle added: "Only, everything is wonderful."

"Everything has become wonderful, indeed," said Marcia, "since you began your charities and research work and— and— —  Shall I say it? You won't think me foolish and vain? It's hard to live up to the standard set by a great man. Everything is wonderful, Christy, since I knew that you loved me."

"When was that?" Querle asked.

"Since— your letter."

"You mean the letter I wrote you a couple of days ago telling you that I was going to call to-night?"

"Why do you tease me?"— playfully. "You know very well that I refer to your letter asking me to marry you."

"I loved you long— long before that," Querle declared, with a touch of hoarseness. He remembered something. From the pocket where he had placed it when he was redressing himself at the Essex Pastime Club he brought out the pink pearl pendant. He handed it to Marcia. "I've been keeping it for you," he said.

Marcia received it with a little cry of delight. But there was no delight in the moment for Querle himself. He felt like a mental and spiritual Houdini, smothered in manacles; only, he was unable to free himself. The pearl had recalled, as nothing else could have done, the fundamental question as to who and what— and why— was the Volunteer Nemesis. Was it friend or enemy, good or bad, incarnate or disincarnate; himself, after all, or some one else?

"How long has it been since you have seen me?" he asked abruptly.

"Not since the day in Washington Square. I think I should have died if it hadn't been for your letters."

So she hadn't seen any other Christopher, at any rate.

"What did you think about that meeting in the Square?"

"Let's don't go all over that again, dear," she murmured.

"We've never gone over it at all," Querle insisted, desperately intent in dragging Truth from her well. "I've never spoken to you about it, nor written to you about it, until this blessed minute."

"Why, Christy!"

"I tell you the plain fact, Marcia. You mean to tell me that I wrote you concerning the day that you held me up in Washington Square and I denied my identity. I tell you that I never wrote to you at all."

"I think that you might leave off pretending now," Marcia pouted, but good-naturedly enough.

"I'm not pretending."

Marcia shrugged a shoulder.

"If you wish to deny it, dear, you are, of course, at perfect liberty to do so— just as you denied your identity that day down in the Square, when—  I don't mind telling you— I think you behaved simply horrid, or horridly, whichever you prefer."

"Marcia, you don't understand. Let's get the facts straight. You know that I love you, don't you?"

"Don't be absurd."

"And some day we're going to be married."

"Some day! Is it possible, Christy, that you have forgotten the date?"

Querle spoke more rapidly yet. He did so, feeling that he was trying to keep up with his mind. His mind was like a fractious horse, and it was trying to run away from him.

"Marcia," he said desperately, "I'm going to throw myself on your mercy. I need you. I swear I do. But first you have to believe everything I say."

At that cry of distress, Marcia had turned to look at him.

"Sweetheart," she whispered, "we are almost home."

It was getting rather late, but the valet who admitted them to the Schermerhorn house was as brightly alert as if he had not just been aroused from a sound nap by the sound of the motor stopping in front of the door. He was a well-trained servant, like all the others in Major Schermerhorn's somewhat irascible employment, but his smile, while respectful, was frankly friendly.

"You 'ave my sincere thanks, sir," he whispered, as he helped Querle off with his light topcoat. "I thank you kindly."

"What for, James?" Querle asked.

"All of us do, sir," said James. "You 'ave made us very happy, sir."

"Tent mieux!" Querle sighed, resigned.

"Why did James thank me?" he asked, as he joined Marcia in the small drawing-room on the second floor.

"Let's sit down by the window," she suggested, maternal.

He started to follow her. She lingered for a step. All the suppressed emotions of his mental disarray surged up within him and overflowed. He knew that they were alone and unobserved. He put his arms about her. She swayed lightly backward, surrendered her lips to him.

"Ah, Christy, dear," she breathed, "you're making so many people happy! You are making poor me distractedly happy. Listen! I know that the path to achievement, the path to real greatness, is never an easy one. I know— sweetheart" — she whispered the word—  "that there are many things which I am unable to understand. I know that it must always be like that. But I'll be happy in your love. Just that! You have my perfect confidence. And I have yours. You don't have to throw yourself on my mercy as you said a moment ago, dear heart. Let our love suffice."

The window Marcia had spoken about embraced an alcove overlooking a small garden at the rear of the house. Joseph, the aged handy man— more of a pensioner than anything else— had been the Schermerhorn gardener at Lenox in the old days. And Joseph had transformed the little rear garden into a mass of roses. Their perfume came up to Querle where he sat with Marcia at the open window. Two heavily fronded palms, moreover— one on each side of them— emphasized the garden sense, made this corner of the drawing-room seem almost like a bit of enchanted isle.

Querle was meditating that last utterance of Marcia's. He saw that it had answered more questions than he had at first suspected.

In the first place— and he admitted it unequivocally in his heart— the Nemesis was a friend and not an enemy. Automatically, his mind repeated a fragment of that initial letter:

Therefore, submit to all that is about to be done in your name. If you do, you will become worthy of—

"Marcia," he whispered.

Her only response was to take his hand and continue to hold it as she dreamed with her eyes open.

"Then you are happy," he said, giving up his purpose to talk about the things that had tormented him so. It would merely be dragging her into the same whirlpool of anxiety which had been obsessing him for so long. That other and uglier question had also been answered. There was no other Christopher Querle in Marcia's affections, at any rate. And, in spite of his past, in spite of everything that had happened, in spite of his poverty, in spite of his reason which for a time he believed was failing him, but which he was now convinced was clearer than it ever was, he had become worthy of this girl at his side.

Marcia was speaking dreamily, as to herself: "Just to make folks happy! Isn't that, after all, our only justification for remaining alive? Oh, Christy, I know that you will make a most wonderful, wonderful mayor!"

Chapter 22

QUERLE WENT out into the night. He made his way over to Central Park. The place was as deserted as it might have been in the days of Hendryk Hudson. He came to a bench in the dark, cool shadow of trees and the clean, pungent perfume of grass, and there he sat himself down. At the foot of the slope there was a darkling lake. Over this fragment of aboriginal creation brooded the illimitable sky.

Querle laughed— laughed softly, but aloud.

The whole visible world, and its origin and its end, and the purpose of it all, and what had gone before, and what would come afterward-these were but elements of a story like his own. Mystery! All mystery!

He reviewed the questions now with complacency. All in good time they would be answered or they would not. Either way, he was going to live, put into life what he could and get out of it what he could. The hour or so which he had just passed in the society of Marcia Schermerhorn had been food and drink to his soul. His soul felt strong enough to confront anything.

Nemesis was a friend-had worked, sure enough, for his redemption. He was engaged to be married to the finest girl in the world. He had a fair chance to become mayor of the greatest city on earth.

The sequence of these three propositions brought him to a fourth which sprang upon him as deftly and completely as would have done a glare of light. In the same way it dazzled him, opened up a field of dancing, half-seen specters.

The conclusion was this: Who could the Nemesis be other than Marcia's father?

Querle permitted his stupefaction to billow over him and recede again like the wash of a tide. Not a thought came to him, however, that did not add weight to the conclusion, show him how inevitable it was.

If there was one person in New York who ought to be interested in his welfare, that person was certainly Major Schermerhorn. The major had just given proof of how real this interest was. The major was a strong and original character. He was possessed of great wealth. There probably wasn't a thing about Querle that the major didn't know or which, at least, he couldn't have found out. As for the mastery imitation of Querle's handwriting, any man of intelligence, given ordinary talents and a sufficiently strong motive, could have done as much.

And the motive?

Marcia!

At this, Querle was confronted by a still more dazzling flood of light.

Perhaps it had been Marcia herself who had acted as the Nemesis. Like many another girl with soft brown eyes, Marcia had a will of steel. What was that Marcia had said to him in Washington Square about herself being to blame for everything? Why had Marcia put him off with such determination when he had essayed, a little while ago, to get an explanation of his engulfing problem? What were all those letters which he had never written, but which she had referred to as coming from him? Who but herself could have written such letters, if, indeed, they had been written at all? Who else could have sent her the pink pearl? Who could have given presents to her servants? Who else, in the name of High Heaven, could ever have brought her father around to think well of him when, as a matter of fact, he was perfectly sure that, not so very many months ago, Major Schermerhorn had been on the point of banishing him from his house altogether?

Querle twisted around on his bench in a very agony of concentrated thought. Passionately he recalled that visit which Marcia had paid to his own house when she must have been only too well informed that he was there in the guise of a painter. It was just like Marcia, with her tender heart and her nerves of watch-spring steel, to go ahead and have the house redecorated in view of her forthcoming marriage with a man who had not as yet so much as mentioned such a thing. And there was Mr. Lathrope, the supposed purchaser of the old home. Querle had some vague recollection that there were Lathropes among the Schermerhorn connections.

Far from these staggering thoughts diminishing his love for Marcia in any way, they merely served to increase his reverence for her and his awe of her. Querle wasn't very strong on history, but he was well enough aware that more than one man who had achieved greatness owed his success to some one woman. With Marcia's backing, he could become great. Mayor of New York! Governor of the State! President!

There remained a great many details naturally which were not clear in Querle's mind, even now, when it had become practically certain that the Volunteer Nemesis was his affianced bride and none other.

For example, there was the matter of those masterly articles which had appeared in certain magazines devoted to reform. But, in the last analysis, all such articles were pretty much alike. Any one could write them. Querle himself could write them. He was absolutely sure of it. That was why he had been more than half convinced there for a while that he had written the articles himself— in a state of dual personality, as Doctor White would have said.

But this led him off into speculations concerning the earlier phases of the case. The figure of Judge Cough reared itself up in his mental vision— gray-whiskered, spectacled, imperturbable. The figure seemed to say: "Young man, I am your Nemesis!"

The declaration gave Querle something of the same sort of shock as he had experienced when he discovered that Marcia must have played the elusive role.

It wasn't like Marcia to have permitted him to welter in jail for thirty days and send him a mere five dollars at the conclusion of his term. That was Judge Gough all over. It wasn't like Marcia to tell him to "try poverty for a while." That also sounded like the gruff old lawyer who had been his father's attorney for so many years.

But from the spirit effigy of Judge Gough, Querle's mind, like a magician, at this point summoned up that of the wolflike Simpson and Simpson's acolyte, the sheeplike Blell. Here were handwriting experts of the finest. Simpson would have gobbled up those missing millions as readily as he would gobble up Blell were his wolfish appetite not satiated otherwise.

Could Simpson have been the Nemesis, after all?

Querle squirmed again on his bench, let his floundering head drop into his hands. He didn't look up until he heard a heavy, measured tread. It was a policeman. The policeman gravely saluted him and passed on into the blue-and-golden shadows. Law and order were, as man conceived them, nothing but a receding footstep in cosmic mystery.

As Querle took note once more of the shadowy trees, the dewy fragrance of the grass, the dark and tranquil lake, the infinity of the stars, a feeling of peace and courage wafted in upon him as tepid and poetic as a breeze from the south.

After all, so he told himself, there must be a design in fate. Whether or not Marcia Schermerhorn was the Nemesis who had transformed him, she was the beneficent influence in his life. He had needed such an influence. All that he had been through had been necessary to make him recognize the truth. He would accept this influence as a gift from God. He wouldn't worry any more. He wasn't going to ask too many questions.

He got up and started off along the dusky path.

It wasn't until then that he recollected that promise of his to address the mass meeting at Carnegie Hall two weeks thence. The recollection had a fist attached to it, and it was a fist that clutched his heart. It was Marcia who was accountable for that as well. It was she who had urged him to accept the call.

Chapter 23

AS MR. MAX had predicted, all the newspapers of the great city on the following morning had accounts of the extraordinary battle that had been fought at the Essex Pastime Club. And, for the first time since the great adventure had begun, Querle found himself unmistakably linked with that shadowy, fictitious Christopher Querle who had been his envy and his inspiration. According to the newspapers, the young millionaire who had fought the Whyo Kid and the young reformer who was a growing political light were one and the same.

Oakley had brought the papers into Querle's room at Mills Hotel No. 6.

Last night, after his session in the park, Querle had decided not to return to this place which had known him for so long. But he was there. It was a case of force majeure. He had had three dollars when he left the park. He had the arrogance of wealth. This arrogance had almost ruined him. It had taken him for a stroll through the Plaza. He looked into the grill. There were a dozen young fellows in there whom he had known. They greeted him with a curious mingling of mockery and admiration. It was clear that they regarded him as a crank.

Querle ordered a glass of mineral water, and invited such as would to join him. Several accepted the invitation, chaffing him blithely betimes. When he paid his bill and tipped the waiter there remained to him just sixty cents.

He had returned to the hotel in the early morning. The night clerk had become a friend of his.

"Gee, Henry!" the night clerk said, pop-eyed at his guest's evening clothes.

"Not Henry, old top," said Querle. "I'm through with that alibi. Call me Christy, if you want to." And he told the night clerk who he was.

Querle sat up in his narrow, iron bed, reading his newspapers, when Oakley returned.

"Here's a letter for you, sir," said Oakley. "It just came."

"Cut out the 'sir,' Oakley," said Querle softly. "We're friends."

"It looks like Nemesis," Oakley said, putting on the mask of uneasiness, despite Querle's words.

Querle took the letter, but before so much as glancing at the superscription, he got a good grip on Oakley with his eyes.

"Why didn't you tell me that you'd spoken to Miss Schermerhorn?" Querle demanded softly. "Why didn't you tell me that you and she had rigged up this Nemesis business together?"

Oakley's expression visibly changed from mask to reality.

"I didn't—" he began.

Querle interrupted him: "I'll take your word for it, Oakley, old man. But I've done a lot of thinking about who's been guilty in this affair."

A glance had been sufficient to tell him that Oakley's surmise was correct, and that the letter in his hand was one more communication from the Volunteer Nemesis. It was addressed to Henry Mysterious Smith; but, for all he could see, that address had been written by himself. He tore open the envelope and took out the paper contained in it. There was instantly one point which attracted his attention, fascinated him even before he proceeded to read. The paper on which the letter had been written bore the letterhead of a great hotel. It was one of the hotels which Oakley had visited. This particular sheet of paper was strikingly similar to one that Oakley had brought back with him, had the same sort of a diagonal fold across one corner of it. Querle had rejected it for that very reason when he wrote to Marcia Schermerhorn telling her that he would call.

Once more Querle had raised his eyes to Oakley, but Oakley looked so ridiculously idiotic that Querle said nothing, brought his attention back to the communication. Like all the other messages which he had received from the Nemesis, this one also was brief:

Make a success of your Carnegie Hall appearance, and all things will be yours.

The meeting was a little less than two weeks off.

He was glad to find Virgil in the assembly room of the hotel when he came downstairs. The room was fairly filled with men— of the no-family, poor-but-respectable type principally— who sat around smoking their pipes and reading their newspapers. Querle was aware of a tensing of interest among them from the moment that he appeared. Either "Mysterious Smith" or Christopher Querle, separately and alone, would have been enough to attract their attention. Here were both characters presented for their delectation in a single man, and that man one of them.

There was a buzz of comment by the time that Querle reached Virgil's side. Virgil had got to his feet, was pulling off his spectacles preparatory to putting them away.

"You're just the man I want to see," said Querle.

"Well, if I can be of any service to you—" Virgil began tremblingly. There was nothing of the prize-fight follower left in him. Once more he was the simple-minded old gentleman who might have been a minister had his own white shadow become real.

"New York is filled with places where one may practice speaking in public," said Virgil, after he had considered the Nemesis letter which Querle had shown him. "And your task will be all the easier in that you are already a personality— already interesting—"

"But, in the meantime," said Querle, "I have to earn my living— not as Henry Smith, but as Christopher Querle—"

Virgil blinked at him, mouth open.

"And that," said he, "will get you more votes than words."

On the morning of the date set for the mass meeting at Carnegie Hall, Querle got up at the crack of dawn. He hadn't been able to sleep except in a fitful way, and his wakefulness had been filled with dreams, his dozing filled with feverish thoughts. He went out into the dun-colored air. He felt that if he put in one more day— this day above all others— as he had put in the days since the fight at the Essex Pastime Club, he would fly to pieces like an overworked grindstone.

The newspaper men had been on his trail. So had the little and the big politicians. So had the beggars and the cranky. He had granted few interviews, but the newspapers had been full of him— with a column on the front page and stories that occupied other columns on the inside pages.

The reform movement, sponsored by Major Schermerhorn, was gathering momentum, and it was generally conceded that Querle was going to be the movement's candidate.

As for him, he had continued to live at the hotel that had sheltered him when he was nothing but Henry Smith. He had continued to do the same sort of work as Henry Smith had done so far as he could, that is, with his hampering following of reporters and photographers. He had seen published photographs of himself as a window cleaner, a Bowery orator, a boxing instructor, and as a "society man. He had been derided and praised. But even the quality of the attention he was receiving from the opposition press was enough to inform the world that a great and fascinating new orb had appeared in the political heavens.

Privately, he had been offered all sorts of money, from the agents of vaudeville circuits right on up to Major Schermerhorn himself. He had refused all such offers.

This suited Major Schermerhorn and his associates. More important than that, it suited Marcia. Most important of all, it suited Querle himself. Each evening he had returned to his fifteen-cent room and donned that evening suit of his and made his way to upper Fifth Avenue. But even there, as when he was beset by the journalistic pack, Querle found himself crusted about by a growing reserve. This reserve was not of his own volition precisely. Rather, it was something that had grown out of himself.

"He's a big man," Major Schermerhorn whispered.

Querle took a street car that carried him to Brooklyn Bridge. His first thought had been merely to get away— get away far where the reporters could not find him. But at the Bridge he felt the call of the ocean. He took the train to Coney Island. The season at Coney was long past. The place was practically deserted. The beach was altogether so. Querle seated himself on a driftwood timber and looked out to sea. The solitude, informed by the murmur of the surf, was balm to his frayed nerves.

The sun came up and warmed the sand. The sea gulls circled around. Far out on the horizon the slow ships passed, sail and steam.

And out of all of this— from the sand and sunshine, the ocean, the gulls, the ship— there came to an intimate voice that declared over and over to him:

"You are Chrstopher Querle!"

Along toward noon, he was so smitten with hunger that he went back into the wooden-built village. He found a lunch counter, where he fortified himself with frankfurter sandwiches and coffee. The man in charge of the counter was middle-aged. He had a squat, fat head with winkles at the back of it, but he was reading with meditative interest a red-headed evening paper of the day before. In the center of the page, Querle saw a photograph which he recognized as his own.

This symbol of fame coming to him out of the silences impressed him as no amount of attention in town could have done. It sent him back to the beach for more thought.

The day was superlatively fine, clear, and warm, the outskirts of a tropic breeze eddying in from the south.

Querle slept.

For a long time he had lain there in the soft, sun-heated sand and tried to compose some part of the speech which he was expected to deliver that night, but it was as useless as it would have been for the ocean to try to compose in advance what its own wild waves would say. That was the thought that came to Querle. At odd moments for the past two weeks he had essayed the same thing. Impossible! He had become more or less adept, though, at impromtu speaking.

Then he found himself on the stage of Carnegie Hall with what looked like a million people out there in front of him, and they were all roaring at him.

Querle started and sat up. That was the ocean that had been roaring at him. The tide was coming in. The sun was almost down.

Chapter 24

CARNEGIE HALL was filling fast. Querle had been his own best press agent. It looked as if every one in town wanted to see him and was bent on being there. The galleries became packed. A good part of the parquet had been reserved for ticket holders. The ticket holders arrived, singly and in groups, most of them in evening dress. Among them were included many women. Presently there wasn't a vacant seat left in the whole vast hall, and policemen and firemen were blocking the entrances to keep any one else from getting in. A band blared ragtime and patriotic songs. Every now and then, for no special reason, there would be an eruption of cheering from some corner of the gallery, and this would spread like a flow of lava until the whole place was submerged in it.

There wasn't a sign missing that this was going to be a great night politically.

In the center of the stage, there was a small speaker's stand draped in an American flag. Immediately back of this stand, at a distance of fifteen or twenty feet, sat Major Thurlow Schermerhorn. Grouped to each side and back of him and in a deep crescent, were perhaps a hundred other prominent citizens— the Honorable Dexter Agneu Willis, the Honorable Billy Andrews, Former Judge John B. Gough, the celebrated specialist in nervous and mental diseases, Doctor White. The only gentleman on the stage not in evening clothes— all dressed up none the less, and red and shiny and very well satisfied withal— was Mr. Max, of the Essex Pastime Club. A little to the right of the center aisle, in the third row from the front, was Marcia Schermerhorn. Like her father up there on the stage, she also was flanked by her own kind of people— women most of them, and every time that they moved they set into motion little currents of light and perfume.

But something was wrong with Marcia. Her heart kept thumping and fluttering, working too hard or not enough. She tried to concentrate her mind on what her friends said to her, tried to smile, but her face was getting whiter and whiter, and her big, dark eyes larger and darker still.

Around the entire front of the stage, where the orchestra is usually placed, there was an inordinately long and narrow table, along which sat the local reporters and out-of-town correspondents. And any one with half an eye could see that even the reporters were beginning to champ at their bits. They laughed and talked among themselves. They rewrote their opening paragraphs. But, from time to time, one of them would stop and cast a hasty glance in the direction of Major Schermerhorn.

The major himself was an old campaigner. But even he was beginning to show the strain. And there was reason for this.

The chair at the major's side, obviously retained for the chief speaker of the evening, remained unoccupied.

Messenger boys came and went. The last one had brought Oakley with him. Oakley was looking frightened and apologetic. Oakley's entry "got across," as they say in vaudeville. He was greeted by a roar of cheers and laughter. Oakley was tiptoeing across the stage. He was taken with the paralysis of stage fright. He stopped where he was and looked out across the hall with a sickly smile. The racket was subsiding. Some one up in the top gallery who had been present at the Essex Pastime fight let out a yell: "It's me old friend, Fish Eye."

Oakley said whatever he had to say to Major Schermerhorn and stumbled to an exit amid loud and general applause.

The major whispered a few words to the Honorable Dexter Agneu Willis, and that well-known apostle of reform got to his feet. He was suave and inclined to fat, albeit he carried himself well. He stepped forward to the speaker's table.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began. His voice was fluty and may have got as far as the reporters' table. "It is, indeed, an honor—"

The big crowd had quieted down somewhat when the Honorable Dexter Agneu Willis first came forward, but it was only long enough to hear whether or not he had any news to give. The crowd began to talk again. Those who were not singing and whistling must have begun to talk. It sounded as if there could not possibly be any one in the hall who was not talking.

This went on for about five minutes, the crowd getting noisier and noisier and the speaker beginning to perspire, when a very queer thing happened. The big noise collapsed and flattened down like a stricken balloon until there was nothing left of it but the rags of a fluttering whisper.

Mr. Willis, pleased at having scored his point, proceeded to enmesh his hearers in an even tighter coil.

"But, no!" he cried. He was about to follow this up, had already begun to do so, when the whole auditorium let go in a crackling thunder.

Willis was not precisely a fool. He turned and looked back of him. He saw every one on the stage standing up. And there, dressed in his old clothes, one eye bruised, his hair mussed up, but otherwise looking as keen and efficient as a battle-ax, was Christopher Querle.

Querle shook a few hands right and left, while the crowd continued to roar. He dropped into the chair that had been reserved for him. There was a quick interchange between Mr. Willis and Major Schermerhorn. Then Major Schermerhorn stepped forward. The band blared. The crowd howled. It lasted all of five minutes. By that time, Major Schermerhorn had started to say what he had to say. There was enough quiet at last to get, at any rate, his closing words:

"—the people's choice for mayor of this great city. His name is— Christopher Querle!"

Querle was breathless when he came to the front of the stage. He had been breathless when he arrived. He stood there, panting his breath back, while the crowd let itself go again. It wasn't every day that a millionaire philanthropist appeared before them in clothing which would have attracted no particular attention anywhere along the water front. This youth, moreover, had been born on Fifth Avenue and had become "the Bowery's friend." He had renounced a life of idle luxury that he might see how it felt to work with his hands and live in a cheap hotel. He had written a lot of articles and knocked out the Whyo Kid. Now he looked the part.

"Great politics," howled Brinkley, of the Recorder, into the ear of Jenkins, of the Star.

Querle made some movements of his arms to command silence. There was no pretense about it. He looked as if he wanted silence.

"I apologize," he said, "for coming here dressed like this, but they stole my dress suit. I had only one. I was late. They tried to slug me." He waited. He was still troubled by his breathing. The silence became absolute. "But I am here!"

This struck the crowd as funny, but the people were laughing with Querle, not at him. There were a good many expressions of good-natured sympathy from the upper part of the house, hand-clapping from the parterre. Querle was letting his eyes drift over row after row. They found the eyes of Marcia Schermerhorn, remained steadfast for a while. And thereafter, whenever the cheering made him pause, the reporters noticed that he looked in the same direction. Some of them took note of the girl in the third row. She wasn't hard to pick out. She was all eyes. And they made a pretty paragraph about it, which appeared in their stories on the following day.

There were intervals enough when the cheering did make Querle pause. Most of the time he was telling about a youth who was rich and profligate and who had heard the voice of Nemesis. Obviously he was referring to the city of his birth. He couldn't be referring to anything else. But there was a poignancy of allusion, a vividness of portrayal, and a sincerity of feeling that went home to every one at times—  brought the gooseflesh, spread the little shivers around in a fine shower, brought an occasional laugh and an occasional tear, made every one glad when it did come time to relieve oneself with much handclapping and a cheer or two.

"Friends," he said, "there comes a time in the life of every man, and of every city, and of every State, and of every nation, when the White Shadow appears and says: 'Behold! I am your Nemesis. Behold! The hour and the opportunity are here for your redemption. Better were it that you die than you continue to live as you have been living. Therefore, submit to all that is about to be done— in your name. If you do, you will become worthy of the One Who Loves You. Resist, and you bring upon your shoulders the scourge.' And you answer: 'Nay! Nay! Thou White Shadow of all things as they ought to be, thou art no Nemesis! Thou art our very soul! In our redemption, and in everything, thy will be done, so help us God!'"

As Querle finished this curious peroration to the oddest political speech ever heard in New York, he suddenly became conscious of himself. He felt like a sparrow in a hurricane. It was as if he had just awakened from that dream of his on the beach at Coney Island and had found that there had been no dream, after all. The roar was there. The big hall had become a Cave of the Winds.

Then Querle once more was looking into the eyes of Marcia Schermerhorn. Her mouth was open. There were tears on her cheeks. She was frantically clapping her hands. Then there was Marcia's father at his side, patting him on the back, and, at the same time, trying— not very seriously— to recall the meeting to order.

No use!

Half of the audience was on its feet and moving toward the exits. Querle dropped into a chair. As he did so, he was aware that the hour of his own triumph hadn't been without its tragic note for some one else.

He saw a group of those who had been on the stage withdrawing through the wings. And, in the midst of the group, tottering, half carried by those who surrounded him, the black-clad figure of some one whom he did not recognize.

Chapter 25

SO FAR as Querle was concerned, it was dazzlement upon dazzlement.

Presently, in the company of Major Schermerhorn and others of those who had sat with him on the stage, Querle himself had groped, rather than walked normally, out of the hall by way of the stage door. There, with some undefined idea that they were off to a restaurant, he had been pushed into an automobile. Major Schermerhorn and Mr. Willis were with him, embracing him genially and telling him and each other what a wonderful speech he had made.

The car swung into Fifth Avenue and turned north.

"Aha!" thought Querle. "It's to be the Plaza."

But the car shot across Fifty-ninth Street and held to its course.

"I'm willing," he said; "they're taking me to the major's. I'll see Marcia there, and she can tell me again with her lips what she has already told me with her eyes."

So much; then he saw that the car had stopped in front of the house that had been his, the house which Judge Gough had sold through error, the place to which he had come as the assistant to the kind and cunning Mr. Leppert.

Out of his brain fog a few words from Major Schermerhorn sounded clear. The major had turned to him.

"Another master stroke, my boy, to have invited us all to be your guests here to-night, instead of at that pesky hotel of yours!"

"I thought you'd like it," said Querle, gulping hard.

"Willis and I'll take care of ourselves in the smoking room," said Major Schermerhorn jovially, "while you run upstairs for a dip and a change of clothing. Don't bother about the guests. We'll do the honors until you return."

Querle, inside of this house that had been his— was his again apparently—  turned to look at the servant who had admitted him. It was an elderly man who smiled at him toothlessly. He recognized old Jason, who had been his father's butler years ago. Old Jason called him "Mr. Christopher," shed a tear, quavered something about being glad to be back and God bless you, sir!

"Where did you blow in from?" Querle asked.

"Your letter found me at Lenox, sir," said Jason, with senile joy.

Querle obeyed the impulse— he was becoming intuitional as well as kind—  and patted Jason on the back and thanked him.

He ran up the steps to his old quarters. He didn't have to pause to see that the house had been freshly decorated. Leppert had certainly done his part, and after that there must have been other experts on the job, supervised by— who else but Marcia?

All the time that he was tubbing himself and afterward, when he was getting into his very own clothes— clothing he had not seen since that last and all but fatal day of the old life— he meditated still on the identity of the Volunteer Nemesis. Was it, after all, by some miraculous process, none other than himself, none other than his own soul, as he had put it back there in that speech of his?

THERE WERE perhaps a hundred guests downstairs— men prominent in various ways all of them. They were of a sort to make it something more than mere idle optimism when they predicted that Querle was going to be the next mayor of New York. There were a good many women present. Among them was Marcia. Querle watched his chance and slipped away with her to a corner of the music room. She seated herself at the grand piano. She was a skilled musician. Querle leaned over in the accepted attitude of one who wishes to explain the intricacies of a score. The lid of the instrument was raised. It hid them conveniently from view. No notes came— none that were audible.

"It's queer that it should have slipped my mind," quoth Querle, as they eventually reappeared. "So it's a week from to-day, then, that we are to be married. You see, the strain of all this excitement—"

"Hereafter," Marcia whispered, "there'll be two of us to share it. I'm going to do my part."

He glanced down at her, and his heart swelled with devotion. He knew that what she said was true— she, with her soft brown eyes and her will of steel.

Oakley hurried up to them. Oakley was properly dressed, and this was one of the most important nights in his life. And yet Oakley, for the very first time since Querle had known him, was not self-conscious. Oakley brought word that it was Doctor White who had been stricken at Carnegie Hall and that Doctor White begged permission to see him without delay.

"Where?" Querle asked.

"He's at his own home, sir," said Oakley, with a gust of sentiment.

Querle glanced at Marcia.

"Let me go with you," she proposed wistfully.

Querle left Oakley to explain his enforced absence. He didn't expect to be long away. It required but a few minutes for Marcia's car to bring them to the doctor's door.

They found the doctor in his bed. He was propped high with pillows. He looked as white as his name, and as his whole life had been. And from their first glance at him— inexperienced though they were— they had a premonition that the doctor's spirit was preparing itself for flight.

It was only at Querle's second glance that he discovered that two others were there apart from the nurse who had admitted them. One was Emlen Gonthorpe, who, for so many years, had been the doctor's aide and companion. The other was that old man whom Querle had christened "Virgil." Querle greeted them with a sort of blank consternation, then turned again toward the bed. But Marcia paused.

"Miss Schermerhorn," Gonthorpe said softly, as he introduced the old man, "this is my father." And he added, with a touch of saturnine pride: "He's the oldest operative of the Burke Detective Agency."

Querle heard this, and he wondered; but Doctor White, from some dream of approaching peace, opened his eyes.

"Is that you, Christopher?"

"I hope that you are better," said Querle, stepping forward. He took the physician's hand, seated himself at the bedside.

"Aye, better!" the doctor returned lightly. "I shall come into port with my colors flying. I am almost there. The headlands rise. Elsie is there. It will be a gala day— for some of us."

Querle was looking at the doctor very hard, keeping a tight rein on himself. The name the doctor had let fall had touched a long-silent chord in Querle's breast. Elsie was the name of his mother, dead these fifteen years.

"I needn't recall, Christopher, the sort of woman that your mother was," the doctor went on. His voice was almost supernaturally soft and clear. "She was an angel— even before she died— as so many women are. God knows that I'm not to blame if I loved her, have loved her ever since! Closer, my boy! This is for you and me. On her deathbed her thoughts were all of you. She said: 'I should rather see him dead than to have him— have him—"

The doctor paused. He smiled, as at something that no one but he himself could see.

"Twenty-five years ago," he continued— and Querle thought that he was rambling, but he was not—"I received a letter purporting to come from your father, asking me to devote my best skill to a certain very poor but estimable woman in a wretched section of the city. I did so, and, by the grace of God, she recovered. I did not discover until then that the letter which had taken me over there was a benevolent forgery. It had been written by the woman's son. The boy was a genius. I was convinced— I am still convinced— that all genius, that all talent, even if it be a genius for forgery, could serve a good end if properly directed. Eventually I brought the young man to my house. He has been with me ever since."

"Emlen?"

"Yes, Emlen. He and I worked together. I was the Nemesis, but he was the instrument the Lord put into my hand."

There followed a period of silence.

"Don't worry about your fortune, Christopher," the doctor said lightly, almost joyfully. "I have conserved it for you. It was my own money that I was using for the charities which bear your name. So let them stand, my boy, as a memorial to your mother."

Querle could not speak.

"And remember Gonthorpe," the doctor murmured. "There may be another occasion some day to use those talents of his. Isn't that Marcia over there?"

"Yes."

"Call her here."

Marcia came over to the bedside. Querle surrendered his chair to her. But the doctor clung to his hand. There being nothing else to do, Querle knelt.

"I'll be present at your marriage," said the doctor, with a dim and holy smile. "Christopher revealed it to me long ago, without intending to, perhaps, that he loved you, that you were the one element on earth necessary to his steadfastness in this battle of life. Marcia, what he said to-night was true— that his own soul, all that was best in him— that was— was—"

The doctor showed a sudden gleam of animation. There was something shining in his face like an inner light. He smiled again seraphically.

"—the White Shadow," he whispered; "the Volunteer Nemesis."

End

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25