Montague had taken a couple of days to think over Lucy's last request. It was a difficult commission; but he made up his mind at last that he would make the attempt. He went up to Ryder's home and presented his card. “Mr. Ryder is very much occupied, sir—” began the butler, apologetically.
“This is important,” said Montague. “Take him the card, please.” He waited in the palatial entrance-hall, decorated with ceilings which had been imported intact from old Italian palaces.
At last the butler returned. “Mr. Ryder says will you please see him upstairs, sir?”
Montague entered the elevator, and was taken to Ryder's private apartments. In the midst of the drawing-room was a great library table, covered with a mass of papers; and in a chair in front of it sat Ryder.
Montague had never seen such dreadful suffering upon a human countenance. The exquisite man of fashion had grown old in a week.
“Mr. Ryder,” he began, when they were alone, “I received a letter from Mrs. Taylor, asking me to come to see you.”
“I know,” said Ryder. “It was like her; and it is very good of you.”
“If there is any way that I can be of assistance,” the other began.
But Ryder shook his head. “No,” he said; “there is nothing.”
“If I could give you my help in straightening out your own affairs—”
“They are beyond all help,” said Ryder. “I have nothing to begin on—I have not a dollar in the world.”
“That is hardly possible,” objected Montague.
“It is literally true!” he exclaimed. “I have tried every plan—I have been over the thing and over it, until I am almost out of my mind.” And he glanced about him at the confusion of papers, and leaned his forehead in his hands in despair.
“Perhaps if a fresh mind were to take it up,” suggested Montague. “It is difficult to see how a man of your resources could be left without anything—”
“Everything I have is mortgaged,” said the other. “I have been borrowing money right and left. I was counting on profits—I was counting on increases in value. And now see—everything is wiped out! There is not value enough left in anything to cover the loans.”
“But surely, Mr. Ryder, this slump is merely temporary. Values must be restored—”
“It will be years, it will be years! And in the meantime I shall be forced to sell. They have wiped me out—they have destroyed me! I have not even money to live on.”
Montague sat for a few moments in thought. “Mrs. Taylor wrote me that Waterman—” he began.
“I know, I know!” cried the other. “He had to tell her something, to get what he wanted.”
Montague said nothing.
“And suppose he does what he promised?” continued the other. “He has done it before—but am I to be one of Dan Waterman's lackeys?”
There was a silence. “Like John Lawrence,” continued Ryder, in a low voice. “Have you heard of Lawrence? He was a banker—one of the oldest in the city. And Waterman gave him an order, and he defied him. Then he broke him; took away every dollar he owned. And the man came to him on his knees. 'I've taught you who is your master,' said Waterman. 'Now here's your money.' And now Lawrence fawns on him, and he's got rich and fat. But all his bank exists for is to lend money when Waterman is floating a merger, and call it in when he is buying.”
Montague could think of nothing to reply to that.
“Mr. Ryder,” he began at last, “I cannot be of much use to you now, because I haven't the facts. All I can tell you is that I am at your disposal. I will give you my best efforts, if you will let me. That is all I can say.”
And Ryder looked up, the light shining on his white, wan face. “Thank you, Mr. Montague,” he said. “It is very good of you. It is a help, at least, to hear a word of sympathy. I—I will let you know—”
“All right,” said Montague, rising. He put out his hand, and Ryder took it tremblingly. “Thank you,” he said again.
And the other turned and went out. He went down the great staircase by himself. At the foot he passed the butler, carrying a tray with some coffee.
He stopped the man. “Mr. Ryder ought not to be left alone,” he said. “He should have his physician.”
“Yes, sir,” began the other, and then stopped short. From the floor above a pistol shot rang out and echoed through the house.
“Oh, my God!” gasped the butler, staggering backward.
He half dropped and half set the tray upon a chair, and ran wildly up the steps. Montague stood for a moment or two as if turned to stone. He saw another servant run out of the dining-room and up the stairs. Then, with a sudden impulse, he turned and went to the door.
“I can be of no use,” he thought to himself; “I should only drag Lucy's name into it.” And he opened the door, and went quietly down the steps.
In the newspapers the next morning he read that Stanley Ryder had shot himself in the body, and was dying.
And that same morning the newspapers in Denver, Colorado, told of the suicide of a mysterious woman, a stranger, who had gone to a room in one of the hotels and taken poison. She was very beautiful; it was surmised that she must be an actress. But she had left not a scrap of paper or a clew of any sort by which she could be identified. The newspapers printed her photograph; but Montague did not see the Denver newspapers, and so to the day of his death he never knew what ha............