her hand on her back:
"There go my pleats – Ding it!" she craned round over her shoulder trying to see the back of her skirt. "What's got me? Oh, the key. Well what do you make of that – caught me like a hook."
She drew her dress off the key, which fell out of the lock on to the floor.
"It's only ripped," I said consolingly. "I can pin it for you."
"Well, there's always something to be thankful for," she said, as I pinned her up. "But it's an unlucky day, I can feel that. That key's never before been on the inside of the door." She bent and picked it up. "I'd like to know what smart Aleck changed it."
"Probably the scrubwoman."
"I guess so," she grumbled, "put it on the wrong side where it waited patiently and then got its revenge on me. Such is life among the lowly."
That night Babbitts was late for dinner. I expected it but Isabella, who says she never lived out except in families where the husband comes home at six like a Christian, was getting restive about the chops, when he finally showed up, tired as a dog.
"My Lord!" he said, as I helped him off with his coat. "What a day!"
"Because of the suicide?"
"Outcome of the suicide and all the rest of it. The wildest panic on the Street. The Copper Pool's gone smash. Let's have something to eat. I've had no lunch and I'm famished."
When we were at table and the edge off his hunger he told me more:
"It began this morning, and this afternoon when there was still no trace of Barker – Gee whizz! it was an avalanche."
"You mean he's gone? Disappeared?"
"That's the way it looks. They had their suspicions when they couldn't find him last night. And today – nobody knows a thing about him at his house or his office, can't account for it, don't understand. Then we turned up something that looked like a clincher. One of his motors, a limousine, and his chauffeur, fellow called Heney, have disappeared too."
"What do they say about that at the house?"
"Same thing – know nothing. Nobody was in the garage from six to half-past eight. When the other men who sleep there came back Heney and the limousine were gone."
"Did anyone see Barker at the Black Eagle Building?"
"No – that's the strongest proof that he's decamped. You'd suppose with such a scene as that going on he'd have shown up. But not a soul's been found who saw him there. If he wanted to slip out quietly he could easily have done it. Jerome and the Franks girl say they were so paralyzed they never gave him another thought and he could have passed behind them, as they stood in the corridor, and gone down by the side stairs. There's another flight round the corner on the branch hall. The street on that side was deserted – the boys say every human being in the neighborhood was round on the Broadway front."
"But, but," I stammered, for I couldn't understand it all, "what's he done? What's the reason for his going?"
"Reason!" said Babbitts with a snort. "Believe me, there's reason enough. Somebody's welched on the Copper Pool and they think it's he and that he's disappeared with twenty million."
"Twenty million! How could he?"
"By selling out on the rest of the crowd. They think he's been selling copper to the Pool itself of which he was the head."
"Was that what he and Mr. Harland were supposed to be quarreling about yesterday afternoon?"
"Yes. The idea now is that Harland, who was one of the Copper crowd, suspected and accused him, that there was a fierce interview in the course of which the lawyer realized he was beaten and ruined."
"Good gracious!" I said. "What are they going to do with him?"
"If he doesn't show up, go after him. A group of ruined financiers doesn't kneel down and pray for their money to come back. And they've got a man looking after their interests who's a lightning striker. A friend of yours. Guess who?"
"Wilbur Whitney!" I crowed.
"The same," said Babbitts.
"Then," I cried, "they'll have him and the twenty millions served up on a salver before the week's out."
If you don't know the story of the Hesketh Mystery you don't know who Wilbur Whitney is, so I'll tell you here. He's one of the biggest lawyers in New York and one of the biggest men anywhere. You'd as soon suspect that an insignificant atom like me would know a man like him as that the palace ashman would know the Czar of Russia, but I do, well – I guess I'm not stretching things if I say we're friends. The Babbitts and the Whitneys don't exchange calls, but they think a lot of each other just the same. And it's my doing, little Molly's – yes, sir, the ex-telephone girl. In the Hesketh case I did a job for Mr. Whitney that brought us together, and ever since it's been kindnesses from the big house off Fifth Avenue, to the little flat on Ninety-fifth Street. He doesn't forget – the real eighteen-carat people never do – and he'll send me tickets for the opera one night and tip off Soapy to a bit of news so he'll get a scoop the week after. Oh, he's just grand!
And right in his office – Mr. Whitney's assistant this year – is one of our realest, truest, dearest pals, Jack Reddy. If this is your first acquaintance with me you don't know much about him and I'll have to give you a little sketch of him for he's got a lot to do with this story.
To look at he's just all right, brown with light-colored hair and gray eyes, over six feet and not an ounce of fat on him. It's not because he's my friend that I'm saying all this, everybody agrees on it. He's thirty years old now and not married. That's because of a tragedy in his life: the girl he loved was killed nearly three years ago. It's a long story – I can't stop to tell it to you – but it broke him up something dreadful, though I and Babbitts and all of us know it was better that he shouldn't have married her. Ever since I've been hoping he'd meet up with his real affinity, someone who'd be the right woman for him. But he hasn't so far. Babbitts says the girl isn't born I'd think good enough – but I don't know. I guess in the ninety millions of people we've got scattered round this vast republic there's a lady that'll fill the bill.
Once I had a crush on him – Babbitts teases me about it now – but it all faded away when Himself came along with his curly blond hair and his dear, rosy, innocent face. But Jack Reddy's still a sort of hero to me. He showed up so fine in those old dark days and he's showed up fine ever since – don't drop off his pedestal and have to be boosted back. I've put several people on pedestals and seen them so unsteady it made me nervous, but he's riveted on.
He's got a country place out in New Jersey – Firehill – where he used to live. But since he's been with Mr. Whitney he stays in town, only going out there in summer. His apartment's down near Gramercy Park – an elegant place – where his two old servants, David and Joanna Gilsey, keep house for him and treat him like he was their only son. Babbitts and I go there often, and Gee, we do have some eats!
"Well," I said, wagging my head proud and confident at Babbitts, "if Wilbur Whitney and Jack Reddy are out to find that Barker man, they'll do it if he burrows through to China."
CHAPTER III
JACK TELLS THE STORY
The appalling suicide of Hollings Harland, followed by the non-appearance of Johnston Barker, precipitated one of the most spectacular smashes Wall Street had seen since the day of the Northern Pacific corner. It began slowly, but as the day advanced and no news of Barker was forthcoming it became a snowslide, for the rumor flew through the city that there had been a "welcher" in the pool and that the welcher was its head – Barker himself.
For years the man had loomed large in the public eye. He was between fifty and sixty, small, wiry, made of iron and steel with a nerve nothing could shake. Like so many of our big capitalists, he had begun life in the mining camps of the far Northwest, had never married, and had kept his doors shut on the world that tried to force his seclusion. Among his rivals he was famed for his daring, his ruthless courage and his almost uncanny foresight. He was a financial genius, the making of money, his life. But as one coup after another jostled the Street, the wiseacres wagged their heads and said "Some