He shows some maps and papers and gets cablegrams signed `Moliterno.' Then he talks about selling the old Corliss house here, where the Madisons live, and putting the money into his oil company: he does that to sound plausible, but I have good reason to know that house was mortgaged to its full value within a month after his aunt left it to him. He'll not get a cent if it's sold. That's all. And he's got Cora Madison so crazy over him that she makes life a hell for poor old Lindley until he puts all he's saved into the bubble. The scheme may be all right. How do _I_ know? There's no way to tell, without going over there, and Corliss won't let anybody do that--oh, he's got a plausible excuse for it! But I'm sorry for Lindley: he's so crazy about Cora, he's soft. And she's so crazy about Corliss SHE'S soft! Well, I used to be crazy about her myself, but I'm not soft--I'm not the Lindley kind of loon, thank heaven!"
"What kind are you, Trumble?" asked Ray, mildly.
"Not your kind either," retorted the other going to the door.
"She cut me on the street the other day; she's quit speaking to me. If you've got any money, why don't you take it over to the hotel and give it to Corliss? She might start speaking to YOU again. I'm going to lunch!" He slammed the door behind him.
Ray Vilas, left alone, elevated his heels to the sill, and stared out of the window a long time at a gravelled roof which presented little of interest. He replenished his glass and his imagination frequently, the latter being so stirred that when, about three o'clock, he noticed the inroads he had made upon the bottle, tears of self-pity came to his eyes. "Poor little drunkard!" he said aloud. "Go ahead and do it. Isn't anything YOU won't do!" And, having washed his face at a basin in a corner, he set his hat slightly upon one side, picked up a walking stick and departed jauntily, and, to the outward eye, presentably sober.
Mr. Valentine Corliss would be glad to see him, the clerk at the Richfield Hotel reported, after sending up a card, and upon Ray's following the card, Mr. Valentine Corliss in person confirmed the message with considerable amusement and a cordiality in which there was some mixture of the quizzical. He was the taller; and the robust manliness of his appearance, his splendid health and boxer's figure offered a sharp contrast to the superlatively lean tippler. Corliss was humorously aware of his advantage: his greeting seemed really to say, "Hello, my funny bug, here you are again!" though the words of his salutation were entirely courteous; and he followed it with a hospitable offer.
"No," said Vilas; "I won't drink with you." He spoke so gently that the form of his refusal, usually interpreted as truculent, escaped the other's notice. He also declined a cigar, apologetically asking permission to light one of his own cigarettes; then, as he sank into a velour-covered chair, apolo-gized again for the particular attention he was bestowing upon the apartment, which he recognized as one of the suites de luxe of the hotel.
"`Parlour, bedroom, and bath,'" he continued, with a melancholy smile; "and `Lachrymae,' and `A Reading from Homer.'
Sometimes they have `The Music Lesson,' or `Winter Scene' or `A Neapolitan Fisher Lad' instead of `Lachrymae,' but they always have `A Reading from Homer.' When you opened the door, a moment ago, I had a very strong impression that something extraordinary would some time happen to me in this room."
"Well," suggested Corliss, "you refused a drink in it."
"Even more wonderful than that," said Ray, glancing about the place curiously. "It may be a sense of something painful that already has happened here--perhaps long ago, before your occu-pancy. It has a pathos."
"Most hotel rooms have had something happen in them," said Corliss lightly. "I believe the managers usually change the door numbers if what happens is especially unpleasant. Probably they change some of the rugs, also."
"I feel----" Ray paused, frowning. "I feel as if some one had killed himself here."
"Then no doubt some of the rugs HAVE been changed."
"No doubt." The caller laughed and waved his hand in dismissal of the topic. "Well, Mr. Corliss," he went on, shifting to a brisker tone, "I have come to make my fortune, too.
You are Midas. Am I of sufficient importance to be touched?"
Valentine Corliss gave him sidelong an almost imperceptibly brief glance of sharpest scrutiny--it was like the wink of a camera shutter--but laughed in the same instant. "Which way do you mean that?"
"You have been quick," returned the visitor, repaying that glance with equal swiftness, "to seize upon the American idiom.
I mean: How small a contribution would you be willing to receive toward your support!"
Corliss did not glance again at Ray; instead, he looked interested in the smoke of his cigar. "`Contribution,'" he repeated, with no inflection whatever. "`Toward my support.'"
"I mean, of course, how small an investment in your oil company."
"Oh, anything, anything," returned the promoter, with quick amiability. "We need to sell all the stock we can."
"All the money you can get?"
"Precisely. It's really a colossal proposition, Mr. Vilas."
Corliss spoke with brisk enthusiasm. "It's a perfectly certain enormous profit upon everything that goes in. Prince Moliterno cables me later investigations show that the oil-field is more than twice as large as we thought when I left Naples. He's on the ground now, buying up what he can, secretly."
"I had an impression from Richard Lindley that the secret had been discovered."
"Oh, yes; but only by a few, and those are trying to keep it quiet from the others, of course."
"I see. Does your partner know of your success in raising a large investment?"
