"I don"t know anything about nights. In the day she sometimes comes mornings, sometimes in the afternoon."

"Anybody with her?"

"Sometimes a man, sometimes a girl or two. I haven"t really paid much attention to her, to tell you the truth."

Kennedy walked away whistling.

From this day on Mr. Kennedy became a watcher over this very unconventional atmosphere. He was in and out, princ.i.p.ally observing the comings and goings of Mr. Gurney. He found what he naturally suspected, that Mr. Gurney and Stephanie spent hours here at peculiar times--after a company of friends had jollified, for instance, and all had left, including Gurney, when the latter would quietly return, with Stephanie sometimes, if she had left with the others, alone if she had remained behind. The visits were of varying duration, and Kennedy, to be absolutely accurate, kept days, dates, the duration of the hours, which he left noted in a sealed envelope for Cowperwood in the morning.

Cowperwood was enraged, but so great was his interest in Stephanie that he was not prepared to act. He wanted to see to what extent her duplicity would go.

The novelty of this atmosphere and its effect on him was astonishing.

Although his mind was vigorously employed during the day, nevertheless his thoughts kept returning constantly. Where was she? What was she doing? The bland way in which she could lie reminded him of himself.

To think that she should prefer any one else to him, especially at this time when he was shining as a great constructive factor in the city, was too much. It smacked of age, his ultimate displacement by youth.

It cut and hurt.

One morning, after a peculiarly exasperating night of thought concerning her, he said to young Kennedy: "I have a suggestion for you.

I wish you would get this elevator man you are working with down there to get you a duplicate key to this studio, and see if there is a bolt on the inside. Let me know when you do. Bring me the key. The next time she is there of an evening with Mr. Gurney step out and telephone me."

The climax came one night several weeks after this discouraging investigation began. There was a heavy yellow moon in the sky, and a warm, sweet summer wind was blowing. Stephanie had called on Cowperwood at his office about four to say that instead of staying down-town with him, as they had casually planned, she was going to her home on the West Side to attend a garden-party of some kind at Georgia Timberlake"s. Cowperwood looked at her with--for him--a morbid eye.

He was all cheer, geniality, pleasant badinage; but he was thinking all the while what a shameless enigma she was, how well she played her part, what a fool she must take him to be. He gave her youth, her pa.s.sion, her attractiveness, her natural promiscuity of soul due credit; but he could not forgive her for not loving him perfectly, as had so many others. She had on a summery black-and-white frock and a fetching brown Leghorn hat, which, with a rich-red poppy ornamenting a flare over her left ear and a peculiar ruching of white-and-black silk about the crown, made her seem strangely young, debonair, a study in Hebraic and American origins.

"Going to have a nice time, are you?" he asked, genially, politically, eying her in his enigmatic and inscrutable way. "Going to shine among that charming company you keep! I suppose all the standbys will be there--Bliss Bridge, Mr. Knowles, Mr. Cross--dancing attendance on you?"

He failed to mention Mr. Gurney.

Stephanie nodded cheerfully. She seemed in an innocent outing mood.

Cowperwood smiled, thinking how one of these days--very shortly, perhaps--he was certain to take a signal revenge. He would catch her in a lie, in a compromising position somewhere--in this studio, perhaps--and dismiss her with contempt. In an elder day, if they had lived in Turkey, he would have had her strangled, sewn in a sack, and thrown into the Bosporus. As it was, he could only dismiss her. He smiled and smiled, smoothing her hand. "Have a good time," he called, as she left. Later, at his own home--it was nearly midnight--Mr.

Kennedy called him up.

"Mr. Cowperwood?"

"Yes."

"You know the studio in the New Arts Building?"

"Yes."

"It is occupied now."

Cowperwood called a servant to bring him his runabout. He had had a down-town locksmith make a round keystem with a bored clutch at the end of it--a hollow which would fit over the end of such a key as he had to the studio and turn it easily from the outside. He felt in his pocket for it, jumped in his runabout, and hurried away. When he reached the New Arts Building he found Kennedy in the hall and dismissed him.

"Thanks," he observed, brusquely. "I will take care of this."

He hurried up the stairs, avoiding the elevator, to the vacant room opposite, and thence reconnoitered the studio door. It was as Kennedy had reported. Stephanie was there, and with Gurney. The pale poet had been brought there to furnish her an evening of delight. Because of the stillness of the building at this hour he could hear their m.u.f.fled voices speaking alternately, and once Stephanie singing the refrain of a song. He was angry and yet grateful that she had, in her genial way, taken the trouble to call and a.s.sure him that she was going to a summer lawn-party and dance. He smiled grimly, sarcastically, as he thought of her surprise. Softly he extracted the clutch-key and inserted it, covering the end of the key on the inside and turning it. It gave solidly without sound. He next tried the k.n.o.b and turned it, feeling the door spring slightly as he did so. Then inaudibly, because of a gurgled laugh with which he was thoroughly familiar, he opened it and stepped in.

At his rough, firm cough they sprang up--Gurney to a hiding position behind a curtain, Stephanie to one of concealment behind draperies on the couch. She could not speak, and could scarcely believe that her eyes did not deceive her. Gurney, masculine and defiant, but by no means well composed, demanded: "Who are you? What do you want here?"

Cowperwood replied very simply and smilingly: "Not very much. Perhaps Miss Platow there will tell you." He nodded in her direction.

Stephanie, fixed by his cold, examining eye, shrank nervously, ignoring Gurney entirely. The latter perceived on the instant that he had a previous liaison to deal with--an angry and outraged lover--and he was not prepared to act either wisely or well.

"Mr. Gurney," said Cowperwood, complacently, after staring at Stephanie grimly and scorching her with his scorn, "I have no concern with you, and do not propose to do anything to disturb you or Miss Platow after a very few moments. I am not here without reason. This young woman has been steadily deceiving me. She has lied to me frequently, and pretended an innocence which I did not believe. To-night she told me she was to be at a lawn-party on the West Side. She has been my mistress for months. I have given her money, jewelry, whatever she wanted. Those jade ear-rings, by the way, are one of my gifts." He nodded cheerfully in Stephanie"s direction. "I have come here simply to prove to her that she cannot lie to me any more. Heretofore, every time I have accused her of things like this she has cried and lied. I do not know how much you know of her, or how fond you are of her. I merely wish her, not you, to know"--and he turned and stared at Stephanie--"that the day of her lying to me is over."

During this very peculiar harangue Stephanie, who, nervous, fearful, fixed, and yet beautiful, remained curled up in the corner of the suggestive oriental divan, had been gazing at Cowperwood in a way which plainly attested, trifle as she might with others, that she was nevertheless fond of him--intensely so. His strong, solid figure, confronting her so ruthlessly, gripped her imagination, of which she had a world. She had managed to conceal her body in part, but her brown arms and shoulders, her bosom, trim knees, and feet were exposed in part. Her black hair and naive face were now heavy, distressed, sad. She was frightened really, for Cowperwood at bottom had always overawed her--a strange, terrible, fascinating man. Now she sat and looked, seeking still to lure him by the pathetic cast of her face and soul, while Cowperwood, scornful of her, and almost openly contemptuous of her lover, and his possible opposition, merely stood smiling before them. It came over her very swiftly now just what it was she was losing--a grim, wonderful man. Beside him Gurney, the pale poet, was rather thin--a mere breath of romance. She wanted to say something, to make a plea; but it was so plain Cowperwood would have none of it, and, besides, here was Gurney. Her throat clogged, her eyes filled, even here, and a mystical bog-fire state of emotion succeeded the primary one of opposition. Cowperwood knew the look well. It gave him the only sense of triumph he had.

"Stephanie," he remarked, "I have just one word to say to you now. We will not meet any more, of course. You are a good actress. Stick to your profession. You may shine in it if you do not merge it too completely with your loves. As for being a free lover, it isn"t incompatible with what you are, perhaps, but it isn"t socially advisable for you. Good night."

He turned and walked quickly out.

"Oh, Frank," called Stephanie, in a strange, magnetized, despairing way, even in the face of her astonished lover. Gurney stared with his mouth open.

Cowperwood paid no heed. Out he went through the dark hall and down the stairs. For once the lure of a beautiful, enigmatic, immoral, and promiscuous woman--poison flower though she was--was haunting him.

"D-- her!" he exclaimed. "D-- the little beast, anyhow! The ----! The ----!" He used terms so hard, so vile, so sad, all because he knew for once what it was to love and lose--to want ardently in his way and not to have--now or ever after. He was determined that his path and that of Stephanie Platow should never be allowed to cross again.

Chapter XXIX

A Family Quarrel

It chanced that shortly before this liaison was broken off, some troubling information was quite innocently conveyed to Aileen by Stephanie Platow"s own mother. One day Mrs. Platow, in calling on Mrs.

Cowperwood, commented on the fact that Stephanie was gradually improving in her art, that the Garrick Players had experienced a great deal of trouble, and that Stephanie was shortly to appear in a new role--something Chinese.

"That was such a charming set of jade you gave her," she volunteered, genially. "I only saw it the other day for the first time. She never told me about it before. She prizes it so very highly, that I feel as though I ought to thank you myself."

Aileen opened her eyes. "Jade!" she observed, curiously. "Why, I don"t remember." Recalling Cowperwood"s proclivities on the instant, she was suspicious, distraught. Her face showed her perplexity.

"Why, yes," replied Mrs. Platow, Aileen"s show of surprise troubling her. "The ear-rings and necklet, you know. She said you gave them to her."

"To be sure," answered Aileen, catching herself as by a hair. "I do recall it now. But it was Frank who really gave them. I hope she likes them."

She smiled sweetly.

"She thinks they"re beautiful, and they do become her," continued Mrs.

Platow, pleasantly, understanding it all, as she fancied. The truth was that Stephanie, having forgotten, had left her make-up box open one day at home, and her mother, rummaging in her room for something, had discovered them and genially confronted her with them, for she knew the value of jade. Nonplussed for the moment, Stephanie had lost her mental, though not her outward, composure and referred them back casually to an evening at the Cowperwood home when Aileen had been present and the gauds had been genially forced upon her.

Unfortunately for Aileen, the matter was not to be allowed to rest just so, for going one afternoon to a reception given by Rhees Crier, a young sculptor of social proclivities, who had been introduced to her by Taylor Lord, she was given a taste of what it means to be a neglected wife from a public point of view. As she entered on this occasion she happened to overhear two women talking in a corner behind a screen erected to conceal wraps. "Oh, here comes Mrs. Cowperwood,"

said one. "She"s the street-railway magnate"s wife. Last winter and spring he was running with that Platow girl--of the Garrick Players, you know."

The other nodded, studying Aileen"s splendiferous green--velvet gown with envy.

"I wonder if she"s faithful to him?" she queried, while Aileen strained to hear. "She looks daring enough."

Aileen managed to catch a glimpse of her observers later, when they were not looking, and her face showed her mingled resentment and feeling; but it did no good. The wretched gossipers had wounded her in the keenest way. She was hurt, angry, nonplussed. To think that Cowperwood by his variability should expose her to such gossip as this!

One day not so long after her conversation with Mrs. Platow, Aileen happened to be standing outside the door of her own boudoir, the landing of which commanded the lower hall, and there overheard two of her servants discussing the Cowperwood menage in particular and Chicago life in general. One was a tall, angular girl of perhaps twenty-seven or eight, a chambermaid, the other a short, stout woman of forty who held the position of a.s.sistant housekeeper. They were pretending to dust, though gossip conducted in a whisper was the matter for which they were foregathered. The tall girl had recently been employed in the family of Aymar Cochrane, the former president of the Chicago West Division Railway, and now a director of the new West Chicago Street Railway Company.