Part 1 (1/2)
THE DUKE DECIDES.
by Headon Hill.
CHAPTER I-_The Man with the Mandate_
At six o'clock on a May evening, at an uptown corner of Broadway, in New York City, the bowels of the earth opened and disgorged a crowd of weary-faced men and women who scattered in all directions. They were the employees of a huge ”dry-goods store,” leaving work for the day. It was a stringent rule of the firm that everyone drawing wages, from the smart managers of departments and well-dressed salesladies down to the counting-house drudges and check-boys, should descend into the bas.e.m.e.nt, and there file past the timekeeper and a private detective before pa.s.sing up a narrow staircase, and so out by a sort of stage-door into the side street.
The great plate-gla.s.s portals on the main thoroughfare were not for the working bees of this hive of industry-only for the gay b.u.t.terflies of fas.h.i.+on by whom they lived.
The last to come out was a young man dressed in a threadbare suit of tweeds, that somehow hardly seemed American, either in cut or fabric.
There might have been a far-away reminiscence of Perths.h.i.+re moors clinging to them, or earlier memories of a famous creator in Bond Street; but suggestion of the reach-me-down shops from which New York clerks clothe themselves there was none. A flush of anger was fading on their owner's face as he came out into the sunlight, leaving a mild annoyance that presently gave place to a grin.
The firm's detective, rendered suspicious by a bulging pocket, had just searched him, and had failed to apologize on finding the protuberance to be nothing but a bundle of un-eatable sandwiches that were being taken home to confound the landlady of the young man's cheap boarding-house.
The indignity did not rankle long. It was only a detail in the topsy-turvydom that in one short year had changed a subaltern in a crack English cavalry regiment into an ill-paid drudge in a dry-goods store.
Twelve months before Charles Hanbury had been playing polo and riding gymkhana races in Upper India, but extravagance beyond his means had brought swift ruin in its train. Tired of helping him out of sc.r.a.pes, his connections had refused further a.s.sistance; and, leaving the Army, he had come out to ”the States” with the idea of roughing it on the Western plains. Still misfortune had dogged his steps. A fall down a hatchway on the voyage out had hopelessly lamed him, and he had been compelled to ward off starvation by obtaining his present inglorious berth.
His work-adding up columns of figures entered from the sales-tickets-was quite irresponsible, and he was paid accordingly. He drew eight dollars a week, of which five went to his boarding-house keeper.
Limping up -- Street, he turned into the Bowery, intending to take his usual homeward route across the big bridge into Brooklyn. Unable to afford a street-car, he walked to and from the store daily, and it was one of his few amus.e.m.e.nts to study the cosmopolitan life of the teeming and sordid thoroughfare through which his way led.
He was still chuckling over the discomfiture of the tame detective, when his eye was caught by a label in a cheap boot-store. ”Three dollars the pair,” ran the legend, which drew a rueful sigh from one who had paid-and alas! still owed-as many guineas for a pair of dancing-pumps.
”I don't suppose they'd sell me half a pair, for that's all it runs to,”
he muttered, turning regretfully away from the vamped-up frauds, and in so doing jerking the elbow of a pa.s.ser-by. The victim of his sudden move-a stout, fair man in a light frock-coat and a Panama straw hat-stopped, and seemed inclined to resent the awkwardness.
”I really beg your pardon,” the culprit said with easy politeness. ”I was so absorbed in my reflections that I forgot for the moment that the Bowery requires cautious steering.”
”You are an Englishman?” returned the other, with a milder countenance.
”So am I. No need to apologize. As a fellow-countryman in foreign parts, permit me to offer you some liquid refreshment. In other words, come into that dive next door and have a drink.”
With an imperceptible shrug, Mr. Hanbury allowed himself to be persuaded. He would lose his supper at his boarding-house by the irregularity, but dissipation seldom came his way nowadays, and the prospect of whisky at some one else's expense was tempting. Yes, he had fallen low enough for that! The stout Englishman somehow conveyed the impression that he would not expect to be treated in return by his new acquaintance, who was prepared to take advantage of his liberality. To do him justice, Hanbury's complacence was not entirely due to spirituous longings, but to a homesick instinct aroused by the c.o.c.kney accent of the vulgar stranger.
The garish underground saloon into which they descended was almost empty at that early hour of the evening. Drinks having been set before them at one of the circular tables, the host subjected his guest to a scrutiny so searching that its object broke into a laugh.
”You are sizing me up pretty closely,” he remarked, with a touch of annoyance.
”Exactly; but not so as to give offence, I hope,” was the reply. ”I should like to know your name, if you have no objection.”
”Hanbury-Charles Hanbury. Perhaps you will make the introduction mutual?” said the younger man, appeased by the other's conciliatory manner.
”Call me Jevons,” the stout man answered. ”Now look here, Mr. Hanbury; it's not my game to begin our acquaintance under false pretences. The fact is, I contrived that you should jostle me just now, and so give me a chance to speak. I spotted you as an Englishman and a gentleman a fortnight ago, and I've noticed you pa.s.s along the Bowery every day since. I am in need of an Englishman, who is also a gentleman, to take on a job with a fortune-a moderate fortune-at the back of it.”
”You can hardly have mistaken me for an investor,” said Hanbury, with a quizzical glance at his threadbare seams and dilapidated boots. ”Believe me, I am a very broken-down gentleman; but still, my gentility survives, I suppose, and I am willing to treat it as a commercial a.s.set, if that is what you mean.”