The Substitute Millionaire Page #10

Jack Norman had no idea he was Silas Gyde's sole heir—until the multimillionaire was killed by an anarchist's bomb and Jack found himself the richest man in New York. The inheritance included a warning from his benefactor about an elaborate protection scheme promising to protect the wealthy from anarchists, in which Gyde had declined to enroll. Recognizing his own danger, Jack enlists a out-of-work actor to take on his own identity, while he, in the guise of Jack Norman's secretary, works furiously behind the scenes to break up the gang and unmask their leader, the mysterious Mr. B.

• Fiction
• Mystery

								


The next entry had been made nine months later.

"My dear boy:

"The long evenings are hard to get through.  My eyes tire with reading, and my thoughts are not cheering.  I have tried playing solitaire, but it seems like the last resource of the feeble-minded.  I have got me a little dog for company, picked him up half-starved, but he's a great sleepyhead.

"I think of you more and more.  I wish I dared go to you and make myself known.  But I have put it off too long.  I know now that I shall never go.  This is the only medium I can use to communicate with you. You will know me after I am gone.  Who knows, perhaps I shall have left a friend here after all."

Several pages of good advice followed here; cynical, humorous, friendly, out of the old millionaire's store of experience.  A very different Silas Gyde was revealed from him the world knew.  But for the moment Jack skimmed over this part hastily in his anxiety to learn more of the facts bearing on his benefactor's end.

The last entry was only three days old.

"Three years have now elapsed since I told you of the first threats against my life.  The threats have been renewed from time to time. That I am still above ground is due to no lack of effort on the part of my enemy, I am sure.  More and more I feel that one man is behind it all.  One attempt has been made on my life that I know of, and no doubt others.  My supposed room in the Madagascar has been entered.  But my real abiding-place is still my secret, I believe.

"Now I want to tell you of a new direction their activities have taken.

"About three weeks ago in the flock of begging letters that assail me every day there was one which caught my attention.  It purported to be from a young girl struggling to make her way in New York as a visiting stenographer, and asked me if I could give her occasional work.  An affecting note of simplicity seemed to distinguish it from the usual type of such letters.  'Why shouldn't even Silas Gyde do a good act?' I asked myself, and sent for her to come to the public writing room of the hotel.

"Previous to that I had been dictating to public stenographers wherever I happened to drop in.  They didn't know me of course, and thus my business secrets were safeguarded.  So you see it was at somewhat of a sacrifice that I engaged my pretty petitioner.

"She was extremely pretty, and seemingly well-bred.  Her modest manner carried out the promise of her letter.  Perhaps I am not sufficiently experienced with the sex.  No man ever fooled me for long.  For two weeks she came every day that I needed her.  She was not a very expert stenographer but filled my simple demands.  I noticed on her part a willingness to enter into more personal relations with her employer, but I didn't blame her for that, poor girl.  A hundred millions I supposed was enough to sugar even such an old pill as Silas Gyde.

"But a week ago in amongst the bundle of completed letters she left with me, had been slipped by chance the page of a letter she had been writing on her own account.  The beginning was missing, but the piece I had was sufficiently significant.  I will paste it below."

The inserted typewritten page read as follows:

"--where the old man sleeps.  You say you are sure he doesn't occupy his bed in the Madagascar, but I haven't been able to find out anything to the contrary.  Apparently he comes down from his room to give me dictation.  He never has me up there, though I have complained about the noise down-stairs, etc.  I got in touch with the chambermaid that does up his room, as you suggested.  She doesn't suspect that the bed is not slept in every night.  I understood that she has to make it up in the mornings, like all the other beds.  So I think you are mistaken in saying that suite is a blind.  Give me a little more time and I will make sure through one of the clerks (with whom I am friendly) if S.G. has another suite somewhere in the hotel.

M.C.

Silas Gyde's ms. resumed:

"When my young lady came the following day I observed a certain anxiety in her glance.  Evidently she was not sure where she had lost that tell-tale paper.  She sounded me discreetly.  I was careful to show her an unchanged front, and she finally made up her mind that I had not seen it.  I continued to give her work just as before, and after several days quietly dropped her.  That was yesterday.

"This incident has made me thoughtful of course, showing how close they had come to my secret.  They may get me at any time.  If they do, they will most assuredly transfer their attentions to you as soon as it is published that you are my heir.  Therefore I wish you to be armed with all the information possible.

"The name this precious young lady gave me was Beatrice Blackstone. That means nothing of course.  But her good looks were really notable, even to my dim old eyes, and I will try to give you a description that will put you on your guard, should she ever bring her fascinations to bear on you.

"She said she was twenty-three, but seemed in unguarded moments to be a good five or six years older.  She was a brunette with lustrous, wavy chestnut hair and hazel eyes of extraordinary size and brilliancy.  By hazel I mean gray eyes with a rim of brown around the iris.  With me she played a demure part, but there were moments when I saw that she could do the haughty and imperious too.  She was tall for a woman, about five feet seven I should say, and of a very elegant figure which seemed slimmer than it was.  Weight about a hundred and thirty-five. She walked with a peculiar undulating motion, bobbing her head slightly with each step.  When she was taking dictation I noticed on the index finger of her right hand a large pale mole, round in shape and of the bigness of a button on a woman's glove.  So much for Beatrice Blackstone.

"I find that the pleasure of writing to you is growing on me and I mean to make a regular thing of it hereafter."

Those were the last words.

6

Jack sat staring at the letter he had just read, deeply stirred by feelings new to him.  Youth generally is profoundly unaware of the hearts of the aged.  The feeling is that the old have had their day, have cooled off and hardened, and practically ceased to exist.  It came with a shock of surprise to Jack to learn that an old man might be misunderstood, bitter, hungry for affection--just the same as a young one.

"Poor old fellow!" he murmured.  "He thought of me a lot!  He was good to me.  And I never knew.  If I had known him I might have made his last days easier.  I might have prevented what happened."
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