The Substitute Millionaire Page #6

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

								


"This is certainly me, Jack Norman," he thought.  "And this is my money!  The roll's not much smaller either.  It must be real money because I have eaten it, drunk it, smoked it and am wearing it!"

He entered the hotel, one of Manhattan's greatest, with an odd little thrill in his breast.  "This is mine," he told himself, "all this marble and onyx and plate glass; these tapestries, these Oriental rugs, these tropical plants, all mine!  These good-looking bell-hops work for me; the Duke himself yonder at the desk will have to bend his haughty head when he finds out who I am!"

Jack was a little shy of asking to be shown to the late Mr. Gyde's rooms.  Having no credentials, he suspected that his story might very well be laughed at, and he himself be shown the door.  Anyway, he felt an instinctive repugnance to telling his story to all and sundry.  If he could only find out where the rooms were he needn't apply at the desk, since he had the keys.

An attractive young woman at the news counter caught his attention.  He bought a magazine from her, and while she made change sought to engage her in conversation.

"They say Mr. Silas Gyde used to live here."

"Yes, he owned this hotel."

"He must have been a queer Dick if you can believe what you read."

"Oh, the half of his queerness hasn't been printed."

"Was he a customer of yours?"

"No indeed.  He never bought anything in the hotel.  Said he could get it cheaper outside.  Got his meals over on Eighth avenue and around."

"I wonder he lived here at all.  Did he have a fine suite?"

"No, the cheapest rooms in the house."

"Where were they?"

"On the second floor at the back on the Forty ----th street side."

"He must have been a funny sight here in the lobby with his old hand-me-downs."

"He seldom showed himself here.  He went in and out by his private entrance on Forty ----th street."

"So he had a private entrance, eh?"

"Yes, it was a regular thing to see him going in and out carrying his little oil-can."

"Oil-can!"

"Well, you see, when he rented the hotel to the management, he saved out his rooms rent free, but there wasn't anything said about steam heat or electric current, and when the management sent him a bill for heat and light, he made them take out the radiators and the fixtures, and he burned an oil lamp and a little oil heater."

"Here, in the Madagascar!  Well, that beats all!"

"It sure does!"

In this little colloquy Jack had learned all that he desired.  It was a simple matter to leave the hotel, turn the corner into Forty ----th street and proceed to the private entrance.  It was at the extreme end of the hotel building, a modest door with the street numeral painted on it.  Adjoining the hotel on this side was a deserted dwelling with boarded up windows below, and blinds pulled down above, the whole bearing the signs of long neglect.

One of Jack's keys fitted the door.  Inside he found a single flight of stairs ending on a dark landing with another door.  This door was not locked.  Opening it he found himself in the sitting-room of the suite, a small room with two windows looking out on the street he had just left.

It was a typical hotel room, furnished by contract expensively but without taste.  An amusingly incongruous note was furnished by the oil heater in the center of the rug, and the cheap lamp on the table.  The naked ugliness of the latter object was not even mitigated by a shade. There was nothing to suggest that the room had been a man's home for several years, no personal belongings of any description.

Yet it was neat enough, and Jack guessed that Silas Gyde's arrangement with the hotel must have included maid service.  From the bedroom there was a door to the hotel corridor, through which servants might have entered.  This bedroom and a bathroom, both almost entirely without light or air, completed the suite.  Jack had no difficulty in believing that it was one of the least desirable apartments in the hotel.

Jack's first glance around revealed nothing out of the common.  The only signs of human occupancy were a few cheap toilet articles on the bureau.  But there were several closets.  That in the bedroom was locked.  Opening it with one of his keys, Jack was faced by his first surprise--a modern and highly efficient steel vault door.

An alluring picture of heaped coin, greenbacks, securities, stored inside, arose before him, but the door was locked of course, and he had no instructions as to the combination.  He wondered, not without chagrin, if Silas Gyde had been a practical joker.  Why had he been instructed to proceed there alone merely for the pleasure of looking at a locked vault.

He went through the rooms more carefully.  In the sitting-room there was a little fancy desk.  He had a key to this, and upon its being opened, one of the pigeon-holes yielded up a packet of dusty, faded papers.  He went over them one by one; advertisements, unimportant business letters, receipts for small amounts; not until he reached the last envelope of all was he rewarded.

This was sealed, and on it was written in an old man's cramped and tremulous hand:

"For my heir."

It was like a voice from beyond the grave.

But the contents were matter-of-fact enough: no more than this:

"You are to go to James Renfrew, 120 Broadway, who will hand you a communication from me."

This simple sentence revived the lure of mystery, and another taxi-cab was soon bearing Jack downtown.  Since the old man's note had been written, the famous office building at 120 Broadway had burned down, and had risen again to five times its former height.  The firm of Renfrew, Bates and Meldrum, the eminent lawyers, still had their offices there, and Jack succeeded in seeing the senior member without too much delay.

This testy old gentleman with a snort of scorn for what he termed "Gyde's foolishness" put Jack through a cross-examination similar to that he had undergone from Delamare earlier in the day.  Jack's answers being satisfactory, he received another note in Silas Gyde's cramped hand.

This contained a row of cabalistic figures, and further instructions for him to go to Nathan Harris, the well-known banker.  At this office the performance was exactly repeated, with the exception that Mr. Harris evinced a good deal of curiosity on his own account.  But since it was no part of Jack's instructions to take him into his confidence, he confined himself to polite and non-committal answers.

The note he received here, besides giving him more figures, sent him to the office of Sanford Gair, another eminent lawyer.  At this stage Jack was brought to a stand by the information that Mr. Gair had been dead for a year.  But Jack's blood was up now: persistent questioning finally elicited the fact that Mr. Gair's son and executor did indeed have a note for him.

This contained another line of figures followed by the word: "Complete."  Underneath was written: "You are to enter alone."
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