The Running Fight

I

Once, twice, thrice,—failing miserably in his attempt to appear unconcerned,—Ilingsworth paced back and forth in front of Peter V. Wilkinson's big house in Riverside Drive. There it stood: a massive, forbidding, modern pile of limestone, wholly unlike anything in its vicinity. And yet, now that the time had come, Ilingsworth's face wore a confused, half-fearful look, a sense of uncertainty possessed him, which was all the more maddening because so far, at least, there had been no obstacles or delays in this brief, turbulent journey of his; on the contrary, all had gone well with him, and like a falcon in pursuit of its prey he had sped on the straightest of straight lines towards a person of the name of Leslie Wilkinson, and this person, so Ilingsworth assured himself, would soon feel his claws.

From a distance, it is true, Wilkinson's imposing structure had differed little from that which his imagination had led him to expect. It was like the pictures he had seen of it many times in the papers; so like, in fact, that even now in his extremity he could feel the strange, exultant pride he had experienced but a few short months ago 


when exhibiting to Elinor a counterfeit presentment of it in a monthly magazine. And, certainly, he had every right to be proud, at least, so he thought then,—for was not he, Elinor's father, Giles Ilingsworth of Morristown, a close business associate of Peter V. Wilkinson, the great financier? His business associate! Ugh! The very thought of it now made him shiver, tortured him. Indeed, to such an extent that, on nearing the place, his vengeful purpose was kindled anew, and his right hand took a fresh grip on an object of sinister shape hidden in his pocket. At that moment Ilingsworth had but one idea: to get it over with as soon as possible.

But once actually in front of the Wilkinson mansion, when his eyes sweeping upward had failed to catch the point of view of the press photographers, a feeling akin to panic had come over him; and he had passed and repassed, unable to force himself to the point of making an inquiry of a passerby. And yet, what could he do to make certain? And then, as if in answer to his half-smothered cries of "Is this Wilkinson's? There must be no mistake ..." there fell on his ears the raucous squeal of a megaphone, and, turning whence came the sound, he beheld a crowded tourists' sight-seeing car rolling slowly and laboriously along the Drive, its interlocutor busily engaged in the practice of his genteel profession.


"We now perceive the palatial residence of Peter V. Wilkinson, the multi-millionaire—the ten-million-dollar steal trust—so-called from the habit of its owner in stealing trust companies."

This exceptionally brilliant play upon words was instantly rewarded by a titter from some of the occupants of the car, and the perpetrator, encouraged, proceeded:

"This house contains no less than eighty-four rooms; has twenty-four bathrooms, not to speak of the Turkish bath; has paintings worth a million or two; the rugs cost half a million, at least; and nearly a million pounds of bronze has been used in its construction. Wilkinson's second wife—Maggie Lane, when he married her, now Mrs. Margaret Lane Wilkinson,—is said to be the handsomest woman in the block." He paused to heighten the effect of what was to follow; then trumpeted: "That is, on this end of the block. Peter V. Wilkinson owns seventeen trust companies in the City of New York. He is president of the famous, and now notorious, Interstate Trust Company which closed its doors last week. Also president of the Tri-State Trust—the largest trust company in the world, now toppling on the brink of the precipice...."

So the voice droned on, the car laboured on, and the passengers, already sufficiently gorged with Wilkinson's affairs, would have been 


spared any further enlightenment had not the eye of this dispenser of metropolitan information lighted upon Ilingsworth as the latter, trying to escape attention, stepped into the low-arched doorway of the Wilkinson home. The opportunity was too good to be lost.

"The gentleman," proceeded the privileged lecturer, "now entering this impressive imperial mansion, is not Peter V. Wilkinson. Note the sinister expression of the back of his head and the peculiar attitude of his right arm!" The megaphone turned itself directly upon Ilingsworth, and kept on: "He looks like a disgruntled depositor of the Interstate Trust Company—what if he be making a call for the purpose of putting a pill into the proprietor? What?"

Ilingsworth turned an involuntary, startled glance toward the car. Despite a desperate effort at self-control, he was visibly alarmed, and jerked his hand swiftly from the confines of his pocket. Amidst a chorus of laughter at his action the car rolled on. Ilingsworth turned back to the entrance of the house, muttering to himself:

"They little know, they little know...."

Presently he pulled himself together and pressed the button with that same right hand, then squared his shoulders, once more dropping both hands at his side. There was a short interval of waiting, during which 


he kept repeating to himself, as though conning some essential lesson:

"Leslie Wilkinson—Leslie Wilkinson, that's the man I want to see."

Suddenly a heavy door was swung open inward and a butler stood before him, bowing.

"Leslie Wilkinson," demanded Ilingsworth somewhat explosively. There was no prefix to the name—Ilingsworth was not considering the conventionalities. He had come fresh from the confidential reports of Wall Street detectives. Those two words had seared themselves into his brain.

The butler looked surprised, shocked, that is, so far as his rigid training would permit.

"Leslie Wilkinson," he repeated doubtfully, as though already hypnotised into the other's trend of thought.

"Leslie Wilkinson," said Ilingsworth, "and right away."

The servant bowed.

"Who shall I say, sir?"

Ilingsworth smiled. It was all too easy, so it seemed. He felt as though the fates were with him, as though before him lay the path to victory. His breath came short and fast as he thought of the possibilities: for if he should succeed, Elinor forever would be safe—could take her rightful place in society.


"There's my card," he said, drawing forth his wallet.

Instantly the butler became obsequious, for not only did he perceive that the visitor bore himself as a gentleman, but he recognised the card as an open-sesame to his master. He handled it with infinite respect. It read:

Mr. Giles Illingsworth

Vice-President of the

Tri-State Trust Company,

New York.

"Your pardon, sir," said the butler before he closed the door, and With a nod of the head towards the street. "Your car—does it need attention, sir? Our garage is only half a block away. Shall I send out and tell your chauffeur, sir?"

Ilingsworth's glance followed that of the butler's. A blue limousine stood throbbing at the curb. It had evidently been there all the while, though Ilingsworth had failed to observe it.

"It's not my car," he returned brusquely.

Again a puzzled look came over the servant's face, but concealing his embarrassment, he closed the door.

"Very good, sir," he said. "Kindly step this way."


Ilingsworth followed him down the long hall to the entrance of a room before which stood another servant.

"Step into the reception-room, sir, if you please," said the butler. But, to the astonishment of both men, the footman advanced and waved them back, saying:

"One moment, please, sir." And oblivious to the fact that Ilingsworth was standing in the middle of the broad hall, he drew the butler to one side, whispered in a confidential, off-duty aside: "You must not take him in there. Put him somewhere else."

"Why not?" asked the butler. "Who's in there?"

The footman became inexcusably mysterious. He looked about him on all sides to see that he was unheard. Then he shaded his mouth with his hand and placed his lips close to the other's ear.

"Her," he whispered.

The butler eyed the footman sharply.

"Her!" he exclaimed. "Who's she?"

"There's only one her," he answered, and pursed his lips as though about to perpetrate an explosion. And then it came: "Miss Braine, of course. Here's her card."

The man who had admitted Giles Ilingsworth stiffened when he looked 

upon this card, which read:

Miss Madeline Braine

The Llandegraff

——th Street and

the Drive.

"Not the governor's ...?"

"The same."

"What's she doing here?"

For answer the footman merely shrugged his shoulders.

"When did she come?" asked the butler.

"Ten minutes or so ago."

"But I didn't see her come."

"I let her in; you were downstairs."

The butler came as near to a whistle as any butler on duty ever came. What is more, in his agitation at this new and unexpected crisis, he quite forgot the presence of Giles Ilingsworth, vice-president of the largest trust company in the world.

"There'll be the devil to pay if the missus sees her! Did she ask for——"

"She came to see the governor," interrupted the footman, shaking his head; "and what's more, she says she's going to wait until he comes."

The butler knitted his brows.

"You were a fool to let her in! Is that her car outside?"

"Don't you know it when you see it?"

The mention of the car forced the butler's thoughts back to Ilingsworth. He started toward the financier of the Tri-State Company with abundant apology upon his lips.

"I beg your pardon, sir ..." he began, and then stopped. For as he passed the door of the reception-room he was able to peer into it, and by some servant's trick to sweep every corner of it with his glance. It was a room void of hangings, almost bare in its rich simplicity—one of those triumphs of interior decoration. The butler's face was pale as he retraced his steps and once more faced his fellow-servant.

"There's not a soul in there—see for yourself."

The other did see for himself, and he, too, looked bewildered.

"But I put her in there, and I put her there to stay. I didn't leave her for more than half a second. Where's she gone?"

Instantly the butler took charge of the situation, and in commanding sotto voce directed the other to look in the library, the music-room, the Louis XIV. room, even in the grand salon.

The search was conducted quietly and with decorum, and it is only due to these two past-masters of the art of footmanship to say that this dialogue had taken an almost infinitesimal space of time, that its utterance had been practically inaudible, and that Ilingsworth, the 


guest to whom these two had owed a very present duty, had not yet begun to realise that his interests were in any wise neglected.

But the footman came back disgruntled, disturbed, and wailing that she was not to be found. And then it was that the butler stepped once more to the side of Giles Ilingsworth and said somewhat contritely:

"Beg your pardon, sir, but would you mind stepping into 'the Den,'" all the while showing the way. "It's Mr. Wilkinson's favourite place, his private room, sir, for seeing all his friends—business and otherwise, sir—yes, sir."

Ilingsworth followed where the butler led. And then, turning sharply upon him, he repeated:

"I'm waiting to see Leslie Wilkinson. Do you understand?"

"Very good, sir."

Alone in "the Den" Ilingsworth smiled as he looked about him. Fate was surely favouring him. The Den was a quasi-business office and smoking-room, a room where anybody might be interviewed by anybody of the household. It was in this room that Tiffany's man displayed his biggest, newest jewels to Mrs. Peter V.; it was in this room that Mrs. Peter V.'s women friends would drop in evenings for a chat with Peter V. as he smoked a black cigar; it was the comfortable place of 


the whole, big house. But to Ilingsworth it was something more: it was the place best fitted for the arena of events as events had shaped themselves. "The Den" had but one window—a high window that ran along one side of the wall just underneath the black-beamed ceiling and just above a long, comfortable, leather seat that ran along the wall. The window was above the head of an ordinary man, and was composed of leaded glass. It gave but little light, and afforded no view at all of the world without. For the rest, there was a big, flat-topped desk, heavy, leather-covered lounging-chairs, and heavy, dark red curtains everywhere about the walls. And but a single door.

"The place I've dreamed about," Ilingsworth thought to himself. For an instant he stood drinking in all of its details in some sort of gleeful ecstasy—the ecstasy of a man who feels the end of the journey near. And then, suddenly, he became all action. He stepped to the desk upon which stood a desk-telephone upon a standard, and a small mahogany tablet with two push-buttons on its surface.

"I can't understand why it's all so easy," he told himself; and the next moment he drew from his left coat-pocket a pair of wire-cutters, and with two sudden, jerky twists of his right wrist he clipped the flexible green-covered wires that connected the push-buttons and the 


telephone, and twisted the unconnected ends down and out of sight. It was his first advent in this house of Wilkinson, and yet he had rehearsed the scene in his waking hours and in his sleep so many, many times, that he did it without nervousness and without fear. So that he was not surprised to find himself more than practise-perfect. He glanced about the room for evidences of other wires, buttons, bells and speaking tubes, and then swooped down upon the door.

"If only it has a key!" he thought; and the next moment he almost cried out joyfully, for he found that it had not only a key, but that it might be bolted from the inside.

"And when it's bolted," he assured himself, "What sound can penetrate beyond its walls?"

Beyond its walls! The phrase, somehow, kept ringing in his ears; to him there was music in it. He never thought of the walls themselves; nor had he ever asked himself whether behind those rich and heavy hanging curtains there might not be other means of exit.

He took his place behind the open door.

"Now for the crisis," he said calmly to himself.

And plunging his hand once more into his coat-pocket he produced a gun—a modern, hammerless revolver that he had selected with 


considerable care, after consulting the advertisements in the magazines, and after reading the booklets of their makers. This gun he had selected, not only on account of its particular efficiency, but also because of its remarkably repulsive look. It bore the same formidable appearance compared with the large family of fire-arms as the bull-dog does to his canine race. It was a weapon of peculiarly terrifying appearance—and that was what he wanted. For the rest, it was a .32 calibre, and upon its handle it bore the maker's name and a number—a number that belonged to this particular weapon and to no other weapon of this make in the whole wide world.

Suddenly the sound of footsteps in the hall without reached his ears. Every nerve tingled with his purpose; every muscle became rigid and alert.

"Now!" he exclaimed.

" ... Wilkinson," said the voice.

It was a mumbled announcement of some sort which came from the butler. Ilingsworth waited until he had retreated, and only when he was certain that but one figure had entered the room, was looking about in wonder at its apparent emptiness, did he slowly, swiftly close the door, lock it, bolt it, and finally place his back against it. Then, levelling the weapon, he extended it toward the person who had entered.


"Seat yourself at that desk," he commanded, a dangerous note in his voice; "and don't make any outcry, or I'll——"

He stopped short and lowered his weapon.

"Why—I——" he stammered, growing red-faced as he spoke.

It was a mere wisp of a girl who confronted him—a girl full-throated and full-bosomed, and upon whom the gods had conferred that dazzling of all dazzling charms: light hair and dark brown eyes. Fascinating she was even to Ilingsworth, bewildering, too, as she gazed upon him in sudden fear, her eyes widening, her lips parted.

"I—I beg your pardon," he stammered, consternation making it difficult for him to speak. "I was expecting quite another person—Leslie Wilkinson."

Too frightened to reply the girl merely stood and gazed at him. For a moment she remained thus, and then, with the shudder of one who shakes from her some horrible nightmare, she found her voice and said:

"Why, I'm Miss Wilkinson—Leslie Wilkinson!"

Ilingsworth could hardly believe his ears.

"You—you are Leslie Wilkinson!" he broke out. "Surely there must be some mistake. Leslie is a man's name, isn't it?"