第92章

"Holy Moses, I'd like to know who is, then.""_I_ am.And he's got to know it.There's not room for Crookes and me in this game.One of us two has got to control this market.If he gets in my way, by God, I'll smash him!""Well, then, J., you and I have got to do some tall talking to-night.You'd better come down to the Grand Pacific Hotel right away.Court is there already.It was him, nervy little cuss, that found out about Crookes.Can you come now, at once? Good evening, Mrs.Jadwin.I'm sorry to take him from you, but business is business."No, it was not.To the wife of the great manipulator, listening with a sinking heart to this courier from the front, it was battle.The Battle of the Streets was again in array.Again the trumpet sounded, again the rush of thousands of feet filled all the air.Even here, here in her home, her husband's head upon her lap, in the quiet and stillness of her hour, the distant rumble came to her ears.Somewhere, far off there in the darkness of the night, the great forces were manoeuvring for position once more.To-morrow would come the grapple, and one or the other must fall--her husband or the enemy.How keep him to herself when the great conflict impended? She knew how the thunder of the captains and the shoutings appealed to him.She had seen him almost leap to his arms out of her embrace.He was all the man she had called him, and less strong, less eager, less brave, she would have loved him less.

Yet she had lost him again, lost him at the very moment she believed she had won him back.

"Don't go, don't go," she whispered to him, as he kissed her good-by."Oh, dearest, don't go! This was my evening.""I must, I must, Laura.Good-by, old girl.Don't keep me--see, Sam is waiting."He kissed her hastily twice.

"Now, Sam," he said, turning toward the broker.

"Good night, Mrs.Jadwin.', "Good-by, old girl."They turned toward the door.

"You see, young Court was down there at the bank, and he noticed that checks----"The voices died away as the hangings of the entrance fell to place.The front door clashed and closed.

Laura sat upright in her place, listening, one fist pressed against her lips.

There was no more noise.The silence of the vast empty house widened around her at the shutting of the door as the ripples widen on a pool with the falling of the stone.She crushed her knuckles tighter and tighter over her lips, she pressed her fingers to her eyes, she slowly clasped and reclasped her hands, listening for what she did not know.She thought of her husband hurrying away from her, ignoring her, and her love for him in the haste and heat of battle.She thought of Corthell, whom she had sent from her, forever, shutting his love from out her life.

Crushed, broken, Laura laid herself down among the cushions, her face buried in her arm.Above her and around her rose the dimly lit gallery, lowering with luminous shadows.Only a point or two of light illuminated the place.The gold frames of the pictures reflected it dully; the massive organ pipes, just outlined in faint blurs of light, towered far into the gloom above.The whole place, with its half-seen gorgeous hangings, its darkened magnificence, was like a huge, dim interior of Byzantium.

Lost, beneath the great height of the dome, and in the wide reach of the floor space, in her foolish finery of bangles, silks, high comb, and little rosetted slippers, Laura Jadwin lay half hidden among the cushions of the couch.If she wept, she wept in silence, and the muffling stillness of the lofty gallery was broken but once, when a cry, half whisper, half sob, rose to the deaf, blind darkness:

"Oh, now I am alone, alone, alone!"