IN THE ROOKERY BUILDING.
“Has Vance returned yet?” asked Jared Whitemore, a stout, florid-complexioned man of sixty-five, opening the door of his private office and glancing into the outside room.
“No, sir,” replied Edgar Vyce, his bookkeeper and office manager—a tall, saturnine-looking man, who had been in his employ several years.
“Send him in as soon as he comes back.”
The bookkeeper nodded carelessly and resumed his writing.
“Miss Brown,” said Jared to his stenographer and typewriter, a very pretty brown-eyed girl of seventeen, the only other occupant of the room, whose desk stood close to one of the windows overlooking La Salle Street.
She immediately left her machine and followed her employer into the inner sanctum.
Mr. Whitemore was a well-known speculator, one of the shrewdest and most successful operators on the Chicago Board of Trade.
He owned some of the best business sites in the city, and his ground rents brought him in many thousands a year.
Accounted a millionaire many times over, no one could with any degree of certainty say exactly what he was worth.
His plainly furnished office was on an upper floor of the Rookery Building.
He did business for nobody but himself. Jarboe, Willicutt & Co., whose offices were on the ground floor of the Board of Trade Building, were his brokers.
The office clock chimed the hour of five as the bookkeeper, with a frown, laid down his pen, rested his elbow on the corner of his tall desk and glanced down into the busy thoroughfare.
At that moment the office door opened and a messenger boy entered.
Mr. Vyce came to the railing and received an envelope addressed to himself.
He signed for it, tore it open, read the contents, which were brief, with a corrugated brow, and then, with much deliberation, tore the paper into fine particles and tossed them into the waste-basket.
For a moment or two he paced up and down before his desk, with his hands thrust into his trousers pockets, and then resumed his work just as the door opened again and admitted a stalwart, good-looking lad, with a frank, alert countenance and a breezy manner, who entered briskly with a handful of pamphlets and papers.
“Mr. Whitemore wants you to report in his office at once, Thornton,” said the bookkeeper, in a surly kind of voice, accompanied with a look which plainly showed that he was not particularly well disposed toward the boy.
“All right,” answered Vance, cheerily, turning toward the private office, on the door of which he knocked, and then entered on being told to come in.
“I hate him!” muttered Mr. Vyce, following the boy’s retreating figure with a dark scowl. “He’s a thorn in my path. He’s altogether too thick with Whitemore. I can’t understand what the old man sees in him. For the last three months I’ve noticed that my hold here is slipping away, and just when I need it the most. Just when things were coming my way, too. Now, with a fortune in sight, this boy is crowding me to the wall. Curse him! I can’t understand what it means. Is it possible Whitemore suspects me? Pshaw! Am I not an old and trusted employee? I’ve always been in his confidence to a large extent, but of late he has been keeping things from me—matters I ought to know—especially in reference to this deal he has on. Those corn options are on the point of expiring, and I expected ere this to have been sent West to settle with the elevator people and get the receipts, for corn is on the rise and the old man is ahead at this stage of the game. I strongly suspect he means to corner the market this time. He’s got the dust to attempt it with, and already he holds options on nearly half of the visible supply in Kansas and Nebraska, besides what he has stored here. There is no telling what he has been doing during the last thirty days, as not a word about corn has passed between us during that time. It’s not like Whitemore to act this way with me. Something is up, and by George! I’ll find out what it is.”
Mr. Vyce drove his pen savagely into a little glass receptacle filled with small shot and turned to the window again, after glancing at the clock.
Bessie Brown came out of the inner office with her notebook in her hand and sat down at her machine to transcribe her notes.
In a few moments Mr. Vyce came over to her desk and, taking up his station where he could catch a glance of what she was writing, remarked:
“Are you working overtime to-night, Miss Brown?”
“Excuse me, Mr. Vyce,” she said, covering the paper with her hands, “this is strictly confidential.”
“I beg your pardon,” he said, between his teeth, altering his position. “But you haven’t answered my question.”
“I expect to be busy until six,” she replied, without looking at him.
“I have tickets for McVickar’s,” he continued. “Would you honor me with your company there this evening? It is not necessary that you return home to dress. We can dine at Palmer’s.”
“You must excuse me,” she replied, with a heightened color, “but I never go anywhere without my mother’s knowledge and permission.”
“But you went to the Auditorium two weeks ago with Thornton,” he said, in a tone of chagrin.
“Mr. Thornton asked mamma if I could go, and she consented.”
“You never invited me to call at your home, so I could become acquainted with your mother,” persisted Mr. Vyce, who was evidently jealous of the intimacy which existed between Vance and the young lady.
Bessie said nothing to this, but applied herself more attentively to her work.
“Aren’t you going to extend that privilege to me, Miss Brown?” he continued, fondling his heavy black mustache.
“Mr. Vyce, I am very busy just now,” she replied, with some embarrassment.
The bookkeeper gave her a savage glance and then walked away without another word.
Much to her relief, he soon put on his hat and left the office abruptly, shutting the door with a slam.
At the same moment Vance came out of the private office and stepped up beside the pretty typewriter.
She looked up with a smile and did not offer to hide from his gaze the long typewritten letter on which she was engaged.
Evidently there was nothing there Vance ought not to know.
“Will you please turn on the light, Vance?” she asked, sweetly, her fingers never leaving the keys for a moment.
“Certainly, Bessie,” he replied, with alacrity, raising his hand to the shaded electric bulb above her machine and turning the key, whereupon the slender wires burst into a white glow. “How much more have you to do?”
“Another page, almost,” she answered, with another quick glance into his bright, eager young face.
“I won’t be able to see you to the car to-night,” he said, regretfully.
That was a pleasure the young man had for some time appropriated to himself and Bessie as willingly accorded.
“You are going to stay downtown, then, for a while?” she asked.
“Yes; I shall be here for an hour yet, perhaps. After supper I’ve got to meet Mr. Whitemore in his rooms at the Grand Pacific. I’ve got to notify mother of the fact by telephone.”
Vance went over to the booth in the corner of the office and rang up a drug store in the vicinity of his home, on the North Side.
Outside the shades of night were beginning to fall.
From the windows of the office one could see directly up La Salle Street.
The cars, as they made the turn into or out of the street at the corner of Monroe, flashed their momentary glares of red and green lights, and filled the air continually with the jangle of their bells.
The sidewalks were filled with a dense crowd that poured out continually from the street entrances of the office buildings.
They streamed out of the brokers’ offices and commission houses on either side of La Salle Street, and the tide set toward the upper end of the thoroughfare, where stood the girders and cables of the La Salle Street bridge.
Vance took all this in with a brief survey from the window, after he had sent his message across the river.
“What do you think?” said Bessie, as he paused once more beside her. “Mr. Vyce asked me to go to the theatre with him to-night. Hasn’t he a cheek?”
“Of course you accepted?” said Vance with a grin.
“Of course I did no such thing,” she answered, pausing for an instant in her work, as she looked up with an indignant flush on her creamy cheeks. “You know better than that, Vance. You just want to provoke me,” with a charming pout.
“That’s right,” he answered, with a quiet chuckle, “but you mustn’t mind me.”
She smiled her forgiveness and went on with her work.
“There, that’s done,” she said, in a few moments, pushing back her chair. “I hope I haven’t made any mistakes,” as she rose to take the sheets into the inner office.
“No fear of that, I guess,” said the boy, encouragingly. “You’re about as accurate as they come, Bessie.”
She paused on the threshold of the door to flash him back a look of appreciation for the compliment and then disappeared within.
Presently she returned and started to put on her things.
“It looks a little bit like rain, doesn’t it?” she asked, glancing at the darkened sky, where not a star was visible.
“You can have my umbrella, if you wish,” Vance offered, “but I guess it won’t rain yet awhile.”
“Never mind; I’ll chance it. Good night, Vance.”
“Good night, Bessie,” and the outside door closed behind her.
Vance returned to his desk and proceeded to make copious extracts from a pile of pamphlets and reports he had taken from a closet.
In half an hour Mr. Whitemore came out of his sanctum with his hat on.
“You’d better go to supper now, Vance. Meet me promptly at eight o’clock at my rooms,” he said, “and bring everything with you.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mr. Whitemore left, and the lad, making a bundle of his notes and such papers as he knew were wanted by his employer, turned out the electric lights and locked up the office.
He didn’t know it then, but this was the last time for many days he was to see the inside of the Rookery Building.
Nor did he dream of the tragedy that awaited his return to the office.