THE PLOT THAT FAILED.
Vance found himself in a narrow, dimly-lighted hallway.
But before the sense of disappointment, not unmixed, perhaps, with a feeling of uneasiness, had time to assert itself, Dudley brushed by him and opened a door which admitted them to a long, low-ceiled room, painted a dull, smoky color, but brilliantly illuminated with many gas jets enclosed in colored globes, which threw a subdued and fantastic glow about the room.
There was a kitchen in the rear and a bar along one side near the door.
The rest of the room was taken up with round, well-polished mahogany tables of different sizes, for large or small parties.
It was a restaurant all right, but entirely different from anything Vance had ever before visited.
The tone of the place was wholly English, as Dudley had intimated to his companion, and the bill of fare was limited to broiled meats and fish, fowl, oysters and rarebits.
The place was chiefly noted for its fine old English ales.
For all that, Bagley’s was a notorious place.
Its frequenters were mostly crooks, gamblers and politicians.
Curiosity and its famous cuisine, however, brought thither a sprinkling of the better classes—men about town, salesmen and their out-of-town customers, lawyers, brokers, merchants, and the sons of rich parents who thought it the correct thing to be seen there.
The upper floors were divided into supper rooms for ladies and their escorts, and it was quite a fad among the upper crust of Kansas City aristocracy to drop in there after the theater.
Mr. Bagley himself, rotund and red-faced, lounged in a big easy chair behind the cashier’s desk near the entrance.
The room was nearly crowded at that hour, and while Vance was surveying the place with much interest a waiter approached Dudley and handed him a card.
“We’ll go upstairs, Vance,” said the dapper gentleman gaily. “I’ll introduce you to a friend of mine.”
Thus speaking, he hooked his arm in Thornton’s and, preceded by the waiter, they passed out again into the entry and walked up a couple of flights of richly-carpeted stairs, down to the end of a corridor, where a window opened on a gloomy prospect of dark roofs and irregular black voids.
The waiter rapped on one of the doors that lined this corridor, and a voice shouted, “Come in.”
The attendant stepped aside and permitted Dudley to usher Vance into a well-lighted room and the presence of a dark-complexioned gentleman in full evening dress and a young lady of unquestioned beauty, that was heightened by her chic air.
They had just been served with supper, the chief dish being grilled bones.
There were bottles of wine and ale on the table, and the couple seemed to be enjoying themselves hugely.
“Hello, Dudley! You’re just in time. You’ll have supper with us, of course—you and your friend. Waiter, take the order.”
“Sure,” responded the dapper young man; then, turning to the lady, whom he evidently knew, he said, “Miss Miller, this is Vance Thornton.”
The young lady bowed with a sweet smile and a fascinating glance.
“Carrington,” continued Dudley, turning to the gentleman, “let me make you acquainted with my friend Thornton. Vance, this is Sid Carrington.”
“Glad to know you, Thornton,” said Carrington, rising and extending his hand.
The boy acknowledged both introductions in a suitable manner and then took the seat pointed out to him, which was close to Miss Miller.
“Vance, like myself, is merely paying a flying visit to Kansas City on business,” explained Dudley, and then he and Carrington began to talk together, leaving the boy and Miss Miller to entertain themselves.
There was nothing backward about Miss Miller, for after Vance had given a modest order to the attendant she proceeded at once to make herself agreeable to the lad.
“So you’re a stranger in Kansas City, Mr. Thornton? Are you from Chicago?”
“Yes,” replied Vance, who was not a little impressed by the lady’s loveliness, as well as her fascinating ways.
“Chicago is a most delightful city,” she exclaimed gushingly. “I lived there for many years myself. The young men of Chicago are so bright and manly; it is really a pleasure to meet one of them way out here,” and she flashed such a look at Vance as almost took his breath away.
During the twenty minutes the newcomers had to wait to be served the lady ate but little, but she talked and laughed enough to make up the difference.
Every little charm she possessed she threw into her conversation, and she made many adroit inquiries of Vance as to when he left Chicago, where he had been before he came to Kansas City, where he expected to go next and when, what his business was, and many other suggestive queries, all of which the boy parried skilfully or replied to as he thought prudent, though he had not the slightest suspicion that the lady had any other object than mere womanly curiosity in asking them.
An acute observer would probably have noticed that she was not entirely pleased with the result when the conversation became general.
An almost imperceptible signal passed between her and Sid Carrington when that gentleman finally favored her with a significant look of inquiry.
He understood at once, and made a remark to Dudley in a low tone, at which the dapper young man shrugged his shoulders.
“What do you drink, Thornton?” asked Carrington as the waiter stood by expectantly. “You can have anything you want, but this house is particularly noted for its imported ales. I’ll order a bottle for you.”
“I’m sorry,” Vance hastened to say, “but I really don’t drink anything.”
“What!” exclaimed Sid, a slight cloud forming on his brow, while Miss Miller looked up in great surprise.
“That’s right,” interposed Dudley. “He doesn’t touch anything in that line. I found that out to-day at the Criterion. You’ll take coffee, however, won’t you, Vance?”
Vance nodded.
“A bottle of your XXX ale, waiter, and a cup of coffee for this gentleman,” said Guy Dudley briskly.
The attendant bowed and departed.
“So you really don’t drink?” said Miss Miller with an artful smile. “This is quite a surprise to me, for I thought every gentleman indulged in something or other. Now, couldn’t I prevail on you to take just a thimbleful of this light Madeira? As a special favor, with me, you know?”
She favored Vance with an arch look as she filled two small wineglasses with the amber liquid, as if to imply it was an honor she was especially according him.
“Really, Miss Miller——” protested Vance, feeling much embarrassed.
“You will oblige me, won’t you?”
She placed one of the glasses close to his fingers and raised the other toward her ruby lips, with a look so seductive as to be almost irresistible.
Vance was confused at his position and somewhat bewildered by the coquettish and persistent attitude of the fair lady at his elbow.
He felt, without actually seeing, that the eyes of the two gentlemen were fixed upon him at that moment.
As his fingers grasped the slender stem of the wineglass and he half drew it toward him, a gleam of unholy triumph seemed to dart from three pairs of eyes.
But their satisfaction was premature.
Suddenly before Vance’s vision passed the face of his gentle, white-haired mother in Chicago, whom he had promised faithfully that he would never drink a drop of intoxicating liquor.
He drew back his hand.
His muscles tightened, and he looked his fair tempter squarely in the face as he said:
“I regret I cannot oblige you, Miss Miller; but I promised my mother I would not drink, and it is impossible that I can go back on my word.”
Vance Thornton was himself again.
Sadie Miller had not found him such an easy proposition after all.
A look of chagrin rested for a moment on the lady’s face, while Sid Carrington uttered a strong invective under his breath.
But the affair was instantly passed off with a laugh, and the boy found himself once more at his ease.
The coffee for Vance and the ale for Dudley presently arrived, and then another slight signal was made by the host which the girl understood.
The conspirators were about to play their last card.
In the most natural way imaginable Dudley attracted Vance’s attention for a moment, and the boy half turned away from Miss Miller.
During that instant she leaned slightly forward, extended her arm and dropped something into the coffee.
It was all done in a moment, and when Vance turned again to the young lady she was in the act of drinking from her own glass of Madeira.
He drank the coffee at intervals as he polished off a grilled bone, quite unsuspicious that he had fallen into the snare at last.
The effects of the drug became evident to the watchful eyes of the three conspirators before Vance began to realize there was anything the matter with him.
At length he experienced the insidious feeling of heaviness and torpor characteristic of a dose of chloral or knockout drops.
“Hadn’t we better—go?” he blurted out in a thick, hesitating tone to Dudley, who was talking to Carrington.
“What for? There’s no hurry. We’ll all go together presently,” was the reply of the dapper young man.
Vance looked helplessly at Miss Miller, his eyes, hitherto so alert and bright, now half closed and dull.
He half rose in his chair with a muttered exclamation, sank back, swayed a bit to and fro, and then utterly collapsed.
“He’s safe!” cried Carrington with sudden energy, rising to his feet. “Quick, Dudley; see if he has the papers on him, and secure them before the waiter turns up.”
In an instant Vance’s treacherous companion was searching him with a swiftness called forth by the urgency of the occasion.
But pocket after pocket failed to yield the desired results.
The option vouchers not yet presented for settlement, and such warehouse receipts as the boy was supposed to have about his person, were not to be found.
In fact, not a document of any kind relating to his trip was in evidence.
“Curse the luck!” exclaimed Carrington, who appeared to be engineering the conspiracy. “We’re euchred after all! What has he done with them?”
Miss Miller, who had been watching the abortive efforts of Guy Dudley with a slight curl on her pretty lips, now spoke.
“Evidently the boy is smarter than you have given him credit for,” she said with a tantalizing laugh. “I suspected it almost from the start. Why, he didn’t give a single thing away the whole time I was doing my best to pump him. You’ll have to try something else, Sid, if you expect to reach results.”
Just then the waiter appeared at the door with the bill.
“What’s the number of your cab, Dudley?” asked Carrington as he handed the attendant a bill.
“No. 206.”
“Call up 206 and 93, waiter, and then you’ll have to help us get our friend here to the walk. Your coffee has been too much for him.”