A startled look had come upon Montague’s face
as he listened. “I don’t believe
I ever thought of it myself!” he exclaimed.
And Bates shrugged his shoulders. “You
see!” he said. “So it goes.”
Montague had taken a couple of days to think over
Lucy’s last request. It was a difficult
commission; but he made up his mind at last that he
would make the attempt. He went up to Ryder’s
home and presented his card.
“Mr. Ryder is very much occupied, sir—”
began the butler, apologetically.
“This is important,” said Montague.
“Take him the card, please.” He waited
in the palatial entrance-hall, decorated with ceilings
which had been imported intact from old Italian palaces.
At last the butler returned. “Mr. Ryder
says will you please see him upstairs, sir?”
Montague entered the elevator, and was taken to Ryder’s
private apartments. In the midst of the drawing-room
was a great library table, covered with a mass of
papers; and in a chair in front of it sat Ryder.
Montague had never seen such dreadful suffering upon
a human countenance. The exquisite man of fashion
had grown old in a week.
“Mr. Ryder,” he began, when they were
alone, “I received a letter from Mrs. Taylor,
asking me to come to see you.”
“I know,” said Ryder. “It was
like her; and it is very good of you.”
“If there is any way that I can be of assistance,”
the other began.
But Ryder shook his head. “No,” he
said; “there is nothing.”
“If I could give you my help in straightening
out your own affairs—”
“They are beyond all help,” said Ryder.
“I have nothing to begin on—I have
not a dollar in the world.”
“That is hardly possible,” objected Montague.
“It is literally true!” he exclaimed.
“I have tried every plan—I have been
over the thing and over it, until I am almost out of
my mind.” And he glanced about him at the
confusion of papers, and leaned his forehead in his
hands in despair.
“Perhaps if a fresh mind were to take it up,”
suggested Montague. “It is difficult to
see how a man of your resources could be left without
anything—”
“Everything I have is mortgaged,” said
the other. “I have been borrowing money
right and left. I was counting on profits—I
was counting on increases in value. And now see—everything
is wiped out! There is not value enough left
in anything to cover the loans.”
“But surely, Mr. Ryder, this slump is merely
temporary. Values must be restored—”
“It will be years, it will be years! And
in the meantime I shall be forced to sell. They
have wiped me out—they have destroyed me!
I have not even money to live on.”
Montague sat for a few moments in thought. “Mrs.
Taylor wrote me that Waterman—” he
began.
“I know, I know!” cried the other.
“He had to tell her something, to get what he
wanted.”
