LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

museum, where, if I do say it myself, may be found an unrivaled collection of curiosities gathered from the four quarters of the globe, and where may be witnessed the most refined and recherché entertainments, which delight daily the élite of New York and the surrounding cities."

      "Yes, sir," assented Mrs. Mason, rather puzzled to guess what all this had to do with her.

      "I have come here to offer your son an engagement of four weeks at twenty-five dollars a week, and the privilege of selling his photographs, with all the profits it may bring."

      "But what am I to do?" asked Mark.

      "Merely to sit on the platform with the other curiosities."

      "But I am not a curiosity."

      "I beg your pardon, my dear boy, but everybody will want to see the heroic boy who foiled a dynamite fiend and saved the life of a banker."

      Somehow this proposal was very repugnant to Mark.

      "Thank you, Mr. Bunsby," he said, "but I should not like to earn money in that way."

      "I might say thirty dollars a week," continued Mr. Bunsby. "Come, let us strike up a bargain."

      "It isn't the money. Twenty-five dollars a week is more than I could earn in any other way, but I shouldn't like to have people staring at me."

      "My dear boy, you are not practical."

      "I quite agree with Mark," said Mrs. Mason. "I would not wish him to become a public spectacle."

      CHAPTER VIII

      A SCENE IN MRS. MACK'S ROOM

      Fifteen minutes before a stout, ill-dressed man of perhaps forty years of age knocked at the door of Mrs. Mack's room.

      "Come in!" called the old lady in quavering accents.

      The visitor opened the door and entered.

      "Who are you?" asked the old lady in alarm.

      "Don't you know me, Aunt Jane?" replied the intruder. "I'm Jack Minton, your nephew."

      "I don't want to see you – go away!" cried Mrs. Mack.

      "That's a pretty way to receive your own sister's son, whom you haven't seen for five years."

      "I haven't seen you because you've been in jail," retorted his aunt in a shrill voice.

      "Yes, I was took for another man," said Jack. "He stole and laid it off on to me."

      "I don't care how it was, but I don't want to see you. Go away!"

      "Look here, Aunt Jane, you're treating me awful mean. I'm your own orphan nephew, and you ought to make much of me."

      "An orphan – yes. You hurried your poor mother to the grave by your bad conduct," said Mrs. Mack with some emotion. "You won't find me so soft as she was."

      "Soft? No, you're as hard as flint, but all the same you're my aunt, and you're rich, while I haven't a dollar to bless myself with."

      "Rich! Me rich!" repeated the old lady shrilly. "You see how I live. Does it look as if I was rich?"

      "Oh, you can't humbug me that way. You could live better if you wanted to."

      "I'm poor – miserably poor!" returned the old woman.

      "I'd like to be as poor as you are!" said Jack Minton grimly. "You're a miser, that's all there is about it. You half starve yourself and live without fire, when you might be comfortable, and all to save money. You're a fool! Do you know where all your money will go when you're dead?"

      "There won't be any left."

      "Won't there? I'll take the risk of that, for I shall be your heir. It'll all go to me!" said Jack, chuckling.

      "Go away! Go away!" cried the terrified old woman wildly.

      "I want to have a little talk with you first, aunt," said Jack, drawing the only other chair in the room in front of Mrs. Mack and sitting down on it. "You're my only relation, and we ought to have an understanding. Why, you can't live more than a year or two – at your age."

      "What do you mean?" said Mrs Mack angrily. "I'm good for ten years. I'm only seventy-seven."

      "You're living on borrowed time, Aunt Jane, you know that yourself. You've lived seven years beyond the regular term, and you can't live much longer."

      "Go away! Go away!" said the terrified old woman, really alarmed at her nephew's prediction. "I don't want to have anything to do with you."

      "Don't forget that I'm your heir."

      "I can leave my money as I please – not that I've got much to leave."

      "You mean you'll make a will? Well, go ahead and do it. There was a man I know made a will and he died the next day."

      This shot struck home, for the old woman really had a superstitious dread of making a will.

      "You're a terrible man!" she moaned. "You scare me."

      "Come, aunt, be reasonable. You can leave part of your money away from me if you like, but I want you to help me now. I'm hard up. Do you see this nickel?" and he drew one from his vest pocket.

      "Yes."

      "Well, it's all the money I've got. Why, I haven't eaten anything to-day, and I have no money to pay for a bed."

      "I – I haven't any supper for you."

      "I don't want any here. I wouldn't care to board with you, Aunt Jane. Why, I should soon become a bag of bones like yourself. I don't believe you've got five cents' worth of provisions in the room."

      "There's half a loaf of bread in the closet."

      "Let me take a look at it."

      He strode to the closet and opened the door. On a shelf he saw half a loaf of bread, dry and stale. He took it in his hand, laughing.

      "Why, that bread is three days' old," he said. "Where's your butter?"

      "I – I don't eat butter. It's too high!"

      "And you don't care to live high!" said Jack, laughing at his own joke. "I don't care to rob you of this bread, Aunt Jane. It's too rich for my blood. Don't you ever eat anything else?"

      "Sometimes," she answered, hesitating.

      "I'd rather take my supper at the cheapest restaurant on the Bowery. What I want is money."

      Mrs. Mack uttered a little cry of alarm.

      "Oh, don't go into a fit, aunt! I only want a little, just to get along till I can find work. Give me twenty-five dollars, and I won't come near you again for a month. I swear it."

      "Twenty-five dollars!" ejaculated Mrs. Mack in dismay. "Do you think I am made of money?"

      "I don't take you for an Astor or a Vanderbilt, Aunt Jane, but you've got a tidy lot of money somewhere – that I am sure of. I shouldn't wonder if you had five thousand dollars. Now where do you keep it?"

      "Have you taken leave of your senses?" asked the old woman sharply. "No, I haven't, but it looks to me as if you had. But I can't waste my time here all night. I'm your only relative, and it's your duty to help me. Will you let me have twenty-five dollars or not?"

      "No, I won't," answered Mrs. Mack angrily.

      "Then I'll take the liberty of helping myself if I can find where you keep your hoards."

      Jack Minton jumped up from his chair and went at once to a cheap bureau, which, however, was probably the most valuable article in the room, and pulling out the top drawer, began to rummage about among the contents. Then it was that Mrs. Mack uttered the piercing shriek referred to at the end of the last chapter, and her nephew, tramping across the floor, seized her roughly by the shoulder.

      "What do you mean by this noise, you old fool?" he demanded roughly.

      "Help! Murder! Thieves!" screamed the old woman.

      Then the door opened, and Mark Mason burst into the room, followed by Tom Trotter.

      "What's the matter, Mrs. Mack?" asked Mark.

      "This

Скачать книгу