Captivating Mary Carstairs | Page 2

a
Price to Pay
XXI Mr. Ferris Stanhope Meets His Double; and Lets the Double Meet
Everything Else
XXII Relating How Varney Fails to Die; and Why Smith Remained in
Hunston; and How a Reception is Planned for Mr. Higginson
XXIII In which Varney, after all, Redeems His Promise

CAPTIVATING MARY CARSTAIRS

Captivating Mary Carstairs

CHAPTER I
THE CHIEF CONSPIRATOR SECURES A PAL
In a rear room of a quaint little house uptown, a great bronzed-faced
man sat at a piano, a dead pipe between his teeth, and absently played
the most difficult of Beethoven's sonatas. Though he played it divinely,
the three men who sat smoking and talking in a near-by corner paid not
the least attention to him. The player, it seemed, did not expect them to:
he paid very little attention himself.
Next to the selection of members, that is, no doubt, the most highly
prized thing about the Curzon Club: you are not expected to pay
attention unless you want to. It is a sanctuary where no one can bore
you, except yourself. The members have been chosen with this in mind,
and not chosen carelessly.
Lord Pembroke, who married a Philadelphian, is quoted as saying that
the Curzon is the most democratic club in a too confoundedly
democratic country. M. Arly, the editor, has told Paris that it is the
most exclusive club in the world. Probably both were right. The
electing board is the whole club, and a candidate is stone-dead at the

first blackball; but no stigma attaches to him for that. Of course, it is a
small club. Also, though money is the least of all passports there, it is a
wealthy club. No stretch of the imagination could describe its dues as
low. But through its sons of plutocracy, and their never-ending elation
at finding themselves in, has arisen the Fund, by which poor but honest
men can join, and do join, with never a thought of ways and means. Of
these Herbert Horning, possibly the best-liked man in the club, who
supported a large family off the funny department of a magazine, was
one. He had spurned the suggestion when it was first made to him, and
had reluctantly foregone his election; whereon Peter Maginnis had
taken him aside, a dash of red in his ordinarily composed eye.
"How much?" he demanded brutally.
"How much for what?"
"How much for you?" roared Peter. "How much must the club pay you
to get you in?"
Horning stared, pained.
"God meant no man to be a self-conscious ass," said Peter more mildly.
"The club pays you a high compliment, and you have the nerve to reply
that you don't take charity. I suppose if Congress voted you a medal for
writing the funniest joke in America, you'd have it assayed and remit
the cash. Chuck it, will you? Once in a year we find a man we want,
and then we go ahead and take him. We don't think much of money
here but--as I say, how much?"
The "but" implied that Horning did, and hurt as it was meant to. He
came into the club, took cheerfully what they offered him that way, and
felt grateful ever afterwards that Maginnis had steered him to the light.
The big man, Maginnis himself, sat on at the piano, his great fingers
rambling deftly over the keys. He was playing Brahms now and doing
it magnificently. He was fifteen stone, all bone and muscle, and looked
thirty pounds heavier, because you imagined, mistakenly, that he
carried a little fat. He was the richest man in the club, at least so far as

prospects went, but he wore ready-made clothes, and one inferred,
correctly, that a suit of them lasted him a long time. He looked capable
of everything, but the fact was that he had done nothing. But for his
money and a past consisting of thirty years of idleness, he might have
been the happiest dog alive.
"The best government," said one of the three men who were not
listening to the piano, "is simply the surest method for putting public
opinion into power."
The sentence drifted over the player's shoulder and Brahms ended with
a crash.
"Balzac said that," he cried, rising abruptly, "and said it better! But,
good heavens, how you both miss the point! Why, let me tell you."
But this they stoutly declined to do. Amid laughter and protests--for the
big man's hobbies were well known to the club--two of them sprang up
in mock terror, and headed for the door. They indicated that they had
promised each other to play billiards and dared not break the
engagement.
"I couldn't stay to the end, anyway, Peter," explained one, from the
door. "My wife sits up when I'm out