“But how on earth could you afford to pay for an apartment in a place like that?”
Uncle Chris coughed.
“I didn’t say I paid for it. I said I took it. That is, as one might say, the point of my story. My old friend, grateful for favors received and wishing to do me a good turn consented to become my accomplice in another—er—innocent deception. I gave my friends the address and telephone number of the apartment-house, living the while myself in surroundings of a somewhat humbler and less expensive character. I called every morning for letters. If anybody rang me up on the telephone, the admirable man answered in the capacity of my servant, took a message, and relayed it on to me at my boarding-house. If anybody called, he merely said that I was out. There wasn’t a flaw in the whole scheme, my dear, and its chief merit was its beautiful simplicity.”
“Then what made you give it up? Conscience?”
“Conscience never made me give up anything,” said Uncle Chris firmly. “No, there were a hundred chances to one against anything going wrong, and it was the hundredth that happened. When you have been in New York longer, you will realize that one peculiarity of the place is that the working-classes are in a constant state of flux. On Monday you meet a plumber. Ah! you say, A plumber! Capital! On the following Thursday you meet him again, and he is a car-conductor. Next week he will be squirting soda in a drug-store. It’s the fault of these dashed magazines, with their advertisements of correspondence courses—Are You Earning All You Should?—Write To Us and Learn Chicken-Farming By Mail — It puts wrong ideas into the fellows’ heads. It unsettles them. It was so in this case. Everything was going swimmingly, when my man suddenly conceived the idea that destiny had intended him for a chauffeur-gardener, and he threw up his position!”
“Leaving you homeless!”
“As you say, homeless—temporarily. But, fortunately,—I have been amazingly lucky all through; it really does seem as if you cannot keep a good man down—fortunately my friend had a friend who was janitor at a place on East Forty-First Street, and by a miracle of luck the only apartment in the building was empty. It is an office-building, but, like some of these places, it has one small bachelor’s apartment on the top floor.”
“And you are the small bachelor?”
“Precisely. My friend explained matters to his friend—a few financial details were satisfactorily arranged—and here I am, perfectly happy with the cosiest little place in the world, rent free. I am even better off than I was before, as a matter of fact, for my new ally’s wife is an excellent cook, and I have been enabled to give one or two very pleasant dinners at my new home. It lends verisimilitude to the thing if you can entertain a little. If you are never in when people call, they begin to wonder. I am giving dinner to your friend Pilkington and Mrs Peagrim there tonight. Homey, delightful, and infinitely cheaper than a restaurant.”
“And what will you do when the real owner of the place walks in in the middle of dinner?”
“Out of the question. The janitor informs me that he left for England some weeks ago, intending to make a stay of several months.”
“Well, you certainly think of everything.”
“Whatever success I may have achieved,” replied Uncle Chris, with the dignity of a Captain of Industry confiding in an interviewer, “I attribute to always thinking of everything.”
Jill gurgled with laughter. There was that about her uncle which always acted on her moral sense like an opiate, lulling it to sleep and preventing it from rising up and becoming critical. If he had stolen a watch and chain, he would somehow have succeeded in convincing her that he had acted for the best under the dictates of a benevolent altruism.
“What success have you achieved?” she asked, interested. “When you left me, you were on your way to find a fortune. Did you find it?”
“I have not actually placed my hands upon it yet,” admitted Uncle Chris. “But it is hovering in the air all round me. I can hear the beating of the wings of the dollar-bills as they flutter to and fro, almost within reach. Sooner or later I shall grab them. I never forget, my dear, that I have a task before me,—to restore to you the money of which I deprived you. Some day—be sure—I shall do it. Some day you will receive a letter from me, containing a large sum—five thousand—ten thousand—twenty thousand—whatever it may be, with the simple words ‘First Instalment’.” He repeated the phrase, as if it pleased him. “First Instalment!”