MR. HERBERT RANSOME SHAW
The man in the shabby blue-serge suit detached his absent gaze from the
opposite wall, and looked up quickly when Laurie stopped at his side. He
was clearly surprised, but courteous. He half rose from his chair, but
the new-comer waved him back and dropped easily into the vacant seat
opposite him. He was smiling. The man in blue serge was not. He looked
puzzled, though vaguely responsive. A third person, watching the two,
might almost have thought the episode the casual reunion of men who
frequently lunched together.
Laurie leaned forward in his chair, rested one elbow on the table, and,
opening his cigarette-case, extended it to the stranger. The latter
rejected it with a slight bow.
"Thank you, but not before lunch," he said, quietly. His voice and
manner were those of an educated man. The quality of his tone was
slightly harsh.
Laurie lit a cigarette, blew out the match, and looked straight into
the stranger's projecting gray eyes. He had acted impulsively. Now that
he was here, he was anxious to put the job over concisely, firmly, but,
above all, neatly. There must be nothing done that would attract the
attention of the few persons in the big room.
"I came over here," he said casually, "to mention to you that you are
annoying the lady I am with. I want to mention also that the annoyance
must stop."
The glance of the stranger held. Laurie observed with interest that the
veiled look of the projecting eyes had changed a little. The change did
not add to the stranger's charm.
"Before I answer you, tell me one thing," he said, formally. "By what
right do you act as the lady's protector?"
Laurie hesitated an instant. The question was embarrassing.
"Has she authorized you to act?"
"In a way, but--"
"How long have you known her? How well do you know her?"
Command of the interview was slipping from the younger man. He
resolutely resumed it.
"Look here," he said, firmly, "I came to this table to tell you
something, but I will decide what that is to be. I am not here to answer
questions. It is enough for you to know that circumstances have given
me the right to protect the lady from annoyance. I want to make it clear
to you that I shall exercise that right. Hereafter you are to let her
alone. Do you understand? Absolutely alone. You are not to follow her,
not to enter places where she is, not to bow to her, nor to be where she
can see you," he recklessly ended.
The stranger looked at him through the light veil which seemed again to
have fallen over the projecting eyes.
"I should really like to know," he said, "when and where you met her. I
saw you starting off together in the taxicab, but I am not quite sure
whether your first encounter occurred this morning."
"And you won't be." Laurie stood up. "I've warned you," he said curtly.
"I don't know how well you understand our laws in this country, but I
fancy you know enough of them to realize that you cannot shadow a lady
without getting into trouble."
"She admitted that?" The stranger appeared to experience a tepid glow of
emotion. "She must know you better than I thought," he added
reflectively. "Doris is not the type to pour her confidence into every
new ear," he mused, seeming to forget the other's presence in his
interest in this revelation.
"Have I made myself quite clear?"
Laurie was staring at him with a mingling of resentment and interest.
The other nodded.
"You have, my young friend," he said, with sudden seriousness, "and now
I, too, will be clear. In return for one warning, I will give you
another. Keep out of matters that do not concern you."
Laurie grinned at him.
"You forget that I have made this matter my concern," he said, lightly.
"Try to remember that."
The other man rose. His manner had changed to a sort of impatient
weariness.
"Get her out of here," he said abruptly. "You are beginning to irritate
me, you two. Take her home, and then keep away from her, unless you are
looking for trouble."
He delivered the last words so clearly and menacingly that the waiter
who had appeared with his luncheon heard them and fell back a step.
Looking into the veiled eyes, Laurie also felt a sense of recoil. The
fellow was positively venomous. There was something serpentlike in the
dull but fixed look of those goggling eyes, in the forward thrust of the
smooth brown head.
"I've said my say," he retorted. "If I ever catch you around that
studio, or in any way annoying the lady, I'll thrash you within an inch
of your life; and then I'll turn what's left of you over to the
authorities. Understand?"
He nodded and strolled back to Miss Mayo's table. For an instant the
other man stood looking after him, as if tempted to follow. Then, with a
shrug, he dropped into his chair and began the luncheon the waiter had
placed before him.
Laurie found the girl standing by the table, ready for the street, her
coat fastened, her gloves buttoned.
"Oh, how could you!" she gasped. "What did he say?"
Laurie summoned the waiter with a gesture and asked for his account.
"Sit down a minute," he suggested, "and tell me who he is."
"Not here," she urged. "I couldn't breathe here. Hurry, please. Let us
get away!"
She was so obviously in earnest that he yielded. He paid the bill, which
the waiter had ready, accepted that appreciative servitor's help with
his overcoat, and escorted his guest from the room.
"But, for heaven's sake, don't run!" he laughed. "Do you want the
creature to think we're flying before him?"
She flushed and moderated her pace. Side by side, and quite
deliberately, they left the restaurant, while the stranger watched them
with his dull, fixed gaze. He seemed to have recovered his temper, but
it was also plain that the little encounter had given him something to
think about. When he resumed his luncheon he ate slowly and with an air
of deep abstraction, as if working out some grave problem.
"What's his name?" asked Laurie, as he helped Miss Mayo into a waiting
taxicab.
She looked startled. Indeed, his most casual questions seemed to startle
her and put her, in a way, on her guard.
"Shaw," she answered, unwillingly.
"Is it spelled P-s-h-a-w?"
Laurie asked the question with polite interest. Then, realizing that in
her preoccupation she did not follow this flight of his mercurial
spirits, he sobered. "It's a perfectly good name," he conceded, "but
there must be more of it. What's the rest?"
"He calls himself Herbert Ransome Shaw."
Laurie made a mental note of the name.
"I shall call him Bertie," he firmly announced, "to show you how
unimportant he really is. By the way,"--a sudden memory struck him--"he
told me your name--Doris."
He added the name so simply that he seemed to be calling her by it. A
faint shadow of her elusive smile touched her lips.
"I like it--Doris," Laurie repeated, dreamily.
"I am so glad," she murmured.
He ignored the irony in her tone.
"I suppose you have several more, like our friend Bertie, but you
needn't tell them to me. If I had to use them every time I spoke to you,
it might check my inspiration. Doris will do very nicely. Doris, Doris!"
"Are you making a song of it?"
"Yes, a hymn."
She looked at him curiously.
"You're a queer boy. I can't quite make you out. One minute you're
serious, and the next--"
"If you're puzzled over me, picture my mental turmoil over you."
"Oh--me?" With a gesture she consigned herself to the uttermost ends of
the universe.
The taxicab had stopped. They had reached the studio building without
observing the fact. The expression on the features of the chauffeur
suggested that if they wanted to sit still all day they could do it, but
that it would not be his personal choice. Doris held out her hand.
"Good-by," she said gently. "And thank you. I'm really
more--appreciative--than I seem."
Laurie's look expressed more surprise than he had ever really
experienced over anything.
"But we haven't settled matters!" he cried. "We're going to the bank--"
"We are not."
She spoke with sharp decision. Then, relenting at the expression of his
face, she touched the heavy gold-and-amber chain around her neck.
"I can pawn this," she said briefly. "It didn't seem worth while before,
but as I've got to go on, I promise you I will do it. I will do it
to-day," she added hurriedly, "this afternoon, if you wish. It is
valuable. I can get enough on it to keep me for a month."
"Till we find that job for you," he suggested, brightening.
She agreed, with a momentary flash of her wonderful smile.
"And you will let me drop in this evening and take you to dinner?"
"No, thank you. But--" again she relented--"you may come in for an hour
at eight."
"I believe you _are_ a crowned head," murmured Laurie, discontentedly.
"That's just the way they do in books. When I come I suppose I must
speak only when I'm spoken to. And when you suddenly stand up at nine,
I'll know the audience is over."
She laughed softly, her red-brown eyes shining at him. Her laughter was
different from any other laughter he had ever heard.
"Good-by," she repeated.
He helped her out of the cab and escorted her into the studio building,
where he rang the elevator bell and waited, hat in hand, until the car
came down. When it arrived, Sam was in it. Before it stopped he had
recognized the waiting pair through the open ironwork of the door. To
Laurie, the elevator and Sam's jaw seemed to drop in unison.
The next instant the black boy had resumed his habitual expression of
indifference to all human interests. Dead-eyed, he stared past the two
young things. Dead-eared, he ignored their moving lips. But there was
fellowship in the jocund youth of all three. In an instant when Laurie
stepped back into the hall as the car shot upward, the eyes of negro and
white man flashed a question and an answer:
In Sam's: "You done took her out an' fed her?"
In Laurie's: "You bet your boots I did!"