DORIS TAKES A JOURNEY
Within five minutes he was in the studio building across the square,
frantically punching the elevator bell. Outwardly he showed no signs of
the anxiety that racked him, but presented to Sam, when that
appreciative youth stopped his elevator at the ground floor, the
sartorial perfection which Sam always vastly admired and sometimes
dreamed of imitating. But for such perfection Sam had no eyes to-day.
At this early hour--it was not much more than half-past eight--he had
brought down only two passengers, and no one but Laurie was waiting for
the upward journey. When the two tenants of the building had walked far
enough toward its front entrance to be out of ear-shot, Sam grasped
Laurie's arm and almost dragged him into the car. As he did so, he
hissed four words.
"She gone, Mist' Devon!"
"Gone! Where? When?"
Laurie had not expected this. He realized now that he should have done
so. His failure to take in the possibility of her going was part of his
infernal optimism, of his inability even now to take her situation at
its face-value. Sam was answering his questions:
"'Bout eight, jes' after Henry went and I come on. An aut'mobile stop in
front de do', an' dat man wid de eyes he come in. I try stop him fum
takin' de car, but he push me on one side an' order me up, like he was
Wilson hisself. So I took him to de top flo'. But when we got dere an'
he went to Miss Mayo's do', I jes' kep' de car right dere an' watch
him."
"Good boy! What happened?"
"He knock an' nuffin' happen. Den he call out, 'Doris, Doris,' jes' like
dat, an' she come an' talk to him; but she didn't open de do'."
"Could you hear what else he said?"
"No, sah. After dat he whisper to her, hissin' like a snake."
Laurie set his teeth. Even Sam felt the ophidian in Shaw.
"Go on," he ordered.
"Den I reckon Miss Mayo she put on a coat, an' dat man wait. I t'ought
he was gwine leave, an' I sho' was glad. But he stood dere, waitin' an'
grinnin' nuff to split his haid."
Laurie recognized the grin.
"'Bout two-three minutes she come out," Sam went on. "She had a big fur
coat an' a veil on. She look awful pale, an' when dey got in de el'vator
she didn' say a word. Dey wasn' nobody else in de car, an' it seem lak I
couldn't let her go off no-how, widout sayin' somethin'. So I say, 'You
gwine away, Miss Mayo?' De man he look at me mighty cold an' hard, an'
she only nod."
"Didn't she speak at all?"
"No, sah. She ain't say a word. She jes' stood stiff an' still, an' he
took her out to de car, an' dey bofe got in."
"Was it a limousine, a closed car?"
"Yaas, sah."
"Did the man himself drive it?"
"No, sah. He sat inside wid Miss Mayo. The man what drove it was
younger."
"What did he look like?"
"I couldn't see much o' him. He had a big coat on, an' a cap. But his
hair was yallah."
Laurie recognized the secretary.
"Which way did they go?"
"East."
They were standing on the top landing by this time, and Laurie strode
forward.
"I'll take a look around her rooms. Perhaps she left some message."
Sam accompanied him, and though he had not desired this continued
companionship, Laurie found a certain solace in it. In his humble way
this black boy was Doris's friend. He was doing his small part now to
help her, if, as he evidently suspected, there was something sinister in
her departure.
Entering the familiar studio, Laurie looked around it with a pang.
Unlike the quarters of Shaw, it remained unchanged. The room, facing
north as it did, looked a little cold in the early light, but it was
still stamped with the impress of its former occupant. The flowers he
had given her only yesterday hung their heads in modest welcome, and
half a dozen eye-flashes revealed half a dozen homely little details
that were full of reassurance. Here, open and face down on the
reading-table, was a book she might have dropped that minute. There was
the long mirror before which she brushed her wonderful hair and, yes,
the silver-backed brushes with which she brushed it. On the
writing-table were a pencil and a torn sheet of paper, as if she had
just dashed off a hurried note.
In short, everything in the room suggested that the owner, whose
presence still hung about it, might return at any instant. And yet,
there in the window, where he had half jokingly told her to place it,
hung the brilliant symbol of danger which he himself had selected.
He walked over and took it from the latch. In doing this, he discovered
that only half the scarf hung there, and that one end was jagged, as if
roughly and hastily cut off. He put the scarf into his pocket. As he did
so, his pulses leaped. Pinned to its folds was a bit of paper, so small
and soft that even the inquisitive eye of Sam, following his every
motion, failed to detect it. Laurie turned to the black boy.
"We'd better get out of here," he suggested, trying to speak carelessly
and leading the way as he spoke. "Miss Mayo may be back at any moment."
Sam's eyes bulged till they rivaled Shaw's.
"You don' t'ink she gone?" he stammered.
"Why should we think she has gone?" Laurie tried to grin at him.
"Perhaps she's merely taking an automobile ride, or an early train for a
day in the country. Certainly nothing here looks as if she had gone away
for good. People usually pack, don't they?"
Sam dropped his eyes. His face, human till now, took on its familiar,
sphinxlike look. He followed "Mist' Devon" into the elevator in silence,
and started the car on its downward journey. But as his passenger was
about to depart with a nod, Sam presented him with a reflection to take
away with him.
"She didn' _look_ lak no lady what was goin' on no excu'sion," he
muttered, darkly.
Laurie rushed back to his rooms with pounding heart and on the way
opened and read at a glance his first note from Doris. It was written in
pencil, seemingly on a scrap of paper torn from the pad he had seen on
her desk.
Long Island, I _think_. An old house, on the Sound, somewhere near
Sea Cliff. Remember your promise. _No police._
That was all there was to it. There was no address, no signature, no
date. The writing, though hurried, was clear, beautiful, and full of
character. In his rooms, he telephoned the garage for his car, and read
and reread the little note. Then, still holding it in his hand, he
thought it over.
Two things were horribly clear. Shaw's "plan" had matured. He had taken
Doris away. And--this was the staggering phase of the episode--she
seemed to have gone willingly. At least she had made no protest, though
a mere word, even a look of appeal from her, would have enlisted Sam's
help, and no doubt stopped the whole proceeding. Why hadn't she uttered
that word? The answer to this, too, seemed fairly clear. Doris had
become a fatalist. She had ceased to hide or fight. She was letting
things go "his way," as she had declared she would do.
Down that dark avenue she had called "his way" Laurie dared not even
glance. His mind was too busy making its agile twists in and out of the
tangle. Granting, then, that she had gone doggedly to meet the ultimate
issue of the experience, whatever that might be, she had nevertheless
appealed to him, Laurie, for help. Why? And why did she know
approximately where she was to be taken?
Why? Why? Why? Again and again the question had recurred to him, and
this time it dug itself in.
Despite his love for her (and he fully realized that this was what it
was), despite his own experience of the night before, he had hardly been
able to accept the fact that she was, must be, in actual physical
danger. When, now, the breath of this realization blew over him, it
checked his heart-beats and chilled his very soul. In the next instant
something in him, alert, watchful, and suspicious, addressed him like an
inner voice.
"Shaw will threaten," this voice said. "He will fight, and he will even
chloroform. But when it comes to a show-down, to the need of definite,
final action of any kind, he simply won't be there. He is venomous, he'd
_like_ to bite, but he has no fangs, and he knows it."
The vision of Shaw's face, when he had choked him during the struggle of
last night, again recurred to Laurie. He knew now the meaning of the
look in those projecting eyes. It was fear. Though he had carried off
the rest of the interview with entire assurance, during that fight the
creature had been terror-stricken.
"He'll have reason for fear the next time I get hold of him," Laurie
reflected, grimly. But that fear was of him, not of Doris. What might
not Doris be undergoing, even now?
He went to the little safe in the wall of his bedroom, and took from it
all the ready money he found there. Oh, if only Rodney were at home! But
Mr. Bangs had gone out, the hall man said. He also informed Mr. Devon
that his car was at the door.
The need of consulting Rodney increased in urgency as the difficulties
multiplied. Laurie telephoned to Bangs's favorite restaurant, to
Epstein's office, to Sonya's hotel. At the restaurant he was suavely
assured that Mr. Bangs was not in the place. At the office the voice of
an injured office boy informed him that there wasn't never nobody there
till half-past nine. Over the hotel wire Sonya's colorful tones held
enough surprise to remind Laurie that he could hardly hope that even
Rodney's budding romance would drive him to the side of the lady so
early in the morning.
He hung up the receiver with a groan of disgust, and busied himself
packing a small bag and selecting a greatcoat for his journey. Also, he
went to a drawer and took out the little pistol he had taken away from
Doris in the tragic moment of their first meeting.
Holding it in his hand, he hesitated. Heretofore, throughout his short
but varied life, young Devon had depended upon his well-trained fists to
protect him from the violence of others. But when those others were the
kind who went in for chloroform--and this time there was Doris to think
of. He dropped the revolver into his pocket, and shot into the elevator
and out on the ground floor with the expedition to which the operator
was now becoming accustomed.
His car was a two-seated "racer," of slender and beautiful lines. As he
took his place at the wheel, the machine pulsated like a living thing,
panting with a passionate desire to be off. Laurie's wild young heart
felt the same longing, but his year in New York had taught him respect
for its traffic laws and this was no time to take chances. Carefully,
almost sedately, he made his way to Third Avenue, then up to the
Queensboro Bridge, and across that mighty runway to Long Island. Here
his stock of patience, slender at the best, was exhausted. With a deep
breath he "let her out" to a singing speed of sixty miles an hour.
A cloud had obscured the sun, quite appropriately, he subconsciously
felt, and there were flakes of snow in the air. As he sped through the
gray atmosphere, the familiar little towns he knew seemed to come
forward to meet him, like rapidly projected pictures on a screen.
Flushing, Bayside, Little Neck, Manhasset, Roslyn, Glenhead, one by one
they floated past. He made the run of twenty-two miles in something
under thirty minutes, to the severe disapproval of several policemen,
who shouted urgent invitations to him to slow down. One of these was so
persistent that Laurie prepared to obey; but just as the heavy hand of
the law was about to fall, its representative recognized young Devon,
and waved him on with a forgiving grin. This was not the first time
Laurie had "burned up" that stretch of roadway.
At the Sea Cliff station he slowed up; then, on a sudden impulse,
stopped his car at the platform with sharp precision and entered the
tiny waiting-room. From the ticket window a pretty girl looked out on
him with the expression of sudden interest feminine eyes usually took on
when this young man was directly in their line of vision. With uncovered
curly head deferentially bent, he addressed her. Had she happened to
notice a dark limousine go by an hour or so before, say around half-past
eight or nine o'clock? The girl shook her head. She had not come on
duty until nine, and even if such a car had passed she would hardly have
observed it, owing to the frequency of the phenomenon and her own
exacting responsibilities.
Laurie admitted that these responsibilities would claim all the
attention of any mind. But was there any one around who might have seen
the car, any one, say, who made a specialty of lounging on the platform
and watching the pulsations of the town's life in this its throbbing
center? No, the girl explained, there were no station loafers around
now. The summer was the time for them.
Then perhaps she could tell him if there were any nice old houses for
rent near Sea Cliff, nice old houses, say, overlooking the Sound, and a
little out of the town? Laurie's newly acquired will power was proving
its strength. With every frantic impulse in him crying for action, for
knowledge, for relief from the intolerable tension he was under, he
presented to the girl the suave appearance of a youth at peace with
himself and the hour.
The abrupt transitions of the gentleman's interest seemed to surprise
the lady. She looked at him with a suspicion which perished under the
expression in his brilliant eyes. What he meant, Laurie soberly
explained, was the kind of house that might appeal to a casual tourist
who was passing through, and who had dropped into the station and there
had suddenly realized the extreme beauty of Sea Cliff. The girl
laughed. She was a nice girl, he decided, and he smiled back at her; for
now she was becoming helpful.
Yes, there was the Varick place, a mile out and right on the water's
edge. And there was the old Kiehl place, also on the Sound. These were
close together and both for rent, she had heard. Also, there was a house
in the opposite direction, and on the water's edge. She did not know the
name of that house, but she had observed a "To Let" sign on it last
Sunday, when she was out driving. Those were all the houses she knew of.
She gave him explicit instructions for reaching all three, and the
interview ended in an atmosphere of mutual regard and regret. Indeed,
the lady even left her ticket office to follow the gentleman to the door
and watch the departure of his chariot.
Laurie raced in turn to the Varick place and the Kiehl place. Shaw, he
suspected, had probably rented some such place, just as he had rented
the East Side office. But a very cursory inspection of the two old
houses convinced him that they were tenantless. No smoke came from their
chimneys, no sign of life surrounded them; also, he was sure, they were
not sufficiently remote from other houses to suit the mysterious Shaw.
The third house on his list was more promising in appearance, for it
stood austerely remote from its neighbors. But on its soggy lawn two
soiled children and a dog played in care-free abandon, and from the side
of the house came the piercing whistle of an underling cheerily engaged
in sawing wood and shouting cautions to the children. Quite plainly, the
closed-up, shuttered place was in charge of a caretaker, whose offspring
were in temporary possession of its grounds. Laurie inspected other
houses, dozens of them. He made his way into strange, new roads. Nowhere
was there the slightest clue leading to the house he sought.
It was one o'clock in the afternoon when, with an exclamation of actual
anguish, he swung his car around for the return journey to the station.
For the first time the hopelessness of his mission came home to him.
There must be a few hundred houses on the Sound near Sea Cliff. How was
he to find the right one?
Perhaps that girl had thought of some other places, or could direct him
to the best local real-estate agents. Perhaps he should have gone to
them in the first place. He felt dazed, incapable of clear thought.
As the car swerved his eye was caught by something bright lying farther
up the road, in the direction from which he had just turned. For an
instant he disregarded it. Then, on second thought, he stopped the
machine, jumped out, and ran back. There, at the right, by the wayside,
lay a tiny jagged strip of silk that seemed to blush as he stared down
at it.
Slowly he bent, picked it up, and, spreading it across his palm,
regarded it with eyes that unexpectedly were wet. It was a two-inch bit
of the Roman scarf, hacked off, evidently, by the same hurried scissors
that had severed the end in his pocket. He realized now what that
cutting had meant. With her hare-and-hounds' experience in mind, Doris
had cut off other strips, perhaps half a dozen or more, and had
undoubtedly dropped them as a trail for him to pick up. Possibly he had
already unseeingly passed several. But that did not matter. He was on
the right track now. The house was on this road, but farther up.
He leaped into the car again and started back. He drove very slowly,
forcing the reluctant racer to crawl along, and sweeping every inch of
the roadside with a careful scrutiny, but he had gone more than a mile
before he found the second scent. This was another bit of the vivid
silk, dropped on a country road that turned off the main road at a sharp
angle. With a heartfelt exclamation of thanksgiving, he turned into this
bypath.
It was narrow, shallow-rutted, and apparently little used. It might stop
anywhere, it might lead nowhere. It wound through a field, a meadow, a
bit of deep wood, through which he saw the gleam of water. Then, quite
suddenly, it again widened into a real road, merging into an avenue of
trees that led in turn to the entrance of a big dark-gray house, in a
somber setting of cedars.
Laurie stopped his car and thoughtfully nodded to himself. This was the
place. He felt that he would have recognized it even without that
guiding flame of ribbon. It was so absolutely the kind of place Shaw's
melodramatic instincts would lead him to choose.
There was the look about it that clings to houses long untenanted, a
look not wholly due to its unkempt grounds and the heavy boards over its
windows. It had been without life for a long, long time, but somewhere
in it, he knew, life was stirring now. From a side chimney a thin line
of smoke curled upward. On the second floor, shutters, newly unbolted,
creaked rustily in the January wind. And, yes, there it was; outside of
one of the unshuttered windows, as if dropped there by a bird, hung a
vivid bit of ribbon.
Rather precipitately Laurie backed his car to a point where he could
turn it, and then raced back to the main road. His primitive impulse had
been to drive up to the entrance, pound the door until some one
responded, and then fiercely demand the privilege of seeing Miss Mayo.
But that, he knew, would never do. He must get rid of the car, come back
on foot, get into the house in some manner, and from that point meet
events as they occurred.
Facing this prospect, he experienced an incredible combination of
emotions--relief and panic, recklessness and caution, fear and elation.
He had found her. For the time being, he frantically assured his
trembling inner self, she was safe. The rest was up to him, and he felt
equal to it. He was intensely stimulated; for now, at last, in his ears
roared the rushing tides of life.