LAURIE CHECKS A REVELATION
Laurie shook his head.
"That was rather stupid of him," he remarked, mildly. "It's almost as
easy to force open a locked door from the inside as from the outside."
"I know." Doris was again breathless. "But in the meantime he's
telephoning to Shaw."
"I don't think so." Laurie, his hands in his pockets, was making a
characteristic turn around the room. "What has he to gain by
telephoning? Shaw's coming back anyway in a few hours; and in the
meantime the secretary has got me safely pocketed, or thinks he has. I
have an idea he'll stand pat. You see, he doesn't know about my talent
for opening locked doors."
He strolled back to the door as he spoke and examined the lock. Then,
appreciatively, he drew from his pocket the screw-driver he had
thoughtfully brought from the garage.
"I fancied this might be useful. It will take me just about four minutes
to open that door," he announced. "So get on your things and be ready
to start in a hurry."
"Do you imagine that we can get away now, in broad daylight?" She seemed
dazed by the suggestion.
"Why not? You want to get out of here, don't you?"
"Yes--I--of course I do!"
"You don't seem very sure of it."
Laurie was smiling down at her with his hands still in his pockets, but
there was an expression in his eyes she had never seen there before, an
expression keen, cold, almost but not quite suspicious.
"Yes, but--you don't understand. Shaw has other men on watch, two of
them."
"Where?"
"In the grounds. One in the front and the other in the back."
The new-comer mentally digested this unwelcome information.
"If we wait till it's dark," said the girl, "we'll have a better
chance."
"Unless Shaw gets back in the meantime." He was still watching her with
that new look in his eyes. Then, briskly, he returned to his interest in
the doorlock.
"In any case," he casually remarked, "we don't want to be jailed here."
She said no more, but sat watching him as he worked, deftly and
silently. In little more than the time he had predicted he opened the
door and held it wide.
"Any time you would like to pass out," he invited, then checked himself
and vanished in the dimness of the hall. The girl left behind heard the
sounds of running feet, of a sharp scuffle, of a few words spoken in a
high, excited voice. Then Laurie reentered the room, pushing the
secretary before him. At present the youth looked anything but meek. His
blond hair was on end, his tie was under one ear, his pale eyes were
bright with anger, and he moved spasmodically, propelled by jerks from
behind.
"I don't like this young man," said Laurie, conversationally. "I never
have. So I'm going to put him where for a few hours he can't annoy us.
Is there a good roomy closet on this floor? If there is, kindly lead us
to it."
"Say, hold on!" cried the blond youth, in outraged tones. "I'm sick of
this."
"Shut up." Laurie shook him gently. "And cheer up. You're going to have
a change. Lead on, please."
Thus urged, and further impelled, the secretary obediently led the way
to a closet at the far end of the upper hall. It was fairly commodious,
and full of garments hanging on pegs and smelling oppressively of
camphor. It afforded an electric-light fixture, and Laurie, switching on
the light, emphasized this advantage to the reluctant new occupant, who
unwisely put up a brief and losing fight on its threshold.
"You may read if you like," Laurie affably suggested, when this had been
suppressed. "I'll bring you some magazines. You may even smoke. Mr. Shaw
and I always treat our prisoners with the utmost courtesy. You don't
smoke? Excellent! Safer for the closet, and a fine stand for a worthy
young man to take. Now, I'll get the magazines for you."
He did so, and the blond secretary accepted them with a black scowl.
"I'm afraid," observed Laurie regretfully, "he has an ungrateful
nature."
He locked the door on the infuriated youth, pocketed the key, and faced
Doris, who had followed the brief procession. The little encounter had
restored his poise.
"What next?" he asked, placidly.
Her reply was in the nature of a shock.
"I'd like to have you wash up."
He raised his eyebrows.
"And spoil my admirable disguise? However, if you insist, I suppose I
can get most of the effect again with ashes, if I have to. Where's a
bath-room?"
She indicated a door, and returned to her room. He made his ablutions
slowly and very thoughtfully. There were elements in this new twist of
the situation which did not tally with any of his former hypotheses.
Doris, too, was doing some thinking on her own account. When he returned
to the sitting-room she wore the air of one who has pondered deeply and
has come to a conclusion.
"What do your friends call you?" she abruptly asked.
"All kinds of things," admitted the young man. "I wouldn't dare to
repeat some of them." Under the thoughtful regard of her red-brown eyes
his manner changed. "My sister calls me Laurie," he added soberly.
"May I?"
"By all means, if you'll promise _not_ to be a sister to me."
"Then--Laurie--"
"I like that," he interrupted.
"So do I. Laurie--I--I'm going to tell you something."
He waited, watching her; and under the renewed friendliness of his black
eyes she stopped and flushed, her own eyes dropping before his. As if to
gain time she changed her position in the chair where she sat, and
leaned forward, an elbow on its arm, her chin in one hand, her gaze on
the fire. His perception sharpened to the knowledge that something
important was coming, and that it was something she was afraid to tell.
She had keyed herself up to it, but the slightest false move on his part
might check the revelation. Therefore, though every impulse in him
responded to her first intimate use of his name, he dropped negligently
into the chair facing hers, tenderly embraced his knees with both arms,
and answered with just the right accent of casual interest and
interrogation.
"Yes?" he said.
"Please smoke." Again she was playing for time. "And--and don't look at
me," she added, almost harshly. "I--I think I can get it out better if
you don't."
His answer was to swing his chair around beside hers, facing the blazing
logs, and to take out his case and light a cigarette.
"I'm going to tell you everything," she said in a low tone.
"I'm glad of that."
"I'm going to do it," she went on slowly, "for two reasons. The first is
that--that you've lost faith in me."
This brought his eyes around to hers in a quick glance. "You're wrong
about that."
She shook her head. "Oh, no, I'm not. You showed it almost from the
moment you came, and there was an instant when you thought that my
suggestion to wait till dark to get away meant a--a sort of ambush."
He made no reply to this, and she said urgently, "Didn't you? Come, now.
Confess."
He reflected for a moment.
"The idea did cross my mind," he admitted, at last. "But it didn't
linger. For one reason, it was impossible to reconcile it with Shaw's
desire to keep me out of the way. That, and this, are hard to
understand. But no harder to understand," he went on, "than that you
should willingly come here and yet send for me, and then quite obviously
delay our leaving after I get here."
Again her eyes dropped before his brilliant, steady glance.
"I know," she muttered, almost inaudibly. "It's all--horrible. It's
infinitely worse than you suspect. And that's why I'm going to tell you
the truth, big as the cost may be to me."
"Wait a minute," he interrupted. "Let's get this straight. You're
telling me, aren't you, that any revelation you make now will react on
you. Is that it?"
"Yes."
"You will be the chief sufferer by it?"
"Yes."
"Will it help you any to have me understand? Will it straighten out the
trouble you're in?"
She considered her answer.
"The only help it will give me will be to know that you do understand,"
she said at last; "to know that--that--you're not suspecting things
about me."
"And it will make things hard for you, otherwise, to have me know?" he
persisted.
"Yes." This time her answer was prompt. "It will end everything I am
trying to do, and destroy what I have already done."
Laurie threw his half-burned cigarette into the fire, as if to lend
greater emphasis to his next words.
"That settles it," he announced. "I won't listen to you."
She turned to look at him.
"But you must," she faltered. "I'm all ready to tell you. I've been
working myself up to it ever since you came."
"I know. I've watched the process, and I won't have another word." He
lit a second cigarette, drew in a mouthful of smoke, and sent it forth
again in a series of widening rings. "Your conversation is extremely
uninteresting," he explained; "and look at the setting we've got for
something romantic and worth while. This cozy room, this roaring
fire,"--he interrupted himself to glance through the nearest window--"a
ripping old snow-storm outside, that's getting worse every minute, and
the exhilarating sense that though we're prisoners, we've already taken
two perfectly good prisoners of our own; what more could one ask to make
an afternoon in the country really pleasant?"
He stopped, for she was crying again, and the sight, which had taxed his
strength an hour earlier, overtaxed it now. She overwhelmed him like a
breaker. He rose, and going close to her, knelt beside her chair.
"Doris," he begged, brokenly. "Don't, don't cry! I can't tell you how it
makes me feel. I--I can stand anything but that." He seized her hands
and tried to pull them away from her face. "Look at me," he urged. "I've
got all sorts of things to say to you, but I won't say them now. This
isn't the time or the place. But one thing, at least, I want you to
know. I _do_ trust you. I trust you absolutely. And whatever happens,
whatever all this incredible tangle may mean, I shall always trust you."
She wiped her eyes and looked into his, more serious in that moment than
she had ever seen them.
"I will stop," she promised, with a little catch in her voice. "But
please don't think I'm a hysterical fool. I'm not crying because I'm
frightened, but because--because--Laurie, you're so splendid!"
For a moment his hands tightened almost convulsively on hers. In the
next instant he rose to his feet, walked to the fireplace, and with an
arm on the mantel, stood partly turned away from her, looking into the
fire. He dared not look at her. In that moment he was passionately
calling on the new self-control which had been born during the past
year; and, at his call, it again awoke in him, ready for its work. This,
he had just truly said to Doris, was not the time nor the place to tell
her what was in his heart. Only a cad would take advantage of such an
opportunity. He had said enough, perhaps too much. He drew a deep breath
and was himself.
"I told you you'd find all sorts of unexpected virtues in me," he
lightly announced; and it was the familiar Laurie who smiled down at
her. "There are dozens more you don't dream of. I'll reveal them to you
guardedly. They're rather overwhelming."
She smiled vaguely at his chatter, but it was plain that she was
following her own thoughts.
"The most wonderful thing about you," she said, "is that through this
whole experience, you've never, for one single instant, been 'heroic.'
You're not the kind to 'emote'!"
"Great Scott!" gasped Laurie, startled. "I should hope not!"
He could look at her now, and he did, his heart filled with the
satisfying beauty of her. She was still leaning forward a little in the
low chair, with her hands unconventionally clasped around one knee, and
her eyes staring into the fire. A painter, he reflected, would go mad
over the picture she made; and why not? He himself was going mad over
it, was even a little light-headed.
She wore again the gown she had worn the first day he saw her, and the
memory of that poignant hour intensified the emotion of this one. Taking
her in, from the superb masses of hair on her small head to the
glittering buckles on her low house-shoes, Laurie knew at last that
whoever and whatever this girl might be, she was the one whose
companionship through life his hungry heart demanded. He loved her. He
would trust her, blindly if he must, but whatever happened fully and for
all time.
There had been a long silence after his last words, but when she spoke
it was as if there had been no interval between his chatter and her
response.
"Almost any other man would have been 'heroic,'" she went on. "Almost
any other man would have been excited and emotional at times, and then
would have been exacting and difficult and rebellious over all the
mystery, and the fact that I couldn't explain. I've set that pace
myself," she confessed. "I haven't always been able to take things
quietly and--and philosophically. The wonderful thing about you is that
you've never been overwhelmed by any situation we've been in together.
You've never even seemed to take them very seriously. And yet, when it
came to a 'show-down,' as Shaw says, you've been right there, always."
He made no answer to this. His mind was caught and held by the phrase
"as Shaw says." So she and Shaw had talked him over! He recalled the
silver-framed photograph of her on Shaw's mantel, the photograph whose
presence had made him see red; and a queer little chill went down his
spine at this reminder of their strange and unexplained association.
Then, resolutely, he again summoned his will and his faith, and became
conscious that she was still speaking.
"You're the kind," she said, "that in the French Revolution, if you had
been a victim of it, would have gone to the guillotine with a smile and
a jest, and would have seen in the experience only a new adventure."
At that, he shook his head.
"I don't know," he said slowly, and with the seriousness he had shown
her once or twice before. "Death is a rather important thing. I've been
thinking about it a good deal lately."
"_You_ have!" In her astonishment, she straightened in her chair. "Why?"
"Well," he hesitated, "I haven't spoken about it much, but--the truth
is, I'm taking the European war more seriously than I have seemed to. I
think America will swing into the fight in a month or two more; I really
don't see how we can keep out any longer. And I've made up my mind to
volunteer as soon as we declare war."
"Oh, Laurie!"
That was all she said, but it was enough. Again he turned away from her
and looked into the fire.
"I want to talk to you about it sometime," he went on. "Not now, of
course. I'm going in for the aviation end. That's my game."
"Yes, it would be," she corroborated, almost inaudibly.
"I've been thinking about it a lot," he repeated. There was an intense,
unexpected relief in this confidence, which he had made to no one else
but Bangs, and to him in only a casual phrase or two. "That's one reason
why it has been hard for me to get down to work on a new play, as Bangs
and Epstein have been hounding me to do. I was afraid I couldn't keep
my mind on it. All I can think of, besides you--" he hesitated, then
went on rather self-consciously--"are those fellows over there and the
tremendous job they're doing. I want to help. I'm going to help. But I'm
not going into it with any illusions about military bands and pretty
uniforms and grand-stand plays. It's the biggest job in the world
to-day, and it's got to be done. But what I see in it in the meantime
are blood and filth and stench and suffering and horror and a limitless,
stoical endurance. And--well, I know I'm going. But I can't quite see
myself coming home."
Save for his revelation on the morning they met, this was the longest
personal confidence Laurence Devon had ever made to another human being
except his sister Barbara. At its end, as she could not speak, he
watched her for a moment in silence, already half regretting what he had
said. Then she rose with a fiercely abrupt movement, and going to the
window stood looking at the storm. He followed her and stood beside her.
"Laurie," she said suddenly.
"Yes?"
"I can't stand it."
"Can't stand it?"
He repeated her words almost absently. His eyes were on a stocky figure
moving among the trees below. It kept in constant motion and, he
observed with pleasure, it occasionally stamped its feet and swung its
arms as if suffering from the cold.
"I can't stand this situation."
"Then we must clear it up for you." He spoke reassuringly, his eyes
still on the active figure. "Is that one of our keepers, down there?"
She nodded.
"He has instructions to watch the front entrance and windows. There's
another man watching the rear."
"He didn't watch very closely," he reminded her. "See how easily I got
in." He studied the moving figure. "Doris," he said slowly, "I'd bet a
thousand dollars against one doughnut that if I walked out of the house
and up to that fellow, he'd run like a rabbit. I don't know why I think
so, but I do."
She shook her head.
"Oh, no, he wouldn't!"
"What makes you think he wouldn't?"
"Because I heard Shaw give him his orders for just that contingency."
Her companion took this in silence.
"May I ask what they were?" he said at last.
"No, I can't tell you."
"I hope he hasn't a nice little bottle of chloroform in his overcoat
pocket, or vitriol," murmured Laurie, reflectively. "By the way," he
turned to her with quickened interest, "something tells me it's long
after lunch-time. Is there any reason why we shouldn't eat?"
She smiled.
"None whatever. The ice-box contains all the things a well regulated
ice-box is supposed to hold. I overheard Shaw and his secretary
discussing their supplies."
"Good! Then we'll release Mother Fagin long enough to let her cook some
of them."
He strolled to the bedroom door. On a chair facing it the woman sat and
gazed at him with her fierce eyes.
"Would you like a little exercise?" he politely inquired. There was no
change of expression in the hostile face. "Because if you would," he
went on, "and if you'll give me your word not to cry out, give any kind
of alarm or signal, or start anything whatever, I'll take that bandage
off your mouth, and let you cook lunch for us and for yourself."
The fierce eyes set, then wavered. He waited patiently. At last the head
nodded, and he expeditiously untied the bandage.
"The very best you've got, please," he instructed. "And I _hope_ you can
cook. If you can't, I'll have to do it myself. I'm rather gifted that
way."
"I can cook," avowed the old woman, sullenly.
"Good work! Then go on your joyous way. But if you feel an impulse to
invite into your kitchen any of the gentlemen out in the grounds, or to
release the secretary, restrain it. They wouldn't like it in here. They
wouldn't like it at all."
A strange grimace twisted the woman's sardonic features. He interpreted
it rightly.
"I'm glad you agree with me," he said. "Now, brook-trout, please, and
broiled chickens, and early strawberries and clotted cream."
She looked at him with a return of the stoic expression that was her
habitual one.
"We ain't got any of those things," she declared.
"We ain't?" Her guest was pained. "What have we got?"
"We got ham and eggs and lettuce and milk and coffee and squash pie."
He sighed.
"They will do," he said resignedly. "Do you think you could have them
ready in five minutes?"
The luncheon was a cheerful meal, for Laurie made it so. When it was
finished he went to the kitchen window, opened it, and carefully
arranged several hot ham sandwiches in a row.
"For the birdies," he explained. "For the cold little birdies out in the
grounds."
He even chirped invitingly to the "birdies," but these latter,
throughout his visit, showed a coy reluctance to approach the house. He
caught another odd grimace on the features of the old woman, who was
now washing the dishes.
"We won't confine you to any one room this afternoon," he told her.
"Wander where your heart leads you. But remember, you're on parole. Like
ourselves, you must forego all communication with the glad outer world.
And leave the secretary where he is, unless you want him hurt."
"This storm will be a good thing for us," he mentioned to Doris, when
they had returned to the up-stairs sitting-room. "It will be dark soon
after four, and the snow will cover our footsteps. But I'm inclined to
think," he added, reflectively, "that before we start I'd better go out
and truss up those two birds in the grounds."
She showed an immediate apprehension.
"No, no! you mustn't think of that!" she cried. "Promise me you won't."
He shrugged his shoulders.
"As you wish, of course. But if they interfere when we're getting
started, surely you'll let me rock them to sleep, won't you?"
"I--I don't know. Something may happen! Oh, I wish you hadn't come!" She
was clearly in a panic, a genuine one. It seemed equally clear that her
nerves, under the recent strain put upon them, were in a bad way. All
this was Shaw's work, and as he realized it Laurie's expression changed
so suddenly that the girl cried out: "What is it? What's the matter?"
He answered, still under the influence of the feeling that had shaken
him.
"I was just thinking of our friend Bertie and of a little bill he's
running up against the future. Sooner or later, and I rather think it
will be sooner, Bertie's going to pay that bill."
She did not move, but gave him a look that made him thoughtful. It was
an odd, sidelong look, frightened, yet watchful. He remembered that once
or twice before she had given him such a look. More than anything else
that had happened, this glance chilled him. It was not thus that the
woman he loved should look at him.
Suddenly he heard her gasp, and the next instant the silence of the room
was broken by another voice, a voice of concentrated rage with a snarl
running through it.
"So you're here, are you?" it jerked. "By God, I'm sick of you and of
your damned interference!"
He turned. Shaw was standing just inside the door. But he was not the
sleek, familiar, torpid figure of recent encounter. He seemed mad clean
through, fighting mad. His jaws were set; his sleek head and heavy
shoulders were thrust forward as if he were ready to spring, and his
protuberant eyes had lost their haze and held a new and unpleasant
light.
But, angry though he appeared, Herbert Ransome Shaw was taking no
chances in this encounter with his undesired guest. Behind him shone the
now smug countenance of the blond secretary, and on each side he was
flanked by another man. Powerful fellows these two seemed, evidently
Italian laborers, gazing at the scene uncomprehendingly, but ready for
any work their master set them. In stupefaction, Laurie stared at the
tableau, while eight eyes unwinkingly stared back at him. Then he
nodded.
"Well, Bertie," he said pleasantly, "you're outdoing even yourself in
the size of this delegation. Four to one. Quite some odds." His voice
changed. "You contemptible coward! Why don't you take me on alone? Have
you got your chloroform cone?"
The complexion of Shaw, red with cold, darkened to an apoplectic purple.
"You'll soon find out what we've got," he barked, "and what's coming to
you. Now, are you going to put up a fight against four, or will you go
quietly?"
"I think," said Laurie thoughtfully, "I'd rather go quietly. But just
where is it I'm going?"
"You'll soon know." Shaw was carrying a coil of rope, light but strong,
and now he tossed it to one of the Italians.
"Tie him up," he curtly ordered.
"Oh, no," said Laurie, backing a step. "Tut, tut! I wouldn't advise
that. I really wouldn't. It would be one of those rash acts you read
about."
Something in his voice checked the forward stride of the Italian with
the rope. He hesitated, glancing at Shaw. With a gesture, the latter
ordered the two men through the door.
"Wait just outside," he directed. He turned to Laurie. "Out you go!" he
ordered brusquely.
Laurie hesitated, glancing at Doris, but he could not meet her eye. At
the window, with her back to the room, she stared out at the storm. Even
in that moment her attitude stunned him. Also, he felt an unconquerable
aversion to anything in the nature of a struggle before her. Perhaps,
once outside the room, he could take on those ruffians, together or in
turn.
Without another word, he crossed the threshold into the hall. Before him
hurried the two Italians. Behind him crowded Shaw and the secretary. He
walked forward perhaps six strides. Then, as the side railing of the
stairway rose beside him, he saw his opportunity. He struck out right
and left with all his strength, flooring one of the Italians and
sending the second helpless against the wall. In the next instant he had
leaped over the slender rail of the stairway, landed half-way down the
stairs, and made a jump for the front door.
As he had expected, the door was locked. Shaw, if he had entered that
way, had not been too hurried to attend to this little detail. Laurie
had just time to brace his back against it when the four men were upon
him.
The ten minutes that followed were among the most interesting of young
Devon's life. He had always liked a good fight, and this episode in the
great dim hall brought out all that was bloodthirsty and primitive in
him. For in the room above was Doris, and these men, whoever they were,
stood in the way of her freedom and happiness.
If he could have taken them on one by one he could have snapped their
necks in turn, and he would have done so without compunction. As it was,
with four leaping at him simultaneously, he called on all his reserve
strength, his skill in boxing, and the strategy of his foot-ball days.
His first blow sent the blond secretary to the floor, where he lay
motionless. After that it was hard to distinguish where blows fell. What
Devon wanted and was striving to reach was the throat of Shaw, but the
slippery thing eluded him.
He fought on with hands and feet, even drawing, against these odds, on
the _savate_ he had learned in Paris. Blood flowed from his nose, his
ear and his lip. Shaw's face was bleeding, too, and soon one of the
Italians had joined the meek young secretary in his slumbers on the
floor. Then Laurie felt his head agonizingly twisted backward, heard the
creak of a rusty bolt, and, in the next instant, was hurled headlong
through the suddenly opened door, to the snow-covered veranda.
As he pulled himself up, crouching for a return spring, Shaw, disheveled
and breathless on the threshold, jerkily addressed him.
"Try it again if you like, you young devil," he panted, "but remember
one thing: the next time you won't get off so easily."
The door slammed, and again the bolt shot into place. Laurie listened.
No sound whatever came from the inner hall. The old house was again
apparently dead, after its moments of fierce life. He slowly descended
the steps, and, bracing himself against the nearest tree, stared at the
house, still gasping from the effects of the struggle.
He was out of it, but he had left Doris behind. The fact sickened him.
So did the ignominy of his departure. He was not even to be followed.
His absence was all the gang desired. His impulse was to force the door
and again face the four of them. But he realized that he could
accomplish nothing against such odds, and certainly, as a prisoner in
the house, trussed up with Shaw's infernal rope, he would be of no use
to either Doris or himself. He decided to return to the garage and get
his car and the weapon he had left there. Then, if the four still wanted
to fight, he would show them something that might take the spirit out of
them.
Having arrived at this sane conclusion, he turned away from the silent
house, and, hatless and coatless as he was, hurriedly made his way
through the heavy snow-drifts toward the public road.