LAURIE MAKES A CONFESSION
The lights of Long Island City greeted them with reassuring winks
through the snow. Seeing these, Doris drew a deep breath. She had let
her nerves run away with her, she subconsciously felt. Now, rising from
the depths of her panic to a realization of contact with a living world,
as they crossed the bridge to Manhattan, seeing hurrying men and women
about her, hearing the blasts of motor horns and the voices of motor
drivers, she fiercely assured herself that she had been an hysterical
fool.
In the first moments of reaction she even experienced a sense of
personal injury and almost of resentment toward her companion. He had
put her through the most horrible half-hour of her life. It seemed that
no service he had rendered could compensate her for such suffering. On
the other hand, he _had_ brought her safely back to New York, as he had
promised to do. Surely, it was not for her to cavil at the manner in
which he had done it. Something, of course, had happened, probably a
racking fight between the two men. Laurie was exhausted, and was showing
it; that was all.
With their arrival at her studio, his manner did not change. He assisted
her from the car, punctiliously escorted her to the elevator, and left
her there.
"I have some telephoning to do," he explained. "I shall not leave the
building, and I expect to be with you again in about fifteen minutes.
With your permission, I am asking my two partners to meet me in your
studio, Rodney Bangs and Jacob Epstein. What I have to tell must be told
to all three of you, and"--his voice caught in a queer fashion--"it is a
thing I don't want to tell more than once. I think I can get them right
away. They'll probably be in their rooms, dressing for dinner. May they
come here?"
"Of course."
Her panic was returning. His appearance in the lighted hall was nothing
short of terrifying, and not the least uncanny feature was his own utter
unconsciousness of or indifference to it.
"Thanks. Then I'll wait for them down here, and bring them up to your
studio when they come."
He left her with that, and Henry, the night elevator man, who went on
duty at six o'clock, indifferently swung the lever and started his car
upward.
In the studio, with her door shut against the world, Doris again
resolutely took herself and her nerves in hand. She summoned endless
explanations of Laurie's manner and appearance, explanations which,
however, turn and twist them as she would, always left something
unexplained.
There was, she realized, a strong probability that he had forced the
truth from Shaw. But even the truth would not make Laurie look and act
like that. Or would it? She tried to believe it would. Anything would be
better than the thing she feared. She set her teeth; then, springing
from the chair into which she had dropped, she turned on the studio
lights and busied herself with preparations for her visitors. She simply
dared not let her thoughts run on.
Five minutes passed--ten--fifteen--twenty. Save during the half-hour of
that return journey from Sea Cliff, she had never known such dragging,
horror-filled moments. A dozen times she fancied she heard the elevator
stop at her floor, and the sound of voices and footsteps approach. A
dozen times she went to her windows and wildly gazed out on the storm.
As she stared, she prayed. It was the same prayer, over and over.
"Dear God, please don't let it be that way!" The aspiration was the
nearest she dared come to putting into words the terror that shook her
heart.
The second fifteen minutes were almost up when she really heard the
elevator stop. Quick footsteps approached her door, but there were no
voices. The three men, if they were coming, were coming in utter
silence. Before they had time to rap she had opened the door and stood
back to let them enter. As they passed her she looked into their faces,
and as she looked the familiar sense of panic, now immeasurably
intensified, again seized her in its grip.
Laurie, usually the most punctilious of men, made on this occasion an
omission extraordinary for him. He did not present his partners to their
hostess. But not one of the three noticed that omission. Rodney Bangs,
pale but carrying himself with a palpable effort at control, shouldered
his way into the room in his characteristic fashion, as if he were
meeting and hurling back a foot-ball rush. Epstein, breathless and
obviously greatly excited, actually stumbled over the threshold in his
unseeing haste. Laurie, slowly following the two, alone wore some
resemblance to a normal manner. He was very serious but quite calm.
He took off his coat, methodically folded it, and laid it on a near-by
chair. To the brain back of each of the three pairs of eyes watching
him, the same thought came. He had something appalling to tell them,
and, cool as he seemed, he dared not tell it. He was playing for time.
The strain of even the brief delay was too much for Epstein's
endurance. High-strung, his nerves on edge, almost before Laurie had
turned he sputtered forth questions like bullets from a machine-gun.
"Vell! vell!" he demanded, "vot's it all about? Vot's it mean? Over the
telephone you say you got to see us this minute. You say you got into
trouble, big trouble. Vell, vot trouble? Vot is it?"
Laurie looked at him, and something in the look almost spiked the big
gun. But Epstein was a man of action, and, notwithstanding his
nervousness, a man of some nerve. The expression in the boy's black eyes
had stunned him, but with only an instant's hesitation he finished what
he had meant to say.
"I guess it ain't nothing ve can't fix up," he jerked out, trying to
speak with his usual assurance. "I guess ve fix it up all right."
Laurie shook his head. None of the thirty minutes he had spent on the
ground floor had been devoted to improving his appearance. His black
curly hair, usually as shining as satin, was rough, matted, dirty.
Across his left cheek the sinister cut still ran, raw, angry-looking,
freshly irritated by the ice-laden wind.
"Sit down," he said, wearily. All the life had gone out of his voice. It
had an uncanny effect of monotony, as if pitched on two flat notes. To
those three, who knew so well the rich beauty of his speaking tones,
this change in them was almost more alarming than the change in his
looks.
They sat down, as he had directed, but not an eye in the room moved from
his face. Epstein, still wearing his hat and heavy coat, had dropped
into the big chair by the reading-lamp and was nervously gnawing his
under lip. Bangs had mechanically tossed his hat toward a corner as he
came in. He took a chair as mechanically, and sat very still, his back
to the window, his eyes trying vainly to meet his friend's. Doris had
moved to the upper corner of the couch, where she crouched, elbows on
knees, chin on hands, staring at a spot on the floor. Though in the
group, she seemed alone, and felt alone.
Walking over to the mantel, Laurie rested an elbow heavily upon it, and
for the first time looked squarely from one to the other of his friends.
As he looked, he tried to speak. They saw the effort and its failure,
and understood both. With a gesture of hopelessness, he turned his back
toward them, and stood with sagging muscles and eyes fixed on the empty
grate. Epstein's nerves snapped.
"For God's sake, Devon," he begged, "cut out the vaits! Tell us vot you
got on your chest, and tell it quick."
Laurie turned and once more met his eyes. Under the look Epstein's
oblique eyes shifted.
"I'm going to," Laurie said quietly and still in those new, flat tones.
"That's why I've brought you here. But--it's a hard job. You see,"--his
voice again lost its steadiness--"I've got to hurt you--all of
you--most awfully. And--and that's the hardest part of this business for
me."
Doris, now staring up at him, told herself that she could not endure
another moment of this tension. She dared not glance at either of the
others, but she heard Epstein's heavy breathing and the creak of Rodney
Bangs's chair as he suddenly changed his position. Again it was Epstein
who spoke, his voice rising on a shriller note.
"Vell! vell! Get it out! I s'pose you done something. Vot you done?"
For the first time Laurie's eyes met those of Doris. The look was so
charged with meaning that she sat up under it as if she had received a
shock. Yet she was not sure she understood it. Did he want her to help
him? She did not know. She only knew now that the thing she had feared
was here, and that if she did not speak out something in her head would
snap.
"He killed Herbert Shaw," she almost whispered.
For a long moment there was utter silence in the room, through which the
words just spoken seemed to scurry like living things, anxious to be out
and away. Laurie, his eyes on the girl, showed no change in his
position, though a spasm crossed his face. Epstein, putting up one fat
hand, feebly beat the air with it as if trying to push back something
that was approaching him, something intangible but terrible. Bangs alone
seemed at last to have taken in the full meaning of the curt
announcement. As if it had galvanized him into movement, he sprang to
his feet and, head down, charged the situation.
"What the devil is she talking about?" he cried out. "Laurie! What does
she mean?"
"She told you." Laurie spoke as quietly as before, but without looking
up.
"You--mean--it's--true?"
Rodney still spoke in a loud, aggressive voice, as if trying to awaken
himself and the others from a nightmare.
"Take it in," muttered Laurie. "Pull yourselves up to it. I had to."
An uncontrollable shudder ran over him. As if his nerve had suddenly
given way, he dropped his head on his bent arm. For another interval
Bangs stood staring at him in a stupefaction through which a slow tremor
ran.
"I--I _can't_ take it in," he stammered at last.
"I know. That's the way I felt."
Laurie spoke without raising his head. Bangs, watching him, saw him
shudder again, saw that his legs were giving under him, and that he was
literally holding to the mantel for support. The sight steadied his own
nerves. He pushed his chair forward, and with an arm across the other's
shoulder, forced him down into it.
"Then, in God's name, why are we wasting time here?" he suddenly
demanded. "Your car's outside. I'll drive you--anywhere. We'll get out
of the country. We'll travel at night and lie low in the daytime. Pull
yourself together, old man." Urgently, he grasped the other's shoulder.
"We've got things to do."
Laurie shook his head. He tried to smile. There was something horrible
in the resulting grimace of his twisted mouth.
"There were only two things to do," he said doggedly. "One was to tell
you three. I've done that. The other was to tell the district attorney.
I've done that, too."
Bangs recoiled, as if from a physical blow. Epstein, who had slightly
roused himself at the prospect of action, sank back into a stunned,
goggling silence.
"You've told him!" gasped Rodney, when he could speak.
"Yes." Laurie was pulling himself together. "We're friends, you know,
Perkins and I," he went on, more naturally. "I've seen a good deal of
him lately. He will make it as easy as he can. He has taken my parole.
I've got--till morning." He let them take that in. Then, very simply, he
added, "I have promised to be in my rooms at eight o'clock."
Under this, like a tree-trunk that goes down with the final stroke of
the ax, Rodney Bangs collapsed.
"My God!" he muttered. "My--God!" He fell into the nearest chair and sat
there, his head in his shaking hands.
As if the collapse of his friend were a call to his own strength, Laurie
suddenly sat up and took himself in hand.
"Now, listen," he said. "Let's take this sensibly. We've got to thresh
out the situation, and here's our last chance. I want to make one thing
clear. Shaw was pure vermin. There's no place for his sort in a decent
world, and I have no more regret over--over exterminating him than I
would have over killing a snake. Later, Miss Mayo will tell you why."
Under the effect of the clear, dispassionate voice, almost natural
again, Epstein began to revive.
"It was self-defense," he croaked, eagerly. He caught at the idea as if
it were a life-line, and obviously began to drag himself out of a pit
with its help. "It was self-defense," he repeated. "You vas fighting, I
s'pose. That lets you out."
"No," Laurie dully explained, "he wasn't armed. I thought he was. I
thought he was drawing some weapon. He had used chloroform on me once
before. I was mistaken. But no jury will believe that, of course."
His voice changed and flatted again. His young figure seemed to give in
the chair, as if its muscles sagged under a new burden. For a moment he
sat silent.
"We may as well face all the facts," he went on, at last. "The one thing
I won't endure is the horror of a trial."
"But you'll get off," choked Epstein. "It's self-defense--it's--it's--"
"Or a brain storm, or temporary insanity!" Laurie interrupted. "No, old
chap, that isn't good enough. No padded cell for me! And I'm not going
to have my name dragged through the courts, and the case figuring in the
newspapers for months. I've got a reason I think you will all admit is a
good one." Again his voice changed. "That would break my sister's
heart," he ended brokenly.
At the words Bangs uttered an odd sound, half a gasp and half a groan.
Epstein, again in his pit of wretchedness, caught it.
"Now you see the job ve done!" he muttered. "Now you see how ve looked
after him, like she told us to!"
Bangs paid no attention to him.
"What are you going to do?" he heavily asked Laurie.
"I'll tell you, on one condition--that you give me your word, all three
of you, not to try in any way to interfere or to prevent it. You
couldn't, anyway, so don't make the blunder of trying. You know what I'm
up against. There's only one way out."
He looked at them in turn. Doris and Epstein merely stared back, with
the effect of not taking in what he was saying. But Bangs recoiled.
"No, by God!" he cried. "No! No!"
Laurie went on as if he had not spoken.
"I promised Perkins to be in my rooms at eight o'clock to-morrow
morning," he muttered, and they had to strain their ears to catch the
words. "I did _not_ promise to be--alive."
This time it was Doris who gasped out something that none of them heard.
For a moment Laurie sat silent in his chair, watching her with a strange
intentness. Then, in turn, his black eyes went to the faces of Bangs and
Epstein. Huddled in the big chair he occupied, the manager sat looking
straight before him, his eyes set in agony, his jaw dropped. He had the
aspect of a man about to have a stroke. Bangs sat leaning forward,
staring at the floor. The remaining color had left his face. He appeared
to have wholly forgotten the presence of others in the room. He was
muttering something to himself, the same thing over and over and over:
"And it's all up to us. It's--all--up--to us."
For an interval which none of the three ever forgot, Laurie watched the
tableau. Then, rising briskly, he ostentatiously stretched himself, and
in loud, cheerful tones answered Rodney's steady babble.
"Yes, old chap, it's all up to you," he said. "So what do you think of
this as a climax for the play?"
Grinning down at his pal, he waited for a reply. It did not come.
Epstein was still unable to speak or move. Doris seemed to have heard
the words without taking them in. But at last Bangs rose slowly, groped
his way to his chum as if through a fog, and catching him by the
shoulders looked wildly into his eyes.
"You mean--you mean," he stuttered at last,
"that--that--this--was--all--a--hoax?"
"Of course it was," Laurie admitted, in his gayest voice. "It was the
climax of the hoax you have played on me. An hour ago Shaw confessed to
me how you three arranged this whole plot of Miss Mayo's adventure, so
that I should be kept out of mischief and should think I was having an
adventure myself. I thought a little excitement was due you in return.
How do you like my climax, anyhow? Pretty fair, I call it."
He stopped short. Rodney had loosened his grip on his shoulders and
stumbled to a chair. Now, his arm on its back and his head on his arm,
his body shook with the relentless convulsion of a complete nervous
collapse. Epstein had produced a handkerchief and was feebly wiping his
forehead. Doris seemed to have ceased to breathe. Laurie walked over to
her, took her hands, and drew them away from her face. Even yet, she
seemed not to understand.
"I'm sorry," he said, very gently. "I've given you three an awful jolt.
But I think you will all admit that there was something coming to you.
You've put me through a pretty bad week. I decided you could endure half
an hour of reprisal."
None of the three answered. None of the three could. But, in the
incandescent moments that followed, the face of Epstein brightened
slowly, like a moon emerging from black clouds. Bangs alone, who had
best borne the situation up till now, was unable to meet the reaction.
In the silence of the little studio he wept on, openly and gulpingly and
unrestrainedly, as he had not wept since he was a little boy.