HOW WE MADE AN UNCONVENTIONAL JOURNEY TO TOWN
Very carefully, and wondering the while in a listless fashion why I
should do so at all, I tore out the notice and put it carefully away in
my pocketbook. I had the explanation now; I understood it all--the
hidden ring at the end of the chain, and the shadow of which it was the
symbol, the mystery and disturbance of the house, the continual pretexts
to get rid of me, the effort to disguise any strangeness of appearance
in the life of the family. And I understood why it was true that I must
go away and utterly forget. And yet--was the explanation so perfect,
after all? Mechanically I pulled the paper out of the drawer, and
searched for the date. It was only three years back; but even that
length of time would have made Lady a mere child when she was married.
She could not be very far beyond twenty now, certainly not more than
twenty-two or three. And in any case, why should the marriage be
concealed and the husband retained as a member of the family,
masquerading as a brother? And how, after the ordinary announcement in
the press, could the marriage have become a secret at all? Then once
more the whispers and pointings of a score of abnormal circumstances,
uncertain, suggestive, indefinite, crowded in upon my understanding,
like the confusion of simultaneous voices. It was no use. I could not
imagine what it all meant, and for the moment I was too sick and weary
to wonder. The bare fact was more than enough; she was married and
beyond my reach, and I must go away.
I went through a pantomime of supper, making the discovery that my
appetite was supplemented by an unquenchable thirst and an immeasurable
desire for tobacco. After that I walked, read, made dull conversation
with casual acquaintances--anything to kill the interminable time, and
quiet for the moment that weary spirit of unrest which kept urging me to
useless thought and unprofitable action, to examine my trouble as one
irritates a trivial wound, to decide or do something where nothing was
to be decided or to be done. An inhabitant of the nearest comfortless
piazza chair contributed the only episode worth remembering.
"Say," he began, "do you remember that guinea that was here the other
day and started the argument with the old gent out in front? Well, what
did you make of that feller, anyway?"
"I don't know. He was drunk, I suppose, and got the wrong man."
"Well, now, you take it from me, there was more to it than that. Yes,
sir, there's a shady story around there somewhere. You hear what I say."
"Is the man still around here?" I asked.
"Well, not now, he ain't. That's what I'm telling you. He hung about
town for two or three days, I guess. Maybe he got after the old man some
more. He was in here after a drink once, and the barkeep threw him out.
He's a good mixer, Harry is, men or drinks; but he don't like guineas.
Well, I don't go much on them foreigners, myself."
"Where does your shady story come in?"
"Well, now, that's just it. You listen. I was coming along the street
the other night, and I passed this guinea standing under a street lamp,
talking to that Reid feller that lives up to Tabors'. Doc Reid, you know
whom I mean? Well, I was going past and I heard Reid say: 'Now, you
understand what you got to do,' he says, 'keep quiet and keep away. The
minute you show up here again or give any trouble,' he says, 'the money
stops. You understand that?' he says. And you can call me a liar if you
like, but I swear I saw him slip the guinea a roll. Now, what do you
know about that?"
I put him off as well as I could. Here was another point in the
labyrinth, but I had no energy to think about it. I got away from the
gossip at last only by taking refuge in my room. And the rest of the
evening was a dreary nightmare of unreality which only expanded without
changing when I tried to sleep. I tossed about endlessly, thinking
thoughts that were not thoughts, dreaming evil dreams even while I
watched the swollen shadows about the room and listened to the unmeaning
voices and footsteps in the hallways. It seemed so much a part of this
when some one pounded on my door and told me that I was wanted on the
telephone, that it was a troublesome task to make me understand.
I pulled on a sweater and ran down-stairs, wondering who could have
called me up at one in the morning. I was not left long in doubt.
"Hello! This Mr. Crosby? Hello! Hello there! Mr. Crosby? Hello!"
"Yes!" I said savagely, "what is it?"
"Doctor Reid talking. Can you--what? All right--hold the line a second."
Then Lady's voice: "Mr. Crosby? Listen: I have to go to New York in the
machine now, right away. Can you come with me?"
"Can I--? Why, of course; but why doesn't--why don't you take some one
else?"
"No one else can go. If you're not willing--"
"Of course I'm willing," I said, "if I can be of use."
"I knew you would. The car will be there for you in five minutes,
or--wait: there's no need of waking up the whole inn. Walk up to the
first street corner this way, and the car will meet you there."
Five minutes later I was standing on the corner, shivering with
interrupted sleep, while four flaming yellow eyes swung toward me down
the hill. It was the same big limousine I had noticed the night before.
I climbed in beside the chauffeur. With a clash and a grinding lurch the
car swung around and pointed up the hill again, toward the Tabors'.
There was power and to spare, but I noticed that one cylinder was
missing now and again.
"Your ignition isn't very steady," I said to the chauffeur. "What is
it--valves?"
He turned and looked at me with supercilious respect. "Poor petrol, sir.
I fancy she'll run well enough, sir."
Lady came running out, veiled and muffled. "Come inside," she said, as I
sprang down to help her in, "I'd rather have you with me." The door
slammed, and we were off with a jerk that threw us back against the deep
leather cushions. For a few moments we flashed under lamps and sidled
around corners to an accompaniment of growling brakes and squeaking
springs; then we ran out upon the smooth macadam of the highway, and
settled into our speed with a steady purr. Lady sat up in her corner and
patted at her veil.
"It was very good of you to come," she said, "but I knew we could count
on you. Here, take this thing--I don't want it."
It was a very serviceable revolver, cold and smooth as I slipped it out
of its leather holster. I made sure that it was ready for use.
"It's perfectly ridiculous taking it along," she added. "We're not going
on any desperate midnight errand. The mere time of night is the only
thing that's even unconventional. But Walter wouldn't let me come
without it."
I asked no questions. By this time I had learned better; and besides I
did not greatly care what we were doing, or what was to happen next. I
would be of service if I could, that was all. Since it was to be
hopelessly, it might as well be blindly, too; and the sense of adventure
was gone out of me. The car swayed and sidled gently to the irregular
mutter of the engine and the drowsy whining of the gears. We might
almost have been motionless, except when the flare of some passing light
swept across us, filling with an uncanny and sudden illumination the
polished interior of the limousine, and showing me as by the glimpse of
a lightning-flash the veiled and silent figure by my side. Here was
romance beyond my wildest imagination: night, and hurry and mysterious
need, the swift rush onward through the warm gloom, the womanhood of the
breathing shadow so close to me, whose thought I could not know, whose
anxiety I could not seek to fathom, whose trouble I could only help by
doing ignorantly what she asked of me and then leaving her in other
hands. And all this that should have stirred me to chivalry seemed only
dull and weary, a thankless task. The lines of _The Last Ride Together_
began running in my mind, and I turned them over and over, trying
vaguely to fill in forgotten phrases, until the rocking of the car
reminded me where I was, and the sardonic incongruity of it jarred me
back to earth. It was always like that: the deed a parody of the dream,
the details of actual happenings making mouths at the truth that lay
behind them, life sneering at itself. Here were two lovers hurrying
together through the night, held silent by a secret and bound by a blind
trust. And they were riding through Westchester in a motor-car, and the
thought of a fussy medical man with a bass voice was the naked sword
which lay between them.
A trolley car, looking like a huge and luminous caterpillar, hung
alongside us for a moment, then fell behind. Our engine had not been
running perfectly from the first; and now as we jolted over a section of
newly mended road and began to climb a bumpy hill, the trouble suddenly
became so much worse that it looked as though it meant delay. Impure
gasolene does not make one cylinder miss fire regularly for many
revolutions and then explode once or twice with a croupy grunt.
"There's something the matter with the car," said Lady nervously. "I
hope we're not going to break down. We mustn't break down."
"The chauffeur says it's the gasolene," I answered, "but I don't believe
it. It's ignition by the sound."
"Do you know anything about a car?"
"A little," I said; and as we drew up at the side of the road, I was out
and in front of the machine almost before the chauffeur had lumbered
from his seat. He got out his electric lamp, and began tinkering with
the carburetor.
"Hold on a minute," I said. "If you ball up that adjustment, it may take
half an hour to get it right again. Are you sure it isn't ignition?"
"Ignition's all right, sir," he grunted; "she's getting too much gas."
"Then why are three of your cylinders all right and one all wrong?" I
snapped. "Come around here with that lamp."
Once the bonnet was open it was not hard to find the trouble. The nut
which held one of the wires to its connection on the magneto had dropped
off, and the end of the wire was hanging loose, connecting only when the
vibration of the car swung it against the binding-post. The chauffeur
did not appear grieved.
"We're dished," he remarked cheerfully. "I've no other nut like that."
"It's probably in the underpan," I retorted. We got the pan off, and
after some search in the puddle of grimy grease, were fortunate enough
to find it. A moment later we were throbbing steadily on our way.
"That man of yours isn't exactly delighted with his work," I commented.
"I don't blame him. He isn't supposed to be waked up for forty-mile
trips in the middle of the night, and he's English and worships his
habits. Are we all right now?"
"Yes; it wasn't anything. We're nearly there now; there's Woodlawn."
She did not speak again for some time, and I began to wonder if I had
again trodden upon trouble. I seemed fated to do so at every turn. But
presently she broke in with a comfortable triviality.
"Look here, why don't you smoke if you want to? I forgot all about it,
but of course you may. I don't mind."
I had not noticed it before, but the cigarette was exactly what I
wanted. The bodily comfort balanced things again, and made me feel at
home with the situation. We ran down Riverside Drive, the dark bulk of
the city on our left, and on our right the glimmering breadth of the
Hudson, streaked with yellow gleams. Thence we crossed over and
continued on down Fifth Avenue, between blank houses and unnatural
lights, the occasional clack of hoofs and hollow growl of wheels
accentuating the unwonted stillness. I had somehow taken it for granted
that we were going for a doctor. But when we passed Madison Square and
kept on south along Broadway, that errand became unlikely; and when we
turned eastward over the rough cobbles of narrow side streets, I was in
a state of blank wonder. We ran slowly, lurching and bumping, through
interminable chasms of squalor where iron railings mounted to the doors
and clots of bedding hung from open windows; where evil odors hung and
drifted like clouds, and a sick heat lay prisoned between wall and
pavement, and stragglers turned to stare after us as we went by. Now and
then we crossed some wider thoroughfare with its noise of cars and
tangle of sagging wires overhead, and signs in foreign tongues under the
corner lights. And at last we came into a city of dreadful sleep, dim
and deserted and still. The scattered lamps were only yellow splotches
in the dusk, the stores were barred and bared, and there was no human
thing in sight save here and there a huddle of grimy clothes under the
half shelter of a doorway. Puffs of salt air from the river troubled the
stagnant mixture of fish, leather and stale beer.
We stopped before a narrow doorway pinched sidewise between two shop
windows like a fish's mouth. Lady leaned across me to scan the bleak
windows above.
"There should be a light on the top floor," she said, "yes, there it is.
Ask Thomas to make sure of the number."
He was back in a moment to say that the number was right: "And all
asleep, Miss, by the look of it. Shall I knock somebody up? There's no
bell."
"No, not yet. What time is it, Mr. Crosby?"
"Twenty minutes of three," I told her.
"She must have got the message before now," she said, half to herself.
Then, after a little thought, "Stay here with the car, Thomas. Mr.
Crosby and I are going in."
"You're not going into such a place at this hour!" I protested. "Tell me
what it is and let me go."
"No, I'm coming too. Don't stop to talk about it, please."
The door yielded and let us into a stained and choking hallway, faintly
lighted by a blue flicker of gas at the far end. The stairs were worn
into creaking hollows, and the noise of our passing, though
instinctively we crept upward like thieves, awakened a multitude of
squeaks and scufflings behind the plaster. The banisters were everywhere
loose and shaky, and in places they were entirely broken away, so that
we went close along the filthy wall rather than trust to them. Each
hallway was like the one below; narrow, dusty and airless, with its blue
spurt of gas giving us just light enough to find our way without
groping. At last we reached the top, and Lady knocked softly on the door
at the end of the hall.
There was no answer. She knocked again. I turned up the gas, and as I
did so a fat beetle ran from under my feet. I stepped on it, and wished
that I had not done so.
"Are you sure this is the place?" I whispered.
"Yes; I've been here before. But I don't understand. Sheila knew that we
were coming."
"Look," said I, "the door is unlatched. Shall I go in?"
For an instant the oppression of the place was too much for her, and she
clung to my arm whispering, "I'm afraid--I'm afraid!" Then before I
could speak, she had caught up her courage.
"Yes," she said. "Open it if you can."
The door swung a few inches, then resisted. Something soft and heavy,
like a mattress, seemed to be braced against the bottom of it. I felt
for the revolver in my pocket, then put my weight against the panel. The
thing inside moved a little, then rolled over with a thud, and the door
swung wide. What had lain against it, and now lay across the opening
clearly visible in the light from behind us was the body of a woman with
blood soaking into her hair.