LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT
The potations in the smoking-car had had their first effect. Sevier
had passed from the jumbled dream now--was safe enisled in that strange
fourth-dimensional empire into which he had first wandered during that
wild night-ride in his motor, that region of tense consciousness that
was yet without rule, in which every sense was acute, his brain clear
as ice, but where impressions recorded themselves without
co-ordination. Eye and ear drank in avidly each sight and sound, and
he sniffed the thick smells as a hound sniffs a haunting but forgotten
trail.
As he went further the dwindling signs of respectability vanished. He
was now below the city's "dead-line" where, in segregated wantonness,
vice and license unrolled their audacities fearless of the complaisant
police regulations.
A hundred yards from the greasy docks lining the sluggish current from
which a plumy mist was lifting, a wide screened doorway showed a blaze
of electric-light upon a patch of saw-dust floor. Through it poured
the tinny blare of a gramophone hooting a comic song, mingled with
rumbling laughter and raised voices. It was a low-roofed, shambling
building, planned for the delectation of the barge-man and the
roustabout and now throbbing with their daily--and nightly--pleasures.
Harry halted before it.
"Tough joint, eh?" The voice fell suddenly at his elbow.
He turned. The speaker was red-cheeked and brisk, with dapper
sophistication and inquisitiveness written all over him. His shining
straw hat had a coloured band, there were white pearl buttons on his
patent-leather shoes and a natty stick swung lightly from his gloved
fingers. "I can see you don't belong with that crowd," he said,
nodding sagely toward the entrance.
"No," said Sevier. He was staring at the speaker with a penetrating
intensity, thinking that, but for colouring and costume, they two
somewhat resembled each other--speculating as to the slanting scar on
the other's right cheek, that might have been the memento of a rusty
nail or of a pet panther--thinking of these things and of a thousand
things beside that were only remotely connected with either of them.
"Neither do I, but I take a high dive into it now and then. Let's go
in and have a drink."
In Harry's middle distance another more decorous swing-door vibrated to
and fro, with a sharp smell of hops, a rattle of glasses, a voice
reckless but good-humoured--proposing a like libation. Beyond this in
endless succession were openings and re-openings of a locked cabinet
that had hung somewhere on a wall, and further yet, myriads of goblets,
cut with shining prisms, reflecting rainbow colours on spotless napery.
A drink?
"Why not?" he said, and striking open the door, led the way into the
noisy interior, reeking with stale odours, with strong tobacco-smoke,
with carouse and profanity. He strode across the floor, shouldering
his way unceremoniously through the press, and sat down at a small deal
table that was unoccupied. His companion seated himself opposite. He
was looking at Harry with critical admiration, noting his lithe
athletic build and the certain, confident swing of his movements. His
eye lighted.
"Gad!" he said, with a little laugh. "To tell the truth I wouldn't
have cared to come in here alone, though I've been in a good many shady
boozeries. Allow me to introduce myself. My name's John Stark--that's
the name I play under, that is. I'm an actor. I'm trying out a new
play, the 'Jail-bird.' Perhaps you've seen the bill-boards."
"Of course," said Harry. The title sprang instantly into his mind,
blazoned on a gaudy bill-board against a maple-shaded street:
"Do not fail to see this Talented Star
In his Gripping Drama, _The Jail-Bird_."
It multiplied, stamping itself on a thousand walls, a chromatic
procession tumbling into the distance. The other nodded in a
self-satisfied way. "It's a great play. Got the real human dope in
it. It'll go big, too. That's why I come to these places--to study
'business.' See that teamster with the pock-marked face and the tattoo
on his arm? What a make-up that would be!"
The burly, half-drunken driver, in red-flannel shirt with a snake-whip
in his armpit, his back to the bar, poured from a gurgling black
bottle. "Hear what it says?" he hiccoughed--"'It's
good--s'good--s'good--s'good--s'good!'"
John Stark withdrew his eyes from the fascinating study, as a waiter,
in an apron that had in some remote epoch aspired to white, with a
strip of soiled towelling thrown over one arm, set two thick glasses on
the table, with a surly "well?"
"I'll take a silver fizz," said the actor.
"The same," said Sevier--"and be quick about it!"
The harsh admonition thrust across the noise. The phrase had no
meaning to Sevier, it had been merely the echo of another bidding that
he had given at some other time, in some other world, repeating itself
now when the hidden spring of association was touched. But it brought
a resentful glare from the waiter. The loungers standing nearest
shuffled truculently, and the teamster by the bar turned an ugly look
upon them. The man in the dingy apron thumped down a black demijohn on
the table.
"Take it straight or not at all," he said in a surly tone.
Harry's companion poured both glasses. He leaned across the table with
sparkling eyes. "I'm in the title-role," he confided. "The story is
like this. I'm a business man, and the other chap--he has a grudge
against me--has me in his power. He's the Great What Ho--a regular
top-notcher, plenty of money, a winner with the women, horses,
steam-yacht, everything. The house he lives in was mine, but he's got
it by trickery and seized it while I was abroad. I come back and find
him in possession. But in the house--he doesn't know this, you
see--hidden behind a panel in the library, are papers that will show
him up and put him behind the bars. I've got to have those papers, and
the only way is to get into the place and take them."
He paused and sipped from the glass before him, then resumed:
"Curious thing, luck. I've had no end of trouble getting up the
scenery, but to-day I saw exactly the lay-out I want to picture--a
whacking big house in this very town. Right in the heart of the city
too, not a mile from here, but shut in from the road. Belongs to about
the richest man in the place. I kodaked it for my scene-painter. Look
here."
He took a pencil from his pocket and sketched rapidly on the deal
table-top as he went on.
"It's set in trees and there's a wide, oval porch along the front--like
this--fine old southern effect, eh?--with Cape Jessamine bushes under
the windows. A long wing runs down one side--here. In there is the
library. I come on in a kind of prologue, no lines--shadows and
moonlight, town-hall clock striking off one side--you know. I'm
desperate. I try the doors. They're locked, of course. But there's a
little window on the second floor that's open. I climb up a trellis
and crawl in. There I am in the house."
He stopped and emptied his glass.
"There's a two-minute dark--no curtain, but a quick change, then lights
up and the stage shows the Great What Ho's library, with me on the
threshold, for the opening scene. I get the papers from the panel, and
just then--"
"Yes, yes," said Harry. He had been staring steadily at the
other--staring with his outer eyes, but with that curious inner vision,
which was the gift of the intoxicant he had drunk, seeing himself,
detached and moving through the significant scene that was being
sketched before him, his alert but liquor-bound mind filling in
strange, lurid detail which rushed forward to crowd the obscure spaces.
He reached forward and gripped the actor by the arm with a force that
made him wince--"and then--"
A stillness had struck the noisier babble and Harry's mental connection
on a sudden broke. A young woman in the red Jersey and poke-bonnet of
the Salvation Army had passed about the room and was now standing by
the table. She stretched her tambourine. "If you please, gentlemen,"
she said.
Harry laid a silver half-dollar in her tambourine and his companion did
the same, when the waiter who had served them spoke to her: "Clear out,
you. You've got your money, now go."
"And be quick about it!" said Harry, distinctly.
The remark had not the excuse of proprietorship and it roused fury in
the sluggish minds about them to whom the addition was extraneous and
gratuitous, a smug insult of one who from his manner belonged to a
class that despised them, offered to one whose daily habit proved that
she did not. With an oath the drunken teamster of the pock-marked
visage lurched forward, rolling a red-flannel sleeve along a hairy
biceps.
The dingy Ganymede thrust him back. "Leave him to me!" he ground
savagely, and turning, struck at Harry with envenomed force.
The fist, however, did not reach home. Harry's brain and eye were
working with the deadly precision of the practised athlete. The
suggestion of combat was complete, and with sober caution and reason
dead, the bodily mechanism rushed to meet it. There was a
lightning-like parry--a crisp, smashing return blow. Then suddenly the
room turned a shambles, a red surging mass of hands that tore, of
thrown missiles, of shattering glass, through which sounded a shrill
whistle and the tattoo of a thorn-baton on the pavement outside.
Two minutes later Harry stood unhurt in the open air, and a blue-jacket
held the door against a cursing pandemonium. "_Run_, you fool!" he
panted. "I can't hold it but a minute. _Run_!"
And Harry ran. Not from fear or dread, but in instant response to that
mental spur, without reason, or logic, or conscious thought. The new
mental formula for the present moment superseded the old. The dingy
saloon, the effervescent young Thespian, the fight--all fell away, were
gone, and there was only the rigid empty calm through which he sped,
and far above him the sound of a wind like a silken sea. It was close
on midnight, the more decorous streets into which he presently emerged
deserted, for intermittent clouds were now blotting the moonlight and a
sprinkle of rain was falling. The sparse pedestrians stared or shrank
away, but none followed, no patrolling guardian of the law forbade. He
ran without direction or purpose, until suddenly--he halted.
He had come to the side of a great enclosure, the grounds of a mansion,
surrounded by a high stone wall with tiled top, in which was set a gate
with tall posts holding dim-lit yellow globes. It was not at these,
however, that Harry was looking; his gaze went beyond, where, touched
by the rainy moonlight, stretched the long facade of a Colonial house
with a wide oval porch. At one side was a wing, with a lattice
climbing over its doorway, and the damp air was full of the scent of
jessamine.
He stiffened. The contours fell with fateful correspondence over
another picture which had been etched on his brain that night with the
sharp outlines of a photographic plate. The old spring had been
touched, and the eerie mechanism was responding. It was his own house,
but now it sheltered the Great What Ho, and in that wing was hidden the
thing he must secure for his own salvation!
Harry entered the gate and crept across the lawn, warily, from bush to
bush. In the curious dual-consciousness that seemed to divide his self
into two independent yet identical entities, he had no sensation of
strangeness that he should already have made that slinking journey once
before, that each detail should possess the quality of predestination.
In the shadow of the ivied walls he softly tried the front door. It
was locked, but he had known it would be. He looked up; he had known
what he should see--the small window in the wing, open, as he could see
from the swaying of the light curtain in the air.
He crept to the lattice and deftly and softly drew himself up. No twig
snapped, scarce a leaf rustled beneath his careful movements. In a
moment he touched the sill of the open window and slid inside.
He was in an upper hall and soft, luxurious carpet was under his feet.
By the dim light from the window he crept noiselessly down the stair.
There before him stood the door behind which lay the thing he must
have. He put his hand on the knob, turned it softly and opened the
door.
The mental picture which he had been tracing suddenly frayed and
vanished like a dissolving view. The room was brightly lighted. At
one side sat a great safe, beside whose steel door stood two men, one
tall and thin, whose eyes glittered through the holes of a black
cambric mask, the other short and stocky with red-rimmed eyes and a
shock of sand-coloured hair.
They stood like setters at point, crouching tensely forward, and the
latter held a pistol levelled at him.