THE PRICE
With the sudden disintegration of the mental picture he had been
tracing, and the instant stoppage of the tense action of mind and body,
Harry Sevier came to himself. He awoke as he had done on the night of
the trial, with the abrupt halt of his motor at the
railroad-crossing--awoke instantly to knowledge of himself, but dazed
and shaken, grasping at phantasmagoric fragments that were swiftly
dissolving in his brain, in a bewilderment in which he could only stare
voicelessly at the black mask that confronted him, at the round muzzle
that spelled danger.
The man of the sand-coloured hair spoke: "It ain't him," he said in a
low voice. "Not one of the servants, either." He stepped forward.
"How did you get in?"
"I don't--know," said Harry. "Yes, I--I fancy it was through a window."
"What did you come for?"
"I wanted to--get something."
There was an instant's pause. Then his questioner came forward with a
cat-like tread. His free hand busied itself in deft exploration. "No
gun on him," he said.
Something like a chuckle came from behind the mask. "I reckon he's
telling the truth, but he's a new one and we scared about all out of
his head there ever was in it!"
The other turned one side to where a heavy portiere screened an alcove,
parted the curtains and set a chair in the hidden space. He pointed to
it. "Sit there," he gruffly commanded, and to the man in the mask he
added, "Get on with your part of the job. We won't take no risks--I'll
take care of _him_!"
Harry sat down. The dream-like fragments at which he had been grasping
were gone now into thin air, and out of the misty limbo the past was
growing back: the note he had received, the smashed wall-cabinet, the
fiery drink that scorched his throat, his mad masquerade, the boarding
of the train at the station, the friendly, stupifying flash, then
flight, on and on--and then, this lighted room, the safe, the levelled
weapons! Into what sordid drama of the under-world had he wandered?
He flinched at the pressure of a cold steel ring against his
temple--the man with the sand-coloured hair was "taking care" of him.
The latter leaned forward and peered searchingly into his face.
"Haven't I seen you before, somewheres?" he asked.
"Who knows?" said Harry. He had answered that look by one that, even
as he spoke, had opened to strange intelligence. The stocky frame, the
small red-rimmed eyes, the up-thrust, wiry hair belonged to his client
of that far away trial, the man whom he had sent to a convict's cell
and who now, by route of ball and stripe, had fled to the dismal
demesne of habitual criminality! "Who knows!" Paddy the Brick had not
now the piteous, shrinking look that had been turned to his counsel in
the courtroom! The manhood was gone from the mottled features, which
now wore the furtive look of the hunted, the sign-manual of cunning,
incorrigibility and debauch.
Paddy the Brick withdrew his eyes. The involuntary question had
passed. There was, after all, little in the smooth-shaven countenance
of the man he guarded to suggest a bearded face that his memory
searched for.
"Quiet!" warned the man in the mask, and kneeling by the safe door,
resumed the delicate manipulation which had been so startlingly
interrupted. He turned the combination swiftly and deftly, his
side-face pressed against the unyielding steel, his ear listening
intently to the fall of the tumblers that chattered like elfin
castenets.
Harry sat silent and moveless, sharply conscious of the cold ring
against his temple. Whither had his besotted flight carried him? To
some distant city, into another state perhaps, where he now figured in
a coarse and desperate adventure that might end anywhere, in some
shameful expose which he could not foresee. In whose house was he?
Whose money was it these nightly prowlers intended? And what ironic
demon had beckoned him here to play this passive part in the despoiling?
There was suddenly a sharp click, a turn of the nickelled handle, and
on mute hinges the safe-door opened. "So!" said the man in the mask,
complacently. He began to pull open drawers and ransack pigeon-holes,
his fingers passing deftly through the papers they contained.
On the instant there was a muffled sound in the hall outside--a door
swinging to, and voices.
"_S-s-s!_" The low hiss was an incarnate menace. The man by the safe
swung the steel door to, but without closing its lock, and snapped off
the lights. The room fell into thick darkness. Harry felt, rather
than heard, that the other had swiftly entered the alcove, and drawn
the portiere into place. His companion had made no sound, but the
aching circlet bit hard again into Harry's temple, with a warning as
sharp as it was silent.
The door opened, there was a groping footstep, then the lights went up,
and a woman's voice, clear and imperious, mingled with the lower
answers of the obsequious servant who had shown her in--a familiar
voice at which Harry's blood seemed to grow still in his veins:
"No matter how late he is, I will wait. You say he is at his
office--is it so near as that? Yes, I think you may send for him--no,
wait--that telephone on the desk! Could I speak with him? No--I think
after all I would rather wait. What number did you say?
'Seven-thirty-two Sumner?' Thank you. Then if he does not come soon,
I will call him up. Thank you--no, I want nothing."
Harry repressed an impulse to cry aloud. A thin streak of light showed
between the edges of the silken hanging, through which the man in the
mask was peering, and for a slender instant, under the crook's elbow,
he could see into the room. The slender figure standing there under
the chandelier was Echo Allen!
She was in a dark travelling dress and wore a light veil through which
her profile looked strained and white. The unexpected sight of her
intensified the haggard pain of heart which had come back to Harry with
his awakening, and this was staggered by the knowledge that they two
were together in this unknown dwelling.
The door closed upon the servant. Behind the portiere the red-rimmed
eyes peered questioningly into the eyelet holes of the black mask.
They said as plainly as speech, "There is only the woman. Why not make
for the open--now?" But the other was an older hand. The room had but
the single door and the servant might be standing on the other side.
Grim danger lurked in hue and cry, and there was always the chance that
the woman might weary of waiting and go. He had a liking for the long
chance. He shook his head.
Harry's straining ears caught now the dragging rustle of a skirt. Echo
was moving slowly across the floor, and in a moment he saw her again
through the slender opening. She was standing tense and straight, her
hands wrung together, finger twisting against finger, before the desk
telephone. He saw her hand go out to the instrument, then draw back as
though it had been a poisonous snake. Then suddenly he saw her seize
the transmitter and put it to her ear. The bell whirred.
"Madison, seven-thirty-two."
There was a pause, in which she repeated the number, and in it Harry
felt that her face had hardened and set, like some cooling plastic
beneath an invisible mould.
"Is that--is it ... Mr. Cameron Craig?"
In spite of his iron control, Harry could not repress a start. He knew
now where he was! The house behind whose curtain he perforce skulked
with a brace of thieves, was Cameron Craig's! And she, on this very
day, had journeyed here too. A sense of an overfate, sardonic and
unescapable, rushed upon him. What a topsy-turveydom of chance, what a
dove-tailing of accident, had wrought for this strange _contretemps_!
In the instant she waited a harrowing question stabbed him. What was
she doing here, to-night, at midnight--in this environment which had
bred unseemly stories--to enter which, under such circumstances, a
woman must be unmindful of what should be most dear?
"... Do you know my voice? Yes, you are right.... Unbelievable, yes.
Many things are unbelievable that--happen. Listen. I am at your
house, in your library.... No! Wait. I have something to say to you,
_now_. You shall answer it first. Once you asked me to marry you. I
will do so, on one condition.... The--the letters written by my
father. You will not use them, publish them. You will give them into
my hands.... Yes.... One has been photographed--yes, the plate. You
swear to do so, when I am your wife? ... Yes, to-night--if
you--wish.... What? In--in five minutes? ..."
The receiver clattered down upon the desk, as she sank into a chair and
covered her face with her hands. To her the broken sentences had
knelled hope gone, the passing of youth and love, the coming of a night
in which was no star; but to the man sitting in such assiduous
stillness behind the curtains, they had told a story that sent the warm
blood coursing through his veins. Instead of being false to him, Echo
was really sacrificing herself on the altar of name and family. She
did not love the man with whom she had just spoken! It was constraint
that had sent her there at that dubious hour, to make a bitter bargain.
Letters written by her father? What they were--in what way
compromising--Harry could not guess. Some indiscreet correspondence
perhaps, which, twisted out of context, might be made ground of
malicious political criticism. He knew her love for her father. In
some way she had learned of these letters, had scented danger to him,
and now would ward the harm from him at any cost to herself! "Think as
gently of me as you can"--the words of her note passed through Harry's
mind. When she wrote that she had known that she should give herself
to Craig! He felt a whirl of rage. The cowardly, contemptible cad,
who would have his desire at the cost of all that was decent and
clean-handed! It should never be, never, never! Why else had fate
dropped him there, like a stone from a sling? And yet for the moment
he was as helpless as a rat in a trap. There, only a half-dozen steps
away lay those letters, the safe door unlocked. Yet the steely
pressure on his temple told him that a single word, a move, and he
would be ingloriously past rendering aid to anybody, with a bullet in
his skull.
Harry was conscious that the two men beside him exchanged glances--they
were going to make a dash for it. His every nerve tightened. But at
that instant the door opened upon the obsequious servant. "Did you
ring, Madame?" he asked.
"I rang the telephone," she replied dully. "I called up Mr. Craig. He
is coming."
"Very good, madame." This time he did not leave, but moved about the
room, setting straight a book upon the table, adjusting a vase,
glancing furtively at her the while. The moment for flight had passed.
Endless minutes ensued. Then in the strained silence there fell a
sharp step outside, and the servant went quickly from the room. Harry
felt a little tremor run over him. There was the sound of a key
grating in a lock. The outer door opened and clanged shut.
Behind the portiere Harry sat motionless, the muzzle of the weapon at
his temple, his hair stirring to the suppressed breathing above his
head, and the man in the mask shifted his felt-shod feet, restlessly
but without sound.