I
But the cab was there; and within it the girl was waiting for him.
The driver, after taking up his fare, had at her direction drawn over
to the further curb, out of the fringe of the rabble which besieged the
St. Luke Building in constantly growing numbers, and through which
Maitland, too impatient to think of leaving by the basement exit, had
elbowed and fought his way in an agony of apprehension that brooked no
hindrance, heeded no difficulty.
He dashed round the corner, stopped short with a sinking heart, then as
the cabby's signaling whip across the street caught his eye, fairly
hurled himself to the other curb, pausing at the wheel, breathless,
lifted out of himself with joy to find her faithful in this ultimate
instance.
She was recovering, whose high spirit and recuperative powers were to
him then and always remained a marvelous thing; and she was bending
forth from the body of the hansom to welcome him with a smile that in a
twinkling made radiant the world to him who stood in a gloomy side
street of New York at three o'clock of a summer's morning,--a good hour
and a half before the dawn. For up there in the tower of the
sky-scraper he had as much as told her of his love; and she had waited;
and now--and now he had been blind indeed had he failed to read the
promise in her eyes. Weary she was and spent and overwrought; but there
is no tonic in all the world like the consciousness that where one has
placed one's love, there love has burgeoned in response. And despite
all that she had suffered and endured, the happiness that ran like soft
fire in her Veins, wrapping her being with its beneficent rapture, had
deepened the color in her cheeks and heightened the glamour in her eyes.
And he stood and stared, knowing that in all time to no man had ever
woman seemed more lovely than this girl to him: a knowledge that robbed
his mind of all other thought and his tongue of words, so that to her
fell the task of rousing him.
"Please," she said gently--"please tell the cabby to take me home, Mr.
Maitland."
He came to and in confusion stammered: Yes, he would. And he climbed up
on the step with no other thought than to seat himself at her side and
drive away for ever. But this time the cabby brought him to his senses,
forcing him to remember that some measure of coherence was demanded
even of a man in love.
"Where to, sir?"
"Eh, what? Oh!" And bending to the girl: "Home, you said--?"
She told him the address,--a number on Park Avenue, above Thirty-fourth
Street, below Forty-second. He repeated it mechanically, unaware that
it would remain stamped for ever on his memory, indelibly,--the first
personal detail that she had granted him: the first barrier down.
He sat down. The cab began to move, and halted again. A face appeared
at the apron,--Hickey's, red and moon-like and not lacking in
complacency: for the man counted of profiting variously by this night's
work.
"Excuse me, Mr. Maitland, 'nd"--touching the rim of his derby--"yeh,
too, ma'am, f'r buttin' in--"
"Hickey!" demanded Maitland suddenly, in a tone of smoldering wrath,
"what the--what do you want?"
"Yeh told me tuh call round to-morrow, yeh know. When'll yeh be in?"
"I'll leave a note for you with O'Hagan. Is that all?"
"Yep--that is, there's somethin' else...."
"Well?"
"Excuse me for mentionin' it, but I didn't know--it ain't generally
known, yeh know, 'nd one uh th' boys might've heard me speak tuh yer
lady by name 'nd might pass it on to a reporter. What I mean's this,"
hastily, as the Maitland temper showed dangerous indications of going
into active eruption: "I s'pose yeh don't want me tuh mention't yeh're
married, jes' yet? Mrs. Maitland here," with a nod to her, "didn't seem
tuh take kindly tuh the notion of it's bein' known--"
"Hickey!"
"Ah, excuse _me!_"
"Drive on, cabby--instantly! Do you hear?"
Hickey backed suddenly away and the cab sprang into motion; while
Maitland with a face of fire sat back and raged and wondered.
Across Broadway toward Fourth Avenue dashed the hansom; and from the
curb-line Hickey watched it with a humorous light in his dull eyes.
Indeed, the detective seemed in extraordinary conceit with himself. He
chewed with unaccustomed emotion upon his cold cigar, scratched his
cheek, and chuckled; and, chuckling, pulled his hat well down over his
brows, thrust both hands into his trousers pockets, and shambled back
to the St. Luke Building--his heavy body vibrating amazingly with his
secret mirth.
And so, shuffling sluggishly, he merges into the shadows, into the mob
that surges about the building, and passes from these pages.