“You won’t feel the cold the first winter in the States.”
That was what people in Manila and Porto Rico had told Ross. He
thought of those people now. You didn’t feel it, did you? Yes, you
did!
He had found “some place where he could hide and watch the front
door”; a plantation of firs halfway between the house and the gates.
He had been there more than an hour, prowling up and down behind the
screen of branches; he had at first tried to smoke, but darkness and
cold annihilated any sort of zest in the tobacco. He had attempted the
army setting-up exercises, considerably hampered by his overcoat; but
nothing produced in him either bodily warmth or a patient serenity of
mind.
He was worried about that child. Not once did he say to himself that
it was none of his business; he admitted willingly that a creature of
that size had a claim upon all full-grown persons; he admitted that,
whoever it was, and wherever it came from, it was entitled to his
protection.
“She’s too little to be left there alone,” he thought. “Much too
little. They always have nurses—or some one. She might fall down the
stairs—or turn on the gas stove. I’ve been gone more than an hour.
Good Lord! This is too much! What the devil’s the matter with that
fellow, anyhow?”
He was disgusted with this thin dark man with a mustache, who was so
outrageously late in coming. Very likely the funny little doll was
sitting up there, crying. The raw cold pierced to the marrow of his
bones.
And this, he reflected, was his second night in his native land. The
first had been spent imprisoned in the garage, at the point of a
revolver, but it had been a thousand times better than this. He had
been warm and comfortable—and he had been innocent, a victim. Now he
was taking an active part in a thoroughly discreditable affair.
He was committed to wait for a thin dark man with a mustache, and to
prevent his entering the house. And how was he to do this? Walk up to
him and begin to expostulate? Try to bribe him?
The thought of bribery aroused in the young man an anger which almost
made him warm. No Ross would ever pay blackmail. Indeed, no Ross of
his branch was fond of parting with money for any purpose at all. They
were very prompt in paying their just bills and debts, but they took
care that these should be moderate.
“No!” thought Ross. “If I was fool enough to give this fellow money,
he’d only come back for more, later on. I’m not going to start that.
No! But how am I going to stop him? Knock him out? That’s all very
well, but suppose he knocked me out? Or he may carry a gun. Of course,
I suppose I could come up behind him and crack him over the head with
a rock. That’s what my Cousin Amy would appreciate. But somehow it
doesn’t appeal to me. After all, what have I got against this fellow?
What do I know about him? Only what she’s told me. And she’s not what
you’d call overparticular with her words.”
His thoughts were off, then, upon the track of that problem which
obsessed him. What had happened to the man under the sofa? He couldn’t
still be there. But who had taken him away, and where was he now? He
looked toward the house, so solid and dignified, with its façade of
lighted windows. He remembered his cozy dinner in the kitchen; he
thought of the orderly life going on there.
It was impossible! Yet it was true. He had seen that dead man with his
own eyes. He had touched him.
Who else knew? Surely Amy; but it was obvious that she had some one to
help her in all emergencies. Mrs. Jones? Ross believed that Mrs. Jones
had been well aware of the man’s presence in her room. Eddy? Eddy’s
behavior had been highly suspicious.
He refused to go on with this profitless and exasperating train of
thought. He was sick of the whole thing. Amy had said that she would
“explain everything” to him the next day. Not for a moment did he
believe that she would do anything of the sort, but he did hope that
at least she would tell him a little. And, anyhow, whatever she told
him, whatever happened or did not happen, he was going away—back to
normal, honest, decent life.
“I said I’d help her, and, by Heaven, I am!” he thought. “After
tonight we’re quits. I’ll hold my tongue about all this; but—I’m
going!”
He whacked his stiff arms across his chest.
“Hotel Benderly, West Seventy-Seventh Street,” he said to himself.
“I’m going there tomorrow.”
For he no longer saw Phyllis Barron as a danger. He was considerably
less infatuated with liberty after these two days. It occurred to him,
now, that to be entirely free meant to be entirely alone, and that to
be without a friend was not good.
He wanted some one to trust, and he trusted Phyllis. No matter that he
had known her only five days; he had seen that she was honest; that
she was steadfast, and, loveliest virtue of all, she was
self-controlled. He knew that from her one need never dread tears,
fury, despairs, selfishness and cajoleries.
Out there, in the cold and dark of his unhappy vigil, he thought of
Phyllis, and longed for her smile.
“She’d never in her life get a fellow into a mess like this!” he
thought. “But Amy—”
His distrust for his Cousin Amy was without limits. There was nothing,
he thought, that she might not do. She was perfectly capable of
forgetting all about him, and then, in the morning, if he were found
frozen to death at his post, she would pretend to wonder what on earth
the new chauffeur had been doing out there.
“After eleven,” he thought. “And Eddy hasn’t come yet. Very likely she
knew he wouldn’t come. Perhaps he’s never coming back. All right! I’ll
wait till twelve, and then I’m going to take a look at that little
kid. I’ve got to. It’s too little.”
So he walked up and down, up and down, over the rough, frozen patch of
ground behind the fir trees; his coat collar turned up, his soft hat
pulled low over his eyes, his face grim and dour; a sinister figure he
would have been to meet on a lonely road.
Up and down—and then something happened. At first he could not grasp
what it was, only that in some way his world had changed. He stopped
short, every nerve alert. Then he realized that it was a sudden
increase in the darkness, and, turning toward the house, he saw the
lights there going out, one by one.
“By George!” he thought. “They’re all going to bed! And I suppose I
can stay here all night, eh? While they’re warm and snug, the faithful
Cousin James will be on guard. All right! I said I’d do it. But I’m
going to get a glass of milk for that baby.”
He set off as fast as his numb feet and stiff legs would carry him,
toward the back door. He would tell the cook that he was hungry, and
she would give him what he wanted. A kind, sensible woman, that cook.
He pushed open the back door and went in; it was dark in the passage,
but warm, and the entrancing perfumes of the great dinner still
lingered there. He went on, toward the kitchen, but before he got
there, the swing door opened, and Mrs. Jones appeared. She stopped,
and he thought that she whispered: “It’s I!”
He was a little disconcerted, because he knew that Mrs. Jones was not
fond of him, and he was extremely suspicious of her. But she looked so
sedate, almost venerable, standing there in the lighted doorway, in
her best black dress, with her gray hair, her spectacles. He took off
his hat, and spoke to her civilly.
“I came to ask for a glass of milk,” he said.
Then she repeated what she had said before, and it was not “It’s I,”
but the word “Spy!” uttered with a suppressed scorn that startled him.
“Spy!” she said. “I know you!”
He looked at her in stern amazement.
“Leave this house!” she said. “You can deceive a poor innocent young
girl, but you can’t deceive me. You and your glass of milk! I know
you! And I tell you straight to your face that you’re not coming one
step farther. I’m going to stay here all night, and I’m going to see
to it that neither you nor anybody else comes to worry and torment
that poor girl. Go!”
“All right!” said Ross, briefly, and, turning on his heel, went out of
the house.
“If she’s going to take over the job of watchdog, she’s welcome to
it,” he thought. “I guess she’d be pretty good at that sort of thing.
But—spy!”
His face grew hot.
“I don’t feel inclined to swallow that,” he said to himself,
deliberately. “Some day we’ll have a reckoning, Mrs. Jones!”