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THE DESTROYING ANGEL
by
LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE
Author of "The Brass Bowl," "The Bronze Bell," "The Bandbox," "Cynthia
of the Minute," Etc.
With Four Illustrations by Arthur I. Keller
A. L. Burt Company
Publishers New York
Copyright, 1912,
By Louis Joseph Vance.
All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian.
Published, October, 1912.
TO
ROBERT HOBART DAVIS
[Illustration: Whitaker's jaw dropped and his eyes widened with wonder
and pity]
CONTENTS
I. DOOM
II. THE LAST STRAW
III. "MRS. MORTEN"
IV. MRS. WHITAKER
V. WILFUL MISSING
VI. CURTAIN
VII. THE LATE EXTRA
VIII. A HISTORY
IX. ENTR'ACTE
X. THE WINDOW
XI. THE SPY
XII. THE MOUSE-TRAP
XIII. OFFSHORE
XIV. DEBACLE
XV. DISCLOSURES
XVI. THE BEACON
XVII. DISCOVERY
XVIII. BLIGHT
XIX. CAPITULATION
XX. TEMPERAMENTAL
XXI. BLACK OUT
ILLUSTRATIONS
Whitaker's jaw dropped and his eyes widened with wonder and pity
Her eyes fastened dilating, upon his. The scene faltered perceptibly
Whitaker felt land beneath his feet
"I do not love you. You are mad to think it"
THE DESTROYING ANGEL
I
DOOM
"Then I'm to understand there's no hope for me?"
"I'm afraid not...." Greyerson said reluctantly, sympathy in his eyes.
"None whatever." The verdict was thus brusquely emphasized by Hartt, one
of the two consulting specialists.
Having spoken, he glanced at his watch, then at the face of his
colleague, Bushnell, who contented himself with a tolerant waggle of his
head, apparently meant to imply that the subject of their deliberations
really must be reasonable: anybody who wilfully insists on footing the
measures of life with a defective constitution for a partner has no
logical excuse for being reluctant to pay the Piper.
Whitaker looked quickly from one to the other of his three judges,
acutely sensitive to the dread significance to be detected in the
expression of each. He found only one kind and pitiful: no more than
might have been expected of Greyerson, who was his friend. Of the
others, Hartt had assumed a stony glare to mask the nervousness so
plainly betrayed by his staccato accents; it hurt him to inflict pain,
and he was horribly afraid lest the patient break down and "make a
scene." Bushnell, on the other hand, was imperturbable by nature: a man
to whom all men were simply "cases"; he sat stroking his long chin and
hoping that Whitaker would have the decency soon to go and leave them
free to talk shop--his pet dissipation.
Failing to extract the least glimmering of hope from the attitude of any
one of them, Whitaker drew a long breath, unconsciously bracing himself
in his chair.
"It's funny," he said with his nervous smile--"hard to realize, I mean.
You see, I _feel_ so fit--"
"Between attacks," Hartt interjected quickly.
"Yes," Whitaker had to admit, dashed.
"Attacks," said Bushnell, heavily, "recurrent at intervals constantly
more brief, each a trifle more severe than its predecessor."
He shut his thin lips tight, as one who has consciously pronounced the
last word.
Greyerson sighed.
"But I don't understand," argued the prisoner at the bar, plaintively
bewildered. "Why, I rowed with the Crew three years hand-running--not a
sign of anything wrong with me!"
"If you had then had proper professional advice, you would have spared
yourself such strains. But it's too late now; the mischief can't be
undone."
Evidently Bushnell considered the last word his prerogative. Whitaker
turned from him impatiently.
"What about an operation?" he demanded of Greyerson.
The latter looked away, making only a slight negative motion with his
head.
"The knife?" observed Hartt. "That would merely hasten matters."
"Yes," Bushnell affirmed....
There was a brief uneasy silence in the gloomy consulting room. Then
Whitaker rose.
"Well, how long will you give me?" he asked in a strained voice.
"Six months," said Greyerson, miserably avoiding his eye.
"Three," Hartt corrected jerkily.
"Perhaps...." The proprietor of the last word stroked his chin with a
contemplative air.
"Thanks," said Whitaker, without irony. He stood for an instant with his
head bowed in thought. "What a damned outrage," he observed
thoughtfully. And suddenly he turned and flung out of the room.
Greyerson jumped to follow him, but paused as he heard the crash of the
street door. He turned back with a twitching, apologetic smile.
"Poor devil!" he said, sitting down at his desk and fishing a box of
cigars from one of the drawers.
"Takes it hard," commented Hartt.
"You would, too, at his age; he's barely twenty-five."
"Must feel more or less like a fellow whose wife has run off with his
best friend."
"No comparison," said Bushnell bluntly. "Go out, get yourself arrested
for a brutal murder you didn't commit, get tried and sentenced to death
within six months, the precise date being left to the discretion of the
executioner--_then_ you'll know how he feels."
"If you ask me"--Greyerson handed round the box--"he feels pretty shaky
and abused, and he wants a drink badly--the same as me."
He unlocked a cellaret.
"Married?" Hartt inquired.
"No. That's the only mitigating circumstance," said Greyerson,
distributing glasses. "He's quite alone in the world, as far as I
know--no near relatives, at least."
"Well off?"
"Tolerably. Comes of good people. Believe his family had a lot of money
at one time. Don't know how much of it there was left for Whitaker. He's
junior partner in a young law firm down-town--senior a friend or
classmate of his, I understand: Drummond & Whitaker. Moves with the
right sort of people. Young Stark--Peter Stark--is his closest
friend.... Well.... Say when."
II
THE LAST STRAW
Greyerson was right in his surmise as to Hugh Whitaker's emotions. His
soul still numb with shock, his mind was altogether preoccupied with
petulant resentment of the unfairness of it all; on the surface of the
stunning knowledge that he might count on no more than six months of
life, floated this thin film of sensation of personal grievance. He had
done nothing to deserve this. The sheer brutality of it....
He felt very shaky indeed.
He stood for a long time--how long he never knew--bareheaded on a
corner, just as he had left Greyerson's office: scowling at nothing,
considering the enormity of the wrong that had been put upon him. Later,
realizing that people were staring, he clapped on his hat to satisfy
them and strode aimlessly down Sixth Avenue. It was five o'clock in the
afternoon of a day late in April--a raw, chilly, dark, unseasonable
brute of a day. He found himself walking fast, instinctively, to keep
his blood in warm circulation, and this struck him as so inconsistent
that presently he stopped short and snarled at himself:
"You blithering fool, what difference does it make whether you're warm
or cold? Don't you understand you're going to die within half a year?"
He strove manfully to grapple with this hideous fact. He felt so well,
so strong and efficient; and yet he walked in the black shadow of death,
a shadow from which there was for him no escape.
He thought it the damnedest sensation imaginable!
On top of this reflection came the third clause of Greyerson's analysis:
he made the discovery that he wanted a drink--a lot of drinks: in point
of fact, more than he had ever had before, enough to make him forget.
He turned across-town toward Fifth Avenue, came to his club, and went
in. Passing through the office, force of habit swung his gaze to the
letter-rack. There was a square white envelope in the W pigeonhole, and
it proved to be addressed to him. He knew the handwriting very well--too
well; his heart gave a great jump as he recognized it, and then sank
like a stone; for not only must he die, but he must give up the girl he
loved and had planned to marry. The first thing he meant to do (after
getting that drink) was to write to her and explain and release her from
her promise. The next thing....
He refused to let the idea of the next step form in his mind. But he
knew very well what it would be. In the backwards of his understanding
it lurked--a gray, grisly, shameful shadow.
"Anyhow," he muttered, "I'm not going to stick round here, dying by
inches, wearing the sympathy of my friends to tatters."
But as yet he dared not name the alternative.
He stuffed the letter into his pocket, and passed on to the elevator
gates, meaning to go up to the library and there have his drink and read
his letter and write the answer, in peace and quiet. The problem of that
answer obsessed his thoughts. It would be hard--hard to write--that
letter that meant the breaking of a woman's faithful heart.
The elevator kept him waiting a moment or two, just round the corner
from the grill-room door, whence came a sound of voices talking and
laughing. One was Billy Hamilton's unmistakable semi-jocular drawl.
Whitaker knew it without thinking of it, even as he heard what was being
said without, at first, comprehending--heard and afterwards remembered
in vivid detail.
"Seems to be the open season for runaways," Hamilton was saying. "It's
only a few days since Thurlow Ladislas's daughter--what's her
name?--Mary--took the bit between her teeth and bolted with the old
man's chauffeur."
Somebody asked: "How far did they get before old Ladislas caught up?"
"He didn't give chase. He's not that kind. If he was put to it, old
Thurlow could play the unforgiving parent in a melodrama without any
make-up whatever."
"That's right," little Fiske's voice put in. "Chap I know on the
_Herald_--reporter--was sent to interview him, but old Ladislas told him
quite civilly that he'd been misinformed--he hadn't any daughter named
Mary. Meaning, of course, that the girl had defied him, and that his
doors were thenceforth barred to her."
"He's just like that," said Hamilton. "Remember his other daughter,
Grace, eloping with young Pettit a few years ago? Old Ladislas had a
down on Pettit--who's a decent enough kid, notwithstanding--so Grace was
promptly disowned and cast into the outer darkness, where there's
weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, because Pettit's only
something-on-a-small-salary in the diplomatic service, and they've no
hope of ever touching a penny of the Ladislas coin."
"But what became of them--Mary and the stoker-person?"
"Nobody knows, except possibly themselves. They're laying low
and--probably--getting first-hand information as to the quantity of
cheese and kisses they can afford on chauffeur's pay."
"What's she like, this Mary-quite-contrary?" inquired George Brenton's
voice. "Anybody ever see her?"
"Oh, nothing but a kid," said little Fiske. "I used to see her often,
last summer, kiting round Southampton on a bike. The old man's so mean
he wouldn't let her use the car alone.... Weedy little beggar, all legs
and eyes--skirts to her shoe-tops and hair to her waist."
"Not over eighteen, I gather?"
"Oh, not a day," little Fiske affirmed.
The elevator was waiting by this time, but Whitaker paused an instant
before taking it, chiefly because the sound of his own name, uttered by
Hamilton, had roused him out of the abstraction in which he had
overheard the preceding conversation.
"Anyhow, I'm sorry for Hugh Whitaker. He's going to take this hard,
mighty hard."
George Brenton asked, as if surprised: "What? I didn't know he was
interested in that quarter."
"You must be blind. Alice Carstairs has had him going for a year.
Everybody thought she was only waiting for him to make some big
money--he as much as anybody, I fancy."
Brenton added the last straw. "That's tough," he said soberly.
"Whitaker's a white man, and Alice Carstairs didn't deserve him. But I
wouldn't blame any man for feeling cut-up to be thrown over for an
out-and-out rotter like Percy Grimshaw...."
Whitaker heard no more. At the first mention of the name of Alice
Carstairs he had snatched her letter from his pocket and thrust his
thumb beneath the flap. Now he had withdrawn the enclosure and was
reading.
When a mean-spirited, selfish woman starts in to justify herself
(especially, on paper) for doing something thoroughly contemptible, the
result is apt to be bitterly unfair to everybody involved--except
herself. Nobody will ever know just what Alice Carstairs saw fit to
write to Hugh Whitaker when she made up her mind to run away with
another man; but there can be little doubt that they were venomous words
he read, standing there under the curious eyes of the elevator boy and
the pages. The blood ebbed from his face and left it ghastly, and when
he had torn the paper to shreds and let them flutter about his feet, he
swayed perceptibly--so much so that one of the pages took alarm and
jumped to his side.
"Beg pardon, Mr. Whitaker--did you call me?"
Whitaker steadied himself and stared until he recognized the boy. "No,"
he said thickly, "but I want you. Give me a bar order."
The boy produced the printed form and Whitaker hastily scribbled his
order on it. "Bring that up to the library," he said, "and be quick
about it."
He stumbled into the elevator, and presently found himself in the
library. There was no one else about, and Whitaker was as glad of that
as it was in him to be glad of anything just then. He dropped heavily
into a big arm-chair and waited, his brain whirling and seething, his
nerves on edge and screeching. In this state Peter Stark found him.
Peter sauntered into the room with a manner elaborately careless.
Beneath that mask he was anything but indifferent, just as his
appearance was anything but fortuitous. It happened that the page who
had taken Whitaker's order, knowing that Peter and Hugh were close
friends, and suspecting that something was wrong with the latter, had
sought out Peter before going to get the order filled. Moreover, Peter
had already heard about Alice Carstairs and Percy Grimshaw.
"Hel-_lo_!" he said, contriving by mere accident to catch sight of
Whitaker, who was almost invisible in the big chair with its back to the
body of the room. "What you doing up here, Hugh? What's up?"
"It's all up," said Whitaker, trying to pull himself together.
"Everything's up!"
"Don't believe it," said Stark, coolly. "My feet are on the ground; but
you look as if you'd seen a ghost."
"I have--my own," said Whitaker. The page now stood beside him with a
tray. "Open it," he told the boy, indicating a half-bottle of champagne;
and then to Peter: "I'm having a bath. Won't you jump in?"
Peter whistled, watching the wine cream over the brandy in the long
glass. "King's peg, eh?" he said, with a lift of disapproving eyebrows.
"Here, boy, bring me some Scotch and plain water for common people."
The boy disappeared as Whitaker lifted his glass.
"I'm not waiting," he said bluntly. "I need this now."
"That's a question, in my mind, at least. Don't you think you've had
about enough for one day?"
"I leave it to your superior knowledge of my capacity," said Whitaker,
putting aside the empty glass. "That's my first to-day."
Peter saw that he was telling the truth, but the edge of his disapproval
remained keen.
"I hope," he said thoughtfully, "that the man who started that lie about
drink making a fellow forget died the death of a dog. He deserved to,
anyway, because it's one of the cruellest practical jokes ever
perpetrated on the human race. I know, because I've tried it on,
hard--and waked up sick to my marrow to remember what a disgusting ass
I'd made of myself for all to behold." He stopped at Whitaker's side and
dropped a hand on his shoulder. "Hugh," he said, "you're one of the
best. Don't...."
Whatever he had meant to say, he left unfinished because of the return
of the page with his Scotch; but he had said enough to let Whitaker
understand that he knew about the Carstairs affair.
"That's all right," said Whitaker; "I'm not going to make a damn' fool
of myself, but I am in a pretty bad way. Boy--"
"Hold on!" Peter interrupted. "You're not going to order another? What
you've had is enough to galvanize a corpse."
"Barring the negligible difference of a few minutes or months, that's
me," returned Whitaker. "But never mind, boy--run along."
"I'd like to know what you mean by that," Peter remarked, obviously
worried.
"I mean that I'm practically a dead man--so near it that it makes no
difference."
"The devil you say! What's the matter with you?"
"Ask Greyerson. I can't remember the name--it's too long--and I couldn't
pronounce it if I did."
Peter's eyes narrowed. "What foolishness has Greyerson been putting into
your head?" he demanded. "I've a good mind to go punch his--"
"It isn't his fault," Whitaker asserted. "It's my own--or rather, it's
something in the nature of a posthumous gift from my progenitors;
several of 'em died of it, and now it seems I must. Greyerson says so,
at least, and when I didn't believe him he called in Hartt and Bushnell
to hold my ante-mortem. They made it unanimous. If I'm uncommonly lucky
I may live to see next Thanksgiving."
"Oh, shut up!" Peter exploded viciously. "You make me tired--you and
your bone-headed M.D.'s!"
He worked himself into a comforting rage, damning the medical fraternity
liberally for a gang of bloodthirsty assassins and threatening to commit
assault and battery upon the person of Greyerson, though Whitaker did
his best to make him understand that matters were what they
were--irremediable.
"You won't find any higher authorities than Hartt and Bushnell," he
said. "They are the court of last resort in such cases. When they hand
down a decision, there's no come-back."
"You can't make me believe that," Peter insisted. "It just can't be so.
A man like you, who's always lived clean.... Why, look at your athletic
record! Do you mean to tell me a fellow could hold a job as undisputed
best all-round man in his class for four years, and all the time
handicapped by a constitutional...? Oh, get out! Don't talk to me. I'm
far more likely to be doing my bit beneath the daisies six months from
now.... I won't believe it!"
His big, red, generous fist described a large and inconclusive gesture
of violence.
"Well," he growled finally, "grant all this--which I don't, not for one
little minute--what do you mean to do?"
"I don't mind telling you," said Whitaker: "I don't know. Wish I did. Up
to within the last few minutes I fully intended to cut the knot with my
own knife. It's not reasonable to ask a man to sit still and watch
himself go slowly to pieces...."
"No," said Stark, sitting down. "No," he admitted grudgingly; "but I'm
glad you've given that up, because I'm right and all these fool doctors
are wrong. You'll see. But...." He couldn't help being curious. "But
why?"
"Well," Whitaker considered slowly--"it's Alice Carstairs. You know what
she's done."
"You don't mean to say you're going--that you think there's any
consideration due her?"
"Don't you?" Whitaker smiled wearily. "Perhaps you're right. I don't
know. We won't discuss the ethics of the situation; right or wrong, I
don't mean to shadow whatever happiness she has in store for her by
ostentatiously snuffing myself out just now."
Peter gulped and succeeded in saying nothing. But he stared.
"At the same time," Whitaker resumed, "I don't think I can stand this
sort of thing. I can't go round with my flesh creeping to hear the
whisperings behind my back. I've got to do something--get away
somewhere."
Abrupt inspiration sparked the imagination of Peter Stark, and he began
to sputter with enthusiasm.
"I've got it!" he cried, jumping to his feet. "A sea trip's just the
thing. Chances are, it'll turn the trick--bring you round all right-O,
and prove what asses doctors are. What d'you say? Are you game for a
sail? The _Adventuress_ is laid up at New Bedford now, but I can have
her put in commission within three days. We'll do it--we'll just light
out, old man! We'll try that South Seas thing we've talked about so
long. What d'you say?"
A warm light glowed in Whitaker's sunken eyes. He nodded slowly.
III
"MRS. MORTEN"
It was three in the morning before Peter Stark, having to the best of
his endurance and judgment tired Whitaker out with talking, took his hat
and his departure from Whitaker's bachelor rooms. He went with little
misgiving; Whitaker was so weary that he would have to sleep before he
could think and again realize his terror; and everything was arranged.
Peter had telegraphed to have the _Adventuress_ rushed into commission;
they were to go aboard her the third day following. In the meantime,
Whitaker would have little leisure in which to brood, the winding up of
his affairs being counted upon to occupy him. Peter had his own affairs
to look to, for that matter, but he was prepared to slight them if
necessary, in order that Whitaker might not be left too much to
himself....
Whitaker shut the hall door, when the elevator had taken Peter away, and
turned back wearily into his living-room. It was three in the morning;
his body ached with fatigue, his eyes were hot and aching in their
sockets, and his mouth hot and parched with excess of smoking; yet he
made no move toward his bedchamber. Insomnia was a diagnostic of his
malady: a fact he hadn't mentioned to his friend. He had little wish to
surrender his mind to the devils that haunt a wakeful pillow, especially
now when he could feel the reaction setting in from the anodynous
excitement of the last few hours. Peter Stark's whirlwind enthusiasm had
temporarily swept him off his feet, and he had yielded to it,
unresisting, selfish enough to want to be carried away against the wiser
counsels of his intuition.
But now, alone, doubts beset him.
Picking his way across a floor littered with atlases, charts, maps and
guide-books, he resumed his chair and pipe and with the aid of a copy of
"The Wrecker" and a nightcap, strove to drug himself again with the
fascination of the projected voyage. But the savour had gone out of it
all. An hour before he had been able to distil a potent magic, thought
obliterating, by sheer force of repetition of the names, Apia, Hawaii,
Tahiti, Samoa.... Now all their promise was an emptiness and a mockery.
The book slipped unheeded from his grasp; his pipe grew cold between his
teeth; his eyes burned like lamps in their deep hollows, with their
steady and undeviating glare....
Dawn-dusk filled the high windows with violet light before he moved.
He rose, went to the bath-room and took a bottle of chloral from the
medicine-closet. He wondered at the steadiness of the hand that measured
out the prescribed dose--no more, no less. He wondered at the strength
of will which enabled him to take no more. There was enough in the
bottle to purchase him eternity.
What he took bought him three hours of oblivion. He rose at eight,
ordered his breakfast up by telephone, bathed and dressed. When the tray
came up, his mail came with it. Among others there was one letter in a
woman's hand which he left till the last, amusing himself by trying to
guess the identity of the writer, the writing being not altogether
strange to him. When at length he gave over this profitless employment,
he read:
"DEAR HUGH: I can call you that, now, because you're Peter's
dearest friend and therefore mine, and the proof of that is that
I'm telling you first of all of our great happiness. Peter and I
found out that we loved one another only yesterday, so we're going
to be married the first of June and...."
Whitaker read no more. He could guess the rest, and for the moment he
felt too sick a man to go through to the end. Indeed, the words were
blurring and running together beneath his gaze.
After a long time he put the letter aside, absent-mindedly swallowed a
cup of lukewarm coffee and rose from an otherwise untasted meal.
"That settles that, of course," he said quietly. "And it means I've got
to hustle to get ahead of Peter."
He set busily about his preparations, thinking quickly while he packed.
It occurred to him that he had, after all, several hours in which to
catch together the loose ends of things and make an exit without leaving
the businesses of his clients in a hopeless snarl; Peter Stark would
sleep till eleven, at least, and it would be late in the afternoon
before the young man could see his fiancee and find out from her that
Whitaker knew of the sacrifice Peter contemplated for friendship's sake.
Whitaker packed a hand-bag with a few essentials, not forgetting the
bottle of chloral. He was not yet quite sure what he meant to do after
he had definitely put himself out of Peter Stark's sphere of influence,
but he hadn't much doubt that the drug was destined to play a most
important part in the ultimate solution, and would as readily have
thought of leaving it behind as of going without a toothbrush or railway
fare.
Leaving the bag in the parcels-room at the Grand Central Station, he
went down-town to his office and put in a busy morning. Happily his
partner, Drummond, was out of town for the day; so he was able to put
his desk in order unhindered by awkward questionings. He worked
expeditiously, having no callers until just before he was ready to
leave. Then he was obliged to admit one who desired to make a settlement
in an action brought against him by Messrs. Drummond & Whitaker. He took
Whitaker's receipt for the payment in cash, leaving behind him fifteen
one-hundred-dollar notes. Whitaker regarded this circumstance as a
special dispensation of Providence to save him the bother of stopping at
the bank on his way up-town; drew his personal check for the right
amount and left it with a memorandum under the paper-weight on
Drummond's desk; put a match to a shredded pile of personal
correspondence in the fireplace; and caught a train at the Grand Central
at one-three.
Not until the cars were in motion did he experience any sense of
security from Peter Stark. He had been apprehensive until that moment of
some unforeseen move on the part of his friend; Peter was capable of
wide but sure casts of intuition on occasion, especially where his
affections were touched. But now Whitaker felt free, free to abandon
himself to meditative despair; and he did it, as he did most things,
thoroughly. He plunged headlong into an everlasting black pit of terror.
He considered the world through the eyes of a man sick unto death, and
found it without health. Behind him lay his home, a city without a
heart, a place of pointing fingers and poisoned tongues; before him the
brief path of Fear that he must tread: his broken, sword-wide span
leaping out over the Abyss....
He was anything but a patient man at all times, and anything but sane in
that dark hour. Cold horror crawled in his brain like a delirium--horror
of himself, of his morbid flesh, of that moribund body unfit to sheathe
the clean fire of life. The thought of struggling to keep animate that
corrupt Self, tainted by the breath of Death, was invincibly terrible to
him. All sense of human obligation disappeared from his cosmos; remained
only the biting hunger for eternal peace, rest, freedom from the bondage
of existence....
At about four o'clock the train stopped to drop the dining-car. Wholly
swayed by blind impulse, Whitaker got up, took his hand-bag and left the
car.
On the station platform he found himself pelted by a pouring rain. He
had left Town in a sodden drizzle, dull and dismal enough in all
conscience; here was a downpour out of a sky three shades lighter than
India ink--a steadfast, grim rain that sluiced the streets like a
gigantic fire-hose, brimming the gutters with boiling, muddy torrents.
The last to leave the train, he found himself without a choice of
conveyances; but one remained at the edge of the platform, an aged and
decrepit four-wheeler whose patriarchal driver upon the box might have
been Death himself masquerading in dripping black oilskins. To
Whitaker's inquiry he recommended the C'mercial House. Whitaker agreed
and imprisoned himself in the body of the vehicle, sitting on stained
and faded, threadbare cushions, in company with two distinct odours, of
dank and musty upholstery and of stale tuberoses. As they rocked and
crawled away, the blind windows wept unceasingly, and unceasingly the
rain drummed the long roll on the roof.
In time they stopped before a rambling structure whose weather-boarded
facade, white with flaking paint, bore the legend: COMMERCIAL HOUSE.
Whitaker paid his fare and, unassisted, carried his hand-bag up the
steps and across the rain-swept veranda into a dim, cavernous hall whose
walls were lined with cane-seated arm-chairs punctuated at every second
chair by a commodious brown-fibre cuspidor. A cubicle fenced off in one
corner formed the office proper--for the time being untenanted. There
was, indeed, no one in sight but a dejected hall-boy, innocent of any
sort of livery. On demand he accommodatingly disentangled himself from a
chair, a cigarette and a paper-backed novel, and wandered off down a
corridor, ostensibly to unearth the boss.
Whitaker waited by the desk, a gaunt, weary man, hag-ridden by fear.
There was in his mind a desolate picture of the room up-stairs when
he--his soul: the imperishable essence of himself--should have finished
with it....
At his elbow lay the hotel register, open at a page neatly headed with a
date in red ink. An absence of entries beneath the date-line seemed to
indicate that he was the first guest of the day. Near the book was a
small wooden corral neatly partitioned into stalls wherein were herded
an ink-well, toothpicks, matches, some stationery, and--severely by
itself--a grim-looking raw potato of uncertain age, splotched with ink
and wearing like horns two impaled penholders.
Laboriously prying loose one of the latter, Whitaker registered; but
two-thirds of his name was all he entered; when it came to "Whitaker,"
his pen paused and passed on to write "Philadelphia" in the residence
column.
The thought came to him that he must be careful to obliterate all
laundry marks on his clothing.
In his own good time the clerk appeared: a surly, heavy-eyed, loutish
creature in clothing that suggested he had been grievously misled by
pictures in the advertising pages of magazines. Whitaker noted, with
insensate irritation, that he wore his hair long over one eye, his mouth
ajar, his trousers high enough to disclose bony purple ankles. His
welcome to the incoming guest was comprised in an indifferent nod as
their eyes met, and a subsequent glance at the register which seemed
unaccountably to moderate his apathy.
"Mr. Morton--uh?" he inquired.
Whitaker nodded without words.
The youth shrugged and scrawled an hieroglyph after the name. "Here,
Sammy," he said to the boy--"Forty-three." To Whitaker he addressed the
further remark: "Trunks?"
"No."
The youth seemed about to expostulate, but checked when Whitaker placed
one of his hundred-dollar notes on the counter.
"I think that'll cover my liability," he said with a significance
misinterpreted by the other.
"I ain't got enough change--"
"That's all right; I'm in no hurry."
The eyes of the lout followed him as he ascended the stairs in the path
of Sammy, who had already disappeared. Annoyed, Whitaker quickened his
pace to escape the stare. On the second floor he discovered the bell-boy
waiting some distance down a long, darksome corridor, indifferently
lighted by a single window at its far end. As Whitaker came into view,
the boy thrust open the door, disappeared for an instant, and came out
minus the bag. Whitaker gave him a coin in passing--an attention which
he acknowledged by pulling the door to with a bang the moment the guest
had entered the room. At the same time Whitaker became aware of a
contretemps.
The room was of fair size, lighted by two windows overlooking the tin
roof of the front veranda. It was furnished with a large double bed in
the corner nearest the door a wash-stand, two or three chairs, a
bandy-legged table with a marble top; and it was tenanted by a woman in
street dress.
She stood by the wash-stand, with her back to the light, her attitude
one of tense expectancy: hardly more than a silhouette of a figure
moderately tall and very slight, almost angular in its slenderness. She
had been holding a tumbler in one hand, but as Whitaker appeared this
slipped from her fingers; there followed a thud and a sound of spilt
liquid at her feet. Simultaneously she cried out inarticulately in a
voice at once harsh and tremulous; the cry might have been "_You!_" or
"_Hugh!_" Whitaker took it for the latter, and momentarily imagined that
he had stumbled into the presence of an acquaintance. He was pulling off
his hat and peering at her shadowed face in an effort to distinguish
features possibly familiar to him, when she moved forward a pace or two,
her hands fluttering out toward him, then stopped as though halted by a
force implacable and overpowering.
"I thought," she quavered in a stricken voice--"I thought ... you ... my
husband ... Mr. Morton ... the boy said...."
Then her knees buckled under her, and she plunged forward and fell with
a thump that shook the walls.
"I'm sorry--I beg pardon," Whitaker stammered stupidly to ears that
couldn't hear. He swore softly with exasperation, threw his hat to a
chair and dropped to his knees beside the woman. It seemed as if the
high gods were hardly playing fair, to throw a fainting woman on his
hands just then, at a time when he was all preoccupied with his own
absorbing tragedy.
She lay with her head naturally pillowed on the arm she had
instinctively thrown out to protect her face. He could see now that her
slenderness was that of youth, of a figure undeveloped and immature. Her
profile, too, was young, though it stood out against the dark background
of the carpet as set and white as a death-mask. Indeed, her pallor was
so intense that a fear touched his heart, of an accident more serious
than a simple fainting spell. Her respiration seemed entirely suspended,
and it might have been merely his fancy that detected the least
conceivable syncopated pulsation in the icy wrist beneath his fingers.
He weighed quickly half a dozen suggestions. His fundamental impulse, to
call in feminine aid from the staff of the hotel, was promptly relegated
to the status of a last resort, as involving explanations which might
not seem adequate to the singular circumstances; besides, he entertained
a dim, searching, intuitive suspicion that possibly the girl herself
would more cheerfully dispense with explanations--though he hardly knew
why.... He remembered that people burned feathers in such emergencies,
or else loosened the lady's stays (corsets plus a fainting fit equal
stays, invariably, it seems). But there weren't any feathers handy,
and--well, anyway, neither expedient made any real appeal to his
intelligence. Besides, there were sensible things he could do to make
her more comfortable--chafe her hands and administer stimulants: things
like that.
Even while these thoughts were running through his mind, he was
gathering the slight young body into his arms; and he found it really
astonishingly easy to rise and bear her to the bed, where he put her
down flat on her back, without a pillow. Then turning to his hand-bag,
he opened it and produced a small, leather-bound flask of brandy; a
little of which would go far toward shattering her syncope, he fancied.
It did, in fact; a few drops between her half-parted lips, and she came
to with disconcerting rapidity, opening dazed eyes in the middle of a
spasm of coughing. He stepped back, stoppering the flask.
"That's better," he said pleasantly. "Now lie still while I fetch you a
drink of water."
As he turned to the wash-stand his foot struck the tumbler she had
dropped. He stopped short, frowning down at the great, staring, wet,
yellow stain on the dingy and threadbare carpet. Together with this
discovery he got a whiff of an acrid-sweet effluvium that spelled
"_Oxalic Acid--Poison_" as unmistakably as did the druggist's label on
the empty packet on the wash-stand....
In another moment he was back at the bedside with a clean glass of
water, which he offered to the girl's lips, passing his arm beneath her
shoulders and lifting her head so that she might drink.
She emptied the glass thirstily.
"Look here," he said almost roughly under the lash of this new
fear--"you didn't really drink any of that stuff, did you?"
Her eyes met his with a look of negation clouded by fear and
bewilderment. Then she turned her head away. Dragging a pillow beneath
it, he let her down again.
"Good," he said in accents meant to be enheartening; "you'll be all
right in a moment or two."
Her colourless lips moved in a whisper he had to bend close to
distinguish.
"Please...."
"Yes?"
"Please don't ... call anybody...."
"I won't. Don't worry."
The lids quivered down over her eyes, and her mouth was wrung with
anguish. He stared, perplexed. He wanted to go away quickly, but
couldn't gain his own consent to do so. She was in no condition to be
left alone, this delicate and fragile child, defenceless and beset. It
wasn't hard to conjecture the hell of suffering she must have endured
before coming to a pass of such desperation. There were dull blue
shadows beneath eyes red with weeping, a forlorn twist to her thin,
bloodless lips, a pinched look of wretchedness like a glaze over her
unhappy face, that told too plain a story. A strange girl, to find in a
plight like hers, he thought: not pretty, but quite unusual: delicate,
sensitive, high-strung, bred to the finer things of life--this last was
self-evident in the fine simplicity of her severely plain attire. Over
her hair, drawn tight down round her head, she wore one of those knitted
motor caps which were the fashion of that day. Her shoes were still wet
and a trifle muddy, her coat and skirt more than a trifle damp,
indicating that she had returned from a dash to the drug store not long
before Whitaker arrived.
A variety of impressions, these with others less significant, crowded
upon his perceptions in little more than a glance. For suddenly Nature
took her in hand; she twisted upon her side, as if to escape his regard,
and covered her face, her palms muffling deep tearing sobs while waves
of pent-up misery racked her slender little body.
Whitaker moved softly away....
Difficult, he found it, to guess what to do; more difficult still to do
nothing. His nerves were badly jangled; light-footed, he wandered
restlessly to and fro, half distracted between the storm of weeping that
beat gustily within the room and the deadly blind drum of the downpour
on the tin roof beyond the windows. Since that twilight hour in that
tawdry hotel chamber, no one has ever been able to counterfeit sorrow
and remorse to Whitaker; he listened then to the very voice of utter
Woe.
Once, pausing by the centre-table, he happened to look down. He saw a
little heap of the hotel writing-paper, together with envelopes, a pen,
a bottle of ink. Three of the envelopes were sealed and superscribed,
and two were stamped. The unstamped letter was addressed to the
Proprietor of the Commercial House.
Of the others, one was directed to a Mr. C. W. Morton in care of another
person at a number on lower Sixth Avenue, New York; and from this
Whitaker began to understand the singular manner of his introduction to
the wrong room; there's no great difference between _Morton_ and
_Morten_, especially when written carelessly.
But the third letter caused his eyes to widen considerably. It bore the
name of Thurlow Ladislas, Esq., and a Wall Street address.
Whitaker's mouth shaped a still-born whistle. He was recalling with
surprising distinctness the fragment of dialogue he had overheard at his
club the previous afternoon.
IV
MRS. WHITAKER
He lived through a long, bad quarter hour, his own tensed nerves
twanging in sympathy with the girl's sobbing--like telegraph wires
singing in a gale--his mind busy with many thoughts, thoughts strangely
new and compelling, wearing a fresh complexion that lacked altogether
the colouring of self-interest.
He mixed a weak draught of brandy and water and returned to the bedside.
The storm was passing in convulsive gasps ever more widely spaced, but
still the girl lay with her back to him.
"If you'll sit up and try to drink this," he suggested quietly, "I think
you'll feel a good deal better."
Her shoulders moved spasmodically; otherwise he saw no sign that she
heard.
"Come--please," he begged gently.
She made an effort to rise, sat up on the bed, dabbed at her eyes with a
sodden wisp of handkerchief, and groped blindly for the glass. He
offered it to her lips.
"What is it?" she whispered hoarsely.
He spoke of the mixture in disparaging terms as to its potency, until at
length she consented to swallow it--teeth chattering on the rim of the
tumbler. The effect was quickly apparent in the colour that came into
her cheeks, faint but warm. He avoided looking directly at her, however,
and cast round for the bell-push, which he presently found near the head
of the bed.
She moved quickly with alarm.
"What are you going to do?" she demanded in a stronger voice.
"Order you something to eat," he said. "No--please don't object. You
need food, and I mean to see you get it before I leave."
If she thought of protesting, the measured determination in his manner
deterred her. After a moment she asked:
"Please--who are you?"
"My name is Whitaker," he said--"Hugh Morten Whitaker."
She repeated the name aloud. "Haven't I heard of you? Aren't you engaged
to Alice Carstairs?"
"I'm the man you mean," he said quietly; "but I'm not engaged to Alice
Carstairs."
"Oh...." Perplexity clouded the eyes that followed closely his every
movement. "How did you happen to--to find me here?"
"Quite by accident," he replied. "I didn't want to be known, so
registered as Hugh Morten. They mistook me for your husband. Do you mind
telling me how long it is since you've had anything to eat?"
She told him: "Last night."
He suffered a sense of shame only second to her own, to see the dull
flush that accompanied her reply. His fingers itched for the throat of
Mr. C. W. Morton, chauffeur. Happily a knock at the door distracted him.
Opening it no wider than necessary to communicate with the bell-boy, he
gave him an order for the kitchen, together with an incentive to speed
the service.
Closing the door, he swung round to find that the girl had got to her
feet.
"He won't be long--" Whitaker began vaguely.
"I want to tell you something." She faced him bravely, though he refused
the challenge of her tormented eyes. "I ... I have no husband."
He bowed gravely.
"You're so good to me--" she faltered.
"O--nothing! Let's not talk about that now."
"I must talk--you must let me. You're so kind, I've got to tell you.
Won't you listen?"
He had crossed to a window, where he stood staring out. "I'd rather
not," he said softly, "but if you prefer--"
"I do prefer," said the voice behind him. "I--I'm Mary Ladislas."
"Yes," said Whitaker.
"I ... I ran away from home last week--five days ago--to get married to
our chauffeur, Charles Morton...."
She stammered.
"Please don't go on, if it hurts," he begged without looking round.
"I've got to--I've got to get it over with.... We were at Southampton,
at my father's summer home--I mean, that's where I ran away from.
He--Charley--drove me over to Greenport and I took the ferry there and
came here to wait for him. He went back to New York in the car,
promising to join me here as soon as possible...."
"And he didn't come," Whitaker wound up for her, when she faltered.
"No."
"And you wrote and telegraphed, and he didn't answer."
"Yes--"
"How much money of yours did he take with him?" Whitaker pursued.
There was a brief pause of astonishment. "What do you know about that?"
she demanded.
"I know a good deal about that type of man," he said grimly.
"I didn't have any money to speak of, but I had some jewellery--my
mother's--and he was to take that and pawn it for money to get married
with."
"I see."
To his infinite relief the waiter interrupted them. The girl in her turn
went to one of the windows, standing with her back to the room, while
Whitaker admitted the man with his tray. When they were alone once more,
he fixed the place and drew a chair for her.
"Everything's ready," he said--and had the sense not to try to make his
tone too cheerful.
"I hadn't finished what I wanted to tell you," said the girl, coming
back to him.
"Will you do me the favour to wait," he pleaded. "I think things will
seem--well, otherwise--when you've had some food."
"But I--"
"Oh, please!" he begged with his odd, twisted smile.
She submitted, head drooping and eyes downcast. He returned to his
window, rather wishing that he had thought to order for himself as well
as for the girl; for it was suddenly borne strongly in upon him that he
himself had had little enough to eat since dinner with Peter Stark. He
lighted a cigarette, by way of dulling his appetite, and then let it
smoulder to ashes between his fingers, while he lost himself in profound
speculations, in painstaking analysis of the girl's position.
Subconsciously he grew aware that the storm was moderating perceptibly,
the sky breaking....
"I've finished," the girl announced at length.
"You're feeling better?"
"Stronger, I think."
"Is there anything more--?"
"If you wouldn't mind sitting down--"
She had twisted her arm-chair away from the table. Whitaker took a seat
a little distance from her, with a keen glance appraising the change in
her condition and finding it not so marked as he had hoped. Still, she
seemed measurably more composed and mistress of her emotions, though he
had to judge mostly by her voice and manner, so dark was the room.
Through the shadows he could see little more than masses of light and
shade blocking in the slender figure huddled in a big, dilapidated
chair--the pallid oval of her face, and the darkness of her wide,
intent, young eyes.
"Don't!" she cried sharply. "Please don't look at me so--"
"I beg your pardon. I didn't mean to--"
"It's only--only that you make me think of what you must be thinking
about me--"
"I think you're rather fortunate," he said slowly.
"Fortunate!"
He shivered a little with the chill bitterness of that cry.
"You've had a narrow but a wonderfully lucky escape."
"Oh! ... But I'm not glad ... I was desperate--"
"I mean," he interrupted coolly, "from Mr. Morton. The silver lining is,
you're not married to a blackguard."
"Oh, yes, yes!" she agreed passionately.
"And you have youth, health, years of life before you!"
He sighed inaudibly....
"You wouldn't say that, if you understood."
"There are worse things to put up with than youth and health and the
right to live."
"But--how can I live? What am I to do?"
"Have you thought of going home?"
"It isn't possible."
"Have you made sure of that? Have you written to your
father--explained?"
"I sent him a special delivery three days ago, and--and yesterday a
telegram. I knew it wouldn't do any good, but I ... I told him
everything. He didn't answer. He won't, ever."
From what Whitaker knew of Thurlow Ladislas, he felt this to be too
cruelly true to admit of further argument. At a loss, he fell silent,
knitting his hands together as he strove to find other words wherewith
to comfort and reassure the girl.
She bent forward, elbows on knees, head and shoulders cringing.
"It hurts so!" she wailed ... "what people will think ... the shame, the
bitter, bitter shame of this! And yet I haven't any right to complain. I
deserve it all; I've earned my punishment."
"Oh, I say--!"
"But I have, because--because I didn't love him. I didn't love him at
all, and I knew it, even though I meant to marry him...."
"But, why--in Heaven's name?"