_Two Apparitions_
They found that the room in the house on Beekman Place, opposite that
which they felt covered their quarry, could be secured, and they were
shown to it by a quiet old gentlewoman, found a big double room that
ran across the whole length of the house. From the back it looked down
on the lights glimmering on the black East River and across to the
flare of Brooklyn; to the left the whole arc of the Fifty-ninth Street
Bridge was exposed. In front the windows overlooked Beekman Place
and were directly opposite, the front of the house to which the taxi
driver had gone that afternoon.
Here they took up the vigil. For four hours one of the two sat with
eyes never moving from the street and the windows of the house across
the street; and then he left the post, and the other took it.
It was vastly wearying work. Very few vehicles came into the light of
the street lamp beneath them, and every person who dismounted from one
of them had to be scrutinized with painful diligence.
Once a girl, young and slender and sprightly, stepped out of a taxi,
about ten o'clock at night, and ran lightly up the steps of the house.
Ronicky caught his friend by the shoulders and dragged him to the
window. "There she is now!" he exclaimed.
But the eye of the lover, even though the girl was in a dim light,
could not he deceived. The moment he caught her profile, as she turned
in opening the door, Bill Gregg shook his head. "That's not the one.
She's all different, a pile different, Ronicky."
Ronicky sighed. "I thought we had her," he said. "Go on back to sleep.
I'll call you again if anything happens."
But nothing more happened that night, though even in the dull, ghost
hours of the early morning they did not relax their vigil. But all the
next day there was still no sign of Caroline Smith in the house across
the street; no face like hers ever appeared at the windows. Apparently
the place was a harmless rooming house of fairly good quality. Not a
sign of Caroline Smith appeared even during the second day. By this
time the nerves of the two watchers were shattered by the constant
strain, and the monotonous view from the front window was beginning to
madden them.
"It's proof that she ain't yonder," said Bill Gregg. "Here's two days
gone, and not a sign of her yet. It sure means that she ain't in that
house, unless she's sick in bed." And he grew pale at the thought.
"Partner," said Ronicky Doone, "if they are trying to keep her away
from us they sure have the sense to keep her under cover for as long
as two days. Ain't that right? It looks pretty bad for us, but I'm
staying here for one solid week, anyway. It's just about our last
chance, Bill. We've done our hunting pretty near as well as we could.
If we don't land her this trip, I'm about ready to give up."
Bill Gregg sadly agreed that this was their last chance and they must
play it to the limit. One week was decided on as a fair test. If, at
the end of that time, Caroline Smith did not come out of the house
across the street they could conclude that she did not stay there. And
then there would be nothing for it but to take the first train back
West.
The third day passed and the fourth, dreary, dreary days of
unfaltering vigilance on the part of the two watchers. And on the
fifth morning even Ronicky Doone sat with his head in his hands at
the window, peering through the slit between the drawn curtains which
sheltered him from being observed at his spying. When he called out
softly, the sound brought Gregg, with one long leap out of the chair
where he was sleeping, to the window. There could be no shadow of a
doubt about it. There stood Caroline Smith in the door of the house!
She closed the door behind her and, walking to the top of the steps,
paused there and looked up and down the street.
Bill Gregg groaned, snatched his hat and plunged through the door, and
Ronicky heard the brief thunder of his feet down the first flight of
stairs, then the heavy thumps, as he raced around the landing. He was
able to trace him down all the three flights of steps to the bottom.
And so swift was that descent that, when the girl, idling down the
steps across the street, came onto the sidewalk, Bill Gregg rushed out
from the other side and ran toward her.
They made a strange picture as they came to a halt at the same
instant, the girl shrinking back in apparent fear of the man, and Bill
Gregg stopping by that same show of fear, as though by a blow in the
face. There was such a contrast between the two figures that Ronicky
Doone might have laughed, had he not been shaking his head with
sympathy for Bill Gregg.
For never had the miner seemed so clumsily big and gaunt, never had
his clothes seemed so unpressed and shapeless, while his soft gray
hat, to which he still clung religiously, appeared hopelessly out of
place in contrast with the slim prettiness of the girl. She wore a
black straw hat, turned back from her face, with a single big red
flower at the side of it; her dress was a tailored gray tweed. The
same distinction between their clothes was in their faces, the finely
modeled prettiness of her features and the big, careless chiseling of
the features of Bill Gregg.
Ronicky Doone did not wonder that, after her first fear, her gesture
was one of disdain and surprise.
Bill Gregg had dragged the hat from his head, and the wind lifted his
long black hair and made it wild. He went a long, slow step closer to
her, with both his hands outstretched.
A strange scene for a street, and Ronicky Doone saw the girl flash a
glance over her shoulder and back to the house from which she had just
come. Ronicky Doone followed that glance, and he saw, all hidden save
the profile of the face, a man standing at an opposite window and
smiling scornfully down at that picture in the street.
What a face it was! Never in his life had Ronicky Doone seen a man
who, in one instant, filled him with such fear and hatred, such
loathing and such dread, such scorn and such terror. The nose was
hooked like the nose of a bird of prey; the eyes were long and
slanting like those of an Oriental. The face was thin, almost
fleshless, so that the bony jaw stood out like the jaw of a
death's-head.
As for the girl, the sight of that onlooker seemed to fill her with a
new terror. She shrank back from Bill Gregg until her shoulders were
almost pressed against the wall of the house. And Ronicky saw her head
shake, as she denied Bill the right of advancing farther. Still he
pleaded, and still she ordered him away. Finally Bill Gregg drew
himself up and bowed to her and turned on his heel.
The girl hesitated a moment. It seemed to Ronicky, in spite of the
fact that she had just driven Bill Gregg away, as if she were on
the verge of following him to bring him back. For she made a slight
outward gesture with one hand.
If this were in her mind, however, it vanished instantly. She turned
with a shudder and hurried away down the street.
As for Bill Gregg he bore himself straight as a soldier and came back
across the pavement, but it was the erectness of a soldier who has met
with a crushing defeat and only preserves an outward resolution, while
all the spirit within is crushed.
Ronicky Doone turned gloomily away from the window and listened to the
progress of Gregg up the stairs. What a contrast between the ascent
and the descent! He had literally flown down. Now his heels clumped
out a slow and regular death march, as he came back to the room.
When Gregg opened the door Ronicky Doone blinked and drew in a deep
breath at the sight of the poor fellow's face. Gregg had known before
that he truly loved this girl whom he had never seen, but he had never
dreamed what the strength of that love was. Now, in the very moment of
seeing his dream of the girl turned into flesh and blood, he had lost
her, and there was something like death in the face of the big miner
as he dropped his hat on the floor and sank into a chair.
After that he did not move so much as a finger from the position into
which he had fallen limply. His legs were twisted awkwardly, sprawling
across the floor in front of him; one long arm dragged down toward the
floor, as if there was no strength in it to support the weight of the
labor-hardened hands; his chin was fallen against his breast.
When Ronicky Doone crossed to him and laid a kind hand on his shoulder
he did not look up. "It's ended," said Bill Gregg faintly. "Now we
hit the back trail and forget all about this." He added with a faint
attempt at cynicism: "I've just wasted a pile of good money-making
time from the mine, that's all."
"H'm!" said Ronicky Doone. "Bill, look me in the eye and tell me, man
to man, that you're a liar!" He added: "Can you ever be happy without
her, man?"
The cruelty of that speech made Gregg flush and look up sharply. This
was exactly what Ronicky Doone wanted.
"I guess they ain't any use talking about that part of it," said Gregg
huskily.
"Ain't there? That's where you and me don't agree! Why, Bill, look at
the way things have gone! You start out with a photograph of a girl.
Now you've followed her, found her name, tracked her clear across the
continent and know her street address, and you've given her a chance
to see your own face. Ain't that something done? After you've done all
that are you going to give up now? Not you, Bill! You're going to buck
up and go ahead full steam. Eh?"
Bill Gregg smiled sourly. "D'you know what she said when I come
rushing up and saying: 'I'm Bill Gregg!' D'you know what she said?"
"Well?"
"'Bill Gregg?' she says. 'I don't remember any such name!'
"That took the wind out of me. I only had enough left to say: 'The
gent that was writing those papers to the correspondence school to you
from the West, the one you sent your picture to and--'
"'Sent my picture to!' she says and looks as if the ground had opened
under her feet. 'You're mad!' she says. And then she looks back over
her shoulder as much as to wish she was safe back in her house!"
"D'you know why she looked back over her shoulder?"
"Just for the reason I told you."
"No, Bill. There was a gent standing up there at a window watching her
and how she acted. He's the gent that kept her from writing to you and
signing her name. He's the one who's kept her in that house. He's the
one that knew we were here watching all the time, that sent out the
girl with exact orders how she should act if you was to come out and
speak to her when you seen her! Bill, what that girl told you didn't
come out of her own head. It come out of the head of the gent across
the way. When you turned your back on her she looked like she'd run
after you and try to explain. But the fear of that fellow up in the
window was too much for her, and she didn't dare. Bill, to get at the
girl you got to get that gent I seen grinning from the window."
"Grinning?" asked Bill Gregg, grinding his teeth and starting from his
chair. "Was the skunk laughing at me?"
"Sure! Every minute."