BACK IN THE ROOM
The situation had become more preposterous than ever. Two hours before
it would have been unimaginable; one hour ago I had merely been
offering aid to a young woman in distress; now she was occupying my
rooms and I was hurrying along Tenth Street, careless as to my
destination, and feeling as though the whole world was crumbling about
my head because she wore a wedding-ring.
Certainly I was not in love with her, so far as I could analyze my
emotions. I had been conscious only of a desire to help her, merging
by degrees into pity for her friendlessness.
But the wedding-ring--what hopes, then, had begun to spring up in my
heart? I could not fathom them; I only knew that my exaltation had
given place to profound dejection.
As I passed up the street the taxicab which I had seen at the east end
came rapidly toward me. It passed, and I stopped and looked after it.
I was certain that it slackened speed outside the door of the old
building, but again it went on quickly, until it was lost to view in
the distance.
Had I given the pursuers a clue by my reappearance?
I watched for a few moments longer, but the vehicle did not return, and
I dismissed the idea as folly. In truth, there was no reason to
suppose that the man I had seen in Herald Square was connected with the
two others, or that any of the three had followed us. No doubt the
third man was but a street-loafer of the familiar type, attracted by
Jacqueline's unusual appearance.
And, after all, New York was a civilized city, and I could be sure of
the girl's safety behind the street door-lock and that of my apartment
door. So I refused to yield to the impulse to go back and assure
myself that she was all right. I must find a hotel and get a good
night's sleep. In the morning, undoubtedly, I would see the episode in
a less romantic fashion.
As I went on, new thoughts began to press on my imagination. Such an
event as this, told in any gathering of men, why, they would smile at
me and call me the victim of an adventuress. The tale about the
father, the assumed ignorance of the conventions--how much could be
believed?
Had she not probably left her husband in some Canadian city and come to
New York to enjoy her holiday in her own fashion? Could she innocently
have adventured to Daly's door and actually have succeeded in gaining
admission? Why, many a would-be gambler had had the wicket of the
grille slammed in his face by the old colored butler.
Perhaps she was worse than I was even now imagining!
I had turned up Fifth Avenue, and had reached Twelfth or Thirteenth
Street when I thought I heard the patter of the Eskimo dog's feet
behind me. I spun, around, startled, but there was only the long
stretch of pavement, wet from a slight recent shower, and the
reflection of the white arc-lights in it.
I had resumed my course when I was sure I heard the pattering again.
And again I saw nothing.
A moment later I was hurrying back toward the apartment-house. My
nerves had suddenly become unstrung. I felt sure now that some
imminent danger was threatening Jacqueline. I could not bear the
suspense of waiting till morning. I wanted to save her from something
that I felt intimately, but did not understand, and at which my reason
mocked in vain.
And as I ran I thought I heard the patter of the dog's feet, pacing
mine.
I was rounding the corner of Tenth Street now, and again the folly of
my behaviour struck home to me. I stopped and tried to think. Was it
some instinct that was taking me back, or was it the remembrance of
Jacqueline's beauty? Was it not the desire to see her, to ask her
about the ring?
Surely my fears were but an overwrought imagination and the strangeness
of the situation, acting upon a mind eagerly grasping out after
adventure, being set free from the oppression of those dreadful years
of bondage!
I had actually swung around when I heard the ghostly patter of the feet
again close at my side. I made my decision in that instant, and
hurried swiftly on my course back toward the apartment house.
I was in Tenth Street now. It was half-past two in the morning, and
beginning to grow cold. The thoroughfare was empty. I fled, a tiny
thing, between two rows of high, dark houses.
When at last I found my door my hands were trembling so that I could
hardly fit the key into the lock.
I wondered now whether it had not been the pattering of my heart that I
had heard.
I bounded up the stairs. But on the top story I had to pause to get my
breath, and then I dared not enter. I listened outside. There was no
sound from within.
The two rooms that I occupied were separated only by a curtain, which
fell short a foot from the floor and was slung on a wooden pole,
disclosing two feet between the top of it and the ceiling. The rooms
were thus actually one, and even that might have been called small, for
the bed in the rear room was not a dozen paces from the door.
I listened for the breathing of the sleeping girl. My intelligence
cried out upon my folly, telling me that my appearance there would
terrify her; and yet that clamorous fear that beat at my heart would
not be silenced.
If I could hear her breathe, I thought, I would go quietly away, and
find a hotel in which to sleep. I listened minute after minute, but I
could not hear a sound.
At last I put my mouth to the keyhole and spoke to her. "Jacqueline,"
I called. The name sounded as strange and sweet on my own lips as it
had sounded on hers when she told it to me. I waited.
There was no answer.
Then a little louder: "Jacqueline!"
And then quite loudly: "Jacqueline!"
I listened, dreading that she would cry out in alarm, but the same dead
silence followed.
Then, out of the silence, hammering on my eardrums, burst the loud
ticking of the little alarm-clock that I had left on the mantel of the
bedroom. I heard that, and it must have been ticking minutes before
the sound reached me; perhaps if I waited a little longer I should hear
her breathing.
The alarm-clock was one of that kind which, when set to "repeat,"
utters a peculiar little click every two hundred and eighth stroke
owing to a catch in the mechanism. Formerly it had annoyed me
inexpressibly, and I would lie awake for hours waiting for that tiny
sound. Now I could hear even that, and heard it repeat and repeat
itself; but I could not hear Jacqueline breathe.
I took the key of the apartment door from my pocket at last and fitted
it noiselessly into the lock. I stood there, trembling and irresolute.
I dared not turn the key. The hall door gave immediately upon the
rooms without a private passage, and at the moment when I opened the
door I should be practically inside my bedroom save for the intervening
curtain.
Once more I ventured:
"Jacqueline! Jacqueline!"
There was not the smallest answering stir within. And so, with shaking
fingers, I turned the key.
The door creaked open with a noise that must have sounded throughout
the empty house. I recollected then that it was impossible to keep it
shut without locking it. The landlord had long ago ceased to concern
himself with his tumble-down property.
I caught at the door-edge, missed it and, tripping over a rent in the
cheap mat that lay against the door inside, stumbled against the
table-edge and clung there.
And even after I had caught at it, and stayed my fall, that infernal
door went creaking, creaking backward till it brought up against the
wall.
The room was completely dark, except for a little patch of light high
up on the bedroom wall, which came through the hole the workmen had
made when they began demolishing the building. I hesitated a moment;
then I drew a match from my pocket and rubbed it softly into a flame
against my trouser leg.
I reached up to the gas above the table, turned it on, and lit the
incandescent mantle, lowering the light immediately. But even then
there was no sound from behind the curtains.
They hung down close together, so that I was able to see only the
gas-blackened ceiling above them and, underneath, the lower edge of the
bed linen, and the bed-frame at the base, with its enamelled iron feet,
The sheets hung straight, as though the bed had not been occupied; but,
though there was no sound, I knew Jacqueline was at the back of the
curtains.
The oppressive stillness was not that of solitude. She must be awake;
she must be listening in terror.
I went toward the curtains, and when I spoke I heard the words come
through my lips in a voice that I could not recognize as mine.
"Jacqueline!" I whispered, "it is Paul. Paul, your friend. Are you
safe, Jacqueline?"
Now I saw, under the curtains, what looked like the body of a very
small animal. It might have been a woolly dog, or a black lambkin, and
it was lying perfectly still.
I pulled aside the curtains and stood between them, and the scene
stamped itself upon my brain, as clear as a photographic print, for
ever.
The woolly beast was the fur cap of a dead man who lay across the floor
of the little room. One foot was extended underneath the bed, and the
head reached to the bottom of the wall on the other side of the room.
He lay upon his back, his eyes open and staring, his hands clenched,
and his features twisted into a sneering smile.
His fur overcoat, unbuttoned, disclosed a warm knit waistcoat of a
gaudy pattern, across which ran the heavy links of a gold chain. There
was a tiny hole in his breast, over the heart, from which a little
blood had flowed. The wound had pierced the heart, and death had
evidently been instantaneous.
It was the man whom I had seen staring at us across Herald Square.
Beside the window Jacqueline crouched, and at her feet lay the Eskimo
dog, watching me silently. In her hand she held a tiny, dagger-like
knife, with a thin, red-stained blade. Her grey eyes, black in the
gas-light, stared into mine, and there was neither fear nor recognition
in them. She was fully dressed, and the bed had not been occupied.
I flung myself at her feet. I took the weapon from her hand.
"Jacqueline!" I cried in terror. I raised her hands to my lips and
caressed them.
She seemed quite unresponsive.
I laid them against my cheek. I called her by her name imploringly; I
spoke to her, but she only looked at me and made no answer. Still it
was evident to me that she heard and understood, for she looked at me
in a puzzled way, as if I were a complete stranger. She did not seem
to resent my presence there, and she did not seem afraid of the dead
man. She seemed, in a kindly, patient manner, to be trying to
understand the meaning of the situation.
"Jacqueline," I cried, "you are not hurt? Thank God you are not hurt.
What has happened?"
"I don't know," she answered. "I don't know where I am."
I kneeled down at her side and put my arms about her.
"Jacqueline, dear;" I said, "will you not try to think? I am
Paul--your friend Paul. Do you not remember me?"
"No, monsieur," she sighed.
"But, then, how did you come here, Jacqueline?" I asked.
"I do not know," she answered. And, a moment later, "I do not know,
Paul."
That encouraged me a little. Evidently she remembered what I had just
said to her.
"Where is your home, Jacqueline?"
"I do not know," she answered in an apathetic voice, devoid of interest.
There was something more to be said, though it was hard.
"Jacqueline, who--was--that?"
"Who?" she inquired, looking at me with the same patient, wistful gaze.
"That man, Jacqueline. That dead man."
"What dead man, Paul?"
She was staring straight at the body, and at that moment I realized
that she not only did not remember, but did not even see it.
The shock which she had received, supervening upon the nervous state in
which she had been when I encountered her, had produced one of those
mental inhibitions in which the mind, to save the reason, obliterates
temporarily not only all memory of the past, but also all present
sights and sounds which may serve to recall it. She looked idly at the
body of the dead man, and I was sure that she saw nothing but the worn
woodwork of the floor.
I saw that it was useless to say anything more upon this subject.
"You are very tired, Jacqueline?" I asked.
"Yes, _monsieur_," she answered, leaning back against my arm.
"And you would like to sleep?"
"Yes, _monsieur_."
I raised her in my arms and laid her on the bed, telling her to close
her eyes and sleep. She was asleep almost immediately after her head
rested Upon the pillow. She breathed as softly as an infant.
I watched her for a while until I heard a distant clock strike three.
This recalled me to the dangers of our situation. I struck a match and
lit the gas in the bedroom. But the yellow glare was so ghastly and
intolerable that I turned it down.
And then I set about the task before me.