BOFINGER LOSES HOPE
Bofinger, with his instinct for blackmail, already saw clearly into the
case. A misanthrope in love, who, to conceal his purpose, hid his
identity and feigned to be considering an adoption; and a woman who, on
her side, refused to reveal her address presented to him the familiar
conjunction of senility and the adventuress. When he had asked his
client how long he had known Sheila Vaughn he had had a motive. To him,
the vital issue was to learn whether this shabby, odd client had means.
Confident that the woman must have already secured that information,
when he learned that the intimacy had already existed four months he
felt certain that if she had played so carefully it was for no mean
stake.
To his keen sense of his own opportunities the eccentric character of
his client, all suspicion and mistrustful cunning, provoked a
professional eagerness to meet and dupe so unusual an antagonist. He did
not formulate a plan yet, but he had that strange, excited premonition
of success, which, though it deceive a hundred times, gains always with
the temperament of the gambler an easy credence.
He went to the court-room, where he transacted some business, and
towards four o'clock hastened back to the office. To his great
irritation Toby was nowhere to be seen, but on going to his desk he
discovered a note on which was scrawled:
MAX FARGUS
_The Oyster House Man._
Bofinger pounced upon it with a cry of exultation. Max Fargus,
proprietor of half a dozen oyster houses, was a character known to the
city by a score of anecdotes of eccentricity and greed. He crushed the
paper in his hand and swung out triumphantly.
"Fargus is worth half a million, if a cent," he said joyfully. "What
luck, eh! The woman is playing for marriage of course. Bo, I begin to
see where you come in!"
As he hastened towards the Square, dodging amid the filth of Sixth
Avenue, he amused himself by sketching the portrait of the woman as he
imagined her.
"Yes, sure, its a question of marriage," he thought. "It must be if she
has played as close as that for four months. She's a clever one, I bet,
an old hand. I wonder if I know her."
The Square suddenly discovered itself, that smiling barrier which
interposes between the horrors of Third Street, a locality so foul that
a conflagration alone could cleanse it, and the thoughtless royal avenue
which digs its roots here and stretches upward to flower like a royal
palm in the luxuriance of Central Park.
At this period Washington Square had not fallen before the vandal march
of business, though already the invaders showed their menacing front
above the roofs. To-day nothing remains of that glory save the north
side, which, in its red and white uniforms, makes face with solid front
to the enemy from whom it expects nothing but obliteration.
"Now for it," thought Bofinger as he entered the grateful shades which
the foliage, nowhere more generous, lavished there. On a bench at the
foot of a sycamore he had perceived the somber note of his odd client
and the green flush of a dress. Slackening he came towards them, his
eyes eagerly on the woman. He had expected a young girl, he found a
woman in the thirties, but fresh and defying an exact estimate. A simple
bonnet, with border of lace, which drooped like petals, effectually
concealed her face. The dress of a peculiar shade of May-green silk
showed a neck as modest as that of a young girl, and draped itself
demurely and indefinitely.
She was busy over some embroidery, but at the moment of his passing the
needle was idle, and with her eyes on the ground she was pondering on
some remark of her companion. Everything spoke of the natural--the
innocence and prudery of her pose, the gradual motion of her body, the
artless quiet of her attention; of the coquette or the actress--not a
sign.
Bofinger caught this rapid impression as one seizes the flight of a
star. He passed, his hopes sank. His anger rose and he cried with an
oath:
"Hell, what luck--she's honest!"
It was the one obstacle that never failed to upset his temper. To be
defeated by rascality, by a clever turn of chicanery, never disturbed
him--that was legitimate. But honesty, in his philosophy, was such a
colossal absurdity that before it he never could control his impatience.
So it was with a sense of having been defrauded that he repeated:
"Damn the luck, she _seems_ honest."
He sat down at some distance, yet near enough to wait anxiously a better
look. In a moment the woman lifted her head and he saw her face as she
nodded deferentially to her companion. The black hair was divided in
the middle and fell over the temples in the fashion of a thousand
madonnas. He thought that she had even a look of stupidity. She put the
embroidery into a bag and the movements of her arm was stiff, lacking
grace, the gestures of a woman without coquetry.
"Sold again!" Bofinger murmured, overcome by such evidence. "Perhaps
after all I jumped too soon. The old boy is crazy enough to adopt her."
With an abrupt leave-taking, Fargus arose and departed eastward. The
woman without lightness or geniality had accepted his bow, bobbing her
head and, betraying her inexperience by a slight diffident start,
reseated herself with embarrassment.
Presently she stood up, smoothed her skirt, tucked her bag under her arm
and moved off, clutching her parasol by the waist.
"Oh, a woman who walks like that," Bofinger said to himself as he
followed her up Fifth Avenue, "must be virtuous. She's the honest
working girl supporting an invalid mother and all that. It's true, such
things do happen. Ah, we turn east now."
She had disappeared around the corner of Twelfth Street. Without
distrust, Bofinger followed so negligently that on rounding the corner
he ran full upon her waiting in ambush. The surprise made him lose his
self-possession; he passed hurriedly, without daring to meet her glance.
But to his immense relief he saw she had not even noticed him and
divined that it was for Fargus alone that she took such precautions.
"Eh, eh! What does that mean?" he said joyfully to himself. But this new
hope gradually flickered out, as he considered logically: "After all,
she has a right to hide where she lives. Besides, if she were an
adventuress, she would have suspected me. That's true, that proves
nothing."
He continued eastward and turned north up Irving Place, perceiving to
his satisfaction that she would do the same. At Fourteenth Street he
covered himself in the crowd, while the woman taking the other side went
west to Seventh Avenue, again starting north.
Seeing that she no longer feared pursuit Bofinger approached nearer. At
one crossing, to avoid a puddle she caught up her skirts in either hand,
the parasol projecting awkwardly.
"She walks like a country school ma'am, going to school in rubber
boots!" he thought savagely, finding relief, as his irritation grew, in
ridiculing the woman. "How long is she going to keep me trotting after
her, I wonder?"
As though in answer to his question she turned west and suddenly mounted
the steps of a brown stone front close to the southern corner.
"Respectable, of course!" Bofinger ejaculated, passing and marking the
number. He went to Eighth Avenue, descended a block and returned
eastward. The respectability of the house completed his dejection, which
showed itself in the listless drag of his feet.
All at once as he neared Seventh Avenue again his indifferent glance,
wandering along the street, was stopped by the peculiar actions of a
woman in a light duster, who was holding the door across her and spying
the street with caution. The veil which fell from a saucy toque of light
blue straw was thick enough to hide her features. With only a languid
amusement Bofinger was watching her when, in stepping from the
vestibule, the woman caught her duster on the door. The next moment she
snatched it around her, but in the second's interval Bofinger beheld a
flash of green, of that peculiar May-green silk which a half an hour
before had first attracted his eye to the companion of Max Fargus.
Her alarm, the dress so carefully concealed, the position of the house
back to back with the one she had entered, revealed the whole stratagem.
A great thankfulness welled up in him, and like all men whom a flip of
fortune redeems, he received the turn exultingly, as an evidence that he
might count on illimitable favors.
He laughed with an easy heart at the simplicity of the trick which had
deceived him, and as he followed her he laughed anew at the
transformation of the woman. Everything was changed. The skirts hidden
under the duster were yet gathered about her in a way to suggest the
slender lines of the body. She walked daintily, placing her feet with
care. Even to the alert poise of the head and the rapid grace of her
movement, everything breathed an air of coquetry and art.
Bofinger, lost in this analysis, continued to laugh, sharing emotion
between railing at his stupidity and admiration for the actress who had
not neglected a single detail. He thought of the awkward start she had
made when Fargus had left, and of the way she had reminded him of the
country woman stalking in rubber boots, and recalling such details he
followed joyously, scenting success with such an ally.
After a few blocks she went west and entered a house, letting herself in
with a key.
"Hello, I know that place," Bofinger said to himself, recognizing the
boarding-house as a haven of improvident actors. "So Miss Vaughn is of
the stage. I can believe it." Then he added with decision: "What a
treasure, eh! She's clever enough to hoodwink a dozen Farguses!"
The exact meaning of this sentiment was, no doubt, that a woman who
could deceive him must be capable of great things.