MISS MORISSEY IS MISS VAUGHN
At the end of half an hour, which he gave to a careful consideration of
his plans, Bofinger returned to the boarding-house. A plot of burned and
scrawny grass served as a front lawn. A cast-iron nymph, relic of
prosperity, stained and chipped, its head-dress holding the straws of an
old nest, gave the note to the place and prophesied the interior. At his
pull, the loose knob, as though unaccustomed to use, came forth so far
that he feared he had wrenched it bodily out, before a faint twinkle
from within persisted to his ears. Three times he repeated this
operation, before a shadow on the glass announced a slow relief.
A frail old woman, moving tediously, ushered him into the hall, shading
her weak eyes while she awaited his errand.
Bofinger, drawing forth his pocketbook, selected a business card,
discarded that for one that bore his name alone, and finally, after a
moment's consideration, replaced the pocketbook and said:
"Just tell the lady who came in a half an hour ago that a gentleman
wants to speak to her."
"Ain't ye goin' to send no name?" the woman asked in dull astonishment.
"It is not necessary."
"And ye don't know her well?"
"I don't."
"I guess, then, I've got to climb up," she answered wearily. "I was
hopin' you might go up. What did ye say her name was?"
"The lady who came in a while ago; she wore a light duster."
"Oh, Miss Morissey--ye want to see her, do ye?"
"That's it, Miss Morissey--please."
"She wouldn't hear if I called. She's on the third," she answered, with
a sigh and a look of reproach. "Ye can sit down there--" She took a
step but turned with a sudden solicitude. "Don't bear too hard."
Mindful of the caution Bofinger balanced gingerly on the shaky chair,
watching the landlady laboring up the stairs, a step at a time, childish
fashion.
An air of dinginess and neglect pervaded the hall and the distant
dining-room. In the carpets were frayed shallows, on the banisters two
spindles diverged from the line. The blistered plaster was dropping from
the ceiling, while on the wall the grimy, green paper had regions of
musky yellow. Curtains and shutters rigidly excluded the daylight, while
everywhere the carpeted silence spread the feeling of a cemetery of
abandoned hopes.
From the second floor the thin complaint of the landlady came down.
"Miss Morissey! oh, Miss Morissey!"
So persuaded was Bofinger by the all prevailing famine that he rose and
cautiously regained his hat from the loose rack. The landlady, climbing
on, kept calling from time to time, fruitlessly, "Miss Morissey! Miss
Morissey!"
A door whined, and in the dusk of the landing above a vague head came to
peer down at the lawyer. The landlady returned, descending with the same
efforts, and announced:
"Ye can go up, top floor back, feel to the right as far as ye can go,
and knock."
Seized with the general decadence he toiled upward with slow, lifeless
steps. An odor of stale tobacco hung in the air. At the first floor a
door left purposely open showed a man in shirt sleeves, shaving, while a
woman in a wrapper arrived in time to study his passing. Through the
darkness into which he now ascended came an atmosphere of musk and the
scraping of a violin. Groping down the blind passage with outstretched
fingers, his hands finally struck against the wall. He felt to the
right, found a door, and knocked. A voice replied, uncertainly:
"Yes--come in."
He stepped out of the blackness, blinking a moment at the sudden light.
The woman he saw was indeed Sheila Vaughn.
"Miss Morissey?" he asked, shutting the door carefully.
"Yes."
He bowed and, indifferent to her questioning, remained sweeping the room
with precise scrutiny. In the walls the same decrepitude was manifest,
in the furniture the same infirmity. A patch of brown paper replaced a
pane in the window, the globe on the gas-jet was bitten and smoked. On
the rakish bed was laid out the green silk dress, a clothes brush on
top. In its place she wore a soiled muslin, raveled at the cuffs and the
neck, while the neat boots had given way to frayed red slippers. A
wrapper, a musty dress or two, in impoverished contrast to the elegance
on the bed, hung from a row of pegs.
The eye of the lawyer, after noting each evidence of unusual poverty,
rested on the table where a few photographs were displayed. He advanced
and picking up each in turn said pleasantly:
"Ah, Miss Morissey, you have had a career?"
The woman, who had followed him with amazement and alarm, said stiffly:
"What do you want with me?"
"Miss Morissey," Bofinger said, replacing the photographs with a nod, "I
want to see you on business--particular business. Can I sit down?"
"Sit down."
Reassured by the matter-of-fact method of his address, she motioned him
to a chair, drawing one for herself.
"If you please, I'll sit here," he said, placing himself so that the
light would fall on her face. He drew his glasses, peered at her
earnestly, and began:
"My dear Miss Morissey, you are certainly a most interesting
person--pardon me if I am too curious."
"What's your name?" she said quickly.
"Mr. Bofinger--Mr. Alonzo Bofinger."
"You are a lawyer?" she asked slowly.
"Yes, Miss _Vaughn_, I am."
"Ah!"
The interjection escaped her. Immediately she rallied, rose and shifted
her chair, that the light might be equally shared. Her eyes showed
anxiety but more interest, as she asked with false calm:
"Then what do you want with--Miss Vaughn?"
"Sheila Vaughn," Bofinger said loudly, thinking the time right to
overwhelm her, "I represent Mr. Max Fargus."
He paused for evidence of disconcertion, but whatever her emotions she
replied evenly:
"Yes, I know him."
"Mr. Fargus has commissioned me to make the most exact inquiries about
you."
"Why?" she asked, studying his face intently.
"My client is thinking of an adoption."
"Indeed!" she said, really astonished; but the smile that succeeded
showed him she was not the dupe of the subterfuge.
"That was the reason he gave me. I suspect, though, that it is rather a
question of marriage."
"Very probably," she said, nodding. In measure, as she studied the sly
countenance, her assurance had returned. "And what'll you do?"
"Madam," Bofinger said impressively, "I must report what I have
discovered."
"And that's what?"
"That I followed Miss Vaughn to a house where she disappeared and Miss
Morissey emerged--by a back passage. That Miss Morissey is quite a
different character from Miss Vaughn, especially in style," he added,
smiling reminiscently. "That Miss Morissey is evidently of the stage,
living in a boarding-house, which I happen to know is a resort of actors
on their uppers. I shall be forced to describe the contrast in your
dress and the destitution of your wardrobe; pardon me, if I am forced
to use the word,--deception. This, I say it frankly, is but the
beginning of my investigation."
"It's already a good deal, isn't it?" she said thoughtfully.
"You must judge of that, Miss Vaughn."
"Are you sure" she asked with a smile, "quite sure that you'll tell all
that?"
He turned in astonishment and saw that she had taken his measure.
Realizing that he could no longer count on the advantage of terrifying
her, he acknowledged the turn by abandoning his magisterial attitude,
and discarding his glasses.
"Sheila," he said genially, "I don't intend to do anything of the kind."
She frowned, laughed, rose, rearranged her skirts and, with a return of
coquetry, asked maliciously:
"Will you please tell me how my extraordinary friend came to employ
you?"
He did not like it that she should have read him so easily, but this
pique yielding to the humor of the question, he said with a grin:
"I guess Fargus thinks all lawyers a set of scoundrels. Anyhow he picked
me at random, thinking he would stand as good a chance that way as any
other. To which I'll add, since perfect confidence is necessary between
us, he was wrong in his theory and unlucky in its application. However,
his misfortune is our gain."
At the word "our," calmly spoken, Sheila turned anxiously.
"You have some plan then?" she said abruptly. "And what do you expect
out of it?"
"One moment," Bofinger said with a deprecating smile; "before we discuss
such vulgar details there must be, I repeat, absolute confidence. Miss
Vaughn, you have sized up quickly the fact that your future lies solely
in my hands. I ain't going to deceive you--my interests depend on you.
Let's begin at the start. What's your side of the affair?"
He threw himself back into a listening attitude and looked at her
encouragingly. The daylight had begun to weaken. Across the sordid back
lots an occasional gas-jet flared upon a room too miserable to be
hidden. Before the direct avowal Sheila hesitated, incapable of his
brutal frankness, woman-like considering some justifying motive. The
lawyer with a cynical smile comprehended the dumb play and waited until
she broke out lamely:
"My side--you know it already. He wants to marry me--and I--I am
willing. That's all. How could it be anything else?" She put out her
hand as though calling on her surroundings to explain.
"What have you told him?" Bofinger asked, seeing that he must prompt the
recital.
"I am living with an aunt, whom I support by needlework," she admitted
reluctantly.
"Come, my dear," Bofinger said encouragingly. "If you don't want to tell
me how you managed it--you're clever enough, you fooled me for a
moment--tell me where you are."
"I don't know," she said frankly. "He's half crazy, you know. I'm never
sure of him."
"Well, has he spoken?"
"Of marriage? No--that is, not outright."
"Well, where are you?"
"Why, I am waiting," she said with a shrug. "He makes love to me all the
time."
"And I suppose, my clever dear," Bofinger said, taking the opportunity
to promote familiarity. "You've made him think you're pining away?"
"I'm no such fool," she answered with an indefinable smile. "Indeed I
tell him that I don't care the least bit for him. That if he wants to
win my affection he's going to have a hard time, but--" she added with a
laugh, "I let him believe that's not entirely impossible."
"You're right," Bofinger said appreciatively. "Of course you're right."
A weak knock sounded on the door. Bofinger, who did not wish to be
seen, rose, looking anxiously at Sheila.
"It's only dinner," she explained, going to the door.
"Nevertheless," he said hurriedly, showing his back and going to the
window, "don't let any one in."
Obedient to his request, she received the meal from the child who
brought it, paying out the pennies and barring the door.
"Let's see," he said, returning to the table, "what you call a dinner."
On the table were arranged half a sausage, half a loaf of bread, and a
pint of milk. He looked at them a moment and then with a contemptuous
motion tossed the loaf and the sausage out of the window.
Sheila, with a cry, sprang forward.
"No more of that stuff," he said with a sneer. He drew his pocketbook
and laid on the table a fifty-dollar note. "There's ready money, pay
your debts and be ready for me at half-past seven."
"Why, what do you mean?" she blurted out, fastening greedily on the
money. "Is that for me? Why?"
Bofinger, who watched anxiously the effect, was exultant at the hunger
in her eyes.
"I hold her there," he thought. Then aloud he said cheerily, "I'm going
to take you to your aunt's, my dear, and respectable quarters where you
need not be afraid of being found. And we'll do that right away, for old
Fargus is suspicious enough to have me watched as well as you. We'll
take no risks. Now if you'll light the gas."
As she complied, he pulled his note-book and, tearing out a page, was
proceeding to write, when he stopped and considered the woman as though
to measure her cunning. Suddenly he asked:
"Sheila, are you educated?"
"Yes."
"You can write--like a lady?"
"Of course."
"Let's see," he insisted, passing her the paper and pencil. She wrote
her name and his in a free, regular hand.
"Very good," he nodded, scanning her signature. "Now just a moment."
He wrote with pains, while she waited in perplexity, until at length,
with a glance of satisfaction, he returned the page to his pocket,
stiffened in his chair and said drily:
"Now, if you please, we'll talk business!"