Valentine Corliss had nothing to do but to wait for the money
his friend Antonio would send him by cable. His own cable,
anticipating his letter, had been sent yesterday, when he came
back to the hotel, after lunching in the country with Cora.
As he walked down Corliss Street, after his tumultuous interview
with her, he was surprised to find himself physically tremulous:
he had not supposed that an encounter, however violent, with an
angry woman could so upset his nerves. It was no fear of Pryor
which shook him. He knew that Pryor did not mean to cause his
arrest--certainly not immediately. Of course, Pryor knew that Cora
would tell him. The old fellow's move was a final notification. It
meant: "Get out of town within twenty-four hours." And Corliss
intended to obey. He would have left that evening, indeed, without
the warning; his trunk was packed.
He would miss Cora. He had kept a cool head throughout their
affair until the last; but this morning she had fascinated him:
and he found himself passionately admiring the fury of her. She
had confused him as he had never been confused. He thought he had
tamed her; thought he owned her; and the discovery of this mistake
was what made him regret that she would not come away with him.
Such a flight, until to-day, had been one of his apprehensions:
but now the thought that it was not to be, brought something like
pain. At least, he felt a vacancy; had a sense of something
lacking. She would have been a bright comrade for the voyage; and
he thought of gestures of hers, turns of the head, tricks of the
lovely voice; and sighed.
Of course it was best for him that he could return to his old
trails alone and free; he saw that. Cora would have been a
complication and an embarrassment without predictable end, but she
would have been a rare flame for a while. He wondered what she
meant to do; of course she had a plan. Should he try again, give
her another chance? No; there was one point upon which she had not
mystified him: he knew she really hated him.
. . . The wind was against the smoke that day; and his spirits
rose, as he walked in the brisk air with the rich sky above him.
After all, this venture upon his native purlieus had been fax from
fruitless: he could not have expected to do much better. He had
made his coup; he knew no other who could have done it. It was a
handsome bit of work, in fact, and possible only to a talented
native thoroughly sophisticated in certain foreign subtleties. He
knew himself for a rare combination.
He had a glimmer of Richard Lindley beginning at the beginning
again to build a modest fortune: it was the sort of thing the
Richard Lindleys were made for. Corliss was not troubled. Richard
had disliked him as a boy; did not like him now; but Corliss had
not taken his money out of malice for that. The adventurer was not
revengeful; he was merely impervious.
At the hotel, he learned that Moliterno's cable had not yet
arrived; but he went to an agency of one of the steamship lines
and reserved his passage, and to a railway ticket office and
secured a compartment for himself on an evening train. Then he
returned to his room in the hotel.
The mirror over the mantelpiece, in the front room of his suite,
showed him a fine figure of a man: hale, deep-chested, handsome,
straight and cheerful.
He nodded to it.
"Well, old top," he said, reviewing and summing up his whole
campaign, "not so bad. Not so bad, all in all; not so bad, old
top. Well played indeed!"
At a sound of footsteps approaching his door, he turned in casual
expectancy, thinking it might be a boy to notify him that
Moliterno's cable had arrived. But there was no knock, and the
door was flung wide open.
It was Vilas, and he had his gun with him this time. He had two.
There was a shallow clothes-closet in the wall near the fireplace,
and Corliss ran in there; but Vilas began to shoot through the
door.
Mutilated, already a dead man, and knowing it, Corliss came out,
and tried to run into the bedroom. It was no use.
Ray saved his last shot for himself. It did the work.