BLACKMAIL
There was a breathless instant while the combination of knobs, bolts,
and locks defied her importunity so obstinately that Sally was tempted
to despair.
She dared not look behind her; but momentarily, as she groped,
fumbled, and trembled at the front door, she was aware that a man had
backed out of the library into the hall and paused there in the gush
of light, staring after her.
And when the door suddenly yielded she heard--or fancied that she
heard--his voice, its accent peremptory: "Stop!" Or perhaps it was:
"Wait!"
She did neither; the door slammed behind her with a crash that
threatened its glass; she was at the foot of the front steps before
that sound had fairly registered on her consciousness; and her
panic-winged heels had carried the young woman well round the corner
and into Park Avenue before she appreciated how interesting her
tempestuous flight from that rather thoroughly burglarised mansion
would be apt to seem to a peg-post policeman. And then she pulled
up short, as if reckoning to divert suspicion with a semblance of
nonchalance--now that she had escaped.
But a covert glance aside brought prompt reassurance; after all, the
gods were not unkind; the policeman was just then busy on the far side
of the avenue, hectoring humility into the heart of an unhappy taxicab
operator who had, presumably, violated some minor municipal ordinance.
Inconsistently enough--so strong is the habit of a law-abiding
mind--the sight of that broad, belted, self-sufficient back, symbolic
of the power and sanity of the law, affected Sally with a mad impulse
to turn, hail the officer, and inform him of the conditions she had
just quitted. And she actually swerved aside, as if to cross the
avenue, before she realised how difficult it would be to invoke the
law without implicating herself most damningly.
Recognition of that truth was like receiving a dash of ice-water in
her face; she gasped, cringed, and scurried on up Park Avenue as if
hoping to outdistance thought. A forlorn hope, that: refreshed from
its long rest (for since the storm she had been little better than the
puppet of emotions, appetites, and inarticulate impulses) her mind had
resumed its normal functioning.
Inexorably it analysed her plight and proved that what she had
conceived in an hour of discontent and executed on the spur of an
envious instant could nevermore be undone. What had been planned to be
mere temporary appropriation of an outfit of clothing--"to be returned
in good order, reasonable wear and tear excepted"--was one thing;
safe-breaking, with the theft of Heaven only knew what treasure, was
quite another. As to that, had she not been guilty of active
complicity in the greater crime? How could she be sure (come to think
of it) that the stout man had not been the lawful caretaker rather
than a rival housebreaker?
She had indeed commenced adventures with a vengeance!
The police were bound to learn of the affair all too soon; her part in
it was as certain to become known; too late she was reminded that the
name "Manvers" indelibly identified every garment abandoned in the
bath-room. Before morning certainly, before midnight probably, Sarah
Manvers would be the quarry of a clamorous hue-and-cry.
Appalled, she hurried on aimlessly, now and again breaking into
desperate little jog-trots, with many a furtive glance over shoulder,
with as many questing roundabout for refuge or resource.
But the city of that night wore a visage new and strange to her, and
terrifying. The very quietness of those few residential blocks,
marooned amid ever-rising tides of trade, had an ominous accent.
All the houses seemed to have drawn together, cheek by jowl, in secret
conference on her case, sloughing their disdainful daytime pose and
following her fugitive, guilty figure with open amusement and
contempt. Some (she thought) leered horribly at her, others scowled,
others again assumed a scornful cast; one and all pretended to a
hideous intelligence, as though they knew and, if they would, could
say what and why she fled.
It was as if the storm had been a supernatural visitation upon the
city, robbing it of every intimate, homely aspect, leaving it
inhumanly distorted in an obsession of abominable enchantment.
With the start of one suddenly delivered from dream-haunted sleep, she
found herself arrived at Forty-Second Street, and safe; none pursued
her, nothing in her manner proclaimed the new-fledged malefactor; she
need only observe ordinary circumspection to escape notice altogether.
And for several moments she remained at a complete standstill there on
the corner, blocking the fairway of foot traffic and blindly surveying
the splendid facade of Grand Central Station, spellbound in wonder at
the amazing discovery that Providence did not always visit incontinent
retribution upon the heads of sinners--since it appeared that she who
had sinned was to escape scot-free.
With this she was conscious of a flooding spirit of exultant
impenitence; the deadly monotony of her days was done with once and
for all. It mattered little that--since it were suicidal to return to
the studio, the first place the police would search for her--she was
homeless, friendless, penniless; it mattered little that she was
hungry (now that she remembered it) and had not even a change of
clothing for the morrow; these things would somehow be
arranged--whether by luck or by virtue of her wit--they _must!_
All that really mattered was that the commonplace was banished from
her ways, that she was alive, foot-loose and fancy-free, finally and
definitely committed to the career of an adventuress.
Paradoxically, she was appalled by contemplation of her amazing
callousness; outlawed, _declassee_, she was indifferent to her
degradation, and alive only to the joy of freedom from the bondage of
any certain social status.
Now as she lingered on the corner, people were passing her continually
on their way over to the terminal; and one of these presently caught
her attention--a man who, carrying a small oxford hand-bag, came up
hastily from behind, started to cross the street, drew back barely in
time to escape annihilation at the wheels of a flying squadron of
taxicabs, and so for a moment waited, in impatient preoccupation
with his own concerns, only a foot or two in advance but wholly
heedless of the girl.
Sally caught her breath sharply, and her wits seemed to knit together
with a sort of mental click; the man was Blue Serge, identified
unmistakably to her eyes by the poise of his blue-clad person--the
same Blue Serge who owed his life to Sally Manvers!
In another instant the way cleared and the man moved smartly on again,
with every indication of one spurred on by an urgent errand--but went
no more alone. Now a pertinacious shadow dogged him to the farther
sidewalk, into the yawning vestibule of the railway station, on (at a
trot) through its stupendous lobbies, even to the platform gates that
were rudely slammed in his face by implacable destiny in the guise and
livery of a gateman.
At this, pausing a little to one side, Sally watched Blue Serge accost
the guardian, argue, protest, exhibit tickets, and finally endeavour
to bribe a way past the barrier. But the train was already pulling
out; with a shake of his stubborn head the uniformed official moved
on; and ruminating on a power of pent profanity, Blue Serge turned and
strode back into the waiting-room, passing so near to Sally that their
elbows almost touched without his rousing to the least recognition of
her existence.
But that in itself was nothing to dismay or check the girl in her
purpose, and when Blue Serge a minute later addressed himself to
the Pullman bureau she was still his shadow--an all but open
eavesdropper upon his communications with the authority of the
brass-barred wicket.
"I've just missed the eleven ten for Boston," she heard him explain as
he displayed tickets on the marble ledge, "and, of course, I'm out my
berth reservation. Can you give me a lower on the midnight express?"
"No," Authority averred with becoming sententiousness.
"An upper, then?"
"Nothing left an the midnight."
"Not even a stateroom?"
"I told you nothing doing."
"Well, then, perhaps you can fix me up for the Owl train?"
"Wait a minute."
A pause ensued while Authority consulted his records; not a long
pause, but one long enough to permit a wild, mad inspiration to flash
like lightning athwart the clouded horizon of Sally's doubt and
perplexity. Surely it were strangely inconsistent with her role of
adventuress to permit this man to escape, now that destiny had
delivered him into her unscrupulous hands!
"Owl train? De luxe room or ordinary stateroom--all I got left."
"Good enough. I'll take--"
If Blue Serge failed promptly to nominate his choice, it was only
because Miss Manvers chose that juncture to furnish him--and
incidentally herself, when she had time to think things over--with
what was unquestionably for both of them the most staggering surprise
of that most surprising night.
Peremptorily plucking a blue-serge sleeve with the brazenest impudence
imaginable, she advised her victim:
"Take both, if you please!"
Had she schemed deliberately to strike him dumb in consternation, her
success must have afforded Sally intense satisfaction. Since she
hadn't, her personal consternation was momentarily so overpowering as
to numb her sense of appreciation. So that for the period of a long
minute neither of them moved nor spoke; but remained each with a blank
countenance reflecting a witless mind, hypnotised by the stupefaction
of the other.
Then, perhaps a shade the quicker to recover, Sally fancied that her
victim's jaw had slackened a bit and his colour faded perceptibly; and
with this encouragement she became herself again, collected,
aggressive, confronting him undismayed before recognition dawned upon
Blue Serge, and, with it, some amused appreciation of her effrontery.
Even so, his first essay at response was nothing more formidable
than a stammered "I beg your pardon?"
She explained with absolute composure: "I said, take both rooms,
please. I'm going to Boston, too."
"Oh!" he replied stupidly.
She nodded with determination and glanced significantly aside, with a
little toss of her head, toward the middle of the lobby.
"There's a Central Office man over there," she observed obliquely,
dissembling considerable uncertainty as to what a Central Office man
really was, and why.
"There is!"
"If you go to Boston, I go," she persisted stolidly. His countenance
darkened transiently with distrust or temper. Then of a sudden the man
was shaken by a spasm of some strange sort--the corners of his mouth
twitched, his eyes twinkled, he lifted a quizzical eyebrow, his lips
parted.
But whatever retort he may have contemplated was checked by the
accents of Authority and the tapping of an imperative pencil on the
window-ledge.
"Say, I'm busy. Which are you going to take now, de luxe room or--"
"Both!" With the dexterity of a stage conjurer Blue Serge whipped a
bill from his pocket and thrust it beneath the wicket, not for an
instant detaching his gaze from Sally. "And quick," said he; "I'm
in a hurry!"
Grunting resentfully, Authority proceeded to issue the reservations,
thus affording Sally, constrained to return without a tremor the
steadfast regard of her burglar, time to appreciate the lengths to
which bravado had committed her. And though she stood her ground
without flinching, her cheeks had taken on a hue of bright crimson
before Blue Serge, without troubling to verify them, seized tickets
and change and turned squarely to her.
"Now that's settled," he inquired amiably, "what next?"
The better to cover her lack of a ready answer, she made believe to
consult the mellow orb of the four-faced clock that crowns the bureau
of information.
"The Owl train leaves when?" she asked with a finely speculative air.
"One o'clock."
"Then we've got over an hour and a half to wait!"
"How about a bite of supper? The station restaurant is just
down-stairs--"
"Thank you," she agreed with a severe little nod.
Lugging his bag, he led the way with the air of one receiving rather
than conferring a favour.
"Curious how things fall out," he observed cheerfully; "isn't it?"
"Yes--"
"I mean, your popping up like this just when I was thinking of you.
Coincidence, you know."
"Coincidences," Sally informed him consciously, "are caviar only to
book critics. There's nothing more common in real life."
He suffered this instruction with a mildly anguished smile.
"That's true, I presume, if one knows anything about real life. I
don't go in for realistic novels you see, so can't say. But you're
right one way: it isn't anything extraordinary, come to consider it,
that you and I, both headed for Boston, should run into each other
here. By the way," he added with a casual air, "speaking of
coincidences, it sort of triple-plated this one to have your friend
from Central Office hanging round so handy, didn't it? If he's in
sight, why not be a sport and tip me off?"
"I don't see the necessity," Sally returned, biting her lip--"yet."
"Not from your point of view, perhaps--from mine, yes. Forewarned is
fortunate, you know."
"I dare say."
"You won't put me wise?"
"Certainly not."
"Well, of course, one can guess why."
"Can one?"
"Why, forgive me for calling your bluff, it wouldn't be safe,
would it? Of course, I'm a sure-enough bad man--and all that. But you
must be a bird of my feather, or you wouldn't flock together so
spontaneously."
Sally opened her eyes wide and adopted a wondering drawl known to have
been of great service to Miss Lucy Spode: "Why, whatever do you mean?"
"Good!" Blue Serge applauded. "Now I _know_ where I stand. That baby
stare is the high sign of our fraternity--of blackbirds. Only the
guilty ever succeed in looking as transparently innocent. Too bad you
didn't think of that in time."
"I don't follow you," she said truthfully, beginning to feel that she
wasn't figuring to great advantage in this passage of repartee.
"I mean, your give-away is calculated to cramp your style; now you
can't very well cramp mine, threatening to squeal."
"Oh, can't I?"
"No. I know you won't go through with it; not, that is, unless you're
willing to face Sing Sing yourself. For that matter, I don't see how
you're going to make Boston at all to-night, after that break, unless
you go on your own; I don't believe I'm scared enough to stand for
being shaken down for your transportation."
He was gaining the whip-hand much too easily. She averted her face to
mask a growing trepidation and muttered sullenly: "What makes you
think I'm afraid--?"
"Oh, come!" he chuckled. "I know you hadn't any lawful business in
that house, don't I?"
"How do you know it?"
"Because if you had, I would now be going peaceful, with the kind
policeman instead of being a willing victim of a very pleasant form of
blackmail."
Burning with indignation and shivering a bit with fear of the man, she
stopped short, midway down the ramp to the "lower level," and
momentarily contemplated throwing herself upon his mercy and crawling
out of it all with whatever grace she might; but his ironic and
skeptical smile provoked her beyond discretion.
"Oh, very well!" she said ominously, turning, "if that's the way you
feel about it, we may as well have this thing out here and now."
And she made as if to go back the way she had come; but his hand fell
upon her arm with a touch at once light and imperative.
"Steady!" he counselled quietly. "This is no place for either
bickering or barefaced confidences. Besides, you mustn't take things
so much to heart. I was only making fun, and you deserved as much for
your cheek, you know. Otherwise, there's no harm done. If you hanker
to go to Boston, go you shall, and no thanks to me. Even if I do
pay the bill, I owe you a heap more than I'll ever be able to repay,
chances are. So take it easy; and I say, do brace up and make a bluff,
at least, of being on speaking terms. I'm not a bad sort, but I'm
going to stick to you like grim death to a sick nigger's bedside until
we know each other better. That's flat, and you may as well resign
yourself to it. And here we are."
Unwillingly, almost unaware, she had permitted herself to be drawn
through the labyrinth of ramps to the very threshold of the
restaurant, where, before she could devise any effectual means of
reasserting herself, a bland head waiter took them in tow and, at Blue
Serge's direction, allotted them a table well over to one side of the
room, out of earshot of their nearest neighbours.
Temporarily too fagged and flustered to react either to the danger or
to the novelty of this experience, or even to think to any good
purpose, Sally dropped mechanically into the chair held for her,
wondering as much at herself for accepting the situation as at the
masterful creature opposite, earnestly but amiably conferring with the
head waiter over the bill of fare.
Surely a strange sort of criminal, she thought, with his humour and
ready address, his sudden shifts from slang of the street to phrases
chosen with a discriminating taste in English, his cool
indifference to her threatening attitude, and his paradoxical pose of
warm--it seemed--personal interest in and consideration for a complete
and, to say the least, very questionable stranger.
She even went so far as to admit that she might find him very likable,
if only it were not for that affected little moustache and that
semi-occasional trick he practised of looking down his nose when he
talked.
On the other hand, one assumed, all criminals must seem strange types
to the amateur observer. Come to think of it, she had no standard to
measure this man by, and knew no law that prescribed for his kind
either dress clothing with an inverness and a mask of polished
imperturbability, or else a pea-jacket, a pug-nose, a cauliflower ear,
with bow legs and a rolling gait. . . .
"There, I fancy that will do. But hurry it along, please."
"Very good, sir--immediately."
The head waiter ambled off, and Blue Serge faced Sally with an odd,
illegible smile.
"At last!" he hissed in the approved manner of melodrama, "we are
alone!"
She wasn't able to rise to his irresponsible humour. Thus far her
audacity seemed to have earned her nothing but his derision. He was
not in the least afraid of her--and _he_ was a desperate
criminal. Then what was she in his esteem?
Such thoughts drove home a fresh painful realisation of her ambiguous
personal status. It began to seem that she had been perhaps a little
hasty in assuming she was to be spared punishment for her sin, however
venial that might in charity be reckoned. Chance had, indeed, offered
what was apparently a broad and easy avenue of escape; but her own
voluntary folly has chosen the wrong turning.
Her hands were twisted tight together in her lap as she demanded with
tense directness:
"What have you done with them?"
He lifted the ironic eyebrow. "_Them?_"
"The jewels. I saw you steal them--watched you from the dining-room,
through the folding doors--"
"The deuce you did!"
"I saw you break open the desk--and everything."
"Well," he admitted fairly, "I'm jiggered!"
"What have you done with them?"
"Oh, the jewels?" he said with curious intonation. "Ah--yes, to be
sure; the jewels, of course. You're anxious to know what I've done
with them?"
"Oh, no," she countered irritably; "I only ask out of politeness."
"Thoughtful of you!" he laughed. "Why, they're outside, of course--in
my bag."
"Outside?"
"Didn't you notice? I checked it with my hat, rather than have a row.
I ought to be ashamed of myself, I know, but I'm a moral coward before
a coat-room attendant. I remember keeping tabs one summer, and--will
you believe me?--a common, ordinary, every-day three-dollar straw lid
set me back twenty-two dollars and thirty cents in tips. But I hope
I'm not boring you."
"Oh, how can you?" she protested, lips tremulous with indignation.
"Don't flatter; I bore even myself at times."
"I don't mean that, and you know I don't. How can you sit there joking
when you--when you've just--"
"Come off the job?" he caught her up as she faltered. "But why not? I
feel anything but sad about it. It was a good job--wasn't it?--a clean
haul, a clear getaway. Thanks, of course, to you."
She responded, not without some difficulty: "Please! I wouldn't have
dared if he hadn't tried to get at that sword."
"Just like him, too!" Blue Serge observed with a flash of indignation:
"his kind, I mean--less burglars than bunglers, with no professional
pride, no decent instincts, no human consideration. _They_ never
stop to think it's tough enough for a householder to come home to a
cracked crib without finding a total stranger to boot--a man he's
never even _seen_ before, like as not--ah--weltering on the
premises--"
"Oh, do be serious!"
"Must I? If you wish."
The man composed his features to a mask of whimsical attention.
"What--what did you do with him?" the girl stammered after a pause
during which consciousness of her disadvantage became only more acute.
"Our active little friend, the yegg? Why, I didn't do anything with
him."
"You didn't leave him there'?"
"Oh, no; he went away, considerately enough--up-stairs and out
through the scuttle--the way he broke in, you know. Surprisingly spry
on his feet for a man of his weight and age--had all I could do to
keep up. He did stop once, true, as if he'd forgotten something, but
the sword ran into him--I happened thoughtlessly to be carrying
it--only a quarter of an inch or so--and he changed his mind, and by
the time I got my head through the scuttle he was gone--vanished
utterly from human ken!"
"He had broken the scuttle open, you say?"
"Pried it up with a jimmy."
"And you left it so? He'll go back."
"No, he won't. I found hammer and nails and made all fast before I
left."
"But," she demanded, wide-eyed with wonder, "why did you take that
trouble?"
"My silly conceit, I presume. I couldn't bear the thought of having
that roughneck return and muss up one of my neatest jobs."
"I don't understand you at all," she murmured, utterly confounded.
"Nor I you, if it matters. Still, I'm sure you won't keep me much
longer in suspense, considering how open-faced I've been. But here's
that animal of a waiter again."
She was willingly silent, though she exerted herself to seem at ease
with indifferent success. The voice of her companion was like a
distant, hollow echo in her hearing; her wits were all awhirl, her
nerves as taut and vibrant as banjo-strings; before her vision the
face of Blue Serge swam, a flesh-tinted moon now and again traversed
by a flash of white when he smiled.
"Come!" the man rallied her sharply, if in an undertone, "this will
never do. You're as white as a sheet, trembling and staring as if I
were a leper--or a relation by marriage or--something repulsive!"
She sat forward mechanically and mustered an uncertain smile.
"Forgive me. I'm a little overwrought--the heat and--everything."
"Not another word, then, till you've finished. I'll do the talking, if
it's all the same to you. But you needn't answer--needn't listen, for
that matter. I've no pride in my conversational powers, and you
mustn't risk losing your appetite."
He seemed to find it easy enough to make talk; but Sally spared him
little attention, being at first exclusively preoccupied with the
demands of her hunger, and later--as the meal progressed, renewing her
physical strength and turning the ebbing tide of her
spirits--thoroughly engaged with the problem of how to extricate
herself from this embarrassing association or, if extrication proved
impossible, how to turn it to her own advantage. For if the affair
went on this way--his way--she were a sorry adventuress indeed.
Small cups of black coffee stood before them, steaming, when a
question roused her, and she shook herself together and faced her
burglar across the cloth, once more full mistress of her faculties.
"You're feeling better'?"
"Very much," she smiled, "and thank you!"
"Don't make me uncomfortable; remember, this is all your fault.
"That I'm here, alive and whole, able to enjoy a most unique
situation. _Who are you?_"
But she wasn't to be caught by any such simple stratagem as a question
plumped suddenly at her with all the weight of a rightful demand; she
smiled again and shook her head.
"Shan't tell."
"But if I insist?"
"Why don't you, then?"
"Meaning insistence won't get me anything?"
Sensitive to the hint of a hidden trump, she stiffened slightly.
"I haven't asked you to commit yourself. I've got a right to my own
privacy."
There fell a small pause. Lounging, an elbow on the table, a cigarette
fuming idly between his fingers, the man favoured her with a steady
look of speculation whose challenge was modified only by the
inextinguishable humour smouldering in his eyes--a look that Sally met
squarely, dissembling her excitement. For with all her fears and
perplexity she could never quite forget that, whatever its sequel,
this was verily an adventure after her own heart, that she was looking
her best in a wonderful frock and pitting her wits against those of an
engaging rogue, that she who had twelve hours ago thought herself
better dead was now living intensely an hour of vital emergency.
"But," the man said suddenly, and yet deliberately, "surely you
won't dispute my right to know who makes free with my own home?"
Her bravado was extinguished as suddenly as a candle-flame in a gust
of wind.
"_Your_ home?" she parroted witlessly.
"Mine, yes. If you can forgive me." He fumbled for his card-case. "It
has been amusing to play the part you assigned me of amateur
cracksman, but really, I'm afraid, it can't be done without a better
make-up."
He produced and placed before her on the cloth a small white card; and
as soon as its neat black script ceased to writhe and run together
beneath her gaze she comprehended the name of _Mr. Walter Arden
Savage_, with a residence address identical with that of the house
wherein her great adventure had begun.
"You!" she breathed aghast, "you're not _really_ Mr. Savage?"
He smiled indulgently. "I rather think I am."
"But--"
Sally's voice failed her entirely, and he laughed a tolerant little
laugh as he bent forward to explain.
"I don't wonder you are surprised--or at your mistake. The fact is,
the circumstances are peculiar. It's my sister's fault, really; she's
such a flighty little thing--unpardonably careless. I must have warned
her a hundred times, if once, never to leave valuables in that
silly old tin safe. But she won't listen to reason--never would. And
it's her house--her safe. I've got no right to install a better one.
And that is why we're here."
He smiled thoughtfully down his nose. "It's really a chapter of
accidents to which I'm indebted for this charming adventure," he
pursued with a suavely personal nod, "beginning with the blow-out of
the taxicab tire that made us five minutes late for this evening's
boat. We were bound up the Sound, you understand, to spend a fortnight
with a maternal aunt. And our luggage is well on its way there now. So
when we missed the boat there was nothing for it but go by train. We
taxied back here through that abominable storm, booked for Boston by
the eleven ten, and ducked across the way to dine at the Biltmore. No
good going home, of course, with the servants out--and everything. And
just as we were finishing dinner this amiable sister of mine gave a
whoop and let it out that she'd forgotten her jewels. Well, there was
plenty of time. I put her aboard the train as soon as the sleepers
were open--ten o'clock, you know--and trotted back home to fetch the
loot."
A reminiscent chuckle punctuated his account, but struck no echo from
Sally's humour. Moveless and mute, the girl sat unconsciously
clutching the edge of the table as if it were the one stable fact in
her whirling world; all her bravado dissipating as her daze of
wonder yielded successively to doubt, suspicion, consternation.
"I said there was plenty of time, and so there was, barring accidents.
But the same wouldn't be barred. I manufactured the first delay for
myself, forgetting to ask Adele for the combination. I knew where to
find it, in a little book locked up in the desk; but I hadn't a key to
the desk, so felt obliged to break it open, and managed that so
famously I was beginning to fancy myself a bit as a Raffles when, all
of a sudden--_Pow!_" he laughed--"that fat devil landed on my devoted
neck with all the force and fury of two hundredweight of professional
jealousy!
"And then," he added, "in you walked from God knows where--"
His eyes affixed a point of interrogation to the simple declarative.
She started nervously in response, divided between impulses which she
had no longer sufficient wit to weigh. Should she confess, or try to
lie out of it?
Must she believe this glibly simple and adequate account or reject it
on grounds of pardonable skepticism?
If this man were what he professed to be, surely he must recognise her
borrowed plumage as his sister's property. True, that did not of
necessity follow; men have so little understanding of women's
clothing; it pleases them or it displeases, if thrust upon their
attention, but once withdrawn it is forgotten utterly. Such might well
be the case in this present instance; the man gave Sally, indeed,
every reason to believe him as much bewildered and mystified by her as
she was by him.
On the other hand, and even so . . .
The infatuate impulse prevailed, to confess and take the consequences.
"I'm afraid--" she began in a quaver.
"No need to be--none I know of, at least," he volunteered promptly, if
without moderating his exacting stare.
"You don't understand--"
She hesitated, sighed, plunged in desperation. "It's no use; there's
nothing for me to do but own up. What you were not to-night, Mr.
Savage, I was."
"Sounds like a riddle to me. What is the answer?"
"You were just make-believe. I was the real thing--a real thief. No,
let me go on; it's easier if you don't interrupt. Yes, I'll tell you
my name, but it won't mean anything. I'm nobody. I'm Sarah Manvers.
I'm a shop-girl out of work."
"Still I don't see . . ."
"I'm coming to that. I live on your block--the Lexington Avenue
end, of course--with two other girls. And this afternoon--the studio
was so hot and stuffy and lonesome, with both my friends away--I went
up on the roof for better air, and fell asleep there and got caught by
the storm. Somebody had closed the scuttle, and I ran across roofs
looking for another that wasn't fastened down, and when I found
one--it was your house--I was so frightened by the lightning I hardly
knew what I was doing. I just tumbled in--"
"And welcome, I'm sure," Blue Serge interpolated.
She blundered on, unheeding: "I went all through the house, but there
wasn't anybody, and--I was so wet and miserable that I--made myself
at home--decided to take a bath and--and borrow some things to wear
until my own were dry. And then I thought . . ."
She halted, confused, realising how impossible it would be to convince
anybody with the tale of her intention merely to borrow the clothing
for a single night of arabesque adventure, finding it difficult now to
believe in on her own part, and hurried breathlessly on to cover the
hiatus.
"And then I heard a noise on the roof. I had closed the scuttle, but I
was frightened. And I crept down-stairs and--saw the light in the
library and . . . That's all." And when he didn't reply promptly,
she added with a trace of challenge: "So now you know!"
He started as from deep reverie.
"But why call yourself a thief--for that?"
"Because . . . because . . ." Overstrung nerves betrayed her in gusty
confession. "Because it's no good blinking facts: that's what I was in
my heart of hearts. Oh, it's all very well for you to be generous, and
for me to pretend I meant only to borrow, and--and all that! But the
truth is, I did steal--and I never honestly meant to send the things
back. At first--yes; then I meant to return them, but never once they
were on my back. I told myself I did, I believed I did; but deep down,
all along, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't! I'm a liar as well as a
thief."
"Oh, come now!" Blue Serge interjected in a tone of mild remonstrance,
lounging back and eying the girl intently. "Don't be so down on
yourself."
"Well, everything I've said was true except that one word 'borrow';
but that in itself was a lie big enough to eclipse every word of
truth. . . . But you'll never understand--never! Men can't. They
simply can't know what it is to be clothes-hungry--starving for
something fit to wear--as I have been for years and years and years,
as most of us in the shops are all our lives long."
"Perhaps _I_ understand, though," he argued with an odd look. "I
know what you mean, at any rate, even if I'm not ready to admit that
shop-girls are the only people who ever know what it is to desire the
unattainable. Other people want things, at times, just as hard as you
do clothes."
"Well, but . . ." She stammered, unable to refute this reasonable
contention, but, womanlike, persistent to try: "It's different--when
you've never had anything. Try to think what it must be to work from
eight till six--sometimes later--six days a week, for just enough to
keep alive on, if you call such an existence being alive! Why, in ten
years I haven't seen the country or the sea--unless you count trips to
Coney on crowded trolley-cars, and mighty few of them. I never could
afford a vacation, though I've been idle often enough--never earned
more than ten dollars a week, and that not for many weeks together.
I've lived on as little as five--on as little as charity, on nothing
but the goodness of my friends at times. That's why, when I saw myself
prettily dressed for once, and thought nothing could stop my getting
away, I couldn't resist the temptation. I didn't know where I was
going, dressed like this, and not a cent; but I was going some place,
and I wasn't ever coming back!"
"Good Lord!" the man said gently. "Who'd blame you?"
"Don't sympathise with me," she protested, humanly quite unconscious
of her inconsistency. "I don't deserve it. I'm caught with the goods
on, literally, figuratively, and I've got to pay the penalty. Oh, I
don't mean what you mean. I'm no such idiot as to think you'll have me
sent to jail; you've been too kind already and--and, after all, I did
do you a considerable service, I did help you out of a pretty
dangerous fix. But the penalty I'll pay is worse than jail: it's
giving up these pretty things and all my silly, sinful dreams, and
going back to that scrubby studio--and no job--"
She pulled up short, mystified by a sudden change in the man's
expression, perceiving that she was no longer holding his attention as
completely as she had. She remarked his look of embarrassment, that
his eyes winced from something descried beyond and unknown to her. But
he was as ready as ever to recover and demonstrate that, if his
attention had wandered, he hadn't missed the substance of her
harangue; for when she paused he replied:
"Oh, perhaps not. Don't let's jump at conclusions. I've a premonition
you won't have to go back. Here comes some one who'll have a word to
say about that--or I don't know!"
And he was up before Sally had grasped his meaning--on his feet and
bowing civilly, if with a twinkling countenance, to a woman who
swooped down upon him in a sudden, wild flutter of words and
gestures:
"Walter! Thank God I've found you! I've been so upset--hardly knew
what to do--when you didn't show up. . . ."
What more she might have said dried instantly on the newcomer's lips
as her gaze embraced Sally. She stiffened slightly and drew back,
elevating her eyebrows to the frost-line.
"Who is this woman? What does this mean?" Without awaiting an answer
to either question, she observed in accents that had all the chilling
force and cutting edge of a winter wind:
"_My_ dress! _My_ hat!"