he thought might be pain or fear or horror in her glance. Certainly
it was not a look disguising a sympathetic interest in the plans of
her friends or employers, if they were such. Her astonishment was so
obviously sincere, confusing, revealing, in a way that it all but won
him. He could not make himself believe that she had had a hand in that
anyhow. It must be as Blount said, that she was more of a tool herself
than anything else. She probably couldn’t help herself very well or
didn’t know the lengths to which her pretended “friends” were prepared
to go. Her eyes seemed troubled, sad. She seemed weaker, more futile,
than at any time since he had known her, and this, while it did not
add particularly to his respect, softened his personal animosity. He
felt that under the circumstances he might come to like her. He also
thought that she might be made to like him enough to help him. He had
the emotional mastery of her, he thought, and that was something. He
had described the incident with all the vividness of detail that he
could, showing how he and Blount had escaped death by a hair’s breadth.
She seemed a little sick, and shortly after left the table. Gregory had
taken good care to make it plain that the strangers in the other car
had been informed as to the exact details of the case, and had offered
their services as witnesses in case they were wanted.
“But we don’t propose to do anything about it,” he said genially, “not
now, anyhow,” and it was then that she seemed to become a little sick
or faint, and left him.
Whether owing to this conversation or the accident itself, or to
circumstances concerning which he knew nothing, there now seemed to
come a temporary lull in the activities of this group. The Blue Trailer
disappeared as an active daily fact in their lives. Mrs. Skelton
was called to the city on business for a few days, as well as Mr.
Diamondberg, the “cloak and suit man,” as Blount always called him,
who in all the time he had been there had never publicly joined them.
Mrs. Skelton came back later as cheerful and optimistic as ever, but in
the meanwhile there had been an approach on the part of Imogene toward
himself which seemed to promise a new order of things. She was freer,
more natural and more genial than she had been hitherto. She was with
him more, smiling, playful, and yet concerned, he thought. Because of
their conversation the morning after the accident, he felt easier in
her presence, more confidential, as though he might be able to talk to
her about all this soon and get her to help him.
They had two hours together on the second afternoon of the absence of
the others which brought them within sight of each other’s point of
view. It began after lunch, because Gregory had some reports to examine
and was staying here to do it. She came over and stood beside him.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Oh, I’m looking up some facts,” he replied enigmatically, smiling up
at her. “Sit down.”
They fell into conversation first about a tennis match which was being
held here, and then about his work, which he described in part after
observing that she knew all about it, or ought to.
“Why do you always talk to me that way about everything in connection
with you?” she asked after a moment’s pause. “You have such a queer way
of speaking, as though I knew something I ought not to know about your
affairs.”
“Well, you do, don’t you?” he questioned grimly, staring at her.
“Now, there it is again! What do you mean by that?”
“Do you really need to have me explain to you?” he went on in a hard
cynical manner. “As though you didn’t know! I don’t suppose you ever
heard of the Union Bank of Penyank, for instance? Or Mr. Swayne, its
president? Or Mr. Riley, or Mr. Mears, the cashier?”
At the mention of these, as at the mention of the automobile accident,
there was something which seemed to click like a camera shutter in her
eyes, only this time there was no sign of pain, none even of confusion.
She seemed, except for a faint trace of color, to be fairly calm and
poised. She opened her mouth slightly, but more in an attempted smile
of tolerance than anything else.
“The Union Bank? Mr. Swayne? Mr. Tilney? What are you talking about?”
she persisted. “Who is Mr. Swayne, and where is the Union Bank?”
“Really, now, Miss Carle,” he said with a kind of dogmatic fury, “if
you want me to have any regard of any kind for you in the future, quit
lying about this. You know well enough what I mean. You know who Mr.
Swayne is, all right, and why he left Eastridge. You also know Mr.
Diamondberg, although I heard you say you didn’t, and that right after
I had seen you walking with him out here on the dunes three weeks ago.
You don’t remember that, I suppose?” this as she fluttered slightly.
She stared, completely shaken out of her composure, and a real flush
spread over her cheeks and neck. For the moment her expression hardened
the least bit, then gave way to one of mingled weakness and confusion.
She looked more or less guilty and genuinely distrait.
“Why, Mr. Gregory,” she pleaded weakly, “how you talk! Positively, I
haven’t the slightest idea of what you mean, and I wish you wouldn’t be
so rough. I don’t think you know what you’re talking about, or if you
do you certainly don’t know anything about me. You must have me mixed
up with some one else, or with something that I don’t know anything
about.” She moved as if to leave.
“Now listen to me a minute,” he said sharply, “and don’t be so ready
to leave. You know who I am, and just what I’m doing. I’m running an
investigation bureau on my own account with which I mean to break up
the present city political ring, and I have a lot of evidence which
might cause Mr. Tilney and the mayor and some others a lot of trouble
this fall, and they know it, and that’s why you’re out here. Mr. Tilney
is connected with the mayor, and he used to be a bosom friend of your
friend, Jack Swayne. And Diamondberg and Mrs. Skelton are in his employ
right now, and so are you. You think I don’t know that Castleman and
his friends were working with you and Mrs. Skelton, and Diamondberg
and these ‘brokers’ also, and that Castleman tried to run into us the
other night and kill me, and that I’m being watched here all the time
and spied on, but I am, and I know it, and I’m not in the dark as to
anything--not one thing--not even you,” and he leered at her angrily.
“Now wait a moment,” he went on quickly as she opened her mouth and
started to say something. “You don’t look to me to be so crafty and
devilish as all this seems, or I wouldn’t be talking to you at all,
and your manner all along has been so different--you’ve appeared so
friendly and sympathetic, that I’ve thought at times that maybe you
didn’t know exactly what was going on. Now, however, I see that you do.
Your manner the other morning at breakfast made me think that possibly
you were not so bad as you seemed. But now I see that you’ve been lying
to me all along about all this, just as I thought, only I must say that
up to now I haven’t been willing to believe it. This isn’t the first
time an attempt has been made to get people in this way, though. It’s
an old political trick, only you’re trying to work it once more, and I
don’t propose that you shall work it on me if I can help it. Plainly,
you people wouldn’t hesitate to kill me, any more than Tilney hesitated
to ruin Crothers three years ago, or than he would hesitate to ruin
me or any other man or woman who got in his path, but he hasn’t got
me yet, and he’s not going to, and you can tell him that for me. He’s
a crook. He controls a bunch of crooks--the mayor and all the people
working with him--and if you’re in with them, as I know you are, and
know what you’re doing, you’re a crook too.”
“Oh, oh, oh! Don’t!” she exclaimed. “Please don’t! This is too
terrible! To think that you should talk to me in this way!” but she
made no attempt to leave.
“Now I want to tell you something more, Miss Carle--if that’s your real
name--” Gregory went on as she was putting her hands to her temples and
exclaiming, and she winced again. “As I said before, you don’t look to
me to be as bad as you seem, and for that reason I’m talking to you
now. But just see how it is: Here I am, a young man just starting out
in the world really, and here you are trying to ruin me. I was living
here with my wife and my little two-year-old baby peacefully enough
until she had to go to the mountains because our little boy was taken
sick, and then you and Mrs. Skelton and Diamondberg and Castleman and
the ‘brokers’ and all the rest of the crowd that are and have been
around here watching and spying, came and began to cause me trouble.
Now I’m not helpless. And you needn’t think I wasn’t warned before you
came, because I was. There are just as many influential men on my side
of the fence right now as there are on Tilney’s--will be--and he isn’t
going to get away with this thing as easily as he thinks. But just
think of your part in all this! Why should you want to ruin me or help
these people? What have I ever done to you? I can understand Tilney’s
wanting to do it. He thinks that I have facts which will injure him,
and I have, and that because I haven’t made any public statement the
evidence is still in my hands, and that if I am put out of the way or
discredited the whole thing will blow over and nothing will happen to
him--but it won’t. Not now any more. It can’t. This thing will go
on just the same, whether I am here or not. But that isn’t the point
either. I was told two months ago that you would come, not by Mrs.
Skelton, but by friends of mine, and that an attempt would be made on
my life,” and at that she opened her eyes wide and sat there apparently
amazed, “and here you are on schedule time and doing just as you were
told, and apparently you aren’t the least bit ashamed to do it. But
don’t you think it’s a pretty shabby game for you to play?” He stared
at her wearily and she at him, but now for the moment she said nothing,
just sat there.
“That big blue machine that was to have killed me the other night,” he
went on, stretching matters a little in so far as his own knowledge
was concerned, “was all arranged for long before you came down here.
I haven’t the slightest idea why you work for Tilney, but I know now
that that’s what you’re doing, and I’m sick of you and the whole thing.
You’re just a plain little crook, that’s all, and I’m through with you
and this whole thing, and I don’t want you to talk to me any more.
What’s more, I’m not going to leave this hotel, either, and you can
take that news to Tilney if you want to, or Mrs. Skelton or whoever
else is managing things here for him. I’ve kept a day-to-day record
of everything that’s happened so far, and I have witnesses, and if
anything more happens to me here I’m going to the newspapers and expose
the whole thing. If you had any sense of decency left you wouldn’t be
in on anything like this, but you haven’t--you’re just a shabby little
trickster, and that lets you out, and that’s all I have to say.”
He stood up and made as if to walk off, while Miss Carle sat there,
seemingly dazed, then jumped up and called after him:
“Mr. Gregory! Please! Please! Mr. Gregory, I want to tell you
something!”
He stopped and turned. She came hurriedly up to him.
“Don’t go,” she pleaded, “not just yet. Wait a minute. Please come
back. I want to talk to you.” And though he looked at her rather
determinedly, he followed her.
“Well?” he asked.
“You don’t understand how it is,” she pleaded, with a look of real
concern in her eyes. “And I can’t tell you either, just now, but I
will some time if you will let me. But I like you, and I really don’t
want to do you any harm. Really, I don’t. I don’t know anything about
these automobile things you’re telling about--truly I don’t. They’re
all terrible and horrible to me, and if they are trying to do anything
like that, I don’t know it, and I won’t have anything more to do with
it--really I won’t. Oh, it’s terrible!” and she clenched her hands.
“I do know Mr. Diamondberg now, I admit that, but I didn’t before I
came down here, and Mr. Swayne and Mr. Tilney. I did come here to see
if I could get you interested in me, but they didn’t tell me just
why. They told me--Mrs. Skelton did--that you, or some people whom
you represented, were trying to get evidence against some friends of
theirs--Mr. Tilney’s, I believe--who were absolutely innocent, that you
weren’t happy with your wife, and that if some one, any one, were able
to make you fall in love with her or just become very good friends,
she might be able to persuade you not to do it, you see. There wasn’t
any plan, so far as I know, to injure you bodily in any way. They
didn’t tell me that they wanted to injure you physically--really they
didn’t. That’s all news to me, and dreadful. All they said was that
they wanted to get some one to get you to stop--make it worth your
while in a money way, if I could. I didn’t think there was anything so
very wrong in that, seeing all they have done for me in the past--Mr.
Tilney, Mrs. Skelton and some others. But after I saw you a little
while I----” she paused and looked at him, then away, “I didn’t think
you were that kind of a man, you see, and so--well, it’s different
now. I don’t want to do anything to hurt you. Really I don’t. I
couldn’t--now.”
“So you admit now that you do know Mr. Tilney,” he commented sourly,
but not without a sense of triumph behind it all.
“I just told you that,” she said.
She stopped, and Gregory stared at her suspiciously. That she liked him
was plain, and in a sense it was different from that of a mere passing
flirtation, and as for himself--well, he couldn’t help liking her in
a genial way. He was free to admit that to himself, in spite of her
trickery, and that she was attractive, and as yet she personally had
not done anything to him, certainly nothing that he could prove. She
seemed even now so young, although so sophisticated and wise, and much
about her face, its smoothness, the delicate tracery of hair about her
forehead, the drooping pout of the upper lip, sharpened his interest
and caused him to meditate.
“Well?” he inquired after a time.
“Oh, I wish you wouldn’t turn on me so and leave me,” she pleaded. “I
haven’t done anything to you, have I? Not yet, anyhow.”
“That’s just the point--not yet. There’s the whole story in a nutshell.”
“Yes, but I promise you faithfully that I won’t, that I don’t intend
to. Really I don’t. You won’t believe me, but that’s true. And I won’t,
I give you my word,--truly. Why won’t you still be friends with me?
I can’t tell you any more about myself now than I have--not now--but
I will some time, and I wish you would still be friends with me. I
promise not to do anything to cause you trouble. I haven’t really, have
I? Have I?”
“How should I know?” he answered testily and roughly, the while
believing that this was a deliberate attempt on her part to interest
him in spite of himself, to get him not to leave yet. “It seems to me
you’ve done enough, being with these people. You’ve led me into going
about with them, for one thing. I would never have gone with them on
most of these trips except for you. Isn’t that enough? What more do you
want? And why can’t you tell me now,” he demanded, feeling in a way
the authority of a victor, “who these people are and all about them?
I’d like to know. It might be a help to me, if you really wanted to do
something for me. What are their plans, their game?”
“I don’t know. I can’t tell you any more than I have, truly I can’t. If
I find out, maybe I will some time. I promise to. But not now. I can’t,
now. Can’t you trust me that much? Can’t you see that I like you, when
I tell you so much? I haven’t any plan to injure you personally,
truly I haven’t. I’m obliged to these people in one way and another,
but nothing that would make me go that far. Won’t you believe me?” She
opened her eyes very wide in injury. There was something new in her
expression, a luring, coaxing something.
“I haven’t any one who is really close to me any more,” she went on,
“not anybody I like. I suppose it’s all my own fault, but--” her voice
became very sweet.
In spite of his precautions and the knowledge that his wife was the
best and most suitable companion for him in the world, and that he was
permanently fixed through his affection for his child and the helpful,
hopeful mother of it, nevertheless he was moved by some peculiarity of
this girl’s temperament. What power had Tilney over her, that he could
use her in this way? Think of it--a beautiful girl like this!
“What about Mrs. Skelton?” he demanded. “Who is she, anyhow? And these
three gardeners around here? What is it they want?” (There were three
gardeners of the grounds who whenever he and Imogene had been alone
together anywhere managed somehow to be working near the scene--an
arrival which caused him always instanter to depart.) “And Diamondberg?”
She insisted that in so far as the gardeners were concerned she knew
absolutely nothing about them. If they were employed by Mrs. Skelton
or any one, it was without her knowledge. As for Diamondberg, she
explained that she had only met him since she had come here, but that
she really did not like him. For some reason Mrs. Skelton had asked her
to appear not to know him. Mrs. Skelton, she persisted, had known her
years before in Cincinnati, as she had said, but more recently in the
city. She had helped her to get various positions, twice on the stage.
Once she had worked for Mr. Swayne, yes, for a year, but only as a
clerk. She had never known anything about him or his plans or schemes,
never. When Gregory wanted to know how it was that he was to be trapped
by her, if at all, she insisted that she did not believe that he was to
be trapped. It was all to have been as she said.
Gregory could not quite make out whether she was telling him the exact
truth, but it was near enough, and it seemed to him that she could not
be wholly lying. She seemed too frank and wishful. There was something
sensuously affectionate in her point of view and her manner. He would
know everything in the future, she insisted, if he wanted to, but only
not now--please not now. Then she asked about his wife, where she was,
when she was coming back.
“Do you love her very much?” she finally asked naïvely.
“Certainly I love her. Why do you ask? I’ve a two-year-old boy that I’m
crazy about.”
She looked at him thoughtfully, a little puzzled or uncertain, he
thought.
They agreed to be friends after a fashion before they were through. He
confessed that he liked her, but still that he did not trust her--not
yet. They were to go on as before, but only on condition that nothing
further happened to him which could be traced to her. She frankly told
him that she could not control the actions of the others. They were
their own masters, and, after a fashion, hers, but in so far as she
could she would protect him. She did not believe that they intended to
try much longer. In so far as she was concerned, he might go away if
he chose. She could see him anywhere, if he would. She was not sure if
that would make any difference in their plans or not. Anyhow, she would
not follow him if he did go unless he wished it, but she would prefer
that he did. Perhaps nothing more would happen here. If she heard of
anything she would tell him, or try to, in time. But she could not say
more than that now. After a while, maybe, as soon as she could get out
of here ... there were certain things over which she had no control.
She was very enigmatic and secretive, and he took it to mean that she
was involved in some difficult situation and could not easily extricate
herself.
“I wouldn’t take too much stock in her, at that,” Blount reflected
when Gregory had told him about it. “Just keep your eyes open, that’s
all. Don’t have anything to do with her in a compromising way. She may
be lying to you again. Once a crook, always a crook.” Such was his
philosophy.
Mrs. Skelton returned on the third day after his long conversation
with Imogene, and in spite of the fact that they had seemed to come
closer together than ever before, to have established a friendly
semi-defensive pact, still he sensed treachery. He could not make out
what it was. She seemed to be friendly, simple, gay, direct, even
wooing--and yet--what? He thought at one time that she might be the
unconscious psychologic victim of Mrs. Skelton or of some one else; at
other times, an absolutely unprincipled political philanderer. While
pretending to be “on the level,” as he phrased it, with him, she was
crossing his path in such odd ways, making him uncertain as to whether,
in spite of all she had said and was saying, she was still engaged
in trying to compromise him. The whole thing began to take on the
fascination of a game with the unconquerable lure of sex at the bottom
of it--steeled as he was against compromising himself in any way.
Thus once, after a late card game, when he stepped out on a small
veranda or balcony which graced the end of the hall nearest which his
room was situated, and which commanded a splendid view of the sea, he
found her just outside his door, alone, diaphanously attired, and very
sympathetic and genial. Now that they were friends and had had this
talk, there was something in her manner which always seemed to invite
him on to a closer life with her without danger to himself, as she
seemed to say. She would shield him against all, at her own expense. At
the same time he was far--very far--from yielding. More than once he
had insisted that he did not want to have anything to do with her in an
affectional way, and yet here she was on this occasion, and although
there might or there might not have been anything very alarming in
that, he argued with himself afterward, yet since he had told her,
this could be made to look as though she were trying to overpersuade
him, to take him off his guard. Any guest of the hotel might have done
as much (her room was somewhere near there), but Rule One, as laid
down by Blount, and as hitherto practised by him, was never, under any
circumstances which might be misinterpreted, to be alone with her. And
besides, when he withdrew, as he did at once, excusing himself lightly
and laughingly, he saw two men turning in at a cross corridor just
beyond, and one, seeing him turn back, said to the other, “It must be
on the other side, Jim.” Well, there might not have been anything very
significant in that, either. Any two men might accidentally turn into a
hall on an end balcony of which a maiden was sitting in very diaphanous
array, but still----
It was the same whenever he walked along the outer or sea wall at
night, listening to the thunder of the water against the rapp which
sustained the walk, and meditating on the night and the beauty of the
hotel and the shabbiness of politics. Imogene was always about him
when she might be with safety, as he saw it, but never under such
circumstances as could be made to seem that they were alone together.
Bullen, one of the two brokers, who seemed not a bad sort after his
kind, came out there one night with Mrs. Skelton and Imogene, and
seeing Gregory, engaged him in conversation and then left Imogene to
his care. Gregory, hating to appear asininely suspicious under such
circumstances, was genuinely troubled as to what to do in such cases
as these. Always now he was drawn to her, painfully so, and yet---- He
had told her more than once that he did not wish to be alone with her
in this way, and yet here she was, and she was always insisting that
she did not wish him to be with her if he objected to it, and yet look
at this! Her excuse always was that she could not help it, that it
was purely accidental or planned by them without her knowledge. She
could not avoid all accidents. When he demanded to know why she did
not leave, clear out of all of this, she explained that without great
injury to herself and Mrs. Skelton she could not, and that besides he
was safer with her there.
“What is this?” he asked on this occasion. “Another plan?” Feeling her
stop and pull back a little, he felt ashamed of himself. “Well, you
know what I’ve been telling you all along,” he added gruffly.
“Please don’t be so suspicious, Ed. Why do you always act so? Can’t I
even walk out here? I couldn’t avoid this to-night, truly I couldn’t.
Don’t you suppose I have to play a part too--for a time, anyhow? What
do you expect me to do--leave at once? I can’t, I tell you. Won’t you
believe me? Won’t you have a little faith in me?”
“Well, come on,” he returned crossly, as much irritated with himself
as any one. “Give me your arm. Give a dog a bad name, you know,” and
he walked her courteously but firmly in the direction of the principal
veranda, trying to be nice to her at the same time.
“I tell you, Imogene, I can’t and I won’t do this. You must find ways
of avoiding these things. If not, I’m not going to have anything to
do with you at all. You say you want me to be friends with you, if
no more. Very well. But how are we going to do it?” and after more
arguments of this kind they parted with considerable feeling, but not
altogether antagonistic, at that.