THE BEGINNING OF A NIGHTMARE
Coming to Parlor A on his way to his apartment, Ryder saw lights and
heard a buzz of excited voices. He saw the house detective, and
stopped a moment to see what had brought her here in such haste.
Drawn into a corner at the end of the room near the huge picture of
"The Cheesemonger" was an invalid's chair, which the colored man,
James, had evidently just made up as a bed for his crotchety master.
And there was old Cudger, in a blanket robe, nightcap, and carpet
slippers, wrathfully facing three women who, so Ryder thought, should
have long since been in bed.
Eying both parties stood the sharp-featured Miss Solomons, her novel
in one hand, the other on her hip and her head on one side. The
chatter of the women, the grumbling of Cudger, and the chuckling of
James, who seemed to find much amusement in the situation, made
little impression upon the phenomenal calm of the house detective.
"Now, then!" the latter said at last, "let's get this thing straight.
Mr. Cudger has permission to sleep here to watch his oil painting
tonight. What are you ladies doin' here? Lights'll go out in two
minutes anyway."
"It is disgraceful!" ejaculated one woman, a hard-featured person
with glasses and a "transformation" that did not match her back hair
in color. "This man coming into the ladies' parlor in his
nightclothes----"
"Ha! Don't expect me to sleep in my day clothes, do you?" snapped
Mr. Cudger.
"What are you ladies here for?" reiterated the sharp voice of Miss
Solomons. "I ask you."
"We were holding a committee meeting--a very important meeting," said
the hard-featured one. "You know very well, young woman, that the
Society for the Betterment of the Condition of Delinquent Girls will
hold their convention here next week. We are the advance committee
of the S.B.C.D.G.
"All right," interrupted Miss Solomons. "But you had better advance
right to bed, ladies. Lights out in one minute. Talk it over in the
morning. Mr. Cudger has the call on this parlor tonight."
"But I tell you, young woman, we have a right to hold our meeting
here, no matter what the time is," cried the militant lady.
"In the dark?" exclaimed the house detective. "No, ma'am!" and she
advanced upon the three much as she might have upon a flock of
chickens, literally shooing them out of the parlor.
But once in the hall the women stopped to parley some more.
"Miss Solomons, this is a perfect outrage--an outrage not to be
permitted in a well-ordered house, such as the Pinewood Inn is
supposed to be," stormed the hard-featured woman, and there was the
ring of war in her voice.
"Now, Mrs. Dent," put in the oily voice of a large brawny woman,
another of the three ejected committee women, "Miss Solomons is not
to blame. Miss Solomons, no doubt, is deeply interested in our
work"--Miss Solomons sniffed and the woman with the "transformation"
glared angrily at the house detective--"but this awful Bangs----"
"Miss Solomons is to blame!" interrupted Mrs. Dent, in a hard,
decisive tone. "If she had the judgment of a kitten----"
"Now, see here, ladies!" flared out the house detective, "we're not
a-goin' to have any meanderings around the hallways in the dark this
night. There go the lights now. You go, and go now!"
The women scuttled away without further words, and Miss Solomons
disappeared in the darkness.
John Ryder, vastly amused, changed his opinion then and there
regarding the appointment of a woman for such a position as Miss
Solomons held. No man could have handled this situation with such
vigor and promptness.
A smile wreathed his lips as he went on to his own door. Along the
corridor before him, now illumined only by an occasional bracket
lamp, he saw flitting the lighted candles of the other late guests
seeking their beds.
Ryder opened the door of his suite expecting to see a picture similar
to the one he had observed when he had come to the room before
supper. But, although the lamp he had sent up was burning on the
reading table, Ruth was not present. The room was empty and the
atmosphere of it seemed chill as he stepped in.
Nor was there a light in the inner room. He did not hear a sound.
Where had his wife gone? Was she with Mrs. Judson in that lady's
rooms? And where were they?
Ryder was suddenly disgusted again. For heaven's sake! couldn't Ruth
break away from that woman? And after the experience they had had
with her at the supper table, too!
He had heard certain of his married acquaintances occasionally curse
the interference of some "woman friend" in the otherwise quiet pool
of their domesticity. Was he going to butt up against something like
that at the very start? It could not be possible that Ruth was
enamored of the society of such a woman as the vulgar Mrs. Judson!
He turned up the wick of the lamp and strode with it to the door of
the bedroom, flinging back the hangings. Instantly the light flooded
the chamber, and a prettily disheveled figure started up out of a
nest of pillows.
"Oh! I was napping!" she cried with a tremulous little laugh. "What
a bad girl I am! You were so long, Johnny, and I was so sleepy. It
must be very late."
She had made ready for the night. Her beautiful hair was in two
thick plaits over her shoulders--those shoulders so white and soft
and beautifully curved betrayed by the cut of her nightgown and the
lacy negligee she had thrown over it.
As she slipped out of bed he saw her slim bare ankles, her feet
thrust into swansdown slippers. They were like a child's. She
seemed more childish and appealing to him than she had before. Ryder
felt momentary shame again that he should have been impatient.
"It is late," he admitted. "I am afraid, Ruth, you have had a very
tiresome evening. This hasn't been just the sort of a beginning to
our married life that we might wish."
She laughed merrily. "I guess neither of us imagined a honeymoon
like this, dear. I used to try to think what you would be like after
all these years--and you were so far away, too, John. It--it was
like a dream----"
Ryder had stepped back to replace the lamp upon the table. He almost
dropped it. What was she saying? But before he could find his voice
or move from the spot where surprise had frozen him, the door which
he had failed to lock burst in and Mrs. Judson, in a state of
mind--and of dishabille--that completely shocked John Ryder, entered.
A large woman in bedroom wrapper and tears is not a fetching sight.
And when she came down the room like a cyclone and flung herself with
abandon into his arms, he--well, John Ryder swore!
[Illustration: Flung herself with abandon into John Ryder's arms]
Not loud, but deep and with a fervency that could not be mistaken.
She came within an ace of toppling him over, and he dragged her to
the couch and dropped her there--the springs creaking a pained
objection to her sudden weight.
"Great heavens above!" grumbled the exasperated Ryder. "What's the
matter with the creature now?"
"Oh, what is it?" asked Ruth from the chamber, and he heard the
patter of her slippered feet as she ran to the door.
"It's your friend, Mrs. Judson," said the harassed bridegroom with
disgust. "She's come in here to have a fit--or something." Then to
himself he added: "Why in hades didn't I lock that door? But she'd
have busted it in and come right through. Talk about a honeymoon!
Ye gods! was ever a man----"
Here he was startled by Mrs. Judson's hysterical acrobatics. She was
gasping and crying and laughing, all at once. Her state was plainly
volcanic.
"What the deuce is to be done with her?" he demanded of his wife.
Ruth brushed him aside and took charge of the patient, whom he had
been trying to hold down upon the cushions by main force.
"The ammonia bottle--on the bureau in there--quick!" Ruth commanded,
and Ryder ran to obey like a lamb.
Ruth thrust the unstoppered bottle under Mrs. Judson's nose. The
ammonia almost choked Ryder when he got a whiff of it; and it brought
the widow up standing and trying to catch her breath. She had been
by no means unconscious, and it flashed through John Ryder's brain
that she might have heard what he said about her.
Mrs. Judson choked for a moment, sputtered, uttered a stifled shriek
or two, and then fell to crying more quietly, but rocking herself to
and fro on the couch and wringing her bejeweled hands.
"Well, I'm hanged!" muttered Ryder. "This is pretty near the limit!"
Ruth turned to look at him for a moment. Her eyes suddenly sparkled
with merriment and she shook a playful finger at him.
"You're like other men, I see," she whispered. "I guess I'm glad. I
began to think you were almost an angel, hubby."
Mrs. Judson monopolized her attention then. She began to pour out a
tale of woe that Ryder could scarcely understand; but it seemed Marie
had left her--had run away while she was at supper--and had gone with
some of the hotel help in a wagon back into the country where there
was a station on another railroad--a long and toilsome journey, but
anything to get away from a hotel that had no heat or electric lights!
"And she's robbed me--I know she has! Of course she has! Don't you
say she hasn't!" chattered the large lady, her bosom heaving,
threatening to go into another convulsion. "Send for Miss Solomons.
She must find my brooches--my rings--my necklace----"
"Who is Miss Solomons?" asked Ruth wonderingly.
"The house detective," said Ryder, and was very glad thereafter that
he said no more, for a cold voice at the open door of the suite said
clearly:
"What's going on here? Who wants Miss Solomons?"
Mrs. Judson had gone waveringly on to another phase of her trouble.
"And I tried to undress myself; but I didn't dare go to bed. And
then the lights went out and--and----"
She trailed off again into spasmodic cries. Miss Solomons marched
down the room to where the bridegroom and his bride were endeavoring
to pacify the large lady.
"Huh!" sniffed the house detective, high disgust expressed upon her
keen face. "It's that Judson woman. What's the matter with her now?"
The question, Ryder thought, was to the point. At that moment Mrs.
Judson's gyrations reminded him of those of an eel upon a hot frying
pan. Personally he was becoming frightened.
"Shouldn't she have a doctor?" he demanded.
"A barrel stave would do her more good," declared Miss Solomons
harshly.
"If I had a little aromatic spirits I'd fix her!" exclaimed Ruth,
biting her lower lip either to stifle a desire to laugh or to cry,
Ryder could not tell which.
"Doctor!" sniffed the house detective, glaring at the hysterical
woman.
But Ryder rushed to the telephone and called the office. George
answered at once.
"Mrs. Judson is ill--here in our rooms," Ryder said. "Isn't there a
doctor in the neighborhood?"
"There's one in the house. I'll send Dr. Hoyle right up, Mr. Ryder,"
said the clerk.
"Hoyle won't thank you for troubling him," Miss Solomons sneered.
But as Mrs. Judson began on another spasm she did not leave Ruth all
the work of holding the large lady upon the couch.
"My soul! this is awful!" groaned Ryder, coming back just as Mrs.
Judson began another series of convulsions, for which indulgence in
public she was not dressed exactly right.
"Say!" exclaimed the house detective to Ryder. "This is no place for
a man. You had better go."
"Hang it!" groaned Ryder, realizing that Miss Solomons was right, and
starting for the door again. "Why couldn't she have gone somewhere
else to have her fit?"
Just then the doctor's welcome knock sounded. Ryder let him in. The
medical man appeared, candle in one hand and his black case in the
other. The ridiculousness of walking about this big hotel carrying a
candle stuck into the neck of a whisky bottle did not appear to
strike any of them at the moment as humorous.
Dr. Hoyle was a young but very businesslike practitioner. He handed
his candle to Ryder, strode down the room, and sat down beside the
widow, one end of whom each of the other women was trying to hold to
the couch.
"Half a glass of water, please," he said to Ruth. "Let her go, Miss
Solomons. She isn't going to kick any more now."
"Gee!" gasped the house detective, getting up from her knees and
striking her usual attitude, one hand on her hip and the other
clutching the paper novel.
The doctor selected a vial from his case, dropped a little of its
contents into the water, which instantly turned the water cloudy and
white; then held the glass to the patient's lips.
"Drink this," he commanded.
Mrs. Judson's jaws seemed to be locked and her eyes were tightly
closed. She breathed stertorously. Ryder, looking on from afar, was
actually frightened. If that woman dared to die in this room----
"Drink this, Mrs. Judson!" said the doctor again.
No result. Then the professional man leaned forward, with the glass
still at her lips, and, seizing the large lady's nose, deliberately
wrung it! The seemingly fixed jaws unlocked instantly and Mrs.
Judson uttered an entirely different cry from her former painful
sounds.
"Gee!" sighed Miss Solomons again, but with satisfaction. "This is
no place for us, Mister. Come on! Dr. Hoyle can manage her without
our help," and she started for the door.