|PETER sat alone in the corner room downstairs. Mechanically he turned
the pages of _Le Sourire_--turned them forward and back, tried to see
what lay before his eyes, tried indeed, to appear as should appear that
well-known playwright, “Eric” Mann. “I must think objectively,” he told
himself. “That's the great thing--to think objectively.”
Time was passing--minutes, hours, years. He was trying to think out how
long it had been since the Worm went up-stairs. “Was it one minute or
ten?”
There was a sudden new noise outside--a voice. He listened intently. It
was Hy Lowe's voice; excited, incoherent, shouting imprecations of
some sort. Somebody ought to take Hy home. On any occasion short of the
present crisis he would do it himself. Gradually the voice died down.
He heard the side-street door open and close.
Some One had entered the barroom. He tipped back and peered out there.
He could see part of a bulky back, a familiarly bulky back. It moved
over a little. It was the back of Sumner Smith.
Peter got up, turned, then stood irresolute. It was not, he told
himself, that he was afraid of Sumner Smith, only that the mere sight of
the man stirred uncomfortable and wild emotions within him.
The best way to get out, in fact the only way now, was through the
adjoining room to the door under the front steps. Certainly he couldn't
go up-stairs. There might be trouble on the Avenue if the Worm should
see him coming out. For a moment he even considered swallowing down all
this outrageous emotional upheaval within him and staying there. He had
said that Sue would send for him. During ten or twelve seconds out of
every sixty he firmly believed she would. It was so in his plays--let
the heartless girl, in her heyday, jilt a worthy lover, she was sure in
her hours of trial to flee, chastened, to his arms.
But he looked again at the back of Sumner Smith. It was a solid back.
It suggested, like the man's inscrutable round face, quiet power. Peter
decided on flight via that front door.
He moved slowly across the room. Then he heard a voice that chilled his
hot blood.
“Mann,” said this voice.
He turned. One or two men glanced up from their papers, then went on
reading.
Peter stood wavering. Sumner Smith's eye was full on him from the
barroom door; Sumner Smith's head was beckoning him with a jerk. He
went.
“What'll you have?” he asked hurriedly, in the barroom.
“What'll I have?” mimicked Sumner Smith in a voice of rumbling calm.
“You're good, Maun. But if anybody was to buy, it'd be me. The joke, you
see, is on me. Only nobody's buying at the moment. You send me out--an
_Evening Earth_ man!--to pull off a murder for the morning papers. Oh,
it's good! I grant you, it's good. I do your little murder; the morning
papers get the story. Just to make sure of it you send Jimmie Markham
around after me. It's all right, Mann. I've done your murder. _The
Continental's_ getting the story now--a marvel of a story. There's a
page in it for them to-morrow. As for you--I don't know what you are.
And I don't care to soil any of the words I know by putting 'em on you!”
Even Peter now caught the rumble beneath the calm surface of that voice.
And he knew it was perhaps the longest speech of Sumner Smith's eventful
life. Peter's stomach, heart, lungs and spine seemed to drop out of his
body, leaving a cold hollow frame that could hardly be strong enough to
support his shoulders and head. But he drew himself up and replied with
some dignity in a voice that was huskier and higher than his own:
“I can't match you in insults, Smith. I appear to have a choice between
leaving you and striking you. I shall leave you.”
“The choice is yours,” said Smith. “Either you say.”
“I shall leave you,” repeated Peter; and walked, very erect, out to the
side street.
Here, near the corner of the Avenue, he found Hy Lowe, leaning against
the building, weeping, while four taxi chauffeurs and two victoria
drivers stood by. It occurred to Peter that it might, be best, after
all, to give up brooding over his own troubles and take the boy home. He
could bundle him into a taxi. And once at the old apartment building
in the Square, John the night man would help carry him up. It would be
rather decent, for that matter, to pay for the taxi just as if it was a
matter of course and never mention it to Hy. Of course, however, if Hy
were to remember the occurrence--A fist landed in Peter's face--not a
hard fist, merely a limp, folded-over hand. Peter brushed it aside. It
was the fist of Hy Lowe. Hy lurched at him now, caught his shoulders,
tried to shake him. He was saying things in a rapidly rising voice.
After a moment of ineffectual wrestling, Peter began to catch what these
things were:
“Call yourself frien'--take bread outa man's mouth! Oh, I know. No good
tryin' lie to me--tellin' me Sumner Smith don' know what he's talkin'!
Where's my raise? You jes' tell me--where's my raise? Ol' Walrus
gone--croaked--where's my raise?”
Peter propped him against the building and walked swiftly around the
corner.
There he stopped; dodged behind a tree.
Sue and the Worm were running down tire wide front steps. She leaped
into the first taxi. The Worm stood, one foot on the step, hand on door,
and called. One of Hy's audience hurried around, brushing past Peter,
receiving his instructions as he cranked the engine and leaped to his
seat. The door slammed. They were gone.
Peter was sure that something snapped in his brain. It was probably a
lesion, he thought. He strode blindly, madly, up the Avenue, crowding
past the other pedestrians, bumping into one man and rushing on without
a word.
Suddenly--this was a little farther up the Avenue--Peter stopped short,
caught his breath, struggled with emotions that even he would have
thought mixed. He even turned and walked back a short way. For across
the street, back in the shadow of the corner building, his eyes made out
the figure of a girl; and he knew that figure, knew the slight droop of
the shoulders and the prise of the head.
She had seen him, of course. Yes, this was Tenth Street! With swift
presence of mind he stooped and went through the motion of picking up
something from the sidewalk. This covered his brief retreat. He advanced
now.
She hung back in the shadow of the building. Her dark pretty face was
clouded with anger, her breast rose and fell quickly with her breathing.
She would not look at him.
He took her arm--her softly rounded arm--in his hand. She wrenched it
away.
“Oh, come, Maria, dear,” he murmured rather weakly. “I'm sorry I kept
you waiting.”
She confronted him now. There was passion in her big eyes. Her voice was
not under control.
“Why don't you tell the truth?” she broke out. “You think you can do
anything with me--play with me, hurt me.”
“Hush, Maria!” He caught her arm again. “Some one will hear you!”
“Why should I care? Do you think I don't know--”
“Child, I don't know what on earth you mean!”
“You do know! You play with me! You sent for your bags. Why didn't you
come yourself?”
“Why, that--”
“When you saw me here you stopped--you went back--”
Peter gulped. “I dropped my keys,” he cried eagerly. “I was swinging
them. I had to go back and pick them up.” And triumphantly, with his
free hand, he produced them from his pocket.
Within the grip of his other hand he felt her soft arm tremble a little.
Her gaze drooped.
“It isn't just to-night--” he heard her trying to say.
“Come, dear, here's a bus! We'll ride up-town.”
She let him lead her to the curb. Solicitously he handed her up the
winding little stairway to a seat on the roof.
There is no one book of Peter's life. There are a great many little
books, some of them apparently unconnected with any of the others. Maria
Tonifetti, as you may gather from this unintelligible little scene on a
street corner, had one of those detached Peter books all to herself.
Up on the roof of the bus, Peter, reacting with great inner excitement
from his experiences of the last three hours, slipped an arm about
Maria's shoulders, bent tenderly over her, whispered softly into her
ear. Before the bus reached Forty-second Street he had the satisfaction
of feeling her nestle softly and comfortably against his arm, and he
knew that once again he had won her. Slowly within his battered spirit
the old thrill of conquest stirred and flamed up into a warm glow....