After his father and Dr. Frauenthal left the house Tom tried to feel
that he had finished his breakfast--that is to say, he attempted to read
the newspapers. But the printed letters failed to combine themselves
into intelligible forms, and even when he read a word here and there his
mind did not record it. Obeying an unexplained impulse, he rose.
Then he sat down merely because he had been standing. Then he tried to
reason why he was sitting and what sitting there thinking of himself in
that particular position meant. But the sky was too blue! It called to
him in an azure voice that made him long for the sunshine and the open
air, and the rooflessness of outdoors that permits ten million fancies
to soar unchecked.
Also, he longed for something; and, though he knew that he longed, he
did not know exactly what it was he longed for, because it was not his
mind that desired it, but all of him; and all of him did not think with
precision. Young men are apt to feel like that in the springtime--also
young women. Also widowers and relicts and canaries and heifers and
burros--and even bankers!
Therefore Tom swore at that nothing which is always something and gave
up trying to make himself think that he wanted to read the morning
papers. His nervous system coined a proverb for him: “When in doubt,
walk out!” So he walked out of the house and crossed the Avenue.
He found himself in Central Park--the remedy which the very rich do not
and the very poor cannot use to cure the spring in the blood. And as he
walked the soul-fidgets left him, so that after a mile or two he quite
cold-bloodedly began to think of his most pressing duties. He went about
them systematically.
The first thing he had to do was some shopping; shopping on Fifth
Avenue--on Fifth Avenue where the jewelry-shops were; in the
jewelry-shops where the wedding-presents were. There! He was off again.
Everybody was getting married! What business had people to make people
think of wives--yes, wives--plural; lots of wives; all beautiful, all
desirable and worthy; all lovely and loving and lovable; and all fit to
be rolled into one--Tom's?
It was not polygamy. It was merely composite photography. The one
he desired had a little of each of the girls he admired. She was the
amorous crazy-quilt that youth is so apt to dazzle itself with in the
springtime--a nose from a friend; two lips from a stranger; a complexion
from a distant relative; a pair of eyes from the sky; a heart from the
heart of the sun--and lo! the wife-to-be!
And so the wedding-presents--a silver service, to be used by two
sitting on opposite sides of a table, looking into each other's eyes;
a glittering string, to be admired on a wonderful throat--were heavy
enough to keep Tom's soul from soaring. And because his feet were on the
pavement he soon found himself--of course!--before 777 Fifth Avenue.
Why should he not go to that house? And why should he not ring the bell?
Why not? He was just in the mood to meet her!
His intentions were above suspicion, though marriage is a serious thing;
but, really, now was the time for the adventure to appear--even if the
adventure turned out to be merely the adventuress.
Therefore, with the inexorable logic of the most illogical state of mind
known, he rang the bell and waited with an eagerness--half hope, half
curiosity--most unusual among people who, like Tom, early acquire the
habit of asking, check-book in hand, for whatever they wish.
The footman who answered was one of the men with the over-intelligent
faces.
“I am Mr. Merriwether. I wish to see your master.”
Tom's voice rang a trifle more commandingly than the occasion appeared
to call for. There was a physiological reason for it. The man hesitated
so that Tom wondered; but presently all expression vanished from the
non-menial face and the footman said:
“This way, if you please, sir.”
He preceded Tom to the door of his master's library. He rapped twice
smartly and waited in an attitude of listening. Tom also listened
intently; he could not have told why he did it--though it was, of
course, inevitable.
Not a sound was heard. The over-intelligent footman's lips moved for all
the world as though he were counting, and presently he opened the door
and announced:
“Mr. Thomas Thorne Merriwether--7-7-7 7.”
Tom entered. The master of this strange house was seated at the
over-elaborate library table, writing. He looked up, but before Tom
could speak the man said, coldly:
“I cannot do anything for you, sir.”
It was so much like a refusal to give alms to a beggar that Tom flushed
angrily. He managed to check a sharp retort on the very brink and,
instead, began in a mildly ironical tone:
“Of course you know what I--”
“Of course!” interrupted the man, rudely; and he began impatiently to
drum on the edge of the table with his penholder. “Do you imagine for a
minute that you are the only mateless male in New York looking for his
destined bride? And do you really think that the fruitlessness--until
now--of your search is a world-tragedy? Because your name happens to
be Thomas--which is a descriptive title when applied to marriageable
felines of your own sex--do you fancy I am concerned with your affairs?
Young man, you are the only son and heir of a very rich man; but there
are some things that money cannot buy. Love is one of them.”
He frowned at Tom, but something in the young millionaire's face made
him relent. He went on, more kindly, more encouragingly:
“My boy, she is seeking you, even as you are seeking her. She is very
beautiful! You will meet her at the appointed hour--have no doubt of it.
After your perfectly stupid failure at the opera--Wait!” He held up a
hand as Tom was about to speak in self-defense. “The very futility of
your manoeuvers shows that youth, brains, money, persistence, and desire
are all powerless to hurry fate. As you, who have never seen her, love
her, she loves you, though she has never seen you. She will know you as
you will know her; but she is gone!”
“Where?” Tom spoke before he knew it.
“Be patient! After you meet her you will live with her until death parts
you.”
He said this, without theatrical emphasis, in a most matter-of-fact way.
Tom's suspicions, always present in this house of mystification rather
than of mystery, were not made livelier by the man's words; but neither
were they allayed by the tone of his voice. He hesitated, and then,
adventure whispering, he said:
“To be perfectly frank, I am interested in this--”
“Young man, I told you before that I ask nothing of you--no favor, no
money, no service; not even your interest. When I asked you to do a
certain thing you did it. I am not particularly grateful. You could not
have refused! Possibly you can explain to your own satisfaction your
own inexplicable acquiescence; you doubtless have evolved a dozen most
ingenious theories to account for your doings and mine. The shortest
and easiest explanation is the true one--fate. After you marry you will
compare notes with her--and yet you will not understand why I concerned
myself with your lives. You will perplex yourselves so unnecessarily;
all because of your unwillingness to say, fate! Men hate fate as a
hypothesis. It is not flattering to admit that we are but puppets--the
strongest of us no stronger than an autumn leaf in the wind. And because
you do not see fate you do not believe in it. And, for fear of being
considered an ass by a lot of asses, who also do not believe in fate,
you will never tell any one your romantic story. And yet, of the scores
you call friends, there are only seven men who are happily married. And
those seven I helped, as I have helped you and as I shall help those I
am ordered to help. Even now the Dispeller of Darkness is out, making
one heart send a message in the dark to another heart waiting for it!”
“Do you mean to say you cannot or will not arrange for my meeting the
mysterious person you tell me I am going to marry?”
“I mean to say that your coming to this house with such a hope merely
means a waste of your time, young sir, and of mine. You will meet your
love, but you cannot find her. No man finds happiness by means of a
systematic or diligent search. It comes or it does not come--as God
wills.”
The man rose. Tom also rose and said:
“But at least tell me where this--this alleged fate of mine is.”
The man shook his head with a smile that was in the nature of a mild
sneer.
“Doubting Thomas! He won't admit it, but he can't deny it! Ah, so wise!
So clever in his suspicions! So intelligently skeptical! Ah yes!”
Still nodding in ironical admiration, he approached the filing-cabinet.
“Let me see--you are 7-7-77.” He pulled out drawer seven in section
seven and took out an envelope from which he drew a lot of papers. He
read a typewritten sheet. He replaced the papers, closed the drawer,
turned, and stared doubtfully at Tom, muttering half to himself: “I
don't know! I don't know!”
“What?” asked Tom.
“Do you really want her? Do you feel that you must meet her soon or
die?”
Tom knew he would not die if he did not meet her soon, but as for
wanting her, he certainly did. Every cell in his body was on the alert,
waiting for her, hoping to see her; and adventure, through a megaphone,
was vociferating in the middle of his soul: “Come! Come!” Therefore Tom
looked the man straight in the eyes and answered:
“Yes, I do!”
The man hesitated. Then he said:
“Listen! It is for the last time. Do you hear? For the last time! Do you
agree?”
He looked sternly at Tom, who thereupon answered, impatiently:
“Yes! Yes!”
“Boston! Hotel Lorraine! Secure Room 77, seventh floor. On Thursday
at exactly 7 p.m. be in the southeast corner of the library or
reading-room, which is on the left of the hall as you go to the main
dining-room. Green arm-chair. Hold your hat between your knees--bottom
side upward. Close your eyes. A letter will be dropped into the hat.
Then do as you please. Personally I don't think it will help or hinder.
But you are young; and perhaps if you wish hard enough it may happen
according to your desire. Good day!”
The man turned his back squarely on Tom, leaving to the heir of the
Merriwether millions no alternative but to go out dissatisfied, excited,
skeptical, hopeful, and determined to go to Boston--danger or no danger,
swindle or no swindle.
The mysterious man, too mysterious to be anything but a charlatan,
who said he did not wish Tom's money and, for that reason, probably
did--this man promised Tom he should meet a girl--a beautiful girl, the
girl he would marry. If there was to be no compulsion about it; if they,
the man and his accomplices, counted on her charms to capture Tom's
heart and hand--why, the sooner she began the attack, the better. Also,
it was one of those things that only an ass would talk about, since the
telling would put an end to all doubts as to the teller's asininity.
Therefore, without saying a word to anybody, Tom went to Boston, not
knowing that McWayne's detectives had orders to follow Tom wherever
he went and to report in detail what he was seen to do and what he was
heard to say and to whom.
Tom arrived in Boston, went to the Hotel Lorraine, registered, and asked
the polite room clerk for Room 77 on the seventh floor. The clerk smiled
pleasantly, as he always did whenever a guest-to-be asked for rooms that
did not end in thirteen, disappeared to look at the index, and returned.
“I'm sorry, sir, but that room is taken. I can give you--”
“Taken!” said Tom, in such a disappointed tone that the clerk deigned to
explain sympathetically: “Engaged by telegraph.”
“Who engaged it?”
Tom asked this so peremptorily that the clerk looked at him icily with
raised eyebrows, turned his back on the New-Yorker, made a pretense of
once more looking at the index of rooms and guests, and said to him with
a cold determination in his voice: “I made a mistake. I thought we had a
vacant room on the eighth floor. I find we have no vacant room anywhere.
I'm sorry, sir. Nothing left.”
He marked something after Tom's name on the register and turned away. He
evidently considered the incident closed.
Tom was too surprised to be angry. Then he recovered himself. His
business in Boston was to get a certain room in this hotel. He was a son
of his father; so he said, with a quiet determination that disturbed the
clerk:
“I must have Room 77 on the seventh floor! The price is of no
consequence. I am Mr. Merriwether.”
“I told you it was engaged.”
“And I told you I must have it. Don't you understand English?”
“Don't you?” said the clerk, trying to disguise his growing uneasiness
with a sneer.
This made Tom calm. He said, quietly:
“Will you be good enough to send my card to Mr. Starrett, the owner of
this hotel? He knows who I am and who my father is; but if he should
have forgotten, say that he is to call up Major Wilkinson, of Pierce,
Wilkinson & Company, the bankers, or Mr. Blandy, of the Moontucket
National Bank, or anybody who knows where New York is on the map. Good
heavens! there must be somebody in Boston who hasn't been asleep for the
last twenty years!” The clerk decided to be polite. The name Merriwether
had a familiar sound, but he could not associate it. He said, more
politely:
“I am sorry, Mr. Merriwether, but the room you want--and three others
with it--have been engaged.”
“By whom?”
“You are asking me to break one of our rules.”
“Well, can you tell me whether it has been engaged since yesterday?”
“Oh, longer than that!” He disappeared, consulted a book, and came back
with the triumphant expression human beings put on when they do not wish
to say “I told you so,” aloud, “Engaged and paid for since the eighth,
Mr. Merriwether. That's nine days ago. So, you see, we can't do what you
ask us to. Sorry!”
Wherever he went, Tom thought he was confronted by crude attempts at
mystery. To send him to this particular room, 77 on the seventh floor,
was merely the same as an effort to impress children by using the
magical number seven.
Who had engaged the room? Was it an accomplice or some stranger
guiltless of participation in the rather juvenile joke?
Still, Tom was in Boston to do a particular thing; and, though much
of the spring restlessness had gone from his veins, there remained the
desire to see the affair through to the end, whether the end should be a
smile or a mild oath. Therefore, after a pause, Tom said to the clerk:
“Can you give me the room exactly opposite 77 on the seventh floor?”
The clerk hesitated, then said:
“Just a minute, please.”
He consulted one of the bookkeepers, from whom he must have learned
whose son Tom was. And, though Boston is not New York, money is money,
even in Massachusetts; and the heir to fifty or a hundred million
dollars is something, whether or not he is somebody.
“Certainly,” said the clerk, and handed the key to a young man called,
in New York, a bell-boy. The young man now preceded Tom to the seventh
floor and ushered the New-Yorker into Room 78.
Tom gave the studious youth a dollar and never noticed that the boy
regarded the bill with a mixture of suspicion and alarm, put it gingerly
into his pocket, and left the room, closing the door. Tom opened the
door. The boy thought it had opened itself and returned to close it. Tom
waved him away. The boy hastily retreated. He did not, however, throw
away the dollar. He had discovered it was not “phony.”
The bell-boy found the room clerk engaged in conversation with two men.
He, divining that the talk concerned the generous lunatic, flung at
the room clerk that look of exaggerated perplexity which will cause any
normal human being inevitably to ask: “What is it?”
The room clerk saw the look and still kept on talking with the men;
whereupon the bell-boy walked up to the desk, frowned fiercely, and
muttered, “He is in his room!”
“What's that, boy?”
“I said,” retorted the studious youth, glacially, “he was in his
room--78. He gave me a dollar and left the door open. I tried to close
it, but he opened it again--after he gave me the dollar.”
The clerk, awe in his face, turned to the men and nodded confirmatively.
“Your man!” he said. “Of course we don't want any fuss--”
“We'll telephone Mr. McWayne, the private secretary. The young fellow
isn't violent, you know.”
The hotel clerk said the inevitable thing:
“Only son, too--isn't he?”
“Yes. Over a hundred million dollars, I've heard.” The detective,
induced thereto by the invitation in the clerk's voice, had vouchsafed
inside information.
“Too bad!” murmured the clerk, thinking of the hundred million and Tom.
“Too damned bad!” he almost whimpered, thinking of the hundred million
and himself. To show that he was unimpressed by vast wealth he added,
sternly, “No trouble, you understand!”
One of the men whom McWayne had instructed to shadow Tom sat in the
lobby just in front of the elevator. The other, with the clerk's
permission, went up to the seventh floor and sat down by the floor
telephone operator. From there he could keep a ten-dollar-a-day eye on
Room 78.
Meantime Tom's impatience had reached such a point that he could not sit
still. Through his open door he could see the closed door of Room 77.
The thought came to him to see who was in that room. Then it struck him
that perhaps the mysterious man in New York had reckoned precisely
on rousing the Merriwether curiosity. Perhaps an unpleasant surprise
awaited the man who should enter Room 77. Perhaps the room was occupied
by some one who had nothing to do with her--and therefore nothing to
do with him. Perhaps he should put himself in a ridiculous predicament.
Perhaps a million disagreeable things might happen, making it obviously
the unwise thing to do to go into Room 77.
All these reflections, however, weighed no more than a shadow with
him. The more he thought of why he should not go into Room 77 the more
difficult it became to resist the call of adventure. He walked across
the hall and knocked sharply on the door. No answer came. He knocked
again. A hotel maid approached him.
“I beg your pardon, sir. Are you in the party?”
“What party?”
“In Room 77.”
“No. I am in 78.”
“I am very sorry--but it is against the rules of the house, sir.”
Tom had nothing to say to the maid; so he closed the door of his own
room, conscious that his actions must appear erratic, but not much
concerned over it. Presently he went out for a walk and did not go to
either of his Boston clubs. This omission was duly noted by the clever
Mr. McWayne's star sleuths.
Tom returned to the hotel, feeling almost cured. He realized that he had
come on a fool's errand; and yet there was something that told him it
was not a fool's errand. It was too elaborate for a practical joke. So
long as no motive was apparent the mystery remained a mystery; and no
mystery is laughable--at least, not while in the act of mystifying.
So he decided for the tenth time to go through with his part, absurd or
not. He walked about the lobby, utterly unconscious that he was a marked
man. He could not see that the clerks and the bellboys and the two
men from the New York agency followed his movements, not only with the
liveliest curiosity, but with deep pity.
All he was doing was to wait more or less impatiently for seven o'clock;
but impatience is so natural a feeling, and comes so easily to most
human beings, that it always rouses suspicion. Tom did not “act right”
to the watchers. Any perfectly sane and intelligent man, accused
of being mad, will confirm the accusation if he is watched for five
minutes. People who never think and never imagine are never taken for
lunatics. That nowadays is about the only compensation for being an ass.
At 6.56 p.m. he walked into the hotel library and found that the
green-plush arm-chair in the corner by the window was occupied by an
elderly woman. It annoyed him because he desired to sit in that chair at
exactly seven o'clock. Absurd or not, the problem became how to get rid
of the old woman quickly and without disturbing the peace or alarming
the office.
His mind worked logically enough for a man under observation for
insanity, and his sense of humor acted as a safety-valve for his
inventiveness. He merely drew his chair very close to the startled old
lady and opened a magazine. He found a poem and began to read it in the
exasperating undertone used by the demons who have the next seats to
yours at the opera.
Presently he began to drum on his thigh with the tips of his fingers,
and at regular intervals of ten seconds he thumped it with his clenched
fist bass-drumwise. Every twenty-five seconds he pulled out his watch,
looked at it, exclaimed, “Gracious!”--and blew his nose loudly and
determinedly.
Within two and three-quarter minutes the old lady glared at him, rose,
looked at the clock, glared again at him to make sure, and left the
room. In the hall she stopped and spoke to the young lady who checked
hats and coats near the entrance of the main dining-room.
“I had to leave the reading-room. A perfectly horrible person came in!
He simply drove me out.”
“Yes, madam. He is insane. It is a very sad case.”
“Goodness! What a narrow--“.
“Oh, he is quite harmless, madam.”
“It's a wonder a first-class hotel, like this claims to be, allows--”
“You are right!” agreed the wise young woman, whose business was to
encourage generosity.
The old lady went away, muttering. Thomas Thome Merriwether sat down
in the vacated chair, put his hat between his knees, and waited. The
mahogany clock on the mantel presently began to chime the hour and Tom
felt a pang of angry disappointment. Nothing had happened--except that
he again had made an ass of himself!
A tall, strongly built man at that moment entered the room, looked at
Tom, saw the hat held between the knees, and turned away as if the last
person in the world he wished to see was young Mr. Merriwether.
Tom saw him stretch his hand toward a panel in the wall. Instantly the
room was in darkness. It occurred to Tom that this would be a good way
to attack him; but there instantly followed the reflection that it was
not a good place in which to do any robbing or murdering.
Therefore young Merriwether sat on quietly. He felt something drop into
his hat. A faint odor of sweet peas came to his nostrils--the odor he
had associated with his youth until he began to associate it with her,
and therefore with love.
This evanescent perfume that made vague memories stir within him--that
made him desire to see the woman who was to be his wife--that made
him thrill obediently at the call of adventure--made him feel that the
mysterious man of 777 Fifth Avenue was not a cheap charlatan.
Suddenly the light was turned on again. Tom saw a slip of paper within
his hat, fished it out, and, without stopping to see what it was or what
it said, rushed from the room into the corridor.
He saw men and women coming and going. He could not tell whether she was
among them or whether the man who had entered the library--who probably
was the man that put out the light--was among the crowd. But the sleuths
and the bell-boy and the coat-girl watched him. What doubt could remain?
In their minds there was none.
Tom abandoned the chase. The key to the mystery eluded him, as usual. He
was not clever enough to catch the mystery-manipulator in the act, as it
were. He looked at the paper. It was an envelope. On it was written in a
woman's hand:
_For T. M._
He opened the envelope and pulled out a sheet of the hotel note-paper,
on which he read, in the same handwriting:
_Too late!_
He walked to the desk and spoke to the room clerk.
“I must--” he began, but stopped.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Merriwether!” The clerk used the voice and manner of a
man saying nice things to a child in order to propitiate its mother.
“About Room 77 on the seventh floor,” said Tom.
“We can give it to you now, if you wish. Yes, sir.”
“What? Has she--Is it vacant?”
“Given up this very minute. If you'll wait until we send up and see
whether it is ready to be occupied, I'll--”
“I'll take it; but I'd like to go up at once.”
He wished to see whether there was any clue left by the previous
occupants.
“Certainly. Front!”
Tom followed the bell-boy. The room was empty and undisturbed. He
thought he smelled sweet peas and sat down in an arm-chair to think; but
the odor, which made her recognizable in his dreams of her, prevented
him from thinking as you would expect a healthy young man to think.
There was no sharpness of outline in the visions of her seen through the
mist of dreams and longings.
He knew there was a girl somewhere whom he would marry. Indeed, he often
had wondered what his wife would be like. Every man, when he endeavors
to look ahead, thinks that some day he shall have a wife--the mother
of his children--the woman whose mere existence will influence his
life more than anything else in the world; whose love will make him a
different man; whose necessities will give to him an utterly different
point of view.
Our lives depend on our point of view; and Tom knew that his point of
view would be utterly changed by this girl he had never seen. Would she
be the girl the man in 777 Fifth Avenue said she would be? Was she the
mysterious person with whom, of course, he was not in love, but with
whom he might fall in love--adventuress or not? His love of love had
not yet changed into love of somebody; but he was keen to enter into a
definite love-affair with a concrete being, and he rather suspected that
this affair was being stage-managed for his benefit.
He would forgive everything so long as in the end something
happened--something in which there was a girl, whether or not she was
the girl. What most irritated him was the indefiniteness of the mystery
so far. The spice of danger; the tragical possibilities; the lure of
adventure; the call of the unusual; the attraction of the unknown and
therefore of the interesting--were no longer quite enough. The glimpse
of a face--of a living face--and a hand to shake, a waist to clasp and
lips to kiss--these things he now desired.
His irritability over his failure to develop an adventure in Boston grew
keener until it became anger. He would have it out once for all with the
mysterious man at 777 Fifth Avenue.
He went down-stairs, paid his bill, and took the midnight train for New
York.