TO A FINISH
The hospital called her on the telephone about eight o'clock in the
morning:
"Miss Evelyn Erith, please?"
"Yes," she said in a tired voice, "who is it?"
"Is this Miss Erith?"
"Yes."
"This is the Superintendent's office, Samaritan, Hospital, Miss
Dalton speaking."
The girl's heart contracted with a pang of sheer pain. She closed
her eyes and waited. The voice came over the wire again:
"A wreath of Easter lilies with your card came early--this morning.
I'm very sure there is a mistake--"
"No," she whispered, "the flowers are for a patient who died in the
hospital last night--a young man whom I brought there in my car--Kay
McKay."
"I was afraid so--"
"What!"
"McKay isn't dead! It's another patient. I was sure somebody here
had made a mistake."
Miss Erith swayed slightly, steadied herself with a desperate effort
to comprehend what the voice was telling her.
"There was a mistake made last night," continued Miss Dalton.
"Another patient died--a similar case. When I came on duty a few
moments ago I learned what had occurred. The young man in whom you
are interested is conscious this morning. Would you care to see him
before he is discharged?"
Miss Erith said, unsteadily, that she would.
She had recovered her self-command but her knees remained weak and
her lips tremulous, and she rested her forehead on both hands which
had fallen, tightly clasped, on the table in front of her. After a
few moments she felt better and she rang up her D. C., Mr. Vaux, and
explained that she expected to be late at the office. After that she
got the garage on the wire, ordered her car, and stood by the window
watching the heavily falling snow until her butler announced the
car's arrival.
The shock of the message informing her that this man was still alive
now rapidly absorbed itself in her reviving excitement at the
prospect of an approaching interview with him. Her car ran
cautiously along Park Avenue through the driving snow, but the
distance was not far and in a few minutes the great red quadrangle
of the Samaritan Hospital loomed up on her right. And even before
she was ready, before she quite had time to compose her mind in
preparation for the questions she had begun to formulate, she was
ushered into a private room by a nurse on duty who detained her a
moment at the door:
"The patient is ready to be discharged," she whispered, "but we have
detained him at your request. We are so sorry about the mistake."
"Is he quite conscious?"
"Entirely. He's somewhat shaken, that is all. Otherwise he shows no
ill effects."
"Does he know how he came here?"
"Oh, yes. He questioned us this morning and we told him the
circumstances."
"Does he know I have arrived?"
"Yes, I told him."
"He did not object to seeing me?" inquired Miss Erith. A slight
colour dyed her face.
"No, he made no objection. In fact, he seemed interested. He expects
you. You may go in."
Miss Erith stepped into the room. Perhaps the patient had heard the
low murmur of voices in the corridor, for he lay on his side in bed
gazing attentively toward the door. Miss Erith walked straight to
the bedside; he looked up at her in silence.
"I am so glad that you are better," she said with an effort made
doubly difficult in the consciousness of the bright blush on her
cheeks. Without moving he replied in what must have once been an
agreeable voice: "Thank you. I suppose you are Miss Erith."
"Yes."
"Then--I am very grateful for what you have done."
"It was so fortunate--"
"Would you be seated if you please?"
She took the chair beside his bed.
"It was nice of you," he said, almost sullenly. "Few women of your
sort would bother with a drunken man."
They both flushed. She said calmly: "It is women of my sort who DO
exactly that kind of thing."
He gave her a dark and sulky look: "Not often," he retorted: "there
are few of your sort from Samaria."
There was a silence, then he went on in a hard voice:
"I'd been drinking a lot... as usual.... But it isn't an excuse when
I say that my beastly condition was not due to a drunken stupor. It
just didn't happen to be that time."
She shivered slightly. "It happened to be due to chloral," he added,
reddening painfully again. "I merely wished you to know."
"Yes, they told me," she murmured.
After another silence, during which he had been watching her
askance, he said: "Did you think I had taken that chloral
voluntarily?"
She made no reply. She sat very still, conscious of vague pain
somewhere in her breast, acquiescent in the consciousness, dumb, and
now incurious concerning further details of this man's tragedy.
"Sometimes," he said, "the poor devil who, in chloral, seeks
a-refuge from intolerable pain becomes an addict to the drug.... I
do not happen to be an addict. I want you to understand that."
The painful colour came and went in the girl's face; he was now
watching her intently.
"As a matter of fact, but probably of no interest to you," he
continued, "I did not voluntarily take that chloral. It was
administered to me without my knowledge--when I was more or less
stupid with liquor.... It is what is known as knockout drops, and is
employed by crooks to stupefy men who are more or less intoxicated
so that they may be easily robbed."
He spoke now so calmly and impersonally that the girl had turned to
look at him again as she listened. And now she said: "Were you
robbed?"
"They took my hotel key: nothing else."
"Was that a serious matter, Mr. McKay?"
He studied her with narrowing brown eyes.
"Oh, no," he said. "I had nothing of value in my room at the Astor
except a few necessaries in a steamer-trunk.... Thank you so much
for all your kindness to me, Miss Erith," he added, as though
relieving her of the initiative in terminating the interview.
As he spoke he caught her eye and divined somehow that she did not
mean to go just yet. Instantly he was on his guard, lying there with
partly closed lids, awaiting events, though not yet really
suspicious. But at her next question he rose abruptly, supported on
one elbow, his whole frame tense and alert under the bed-coverings
as though gathered for a spring.
"What did you say?" he demanded.
"I asked you how long ago you escaped from Holzminden camp?"
repeated the girl, very pale.
"Who told you I had ever been there?--wherever that is!"
"You were there as a prisoner, were you not, Mr. McKay?"
"Where is that place?"
"In Germany on the River Weser. You were detained there under
pretence of being an Englishman before we declared war on Germany.
After we declared war they held you as a matter of course."
There was an ugly look in his eyes, now: "You seem to know a great
deal about a drunkard you picked up in the snow near the Plaza
fountain last night."
"Please don't speak so bitterly."
Quite unconsciously her gloved hand crept up on her fur coat until
it rested over her heart, pressing slightly against her breast.
Neither spoke for a few moments. Then:
"I do know something about you, Mr. McKay," she said. "Among other
things I know that--that if you have become--become intemperate--it
is not your fault.... That was vile of them-unutterably wicked-to do
what they did to you--"
"Who are you?" he burst out. "Where have you learned-heard such
things? Did I babble all this?"
"You did not utter a sound!"
"Then--in God's name--"
"Oh, yes, yes!" she murmured, "in God's name. That is why you and I
are here together--in God's name and by His grace. Do you know He
wrought a miracle for you and me--here in New York, in these last
hours of this dreadful year that is dying very fast now?
"Do you know what that miracle is? Yes, it's partly the fact that
you did not die last night out there on the street. Thirteen degrees
below zero! ... And you did not die.... And the other part of the
miracle is that I of all people in the world should have found
you!... That is our miracle."
Somehow he divined that the girl did not mean the mere saving of his
life had been part of this miracle. But she had meant that, too,
without realising she meant it.
"Who are you?" he asked very quietly.
"I'll tell you: I am Evelyn Erith, a volunteer in the C. E. D.
Service of the United States."
He drew a deep breath, sank down on his elbow, and rested his head
on the pillow.
"Still I don't see how you know," he said. "I mean--the beastly
details--"
"I'll tell you some time. I read the history of your case in an
intercepted cipher letter. Before the German agent here had received
and decoded it he was arrested by an agent of another Service. If
there is anything more to be learned from him it will be extracted.
"But of all men on earth you are the one man I wanted to find. There
is the miracle: I found you! Even now I can scarcely force myself to
believe it is really you."
The faintest flicker touched his eyes.
"What did you want of me?" he inquired.
"Help."
"Help? From such a man as I? What sort of help do you expect from a
drunkard?"
"Every sort. All you can give. All you can give."
He looked at her wearily; his face had become pallid again; the dark
hollows of dissipation showed like bruises.
"I don't understand," he said. "I'm no good, you know that. I'm done
in, finished. I couldn't help you with your work if I wanted to.
There's nothing left of me. I am not to be depended on."
And suddenly, in his eyes of a boy, his self-hatred was revealed to
her in one savage gleam.
"No good," he muttered feverishly, "not to be trusted--no will-power
left.... It was in me, I suppose, to become the drunkard I am--"
"You are NOT!" cried the girl fiercely. "Don't say it!"
"Why not? I am!"
"You can fight your way free!" His laugh frightened her.
"Fight? I've done that. They tried to pump me that way, too--tried
to break me--break my brain to pieces--by stopping my liquor.... I
suppose they thought I might really go insane, as they gave it back
after a while--after a few centuries in hell--and tried to make me
talk by other methods--
"Don't, please." She turned her head swiftly, unable to control her
quivering face.
"Why not?"
"I can't bear it."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to shock you."
"I know." She sat for a while with head averted; and presently
spoke, sitting so:
"We'll fight it, anyway," she said.
"What do you mean?"
"If you'll let me--"
After a silence she turned and looked at him. He stammered, very
red:
"I don't quite know why you speak to me so."
She herself was not entirely clear on that point, either. After all,
her business with this man was to use him in the service of her
Government."
"What is THE GREAT SECRET?" she asked calmly.
After a long while he said, lying there very still: "So you have
even heard about that."
"I have heard about it; that is all."
"Do you know what it is?"
"All I know about it is that there is such a thing--something known
to certain Germans, and by them spoken of as THE GREAT SECRET. I
imagine, of course, that it is some vital military secret which they
desire to guard."
"Is that all you know about it?"
"No, not all." She looked at him gravely out of very clear, honest
eyes:
"I know, also, that the Berlin Government has ordered its agents to
discover your whereabouts, and to'silence' you."
He gazed at her quite blandly for a moment, then, to her amazement,
he laughed--such a clear, untroubled, boyish laugh that her
constrained expression softened in sympathy.
"Do you think that Berlin doesn't mean it?" she asked, brightening a
little.
"Mean it? Oh, I'm jolly sure Berlin means it!"
"Then why--"
"Why do I laugh?"
"Well--yes. Why do you? It does not strike me as very humorous."
At that he laughed again--laughed so whole-heartedly, so
delightfully, that the winning smile curved her own lips once more.
"Would you tell me why you laugh?" she inquired.
"I don't know. It seems so funny--those Huns, those Boches, already
smeared from hair to feet with blood--pausing in their wholesale
butchery to devise a plan to murder ME!"
His face altered; he raised himself on one elbow:
"The swine have turned all Europe into a bloody wallow. They're
belly-deep in it--Kaiser and knecht! But that's only part of it.
They're destroying souls by millions!... Mine is already damned."
Miss Erith sprang to her feet: "I tell you not to say such a thing!"
she cried, exasperated. "You're as young as I am! Besides, souls are
not slain by murder. If they perish it's suicide, ALWAYS!"
She began to pace the white room nervously, flinging open her fur
coat as she turned and came straight back to his bed again. Standing
there and looking down at him she said:
"We've got to fight it out. The country needs you. It's your bit and
you've got to do it. There's a cure for alcoholism--Dr. Langford's
cure. Are you afraid because you think it may hurt?"
He lay looking up at her with hell's own glimmer in his eyes again:
"You don't know what you're talking about," he said. "You talk of
cures, and I tell you that I'm half dead for a drink right now! And
I'm going to get up and dress and get it!"
The expression of his features and his voice and words appalled her,
left her dumb for an instant. Then she said breathlessly:
"You won't do that!"
"Yes I will."
"No."
"Why not?" he demanded excitedly.
"You owe me something."
"What I said was conventional. I'm NOT grateful to you for saving
the sort of life mine is!"
"I was not thinking of your life."
After a moment he said more quietly: "I know what you mean.... Yes,
I am grateful. Our Government ought to know."
"Then tell me, now."
"You know," he said brutally, "I have only your word that you are
what you say you are."
She reddened but replied calmly: "That is true. Let me show you my
credentials."
From her muff she drew a packet, opened it, and laid the contents on
the bedspread under his eyes. Then she walked to the window and
stood there with her back turned looking out at the falling snow.
After a few minutes he called her. She went back to the bedside,
replaced the packet in her muff, and stood waiting in silence.
He lay looking up at her very quietly and his bruised young features
had lost their hard, sullen expression.
"I'd better tell you all I know," he said, "because there is really
no hope of curing me... you don't understand... my will-power is
gone. The trouble is with my mind itself. I don't want to be
cured.... I WANT what's killing me. I want it now, always, all the
time. So before anything happens to me I'd better tell you what I
know so that our Government can make the proper investigation.
Because what I shall tell you is partly a surmise. I leave it to you
to judge--to our Government."
She drew from her muff a little pad and a pencil and seated herself
on the chair beside him.
"I'll speak slowly," he began, but she shook her head, saying that
she was an expert stenographer. So he went on:
"You know my name--Kay McKay. I was born here and educated at Yale.
But my father was Scotch and he died in Scotland. My mother had been
dead many years. They lived on a property called Isla which belonged
to my grandfather. After my father's death my grandfather allowed me
an income, and when I had graduated from Yale I continued here
taking various post-graduate courses. Finally I went to Cornell and
studied agriculture, game breeding and forestry--desiring some day
to have a place of my own.
"In 1914 I went to Germany to study their system of forestry. In
July of that year I went to Switzerland and roamed about in the
vagabond way I like--once liked." His visage altered and he cast a
side glance at the girl beside him, but her eyes were fixed on her
pad.
He drew a deep breath, like a sigh:
"In that corner of Switzerland which is thrust westward between
Germany and France there are a lot of hills and mountains which were
unfamiliar to me. The flora resembled that of the Vosges--so did the
bird and insect life except on the higher mountains.
"There is a mountain called Mount Terrible. I camped on it. There
was some snow. You know what happens sometimes in summer on the
higher peaks. Well, it happened to me--the whole snow field slid
when I was part way across it--and I thought it was all off--never
dreamed a man could live through that sort of thing--with the sheer
gneiss ledges below!
"It was not a big avalanche--not the terrific thundering
sort--rather an easy slipping, I fancy--but it was a devilish thing
to lie aboard, and, of course, if there had been precipices where I
slid--" He shrugged.
The girl looked up from her shorthand manuscript; he seemed to be
dreamily living over in his mind those moments on Mount Terrible.
Presently he smiled slightly:
"I was horribly scared--smothered, choked, half-senseless.... Part
of the snow and a lot of trees and boulders went over the edge of
something with a roar like Niagara.... I don't know how long
afterward it was when I came to my senses.
"I was in a very narrow, rocky valley, up to my neck in soft snow,
and the sun beating on my face. ... So I crawled out... I wasn't
hurt; I was merely lost.
"It took me a long while to place myself geographically. But
finally, by map and compass, I concluded that I was in some one of
the innumerable narrow valleys on the northern side of Mount
Terrible. Basle seemed to be the nearest proper objective, judging
from my map.... Can you form a mental picture of that particular
corner of Europe, Miss Erith?"
"No."
"Well, the German frontier did not seem to be very far northward--at
least that was my idea. But there was no telling; the place where I
landed was a savage and shaggy wilderness of firs and rocks without
any sign of habitation or of roads.
"The things that had been strapped on my back naturally remained
with me--map, binoculars, compass, botanising paraphernalia, rations
for two days--that sort of thing. So I was not worried. I prowled
about, experienced agreeable shivers by looking up at the mountain
which had dumped me down into this valley, and finally, after
eating, I started northeast by compass.
"It was a rough scramble. After I had been hiking along for several
hours I realised that I was on a shelf high above another valley,
and after a long while I came out where I could look down over miles
of country. My map indicated that what I beheld must be some part of
Alsace. Well, I lay flat on a vast shelf of rock and began to use my
field-glasses."
He was silent so long that Miss Erith finally looked up
questioningly. McKay's face had become white and stern, and in his
fixed gaze there was something dreadful.
"Please," she faltered, "go on."
He looked at her absently; the colour came back to his face; he
shrugged his shoulders.
"Oh, yes. What was I saying? Yes--about that vast ledge up there
under the mountains... I stayed there three days. Partly because I
couldn't find any way down. There seemed to be none.
"But I was not bored. Oh, no. Just anxious concerning my situation.
Otherwise I had plenty to look at."
She waited, pencil poised.
"Plenty to look at," he repeated absently. "Plenty of Huns to gaze
at. Huns? They were like ants below me, there. They swarmed under
the mountain ledge as far as I could see--thousands of busy
Boches--busy as ants. There were narrow-gauge railways, too,
apparently running right into the mountain; and a deep broad cleft,
deep as another valley, and all crawling with Huns.
"A tunnel? Nobody alive ever dreamed of such a gigantic tunnel, if
it was one!... Well, I was up there three days. It was the first of
August--thereabouts--and I'd been afield for weeks. And, of course,
I'd heard nothing of war--never dreamed of it.
"If I had, perhaps what those thousands of Huns were doing along the
mountain wall might have been plainer to me.
"As it was, I couldn't guess. There was no blasting--none that I
could hear. But trains were running and some gigantic enterprise was
being accomplished--some enterprise that apparently demanded speed
and privacy--for not one civilian was to be seen, not one dwelling.
But there were endless mazes of fortifications; and I saw guns being
moved everywhere.
"Well, I was becoming hungry up on that fir-clad battlement. I
didn't know how to get down into the valley. It began to look as
though I'd have to turn back; and that seemed a rather awful
prospect.
"Anyway, what happened, eventually, was this: I started east through
the forest along that pathless tableland, and on the afternoon of
the next day, tired out and almost starved, I stepped across the
Swiss boundary line--a wide, rocky, cleared space crossing a
mountain flank like a giant's road.
"No guards were visible anywhere, no sentry-boxes, but, as I stood
hesitating in the middle of the frontier--and just why I hesitated I
don't know--I saw half a dozen jagers of a German mounted regiment
ride up on the German side of the boundary.
"For a second the idea occurred to me that they had ridden parallel
to the ledge to intercept me; but the idea seemed absurd, granted
even that they had seen me upon the ledge from below, which I never
dreamed they had. So when they made me friendly gestures to come
across the frontier I returned their cheery 'Gruss Gott!' and
plodded thankfully across. ... And their leader, leaning from his
saddle to take my offered hand, suddenly struck me in the face, and
at the same moment a trooper behind me hit me on the head with the
butt of a pistol."
The girl's flying pencil faltered; she lifted her brown eyes,
waiting.
"That's about all," he said--"as far as facts are concerned.... They
treated me rather badly.... I faced their firing-squads half-a-dozen
times. After that bluff wouldn't work they interned me as an English
civilian at Holzminden.... They hid me when, at last, an inspection
took place. No chance for me to communicate with our Ambassador or
with any of the Commission."
He turned to her in his boyish, frank way: "But do you know, Miss
Erith, it took me quite a while to analyse the affair and to figure
out why they arrested me, lied about me, and treated me so
hellishly.
"You see, I was kept in solitary confinement and never had a chance
to speak to any of the other civilians interned there at Holzminden.
There was no way of suspecting why all this was happening to me
except by the attitude of the Huns themselves and their endless
questions and threats and cruelties. They were cruel. They hurt me a
lot."
Miss Erith's eyes suddenly dimmed as she watched him, and she
hastily bent her head over the pad.
"Well," he went on, "the rest, as I say, is pure surmise. This is my
conclusion: I think that for the last forty years the Huns have been
busy with an astounding military enterprise. Of course, since 1870,
the Boche has expected war, and has been feverishly preparing for
it. All the world now knows what they have done--not everything that
they have done, however.
"My conclusion is this: that, when Mount Terrible shrugged me off
its northern flank, the snow slide carried me to an almost
inaccessible spot of which even the Swiss hunters knew nothing. Or,
if they did, they considered it impossible to reach from their own
territory.
"From Germany it could be reached, but it was Swiss territory. At
any rate I think I am the only civilian who has been there, and who
has viewed from there this enormous work in which the Huns are
engaged.
"And I belive that this mysterious, overwhelmingly enormous work is
nothing less than the piercing--not of a mountain or a group of
mountains--but of that entire part of Switzerland which lies between
Germany and France.
"I believe that a vast military road, deep, deep, under the earth,
is being carried by an enormous tunnel from far back on the German
side of the frontier, under Mount Terrible, under all the mountains,
hills, valleys, forests, rivers--under Switzerland, in fact--into
French territory.
"I believe it has been building since 1871. I believe it is nearly
finished, and that it will, on French territory, give egress to a
Hun army debouching from Alsace, under Switzerland, into France
behind the French lines. That part of the Franco-Swiss frontier is
unguarded, unfortified, uninhabited. From there a Hun army can
strike the French trenches from the rear--strike Toul, Nancy,
Belfort, Verdun--why, the road is open to Paris that way--open to
Calais, to England!"
"This is frightful!" cried the girl. "If such a dreadful--"
"Wait! I told you that it is merely a surmise. I don't know. I
guess. Why I guess it I have told you.... They were savage with
me--those Huns.... They got nothing out of me. I lied steadily, even
when drunk. No, they got nothing out of me. I denied I had seen
anything. I denied--and truly enough--that anybody had accompanied
me. No, they wrenched nothing out of me--not by starving me, not by
water torture, not by their firing-squads, not by blows, not even by
making of me the drunkard I am."
The pencil fell from Miss Erith's hand and the hand caught McKay's,
held it, crushed it.
"You're only a boy," she murmured. "I'm not much more than a girl.
We've both got years ahead of us--the best of our lives."
"YOU have."
"You also! Oh, don't, don't look at me that way. I'll help you.
We've got work to do, you and I. Don't you see? Don't you
understand? Work to do for our Government! Work to do for America!"
"It's too late for me to--"
"No. You've got to live. You've got to find yourself again. This
depends on you. Don't you see it does? Don't you see that you have
got to go back there and PROVE what you merely suspect?"
"I simply can't."
"You shall! I'll make this right with you! I'll stick to you! I'll
fight to give you back your will-power--your mind. We'll do this
together, for our country. I'll give up everything else to make this
fight."
He began to tremble.
"I--if I could--"
"I tell you that you shall! We must do our bit, you and I!"
"You don't know--you don't know!" he cried in a bitter voice, then
fell trembling again with the sweat of agony on his face.
"No, I don't know," she whispered, clutching his hand to steady him.
"But I shall learn."
"You'll learn that a drunkard is a dirty beast!" he cried. "Do you
know what I'd do if anybody tried to keep me from drink?
ANYBODY!--even you!"
"No, I don't know." She shook her head sorrowfully: "A mindless man
becomes a demon, I suppose. ... Would you--injure me?"
He was shaking all over now, and presently he sat up in bed and
covered his head with one desperate hand.
"You poor boy!" she whispered.
"Keep away from me," he muttered, "I've told you all I know. I'm no
further use.... Keep clear of me.... I'm sorry--to be--what I am."
"When I leave what are you going to do?" she asked gently.
"Do? I'll dress and go to the nearest bar."
"Do you need it so much already?"
He nodded his bowed head covered by the hand that gripped his hair:
"Yes, I need it--badly."
She rose, loosened his clutch on her slender hand, picked up her
muff:
"I'll be waiting for you downstairs," she said simply.
His face expressed sullen defiance as he passed through the
waiting-room. Yet he seemed a little taken aback as well as relieved
when Miss Erith did not appear among the considerable number of
people waiting there for discharged patients. He walked on,
buttoning his fur coat with shaky fingers, passed the doorway and
stepped out into the falling snow. At the same moment a chauffeur
buried in coon-skins moved forward touching his cap:
"Miss Erith's car is here, sir; Miss Erith expects you."
McKay hesitated, scowling now in his perplexity; passed his
quivering hand slowly across his face, then turned, and looked at
the waiting car drawn up at the gutter. Behind the frosty window
Miss Erith gave him a friendly smile. He walked over to the curb,
the chauffeur opened the door, and McKay took off his hat.
"Don't ask me," he said in a low voice that trembled slightly like a
sick man's.
"I DO ask you."
"You know what's the matter with me, Miss Erith," he insisted in the
same low, unsteady voice.
"Please," she said: and laid one small gloved hand lightly on his
arm.
So he entered the car; the chauffeur drew the robe over them, and
stood awaiting orders.
"Home," said Miss Erith faintly.
If McKay was astonished he did not betray it. Neither said anything
more for a while. The man rested an elbow on the sill, his troubled,
haggard face on his hand; the girl kept her gaze steadily in front
of her with a partly resolute, partly scared expression. The car
went up Park Avenue and then turned westward.
When it stopped the girl said: "You will give me a few moments in my
library with you, won't you?"
The visage he turned to her was one of physical anguish. They sat
confronting each other in silence for an instant; then he rose with
a visible effort and descended, and she followed.
"Be at the garage at two, Wayland," she said, and ascended the snowy
stoop beside McKay.
The butler admitted them. "Luncheon for two," she said, and mounted
the stairs without pausing.
McKay remained in the hall until he had been separated from hat and
coat; then he slowly ascended the stairway. She was waiting on the
landing and she took him directly into the library where a wood fire
was burning.
"Just a moment," she said, "to make myself as--as persuasive as I
can."
"You are perfectly equipped, Miss Erith--"
"Oh, no, I must do better than I have done. This is the great moment
of our careers, Mr. McKay." Her smile, brightly forced, left his
grim features unresponsive. The undertone in her voice warned him of
her determination to have her way.
He took an involuntary step toward the door like a caged thing that
sees a loophole, halted as she barred his way, turned his marred
young visage and glared at her. There was something terrible in his
intent gaze--a pale flare flickering in his eyes like the uncanny
light in the orbs of a cornered beast.
"You'll wait, won't you?" she asked, secretly frightened now.
After a long interval, "Yes," his lips motioned.
"Thank you. Because it is the supreme moment of our lives. It
involves life or death.... Be patient with me. Will you?"
"But you must be brief," he muttered restlessly. "You know what I
need. I am sick, I tell you!"
So she went away--not to arrange her beauty more convincingly, but
to fling coat and hat to her maid and drop down on the chair by her
desk and take up the telephone:
"Dr. Langford's Hospital?"
"Yes."
"Miss Erith wishes to speak to Dr. Langford. ... Is that you,
Doctor?... Oh, yes, I'm perfectly well.... Tell me, how soon can you
cure a man of--of dipsomania?... Of course.... It was a stupid
question. But I'm so worried and unhappy... Yes.... Yes, it's a man
I know.... It wasn't his fault, poor fellow. If I can only get him
to you and persuade him to tell you the history of his case... I
don't know whether he'll go. I'm doing my best. He's here in my
library.... Oh, no, he isn't intoxicated now, but he was yesterday.
And oh, Doctor! He is so shaky and he seems so ill--I mean in mind
and spirit more than in body.... Yes, he says he needs something....
What?... Give him some whisky if he wants it?... Do you mean a
highball?... How many?... Oh... Yes... Yes, I understand ... I'll do
my very best.... Thank you. ... At three o'clock?... Thank you so
much, Doctor Langford. Good-bye!"
She hung up the receiver, took a look at herself in the
dressing-glass, and saw reflected there a yellow-haired hazel-eyed
girl who looked a trifle scared. But she forced a smile, made a
hasty toilette and rang for the butler, gave her orders, and then
walked leisurely into the library. McKay lifted his tragic face from
his hands where he stood before the fire, his elbows resting on the
mantel.
"Come," she said in her pretty, resolute way, "you and I are
perfectly human. Let's face this thing together and find out what
really is in it."
She took one armchair, he the other, and she noticed that all his
frame was quivering now--his hands always in restless, groping
movement, as though with palsy. A moment later the butler came with
a decanter, ice, mineral water and a tall glass. There was also a
box of cigars on the silver tray.
"You'll fix your own highball," she said carelessly, nodding
dismissal to the butler. But she looked only once at McKay, then
turned away--pretence of picking up her knitting--so terrible it was
to her to see in his eyes the very glimmer of hell itself as he
poured out what he "needed."
Minute after minute she sat there by the fire knitting tranquilly,
scarcely ever even lifting her calm young eyes to the man. Twice
again he poured out what he "needed" for himself before the agony in
his sickened brain and body became endurable--before the tortured
nerves had been sufficiently drugged once more and the indescribable
torment had subsided. He looked at her once or twice where she sat
knitting and apparently quite oblivious to what he had been about,
but his glance was no longer furtive; he unconsciously squared his
shoulders, and his head straightened up.
Without lifting her eyes she said: "I thought we'd talk over our
plans when you feel better."
He glanced sideways at the decanter: "I am all right," he said.
She had not yet lifted her eyes; she continued to knit while
speaking:
"First of all," she said, "I shall place your testimony and my
report in the hands of my superior, Mr. Vaux. Does that meet with
your approval?"
"Yes."
She knitted in silence a few moments. He kept his eyes on her.
Presently--and still without looking up--she said: "Are you within
the draft age?"
"No. I am thirty-two."
"Will you volunteer?"
"No."
"Would you tell me why?"
"Yes, I'll tell you why. I shall not volunteer because of my
habits."
"You mean your temporary infirmity," she said calmly. But her cheeks
reddened and she bent lower over her work. A dull colour stained his
face, too, but he merely shrugged his comment.
She said in a low voice: "I want you to volunteer with me for
overseas service in the Army Intelligence Department.... You and I,
together.... To prove what you have surmised concerning the German
operations beyond Mount Terrible.... And first I want you to go with
me to Dr. Langford's hospital .... I want you to go this afternoon
with me. ... And face the situation. And see it through. And come
out cured." She lifted her head and looked at him. "Will you?" And
in his altering gaze she saw the flicker of half-senseless anger
intensified suddenly to a flare of hatred.
"Don't ask anything like that of me," he said. She had grown quite
white.
"I do ask it.... Will you?"
"If I wanted to I couldn't, and I don't want to. I prefer this hell
to the other."
"Won't you make a fight for it?"
"No!" he said brutally.
The girl bent her head again over her knitting. But her white
fingers remained idle. After a long while, staring at her intently,
he saw her lip quiver.
"Don't do that!" he broke out harshly. "What the devil do you care?"
Then she lifted her tragic white face. And he had his answer.
"My God!" he faltered, springing to his feet. "What's the matter
with you? Why do you care? You can't care! What is it to you that a
drunken beast slinks back into hell again? Do you think you are
Samaritan enough to follow him and try to drag him out by the
ears?... A man whose very brain is already cracking with it all--a
burnt-out thing with neither mind nor manhood left--"
She got to her feet, trembling and deathly white.
"I can't let you go," she whispered.
Exasperation almost strangled him and set afire his unhinged brain.
"For Christ's sake!" he cried. "What do you care?"
"I--I care," she stammered--"for Christ's sake ... And yours!"
Things went dark before her eyes.... She opened them after a while
on the sofa where he had carried her. He was standing looking down
at her. ... After a long while the ghost of a smile touched her
lips. In his haunted gaze there was no response. But he said in an
altered, unfamiliar voice: "I'll go if you say so. I'll do all
that's in me to do. ... Will you be there--for the first day or
two?"
"Yes.... All day long.... Every day if you want me. Do you?"
"Yes.... But God knows what I may do to you.... There'll be somebody
to--watch me--won't there?... I don't know what may happen to you
or to myself.... I'm in a bad way, Miss Erith... I'm in a very bad
way."
"I know," she murmured.
He said with an almost childish directness: "Do men always live
through such cures?... I don't see how I can live through it."
She rose from the sofa and stood beside him, feeling still dizzy,
still tremulous and lacking strength.
"Let us win through," she said, not looking at him. "I think you
will suffer more than I shall. A little more.... Because I had
rather feel pain than give it--rather suffer than look on suffering....
It will be very hard for us both, I fear."
Her butler announced luncheon.