When the janitor and the taxicab operator between them had worried all
his luggage upstairs, Staff paid and tipped them and thankfully saw the
hall-door close on their backs. He was tired, over-heated and glad to be
alone.
Shaking off his coat, he made a round of his rooms, opening windows.
Those in the front of the apartment looked out from the second-story
elevation upon East Thirtieth Street, between Fourth and Lexington
Avenues. Those in the rear (he discovered to his consummate disgust)
commanded an excellent view of a very deep hole in the ground swarming
with Italian labourers and dotted with steam drills, mounds of broken
rock and carters with their teams; also a section of East Twenty-ninth
Street was visible through the space that had been occupied no longer
ago than last spring by a dignified row of brownstone houses with
well-tended backyards.
Staff cursed soulfully the noise and dirt caused by the work of
excavation, shut the back windows to keep out the dust and returned to
the front room--his study, library and reception-room in one. With the
addition of the bath off the bedroom in the rear, and a large
hall-closet opening from the study, these two rooms comprised his home.
The hall was public, giving access to two upper floors which, like that
beneath him, were given up to bachelor apartments. The house was in
reality an old-fashioned residence, remodelled and let out by the floor
to young men mainly of Staff's ilk: there was an artist on the upper
story, a writer of ephemeral fiction on the third, an architect on the
first. The janitor infested the basement, chiefly when bored by the
monotony of holding up an imitation mahogany bar over on Third Avenue.
His wife cooked abominably and served the results under the name of
breakfast to the tenants, who foraged where they would for their other
meals. Otherwise she was chiefly distinguished by a mad, exasperating
passion for keeping the rooms immaculately clean and in order. Staff
noted approvingly that, although Mrs. Shultz had not been warned of his
return, there was no trace of dust in the rooms, not a single stick of
furniture nor a book out of place.
There wasn't really any reason why he should stick in such un-modern and
inconveniently situated lodgings--that is, aside from his ingrained
inclination to make as little trouble for himself as possible. To hunt
a new place to live would be quite as much of a nuisance as to move to
it, when found. And he was comfortable enough where he was. He had taken
the place some eight years previously, at a time when it was rather
beyond his means; today when he could well afford to live where he would
in New York, he found that his rooms had become a habit with him. He had
no intention whatever of leaving them until the house should be
dismantled to make way for some more modern structure--like that going
up in the rear--or until he married.
He poked round, renewing acquaintance with old, familiar things,
unearthed an ancient pipe which had lain in one of his desk-drawers like
a buried bone, fondled it lovingly, filled and lighted it, and felt all
the time more and more content and at ease.
Then Shultz knocked at the door and delivered to him a bundle of
afternoon papers for which he had filed a requisition immediately on his
arrival.
He sat down, enjoying his pipe to the utmost and wondering how under the
sun he had managed to worry along without it all the time he had been
away, and began to read what the reporters had to say about the arrival
of the Autocratic and the case of the Cadogan collar.
In the main they afforded him little but amusement; the stories were
mostly a hash of misinformation strongly flavoured with haphazard
guesswork. The salient facts of the almost simultaneous disappearance of
the necklace and Mr. Iff stood up out of the welter of surmise like
mountain peaks above cloud-rack. There were no other facts. And both
these remained inexplicable. No trace had been found of Mr. Iff; his
luggage remained upon the pier, unclaimed. With him the Cadogan collar
had apparently vanished as mysteriously: thus the consensus. The
representative of the Secret Service bent on exposing an impostor, the
Pinkerton men employed by the steamship company, and a gratuitous corps
of city detectives were verbally depicted as so many determined
bloodhounds nosing as many different scents--otherwise known as clues.
Jules Max, moreover, after a conference with his star, had published an
offer of a reward of $10,000 for the return of the necklace or for
information leading to its recovery whether or not involving the
apprehension of the thief.
Several of the papers "ran" unusually long stories descriptive of the
scenes on the pier. Staff chuckled over them. The necklace had, in fact,
made no end of trouble for several hundred putatively innocent and
guileless passengers. The customs examination had been thorough beyond
parallel. Not even the steerage and second-cabin passengers had escaped;
everybody's belongings had been combed fine by a corps of inspectors
whose dutiful curiosity had been abnormally stimulated by the prospect
of a ten-thousand-dollar reward. Not a few passengers had been obliged
to submit to the indignity of personal search--Staff and Alison in their
number; the latter for no reason that Staff could imagine; the former
presumably because he had roomed with the elusive Mr. Iff on the way
over. He had also been mulcted a neat little sum as duty on that
miserable hat, which he had been obliged to declare as a present for a
friend.
In memory of this he now rose, marched over to the bandbox, innocently
reposing in the middle of the floor, and dispassionately lifted it the
kick he had been promising it ever since the first day of their
acquaintance.
It sailed up prettily, banged the wall with a hollow noise and dropped
to the floor with a grievous dent in one side.
There--out of his way--Staff left it. Immeasurably mollified, he
proceeded to unpack and put his house in order. By the time this was
done to his satisfaction and Shultz had dragged the empty trunks into
the hall, to be carried down-stairs and stored in the cellar, it was
evening and time to dress. So Staff made himself clean with much water
and beautiful with cold steel and resplendent with evening clothes, and
tucked the manuscript of _A Single Woman_ into the pocket of a light
topcoat and sallied forth to dine with Jules Max and Alison Landis.
It was late, something after midnight, when he returned, driving up to
his house in a taxicab and a decidedly disgruntled frame of mind. Alison
had been especially trying with regard to the play; and Max, while
privately letting the author see that he thought him in the right in
refusing to make changes until rehearsals had demonstrated their
advisability, and in spite of his voluble appreciation of the play's
merits, had given Alison the support she demanded. The inference was
plain: the star was to be humoured even at the cost of a crippled play.
Between love for the woman and respect for his work, desire to please
her and determination not to misrepresent himself to the public, Staff,
torn this way and that, felt that he had at length learned the true
meaning of "the horns of dilemma." But this reflection availed nothing
to soothe his temper.
When he got out of the cab a short but sharp argument ensued with the
operator; it seemed that "the clock" was out of order and not
registering--had struck in conformance to the time-honoured custom of
the midnight taximeter union. But the driver's habitual demand for two
and one-half times the proper fare by distance proved in this instance
quite fruitless. Staff calmly counted out the right amount, put it in
the man's hand, listened with critical appreciation to the resultant
flow of profanity until it verged upon personality, then deliberately
dragged the man by the scruff of his neck, choking and cursing, from his
seat to the sidewalk.
"Now, listen," said he in a level tone: "you've got either to put up or
shut up. I've been sort of aching to beat the tar out of one of you
highwaymen for some time, and I feel just ripe for it tonight. You
either put up your fists or crawl--another yap out of you and I won't
wait for you to do either."
The man bristled and then, analysing the gleam in Staff's eyes, crawled:
that is to say, he climbed back into his seat and swung the machine to
the far side of the street before again resorting to vituperation.
To this Staff paid no more attention. He was opening the front door. The
passage had comforted him considerably, but he was presently to regret
it. But for that delay he might have been spared a deal of trouble.
As he let himself into the house, a man in evening dress came running
down the stairs, brushed past rudely and without apology, and slammed
the door behind him. Staff wondered and frowned slightly. Presumably the
fellow had been calling on one of the tenants of the upper floors. There
had been something familiar in his manner--something reminiscent, but
too indefinite for recognition. And certainly he'd been in the devil of
a hurry!
In the meantime he had mounted the first flight of stairs and turned
through the hall to his study door. To his surprise it wasn't locked. He
seemed distinctly to remember locking it when he had left for dinner.
Still, memory does play us odd tricks.
He pushed the door open and entered the room. At the same moment he
heard the trilling of the telephone bell. The instrument stood upon his
desk between the two front windows. Without pausing to switch on one of
the lights in the combination gas- and electrolier in the centre of the
room, he groped his way through blinding darkness to the desk and,
finding the telephone instrument with the certainty of old acquaintance,
lifted the receiver to his ear.
"Hello?" he called.
A thin and business-like voice detailed his number.
"Yes," he said. "What is it?"
"Just a moment," came out of the night. "Hold the wire."
There was a pause in which it occurred to him that a little light would
be a grateful thing. He groped for his desk-lamp, found it and scorched
his fingers slightly on its metal reflector. He had switched on the
light and said "Damn!" mechanically before he reflected that the said
metal reflector had no right to be hot unless the light had been burning
very recently.
As this thought penetrated his consciousness, the telephone waxed
eloquent.
"Hello!" called a voice. "Is that you, Staff?"
"Why!" he exclaimed in surprise--"yes, Alison!"
"Are you alone?"
"Yes," he said. "What is it?"
"I just wanted to know," returned the girl at the other end of the wire.
"I'm coming to see you."
"What--now?"
"Of course, silly."
"But why--this time of night--it doesn't seem--"
"Oh, I've got something most important to say to you--very important
indeed. It won't keep. I'll be there in five minutes. Listen for the
taxi--will you, like a dear boy?--and come down and open the door for
me. Good-bye."
"Good-bye," he returned automatically, and hung up the receiver.
What on earth could _she_ be wanting, that could have turned up so
unexpectedly in the half-hour since he had left her and that wouldn't
keep till morning?
Abruptly he became aware that the air in the room was stiflingly close.
And he had left the windows open when he went out; he knew that he
wasn't mistaken about that; and now they were closed, the shades drawn
tight!
This considered in connection with the open door that had been locked,
and the heated desk-lamp that should have been cold, he couldn't avoid
the conclusion that somebody had been in his rooms, an unlawful
trespasser, just a few minutes before he came in--possibly the very man
who had rushed past him in such violent haste at the front door.
He jumped up and turned on all the lights in the room. A first, hasty
glance about showed him nothing as it had not been when he had left six
hours or so ago--aside from the front windows, of course. Mechanically,
thinking hard and fast, he went to these latter and opened them wide.
The possibility that the intruder might still be in the rooms--in his
bedroom, for instance--popped into his head, and he went hurriedly to
investigate. But there wasn't anybody in the back-room or the
bath-room.
Perplexed, he examined the rear windows. They were closed and locked, as
when he had left. Opening them, he peered out and down the fire-escape;
he had always had a notion that anybody foolish enough to want to burgle
his rooms would find it easy to effect an entrance via the fire-escape,
whose bottom rung was only eight feet or so above the level of the
backyard. And now, since the Twenty-ninth Street houses had been torn
down, lending access easy via the excavation, such an attempt would be
doubly easy.
But he had every evidence that his rooms hadn't been broken into by any
such route; although--of course!--an astute burglar might have thought
to cover up his tracks by relocking the windows after he had entered. On
the other hand, the really wise marauder would have almost certainly
left them open to provide a way of escape in emergency.
Baffled and wondering, Staff returned to his study. An examination of
the hall-closet yielded nothing illuminating. Everything was
undisturbed, and there wasn't room enough therein for anybody to hide.
He shut the closet door and reviewed the study more carefully. Not a
thing out of place; even that wretched bandbox lay where he had kicked
it, with a helpless, abused look, the dented side turned pitifully to
the light--much like a street beggar exposing a maimed limb to excite
public sympathy.
He struggled to think: what did he possess worth stealing? Nothing of
any great value: a modest collection of masculine jewelry--stick-pins
and the like; a quantity of clothing; a few fairly good pictures; a few
rare books. But the merest cursory examination showed that these were
intact, one and all. What cash he had was all upon his person. His desk,
where the lamp had been lighted, held nothing valuable to anybody other
than himself: manuscripts, account books, some personal papers strictly
non-negotiable. And these too proved undisturbed.
Swinging round from the desk, he rested his elbows on his knees, clasped
his hands, and lapsed into the most profound of meditations; through
which he arrived at the most amazing discovery of all.
Very gradually his eyes, at first seeing not what they saw, focussed
upon an object on the floor. Quite excusably he was reluctant to believe
their evidence. Eventually, however, he bent forward and picked up the
thing.
It lay in his hand, eloquently absurd--in his study!--a bow of
violet-coloured velvet ribbon, cunningly knotted, complete in itself.
From its reverse, a few broken threads of silk hung, suggesting that it
had been originally sewn upon a gown, or some other article of dress,
from which it had been violently torn away.
The thing was so impossible--preposterous!--that he sat as if stunned,
eyes a-stare, jaw dropping, wits bemused; until abruptly roused by the
sharp barking of a taxicab horn as it swung round the corner of Fourth
Avenue and the subsequent grumble of its motor in the street below.
Thrusting the velvet knot into his pocket he ran down and opened the
front door just as Alison gained the top of the brownstone steps.
He noticed that her taxicab was waiting.
Still in her shimmering, silken, summery dinner-gown of the earlier
evening, a light chiffon wrap draped round her shoulders, she entered
the vestibule, paused and stood smiling mischievously into his grave,
enquiring eyes.
"Surprised you--eh, Staff?" she laughed.
"Rather," said he, bending over her hand and wondering at her high
spirit of gaiety so sharply in contrast with her determined and
domineering humour of a few hours since. "Why?" he asked, shutting the
outside door.
"Just wanted to see you alone for a few moments; I've something to say
to you--something very important and surprising.... But not down here."
"I beg your pardon," he said contritely. He motioned toward the stairs:
"There's no elevator, but it's only one flight up ..."
"No elevator! Heavens!" she cried in mock horror. "And this is how the
other half lives!"
She caught up her skirts and ran up the stairs with footsteps so light
that he could hear nothing but the soft, continuous murmuring of her
silken gown.
"Genius," he said, ironic, as he followed her--"Genius frequently needs
a lift but is more often to be found in an apartment without one. Permit
me"--he flung wide the door to his study--"to introduce you to the
garret."
"So this is where you starve and write!"
Alison paused near the centre of the room, shrugging her wrap from her
shoulders and dropping it carelessly on the table. He saw her shoot
swift glances round her with bright, prying eyes.
"I'm afraid I'm not enough of a genius to starve," he said; "but anyway,
here's where I write."
"How interesting!" she drawled in a tone that conveyed to him the
impression she found it anything but that. And then, a trace sharply:
"Please shut the door."
He lifted his brows in surprise, said "Oh?" and turning back did as
bid. At the same time Alison disposed herself negligently in a capacious
wing-chair.
"Yes," she took up his monosyllable; "it's quite as important as all
that. I don't wish to be overheard. Besides," she added with nonchalant
irrelevance, "I do want a cigarette."
Silently Staff found his metal cigarette-safe and offered it, put a
match to the paper roll held so daintily between his lady's lips, and
then helped himself.
Through a thin veil of smoke she looked up into his serious face and
smiled bewitchingly.
"Are you thrilled, my dear?" she asked lightly.
"Thrilled?" he questioned. "How?"
She lifted her white, gleaming shoulders with an air of half-tolerant
impatience. "To have a beautiful woman alone with you in your rooms, at
this hour o' night ... Don't you find it romantic, dear boy? Or aren't
you in a romantic mood tonight? Or perhaps I'm not sufficiently
beautiful ...?" She ended with a charming little petulant moue.
"You know perfectly well you're one of the most beautiful women in the
world," he began gravely; but she caught him up.
"One of--?"
"To me, of course--you know the rest: the usual thing," he said. "But
you didn't come here to discuss your charms--now did you?"
She shook her head slightly, smiling with light-hearted malice. "By no
means. But, at the same time, if I've a whim to be complimented, I do
think you might be gallant enough to humour me."
But he was in anything but a gallant temper. Mystery hedged his thoughts
about and possessed them; he couldn't rid his imagination of the
inexplicable circumstances of the man who had broken into his rooms to
steal nothing, and the knot of velvet ribbon that had dropped from
nowhere to his study floor. And when he forced his thoughts back to
Alison, it was only to feel again the smart of some of the stinging
things she had chosen to say to him that night during their discussion
of his play, and to be conscious of a certain amount of irritation
because of the effrontery of her present pose, assuming as it did that
he would eventually bend to her will, endure all manner of insolence and
indignity, because he hoped she would marry him.
Something of what was passing through his mind as he stood mute before
her, she read in his look--or intuitively divined.
"Heavens!" she cried, "you're as temperamental as a leading-man. Can't
you accept a word or two of criticism of your precious play without
sulking like--like Max does when I make up my mind to take a week's
rest in the middle of the season?"
"Criticise as much as you like," he said; "and I'll listen and take it
to heart. But I don't mind telling you I'm not going to twist this play
out of all dramatic semblance at your dictation--or Max's either."
For a moment their glances crossed like swords; he was conscious from
the flicker in her eyes that her temper was straining at the leash; and
his jaw assumed a certain look of grim solidity. But the outbreak he
expected did not come; Alison was an artiste too consummate not to be
able to control and mask her emotions--even as she did now with a quick
curtaining of her eyes behind long lashes.
"Don't let's talk about that now," she said in a soft, placating voice.
"That's a matter for hours of business. We're getting farther and
farther away from my errand."
"By all means," he returned pleasantly, "let us go to that at once."
"You can't guess?" She unmasked again the battery of her laughing eyes.
He shook his head. "I'll give you three guesses."
He found the courage to say: "You didn't come to confess that I'm in the
right about the play?"