|JOHN BRUCE abstractedly twirled the tassel of the old and faded
dressing gown which he wore, the temporary possession of which he
owed to Paul Veniza, his host. From the chair in which he sat his eyes
ventured stolen glances at the nape of a dainty neck, and at a great
coiled mass of silken brown hair that shone like burnished copper in the
afternoon sunlight, as Claire Veniza, her back turned toward him, busied
herself about the room. He could walk now across the floor--and a
great deal further, he was sure, if they would only let him. He had not
pressed that point; it might be taking an unfair advantage of an already
over-generous hospitality, but he was not at all anxious to speed his
departure from--well, from where he was at that precise moment.
And now as he looked at Claire Veniza, his thoughts went back to the
night he had stepped, at old Hawkins' invitation, into the traveling
pawn-shop. That was not so very long ago--two weeks of grave illness,
and then the past week of convalescence--but it seemed to span a great
and almost limitless stretch of time, and to mark a new and entirely
different era in his life; an era that perplexed and troubled and
intrigued him with conditions and surroundings and disturbing elements
that he did not comprehend--but at the same time made the blood in his
veins to course with wild abandon, and the future to hold out glad and
beckoning hands.
He loved, with a great, overwhelming, masterful love, the girl who stood
there just across the room all unconscious of the worship that he knew
was in his eyes, and which he neither tried nor wished to curb. Of his
own love he was sure. He had loved her from the moment he had first seen
her, and in his heart he knew he held fate kind to have given him the
wound that in its turn had brought the week of convalescence just past.
And yet--and yet---- Here dismay came, and his brain seemed to stumble.
Sometimes he dared to hope; sometimes he was plunged into the depths of
misery and despair. Little things, a touch of the hand as she had nursed
him that had seemed like some God-given tender caress, a glance when
she had thought he had not seen and which he had allowed his heart to
interpret to its advantage with perhaps no other justification than
its own yearning and desire, had buoyed him up; and then, at times,
a strange, almost bitter aloofness, it seemed, in her attitude toward
him--and this had checked, had always checked, the words that were ever
on his lips.
A faint flush dyed his cheeks. But even so, and for all his boasted
love, did he not in his own soul wrong her sometimes? The questions
_would_ come. What was the meaning of the strange environment in which
she lived? Why should she have driven to a gambling hell late at night,
and quite as though it were the usual thing, to transact business alone
in that car with----
God! His hands clenched fiercely. He remembered that night, and how the
same thought had come then, mocking him, jeering him, making sport of
him. He was a cad, a pitiful, vile-minded cad! Thank God that he was at
least still man enough to be ashamed of his own thoughts, even if they
came in spite of him!
Perhaps it was the strange, unusual characters that surrounded her, that
came and went in this curious place here, that fostered such thoughts;
perhaps he was not strong enough yet to grapple with all these confusing
things. He smiled a little grimly. The robbery of the safe, for
instance--and that reptile whom he now knew to be his own attending
physician, Doctor Crang! He had said nothing about his knowledge of the
robbery--yet. As nearly as he could judge it had occurred two or three
days prior to the time when his actual convalescence had set in, and as
a material witness to the crime he was not at all sure that in law his
testimony would be of much value. They must certainly have found him in
an unconscious state immediately afterward--and Doctor Crang would
as indubitably attack his testimony as being nothing more than the
hallucination of a sick brain.
The luck of the devil had been with Crang! Why had he, John Bruce, gone
drifting off into unconsciousness just at the psychological moment when,
if the plan had been carried out as arranged and the other two had made
their fake escape, Crang would have been left in the room with Claire
and Paul Veniza--with the money in his pockets! He would have had Doctor
Crang cold then! It was quite different now. He was not quite sure what
he meant to do, except that he fully proposed to have a reckoning with
Doctor Crang. But that reckoning, something, he could not quite define
what, had prompted him to postpone until he had become physically a
little stronger!
And then there was another curious thing about it all, which too had
influenced him in keeping silent. Hawkins, Paul Veniza, Claire and
Doctor Crang had each, severally and collectively, been here in this
room many times since the robbery, and not once in his presence had the
affair ever been mentioned! And--oh, what did it matter! He shrugged his
shoulders as though to rid himself of some depressing physical weight.
What did anything matter on this wonderful sunlit afternoon--save Claire
there in her white, cool dress, that seemed somehow to typify her own
glorious youth and freshness.
How dainty and sweet and alluring she looked! His eyes were no longer
contented with stolen glances; they held now masterfully, defiant of any
self-restraint, upon the slim figure that was all grace from the trim
little ankles to the poise of the shapely head. He felt the blood
quicken his pulse. Stronger than he had ever known it before, straining
to burst all barriers, demanding expression as a right that would not be
denied, his love rose dominant within him, and----
The tassel he had been twirling dropped from his hand. She had
turned suddenly; and across the room her eyes met his, calm, deep and
unperturbed at first, but wide the next instant with a startled shyness,
and the color sweeping upward from her throat crimsoned her face, and in
confusion she turned away her head.
John Bruce was on his feet. He stumbled a little as he took a step
forward. His heart was pounding, flinging a red tide into the pallor of
his cheeks that illness had claimed as one of its tolls.
“I--I did not mean to tell you like that,” he said huskily. “But I have
wanted to tell you for so long. It seems as though I have always wanted
to tell you. Claire--I love you.”
She did not answer.
He was beside her now--only her head was lowered and averted and he
could not look into her face. Her fingers were plucking tremulously at a
fold of her dress. He caught her hand between both his own.
“Claire--Claire, I love you!” he whispered.
She disengaged her hand gently; and, still refusing to let him see her
face, shook her head slowly.
“I--I-----” Her voice was very low. “Oh, don't you know?”
“I know I love you,” he answered passionately. “I know that nothing else
but that matters.”
Again she shook her head.
“I thought perhaps he would have told you. I--I am going to marry Doctor
Crang.”
John Bruce stepped back involuntarily; and for a moment incredulity and
helpless amazement held sway in his expression--then his lips tightened
in a hurt, half angry way.
“Is that fair to me, Claire--to give me an answer like that?” he said in
a low tone. “I know it isn't true, of course; it couldn't be--but--but
it isn't much of a joke either, is it?”
“It is true,” she said monotonously.
He leaned suddenly forward, and taking her face between his hands, made
her lift her head and look at him. The brown eyes were swimming with
tears. The red swept her face in a great wave, and, receding, left it
deathly pale--and in a frenzy of confusion she wrenched herself free
from him and retreated a step.
“My God!” said John Bruce hoarsely. “You--and Doctor Crang! I don't
understand! It is monstrous! You can't love that----” He checked
himself, biting at his lips. “You can't love Doctor Crang. It is
impossible! You dare not stand there and tell me that you do. Answer me,
Claire--answer me!”
She seemed to have regained her self-control--or perhaps it was the one
defense she knew. The little figure was drawn up, her head held back.
“You have no right to ask me that,” she said steadily.
“Right!” John Bruce echoed almost fiercely. His soul itself seemed
suddenly to be in passionate turmoil; it seemed to juggle two figures
before his consciousness, contrasting one with the other in most hideous
fashion--this woman here whom he loved, who struggled to hold herself
bravely, who stood for all that was pure, for all that he reverenced in
a woman; and that sallow, evil-faced degenerate, a drug fiend so lost to
the shame of his vice that he pricked himself with his miserable needle
quite as unconcernedly in public as one would smoke a cigarette--and
worse--a crook--a thief! Was it a coward's act to tell this girl _what_
the man was whom she proposed to marry? Was it contemptible to pull a
rival such as that down from the pedestal which in some fiendish way he
must have erected for himself? Surely she did not know the man for what
he actually was! She could not know! “Right!” he cried out. “Yes, I have
the right--both for your sake and for my own. I have the right my love
gives me. Do you know how I came here that first night?”
“Yes,” she said with an effort. “You told me. You were in a fight in
Ratti's place, and were wounded.”
He laughed out harshly.
“And I told you the truth--as far as it went,” he said. “But do you know
how I came to be in this locality after leaving you in that motor car? I
followed you. I loved you from the moment I saw you that night. It seems
as though I have always loved you--as I always shall love you. That is
what gives me the right to speak. And I mean to speak. If it were an
honorable man to whom you were to be married it would be quite another
matter; but you cannot know what you are doing, you do not know this man
as he really is, or what he----”
“Please! Please stop!” she cried out brokenly. “Nothing you could say
would tell me anything I do not already know.”
“I am not so sure!” said John Bruce grimly. “Suppose I told you he was a
criminal?”
“He is a criminal.” Her voice was without inflection.
“Suppose then he were sent to jail--to serve a sentence?”
“I would marry him when he came out,” she said. “Oh, please do not
say any more! I know far more about him than you do; but--but that has
nothing to do with it.”
For an instant, motionless, John Bruce stared at Claire; then his hands
swept out and caught her wrists in a tight grip and held her prisoner.
“Claire!” His voice choked. “What does this mean? You do not love him;
you say you know he is even a criminal--and yet you are going to marry
him! What hold has he got on you? What is it? What damnable trap has he
got you in? I am going to know, Claire! I will know! And whatever it is,
whatever the cause of it, I'll crush it, strangle it, sweep it out of
your dear life at any cost! Tell me, Claire!”
Her face had gone white; she struggled a little to release herself.
“You--you do not know what you are saying. You----” Her voice broke in a
half sob.
“Claire, look at me!” He was pleading now with his soul in his eyes and
voice. “Claire, I----”
“Oh, please let me go!” she cried out frantically. “You cannot say
anything that will make any difference. I--it only makes it harder.”
The tears were brimming in her eyes again. “Oh, please let me
go--there's--there's some one coming.”
John Bruce's hands dropped to his sides. The door, already half open,
was pushed wide, and Hawkins, the old chauffeur, stood on the threshold.
And as John Bruce looked in that direction, he was suddenly and
strangely conscious that somehow for the moment the old man dominated
his attention even to the exclusion of Claire. There was something of
curious self-effacement, of humbleness in the bent, stoop-shouldered
figure there, who twisted a shapeless hat awkwardly in his hands; but
also something of trouble and deep anxiety in the faded blue eyes as
they fixed on the girl, and yet without meeting her eyes in return, held
upon her as she walked slowly now toward the door.
“Dear old Hawkins,” she said softly, and laid her hand for an instant on
the other's arm as she passed by him, “you and Mr. Bruce will be able
to entertain each other, won't you? I--I'm going upstairs for a little
while.”
And the old man made no answer; but, turning on the threshold, he
watched her, his attitude, it seemed to John Bruce, one of almost
pathetic wistfulness, as Claire disappeared from view.