It was, in its way, a pathetic sight upon which Laverick gazed when he
stole into that shabby little sitting-room. Zoe had fallen asleep in a
small, uncomfortable easy-chair with its back to the window. Her supper
of bread and milk was half finished, her hat lay upon the table. A book
was upon her lap as though she had started to read only to find it slip
through her fingers. He stood with his elbow upon the mantelpiece,
looking down at her. Her eyelashes, long and silky, were more beautiful
than ever now that her eyes were closed. Her complexion, pale though
she was, seemed more the creamy pallor of some southern race than the
whiteness of ill-health. The bodice of her dress was open a few inches
at the neck, showing the faint white smoothness of her flawless skin.
Not even her shabby shoes could conceal the perfect shape of her feet
and ankles. Once more he remembered his first simile, his first thought
of her. She seemed, indeed, like some dainty statuette, uncouthly clad,
who had strayed from a world of her own upon rough days and found
herself ill-equipped indeed for the struggle. His heart grew hot with
anger against Morrison as he stood and watched her. Supposing she had
been different! It would have been his fault, leaving her alone to
battle her way through the most difficult of all lives. Brute!
[Illustration]
He had muttered the word half aloud and she suddenly opened her eyes.
At first she seemed bewildered. Then she smiled and sat up.
“I have been asleep!” she exclaimed.
“A most unnecessary statement,” he answered, smiling. “I have been
standing looking at you for five minutes at least.”
“How fortunate that I gave you the key!” she declared. “I don’t suppose
I should ever have heard you. Now please stand there in the light and
let me look at you.”
“Why?”
“I want to look at a man who has had supper with Mademoiselle Idiale.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Am I supposed to be a wanderer out of Paradise, then?”
She looked at him doubtfully.
“They tell strange stories about her,” she said; “but oh, she is so
beautiful! If I were a man, I should fall in love with her if she even
looked my way.”
“Then I am glad,” he answered, “that I am less impressionable.”
“And you are not in love with her?” she asked eagerly.
“Why should I be?” he laughed. “She is like a wonderful picture, a
marvelous statue, if you will. Everything about her is faultless. But
one looks at these things calmly enough, you know. It is life which
stirs life.”
“Do you think that there is no life in her veins, then?” Zoe asked.
“If there is,” he answered, “I do not think that I am the man to stir
it.”
She drew a little sigh of content.
“You see,” she said, “you are my first admirer, and I haven’t the least
desire to let you go.”
“Incredible!” he declared.
“But it is true,” she answered earnestly. “You would not have me talk
to these boys who come and hang on at the stage-door. The men to whom I
have been introduced by the other girls have been very few, and they
have not been very nice, and they have not cared for me and I have not
cared for them. I think,” she said, disconsolately, “I am too small.
Every one to-day seems to like big women. Cora Sinclair, who is just
behind me in the chorus, gets bouquets every night, and simply chooses
with whom she should go out to supper.”
Laverick looked grave.
“You are not envying her?” he asked.
“Not in the least, as long as I too am taken out sometimes.”
Laverick smiled and sat on the arm of her chair.
“Miss Zoe,” he said, “I have come because you told me to, just to
prove, you see, that I am not in the toils of Mademoiselle Idiale. But
do you know that it is half past one? I must not stay here any longer.”
She sighed once more.
“You are right,” she admitted, “but it is so lonely. I have never been
here without May and her mother. I have never slept alone in the house
before the other night. If I had known that they were going away, I
should never have dared to come here.”
“It is too bad,” he declared. “Couldn’t you get one of the other girls
to stay with you?”
She shook her head.
“There are one or two whom I would like to have,” she said, “but they
are all living either at home or with relatives. The others I am afraid
about. They seem to like to sit up so late and—”
“You are quite right,” he interrupted hastily,—“quite right. You are
better alone. But you ought to have a servant.”
She laughed.
“On two pounds fifteen a week?” she asked. “You must remember that I
could not even live here, only I have practically no rent to pay.”
He fidgeted for a moment.
“Miss Zoe,” he said, “I am perfectly serious when I tell you that I
have money which should go to your brother. Why will you not let me
alter your arrangements just a little? I cannot bear to think of you
here all alone.”
“It is very kind of you,” she answered doubtfully; “but please, no.
Somehow, I think that it would spoil everything if I accepted that sort
of help from you. If you have any money of Arthur’s, keep it for a time
and I think when you write him—I do not want to seem grasping—but I
think if he has any to spare you might suggest that he does give me
just a little. I have never had anything from him at all. Perhaps he
does not quite understand how hard it is for me.
“I will do that, of course,” Laverick answered, “but I wish you would
let me at least pay over a little of what I consider due to you. I will
take the responsibility for it. It will come from him and not from me.”
She remained unconvinced.
“I would rather wait,” she said. “If you really want to give me
something, I will let you—out of my brother’s money, of course, I
mean,” she added. “I haven’t anything saved at all, or I wouldn’t have
that. But one day you shall take me out and buy me a dress and hat. You
can tell Arthur directly you write to him. I don’t mind that, for
sometimes I do feel ashamed—I did the other night to have you sit with
me there, and to feel that I was dressed so very differently from all
of them.”
He laughed reassuringly.
“I don’t think men notice those things. To me you seemed just as you
should seem. I only know that I was glad enough to be there with you.”
“Were you?”—rather wistfully.
“Of course I was. Now I am going, but before I go, don’t forget Monday
afternoon. We’ll have lunch and then go to your brother’s rooms.”
She glanced at the clock.
“Is it really so late?” she asked.
“It is. Don’t you notice how quiet it is outside?”
They stood hand in hand for a moment. A strange silence seemed to have
fallen upon the streets. Laverick was suddenly conscious of something
which he had never felt when Mademoiselle Idiale had smiled upon him—a
quickening of the pulses, a sense of gathering excitement which almost
took his breath away. His eyes were fixed upon hers, and he seemed to
see the reflection of that same wave of feeling in her own expressive
face. Her lips trembled, her eyes were deeper and softer than ever.
They seemed to be asking him a question, asking and asking till every
fibre of his body was concentrated in the desperate effort with, which
he kept her at arm’s length.
“Is it so very late?” she whispered, coming just a little closer, so
that she was indeed almost within the shelter of his arms.
He clutched her hands almost roughly and raised them to his lips.
“Much too late for me to stay here, child,” he said, and his voice even
to himself sounded hard and unnatural.
“Run along to bed. To-morrow night—to-morrow night, then, I will fetch
you. Good-bye!”
He let himself out. He did not even look behind to the spot where he
had left her. He closed the front door and walked with swift, almost
savage footsteps down the quiet Street, across the Square, and into New
Oxford Street. Here he seemed to breathe more freely. He called a
hansom and drove to his rooms.
The hall-porter had left his post in the front hall, and there was no
one to inform Laverick that a visitor was awaiting him. When he entered
his sitting-room, however, he gave a little start of surprise. Mr.
James Shepherd was reclining in his easy-chair with his hands upon his
knees—Mr. James Shepherd with his face more pasty even than usual, his
eyes a trifle greener, his whole demeanor one of unconcealed and
unaffected terror.
“Hullo!” Laverick exclaimed. “What the dickens—what do you want here,
Shepherd?”
“Upon my word, sir, I’m not sure that I know,” the man replied, “but
I’m scared. I’ve brought you back the certificates of them shares. I
want you to keep them for me. I’m terrified lest they come and search
my room. I am, I tell you fair. I’m terrified to order a pint of beer
for myself. They’re watching me all the time.”
“Who are?” Laverick demanded.
“Lord knows who;” Shepherd answered, “but there’s two of them at it. I
told you about them as asked questions, and I thought there we’d done
and finished with it. Not a bit of it! There was another one there this
afternoon, said he was a journalist, making sketches of the passage and
asking me no end of questions. He wasn’t no journalist, I’ll swear to
that. I asked him about his paper. ‘Half-a-dozen,’ he declared.
‘They’re all glad to have what I send them.’ Journalist! Lord knows who
the other chap was and what he was asking questions for, but this one
was a ’tec, straight. Joe Forman, he was in to-day looking after my
place, for I’d given a month’s notice, and he says to me, ‘You see that
big chap?’—meaning him as had been asking me the questions—and I says
‘Yes!’ and he says, ‘That’s a ’tee. I’ve seed him in a police court,
giving evidence.’ I went all of a shiver so that you could have knocked
me down.”
“Come, come!” said Laverick. “There’s no need for you to be feeling
like this about it. All that you’ve done is not to have remembered
those two customers who were in your restaurant late one night. There’s
nothing criminal in that.”
“There’s something criminal in having two hundred and fifty pounds’
worth of shares in one’s pocket—something suspicious, anyway,” Shepherd
declared, plumping them down on the table. “I ain’t giving you these
back, mind, but you must keep ’em for me. I wish I’d never given
notice. I think I’ll ask the boss to keep me on.”
“Why do you suppose that this man is particularly interested in you?”
Laverick inquired.
“Ain’t I told you?” Shepherd exclaimed, sitting up. “Why, he’s been to
my place down in ’Ammersmith, asking questions about me. My landlady
swears he didn’t go into my room, but who can tell whether he did or
not? Those sort of chaps can get in anywhere. Then I went out for a bit
of an airing after the one o’clock rush was over to-day, and I’m danged
if he wasn’t at my ’eels. I seed him coming round by Liverpool Street
just as I went in a bar to get a drop of something.”
Laverick frowned.
“If there is anything in this story, Shepherd,” he said, “if you are
really being followed, what a thundering fool you were to come here!
All the world knows that Arthur Morrison was my partner.”
“I couldn’t help it, sir,” the man declared. “I couldn’t, indeed. I was
so scared, I felt I must speak about it to some one. And then there
were these shares. There was nowhere I could keep ’em safe.”
“Look here,” Laverick went on, “you’re alarming yourself about nothing.
In any case, there is only one thing for you to do. Pull yourself
together and put a bold face upon it. I’ll keep these certificates for
you, and when you want some money you can come to me for it. Go back to
your place, and if your master is willing to keep you on perhaps it
would be a good thing to stay there for another month or so. But don’t
let any one see that you’re frightened. Remember, there’s nothing that
you can get into trouble for. No one’s obliged to answer such questions
as you’ve been asked, except in a court and under oath. Stick to your
story, and if you take my advice,” Laverick added, glancing at his
visitor’s shaking fingers, “you will keep away from the drink.”
“It’s little enough I’ve had, sir,” Shepherd assured him. “A drop now
and then just to keep up one’s spirits—nothing that amounts to
anything.”
“Make it as little as possible,” Laverick said. “Remember, I’m back of
you, I’ll see that you get into no trouble. And don’t come here again.
Come to my office, if you like—there’s nothing in that—but don’t come
here, you understand?”
Shepherd took up his hat.
“I understand, sir. I’m sorry to have troubled you, but the sight of
that man following me about fairly gave me the shivers.”
“Come into the office as often as you like, in reason,” Laverick said,
showing him out, “but not here again. Keep your eyes open, and let me
know if you think you’ve been followed here.”
“There’s no more news in the papers, sir? Nothing turned up?”
“Nothing,” replied Laverick. “If the police have found out anything at
all, they will keep it until after the inquest.”
“And you’ve heard nothing, sir,” Shepherd asked, speaking in a hoarse
whisper, “of Mr. Morrison?”
“Nothing,” Laverick answered. “Mr. Morrison is abroad.”
The man wiped his forehead with his hand.
“Of course!” he muttered. “A good job, too, for him!”