"Probably I don't," he conceded. "Still, things may look very much
otherwise in the morning. They generally do, I notice. One goes to bed
with reluctance and wakes up with a headache. All that sort of thing....
But if you'll listen to me a moment--why, then if you want to go, I
shan't detain you.... My name is John Matthias. My trade is writing
things--plays, mostly: I know it sounds foolish, but then I hate
exercise. I live--sleep, that is--ah--elsewhere--down the street. This
is merely my work-room. So your stopping here won't inconvenience me in
the least...."
He snatched up a mass of papers from the table, folded them hastily and
thrust them into a coat pocket.
"That manuscript I was after. Good night. I do hope you'll be
comfortable."
Before the amazed girl could collect herself, he had his hat and handbag
and was already in the hallway.
She ran after him.
"But, Mr. Matthias--"
He glanced hastily over his shoulder while fumbling with the
night-latch.
"I can't let you--"
"Oh, but you must--really, you know."
He had the door open.
"But why do you--how can you trust me with all your things?"
"Tut!" he said reprovingly from the vestibule--"nothing there but play
'scripts, and they're not worth anything. You can't get anybody to
produce 'em. I know, because I've tried."
He closed the inner door and banged the outer behind him.
Joan, on the point of pursuing to the street, paused in the vestibule,
and for a moment stood doubting. Then, with a bewildered look, she
returned slowly to the back room, shut herself in, and shot the bolt....
* * * * *
On the platform of the stoop, Mr. Matthias delayed long enough to turn
up his coat-collar for the better protection of his linen, and surveyed
with a wry grin the slashing rush of rain through which he now must
needs paddle unprotected.
"Queer thing for a fellow to do," he mused dispassionately....
"Daresay I am a bit of an ass.... I might at least have borrowed my own
umbrella.... But that would hardly have been consistent with the
egregious insanity of the performance....
"I wonder why I do these awful things?... If I only knew, perhaps I
could reform...."
Running down the steps, he set out at a rapid pace for the Hotel Astor;
which in due time received and harboured him for the night.
V
Awakening at a late hour in a small bedroom bright with sunlight, Mr.
Matthias treated himself to a moment of incredulity. Such surroundings
were strange to his drowsy perceptions, and his transitory emotions on
finding himself so curiously embedded might be most aptly and tersely
summed up in the exclamation of the old lady in the nursery rhyme:
"Lack-a-mercy, can this be I?"
Being, however, susceptible to a conviction of singular strength that he
was himself and none other; and by dint of sheer will-power overcoming a
tremendous disinclination to do anything but lie still and feel
perfectly healthy, sound, and at peace with the world: he induced
himself to roll over and fish for his watch in the pocket of the coat
hanging on a nearby chair.
The hour proved to be half-past ten.
He fancied that he must have been uncommonly tired to have slept so
late.
Then he remembered.
"One doesn't need to get drunk to be daft," was the conclusion he
enunciated to his loneliness.
"I hope to goodness she doesn't go poking through my papers!"
The perturbation to which this thought gave rise got him out of bed more
promptly than would otherwise have been the case. None the less he
forgot it entirely in another moment, and had bathed and dressed and was
knotting his tie before a mirror when the memory of the girl again
flitted darkly athwart the glass of his consciousness.
"Wonder what it was that made me turn myself out of house and home for
the sake of that girl, anyway? Something about her...."
But try as he might he could recall no definite details of her
personality. She remained a shadow--a hunted, tearful, desperate wraith
of girlhood: more than that, nothing.
He wagged his head seriously.
"Something about her!... _Must_'ve been good-looking ... or
something...."
With which he drifted off into an inconsequent and irrelevant reverie
which entertained him exclusively throughout breakfast and his brief
homeward walk: in his magnificent, pantoscopic, protean imagination he
was busily engaged in writing the first act of a splendid new
play--something exquisitely odd, original, witty, and dramatic.
A vague smile touched the corners of his mouth; his eyes were hazily
lustrous; his nose was in the air. He had forgotten his guest entirely.
He ran up the steps of Number 289, let himself in, trotted down the hall
and burst unceremoniously into his room--not in the least disconcerted
to find it empty, not, indeed, mindful that it might have been
otherwise.
His hat went one way, his handbag into a corner with a resounding bang.
He sat himself down at his typewriter, quickly and deftly inserted a
sheet of paper into the carriage and ... sat back at leisure, his gaze
wandering dreamily out of the long, open windows, into the world of
sunshine that shimmered over the back-yards.
A subconscious impulse moved him to stretch forth a long arm and drop
his hand on the centre-table; after a few seconds his groping fingers
closed round the bowl of an aged and well-beloved pipe.
He filled it, lighted it, smoked serenely.
Half an hour elapsed before he was disturbed. Then someone knocked
imperatively on the door. He recognized the knock; it was Madame
Duprat's. Swinging round in his chair he said pleasantly: "Come in."
Madame Duprat entered, filling the doorway. She shut the door and stood
in front of it, subjecting it to an almost total eclipse. She was tall
and portly, a grenadier of a woman, with a countenance the austerity of
whose severely classic mould was somewhat moderated by a delicate, dark
little moustache on her upper lip. Her mien was regal and portentous,
sitting well upon the person of the widow of a great if unrecognized
French tragedian; but her eyes were kindly; and Matthias had long since
decided that it needed a body as big as Madame Duprat's to contain her
heart.
"Bon jour, monsieur."
"Bon jour, madame."
This form of salutation was invariable between them; but the French of
Matthias rarely withstood much additional strain. He lapsed now into
English, cocking an eye alight with whimsical intelligence at the face
of the landlady. Madame possessed the gift (as it were an inheritance
from the estate of her late husband) of creating an atmosphere at will,
when and where she would. That which her demeanour now created within
the four walls of the chamber of Monsieur Matthias was rather
electrical.
"Something's happened to disturb madame?" he hazarded. "What's the row?
Have we discharged our chef? Is it that the third-floor front is
behindhand with his rent? Or has Achilles--that dachshund of
Heaven!--turned suffragette--and proved it with pups?"
"The row, monsieur," madame checked him coldly, "has to do only with the
conduct of monsieur himself?"
"Eh?" Matthias queried blankly.
"You ask me what?" The hands of madame were vivid with exasperation. "Is
it that monsieur is not aware he entertained a young woman in this room
last night?"
"Oh--that!" The cloud passed from monsieur's eyes. He smiled cheerfully.
"But it was quite proper, indeed, madame. Believe me, I--"
"Proper! And what is propriety to me, if you please--at my age?" madame
demanded indignantly. "Am I not aware that monsieur left my house almost
immediately after entering it and spent the night elsewhere? Did I not
from my window see him running up the street with his handbag through
the rain? But am I to figure as the custodian of my lodgers' morals?"
The thought perished, annihilated by an ample gesture. "My quarrel with
monsieur is that he left the young woman here _alone_!"
Matthias found the vernacular the only adequate vehicle of expression:
"I've got to hand it to you, Madame Duprat; your point of view is
essentially Gallic."
"But what is the explanation of this conduct, monsieur? Am I to look
forward to future escapades of the same nature? Do you intend to make of
my house a refuge for all the stray unfortunates of New York? Am I, and
my guests, to be left to the mercies of God-knows-who, simply because
monsieur has a heart of pity?"
"Oh, here!" Matthias broke in with some impatience. "It wasn't as bad as
that. It's not likely to happen again ... and besides, the girl was a
perfectly good, nice, respectable girl. Madame should know that I
wouldn't take any chances with people I didn't know all about."
"Monsieur knew the young woman, then?"
"Oh, yes; assuredly yes," Matthias lied nonchalantly.
By the happiest of accidents, his glance, searching the table for a box
of matches wherewith to relight his pipe, encountered a sheet of
typewriter paper on which a brief message had been scrawled in a
formless, untrained hand:
"_Dear Sir_," he read with relief, "_thank you--Your friend, Joan
Thursby_."
He found the matches and used one before looking up.
"Miss Thursby," he said coolly, "is the daughter of an eminently
respectable family in reduced circumstances. Thinking to better her
condition, she proposed to become an actress, but met with such violent
opposition on the part of her father--a bigot of a man!--that she was
obliged to leave her home in order to retain her self-respect. Quite
naturally she thought first of her only friend in the profession, Miss
Maizie Dean, and came here to find her. The rest you may imagine. Was I
to turn her out to wander through the rain--at two o'clock in the
morning? Madame discredits her heart by suggesting anything of the
sort!"
Madame's expression of contrition seemed to endorse this reproof. She
hesitated with a hand on the doorknob.
"Monsieur is prepared to vouch for the young woman?"
"Certainly," he assented, with an imperturbable countenance masking a
creepy, crawly feeling that perhaps he might be letting himself in for
more than he bargained.
"Very good. I go, with apologies." Madame opened the door. "Thursday,
you said?"