The Man Who Couldn't Sleep

  CHAPTER IV

  THE OPEN DOOR

  "Shall I call the car, sir?" asked the solicitous-eyed Benson, covertlywatching me as I made ready for the street.

  "No," was my studiously detached retort, "I intend to walk."

  "Latreille was asking, sir, if you would care to have the car laid up."

  The significance of that bland suggestion did not escape me. And itdid not add to my serenity of mind.

  "Just what business is that of Latreille's?" I demanded, with a prickleof irritation. My patient-eyed old butler averted his glance, with asigh which he didn't seem quite able to control.

  "And at the end of the month," I went on, "I intend to discharge thatman, I'm tired of his insolences."

  "Yes, sir," Benson softly yet fervently agreed.

  My nerves were on edge, I knew, but I wasn't looking for sympathy frommy hired help. And when I swung the door shut behind me I am afraid itwas a movement far from noiseless.

  I was glad to get out into the open, glad to get away from old Benson'scommiserative eyes, and have space about me, and cool air to breathe,and uncounted miles of pavement to weary my legs on.

  I noticed, as I turned, into Fifth Avenue, that the moving finger oflight on the Metropolitan clock-dial pointed to an hour past midnight.So I veered about that delta of idleness, where the noontide turbulenceof Broadway empties its driftwood into the quietness of the square, andpursued my way up the avenue.

  No one can claim to know New York who does not know its avenues inthose mystical small hours that fall between the revolvingstreet-sweeper and the robin-call of the first morning paper. FifthAvenue, above all her sisters, then lies as though tranquillized byDeath, as calm as the Coliseum under its Italian moonlight. She seems,under the stars, both medievalized and spiritualized. She speaks thenin an intimate whisper foreign to her by day, veiling her earthlierloquacity in a dreaming wonder, softening and sweetening like a womanawaiting her lover. The great steel shafts enclosed in their whitemarble become turrets crowned with mystery. And the street-flooritself, as clean and polished as a ballroom, seems to undulate off intoouter kingdoms of romance. An occasional lonely motor-car, dipping upits gentle slopes like a ship treading a narrow sea-lane buoyed withpearls as huge as pumpkins, only accentuates the midnight solitude.

  So up this dustless and odorless and transmuted avenue I wandered, aspassively as a policeman on his beat, asking of the quietness when andhow I might capture that crown of weariness known as sleep.

  I wandered on, mocked at by a thousand drawn blinds, taunted by athousand somnolently closed doors. I felt, in that city of rest, ashomeless as a prairie wolf. The very smugness of those veiled andself-satisfied house-fronts began to get on my nerves. The verytaciturnity of the great silent hostelries irritated me; everythingabout them seemed so eloquent of an interregnum of rest, of relaxedtension, of invisible reservoirs of life being softly and secretlyfilled.

  Yet as I came to the open width of the Plaza, and saw the wooded gloomof Central Park before me, I experienced an even stronger feeling ofdisquiet. There seemed something repugnant in its autumnal solitudes.That vague _agoraphobia_ peculiar to the neurasthenic made me long forthe contiguity of my own kind, however unconscious of me and mywandering they might remain. I found myself, almost without thought,veering off eastward into one of the city's side-streets.

  Yet along this lateral valley of quietness I wandered as disconsolatelyas before. What impressed me now was the monotony of the house-frontswhich shouldered together, block by block. Each front seemed of thesame Indiana limestone, of the same dull gray, as though, indeed, thewhole district were a quarry checker-boarded by eroding cross-currentsout of the self-same rock. Each tier of windows seemed backed by thesame blinds, each street-step barricaded by the same door. I stoppedand looked up, wondering if behind those neutral-tinted walls andblinds were lives as bald and monotonous as the materials that screenedthem. I wondered if an environment so without distinction would notactually evolve a type equally destitute of individuality.

  I turned where I stood, and was about to pass diffidently on, when oneof the most unexpected things that can come to a man at midnighthappened to me.

  Out of a clear sky, without a note or movement of warning, theresuddenly fell at my feet a heavy bundle.

  Where it came from I had no means of telling. The house above me wasas silent and dark as a tomb. The street was as empty as a church.Had the thing been a meteor out of a star-lit sky, or a wildcat leapingfrom a tree-branch, it could not have startled me more.

  I stood looking at it, in wonder, as it lay beside the veryarea-railing on which my hand had rested. Then I stepped back andleaned in over this railing, more clearly to inspect the mystery.Whatever it was, it had fallen with amazingly little noise. There wasno open window to explain its source. There had been no wind to blowit from an upper-story sill. There was no movement to show that itsloss had been a thing of ponderable import. Yet there it lay, amystery which only the deep hours of the night, when the more solemnlyimaginative faculties come into play, could keep from being ridiculous.

  I stood there for several minutes blinking down at it, as though itwere a furred beast skulking in a corner. Then I essayed a movementwhich, if not above the commonplace, was equally related to commonsense. I stepped in through the railing and picked up the parcel. Iturned it over several times. Then I sat down on the stone steps anddeliberately untied the heavy cord that baled it together.

  I now saw why I had thought of that falling bundle as an animal's leap.It was completely wrapped in what I took to be a Russian-squirrelmotor-coat. The tightly tied fur had padded the parcel's fall.

  Enclosed in that silk-lined garment I found a smaller bundle, swathedabout with several lengths of what seemed to be Irish point lace.Inside this again were other fragments of lacework. Through these Ithrust my exploring fingers with all the alert curiosity of a childinvestigating a Christmas-tree cornucopia.

  There, in the heart of the parcel, I found a collection which ratherstartled me. The first thing I examined was a chamois bag filled withwomen's rings, a dozen or more of them, of all kinds. I next drew outa Florentine _repousse_ hand-bag set with turquoises and seed-pearls,and then a moonstone necklace, plainly of antique Roman workmanship.Next came a black and white Egyptian scarab, and then, of all things, asnuff-box. It was oval and of gold, enameled _en plein_ with apastoral scene swarming with plump pink Cupids. Even in that uncertainlight it required no second glance to assure me that I was looking downat a rare and beautiful specimen of Louis XV jeweler's art. Then camea small photograph in an oval gold frame. The remainder of the strangecollection was made up of odds and ends of jewelry and aleather-covered traveling-clock stamped with gilt initials.

  I did not take the time to look more closely over this odd assortmentof valuables, for it now seemed clear that I had stumbled on somethingas disturbing as it was unexpected. The only explanation of anotherwise inexplicable situation was that a house-breaker was busilyoperating somewhere behind the gray-stone wall which I faced.

  The house behind that wall seemed to take on no new color at thisdiscovery. Its inherent sobriety, its very rectangularity of outline,appeared a contradiction of any claim that it might be harboring afigure either picturesque or picaresque. It was no old mansion stainedwith time, dark with memories and tears. It carried no atmosphere ofromance, no suggestion of old and great adventures, of stately ways andnoble idlers, of intrigues and unremembered loves and hates, of silenceand gloom touched with the deeper eloquence of unrecorded history. Itwas nothing more than a new and narrow and extremely modern house, inthe very heart of a modern New York, simple in line and as obvious inarchitecture as the warehouses along an old-world water-front, as bareof heart as it was bald of face, a symbol of shrill materialities, ofthe day of utility. It could no more have been a harbor for romance, Itold myself, than the stone curb in front of it could be translatedinto a mountain-precipice threaded with brigand-
paths.

  Yet I went slowly up those unwelcoming stone steps with the bundleunder my arm. The thief at work inside the house, I assumed, hadsimply tied the heavier part of his loot together and dropped it from aquietly opened window, to be gathered as quickly up, once he hadeffected his escape to the street. The sudden afterthought that itmight have been dropped for a confederate caused me to look carefullyeastward and then as carefully westward. But not a sign of life met mygaze. My figure standing puzzled before that unknown door was the onlyfigure in the street.

  Heaven only knows what prompted me to reach out and try that door. Itwas, I suppose, little more than the habit of a lifetime, the almostunconscious habit of turning a knob when one finds oneself confrontedby a door that is closed. The thing that sent a little thrill ofexcitement through my body was that the knob turned in my hand, thatthe door itself stood unlocked.

  I stooped down and examined this lock as best I could in the uncertainlight. I even ran a caressing finger along the edge of the door.There was no evidence that it had been jimmied open, just as there wasnothing to show that the lock itself did not stand intact anduninjured. A second test of the knob, however, showed me that the doorwas unmistakably open.

  My obvious course, at such a time, would have been to wait for apatrolman or to slip quietly away and send word in to policeheadquarters. But, as I have already said, no man is wholly sane aftermidnight. Subliminal faculties, ancestral perversions, dormant andwayward tendencies, all come to the surface, emerging like rats about asleeping mansion. And crowning these, again, was my own neurastheniccraving for activity, my hunger for the narcotizing influence ofexcitement.

  And it has its zest of novelty, this stepping into an unknown andunlighted house at three o'clock in the morning. That novelty takes ona razor-edge when you have fairly good evidence that some one who hasno business there has already preceded you into that house.

  So as I stepped inside and quietly closed the door after me, I movedforward with the utmost care. Some precautionary sixth sense told methe place was not unoccupied. Yet the darkness that surrounded me wasabsolute. Not a sound or movement came to my ears as I stood therelistening, minute after minute. So I crept deeper into the gloom.

  My knowledge of that stereotyped class of residence provided me with avery fair idea of where the stairway ought to stand. Yet it took muchprodding and groping and pawing about before I came to it. One flickerof a match, I knew, would have revealed the whole thing to me. But tostrike a light, under the circumstances, would be both foolish anddangerous. No house dog, I felt, would interrupt my progress; the mereremembrance of the intruder above me set my mind at rest on this point.

  I came to a stop at the head of the first stairway, puzzled by thecompleteness of the quiet which encompassed me. I directed myattention to each quarter of the compass, point by point.

  But I might have been locked and sealed in a cistern, so complete wasthe silence, so opaque was the blackness. Yet I felt that nothing wasto be gained by staying where I was.

  So I groped and shuffled my way onward, rounding the banister andadvancing step by step up the second stairway. This, I noticed, wasboth narrower and steeper than the first. I was also not unconsciousof the fact that it was leading me into a zone of greater danger, forthe floor I was approaching, I knew, would be the sleeping floor.

  I was half-way up the stairway when something undefined brought me to asudden stop. Some nocturnal adeptness of instinct warned me of animminent presence, of a menace that had not yet disclosed itself.

  Once more I came to a stop, straining my eyes through the darkness.Nothing whatever was to be seen. Along the floor of the hallway justabove my head, however, passed a small but unmistakable sound. It wasthe soft _frou-frou_ of a skirt, a skirt of silk or satin, faintlyrustling as a woman walked the full length of the hall. I had justmade a mental register of the deduction that this woman was dressed instreet-clothes, and was, accordingly, an intruder from outside, ratherthan a sleeper suddenly awakened, when a vague suffusion of lightfilled the space above me and was as quickly quenched again.

  I knew the moment I heard the soft thud of wood closing against wood,that a door had been quietly opened and as quietly closed again. Theroom into which that door led must have been faintly lighted, for itwas the flowering of this refracted light that had caught my attention.

  I went silently up the stairs, step by step, listening every now andthen as I advanced. Once I reached the floor level I kept close to thewall, feeling my way along until I came to the door I wanted.

  There was no way whatever of determining what stood on the other sideof that door, without opening it. I knew what risks I ran inattempting any such movement. But I decided it was worth the risk.

  Now, if a door is opened slowly, if every quarter-inch of movement ismeasured and guarded, it can, as a rule, be done noiselessly. I feltquite sure there was not one distinguishable sound as I cautiouslyturned that bronze knob and even more cautiously worked back the door,inch by inch.

  I came to a stop when it stood a little more than a foot from the jamb.I did not, at first, attempt to sidle in through the aperture; thatwould have been needlessly reckless. I stood there waiting,anticipating the effect the door-movement might have had on anyoccupant of the room, had it been seen.

  While I waited I also studied that portion of the chamber which fellwithin my line of vision. I saw enough to convince me that the roomwas a bedroom. I could also make out that it was large, and from therose-pink of its walls to the ivory-white of its furnishings it stooddistinctly feminine in its note.

  There was, I felt, a natural limit to that period of experimentalinaction. The silence lengthened. The crisis of tedium approached,arrived, and passed. Audaciousness reconquered me, and I actuallyadvanced a little into the room. Steadying myself with one hand on thedoor-frame, I thrust my body through the narrow aperture until thewhole four walls lay subject to my line of vision.

  The first thing I noticed was a green-shaded electric lamp burning onwhat seemed to be a boudoir writing-table. It left the rest of theroom in little more than twilight. But after the utter darknessthrough which I had groped, this faint illumination was quite adequatefor my purposes.

  I let my gaze pivot about the room, point by point. Then, if I did notgasp, there was at least a sudden and involuntary cessation ofbreathing, for standing beside a second door at the farther end of theroom was a woman dressed in black. On her head was a black hat, roundwhich a veil was tightly wound, the front of it apparently thrust uphurriedly from her face. But what startled me was the fact that bothher attitude and her position seemed such an exact duplication of myown.

  With one hand, I noticed, she clung to the frame of the door. With theother hand she held back a heavy portiere, which hung across thisframe. I could see the white half-oval of her intent face as she stoodthere. Something about her suggested not the spying intruder so muchas the secret listener. Her attention seemed directed toward someobject which her eyes were not seeing. It appeared as though she stoodwaiting to overhear a sound which meant much to her.

  As I peered past her through the dim light I could catch a faintglimmer of green and white marble, with here and there the high-lightsreflected from polished nickel. I knew then that the room into whichshe was peering was a bathroom, and this bathroom, I concluded, openedon a second sleeping-chamber which held the _raison d'etre_ of hermotionless apprehension. I directed my glance once more at the woman.Something almost penitential in her attitude brought the sudden thoughtto my mind that she had committed a crime at the mere memory of whichshe was already morally stricken. Unexpected discovery, I began tosuspect, had driven her to an extreme which she was already beginningto regret. There was, in fact, something so pregnant and portentous inthat unchanging attitude of hers that I began to feel it would be amean surrender on my part to evade the issue in which I had alreadyrisked so much. So I moved silently into the room, crossing it withouta sound, until I dro
pped into a high-backed _fauteuil_ upholstered inembossed and pale-green leather.

  I sat there studying her, unaccountably at my ease, fortified by theknowledge that I was the observer of an illicit intrusion and that myown presence, if impertinent, might at least be easily explained. Isaw her sigh deeply and audibly, and then gently close the door,dropping the curtain as she turned slowly away.

  I watched her as she crossed to the dresser, looked over the toiletarticles on it, and then turned away. She next skirted a heavycheval-mirror, crossed to the writing-table with her quick yet quietlyrestless movements, and from this table caught up what seemed to be ametal paper-knife. She moved on to an ivory and mother-of-pearl desk,which, apparently, she already knew to be locked. For after one shortglance toward the curtained door again, she inserted the edge of theknife in a crack of this desk and slowly pried on the lock-bar thatheld it shut.

  I saw her second apprehensive glance toward the curtained door as thelock sprung with a snap. She sank into a chair before it, breathingquickly, obviously waiting a minute or two to make sure she had notbeen overheard. Then with quick and dextrous fingers she rummagedthrough the desk. Just what she swept from one of the drawers into heropen hand-bag I could not distinguish. But I plainly saw the packageof letters which she took up in her hand, turned over and over, thencarefully and quietly secreted within the bosom of her dress. Shelooked deeper into the desk, examined an additional paper or two whichappeared not to interest her, and slowly swung back the cover.

  Then she slowly rose to her feet, standing beside the desk. She lether gaze, as she stood there, wander about the room. I coulddistinctly see the look on her face, the hungry and unhappy look ofunsatisfied greed. I sat motionless, waiting for that expression tochange. I knew that it must change, for it would be but a moment ortwo before she caught sight of me. But I had seen enough. I felt sureof my position--in fact, I found a wayward relish in it, an almostenjoyable anticipation of the shock which I knew the discovery of mypresence there would bring to her. I even exulted a little in thatimpending dramatic crisis, rejoicing in the slowness with which theinevitable yet epochal moment was approaching.

  Her eyes must have dwelt on my figure for several seconds before hermind became convinced of my actual presence there. She did not scream,as I thought she was about to do when I saw one terrified hand go up toher partly open lips. Beyond that single hand-movement there was nomotion whatever from her. She simply stood mere, white-faced andspeechless, staring at me out of wide and vacant eyes.

  "Good evening--or, rather, good morning!" I said, with all the calmnessat my command.

  For one brief second she glanced back toward the curtained door, asthough behind it lay a sleeper my words might awaken. Then she staredat me again.

  She did not speak. She did not even move. The intent and staringface, white as a half-moon in a misty sky, seemed floating in space.The faint light of the room swallowed up the lines of her black-cladfigure, enisling the face in the unbroken gloom of a Rembrandt-likebackground, making it stand out as though it were luminous.

  It was a face well worth studying. What first struck me was itspallor. Across this the arched, faintly interrogative eyebrows gave ita false air of delicacy. The eyes themselves had a spacious claritywhich warned me my enemy would not be without a capable enough mind,once she regained possession of her wits. Her mouth, no longerdistorted by terror, was the nervous, full-lipped mouth of a onceardent spirit touched with rebellion.

  She was, I could see, no every-day thief of the streets, no ordinaryoffender satisfied with mean and petty offenses. There would, I toldmyself, always be a largeness about her wrong-doing, a sinisterbrilliance in her illicit pursuits. And even while I decided this, Iwas forced to admit that it was not precisely terror I was beholding onher face. It seemed to merge into something more like a sense ofshame, the same speechless horror which I might have met with had Iintruded on her bodily nakedness. I could see that she was evenbeginning to resent my stare of curiosity. Then, for the first time,she spoke.

  "Who are you?" she asked. Her voice was low; in it was the quaver ofthe frightened woman resolutely steeling herself to courage.

  "That's a question you're first going to answer for me," was my calmlydeliberate retort.

  "What are you doing here?" she demanded, still confronting me from thesame spot. I remembered the bundle of loot which I had dropped justoutside the door.

  "I can answer that more easily than you can," I replied, with a slighthead-movement toward the broken desk-top.

  Once more her glance went back to the curtained door. Then she studiedme from head to foot, each sartorial detail and accessory of clothing,hat, gloves, and shoes, as though each must figure in the resolution ofsome final judgment.

  "What do you want?" she demanded.

  I preferred to leave that question unanswered.

  "What do you intend to do?" she demanded, once more searching my face.

  I resented the way in which she anticipated my own questions. I couldsee, from the first, that she was going to be an extraordinarily adeptand circuitous person to handle. I warned myself that I would have tobe ready for every trick and turn.

  "What do you suppose I'm going to do?" I equivocated, looking for somebetraying word to put me on firmer ground. I could see that she wasslowly regaining her self-possession.

  "You have no right in this house," she had the brazenness to say to me.

  "Have _you_?" I quickly retorted. She was silent for a second or two.

  "No," she admitted, much as she would like to have claimed the contrary.

  "Of course not! And I imagine you realize what your presence hereimplies, just as what your discovery here entails?"

  "Yes," she admitted.

  "And I think you have the intelligence to understand that I'm here formotives somewhat more disinterested than your own?"

  "What are they?" she demanded, letting her combative eyes meet mine.

  "That," I calmly replied, "can wait until you've explained yourself."

  "I've nothing to explain."

  There was a newer note in her voice again--one of stubbornness. Icould see that the calmness with which I pretended to regard the wholeaffair was a source of bewilderment to her.

  "You've got to explain," was my equally obdurate retort.

  Her next pose was one of frigidity.

  "You are quite mistaken. We have nothing whatever to do with eachother."

  "Oh, yes we have. And I'm going to prove it."

  "How?"

  "By putting an end to this play-acting."

  "That sounds like a threat."

  "It was meant for one."

  "What right have you to threaten me?"

  She looked about as she spoke, almost wearily. Then she sank into thechair that stood beside the ravaged writing-desk. It was all divertingenough, but I was beginning to lose patience with her.

  "I'm tired of all this side-stepping," I told her. An answering lookof anger flashed from her eyes.

  "I object to your presence here," she had the effrontery to exclaim.

  "You mean, I suppose, that I'm rather interfering with your night'soperations?"

  "Those operations," she answered in a fluttering dignity, "are my ownaffairs."

  "Of course they are!" I scoffed. "They _have_ to be! But you shouldhave kept them your own affairs. When you drop a bundle of swag out ofa window you shouldn't come so perilously near to knocking a man's hatoff."

  "A bundle of swag?" she echoed, with such a precise imitation of wonderthat I could plainly see she was going to be the astutest of liars.

  "The loot you intended carrying off," I calmly explained. "The stuffyou dropped down beside the house-step, to be ready for your getaway."

  "My what?"

  "Your escape. And it was rather clever."

  "I dropped nothing," she protested, with a fine pretense ofbewilderment on her face.

  "Nor let it roll quietly off a front
window-ledge?" I suggested.

  "I was near no window--it would be impossible for me to open a window,"she protested. Her words in themselves were a confession.

  "You seem to know this house pretty well," I remarked.

  "_I ought to--it's my own_," was her quick retort.

  "It's your own?" I repeated, amazed at the woman's mendacity.

  "It _was_ my own," she corrected.

  I peered quickly about the room. It held three doors, one behind thewoman, opening into the bathroom, a second opening into the hallway,and a third to the rear, which plainly opened into a clothes-closet.There had been too much of this useless and foolish argument.

  "Since your claim to proprietorship is so strong," I said as I crossedto the hall door, and, after locking it, pocketed the key, "there arecertain features of it I want you to explain to me."

  "What do you mean?" she asked, once more on her feet.

  "I want to know," I said, moving toward the curtained door beside her,"just who or what is in that front room?"

  The look of terror came back to her white face. She even stood withher back against the door, as though to keep me from opening it, makingan instinctive gesture for silence as I stood facing her.

  "I'm going to find out what is in that room," I proclaimed, unmoved bythe agony I saw written on her guilty face.

  "Oh, believe me," she said, in supplicatory tones, a little above awhisper, "it will do no good. It will only make you sorry youinterfered in this."

  "But you've made it my duty to interfere."

  "No; no; you're only blundering into something where you can do nogood, where you have no right."

  "Then I intend to blunder into that room!" And I tore the portierefrom her grasp and flung it to one side.

  "Wait," she whispered, white-faced and panting close beside me. "I'lltell you everything. I'll explain it--everything."

  The tragic solemnity of that low-toned relinquishment brought me upshort. It was my turn to be bewildered by an opponent I could notunderstand.

  "Sit down," she said, with a weary and almost imperious movement of thehand as she advanced into the room and again sank into the chair besidethe writing-desk.

  "Now what is it you want to know?" she asked, with only too obviousequivocation. Her trick to gain time exasperated me.

  "Don't quibble and temporize that way," I cried. "Say what you've gotto, and say it quick."

  She directed at me a look which I resented, a look of scorn, ofsuperiority, of resignation in the face of brutalities which I shouldnever have subjected her to. Yet, when she spoke again her voice wasso calm as to seem almost colorless.

  "I said this was my home--and it's true. This was once my room.Several weeks ago I left it."

  "Why?" I inquired, resenting the pause which was plainly giving her achance to phrase ahead of her words.

  "I quarreled with my husband. I went away. I was angry. I--I--There's no use explaining what it was about."

  "You've got to explain what it was about," I insisted.

  "You couldn't possibly understand. It's impossible to explain," shewent quietly on. "I discharged a servant who was not honest. Then hetried to blackmail me. He lied about me. I had been foolish,indiscreet, anything you care to call it. But the lie he told wasawful, unbelievable. That my husband should ask me to disprove it wasmore than I could endure. We quarreled, miserably, hopelessly. I wentaway. I felt it would be humiliating to stay under the same roof withhim."

  "Wait," I interposed, knowing the weak link was sure to present itselfin time. "Where is your husband now?"

  She glanced toward the curtained door.

  "He's in that room asleep," she quietly replied.

  "And knowing him to be asleep you came to clean out the house?" Ipromoted.

  "No," she answered without anger. "But when service was begun for aninterlocutory decree I knew I could never come back openly. There werecertain things of my own I wanted very much."

  "And just how did you get into the house?"

  "The one servant I could trust agreed to throw off the latch aftermidnight, to leave the door unlocked for me when I knew I would neverbe seen."

  "Then why couldn't that trusted servant have secured the things, thesethings you came after? Without all this foolish risk of your forcingyour way into a house at midnight?"

  Her head drooped a little.

  "I wanted to see my husband," was the quiet-toned response. Just how,she did not explain. I had to admit to myself that it was very goodacting. But it was not quite convincing; and the case against her wastoo palpably clear.

  "This is a fine cock-and-bull story," I calmly declared. "But just howare you going to make me believe it?"

  "You don't have to believe it," was her impassive answer. "I'm onlytelling you what you demanded to know."

  "To know, yes--but how am I to know?"

  She raised her hand with a movement of listless resignation.

  "If you go to the top drawer of that dresser you will see my photographin a silver frame next to one of my husband. That will show you at aglance."

  For just a moment it flashed through me as I crossed the room that thismight be a move to give her time for some attempted escape. But Ifelt, on second thought, that I was master enough of the situation torun the risk. And here, at least, was a point to which she could bemost definitely pinned down.

  "The other drawer," she murmured as my hand closed on the fragileivory-tinted knob. I moved on to the second drawer and opened it. Ihad thrust an interrogative finger down into its haphazard clutter ofknick-knacks, apparently thrown together by a hurried and carelesshand, when from the other end of the room came a quick movement whichseemed to curdle the blood in my veins. It brought me wheeling about,with a jump that was both grotesque and galvanic.

  I was just in time to see the figure that darted out through thesuddenly opened door of the clothes-closet.

  I found myself confronted by a man, a thin-lipped, heavy-jawed man ofabout thirty-five, with black pinpoint pupils to his eyes. He wore asmall-rimmed derby hat and a double-breasted coat of blue cheviot. Butit was not his clothes that especially interested me. What caught andheld my attention was the ugly, short-barreled revolver which wasgripped in the fingers of his right hand. This revolver, I noticed,was unmistakably directed at me as he advanced into the room. I couldnot decide which was uglier, the blue-metaled gun or the face of theman behind it.

  "Get back against that wall," he commanded. "Then throw up your hands.Get 'em up quick!"

  I had allowed her to trap me after all! I had even let myselfhalf-believe that pleasant myth of the slumbering husband in the nextroom. And all the while she was guarding this unsavory-lookingconfederate who, ten to one, had been slinking about and working hisway into a wall-safe even while I was wasting time with diverting butcostly talk.

  And with that gun-barrel blinking at me I had no choice in thematter--I was compelled to assume the impotent and undignified attitudeof a man supplicating the unanswering heavens. The woman turned andcontemplated the newcomer, contemplated him with a fine pretense ofsurprise.

  "_Hobbs,_" she cried, "_how did you get here?_"

  "You shut up!" he retorted over his shoulder.

  "What are you doing in this house?" she repeated, with a sustained showof amazement.

  "Oh, I'll get round to _you_, all right, all right," was his secondrejoinder.

  Hobbs' left hand, in the meanwhile, had lifted my watch from its pocketand with one quick jerk tore watch and chain away from its waistcoatanchorage.

  "You're a sweet pair, you two!" I ejaculated, for that watch was rathera decent one and I hated to see it ill-treated.

  "Shut up!" said Hobbs, as his hand went down in my breast-pocket insearch of a wallet. I knew, with that gun-barrel pressed close againstmy body, that it would be nothing short of suicidal to try to have itout with him then and there. I had to submit to that odious pawing andprodding about my body. But if my turn
ever came, I told myself, itwould be a sorry day for Hobbs--and an equally sorry one for thatsmooth-tongued confederate of his.

  "You're a sweet pair!" I repeated, hot to the bone, as that insolenthand went down into still another pocket.

  But it did not stay there. I saw a sudden change creep over the man'sface. He looked up with a quick and bird-like side-movement of thehead. It was not until he wheeled about that I realized the reason ofthe movement.

  The actual motive behind the thing I could not fathom. The realsignificance of the tableau was beyond my reach. But as I looked up Isaw that the woman had crept noiselessly to the hall door, and with asudden movement had thrust out her hand and tried to open this door.But as I had already locked it, and still carried the key in my pocket,her effort was a useless one. Just why it should enrage herconfederate was more than I could understand. He ignored me for thetime being, crossing the room at a run and flinging the woman in blackaway from the door-knob. She, in turn, was making a pretense to resentthat assault. Why she should do this I did not wait to ask. I saw mychance and took it.

  Half-a-dozen quick steps brought me to the bathroom door, one turn ofthe knob threw it open, and another step put me through it and broughtthe door closed after me. There was, I found, a key in the lock.Another second of time saw that key turned. A quick pad or two aboutthe cool marble wall brought my hand in contact with the light-switch.

  The moment the light came on I darted to the inner door and tried it.But this, to my dismay, was locked, although I could catch sight of nokey in it. I ran back for the key of the first door, tried it, andfound it useless. At any moment, I knew, a shot might come splinteringthrough those thin panels. And at any moment, should they decide onthat move, the two of them might have their own door into the hallwayforced open and be scampering for the street.

  I reached over and wrenched a nickeled towel-bar away from the wallopposite me. One end of this I deliberately jabbed into thewhite-leaded wood between the frame and the jam of the second door. Iwas about to pry with all my force, when the sound of yet another voicecame from the room before me. It was a disturbed yet sleepy voice,muffled, apparently, by a second portiere hung on the outside of thesecond door.

  "Is that you, Simmonds?" demanded this voice.

  I continued to pry, for I felt like a rat in a corner, in that baldlittle bathroom, and I wanted space about me, even though that meantfresh danger. The mysteries were now more than I could decipher. I nolonger gave thought to them. The first thing I wanted was liberation,escape. But my rod-end bent under the pressure to which I subjectedit, and I had to reverse it and try for a fresh hold.

  I could hear, as I did so, the sudden sound of feet crossing a floor,the click of a light-switch, and then the rattle of the portiere-ringson the rod above the door at which I stood.

  "Who locked this door?" demanded the startled voice on the other side.For answer, I threw my weight on the rod and forced the lock. I stillkept the metal rod in my hand, for a possible weapon, as Ihalf-stumbled out into the larger room.

  Before me I saw a man in pajamas. He was blond and big and his hairwas rumpled--that was all I knew about him, beyond the fact that hispajamas were a rather foolish tint of baby-blue. We stood there, for asecond or two, staring at each other. We were each plainly afraid ofthe other, just as we were each a little reassured, I imagine, at thesight of the other.

  "For the love of God," he gasped, wide-eyed, "who are you?"

  "Quick," I cried, "is this your house?"

  "Of course it's my house," he cried back, retreating as I advanced. Hesuddenly side-stepped and planted his thumb on a call-bell.

  "Good!" I said. "Get your servants here quick. We'll need them!"

  "Who'll need them? What's wrong? What's up?"

  "I've got two burglars locked in that room."

  "Burglars?"

  "Yes, and they'll have a nice haul if they get away. Have you got arevolver?"

  "Yes," he answered, jerking open a drawer. I saw that his firearm wasan automatic.

  "Where's the telephone?" I demanded, crossing the room to the door thatopened into the hall.

  "On the floor below," he answered. He pulled on a brown blanketdressing-gown, drawing the girdle tight at the waist.

  "You can get to it quicker than I can," I told him. "Give me the gun,and throw on the lights as you go down. Then get the police here assoon as you can."

  "What'll you do?" he demanded.

  "I'll guard the door," I answered as I all but pushed him into thathallway. Then I swung-to the door after me, and locked it from theoutside. "Quick, the gun," I said. There was no fear on his face now,yet it was natural enough that he should hesitate.

  "What are you? An officer?"

  There was no time for an explanation.

  "Plain-clothes man," was my glib enough answer, as I caught the pistolfrom his hand. He switched on the hall lights.

  He was half-way to the top of the stairs when a woman's scream, highpitched and horrible, echoed out of the room where I had the twoconfederates trapped. It was repeated, shrill and sharp. The face ofthe big blond man went as white as chalk.

  "_Who is that!_" he demanded, with staring eyes, facing the locked doorof the second room. Then he backed off from the door.

  I flung a cry of warning at him, but it did not stop his charge. Hisgreat shoulder went against the paneled wood like a battering-ram.Under the weight of that huge body the entire frame-facing gave way; hewent lunging and staggering from sight into the dimly-lit inner room.

  I waited there, with my gun at half-arm, feeling the room wouldsuddenly erupt its two prisoners. Then, at a cry from the man, Istepped quickly in after him.

  I had fortified myself for the unexpected, but the strangeness of thescene took my breath away. For there I beheld the man called Hobbsengaged in the absurd and extraordinary and altogether brutaloccupation of trying to beat in his confederate's head with the butt ofhis heavy revolver. He must have struck her more than once, evenbefore the man in the hairy brown dressing-gown and the blue pajamascould leap for him and catch the uplifted arm as it was about to strikeagain.

  The woman, protected by her hat and veil and a great mass of thickhair, still showed no signs of collapse. But the moment she was freeshe sat back, white and panting, in the same high-armed _fauteuil_which I myself had occupied a half-hour before. I made a leap for hercompanion's fallen revolver, before she could get it, though I noticedthat she now seemed indifferent to both the loss of it and the outcomeof the struggle which was taking place in the center of that pink andwhite abode of femininity.

  And as I kept one eye on the woman and one on the gun in my hand, I,too, caught fleeting glimpses of that strange struggle. It seemed morelike a combat between wildcats than a fight between two human beings.It took place on the floor, for neither man was any longer on his feet,and it wavered from one side of the room to the other, leaving a swathof destruction where it went. A table went over, a fragile-limbedchair was crushed, the great cheval-glass was shattered, thewriting-desk collapsed with a leg snapped off, a shower of toiletarticles littered the rugs, a reading-lamp was overturned and went theway of the other things. But still the fight went on.

  I no longer thought of the woman. All my attention went to the two menstruggling and panting about the floor. The fury of the man in theshaggy and bear-like dressing-gown was more than I could understand.The madness of his onslaught seemed incomprehensible. This, I felt,was the way a tigress might fight for her brood, the way a cave-manmight battle for his threatened mate. Nor did that fight end until thebig blond form towered triumphant above the darker clad figure.

  Then I looked back at the woman, startled by her stillness through itall. She was leaning forward, white, intent, with parted lips. In hereyes I seemed to see uneasiness and solicitude and desolation, butabove them all slowly flowered a newer look, a look of vague exultationas she gazed from the defeated man gasping and choking for breath tothe bro
ad back of the shaggy-haired dressing-gown.

  I had no chance to dwell on the puzzle of this, for the man envelopedin the shaggy-haired garment was calling out to me.

  "Tie him up," he called. "Take the curtain-cords--but tie him tight!"

  "Do you know this man?" something in his tone prompted me to ask, as Istruggled with the heavy silk curtain-cords.

  "It's Hobbs."

  "I know that, but who's Hobbs?"

  "A servant dismissed a month ago," was the other's answer.

  "Then possibly you know the woman?" I asked, looking up.

  "Yes, possibly I know the woman," he repeated, standing before her andstaring into her white and desolate face. It took me a moment or twoto finish my task of trussing the wrists of the sullen and soddenHobbs. When I looked up the woman was on her feet, several stepsnearer the door.

  "Watch that woman!" I cried. "She's got a load of your loot on her!"

  My words seemed merely to puzzle him. There was no answering alarm onhis face.

  "What do you mean?" he inquired. He seemed almost to resent my effortin his behalf. The woman's stare, too, seemed able to throw him intosomething approaching a comatose state, leaving him pale and helpless,as though her eye had the gift of some hypnotic power. It angered meto think that some mere accidental outward husk of respectability couldmake things so easy for her. Her very air of false refinement, I felt,would always render her viciousness double-edged in its danger.

  "Search her!" I cried. "See what she's got under her waist there!"

  He turned his back on me, deliberately, as though resenting mydetermination to dog him into an act that was distasteful to him.

  "What have you there?" he asked her, without advancing any closer.

  There was utter silence for a moment or two.

  "Your letters," she at last answered, scarcely above a whisper.

  "What are they doing there?" he asked.

  "I wanted them," was all she said.

  "Why should you want my letters?" was his next question.

  She did not answer it. The man in the dressing-gown turned and pointedto the inert figure of Hobbs.

  "What about him? How did _he_ get here?"

  "He must have followed me in from the street when the door wasunlocked. Or he may have come in before I did, and kept in hidingsomewhere."

  "Who left the door unlocked?"

  "Simmonds."

  "Why?"

  "Because he could trust me!"

  There was a muffled barb in this retort, a barb which I could notunderstand. I could see, however, that it had its effect on the otherman. He stared at the woman with sudden altered mien, with a foolishdrop of the jaw which elongated his face and widened his eyes at thesame moment. Then he wheeled on the sullen Hobbs.

  "_Hobbs, you lied about her!_" he cried, like a blind man at lastfacing the light.

  He had his hand on the bound and helpless burglar's throat.

  "Tell me the truth, or by the living God, I'll kill you! You liedabout her?"

  "About what?" temporized Hobbs.

  "You know what!"

  Hobbs, I noticed, was doing his best to shrink back from the throttlingfingers.

  "It wasn't my fault!" he equivocated.

  "But you lied?"

  Hobbs did not answer, in words. But the man in the dressing-gown knewthe answer, apparently, before he let the inert figure fall away fromhis grasp. He turned, in a daze, back to the waiting and watchingwoman, the white-faced woman with her soul in her eyes. His faceseemed humbled, suddenly aged with some graying blight of futilecontrition.

  The two staring figures appeared to sway and waver toward each other.Before I could understand quite what it all meant the man had raisedhis arms and the woman had crept into them.

  "Oh, Jim, I've been such a fool!" I heard her wail. And I could seethat she was going to cry.

  I knew, too, that that midnight of blunders had left me nothing to beproud of, that I had been an idiot from the first--and to make thatidiocy worse, I was now an intruder.

  "I'll slip down and look after that phoning," I mumbled, so abashed andhumiliated that as I groped wearily out through the door I stumbledover the Russian-squirrel bundle which I had placed there with my ownhands. It was not until I reached the street that I realized, with agulp of relief, how yet another night of threatening misery had beendissembled and lost in action, very much as the pills of childhood aredissembled in a spoonful of jelly.