The Man Who Couldn't Sleep

  CHAPTER V

  THE MAN FROM MEDICINE HAT

  I sat in that nocturnal sun-parlor of mine, known to the world asMadison Square, demanding of the quiet night why sleep should be deniedme, and doing my best to keep from thinking of Mary Lockwood. I satthere with my gaze fixed idly on a girl in black, who, in turn, staredidly up at _Sagittarius_.

  Then I lost interest in the black-clad and seemingly catalepticstar-gazer. For I was soon busy watching a man in a rather odd-lookingvelour hat. My eyes followed him from the moment he first turnedeastward out of Fifth Avenue. They were still on him as he veeredirresolutely southward again into the square where I sat.

  The pure aimlessness of his movements arrested my attention. Thefigure that drifted listlessly in past the Farragut Statue and wanderedon under the park trees in some way reminded me of my own. I, too,knew only too well what it was to circle doggedly and sullenly aboutlike a bell-boy paging the corridors of night for that fugitive knownas Sleep.

  So I continued to watch him, quietly and closely. I had lost myinterest in the white-faced girl who sat within twenty paces of me,looking, silent and still, up at the autumn stars.

  It was the man's figure, thereafter, that challenged my attention, forthis man marked the only point of movement in what seemed a city of thedead. It was, I remembered, once more long past midnight, the hour ofsuspended life in the emptied canyons of the lamp-strung streets whenthe last taxi had hummed the last reveler home, and the firstmilk-wagons had not yet rattled up from the East River ferries.

  So I sat there listlessly watching the listlessly moving figure withthe wide hat-brim pulled down over its face. There was something stillyouthful about the man, for all the despondent droop to the shoulders.I asked myself idly who or what he could be. I wondered if, likemyself, he was merely haunted by the curse of wakefulness, if the samebloodhounds of unrest dogged him, too, through the dark hours of thenight. I wondered if he, too, was trying to escape from the grindingmachinery of thought into some outer passivity.

  I saw him thread his indeterminate way along the winding park walks. Isaw him glance wearily up at the massive austerity of the MetropolitanTower, and then turn and gaze at the faded Diana so unconcernedlypoised above her stolen Sevillian turrets. I saw him look desolatelyabout the square with its bench-rows filled with huddled and motionlesssleepers. These sleepers, with their fallen heads and twisted limbs,with their contorted and moveless bodies, made the half-lit square ashorrible as a battlefield. Clouded by the heavy shadows of the parktrees, they seemed like the bodies of dead men, like broken and soddenthings over which had ground the wheels of carnage. The only murmur orsound of life was the fountain, with its column of slowly rising andslowly falling water, like the tired pulse-beat of the tired city.

  The man in the velour hat seemed to find something companionable inthis movement, for he slowly drew nearer. He came within three benchesof where I sat. Then he flung himself down on an empty seat. I couldsee his white and haggard face as he watched the splashing fountain. Icould see his shadowy and unhappy eyes as he pushed back his hat andmopped his moist forehead. Then I saw him suddenly bury his head inhis hands and sit there, minute by minute, without moving.

  When he made his next movement, it was a startling one. It sent atingle of nerves scampering up and down my backbone. For I saw hisright hand go down to his pocket, pause there a moment, and thensuddenly lift again. As it did so my eye caught the white glimmer ofmetal. I could see the flash of a revolver as he thrust it up underthe hat-brim, and held the nickeled barrel close against his temple,just above the lean jaw-bone.

  It was so sudden, so unexpected, that I must have closed my eyes in asort of involuntary wince. The first coherent thought that came to mewas that I could never reach him in time. Some soberer second thoughtwas to the effect that even my interference was useless, that he andhis life were his own, that a man once set on self-destruction will notbe kept from it by any outside influence.

  Yet even as I looked again at his huddled figure, I heard his littlegasp of something that must have been between fear and defeat. I sawthe arm slowly sink to his side. He was looking straight before him,his unseeing eyes wide with terror and hazy with indecision.

  It was then that I decided to interfere. To do so seemed only my plainand decent duty. Yet I hesitated for a moment, pondering just how tophrase my opening speech to him.

  Even as I took a sudden, deeper breath of resolution, and was on thepoint of crossing to his side, I saw him fling the revolver vehementlyfrom him. It went glimmering and tumbling along the coppery-greengrass. It lay there, a point of high light against the darkness of theturf.

  Then I looked back to the stranger, and saw his empty hands go up tohis face. It was a quiet and yet a tragic gesture of utter misery.Each palm was pressed in on the corded cheek-bones, with thefinger-ends hard against the eyeballs, as though that futile pressurecould crush away all inner and all outer vision.

  Then I turned back toward the fallen revolver. As I did so I noticed afigure in black step quietly out and pick up the firearm. It was thewhite-faced girl who had sat looking up at the stars. Before I fullyrealized the meaning of her movement, she slipped the weapon out ofsight, and passed silently on down the winding asphalt walk, betweenthe rows of sleepers, toward the east. There was something arrestingin the thin young figure, something vaguely purposeful and appealing inthe poise of the half-veiled head.

  I vacillated for a moment, undecided as to which to approach. But asecond glance at the man in the velour hat, crouched there in his utterand impassive misery, caused me to cross over to him.

  I put a hand on his flaccid shoulder, and shook it. He did not move atfirst, so I shook him again. Then he directed a slow and resentfulglance at me.

  "I want to have a talk with you," I began, puzzled as to how toproceed. He did not answer me.

  "I want to help you if I can," I explained, as I still let my hand reston his shoulder.

  "Oh, go 'way!" he ejaculated, in utter listlessness, shaking my handfrom his shoulder.

  "No, I won't!" I quite firmly informed him. He shrank back and movedaway. Then he turned on me with a resentment that was volcanic.

  "For God's sake leave me alone!" he cried.

  A sleeper or two on near-by benches sat up and stared at us with theirdrowsily indifferent eyes.

  "Then why are you making a fool of yourself like this?" I demanded.

  "That's my own business," he retorted.

  "Then you intend to keep it up?" I inquired.

  "No, I don't," he flung back. "_I can't._"

  "Then will you be so good as to talk to me?" His sullen anger seemedstrangely removed from that exaltation which tradition imputes to lastmoments. It even took an effort to be patient with him.

  "No, I won't," was his prompt retort. It dampened all the quixoticfires in my body. Then he rose to his feet and confronted me. "And ifyou don't get out of here, I'll kill you!"

  His threat, in some way, struck me as funny. I laughed out loud.

  But I did not waste further time on him.

  I was already thinking of the other figure, the equally mysterious andmore appealing figure in black.

  I swung round and strode on through the trees just in time to see thatsomber and white-faced young woman cross Madison Avenue, and passwestward between a granite-columned church and the towering obelisk ofa more modern god of commerce. I kept my eyes on this street-end as itswallowed her up. Then I passed out through the square and under theclock-dial and into Twenty-fourth Street.

  By the time I had reached Fourth Avenue I again caught sight of theblack-clad figure. It was moving eastward on the south side of thestreet, as unhurried and impassive as a sleep-walker.

  When half-way to Lexington Avenue I saw the woman stop, look slowlyround, and then go slowly up the steps of a red-brick house. She didnot ring, I could see, but let herself in with a pass-key. Once thedoor had closed on her, I sauntered toward t
his house. To go fartherat such an hour was out of the question. But I made a careful note ofthe street number, and also of the fact that a slip of paper pasted onthe sandstone door-post announced the fact of "Furnished Rooms."

  I saw, not only that little was to be gained there, but also that I hadfaced my second disappointment. So I promptly swung back to MadisonSquare and the fountain where I had left the man in the velour hat. Iran my eye from bench to bench of sleepers, but he was not among them.I went over the park, walk by walk, but my search was unrewarded. ThenI circled about into Broadway, widening my radius of inspection. Ishuttled back and forth along the side-streets. I veered up and downthe neighboring avenues. But it was useless. The man in the velourhat was gone.

  Then, to my surprise, as I paced the midnight streets, a sense ofphysical weariness crept over me. I realized that I had walked formiles. I had forgotten my own troubles and that most kindly of allnarcotics, utter fatigue, crept through me like a drug.

  So I went home and went to bed. And for the first time that week Ifelt the Angel of Sleep stoop over me of her own free will. For thefirst time that week there was no need of the bitter lash of chloralhydrate to beat back the bloodhounds of wakefulness. I fell into asound and unbroken slumber, and when I woke up, Benson was waiting toannounce that my bath was ready.

  Two hours later I was ringing the bell of a certain old-fashionedred-brick apartment-house in East Twenty-fourth Street. I knew littleenough about such places, but this was one obviously uninviting, fromthe rusty hand-rail to the unwashed window draperies. Equallyunprepossessing was the corpulent and dead-eyed landlady in her fadedblue house-wrapper; and equally depressing did I find the slatternlyand bared-armed servant who was delegated to lead me up through themusty-smelling halls. The third-floor front, I was informed, was theonly room in the house empty, though its rear neighbor, which, was abargain at two dollars and a half a week, was soon to be vacated.

  I took the third-floor front, without so much as one searching look atits hidden beauties. The lady of the faded blue wrapper emitted herfirst spark of life as I handed over my four dollars. The listlesseyes, I could see, were touched with regret at the thought that she hadnot asked for more. I tried to explain to her, as she exacted adeposit for my pass-key, that I was likely to be irregular in my hoursand perhaps a bit peculiar in my habits.

  These intimations, however, had no ponderable effect upon her. Shefirst abashed me by stowing the money away in the depths of her opencorsage, and then perplexed me by declaring that all she set out to do,since her legs went back on her, was to keep her first two floorsdecent. Above that, apparently, deportment could look after itself,the upper regions beyond her ken could be Olympian in their morallaxities.

  As I stood there, smiling over this discovery, a figure in blackrustled down the narrow stairway and edged past us in the half-lit hall.

  The light fell full on her face as she opened the door to the street.It outlined her figure, as thin as that of a medieval saint from amissal. It was the young woman I had followed from Madison Square.

  Of this I was certain--from the moment the light fell on herthin-cheeked face, where anxiety seemed to have pointed the soft ovalof the chin into something mask-like in its sharpness. About her,quite beyond the fact that her eyes were the most unhappy eyes I hadever seen, hung a muffled air of tragedy, the air of a spirit bothbewildered and baffled. But I could see that she was, or that she hadbeen, a rather beautiful young woman, though still again theslenderness of the figure made me think of a saint from a missal.

  I was still thinking of her as I followed the sullen and slatternlyservant up the dark stairs. Once in my new quarters, I glancedabsently about at the sulphur-yellow wallpaper and the melancholyantiquities that masqueraded as furniture. Then I came back to theissue at hand.

  "Who is that young woman in black who happened to pass us in the hall?"I casually inquired.

  "_Can_ that!" was the apathetic and quite enigmatic retort of thebare-armed girl. I turned to inquire the meaning of this obviouscolloquialism.

  "Aw, cage the zooin' bug!" said my new-found and cynical young friend."She ain't that kind."

  "What is she?" I asked, as I slipped a bill into the startled andsomewhat incredulous hand of toil. The transformation was immediate.

  "She ain't nothin'!" was the answer. "She's just a four-flush, analso-ran! And unless she squares wit' the madam by Sat'rday she'sgoin' to do her washin' in somebody else's bath-tub!"

  Through this sordid quartz of callousness ran one silver streak ofluck. It was plain that I was to be on the same floor with the girl inblack. And that discovery seemed quite enough.

  I waited until the maid was lost in the gloom below-stairs and thehouse was quiet again. Then I calmly and quietly stepped out into thelittle hall, pushed open the door of the rear room, and slipped inside.I experienced, as I did so, a distinct and quite pleasurable quickeningof the pulse.

  I found myself in a mere cell of a room, with two dormer windows facinga disorderly vista of chimney-pots and brick walls. On the sill of onewindow stood an almost empty milk-bottle. Beside the other window wasa trunk marked with the initials "H. W." and the pretty-nearlyobliterated words "Medicine Hat."

  About the little room brooded an almost forlorn air of neatness. Onone wall was tacked a picture postcard inscribed "In the Devil's Poolat Banff." On another was a ranch scene, an unmounted photograph whichshowed a laughing and clear-browed girl on a white-dappled pinto. Onthe chintz-covered bureau stood a half-filled carton of soda-biscuits.Beside this, again, lay an empty candy-box. From the mirror of thisbureau smiled down a face that was familiar to me. It was amagazine-print of Harriet Walter, the young Broadway star who hadreached success with the production of _Broken Ties_, the same HarrietWalter who had been duly announced to marry Percy Adams, the son of theTraction Magnate. My own den, I remembered, held an autographed copyof the same picture.

  Beyond this, however, the room held little of interest and nothing ofsurprise. Acting on a sudden and a possibly foolish impulse, after onefinal look at the room and its record of courageous struggles, I took abank-note from my waistcoat pocket, folded it, opened the top drawer ofthe bureau and dropped the bill into it. Then I stood staring downinto the still open drawer, for before me lay the revolver which thegirl had carried away the night before from Madison Square.

  In a few moments I went back to my own room and sat down in thebroken-armed rocking-chair, and tried desperately to find some key tothe mystery. But no light came to me.

  I was still puzzled over it when I heard the sound of steps on theuncarpeted stairway. They were very slow and faltering steps. As Istood at the half-opened door listening, I felt sure I heard the soundof something that was half-way between a sob and a gasp. Then came thesteps again, and then the sound of heavy breathing. I heard the rustleof paper as the door of the back room was pushed open, and then thequick slam of the door.

  This was followed by a quiet and almost inarticulate cry. It was not acall, and it was not a moan. But what startled me into sudden actionwas the noise that followed. It was a sort of soft-pedaled thud, asthough a body had fallen to the floor.

  I no longer hesitated. It was clear that something was wrong. I ranto the closed door, knocked on it, and a moment later swung it open.

  As I stepped into the room I could see the girl lying there, herupturned face as white as chalk, with bluish-gray shadows about theclosed eyes. Beside her on the floor lay a newspaper, a flaringhead-lined afternoon edition.

  I stood staring stupidly down at the white face for a moment or twobefore it came to me that the girl had merely fallen in a faint. Then,seeing the slow beat of a pulse in the thin throat, I dropped on oneknee and tore open the neck of her blouse. Then I got water from thestoneware jug on the wash-stand and sprinkled the placid and colorlessbrow. I could see, as I lifted her up on the narrow white bed, howbloodless and ill-nurtured her body was. The girl was half starved; ofthat there was n
o shadow of doubt.

  She came to very slowly. As I leaned over her, waiting for theheavy-lidded eyes to open, I let my glance wander back to the newspaperon the floor. I there read that Harriet Walter, the young star of the_Broken Ties_ Company, had met with a serious accident. It hadoccurred while riding down Morningside Avenue in a touring-car drivenby Percy Alward Adams, the son of the well-known Traction Magnate. Thebrake had apparently refused to work on Cathedral Hill, and the car hadcollided with a pillar of the Elevated Railway at the corner ofOne-hundred-and-ninth Street. Adams himself had escaped with asomewhat lacerated arm, but Miss Walter's injuries were more serious.She had been taken at once to St. Luke's Hospital, but a few blocksaway. She had not, however, regained consciousness, and practicallyall hope of recovery had been abandoned by the doctors.

  I was frenziedly wondering what tie could bind these two strangelydiverse young women together when the girl beside me gave signs ofreturning life. I was still sousing a ridiculous amount of water onher face and neck when her eyes suddenly opened. They looked up at me,dazed and wide with wonder.

  "What is it?" she asked, gazing about the room. Then she looked backat me again.

  "I think you must have fallen," I tried to explain. "But it's allright; you mustn't worry."

  My feeble effort at reassuring her was not effective. I could see theperplexed movement of her hands, the unuttered inquiry still in hereyes. She lay there, staring at me for a long time.

  "You see, I'm your new neighbor," I told her, "and I heard you from myroom."

  She did not speak. But I saw her lips pucker into a little sob thatshook her whole body. There seemed something indescribably childlikein the movement. It took a fight to keep up my air of bland optimism.

  "And now," I declared, "I'm going to slip out for a minute and get youa little wine."

  She made one small hand-gesture of protest, but I ignored it. I dodgedin for my hat, descended the stairs to the street, got Benson on thewire; and instructed him to send the motor-hamper and two bottles ofBurgundy to me at once. Then I called up St. Luke's Hospital. There,strangely enough, I was refused all information as to Harriet Walter'scondition. It was not even admitted, in fact, that she was at presenta patient at that institution.

  The girl, when I got back, was sitting in a rocking-chair by thewindow. She seemed neither relieved nor disturbed by my return. Hereyes were fixed on the blank wall opposite her. Her colorless faceshowed only too plainly that this shock from which she had suffered hadleft her indifferent to all other currents of life, as though everyfurther stroke of fate had been rendered insignificant. She did noteven turn her eyes when I carried the hamper into the room and openedit. She did not look up as I poured the wine and held a glass of itfor her to drink.

  She sipped at it absently, brokenly, reminding me of a bird drinkingfrom a saucer-edge. But I made her take more of it. I persisted,until I could see a faint and shell-like tinge of color creep into hercheeks.

  Then she looked at me, for the first time, with comprehending andstrangely grateful eyes. She made a move, as though to speak. But asshe did so I could see the quick gush of tears that came to her eyesand her gesture of hopelessness as she looked down at the newspaper onthe floor.

  "Oh, I want to die!" she cried brokenly and weakly. "I want to die!"

  Her words both startled and perplexed me. Here, within a few hours'time, I was encountering the second young person who seemed tired oflife, who was ready and walling to end it.

  "What has happened?" I asked, as I held more of the Burgundy out forher to drink. Then I picked up the afternoon paper with the flaringhead-lines.

  She pointed with an unsteady finger to the paper in my hands.

  "Do you know her?" she asked.

  '"Yes, I happen to know her," I admitted.

  "Have you known her long?" asked the girl.

  "Only a couple of years," I answered. "Since she first went withFrohman."

  The possible truth flashed over me. They were sisters. That was thestrange tie that bound them together; one the open and flashing andopulent, and the other the broken and hidden and hopeless.

  "Do you know Harriet Walter?" I asked.

  She laughed a little, forlornly, bitterly. The wine, I imagined, hadrather gone to her head.

  "I _am_ Harriet Walter!" was her somewhat startling declaration.

  She was still shaken and ill, I could see. I took the Burgundy glassfrom her hand. I wanted her mind to remain lucid. There was a greatdeal for me still to fathom.

  "And they say she's going to die?" she half declared, half inquired, asher eyes searched my face.

  "But what will it mean to you?" I demanded.

  She seemed not to have heard; so I repeated the question.

  "It means the end," she sobbed, "the end of everything!"

  "But why?" I insisted.

  She covered her face with her hands.

  "Oh, I can't tell you!" she moaned. "I can't explain."

  "But there must be some good and definite reason why this young woman'sdeath should end everything for you."

  The girl looked about her, like a life-prisoner facing the four blankwalls of a cell. Her face was without hope. Nothing but utter misery,utter despair, was written on it.

  Then she spoke, not directly to me, but more as though she werespeaking to herself.

  "_When she dies, I die too!_"

  I demanded to know what this meant. I tried to burrow down to the rootof the mystery. But my efforts were useless. I could wring nothingmore out of the unhappy and tragic-eyed girl. And the one thing shepreferred just then, I realized, was solitude. So I withdrew.

  The entire situation, however, proved rather too much for me. The moreI thought it over the more it began to get on my nerves. So Idetermined on a prompt right-about-face. I decided to begin at theother end of the line.

  My first move was to phone for the car. Latreille came promptlyenough, but with a look of sophistication about his cynical mouth whichI couldn't help resenting.

  "St. Luke's Hospital," I told him as I stepped into the car.

  At that institution, however, I was again refused all information as tothe condition of Harriet Walter. It was not even admitted, when Ibecame more insistent, that any such person was in the hospital.

  "But I'm a friend of this young lady's," I tried to explain. "And I'vea right to know of her condition."

  The calm-eyed official looked at me quite unmoved.

  "This young lady seems to have very many friends. And some of themseem to be very peculiar."

  "What do you mean by that?" I demanded. For answer he pointed to afigure pacing up and down in the open street.

  "There's another of these friends who've been insisting on seeing her,"he explained, with a shrug of extenuation.

  The uniformed attendant of that carbolized and white-walled temple ofpain must have seen my start as I glanced out at the slowly pacingfigure. For it was that of a young man wearing a velour hat. It wasthe youth I had met the night before in Madison Square.

  "Do you happen to know that man's name?" I asked.

  "He gave it as Mallory--James Mallory," was the answer.

  I wasted no more time inside those depressing walls. I was glad to getout to the street, to the open air and the clear afternoon sunlight. Ihad already decided on my next step.

  Whether the man in the velour hat recognized me or not, I could notsay. If he did, he gave no sign of it. Yet I could see that heresented my addressing him, although he showed no surprise as I did soby name. It was not until I point-blank asked if he had been inquiringabout Harriet Walter that any trace of interest came into his face.

  He replied, with considerable ferocity, that he had. One glimpse ofthe unsteady fingers and twitching eyelids showed me the tension underwhich he was struggling. I felt genuinely sorry for him.

  "I happen to know Miss Walter," I told him, "and if you'll be so goodas to step in my car, I can tell you anything
you may want to know."

  "Is your name Adams?" the white-faced youth suddenly demanded.

  "It is not," I answered, with considerable alacrity, for his face wasnot pleasant to look at.

  "Then why can you tell me what I want to know?" he asked, still eyingme with open hostility. I struggled to keep my temper. It was a casewhere one could afford to be indulgent.

  "If we each have a friend in this lady, it's not unreasonable that weshould be able to be friends ourselves," I told him. "So let's clearthe cobwebs by a spin down-town."

  "Gasoline won't wash my particular cobwebs away," he retorted. Therewas something likable about his audacious young face, even under itscloud of bitterness.

  "Then why couldn't you dine with me, at a very quiet club of mine?" Isuggested. "Or, better still, on the veranda of the Clairemont, wherewe can talk together."

  He hesitated at first, but under my pressure he yielded, and we bothgot in the car and swung westward, and then up Riverside to theClairemont. There I secured a corner piazza-table, overlooking theriver. And there I exerted a skill of which I had once been proud, inordering a dinner which I thought might appeal to the poignantlyunhappy young man who sat across the table from me. I could see thathe was still looking at me, every now and then, with both revolt andsullen bewilderment written on his lean young face. It would be noeasy matter, I knew, to win his confidence.

  "I suppose you think I'm crazy, like the rest of them?" he suddenlydemanded. I noticed that he had already taken his third drink of wine.

  "Why should I think that?"

  "I've had enough to make me crazy!" he ejaculated, with that abjectself-pity which marks the last milestone on the avenue of hope.

  "Perhaps I could help you," I suggested. "Or perhaps I could adviseyou."

  "What good's advice when you're up against what I'm up against?" washis embittered retort.

  He was apparently finding relief in the Pommery. I found acompensating relief in merely beholding that look of haunted and abjectmisery going out of his young eyes.

  "Then tell me what the trouble is," I said.

  He still shook his head. Then he suddenly looked up.

  "How long have you known Harriet Walter?" he asked.

  "From the time," I told him, after a moment's thought, "when she firstappeared for the Fresh Air Fund at the Plaza. That was about two yearsago--when she first went with Frohman."

  "I've known her for twenty years!" was the youth's unexpectedexclamation. "We grew up together, out West."

  "Where out West?" I asked.

  "In Medicine Hat--that's a Canadian prairie town."

  "But she's younger than you?"

  "Only two years. She's twenty-two; I'm twenty-four. She changed hername from Wilson to Walter when she went on the stage."

  "Then you are close friends?" I asked, for I could see the wine hadloosened his reticent young tongue.

  "Friends!" he scoffed. "I'm the man she promised to marry!"

  Here, I told myself, was a pretty kettle of fish. I knew the manbefore me was not Adams. Yet it was several weeks now since HarrietWalter's engagement to young Adams had been officially announced. Andthere was nothing unstable or predaceous about the Harriet Walter I hadknown.

  "Would you mind telling me just when she promised to marry you?" Iasked. "Remember, this is not prying. I'm only trying to get behindthat cobweb."

  "She promised me over two years ago," he answered me, quite openly.

  "Definitely?" I insisted.

  "As definite as pen and ink could make it. Even before she gave in,before she gave the promise, we'd had a sort of understanding. Thatwas before I made my British Columbia strike out West. She'd come Eastto study for the stage. She always felt she would make a greatactress. We all tried to keep her from it, but she said it was hercareer. She'd been having a hard time of it then, those first sixmonths. So I came through to New York and wanted to take her back, toget her out of all that sort of thing. But she put me off. Shewouldn't give in to being defeated in her work. She gave me herpromise, but asked for a year's time. When that was up, she'd made herhit. Then, of course, she asked for one year more. And in themeantime I made my own hit--in timber limits."

  "But hasn't she justified the time you've given her?" I inquired,remembering the sudden fame that had come to her, the name in electricsover the Broadway theater, the lithographs in the shop windows, theinterviews in the Sunday papers.

  "Justified!" cried the young man across the table from me. "After I'dwaited two years, after she'd given me her promise, she's turned roundand promised to marry this man Adams!"

  "And has she never explained?"

  "Explained? She won't see me. She had me put out of her hotel. Shewent off to Narragansett. She pretended she doesn't even know me."

  This sounded very unlike the Harriet Walter I had known. There hadseemed little that was deliberately venal or treacherous in thatartless-eyed young lady's nature.

  "And what did you do?" I asked.

  "What could I do? I waited and tried again. I felt that if I couldonly see her face to face she'd be able to explain, to make the wholething seem less like insanity."

  "And she wouldn't even see you, meet you?"

  "Not once. Something's set her against me; something's changed her.She never used to be that sort--never!"

  "And you insist all this is without rhyme or reason?"

  "Without one jot of reason. That's what made it so hopeless. And lastnight when I heard of this accident I put my pride in my pocket, andtried still again. It was the same thing over again. They seemed totake me for a crank, or paranoeic of some kind, up there at thehospital. And then I gave up. I felt I'd about reached the end of myrope. I thought it all over, quite calmly, and decided to endeverything. I walked the streets half the night, then I sat down anddecided to blow my brains out. But I couldn't do it. I was too muchof a coward. I hadn't the courage."

  "That would have been very foolish," was my inadequate reply, for at abound my thoughts went back to the night before and the scene in thesquare.

  "Well, what would you have done?" was the prompt and bitter challengeof the unhappy youth facing me.

  I thought for a moment before attempting to answer him.

  "Why," I temporized, "I'd have tried to get down to the root of themystery. I'd have made some effort to find out the reason for it; foreverything seems to have a reason, you know."

  Again I heard him emit his listless little scoff of misery.

  "There's no reason," he declared.

  "There must be," I maintained.

  "Then show me where or what it is," he challenged.

  "I will," I said, with sudden conviction. "There's a reason for allthis, and I'm going to find it out!"

  He studied my face with his tired and unhappy young eyes as I sat theretrying to fit the edges of the two broken stories together. It was noteasy: it was like trying to piece together a shattered vase ofcloisonne-work.

  "And how will you find it out?" he was listlessly inquiring.

  Instead of answering him, I looked up, fixed my eyes on him and askedanother question.

  "Tell me this: if there is a reason, do you still care for her?"

  He resented the question, as I was afraid he would.

  "What concern is that of yours?"

  "If all this thing's a mistake, it's going to be some concern ofyours," I told him.

  He sat there in dead silence for a minute or two.

  "I've always cared for her," he said, and I knew what his answer wasgoing to be before he spoke. "But it's no use. It's all over. It'sover and done with. There's not even a mistake about it."

  "There must be. And I'm going to find out where and what it is."

  "And how are you going to find that out?" he reiterated.

  "Come along with me," I cried a little presumptuously, a littleexcitedly, "and by ten o'clock to-night I'll have your reason for you!"

  My flash-in-the
-pan enthusiasm was shorter lived than I had expected.The tingling and wine-like warmth soon disappeared. A reaction set in,once we were out in the cool night air. And in that reaction I beganto see difficulties, to marshal doubts and misgivings.

  The suspicion crept over me that, after all, I might have been talkingto a man with a slightly unbalanced mind. Delusions, such as his, Iknew, were not uncommon. There were plenty of amiable cranks whocarried about some fixed conviction of their one-time intimateassociation with the great, the settled belief that they are theoppressed and unrecognized friends of earth's elect.

  Yet this did not altogether fill the bill; it could not explain awayeverything. There was still the mystery of the girl in theTwenty-fourth Street rooming-house. There was still the enigma of twopersons claiming to be Harriet Walter.

  On my way down to that rooming-house an idea occurred to me. Itprompted me to step in at my club for a minute or two, leaving Malloryin the car. Then I dodged back to the reading-room, took down from itsshelf a _Who's Who on the Stage_, and turned up the name of HarrietWalter.

  There, to my discomfiture, I read that Harriet Walter's family name wasrecorded as "Kellock," and instead of being a Canadian, and born andbrought up in the western town of Medicine Hat, as young Mallory hadclaimed, her birthplace was recorded as Lansing, Michigan. She hadbeen educated at the Gilder Seminary in Boston, and had later studiedone year at the Wheatley Dramatic School in New York. From there shehad gone on the stage, taking small parts, but soon convincing hermanagement that she was capable of better things. In little over ayear she had been made a star in the _Broken Ties_ production.

  The St. Luke's officials, after all, had not been so far wrong. Theyoung man in the velour hat was clearly off his trolley.

  It was, however, too late to turn back. And there was still the otherend of the mystery to unravel. So I ushered young Mallory up the mustystairs to my third-floor room, and seated him with a cigar and amagazine between those four bald and depressing walls with theirsulphur-colored paper. Then I stepped outside, and carefully closedthe door after me. Then I crossed the hall to the girl's room andknocked.

  There was no answer, so I opened the door and looked in. The room wasempty. A sense of frustration, of defeat, of helplessness, sweptthrough me. This was followed by a feeling of alarm, an impressionthat I might, after all, be too late.

  I crossed the room with a sudden premonition of evil. Then I turned onthe light and pulled open the top drawer of the chintz-covered bureau.There lay my bank-note. And beside it, I noticed, with a sense ofrelief, still lay the revolver.

  I took the weapon up and looked it over, hesitating whether or not tounload it. I still held it in my hand, staring down at it, when Iheard the creak of the door behind me. It was followed by a sudden andquite audible gasp of fright.

  It was the owner of the room herself, I saw, the moment I swung around.It was not so much terror in her eyes, by this time, as sheer surprise.

  "What are you doing here?" she asked, with a quaver of bewilderment.

  "I'll answer that when you answer a question of mine," I temporized, asI held the revolver up before her. "Where did you get this?"

  She did not speak for a second or two.

  "Why are you spying on me like this?" she suddenly demanded. She sankinto a chair, pulling nervously at her pair of worn gloves.

  "You insist on knowing?" I asked.

  "I've a right to know."

  "Because you are not Harriet Walter," was the answer I sent bullet-likeat her.

  She raised her eyes to mine. There was neither anger nor resentment onher face. All I could see was utter weariness, utter tragedy.

  "I know," she said. She spoke very quietly. Something in her voicesent a stab of pity through me.

  "I'm only trying to help you," I told her. "I only want to clear upthis maddening muddle."

  "You can't," she said very simply. "It's too late."

  "It's not too late!" I blindly persisted.

  "What do you know about it?" was her listless and weary retort.

  "I know more about it than you imagine," was my answer. "I know wherethis revolver came from, just when and where you picked it up, and justhow near you came to using it."

  She covered her face with her hands. Then she dropped them to herside, with a gesture of hopelessness.

  "Oh, they'll all know now!" she moaned. "I knew it would come, someday. And I haven't the strength to face it--I haven't the strength!"

  I felt, in some way, that the moment was a climactic one.

  "But how did it begin?" I asked more gently, as I gazed down at thefragile and girlish body huddled together in the chair.

  "It began two years ago," she went on in her tired and throatymonotone. "It began when I saw I was a failure, when I realized thatall was useless, that I'd made a mistake."

  "What mistake?" I demanded, still in the dark.

  "The mistake I wasn't brave enough to face. I thought it was the lifeI was made for, that they'd never understood at home. Even _he_couldn't understand, I thought. Then they let me come. I worked, oh,so hard! And when I left the school all I could get was a place in thechorus. I was ashamed to tell them. I pretended I had a part, a realpart. He kept arguing that I ought to give it up. He kept asking meto come back. I wasn't brave enough to acknowledge defeat. I stillthought my chance would come; I kept asking for more time."

  "And then?" I prompted.

  "Then I couldn't even stay at the work I had. It became impossible; Ican't tell you why. Then I did anything, from extra work with movingpictures to reader in the City Library classes. But I still kept goingto the agencies, to the Broadway offices, trying to get a part. Andthings dragged on and on. And then I did this, this awful thing."

  "What awful thing?" I asked, trying to bridge the ever-recurring breaksin her thought. But she ignored the interruption.

  "We'd studied together in the same classes at the Wheatley School. Andpeople had said we looked alike. But she was born for that sort oflife, for success. As I went down, step by step, she went up. Hewrote me that I must be getting famous, for he'd seen my picture on amagazine-cover. It was hers. I pretended it was mine. I pretended Iwas doing the things she was doing. I let them believe I'd taken a newname, a stage name. I sent them papers that told of her success. Ibecame a cheat, an impostor, a living lie--I _became Harriet Walter_!"

  At last the light had come. I saw everything in a flash. I suddenlyrealized the perplexities and profundities of human life. I feltshaken by a sudden pity for these two bound and unhappy spirits, atthat moment so close together, yet groping so foolishly and perverselyalong their mole-like trails.

  I was still thinking of the irony of it all, of the two broken andlonely young lives even at that moment under the same roof, crushedunder the weight of their unseeing and uncomprehending misery, when thegirl in the chair began to speak again.

  "It was terrible," she went on, in her passionate resolve to purge hersoul of the whole corroding blight. "I didn't dream what it would leadto, what it would cause. I dreaded every advance she made. It wasn'tjealousy, it was more than that; it was fear, terror. She seemed to befeeding on me, day by day, month by month. I knew all the time thatthe higher she got the lower I had to sink. And now, in a differentway, she's taken everything from me. Taken everything, without knowingit!"

  "No, you're wrong there," I said. "She hasn't taken everything."

  "What is there left?" was her forlorn query.

  "Life--all your real life. This has been a sort of nightmare, but nowit's over. Now you can go back and begin over again."

  "It's too late!" She clasped her thin hands hopelessly together. "Andthere's no one to go to."

  "_There's Mallory_," I said, waiting for some start as the name fell onher ears. But I saw none.

  "No," she cried, "he'd hate and despise me."

  "But you still care for him?" I demanded.

  "I need him," she sobbin
gly acknowledged. "Yes--yes, I always caredfor him. But he'd never understand. He'd never forgive me. He'sgrown away from me."

  "He's waiting for you," I said.

  I stood looking at the bowed figure for a moment. Then I slipped outof the room.

  I stepped in through my own door and closed it after me. YoungMallory, with his watch in his hand, swung about from the window andfaced me.

  "Well, it's ten o'clock--and nothing's settled!"

  "It is settled," was my answer.

  I led him across the quiet hall to the half-lit back room.

  I saw his startled and groping motion. Then I heard his cry of"Harrie!" and her answering cry of "Jamie" as the white face, with itshunger and its happiness, looked up into his.

  Then I quietly stepped outside and closed the door, leaving them alone.From that moment I was an outsider, an intruder. My part was over anddone. But the sight of those two young people, in each other's arms,made my thoughts turn back to Mary Lockwood and the happiness which hadbeen lost out of my own life. And I didn't sleep so well that night asI had hoped to.