CHAPTER XI
A BIT OF BRIGHT RIBBON
When Laurie opened his eyes blackness was still around him, a blacknesswithout a point of light. But as his mind slowly cleared, the picture hesaw in his last conscious moment flashed across his mental vision--thedim, firelit room, the struggling, straining figures of Shaw and theblond secretary. He heard again the hissed caution, "Not too much ofthat!"
He sat up, dizzily. There _had_ been "too much of that." He felt faintand mildly nauseated. His hands, groping in the darkness, came incontact with a brick floor; or was it the tiling around the fireplace?He did not know. He decided to sit quite still for a moment, until hecould pull himself together.
His body felt stiff and sore. There must have been a dandy fight in thatdingy old room, he reflected with satisfaction. Perhaps the other twomen were lying somewhere near him in the darkness. Perhaps they, too,were knocked out. He hoped they were. But no, of course not. Again heremembered the hurried caution, "Not too much of that."
He decided to light a match and see where he was, and he fumbled in hispockets with the first instinct of panic he had known. If those bruteshad taken his match-box! But they hadn't. He opened it carefully, stillwith a lingering suggestion of the panic. If he had been a hero ofromance, he reasoned, with a dawning grin, that box would have heldexactly one match; and he would have had to light that one very slowlyand carefully. Then, at the last instant, the feeble flicker would havegone out, leaving it up to him to invent some method of manufacturinglight.
As it was, however, his fat match-box was comfortably filled, and hiscigarette-case, which he eagerly opened and examined by touch, heldthree, no, four cigarettes. That was luck! His spirits rose, singing.Now for a light!
He lit a match, held it up, looked around him, and felt himself growsuddenly limp with surprise. He had expected, of course, to find himselfin Shaw's room. Instead, he was in a cellar, which resembled that roomonly in the interesting detail that it appeared to have no exit. Withthis discovery, his match went out. He lit another, and examined his newenvironment as carefully as he could in the brief interval ofillumination it afforded.
The cellar was a perfectly good one, as cellars go. It was a small,square, hollow cube in the earth, not damp, not especially cold, and notevil-smelling. Its walls were brick. So was its floor, which was coveredwith clean straw, a discovery that made its present occupant suddenlycautious in handling his matches. He had no wish to be burned alive inthis underground trap. The place was apparently used as a sort ofstore-room. There was an old trunk in it, and some broken-down pieces offurniture. The second match burned out.
Affluent though he was in matches, it was no part of the young man'splan to burn his entire supply at one sitting, as it were. For half anhour he crouched in the darkness, pondering. Then, as an answer tocertain persistent questions that came up in his mind, he lit a thirdmatch. He greatly desired to know where lay the outlet to that cellar,and in this third illumination he decided that he had found it. Theremust be some sort of a trap-door at the top, through which he had beendropped or lowered. Those wide seams in the whitewashed ceiling mustmean the cracks due to a set-in door. Undoubtedly that door had beenbolted. Also, even assuming that it was not fastened, the ceiling wasfully eight feet above him. There was no ladder, there were no stairs.His third match burned out.
In the instant of its last flicker he saw something white lying on thestraw beside him. He promptly lit another match, and with risingexcitement picked up the sheet of paper and read the three-linecommunication scrawled in pencil upon it:
Out to-morrow. Flash-light, candles, cigarettes, and matches in box at your left. Blankets in corner. Be good.
The recipient of this interesting document read it twice. Then, havingsecured the box at his left--a discarded collar box, judging by itsshape and labels--he drew forth the flash-light, the cigarettes, thematches, and the candles it contained. Lighting one of the candles, hestuck it securely on a projecting ledge of the wall. By its wan light,aided by the electric flash, he took a full though still dazed inventoryof his surroundings. The ophidian Shaw had puzzled him again.
He had handled Shaw very roughly for a time. He could still feel--and herecalled the sensation with great pleasure--the thick, slippery neck ofthe creature, and the way it had squirmed when he got his fingers intoit. Yet the serpent evidently bore no malice. Or--a searing thoughtstruck Laurie--having things his own way, he could afford to begenerous. In other words, he was now perfecting his plans, while he,Laurie, was out of the way.
The promise of release to-morrow could mean, of course, only onething--that those plans, whatever they were, would be carried out bythen. And yet--and yet-- The boy put his head between his hands andgroaned. What was happening to Doris? Surely nothing could happen thatnight! Or could it? And what would it be? Only a fool would doubt Shaw'spower and venom after such an experience as Laurie had just had, andyet--Even now the skeptical interrogation-point reared itself in theyoung man's mind.
One fact alone was clear. He must get out of this. But how? Flash-lightin hand, he made the short tour of the cellar, examining and tappingevery inch of the wall, the masonry, and the floor-work. Could he pileup the furniture and so reach the door in the ceiling? He could not. Thearticles consisted of the small, battered trunk, a legless,broken-springed cot, and a clock whose internal organs had been removed.Piled one on the other, they would not have borne a child's weight.Laurie decided that he was directly under Shaw's room. Perhaps thecreature was there now. Perhaps he would consent to a parley. But shoutsand whistles, and a rain of small objects thrown up against thetrap-door produced no response.
He began to experience the sensations of a trapped animal. So vivid werethese, and so overpowering, as he measured his helplessness against thegirl's possible need of him, that he used all his will power inovercoming them. Resolutely he reminded himself that he must keep cooland steady. He would leave nothing undone that could be done. He wouldshout at intervals. Perhaps sooner or later some night-watchman wouldhear him. He would reach that trap-door if the achievement were humanlypossible. But first, last, and all the time he would keep cool.
When he had exhausted every resource his imagination suggested, he satin the straw, smoking and brooding, his mind incessantly seeking someway out of his plight. At intervals he shouted, pounded, and whistled.He walked the floor, and reexamined it and the cellar walls. He lookedat his watch. It was three o'clock in the morning. He was exhausted, andhis body still ached rackingly.
Very slowly he resigned himself to the inevitable. Morning would sooncome. He must sleep till then, to be in condition for the day. He foundShaw's blankets, threw himself on the straw, and fell into a slumberfull of disturbing dreams. In the most vivid of these he was a littleboy, at school; and on the desk before him a coiled boa-constrictor,with Shaw's wide and sharp-toothed grin, ordered him to copy on hisslate an excellent photograph of Doris.
He awoke with a start, and in the next instant was on his feet. He hadheard a sound, and now he saw a light falling from above. He looked up.A generous square opening appeared in the ceiling, and leading down fromit was the gratifying vision of a small ladder. Up the ladder Lauriesprang with the swiftness of light itself. Subconsciously he realizedthat if he was to catch the person who had opened that door and droppedthat ladder, he must be exceedingly brisk about it. But quick as he was,he was still too slow. With a grip on each side of the opening, and astrong swing, he lifted himself into the room above. As he had expected,it held no occupant. What he had not expected, and what held him staringnow, was that it held not one stick of furniture.
Bare as a bone, bleak as a skeleton, it had the effect of grinning athim with Shaw's wide white grin.
His first conscious reflection was the natural one that it was notShaw's room. He had been carried to another building. This room had awindow, which, of course, might have been concealed behind theletter-files. Yet, bare as it was, it looked familiar. There was thefireplace, with its charred
logs. There, yes, there were the splintersof the glass that had protected Doris's photograph. And, finalconvincing evidence, there, forgotten in a corner, was the worn bedroomslipper he had noticed under the couch the night before.
With eyes still bewildered, still incredulous, he stared around theempty room. Before him yawned an open door, showing an uninviting vistaof dingy hall. He stepped across its threshold, and looked down thewinding passage of the night before. But why hadn't he seen the door? Hemoved back into the empty room. A glance explained the little mystery.The room had been freshly papered, door and all. The surface of the doorhad been made level with the wall. When it was closed there was noapparent break in the pattern of the wall-paper.
If there had been a chair in the room, young Mr. Devon would have satdown at this point. His body wanted to sit down. In fact, it almostinsisted upon doing so. But just as he was relaxing in utterbewilderment, he received another gentle shock. Above the old-fashionedmantel was a narrow, set-in mirror, and in this mirror Laurie caught aglimpse of the features of a disheveled young ruffian, staring fixedlyat him. He had time to stiffen perceptibly over this vision before herealized that the disheveled ruffian was himself, a coatless, collarlessself, with shirt torn open, cuffs torn off, hair on end, featuresbattered and dirty, and bits of straw clinging to what was left of hisclothing.
For a long moment Laurie gazed at the figure in the glass, and as hegazed his mingled emotions shook down into connected thought. Yes, there_had_ been a dandy fight in this room last night, and he had thesatisfaction of knowing that his two opponents must have come out of itas disheveled as himself. He had "had them going." Beyond doubt he couldhave handled them both but for their infernal chloroform. Again herecalled, with pleasure, the feeling of Shaw's thick, slippery neck asit choked and writhed under the grip of his fingers. Incidentally he hadlanded two blows on the secretary's jaw, sending him first into a cornerand the next time to the floor. It was soon after the second blow thatthe episode of the chloroform occurred.
Straightening up, he began the hurried and elemental toilet which wasall the conditions permitted. He removed the pieces of straw from hisclothing, smoothed his hair, straightened his garments to conceal asmuch of the damage to them as possible, and gratefully put on his coat,which lay neatly folded on the floor, with his silk hat resting smuglyupon it. It required some courage to go out into the clear light of aJanuary morning in patent-leather pumps and wearing a silk hat. He wouldfind some one around the place from whom he could borrow a hat and getthe information he needed about the late tenants of this extraordinaryoffice. He looked at his watch. It was half-past seven. He had sleptlater than he had realized. He had slept while Doris was in peril. Thereminder both appalled and steadied him.
With a last look around the dismantled room, he closed its door behindhim and went out into the winding hall. He hurried up and down itslength, poking his head into empty store-rooms and dusty offices, butfinding no sign of life.
At last a cheerful whistle in the lower regions drew him down a flightof stairs to what appeared to be an underground store-room. Here abulky, overalled individual, looming large in the semi-darkness, stoppedin his labor of pushing about some boxes, and regarded Laurie withsurprise.
"Are you the watchman?" asked the latter, briskly.
"I am, that."
"Were you here last night?"
"I was."
"Was any one else here?"
"Divil a wan."
"Did you hear any noise during the night?"
"Divil a bit."
"Were you asleep?"
"I was," admitted the watchman, simply. His voice was Hibernian, andrich with tolerant good humor.
"I want to make a trade with you." The new-comer held out his silk hat."Will you give me your hat, or any old hat you've got around the place,for this?"
"I will," said the watchman calmly. Though good-humored, he seemed a manof few words. "And who might you be?" he added.
"I came in last night with Mr. Shaw, and I spent the night here. When Iwoke up," added Laurie drily, "I found that my host had moved."
The watchman sadly shook his head.
"You're a young lad," he said, with friendly sympathy. "'Tis a pityyou've got into these habits."
Laurie grinned at him. He had discovered that his money, like his watch,was safe in his pockets. Taking out a bill, he showed it to hiscompanion.
"Do you like the looks of that?" he inquired.
"I do," admitted the watchman, warmly.
"Tell me all you know about Shaw, and take it for your trouble."
"I will," promptly agreed the other, "but 'tis not much you'll get foryour money, for 'tis little enough I know. The man you're talkin' about,I suppose, is the fat fella with eyes you could hang yer hat on, thathad the back room on the ground floor."
"That's the one."
"Then all I know is, he moved in three days ago, and he moved out twohours ago. What he did between-times I don't know. But he paid for theroom for a month in advance, so nobody's mournin' his loss."
"Didn't he say why he was going, or where?"
"Divil a word did he say. He was in a hurry, that lad. He had a gang ofthree men with him, and they had the place empty in ten minutes. I lent'em a hand, an' he give me a dollar, and that's the last I saw of him."
A sudden thought struck the watchman. "Where was you all the time?" heasked with interest.
"In the cellar."
The watchman nodded, understandingly.
"You're too young for that sort of thing, me boy. Now, I'm no teetotalermeself," he went on argumentatively. "A glass once in a while is allright, if a man knows whin to stop. But--"
"How about that hat?" interrupted the restive victim of this homily."Have you got one handy?"
"I have."
The watchman disappeared into a shadowy corner and returned with abattered derby.
"An' a fine grand hat it is!" he earnestly assured the new owner, as hehanded it over.
Laurie took the hat and put it on his head, where, being too small forhim, it perched at a rakish angle. He dropped the bank-note into his ownsilk hat, and handed them to his companion, who accepted them withoutvisible emotion. Evidently, brief though his stay in the building hadbeen, Herbert Ransome Shaw had accustomed its watchman to surprises.Laurie's last glimpse of the man as he hurried away showed him, withextreme efficiency and the swift simultaneous use of two well-trainedhands, putting the silk hat on his head and the bill in his pocket.
Laurie rushed through the early East Side streets. He was not oftenabroad at this hour, and even in his anxiety it surprised him todiscover how many were abroad so early in the morning. The streetsseemed full of pretty girls, hastening to factories and offices, and ofbriskly stepping men and women, representing types that also wouldordinarily catch the attention of the young playwright. But now he hadneither thought nor eyes for them.
His urgent needs were first the assurance that Doris was safe, and nextthe privacy of his own rooms, a bath, and a change of clothing.Obviously, he could not present himself to Doris in the sketchy ensemblehe presented now; or could he? He decided that he could, and must. Toremain in his present state of suspense a moment longer than he need dowas unthinkable.
In a surprisingly short time he was in the studio building, facing theman Sam had called Henry, a yawning night elevator man who regarded himand his questions with a pessimism partly due to the lack of sleep andfatigue. These combined influences led him to make short work of gettingrid of this unkempt and unseasonable caller.
"No, sah," he said. "Miss Mayo don' receive no callers at dis yere hour.No, sah, Sam don' come on tell eight o'clock. No, sah, I cain't take nomessages to no ladies what ain't out dey beds yit. I got to perteck deseyere folks, I has," he ended austerely.
The caller peeled a bill from his ever-ready roll, and the face of thebuilding's guardian angel changed and softened.
"P'raps I could jes' knock on Miss Mayo's do'," he suggested after athought-filled inte
rval.
"That's all I want," agreed Laurie. "Knock at her door and ask her ifMr. Devon may call at nine and take her out to breakfast. Tell her hehas something very important to say to her."
"Yaas, sah."
The guardian was all humility. He accepted the bill, and almostsimultaneously the elevator rose out of sight. The interval before itsreturn was surprisingly short, but too long for the nerves of thecaller. Laurie, pacing the lower hall, filled it with apprehensions andvisions which drove the blood from his heart. He could have embracedHenry when the latter appeared, wearing an expansively reassuring grin.
"Miss Mayo she say, 'Yaas,'" he briefly reported.
Under the force of the nervous reaction he experienced, Laurie actuallycaught the man's arm.
"She's there?" he jerked out. "You're sure of it?"
"Yaas, sah." Henry spoke soothingly. By this time he had made adiagnosis of the caller's condition which agreed with that of thenight-watchman Laurie had just interviewed.
"She say, 'Yaas,'" he repeated. "I done say what you tol' me, and shesay, 'Tell de genman, Yaas,' jes' like dat."
"All right." Laurie nodded and strode off. For the first time he wasbreathing naturally and freely. She was there. She was safe. In a littlemore than an hour he would see her. In the meantime his urgent needswere a bath and a change of clothing. As soon as he was dressed he wouldgo back to the studio building and keep watch in the corridors until shewas ready. Then, after breakfast, he would personally conduct her tothe security of Louise Ordway's home. Louise need not see her, if shedid not feel up to it, but she would surely give her asylum afterhearing Laurie's experiences of the night.
That was his plan. It seemed a good one. He did not admit even tohimself that under the air of sang-froid he wore as a garment, everyinstinct in him was crying out for the sound of Doris's voice. Also, ashe hurried along, he was conscious that a definite change was takingplace in his attitude toward Herbert Ransome Shaw. Slowly, reluctantly,but fully, he had now accepted the fact that "Bertie" represented aforce that must be reckoned with.
He inserted the latch-key into the door of his apartment with an inwardprayer that Bangs would not be visible, and for a moment he hoped it hadbeen granted. But when he entered their common dressing-room he foundhis chum there, in the last stages of his usual careful toilet. Hegreeted Laurie without surprise or comment, in the detached, absentmanner he had assumed of late, and Laurie hurried into the bath-room andturned on the hot water, glad of the excuse to escape even atete-a-tete.
That greeting of Bangs's added the final notes to the minor symphonylife was playing for him this morning. As he lay back in the hot water,relaxing his stiff, bruised body, the thought came that possibly he andRodney were really approaching the final breaking-point. Bangs was notordinarily a patient chap. He was too impetuous and high-strung forthat. But he had been wonderfully patient with this friend of his heart.If it were true that the friendship was dying under the strain put uponit, and Laurie knew how possible this was, and how swift and intensewere Bangs's reactions, life henceforth, however full it might be, wouldlack an element that had been singularly vital and comforting. He triedto think of what future days would be without Bangs's exuberantpersonality to fill them with work and color; but he could not picturethem; and as the effort merely added to the gloom that enveloped him, heabandoned it and again gave himself up to thoughts of Doris.
As he hurried into his clothes a strong temptation came to him to tellBangs the whole story. Then Bangs would understand everything, and he,Laurie, would have the benefit of Rodney's advice and help in untyingDoris's tangle.
Doris! Again she swam into the foreground of his consciousness with avividness that made his senses tingle. He was sitting on a low chair,lacing his shoes, and his fingers shook as he finished the task. Hedressed with almost frantic haste, urged on by a fear that, despite hisefforts, was shaping itself into a mental panic. Then, hair-brushes inhand, he faced his familiar mirror, and recoiled with an exclamation.
Doris was not there, but her window was, and hanging from its centercatch was something bright that caught his eye and instantaneousrecognition.
It was a small Roman scarf, with a narrow, vivid stripe.