CHAPTER VIII
HOW WE MADE AN UNCONVENTIONAL JOURNEY TO TOWN
Very carefully, and wondering the while in a listless fashion why Ishould do so at all, I tore out the notice and put it carefully away inmy pocketbook. I had the explanation now; I understood it all--thehidden ring at the end of the chain, and the shadow of which it was thesymbol, the mystery and disturbance of the house, the continual pretextsto get rid of me, the effort to disguise any strangeness of appearancein the life of the family. And I understood why it was true that I mustgo away and utterly forget. And yet--was the explanation so perfect,after all? Mechanically I pulled the paper out of the drawer, andsearched for the date. It was only three years back; but even thatlength of time would have made Lady a mere child when she was married.She could not be very far beyond twenty now, certainly not more thantwenty-two or three. And in any case, why should the marriage beconcealed and the husband retained as a member of the family,masquerading as a brother? And how, after the ordinary announcement inthe press, could the marriage have become a secret at all? Then oncemore the whispers and pointings of a score of abnormal circumstances,uncertain, suggestive, indefinite, crowded in upon my understanding,like the confusion of simultaneous voices. It was no use. I could notimagine what it all meant, and for the moment I was too sick and wearyto wonder. The bare fact was more than enough; she was married andbeyond my reach, and I must go away.
I went through a pantomime of supper, making the discovery that myappetite was supplemented by an unquenchable thirst and an immeasurabledesire for tobacco. After that I walked, read, made dull conversationwith casual acquaintances--anything to kill the interminable time, andquiet for the moment that weary spirit of unrest which kept urging me touseless thought and unprofitable action, to examine my trouble as oneirritates a trivial wound, to decide or do something where nothing wasto be decided or to be done. An inhabitant of the nearest comfortlesspiazza chair contributed the only episode worth remembering.
"Say," he began, "do you remember that guinea that was here the otherday and started the argument with the old gent out in front? Well, whatdid you make of that feller, anyway?"
"I don't know. He was drunk, I suppose, and got the wrong man."
"Well, now, you take it from me, there was more to it than that. Yes,sir, there's a shady story around there somewhere. You hear what I say."
"Is the man still around here?" I asked.
"Well, not now, he ain't. That's what I'm telling you. He hung abouttown for two or three days, I guess. Maybe he got after the old man somemore. He was in here after a drink once, and the barkeep threw him out.He's a good mixer, Harry is, men or drinks; but he don't like guineas.Well, I don't go much on them foreigners, myself."
"Where does your shady story come in?"
"Well, now, that's just it. You listen. I was coming along the streetthe other night, and I passed this guinea standing under a street lamp,talking to that Reid feller that lives up to Tabors'. Doc Reid, you knowwhom I mean? Well, I was going past and I heard Reid say: 'Now, youunderstand what you got to do,' he says, 'keep quiet and keep away. Theminute you show up here again or give any trouble,' he says, 'the moneystops. You understand that?' he says. And you can call me a liar if youlike, but I swear I saw him slip the guinea a roll. Now, what do youknow about that?"
I put him off as well as I could. Here was another point in thelabyrinth, but I had no energy to think about it. I got away from thegossip at last only by taking refuge in my room. And the rest of theevening was a dreary nightmare of unreality which only expanded withoutchanging when I tried to sleep. I tossed about endlessly, thinkingthoughts that were not thoughts, dreaming evil dreams even while Iwatched the swollen shadows about the room and listened to the unmeaningvoices and footsteps in the hallways. It seemed so much a part of thiswhen some one pounded on my door and told me that I was wanted on thetelephone, that it was a troublesome task to make me understand.
I pulled on a sweater and ran down-stairs, wondering who could havecalled me up at one in the morning. I was not left long in doubt.
"Hello! This Mr. Crosby? Hello! Hello there! Mr. Crosby? Hello!"
"Yes!" I said savagely, "what is it?"
"Doctor Reid talking. Can you--what? All right--hold the line a second."Then Lady's voice: "Mr. Crosby? Listen: I have to go to New York in themachine now, right away. Can you come with me?"
"Can I--? Why, of course; but why doesn't--why don't you take some oneelse?"
"No one else can go. If you're not willing--"
"Of course I'm willing," I said, "if I can be of use."
"I knew you would. The car will be there for you in five minutes,or--wait: there's no need of waking up the whole inn. Walk up to thefirst street corner this way, and the car will meet you there."
Five minutes later I was standing on the corner, shivering withinterrupted sleep, while four flaming yellow eyes swung toward me downthe hill. It was the same big limousine I had noticed the night before.I climbed in beside the chauffeur. With a clash and a grinding lurch thecar swung around and pointed up the hill again, toward the Tabors'.There was power and to spare, but I noticed that one cylinder wasmissing now and again.
"Your ignition isn't very steady," I said to the chauffeur. "What isit--valves?"
He turned and looked at me with supercilious respect. "Poor petrol, sir.I fancy she'll run well enough, sir."
Lady came running out, veiled and muffled. "Come inside," she said, as Isprang down to help her in, "I'd rather have you with me." The doorslammed, and we were off with a jerk that threw us back against the deepleather cushions. For a few moments we flashed under lamps and sidledaround corners to an accompaniment of growling brakes and squeakingsprings; then we ran out upon the smooth macadam of the highway, andsettled into our speed with a steady purr. Lady sat up in her corner andpatted at her veil.
"It was very good of you to come," she said, "but I knew we could counton you. Here, take this thing--I don't want it."
It was a very serviceable revolver, cold and smooth as I slipped it outof its leather holster. I made sure that it was ready for use.
"It's perfectly ridiculous taking it along," she added. "We're not goingon any desperate midnight errand. The mere time of night is the onlything that's even unconventional. But Walter wouldn't let me comewithout it."
I asked no questions. By this time I had learned better; and besides Idid not greatly care what we were doing, or what was to happen next. Iwould be of service if I could, that was all. Since it was to behopelessly, it might as well be blindly, too; and the sense of adventurewas gone out of me. The car swayed and sidled gently to the irregularmutter of the engine and the drowsy whining of the gears. We mightalmost have been motionless, except when the flare of some passing lightswept across us, filling with an uncanny and sudden illumination thepolished interior of the limousine, and showing me as by the glimpse ofa lightning-flash the veiled and silent figure by my side. Here wasromance beyond my wildest imagination: night, and hurry and mysteriousneed, the swift rush onward through the warm gloom, the womanhood of thebreathing shadow so close to me, whose thought I could not know, whoseanxiety I could not seek to fathom, whose trouble I could only help bydoing ignorantly what she asked of me and then leaving her in otherhands. And all this that should have stirred me to chivalry seemed onlydull and weary, a thankless task. The lines of _The Last Ride Together_began running in my mind, and I turned them over and over, tryingvaguely to fill in forgotten phrases, until the rocking of the carreminded me where I was, and the sardonic incongruity of it jarred meback to earth. It was always like that: the deed a parody of the dream,the details of actual happenings making mouths at the truth that laybehind them, life sneering at itself. Here were two lovers hurryingtogether through the night, held silent by a secret and bound by a blindtrust. And they were riding through Westchester in a motor-car, and thethought of a fussy medical man with a bass voice was the naked swordwhich lay between them.
A trolley car, looking like
a huge and luminous caterpillar, hungalongside us for a moment, then fell behind. Our engine had not beenrunning perfectly from the first; and now as we jolted over a section ofnewly mended road and began to climb a bumpy hill, the trouble suddenlybecame so much worse that it looked as though it meant delay. Impuregasolene does not make one cylinder miss fire regularly for manyrevolutions and then explode once or twice with a croupy grunt.
"There's something the matter with the car," said Lady nervously. "Ihope we're not going to break down. We mustn't break down."
"The chauffeur says it's the gasolene," I answered, "but I don't believeit. It's ignition by the sound."
"Do you know anything about a car?"
"A little," I said; and as we drew up at the side of the road, I was outand in front of the machine almost before the chauffeur had lumberedfrom his seat. He got out his electric lamp, and began tinkering withthe carburetor.
"Hold on a minute," I said. "If you ball up that adjustment, it may takehalf an hour to get it right again. Are you sure it isn't ignition?"
"Ignition's all right, sir," he grunted; "she's getting too much gas."
"Then why are three of your cylinders all right and one all wrong?" Isnapped. "Come around here with that lamp."
Once the bonnet was open it was not hard to find the trouble. The nutwhich held one of the wires to its connection on the magneto had droppedoff, and the end of the wire was hanging loose, connecting only when thevibration of the car swung it against the binding-post. The chauffeurdid not appear grieved.
"We're dished," he remarked cheerfully. "I've no other nut like that."
"It's probably in the underpan," I retorted. We got the pan off, andafter some search in the puddle of grimy grease, were fortunate enoughto find it. A moment later we were throbbing steadily on our way.
"That man of yours isn't exactly delighted with his work," I commented.
"I don't blame him. He isn't supposed to be waked up for forty-miletrips in the middle of the night, and he's English and worships hishabits. Are we all right now?"
"Yes; it wasn't anything. We're nearly there now; there's Woodlawn."
She did not speak again for some time, and I began to wonder if I hadagain trodden upon trouble. I seemed fated to do so at every turn. Butpresently she broke in with a comfortable triviality.
"Look here, why don't you smoke if you want to? I forgot all about it,but of course you may. I don't mind."
I had not noticed it before, but the cigarette was exactly what Iwanted. The bodily comfort balanced things again, and made me feel athome with the situation. We ran down Riverside Drive, the dark bulk ofthe city on our left, and on our right the glimmering breadth of theHudson, streaked with yellow gleams. Thence we crossed over andcontinued on down Fifth Avenue, between blank houses and unnaturallights, the occasional clack of hoofs and hollow growl of wheelsaccentuating the unwonted stillness. I had somehow taken it for grantedthat we were going for a doctor. But when we passed Madison Square andkept on south along Broadway, that errand became unlikely; and when weturned eastward over the rough cobbles of narrow side streets, I was ina state of blank wonder. We ran slowly, lurching and bumping, throughinterminable chasms of squalor where iron railings mounted to the doorsand clots of bedding hung from open windows; where evil odors hung anddrifted like clouds, and a sick heat lay prisoned between wall andpavement, and stragglers turned to stare after us as we went by. Now andthen we crossed some wider thoroughfare with its noise of cars andtangle of sagging wires overhead, and signs in foreign tongues under thecorner lights. And at last we came into a city of dreadful sleep, dimand deserted and still. The scattered lamps were only yellow splotchesin the dusk, the stores were barred and bared, and there was no humanthing in sight save here and there a huddle of grimy clothes under thehalf shelter of a doorway. Puffs of salt air from the river troubled thestagnant mixture of fish, leather and stale beer.
We stopped before a narrow doorway pinched sidewise between two shopwindows like a fish's mouth. Lady leaned across me to scan the bleakwindows above.
"There should be a light on the top floor," she said, "yes, there it is.Ask Thomas to make sure of the number."
He was back in a moment to say that the number was right: "And allasleep, Miss, by the look of it. Shall I knock somebody up? There's nobell."
"No, not yet. What time is it, Mr. Crosby?"
"Twenty minutes of three," I told her.
"She must have got the message before now," she said, half to herself.Then, after a little thought, "Stay here with the car, Thomas. Mr.Crosby and I are going in."
"You're not going into such a place at this hour!" I protested. "Tell mewhat it is and let me go."
"No, I'm coming too. Don't stop to talk about it, please."
The door yielded and let us into a stained and choking hallway, faintlylighted by a blue flicker of gas at the far end. The stairs were worninto creaking hollows, and the noise of our passing, thoughinstinctively we crept upward like thieves, awakened a multitude ofsqueaks and scufflings behind the plaster. The banisters were everywhereloose and shaky, and in places they were entirely broken away, so thatwe went close along the filthy wall rather than trust to them. Eachhallway was like the one below; narrow, dusty and airless, with its bluespurt of gas giving us just light enough to find our way withoutgroping. At last we reached the top, and Lady knocked softly on the doorat the end of the hall.
There was no answer. She knocked again. I turned up the gas, and as Idid so a fat beetle ran from under my feet. I stepped on it, and wishedthat I had not done so.
"Are you sure this is the place?" I whispered.
"Yes; I've been here before. But I don't understand. Sheila knew that wewere coming."
"Look," said I, "the door is unlatched. Shall I go in?"
For an instant the oppression of the place was too much for her, and sheclung to my arm whispering, "I'm afraid--I'm afraid!" Then before Icould speak, she had caught up her courage.
"Yes," she said. "Open it if you can."
The door swung a few inches, then resisted. Something soft and heavy,like a mattress, seemed to be braced against the bottom of it. I feltfor the revolver in my pocket, then put my weight against the panel. Thething inside moved a little, then rolled over with a thud, and the doorswung wide. What had lain against it, and now lay across the openingclearly visible in the light from behind us was the body of a woman withblood soaking into her hair.