Philip stepped into his own little bedroom and made scanty preparations for this, his first excursion. Then he made his way down into the shabby hall and was seated there on the worn settee when his guest descended. She was wearing a hat which, so far as he could judge, was almost becoming. Her gloves, notwithstanding their many signs of mending, were neat, her shoes carefully polished, and although her dress was undeniably shabby, there was something in her carriage which pleased him. Her eyes were fixed upon his from the moment she stepped from the lift. She was watching for his expression half defiantly, half anxiously.
"Well, you see what I look like," she remarked brusquely. "You can back out of it, if you want to."
"Don't be silly," he replied. "You look quite all right. I'm not much of a beau myself, you know. I bought this suit over the counter the other day, without being measured for it or anything."
"Guess you ain't used to ready-made clothes," she observed, as they stepped outside.
"You see, in England—and the Colonies," he added hastily, "things aren't so expensive as here. What a wonderful city this is of yours, Martha!"
"Miss Grimes, please," she corrected him.
"I beg your pardon," he apologised.
"That's just what I was afraid of," she went on querulously. "You're beginning already. You think because you're giving me a meal, you can take all sorts of liberties. Calling me by my Christian name, indeed!"
"It was entirely a slip," he assured her. "Tell me what theatre that is across the way?"
She answered his question and volunteered other pieces of information. Philip gazed about him, as they walked along Broadway, with the eager curiosity of a provincial sightseer. She laughed at him a little scornfully.
"You'll get used to all the life and bustle presently," she told him. "It won't seem so wonderful to you when you walk along here without a dollar to bless yourself with, and your silly plays come tumbling back. Now this is the Martin House. My! Looks good inside, don't it?"
They crossed the threshold, Philip handed his hat to the attendant and they stood, a little undecided, at the top of the brilliantly-lit room. A condescending maître d'hotel showed them to a retired table in a distant corner, and another waiter handed them a menu.
"You know, half of this is unintelligible to me," Philip confessed."You'll have to do the ordering—that was our bargain, you know."
"You must tell me how much you want to spend, then?" she insisted.
"I will not," he answered firmly. "What I want is a good dinner, and for this once in my life I don't care what it costs. I've a few hundred dollars in my pocket, so you needn't be afraid I shan't be able to pay the bill. You just order the things you like, and a bottle of claret or anything else you prefer."
She turned to the waiter, and, carefully studying the prices, she gave him an order.
"One portion for two, remember, of the fish and the salad," she enjoined."Two portions of the chicken, if you think one won't be enough."
She leaned back in her place.
"It's going to cost you, when you've paid for the claret, a matter of four dollars and fifty cents, this dinner," she said, "and I guess you'll have to give the waiter a quarter. Are you scared?"
He laughed at her once more.
"Not a bit!"
She looked at his long, delicate fingers—studied him for a moment. Notwithstanding his clothes, there was an air of breeding about him, unconcealable, a thing apart, even, from his good looks.
"Clerk, were you?" she remarked. "Seems to me you're used to spending two dollars on a meal all right. I'm not!"
"Neither am I," he assured her. "One doesn't have much opportunity of spending money in—Jamaica."
"You seem kind of used to it, somehow," she persisted. "Have you come into money, then?"
"I've saved a little," he explained, with a rather grim smile, "andI've—well, shall we say come into some?"
"Stolen it, maybe," she observed indifferently.
"Should you be horrified if I told that I had?"
"I don't know," she answered. "I'm one of those who's lived honest, and I sometimes wonder whether it pays."
"It's a great problem," he sighed.
"It is that," she admitted gloomily. "I've got a friend—she used to live in our place, just below me—Stella Kimbell, her name is. She and I learnt our typewriting together and started in the same office. We stood it, somehow, for three years, sometimes office work, sometimes at home. We didn't have much luck. It was always better for me than for Stella, because she was good-looking, and I'm not."
"I shouldn't say that," he remonstrated. "You've got beautiful eyes, you know."
"You stop it!" she warned him firmly. "My eyes are my own, and I'll trouble you not to make remarks about them."
"Sorry," Philip murmured, duly crushed.
"The men were after her all the time," the girl continued, reminiscently. "Last place we were at, a dry goods store not far from here, the heads of the departments used to make her life fairly miserable. She held out, though, but what with fines, and one thing or another, they forced her to leave. So I did the same. We drifted apart then for a while. She got a job at an automobile place, and I was working at home. I remember the night she came to me—I was all alone. Pop had got a three-line part somewhere and was bragging about it at all the bars in Broadway. Stella came in quite suddenly and almost out of breath.
"'Kid,' she said, 'I'm through with it.'
"'What do you mean?' I asked her.
"Then she threw herself down on the sofa and she sobbed—I never heard a girl cry like that in all my life. She shrieked, she was pretty nearly in hysterics, and I couldn't get a word out of her. When she was through at last, she was all limp and white. She wouldn't tell me anything. She simply sat and looked at the stove. Presently she got up to go. I put my hands on her shoulders and I forced her back in the chair.
"'You've got to tell me all about it, Stella,' I insisted.
"And then of course I heard the whole story. She'd got fired again. These men are devils!"
"Don't tell me more about it unless you like," he begged sympathetically."Where is she now?"
"In the chorus of 'Three Frivolous Maids.' She comes in here regularly."
"Sorry for herself?"
"Not she! Last time I saw her she told me she wouldn't go back into an office, or take on typewriting again, for anything in the world. She was looking prettier than ever, too. There's a swell chap almost crazy about her. Shouldn't wonder if she hasn't got an automobile."
"Well, she answers our question one way, then," he remarked thoughtfully. "Tell me, Miss Grimes, is everything to eat in America as good as this fish?"
"Some cooking here," she observed, looking rather regretfully at her empty plate. "I told you things were all right. There's grilled chicken—Maryland chicken—coming, and green corn."
"Have I got to eat the corn like that man opposite?" he asked anxiously.
"You can eat it how you like," she answered.
"Watch me, if you want to. I don't care. I ain't tasted green corn sinceI can remember, and I'm going to enjoy it."
"You don't like your claret, I'm afraid," he remarked.
She sipped it and set down the glass a little disparagingly.
"If you want to know what I would like," she said, "it's just a Martini cocktail. We don't drink wines over here as much as you folk, I guess."
He ordered the cocktails at once. Every now and then he watched her. She ate delicately but with a healthy and unashamed appetite. A little colour came into her cheeks as the room grew warmer, her lower lip became less uncompromising. Suddenly she laid down her knife and fork. Her eyes were agleam with interest. She pulled at his sleeve.
"Say, that's Stella!" she exclaimed excitedly. "Look, she's coming this way! Don't she look stunning!"
A girl, undeniably pretty, with dark, red-gold hair, wearing a long ermine coat and followed by a fashionably dressed young man, was making her way up the room. She suddenly recognised Philip's companion and came towards her with outstretched hand.
"If it isn't Martha!" she cried. "Isn't this great! Felix, this is Miss Grimes—Martha Grimes, you know," she added, calling to the young man who was accompanying her. "You must remember—why, what's the matter with you, Felix?"
She broke off in her speech. Her companion was staring at Philip, who was returning his scrutiny with an air of mild interrogation.
"Say," the young man enquired, "didn't I meet you on theElletania?Aren't you Mr. Douglas Romilly?"
Philip shook his head.
"My name is Ware," he pronounced, "Merton Ware. I have certainly never been on theElletaniaand I don't remember having met you before."
The young man whose name was Felix appeared almost stupefied.
"Gee whiz!" he muttered. "Excuse me, sir, but I never saw such a likeness before—never!"
"Well, shake hands with Miss Grimes quickly and come along," Stella enjoined. "Remember I only have half an hour for dinner now. You coming to see the show, Martha?"
"Not to-night," that young woman declared firmly.
The two passed on after a few more moments of amiable but, on the part of the young man, somewhat dazed conversation. Philip had resumed the consumption of his chicken. He raised an over-filled glass to his lips steadily and drank it without spilling a drop.
"Mistook me for some one," he remarked coolly.
She nodded.
"Man who disappeared from the Waldorf Astoria. They made quite a fuss about him in the newspapers. I shouldn't have said you were the least like him—to judge by his pictures, anyway."
Philip shrugged his shoulders. He seemed very little interested.
"I don't often read the newspapers…. So that is Stella."
"That is Stella," she assented, a little defiantly. "And if I were she—I mean if I were as good-looking as she is—I'd be in her place."
"I wonder whether you would?" he observed thoughtfully.
"Oh! don't bother me with your problems," she replied. "Does it run to coffee?"
"Of course it does," he agreed, "and a liqueur, if you like."
"If you mean a cordial, I'll have some of that green stuff," she decided."Don't know when I shall get another dinner like this again."
"Well, that rests with you," he assured her. "I am very lonely just now.Later on it will be different. We'll come again next week, if you like."
"Better see how you feel about it when the time comes," she answered practically. "Besides, I'm not sure they'd let me in here again. Did you see Stella's coat? Fancy feeling fur like that up against your chin! Fancy—"
She broke off and sipped her coffee broodingly.
"Those things are immaterial in themselves," he reminded her. "It's just a question how much happiness they have brought her, whether the thing pays or not."
"Of course it pays!" she declared, almost passionately. "You've never seen my rooms or my drunken father. I can tell you what they're like, though. They're ugly, they're tawdry, they're untidy, when I've any work to do, they're scarcely clean. Our meals are thrown at us—we're always behind with the rent. There isn't anything to look at or listen to that isn't ugly. You haven't known what it is to feel the grim pang of a constant hideousness crawling into your senses, stupefying you almost with a sort of misery—oh, I can't describe it!"
"I have felt all those things," he said quietly.
"What did you do?" she demanded. "No, perhaps you had luck. Perhaps it's not fair to ask you that. It wouldn't apply. What should you do if you were me, if you had the chance to get out of it all the way that she has?"
"I am not a woman," he reminded her simply. "If I answer you as an outsider, a passer-by—mind, though, one who thinks about men and women—I should say try one of her lesser sins, one of the sins that leaves you clean. Steal, for instance."
"And go to prison!" she protested angrily. "How much better off would you be there, I wonder, and what about when you came out? Pooh! Pay your bill and let's get out of this."
He obeyed, and they made their way into the crowded street. He paused for a moment on the pavement. The pleasure swirl was creeping a little into his veins.
"Would you like to go to a theatre?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"You do as you like. I'm going home. You needn't bother about coming with me, either."
"Don't be foolish," he protested. "I only mentioned a theatre for your sake. Come along."
They walked down Broadway and turned into their own street. They entered the tenement building together and stepped into the lift. She held out her hand a little abruptly.
"Good night!"
"Good night!" he answered. "You get out first, don't you? I'll polish that stuff up to-night, the first part of it, so that you can get on with the typing."
Some half-developed fear which had been troubling her during the walk home, seemed to have passed. Her face cleared.
"Don't think I am ungrateful," she begged, as the lift stopped. "I haven't had a good time like this for many months. Thank you, Mr. Ware, and good night!"
She stepped through the iron gates on to her own floor, and Philip swung up to his rooms. Somehow, he entered almost light-heartedly. The roar of the city below was no longer provocative. He felt as though he had stretched out a hand towards it, as though he were in the way of becoming one of its children.
A few nights later Philip awoke suddenly to find himself in a cold sweat, face to face with all the horrors of an excited imagination. Once more he felt his hand greedy for the soft flesh of the man he hated, tearing its way through the stiff collar, felt the demoniacal strength shooting down his arm, the fever at his finger tips. He saw the terrified face of his victim, a strong man but impotent in his grasp; heard the splash of the turgid waters; saw himself, his lust for vengeance unsatisfied, peering downwards through the dim and murky gloom. It was not only a physical nightmare which seized him. His brain, too, was his accuser. He saw with a hideous clarity that even the excuse of motive was denied him. It was a sense of personal loss which had driven him out on to that canal path, a murderer at heart. It was something of which he had been robbed, an acute and burning desire for vengeance, personal, entirely egotistical. It was not the wrong to the woman which he resented, had there been any wrong. It was the agony of his own personal misery. He rose from his bed and stamped up and down his little chamber in a fear which was almost hysterical. He threw wide open the windows, heedless of a driving snowstorm. The subdued murmur of the city, with its paling lights, brought him no relief. He longed frantically for some one who knew the truth, for Elizabeth before any one, with her soft, cool touch, her gentle, protective sympathy. He was a fool to think he could live alone like this, with such a burden to bear! Perhaps it would not be for long. The risks were many. At any moment he might hear the lift stop, steps across the corridor, the ring at his bell, the plainly-clad, businesslike man outside, with his formal questions, his grim civility. He fumbled about in his little dressing-case until he came to a small box containing several white pills. He gripped them in his hand and looked around, listening. No, it was fancy! There was still no sound in the building. When at last he went back to bed, however, the little box was tightly clenched in his hands.
In the morning he went through his usual programme. He arose soon after eight, lighted his little spirit lamp, made his coffee, cut some bread and butter, and breakfasted. Then he lit a cigarette and sat down at his desk. His imagination, however, seemed to have burnt itself out in the night. Ideas and phrases were denied to him. He was thankful, about eleven o'clock, to hear a ring at the bell and find Martha Grimes outside with a little parcel under her arm. She was wearing the same shabby black dress and her fingers were stained with copying ink. Her almost too luxuriant hair was ill-arranged and untidy. Even her eyes seemed to have lost their lustre.
"I've finished," she announced, handing him the parcel. "Better look and see whether it's all right. I can't do it up properly till I've had the whole."
He cut the string and looked at a few of the sheets. The typing was perfect. He began to express his approval but she interrupted him.
"It's better stuff than I expected," she declared grudgingly. "I thought you were only one of these miserable amateurs. Where did you learn to write like that?"
Somehow, her praise was like a tonic.
"Do you like it?" he asked eagerly.
"Oh! my likes or dislikes don't matter," she replied. "It's good stuff. You'll find the account in there. If you'd like to pay me, I'd like to have the money."
He glanced at the neat little bill and took out his pocketbook.
"Sit down for a minute," he begged. "I'm stuck this morning—can't write a line. Take my easy-chair and smoke a cigarette—I have nothing else to offer you."
For a moment she seemed about to refuse. Then she flung herself into his easy-chair, took a cigarette, and, holding it between her lips, almost scarlet against the pallor of her cheeks, stretched upwards towards the match which he was holding.
"Stella and her boy were over to see me last night," she announced, a little abruptly.
"The young lady with the ermines," he murmured.
"And her boy, Felix Martin. It was through him they came—I could see that all right. He was trying all the time to pump me about you."
"About me?"
"Oh! you needn't trouble to look surprised," she remarked. "I guess you remember the bee he had in his bonnet that night."
"Mistook me for some one, didn't he?" Philip murmured.
She nodded.
"Kind of queer you don't read our newspapers! It was a guy named Romilly—Douglas Romilly—who disappeared from the Waldorf Hotel. Strange thing about it," she went on, "is that I saw photographs of him in the newspapers, and I can't recognise even a likeness."
"This Mr. Felix Martin doesn't agree with you, apparently," Philip observed.
"He don't go by the photographs," Martha Grimes explained. "He believes that he crossed from Liverpool with this Mr. Douglas Romilly, and that you," she continued, crossing her legs and smoothing down her skirt to hide her shabby shoes, "are so much like him that he came down last night to see if there was anything else he could find out from me before he paid a visit to police headquarters."
There was a moment's silence. Philip was apparently groping for a match, and the girl was keeping her head studiously turned away from him.
"What business is it of his?"
"There was a reward offered. Don't know as that would make much difference to Felix Martin, though. According to Stella's account, he is pretty well a millionaire already."
"It would be more useful to you, wouldn't it?" Philip remarked.
"Five hundred dollars!" Martha sighed. "Don't seem to me just now that there's much in the world you couldn't buy with five hundred dollars."
"Well, what did you tell Mr. Felix Martin?"
"Oh, I lied, sure! He'd found out the date you came into your rooms here—the day this man Romilly disappeared—but I told him that I'd known you and done work for you before then—long enough before theElletaniaever reached New York. That kind of stumped him."
"Why did you do that?" Philip demanded.
"Dunno," the girl replied, with a shrug of the shoulders. "Just a fancy.I guessed you wouldn't want him poking around."
"But supposing I had been Douglas Romilly, you might at least have divided the reward," he reminded her.
"There's money and money," Martha declared. "We spoke of that the other day. Stella's got money—now. Well, she's welcome. My time will come, I suppose, but if I can't have clean money, I haven't made up my mind yet whether I wouldn't rather try the Hudson on a foggy morning."
"Well, I am not Douglas Romilly, anyway," Philip announced.
She looked up at him almost for the first time since her entrance.
"I kind of thought you were," she admitted. "I might have saved my lies, then."
He shook his head.
"You have probably saved me from more than you know of," he replied. "I am not Douglas Romilly, but—"
"You're not Merton Ware, either," she interrupted.
"Quite right," he agreed. "I started life as Philip Merton Ware the day I took these rooms, and if the time should come," he went on, "that any one seriously set about the task of finding out exactly who I was before I was Merton Ware, you and I might as well take that little journey—was it to the Hudson, you said, on a foggy morning?—together."
They sat in complete silence for several moments, Then she threw the end of her cigarette into the fire.
"Well, I'm glad I didn't lie for nothing," she declared. "I didn't quite tumble to the Douglas Romilly stunt, though. They say he has left his business bankrupt in England and brought a fortune out here. You don't look as though you were overdone with it."
"I certainly haven't the fortune that Douglas Romilly is supposed to have got away with," he said quietly. "I have enough money for my present needs, though—enough, by-the-by, to pay you for this typing," he added, counting out the money upon the table.
"Any more stuff ready?"
"With luck there'll be some this afternoon," he promised her. "I had a bad night last night, but I think I'll be able to work later in the day."
She looked at him curiously, at his face, absolutely devoid of colour, his eyes, restless and overbright, his long, twitching fingers.
"Bad conscience or drugs?" she asked.
"Bad conscience," he acknowledged. "I've been where you have been—MissGrimes. I looked over the edge and I jumped. I'd stay where you are, ifI were you."
"Maybe I shall, maybe I shan't," she replied doggedly. "Stella wants to bring a boy around to see me. 'You bring him,' I said. 'I'll talk to him.' Then she got a little confused. Stella's kind, in her way. She came back after Mr. Martin had gone down the passage. 'See here, kid,' she said, 'you know as well as I do I can't bring any one round to see you while you are sitting around in those rags. Let me lend you—' Well, I stopped her short at that. 'My own plumes or none at all,' I told her, 'and I'd just as soon he didn't come, anyway.'"
"You're a queer girl," Philip exclaimed. "Where's your father to-day?"
"Usual place," she answered,—"in bed. He never gets up till five."
"Let me order lunch up here for both of us, from the restaurant," he suggested.
She shook her head.
"No, thanks!"
"Why not?" he persisted.
"I'm going round to the office to see if I can get any extra work."
"But you've got to lunch some time," he persisted.
She laughed a little hardly.
"Have I? We girls haven't got to eat like you men. I'll call up towards the evening and see if you've anything ready for me."
She was gone before he could stop her. He turned back to his desk and seated himself. The sight of his last finished sentence presented itself suddenly in a new light. There was a suggestiveness about it which was almost poignant. He took up his pen and began to write rapidly.
It was a few minutes after six that evening when Philip was conscious of a knock at his door. He swung around in his chair, blinking a little.
"Come in!"
Martha Grimes entered. She was in outdoor apparel, that is to say she wore her hat and a long mackintosh. She remained standing upon the threshold.
"Just looked up to see if you've got any more work ready," she explained.
He sprang to his feet and stood there, for a moment, unsteadily.
"Come in and shut the door," he ordered. "Look! Look!" he added, pointing to his table. "Thirty-three sheets! I've been working all the time. I've been living, I tell you, living God knows where!—not in this accursed little world. Here, let's pick up the sheets. There's enough work for you."
She looked at him curiously.
"Have you been in that chair ever since?" she asked.
"Ever since," he assented enthusiastically.
"Any lunch?"
"Not a scrap. Never thought about it."
"You'll make yourself sick, that's what you'll do," she declared. "Go out and get something at once."
"Never even thought about lunch," he repeated, half to himself. "Where have you been?"
"Some luck," she replied. "First place I dropped in at. Found there was a girl gone home for the day, fainted. Lots of work to do, so they just stuck me down in her chair. Three dollars they gave me. The girl's coming back to-morrow, though, worse luck."
"When did you have your lunch?"
"Haven't had any. I'm going to make myself a cup of tea now."
He reached for his hat.
"Not on your life" he exclaimed. "Come along, Miss Martha Grimes. I have written lines—you just wait till you type them! I tell you it's what I have had at the back of my head for months. It's there now on paper—living, flaring words. Come along."
"Where to?"
"We are going to eat," he insisted. "I am faint, and so are you. We are going to that same place, and we'll have lunch and dinner in one."
"Nothing doing," she snapped. "You'll see some more people who recognise you."
He waved his hand contemptuously.
"Who cares! If you don't come along with me, I'll go up town to theWaldorf or the Ritz Carlton. I'll waste my money and advertise myself.Come along—that same little quiet corner. I don't suppose your friendswill be there again."
"Stella won't," she admitted doubtfully. "She's going to Sherry's. I'd just as soon be out," she went on ruminatingly. "Shouldn't be surprised if she didn't bring that guy in, after all."
He had already rung the bell of the lift.
"Look at me!" she exclaimed ironically. "Nice sort of an object I am to take out! Got a raincoat on—though it's dry enough—because my coat's gone at the seams."
"If you don't stop talking like that," he declared, "I'll march into one of those great stores and order everything a woman wants to wear. Look at me. Did you ever see such clothes!"
"A man's different," she protested. "Besides, you've got a way with you of looking as though you could wear better clothes if you wanted to—something superior. I don't like it. I should like you better if you were common."
"You're going to like me better," he assured her, "because we are going to have a cocktail together within the next three minutes. Look at you—pale as you can stick. I bet you haven't had a mouthful of food all day. Neither have I, except a slice of bread and butter with my tea this morning. We're a nice sort of couple to talk about clothes. What we want is food."
She swayed for a moment and pretended that she tripped. He caught her arm and steadied her. She jerked it from him.
"Have your own way," she yielded.
They reached the corner of the street, plunged into the surging crowds of Broadway, passed into the huge restaurant, were once more pounced upon by a businesslike but slightly patronizing maître d'hôtel, and escorted to a remote table in a sort of annex of the room. Philip pushed the menu away.
"Two cocktails—the quickest you ever mixed in your life," he ordered."Quicker than that, mind."
The man was back again almost at once with two frosted glasses upon a tray. They laughed together almost like children as they set them down empty.
"I know what I want, and you, too, by the look of you," he continued—"a beefsteak, with some more of that green corn you gave me the other day, and fried potatoes, and Burgundy. We'll have some oysters first while we wait."
She sighed.
"I don't mean to come here with you again," she said, a little impatiently. "I don't know why I give in to you. You're not strong, you know. You are a weak man. Women will always look after you; they'll always help you in trouble—I suppose they'll always care for you. Can't think why I do what you want me to. Guess I was near starving."
He laughed.
"You don't know much about me yet," he reminded her.
"You don't know much about yourself," she retorted glibly. "Why, according to your own confession, you only started life a few weeks ago. I fancy what went before didn't count for much. You've been fretted and tied up somewhere. You haven't had the chance of getting big like so many of our American men. What are you going to do with this play of yours?"
"Miss Elizabeth Dalstan has promised to produce it," he told her.
She looked at him in some surprise.
"Elizabeth Dalstan?" she repeated. "Why, she's one of our best actresses."
"I understood so," he replied. "She has heard the story—in fact I wrote out one of the scenes with her. She is going to produce it as soon as it's finished."
"Well, all you poor idiots who write things have some fine tale to tell their typewriter," she remarked. "You seem as though you mean it, though. Where did you meet Elizabeth Dalstan?"
"I came over with her on theElletania," he answered thoughtlessly.
She gave a little start. Then she turned upon him almost in anger.
"Well, of all the simpletons!" she exclaimed. "So that's the way you give yourself away, is it? Just here from Jamaica, eh! Nothing to do with Douglas Romilly! Never heard of theElletania, did you! I'd like to see you on the grid at police headquarters for five minutes, with one of our men asking you a few friendly questions! You'd look well, you would! You ought to go about with a nurse!"
Philip had all the appearance of a guilty child.
"You see," he explained penitently, "I am new to this sort of thing.However, you know now."
"Still ready to swear that you're not Douglas Romilly, I suppose?"
"On my honour I am not," he replied.
"Kind of funny that you should have been on the steamer, after all," she jeered.
"Perhaps so, but I am not Douglas Romilly," he persisted.
She was silent for a moment, then she shrugged her shoulders.
"What do I care who your are?" she said. "Here, help me off with this raincoat, please. It's warm in here, thank goodness!"
He looked at her as she sat by his side in her plain black dress, and was impressed for the first time with a certain unsuspected grace of outline, which made him for the moment oblivious of the shabbiness of her gown.
"You have rather a nice figure," he told her with a sudden impulse of ingenuousness.
She turned upon him almost furiously. Something in his expression, however, seemed to disarm her. She closed her lips again.
"You are nothing but a child!" she declared. "You don't mean anything.I'd be a fool to be angry with you."
The waiter brought their steak. Philip was conscious of something in his companion's eyes which almost horrified him. It was just that gleam of hungry desire which has starvation for its background.
"Don't let's talk," he pleaded. "There isn't any conversation in the world as good as this."
The waiter served them and withdrew, casting a curious glance behind. They were, from his point of view, a strange couple, for, cosmopolitan though the restaurant was, money was plentiful in the neighbourhood, and clients as shabby as these two seldom presented themselves. He pointed them out to a maître d'hôtel, who in his turn whispered a few words concerning them to a dark, lantern-jawed man, with keen eyes and a hard mouth, who was dining by himself. The latter glanced at them and nodded.
"Thank you, Charles," he said, "I've had my eye on them. The girl's a pauper, daughter of that old fool Grimes, the actor. Does a little typewriting—precious little, I should think, from the look of her. The man's interesting. Don't talk about them. Understand?"
The maître d'hôtel bowed.
"I understand, Inspector. Not much any one can tell you, sir."
"Pays his bill in American money, I suppose?" the diner asked.
"I'll ascertain for you, Mr. Dane," Charles replied. "I believe he is anEnglishman."
"Name of Merton Ware," the inspector agreed, nodding, "just arrived fromJamaica. Writes some sort of stuff which the girl with him typewrites.That's his story. He's probably as harmless as a baby."
Charles bowed and moved away. His smile was inscrutable.
New York became a changed city to Philip. Its roar and its turmoil, its babel of tongues speaking to him always in some alien language, were suddenly hushed! He was no longer conscious of the hard unconcern of a million faces, of the crude buildings in the streets, the cutting winds, the curious, depressing sense of being on a desert island, the hermit clutching at the sleeves of imaginary multitudes. A few minutes' journey in a cable car which seemed to crawl, a few minutes' swift walking along the broad thoroughfare of Fifth Avenue, where his feet seemed to fall upon the air and the passersby seemed to smile upon him like real human beings, and he was in her room. It was only an hotel sitting room, after all, but eloquent of her, a sitting room filled with great bowls of roses, with comfortable easy-chairs, furniture of rose-coloured satin, white walls, and an English fire upon the grate. Elizabeth was in New York, and the world moved differently.
She came out to him from an inner room almost at once. His eyes swept over her feverishly. He almost held his breath. Then he gave a great sigh of satisfaction. She came with her hands outstretched, a welcoming smile upon her lips. She was just as he had expected to find her. There was nothing in her manner to indicate that they had not parted yesterday.
"Welcome to New York, my dramatist!" she exclaimed. "I am here, you see, to the day, almost to the hour."
He stood there, holding her hands. His eyes seemed to be devouring her.
"Go on talking to me," he begged. "Let me hear you speak. You can't think—you can't imagine how often in the middle of the night, I have waked up and thought of you, and the cold shivers have come because, after all, I fancied that you must be a dream, that you didn't really exist, that that voyage had never existed. Go on talking."
"You foolish person!" she laughed, patting his hands affectionately. "But then, of course, you are a little overwrought. I am very real, I can assure you. I have been in Chicago, playing, but there hasn't been a night when I haven't thought of the times when we used to talk together in the darkness, when you let me into your life, and I made up my mind to try and help you. Foolish person! Sit down in that great easy-chair and draw it up to the fire."
He sank into it with a little sigh of content. She threw herself on to the couch opposite to him. Her hands drooped down a little wearily on either side, her head was thrown back. Against the background of rose-silk cushions, her cheeks seemed unexpectedly pale.
"I am tired with travelling," she murmured, "and I hate Chicago, and I have worried about you. Day by day I have read the papers. Everything has gone well?"
"So far as I know," he answered. "I did exactly as we planned—or rather as you planned. The papers have been full of the disappearance of Douglas Romilly. You read how wonderfully it has all turned out? Fate has provided him with a real reason for disappearing. It seems that the business was bankrupt."
"You mustn't forget, though," she reminded him, "that that also supplies a considerable motive for tracking him down. He is supposed to have at least twenty thousand pounds with him."
"I have all the papers," he went on. "They prove that he knew the state the business was in. They prove that he really intended to disappear in New York. The money stands to the credit of Merton Ware—and another at a bank with which his firm apparently had had no connections, a small bank in Wall Street."
"So that," she remarked, "is where you get your pseudonym from?"
"It makes the identification so easy," he pointed out, "and no one knew of it except he. I could easily get a witness presently to prove that I am Merton Ware."
"You haven't drawn the money yet, then?"
"I haven't been near the bank," he replied. "I still have over a thousand dollars—money he had with him. Sometimes I think that if I could I'd like to leave that twenty thousand pounds where it is. I should like some day, if I could do so without suspicion, to let the creditors of the firm have it back again. What do you think?"
She nodded.
"I would rather you didn't touch it yourself," she agreed. "I think you'll find, too, that you'll be able to earn quite enough without wanting it. Nothing disturbing has happened to you at all, then?"
"Once I had a fright," he told her. "I was in a restaurant close to my hotel. I was there with a young woman who is typing the play for me."
She looked towards him incredulously.
"You were there with a typewriter?" she exclaimed.
"I suppose it seems queer," he admitted. "It didn't to me. She is a plain, shabby, half starved little thing, fighting her own battle bravely. She came to me for work—she lives in the flat below—and it seemed to me that she was just as hungry for a kind word as I was lonely, and I took her out with me. Twice I have taken her. Her name is Miss Grimes."
"I am not in the least sure that I approve," she said, "but go on."
"A friend of hers came into the restaurant, a girl in the chorus of a musical comedy here, and she had with her a young man. I recognised him at once. We didn't come across one another much, but he was on the steamer."
Elizabeth's face was full of concern.
"Go on."
"He asked me twice if I wasn't Mr. Romilly. I assured him that he was mistaken. I don't think I gave myself away. The next day he went to see the girl I was with, Martha Grimes."
"Well, what did she tell him?"
"She told him that she had been typing my work for over a month, that I had come from Jamaica, and that my name was Merton Ware."
Elizabeth gazed into the fire for several moments, and Philip watched her. It was a woman's face, grave and thoughtful, a little perturbed just then, as though by some unwelcome thought. Presently she looked back at him, looked into his eyes long and earnestly.
"My friend," she said, "you are like no one else on earth. Perhaps you are one of those horrible people who have what they call an unholy influence over my sex. You have known this girl for a matter of a few days, and she lies for you. And there's five hundred dollars reward. I suppose she knew about that?"
"Yes, she knew," he admitted. "She simply isn't that sort. I suppose I realised that, or I shouldn't have been kind to her."
"It's a puzzle," she went on. "I think there must be something in you of the weakling, you know, something that appeals to the mothering instinct in women. I know that my first feeling for you was that I wanted to help you. Tell me what you think of yourself, Mr. Philip Merton Ware? Are you a faithful person? Are you conscientious? Have you a heart, I wonder? How much of the man is there underneath that strong frame of yours? Are you going to take just the things that are given you in life, and make no return? For the moment, you see, I am forgetting that you are my friend and that I like you. I am thinking of you from the point of view of an actress—as a psychical problem. Philip, you idiot!" she broke off, suddenly stamping her foot, "don't sit there looking at me with your great eyes. Tell me you are glad I've come back. Tell me you feel something, for goodness' sake!"
He was on his knees before she could check him, his arms, his lips praying for her. She thrust him back.
"It was my fault," she declared, "but don't, please. Yes, of course you have feelings. I don't know why you tempted me to that little outburst."
"You'll tempt me to more than that," he cried passionately. "Do you think it's for your help that I've thought of you? Do you think it's because you're an angel to me, because you've comforted me in my darkest, most miserable hours that I've dreamed of you and craved for you? There's more than that in my thoughts, dear. It's because you are you, yourself, that I've longed for you through the aching hours of the night, that I've sat and written like a man beside himself just for the joy of thinking that the words I wrote would be spoken by you. Oh! if you want me to tell you what I feel—"
She suddenly leaned forward, took his head between her hands and kissed his forehead.
"Now get back, please, to your chair," she begged. "You've stilled the horrible, miserable little doubt that was tearing at my heartstrings. I just had it before, once or twice, and then—isn't it foolish!—your telling me about this little typewriter girl! I must go and see her. We must be kind to her."
He resumed his seat with a little sigh.
"She thought a great deal more of me and my work when I told her that you were probably going to act in my play."
Her expression changed. She was more serious, at the same time more eager.
"Ah! The play!" she exclaimed. "I can see that you have brought some of it."
He drew the roll of manuscript from his pocket.
"Shall I read it?" he suggested.
She almost snatched it away. "No! I can't wait for that. Give it to me, quickly."
She leaned forward so that the firelight fell upon the pages. Little strands of soft brown hair drooped over her face. In studying her, Philip almost forgot his own anxiety. He had known so few women, yet he had watched so many from afar off, endowed them with their natural qualities, built up their lives and tastes for them, and found them all so sadly wanting. To him, Elizabeth represented everything that was desirable in her sex, from the flowing lines of her beautiful body to the sympathy which seemed to be always shining out of her eyes. Notwithstanding her strength, she was so exquisitely and entirely feminine, a creature of silk and laces, free from any effort of provocativeness, yet subtly, almost clamorously human. He forgot, in those few moments, that she had become the arbitress of his material fate—that he was a humble author, watching the effect of his first attempts upon a mistress in her profession. He remembered only that she was the woman who was filling his life, stealing into every corner of it, permeating him with love, pointing him onwards towards a life indescribable, unrealisable….
She swung suddenly towards him. There was a certain amount of enthusiasm in her face but even more marked was her relief.
"Oh! I am so glad," she cried. "You know, I have had qualms. When you told me the story in your own words, picking your language so carefully, and building it all up before me, well, you know what I said. I gave you more than hope—I promised you success. And then, when I got away into the hard, stagey world of Chicago, and my manager talked business to me, and my last playwright preached of technique, I began to wonder whether, after all, you could bring your ideas together like this, whether you would have a sense of perspective—you know what I mean, don't you? And you have it, and the play is going to be wonderful, and I shall produce it. Why don't you look pleased, Mr. Author? You are going to be famous."
He smiled.
"I don't care about fame," he said. "And for the rest, I think I knew."
"Conceited!" she exclaimed.
"It wasn't that," he protested. "It was simply when I sat down in that little room, high up over the roofs and buildings of a strange city, shut myself in and told myself that it was for you—well, the thoughts came too easily. They tumbled over one another. And when I looked away from my work, I saw the people moving around me, and I knew that I had made my dreams real, and that's the great thing, isn't it?… Elizabeth!"
"Well?"
"I am lonely in that little room."
"You lonely, taking out typewriters to dine!" she mocked tenderly.
"It is lonely," he repeated, "and I am afraid of you here in all this luxury. I am so far away. I come from my attic to this, and I am afraid. Do you know why?"
She sat quite still for a moment. Dimly she felt the presage of a coming change in their relations. Up to now she had been the mistress, she had held him so easily in check with her practised skill, with an unfinished sentence, a look, a touch. And now the man was rising up in him, and she felt her powers weaken.
"Shall I change my abode?" she murmured.
"Ah! but you would be just as wonderful and as far away even if we changed places—if you sat in my attic and I took your place here. That isn't why I torture myself, why I am always asking myself if you are real, if the things we talk about are real, if the things we feel belong to ourselves, well up from our own hearts for one another or are just the secondary emotions of other people we catch up without knowing why. This is foolish, but you understand—you do understand. It is because you keep me so far away from yourself, when my fingers are burning for yours, when even to touch your face, to feel your cheek against mine, would banish every fear I have ever had. Elizabeth, you do understand! I have never kissed you, I have never held you for one moment in my arms—and I love you!"
He was leaning over her chair and she held him tightly by the shoulders. There was nothing left of that hidden fear in his dark eyes. They shone now with another light, and she began to tremble.
"I wanted to wait a little, Philip, but if you feel like that—well, I can't."
He took her silently into his arms. With the half closing of her eyes, the first touch of her responsive lips, himself dimly conscious of the change, he passed into the world where stronger men live.
Three months later, a very different Philip stood in the smaller of a handsome suite of reception rooms in a fashionable Fifth Avenue hotel. He was wearing evening clothes of the most approved cut and carried himself with a dignity and assurance entirely transforming. The distinction of birth and breeding, little apparent in those half-starved, passionate days of his misery, had come easily to the surface. His shoulders, too, seemed to have broadened, and his face had lost its cadaverous pallor.
The apartment in which he stood was plainly but handsomely furnished as a small withdrawing room. On the oak chiffonier stood a silver tray on which were half a dozen frosted cocktails. Through the curtains was apparent a room beyond, in which a round table, smothered with flowers, was arranged for supper; in the distance, from the public restaurant, came the sound of softly played music. Philip glanced at the clock. The whole of the anxieties of this momentous evening had passed. Telephone messages had reached him every quarter of an hour. The play was a great success. Elizabeth was coming to him with her producer and a few theatrical friends, flushed with triumph. They were all to meet for the first time that night the man who for the last three months had lived as a hermit—Merton Ware, the author of "The House of Shams," the new-found dramatist.
A maître d'hôtel appeared in the space between the two rooms, and bowed.
"Everything is quite ready, Mr. Ware," he said, in the friendly yet deferential manner of an American head-waiter. "Won't you take a cocktail, sir, while you are waiting?"
"Very thoughtful of you, Louis. I think I will," Philip assented, taking a little case from his pocket and lighting a cigarette.
The man passed him a glass upon a small salver.
"You'll pardon the liberty, I am sure, sir," he continued, dropping his voice a little. "I've just heard that 'The House of Shams' seems to be a huge success, sir. If I might take the liberty of offering my congratulations!"
Philip smiled genially.
"You are the first, Louis," he said. "Thank you very much indeed."
"I think you will find the supper everything that could be desired, Mr. Ware," the man went on. "Our head chef, Monsieur Raconnot, has given it his personal attention. The wine will be slightly iced, as you desired. I shall be outside in the corridor to announce the guests."
"Capital, Louis!" Ware replied, sipping his cocktail. "It will be another quarter of an hour yet before we see anything of them, I am afraid."
The man disappeared and left Philip once more alone. He looked through the walls of the room as though, indeed, he could see into the packed theatre and could hear the cries for "Author!" which even then were echoing through the house. From the moment when Elizabeth, abandoning her reserve, had given him the love he craved, a new strength seemed to have shone out of the man. Step by step he had thought out subtly and with infinite care every small detail of his life. It was he who had elected to live those three months in absolute seclusion. It was he, indirectly, who had arranged that many more photographs of Douglas Romilly, the English shoe manufacturer, should appear in the newspapers. One moment's horror he had certainly had. He could see the little paragraph now, almost lost in the shoals of more important news:
Yesterday the police recovered the body of a man who had apparently been dead for some weeks, from a canal close to Detton Magna. The body was unrecognisable but it is believed that the remains are those of Mr. Philip Romilly, the missing art teacher from London, who is alleged to have committed suicide in January last.
The thought of that gruesome find scarcely blanched his cheeks. His nerves now were stronger and tenser things. He crushed back those memories with all the strength of his will. Whatever might lie behind, he had struck for the future which he meant to live and enjoy. They were only weaklings who brooded over an unalterable past. It was for the present and the near future that he lived, and both, in that moment, were more alluring than ever before. Even his intellectual powers seemed to have developed in his new-found happiness. The play which he had written, every line of which appeared to gain in vital and literary force towards its conclusion, was only the first of his children. Already other images and ideas were flowing into his brain. The power of creation was triumphantly throwing out its tendrils. He was filled with an amazing and almost inspired confidence. He was ready to start upon fresh work that hour, to-morrow, or when he chose. And before him now was the prospect of stimulating companionship. Elizabeth and he had decided that the time had come for him to take his fate into his hands. He was to be introduced to the magnates of the dramatic profession, to become a clubman in the world's most hospitable city, to mix freely in the circles where he would find himself in constant association with the keenest brains and most brilliant men of letters in the world. He was safe. They had both decided it.
He walked to the mirror and looked at himself. The nervous, highly-strung, half-starved, neurotic stripling had become the perfectly assured, well-mannered, and well-dressed man of the world. He had studied various details with a peculiar care, suffered a barber to take summary measures with his overlong black hair, had accustomed himself to the use of an eyeglass, which hung around his neck by a thin, black ribbon. Men might talk of likenesses, men who were close students of their fellows, yet there was no living person who could point to him and say—"You are, beyond a shadow of doubt, a man with whom I travelled on theElletania." The thing was impossible.
Louis once more made a noiseless appearance. There was the slightest of frowns upon his face.
"A gentleman wishes a word with you before the arrival of your guests,Mr. Ware," he announced.
"A journalist?" Philip enquired carelessly.
"I do not think so, sir."
Even as he spoke the door was opened and closed again. The man who had entered bowed slightly to Philip. He was tall and clean-shaven, self-assured, and with manner almost significantly reserved. He held a bowler hat in his hand and glanced towards Louis. He had the air of being somewhat out of place in so fashionable a rendezvous.
"Good evening, Mr. Ware!" he began. "Could I have just a word with you?"
Philip nodded to Louis, who at once left the room. The newcomer drew a little nearer.
"My name, sir," he said, "is Dane—Edward Dane."
Philip bowed politely. He was just a little annoyed at the intrusion, an annoyance which he failed altogether to conceal.
"What do you want with me?" he asked. "I am expecting some friends to supper in about ten minutes."
"Ten minutes will perhaps be sufficient for what I have to say," the other promised. "You don't know me, then, Mr. Ware?"
"Never saw you before, to the best of my knowledge," Philip replied nonchalantly. "Are you a journalist?"
The man laid his hat upon a corner of the table.
"I am a detective," he said, "attached to the Cherry Street headquarters.Your last rooms, Mr. Ware, were in my beat."
Philip nodded with some slight indication of interest. He faced his ordeal with the courage of a man of steel.
"That so?" he remarked indifferently. "Well, Mr. Dane, I have heard a good deal about you American detectives. Pleased to meet you. What can I do for you?"
The detective eyed Philip steadfastly. There was just the shadow of something that looked like admiration in his hard, grey eyes.
"Well, Mr. Ware," he said, "nothing that need disturb your supper party, I am sure. Over in this country we sometimes do things in an unusual way. That's why I am paying you this visit. I have been watching you for exactly three months and fourteen days."
"Watching me?" Philip repeated.
"Precisely! No idea why, I suppose?"
"Not the slightest."
The detective glanced towards the clock. Barely two minutes had passed.
"Well," he explained, "I got on your tracks quick enough when you skipped from the Waldorf and blossomed out in a second-rate tenement house as Merton Ware."
"So I was at the Waldorf, was I?" Philip murmured.
"You crossed from Liverpool on theElletania," the man continued, "registered at the Waldorf as Mr. Douglas Romilly of the Douglas Romilly Shoe Company, went to your room, changed your clothes, and disappeared. Of course, a disappearance of that sort," he went on tolerantly, "might be possible in London. In New York, to even attempt it is farcical."
"Dear me," remarked Philip, "this is very interesting. Let me ask you this question, though. If you were so sure of your facts, why didn't you arrest me at once instead of just watching me?"
The man's eyes were like gimlets. He seemed as though he were trying, with curious and professional intensity, to read the thoughts in Philip's brain.
"There is no criminal charge against Douglas Romilly that I know of," he said.
"There's a considerable reward offered for his discovery," Philip reminded him.
"I can claim that at any moment," the man replied. "I have had my reasons for waiting. It's partly those reasons that have brought me here. For one thing, Mr. Douglas Romilly was supposed to be able to put his hand on a matter of a hundred thousand dollars somewhere in New York. You haven't shown many signs up till now, Mr. Ware, of having any such sum in your possession."
"I see," Philip assented. "You wanted the money as well."
"The creditors of the Douglas Romilly Shoe Company are wanting it pretty badly," the man proceeded, "but that wasn't all. I wanted to find out what your game was. That I don't know, even now. That is why I have come to you. Have I the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Douglas Romilly?"
"I really don't see," Philip protested thoughtfully, "why I should go into partnership with you in this affair. You see, in the long run, our interests might not be altogether identical."
Mr. Dane smiled grimly.
"That's a fairly shrewd calculation, Mr. Ware," he admitted. "You ain't bound to answer any question you don't want to. This is just a friendly chat and no more."
"Besides," Philip continued, lighting another cigarette, "I think I understood you to say that you had already arrived at the conclusion that I was Douglas Romilly?"
"Not precisely that," the detective replied. "All that I discovered was that you were the man who registered at the Waldorf Hotel as Mr. Douglas Romilly."
"Well, the only name I choose to acknowledge at present is the name of Merton Ware," Philip declared. "If you think there is any mystery about me, any connection with the gentleman whom I believe you call Mr. Douglas Romilly, well, the matter is one for your investigation. You will forgive me if I remind you that my guests will be here in a matter of a few minutes, and permit me to ask you one more question. Why do you come here to me in this very unofficial manner? If I am really an impostor, you are giving me every opportunity of clearing out."
Mr. Edward Dane shook his head. He was fingering the brim of his hat.
"Oh, no, Mr. Ware!" he declared smoothly. "Our detective system may have some faults, but when a man's name is put on the list where yours figures, he has not one chance in a million of leaving the country or of gaining any place of hiding. I shall know where you lunch to-morrow and with whom you dine, and with whom you spend your time. The law, sir, will keep its eye upon you."
"Really, that seems very friendly," Philip said coolly. "Shall I have the privilege of your personal surveillance?"
"I think not, Mr. Ware. To tell you the truth, this is rather a p.p.c. visit. I've booked my passage on theElletania, sailing to-morrow from New York. I am taking a trip over to England to make a few enquiries round about the spot where this Mr. Douglas Romilly hails from—Detton Magna, isn't it?"
Philip made no reply, yet even his silence might well have been the silence of indifference.
"At the last moment," the detective concluded, "it flashed in upon me that there might be some ridiculous explanation of the few little points about your case which, I must confess, have puzzled me. For that reason, I decided to seek an interview with you before I left. You have, however, I gather, nothing to say to me?"
"Nothing at all, Mr. Dane, except to wish you a pleasant voyage," Philip declared. "I won't detain you a moment longer. I hear my guests in the corridor. Good night, sir!" he added, opening the door. "I appreciate your call very much. Come and see me again when you return from England."
Mr. Dane lingered for a moment upon the threshold, hat in hand, a somewhat ominous figure. There was no attempt at a handshake between the two men. The detective was imperturbable. Philip, listening to Elizabeth's voice, had shown his first sign of impatience.
"I shall surely do that, Mr. Ware!" the other promised, as he passed out.
The door closed. Philip stood for a moment in the empty room, listening to the man's retreating footsteps. Then he turned slowly around. His cheeks were blanched, his eyes were glazed with reminiscent horror. He looked through the wall of the room—a long way back.
"We shall find Mr. Ware in here, I expect." He could hear the voices of his approaching guests.
He ground his heel into the carpet and swung around. He anticipated Louis, threw open the curtain, and stood there waiting to welcome his guests, a smile upon his lips, his hands outstretched towards Elizabeth.