263Chapter XXI
Having the choice between going southward either by Fifth Avenue or by Madison Avenue, Letty took the former for the reason that there were no electric cars crashing through it, so that she would be less observed. It seemed to her important to get as far from East Sixty-seventh Street as possible before letting a human glance take note of her personality, even as a drifting silhouette.
In this she was fortunate. For the hour between one and two in the early morning this part of Fifth Avenue was unusually empty. There was not a pedestrian, and only a rare motor car. When one of the latter flashed by she shrank into the shadow of a great house, lest some eye of miraculous discernment should light on her. It seemed to her that all New York must be ready to read her secret, and be on the watch to turn her back.
She didn’t know why she was going southward rather than northward, except that southward lay the Brooklyn Bridge, and beyond the Brooklyn Bridge lay Beehive Valley, and within Beehive Valley the Excelsior Studio, and in the Excelsior Studio the faint possibility of a job. She was already thinking in the terms that went with the old gray rag and the battered hat, and had come back to them as to her mother-tongue. In forsaking paradise for the limbo of outcast souls she was at least supported264by the fact that in the limbo of outcast souls she was at home.
She was not frightened. Now that she was out of the prince’s palace she had suddenly become sensationless. She was like a soul which having reached the other side of death is conscious only of release from pain. She was no longer walking on blades; she was no longer attempting the impossible. Between her and the life which Barbara Walbrook understood the few steps she had taken had already marked the gulf. The gulf had always been there, yawning,unbridgeable, only that she, Letty Gravely, had tried to shut her eyes to it. She had tried to shut her eyes to it in the hope that the man she loved might come to do the same. She knew now how utterly foolish any such hope had been.
She would have perceived this earlier had he not from time to time revived the hope when it was about to flicker out. More than once he had confessed to depending on her sympathy. More than once he had told her that she drew out something he had hardly dared think he possessed, but which made him more of a man. Once he harked back to the dust flower, saying that as its humble and heavenly bloom brightened the spots bereft of beauty so she cheered the lonely and comfortless places in his heart. He had said these things not as one who is in love, but as one who is grateful, only that between gratitude and love she had purposely kept from drawing the distinction.
She did not reproach him. On the contrary, she blessed him even for being grateful. That meed he gave her at least, and that he should give her anything265at all was happiness. Leaving his palace she did so with nothing but grateful thoughts on her own side. He had smiled on her always; he had been considerate, kindly, and very nearly tender. For what he called the wrong he had done her, which she held to be no wrong at all, he would have made amends so magnificent that the mere acceptance would have overwhelmed her. Since he couldn’t give her the one thing she craved her best course was like the little mermaid to tremble into foam, and become a spirit of the wind.
It was what she was doing. She was going without leaving a trace. A girl more important than she couldn’t have done it so easily. A Barbara Walbrook had she attempted a freak so mad, would be discovered within twenty-four hours. It was one of the advantages of extreme obscurity that you came and went without notice. No matter how conspicuously a Letty Gravely passed it would not be remembered that she had gone by.
With regard to this, however, she made one reserve. She couldn’t disappear forever, not any more than Judith of Bethulia when she went to the tent of Holofernes. The history of Judith was not in Letty’s mind, because she had never heard of it; there was only the impulse to the same sort of sacrifice. Since Israel could be delivered only in one way, that way Judith had been ready to take. To Letty her prince was her Israel. One day she would have to inform him that the Holofernes of his captivity was slain—that at last he was free.
There were lines along which Letty was not imaginative, and one of those lines ran parallel to Judith’s experience. When it came to love at first sight, she266could invent as many situations as there were millionaires in the subway. In interpreting a part she had views of her own beyond any held by Luciline Lynch. As to matters of dress her fancy was boundless.
Her limitations were in the practical. Among practical things “going to the bad” was now her chief preoccupation. She had always understood that when you made up your mind to do it you had only to present yourself. The way was broad; the gate wide open. There were wicked people on every side eager to pull you through. You had only to go out into the street, after dark especially—and there you were!
Having walked some three or four blocks she made out the figure of a man coming up the hill toward her. Her heart stopped beating; her knees quaked. This was doom. She would meet it, of course, since her doom would be the prince’s salvation; but she couldn’t help trembling as she watched it coming on.
By the light of an arc-lamp she saw that he was in evening dress. The wicked millionaires who, in motion-pictures, were the peril of young girls, were always so attired. Iphigenia could not have trodden to the altar with a more consuming mental anguish than Letty as she dragged herself toward this approaching fate; but she did so drag herself without mercy. For a minute as he drew near she was on the point of begging him to spare her; but she saved herself in time from this frustration of her task.
The man, a young stock-broker in a bad financial plight, scarcely noticed that a female figure was passing him. Had the morrow’s market been less a matter of life and death to him he might have thrown her a267glance; but as it was she did not come within the range of his consciousness. To her amazement, and even to her consternation, Letty saw him go onward up the hill, his eyes straight before him, and his profile sharply cut in the electric light.
She explained the situation by the fact that he hadn’t seen her at all. That a man could actuallyseea girl, in such unusual conditions, and still go by inoffensively, was as contrary to all she had heard of life as it would have been to the principles of a Turkish woman to suppose that one of this sex could behold her face and not fall fiercely in love with her. As, however, two men were now coming up the hill together Letty was obliged to re-organize her forces to meet the new advance.
She couldn’t reason this time that they hadn’t seen her, because their heads turned in her direction, and the intonation of the words she couldn’t articulately hear was that of faint surprise. Further than that there was no incident. They were young men too, also in evening dress, and of the very type of which all her warnings had bidden her beware. The immunity from insult was almost a matter for chagrin.
As she approached Fifty-ninth Street encounters were nearly as numerous as they would have been in daylight; but Letty went on her way as if, instead of the old gray rag, she wore the magic cloak of invisibility. So it was during the whole of the long half mile between Fifty-ninth Street and Forty-second Street. In spite of the fact that she was the only unescorted woman she saw, no invitation “to go to the bad” was proffered her. “There’s quite a trick to it,”268Steptoe had said, in the afternoon; and she began to think that there was.
At Forty-second Street, for no reason that she could explain, she turned into the lower and quieter spur of Madison Avenue, climbing and descending Murray Hill. Here she was almost alone. Motor-car traffic had practically ceased; foot-passengers there were none; on each side of the street the houses were somber and somnolent. The electric lamps flared as elsewhere, but with little to light up.
Her sense of being lost became awesome. It began to urge itself in on her that she was going nowhere, and had nowhere to go. She was back in the days when she had walked away from Judson Flack’s, without the same heart in the adventure. She recalled now that on that day she had felt young, daring, equal to anything that fate might send; now she felt curiously old and experienced. All her illusions had been dished up to her at once and been blown away as by a hurricane. The little mermaid who had loved the prince and failed to win his love in return could have nothing more to look forward to.
She was drifting, drifting, when suddenly from the shadow of a flight of broad steps a man stalked out and confronted her. He confronted her with such evident intention that she stopped. Not till she stopped could she see that he was a policeman in his summer uniform.
“Where you goin’, sister?”
“I ain’t goin’ nowheres.”
She fell back on the old form of speech as on another tongue.
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“Where you come from then?”
Feeling now that she had gone to the bad, or was at the beginning of that process, she made a reply that would seem probable. “I come from a fella I’ve been—I’ve been livin’ with.”
“Gee!” The tone was of deepest pity. “Darned sorry to hear you’re in that box, a nice girl like you.”
“I ain’t such a nice girl as you might think.”
“Gee! Anyone can see you’re a nice girl, just from the way you walk.”
Letty was astounded. Was the way you walked part of Steptoe’s “trick to it?” In the hope of getting information she said, still in the secondary tongue: “What’s the matter with the way I walk?”
“There’s nothin’ the matter with it. That’s the trouble. Anyone can see that you’re not a girl that’s used to bein’ on the street at this hour of the night. Ain’t you goin’anywheres?”
Fear of the police-station suddenly made her faint. If she wasn’t goinganywhereshe might arrest her. She bethought her of Steptoe’s scrawled address. “Yes, I’m goin’ there.”
As he stepped under the arc-light to read it she saw that he was a fatherly man, on the distant outskirts of youth, who might well have a family of growing boys and girls.
“That’s a long ways from here,” he said, handing the scrap of paper back to her. “Why don’t you take the subway? At this time of night there’s a train every quarter of an hour.”
“I ain’t got no bones. I’m footin’ it.”
“Footin’ it all the way to Red Point? You? Gee!”
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Once more Letty felt that about her there was something which put her out of the key of her adventure.
“Well, what’s there againstmefootin’ it?”
“There’s nothin’ against you footin’ it—on’y you don’t seem that sort. Haven’t you got as much as two bits? It wouldn’t come to that if you took the subway over here at––”
“Well, I haven’t got two bits; nor one bit; nor nothin’ at all; so I guess I’ll be lightin’ out.”
She had nodded and passed, when a stride of his long legs brought him up to her again. “Well, see here, sister! If you haven’t got two bits, take this. I can’t have you trampin’ all the way over to Red Point—notyou!”
Before knowing what had happened Letty found her hand closing over a silver half-dollar, while her benefactor, as if ashamed of his act, was off again on his beat. She ran after him. Her excitement was such that she forgot the secondary language.
“Oh, I couldn’t accept this from you. Please! Don’t make me take it. I’m—” She felt it the moment for making the confession, and possibly getting hints—“I’m—I’m goin’ to the bad, anyhow.”
“Oh, so that’s the talk! I thought you said you’d gone to the bad already. Oh, no, sister; you don’t put that over on me, not a nice looker like you!”
She was almost sobbing. “Well, I’m going—if—if I can find the way. I wish you’d tell me if there’s a trick to it.”
“There’s one trick I’ll tell you, and that’s the way to Red Point.”
“I know that already.”
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“Then, if you know that already, you’ve got my four bits, which is more than enough to take you there decent.” He lifted his hand, with a warning forefinger. “Remember now, little sister, as long as you spend that half dollar it’ll bind you to keep good.”
He tramped off into the darkness, leaving Letty perplexed at the ways of wickedness, as she began once more to drift southward.
But she drifted southward with a new sense of misgiving. Danger was mysteriously coy, and she didn’t know how to court it. True, there was still time enough, but the debut was not encouraging. When she had gone forth from Judson Flack’s she had felt sure that adventure lay in wait for her, and Rashleigh Allerton had responded almost instantaneously. Now she had no such confidence. On the contrary; all her premonitions worked the other way. Perhaps it was the old gray rag. Perhaps it was her lack of feminine appeal. Men had never flocked about her as they flocked about some girls, like bees about flowers. If she was a flower, she was a dust flower, a humble thing, at home in the humblest places, and never regarded as other than a weed.
She wandered into Fourth Avenue, reaching Astor Place. From Astor Place she descended the city by the long artery of Lafayette Street, in which teams rumbled heavily, and all-night workers shouted raucously to each other in foreign languages. One of a band of Italians digging in the roadway, with colored lanterns about them, called out something at her, the nature of which she could only infer from the laughter of his compatriots. Here too she began to notice other272women like herself, shabby, furtive, unescorted, with terrible eyes, aimlessly drifting from nowhere to nowhere. There were not many of them; only one at long intervals; but they frightened her more than the men.
They frightened her because she saw what she must look like herself, a thing too degraded for any man to want. She was not that yet, perhaps; but it was what she might become. They were not wholly new to her, these women; and they all had begun at some such point as that from which she was starting out. Very well! She was ready to go this road, if only by this road her prince could be freed from her. Since she couldn’t give up everything for him in one way, she would do it in another. The way itself was more or less a matter of indifference—not entirely, perhaps, but more or less. If she could set him free in any way she would be content.
The rumble and stir of Lafayette Street alarmed her because it was so foreign. The upper part of the town had been empty and eerie. This quarter was eerie, alien, and occupied. It was difficult for her to tell what so many people were doing abroad because their aims seemed different from those of daylight. What she couldn’t understand struck her as nefarious; and what struck her as nefarious filled her with the kind of terror that comes in dreams.
By these Italians, Slavs, and Semites she was more closely scrutinized than she had been elsewhere. She was scrutinized, too, with a hint of hostility in the scrutiny. In their jabber of tongues they said things about her as she passed. Wild-eyed women, working273by the flare of torches with their men, resented her presence in the street. They insulted her in terms she couldn’t understand, while the men laughed in frightful, significant jocosity. The unescorted women alone looked at her with a hint of friendliness. One of them, painted, haggard, desperate, awful, stopped as if to speak to her; but Letty sped away like a snowbird from a shrike.
At a corner where the cross-street was empty she turned out of this haunted highway, presently finding herself lost in a congeries of old-time streets of which she had never heard. Her only knowledge of New York was of streets crossing each other at right angles, numbered, prosaic, leaving no more play to the fancy than a sum in arithmetic. Here the ways were narrow, the buildings tall, the night effects fantastic. In the lamp light she could read signs bearing names as unpronounceable as the gibbering monkey-speech in Lafayette Street. Warehouses, offices, big wholesale premises, lairs of highly specialized businesses which only the few knew anything about, offered no place for human beings to sleep, and little invitation to the prowler. Now and then a marauding cat darted from shadow to shadow, but otherwise she was as nearly alone as she could imagine herself being in the heart of a great city.
Still she went on and on. In the effort to escape this overpowering solitude she turned one corner and then another, now coming out beneath the elevated trains, now on the outskirts of docks where she was afraid of sailors. She was afraid of being alone, and afraid of the thoroughfares where there were people.274On the whole she was more afraid of the thoroughfares where there were people, though her fear soon entered the unreasoning phase, in which it is fear and nothing else. Still headed vaguely southward she zigzagged from street to street, helpless, terrified, longing for day.
She was in a narrow street of which the high weird gables on either side recalled her impressions on opening a copy ofFaust, illustrated by Gustave Doré, which she found on the library table in East Sixty-seventh Street. On her right the elevated and the docks were not far away, on the left she could catch, through an occasional side street the distant gleam of Broadway. Being afraid of both she kept to the deep canyon of unreality and solitude, though she was afraid of that. At least she was alone; and yet to be alone chilled her marrow and curdled her blood.
Suddenly she heard the clank of footsteps. She stopped to listen, making them out as being on the other side of the street, and advancing. Before she had dared to move on again a man emerged from the half light and came abreast of her. As he stopped to look across at her, Letty hurried on.
The man also went on, but on glancing over her shoulder to make sure that she was safe she saw him pause, cross to her side of the street, and begin to follow her. That he followed her was plain from his whole plan of action. The ring of his footsteps told her that he was walking faster than she, though in no precise hurry to overtake her. Rather, he seemed to be keeping her in sight, and watching for some opportunity.
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It was exactly what men did when they robbed and murdered unprotected women. She had read of scores of such cases, and had often imagined herself as being stalked by this kind of ghoul. Now the thing which she had greatly feared having come upon her she was nearly hysterical. If she ran he would run after her. If she only walked on he would overtake her. Before she could reach the docks on one side or Broadway on the other, where she might find possible defenders, he could easily have strangled her and rifled her fifty cents.
It was still unreasoning fear, but fear in which there was another kind of prompting, which made her wheel suddenly and walk back towards him. She noticed that as she did so, he stopped, wavered, but came on again.
Before the obscurity allowed of her seeing what type of man he was she cried out, with a half sob:
“Oh, mister, I’m so afraid! I wish you’d help me.”
“Sure!” The tone had the cheery fraternal ring of commonplace sincerity. “That’s what I turned round for. I says, that girl’s lost, I says. There’s places down here that’s dangerous, and she don’t know where she is.”
Hysterical fear became hysterical relief. “And you’re not going to murder me?”
“Gee! Me? What’d I murder you for? I’m a plumber.”
His tone making it seem impossible for a plumber to murder anyone she panted now from a sense of reassurance and security. She could see too that he276was a decent looking young fellow in overalls, off on an early job.
“Where you goin’ anyhow?” he asked, in kindly interest. “The minute I see you on the other side of the street, I says Gosh, I says! That girl’s got to be watched, I says. She don’t know that these streets down by the docks is dangerous.”
She explained that she was on her way to Red Point, Long Island, and that having only fifty cents she was sparing of her money.
“Gee! I wouldn’t be so economical if it was me. That ain’t the only fifty cents in the world. Look-a-here! I’ve got a dollar. You must take that––”
“Oh, I couldn’t.”
“Shucks! What’s a dollar? You can pay me back some time. I’ll give you my address. It’s all right. I’m married. Three kids. And say, if you send me back the dollar, which you needn’t do, you know—but if youmust—sign a man’s name to the letter, because my wife—well, she’s all right, but if––”
Letty escaped the necessity of accepting the dollar by assuring him that if he would tell her the way to the nearest subway station she would use a portion of her fifty cents.
“I’ll go with you,” he declared, with breezy fraternity. “No distance. They’re expecting me on a job up there in Waddle Street, but they’ll wait. Pipe burst—floodin’ a loft where they’ve stored a lot of jute—but why worry?”
As they threaded the broken series of streets toward the subway he aired the matrimonial question.
“Some think as two can live on the same wages as277one. All bunk, I’ll say. My wife used to be in the hair line. Some little earner too. Had an electric machine that’d make hair grow like hay on a marsh. Two dollars a visit she got. When we was married she had nine hunderd saved. I had over five hunderd myself. We took a weddin’ tour; Atlantic City. Gettin’ married’s a cinch; butstayin’ married—she’s all right, my wife is, only she’s kind o’ nervous like if I look sideways at any other woman—which I hardly ever do intentional—only my wife’s got it into her head that....”
At the entrance to the subway Letty shook hands with him and thanked him.
“Say,” he responded, “I wish I could do something more for you; but I got to hike it back to Waddle Street. Look-a-here! You stick to the subway and the stations, and don’t you be in a hurry to get to your address in Red Point till after daylight. They can’t be killin’ nobody over there, that you’d need to be in such a rush, and in the stations you’d be safe.”
To a degree that was disconcerting Letty found this so. Having descended the stairs, purchased a ticket, and cast it into the receptacle appointed for that purpose, she saw herself examined by the colored man guarding the entry to the platform. He sat with his chair tilted back, his feet resting on the chain which protected part of the entrance, picking a set of brilliant teeth. Letty, trembling, nervous, and only partly comforted by the cavalier who was now on his way to Waddle Street, shrank from the colored man’s gaze and was going down the platform where she could be away from it. Her progress was arrested by the sight278of two men, also waiting for the train, who on perceiving her started in her direction.
The colored man lifted his feet lazily from the chain, brought his chair down to four legs, put his toothpick in his waistcoat pocket, and dragged himself up.
“Say, lady,” he drawled, on approaching her, “I think them two fellas is tough. You stay here by me. I’ll not let no one get fresh with you.”
Languidly he went back to his former position and occupation, but when after long waiting, the train drew in he unhooked his feet again from the chain, rose lazily, and accompanied Letty across the otherwise empty platform.
“Say, brother,” he said to the conductor, “don’t let any fresh guy get busy with this lady. She’s alone, and timid like.”
“Sure thing,” the conductor replied, closing the doors as Letty stepped within. “Sit in this corner, lady, next to me. The first mutt that wags his jaw at you’ll get it on the bean.”
Letty dropped as she was bidden into the corner, dazed by the brilliant lighting, and the greasy unoccupied seats. She was alone in the car, and the kindly conductor having closed his door she felt a certain sense of privacy. The train clattered off into the darkness.
Where was she going? Why was she there? How was she ever to accomplish the purpose with which two hours earlier she had stolen away from East Sixty-seventh Street? Was it only two hours earlier? It seemed like two years. It seemed like a space of time not to be reckoned....
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She was tired as she had never been tired in her life. Her head sank back into the support made by the corner.
“There’s quite a trick to it,” she found herself repeating, though in what connection she scarcely knew. “An awful wicked lydy, she is, what’d put madam up to all the ropes.” These words too drifted through her mind, foolishly, drowsily, without obvious connection. She began to wish that she was home again in the little back spare room—or anywhere—so long as she could lie down—and shut her eyes—and go to sleep....
280Chapter XXII
It was Steptoe who discovered that the little back spare room was empty, though William had informed him that he thought it strange that madam didn’t appear for breakfast. Steptoe knew then that what he had expected had come to pass, and if earlier than he had looked for it, perhaps it was just as well. Having tapped at madam’s door and received no answer he ventured within. Everything there confirming his belief, he went to inform Mr. Rash.
As Mr. Rash was shaving in the bathroom Steptoe plodded round the bedroom, picking up scattered articles of clothing, putting outside the door the shoes which had been taken off on the previous night, digging another pair of shoes from the shoe-cupboard, and otherwise busying himself as usual. Even when Mr. Rash had re-entered the bedroom the valet made no immediate reference to what had happened in the house. He approached the subject indirectly by saying, as he laid out an old velvet house-jacket on the bed:
“I suppose if Mr. Rash ain’t goin’ out for ’is breakfast ’e’ll put this on for ’ome.”
Mr. Rash, who was buttoning his collar before the mirror said over his shoulder: “But I am going out for my breakfast. Why shouldn’t I? I always do.”
Steptoe carried the house-jacket back to the closet.
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“I thought as Mr. Rash only did that so as madam could ’ave the dinin’ room to ’erself, private like.”
As a way of expressing the fact that Allerton had never eaten a meal with Letty the choice of words was neat.
“Well? What then?”
“Oh, nothink, sir. I was only thinkin’ that, as madam was no longer ’ere––”
Allerton wheeled round, his fingers clawing at the collar-stud, his face growing bloodless. “No longer here? What the deuce do you mean?”
“Oh, didn’t Mr. Rash know? Madam seems to ’ave left us. I supposed that after I’d gone upstairs last night Mr. Rash and ’er must ’ave ’ad some sort of hunderstandin’—and she went.”
“Went?” Allerton’s tone was almost a scream. Leaping on the old man he took him by the shoulders, snaking him. “Damn you! Get it out! What are you trying to tell me?”
Steptoe quaked and cowered. “Why, nothink, sir. Only when William said as madam didn’t come down to ’er breakfast I went to ’er door and tapped—and there wasn’t no one in the room. Mr. Rash ’ad better go and see for ’imself.”
The young man not only released the older one, but pushed him aside with a force which sent him staggering backwards. Over the stairs he scrambled, he plunged. Though he had never entered the back spare room since allotting it to Letty as her own he threw the door open now as if the place was on fire.
But by the time Steptoe had followed and reached the threshold Allerton had calmed suddenly. He stood282in front of the open closet vaguely examining its contents. He picked up the little gold band, chucked it a few inches into the air, caught it, and put it down. He looked into the little leather purse, poured out its notes and pennies into his hand, replaced them, and put that also down again. He opened the old red volume lying on the table by the bed, findingThe Little Mermaidmarked by two stiff dried sprays of dust flower, which more than ever merited its name. When he turned round to where Steptoe, white and scared by this time, was standing in the open doorway, his, Allerton’s, face was drawn, in mingled convulsion and bewilderment. With two strides he was across the room.
“Tell me what you know about this, you confounded old schemer, before I kick you out.”
Shivering and shaking, Steptoe nevertheless held himself with dignity. “I’ll tell you what I know, Mr. Rash, though it ain’t very much. I know that madam ’as ’ad it in ’er mind for some time past that unless she took steps Mr. Rash’d never be free to marry the young lydy what ’e was in love with.”
“What did she mean by taking steps?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I think it was the kind o’ steps as’d give Mr. Rash ’is release quicker nor any other.”
Allerton’s arm was raised as if to strike a blow. “And you let her?”
The old face was set steadily. “I didn’t do nothin’ but what Mr. Rash ’imself told me to do.”
“Told you to do?”
“Yes, Mr. Rash; six months ago; the mornin’ after283you’d brought madam into the ’ouse. I was to get you out of the marriage, you said; but I think madam ’as done it all of ’er own haccord.”
“But why? Why should she?”
Steptoe smiled, dimly. “Oh, don’t Mr. Rash see? Madam ’ad give ’erself to ’im ’eart and spirit and soul. If she couldn’t go to the good for ’im, she’d go to the bad. So long as she served ’im, it didn’t matter to madam what she done. And if I was Mr. Rash––”
Allerton’s spring was like that of a tiger. Before Steptoe felt that he had been seized he was on his back on the floor, with Allerton kneeling on his chest.
“You old reptile! I’m going to kill you.”
“You may kill me, Mr. Rash, but it won’t make no difference to madam ’avin’ loved you––”
Two strong hands at his throat choked back more words, till the sound of his strangling startled Allerton into a measure of self-control. He scrambled to his feet again.
“Get up.”
Steptoe dragged himself up, and after dusting himself with his fingers stood once more passive and respectful, as if nothing violent had occurred.
“If I was Mr. Rash,” he went on, imperturbably, “I’d let well enough alone.”
It was Allerton who was breathless. “Wha—what do you mean by well enough alone?”
“Well the wye I see it, it’s this wye. Mr. Rash is married to one young lydy and wants to marry another.” He broke off to ask, significantly: “I suppose that’d be so, Mr. Rash?”
“Well, what then?”
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“Why, then, ’e can’t marry the other young lydy till the young lydy what ’e’s married to sets ’im free. Now that young lydy what ’e’s married to ’as started out to set ’im free, and if I was Mr. Rash I’d let ’er.”
“You’d let her throw herself away for me?”
“I’d let ’er do anythink what’d show I knowed my own mind, Mr. Rash. If it wouldn’t be steppin’ out of my place to sye so, I wish Mr. Rash could tell which of these two young lydies ’e wanted, and which ’e’d be willin’ for to––”
“How can I tell that when—when both have a claim on me?”
“Yes, but only one ’as a clyme on Mr. Rash now. Madam ’as given up ’er clyme, so as to myke things easier for’im. There’s only one clyme now for Mr. Rash to think about, and that mykes everythink simple.”
An embarrassed cough drew Steptoe’s attention to the fact that someone was standing in the hall outside. It was William with a note on a silver tray. Beside the note stood a small square package, tied with a white ribbon, which looked as if it contained a piece of wedding cake. His whisper of explanation was the word, “Wildgoose,” but a cocking of his eye gave Steptoe to understand that William was quite aware of wading in the current of his employer’s love-affairs. Moreover, the fact that Steptoe and his master should be making so free with the little back spare room was in William’s judgment evidence of drama.
“What’s this?”
Glancing at the hand-writing on the envelope, and taking in the fact that a small square package, looking285like a bit of wedding cake stood beside it, Allerton jumped back. Steptoe might have been presenting him with a snake.
“I don’t know, Mr. Rash. William ’as just brought it up. Someone seems to ’ave left it at the door.”
As Steptoe continued to stand with his offering held out Allerton had no choice but to take up the letter and break the seal. He read it with little grunts intended to signify ironic laughter, but which betrayed no more than bitterness of soul.
“Dear Rash:
I have come to see that we shall never get out of the impasse in which we seem to have been caught unless someone takes a stand. I have therefore decided to take one. Of the three of us it is apparently easiest for me, so that I am definitely breaking our engagement and sending you back your ring. Any claim I may have had on you I give up of my own accord, so that as far as I am concerned you are free. This will simplify your situation, and enable you to act according to the dictates of your heart. Believe me, dear Rash, affectionately yours
Barbara Walbrook.”
Though it was not his practice to take his valet into the secret of his correspondence the circumstances were exceptional. Allerton handed the letter to Steptoe without a word. As the old man was feeling for his glasses and adjusting them to his nose Mr. Rash turned absently away, picking up the volume of Hans286Andersen, from which the sprays of dust flower tumbled out. On putting them back his eyes fell upon the words, which someone had marked with a pencil:
“Day by day she grew dearer to the prince; but he loved her as one loves a child. The thought of making her his queen never crossed his mind.”
A spasm passed over his face. He turned the page impatiently. Here he caught the words which had been underlined:
“I am with him every day. I will watch over him—love him—and sacrifice my life for him.”
Shutting the book with a bang, and throwing it on the table, he wheeled round to where Steptoe, having folded the letter, was taking off his spectacles.
“Well, what do you say to that?”
“What I’d sye to that, Mr. Rash, is that it’s as good as a legal document. If any young lydy what wrote that letter was to bring a haction for breach, this ’ere pyper’d nyle ’er.”
“So where am I now?”
“Free as a lark, Mr. Rash. One young lydy ’as turned you down, and the other ’as gone to the bad for you; so if you was to begin agyne with a third you’d ’ave a clean sheet.”
He groaned aloud. “Ah, go to ––”
But without stating the place to which Steptoe was to go he marched out of the room, and back to his dressing upstairs.
More dispassionate was the early morning scene in the little basement eating house in which the stunted Hebrew maid of Polish culture was serving breakfast287to two gentlemen who had plainly met by appointment. Beside the one was an oblong packet, of which some of the contents, half displayed, had the opulent engraved decorations of stock certificates.
The other gentleman, resembling an operatic brigand a little the worse for wear, was saying with conviction: “Oil! Don’t talk to me! No, sir! There’s enough oil in Milligan Center alone to run every car in Europe and America at this present time; while if you include North Milligan, where it’s beginnin’ to shoot like the Old Faithful geyser––”
“Awful obliged to you, Judson,” the other took up, humbly. “I thought that bunch o’ nuts ’d never––”
“So did I, Gorry. I’ve sweated blood over this job all winter. Queer the way men are made. Now you’d hardly believe the work I’ve had to show that lot of boneheads that because a guy’s a detective in one line, he ain’t a detective in every line. Homicide, I said, was Gorry Larrabin’s specialty, and where there’s no homicide he’s no more a detective than a busted rubber tire.”
“You’ve said it,” Gorry corroborated, earnestly. “One of the cussed things about detectin’ is that fellas gets afraid of you. Think because you’re keepin’ up your end you must be down on every little thing, and that you ain’t a sport.”
“Must be hard,” Judson said, sympathetically.
“I’ll tell you it’s hard. Lots of fun I’d like to be let in on—but you’re kept outside.”
The drawbacks of the detective profession not being what Judson chiefly had on his mind he allowed the subject to drop. An interval of silence for the consumption288of a plateful of golden toasties permitted Gorry to begin again reminiscently.
“By the way, Judson, do you remember that about six months ago you was chewin’ over that girl of yours, and what had become of her?”
To himself Judson said: “That’s the talk; now we’re comin’ to business.” Aloud he made it: “Why, yes. Seems to me I do. She’s been gone so long I’d almost forgot her.”
“Well, what d’ye know? Last night—lemme see, was it last night?—no, night before last—I kind o’ got wind of her.”
“Heaven’s sake!”
“Guy I know was comin’ through East Sixty-seventh Street, and there was my lady, dressed to beat the band, leadin’ one of them little toy dogs, and talkin’ to a swell toff that lives in one of them houses. Got the number here in my pocket-book.”
While he was searching his pocket-book Judson asked, breathlessly: “Couldn’t be no mistake?”
“It’s nix on mistakes. That guy don’t make ’em. Surest thing on the force. He said, ‘Good afternoon, Miss Gravely’; and she said, ‘Good afternoon’ back to him—just like that. The guy walked on and turned a corner; but when he peeped back, there was the couple goin’ into the house just like husband and wife. What d’ye know?”
“What do I know? I know I’ll spill his claret for him before the week is out.”
“Ah, here it is! Knew I had that address on me somewheres.” He handed the scrap of paper across the table. “That’s his name and number. Seems to289me you may have a good thing there, Judson, if you know how to work it.”
In another early morning scene the ermine was cleaning her nest; and you know how fastidious she is supposed to be as to personal spotlessness. The ermine in question did not belie her reputation, as you would have seen by a glance at the three or four rooms which made up what she called her “flat.”
Nothing was ever whiter than the wood-work of the “flat” and its furnishings. Nothing was ever whiter than the little lady’s dress. The hair was white, and even the complexion, the one like silver, the other like the camelia. Having breakfasted from white dishes placed on a white napkin, she was busy with a carpet-sweeper sweeping up possible crumbs. In an interval of the carpet-sweeper’s buzz she heard the telephone.
“Hello!” The male voice was commanding.
“Yes?” The response was sweetly precise.
“Is this Red Point 3284-W?”
“It is.”
“Can I speak to Miss Henrietta Towell?”
“This is Miss Henrietta Towell.”
“This is the Brooklyn Bridge Emergency Hospital. Do you know a girl named Letitia Rashleigh?”
There was a second’s hesitation. “I was once a lady’s maid to a lady whose maiden name was Rashleigh. I think there may be a connection somewhere.”
“She was found unconscious on a car in the subway last night and brought in here.”
“And has she mentioned me?”
290
“She hasn’t mentioned anyone since she came to; but we find your address on a paper in her pocket.”
“That seems singular, but I expect there’s a purpose behind it. Is that everything she had?”
“No; she had forty-five cents and a thimble.”
“A thimble! Just an ordinary thimble.”
“Yes, an ordinary thimble, except that it has initials on the edge. ‘H.T. from H.S.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
“Yes; that means something to me. May I ask how to reach the hospital?”
This being explained Miss Towell promised to appear without delay, begging that in the meantime everything be done for Miss Rashleigh’s comfort.
She was not perturbed. She was not surprised. She did not wonder who Letitia Rashleigh could be, or why her address should be found in the girl’s pocket. She was as quiet and serene as if such incidents belonged to every day’s work.
Dressed for the street she was all in black. A mantua covered with bugles and braid dropped from her shoulders, while a bonnet which rose to a pointed arch above her brow, and allowed the silver knob of her hair to escape behind, gave her a late nineteenth century dignity. Before leaving the house she took two volumes from her shelves—read first in one, then in the other—sat pensive for a while, with head bent and eyes shaded—after which she replaced her books, turned the key in her door, and set forth for Brooklyn Bridge.