He tightened his grip on the thick, slippery throat. "I'm enjoying this," he rasped. "If you were anything but the snake you are, I'd give you a fighting chance. But a creature that uses chloroform and hires three thugs to help him in his dirty jobs—"
He increased the pressure on the thick neck. Shaw's face began to purple. His eyes bulged horribly. He choked, and with the act gave up.
"Hold on," he gurgled. "Listen."
The pressure on his throat slightly relaxed. With eyes closed, he collapsed against the nearest tree-trunk. Laurie followed him, expecting some treacherous move; but all the fight seemed out ofthe serpent. He was clutching at his coat and collar as if not yet able to breathe.
"I've had enough of this," he finally gasped out. "I'll tell you everything."
Even as he spoke, Laurie observed that one of the clutching, clawing hands had apparently got hold of what it was seeking.
Doris, feeling her way through the blackness of the storm on the unfamiliar country road, heard above the wind the sound of a sharp explosion which she thought meant a blown-out tire. She did not stop. Before her, only a short distance away, was the garage to which she was hastening and where she was to wait for Laurie. To go on meant to take a chance, but she had been ordered not to stop. There was a certain exhilaration in obeying that order. Crouched over the wheel, with head bent, and guessing at the turns she could not see, she pressed on through the storm.
Burke, dozing over the fire in his so-called office, was aroused from his dreams by the appearance of a vision. For a moment he blinked at it doubtfully. Then into his eyes came a dawning intelligence, slightly tinged with reproach.
Burke was an unimaginative man, who did not like to be jarred out of his routine. Already that day several unusual incidents had occurred; and though, like popular tales, they ended happily, they had been almost too great a stimulus to thought. Now here was another, in the form of a girl, young and beautiful, and apparently blown into his presence on the wings of the wild storm that was raging.
Somewhat uncertainly, Mr. Burke arose and approached the vision, which, standing at the threshold of his sanctum, thereupon addressed him in hurried but reassuring human tones.
"I've had a blow-out," the lady briefly announced. "Will you put on a 'spare,' please, and take a look at the other shoes?"
This service, she estimated, would take half an hour of the proprietor's time, if he moved with the customary deliberation of his class, and would, of course, make superfluous any explanation of her wait in the garage, and of her nervousness, if he happened to be sufficiently observant to notice that.
It was really fortunate that the blow-out had occurred. Surely within the half-hour Laurie would have rejoined her. If he did not, she frankly conceded to herself, she would go mad with suspense. There was a limit to what she could endure, and that limit had been reached. Thirty minutes more of patience and courage and seeming calm covered the last draft she could make on a nervous system already greatly overtaxed.
Burke drew his worn office chair close to the red-hot stove, and was mildly pained by the lady's failure to avail herself of the comfort thus offered. Instead, she threw off her big coat, and, drawing the chair to the corner farthest from the stove, seated herself there and with hands that shook took up the local newspaper which was the live wire between Burke and the outer world. Her intense desire for solitude was apparent even to his dull eye.
Burke sighed. In his humble way he was a gallant man, and it would have been pleasant to exchange a few remarks with this visitor from another sphere. Undoubtedly they would have found interests in common. This, it will be remembered, was January, 1917, three months before America's entry into the world war, and women able to drive motors were comparatively rare. Any girl who could drive a car in a storm like this, and through the drifts of country roads—Mr. Burke, having reluctantly removed himself from the lady's presence, was now beside her car, and at this point in his reflections he uttered an exclamation and his jaw dropped.
"It's the lad's car!" he ejaculated slowly, and for a moment stood staring at it. Then, still slowly, he nodded.
It was the lad's car, which, only a short time before, he himself had put in perfect order for a swift run to New York. Now this girl had it, but 'twas easy to see why. He had been wrong in his college-prank theory. Here was something more serious and much more interesting. Here was a love-affair. And, he handsomely conceded, it was going on between a pair of mates the like of which wasn't often seen. In her way the girl was as fine a looker as the boy, and that, Mr. Burke decided, was "going some, for them both."
As his meditations continued he was cursorily glancing at the tires, looking for the one that had sustained the blow-out. He was not greatly surprised to find every tire perfect. There had beenplenty of mysteries in the lad's conduct, and this was merely another trifle to add to the list. Undoubtedly the lady had her reasons for insisting on a blow-out, and if she had, it was no affair of his. Also, the price for changing that tire would be a dollar, and Mr. Burke was always willing to pick up a dollar.
Whistling softly but sweetly, he removed a rear shoe, replaced it with one of the "spares" on the car's rack, and solemnly retested the others. The task, as Doris had expected, took him almost half an hour. When it was completed he lounged back to the lady and assured her that the car was again ready for service.
The lady hesitated. There was no sign of Laurie, and she dared not leave. Yet on what pretext could she linger? With the manner of one who has unlimited time at her disposal, she demanded her bill, a written one, and paid it. Then, checking herself on a casual journey toward the big coat, she showed a willingness to indulge in that exchange of friendly points of view for which Burke's heart had longed.
The exchange was not brilliant, but Burke made the most of it. No, he told her, they didn't often have storms as bad as this. One, several years ago, had blocked traffic for two days, but that was very unusual. He hoped the young lady knew the roadswell. It wasn't easy driving when you couldn't see your hand before your face. He hoped she wasn't nervous about getting back; for now he had discovered that she was intensely nervous about something.
With a gallant effort at ease, the lady took up the theme of the storm and embroidered it in pretty colors and with much delicate fancy. When the pattern was getting somewhat confused, she suddenly asked a leading question.
"Which shoe blew out?"
Burke stared at her. He wished he knew what was expected of him. Did she want the truth, or didn't she? He realized that momentarily she was becoming more excited. He had not missed her frequent glances through the window, up the road, and he knew that for the past five minutes she had been listening for something wholly unconnected with his words. In reality Doris was in the grip of an almost unconquerable panic. What had happened? Why didn't Laurie come?
Burke decided to let her have the truth, or part of the truth. She'd get it anyway, if she examined the replaced "spare" on the car's rack.
"There wasn't no blow-out," he stated, defensively.
"There wasn't! What do you mean?"
He saw that she was first surprised, then startled,then, as some sudden reflection came to her, actually appalled.
"I mean that there wasn't no blow-out."
"No blow-out? Then—then—what did I hear?" She asked the question of Burke, and, as she asked it, recoiled suddenly, as if he had struck her.
"P'raps you got a back-fire," he suggested, reassuringly. "You come down the steep hill up there, didn't you?"
Doris pulled herself together, shrugged her shoulders, and resolutely smiled at him. She knew the difference between the sound of a blow-out and the back-firing of an irritated engine. But some abysmal instinct made her suddenly cautious, though with that same instinct her inner panic developed.What had she heard?
"I put on a 'spare,' anyway," Burke was saying. "The rear right looked a little weak, so I changed it."
He was tacitly explaining the bill he had submitted, but Doris did not hear him.What had she heard?Insistently the question repeated itself in her mind. She turned dizzily, and went back for the coat. As she did so she heard Burke's voice.
"Why—hel-lo!"
Even in that moment she observed its modulation. It had begun on a note of cheery surprise and endedon one of sharp concern. Turning, she saw Laurie.
He had nodded to Burke, and was obviously trying to speak naturally.
"What you been doin' to yerself?" he gasped"What you been doin' to yerself?" he gasped
"All ready?" he asked.
The remark was addressed to them both, but he looked at neither. There was an instant of utter silence during which they took him in, Burke with insistent, goggling eyes, Doris with one quick glance, soul-searching and terror-filled. Burke spoke first.
"What you been doin' to yerself?" he gasped.
The question was inevitable. Laurie was hatless and disheveled. His coat was torn, and across one pallid cheek ran a deep cut, freshly bleeding.
"Fell," he said, tersely.
He was breathing hard, as if he had been running. He had not yet looked at Doris, but now he abruptly swung into the little office and emerged, bringing her coat. Without a word, he held it for her. In equal silence, she slipped into it. He retrieved the cap from the pile of discarded garments still lying on the office floor, put it on, and indicated the waiting car.
"Get in," he commanded.
She obeyed and he followed her, taking his place at the wheel.
"You're hurt," she almost whispered. "Shall I drive?"
"No—Burke!"
The word was like a pistol shot.
"Y-yessir!" Burke was stammering. In his excitement he was hardly conscious that another bill had found its way into his hand, but his hand had automatically reached for and closed on it.
"Keep your mouth shut."
"Y-yessir."
"Keep it shut till to-morrow morning. You haven't seen anything or anybody at all to-day. Understand?"
"Y-yessir."
"After to-night you can talk about me all you like. But you're to forget absolutely that you ever saw the lady. Is that clear?"
"Y-yessir!"
"Thank you. Good-by."
He started the car and swung it out into the storm. As it went Burke saw the girl catch the boy's arm and heard something that sounded partly like a cry and partly like a sob.
"Laurie!"
"H-ush!"
The car was tearing through the storm and drifts at fifty miles an hour, and this time it was headed down the road for New York.
Burke's eyes followed it, as far as he could see it, which was not far. Then he retreated to the"office," and, dropping heavily into his desk chair, stared unseeingly at a calendar on the wall.
"That lad's been up to somethin'," he muttered. "I wonder what my dooty is."
It was a long moment before he remembered to open his hand and look at the bill he was holding. As he did so his eyes widened. The bill was a large one. It amounted to much more than the combined value of the bills dropped into that willing palm during the day. Briskly and efficiently it solved the little problem connected with Mr. Burke's "dooty." With a quick look around him, he thrust it into his pocket.
"I ain't reallyseennothin'," he muttered, "an' I ain't sure of nothin', anyhow."
"What has happened? Oh, Laurie, what has happened?"
For a time Laurie did not answer. Then she felt rather than saw his face turn toward her in the darkness.
"Doris."
"Yes."
"Will you do something for me?"
"Yes, Laurie, anything."
"Then don't speak till we reach New York. When we get to your studio I'll tell you everything. Will you do that?"
"But—Laurie—"
"Will—you—do—it?" The voice was not Laurie's. It was the harsh, grating voice of a man distraught.
"Yes, of course."
Silence settled upon them like a substance, a silence broken only by the roar of the storm and the crashing of wind-swept branches of the trees that lined the road. The car's powerful search-lights threw up in ghostly shapes the covered stumps and hedges they passed and the masses of snow that beat against them. Subconsciously the girl knew that this boy beside her, driving with the recklessness of a lost soul, was merely guessing at a road no one could have seen, but in that half-hour she had no thought for the hazards of the journey. Her panic had grown till it filled her soul.
She wanted to cry out, to shriek, but she dared not. The compelling soul in the rigid figure beside her held her silent. Her nerves began to play strange tricks. She became convinced that the whole experience was a nightmare, an incredible one from which she would wake if that terrible figure so close to her, and yet so far away, would help her. But it wouldn't. Perhaps it never would. The nightmare must go on and on. Soon all sense of being in a normal world had left her.
Once, in a frantic impulse of need of human contact, she laid her hand on the arm nearest her, over the wheel. The next instant she withdrew it with a shudder. For all the response she had found she might have touched a dead man. Something of the look of a dead man, too, was in the boy's face and eyes as he bent forward, motionless as a statue, his features like stone and his eyes as unhuman as polished agate, staring fixedly at the road before them.
A low-bending, ice-covered branch whipped her face and she shrieked, fancying it the touch of dead fingers. Several times huge shapes from the roadside seemed to spring at them, but their progress was too swift even for spectral shapes. Or was it?
It was on a stretch of road through the woods that the obsession in her mind took its final and most hideous form. Close behind them, and ringing in their ears, she fancied she heard a cry in the voice of Shaw. It was not Shaw's human voice. She would not have known it in a human world. It had passed through the great change; but it was recognizable, because she, too, had passed through some great change. Recognizable, too, was the sound of Shaw's running feet, though she had never heard them run, and though they were running so lightly on the top of the snow.
He was just behind them, she thought. If she turned she knew she would see him, not as she hadknown him, plump, sleek, living and loathsome, but stark, rigid, and ready for his grave, yet able to pursue; and the new, unearthly light of his bulging eyes seemed burning into her back.
She groaned, but the groan brought no response from the tense figure beside her. The only sounds were the howls of the wind, the frenzied protests of the tortured trees, and the fancied hail of a dead man, coming closer and closer.
The lights of Long Island City greeted them with reassuring winks through the snow. Seeing these, Doris drew a deep breath. She had let her nerves run away with her, she subconsciously felt. Now, rising from the depths of her panic to a realization of contact with a living world, as they crossed the bridge to Manhattan, seeing hurrying men and women about her, hearing the blasts of motor horns and the voices of motor drivers, she fiercely assured herself that she had been an hysterical fool.
In the first moments of reaction she even experienced a sense of personal injury and almost of resentment toward her companion. He had put her through the most horrible half-hour of her life. It seemed that no service he had rendered could compensate her for such suffering. On the other hand, hehadbrought her safely back to New York, as he had promised to do. Surely, it was not for her to cavil at the manner in which he had done it. Something, of course, had happened, probably a racking fight between the two men. Laurie was exhausted, and was showing it; that was all.
With their arrival at her studio, his manner did not change. He assisted her from the car, punctiliously escorted her to the elevator, and left her there.
"I have some telephoning to do," he explained. "I shall not leave the building, and I expect to be with you again in about fifteen minutes. With your permission, I am asking my two partners to meet me in your studio, Rodney Bangs and Jacob Epstein. What I have to tell must be told to all three of you, and"—his voice caught in a queer fashion—"it is a thing I don't want to tell more than once. I think I can get them right away. They'll probably be in their rooms, dressing for dinner. May they come here?"
"Of course."
Her panic was returning. His appearance in the lighted hall was nothing short of terrifying, and not the least uncanny feature was his own utter unconsciousness of or indifference to it.
"Thanks. Then I'll wait for them down here, and bring them up to your studio when they come."
He left her with that, and Henry, the night elevator man, who went on duty at six o'clock, indifferently swung the lever and started his car upward.
In the studio, with her door shut against the world, Doris again resolutely took herself and her nerves in hand. She summoned endless explanations of Laurie's manner and appearance, explanations which, however, turn and twist them as she would, always left something unexplained.
There was, she realized, a strong probability that he had forced the truth from Shaw. But even the truth would not make Laurie look and act like that. Or would it? She tried to believe it would. Anything would be better than the thing she feared. She set her teeth; then, springing from the chair into which she had dropped, she turned on the studio lights and busied herself with preparations for her visitors. She simply dared not let her thoughts run on.
Five minutes passed—ten—fifteen—twenty. Save during the half-hour of that return journey from Sea Cliff, she had never known such dragging, horror-filled moments. A dozen times she fancied she heard the elevator stop at her floor, and the sound of voices and footsteps approach. A dozen times she went to her windows and wildly gazed out on the storm. As she stared, she prayed. It was the same prayer, over and over.
"Dear God, please don't let it be that way!" The aspiration was the nearest she dared come to putting into words the terror that shook her heart.
The second fifteen minutes were almost up when she really heard the elevator stop. Quick footsteps approached her door, but there were no voices. The three men, if they were coming, were coming in utter silence. Before they had time to rap she had opened the door and stood back to let them enter. As they passed her she looked into their faces, and as she looked the familiar sense of panic, now immeasurably intensified, again seized her in its grip.
Laurie, usually the most punctilious of men, made on this occasion an omission extraordinary for him. He did not present his partners to their hostess. But not one of the three noticed that omission. Rodney Bangs, pale but carrying himself with a palpable effort at control, shouldered his way into the room in his characteristic fashion, as if he were meeting and hurling back a foot-ball rush. Epstein, breathless and obviously greatly excited, actually stumbled over the threshold in his unseeing haste. Laurie, slowly following the two, alone wore some resemblance to a normal manner. He was very serious but quite calm.
He took off his coat, methodically folded it, and laid it on a near-by chair. To the brain back of each of the three pairs of eyes watching him, the same thought came. He had something appalling to tell them, and, cool as he seemed, he dared not tell it. He was playing for time. The strain ofeven the brief delay was too much for Epstein's endurance. High-strung, his nerves on edge, almost before Laurie had turned he sputtered forth questions like bullets from a machine-gun.
"Vell! vell!" he demanded, "vot's it all about? Vot's it mean? Over the telephone you say you got to see us this minute. You say you got into trouble, big trouble. Vell, vot trouble? Vot is it?"
Laurie looked at him, and something in the look almost spiked the big gun. But Epstein was a man of action, and, notwithstanding his nervousness, a man of some nerve. The expression in the boy's black eyes had stunned him, but with only an instant's hesitation he finished what he had meant to say.
"I guess it ain't nothing ve can't fix up," he jerked out, trying to speak with his usual assurance. "I guess ve fix it up all right."
Laurie shook his head. None of the thirty minutes he had spent on the ground floor had been devoted to improving his appearance. His black curly hair, usually as shining as satin, was rough, matted, dirty. Across his left cheek the sinister cut still ran, raw, angry-looking, freshly irritated by the ice-laden wind.
"Sit down," he said, wearily. All the life had gone out of his voice. It had an uncanny effect ofmonotony, as if pitched on two flat notes. To those three, who knew so well the rich beauty of his speaking tones, this change in them was almost more alarming than the change in his looks.
They sat down, as he had directed, but not an eye in the room moved from his face. Epstein, still wearing his hat and heavy coat, had dropped into the big chair by the reading-lamp and was nervously gnawing his under lip. Bangs had mechanically tossed his hat toward a corner as he came in. He took a chair as mechanically, and sat very still, his back to the window, his eyes trying vainly to meet his friend's. Doris had moved to the upper corner of the couch, where she crouched, elbows on knees, chin on hands, staring at a spot on the floor. Though in the group, she seemed alone, and felt alone.
Walking over to the mantel, Laurie rested an elbow heavily upon it, and for the first time looked squarely from one to the other of his friends. As he looked, he tried to speak. They saw the effort and its failure, and understood both. With a gesture of hopelessness, he turned his back toward them, and stood with sagging muscles and eyes fixed on the empty grate. Epstein's nerves snapped.
"For God's sake, Devon," he begged, "cut out the vaits! Tell us vot you got on your chest, and tell it quick."
Laurie turned and once more met his eyes. Under the look Epstein's oblique eyes shifted.
"I'm going to," Laurie said quietly and still in those new, flat tones. "That's why I've brought you here. But—it's a hard job. You see,"—his voice again lost its steadiness—"I've got to hurt you—all of you—most awfully. And—and that's the hardest part of this business for me."
Doris, now staring up at him, told herself that she could not endure another moment of this tension. She dared not glance at either of the others, but she heard Epstein's heavy breathing and the creak of Rodney Bangs's chair as he suddenly changed his position. Again it was Epstein who spoke, his voice rising on a shriller note.
"Vell! vell! Get it out! I s'pose you done something. Vot you done?"
For the first time Laurie's eyes met those of Doris. The look was so charged with meaning that she sat up under it as if she had received a shock. Yet she was not sure she understood it. Did he want her to help him? She did not know. She only knew now that the thing she had feared was here, and that if she did not speak out something in her head would snap.
"He killed Herbert Shaw," she almost whispered.
For a long moment there was utter silence in the room, through which the words just spoken seemed to scurry like living things, anxious to be out and away. Laurie, his eyes on the girl, showed no change in his position, though a spasm crossed his face. Epstein, putting up one fat hand, feebly beat the air with it as if trying to push back something that was approaching him, something intangible but terrible. Bangs alone seemed at last to have taken in the full meaning of the curt announcement. As if it had galvanized him into movement, he sprang to his feet and, head down, charged the situation.
"What the devil is she talking about?" he cried out. "Laurie! What does she mean?"
"She told you." Laurie spoke as quietly as before, but without looking up.
"You—mean—it's—true?"
Rodney still spoke in a loud, aggressive voice, as if trying to awaken himself and the others from a nightmare.
"Take it in," muttered Laurie. "Pull yourselves up to it. I had to."
An uncontrollable shudder ran over him. As if his nerve had suddenly given way, he dropped his head on his bent arm. For another interval Bangs stood staring at him in a stupefaction through which a slow tremor ran.
"I—Ican'ttake it in," he stammered at last.
"I know. That's the way I felt."
Laurie spoke without raising his head. Bangs, watching him, saw him shudder again, saw that his legs were giving under him, and that he was literally holding to the mantel for support. The sight steadied his own nerves. He pushed his chair forward, and with an arm across the other's shoulder, forced him down into it.
"Then, in God's name, why are we wasting time here?" he suddenly demanded. "Your car's outside. I'll drive you—anywhere. We'll get out of the country. We'll travel at night and lie low in the daytime. Pull yourself together, old man." Urgently, he grasped the other's shoulder. "We've got things to do."
Laurie shook his head. He tried to smile. There was something horrible in the resulting grimace of his twisted mouth.
"There were only two things to do," he said doggedly. "One was to tell you three. I've done that. The other was to tell the district attorney. I've done that, too."
Bangs recoiled, as if from a physical blow. Epstein, who had slightly roused himself at the prospect of action, sank back into a stunned, goggling silence.
"You've told him!" gasped Rodney, when he could speak.
"Yes." Laurie was pulling himself together. "We're friends, you know, Perkins and I," he went on, more naturally. "I've seen a good deal of him lately. He will make it as easy as he can. He has taken my parole. I've got—till morning." He let them take that in. Then, very simply, he added, "I have promised to be in my rooms at eight o'clock."
Under this, like a tree-trunk that goes down with the final stroke of the ax, Rodney Bangs collapsed.
"My God!" he muttered. "My—God!" He fell into the nearest chair and sat there, his head in his shaking hands.
As if the collapse of his friend were a call to his own strength, Laurie suddenly sat up and took himself in hand.
"Now, listen," he said. "Let's take this sensibly. We've got to thresh out the situation, and here's our last chance. I want to make one thing clear. Shaw was pure vermin. There's no place for his sort in a decent world, and I have no more regret over—over exterminating him than I would have over killing a snake. Later, Miss Mayo will tell you why."
Under the effect of the clear, dispassionate voice, almost natural again, Epstein began to revive.
"It was self-defense," he croaked, eagerly. He caught at the idea as if it were a life-line, and obviously began to drag himself out of a pit with its help. "It was self-defense," he repeated. "You vas fighting, I s'pose. That lets you out."
"No," Laurie dully explained, "he wasn't armed. I thought he was. I thought he was drawing some weapon. He had used chloroform on me once before. I was mistaken. But no jury will believe that, of course."
His voice changed and flatted again. His young figure seemed to give in the chair, as if its muscles sagged under a new burden. For a moment he sat silent.
"We may as well face all the facts," he went on, at last. "The one thing I won't endure is the horror of a trial."
"But you'll get off," choked Epstein. "It's self-defense—it's—it's—"
"Or a brain storm, or temporary insanity!" Laurie interrupted. "No, old chap, that isn't good enough. No padded cell for me! And I'm not going to have my name dragged through the courts, and the case figuring in the newspapers for months. I've got a reason I think you will all admit is a good one." Again his voice changed. "That would break my sister's heart," he ended brokenly.
At the words Bangs uttered an odd sound, half a gasp and half a groan. Epstein, again in his pit of wretchedness, caught it.
"Now you see the job ve done!" he muttered. "Now you see how ve looked after him, like she told us to!"
Bangs paid no attention to him.
"What are you going to do?" he heavily asked Laurie.
"I'll tell you, on one condition—that you give me your word, all three of you, not to try in any way to interfere or to prevent it. You couldn't, anyway, so don't make the blunder of trying. You know what I'm up against. There's only one way out."
He looked at them in turn. Doris and Epstein merely stared back, with the effect of not taking in what he was saying. But Bangs recoiled.
"No, by God!" he cried. "No! No!"
Laurie went on as if he had not spoken.
"I promised Perkins to be in my rooms at eight o'clock to-morrow morning," he muttered, and they had to strain their ears to catch the words. "I didnotpromise to be—alive."
This time it was Doris who gasped out something that none of them heard. For a moment Laurie sat silent in his chair, watching her with a strange intentness. Then, in turn, his black eyes went to the faces of Bangs and Epstein. Huddled in the big chair he occupied, the manager sat looking straight before him, his eyes set in agony, his jaw dropped.He had the aspect of a man about to have a stroke. Bangs sat leaning forward, staring at the floor. The remaining color had left his face. He appeared to have wholly forgotten the presence of others in the room. He was muttering something to himself, the same thing over and over and over: "And it's all up to us. It's—all—up—to us."
For an interval which none of the three ever forgot, Laurie watched the tableau. Then, rising briskly, he ostentatiously stretched himself, and in loud, cheerful tones answered Rodney's steady babble.
"Yes, old chap, it's all up to you," he said. "So what do you think of this as a climax for the play?"
Grinning down at his pal, he waited for a reply. It did not come. Epstein was still unable to speak or move. Doris seemed to have heard the words without taking them in. But at last Bangs rose slowly, groped his way to his chum as if through a fog, and catching him by the shoulders looked wildly into his eyes.
"You mean—you mean," he stuttered at last, "that—that—this—was—all—a—hoax?"
"Of course it was," Laurie admitted, in his gayest voice. "It was the climax of the hoax you haveplayed on me. An hour ago Shaw confessed to me how you three arranged this whole plot of Miss Mayo's adventure, so that I should be kept out of mischief and should think I was having an adventure myself. I thought a little excitement was due you in return. How do you like my climax, anyhow? Pretty fair, I call it."
He stopped short. Rodney had loosened his grip on his shoulders and stumbled to a chair. Now, his arm on its back and his head on his arm, his body shook with the relentless convulsion of a complete nervous collapse. Epstein had produced a handkerchief and was feebly wiping his forehead. Doris seemed to have ceased to breathe. Laurie walked over to her, took her hands, and drew them away from her face. Even yet, she seemed not to understand.
"I'm sorry," he said, very gently. "I've given you three an awful jolt. But I think you will all admit that there was something coming to you. You've put me through a pretty bad week. I decided you could endure half an hour of reprisal."
None of the three answered. None of the three could. But, in the incandescent moments that followed, the face of Epstein brightened slowly, like a moon emerging from black clouds. Bangs alone, who had best borne the situation up till now, wasunable to meet the reaction. In the silence of the little studio he wept on, openly and gulpingly and unrestrainedly, as he had not wept since he was a little boy.
"So Shaw told you!" muttered Epstein a few moments later.
"You bet he did!" Laurie blithely corroborated. "He had to, to save his skin. But he was pretty game, I'll give him credit for that. I had to fire one shot past his head to convince him that I meant business. Besides, as I've said, I thought he was reaching for something. I suppose I was a little nervous. Anyway, we clenched again, and—well—I'd have killed him, I guess, if he hadn't spoken."
He smiled reminiscently. All three were tactfully ignoring Bangs, who had walked over to the window and by the exercise of all his will-power was now getting his nerves under control.
"Shaw didn't do the tale justice, he hadn't time to," Laurie continued, "and I was in such a hurry to get back to Miss Mayo that I didn't ask for many details. But on the way to the garage it occurred to me that I had a chance for a come-back that would keep you three from feeling too smugand happy over the way I had gulped down your little plot. So I planned it, and I rather think," he added complacently, "that I put it over."
"Put it over!" groaned Epstein. "Mein Gott, I should think you did put it over! You took twenty years off my life, young man; that's von sure thing."
He spoke with feeling, and his appearance bore out his words. Even in these moments of immense relief he looked years older than when he entered the room.
"You'll revive." Laurie turned to Rodney, who was now facing them. "All right, old man?"
"I guess so," gulped Rodney. There was no self-consciousness in his manner. He had passed through blazing hell in the last twenty minutes, and he did not care who knew it.
"Then," urged Laurie, seeking to divert him, "you may give me the details Shaw had to skip. How the dickens did you happen to start this frame-up, anyhow?"
"How much did Shaw tell you?" Rodney tried to speak naturally.
"That the whole adventure was a plant you and Epstein had fixed up to keep me out of mischief," Laurie repeated, patiently. "He explained that you had engaged a company to put it over, headed by Miss Mayo, who is a friend of Mrs. Ordway,and who has a burning ambition to go on the stage. He said you promised her that if she made a success of it, she was to have the leading rôle in our next play. That's about all he told me."
He did not look at Doris as he spoke, and she observed the omission, though she dared not look at him. Also, she caught the coldness of his rich young voice. She hid her face in her hands.
"That's all I know," ended Laurie. "But I want to know some more. Whose bright little idea was this, in the first place?"
"Mrs. Ordway's."
"Louise's!" Unconsciously Laurie's face softened.
"Yes. I went to see her one day," Bangs explained, "and I mentioned that we couldn't get any work out of you till you'd had the adventure you were insisting on. Mrs. Ordway said, 'Well, why don't you give him an adventure?' That," confessed Rodney, "started me off."
"Obviously," corroborated his friend. "So it was Louise's idea. Poor Louise! I hope she got some fun out of it."
"You bet she did!" corroborated Bangs, eagerly. "I kept her posted every day. She said it was more fun than a play, and that it was keeping her alive."
"Humph! Well, go on. Tell me how it started." Laurie was smiling. If the little episodejust ended had been, as it were, a bobolink singing to Louise Ordway during her final days on earth, it was not he who would find fault with the bird or with those who had set it singing.
"The day we saw the caretaker in the window across the park," continued Rodney, "and I realized how interested you were, it occurred to me that we'd engage that studio and put Miss Mayo into it. Miss Mayo lives in Richmond, Virginia, and she had been making a big hit in amateur theatricals. She wanted to get on the legitimate stage, as Shaw told you; so Mrs. Ordway suggested that Epstein and I try her out—"
"Never mind all that!" interrupted Laurie. "Perhaps later Miss Mayo will tell me about it herself."
Bangs accepted the snub without resentment.
"Epstein thought it was a corking idea," he went on, "especially as we expected to try out some of the scenes I have in mind for the new play. But the only one you let us really get over was the suicide scene in the first act. You balled up everything else we attempted," he ended with a sigh.
Laurie smiled happily.
"Were your elevator boys in on the secret?" he asked Doris.
"No, of course not."
"Now, what I meant to do was this—" Rodneyspoke briskly. He was recovering poise with extraordinary rapidity. His color was returning, his brown eyes were again full of life. And, as always when his thoughts were on his work, he was utterly oblivious to any other interest. "The second act was to be—"
He stopped and stared. Epstein had risen, had ponderously approached him, and had resolutely grasped him by one ear.
"Rodney," said the manager, with ostentatious subtlety, "you don't know it, but you got a date up-town in five minutes."
His voice and manner enlightened the obtuse Mr. Bangs.
"Oh, er—yes," stammered that youth, confusedly, and reluctantly got to his feet.
"Wait a minute," said Laurie. "Before you fellows go, there's one more little matter we've got to straighten out." They turned to him, and at the expression of utter devotion on the two faces the sternness left young Devon's eyes. "I was pretty mad about this business for a few minutes after Shaw explained it," he went on. "You folks didn't have much mercy, you know. You fooled me to the top of my bent. But now I feel that we've at least broken even."
"Even! Mein Gott!" repeated Epstein with a groan. "You've taken ten years—"
"You've got back ten already," the young man blithely reminded him. "That's fine! As I say, we're even. But from this time on, one thing must be definitely understood: Henceforth I'm not in leading-strings of any kind, however kindly they are put on me. If this association is to continue, there must be no more practical jokes, no more supervision, no more interference with me or my affairs. Is that agreed?"
"You bet it is!" corroborated Epstein. Again he wiped his brow. "I can't stand the pace you fellas set," he admitted.
Bangs nodded. "That's agreed. You're too good a boomerang for little Rodney."
"For my part," continued Laurie, "I promise to get to work on the new play, beginning next Monday."
"You will!" the two men almost shouted.
"I will. I've got to stand by Louise for the next two or three months, and we'll write the play while I'm doing it. Then, whether America enters the war this spring or not, I'm going to France. But we'll talk over all that later. Are you off?"
He ushered them to the door.
"And it's all right, boy?" Epstein asked wistfully. "You know how vell ve meant. You ain't got no hard feelings about this?"
"Not one." Laurie wrung his hand. Then,with an arm across Rodney's shoulders, he gave him a bearish hug. "I'll see you a little later," he promised.
Rodney suddenly looked self-conscious.
"Perhaps then you'll give me a chance to tell you some news," he suggested, with a mixture of triumph and embarrassment. Epstein's knowing grin enlightened Laurie.
"Sonya?" he asked eagerly.
"Yep. Great, isn't it?"
Laurie stared at him.
"By Jove, youhavebeen busy!" he conceded. "Between manufacturing a frame-up for me, and winning a wife, you must have put in a fairly full week even for you." His arm tightened round his chum's shoulders. "I'm delighted, old man," he ended, seriously. "Sonya is the salt of the earth. Tell her she has my blessing."
When he reëntered the room he found Doris standing in its center, waiting for him. Something in her pose reminded him of their first moments together in that familiar setting. She had carried off the original scene very well. Indeed, she had carried off very well most of the scenes she had been given.
"You'll be a big hit in the new play," he cheerfully remarked, as he came toward her.
"Laurie—" Her voice trembled. "You have forgiven the others. Can't you forgive me?"
"There's nothing to forgive," he quietly told her. "You saw a chance and you took it. In the same conditions, I suppose any other girl would have done the same thing. It's quite all right, and I wish you the best luck in the world. We'll try to make the new play worthy of you."
He held out his hand, but she shrank away from it.
"You'renotgoing to forgive me!" she cried. "And—I don't blame you!"
She walked away from him, and, sinking into the chair Epstein had so recently vacated, sat bending forward, her elbow resting on its broad arm, her chin in her hand. It was the pose he knew so well and had loved so much.
"I don't blame you," she repeated. "What I was doing was—horrible. I knew it all the time, and I tried to get out of it the second day. But they wouldn't let me."
She waited, but he did not speak.
"Can't you understand?" she went on. "I've hated it from the start. I've hated deceiving you. You see—I—I didn't know you when I began. I thought it was just a good joke and awfully interesting. Then, when I met you, and you were so stunning, always, I felt like a beast. I told them I simply couldn't go on, but they coaxed and begged, and told me what it would mean to you as well as to me— They made a big point of that."
He took his favorite position by the mantel and watched her as she talked.
"Don't feel that way," he said at last. "You were playing for big stakes. You were justified in everything you said and did."
"I hated it," she repeated, ignoring the interruption. "And to-day, this afternoon, I tried to tell you everything. Don't you remember?"
"Yes, I remember." He spoke as he would to a child, kindly and soothingly. "Don't worry about it any more," he said. "You'll forget all this when we begin rehearsing."
She sprang to her feet.
"I don't want the play!" she cried passionately. "I wouldn't appear in it now under any conditions. I don't want to go on the stage. It was just a notion, an impulse. I've lost it, all of it, forever. I'm going back home, to my own people and my—own Virginia, to—to try to forget all this. I'm going to-morrow."
"You're excited," said Laurie, soothingly. He took her hands and held them. "I've put you through a bad half-hour. You understand, of course, that I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been made to realize that your whole thought, throughout this experiment, has been of the play, and only of the play."
She drew back and looked at him.
"What do you mean?"
"Why—" It was hard to explain, but he blundered on. "I mean that, for a little time, I was fool enough to hope that—that—some day you might care for me. For of course you know, you've known all along—that I—love you. But when I got the truth—"
"You haven't got the truth." She was interrupting him, but her face had flashed into flame. "You haven't had it for one second; but you're going to get it now. I'm not going to let our lives be wrecked by any silly misunderstanding."
She stopped, then rushed on.
"Oh, Laurie, can't you see? The only truth that counts between us is that I—I—adore you! I have from the very first—almost from the day you came here—Oh, it's dreadful of you to make me say all this!"
She was sobbing now, in his arms. For a long moment he held her very close and in utter silence. Like Bangs, but in a different way, he was feeling the effects of a tremendous reaction.
"You'll make a man of me, Doris," he said brokenly, when he could speak. "I'm not afraid to let you risk the effort. And when I come back from France—"
"When you come back from France you'll come back to your wife," she told him steadily. "Ifyou're going, I'll marry you before you go. Then I'll wait and pray, and pray and wait, till you come again. And you will come back to me," she whispered. "Something makes me sure of it."
"I'll come back," he promised. "Now, for the first time, I am sure of that, too."
Four hours later Mr. Laurence Devon, lingeringly bidding good night to the lady of his heart, was surprised by a final confidence.
"Laurie," said Doris, holding him fast by, one button as they stood together on the threshold of the little studio, "do you know my real reason for giving up my ambition to go on the stage?"
"Yes. Me," said young Mr. Devon promptly and brilliantly. "But you needn't do it. I'm not going to be the ball-and-chain type of husband."
"I know. But there are reasons within the reason." She twisted the button thoughtfully. "It's because you're the real actor in the family. When I remember what you did to the three of us in that murder scene, and so quietly and naturally, without any heroics—"
She broke off. "There are seven million things about you that I love," she ended, "but the one I think I love the best of all is this: even in your biggest moments, Laurie darling, you never, never 'emote'!"
From theNew York Sun, January 7, 1919:—
"Among the patients on the hospital shipComfort, which arrived yesterday with nine hundred wounded soldiers on board, was Captain Laurence Devon, of the American Flying Forces in France."Captain Devon was seriously injured in a combat with two German planes, which occurred only forty-eight hours before the signing of the armistice. He brought down both machines and though his own plane was on fire and he was badly wounded, he succeeded in reaching the American lines. He has since been in the base hospital at C——, but is now convalescent."Captain Devon is an American 'ace,' with eleven air victories officially to his credit. He was awarded the FrenchCroix de Guerreand the American Distinguished Service Medal for extraordinary heroism on August 9, 1918, when he went to the assistance of a French aviator who was fighting fourFokker planes. In the combat the four German machines were downed and their pilots killed. The Frenchman was badly hurt but eventually recovered."Captain Devon is well known in American social and professional life. He is the only son of the late Horace Devon, of Devondale, Ohio, and the brother-in-law of Robert J. Warren, of New York. Before the war he was a successful playwright. Just before sailing for France last year, he married Miss Doris Mayo, daughter of the late General Frederick Mayo, of Richmond, Virginia. On reaching his New York home to-day he will see for the first time his infant son, Rodney Jacob Devon."
"Among the patients on the hospital shipComfort, which arrived yesterday with nine hundred wounded soldiers on board, was Captain Laurence Devon, of the American Flying Forces in France.
"Captain Devon was seriously injured in a combat with two German planes, which occurred only forty-eight hours before the signing of the armistice. He brought down both machines and though his own plane was on fire and he was badly wounded, he succeeded in reaching the American lines. He has since been in the base hospital at C——, but is now convalescent.
"Captain Devon is an American 'ace,' with eleven air victories officially to his credit. He was awarded the FrenchCroix de Guerreand the American Distinguished Service Medal for extraordinary heroism on August 9, 1918, when he went to the assistance of a French aviator who was fighting fourFokker planes. In the combat the four German machines were downed and their pilots killed. The Frenchman was badly hurt but eventually recovered.
"Captain Devon is well known in American social and professional life. He is the only son of the late Horace Devon, of Devondale, Ohio, and the brother-in-law of Robert J. Warren, of New York. Before the war he was a successful playwright. Just before sailing for France last year, he married Miss Doris Mayo, daughter of the late General Frederick Mayo, of Richmond, Virginia. On reaching his New York home to-day he will see for the first time his infant son, Rodney Jacob Devon."
Transcriber's note:Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.